There is nothing wrong with the trinity. The issue is the dumb mobs that are ruled by an aggro table. Create smarter enemies and you will have to change the way the trinity works and make everyone be on their toes more. Instead of the tanks job being holding aggro his job is to use abilities that deflect damage from one person to him. Instead of the healer just healing the tank he needs to spread out and heal everyone. The DPS have to take more responsibility for moving around and positioning because mobs will know who is doing the damage etc.
Tank and spank is broken, the trinity isn't. As long as you build your classes so that needed abilities are spread out everything works fine.
Also getting away from the instance would help. Requiring a full group to do anything in a dungeon is a broken mechanic. Back in the day you could do a lot of content in imperfect groups because it wasn't all tuned for a full group.
I prefer trinity plus additional roles, and am against multi-class(per character), multi-build games that allow you to change your role through a clickable option and/or a cheap re-spec.
The trinity will return, its honestly the only viable way to do things until they can come up with a truly intelligent AI system to replace it. Even then, you still need to have defined roles in a group, it doesnt neccesarily have to be healer/dps/tank. Where the trinity really came from was EQ1, a lot of people don't realize this because they misinterpreted it in WOW to being tank/healer/dps. In EQ1 the trinity was referring to warrior/cleric/enchanter. You couldnt, at least initially use anything but those 3 classes as the core of a group. Later down the road paladins/sk's could tank in group dungeons, though warriors were still the only raid tanks. Much later down the road they made it possible for shamans and druids to solo heal groupws. A reaaly really good bard could sorta kinda take the place of an enchanter, but not really. But, for the majority of EQ's life you had to have a warrior, cleric, and an enchanter.
Anyways. Not having defined roles is nonsense, it goes against human nature. People, especially in the past, performed certain functions because they were better at it than others. You didn't task the guy who was really good at shooting longbows as a pikeman because he "didnt want" to be a longbow man. You didnt ask the tailor to go bang out a breastplate instead of the blacksmith.
The biggest problem in the MMO industry and really the entertainment/gaming industry in general is this pervasive sense that we need to "give the players what they want!". That sounds good in theory but the issue is the players don't reaaaallly know what they want. They THINK they want something, but once they get it, they often realize it wasnt what they really wanted.
I personally believe the over casualization and the ez mode faceroll mmo situation is a direct result of this and is a huge portion of why communities in MMO's are approaching the level of terrible of games like DOTA 2, or xbox live.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I don't know why people just cant understand human behavior an how it translates (eventually) into what we do. Most people don't like their performance to be evaluated (on show) and shy away from responsibility. You see this most evidently in the work force and it happens to be in game as well via the trinity. Tanks/Healers are the managers/team leaders of the world and dps are the shop floor workers.
In real life the shop floor workers get around saying how they don't need managers/team leaders and that they should get more even though they don't want to do the role. This never translates because although the shop floor people have much greater numbers (dps) the enterprise makes money through the performance of the team and would never let that happen.
In games on the other hand money has nothing to do with the team performance its all about how many you can get to turn up. So, when the group with the largest numbers pushes to remove the managers/team leaders the enterprise starts to listen. The downside however is that the tasks have to be dumb downed to a level that requires no managers/coordinators. Every game that has gone this way has done this including WoW with LFR.
Personally I'd rather stick with human nature in that people generally like defined roles in life and like to be a master of one trade rather than a jack of all master of none. I'd prefer to stick with the trinity and let the managers/coordinators filter into those roles and dps be part of a model that allows them to raise their performance level and complete things on difficulty they otherwise couldn't.
GW2 didnt get rid of the trinity, they just blurred the lines and made it more vague. Look what happened as a result. 95% of the game plays with no synergy or coordination with team mates, all running around like they are solo all the time.
Apparently players need to be spoon fed roles, that is my take home message from gw2.
So lets say you made a game with both systems available (Trinity/Hybrid) in the same game. Have the mobs be able to respond to both systems and make the damage output equalized to both (if mob gets taunted it smacks hard as hell, otherwise its dps is more metered).
