Originally posted by Dewm

 

 

 I hear alot of people saying they are tired with the old set up of "tank dps heal" that whole situation. Well i've been thinkin about it for a while. and honestly I can't think of any other way to do it. So would some of you like to tell me what you had in mind?

(Keeping in mind it has to work in a grouping enviroment)

Every class can be a dps class with some healing abilities. What I really hate is to be looking for a tank or healer all the time. This will eliminate the QQing about healing and tanking. If you didn't heal yourself, then it was your fault. If TOR is going to deliver this, I hope the game is released with all the classes and races.

I'm tired of it because the concept is pretty lame.  Getting stuffed into a generic role where the game play is tweaked to fir that role is just bad mechanics.

Part of the problem is that most MMOs have really poor collision modeling along with little to no facing penalties or bonuses.  If I can't keep you from walking past me to hit the lightly armored wizard, then I have to have some kind of skill that keeps your attention on me.  So instead of making a shield wall, or standing shoulder to shoulder, you have something like taunt.  It's a bad mechanic covering bad mechanics.

Other people have hit on the large bag of hit points being a problem as well.  When mobs do significantly more than the average player can take, you need to have tanks who can take that damage.  However, then you need to lower their damage because of the whole risk reward mechanic.  Of course if you made most mobs do a fraction of an average players health, then everyone could contribute and you wouldn't have the static and boring roles that have evolved.

Originally posted by Sengi

The problem is that the AI is todays mmos is so bad. The monsters behaviour is so predictable that one can hardly call that an AI.
Just consider if the tank-dps-healer tactic would work in any way in a pvp situation. No, it wouldn’t because players just refuse to attack the character you want them to attack. Of cause they would go for the guys in the cloth-armour first.

It all started with exploiting the simplicity of the AI that turned into some kind of mmo-tradition, and the developers stuck to it, because they thought that’s the way people want to play, bedsides they didn’t need to invest into a better AI.

Just imagine a medieval battle where on guy, all dressed in armour so that he barley can walk, would step to the front calling out to the enemy: “C’mon shoot all your arrows at me and forget about all my friends.” …

So if the AI would be better, the whole tank-dps-healer tactic would become obsolete and one would have to figure out different and more alterable tactics.
 

Out of everything that I have read this sounds the most hopfull/makes the most sense. The problem being the mobs/boss's that we fight...

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To some of the earlier posters that said we need "lots of little enemies, as apposed to one big boss. Did you every play WoW? there are lots of instances where you have to fight 5-15 mobs at a time. And its easily taken care of with a couple hunters with crowd control. So I think it really doesn't solve the "class" problem.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Dewm

 I hear alot of people saying they are tired with the old set up of "tank dps heal" that whole situation. Well i've been thinkin about it for a while. and honestly I can't think of any other way to do it. So would some of you like to tell me what you had in mind?

(Keeping in mind it has to work in a grouping enviroment)

 

Uhm, there are actually games that have working ways of solving this.

Try play Guildwars, there the mobs always go for the easiest kills, there is no tanks there.

Neverwinter nights didn't work that way either and still work very good in small groups, I did my share of the group playing there and it worked well.

In pen and paper RPGs the game master usually try to kill the cloth users first, forcing the armored ones to jump in front of them and bodyblock. Actuall tanking skills have only shown up there since Wow got so big.

As I see it, better AI so that the mobs select their targets more intelligently based both on damage, armor and on how easy they look to kill. Give all classes high DPS capability, and make it propational to how good armor you were. And no taunts.

FFXI had this, and if i'm not mistaken it cam out 3 years before WoW. (I've never play'd EQ but i'm pretty sure it had some sort of tanking system also)

And in Guildwars (which I have play'd) they did have a mage\dps\heals combo. but your right the mobs did go after the easest target. So the only diffrence is that there was no stratagy involved.....

Originally posted by Dewm

Out of everything that I have read this sounds the most hopfull/makes the most sense. The problem being the mobs/boss's that we fight...

-------------------------------------------------------------------

To some of the earlier posters that said we need "lots of little enemies, as apposed to one big boss. Did you every play WoW? there are lots of instances where you have to fight 5-15 mobs at a time. And its easily taken care of with a couple hunters with crowd control. So I think it really doesn't solve the "class" problem.

Played WoW for about 4 years (still do, on occasion) and I remember the stairs event in Zul'Farrak being one of the most entertaining and challenging encounters in the entire game.

