Originally posted by supertouchme

gw2's system doesn't make sense when you have several people trying to focus on common enemies. you can defend the game's design all you want, but combat is generally disorganized and not very fun.

classes exist to complement to one another. everquest had a great class system. you had tanks, hybrids that could tank and maybe do a little dps and heal, healers that could debuff, and you had utility classes. to this day, the bard remains one of my favorite classes of all time.

GW2's make perfect sense. Just not if you're trying to treat it like a traditional trinity based game (i.e. tanks keep the mob 'taunt'ed, healers sit back and spam heals, dps sit back and spam rotations). It's much more active than that.

As for aggro, I have a post (i think it's on page 10 of this thread) explaining in detail how the aggro works in GW2. It's amazing how many people still don't know how the game fundamentally operates on certain things. The combat only gets chaotic when you have 5 glass cannons trying to all take on a boss. There is room for more tank-like roles (guardian, elementalist, necro, warrior), just as there are roles for more damage oriented players (warrior, thief, ele, necro, etc. etc.), and roles for more support oriented players (guardian, ele, engineer, mesmer, necro).

Furthermore, more knowledgeable groups know these things, and run dungeons accordingly. Heck, some of the smoothest runs I've ever had were with a guardian up front taking most of the damage & healing, warriros alongside him doing most of the damage, and an ele / mesmer in the back supporting them with heals, utility, cc, and damage.

- It's when players try and go into a fight w/ full berserker gear, and just unload on an enemy expecting the enemy to not react, when things go badly.

The system works, but not if you ignore it completely.

Originally posted by simmihi
Yes i definitely like to have a specific role. GW2's praised "no trinity, everyone's welcome" thing just turned into "4 warriors + mesmer" fast runs just a few months past release. The rest of people, with a few exceptions, are just considered sub-par. Rift's class system is perfect, too bad the game is WoW-like at endgame (not enough open world content)

Wait so you're telling me that there's a difference between people finding out the most efficient way of running a dungeon and the holy trinity???

Also fyi

1. 3 warriors and 2 mesmers is a better combo than 4/1

2. The warrior/mes combo is only used in 1 path of 1 dungeon .

3. Every other path of every other dungeon you can have any class combination 

4. It's possible to run cof p1 (the war/mes group combo you mention) with any other class combination. It's just fastest with only warriors and mesmers, that's why they're called speed runs...

 Please stop spreading disinformation

Originally posted by FelixMajor
There has to be a happy medium between having freedom in character building and team play imo.  Gw2 is fun, but in group play you just feel like you are all trying to dish out as much dps as possible.  In a trinity system, it gets stale fast doing the same thing over and over, but you also get that pride in being good in your role...there has to be a point where those two systems can compliment each other, that would be nice to see

already been done, age of conan 2008

Originally posted by Foreverdream

Originally posted by FelixMajor
There has to be a happy medium between having freedom in character building and team play imo.  Gw2 is fun, but in group play you just feel like you are all trying to dish out as much dps as possible.  In a trinity system, it gets stale fast doing the same thing over and over, but you also get that pride in being good in your role...there has to be a point where those two systems can compliment each other, that would be nice to see

already been done, age of conan 2008

^^ that.

I was never a fan of holy trinity. I'm also not a fan of free for all combat as in GW2. I prefer EQ's method. Tanks, Healers, DPS, Buffers, Debuffers, Pullers. 

Make more group roles, not less. 

Originally posted by Jimmydean

I was never a fan of holy trinity. I'm also not a fan of free for all combat as in GW2. I prefer EQ's method. Tanks, Healers, DPS, Buffers, Debuffers, Pullers. 

Make more group roles, not less. 

I remember being a puller in FFXI on my ranger.. was fun and took alot of skill then. WoW had hunters for primarly pulling until wrath then it just turn into tank charges in and shit gets aoe'd killed.

Both have their own charm. The real answer is:

Depends on the game.

It works for GW2, it probably wouldnt work for other games. I can have fun in both types. If I had to pick one or the other I would go with the hybrid system however, as I like that everyone has to work as a team and contribute, rather than relying on two or maybe three roles (tank, healer and sometimes utility like bards or enchanters).

I appreciate that a lot of players like the clutch of having these roles though, which is fine, the point of gaming is fun and not everyone wants the same level of challenge.

Which is why a diversity of types is always going to be better than making all games this or all games that.

I dont really care if a roleplaying game is trinity or not.

But a RPG should have challenge.

And even if a game doesnt explicitly have the trinity, there are always characters that are more resilient than others, and characters that are rather fragile. Thus the sturdier will always try to protect the fragile ones, if they can. Even if there is no aggro mechanism, you often can do that, for example by getting spotted first.

And healing spells, well you can make everybody their own healer, obviously. For example, Diablo 2 did that long ago with healing potions.

Baldurs Gate didnt have the trinity, and yet its gameplay was already a lot like MMOs: send the tanks in first so they gain aggro, then keep healing them with your healers.

Originally posted by Adamantine

Baldurs Gate didnt have the trinity, and yet its gameplay was already a lot like MMOs: send the tanks in first so they gain aggro, then keep healing them with your healers.

Which, for a game like with a name like "Warcraft" is just ludicrous, as in "man. that sounds like a terrific way to lose battles".

Not much similarity to WC3, either :(

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by Adamantine

Baldurs Gate didnt have the trinity, and yet its gameplay was already a lot like MMOs: send the tanks in first so they gain aggro, then keep healing them with your healers.

