Will the 'Holy Trinity' be required?

So, we don't know much about classes yet, but we do know that there will be skill trees and you will be able to solo pretty much all of the game. We also know that you will be able to ready certain abilities for certain situations. My question is: For group content (harder dungeons or locales) will there be a requirement for the Holy Trinity (Tank/Healer/DPS).

The reason I ask is that I have played a few games that have tried to steer away from this (Champions Online and UO are really good examples) and if one person does it all himself, then it lead invariably to two issues (both of which relate to combat, so I stuck this here):

1) No team required. I don't need anyone, I don't team and I don't share loot.... No reason to. I can heal myself, I have enough offense to hold my own and I have the HP to take anything down before it can take me. I am now playing a solo game with others hanging around.

2) FotM (Flavor of the Month) Builds. Everyone has the same build so they can solo the content themselves. Everyone has Magery to recall and heal themselves. Everyone has the most powerful min/max set of abilities. Sure one has a mace and another a sword, but overall, they are the same. Once again, I'm playing a solo game, but on a team with others so, who is doing what? Might as well do it on my own and I will. Next month, someone will discover the new power build and then we will all respec and solo on again.

Maybe I'm a bit cynical, but sometimes there needs to be a method to get people together and like it or not, the HT works for teaming. It does force certain individuals into certain roles, but it sounds like we will be able to switch our builds a bit and change those roles for situational needs.

Champions Online came out with pre-made builds that defined these roles at players requests. Ultima Online seemed to ignore it and everyone seems relatively okay I guess. The most popular games though... they have this system and it works....

Maybe it's too early to ask this question, but I do like a good discussion!

P.S. - I might really be getting ahead of myself, since I don't even know if there will be party mechanics incorporated into the game yet.... No team, no trinity! Heck, I don't even know if there will be content difficult enough to warrant a full team.

 

Players will adopt the play style that offers the best result. The 'trinity' you mention was arrived at because it is effective. But no matter what the devs come up with, players will find unexpected combinations. That was very obvious in UO, which led to repeated rounds of changes, buffs, nerfs, and restrictions.

Want to discourage Tank Mages? Add meditation to suck up another 100 points out of 700 max, or suffer a crippling mana penalty. Force warriors to take Anatomy as a component to damage and as a modifier to healing. All in a futile attempt at diversity. Tinker with a thing too much, and you break it. We also saw THAT in UO.

Some people don't want 'to get together' and that is a valid play style that LB embraces, what with Single Player Offline/Online. It might not mesh with your preferred play style, but that is YOUR play style. My play style is Open PvP/Full Loot, but I don't demand that everyone adopt my play style. That should be purely voluntary.

You play your game. Allow others to play their game. Out of all the people who buy SotA, I'm betting there will be more than enough people involved that every play style can be supported.

 

it may not be nessessary to use meditation to suck up anything. just limite how many skills can be used, and make healing an important part of any group content. and make stronger abilities have prerequisites, such as combos among skills or skills that work together so that it is better to fill your deck with healing skills or dmg skills to be the best at those spots within a group.

 

@Owain, actually, the trinity is now a fundamental mechanic for most MMOs (and even D&D 4th edition). You MUST heal. You MUST DPS. You MUST tank. There is no leeway in character building to create a hybrid - either you do the ONE thing purely and NOTHING else or you do not belong in a group.

If SotA goes down that path then I won't be supporting it past the first game.

 

If SotA doesn't have that trinity, it will have some other Min/Max combination to take it's place. That is human nature.

 

I agree with Tekk, I hope hybrids are viable atleast in the open world. LB already said that we can change weapons mid battle though, I can't see how that will be viable if we can't swap decks as well.

 

The question is to what extreme the min/maxing goes towards. Would you rather have, for instance, raid-style encounters (gawd forbid) that require a group of 16-20 optimally-equipped players, all specced 100% to one of three combat-only presets, or would you rather the game be balanced around fun encounters for everyone?

Balance is everything

 

Don't get me wrong, I didn't say anywhere that I WANTED the trinity, I was soliciting information on it's necessity and providing examples. In team play it works pretty well and ensures that all in the party have a role and responsibility. Further without much info yet, we don't even know how aggro will work in combat. All these details to consider!

