For me 5/6 is ideal. I wish games would bring back the support role and stop trying to roll it into the tank/healer rolls just so people can dps and face roll their keyboards.
6 or 8 is fine. I loved City of Heroes we had so many different skills it was crazy fun to do missions. I also like cc,heals,dps ,tank,off tank, buffer and so on.
Not only were the 8 person groups in City of Heroes inclusive due to the many classes much like DAOC. In City of Heroes the content could be scaled to your group size with extra options for fighting bosses or not archvillians or not etc. It was really amazing seeing people group all the time in City of Heroes. Never played a more group friendly game. Might have been many more factors than the group size and difficulty selection... the community was very good and everyone also had travel powers and supergroup bases making getting around easy too.
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
In a trinity style setup, I think that the crux of the issue lies between wanting groups small enough so that they are easy to form and large enough to ensure none of the roles have difficulty finding a group.
In WoW for instance, dps queues tend to be 30+ minutes while tank queues are instant. This idea can also be applied to forming your own groups. "LF Tank/Healer Armageddon's Breach." 45 minutes later, give up. So perhaps for that style of game, a game with 3 very well defined roles, it might be better to open it up to 6 man groups instead of 5 to help alleviate the pressure.
If the roles are more fluid, then lower it down a bit in my opinion. Perhaps 4 or 5 is more appropriate. Getting a team together and engaging challenging content is the goal (that often leads to the broader goal of progression).
I know that personally, I like playing 3 on 3 basketball much more than 5 on 5. Besides it being less confusing, it also helps build a more impactful sense of "team" more quickly in my opinion. Roles start to form naturally and much more quickly than an average pickup game of 5 on 5.
How about flexible. You can add more to a group than the maximum group size but you have some penalties against normal group monsters. That way you can grab that second healer for a while before the first healer leaves.
My wish is for content that you only need 4 to complete, but that size should make the content more difficult, with the option of six to make things faster.
I definately believe that the holy quartet (with CC) is by far a more sacred dynamic than the trinity. I want the option to go fight and not have to wait around for six busy lives to connect. But that's all to assume no group finder.
So that makes me think, well; how was the game designed? DAoC was designed for 8 so 8 worked best. EQ designed for 6 so 6 works best '. In WoW's system, it's the trinity with everyone having some utility/cc that has to be coordinated. But bosses demand a lot more dps than the trinity so 5 works best because it was designed that way.
Another way to look at it: if there is a dungeon finder, I want the size of the group to equal a 10 min or less wait time window.
If there isn't a group finder, I want to be able to put together a viable group regularly between 10 and 20 minutes.
I like games that require larger groups; I just find that it is harder to coordinate larger groups if there is no in-game system beyond chat to put them together. Even tougher in low population games. So once in a big group - awesome; but I remember days where I spent 2 of my 3 hour play time in EQ just trying to get six to group.
How about flexible. You can add more to a group than the maximum group size but you have some penalties against normal group monsters. That way you can grab that second healer for a while before the first healer leaves.
I'd love to see a bit of flexibility in group size and composition, but probably a challenge to program
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I love group size of 4. But in games like City of
Heroes there was nothing like having 8 masterminds killing everything in sight,
it was glorious chaos!!
In City of Heroes the content could be scaled to your group size with extra options for fighting bosses or not archvillians or not etc.
Not just for group size but for the levels too, and after that there was still the difficulty slider to fine-tune it. It was a really flexible system, CO took some parts of it but not all. On lists comparing the two, I used to put that mechanic as a point for CoH.
As for the numbers, it looks like I'm with the majority. Sure it depends on the number of classes available on the game, also their role distribution (since roles are important, zerging is for dummies), but 6 seems like an optimal number. Easy to form raid groups too by simply joining 2 or 4 groups. LotRO and AoC are both using this 6/12/24 setup, in AoC maybe it was even more straightforward than in LotRO (AoC has 12 classes, and the original raids were designed for a group with 24 players, 2 from each class).
For anyone that played it. Dungeons and Dragons Online, really tagged the way Dungeons could be made.
Quite frankly tho, roles in games, just gives players an excuse to be sloppy if you ask me.
