back in BC (wow) my tank did so little dps compared to a real dps that it was insignifficant in a 25man raid.

my role was simple:

1) stay alive.

2) keep the big boss looking at me.

I loved that. as game progressed in wolk and cata and tanks began doing reasonable dps I started feeling increasingly dissatisfied with tanking. I didn't want to be capable of doing reasonable dps. I wanted to have one tiny role in a big diverse group an specialize on that alone.

if I want to be able to do everything, I'd go solo or do a small group dugeon...not a large-size raid.

I like to be one small guy in a big group playing a critical role. like a scout or prober or tackler in EVE for example. I have very little to do with the enemy dying, I barely damage it at all, but my work makes everyone else's work possible.

I would love to play a "puller" in a raid. a small yet critical high-precision role that makes or breaks the attempt for the other many players before the fight really gets going.

I also played a main tank warrior in vanilla WoW. Like you said as the expansions came warrior tanking dwindled down to nothing. Pallys took the main tank role, then DKs, then Druids etc...I no longer felt like i was meant to be a "warrior" Leading the party into battle. It ruined the game for me.

I am very happy to see some people missing more specified roles in games. I am glad some games still make a few offhand classes here and there but i do miss a lot of the people who sacrificed DPS to be a true buffer or spent there time and skill pulling mobs to our party because it was that dangerous. Being the "best of role" is to common now. So many games that have only 3 or 4 classes bores me.

Tank>healer>dps>aoe dps would be the most common 4 i see in games now. expanding on this makes it more exciting. Vanguard is a pretty good example of this. As well as plenty of other older mmorpgs.

Originally posted by Robokapp

back in BC (wow) my tank did so little dps compared to a real dps that it was insignifficant in a 25man raid.

 

my role was simple:

 

1) stay alive.

2) keep the big boss looking at me.

 

I loved that. as game progressed in wolk and cata and tanks began doing reasonable dps I started feeling increasingly dissatisfied with tanking. I didn't want to be capable of doing reasonable dps. I wanted to have one tiny role in a big diverse group an specialize on that alone.

 

if I want to be able to do everything, I'd go solo or do a small group dugeon...not a large-size raid.

 

I like to be one small guy in a big group playing a critical role. like a scout or prober or tackler in EVE for example. I have very little to do with the enemy dying, I barely damage it at all, but my work makes everyone else's work possible.

 

I would love to play a "puller" in a raid. a small yet critical high-precision role that makes or breaks the attempt for the other many players before the fight really gets going.

Well last I checked in WoW a tank (warrior), mage (dps), and even the healers could all pull.  they all had ranged weapons or abilities.  And since their usefulness is limited to one attack, this is better than having an entire slot of your group or raid do one attack.  Instead you get a true role of usefulness, that can pull the monster as well.

I mean what's next, people asking for half their raid being filled with one of each profession - such as fishing, jewelcrafting, and cooking?

"Guys we can't take down this undead warlord boss, we don't have a chef."

In my opinion, the trinity is simply the base of a type of gameplay, which is, more often than not, the most efficient. It simply consists of at least 1 character to deal with the heavy hits from the encounter (the tank), at least 1 character which make sure the team stay alive with heals or shielding spells (the healer) and at least 1 character which does a lot of damage to get the whole thing rolling.

That's pretty much it. I wouldn't mind a game which allow alternatives to this concept, such as two DPS jungling with the aggro between themselves to replace a tank, etc. But at least, they should not simply deny this type of strategy from players.

On a sidenote and without any wish to be mean, from all my years playing MMO it is usually a good thing that only 2 members of a team will do around 60-80% of the job by themselves, seeing how many people fail at extremely easy mechanics.

Originally posted by HeroEvermore

I also played a main tank warrior in vanilla WoW. Like you said as the expansions came warrior tanking dwindled down to nothing. Pallys took the main tank role, then DKs, then Druids etc...I no longer felt like i was meant to be a "warrior" Leading the party into battle. It ruined the game for me.

I am very happy to see some people missing more specified roles in games. I am glad some games still make a few offhand classes here and there but i do miss a lot of the people who sacrificed DSP to be a true buffer or spent there time and skill pulling mobs to our party because it was that dangerous. Being the "best of role" is to common now. So many games that have only 3 or 4 classes bores me.

