It is too bad that the "holy trinity" actually existed BEFORE MMORPGs did. Ever hear of "Tabletop RPGs"? You know, RPGs that actually consisted of books, while using paper, and pens & pencils, and dice, d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20 and percentile?
That is probably another discussion. Most people talk about games on this forum, lol.
Yeah, I think this topic is already dead on account of people not even knowing what the original "Trinity" even was or why it was.
the holy trinity was warrior / cleric / enchanter, Rattenman got it right, it was a term given to specific EQ classes that formed to core of many groups
it didn't include DPS, DPS was added to the trinity, but the trinity itself didnt include DPS, neither warrior, cleric or enchanter were a DPS class
would you like to tell us what you think it was instead.
It is too bad that the "holy trinity" actually existed BEFORE MMORPGs did. Ever hear of "Tabletop RPGs"? You know, RPGs that actually consisted of books, while using paper, and pens & pencils, and dice, d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20 and percentile?
Ever hear of the term "thac0"?
The OP was talking about EQ .What are you talking about ? We are discussing Everquest. Did you get lost? We are not interested in tabletop we are discussing Everquest.
I had a bard in Everquest, and I remember I downloaded Vanguard, full of excitement, I picked a bard. In my first dungeons, I tried to CC and help the group out, after about 10 minutes in the dungeons, the tank started shouting at me.
"WILL YOU STOP MEZZING MOBS, GOD"
Lol, I knew right there and then that MMO had forever changed. CC in EQ was a matter of life and death, in Vanguard it was a matter of convenience.
Or inconvenience guessing based on the tank's reaction
Look coming into a thread and trying to show everyone up about your superior knowledge on trinity was a dick move and you know it. You were not interested in a discussion merely showing us up. We are discussing Everquest and the games that came after. What you were interested in doing is trying to tell us all we know nothing. Thanks for your contribution.
i think many of you simply miss the real point of the OP.
Each class was needed in EQ. Each class had a vital reason to be wanted in a group. Sure some mixes were better than others, but groups wanted class diversity, because it always helped.
That's what's missing in most the other games. First no one knows what unique aspect a class can bring half the time -- classes are blured. Second, nothing is vital about most any class anymore; most it comes down to just healer and tank is vital -- not any others. Third, people liked the game style -- simple, but so under-rated by those today.
I dont like the sloppy combat in either EQ game they seem so set on having adds in every fight.Their weak system also encourages face pulling which again is a bad design.
So it's bad design because you don't prefer it? So the WOW method of getting a tank who just AOE taunt's everything and the group just aoe facerolls the entire dungeon is so much "better" design?
Face pulling and sneak pulling were part of what made it awesome. It also gave certain classes an identity, having a monk to pull was superior to other classes, but didnt mean that a warrior or paladin or ranger or whatever couldnt pull either. Rogues could sneak pull, monks could split groups with feign death. Paladins could pacify pull, root pull, etc, etc, etc.
I love that you think that having tons of cool options that require skill and forethought to use is "bad design".
"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 dont like the sloppy combat in either EQ game they seem so set on having adds in every fight.Their weak system also encourages face pulling which again is a bad design.
So it's bad design because you don't prefer it? So the WOW method of getting a tank who just AOE taunt's everything and the group just aoe facerolls the entire dungeon is so much "better" design?
Face pulling and sneak pulling were part of what made it awesome. It also gave certain classes an identity, having a monk to pull was superior to other classes, but didnt mean that a warrior or paladin or ranger or whatever couldnt pull either. Rogues could sneak pull, monks could split groups with feign death. Paladins could pacify pull, root pull, etc, etc, etc.
I love that you think that having tons of cool options that require skill and forethought to use is "bad design".
That's what I mean Hrimnir -- your response is perfect. Folks like Wizardry just do not get the depth of strategy it involved.
Whether he prefers WOW or not, I do not know; but that's exactly what folks THINK they prefer. Whether they do or not I am not certain, but real EQ mechanics really are known to less and less and those that practice it even in EQ are almost non-existent anymore (at the lower 60 or 70 levels at least).
It will come back when one of us that loved it so finally gets rich enough to create a modern equivalent -- unlikely it looks; otherwise it will remain dead.
I really do not believe any of the folks at Sony even get it. Much less those few developers that were there and remain in the business.
Even when the monk fds the last straggling mob is picked up by the pally or warrior tank and brought back and if you hit it too early the others will come too .It took skill and time to pull off .Who does these things any more. No one is interested in this slow ass mechanics they want to rush in and aoe down everything .