Trinity or non-Trinity is not what determines if a group is enjoyable/aggravating, it's the other players and their ability to play their class the best they can and adapt to any given situation
In both types I've played with very good pugs and also with ones that made you want to slit your wrists. Yes, Trinity does have more structure, but non-Trinity groups tend to try to help each other out more ( I just love watching a DPS with healing abilities ignore a healer in trouble cause , "HEY, that's not my job!" )
The thing I like better about non-trinity is when a group wipes on a boss they try to figure out what to do different to succeed instead of the coma-inducing, drama-infested, blame-game of "Tank, you suck! Healer, you suck! DPS, are you AFK?!" ( WoW, I'm looking at you...)
Originally posted by Rockniss Wonder how many people that complain about zerg fest just want to /follow an op tank through a dungeon.
This is definitely true. Most people just want to be lead around without thinking so they can collect loot while expending as little effort as possible. This includes healers as well. In a 24 man raid there can only be one MT. Group tanks are irrelevant. Nobody wants to be a group tank and lead a bunch of unthinking noobs through heroic content. This leads to a shortage of group tanks while at the same time there is huge competition for the MT slot.
I was MT for quite a while in EQ1 and then again in EQ2. I also did the whole group tank thing for over 8 years. Never again will I put up the stress of that nonsense. Responsibility should be shared equally among all classes. Detractors call this zerg because nobody wants to carry them anymore. Time to sink or swim boys.
It is a hard thing to nail. Making combat fun, challenging yet accessible. Groups and content that scale dynamically. People that play together without barriers, limitations and without queues. I think it is somewhat of a holy grail. If a game manages to nail that I think it would be immensely successful. I just think it is a pretty hard thing to get right. We don't have the trinity because it is great for the players, we have the trinity because it is easier to design encounters if you know exactly what the size and breakup of the group will be.
I think at it's core it goes against what MMOs should be about, massive numbers of players having fun together. It takes those massive numbers and breaks them down into smaller manageable groups. Groups of 5~25 players doing instanced content together is not much different than most multiplayer modes in single player games. The truly massive part of MMORPGs happens outside of this instanced content.
As much as I support it, I do have to admit it's given me a lot of horror stories and frustrations in MMORPG's back in the day..
Sitting around looking for a group because you wanted to play something besides a freaking white mage in FF11,'s old days, looking for a group for hours if not the entire day in EQ1's old days once you where mid/high level,, etc., etc.
I seriously don't have that much for/against the trinity, but I can go on and on with complaints/examples about the community the system creates..
You're forced into being judged/judging others based on their gear and classes, and even when that's "acceptable" you're judged on your performance..
I have not played an MMO that has not offered an alternative. I tend to play the hybrid classes that don't quite fit the trinity roles as well as the "desired" classes do. In any MMO there is usually a small set of players who enjoy doing something different. But for the most part players gravitate to the familiar and easy and the trinity offers that in spades. Although I don't think GW2 hit on perfection they did break this to some degree so that for, in most cases, all classes have value. For me being able to play the class you want the way you want is as desirable as wanting to fill a role. Maybe someone will merge these ideas so that they provide the most fun for the player.
Originally posted by djazzy this is like the Sandbox vs Themepark debate
you will never have a consensus about it
agreed. too many threads like this where we debate personal preference. and an official column, no less...c'mon guys you're better than this.
Thier hostory on column choices would suggest they really aren't. Thier writters tend to just pick whatever topic happens to be "hot" and write a few lines on it.
Moving away from the pro/con trinity debate and getting back to the topic: I don't think the trinity is the reason communities form at all.
When people talk about community in MMO's they generally are talking older games like UO, EQ, DAoC etc. The reason communities formed in those older games wasn't due to a Trinity system. It was because a) the content couldn't be done solo and b) there was a lot of downtime.
When you combine those two factors you get groups forming and spending quite a bit of time doing nothing but chatting or suffering awkward silences. It was during downtime in groups that people made friends, got guild invites if they were doing a good job etc. In order to form a Community you need to Communicate!