Tank>healer>dps>aoe dps would be the most common 4 i see in games now. expanding on this makes it more exciting. Vanguard is a pretty good example of this. As well as plenty of other older mmorpgs.

Even Vanguard groups their multitude of classes into categories.  Four categories.  Two of which are DPS.

I was the paladin :)

I was the guy who can't tank as good as a warrior, can't survive as good as the warrior, can't generate tanking threat as good as  the warrior but...

can generate great offtank threat without being hit. Can aoe-tank very well. Can move mobs to the main tank very well.

I knew my place. it was behind the warrior, second on threat. And i loved it. I wouldn't get to tak the whole fight, but what i was doing waas still important - something that woul only be visible when I wasn't doing it.

the role of "Offtank" is also fading, replaced by many main tanks rotating until that debuff clears out.

MT/OT was grat. We didn't need to have 3 MTs. the OTs weren't envious of the MT...:(. WE WERE FINE as OTs.

Originally posted by HeroEvermore

I love all the silly trinity threads. Obviously something thought up by younger gamers who never experienced older mmorpgs.

Games had way more then a trinity.

Tank

Healer

Mana-feed/Buffer (remember enchanters, they were NOT dps)

Puller

Crowd control

Rezzer (not always the healer)

Damage dealer (the most unwanted role in many games, now it is the most common filler role)

Attack Buffer (atk spd or atk output not neccesarily from a dps role)

 

I could go on and on.

 

Want to know why you do not see this as much anymore?

GAMING COMPANYS GOT LAZY!!!! They started combining this stuff into other roles so they could get away with less classes. You think Guild Wars 2 got rid of healers and tanks to be innovative? LOL! It was lazy. They gave everyone a rez. Gave everyone a heal. Gave everyone the ability to safely pull mobs. Something challenging will come along eventually that will once again REQUIRE such specified teamwork. Until then enjoy easy mode.

Yeah there is more then just 3 roles, but in most rpg the easier settings was the trinity (try bladur gate with only mage and you will know what i mean). Of course you could create a party without this trinity rule an beeing succesful but still the trinity exist in terms of a rule setting.

But i agree with you for almost all your post. But that just not the devs who are lazy but the gamers who want to be the perfect hero and self sufficient so the devs give them that.

It is a very stale mechanic though, to have a huge boss unable to switch targets despite clearly making no headway against killing the player with fifty feet of steel plates on his chest.

It'd be much more interesting to have a boss or group of monsters suddenly ravaging the healers because they figured that was the best thing to do in order to win against the players.  Or to use their own crowd control on the healers to quickly rip through the DPS.

But yeah as long as there are incredibly boring mechanics for AI in NPCs, then I guess you can look to tank and spank all you want.

Classes themselves are extremely stale to me also.  "It is impossible for me to ever pickpocket you for I started off adventuring carrying a shield in one hand."

Originally posted by HeroEvermore

I blame this exact thing on people who think they are social mmorpg gamers and truly they are just RPG gamers.

If you DO NOT RELY on others to succeed. Why are you playing an MMORPG?! /uninstall

Most of gamers these days are even not rpg gamers but action or fps gamers.

some bosses do that.

Faction Champions for example targt players based on their armor grade and health deficit.

problem is realistically in wow's case they were locked in a corner. a cloth-wearing class without defense cap or 490 uncrushable stat would get hit nearly 3 times ahrder than a tank would...and they had less than half the health.

you'll notice caster-based bosses (shade of aran) often disregard threat with many mechanics. physical bosses however HAVE TO obey threat. because if a physical boss like patchwerk or brutallus lays a hand on a non-tank, that player will get hit so hard his game will crash.

I bet most players don't notice this but the more physical a boss is, generally the more damage is on tank and less on raid. the more caster-oriented the boss, the more damage goes aroun into the raid rather than on tank only.

it's just a necesity of how wow is set up. because its insane to expect a non-tank to bring tank-level resistances to physical attacks. shady tricks like anubarak block set where a player gets hit 8 times per second but has his gear set up in such a way that none of those 8 attacks can actually 'land'...happened. End result is the tank will have the lowest health in the raid. because he's literarly avoiance-tanking.

then there's resist fights. against bosses like dragons that are 60% melee 40% spell. how much will you risk, how close do you cut it ?

it can get interesting at high-end but none of this tickles down to the common folk raiding the first encounters. It's quite boring down there.

