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Revisiting the "Holy Trinity" of MMORPG Classes
A feature at Gamasutra examines one of the foundations of many MMORPGs — the idea that class roles within such a game fall into three basic categories: tank, healer, and damage dealer. The article evaluates the pros and cons of such an arrangement and takes a look at some alternatives.
"Eliminating specialized roles means that we do away with boxing a class into a single role. Without Tanks, each class would have features that would help them participate in and survive many different encounters like heavy armor, strong avoidance, or some class or magical abilities that allow them to disengage from direct combat. Without specialized DPS, all classes should be able to do damage in order to defeat enemies. Some classes might specialize in damage type, like area of effect (AoE) damage; others might be able to exploit enemy weaknesses, and some might just be good at swinging a sharpened bit of metal in the right direction at a rapid rate. This design isn't just about having each class able to fill any trinity role. MMO combat would feel more dynamic in this system. Every player would have to react to combat events and defend against attacks."
Don't forget about the fourth type of poster: PizzaAnalogyGuy!
Pigeonhold the players into one of the 3 style is easy.
Letting the players to pick and choose from an array of strength / agility / defense for their own character would be a nighmare for those who program the game.
We all know that mages are the superior class, so this article is invalid.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
And my question is: why would you want to do such thing?
If you start with a system based on: Two sides dealing damage to an amount of health, the first to reach o health loses.
You'll reach the roles of:
Dealing the most damage, receiving the least damage, and avoiding reaching the 0.
If you want another set of classes, you'll have to change the system, not the allowed skills.
For example:
- Add one more number to push into the negatives (typically, armor and shield) and you'll have the posibility of creating a class that manipulates that other number (a shield healer of some sort) a class that damages said number (An EMP mage) and a class that endures more damage to said number (A shield...tank).
- Add positional advantage (complex to do in mmorpgs for lag reasons) and you'll have a class that restricts movement, one that gives positional advantage to teammates and one that uses more effectively positional advantage.
etc.
Isn't any mmorpg out there capable of offering a stats-based or skill-based character with no classification system?
Lacks classes... There are dedicated ships to repairing other ships, but they are not an essential part of the game, and any ship can fit the modules, they just don't get the extra bonus.
Offspec (Apologies for the rubbish link quality, but it gets the point across).
You can't make classes "jack of all trades." It doesn't work. Someone misses their cue to fire off a spell because they're in the middle of doing something else, and it's all gone to pot. This fictional game from Gamasutra would be great if many MMO gamers (that I've encountered) could keep track of more than one thing at a time. However, having seen healers run backwards into a new mob, tanks which run around between enemies trying to take aggro from other characters who don't need it, and damage dealers who have no concept of aggro mitigation, I'm susprised a lot of MMO players can cross the road without assistance.
Paraphrasing someone's very famous words: "If it ain't bust, don't fix it."
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
It's a ridiculous "skill", anyway, and unbalances game play.
America's Army made this work pretty well. They have a "medic" specialty, and while his primary job is still that of a soldier, the medic's secondary function is to stop a "yellow" wound from becoming "red", and a "red" wound from becoming fatal. But both the casualty and the medic have to stand still for the duration of the bandaging process, and unless you're out of sight you're likely to get shot.
And nobody in A.A. is a tank. Getting hit repeatedly means getting dead faster.
For a better swords and sorcery system, maybe they should move to a system based on shields, cavalry, infantry, and artillery.
John
Rock.
Scissors.
Paper.
Call them by any other name, but thats how you get an ideal game balance.
Fighter, Mage, Archer
Human, Dwarf, Elf
Fire, Water, Air
There's a reason why this simple game is still around after possibly a few hundred years. And everyone knows some variant of it, (acid, well, hammer, chainsaw..... you name it) and also knows that they suck. messing up the balance.
bickerdyke
What's BadAnalogyGuy, or BAG, without an analogy? :(
Pigeonhold the players into one of the 3 style is easy.
Letting the players to pick and choose from an array of strength / agility / defense for their own character would be a nighmare for those who program the game.
I always hated the leveling dynamic in rpg's and the idea that you had to be locked into one class. I'm not likely to have the time to play the game again and it would be fun to play different classes.
So, the Batman analogy. Sure, he's got his standard suit he runs around in. Lightweight for acrobatics, bulletproofing on the chest and weights in the cape so he can hit people but his main defense is not taking hits. But if he needs to tank up, he has heavier suits. His anti-superman suit was basically space marine power armor. He has bat spacesuits, bat diving suits, whatever. The point is, all he needs to do to change roles is change equipment. the trick is knowing what to bring.
Strangely enough, Armored Core got this idea right. You can build different mechs specialized for different roles. Some missions you need heavy firepower for crushing hard targets with bolts of energy with low fire rates, sometimes you need autocannons that spam out shells all over the place to hit fast-moving light targets. You equip to suit the mission.