If you make it so there is a Healer Role, all that does is encourages the DPS Role to not pay attention to their life bar, it allows them to not pay attention to their surroundings outside insta-kill attacks, and it allows them to deflect blame, IE: If they die they blame the healer.
So, I am not a huge fan of fixed roles in any game.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
For anyone that played it. Dungeons and Dragons Online, really tagged the way Dungeons could be made.
Quite frankly tho, roles in games, just gives players an excuse to be sloppy if you ask me.
If you make it so there is a Healer Role, all that does is encourages the DPS Role to not pay attention to their life bar, it allows them to not pay attention to their surroundings outside insta-kill attacks, and it allows them to deflect blame, IE: If they die they blame the healer.
So, I am not a huge fan of fixed roles in any game.
GW2 tried removing the trinity, pretty much what you described...no roles...and all it did was make everyone be a DPSer. And it created too much zerging.
I dunno how one would get rid of roles. In real life, every job has roles. But as for roles in MMOs...
Do you make it so the DPS can self heal? That make them need to pay attention. Get rid of the need of healers like GW2 tried? But look at WoW some classes like blood DK while a tank...does so much self healing they can solo the entire game. They are a one man army. So that doesn't work. Any amount of self healing makes encounters vastly easier.
Do you make it so you can't heal at all? Or very limited healing? That doesn't work either because then mechanics need to be too simplified, or it becomes like Wildstar tried catering to the hardcore and obviously failed at anything but a niche MMO.
What about remove the tank role? But then everyone are tanks, and it becomes too easy since you can tank every encounter.
Remove DPS role? Well thats...well...everyone would kill so slow that it make FFXIV low level combat look like a highspeed chase
And then there is the problem...people will still create the roles they are used to. People will always find a way to have a trinity.
Even games like planetside 2 have roles or other FPS games. You got the sniper who picks off targets, the guy who scouts, the tank, the infiltrator, guy who runs in gunning who is fodder...just like real life...everyone has a strategy or a reason to be a part of that group fighting
Doubt its possible to get rid of roles without making it either too easy or too hard where it becomes a niche MMO. And people will make roles anyway.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
Depends on the game and the classes available to be honest. There's no golden medium. Like, in EVE you can be a fleet with hundreds of players and that's fine in that game
In guild wars 2 you can solo most of the stuff but the group content is for 5 man group which is fine since it doesnt enforce the holy trinity so you have spare slots.
Games like Lineage 2 where you have buffers on top of trinity, 9 man groups are a must, 3 or 4 slots being reserved for them.
I was tempted to vote for 7 and then declare "innovative!" (never done before?), but went with 8.
We need remember that groupsize had an upper limit but not a lower requirement, so the group could be any number up to what the game declared. It's not like if you had only 7 people in DAoC that you could NOT adventure until that 8th showed up
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
For anyone that played it. Dungeons and Dragons Online, really tagged the way Dungeons could be made.
Quite frankly tho, roles in games, just gives players an excuse to be sloppy if you ask me.
If you make it so there is a Healer Role, all that does is encourages the DPS Role to not pay attention to their life bar, it allows them to not pay attention to their surroundings outside insta-kill attacks, and it allows them to deflect blame, IE: If they die they blame the healer.
So, I am not a huge fan of fixed roles in any game.
GW2 tried removing the trinity, pretty much what you described...no roles...and all it did was make everyone be a DPSer. And it created too much zerging.
I dunno how one would get rid of roles. In real life, every job has roles. But as for roles in MMOs...
Do you make it so the DPS can self heal? That make them need to pay attention. Get rid of the need of healers like GW2 tried? But look at WoW some classes like blood DK while a tank...does so much self healing they can solo the entire game. They are a one man army. So that doesn't work. Any amount of self healing makes encounters vastly easier.
Do you make it so you can't heal at all? Or very limited healing? That doesn't work either because then mechanics need to be too simplified, or it becomes like Wildstar tried catering to the hardcore and obviously failed at anything but a niche MMO.
What about remove the tank role? But then everyone are tanks, and it becomes too easy since you can tank every encounter.
