434 replies to this topic

[Dasryn]

hey folks, i wanted to start this thread because i wanted to respond to a topic brought up in another thread without derailing said thread.

and because i want Tyrian Assembly to have topics that do not pertain to Ascended Gear and Nexon ruining ANet blah blah blah.

this was the topic about the Trinity System practically synonymous with the MMORPG genre.

as we all know, that system is largely absent from GW2, but not entirely.  healers can still be healers in the sense and tanking can still be achieved but not in the usual way of aggro maintenance and threat generation.

what i want to discuss is whether this was the proper thing to do.

this is the post that i wanted to reply to in the otehr thread but unfortunately, it would have derailed that other thread:

Naginto, on 25 November 2012 - 03:26 PM, said:

Also you are 100% wrong about bringing the trinity into the game. The way all combat in PVE is currently configured, you would put tanks and healers at a significant disadvantage. Tanks and healers always lose dps to make up for increased survivability. Mob tagging would become so hard it would make mesmers getting loot in Orr look easy. Also the reason the trinity was removed was too hasten group formation and increase the fun number of successful group compositions. No more waiting for an hour screaming, LF1M NEED A TANK for CoF!!!!

now i understand we are all tired of the "LF1M NEED A TANK for CoF!!!!" present in games where the Trinity is mandatory, but what my concern is, is whether or not the complete removal of such a system was necessary.

instead of removing the mechanic entirely, i opt that ANet should have balanced the mechanic to where, you still DO NOT NEED the Trinity to attempt/complete content, but the system is still there for those that enjoy tanking in the traditional sense, and dedicated healing.

here is the testimony of someone who supports the Trinity to show that i am not the only one that wants its inclusion:

Larsen, on 25 November 2012 - 02:34 PM, said:

I think this deserves more discussion than it has been getting. The absence of real tanks and healers hasn't broken the game completely, but I feel it has added absolutely nothing while taking away a lot of potential depth from what has turned out to be extremely bland and shallow PvE. I think the three roles simply belong in MMORPG combat and shouldn't be tampered too much with. If it isn't broken, don't try to fix it.

so please discuss.

[Afyael]

I definitely miss healers (monks) from the first game but tanks no. The thing with Tanks is that they promote boring gameplay in which everyone goes glass cannon except for the tank and you just burst things down, rinse and repeat. Healers are boring when coupled with tanks but in the first Guild Wars they were great because you had to watch where the enemies were going, who was taking damage and actively pre-prot and heal people that the mobs attacked.

However the problem with Monks is that they were pretty much required for a lot of content, ritualists and second profession healers could theoretically heal groups but the monk was the guy you really wanted. Content would have to be scaled up to include healers otherwise it would become faceroll easy and this would force groups to take a dedicated healer which isn't something that Anet wanted to promote.

TLDR: Nothing Anet could really do about it, including the trinity would have broken their manifesto even further.

Edited by Afyael, 25 November 2012 - 07:29 PM.

[Red_Falcon]

I hope we all agree "threat tanking" is obsolete, unrealistic and bland.
I also hope we agree that having a boss or mob only attack one person and only that, is gimmicky and removes a lot of depth to the combat.
Finally, I hope you don't believe a person should be able to put himself between mobs and other team members for a whole dungeon, take baziollions of damage and live through it, because this would imply someone had to refill his life continuously and we'd be back at having mobs hit a dummy who's having his health refilled.

I seriously believe you've all come to the conclusion this is a retarded mechanic.

Still, the role of a full supporter is not unrealistic nor obsolete.
Refilling bars should be gone or at least left as a minor part of team protection and revival.
All forms of team defense that do not rely on bar-filling are welcome.
Thief can stealth-ress, Ranger's got spirits, Ele got rain and geyser and finishers, etc.

I have played a Guardian, Warrior and Thief so far, all of them got strong ways to safe and help the team.
More depth to this is welcome but new gimmicky mechanics are not.
Combat depth is probably the main reason I love GW2, if it was made worse I would shelf GW2.