I'd like to see an rpg take that line of reasoning. You need to do sneaking, you carry your light weapons and black tights. Scouting the woods? Longbow, shortsword, cloak. Have to wade into a big melee? Now you bring out the heavy armor.
But what ends up happening in the online games, and I'm sure the publishers don't mind, people will run several accounts specialized in different roles just to make progress. In EVE people will have industrial characters, pvp characters, miners, etc. And the best part is that if you find you have less time to play, you can't consolidate those characters. Bah. It's a cycle best to avoid by not playing.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
It's funny; I played RPGs for a couple of decades or more, and until I got to MMO RPGs, had never really heard the terms tank and dps.
The reason that the MMO genre has devolved to these reductionist archetypes is because MMO gameplay is about one thing and one thing only: doing damage to kill monsters before they kill you. That's it. Pen and paper RPGs have many, many alternative ways to tell stories and player choices.
Few MMOs I've ever heard of offer anything in the way of goals that don't boil down to killing some stuff. Sure, you might be reuniting two warring factions...but never through discussion or negotiation, generally it's about rescuing someone from some monster/prison/boss or bringing them 10 worg hearts (involving killing many more than 10 worgs). Is there ever any possibility that you could sneak into the enemy fortress, steal the Big McGuffin, and get away WITHOUT killing anyone?
If your gameplay can be boiled down to a function including monster health, monster damage, player health, and player damage, you're going to get players naturally 'gaming' the characters to fit that function as efficiently as possible.
-Styopa
i just finished dragon age origins. again there was the stereotypical class definitions and mechanic that made little sense.
a 'tank' which is horribly strong enough to stop a dragon by holding a shield, but it suddenly became less effective when you gave him a huge 2 hander to swing around, despite all the strength (in practice) it should have because stopping anything with a shield requires huge strength.
arch demons, strong and smart enough to marshal entire armies stupidly attacking some party member designated as 'tank', and getting its ass spanked. 'threat' my ass.
the forced stupidity that says a ranged class, especially archer/ranger, should be less effective a damage dealer and should have pathetically low range to make melee classes viable. crossbows which were strong enough to punch full plate + chanmail sets of armor from close range to instantly kill knights does 'damage' to them instead. archers are able to only shoot effectively at 42 yards range. as if agincourt has never happened. the feeling of a real ranger/archer which lurks in a forest/area and snipes the enemy from afar without enemy ever being aware of him/her, is nowhere to be found in games, despite they were a common occurrence in real history and is a frequent occurrence in fantasy fiction.
insanely powerful, stupid mage class. press a button, and freeze 10 enemies to sleep or something. spells 'ignore' armor. the 'crowd control' stupidity, which has never existed in any real battle situation, hell even in no legend/lore the earth civilization has had up to this point, including the later fiction works, leave aside ancient legends. pitt a party of 4 against 10 enemies to create 'challenge', and then be obliged to put the stupid 'crowd control' concept into the game. if you were going to let me freeze 8 out of 10 enemies with 'crowd control' and deal with them one by one, why did you put 10 enemies to challenge me in the first place ...
weapon inconsistencies. the hilariously stupid 'dual wield' thing, which does more 'dps' than other weapons. dual wield ... something that has never been a reality or practicality in entire world history, even including the daggers 17th century musketeers used to wield in left hand for extra control and exploiting occasional openings in duels. go 1-2 centuries backwards, and you will find that lighter weapons which can be wielded in one hand couldnt do shit against heavy armor, and every knight either used swords +shield combo or heavy 2 hander mauls or maces to penetrate armor and negate it, if they were not mounted with a lance. yet, for some reason we have this 'damage' dealing dual wielding nonsense in every goddamn game.
stupid classes. a 'bard' class, that noone can say what it practically does. vague lines to distinguish it even the rogue set it is supposed to belong. 'sings and entrances enemies'. really ? i mean, really ? you sing, and you entrance a demon with your song and freeze it. but isnt that definition of some kind of magic ?
stealth nonsense. going invisible in broad daylight in open field and moving towards an enemy and 'ambushing' it. total hilarity. and that's despite the success Thief series had in gaming industry. they still didnt wake up to the fact that more realism means more excitement for the player.
no flexibility. you HAVE to have a tank, a healer, a controller and a damage dealer. the same old shit everywhere, every game. no variation. no room for an all melee warband or all archer bandit squad. you need to rinse and repeat the same ancient, derelict format in every game. no room for error too - you have to increase tank's defenses, resistances so that it will hold the insanely stupid archdemons, you have to get cc spells for your mage so that it will be able to negate 8 out of 10 enemies you are presented for 'challenge'.
and the 'dungeon' concept. it was fun back in 1980s, but its not fun anymore. fighting and killing 13182356216 random mobs and 2 mini bosses and a major boss at the end o
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When I was a kid, we were so poor we only had rock and paper.
You are welcome on my lawn.
