Originally posted by Faelan

Originally posted by jbombard

 

Maybe WoW has made me cynical but I hate having to trust the success/failure of the group on others ability to play.  Hell in WoW it's bad enough and you see pleny of people who can't do one job let alone all 3 and ALSO be able to switch dynamically between them.  I have a feeling random pugs will just not be doable, at all.

 

I think that's a valid concern and one I share as well.

Look at the big mess that Cataclysm created when it was launched and people suddenly had to CC and not stand in the fire because the healer could no longer spam heal everyone forever without running out of mana. Dungeon crawls slowed to a... well... crawl. The forums were on fire with people who did not enjoy this new level of difficulty. PUGs were a mess and some people had to resort to guild runs only. The thing is, there's only so much I can do in a group. I can play my role to perfection, but if the rest of the group doesn't know how to play, it matters not. We all die. I frankly decided not to subject myself to that by quitting WoW shortly after I reached 85. I just couldn't find the motivation to crawl through dungeons and dealing with all that when I knew I could just go play something else for a while and come back a couple of patches later when things had settled down.

And there are games tailored specifically for the both of you. They're called single player RPGs. EA just released two: Mass Effect 3 and SWTOR. Play those.

Originally posted by Kakkzooka

Originally posted by Faelan

Originally posted by jbombard

 

Maybe WoW has made me cynical but I hate having to trust the success/failure of the group on others ability to play.  Hell in WoW it's bad enough and you see pleny of people who can't do one job let alone all 3 and ALSO be able to switch dynamically between them.  I have a feeling random pugs will just not be doable, at all.

 

I think that's a valid concern and one I share as well.

Look at the big mess that Cataclysm created when it was launched and people suddenly had to CC and not stand in the fire because the healer could no longer spam heal everyone forever without running out of mana. Dungeon crawls slowed to a... well... crawl. The forums were on fire with people who did not enjoy this new level of difficulty. PUGs were a mess and some people had to resort to guild runs only. The thing is, there's only so much I can do in a group. I can play my role to perfection, but if the rest of the group doesn't know how to play, it matters not. We all die. I frankly decided not to subject myself to that by quitting WoW shortly after I reached 85. I just couldn't find the motivation to crawl through dungeons and dealing with all that when I knew I could just go play something else for a while and come back a couple of patches later when things had settled down.

And there are games tailored specifically for the both of you. They're called single player RPGs. EA just released two: Mass Effect 3 and SWTOR. Play those.

 

So, because I'm concerned about the average MMO Joe not being able to live up to the challenge that GW2 is going to provide (if what we've heard/seen so far is correct), I should limit myself to singleplayer games? Nah mate, I'll just have to find a decent guild and stay far far away from PUGs if that turns out to be the case.

Funny thing is, I don't even consider myself that great a player, but I know enough to not stand in the fire, CC when needed and toss some off-heals if in a tight spot. I'm looking forward to the challenge. What I'm not looking forward to is all the drama this could potentially result in when the PUG I'm in wipes and everybody starts blaming everybody. Drama kills the fun for me instantly. That's where my concern lies. But hopefully I'll be able to find some people who are up for that challenge while being down to earth.

Originally posted by Dragonantis

GW2 is yet another step forward in the evolution of MMO's. Soon the term GW2-clone will be born XD

 

this might happen. if scalable dynamic events become succesfull and the new market standard, then we will see GW2-Clones. and the same discussion will start about if this is correct.

people say it is wrong, to call Lotro or AoC and others a WoW clone, because all together are EQ-clones. this is a valid point of view. but WoW evolved it and implemented it 1st time in a way that caused the masses to buy in.

same with dynamic events. the roots are the public quests we saw in WAR and later in RIFT. but people will recognize, that GW2 was the 1st game implementing it correctly, so that the good old quest-system was blowed out of the water. at least i hope so.

even if dynamic events are techincally just clever designed questchains presented differently.

I'd rather keep to the old ways if it means avoiding all of this crappy trend towards twitch combat.  Every single game releasing this year has adopted action combat and it pisses me off.

Originally posted by Vorthanion

I'd rather keep to the old ways if it means avoiding all of this crappy trend towards twitch combat.  Every single game releasing this year has adopted action combat and it pisses me off.

 

this trend towards fast-action-based combat is already unholy. aimed combat is just the next step.

i like this playstyle for melee-classes (moves, blocks, dodges, ...). for ranged classes i prefer a more static playstyle which is based on nearly full crowd-control and tactics not operational combat like moves and such.

as a range-fighter, a perfect fight ends with 100% HP. even if the mob had a serious chance to reach me and one-hit me immediately, he never made it, because i know my class, and reacted fast enough to avoid such a situation. for this type of combat, you have 1st get rid of linked mobs and introduce again a versatile pulling-game. now introduce trash mobs with hgh HP, which is also better for the melees for longer lasting interesting fights. and on top long lasting CC-skills. plus a real dangerous environment with weird pathing and riky adds.

a good game would treat closerange-fighters and longrange-fighters different. i cant see that any game ever did that correctly. EQ1 was perfect for some range classes. but dull combat for close-range. nowadays they implemented the opposite.