[TGIFrisbie]

The bottom line on "Holy Trinity", players enjoy roles.  Some like to tank, some like to heal, some like to melee dps, some like ranged dps, some like pets, etc.

When roles are removed that are liked by any significant portion of the gaming community, there will be blowback.  This is what it boils down to, not if a role is necessary or obsolete.

[matsif]

honestly the only thing preventing a fully fledged trinity from being adopted by the community is the aggro mechanics.  since no one can realistically hold aggro, no one can be a tank, which is the only part of the trinity missing in GW2.  due to the aggro mechanics, you can't have someone go full tank and keep aggro, so your dps characters with no survivability die fast when they inevitably draw aggro, and there isn't really a full healing character like a monk to fill a full time healer role to keep up with a dps character getting hit.  Although there are enough support healing builds that do enough dps with healing to make up for 1 only heal character over 4 dps/support characters.

I personally like it.  Look at GW1 where there was always "LFG monk" in every mission outpost, every elite staging area, literally everywhere.  It was a waste of time.  As falcon pointed out, it makes combat more dynamic as well, which I find more fun.  Since most of the population of the game only wants to see big white numbers over the enemy, having a trinity just leads to rage over waiting for a tank or more often a healer.  It also leads to group exclusion if you never want to play one of those 2 roles.  

Don't get me wrong, I sometimes miss playing stance tank from the old 5 man SF farms of GW1 all those years ago.  But this way is just as good if not better.

Edited by matsif, 25 November 2012 - 08:06 PM.

[Ritualist]

Personally, I feel that the blandness of PvE stems from having foes with shitloads of XP, that take days to kill, while they kill you in one hit. I honestly do not see how including the trinity would change this.

[TGIFrisbie]

Protoss, on 25 November 2012 - 08:29 PM, said:

Personally, I feel that the blandness of PvE stems from having foes with shitloads of XP, that take days to kill, while they kill you in one hit. I honestly do not see how including the trinity would change this.

Add to that the weapon skills you unlocked by level 2 and then went on to play the rest of the game with.  On top of this utility skills with either very long cool downs, short durations, niche uses, or a combination of those.

These are reasons PvP will always be superior in challenge, I am still not sure why Anet really tries to push PvE and left their true PvP game behind with GW1.  Still no GvG in this Guild Wars game.  Trying to add progression to WvW?  Seriously?

The bottom line reasoning behind removing the trinity is PvP.  No one will waste time attacking a tank when the dps is coming down on them from someone else, or the healer in the backline is keeping the frontline up (okay I say no one but there are always idiots, even WoW BGs are full of them).  Healers on one side and not on the other can really decide the outcome of battles, etc.  This is the underlying reason to remove the trinity, that and the reliance on them being required to do instances and waiting around for long periods til you are able to aquire one.

[MisterB]

ArenaNet never removed the so-called trinity from GW2. It was never there to begin with.

[Wordsworth]

ANet really fumbled on their whole "no Trinity" revolution.

Never mind the fact that the only member of the trinity to be completely neutered is the healer, people will still go out of their way to form "balanced" groups anyway. These days it's more along the lines of "LF Heavies" as I've so often seen in map chat, which makes sense. Both Soldier classes have all the durability of a trinity tank without the mob control.

Group finding was so easy in GW1 because people knew the roles and which ones were "popular". You can bet a good chunk of the players rolled a Monk as their alt.

[Falfyrel]

Of note: in some ways, the Holy Trinity hasn't really gone away. Guardians and support Elementalists in particular are widely considered to be invaluable members in dungeons due to their party healing and support potential, compared to classes like the Thief or Ranger whose group support tools are mostly adding damage/debuffs, something which every class can do.

While I like the concept, I think this was an imperfect implementation - healing and support roles, while toned down, are still present and still very much exist. The only true difference was the consolidation of DPS and tanking roles, and even that was a bit iffy.

