Originally posted by Icewhite

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)?

Thats not an RPG. And I wasnt talking about splitting the party. I was talking about sending the tanks in first, meaning they get attacked first and not, for example, the squishy mage.

Originally posted by Quirhid

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.

You could as well argue BG2 forced you to think about formation. Because if the squishy mages goes in first, well, dead mage.

I wouldnt call that an "exploit", it was clearly an intended mechanic. Its also an intended mechanic in pen and paper RPG sessions.

I'm not saying BG2's AI was perfect, but the mobs often had a heck of a lot more abilities than most MMO mobs.

I love the independance the GW2 system offers and delivers.

What I hated in the holy trinity system that some posters probably forgetting was:

- the exclusion of people if they didn't fit a certain role

- the blame game 24/7 either on someone that wasn't "good enough" in his role or people that always blamed others to cover their own mistakes

- the waiting like several hours to get the right people together and disband after without being able to do content only because you couldn't get the people together that you needed

- elitism of the people which is much more present in trinity based games

- having a type of skillset was a "must have"  cause if you didn't had it, you would be dropped from the party even if you class was fitting.

In GW2 we just took people in the group that asked for one, no matter what class they were and with good teamwork run dungeons, fractals, events without having to do "corpse runs".

So for me it's the hybrid system. :)

Originally posted by supertouchme
i'm going to make a bold prediction and say that conventional aggro mechanisms are the only thing that will work in an mmo. i imagine it would be a logistical nightmare to attempt to implement something else.

There are several games that employ less conventional aggro systems.  Bottom line though you are allways going to have rules that determine who bubbles up to top of the threat table.  The difference with non -trinity is not the threat model, its the fact a single player switches between tank/dps/healer mid fight.  older trinity cant cope with this because of 'balancing' ..its about time it evolved rather than stagnating with rules that were developed 5-10 years ago - things SHOULD progress, and if its not something is stifling creativity.

You are arguing for stagnation in effect, new games should constantly be mixing/matching/developing new rules to keep it fun for us players no?

Originally posted by supertouchme
i'm going to make a bold prediction and say that conventional aggro mechanisms are the only thing that will work in an mmo. i imagine it would be a logistical nightmare to attempt to implement something else.

That's the point.  One system is never the only system that will work, it's just what people are used to and comfortable with.  Every video game genre since Pong has mixed things up to make better games, MMOs can do it too.

If you notice, almost all of the people who vote against the GW2 aggro system (on MMORPG anyway) either don't believe/know how it works or they just had bad dungeon experiences.  I really don't see what's wrong with variety in an industry that people complained was getting stale for nearly half a decade.  Not all games will adopt hybrid systems, there should be plenty of things to play for everyone.

I would be quite happy with different models. To me the "threat/aggro" mechanic is so incredibly stupid that it only works for me in a comedy setting.

Most of all I wish that the people who only likes the holy trinity would stop trying to turn every different game into yet another holy trinity borefest!

Originally posted by Eir_S

 

That's the point.  One system is never the only system that will work, it's just what people are used to and comfortable with.  Every video game genre since Pong has mixed things up to make better games, MMOs can do it too.

If you notice, almost all of the people who vote against the GW2 aggro system (on MMORPG anyway) either don't believe/know how it works or they just had bad dungeon experiences.  I really don't see what's wrong with variety in an industry that people complained was getting stale for nearly half a decade.  Not all games will adopt hybrid systems, there should be plenty of things to play for everyone.

Anet is on record on saying the highlighted red is essentially their fault; 'Tutorials for new players needs to be looked at'.

I wouldn't blame the players when the game company themselves did such an awful job in explaining their game.

Originally posted by ShakyMo
Well there is a problem with not being able to find tanks and healers.

But I prefer an eve style soloution when you change your ship to change your role.

Either that or use a FFXI style class system where a single character can level up many jobs.  Then all he has to do is switch to perform a different role.