Shifting from many-vs-boss to many-vs-many fights is only part of the solution imo; the other part is making sure that every player is involved in dealing with multiple aspects of the fight rather than falling back on their traditional "roles".

In WoW for example, if you had a swarm of 50 mobs, you'd probably have a tank gather them up with AOE threat mechanics like a thunderclap or consecration while the healers spamhealed the tank to keep him/her alive and the DPSers all tossed AOE at the swarm to wipe out all the mobs at once.

Now imagine a situation where the AOE threat, spamhealing and AOE damage abilities are removed and the 50 mobs come at you in 5 waves of 10; every member of the group would be required to help nuke down the waves of mobs while keeping themselves alive using mechanics such as cover and not drawing the attention of too many mobs at once.

Originally posted by Dewm

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Dewm

 I hear alot of people saying they are tired with the old set up of "tank dps heal" that whole situation. Well i've been thinkin about it for a while. and honestly I can't think of any other way to do it. So would some of you like to tell me what you had in mind?

(Keeping in mind it has to work in a grouping enviroment)

 

Uhm, there are actually games that have working ways of solving this.

Try play Guildwars, there the mobs always go for the easiest kills, there is no tanks there.

Neverwinter nights didn't work that way either and still work very good in small groups, I did my share of the group playing there and it worked well.

In pen and paper RPGs the game master usually try to kill the cloth users first, forcing the armored ones to jump in front of them and bodyblock. Actuall tanking skills have only shown up there since Wow got so big.

As I see it, better AI so that the mobs select their targets more intelligently based both on damage, armor and on how easy they look to kill. Give all classes high DPS capability, and make it propational to how good armor you were. And no taunts.

 

FFXI had this, and if i'm not mistaken it cam out 3 years before WoW. (I've never play'd EQ but i'm pretty sure it had some sort of tanking system also)

 

And in Guildwars (which I have play'd) they did have a mage\dps\heals combo. but your right the mobs did go after the easest target. So the only diffrence is that there was no stratagy involved.....

 

Dark Age of Camlelot , City of Heroes had this as well.  Don't you get tired of all the people who think WoW created everything, when in reality the only two things they "created"   Bind on Pickup items  (Unless someone knows of a game before that did it) ,  and SCoreboards in battlegrounds have been bad for the mmo industry imo.

Bind on Pickup existed from the very first day in EverQuest 1, and was perfectly fine there, even crucial for the games success, since combined with persistent boss spawns, it meant rare items were actually rare, and you didnt fall into the "run Instance X until I hate it, because every time I have a 10% chance for my drop" problem.

So far, the primary suggestions all revolve around just doing away with tanking or healing, and make everyone a DPS class, who just does Damage through different means.

You guys do realize that this has massive disadvantages, right? For once, balance would be impossible, also mob design would have to be extremely limited, and in general since DPS is a matter of math, not a matter of real playing skill, it devolves into a FPS/Macroing nightmare.

Getting rid of class roles isnt worth it if you have to gut the entire gameplay in order for it to work, and actually make creating content HARDER for the designers.

Also, keep in mind that while on these forums mostly gaming veterans are around, the mass audience will not appreciate MMORPGs turning into skill-based (think Street Fighter) rather than thinking+time+stats based games. The idea is not to forcibly get rid of a mechanic by turning the game into something entirely different.

I honestly think removing class roles will more or less make it necessary to remove the current design of group- and raid gameplay, as well as emphasizing numbers a lot more over class composition and tactics. Which is a valid idea for many genres, but I doubt you ll be creating a better MMORPG with it.

Someone else already said it, Heal Tank DPS isnt an artificially picked trinity, its a logical synergy between the basic concepts of Damage and Healing.

 You _can_ break the trinity but you cannot do it by changing classes, you have to change the game.

The key is the mob AI. If you change it so it begins to behave like players in PvP then the Trinity stops working anyway and people will have to come up with new ways of playing.

Once the NPC issue is done then you begin to form classes around the new combat reality of the game. That means there cannot be any agro control. The mobs will not be drawns to any agro, they are doing what makes sense. 

You will have to make all classes have some part of damage, support and utility and the difference between them will be the balance between these elements.

The advantage of such a system is that you can balance PvE and PvP using the same mechanics. You no longer have to find a PvP balance vs. PvE balance and vice versa since what works in one aspect of the game also works in the other aspect.