Skip forward to the modern MMO and most people solo to the level cap then start using a dungeon finder to do group or raid content. How is a community supposed to form when nobody bothers to talk to anyone else? Simple answer is, it doesn't. Other players in most modern MMO's are just competition for mobs you need and a hindrance to you levelling your character or getting that loot you're after. Not an environment that fosters community when you think about it.
I don't think it had anything to do with the class system at all.
When people talk about community in MMO's they generally are talking older games like UO, EQ, DAoC etc. The reason communities formed in those older games wasn't due to a Trinity system. It was because a) the content couldn't be done solo and b) there was a lot of downtime.
or c) something else entirely.
People aren't so easily herded.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I've been saying this since 2008, when developers started watering down the Trinity to oblivion, so much that some of the latest MMOs completely removed it.
If GW2 had the Trinity, I would still be playing the bloody game.
GW2 is actually a fun game, but group content is boring as hell.
So GW2 lost a customer because of the lack of Trinity.
The Trinity adds "Structure" and certaing expectation on the players, as pointed out in the article, that's the truth that developers seems to miss.
I also add that the Trinity should be reinforced, not weakened.
By a stronger Trinity I mean not just the classic set up (Healer, Tank, DPS) but also adding up the Crowd controller the Buffer, and the Puller............
For me being an exceptional Puller was the reason to play EQ, that was my role, I was good at it, and that gave me satisfaction.
Now with the new games, I don't know what I am supposed to do in a group and all seems like a big mess............ just not fun.
EQ, WoW Vanilla and EQ2 Vanilla were the best MMOs I played and they all adopted a strong Trinity.
I hope developers understand they are doing a mistake and change the tune, before it's too late.
There is nothing wrong with the trinity. The issue is the dumb mobs that are ruled by an aggro table. Create smarter enemies and you will have to change the way the trinity works and make everyone be on their toes more. Instead of the tanks job being holding aggro his job is to use abilities that deflect damage from one person to him. Instead of the healer just healing the tank he needs to spread out and heal everyone. The DPS have to take more responsibility for moving around and positioning because mobs will know who is doing the damage etc.
Tank and spank is broken, the trinity isn't. As long as you build your classes so that needed abilities are spread out everything works fine.
Also getting away from the instance would help. Requiring a full group to do anything in a dungeon is a broken mechanic. Back in the day you could do a lot of content in imperfect groups because it wasn't all tuned for a full group.
You are the only one that have ever brought this up.
Trinity is Roles, but it doesn't mean that a tank just absorbs damage, and Healer only heals the tank. While the dps runs around just constantly pressing their sequences of buttons.
Keep the trinity, but change it up. Make those roles more specific
I totally agree to what Ender4 said
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
GW2 pretty much made everyone fully self-sufficient by putting all 3 roles into one character. The only time team work is essential is to revive someone from down state.
Since nobody is depended on to do anything for anyone else the party composition and allies barely matter. The game might as well be a lobby FPS vs bots which kills both the MMO and the RPG aspect.
Trinity was a stupid phrase to begin with. There are more than 3 types "roles", the others just got erased by the stupid Trinity. It wouldn't be so bad if every game that comes out now didn't just catter to those 3 roles and opened their tiny minds.
The narrow minded focus was one of worst things to happen to the genre. Right up there with limiting player choices and customization of playstyles.
Comments
Good post, can't agree more.
The trinity will return, its honestly the only viable way to do things until they can come up with a truly intelligent AI system to replace it. Even then, you still need to have defined roles in a group, it doesnt neccesarily have to be healer/dps/tank. Where the trinity really came from was EQ1, a lot of people don't realize this because they misinterpreted it in WOW to being tank/healer/dps. In EQ1 the trinity was referring to warrior/cleric/enchanter. You couldnt, at least initially use anything but those 3 classes as the core of a group. Later down the road paladins/sk's could tank in group dungeons, though warriors were still the only raid tanks. Much later down the road they made it possible for shamans and druids to solo heal groupws. A reaaly really good bard could sorta kinda take the place of an enchanter, but not really. But, for the majority of EQ's life you had to have a warrior, cleric, and an enchanter.