Originally posted by Vaelgard
To keep it short, I feel like a lot of the other people on this thread feel.  I was highly anticipating GW2 and its lack of holy trinity, but in practice it was pretty much always a cluster****.  I love being DPS, and constantly trying to improve my numbers by tweaking skills, specs, and gear.  In GW2 there is no real tweaking because it's difficult to tell how you are doing when you have to raise a downed player, or throw a heal, or grab aggro.  Chaos, on paper, sounds fun, but I love the strategy and well defined roles that go into something like WoW raiding. :)

LOL - tweaking - so you want the endless gear grind. I guess I am not with you on that.You CAN tweak your skills in GW2 - if you think you can't then you are mistaken. As a player who did both heal and DPS, in Rift, I can tell you that having someone else to heal, rez, etc is a nice thing.

People keep saying there is strategy with the trinity - how? The Tank just does that - the DPS - pew, pew, pew the target and healers just to that. There is NO strategy to anything in that.

Originally posted by grimal
What's funny about this thread is that I wasn't even aware the Trinity was gone.  What games are abandoning the trinity?

GW2 clones. Duh ;-)

Originally posted by botrytis

Originally posted by Vaelgard
To keep it short, I feel like a lot of the other people on this thread feel.  I was highly anticipating GW2 and its lack of holy trinity, but in practice it was pretty much always a cluster****.  I love being DPS, and constantly trying to improve my numbers by tweaking skills, specs, and gear.  In GW2 there is no real tweaking because it's difficult to tell how you are doing when you have to raise a downed player, or throw a heal, or grab aggro.  Chaos, on paper, sounds fun, but I love the strategy and well defined roles that go into something like WoW raiding. :)

LOL - tweaking - so you want the endless gear grind. I guess I am not with you on that.You CAN tweak your skills in GW2 - if you think you can't then you are mistaken. As a player who did both heal and DPS, in Rift, I can tell you that having someone else to heal, rez, etc is a nice thing.

 

People keep saying there is strategy with the trinity - how? The Tank just does that - the DPS - pew, pew, pew the target and healers just to that. There is NO strategy to anything in that.

Originally posted by Eir_S

Originally posted by supertouchme
i'm going to make a bold prediction and say that conventional aggro mechanisms are the only thing that will work in an mmo. i imagine it would be a logistical nightmare to attempt to implement something else.

That's the point.  One system is never the only system that will work, it's just what people are used to and comfortable with.  Every video game genre since Pong has mixed things up to make better games, MMOs can do it too.

If you notice, almost all of the people who vote against the GW2 aggro system (on MMORPG anyway) either don't believe/know how it works or they just had bad dungeon experiences.  I really don't see what's wrong with variety in an industry that people complained was getting stale for nearly half a decade.  Not all games will adopt hybrid systems, there should be plenty of things to play for everyone.

don't get me wrong. i'm not saying developers should stick to the status quo for the hell of it. i just think certain designs are limited by things like group dynamics.
 

you can completely abandon aggro and any strategic planning and just adopt an every-man-for-himself approach, but i think that would defeat the purpose of group gameplay.

Originally posted by loopback1199
Why do people still play MMO's if all they want is a single player game? Once the roles are gone, there's no point to getting online anymore. Go back to your fallouts and skyrims and enjoy your non-trinity option, because that's all you've got when it's taken away.

You miss the point. The trinity is a holdback from when MMO's were simple and the aggro/mob AI were also simple. Now that you can get a whole host of different AI's, the trinity breaks down because it DEPENDS on your tank keeping aggro some way - be shouts, taunts, etc. If you take that away the Trinity breaks down and is a waste of time.

GW1 had the trinity but it was a little diversified - but still simple - you had to have a healer and a protect/condition removal. Still pretty simple and not much strategy needed to play.

I played WoW with my bro until a couple of weeks back. I leveled a Monk to 90 and we were messing around with PvP. We basically leveled the entire way through BGs and dungeons (I think most people do something like this these days). I did not raid at all this time around but have raided a lot in the past.

I have to say, I literally almost fell asleep while healing in dungeons in WoW. It was the easiest, most boring run of the mill experience I've had in a long time. I would start to zone out and my brother would ask me if I'm alright every once in a while. I think you just get to a point as a player where you are so used to the way things work that the predictability of the holy trinity is just... utterly boring.

Could GW2 improve it's dungeon experience overall? Yeah, definitely. But this holy trinity stuff is really, really boring to me. I say improve the lack of trinity experience, not try and bring back a dull, easily predictable version of "group" gameplay.