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Why didn't we see the Trinity+1 (Quadrinity?) again?

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  • ArtificeVenatusArtificeVenatus Member UncommonPosts: 1,236
     
  • AkulasAkulas Member RarePosts: 3,004
    Because a game wants to be played by the most broadest range of people possible gameplay is going to suffer. More people = more money then it becomes about catering for the shareholders instead of the playerbase.

    This isn't a signature, you just think it is.

  • Adjuvant1Adjuvant1 Member RarePosts: 2,100

    Actually, Wildstar has cc, but not a pull process where cc starts from the initial mob split, no necessary snare in pve or mez for that matter. It's all abridged into "interrupt armor", a shared ability across classes, used at specific times, with ideally spread responsibility across the party members. They added two other factors, though. First there is the action combat aspect and people who played EQ 15 years ago aren't 18yo spring chickens, generally, when it comes to hand-eye coordination and reaction time. Secondly, there is (was...) a parse requirement because passing dungeons on silver meant a time limit, so even if you were doing everything correctly, you wouldn't advance if you weren't pushing the dps the whole time, so dps was as, if not more, important at times than the control. (This has been changed to bronze with no time limit)

    So Wildstar expected too much? Maybe. Admittedly it took me doing each dungeon the better part of 5 times to get the patterns down and anticipate next moves to make the fights go smoothly. Maybe some people got it down in 2 runs, that's fine. Maybe some people it would take 20. Even if you learned it in 5, though, all told, it could equal 15 hours of online time finding the group, wiping, learning, wiping some more, losing a guy, replacing said guy, wiping, learning... hey, I don't mind, because I'm blessed with free time. Some people are only online 15 or 20 hours a week and much of that is filled with dailies and crafting, so even if they were very fast learners, they might not advance.

    Wildstar does some things right, and it's applicable to the conversation, but it adds other demands, so group A who likes articulate cc dungeons is halved to group B who likes articulate dungeons and has time online to group C who likes articulate dungeons, has time online and can grasp the twitchy combat to group D who all of the above plus has the inclination and initiative to parse well and otherwise learn most effective rotations. So you get subset group E, and not all of those are nice people.

    I got off track.

    Developers could replace the mitigation of "action combat" with stat formulae spread across multiple resists. Twitch is replaced by preparedness, and really dps suffers if most stats (assuming a total stat pool on a given toon) are relegated to said resist so combats might take a little longer each by 20-40%. Also certain classes stack more said resist with buffs, so they're necessary group contributions. Spread this across 12 or 20 different types of resist. Now, people who have "done their homework" can participate in given encounters and maybe even not need their eyes glued to the screen for 2 straight hours (which loses more player base than you might imagine). A group could do that particular content that (proper?) way or just try to strong-arm through it with higher dps, hoping it kill targets before they're killed.

    That's just one example of replacement of a game mechanic aspect. Some could argue, too, that "games have advanced to this point, with the ability to cross a platformer or fps with an mmo, and going against it is going backwards". I see that sentiment. I don't share it.

  • aesperusaesperus Member UncommonPosts: 5,135
    Originally posted by Lonzo

    Back in the days when I played EQ1 I had so much fun fighting in groups through all the dungeons gaining loot from rare spawns. It was a blast.

    The usual group was a typical trinity + one crowd control char like a bard or enchanter.

    The fights were very intense and while we had enchanter that could hold like 7-9 adds in single target mezzes, the fights were super thrilling. one runner and the hell broke out.

    It was fun!

    I wonder why no other game took this path? Why?

    I knew a lot of people who liked that.

    What do you think?

    There are 2 reasons, primarily.

    1) CC in a lot of ways was 'too powerful', which created balancing problems. Either you had a character with ridiculously good CC, but could do almost nothing else (which wasn't that fun in a lot of cases), or you had a character that was 'broken' and too good.

    2) When games started to implement more PvP systems, being CCed for a year wasn't fun for the players. No one likes to be stunlocked, or feel like they can't control their character. Which creates another problem. How do these classes enjoy pvp when their primary function is so powerful that it essentially ruins pvp for everyone else?

    That said, crowd control is still very much alive today, it's just different. You have some games (i.e. GW2) which try and get away from the trinity entirely, and give everyone various forms of CC. In a sense that role has been difused over multiple people, instead of condensed onto one person (though that game in particular has classes that can specialize into CC, as did GW1).

    You also have other games which allow for similar types of abilities, but they are more toned down. Either you can't mez an entire army (AoE cap on abilities), or the duration is significantly reduced (also diminishing returns).

  • Adjuvant1Adjuvant1 Member RarePosts: 2,100
    Originally posted by aesperus
    Originally posted by Lonzo

    Back in the days when I played EQ1 I had so much fun fighting in groups through all the dungeons gaining loot from rare spawns. It was a blast.

    The usual group was a typical trinity + one crowd control char like a bard or enchanter.

    The fights were very intense and while we had enchanter that could hold like 7-9 adds in single target mezzes, the fights were super thrilling. one runner and the hell broke out.

    It was fun!

    I wonder why no other game took this path? Why?

    I knew a lot of people who liked that.

    What do you think?

    There are 2 reasons, primarily.

    1) CC in a lot of ways was 'too powerful', which created balancing problems. Either you had a character with ridiculously good CC, but could do almost nothing else (which wasn't that fun in a lot of cases), or you had a character that was 'broken' and too good.

    2) When games started to implement more PvP systems, being CCed for a year wasn't fun for the players. No one likes to be stunlocked, or feel like they can't control their character. Which creates another problem. How do these classes enjoy pvp when their primary function is so powerful that it essentially ruins pvp for everyone else?

    That said, crowd control is still very much alive today, it's just different. You have some games (i.e. GW2) which try and get away from the trinity entirely, and give everyone various forms of CC. In a sense that role has been difused over multiple people, instead of condensed onto one person (though that game in particular has classes that can specialize into CC, as did GW1).

    You also have other games which allow for similar types of abilities, but they are more toned down. Either you can't mez an entire army (AoE cap on abilities), or the duration is significantly reduced (also diminishing returns).

    The way I understand all of this, I have no idea how someone can formulate an effective response to anything including "trinity+cc", but you managed to pull it off.

    Yes, the downside to strong cc (which is 3rd in trinity, not dps) is badly imbalanced pvp, also less preferable classes in most given situations. I agree. Warhammer and SWtoR added mechanism to make pvp recipients of cc immune for a time after 2 or 3 stuns/mez. That was more of a "band-aid on a broken arm", though, but it did push appropriate timing for pvp cc, so I guess that's good.

  • ArtificeVenatusArtificeVenatus Member UncommonPosts: 1,236
     
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