Originally posted by Illyssia

Dear David North.

If a game  allows your character to select between light, medium or heavy armour then isn't that a new type of holy trinity. It's not as if ArenaNet have abolished the holy trinity they just got rid of dedicated healers and gave its players another trinity.

 

One....Light armour

 

Two.....medium armour

 

Three...heavy armour

 

now David 1 + 1 + 1 equals three.

 

What is the dictionary definition of trinity well, David, a group of three things is a simple one.

 

So, yet another MMORPG aritcle that fails on definition. GW2 does indeed have a trinity in its gameplay.

 

Wow, what a trinity... how about red white and blue? just as relevant. GW1 was not gear based and did not have a typical "aggro" mechanism with taunts and such to keep the ennemy on you while the less armored members stayed behind, instead all classes had at least "some" skills available to preserve their life by blocking or reducing damage. In a non gear based game, whatever armor you'll wear won't be the main factor in the way you fight... a caster in robes looks fragile but he can cast stoneskin and be tougher than the plated warrior. GW2 goes one step further by removing the more obvious "healing class" you can try and see trinities everywhere but that's just you.

Originally posted by Bunks

Thank goodness is right. The trinity has to be the most artificial thing every made in tactics. It was all just an easy button for game designers to control the script on fights. I still remember the first time I learned about it, my reaction was "your joking right?".

Although I am excited to try Guild Wars 2 and the new type of combat system in order to give my opinion.... I don't agree with your statement here. The tank, dps, healer roles have been around (at least in my personal experience) since D&D - I don't think it's fair to call it an "articial thing" in terms of tatics. Have you ever been in the miliarty? I only ask because of your mention of tatics. There have always been light armored units, heavy armoued units, medical units, assult units, etc. Different units with very specific goals in combat, some able to take larger amounts of damage, others that are specifically for damage and can't take a hit. 

Specific roles in combat such as this have been around since combat itself. The use of the "holy trinity" was just natural when it came to role playing games to give players a specific role, and thus a feeling of being needed. This may have felt necessary when being applied in gaming just so it didn't feel like 5 guys just unloading on a mob in blitzkrieg fashion. 

I am very interested to see how the new system pans out, and I will not give my opinion of it until I try it. Who knows, I may like it better. I may not, only time will tell. However, I know a lot of players who do enjoy having a specific role, we'll have to see how that translates to GW2 where you can have somewhat of a role, just not in the traditional sense. 

But like I said, often when I speak to gamers, specifically MMO'ers, the first thing they mention is what role they like to play... "i always play healers" or "' I always play tanks" etc. Just saying, perhaps not everyone will enjoy this new method. 

Originally posted by orbitxo

Thank GOD!= no more TANK, Heals, DPS cookie cutter molds!

I know how hard is to believe it, even more for the gw2 fanboys, buy actually; people like to play roles in a MMO, they like to play as a tank, a healer, buffer or a dps. gw2 looks more like a console game, some people will love it, a lot of people will hate it. 

Originally posted by hikaru77

Originally posted by orbitxo

Thank GOD!= no more TANK, Heals, DPS cookie cutter molds!

I know how hard is to believe it, even more for the gw2 fanboys, buy actually; people like to play roles in a MMO, they like to play as a tank, a healer, buffer or a dps. gw2 looks more like a console game, some people will love it, a lot of people will hate it. 

 

...in your opinion.

Please define alot, because WoW supposedly has 10 million players...that's alot. However there's about 6 billion people in the world...that's alot. The gaming community is rumoured to number around the 1 billion mark (thanks Asia)...that's alot. Wow doesn't seem that impressive all of a sudden.

I think that anyone who plays GW2 and treats it like a new game (instead of a standard mmo) will enjoy playing it and will find a class and play style they like. There's no sub so they may also stick to another sub/free MMO if they choose.

Console game?  - ANet have announced that they are looking at possible ports onto consoles but so far it's just an idea, they're focusing on the PC release. Blizzard have said exactly the same thing. How many console gamers would pay a sub though?

Originally posted by Praetalus

Originally posted by Bunks

Thank goodness is right. The trinity has to be the most artificial thing every made in tactics. It was all just an easy button for game designers to control the script on fights. I still remember the first time I learned about it, my reaction was "your joking right?".

Although I am excited to try Guild Wars 2 and the new type of combat system in order to give my opinion.... I don't agree with your statement here. The tank, dps, healer roles have been around (at least in my personal experience) since D&D - I don't think it's fair to call it an "articial thing" in terms of tatics. 