Remove DPS role? Well thats...well...everyone would kill so slow that it make FFXIV low level combat look like a highspeed chase
And then there is the problem...people will still create the roles they are used to. People will always find a way to have a trinity.
Even games like planetside 2 have roles or other FPS games. You got the sniper who picks off targets, the guy who scouts, the tank, the infiltrator, guy who runs in gunning who is fodder...just like real life...everyone has a strategy or a reason to be a part of that group fighting
Doubt its possible to get rid of roles without making it either too easy or too hard where it becomes a niche MMO. And people will make roles anyway.
Since I used to play Dungeons and Dragons Online, where we would Zerg Dungeons 20+ times in a row.. the "Zerging" in GW2 was a joke, all things said and done. And even then, roles won't stop that, as Zerging content is a byproduct of grinding the content. Just like now in GW2 with their supposed Roles they added in players Zerg raids.
Equally so in DDO, they had roles. where there were clerics, fighters, wizards, etc, etc.. and one healed, one DPS, one tanked.. etc..
But.. you could also mix them. When I played the max level was 20, so.. if you wanted to play a solid DPS class like a Barbarian, but, also wanted to be able to self heal, you could mix in cleric, and play something like 4 cleric levels and 16 Barb levels, and quite literally get the best of both worlds. Or play a Monk/Cleric, in fact that game allowed you to mix up to 3 classes in any way you wanted to mix them.
Resolved the whole issue, if you wanted to solo or small group, and wanted to be able to be a grown ass player covering your own ass, you could literally be a Fighter/Cleric/Thief, disarm traps, heal yourself, and do solid damage.
In many ways, allowing that really opened the door to let players chose how dependent they wanted to make themselves. Sure, some players wanted to be Pure DPS and expected Pure Clerics to cater to their every boo-boo. But a huge portion of the population started to make things that were far more self sufficient.
Couple that with gear that also could fill deficiencies, like heal potions, and other gear that could regenerate health and even mana, and then you mix that with special advancements, like the Wizard class has a Pale Master spec, that allowed you to become Undead, and then cast death auras, which harmed mobs around you and healed yourself, you wear gear that augmented necromancy magic.. and you get the idea.
Now, with GW2, there were a lot of support classes, like Guards provided a good deal of healing and buffs, depending on how they built them, same with Elementalist. Yes, players often opted to go full zerk, and just zerg content, but, that was more a social thing, where that was what was passed off as the best way to do things, so everyone just rolled with it, but, truth be told, there were other options to how to play.
Some people will do all they can to suck the fun out of a game, and make it a job or turn a game into work. You can't allow these people to direct a game, nor should a game be built to stop them.
Personally, I thought GW2 really was on the right track with removing roles. But again, I had played a game like DDO, where there was enough freedom in any build you wanted to never have to deal with roles in your party if you didn't want them.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
For anyone that played it. Dungeons and Dragons Online, really tagged the way Dungeons could be made.
Quite frankly tho, roles in games, just gives players an excuse to be sloppy if you ask me.
If you make it so there is a Healer Role, all that does is encourages the DPS Role to not pay attention to their life bar, it allows them to not pay attention to their surroundings outside insta-kill attacks, and it allows them to deflect blame, IE: If they die they blame the healer.
So, I am not a huge fan of fixed roles in any game.
GW2 tried removing the trinity, pretty much what you described...no roles...and all it did was make everyone be a DPSer. And it created too much zerging.
I dunno how one would get rid of roles. In real life, every job has roles. But as for roles in MMOs...
Do you make it so the DPS can self heal? That make them need to pay attention. Get rid of the need of healers like GW2 tried? But look at WoW some classes like blood DK while a tank...does so much self healing they can solo the entire game. They are a one man army. So that doesn't work. Any amount of self healing makes encounters vastly easier.
Do you make it so you can't heal at all? Or very limited healing? That doesn't work either because then mechanics need to be too simplified, or it becomes like Wildstar tried catering to the hardcore and obviously failed at anything but a niche MMO.
What about remove the tank role? But then everyone are tanks, and it becomes too easy since you can tank every encounter.
