Since GW2 announced that they will leave the traditionall holy trinnity behind... and replace it with somethign different... Whatever methode will be the best needs to be seen, we can't know untill we extensively playtested GW2.

But what will happen is that players need to find out and discover the new roles and tactices for grouping (in the instanced dungeonareas) succesfully... this will make sure that the grouping gameplay will atleast feel very fresh when first experienced compared to all other MMO's....

But will all characters just fit in a group regardless of how they are specced, or does the new grouping system require another kind of ballance.... Maybe we will find out that every group requires equall ammounts of offensive/defensive/support specced characters..... (every class tough can to some degree fullfill all these roles depending on their specs)

Will succesfull grouping expect people to fullfill a certain role in a group even if noboddy likes to play it?  Or can those odds be overcome by a full group of DPS specced people... by simply switching the tanking(the one person getting hit) role around... and then healing up in the background while switching to range damage...

I am very thrilled to figure out how the new grouping system works out ......

My guess is that for most casual groups, people will be able to mostly run with what ever build they prefer, rather than group build being that important for success. However, we know that the Explorable Dungeon Content, which is unlocked by doing a Dungeon first in Story Mode (which is supposed to be doable with a Pick Up Group), are designed to be very challenging, so players may need to carefully formulate a group build for that content.

CPVP is somewhat similar. People should be able to enjoy casual games with what ever builds people bring in, with the stress being more on good play than character professions/builds. However, when it get's into structured, highly competitive tournaments, I'm sure team builds will develop in a similar manner to the way they do in GW1. Hopefully it will be easier to balance, though, and we will have fewer Flavor of the Month Profession and Group builds in Competitive PVP than we've seen in GW1.

Bringing it back around to casual groups, being able to change builds easily when out of combat should encourage good players to tweak and adjust to circumstances as part of being a good player.  Although someone who really wants to stick to a certain build should be able to do so with out issue, other players will likely be more proactive, even in casual groups, with adjustments meant to amplify strengths or address weaknesses of the group.

as said, there will be no so called holy trinity, so by that no special tank/healer/dps classes.. So as i understand everyone will have to heal them self, everyone will be hitted (there wouldnt be like that specific guy is tanking atm (i guess no agro thing)) - so no one will actually tank, and there will be no specific dps classes, so everyone will just spawn their skills and move away from been hitted. So if the skills will be like really balanced, then every class will benefit +-~ the same, so you can group with who ever you like to - no need to wait for specific class...

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

Will succesfull grouping expect people to fullfill a certain role in a group even if noboddy likes to play it?  Or can those odds be overcome by a full group of DPS specced people... by simply switching the tanking(the one person getting hit) role around... and then healing up in the background while switching to range damage...

 

I am very thrilled to figure out how the new grouping system works out ......

The point you're making about switching the tanking in a party, the constant in and out of battle, healing up and taking back aggro

is exactly the thing i can't wrap my head around. I'll probably have to see it, experience it, before understanding it.  

I really wanna know aswell how this grouping system works out.

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

I am very thrilled to figure out how the new grouping system works out ......

Same here. Looking forward to how it plays out and how it is received.

It's all about playstyle and adapting. I'd rather have a group full of people that can adapt well to situations than people geared towards one specific thing. There's more room of success that way.

Originally posted by Krusader-NL

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

Will succesfull grouping expect people to fullfill a certain role in a group even if noboddy likes to play it?  Or can those odds be overcome by a full group of DPS specced people... by simply switching the tanking(the one person getting hit) role around... and then healing up in the background while switching to range damage...

 

I am very thrilled to figure out how the new grouping system works out ......

The point you're making about switching the tanking in a party, the constant in and out of battle, healing up and taking back aggro

is exactly the thing i can't wrap my head around. I'll probably have to see it, experience it, before understanding it.  

I really wanna know aswell how this grouping system works out.

 

You can do it in every game that has a class like the Paladin and Druid.

This type of thing has already been done successfully in CIty of Heroes (CoH).  Althought, a small number of fights in CoH did still require the holy trinity. For  most dungeons, any combination of classes and any size group (solo to full group) could do the dungeon.  The encounter changed according to the number of players and levels of the players.   Some of the fights were really fun to watch, particularly those with a full group of the same class using a unique class ability on a full room of mobs.