Anyways. Not having defined roles is nonsense, it goes against human nature. People, especially in the past, performed certain functions because they were better at it than others. You didn't task the guy who was really good at shooting longbows as a pikeman because he "didnt want" to be a longbow man. You didnt ask the tailor to go bang out a breastplate instead of the blacksmith.
The biggest problem in the MMO industry and really the entertainment/gaming industry in general is this pervasive sense that we need to "give the players what they want!". That sounds good in theory but the issue is the players don't reaaaallly know what they want. They THINK they want something, but once they get it, they often realize it wasnt what they really wanted.
I personally believe the over casualization and the ez mode faceroll mmo situation is a direct result of this and is a huge portion of why communities in MMO's are approaching the level of terrible of games like DOTA 2, or xbox live.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I don't know why people just cant understand human behavior an how it translates (eventually) into what we do. Most people don't like their performance to be evaluated (on show) and shy away from responsibility. You see this most evidently in the work force and it happens to be in game as well via the trinity. Tanks/Healers are the managers/team leaders of the world and dps are the shop floor workers.
In real life the shop floor workers get around saying how they don't need managers/team leaders and that they should get more even though they don't want to do the role. This never translates because although the shop floor people have much greater numbers (dps) the enterprise makes money through the performance of the team and would never let that happen.
In games on the other hand money has nothing to do with the team performance its all about how many you can get to turn up. So, when the group with the largest numbers pushes to remove the managers/team leaders the enterprise starts to listen. The downside however is that the tasks have to be dumb downed to a level that requires no managers/coordinators. Every game that has gone this way has done this including WoW with LFR.
Personally I'd rather stick with human nature in that people generally like defined roles in life and like to be a master of one trade rather than a jack of all master of none. I'd prefer to stick with the trinity and let the managers/coordinators filter into those roles and dps be part of a model that allows them to raise their performance level and complete things on difficulty they otherwise couldn't.
GW2 didnt get rid of the trinity, they just blurred the lines and made it more vague. Look what happened as a result. 95% of the game plays with no synergy or coordination with team mates, all running around like they are solo all the time.
Apparently players need to be spoon fed roles, that is my take home message from gw2.
So lets say you made a game with both systems available (Trinity/Hybrid) in the same game. Have the mobs be able to respond to both systems and make the damage output equalized to both (if mob gets taunted it smacks hard as hell, otherwise its dps is more metered).
IF you could somehow magically balance it,
Wouldn't this argument sort itself out?
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Trinity or non-Trinity is not what determines if a group is enjoyable/aggravating, it's the other players and their ability to play their class the best they can and adapt to any given situation
In both types I've played with very good pugs and also with ones that made you want to slit your wrists. Yes, Trinity does have more structure, but non-Trinity groups tend to try to help each other out more ( I just love watching a DPS with healing abilities ignore a healer in trouble cause , "HEY, that's not my job!" )
The thing I like better about non-trinity is when a group wipes on a boss they try to figure out what to do different to succeed instead of the coma-inducing, drama-infested, blame-game of "Tank, you suck! Healer, you suck! DPS, are you AFK?!" ( WoW, I'm looking at you...)
This is definitely true. Most people just want to be lead around without thinking so they can collect loot while expending as little effort as possible. This includes healers as well. In a 24 man raid there can only be one MT. Group tanks are irrelevant. Nobody wants to be a group tank and lead a bunch of unthinking noobs through heroic content. This leads to a shortage of group tanks while at the same time there is huge competition for the MT slot.
I was MT for quite a while in EQ1 and then again in EQ2. I also did the whole group tank thing for over 8 years. Never again will I put up the stress of that nonsense. Responsibility should be shared equally among all classes. Detractors call this zerg because nobody wants to carry them anymore. Time to sink or swim boys.
It is a hard thing to nail. Making combat fun, challenging yet accessible. Groups and content that scale dynamically. People that play together without barriers, limitations and without queues. I think it is somewhat of a holy grail. If a game manages to nail that I think it would be immensely successful. I just think it is a pretty hard thing to get right. We don't have the trinity because it is great for the players, we have the trinity because it is easier to design encounters if you know exactly what the size and breakup of the group will be.