Remove DPS role? Well thats...well...everyone would kill so slow that it make FFXIV low level combat look like a highspeed chase
And then there is the problem...people will still create the roles they are used to. People will always find a way to have a trinity.
Even games like planetside 2 have roles or other FPS games. You got the sniper who picks off targets, the guy who scouts, the tank, the infiltrator, guy who runs in gunning who is fodder...just like real life...everyone has a strategy or a reason to be a part of that group fighting
Doubt its possible to get rid of roles without making it either too easy or too hard where it becomes a niche MMO. And people will make roles anyway.
Now, with GW2, there were a lot of support classes, like Guards provided a good deal of healing and buffs, depending on how they built them, same with Elementalist. Yes, players often opted to go full zerk, and just zerg content, but, that was more a social thing, where that was what was passed off as the best way to do things, so everyone just rolled with it, but, truth be told, there were other options to how to play.
Some people will do all they can to suck the fun out of a game, and make it a job or turn a game into work. You can't allow these people to direct a game, nor should a game be built to stop them.
Personally, I thought GW2 really was on the right track with removing roles. But again, I had played a game like DDO, where there was enough freedom in any build you wanted to never have to deal with roles in your party if you didn't want them.
Here is the problem if ultimately players pick what they find most efficient and choose to go 'full zerk' as you put it then that is the popular choice and the fact that these other options become less popular makes it a failure. Players always gravitate to what is more fun and enjoyable to them. Even if you have all these different skills available but if players do not avail themselves of these choices that makes those choices less than desirable.
So the overall impression is that the 'full zerk' is the normal build.
The trick is balancing a game making it more likely for people to choose those other skills. This is what makes a game design successful if the choice is to go pick DPS since it gets the job done it has already failed.
How about flexible. You can add more to a group than the maximum group size but you have some penalties against normal group monsters. That way you can grab that second healer for a while before the first healer leaves.
I'd love to see a bit of flexibility in group size and composition, but probably a challenge to program
But not impossible. It will require some well thought out and tested systems of course..but that will require game designers with good technical design skills (like certain type of programmers; look at the inventors of the best games in history and check their background), but those are rarely high up in the decision chain anymore. Also it will require a different design of encounters that has implications throughout the entire game design. You can no longer (over)design encounters for a defined number of players with mostly static tactic and roles (the WoW way), but instead you need to have more open encounters allowing/inviting for more versatile tactics and role setups. This is scary to most developers because it takes away control and put it in the hands of the players. This WILL fail sometimes, and it WILL create situations of both overpowered and underpowered players because of un-designed (emergent gameplay) tactics and setup. The developer will need to accept that this is part of the deal, embrace the loss of control in return of (hopefully) more fun as freedom for players, and deal with the worst problem cases on a as-it-appear base. Because unknown development cost is an idea the usually die at the suits table, emergent gameplay is extremely rare .. It is the players paradise and the developers nightmare, except if the developer embrace it as a principle, and also see it as happier players=retention and more money.
Of course what I am really advocating is not a "bit of flexibility" but a lot. Almost to the point where you make groups based on the player(person) and not their class(defined as one static role), because the choice of composition of groups is more open, players can fill out more roles than just one so you can switch around, and last that encounters are open to much bigger range of tactics than the simple tank&spank.
I like the function of dynamic content. The more players participate in the content the more mobs and the higher their levels are generated to balance the game play. This means if no one else is around and you're good you can actually solo the event. If five people or 50 show up the event itself generates more mobs. Of course there are small evens that can be soloed and major events that need a minimum number of people in order to complete the even successfully for another level of variety.
The best games offer old school content and new dynamic open optional grouping content, something for everyone, except for the people who only seek to focus on what's wrong with a particular MMO instead of focusing on the ones they enjoy, or enjoy chasing the 'what if' holy grail MMO that gets everything right, just hasn't been launched and is still in the early concept stage.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
For anyone that played it. Dungeons and Dragons Online, really tagged the way Dungeons could be made.
Quite frankly tho, roles in games, just gives players an excuse to be sloppy if you ask me.