One of the main concepts in Fantasy is....Fantasy! That you can be the super-tough warrior, or mysteriously powerful magician, or quick-killing assassin. Do away with the specialization and you do away with some of the core reasons why people play. I understand wanting to mix things up a bit, but if you aren't special....you aren't special.
Or the fifth: 7-digit+ UID poster.
It was a stat and skill based game. You could be everything and be damn good at it. Essentially what happened in AC was the people mini-maxed their characters to an extreme because you simply had an unlimited amount of experience to be gained. That game was fun because it was about being under the dozens if not more mobs and having the ability to get out alive. Nothing really has compared to combat AC style. Let alone PvP. Hands down the best PvP of any MMORPG. You can dodge spells in AC!!! See the giant snowball coming at you, just side step.
Still it lead to what one should have expected. If you can do about everything you really don't need anyone else. Yeah, specialized tanks were able soak up damage better than some mages but like UO, tank mages existed and they could withstand quite a bit too.
Of course with no class based system comes some fun when you allow stats/skills to reach silly numbers, like run speeds that would make even the fastest drake in WOW look like a slouch
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I've basically played two MMORPGs (level of "RPGness" being debatable): PSO and WoW.
I guess I wouldn't call PSO a MMORPG but more like just a ORPG since parties are limited to four and if you don't group up, you won't meet anyone out in the world.
There are no healers or tanks in PSO. There's no aggro either. There's three races (newman, human, and androids), three classes (force [caster], ranger, hunter [melee]), and male/female. Not every combo is allowed (no female human hunters, no android casters, no newman rangers) but each one that is allowed is different. All non-androids can use techniques (spells) to varying degrees. Females can use higher level spells than males. Androids regen health when not moving and has traps (explosive, freeze, and confusion). Newmans regen technique points (mana) when not moving. Rangers and hunters can use shields; forces are limited to barriers.
Spells are foie (fire), barta (ice), zonde (lightning), grants (holy), and megid (dark). The first three comes in three flavors (simple, normal, and hard). There's one healing spell. One. It's an AOE heal. There's four buff/debuff spells that raises/lowers armor and power. There's no buffs for caster damage but there are armor pieces and weapons that can boost either specific spells or a class of spells. There are limits on what classes can equip but there's nothing preventing players from decking out a force with melee weapons and physical dps armor to let them wade into combat. The buff/debuff spells really closes the gap between the armor differences.
And the system works. It's could use gobs of polish for sure. The "depth" of the system comes from quickly changing weapons but for pure casters, generally you stand at the doorways of rooms and snipe away until the boss.
There is some level requirements for gear but most of the requirements are based on stats. Gotta have such&such amount of hit to equip this gun or this much strength to swing this sword.
I'm pretty sure I explained more than I had to just to get to the point of saying, "Hey, it's possible to make a game without resorting to the tank/healer/dps pattern."
That's quite inaccurate. Tank and Damage Dealer are the same close-range combat class, while ranged combat is missing from the list.
How about, rather than pre-defined classes that are locked in at creation and control what you can wear to improve your abilities... to let the type of play you do evolve based upon what kind of items you pursue and equip. Carry heavy armor if you want to take a beating, tomes and wands if you want to be nuking, etc. Perhaps keep multiple sets so you can fall into different roles, or create hybrid classes of your own choosing based on what you choose to have. That's the basic idea; Of course there can be limitations, or skills you must train and develop to become expert perhaps. But at least you won't be locked out of a group for playing a Ranger.
It's called a nash equilibrium, and what it means in a nutshell is that no one's single strategy can beat anyone else's provided the strategies are fixed (i.e. a fighter cannot take on the attributes of a Mage).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium
stuff |
When you have to have the holy 2.5'inity in one toon.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
I like the solution for this that City of Heroes uses. Yes, they have the holy trinity of tank, damage dealer, and damage mitigator, but they have two variations on the theme that make combat dynamic and interesting.
Specialist Options: Some tanks dodge damage, others resist it, and yet others take the enemy's full attack and then quickly heal it back up. Similarly, some damage mitigators heal, others use force fields to prevent damage from happening in the first place, and others debuff the enemy enough that their damage can be shrugged off. All these options lend themselves to different situations, and the party tactics can change according to which options are present in the group.
Hybrids: All CoH archetypes are hybrids. 'Tanks' serve as tanks and crowd control. Damage mitigators might also be damage dealers or crowd controllers. Some damage dealers have abilities that make them serviceable tanks in a pinch (scrappers). Allowing each character the ability to play two or more roles keeps the game fluid and the player engaged. But no character can play all three roles of the trinity; that removes the incentive to group and creates a single-player experience that's not much fun.
The only real problem in CoH is that most encounters are so easy that their deep, interesting combat system isn't necessary. If the CoH characters are likened to chess pieces, with their own specialties and subtleties, the NPC enemies are playing tic-tac-toe. But the system itself is very, very well done.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
It is like the #2 or #3 MMO depending on how you count...