I think at it's core it goes against what MMOs should be about, massive numbers of players having fun together. It takes those massive numbers and breaks them down into smaller manageable groups. Groups of 5~25 players doing instanced content together is not much different than most multiplayer modes in single player games. The truly massive part of MMORPGs happens outside of this instanced content.
As much as I support it, I do have to admit it's given me a lot of horror stories and frustrations in MMORPG's back in the day..
Sitting around looking for a group because you wanted to play something besides a freaking white mage in FF11,'s old days, looking for a group for hours if not the entire day in EQ1's old days once you where mid/high level,, etc., etc.
I seriously don't have that much for/against the trinity, but I can go on and on with complaints/examples about the community the system creates..
You're forced into being judged/judging others based on their gear and classes, and even when that's "acceptable" you're judged on your performance..
Thier hostory on column choices would suggest they really aren't. Thier writters tend to just pick whatever topic happens to be "hot" and write a few lines on it.
Moving away from the pro/con trinity debate and getting back to the topic: I don't think the trinity is the reason communities form at all.
When people talk about community in MMO's they generally are talking older games like UO, EQ, DAoC etc. The reason communities formed in those older games wasn't due to a Trinity system. It was because a) the content couldn't be done solo and b) there was a lot of downtime.
When you combine those two factors you get groups forming and spending quite a bit of time doing nothing but chatting or suffering awkward silences. It was during downtime in groups that people made friends, got guild invites if they were doing a good job etc. In order to form a Community you need to Communicate!
Skip forward to the modern MMO and most people solo to the level cap then start using a dungeon finder to do group or raid content. How is a community supposed to form when nobody bothers to talk to anyone else? Simple answer is, it doesn't. Other players in most modern MMO's are just competition for mobs you need and a hindrance to you levelling your character or getting that loot you're after. Not an environment that fosters community when you think about it.
I don't think it had anything to do with the class system at all.
or c) something else entirely.
People aren't so easily herded.Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Great article.
I've been saying this since 2008, when developers started watering down the Trinity to oblivion, so much that some of the latest MMOs completely removed it.
If GW2 had the Trinity, I would still be playing the bloody game.
GW2 is actually a fun game, but group content is boring as hell.
So GW2 lost a customer because of the lack of Trinity.
The Trinity adds "Structure" and certaing expectation on the players, as pointed out in the article, that's the truth that developers seems to miss.
I also add that the Trinity should be reinforced, not weakened.
By a stronger Trinity I mean not just the classic set up (Healer, Tank, DPS) but also adding up the Crowd controller the Buffer, and the Puller............
For me being an exceptional Puller was the reason to play EQ, that was my role, I was good at it, and that gave me satisfaction.
Now with the new games, I don't know what I am supposed to do in a group and all seems like a big mess............ just not fun.
EQ, WoW Vanilla and EQ2 Vanilla were the best MMOs I played and they all adopted a strong Trinity.
I hope developers understand they are doing a mistake and change the tune, before it's too late.
You are the only one that have ever brought this up.
Trinity is Roles, but it doesn't mean that a tank just absorbs damage, and Healer only heals the tank. While the dps runs around just constantly pressing their sequences of buttons.
Keep the trinity, but change it up. Make those roles more specific
I totally agree to what Ender4 said
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
GW2 pretty much made everyone fully self-sufficient by putting all 3 roles into one character. The only time team work is essential is to revive someone from down state.
Since nobody is depended on to do anything for anyone else the party composition and allies barely matter. The game might as well be a lobby FPS vs bots which kills both the MMO and the RPG aspect.
Trinity was a stupid phrase to begin with. There are more than 3 types "roles", the others just got erased by the stupid Trinity. It wouldn't be so bad if every game that comes out now didn't just catter to those 3 roles and opened their tiny minds.
The narrow minded focus was one of worst things to happen to the genre. Right up there with limiting player choices and customization of playstyles.
~I am Many~
Yes, I did too. Kinda sad, actually