 

I did a lot of pen and paper RPG, D&D included (2nd ed mostly), from... think 1988 up to around 2002. I honestly don't remember ever coming across anything in the rules or various supplements that points out the holy trinity in all its glorious details and how you have to abide to it. If there was, we sure didn't play that way and we had lots of fun and never had any issues because the party lacked a dedicated healer or was made up of all thieves. The DM would just take that into account when setting the theme of the campaign and balancing the encounters. Sure, it was obvious that having a healer would reduce down time. It was obvious that having a guy with a big shield step in front of the squishy wizard while he was preparing a fireball spell was a wise tactical decision. But the game wasn't built around that as alway being the case, nor would it crumble if you tried to deviate that. So you could say that there was a trinity of sorts based on common and tactical sense... but it wasn't holy. That's the problem with most MMOs. It's holy and if you try to break it, the game breaks because it's balanced around it.

Now, when I look at 4th ed. D&D (haven't had a chance to actually play it), I see a clear MMO inspiration in the way abilities and classes work and a clear holy trinity inspiration where combat and encounter balancing is concerned. But that just tells me that D&D adopted the holy trinity from MMOs rather than inventing it. My guess is to make it more familiar to MMO players and make it easier/quicker for the DM, especially inexperienced ones, to create and balance combat encounters.

Originally posted by chibineko89

last i checked you cant do a dungeon in WoW with 5 rogues 

in gw2 you can do a dungeon with 5 thiefs since they can all do dmg, heal themselves, and evade/kite the mobs

Everyone talks about this being new, or different.  I can list a half dozen if not more games that have done this previously that were either good or bad. 

In no paticular order.

-Fallen Earth

-Mortal Online

-Darkfall Online

-Anarchy Online

-Roma Victor

-Xsyon Online

-Star Trek Online

-Star Wars Galaxies

And thats just a few that come to mind.   I am sure there are others if I looked for five minutes on Google.

All in all every game that comes out now, is the same crap rehashed for a ever simpler gaming population.   Gone are the days of Ultima Online.

Originally posted by L0C0Man

Guild Wars 2 does have a trinity, but with two main differences differences.

First one is that instead of tank-heal-DPS we have damage-support-control. While some classes have heavier armor than others, or more health, there's no class that will be able to continously get hit by a boss and survive, nor any class that will be able to keep it alive for too long. So basically there won't be any class devoted to tanking or healing, but people that do everything at some point, either damage (DPS), support (healing, providing protections and the like) and control (a bit like crowd control, like the guardian barriers or the ranger traps, to name a few).

The other one, and the biggest one IMHO, is that it isn't a "hard" trinity. I remember them saying somewhere that they wanted to really be a "bring the player, not the class" game, so while there is a trinity of sorts, every single class in the game can perform any of those roles, and will have to perform them at some point to really be effective. So there's no "oh, sorry, you're a mage and we need a tank here, you can't go". Also, if they achieve their goals as they've been stated, people won't say things like "oh, sorry, we need a healing specced elementalist for this one", and more "ok, for this fight when the boss does X we need you to attune yourself to water to help keeping us alive". They specifically said that it would be perfectly feasible to do a dungeon with, for example, 5 thieves.

And, at least to me, after watching several videos, doesn't seem they're too far off that goal. We'll see for ourselves when the game goes live (or, for those of us that pre-purchased, in the next beta.. :))

This guy gets it.

Yes there is a soft-trinity of sorts with DPS, support and control. But the thing is that while you can spec into one aspect more than the others, there are no builds that will allow you to completely neglect the others.

Every weapon has damage skills, every weapon has control skills and every person has to bring their own heals.

Go look at the Warrior weapon skills, every single weapon has a control effect in the form of a cripple, daze, immobilise or knockdown (except for the underwater spear, but you'll always have both a spear and a harpoon).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Warrior_skills

Its pretty much impossible to make a character that is unable to do damage, support and control all at the same time. The extent you focus on each of them depends on your weapon setups and traits, but noone can completely neglect the other two in favour of one aspect.

Originally posted by Hodo

Everyone talks about this being new, or different.  I can list a half dozen if not more games that have done this previously that were either good or bad. 

In no paticular order.

-Fallen Earth

-Mortal Online

-Darkfall Online

-Anarchy Online

-Roma Victor

-Xsyon Online

-Star Trek Online

-Star Wars Galaxies

 

And thats just a few that come to mind.   I am sure there are others if I looked for five minutes on Google.

 

All in all every game that comes out now, is the same crap rehashed for a ever simpler gaming population.   Gone are the days of Ultima Online.

 

Sorry bud, but Star Trek Online definitely suffered from the trinity.  Cruisers = Tanks, Science Vessels = Healers / Controllers, Escorts = DPS.  AO and SWG blended the roles a bit more, but it was still alive and present.