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Originally posted by Dewm

Out of everything that I have read this sounds the most hopfull/makes the most sense. The problem being the mobs/boss's that we fight...

-------------------------------------------------------------------

To some of the earlier posters that said we need "lots of little enemies, as apposed to one big boss. Did you every play WoW? there are lots of instances where you have to fight 5-15 mobs at a time. And its easily taken care of with a couple hunters with crowd control. So I think it really doesn't solve the "class" problem.

Played WoW for about 4 years (still do, on occasion) and I remember the stairs event in Zul'Farrak being one of the most entertaining and challenging encounters in the entire game.

Shifting from many-vs-boss to many-vs-many fights is only part of the solution imo; the other part is making sure that every player is involved in dealing with multiple aspects of the fight rather than falling back on their traditional "roles".

In WoW for example, if you had a swarm of 50 mobs, you'd probably have a tank gather them up with AOE threat mechanics like a thunderclap or consecration while the healers spamhealed the tank to keep him/her alive and the DPSers all tossed AOE at the swarm to wipe out all the mobs at once.

Now imagine a situation where the AOE threat, spamhealing and AOE damage abilities are removed and the 50 mobs come at you in 5 waves of 10; every member of the group would be required to help nuke down the waves of mobs while keeping themselves alive using mechanics such as cover and not drawing the attention of too many mobs at once.

Yeah you could do that, but honestly (and this is just my opinion) it would take most of the team work out. which is a aspect of MMO's that I really enjoy.

For instance, I can hope on Halo and play on a team of 8 people....against another 8 people....but its so quick paced that there is little/no time for stratagy, and so you don't work as a team. you end up running around. and if you can help a member you do...but there is no realy team play in there....

Interestingly, Blizzard themselves recently came up with a somewhat fun alternative in WoW. I'm refering to the Leviathan Tank fight, where players drive trucks and mash the buttons on the truck instead of the character itself casting and attacking. Yeah, it's just as shotty as everything else Blizzard has done in the last few years, but the role system is somewhat unique. Instead of Tank/DPS/Heals that fight had DPS/Kiters/CC.

I don't remember which tank was which, but one of them caused more threat and pulled aggro, only instead of "tanking", the player controlling this vehicle would kite them around through the traps laid by the CC tank, while the DPS tanks open fire. It wasn't great, but it was at least somewhat inventive.

Originally posted by Dewm

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Originally posted by Dewm

Out of everything that I have read this sounds the most hopfull/makes the most sense. The problem being the mobs/boss's that we fight...

-------------------------------------------------------------------

To some of the earlier posters that said we need "lots of little enemies, as apposed to one big boss. Did you every play WoW? there are lots of instances where you have to fight 5-15 mobs at a time. And its easily taken care of with a couple hunters with crowd control. So I think it really doesn't solve the "class" problem.

Played WoW for about 4 years (still do, on occasion) and I remember the stairs event in Zul'Farrak being one of the most entertaining and challenging encounters in the entire game.

Shifting from many-vs-boss to many-vs-many fights is only part of the solution imo; the other part is making sure that every player is involved in dealing with multiple aspects of the fight rather than falling back on their traditional "roles".

In WoW for example, if you had a swarm of 50 mobs, you'd probably have a tank gather them up with AOE threat mechanics like a thunderclap or consecration while the healers spamhealed the tank to keep him/her alive and the DPSers all tossed AOE at the swarm to wipe out all the mobs at once.

Now imagine a situation where the AOE threat, spamhealing and AOE damage abilities are removed and the 50 mobs come at you in 5 waves of 10; every member of the group would be required to help nuke down the waves of mobs while keeping themselves alive using mechanics such as cover and not drawing the attention of too many mobs at once.

 

Yeah you could do that, but honestly (and this is just my opinion) it would take most of the team work out. which is a aspect of MMO's that I really enjoy.

For instance, I can hope on Halo and play on a team of 8 people....against another 8 people....but its so quick paced that there is little/no time for stratagy, and so you don't work as a team. you end up running around. and if you can help a member you do...but there is no realy team play in there....

WOW,,, if you really think that removing AOE threat/taunt,/damage, and spamheals would remove teamwork you're sadly mistaken.