[Eliirae]

The problem with leaving the system in is that people go to what is familiar to them.  If GW2 made the game so that you didn't need tank/heal/dps but still could tank/heal/dps then either the game would be too hard for a pure tank/heal/dps or too easy for tank/heal/DPS.  That, and have you seen how many people are here complaining that they want endgame?  Those are WoW players.  Do you know what WoW does?  Tank/heal/DPS.  If tank/heal/dps was in this game in ANY WAY WHATSOEVER the freedom to do whatever you want would be gone in an instant.

You would never see "lfm CoF".  Instead, you would see "lf1m healer CoF!" and if you asked if you could go and weren't a healer?  Well, you're a noob and should go die in a fire and gtfo my game.  It wouldn't matter that "but the game was designed so that we don't need the trinity!" because it's there, and that's all the game needs to become just like every other vertical progression MMO out there.


The complete and utter removal of the holy trinity is the only reason why guild wars 2 is able to do what it does.  Unfortunately, people are so hardwired to think that if they aren't a tank or a healer or a DPS then they must be useless and not needed, so this is why we have these threads that say, "Well what if we did have an option?": It's because people are still struggling to figure out how to deal with themselves now that people can't see their name and go, "OMG it's X!  he/she is that uber tank/heal/dps!  We NEED that person!"

So no, I don't miss it one bit.  I can now hybridize a little bit, allowing me to support the group when needed.  In WoW or other games, I couldn't do that: I was pigeonholed into tanking or healing or DPSing.  If I wanted to have DPS with some support I was laughed at and thrown out of everything because if you were DPS you had to be THE BEST DPS and #2 was not good enough.  If you were a healer you had to be THE BEST HEALER and #2 was not good enough.

Now when you group with people you judge them based on how they react to the situation.  If they sit behind the boss and only DPS all day despite everyone around them dying then you know not to bring that person any more, because they aren't helping the group out in any way aside from trying to get the highest numbers.

[ScoutMATH]

they will do an update that will add monks and another tier of gear, a testament to their unfailing word of honor.

Edited by ScoutMATH, 25 November 2012 - 09:19 PM.

[Dasryn]

im not hard wired, i truly enjoyed tanking.  and i just now on my other monitor, fought a centaur champion in the shiverpeaks and myself, my wife and two other people fighting him all agreed that that fight is doable if we maybe hada dedicated healer.

im not saying gear the game towards it.  i just want the option.  dont you guys like options?

Eliirae, on 25 November 2012 - 09:05 PM, said:

so this is why we have these threads that say, "Well what if we did have an option?":

not really. . . i created this thread because i didnt want to derail another thread. ..  which is quite admirable if i do say so myself.

[Dasryn]

Red_Falcon, on 25 November 2012 - 07:51 PM, said:

I hope we all agree "threat tanking" is obsolete, unrealistic and bland.
I also hope we agree that having a boss or mob only attack one person and only that, is gimmicky and removes a lot of depth to the combat.
Finally, I hope you don't believe a person should be able to put himself between mobs and other team members for a whole dungeon, take baziollions of damage and live through it

if you wanna talk about realism, i can jump into a bonfire and /dance and not take any damage at all if you'd like. . ..

[Skolops]

The British author GK Chesterton once asked his readers to consider the case of some men wandering through the deep jungle and stumbling upon a modern, western style house in their path.  Not really having any idea what this house was doing there, these people might decide to knock it down so as to clear the path and continue upon their way.  However, Chesterton insisted that this would be the wrong decision.  It would be absurdly irresponsible, he asserted, to raze this building without knowing why it was there in the first place.  

Perhaps the point was made more commonly known at the mouth of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park as his character admonished John Hammond that he had been so concerned with whether or not he could clone dinosaurs that he never considered whether or not he should do so.

The "trinity," as it's been called, has been around MMOs since MMOs have been around, and in the zeal to eliminate it many have failed to consider that if it has been so common, there must be a reason.  It is simply not likely to be the case that its near universal presence is simply a result of the influence from Everquest, WoW, or any other game.  After all, there are simply an enormous variety of game designs and mechanics in any number of genres.  That the MMO genre would have simply remained so stagnant were there other options available seems improbable at best.