Even in FFXIV the game I play now the white mage I play has to be able to heal two pulls together when we go into Sartasha,Stone Temple or Snow Cloak . If you are not able to you suck basically. Everything is quantity over quality. I'm getting tired of playing like that it was fun initially but now I am weary of it.
"Trinity" was the damage mitigation for the raid. Everyone had attack spells of some kind, if only just dots, so it's redundant to have "Tank heal dps" as trinity. That view was caused by the "lost" millions of new people who emulated people who acted like they knew what they were talking about.
"Trinity" was tank, heal, cc. CC was chanter/shaman/bard, and often raids would have all 3 (although it never really hurt, it was customary).
Saying otherwise only puts you in "that division" of like-minded people, while those who were present know better, even if they can't always articulate it well. It's the same kind of thing as people thinking "a mob" is a pack of AI opponents, just another misconception handed down by people, eroding the culture of mmo gaming, then wondering why every game sucks. I blame reddit.
TL;DR: Its tank heal cc. Otherwise we can tell you're new since WoW.
This formulaic method was developed for the new style of raid environments wherein a solid smack from a mob would 2-shot, if not one-shot most people and often an unregulated pull would bring 4 or 5. Then you rinse/repeat that about 3 dozen times in rapid succession to get the place done in a decent amount of time.
Alot of other aspects contributed to the flow, too, like cleric complete heal rotations, multiple feign-death puller chains and the requirement of sitting to regain mana (which would certainly get you one-shotted because without other threat, mobs target you first and do multiplied damage).
No one is arguing about what the original trinity meant. We are talking about what the holy trinity which was something dubbed by the players in EQ as Cleric,enchanter and Warrior. Any EQ player who played from 1999 knows this.
But you came into this thread and say we do not know what trinity is. The fact is we were not talking about the original trinity but what the trinity was in EQ. I do not know how much more clearer I can make that and not going to bother with this point anymore.
I just thought of another reason "dps" wasn't in "trinity". Raids weren't 20 man or 40 man, they were just raids. Therefore there was no particular need for guideline on dps proportions. You had your core group, main tank, 2 pullers who could fd, main heal, snare, slow, 2 mez, second snare was usually druid healer in group 2, group 1 might have an auxiliary healer, and you need 1 wiz to get there, so that's 11 core members, then you needed an ae heal for each extra group, so an 18 man raid was pretty much 6 "whatever elses" could roll on the drops.
I got called in to rez a 42 man poh once... generally it was 24 or 30, and 30 was for the 5 extra dps if inny was up, or ct in pof. (and of course people wanting to roll on the loot). It became fashionable to be able to say you did it with fewer and fewer teammates, and from my depiction above, with some corners cut (like 1 fewer puller in chain, 1 less healer, 1 less mez) 12-18 was optimal. If you could do it with fewer than 10, you probably didn't even need the zone.
So I'm saying you could have "30 dps" as you could call it, because they were really just "whatever elses". It wasn't in the formula.
The OP was talking about EQ .What are you talking about ? We are discussing Everquest. Did you get lost? We are not interested in tabletop we are discussing Everquest.
And actually, even IF this thread was about the original EQ... IT was designed based on Dungeons & Dragons... The Tabletop RPG... Even the lead spokesman from the Everquest Next has stated this.
They change so much stuff that it really does not matter that it is "based on" tabletop RPG.
Does tabletop RPG has static spawn? 50 people line camping such static spawn? Force down-time waiting for a boat, waiting for mana to regen, waiting for ....
Heck, does tabletop RPG has chat about the latest movies, tv shows while waiting for something to happen in the "fantasy" world?
So I'm saying you could have "30 dps" as you could call it, because they were really just "whatever elses". It wasn't in the formula.
You can say that again I was a wizard in EQ and I made my mind up never to play DPS ever again in any other game because of simply how long I had to wait to get groups. I had two very good friends who was a cleric and enchanter and if they were on we had no problems at all ,well may be getting an empty camp but we were good to go. Any tank would join a cleric /enchanter group.The only time I felt special when playing was when those AOE groups popped up .
I used to envy the cleric and enchanter class a lot then and felt a little okay a lot of resentment for the way they were always in demand. I guess I subconsciously decided when I played AO to play a doctor. From then on have never play anything but healers. I also had no other class. It was only later in my other games that I had alts. In EQ there was just one toon my wizard.
I remember in Lineage II, there were tanks, dps, healers, buffers, debuffers, and mana healers. (and maybe some other role that I forgot)
I miss this sort of "advanced trinity" in modern MMOs.
This approach of L2 is very flawed because when people realised that by having a boxed PP-WC + BD they could even solo AOE in group areas like the catacombs.