If you make it so there is a Healer Role, all that does is encourages the DPS Role to not pay attention to their life bar, it allows them to not pay attention to their surroundings outside insta-kill attacks, and it allows them to deflect blame, IE: If they die they blame the healer.
So, I am not a huge fan of fixed roles in any game.
GW2 tried removing the trinity, pretty much what you described...no roles...and all it did was make everyone be a DPSer. And it created too much zerging.
I dunno how one would get rid of roles. In real life, every job has roles. But as for roles in MMOs...
Do you make it so the DPS can self heal? That make them need to pay attention. Get rid of the need of healers like GW2 tried? But look at WoW some classes like blood DK while a tank...does so much self healing they can solo the entire game. They are a one man army. So that doesn't work. Any amount of self healing makes encounters vastly easier.
Do you make it so you can't heal at all? Or very limited healing? That doesn't work either because then mechanics need to be too simplified, or it becomes like Wildstar tried catering to the hardcore and obviously failed at anything but a niche MMO.
What about remove the tank role? But then everyone are tanks, and it becomes too easy since you can tank every encounter.
Remove DPS role? Well thats...well...everyone would kill so slow that it make FFXIV low level combat look like a highspeed chase
And then there is the problem...people will still create the roles they are used to. People will always find a way to have a trinity.
Even games like planetside 2 have roles or other FPS games. You got the sniper who picks off targets, the guy who scouts, the tank, the infiltrator, guy who runs in gunning who is fodder...just like real life...everyone has a strategy or a reason to be a part of that group fighting
Doubt its possible to get rid of roles without making it either too easy or too hard where it becomes a niche MMO. And people will make roles anyway.
Now, with GW2, there were a lot of support classes, like Guards provided a good deal of healing and buffs, depending on how they built them, same with Elementalist. Yes, players often opted to go full zerk, and just zerg content, but, that was more a social thing, where that was what was passed off as the best way to do things, so everyone just rolled with it, but, truth be told, there were other options to how to play.
Some people will do all they can to suck the fun out of a game, and make it a job or turn a game into work. You can't allow these people to direct a game, nor should a game be built to stop them.
Personally, I thought GW2 really was on the right track with removing roles. But again, I had played a game like DDO, where there was enough freedom in any build you wanted to never have to deal with roles in your party if you didn't want them.
Here is the problem if ultimately players pick what they find most efficient and choose to go 'full zerk' as you put it then that is the popular choice and the fact that these other options become less popular makes it a failure. Players always gravitate to what is more fun and enjoyable to them. Even if you have all these different skills available but if players do not avail themselves of these choices that makes those choices less than desirable.
So the overall impression is that the 'full zerk' is the normal build.
The trick is balancing a game making it more likely for people to choose those other skills. This is what makes a game design successful if the choice is to go pick DPS since it gets the job done it has already failed.
Well.
Yes, you are correct that GW2 dungeons were poorly designed in sense that they didn't make it so you could build a Tank, even the best bunker builds in the game only had a use in PvP, and were worthless in most PvE.
Also in GW2, stat combos had names, like Knights, Berserker, Traveler, as such "Full Zerk" just meant all your gear had the "berserker" stats (which was viewed as Optimal Power Based DPS) this was not a skill, ability, or class option, it was simply a stat choice, in the case of Berserker is was Power, Precision, and Ferocity.
Now, as the game progressed, Vipers, did a lot to replace the Zerk meta, and then the rise of condition based builds also changed what was considered Meta a bit as well.
But again, you are right, there was a direct design flaw in their dungeons and other instance content where the way damage was set up, it was impossible to make PVE tank based builds. At least until they put in raids, and even then, it was not a Tank role so much as simply agro management.
So yes, That was a very distinct design flaw of GW2. No doubt about it.
I would add that DDO, did not have such a design flaw and that players could build tanker like builds that were viable in a lot of various content. As one of the main design flaws of most games, is that roles are often only good in fixed situations, like for example. Raids have Raid Tanks and Raid Healers, that have focused on doing that role at the exclusion of all other things. It makes them viable as Tanks and Healers, but makes them worthless for any form of Open World exploration, so players are stuck making concessions on what they can do with their class when they have fixed roles.