I think, ultimately, that this system has existed for so long because of the intrinsic nature of combat itself.  Any time any two entities battle (be it in video games or even real life) there are three and only three - no more and no less - basic things that can happen: The first entity can cause harm to the second, the first entity can be harmed by the second, and the harm done to one or the other could be alleviated by some means.  There is no way around this inherent aspect of combat.  It is, in large part, what in fact defines combat.If one wishes to make a game where either two players or a player and an AI fight, there exists the possibility of doing damage, of receiving damage, and of healing damage.  

All the "trinity" is, is a set of roles concerned with doing each of these three things as well as possible.  In video games as in life, the act of striving for the greatest success leads to a consolidation of resources.  We don't have firefighter-doctors, because a person who has invested in learning and practicing the arts of medicine and firefighting would be worse at either of them than another person who has invested all of his resources into any one of the two.  Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but as always those exceptions simply prove the rule.

The point here is that in eliminating the trinity system, all GW2 has done is made all characters less efficient at dealing, receiving, and healing damage.  An class which is able to simultaneously heal, tank, and damage must either be inadequate at all three, or be so strong by virtue of its abilities at all three as to make combat meaningless.  The reason that this system simply doesn't seem to have worked as well as many had hoped is because, while the classes themselves are all able to do each of the three roles to some degree, the enemy characters are still dealing damage as do all opponents in combat, and they therefore still follow the basic rules of combat.  

In the end, I think that one of the reasons that so many find this game boring is because given their greater personal skill and the utility of their classes at all three roles, their characters are too strong, or because given their lesser personal skill and the lack of efficient specialization for their class, their character feels too weak or the world too strong.

[Ghostwing]

Rickter, on 25 November 2012 - 09:43 PM, said:

im not hard wired, i truly enjoyed tanking.  and i just now on my other monitor, fought a centaur champion in the shiverpeaks and myself, my wife and two other people fighting him all agreed that that fight is doable if we maybe hada dedicated healer.

im not saying gear the game towards it.  i just want the option.  dont you guys like options?

Nope, not when it changes the core mechanics of the game. Same reason they shouldn't add rocket jumping into call of duty or kill streak abilities into TF2. Or if you want pve examples, rocket jumps into call of duty single player, just because rocket jumps used to be the status quo of FPSes since at least Quake 1.

Just as a sidenote, the trinity didn't apply to all MMOs. UO had no trinity, and that was before EQ, and the MUDs I've played had no trinity either. I think one person "taking aggro" and controlling the boss (or the trash, or anything, really) while everyone else is basically out of danger is pretty silly. Healers healing people up to full health repeatedly is pretty silly to me too. It places unproportional importance and pressure on that set of the group. I personally longed for a MMO without a trinity for a long time, where everyone is equally important in a fight, individual skills withstanding.

Edited by Ghostwing, 25 November 2012 - 10:34 PM.

[Shroomhead Fred]

I for one am glad the trinity is gone and it's one of the key reasons the game grabbed my interest.

If they were to somehow bring it back, that would be it for me.  They already rolled over on other key selling points of no grind and horizontal progression.

[Lilitu]

I miss it.

When balancing a pve boss, historically you balance how hard he hits based on the standard tank.
Remove the healer and any amount of consistent damage higher than your heal every 30 secs + regen will kill you, there is no question. Each fight is a war of attrition, you need to have more hp coming in than going out.

If they lowered the boss's damage to match that of a weak player's heal cooldown, the boss wouldn't pose a threat. So they tone him up.. and all of a sudden the boss's consistent damage will kill you, there is no tanking. So you all try to avoid damage altogether. So everyone goes range and runs away from the boss.