Originally posted by Zyzra

I would love to spend my entire time in an MMORPG of the future just hitting a monster once so that the rest of the group can do everything else.

Pulling sounds amazing.

Buffing is a great thing as well.  I remember how much buffs helped, and how their durations of an hour or so were far too short so we had to keep one of our group slots filled with someone who followed us around, collected loot to keep, and after a while of yelling buffed us again.

 

And crowd control, amazing, I can't imagine how groups could work without a player who all they did was control the crowds.  They have to be some sort of amazing magic user, but not a Mage because mages use magic and they are DPS.  The CC uses magic too, but can't do damage.  It would be silly to think that someone who could use magic could do both.

There was an art to pulling. It wasnt simply run up and hit a mob and bring it back. There was also the splitting of the groups of mobs that would want to come at you. Something you dont have in todays games, they all come or nothing comes. Nowadays you have the wonderful leash system where everything just snaps back to its area. Try having mobs remember you and follow you across the zone till you either died or left the area. The leash system is in my opinion the worst system ever made.

People love buffs. It makes them more powerful. Usually classes that could buff could also do damage, just not nearly as well as a dps class.

I watched my friend play his enchanter on many occasions soloing stuff that people simply couldnt solo. Could they do damage? Some, yes, but could they charm a creature and have it do damage for them? Hell yeah they can. The enchanter was the hardest class to play but if the person playing the class knew it well, they could usually do stuff that other classes only dreamed of. So, please, continue telling us how you think these classes are useless and we will continue to laugh at you for being ignorant about how these classes could do so much more then you think.

Originally posted by Zyzra

I would love to spend my entire time in an MMORPG of the future just hitting a monster once so that the rest of the group can do everything else.

Pulling sounds amazing.

Buffing is a great thing as well.  I remember how much buffs helped, and how their durations of an hour or so were far too short so we had to keep one of our group slots filled with someone who followed us around, collected loot to keep, and after a while of yelling buffed us again.

 

And crowd control, amazing, I can't imagine how groups could work without a player who all they did was control the crowds.  They have to be some sort of amazing magic user, but not a Mage because mages use magic and they are DPS.  The CC uses magic too, but can't do damage.  It would be silly to think that someone who could use magic could do both.

Don't take things so literal he was generalizing about how there wasn't just the tank who's only job is to stand still and soak up damage, the dps who's only job is to deal damage and occasionally run away from bad shit (fire, mobs etc) and healers that heal through the damage taken.

Once a tank had to seriously worry about correct positioning to maximize the chance of success or making sure the boss wasn't able to cleave or aoe healers and to a certain degree dps. The other roles were much more depended upon also for things like managing cc and dishing out high dps while lots of movement was required. 

If I said geez that mmo was shit I don't mean the game was literally a piece of poo oozing out of my optical drive, I would mean it's a bad game.

Originally posted by DoomsDay01

Originally posted by Zyzra

I would love to spend my entire time in an MMORPG of the future just hitting a monster once so that the rest of the group can do everything else.

Pulling sounds amazing.

Buffing is a great thing as well.  I remember how much buffs helped, and how their durations of an hour or so were far too short so we had to keep one of our group slots filled with someone who followed us around, collected loot to keep, and after a while of yelling buffed us again.

 

And crowd control, amazing, I can't imagine how groups could work without a player who all they did was control the crowds.  They have to be some sort of amazing magic user, but not a Mage because mages use magic and they are DPS.  The CC uses magic too, but can't do damage.  It would be silly to think that someone who could use magic could do both.

There was an art to pulling. It wasnt simply run up and hit a mob and bring it back. There was also the splitting of the groups of mobs that would want to come at you. Something you dont have in todays games, they all come or nothing comes. Nowadays you have the wonderful leash system where everything just snaps back to its area. Try having mobs remember you and follow you across the zone till you either died or left the area. The leash system is in my opinion the worst system ever made.

People love buffs. It makes them more powerful. Usually classes that could buff could also do damage, just not nearly as well as a dps class.

I watched my friend play his enchanter on many occasions soloing stuff that people simply couldnt solo. Could they do damage? Some, yes, but could they charm a creature and have it do damage for them? Hell yeah they can. The enchanter was the hardest class to play but if the person playing the class knew it well, they could usually do stuff that other classes only dreamed of. So, please, continue telling us how you think these classes are useless and we will continue to laugh at you for being ignorant about how these classes could do so much more then you think.