Skill and equipment based "combat triangle" anyone can max any stat, but the gear you are wearing keeps you specialized in a given fight... Metal/heavy armor makes Melee vulnerable to Magic, resistant to Range, Dragonhide armor makes Rangers vulnerable to Melee resistant to Magic, Magic armor gives magic boost and spells are really powerful (including AOE, and life leaching) but they are vulnerable to Range and Melee
There is no practical way to heal others, but when a group goes after a bigbad, there are often roles, but get this: Every player in a successful group will ROTATE ROLES.
The guy with the most food/potions for healing will tank, soak up damage, and heal himself till he is low, then the next guy, and so on.
I value MMOs where grouping is optional, and basically strong character classes really hinder that type of mechanic; so if I want to go to fight in God Wars against huge bosses for top drops, I have to group, but I can play on my own at any time too... I can also be a mage one day a ranger the next, and a melee fighter the next... so I tend to only need one character another huge plus (to me).
The reason things break down this way is because of the fundamental dynamics of the game, not specifically because of class design. The classes exist this way because the games are designed around gameplay the necessitates it. Even if you broke classes out of this mold, you'd still have the same basic objectives: kill something, don't die. Since "don't die" breaks down into "stay alive, keep your friends alive" and kill something is "do damage," you've got three clearly defined tasks. Even if you made all classes capable of doing anything, you've got the same objectives to do, and it's much easier to coordinate if you've got a specific role to perform than if you're just playing it by ear. Hence, even with flexible classes, you'd still have the same basic three roles.
The key is to change the fundamental design of the games to not depend on DPS, HP, and armor. Maybe make it dependent on tactical positioning or being outnumbered or whatever. I don't know, there's plenty of other directions you can go. Observe the MMOFPS: Planetside had healing, heavy armor, and damage-dealing, but it was not critical to have designated healers and tanks and so on because you were not in an environment where you benefitted from that kind of thing (and you can't tank a player-controlled opponent). EverQuest, FFXI, CoH, WoW, whatever MMORPG you care to mention, they all have the same fundamental gameplay, just with comparatively minor variations. Not that they're all particularly similar, they just all have a similar core gameplay concept.
The same gameplay scheme rewards the same tactics, whether your game is set on Azeroth or Earth.
One of my favorite classes is the Mesmer from Guild Wars... practically useless on their own, they have an awesome array of spells for invalidating the other side's strengths. For instance, their skills can cause a target to take damage whenever it attacks. They can move debuffs from friendlies and place them on enemies. And one of my favorite spells removes a hex from a target and allows you to re-cast that hex onto any other opponent. This is what we need more of in RPGs...highly specialized classes that open up new tactics in combat.
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
I once managed this in EVE Online, but in THAT case it was more logging into a space station after a hostile alliance had taken it over, pretending I was looking for a new corp to join, making friends with the residents, Just Happening to mention I could fly their Huge Jump-Capable Freighter if they ever needed a hand, being loaned the freighter, filling it full of their assets, then taking it all back to my "real" alliance.
Of course, infiltration and corp-thievery is a maligned gameplay mode, albeit completely legit, so I think I shall post Cowardly :)
Back then you had skills like swords, tactics, healing, anatomy, magic, evocation, meditation and with a combination of those skills you could create a completely custom character. ... With this character I would open up with a spell or two, equip my axe and try to get a hit in. I usually ended up attacking a strong opponent who knew how to throw on a quick mage heal, cast paralyze on me, equip a spear, and turn the fight around. I would then hit my defensive macros healing myself with spells and bandages. Then turn on my attacks again with a couple of offensive spells, maybe paralize him, equip the axe and pray I hit...This would go on until someone hit the wrong macro or just ran out of steam possibly lasting 30mins-1hr for just a 1-on-1 battle.
It wasn't about quest grinding to gather the ultimate gear.
It was about designing a solid character and knowing how to use it.
For instance, I had a PK (player killer) with stats like 100 strength (melee damage and total HP), 50 dexterity (melee swing speed and archery damage), 100 intelligence (mana), swords, tactics (increases the chance to hit), anatomy (increases attack damage and heals), lumber jacking (when equipped with an axe he could take 99% of someone's health in one hit), magic, evocation (increases magic damage/heals), healing,
This is how battles use to be when UO was the leader of MMORPGs and I wish it would go back to that but even UO is all about the gear now and they've opened up a bunch of other skills and character paths.
It just feels like MMORPGs have become to complex and bloated with all the gear and skill trees. Then they are to simple with the lack of character designs and PvP interaction.
I've played a few games now that didn't rely as much on the tank/healer/damage setup. It always ends up turning into no-tactic free-for-all fighting. Everyone's just trying to do as much damage as possible to enemies; those with defensive abilities activate them and then go back to damage like the rest of their team. Group coordination in such games is at most picking the kill order; beyond that it's just "everybody do whatever."
Some may prefer that style of group play, but it wasn't as fun to me.
Just use Nethack as the example.