I'm happy for anet to prove me wrong, but in terms of fun boss fight mechanics, I feel the holy trinity allows for far more flexibility than the chaotic mess we have now. Think about fights in WoW such as Hydross, Vashj, the delicate tanking of Kael's buddies and weapons, Alar, etc. The amount of strategy required in those fights was achieved because of the concept of aggro, whether it was the heavily armored warrior taking the aggro or someone with a job to do or kiting to perform in a multi-boss scenario such as Illidari council, Supremus etc. All this was allowed by knowing who would be doing the tanking, knowing how much damage they would take, and thus knowing how much healing to give the healers. I have yet to see such intricate fights achieved without an aggro system.  Without one, there are far too many variables to consider when creating challenging and fun combat scenarios.

I do think the holy trinity would have ruined dynamic events though. Get one too many tanks or healers and it becomes a calkwalk. Which again is why the largest 'events' have historically been placed into dungeons and balanced appropriately so that they retain their epic feel.


People who say "holy trinity is bad because it causes bland tank & spank fights" can't see the wood for the trees if you ask me. It opens up more options. It's the opposite of bland when used properly.

Edited by Lilitu, 25 November 2012 - 10:54 PM.

[Reason on Cooldown]

For those who still want a trinity option in GW2, I challenge them to expand their minds.  The pure trinity may be gone, but I think it's spirit remains if you really want it.  If you really want to be a tank, beef up your survivability, maybe add some control skills to try and keep the enemy away from your allies, and try to tease out and sort of aggro mechanics.  There's a thread on the Guardian forums where someone has claimed to have worked out some of the aggro mechanic.  Whether or not it is accurate, I cannot say.

If you like more of a healing role, beef up your character's group healing, and throw in a bunch of support.  Put in skills that help you team avoid damage.  Protection, aegis, group stealth, etc...

Sure, neither of these options are identical to the pure trinity.  But it offers the same concept, the same basic idea as those pure roles fill.  I was originally disappointed at the lack of dedicated healer.  But I'm loving my beefy shouts Guardian.

If that's still not enough for you, my opinion is even adding to OPTION to heal/tank, in the traditional sense, is game breaking.  If you add, for example, better healers, then groups WITH a healer will never die.  If you scale up engagements so that this is not the case, then groups WITHOUT a healer will constantly die.  And if you think scaling engagements based on whether a group has a healer or not, balance becomes almost impossible--and likely will break PUGs as you always have to assess how your group's stats will alter the engagement scaling.  And I'm just thinking about dungeons here.  How will this affect DEs where any role can pop in and out of the engagement at any time?

TL;DR - A "soft" trinity still exists if you really miss the old roles and build your character right, and a "pure" trinity option would break the game.

[Corvindi]

I figure if they threw in a dungeon finder and the standard trinity, I'd probably enjoy at least some of the dungeons some of the time.  I'm a fair pug healer in MMOs and I actually enjoy it.  Yet again something that Blizzard just does better when it comes to dungeons.  If I'm going to be forced to dungeon for the best gear, I'm going to play WoW or just not play at all.  Hell, WoW even has a raid finder.

Edited by Corvindi, 25 November 2012 - 11:12 PM.

[Skolops]

Reason on Cooldown, on 25 November 2012 - 10:58 PM, said:

For those who still want a trinity option in GW2, I challenge them to expand their minds.  The pure trinity may be gone, but I think it's spirit remains if you really want it.  If you really want to be a tank, beef up your survivability, maybe add some control skills to try and keep the enemy away from your allies, and try to tease out and sort of aggro mechanics.  There's a thread on the Guardian forums where someone has claimed to have worked out some of the aggro mechanic.  Whether or not it is accurate, I cannot say.

If you like more of a healing role, beef up your character's group healing, and throw in a bunch of support.  Put in skills that help you team avoid damage.  Protection, aegis, group stealth, etc...

Sure, neither of these options are identical to the pure trinity.  But it offers the same concept, the same basic idea as those pure roles fill.  I was originally disappointed at the lack of dedicated healer.  But I'm loving my beefy shouts Guardian.