That's why I prefer the holy trinity where the tank is the crowd control class and the healer the live saver, you can't box those two characters and be efficient at the same time because they require to be active all the time, but you can box-tribox buffers in L2 because they just need to buff the party and sit on the floor or just get the drops.
2. A Redefining of how the "Trinity" works. There are far more ways of having each part of the Trinity work with the other parts than what we have typically seen (In any game). I have even seen a few very good concepts in this "Redefining" direction in MMORPGs over the past decade. It is too bad developers can not identify good base concepts, take notes and expand on those concepts. These not only could redefine the "Trinity" but also expand beyond just a "Trinity."
1. This is actually what people by and large campaign against. Misunderstanding of "trinity" caused trainwrecks like GW2, wherein it's just a chaotic dodge-roll-scramble ridiculous every-man-for-himself series of encounters. There does need to be more division of labor, specialists filling roles so others are free to perform their duties unhindered. There needs to be a little less emphasis on parse and a little more emphasis on, "this is your job, teammate. If you blow it, we all fail".
People don't like that. They don't like to be held accountable, primarily evidenced by the noticeable lack of players in any game interested in filling such important roles. I can name about any game and be truthful, saying I've waited long periods many times waiting for a "tank" or waiting for a "healer", etc.
Everybody wants to be everything, all the time, with free respec. Eventually everyone is virtually interchangeable and no one is special in any given circumstance.
2. You don't need to redefine "trinity". What you should really do is just lose the term, because no one uses it right. Efforts to change it will invariably lead to development of "what it was". Changing what "people think it is" means more emphasis on control, less on parse, more emphasis on teamwork and necessity of many types of mitigation, less emphasis on the guy who doubles down dps, as a matter of fact, punish him, because he'll die, causing the rest of the team to suffer. It's too much consequence and responsibility. None of these modern gamers have time for that.
Wish people would just stop arguing about/against/for, whatever, trinity. It didn't start as a particularly nice term in the first place, more a sarcastic undertone from those not in the "trinity" classes. But if you do argue it, make it like it used to be, on purpose, not as a consequence of ignorance.
That being said, i don't know. It was a blast, it was challaging,... it seems like we will never get that back. The broad masses simply don't want to be bothered with challange. They want easy faceroll content. Preferably solo content. Grouping is a thing of the past, "working" for your goals is something of the past (not only in gaming sadly).
If a game like EQ comes around again, ill sure play that one. Up to that point i am out of MMOs.
For other people in the thread, trinity existed long before EQ was developed.
It was always "Tank, Cleric and Damage" in my experience, from Tabletop RPGs which i started playing in 1984, and the actual game was from the late 1970's (D&D Red Paperback Books from TSR). Those classes tended to also have their own versions of CC. Consider a Tank's ability to hold aggro even, it is a CC. Not sure where the idea of "Tank. Healer and CC" came from.
I played chainmail before we had dnd, was an early dnd player, play tested tsr products and was a judge at the AD&D open at early gencons. We didn't have tanks as that comes from aggro management. Monsters attacked players as the Dungeon Master saw fit to do. To say we had aggro management is bs.
As I said, tanks is a term dealing with aggro management. Did we have fighter types with shields and sword like many fantasy mmorpgs? You bet we did. But don't call it tanking as there wasn't aggro. You are trying to twist ancient pen and paper mechanics into aggro and then declaring we had tanks. A total load of crap.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
2. A Redefining of how the "Trinity" works. There are far more ways of having each part of the Trinity work with the other parts than what we have typically seen (In any game). I have even seen a few very good concepts in this "Redefining" direction in MMORPGs over the past decade. It is too bad developers can not identify good base concepts, take notes and expand on those concepts. These not only could redefine the "Trinity" but also expand beyond just a "Trinity."
People don't like that.
They don't like to be held accountable.
I've waited many times for a... [insert class here]
Eventually everyone is virtually interchangeable and no one is special in any given circumstance.
What you should really do is just lose the term
means... more emphasis on teamwork
punish him, because he'll die, causing the rest of the team to suffer
too much consequence and responsibility.
None of these modern gamers have time for that.
I have so many thing I want to say about these particular points, and no, not necessarily to you Adjuvant1 (unless of course you share these views too). I definitely see these points I have highlighted here as points that apply to many modern "gamers". They are NOT MMORPGers. They are NOT RPGers.
There is just so much I see that is so wrong with those points, but so much truth with respect to how those lemmings "think". I can only hope reincarnation does not exist, for I certainly would prefer never to exist again rather than see the direction of humanity if this is any indication.
