phineas

Can't agree.

Players will always gravitate towards the path of least resistance.
Not everyone plays for the challenge, most just want to get the most reward for the least time and effort given.

The mere option having trinity style threat mechanics being available in gw2 will kill every other option in pug lfgs, because players are used to it and will perceive it to be the easiest, least risky group comp.

Once this mindset gets established, anyone not conforming to it will suddenly become the noob.

whodini, on 13 December 2012 - 02:35 AM, said:

As a monk and a restore rit I enjoyed those situations (although I also tried not to cause them). I built my characters to have more health than most pug warriors to make the AI ignore me for the most part. Many warriors I would run with would backline the scattering party while I tried to get the aggro under control with them. It was a blast! I found it more engaging than the way combat is in GW2. GW2 is just boring for me since things like this don't really happen.

But everyone finds different things enjoyable. I enjoy healing/protecting and find damage extremely boring. Hence why I am bored in GW2.

Fenice_86, on 28 December 2012 - 11:43 AM, said:

Because there is no way to have a visual impact on your team unless you are dealing damage. A shout warrior healing his team for 4k every 20 seconds will still see that healing be taken away by one attack from any dungeon mob. A guardian using party wide aegis will still only do so maybe twice every minute. Not enough to make even a dent in the amount of attacks enemy mobs push out. An ele using his big heal will still only heal his team for 2 seconds before the field is gone, and then has to wait for like 20-30sec to use it again.

In short: GW2 combat is boring because you will never make a noticeable impact on your team whatever build you run. If you can't, well then you won't do it, because it just isn't fun. Because supporting is rarely fun in this game, you see most people run glass cannon instead because, well, bashing someone's face in and seeing big numbers is always fun.

This is why a lot of pugs are so shit compared to guild teams. In a guild team you know what the other people are running. The two guardians and the water ele in your group may be fine with supporting because they know they are keeping the two GC warriors up, making the run super duper quick. When you are joining a pug however, if you happen to be the only support you can't make that noticeable difference and with sub-par damage you will simply feel like a liability to the team.

Compare this to a monk using protective spirit, a mesmer using Panic or a necro using SS, or maybe an ele using an array of earth skills. The monk can prevent millions of damage throughout the run. The mesmer can completely shut down a group of 20 enemies, the necro can completely obliterate a group of that size, and the ele can become basically unstoppable. All of these skills made a noticeable difference.

GW1 didn't require these skills to complete casual content. However, if you wanted to do UW or DoA or FoW you needed a well thought out team composition to do so. GW2 will never be able to have the same amount of planning go into team builds etc, because the only way GW2 devs can create difficulty is by creating enemy abilities that forces players to dodge. Look at Lupicus, Subject Alpha and Kholer. Widely acclaimed as some of the best bosses in this game. What do they all have in common? They force the player to use dodge wisely. The same can be applied to FotM. The only requirement to progressing is being able to dodge all the agony. Is it fun on Kholer, Lupic and Alpha? Yep. Will it be fun in 3 years if all their end-game content consists of learning when to dodge? Nope.

This is why GW2 must make step towards having a trinity if it hopes to keep any long-term players. They still have a ton of casuals playing who are leveling characters, exploring maps, sniffing flowers in Queensdale etc. But when these people leave, all they will have left is the hardcore players. The hardcore players value skill-dependant encounters and difficult dungeons, but I truly believe that Arena Net with their current system simply cannot make any challenging content. They already have the basics of a trinity system lined out. Every profession can with a little tweaking do all roles of the trinity, they just need to make it a lot more rewarding to delve deep into your supportive, damage or defensive traits.

Millimidget, on 19 December 2012 - 02:18 PM, said:

The sad part is that in some cases it works. Like ArenaNet telling us that they're making a game for the fans in their manifesto, and then later coming out and telling us that we're all wrong-faaced buffoons because GW1 was apparently completely shit anyway, and that they know what's best for us.

Then you have the nodding heads. "Yes, yes! Tell us what's best for us!"

And I find that more than a little disturbing. But the problem with this approach is that the nodding heads are a vast minority of easily manipulatable people, and the vast majority are (I want to believe) too smart to fall for such base chicanery. I think that the average person on the street believes that the best deal is a price-for-product transaction, clearly laid out in obvious terms.