Now in GW2, since there was no real roles, you could take a Guard to run a Dungeon, Fractal and then go wander around the world map, and they would be viable in all the those situations, without any changes in gear or equipment.
With the rise of Raids, it decreased the versatility of what you could do, and often players would need to swap stats and even change their builds around based on the mode they wanted to play.
I am still not a fan of fixed role based builds, I like being able to mix things up and have some self sufficiency, needing to be constantly tether to someone else just to play a game, is not my idea of fun.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Well we have to be able to solo everything, including dungeons, raids, siege events, so one.
Ya know, what's funny about this, is that in Dungeons and Dragons Online, this was a reality.
But not in the way any of the cream puff gamers today would understand.
See, in DDO, it was possible for Players to in fact solo all the content, including raids and it was in some cases, a challenge put forth to others to figure out how to pull it off.
But, just because it was possible, does not mean it was easy or readily available, in some cases it would take years of grinding gear, abilities, stat boots, and then working out how to mix and match race and class abilities to pull off this feat.
In DDO, the reality was, Veteran Players could solo content that was difficult for new and moderate players to do with a full group. But it took a lot of effort to get to that point.
And to get an idea, well, to use an example. A player would need to run a raid a few hundred times to collect all the needed gear to make the chance of soloing that raid in the future a possibility.
Quite the complex system really and I loved it immensely.. then they went an fucked people over, screwed with the very gear that took years to get, and totally ruined the game for me.
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Comments
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/I believe 50+ people in a group is massively multiplayer.
Anything that is 10 or smaller is a co-op sized group.
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https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
In WoW for instance, dps queues tend to be 30+ minutes while tank queues are instant. This idea can also be applied to forming your own groups. "LF Tank/Healer Armageddon's Breach." 45 minutes later, give up. So perhaps for that style of game, a game with 3 very well defined roles, it might be better to open it up to 6 man groups instead of 5 to help alleviate the pressure.
If the roles are more fluid, then lower it down a bit in my opinion. Perhaps 4 or 5 is more appropriate. Getting a team together and engaging challenging content is the goal (that often leads to the broader goal of progression).
I know that personally, I like playing 3 on 3 basketball much more than 5 on 5. Besides it being less confusing, it also helps build a more impactful sense of "team" more quickly in my opinion. Roles start to form naturally and much more quickly than an average pickup game of 5 on 5.
I definately believe that the holy quartet (with CC) is by far a more sacred dynamic than the trinity. I want the option to go fight and not have to wait around for six busy lives to connect. But that's all to assume no group finder.
So that makes me think, well; how was the game designed? DAoC was designed for 8 so 8 worked best. EQ designed for 6 so 6 works best '. In WoW's system, it's the trinity with everyone having some utility/cc that has to be coordinated. But bosses demand a lot more dps than the trinity so 5 works best because it was designed that way.
Another way to look at it: if there is a dungeon finder, I want the size of the group to equal a 10 min or less wait time window.
If there isn't a group finder, I want to be able to put together a viable group regularly between 10 and 20 minutes.
I like games that require larger groups; I just find that it is harder to coordinate larger groups if there is no in-game system beyond chat to put them together. Even tougher in low population games. So once in a big group - awesome; but I remember days where I spent 2 of my 3 hour play time in EQ just trying to get six to group.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I love group size of 4. But in games like City of Heroes there was nothing like having 8 masterminds killing everything in sight, it was glorious chaos!!
6 is my second choice though
Tank/Healer/DPS/DPS/Hybrid/Buffer or CC type
Hybrid could be like a DPS/Offtank or Healer/DPS when needed
Buffer like a Bard, Archon, type
As for the numbers, it looks like I'm with the majority. Sure it depends on the number of classes available on the game, also their role distribution (since roles are important, zerging is for dummies), but 6 seems like an optimal number. Easy to form raid groups too by simply joining 2 or 4 groups.
LotRO and AoC are both using this 6/12/24 setup, in AoC maybe it was even more straightforward than in LotRO (AoC has 12 classes, and the original raids were designed for a group with 24 players, 2 from each class).
Quite frankly tho, roles in games, just gives players an excuse to be sloppy if you ask me.