Anyone can use heavy armor, it just reduces Magic casting abilities (Time, success rates, etc.)
Anyone can use any weapon, just some classes aren't proficient at it (A wizard with a warhammer missing constantly)
Anyone can learn a spell, but your warrior can take 5 minutes to cast that spell vs. the 2 seconds for a wizard.
Maybe its just me but aren't ogres dead in any world the thri-kreen reside in? (Except spelljammer, and it doesn't exist anymore anyways?)
This is why I run a beater. Much simpler to just swing and let the spellchuckers throw over you, so long as there's a healer that can raise you without comps, or someone who will bestow some PoY to de-age you after. Sucks to die old.
I've always run Ninjas in Avatar, an old NovaNET game (now on cyber1,apologies for /.ing them) which I started in on in about 1985 or so (hard to remember when). I know Jim, and I was the first of the =mainei signons to get whacked, having offended many UICU ops, admins, and profs with my political views in =events (at the time UICU was infested with leftists, Marxists, and socialists. Probably still is.)
I still play Avatar on cyber1, God forgive me, and I'm in my third year of learning to manage a healer and wizard. But I digress...
This is the age-old problem in all role-playing games. How 'realistic' do you want your fantasy?
Realisticaly, you would be an unusual specimen if you could in fact master all three major classes. Just the time needed to build knowledge and physique makes it impractical, as if fantasy is realistic at all. So games that enforce the three-class paradigm make sense. But more to the point, most good role-playing games are founded on team building.
Think about it. Playing D&D with just you, the all-powerful master, and a DM who tries to make you dead, and no one else? Pointless. A decent weekend playing D&D needed about a dozen people. Someone had to get pizza, beer, and toilet paper. Cmon, man.
So team play had to, from the beginning, be designed in. Best way to do that is to divide skills so that you need at least two on a team to survive surprise encounters, and of course three or more to challenge demigods. How many to thrash a boss? This is why I'm not the least into WoW or any of that, though Diablo II almost got my attention.
At some point, these games devolve into simple (?) problem-solving, and while the graphics are pretty, they genuinely never match up to my imagination. The last interation of Avatar on NovaNET statted off with a detailed description of many things, suchas the dungeon, monsters, and player characters. Well, I always thought Wyvern Skin was not very stinky, and there were LOTS of monsters taller than 9 feet. And the dungeon was sometimes pretty clean, and sometimes pretty nasty, and it didn't matter now deep you were. But telling me what the writers' concepts were was not good. Avatar is a graphics-challenged game. You needed an imagination if you were the least into fantasy.
Now, Avatar on cyber1 is dominated by problem-solvers, who cruise the bottom to find the next insanely great thing. And I run a beater because, sadly, I don't have to time to be part of a team and do more stuff. So my challenges are to survive surprises with really harsh monsters, beat down the rich ones, amass the next billion in gold, and find a damned RoTP please, if you don't mind, there has to be ONE MORE LEFT, ok?
The class complaint is just another variation on 'I want to be all-powerful'. Many a DM punished those who expressed that sentiment in their presence. No different with the video versions.
Good luck, and good hunting.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
So they're talking about how it would be better to make MMOs more like D&D 3rd edition classes were, mixed and could specialize however you want... after D&D took the bland MMO rigid roles ideology and ran with it in crap-tastic, bad-selling 4th edition. This comes from the "duh" department!
Well, all the Apple vs. Linux vs Windows pissing aside...
Star Wars Galaxies originally had a multitude of classes with 32 different subsets in each class. People could pick and choose according to their play style, and tailor the character to their individual needs. It was fantastic. Up untill they decided to pigeon hole players into archetype classes that resembled the main star wars characters, then the smart player base dried up. That's the whole crux of the matter right there... the smart players vs the dumb players. Unfortunately there are more dumb players than smart players, and every single game will always devolve to suit the dumb players.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
How many game make you kill stuff ? seriously ... hundreds ... thousands ... more probably.
I got sick of being a damage dealer in WoW dongeon in about 2 months, stop playing WoW, and a few months later, try on the healer job.
Oh my ... a NEW GAMEPLAY, you're not just targetting a npc and start to click the same old icons you KNOW maximize your damage by now, again and again.
You actually have to think, to choose which target to heal first, and with what spells. To priorize, to make sure your timing is perfect, because a BIG HEAL 0.2 sec after a tank is dead is pretty damn useless.
And then I tried Tank ... another new gameplay !!! you do damage yes, but it's in no way your priority, your priority is threath.
You're not trying to kill stuff you're making sure others doesn't get attacked, another bunch get aggroed by a healer of a dps, you've to react fast or your group get wiped, you've to analyse the patrols of the dongeon to know what group to pull first, put the right mark so the right target is getting killed in the right order (like enemy healer must die first)
So yeah ... everyone the same, no healing or tanking ... YEURK.