You've still got gaurd abilities that can be shuttled around as certain players need them, single target crowd control,, assisting on targets, buffs, debuffs. Team work would still be there and probably more so because you wouldn't have two classes  PBAOE CC'r and PBAOE dps'r controlling the flow of all the mobs at once.

Originally posted by Greenie

Originally posted by Dewm

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

Originally posted by Dewm

Out of everything that I have read this sounds the most hopfull/makes the most sense. The problem being the mobs/boss's that we fight...

-------------------------------------------------------------------

To some of the earlier posters that said we need "lots of little enemies, as apposed to one big boss. Did you every play WoW? there are lots of instances where you have to fight 5-15 mobs at a time. And its easily taken care of with a couple hunters with crowd control. So I think it really doesn't solve the "class" problem.

Played WoW for about 4 years (still do, on occasion) and I remember the stairs event in Zul'Farrak being one of the most entertaining and challenging encounters in the entire game.

Shifting from many-vs-boss to many-vs-many fights is only part of the solution imo; the other part is making sure that every player is involved in dealing with multiple aspects of the fight rather than falling back on their traditional "roles".

In WoW for example, if you had a swarm of 50 mobs, you'd probably have a tank gather them up with AOE threat mechanics like a thunderclap or consecration while the healers spamhealed the tank to keep him/her alive and the DPSers all tossed AOE at the swarm to wipe out all the mobs at once.

Now imagine a situation where the AOE threat, spamhealing and AOE damage abilities are removed and the 50 mobs come at you in 5 waves of 10; every member of the group would be required to help nuke down the waves of mobs while keeping themselves alive using mechanics such as cover and not drawing the attention of too many mobs at once.

 

Yeah you could do that, but honestly (and this is just my opinion) it would take most of the team work out. which is a aspect of MMO's that I really enjoy.

For instance, I can hope on Halo and play on a team of 8 people....against another 8 people....but its so quick paced that there is little/no time for stratagy, and so you don't work as a team. you end up running around. and if you can help a member you do...but there is no realy team play in there....

 

WOW,,, if you really think that removing AOE threat/taunt,/damage, and spamheals would remove teamwork you're sadly mistaken.

You've still got gaurd abilities that can be shuttled around as certain players need them, single target crowd control,, assisting on targets, buffs, debuffs. Team work would still be there and probably more so because you wouldn't have two classes  PBAOE CC'r and PBAOE dps'r controlling the flow of all the mobs at once.

Come again?

And i'm sure there would still be a little team work. BUT i've noticed that the faster paced the game is the less team work/stratagy there is. pure and simple. (hense the reson chess is a stratagy game, and mario carts isn't)

And honestly.....if there are 20 guys in my "raid/group" and there are around 100 mobs comin at me.....it would be so confuzing and un-orginized it would just be dumb...

Originally posted by Dewm

 

Come again?

 

And i'm sure there would still be a little team work. BUT i've noticed that the faster paced the game is the less team work/stratagy there is. pure and simple. (hense the reson chess is a stratagy game, and mario carts isn't)

And honestly.....if there are 20 guys in my "raid/group" and there are around 100 mobs comin at me.....it would be so confuzing and un-orginized it would just be dumb...

That is because generally speaking , we have more unskilled players when it comes to working as a team.

If you ever watched good 8 man videos or had the pleasure to watch firsthand of guilds like my personal all time favorite Bedlam, or Lagged Again, Free Rps, Hatred, Link Dead, and  Epilogue and I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting in Dark Age of Camelot,, you'd see when these guilds take on superior numbers and win because of team work.

Even if you weren't one of the elite groups, a decent guild group could take down superior numbers with team work and it happened quite often.

Just because there are crappy players doesn't mean the concept is wrong. www.youtube.com/watch

Here is a decent example of how teamwork takes down greater numbers. It seems like organized chaos but if the team didn't do there jobs and work together, they lose.  The fact that 20-30 people couldn't kill at least 2 members of the group at the same time is pathetic teamwork.

Originally posted by bstripp

 If I can't keep you from walking past me to hit the lightly armored wizard, then I have to have some kind of skill that keeps your attention on me.  So instead of making a shield wall, or standing shoulder to shoulder, you have something like taunt.  It's a bad mechanic covering bad mechanics. 

If you're going to have group combat, then why not have a system that provides some kind of realistic strategy?