GW2 may take some of the best features from earlier games or come up with something entirely different that works well.

They won't be necessarily removing the trinity. They are reinventing it. Instead of Tank, DPS, and Healer it is now Damage, Support, and Control.

Boy, it is going to be hard for those who have known only the rigid holy trinity and not much else. I feel sorry for them already...

No doubt players will try to enforce some roles, but I don't see any strict roles built in to the game. I expect the most efficient players will do everything as needed - No strict roles. If the team looks bad, people change weapon sets for more defensive/harrasment playstyle etc. There's no trinity when the s*** goes down. People just do what seems right for the situation. It is not rocket science.

"Herp, derp - I am support. I support."

"Erp, I am DPS. I don't do support."

I can imagine such players wont be very popular in groups.

However, I think we will see "initiator", "roamer" and other roles similar to those found in MOBAs in PvP, but nothing resembling any trinity.

Originally posted by Quirhid

Boy, it is going to be hard for those who have known only the rigid holy trinity and not much else. I feel sorry for them already...

No doubt players will try to enforce some roles, but I don't see any strict roles built in to the game. I expect the most efficient players will do everything as needed - No strict roles. If the team looks bad, people change weapon sets for more defensive/harrasment playstyle etc. There's no trinity when the s*** goes down. People just do what seems right for the situation. It is not rocket science.

"Herp, derp - I am support. I support."

"Erp, I am DPS. I don't do support."

I can imagine such players wont be very popular in groups.

 

However, I think we will see "initiator", "roamer" and other roles similar to those found in MOBAs in PvP, but nothing resembling any trinity.

Considering the fact that there is only one skill bar and that specilizations were made to make things easier for each player, I am willing to bet that most players will do more support, or more damage, or more control instead of everyone being a hybrid. Think about it. If you had to do damage, control, and support all at once, not only would it be harder because you would need to manage a series of different things, it would most likely be less effective than say if you had one person dedicated to supporting the group, one person dedicated to dealing most of the damage, and one person dedicated to controlling.

It's like a company. You don't have the secretary doing the work of an accountant and vice versa.

Sounds great on paper and if they truly will be able to pull a "no specific class/role needed to be wanted in groups" out of their hats, i'll be amazed. My biggest fear is that players will try to "force" the trinity into groups. I dont want to see "lf Warrior to tank and Elementalist to heal for instance X", because people will feel that warrior seems to hold aggro best and the elementalist has the best heal/support skills (just an example). If that will happen, i'd rather have the trinity. Guess we'll wait and see.

I approve of the idea of not needing to have a traditonal tank, dps, CC, healer group rotation anymore.. However, just because It sounds good doesn't mean it will work good.. If everyone can tank, heal, cc, and dps, it means that each person will have to do everything themselves.. If there's no set role for your character, I think It will lead to more disorganized fail groups...

I'm not trying to hate on this system,, just giving my opinion... It's like the Yankees and RedSox.. They build championship teams full of superstar   "I WIN" players on paper.. But when it comes to playing as a team, both haven't done what was predicted of them... 

Hopefully the system will work because I've hated having to create tank and healer classes for my guilds the past 10 years simply because not many people ever really gets excited to play those classes..

Just because they have no trinity doesnt mean you wont have a role in your group.  If your trying to do everything it wont work out. what they mean by each class can heal dps or control is that you have the option to do so but you dont have the skill bar length to equip all those skills at once.

Originally posted by st4t1ck

Just because they have no trinity doesnt mean you wont have a role in your group.  If your trying to do everything it wont work out. what they mean by each class can heal dps or control is that you have the option to do so but you dont have the skill bar length to equip all those skills at once.

They didn't remove the trinity:

"You could say instead of DPS/heal/tank, we have our own trinity of damage, support, and control..."