Pewpewpew if you like, but dont force me do to it.
whats kind of boring with MMorgs is that ...
all classes are hemmed in with their STATS.
there seems to be no game out there that actually
allows a working build with "alternative" stat builds.
-
a soldier/tank requires to be strong so if you
want a working soldier build you have to keep adding
the STRength stat.
-or-
say a cleric or mage, needs to have INTelligence or
CONcentration or s/he cant cast a spell.
-
go on any forum of any game and you find n00b question
about which stat for which class/role and the answers are
always the same. people playing MMORGs are actually all
just building clones. major difference will just be the gear
the acquired
-
there's room for improvement there i guess; a INTelligent
soldier what do you know, or a STRong mage/cleric.
Seriously. It's not news, it's not stuff that mattes, and nothing the guy is writing is in any way original. Multiplayer RPGs that pit players vs. tough NPC characters will always eventually have players min/maxing into the 3 basic roles. Well, that is if the game is any good. Otherwise (as someone else posted) it's just a chaotic free-for-all. A perfect example is WoW. The game has not one but (count 'em) THREE hybrid classes, that are (theoretically) able to do not one, but all three of the basic jobs (yes yes, I know shaman can't really tank, but they can do so well enough with a shield to get through most low-level dungeons). And as the talent trees sat to begin with, they were all able to do just that reasonably well in much of the content. But then you hit the hard stuff (ie. epic dungeons) and that hybrid spec that let you do so well solo just didn't cut it any more. If you played one of those three classes, you didn't even get a spot if you weren't spec'd just right. Now, these classes are if anything even less capable of switching from one basic role to another without redoing the talents. And you're pretty much never going to switch from one to the other in the middle of combat.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Ok, so back in college, I didn't play D&D, I played Runequest. In that system, there was no such thing as a character "class", discrete experience levels, experience points, etc. The game mechanics were vastly superior to those of D&D, but sadly, much of the D&D influence carried into electronic dungeons, I guess because the programmers had learned on D&D and just didn't know any better.
Of course, just like in real life, characters could specialize. You might be naturally better at magic or swordplay, but every fighter knows some basic battle magic, every magician is trained to use some kind of weapon. And one cool aspect.. you could train up in many different things: different tactics, stealth, climbing, etc. beyond your character's "natural" abilities in any of these things. You also gained experience by doing under stress... if you're successful in battle, you gradually get better at... you don't all of a sudden take a drastic jump in your abilities.
-Dave Haynie
you really have no idea of what world crowd control means then.
suppression, choke points and so on - NONE of these prevent you from retaliating against your enemy. even if hurling a grenade requires concentration, you can STILL hurl a grenade. there were and are assigned and trained individuals in squads of many armies for that task even.
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'runscript killallhostiles' in the final 25% of the game.
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The article summarised the current state fairly well, but overlooked at least one obvious solution. There's no reason that different types of character can't be better "tanks" for different types of enemy. As an example, a mage type enemy might have it's attacks best resisted by a mage (traditional DPS) or priest (traditional Support) character, and be damaged best by warriors (traditional Tank). This would, of course, require each class to have mechanics for the roles, but there's no reason that couldn't be done.
This has always seemed like a natural solution to me. It provides the familiarity of a role, with the dynaics of various fights having different roles required of different characters. People would still "know what to do", but also get variety.
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
Create the world first. A consistent world that is "big enough" to allow for many thousands of "heroes - Top 1%ers" without them unnecessarily disturbing each other.
And make the world truly persistent. If UberJoeFoot kills a particular evildoer, then the evildoer is DEAD. I suggest starting out with a world comparable to a real planet.
Once you have the world running you make the modifications to allow the 1%ers to move around/play without being bored to tears making that 2 week journey to town. Don't forget to limit the ability of players using these work arounds to drive NPC 's out of business.
Last but not least, create time lines with various story lines. Hints, warnings, local tales....
In other words, Create the world, then create the stories and player characters.
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
Interrupter.
This class would focus on build up some kind of resource (rage, etc) and would gradually decrease the effectiveness of enemy attacks but without dealing much damage. Additionally, they'd have the option of interrupting enemy spellcasting/draining resources the enemy uses for physical/magical attacks.
There's this to some degree in WoW (the rogue's kick ability), but a dedicated debuff/CC class would be interesting.
Also: the reason why there's these classes in the first place is that none of the enemies are actually designed to win battles. They're designed to attack the tank and go through a preset ability rotation. Design a mob that says "screw the tank, I need to kill the healer first!" and do away with aggro, and the whole system comes crashing down.