If you're going to have wars, then have WARS.  In ancient battles, you had a LINE of soldiers that could prevent someone from crossing.  Getting through was really tough, but if you did it - look out.  FLANKING was an art form.  Bows and arrows were something you used more to harass an enemy before contact, rather than to "provide dps" while your own troops were meleeing.  And, of course, no combat has EVER involved treating injuries while someone is standing there getting repeatedly stabbed.  History, books, movies, fantasy...  Take your pick, in any other venue that would seem utterly asinine - because it is. 

 If you're going to have smaller-scale fights of 1-6 people, then make them like medieval dueling.   You can try to help each other out, but pretty much every man has to be able to defend himself.  You don't stand there and take turns hacking at each other like treecutters; that's downright silly.  You have a GUARD that gets worn down before you start taking any physical damage.   And it's a lot more important to decide WHEN you've worn down your opponent enough to safely press your attack, than to figure out the best sequence to punch two-dozen flamboyant "combo skill" powerup buttons. 

The whole mindset of the original question really galls me.  People can't imagine how CRPG's could possibly be any different than they are.  I always wonder the exact opposite -- why in the heck are they still being made this way at all?  I really don't get it.

Thirty years ago, in PnP D&D and on the original PC's, it made perfect sense to use such a wildly abstracted combat system.  But computers are a MILLION TIMES more powerful today than they were then, and the only thing that's drastically improved are the graphics.

It's way past time players (and designers) stopped wondering if it might be possible to change the way CRPG combat works.  Somebody needs to just start over again from the ground up.  Don't look at it as how can we "refine" what we're doing now.  Look at it in terms of how did ancient combat work, and how can we try to simulate that in a fantasy setting?

Originally posted by kopema

Originally posted by bstripp

 If I can't keep you from walking past me to hit the lightly armored wizard, then I have to have some kind of skill that keeps your attention on me.  So instead of making a shield wall, or standing shoulder to shoulder, you have something like taunt.  It's a bad mechanic covering bad mechanics. 

 

If you're going to have group combat, then why not have a system that provides some kind of realistic strategy?

If you're going to have wars, then have WARS.  In ancient battles, you had a LINE of soldiers that could prevent someone from crossing.  Getting through was really tough, but if you did it - look out.  FLANKING was an art form.  Bows and arrows were something you used more to harass an enemy before contact, rather than to "provide dps" while your own troops were meleeing.  And, of course, no combat has EVER involved treating injuries while someone is standing there getting repeatedly stabbed.  History, books, movies, fantasy...  Take your pick, in any other venue that would seem utterly asinine - because it is. 

 If you're going to have smaller-scale fights of 1-6 people, then make them like medieval dueling.   You can try to help each other out, but pretty much every man has to be able to defend himself.  You don't stand there and take turns hacking at each other like treecutters; that's downright silly.  You have a GUARD that gets worn down before you start taking any physical damage.   And it's a lot more important to decide WHEN you've worn down your opponent enough to safely press your attack, than to figure out the best sequence to punch two-dozen flamboyant "combo skill" powerup buttons. 

The whole mindset of the original question really galls me.  People can't imagine how CRPG's could possibly be any different than they are.  I always wonder the exact opposite -- why in the heck are they still being made this way at all?  I really don't get it.

Thirty years ago, in PnP D&D and on the original PC's, it made perfect sense to use such a wildly abstracted combat system.  But computers are a MILLION TIMES more powerful today than they were then, and the only thing that's drastically improved are the graphics.

It's way past time players (and designers) stopped wondering if it might be possible to change the way CRPG combat works.  Somebody needs to just start over again from the ground up.  Don't look at it as how can we "refine" what we're doing now.  Look at it in terms of how did ancient combat work, and how can we try to simulate that in a fantasy setting?

I disagree. You have ranged, melee, dps, and "tanks" in Roman warfare with arrows, cavalry, lances, and shields with formations like the turtle.

Combat of 6 on 6 can be coordinated, not just everyone man for himself. Watch some old Three Musketeers movies.

Even modern combat is range like tanks and planes, infantry, melee, even healers (medics).

I don't really like the sort of uncoordinated attacks you are describing. Team work is much more fun, IMO.

Can you get rid of team work in a game? Sure, that's pretty darn easy. The question is why would you? If you want to come up with different styles of team work besides the Tank, Heal, Nuke sort of thing, then make some suggestions, but simple unorganized combat with no team work isn't a step forward, it's just crap. 