This being a solo-ish game, a player would need to have all the skills to survive by themselves, but since we don't have information yet on the types or styles of dungeons or if there will be raid style content, I don't see how it could be entirely avoided. Realistically, how are you going to keep up your DPS if you have to stop and heal yourself all the time? How are you going to get that monster off your back for a few seconds to heal if it keeps interrupting your spell/healing skill? A tank could pull aggro for you, but if there is no tank then what? The game engine they are using has aggro mechanics built in if I'm not mistaken, so that detail will have to be dealt with somehow.

Now GW2 doesn't have these roles to speak of and things are pretty cool over there, although doing a dungeon can be quite a chore sometimes. Champions Online is very successful as well, although again, you might end up carrying someone who has a hosed up build. DDO doesn't necessarily use the trinity mechanic either and that game is fairly stable on the teaming side; just as long and everyone has enough potions to chug.

I'm just interested in what people think about how the mechanics are going to work. We already know a lot about PvP and how it's going to be optional based on the types of missions and players you allow visibility to. We don't know about this though, so keep calm and carry on the discussion.

 

If the SotA team can overcome the trinity constraint then they will have achieved the goal of going to the next level for MMORPG.

 

It is of course very hard to say with any certainty to what extent the holy trinity will exist, however it is fun to speculate! From what I have gathered it seems as if players will have a lot of freedom when it comes to skills. I would assume that there will be many skills and skill trees that will focus on tanking, healing and dps. In a system as free as this, if there is the right motivation, players will specialize into those roles. By right motivation, I mean will there be an endgame that has enough content that is group/raid only to require those specializations. If there is very little of this, then I imagine that a lot of people will create builds much more in line with a jack of all trades in order to both test a lot of skills and to make soloing more effective.

Personally, I am fine with the holy trinity. I primarily play a healer in my games and enjoy that role very much.

 

I hope not. I had enough already.

Bard skills turning mobs against each other can be a powerful skill. I think the game will have a lot of interesting choices. A tamer with a couple dragons and an NPC healer might be as good as the trinity. Who knows?

 

If I had my wish, any character could contribute *something* in any situation. I don't care how tough that dragon is, but if it is busy with a group of heroes, Joe the Farmer could sneak up and put a dagger in it. Now that may be 1HP of damage, and the dragon could stomp him, but it was a contribution.

Healing is an area that has gotten out of hand in most RPGs. Now I typically play a healer, so the class is dear to me, but the notion that unless you have (many levels of) experience healing, there is nothing substantial you can do for that dying hero is unnecessary. As a more experienced healer, I should have an advantage. And that may be quite helpful in some situations, but Joe the Farmer may be able to manage putting a bandage on the right body part.

(Nothing against people named Joe, or farmers)

While I like to be valued for my abilities, it is a shame that it so often means that inexperienced characters have little or no value for most of the content people are playing. *This* is one of the reasons people powerlevel past content -- to play with their friends.

So ideally everyone has some ability in each skill, and is better than nothing. It sure would be a shame if people ended up waiting around town for a tank to log in.

 

I understand why it works like it does in WoW. And I understand why there exists games like RIFT which are clones of WoW PvE wise. But there's no reason why other games should function like this. Even WoW was a very different game 5 years ago where all the classes were much more of hybrids and the dps specs actually CC'd and kited.

If the game has "dps race" bosses, people have to min/max. If it doesn't, they don't.

In most games, when you have a "pvp spec" you stack survivability, cc, heals and support, and the ability to burn someone down...it's not optimized for any one thing because you'll never know what you'll face. This is usually what you'd build for soloing as well because again, you may play a little of every role and you might get jumped.

 

I think at some point you can even just reduce it to duality - fighter or defender and thats it. But a trinity system is still a good design IMO.

 

They have stated they are designing as a classless system. Low well that works out in the end is yet to be seen.

I have played enough MMOs to see that yes the "holy trinity" is the common guidelines most games are following, DPS, Tank, Healer. BUT I have also played several where that is not true and you have a bit more freedom in character creation and skill sets. Asherons Call being one of those where you ended up being a Mage, Archer or Melee, or Hybrid, a few people worked out templates to have all three, and it was great, the game wasn't really setup to have "healers" and agro management for the monsters didn't really allow for "tanks" so everyone had to be able to survive and handle their own while dealing dmg.

So they have said they are going for a classless system where you can be a battle blacksmithing farming if you so choose. How well they do that? Well if I didn't have faith in them I wouldn't have donated