Design enemies that really needs mana/combo points/etc and abilities to disrupt them become useful.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
There are actually four roles in any rpg group: tank, artillery, heal-o-matic, and skill monkey. This is true regardless of the game's mechanics - it's the nature of any realistic combat system. Of course, there are some variations. In most online games, you can heal completely just by sitting for a bit, so you might not need a healer. Some games do away with the skill monkey role just by leaving out the various and sundry abilities that they would have, or by letting everyone do everything. But in a more realistic game, you end up with those four roles. Why? Well, let's take a look at the real world; specifically, the US military. Are all soldiers in the army the same? Does the military just have one branch? Of course not. So, let's look at the roles:
Tank: This should be obvious. The army has tanks. But wait, is that all? What about the infantry? The infantry also "tanks." They form the front lines, and protect the rest of the "group" from attack. They do this not by having huge amounts of armor, but by facing off against the enemy in slow, grinding combat. Given two infantries facing off, you end up with a war of attrition. Ever seen two tanks fight in a game? At sea, this role is played by ships who can keep an enemy at bay by being too threatening for the enemy to risk counter-attack, resulting in a standoff. Likewise, in games, there are other ways a character can "tank" without playing a class designed for it, as long as the character is built the right way.
Artillery: Again, there's an obvious analogue. But the military also has air strikes, and bombs, and frickin' flame throwers! Ok, I got a little excited there. But the point is, there are lots of ways to dps, either targeted or aoe. Again, it's just a matter of the build.
Heal-o-matic: Fine, so nobody in the real world can magically bind your wounds. Nevertheless, every company of marines will have a medic. The army has field hospitals. And do I really need to talk about Search and Rescue?
Skill Monkey: Special Forces for a start. Then there's the minesweepers, the diplomats (diplomacy's a skill), the cooks (people gotta eat in real life), and many others. Like in games, many of these skills are performed by people who are also trained for combat.
So I guess what I'm getting at here is that the article has it wrong. You don't have roles in games because the classes are designed that way. You have classes in games because the roles are needed. And sometimes those classes fill roles different than you might expect (eg. "Batman mage" is a skill monkey.) Even in games where the class system has been removed, you will still have common builds, and the players will still name them and treat them like classes. So why not design the game with that in mind, and simplify it for everyone?
Why do people continue to describe spells as AoE spells? AoE describes the area that the spell effects, not the spell itself. The spell is an AE spell. It always has been. The idiots that use AoE to describe the spell are simply wrong, plain and simple.
The spell is an AREA EFFECT spell. Saying an "Area Of Effect" spell is nonsense. An AE spell has an AoE. It's impossible to have an AoE spell.
This also applies to munitions, since that's a prior source of the term AE and AoE, predating computer gaming by just a little.
"Taunt" is an evil, unrealistic power in a battle scenario.
It turns the warrior into a low-damage pseudo-controller, which is the exact opposite of the concept of a vicious melee fighter. High armored individuals have to be low damage output to make sure they can't kill things easily while, in turn, being very tough to kill themselves.
But several games, noticeably City of Heroes, have shown you don't need a taunting tank. They have it, but they show you don't need it. Why? Because there are tons of other powers for crowd control.
So the solution: Get rid of taunt. Then there is no "tank" per se, just varied melee who can stand up to a few individuals for a limited amount of time, but who also do a lot more damage to compensate.
The CoH "Scrapper" class is exactly this: melee who can cut things down 1-on-1 very quickly, and actually specialize at being a boss killer (boss being not quite the super-boss normally used as "boss" in other games.)
And the monsters are weaker, but there are a lot more. This isn't a problem with modern games, where 25 monsters against 6 people might have been a problem in EverQuest for the framerate.
Death to taunt! >:-( The root of all evil in MMORPG design!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Part of what might be contributing to this though, is the dual-class nature of the game. Each character has a primary class, and a secondary class, and can pull from most of the skills from both classes.
Was in Everquest, and it was warrior/cleric/enchanter.
Warrior was tank and cleric was healer, but enchanter was crowd control, not damage dealer. It was made necessary by dungeons where mobs could not be pulled solo and sometimes there would be 4,5, or maybe even 8 mobs at a time which needed to be dealt with. Without a good enchanter, you were toast. The problem was they had to be a *good* enchanter. And there was a massive shortage of good ones.
So there are other paradigms.
Shadowbane was a deeply flawed, but conceptually brilliant MMORPG from a few years back. The game had essentially zero questing content, and focused almost entirely on player controlled faction conflict. Players built, maintained, and defended their own walled city-states and nations, and the world had geographically specific resources, which were used not just for item crafting, but for certain aspects of class leveling.
For example, one player nation might have cities surrounding the only location in the world that produced the resources for training Rangers; if another nation wanted rangers in their ranks, they had to coordinate raids to briefly control the area.
There were base warrior/rogue/mage/priest classes to start with, but from there each class could choose from four or five professions, e.g.; a Rogue could be an Assassin(stealthy dps), a Thief(stealthy, could steal items right out of another player's inventory, which was insanely fun), or a Scout(the only profession that could reliably detect, chase down, and kill assassins or thieves).
By focusing on PvP interactions and strategic resource points, it broke the Trinity problem by making large group strategy and tactics far more complex than tank/dps/healer.