Originally posted by Dewm

 

 

 I hear alot of people saying they are tired with the old set up of "tank dps heal" that whole situation. Well i've been thinkin about it for a while. and honestly I can't think of any other way to do it. So would some of you like to tell me what you had in mind?

(Keeping in mind it has to work in a grouping enviroment)

IMO there is no other way to do it,it is what makes up the MMORPG genre.If you eliminate the tanking role,you eliminate hate control,so now you have a messy game,with no team work,every player can heal themselves,it really turns the genre into a joke,basically dumbs down game play in a real bad way.

If people are tired of it,they are tired of the fantasy MMORPG,no problem ,pick another type of game,that is how you define differences between games.Trying to turn a particular genre into another is ridiculous and wrong IMO.

In a high fantasy setting the tank/dps/healer Trinity works.

Be it through collision detection or mechanics like threat or taunting, having Tanks and DPS and Healers can definitely make sense in a high-fantasy setting and there is a certain beauty to a tightly knit group performing their roles at peak efficiency, where you can have unexpected circumstances arise, like a bad pull or mistaken multi-pull and the group just shifts and adjusts their priorities and tactics naturally.

It's amazing to see CC and kiting and tanking and off-tanking change on the fly without even speaking but instead just knowing... knowing how to focus fire and shift priorities and interupts and CC etc. etc. it really is a beautiful thing and it's really my favorite part of a fantasy MMO.

Unfortunately the days of that kind of teamwork and effort are generally numbered in small group play, even raids in WoW. Once you achieve a certain level of gear you can completely zerg and AoE through about everything.

Thankfully in Ulduar the trash was a lot more challenging and required some CC and thought but still no where near as fun and challenging as it used to be in say... heroic Shattered Halls or heroic Magister's Terrace.

 It was still VERY possible for very highly geared players to die and wipe due to mistakes in CC and mis-pulls. I miss that level of challenge in PvE.

Anywho... the only real way I could see a system working that didn't have the same kind of pre-defined roles yet still required a lot of teamwork and strategy and coordination would ONLY be in a Sci-Fi MMO, and you'd have to eliminate melee combat completely or almost completely and focus only on ranged, as in something like Mass Effect but in multiplayer MMO format.

I'd love to see someone Mod Mass Effect on PC to allow multiplayer... especially if you could somehow have a system where each player had a squad of NPC allies at their command ala Mass Effect, but you could still also group with other players and their squads to make some really cool and really intense fire-fights.

SWG did a real good job of this back in the day. With the multiple profession system and the professions medic and doctor, players could either go part way up medic for a little side healing or all the way as doctor for a full fledged healer, but even they didn't really heal in group situations, not in the traditional method anyway. They were more used for buffing up before going out and fighting. As far as tanking goes, there weren't any.

The way I see it, is that some games take it too drastic. While I love to be unkillable, what's the point if you can't do anything else? If you sit there and tank to god with nothing else to do, you slowly get bored. I think (Mainly because I played it most of my early years) diablo 2 had it down. Where some classes could technically tank better, but there wasn't a specific person who sat there and ate damage.

EX: Barbarian in D2 could soak damage from having more hp, and usually having a higher str to wear better armor. He also had skills that would buff him up to soak some more damage. But even with this, he wasn't invincible. Giant groups with certain stats could kill him with ease, while others, it would just take a while. Then you have the pally with the only real heal. But, who used it? It just wasn't good enough to actually use for a tank and spank situation with another person.

Then there were the boss battles. Some classes, ex: barbarian, pally, some other specific builds of classes, could actually rush in and go toe to toe with bosses, but majority of the time, you tried to avoid being hit. And then when you did, it didn't exactly instantly lock you down or kill you, but you have the chance of dieng if hit more or hit with a spell. Especially when fighting diablo himself in d2. There was the lightning inferno. No one wanted to be the target of that, and even if you weren't, you ran around trying to avoid the possibility of being touched by it.

So, however biased my opinion is towards d2, I will say all classes shouldn't be so much a role fill variety. But more how they get the job done. Some could take more damage than others, some had pets, some were indirect, etc.. Instead of the staple, tank, dps, heal; have it so you approach playing the game with a different style of combat.

Originally posted by Khaunshar

Unfortunately, so far I havent really seen games which completely did away with class roles become anything other than a big Zerg or DPS race.

Try Anarchy Online.  Some classes are committed to tank/healer/dps but most can play multiple roles.