Ahh the art of pulling mobs in EQ with a Monk.  I loved the job.  Hit a mob and run back to the group and FD right at the tank's feet.  Wait a couple seconds, get up and burn the mob down until about 10-20% health depending and run off looking for the next mob.  The pace depended upon our ability to keep the action going without bringing back too much for us to handle.

Things changed with WoW and EQ2.  Some of the changes were good but the change to a simplier "trinity" wasn't so good IMHO.  Oh well, what ya gonna do except hope and pray that someone eventually gets away from tank/spank/heal.

I would say that enchanter was one of the best designed classes ever made in mmorpgs. It could be AMAZING solo but where it truly shined was in the ability to make 4+ people twice as efficient. Much more effective then adding a DPS.

I merely made this topic to point out classes that feel "missing" in games today. I hope to see more of them in the future.

Also to note: I do not find "classless" games filling that niche at all because I am yet to see a game with such a mechanic that offers you the ability to be truly classless (nameless maybe but not classless). You follow a tree or pick here n there but there is a PATH and that in itself defeats the purpose.

Originally posted by HeroEvermore

That is a horrible article lol. Everquest did NOT have the trinity. You can say oh but i liked these 3 classes in my party best so that has to be the trinity. NEGATIVE. Not even close. Bad article :P

Noticed you spammed that article in several posts. Least spam something knowledgable. Anyone that says EQ was restricted to trinity is WRONG WRONG WRONG> Thanks for playing, come again.

Yeah, what does Richard Bartle know about the history of online gaming, anyways!

Sometimes I think y'all don't really want to ever learn anything around here, rather just repeat what you want to believe over and over until someone else actually believes it.

I think the trinity concept is just about reducing role diversity to its three most vital elements.  Crowd control helped, off-tanking helped, buffs helped.. but in a trinity game, you NEED healing, tanking, and damage.  Everything else is a bonus, but not good enough, if you lack any of those three.  

It's also about role overlap, and how you can have classes with multiple roles, but usually not overlapping in any of those three areas.  e.g. a Healer can do crowd control and healing, but not DPS and healing, or tanking and healing, as multiple trinity roles can too easily be OP.

Also, in terms of overlapping roles, in a well balanced trinity based game, every class should be able to do one of those three roles, along with the other stuff.  Buffer that can switch to a pure healer role, if needed, or a crowd controller that can effectively focus on DPS instead, if needed.

So you have all these other roles, but for these reasons, at its core, it's essentially still a trinity.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by HeroEvermore

That is a horrible article lol. Everquest did NOT have the trinity. You can say oh but i liked these 3 classes in my party best so that has to be the trinity. NEGATIVE. Not even close. Bad article :P

Noticed you spammed that article in several posts. Least spam something knowledgable. Anyone that says EQ was restricted to trinity is WRONG WRONG WRONG> Thanks for playing, come again.

Yeah, what does Richard Bartle know about the history of online gaming, anyways!

 

Sometimes I think y'all don't really want to ever learn anything around here, rather just repeat what you want to believe over and over until someone else actually believes it.

 

 

He only knows his perspective as DO WE ALL. If you believe everything someone writes though...giggle..

I am a free thinker. I felt that article was pretty generic and offered no real insight. Just same ol stuff about trinity blagh blagh.

Originally posted by HeroEvermore

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by HeroEvermore

That is a horrible article lol. Everquest did NOT have the trinity. You can say oh but i liked these 3 classes in my party best so that has to be the trinity. NEGATIVE. Not even close. Bad article :P

Noticed you spammed that article in several posts. Least spam something knowledgable. Anyone that says EQ was restricted to trinity is WRONG WRONG WRONG> Thanks for playing, come again.

Yeah, what does Richard Bartle know about the history of online gaming, anyways!

Sometimes I think y'all don't really want to ever learn anything around here, rather just repeat what you want to believe over and over until someone else actually believes it.

He only knows his perspective as DO WE ALL. If you believe everything someone writes though...giggle..

I am a free thinker. I felt that article was pretty generic and offered no real insight. Just same ol stuff about trinity blagh blagh.

So, it's the latter. Got it.