If that's still not enough for you, my opinion is even adding to OPTION to heal/tank, in the traditional sense, is game breaking.  If you add, for example, better healers, then groups WITH a healer will never die.  If you scale up engagements so that this is not the case, then groups WITHOUT a healer will constantly die.  And if you think scaling engagements based on whether a group has a healer or not, balance becomes almost impossible--and likely will break PUGs as you always have to assess how your group's stats will alter the engagement scaling.  And I'm just thinking about dungeons here.  How will this affect DEs where any role can pop in and out of the engagement at any time?

TL;DR - A "soft" trinity still exists if you really miss the old roles and build your character right, and a "pure" trinity option would break the game.

See, I (and I suppose others) disagree on this one point::I think the game is already broken because the trinity doesn't exist.  Adding it would be fixing it, as far as I'm concerned.

That said, I actually wouldn't suggest adding it, because it would change the game into something radically different.  If this is what you mean by saying it would break the game, then I'd agree with you.  I think this game is what it is - and that's fine for those who like it - and trying to do something like adding full out healing and taking would make it something else.  I don't think the game is especially good as it is, but that's me.  For those who do like it, the change would be too much.

[Corvindi]

Skolops, on 25 November 2012 - 11:11 PM, said:

See, I (and I suppose others) disagree on this one point::I think the game is already broken because the trinity doesn't exist.  Adding it would be fixing it, as far as I'm concerned.

That said, I actually wouldn't suggest adding it, because it would change the game into something radically different.  If this is what you mean by saying it would break the game, then I'd agree with you.  I think this game is what it is - and that's fine for those who like it - and trying to do something like adding full out healing and taking would make it something else.  I don't think the game is especially good as it is, but that's me.  For those who do like it, the change would be too much.

I could be wrong, but it actually sounded like infusion slots could be tweaked to create those roles, if only for Fractals.  I wonder if they'll do it?

[Bryant Again]

On one hand, you can kind of 'fill in the blanks' with a threat system. You can 'pretend' that the enemies are always attacking the tank because he's constantly 'in the way'. But even then, seeing Illidan be stupid enough to not hit the healers was awfully disheartening.

On the WoW forums, I remember at one point when people said they'd think it'd be quite interesting to see one of the employees take control of a raid boss. One of the CMs of the forums came over and said how it wouldn't work because all he'd do would kill the healers. And win.

I feel a lot like the trinity was a necessity due to the buffing of mobs because of their shit AI. I also don't think I've ever seen an interesting 'threat' mechanic.

Corvindi, on 25 November 2012 - 11:13 PM, said:

I could be wrong, but it actually sounded like infusion slots could be tweaked to create those roles, if only for Fractals.  I wonder if they'll do it?

Proooobably

Edited by Bryant Again, 25 November 2012 - 11:27 PM.

[Omedon]

The trinity concept is nothing but a series of disclaimers that "that's not my responsibility," which inevitably leads to "that's your fault!"  I'm glad GW2 has kept this out in their personal empowerment game design.  You are responsible for your own survival, and that's how it should be, because you paid ArenaNet for your entertainment, not the other people in your group, and so they (the other players) aren't responsible to validate your investment in Guild Wars 2, that transaction is directly between the player and the game.

[Skolops]

Omedon, on 25 November 2012 - 11:31 PM, said:

The trinity concept is nothing but a series of disclaimers that "that's not my responsibility," which inevitably leads to "that's your fault!"  I'm glad GW2 has kept this out in their personal empowerment game design.  You are responsible for your own survival, and that's how it should be, because you paid ArenaNet for your entertainment, not the other people in your group, and so they (the other players) aren't responsible to validate your investment in Guild Wars 2, that transaction is directly between the player and the game.

Eh, this is really fairly silly for a game with "multi-player" right in the title.  There isn't anything wrong with games which let you have total control of your own destiny.  We have them in real life, too, like tennis and gold and bowling.  At the same time, alongside these we like football and hockey and soccer and sports where success depends on an entire team working together.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the most successful raiding groups - and especially PvP teams - are successful in part because they all take it upon themselves to look beyond individual failures or successes and let the success or failure of the team be just that, the team's.  Even in real life, you have football teams which fail despite amazing talent because they can't look past their own numbers, and those which succeed with lesser talent because they all put the team as the only thing that counts.  

