I think we should learn a lesson from reality when designing this part of the game. Simply put, the dps, healer, tank strategem is outdated and unrealistic. Consider my alternative.

A player will be able to be defensive, offensive, and support with the same character and I don't mean through double-speccing or anything like that.

For instance, a player creates a character, and can choose from the following abilities.

Defense

* Armor - The heavier the armor, the more armor protection it provides. The type of armor makes a difference too, such as plate being resistant to piercing and slashing, but more vulnerable to crushing and magic.

* Evasion - The lighter the armor, the more evasive you become. Armor such as leather and cloth, would be more flamable.

* Parry - When wielding weapons, you may parry. The longer the weapon, the more chance there is to parry

* Block - When wielding a shield, you have a greater chance to block, and a lesser chance to parry.

* Magic - Defensive magic can be used to create invisible shields that protect you from damage. Certain magical shields can focus more on defense against certain kinds of damage

Basically, the idea isn't perfect, but the idea is to allow people to pick and choose their method for defending themselves. This is so that people can look the way they want, without suffering stereotypical penalties for it. I'd also prefer a FPS twitch style gameplay for this. Meaning you actively evade, parry, block, and activate magical shields. You'll evade faster the lighter armor you wear, parry better with longer weapons, block as long as you click the block button and your shield is still in servicable condition, and block with magical shields (by holding shift, like blocking w/ shields), which will last as long as you have mana.

Offense

* Melee - In reality, weapons kill just as effectively in the right hands. Meleers would use the weapon of their choice, and will gain combos for their weapons the more points they put into it. The combos grant more damage.

* Ranged - The advantage is killing from afar. More points into Ranged Weapons makes the cursor less shaky, improving your aim. It also grants you special skills, such as better precision, so you can cripple your foe if you chose to. Also it grants you more skill with the weapon, which allows you to deal more damage with it.

* Magic - There are different kinds of magic, as there are different kinds of weapons. The more points you put into magic, the less your spells will fizzle, and the more powerful and grand they will become.

The idea here is to allow players to pick how they choose to deal damage. They can mix and match as much as they like, but with only a limited amount of points, they can't master everything. However, cross-specializing has it's advantages, since you're more prepared for a variety of encounters, but specializing also has it's advantages, as you unlock better combos and deal more damage, and handle particular encounters better.

Support

* First Aid - Can use bandages to patch up wounds, and stop bleeding among other first aid related things.

* Alchemy - Can use potions to enhance abilities and knowledge of herbs to heal, among other things.

* Magic - Can use divine magic to heal and bolster, or arcane magic to bolster and ward.

The whole idea here is to allow people to choose how they want to support themselves and their allies. Each should be equally viable and attractive, but also carry benefits and penalties.

Obviously a great deal of thought hasn't gone into this, but it's an idea that popped in my head that I wanted to get down on paper before I forget it. I'll let discussion refine and polish the idea. Basically, the variety in the game and difference between two players is how you do what you do, not what you do, since everyone can take care of themselves. The amount a mob does in damage, the type of damage delt, and it's resistances will determine which skills are most useful against it and which players are better suited for the encounter. However, everyone should be at least adequate in handling the challenge, or at least bring something to the table, so that they're needed in the group. I just think the whole tank, healer, dps thing is outdated and unrealistic. It's more realistic to believe that everyone can kill something just as easily as the next person, and have learned how to defend themselves in their own way (they did live this long afterall), and have learned ways to treat their wounds.

I'm confused. You say the tank, healer, dps thing is outdated and unrealistic and you want to change it but what you did was listed tank, dps, heal. Also you mentioned that if put more points into a category it can be more powerful vs spreading them out. So with that you will still have players that become purely focused on tank, dps, or heal but still have the option for some variation. That brings you back to how the majority of fantasy mmorpg classes are but the classes are built in a way each one can do something unique and is fun in its own way.

What if you took out a way for a pure tank or healer?

Evade, Parry and Block are notoriously hard to balance... yet I see a lot of games where one of the three is the main form of mitigation. It's easy to moderate output vs mitigations, but adding "chance" is always an issue - especially when that chance is around 40% and expected to match the mitigations of a high-defense character who is taking hits but mitigating damage. Nothing promises that a fight will have the 40% chance of evades, sometimes its more or less and the fight never had a chance, sometimes it only happens on hotkey abilities or would-be crits. There is no way to balance it, and thats why I am always for the complete removal of passive "whiffs" in lieu of abilities and actions that can either be used preemptively or to-the-moment like an active blocking system.

The other fact being that a guy without heavy armor has no reason to be fighting a guy with it in melee range - he's gonna get hurt more. The idea of light armor is supposed to suit ranged combat because of the mobility, but they never take that into account in games and armor preferences for classes are simply a way to wormhole the damage to mitigation scheme in the way the devs wish implemented; high dmg = low armor, and a mix thereof.

One of the many things holding the industry back; convention.

As for the DPS, Tank, Healer scheme - there is no balance without one class outright destroying another, and that is not usually measured in a DPS to mitigations scheme, as much as applying weaknesses to the class lineups.