Originally posted by Praetalus

Originally posted by Bunks

Thank goodness is right. The trinity has to be the most artificial thing every made in tactics. It was all just an easy button for game designers to control the script on fights. I still remember the first time I learned about it, my reaction was "your joking right?".

Although I am excited to try Guild Wars 2 and the new type of combat system in order to give my opinion.... I don't agree with your statement here. The tank, dps, healer roles have been around (at least in my personal experience) since D&D - I don't think it's fair to call it an "articial thing" in terms of tatics. Have you ever been in the miliarty? I only ask because of your mention of tatics. There have always been light armored units, heavy armoued units, medical units, assult units, etc. Different units with very specific goals in combat, some able to take larger amounts of damage, others that are specifically for damage and can't take a hit. 

 

Specific roles in combat such as this have been around since combat itself. The use of the "holy trinity" was just natural when it came to role playing games to give players a specific role, and thus a feeling of being needed. This may have felt necessary when being applied in gaming just so it didn't feel like 5 guys just unloading on a mob in blitzkrieg fashion. 

 

I am very interested to see how the new system pans out, and I will not give my opinion of it until I try it. Who knows, I may like it better. I may not, only time will tell. However, I know a lot of players who do enjoy having a specific role, we'll have to see how that translates to GW2 where you can have somewhat of a role, just not in the traditional sense. 

 

But like I said, often when I speak to gamers, specifically MMO'ers, the first thing they mention is what role they like to play... "i always play healers" or "' I always play tanks" etc. Just saying, perhaps not everyone will enjoy this new method. 

From my perspective D&D was definately NOT based on the Holy Trinity to that significant a degree. The Holy Triinity, as far as I'm concerned, is a VERY SPECIFIC IMPLIMENTATION of specialization. It's the specific implimentation, not the fact the game features Specialization that defines it as using the Trinity. Many games feature Specialization without implimenting the Trinity. Both chess and baseball have specialization...they don't have the Trinity, however.

If we look at D&D, at least the versions I'm familiar with......

Yes you had Front Line Fighters in Heavy Armor....but those characters didn't just have good defensive abilities...they also had very good offensive abilities as well.... moreover they provided protection through positional interception and engagement (i.e. collision detection)..... which was a limited and tactical method of protection.

This is very different from the classical Trinity version of a Tank.....Which is a character specialized in damage absorption/mitigation with limited offensive capabilities and a pervasive abillity to attract attacks to himself through the use of an aggro mechanic.

Yes you had Wizards that could cast damaging spells like Fireball and Lightning...but Wizards were AT LEAST as usefull, if not more for thier utility spells like Fly, Invisability, Feather Fall, Wall of Iron and Hold Portal as they were for doing damage. These sort of utility spells touch upon several important dimensions/roles of combat/adventuring that aren't even present in most Trinity based MMO's...such as recon/combat intelligence, manuver, area denial, etc.

The same holds true for Rogues.... they weren't really the "DPS" guys...they were the guys you went to for Stealth/Recon... They were the guys you went to get valuable intelligence about what hazards lay ahead of the party without alerting the enemy to the parties presence....and the guys you went to to find ways to circumvent those hazards (disarming traps, unlocking doors, discovering secret passages) and to enrich the rewards for the party (i.e. finding the secret treasury and opening the locked strongbox). Again these are a dynamic/role that doesn't even exist in typical Trinity MMO's.

Yes, you had Clerics who could heal...but they too had entirely different dimensions beyond that...from holding undead at bay to casting auguries that would advise the party upon the wisdom of following a specific course of action.

Alot of peoples objections (certainly mine) to the Trinity is NOT that it pushes players into specialized roles, it's that the SPECIFIC IMPLIMENTATION makes for such a shallow and oversimplistic combat/adventuring gameplay dynamic that it is largely unsatisfying for us. It doesn't address/allow for alot of the gameplay aspects that made something like a PnP RPG adventure fun and tacticaly interesting. YMMV.

---

Look at the big mess that Cataclysm created when it was launched and people suddenly had to CC and not stand in the fire because the healer could no longer spam heal everyone forever without running out of mana.

---

GW2 will at least have the advantage that everyone starts at lvl1 and has to go water 10 melons. *goes and reserves URL*. While leveling to 80 they will have plenty of time to learn the mechanics. I'm sure some people will end up standing in the fire, spamming their skills and dying really fast, and they might complain about that. But I hope most people will figure out how and when to dodge and block and move out of the fire over the course of dozens of hours of game time.

Something else that will immensely help the new GW2 style of play is the use of vent, TS, etc. If the player currently tanking can just call for help, instead of having to type in chat or hope that the next player in line to tank will pay enough attention. Maybe ANet is the first to recognize that the use of voice has spread enough to support this play style in general and in PUGs, and not just in guilds and the odd operation.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a built-in voice client...