Well, the real problem is those are the guys paying the paychecks. Of a million people who bought a b2p or a sub to any given game, more than half ... let's say... aren't really "into it like that". The game has to be palatable to them, somehow, or it fades quickly. So, whatever.
Comments
That is probably another discussion. Most people talk about games on this forum, lol.
The OP was talking about EQ .What are you talking about ? We are discussing Everquest. Did you get lost? We are not interested in tabletop we are discussing Everquest.
exactly
i think many of you simply miss the real point of the OP.
Each class was needed in EQ. Each class had a vital reason to be wanted in a group. Sure some mixes were better than others, but groups wanted class diversity, because it always helped.
That's what's missing in most the other games. First no one knows what unique aspect a class can bring half the time -- classes are blured. Second, nothing is vital about most any class anymore; most it comes down to just healer and tank is vital -- not any others. Third, people liked the game style -- simple, but so under-rated by those today.
"You need a wizard to get there."
"A druid would sure help with that"
"Enchanter OMG I love you!"
"Monk split that group!"
"Bard just keep them running!"
"Ranger you snare em! We'll pull em"
"Wizard at half life you Destroy it."
"INC %t"
"MEZ!!!"
"REZ!!!"
"SOW!!"
"PORT!!!"
"FD!!!"
and so many others.
Ahh this thread brings a tear to the eye. Damm I miss my Enchanter.
So it's bad design because you don't prefer it? So the WOW method of getting a tank who just AOE taunt's everything and the group just aoe facerolls the entire dungeon is so much "better" design?
Face pulling and sneak pulling were part of what made it awesome. It also gave certain classes an identity, having a monk to pull was superior to other classes, but didnt mean that a warrior or paladin or ranger or whatever couldnt pull either. Rogues could sneak pull, monks could split groups with feign death. Paladins could pacify pull, root pull, etc, etc, etc.
I love that you think that having tons of cool options that require skill and forethought to use is "bad design".
"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
That's what I mean Hrimnir -- your response is perfect. Folks like Wizardry just do not get the depth of strategy it involved.
Whether he prefers WOW or not, I do not know; but that's exactly what folks THINK they prefer. Whether they do or not I am not certain, but real EQ mechanics really are known to less and less and those that practice it even in EQ are almost non-existent anymore (at the lower 60 or 70 levels at least).
It will come back when one of us that loved it so finally gets rich enough to create a modern equivalent -- unlikely it looks; otherwise it will remain dead.
I really do not believe any of the folks at Sony even get it. Much less those few developers that were there and remain in the business.
Even when the monk fds the last straggling mob is picked up by the pally or warrior tank and brought back and if you hit it too early the others will come too .It took skill and time to pull off .Who does these things any more. No one is interested in this slow ass mechanics they want to rush in and aoe down everything .
Even in FFXIV the game I play now the white mage I play has to be able to heal two pulls together when we go into Sartasha,Stone Temple or Snow Cloak . If you are not able to you suck basically. Everything is quantity over quality. I'm getting tired of playing like that it was fun initially but now I am weary of it.
"Trinity" was the damage mitigation for the raid. Everyone had attack spells of some kind, if only just dots, so it's redundant to have "Tank heal dps" as trinity. That view was caused by the "lost" millions of new people who emulated people who acted like they knew what they were talking about.
"Trinity" was tank, heal, cc. CC was chanter/shaman/bard, and often raids would have all 3 (although it never really hurt, it was customary).
Saying otherwise only puts you in "that division" of like-minded people, while those who were present know better, even if they can't always articulate it well. It's the same kind of thing as people thinking "a mob" is a pack of AI opponents, just another misconception handed down by people, eroding the culture of mmo gaming, then wondering why every game sucks. I blame reddit.
TL;DR: Its tank heal cc. Otherwise we can tell you're new since WoW.
This formulaic method was developed for the new style of raid environments wherein a solid smack from a mob would 2-shot, if not one-shot most people and often an unregulated pull would bring 4 or 5. Then you rinse/repeat that about 3 dozen times in rapid succession to get the place done in a decent amount of time.
Alot of other aspects contributed to the flow, too, like cleric complete heal rotations, multiple feign-death puller chains and the requirement of sitting to regain mana (which would certainly get you one-shotted because without other threat, mobs target you first and do multiplied damage).
No one is arguing about what the original trinity meant. We are talking about what the holy trinity which was something dubbed by the players in EQ as Cleric,enchanter and Warrior. Any EQ player who played from 1999 knows this.
But you came into this thread and say we do not know what trinity is. The fact is we were not talking about the original trinity but what the trinity was in EQ. I do not know how much more clearer I can make that and not going to bother with this point anymore.