Warrior (Magic Tank and some DPS) > Mage (Ranged DPS) > Rogue (close range DPS) > Healer (Debuff/Heals) > back to the Warrior

*this is just an example, you can set it up any way you want*

Then you have a strategy in "if you are this class, take on that one".

The warrior tanks and melees the mage down after draining him, but the mage nuked the rogue from afar, but not after the rogue merced the healer who debuffed the warrior who is now taken by anyone.

1 v 1 balance is achieveable - but then you have zero hope for a group tactic because all you can do is work the DMG to mitigation scheme until everbody is the same output for effort in PvP.  Then healers become the only real advantage to another class.

As always, a few points.

Defense:

• Armor: Expensive, encumbering, and hot. Full plate required significant assistance to get into, and further to get mounted.
• Evasion: Underrated- probably since you aren't dealing damage while doing it.
• Parry: Weapon length is a marginal factor at best. It's almost all speed and skill.
• Block: This is with a shield. Despite thoughts to the contrary- there is a skill involved.
• Magic (passive defense): A shield, ward, or guardian.
• Magic (Active defense); A counteractive spell to magically block on demand.

etc.

For your 'realistic' dynamic, there have to be consistant limitations in all your dynamics. For example- 'the bane of steel' can you have that and be a mage, but allow a person to wear full plate armor? Also, many combat choices are conditional- enviorment may decide for you. In a bog, evasion is a bad idea. Or against a war hammer, blocking is still like being a pinball.

Also, realisticly, there are sevaral combat ranges, depending on weapon and style, from grappling, close, mid and near to outside (for non-pole arm weilders), to short (thrown) to medium (device) to long (longbow). Pole arms are particularly deadly and one-sided weapons to wield, as you can hold an attacker out of his range, but with yours very skillfully.

Ranged weapons (the legendary longbow) are particularly nasty. Who wants to play a game where you can die at a few hundred yards? Realisticly- a longbowman could kill a man at that range.

A good magic system should probably embrace a good combat system- but god luck seeing that anytime soon.

GTwander,

Evade, Parry and Block are notoriously hard to balance- but I think most attempts thus far have been 'gamey' kludges to maintain the 'staus quo'. Almost all MMOs currently use the 'Armor Class' method of resolving conflict- which 'assumes' you're doing some statistical average of 'your best' when the other guy attacks. It doesn't care what you're actually doing. You could be fishing for all it cares. So the costs/benefits of any particular course of action are ignored. Some games give 'stances' which give offensive/balanced/defensive bonus, thus pretending to shift the defense focus toward or way from parry/block focus. Convention. Thieves backstab- that's it- no one else gets a bonus for attacking from where you can't be seen. No attempt an logic here- more or less 'balance'.

DPS/Tank/Healer could be balanced if there were logical combat rules implemented- or even logical cultural rules. Like 'Killing a healer will give me a nasty bane for 24 hours' or some such. It's a type of armor- without being illogical or actual armor. IT's not impossible- just tough.

following on  from biofells:

In reality: Soldiers made the bulk of the army, they were more expendable and would be there primarily to protect the damage dealers. They were not tanks as such, but it was in their numbers that they defended. You would have to fight through a thousand warriors to kill the hundred archers, this was the problem, not that the soldiers had more armour, there were just more of them you had to kill. This does not work in many mmos because you can walk through each other, however in games like WAR this becomes very apparent.

Likewise powerful soldiers (usually on horses to get them to the fight quicker,  examples are knights and beserkers) were there for two reasons. Firstly they were there to fear and break the enemy line quickly (reducing the time for soldiers to get to those archers), and secondly they were there to mop up without loosing anymore of your soldiers (so they are there for the next battle).

In battle assasins/thieves were useless because they did not carry a shield and would fall to the archers.

In history the most deahs are caused by the archers and ranged catapaults etc.

From what I have seen from MMOs is that WAR is most accurate in the use of such fights, however AoC may also reach that scale if numbers increase.

Originally posted by mmoguy43

I'm confused. You say the tank, healer, dps thing is outdated and unrealistic and you want to change it but what you did was listed tank, dps, heal. Also you mentioned that if put more points into a category it can be more powerful vs spreading them out. So with that you will still have players that become purely focused on tank, dps, or heal but still have the option for some variation. That brings you back to how the majority of fantasy mmorpg classes are but the classes are built in a way each one can do something unique and is fun in its own way.

 

What if you took out a way for a pure tank or healer?

I think your misunderstanding. It seems he wants to do away with the system of only 1 toon can fill that 1 role at a time, dps/tank/healer, and allow everyone to choose their method of performing all 3 of those things with 1 toon. Basically everyone has a method of dps, a method of defense/tanking, and a method of healing, each with their own benefits and penalties.

This would cause some issues though. This would basically increase the amount of soloing going on, as everyone can support themself easily, so why group with someone else when you can tank, dps, and heal on your own? the game mechanics themself would have to somehow work to create an incentive for grouping, maybe even just by simply having a wide variety of types of attacks/damage/debuffs used by mobs against you in a way that makes, lets say, melee damage & blocking useless against them, requiring you to join up with perhaps a magic damage/magic shield user in order to progress, or range dwith evade, etc.