Which, for a game like with a name like "Warcraft" is just ludicrous, as in "man. that sounds like a terrific way to lose battles".

Not much similarity to WC3, either :(

Okay.

I have no idea whatsoever what the frak you are talking about.

Originally posted by Adamantine

Okay.

I have no idea whatsoever what the frak you are talking about.

Warcraft? Armies? Winning wars?

Sending in the tanks to be surrounded and slaughtered by the enemy? Terrific strategy (not)?

Originally posted by elocke
Also, calling it a "trinity" anymore isn't technically correct.  How many games have 3 man parties(besides lotro's 3 man dungeons and WoW's scenarios)?  How many have classes that are pure support or hybrids or controllers?  Quite a lot.  One of the things I love about "trinity" gameplay is filling a role in a party and acting like a part of a machine.  FFXI is a great game to show how this is done.  You have a meat shield, a healer, a puller, some dps and support and all work together to pull off some awesome combat such as skill chains.  I have yet to feel that same synergy in an MMO since.  What with all the experimenting on removing trinity mechanics or adding self heals, etc.  they still haven't designed a group combat system that gels like FFXI did.  Not to say that newer MMOs aren't as fun or don't have their own pleasing combat aspect, but I think devs have gone in the wrong direction and are possibly blaming the wrong thing , such as "trinity" mechanics.

 The point of calling it a Holy Trinity is that those are the only 3 roles actually required. Buffers, debuffers and crowd control generally only make the content easier, but are not essential in most games. EQ1 and EQ2 used to have content that required full time crowd control, but have moved away from that design as people complained that they didn't like to be forced to take one. So now they are just buffers with second rate DPS.

I can't think of a single game anymore where you would require a utility class to finish content. Quite a few where they are required for an optimal setup though.

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by Adamantine

Baldurs Gate didnt have the trinity, and yet its gameplay was already a lot like MMOs: send the tanks in first so they gain aggro, then keep healing them with your healers.

Which, for a game like with a name like "Warcraft" is just ludicrous, as in "man. that sounds like a terrific way to lose battles".

Not much similarity to WC3, either :(

You could "tank" in Baldur's Gate only because the AI was poor and easily exploitable. What was thought as a weakness then someone made a whole mechanic out of it. These days, Bioware's RPGs have taunt in them ... And they are worse for it imo.

I'm all for changing things when the new things are better than the old things. Change for the sake of being trendy without making any real improvement is just a confusing mess that's not worth the effort required to learn the new system.

There are a lot of theoretical discussions about MMORPGs and their gameplay here that often don't translate into fun, intuitive gameplay. Ditching the trinity because it's old is one of those.

Take the much maligned artificial "aggro" system that has been the norm and get rid of it. Fine. What you get then is that when a mob, or worse several "mobs" are just as likely to attack the player with 1/10th the ability to shrug-off attacks as another one, you end-up with chaotic kiting encounters. Some people enjoy that, I don't.

To me RPGs are about evolving into a stronger player by learning and improving abilities... and then getting a chance to use thew new and improved abilities... "Running away" is not really one of those. I could do that at level1. I mean, it can spice things up as a minor part of a long encounter, but when the whole encounter is about running around in circles while the ones not currently being targetted follow behind beating on the mobs... well, it's just a comical mess. This is what. imho, GW2 dungeon runs are like more often than not.

If that's the best they can come-up with as a "trinity-replacer," I'll pass and continue with the old until something actually better replaces it.

And no, getting rid of classes so that everyone is just another tankohealer killer--same as the other 5 guys--is neither new nor an improvement. Hell if that's what it's going to be like, we might as well also get rid of the character creator and we can all also look like the same tanned, ambiguously asexual toon... wearing the one and only armor skin: that's just the visual equivalent of the game-play sameness those systems result in.

I didn't feel like the Trinity was gone in GW2. It maybe due to how i did run dungeons with my friends but we had:

(Healers)
1. The Water Elementalist
2. The Guardian full of heals
While as a Warrior with a shout build i could "heal" a bit it was more akin to a healing pot in other MMOs. But those two above actually really "healed". It's true in Gw2 even those two could not (but three could!) heal anyone standing in the wrong places, but you couldn't heal someone not walking out of the cleave range from a boss in example: Lotro either. (even tanks got one shooted).

Tanking is and was always possible in gw2. What many don't know, the AI completly bugs out when you stack Thoughness gear. Get a Warrior or Guardian (or even thief) in full thoughness gear (including sockets) 2000+ thoughnes - next to a mob group (melee) and they will only chase him reliable.

Most dungeon explorables are even poorly enough designed that you can go full berserker gear with the whole party and just nuke it. (But a good team could also rush nuke bosses in lotro / Wow / Tera / SWTOR without tank & dedicated healer).

I do not argue that GW2 tried to be different and somewhat archieved that. However poor AI and poor class &dungeon design made ANet miss their goal.

Originally posted by Thorbrand
Don't care what they want to say but taking away my main two classes that I play was fuckng stupid. Running around in a world of all DPS is pretty boring, chaotic and lacks any skill to play.

i haven't been all dps in my 400 hours in gw2..

Didn't really know how bad it effected a game until GW2. DPS can't focus all their attention to DPS, same with tanks and whatever. The Holy T has been so popular over the years because it works and works well. It gives your character a purpose, be it DPS, healing or tanking, without everyone is just blaaaa, just like GW2..blaaa.

Peace

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