I just thought of another reason "dps" wasn't in "trinity". Raids weren't 20 man or 40 man, they were just raids. Therefore there was no particular need for guideline on dps proportions. You had your core group, main tank, 2 pullers who could fd, main heal, snare, slow, 2 mez, second snare was usually druid healer in group 2, group 1 might have an auxiliary healer, and you need 1 wiz to get there, so that's 11 core members, then you needed an ae heal for each extra group, so an 18 man raid was pretty much 6 "whatever elses" could roll on the drops.
I got called in to rez a 42 man poh once... generally it was 24 or 30, and 30 was for the 5 extra dps if inny was up, or ct in pof. (and of course people wanting to roll on the loot). It became fashionable to be able to say you did it with fewer and fewer teammates, and from my depiction above, with some corners cut (like 1 fewer puller in chain, 1 less healer, 1 less mez) 12-18 was optimal. If you could do it with fewer than 10, you probably didn't even need the zone.
So I'm saying you could have "30 dps" as you could call it, because they were really just "whatever elses". It wasn't in the formula.
They change so much stuff that it really does not matter that it is "based on" tabletop RPG.
Does tabletop RPG has static spawn? 50 people line camping such static spawn? Force down-time waiting for a boat, waiting for mana to regen, waiting for ....
Heck, does tabletop RPG has chat about the latest movies, tv shows while waiting for something to happen in the "fantasy" world?
You can say that again I was a wizard in EQ and I made my mind up never to play DPS ever again in any other game because of simply how long I had to wait to get groups. I had two very good friends who was a cleric and enchanter and if they were on we had no problems at all ,well may be getting an empty camp but we were good to go. Any tank would join a cleric /enchanter group.The only time I felt special when playing was when those AOE groups popped up .
I used to envy the cleric and enchanter class a lot then and felt a little okay a lot of resentment for the way they were always in demand. I guess I subconsciously decided when I played AO to play a doctor. From then on have never play anything but healers. I also had no other class. It was only later in my other games that I had alts. In EQ there was just one toon my wizard.
This approach of L2 is very flawed because when people realised that by having a boxed PP-WC + BD they could even solo AOE in group areas like the catacombs.
That's why I prefer the holy trinity where the tank is the crowd control class and the healer the live saver, you can't box those two characters and be efficient at the same time because they require to be active all the time, but you can box-tribox buffers in L2 because they just need to buff the party and sit on the floor or just get the drops.
1. This is actually what people by and large campaign against. Misunderstanding of "trinity" caused trainwrecks like GW2, wherein it's just a chaotic dodge-roll-scramble ridiculous every-man-for-himself series of encounters. There does need to be more division of labor, specialists filling roles so others are free to perform their duties unhindered. There needs to be a little less emphasis on parse and a little more emphasis on, "this is your job, teammate. If you blow it, we all fail".
People don't like that. They don't like to be held accountable, primarily evidenced by the noticeable lack of players in any game interested in filling such important roles. I can name about any game and be truthful, saying I've waited long periods many times waiting for a "tank" or waiting for a "healer", etc.
Everybody wants to be everything, all the time, with free respec. Eventually everyone is virtually interchangeable and no one is special in any given circumstance.
2. You don't need to redefine "trinity". What you should really do is just lose the term, because no one uses it right. Efforts to change it will invariably lead to development of "what it was". Changing what "people think it is" means more emphasis on control, less on parse, more emphasis on teamwork and necessity of many types of mitigation, less emphasis on the guy who doubles down dps, as a matter of fact, punish him, because he'll die, causing the rest of the team to suffer. It's too much consequence and responsibility. None of these modern gamers have time for that.
Wish people would just stop arguing about/against/for, whatever, trinity. It didn't start as a particularly nice term in the first place, more a sarcastic undertone from those not in the "trinity" classes. But if you do argue it, make it like it used to be, on purpose, not as a consequence of ignorance.
edited:typos
I played chainmail before we had dnd, was an early dnd player, play tested tsr products and was a judge at the AD&D open at early gencons. We didn't have tanks as that comes from aggro management. Monsters attacked players as the Dungeon Master saw fit to do. To say we had aggro management is bs.
As I said, tanks is a term dealing with aggro management. Did we have fighter types with shields and sword like many fantasy mmorpgs? You bet we did. But don't call it tanking as there wasn't aggro. You are trying to twist ancient pen and paper mechanics into aggro and then declaring we had tanks. A total load of crap.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Well, the real problem is those are the guys paying the paychecks. Of a million people who bought a b2p or a sub to any given game, more than half ... let's say... aren't really "into it like that". The game has to be palatable to them, somehow, or it fades quickly. So, whatever.