If you make it so there is a Healer Role, all that does is encourages the DPS Role to not pay attention to their life bar, it allows them to not pay attention to their surroundings outside insta-kill attacks, and it allows them to deflect blame, IE: If they die they blame the healer.
So, I am not a huge fan of fixed roles in any game.
I dunno how one would get rid of roles. In real life, every job has roles. But as for roles in MMOs...
Do you make it so the DPS can self heal? That make them need to pay attention. Get rid of the need of healers like GW2 tried? But look at WoW some classes like blood DK while a tank...does so much self healing they can solo the entire game. They are a one man army. So that doesn't work. Any amount of self healing makes encounters vastly easier.
Do you make it so you can't heal at all? Or very limited healing? That doesn't work either because then mechanics need to be too simplified, or it becomes like Wildstar tried catering to the hardcore and obviously failed at anything but a niche MMO.
What about remove the tank role? But then everyone are tanks, and it becomes too easy since you can tank every encounter.
Remove DPS role? Well thats...well...everyone would kill so slow that it make FFXIV low level combat look like a highspeed chase
And then there is the problem...people will still create the roles they are used to. People will always find a way to have a trinity.
Even games like planetside 2 have roles or other FPS games. You got the sniper who picks off targets, the guy who scouts, the tank, the infiltrator, guy who runs in gunning who is fodder...just like real life...everyone has a strategy or a reason to be a part of that group fighting
Doubt its possible to get rid of roles without making it either too easy or too hard where it becomes a niche MMO. And people will make roles anyway.
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In guild wars 2 you can solo most of the stuff but the group content is for 5 man group which is fine since it doesnt enforce the holy trinity so you have spare slots.
Games like Lineage 2 where you have buffers on top of trinity, 9 man groups are a must, 3 or 4 slots being reserved for them.
We need remember that groupsize had an upper limit but not a lower requirement, so the group could be any number up to what the game declared. It's not like if you had only 7 people in DAoC that you could NOT adventure until that 8th showed up
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Equally so in DDO, they had roles. where there were clerics, fighters, wizards, etc, etc.. and one healed, one DPS, one tanked.. etc..
But.. you could also mix them. When I played the max level was 20, so.. if you wanted to play a solid DPS class like a Barbarian, but, also wanted to be able to self heal, you could mix in cleric, and play something like 4 cleric levels and 16 Barb levels, and quite literally get the best of both worlds. Or play a Monk/Cleric, in fact that game allowed you to mix up to 3 classes in any way you wanted to mix them.
Resolved the whole issue, if you wanted to solo or small group, and wanted to be able to be a grown ass player covering your own ass, you could literally be a Fighter/Cleric/Thief, disarm traps, heal yourself, and do solid damage.
In many ways, allowing that really opened the door to let players chose how dependent they wanted to make themselves. Sure, some players wanted to be Pure DPS and expected Pure Clerics to cater to their every boo-boo. But a huge portion of the population started to make things that were far more self sufficient.
Couple that with gear that also could fill deficiencies, like heal potions, and other gear that could regenerate health and even mana, and then you mix that with special advancements, like the Wizard class has a Pale Master spec, that allowed you to become Undead, and then cast death auras, which harmed mobs around you and healed yourself, you wear gear that augmented necromancy magic.. and you get the idea.
Now, with GW2, there were a lot of support classes, like Guards provided a good deal of healing and buffs, depending on how they built them, same with Elementalist. Yes, players often opted to go full zerk, and just zerg content, but, that was more a social thing, where that was what was passed off as the best way to do things, so everyone just rolled with it, but, truth be told, there were other options to how to play.
Some people will do all they can to suck the fun out of a game, and make it a job or turn a game into work. You can't allow these people to direct a game, nor should a game be built to stop them.
Personally, I thought GW2 really was on the right track with removing roles. But again, I had played a game like DDO, where there was enough freedom in any build you wanted to never have to deal with roles in your party if you didn't want them.
So the overall impression is that the 'full zerk' is the normal build.
The trick is balancing a game making it more likely for people to choose those other skills. This is what makes a game design successful if the choice is to go pick DPS since it gets the job done it has already failed.