Without those incentives, it would cause everyone to be able to just handle everything on their own and probably severely hinder the community overall and pretty much turn it into a single playe rmmo. if done properly it would work out great though, and im all for it, i hate being stuck in 1 role.

Originally posted by nate1980

 I'd also prefer a FPS twitch style gameplay for this. Meaning you actively evade, parry, block, and activate magical shields

 
In real martial arts, parrying is a conditioned response to whatever your opponent is doing.  It's not just a sequence of random twitches; it's a fluid system.  Trying to portray that in a twitch-based computer game is either going to result in an awkward experience, or one that requires the player to develop a set of conditioned finger responses.  No normal person is going to find that entertaining.

I'd prefer a combat system that let me strategically plan when to press my attacks, but kept parrying and blocking more computer-controlled.  Each character would have a "guard", represented by a pool of "fatigue points" that regenerate very  quickly.  You'd use the same pool of points to defend, attack, cast spells -- or even move quickly.  Only when that guard is actually penetrated would you start taking damage to your (harder to heal) "body points."

Graphically, this would provide a more realistic view of combat.  Instead of the characters repeatedly cutting each other up like a pair of lumberjacks taking turns whittling down trees, you'd see  parrying, blocking, sidestepping, etc. for most of the fight.  Only after this had gone on for a bit would you see actual body strikes start to take place.  And finally a killshot animation.

Tactically, I think this would a blast.  Instead of  waiting for power-up buttons to refresh, and cycling through combos, it would be a game of strategy.  Press your attack too early in the fight, before you've worn your opponent down enough, and you could miss and leave yourself open to counter attack.   But if you wait too long to make a move, your opponent might get you first.

That way, the bizarre paradigm of in-fight healing could be removed from the game entirely.  Instead, the fight would be a cooperative effort to keep each player from running out of steam.  Don't try to put a bandage on him while he's fighting; that's stupid.  Insead, just step up and give a beleaguered player a breather to recover his strength. 

Strategically, it could open up a whole new aspect to RPG gameplay.  Instead of the arcade-style outcome of ending up either trivially delayed or dead, you'd also have minor injuries to worry about.   A "healer", of course, would have to wait until after the fight to do his job.  You wouldn't have ANY downtime for a well-played fight, but you'd have to stop and deal with injuries.  That way, even minor enemies would have to be taken seriously, and finally an RPG could do away with the most immersion-breaking paradigm imaginable: frequent death.  

I've been thinking about this one myself and how most modern MMORPG's focus too much on clear definition and divide mechanics up based on class/roles.

For instance Tanks are generally responsible for threat generation. DPS/DD are responsible for damage and Healers are responsible for, suprisingly, healing.

My own personal idea for changing and rewiring this whole thing, as well as shaking up the boredom and routine a bit is by tweaking classes further than usual to help with, or participate in one of those three areas while maintaining an active roll in whatever they do.

Im probably not explaining it well so ill give an example:

The old Tank/DPS/Healer holy trinity heads to a dungeon. In most cases, the tank builds threat, is healed by the mage, and DPS just spams skills and waits for inevitable death, in some games there is room for a bit of scripting and events etc.

What I would like to see is Threat becoming a new commodity, something akin to playing with fire and bringing some risk vs reward to everyone. I would like to see threat work as a managed sweet spot, say you have a bar that represent your level of threat. something like this: |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||  (this would only apply to healers and DPS)

The green part in the middle is where you are aiming for, at that point you are threatening enough that your attacks are causing extra damage, but not so much so that you are now the focus off attention.

Yellow represents a warning zone, while in here you would be the victim of say random attacks from the boss such as a charge, or a randomly fire spell.

The two red zones leave you in danger of being attacked and killed. Whoever is deepest into the red will still only be the focus of random attacks, but they are random sustained attacks. Each attack would lower your threat towards yellow again, and you only lose the bosses focus once in the yellow again.

For clarification, the meter would move to the left when you are performing underpar and are being seen as weak and an easy target to pick off. Say someone doing low damage or healing compared to everyone else. The right hand side means you are going overboard, as in normal ingame threat.

Now the big twist comes in the form of threat management. The bar itself is based on numbers, specifically the total threat generated by the main tank. Simply working by going off whoever has the highest total threat. As the tank build his overall threat, the sweet spot and yellow area's expand out allowing more room for error.

Healing someone would give them HP but also lower their threat, so someone who has taken some damage would need to fight back hard in order to make sure the healing wont push them back into the red. The threat lowered by healing them is taken and transferred to the healer, in this case we will assume that a healer healing himself receives no threat modification. Healing the main tank will increase the tanks HP, and as well as this will increase their threat total and lower the healers overall total.

Tanks could then spend the rthreat on buffing the group say sarificing threat (and shrinking the safe spots of the bar) for say a bonus of locking everyone's bar into the safe spot for a set period of time.

Its just one idea (and one i'll admit is kinda half baked) to changing the mechanics of a group and getting everyone else involved in all area's. Feel free to pick my idea apart, because im sure the crude idea itself is more than open ground for exploitation, but im sure if it was refined and picked up by someone capable of putting it into action it could be a new way of thinking.