I'm sure certain class ability combininations will prove more optimal than others for certain parts of certain dungeons over time, but from what we've heard, virtually every group comp should theoretically be viable.  That said, even in many current holy trinity MMOs, you can run dungeons without a tank or without a healer and succeed as long as the group is coordinated and controls each enemy properly.  So this *type* of gameplay is possible and even viable in games today, it's just that adding a tank and healer into the mix makes the run infinitely easier, reducing this potentially compelling, challenging, and fun combat to a mere unnecessary struggle.  Still, some of my most fond dungeon crawling memories are of running almost every WoW BC heroic with just a mage, a druid and a hunter.  No real tank, no real healer, only fun :)

Tactics will not change in any game,players look for the fastest way to kill then it becomes a generic setup.The problem i have is that i DO love the typical ROLE playing in a game,so i want the healer ROLE the tank ROLE,i want it to be a role playing game,not a jack of all trades morphling game.

Yes it is hard to predict a combat scenario and we do need to test it first.We need to see how hate is controlled/lost/gained in this game to know how each player will play.

Perhaps the most important factor will be the speed of combat.if it is too fast,then strategy is thrown out the window,nothing really matters then.if combat is slower and thinking is involved then yes how you play  can be an important factor the way it should be in a MMO.This again needs to be tested,however i think there is yet another factor to look at.I beleive there is a system where you don't really die,you sort of hang on the fringe of death.They said this was to allow players to feel more heroic,sounds good on paper and imo is ok soloing but not grouping.This is because in a group i would assume while your player is on the brink another player would proably steal hate rather easily making your heroism mute.This again falls into the actual testing and hate control,everything i already mentioned.

One other important factor is how it will all play out in the boss/event battles where you are basically scaling players.In those battles there is no real grouping because it is unorganized,players just show up and join,so their system will not work all the time.Then again how will hate work in those scenarios?Wil lthe highest level player basically be tanking the whole fight?idk all needs to be thoroughly tested.

Originally posted by stealthbr

Originally posted by st4t1ck

Just because they have no trinity doesnt mean you wont have a role in your group.  If your trying to do everything it wont work out. what they mean by each class can heal dps or control is that you have the option to do so but you dont have the skill bar length to equip all those skills at once.

They didn't remove the trinity:

"You could say instead of DPS/heal/tank, we have our own trinity of damage, support, and control..."

yes, but remember that you can switch in between these roles on the fly, just by swapping weapon sets.  This means that, while you can fosuc on one role at a time, good players will switch roles as needed for the situation.  Somebody earlier said that you would only be relying on yourself in combat, and I have to point out that the level of skill interactions between players and the difficulty of dungeon mobs is going to be geared towards requiring teamwork to some extent (story mode dungeons will be puggable, I doubt explorable mode dungeons will be.)

remember, this isn't a game where they are just saying there isn't going to be the [healer tank DPS] trinity and nothing about difficulty or mobs will change, everything is going to be different to make the super soft [support control damage] trinity actually work in the game.

edit: adding colors is fun.

Originally posted by Wizardry

Tactics will not change in any game,players look for the fastest way to kill then it becomes a generic setup.The problem i have is that i DO love the typical ROLE playing in a game,so i want the healer ROLE the tank ROLE,i want it to be a role playing game,not a jack of all trades morphling game.

I have allways loved them, and still do, tough i also hate wayting for tank or healer... and i cant be both of them myself... i am ready to try something else

Yes it is hard to predict a combat scenario and we do need to test it first.We need to see how hate is controlled/lost/gained in this game to know how each player will play.

Perhaps the most important factor will be the speed of combat.if it is too fast,then strategy is thrown out the window,nothing really matters then.if combat is slower and thinking is involved then yes how you play  can be an important factor the way it should be in a MMO.

If combat is fast and using the right tactics on top of that gives ahuge advantage too.... it will sepperate the babies from the boys...  Great players with excellent skills can do incredible things...

This again needs to be tested,however i think there is yet another factor to look at.I beleive there is a system where you don't really die,you sort of hang on the fringe of death.They said this was to allow players to feel more heroic,sounds good on paper and imo is ok soloing but not grouping.This is because in a group i would assume while your player is on the brink another player would proably steal hate rather easily making your heroism mute.This again falls into the actual testing and hate control,everything i already mentioned.

One other important factor is how it will all play out in the boss/event battles where you are basically scaling players.In those battles there is no real grouping because it is unorganized,players just show up and join,so their system will not work all the time.Then again how will hate work in those scenarios?Wil lthe highest level player basically be tanking the whole fight?idk all needs to be thoroughly tested.