In the real world, outside of this little MMO sphere, we have regulatory committees that actually put a kibosh on predatory business tactics like those I've seen in GW2. Forcing people to face soul-sucking grind or buy gems is a very predatory business tactic, the black lion chests and magic forge are obvious gambling techniques which are illegal in some countries/states.

The problem is is that a fool and their money are easily parted, and there's a minority with disposable income who aren't smart enough to say no to this kind of thing. So they'll buy their gems, they'll buy their keys, they'll buy their mystic forge stuff, and all with real money. But none of these are direct price-for-product or price-for-service transactions.

A locked chest with temporary things inside is gambling and predatory, in my opinion. Whereas a clearly stated product on the cash shop for a price is honest. It's like... if I go to the Steam store, and I see a game, I see a price attached to that game. I pay the price and I get the game. I can read up about the product, and I might even be able to play a demo. So this is an honest transaction.

But for some reason, we have this minority who, via social engineering and other tricks, have been convinced that it's okay to put money down on something nebulous, where they aren't receiving a clearly laid out product in return. And unfortunately, there are enough fo these people (vs. the populace of the world) to fund a game and to tell a developer tha tthese predatory tactics are successful.

The fact of the matter is though is that in my opinion, an honest transaction-for-product system would get more customers, it would generate good will, it would be seen as accepting the customer's intelligence rather than trying to use social engineering tactics to convince them that gambling and throwing their money away is okay (it's not, it's total BS).

So they could offer a permanent buff for a set price. Instead, they take advantage of those who don't know better. I can't play a game that does that, you know? I've left other games behind in the past because they started doing that. I don't want a developer that gets by on doublespeak and social engineering. I want a developer that's honest. This is why I like the indies, I guess, and why in most cases I just avoid MMOs entirely.

The thing is is that even TERA gets this right, for all the infuriating flaws that game has.

Here is a product. Here is a price. You can find alternatives by playing the game. Whether you choose to buy this product or not is up to you. You can see this product being used in game and in these screenshots to decide on whether you want it or not.

That's an honest transaction.

Here are some dishonest examples from GW2:

Buy gems and convert them to gold to bypass that horrible grind! [Grind we created by lowering drop rates, and increasing gold prices in the game, whilst ensuring that only a tiny trickle of any kind of currency is even going into the game.]

Buy a key for a black lion chest! Who knows what's inside, it's a mystery! [It's a gamble that takes advantage of addictive personalities, it takes advantage of the person who's unable to say no to gambling. It takes advantage of the person who has a gambling problem.]

And this is why I have no respect for ArenaNet. From an ethical standpoint, it's not defendable. Oh, people will try, but it's not.

Trinity or not, roles are necessary in MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game).
I don't really know how to call GW2, since, there are no roles. MMOZG. You probably know what Z stands for.

Larsen, on 26 November 2012 - 04:09 AM, said:

Does your group not have blind?
Does your group not have interrupts?
Knockbacks? Immobs?

What I am reading in this thread is not the failure of a post-trinity combat system.
What I see is a PEBKAC issue.

The group game has gone up in difficulty due to key combat responsibilities being reshuffled to be shared amongst all group members instead of just a tank and a healer.
Players are still having problems coming to grips with that and apparently not able to step up their level of play to match.
We all need to learn how best we can perform all the various roles, and not just depend on someone else to do it.

There will of course be some roles each one of our characters are built for, or naturally prefer as players.
However, to go into a dungeon solely thinking "I'm the control guy, I'm the control guy, if there's not enough support it isn't my fault" is just wrong.
On the flipside, it is just as silly to go into the dungeon with no role.

Know your role, but always be prepared to take on others' (even if you are not optimally spec'd for it) when the need arises.

In this game, we can do that.


EDIT: in fact the ability to be able to recognise or even anticipate this above mentioned need in a timely manner is great player skill in of itself.

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.

No, we cannot "just go back" because they have already written what exists and it is now part of the lore whether you, personally, like it or not.

The Norn, Sylvari, and Asura seem 1 dimensional because they don't have a complete series of games flushing out their stories like the Humans and Charr.

The Charr have only been granted the logical conclusion to Pyre and his warband's start of an uprising against the flame legion. And, therefor, have not been given a "glossy paint." Long after the rebellion, the charr and humans were at war, they have only recently formed a treaty because the dragons pose a bigger threat to either race than the other does. There is no doubt in anybody's mind that when the threat of the dragons is removed, the Charr will begin their war against the humans anew.