Also it will require a different design of encounters that has implications throughout the entire game design. You can no longer (over)design encounters for a defined number of players with mostly static tactic and roles (the WoW way), but instead you need to have more open encounters allowing/inviting for more versatile tactics and role setups.
This is scary to most developers because it takes away control and put it in the hands of the players. This WILL fail sometimes, and it WILL create situations of both overpowered and underpowered players because of un-designed (emergent gameplay) tactics and setup. The developer will need to accept that this is part of the deal, embrace the loss of control in return of (hopefully) more fun as freedom for players, and deal with the worst problem cases on a as-it-appear base. Because unknown development cost is an idea the usually die at the suits table, emergent gameplay is extremely rare .. It is the players paradise and the developers nightmare, except if the developer embrace it as a principle, and also see it as happier players=retention and more money.
Of course what I am really advocating is not a "bit of flexibility" but a lot. Almost to the point where you make groups based on the player(person) and not their class(defined as one static role), because the choice of composition of groups is more open, players can fill out more roles than just one so you can switch around, and last that encounters are open to much bigger range of tactics than the simple tank&spank.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
The best games offer old school content and new dynamic open optional grouping content, something for everyone, except for the people who only seek to focus on what's wrong with a particular MMO instead of focusing on the ones they enjoy, or enjoy chasing the 'what if' holy grail MMO that gets everything right, just hasn't been launched and is still in the early concept stage.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Gut Out!
What, me worry?
Yes, you are correct that GW2 dungeons were poorly designed in sense that they didn't make it so you could build a Tank, even the best bunker builds in the game only had a use in PvP, and were worthless in most PvE.
Also in GW2, stat combos had names, like Knights, Berserker, Traveler, as such "Full Zerk" just meant all your gear had the "berserker" stats (which was viewed as Optimal Power Based DPS) this was not a skill, ability, or class option, it was simply a stat choice, in the case of Berserker is was Power, Precision, and Ferocity.
Now, as the game progressed, Vipers, did a lot to replace the Zerk meta, and then the rise of condition based builds also changed what was considered Meta a bit as well.
But again, you are right, there was a direct design flaw in their dungeons and other instance content where the way damage was set up, it was impossible to make PVE tank based builds. At least until they put in raids, and even then, it was not a Tank role so much as simply agro management.
So yes, That was a very distinct design flaw of GW2. No doubt about it.
I would add that DDO, did not have such a design flaw and that players could build tanker like builds that were viable in a lot of various content. As one of the main design flaws of most games, is that roles are often only good in fixed situations, like for example. Raids have Raid Tanks and Raid Healers, that have focused on doing that role at the exclusion of all other things. It makes them viable as Tanks and Healers, but makes them worthless for any form of Open World exploration, so players are stuck making concessions on what they can do with their class when they have fixed roles.
Now in GW2, since there was no real roles, you could take a Guard to run a Dungeon, Fractal and then go wander around the world map, and they would be viable in all the those situations, without any changes in gear or equipment.
With the rise of Raids, it decreased the versatility of what you could do, and often players would need to swap stats and even change their builds around based on the mode they wanted to play.
I am still not a fan of fixed role based builds, I like being able to mix things up and have some self sufficiency, needing to be constantly tether to someone else just to play a game, is not my idea of fun.
But not in the way any of the cream puff gamers today would understand.
See, in DDO, it was possible for Players to in fact solo all the content, including raids and it was in some cases, a challenge put forth to others to figure out how to pull it off.
But, just because it was possible, does not mean it was easy or readily available, in some cases it would take years of grinding gear, abilities, stat boots, and then working out how to mix and match race and class abilities to pull off this feat.
In DDO, the reality was, Veteran Players could solo content that was difficult for new and moderate players to do with a full group. But it took a lot of effort to get to that point.
And to get an idea, well, to use an example. A player would need to run a raid a few hundred times to collect all the needed gear to make the chance of soloing that raid in the future a possibility.
Quite the complex system really and I loved it immensely.. then they went an fucked people over, screwed with the very gear that took years to get, and totally ruined the game for me.