It's good to have games which inspire this kind of stuff in people.

[Omedon]

Skolops, on 25 November 2012 - 11:40 PM, said:

At the same time, alongside these we like football and hockey and soccer and sports where success depends on an entire team working together.  

And in the MMOniverse, these are your WoWs and RIFTs, where the team, and commitment to the team for the sake of doing pretty much anything is the mandated design.  It's optional in GW2, and that's intended.

There is certainly content for people that would rather function like a WoW or a RIFT, on the team commitment front, and yet I commend GW2 for keeping the same non-predictable threat mechanics in this "team content" which still comprises teams of INDIVIDUALS...

You know, because teams, as a general rule, don't buy the game together, they buy it as individuals.  This game just carries that mentality into the gameplay.

Edited by Omedon, 25 November 2012 - 11:51 PM.

[Vackashken]

Red_Falcon, on 25 November 2012 - 07:51 PM, said:

I hope we all agree "threat tanking" is obsolete, unrealistic and bland.

Unrealistic? Conjuring fireballs from the sky is fairly unrealistic too, I'd wager. As for the rest I don't agree with at all. However, that said it has no place in this game whatsoever. The game is already ridiculously easy, adding elements such as above would only make the game stupidly easier.

[Dasryn]

Vackashken, on 25 November 2012 - 11:54 PM, said:

Unrealistic? Conjuring fireballs from the sky is fairly unrealistic too, I'd wager. As for the rest I don't agree with at all. However, that said it has no place in this game whatsoever. The game is already ridiculously easy, adding elements such as above would only make the game stupidly easier.

yeah i think he was trolling - he hasnt posted in here since and its really impractical to throw the word "realism" into a fantasy setting videogame.

Omedon, on 25 November 2012 - 11:45 PM, said:

And in the MMOniverse, these are your WoWs and RIFTs, where the team, and commitment to the team for the sake of doing pretty much anything is the mandated design.  It's optional in GW2, and that's intended.

There is certainly content for people that would rather function like a WoW or a RIFT, on the team commitment front, and yet I commend GW2 for keeping the same non-predictable threat mechanics in this "team content" which still comprises teams of INDIVIDUALS...

You know, because teams, as a general rule, don't buy the game together, they buy it as individuals.  This game just carries that mentality into the gameplay.

it appears as if you've had really bad experiences with Trinity based games in the past.. . .  i think if you were in a decent group where the tanks were not acting the way you've described, you'd have a polar opposite opinion. . .

im a tank, i am a considerate tank.  i try and hold as many enemies as possible, i am patient, i explain boss fights in detail, i look out for my team and at the end of a dungeon, i literally get comments such as, "you are probably the best tank ive ever played with" or, "that was a really smooth run because of your tanking" - with a subsequent friend request sent to me after wards.

Edited by Rickter, 26 November 2012 - 12:11 AM.

[Omedon]

Rickter, on 26 November 2012 - 12:10 AM, said:

it appears as if you've had really bad experiences with Trinity based games in the past.. . .  i think if you were in a decent group where the tanks were not acting the way you've described, you'd have a polar opposite opinion. . .

im a tank, i am a considerate tank.  i try and hold as many enemies as possible, i am patient, i explain boss fights in detail, i look out for my team and at the end of a dungeon, i literally get comments such as, "you are probably the best tank ive ever played with" or, "that was a really smooth run because of your tanking" - with a subsequent friend request sent to me after wards.

I am also a former tank, and while I have had many of the same experience, it's becoming increasingly unrealistic for game designers to gamble on "community treatment" to validate the quality of their games, hence the design of GW2.

[Juanele]

What they really need to is emphasize the use of combos. It should be used to create teamwork so that it is important to use whether with a group or outside of one.

Don't put back the trinity. If they ever did that it would put the nail in the coffin of the game as far as I'm concerned.