Shadowbane had mediocre graphics and terrible performance, but I've never seen a game since that allowed as much emergent player behavior, with the possible exception of EVE Online.
the original eq trinity was warrior, cleric, enchanter, dps was just added fancy. sadly most games after eq felt like removing the finesse of crowd control that actually matters, which left us with todays tanks, healer, dps trinity. as far as i can tell it won't change anytime soon, since people love it, even though they always complain, especially mmorpg veterans, people always lean towards the very traditional mmorpgs.
Nerds!!!!
Where is the thief that can spy and steal? Where is the merchant that can bring in tons of cash? Where are the tradesmen? The politicians? The linguists? If you play a rpg, there are way more than 3 groups. An adventurer doesn't have to be a killer. I'd say modern rpgs are simply action games based around combat. The only real "rpgs" out there are muds like Shadows of Isildur, Armageddon and Harshlands. The only other option is to play a pen and paper rpg (over the net, or live). I actually started to discover muds myself and hope others join in the fun. Screw all these mainstream games!
If you want "real change", you have to change game progression.
Right now, most RPGs have but a single goal: Put the smack down on the Final Boss and his minions. Really, it's all about Damage. Change that, and you change the game and the way the players play it. Gamers use those "trinity" roles, find those imbalances, and create those powerful character builds because of there is only _ONE_ way to make progress in the game. There are no options, no choices. You are forced to grind for levels and gear so when you take on the Big Bad you can withstand his attacks and kill him with your attacks.
To truly change this, you have to give the players options on how to progress. Let them sneak past instead of fight. Instead of reducing the boss's HP to zero, have another way to neutralize them. And not just the final boss, but everything in the entire game. Unfortunately, that greatly multiplies the effort needed to design and create the game. You must add entire paths to victory, besides combat. How about stealth to victory? Economics to victory? Politics to victory?
Stealth to victory could be as simple as "sneak in and slam dunk the one ring" or perhaps "sneak in, gather the vital intelligence, then sneak out and give it to the King."
Economics to victory could be "earn X gold before Y time, then give it to the King" or perhaps "provide all the Kings Knights with these power armor suits"
Politics to victory could be "convince 3 of these 4 other Kingdoms to join with us in this war" or "make sure that Big Bad does not win this election in this city".
In an MMO, once you have all these paths going at the same time, you pit the players against each other. You'll get this beautiful chaos of one group trying to do this or that and another group trying to prevent them. The opposing group becomes your "boss" you must defeat. You won't be able to just read the strategy guide and follow a plan to ultimate victory. Your "boss" will be multiple intelligent gamers that will quickly adapt to your tactics and furthermore the groups will change as they come and go online.
It sounds nice, but it won't work in practice because people are min-maxers. They kind of have to be, unfortunately. If you put together a spec that's 'interesting' but 'doesn't put out more DPS than the other guy', the other guy is going to get all the runs, and all the gear, so they can do other, harder runs for different, better gear. Unless somebody puts up a build for a hybrid spec that is good enough to make itself indispensable, they're going to fall by the wayside while the gear-addicted min-max DPS/Tank/Heal groups plow through 97% of the content that doesn't require some exotic build to et through.
That's the only way this will work, if the designers really wrack their brains to come up with actually novel encounter styles and bosses that actually require something other than tank/dps/heal. Otherwise, the current Tripartite Model works reasonably well, and the Min-Maxers are just going to take your 'universal character system' and make a tank, a healer, or a DPSer because it'll get the job done better than a class who does a couple different things less well.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
The parent post has a "Read the rest of this comment..." link after the end of its content. In other words, if you click the link the only difference is that the stand-alone post doesn't have the additional link.
This must be some kind of "off by stupidity" bug in the /. code.
Maneuvering and physically blocking movement of enemies becomes much more important than it is in current games if the group needs to protect a wounded member who can't just be healed by the specialized healer standing in the back
Surely this physically blocking movement trick would make sense and enhance tactical depth but there is one important factor the author forgot - lag. When I played WOW I typically had lag of 300ms and many other players had worse. It is extremely important to tell the player where his character will be located when all movement commands reach the server, if his movement can be blocked by things not computable on client side only this convenience is gone.
The first place I'm aware of the term "Holy Trinity" being used was in the MMORPG Everquest. This was a very specific reference to the three classes: Warrior, Cleric, and Enchanter. In the original game, these were the best classes for the three roles of Tank, Healer, and Crowd-Control (CC). Pretty much all groups in Everquest strove to fill those three roles, with the "Holy Trinity" being the ideal. Once those roles were filled, you had a group that could do things. DPS was a role which consisted of whoever else filled up the group. Some classes were obviously better at it than others, but DPS was never a part of the "Holy Trinity".
Just a bit of history and correction to the bastardization that other MMORPGs have changed things into. Also, it's true that Everquest changed much over the years and the "Holy Trinity" became much less Holy and much less necessary to do things.
So long as the game is "reduce the other team's score to 0," you're going to have these verbs:
- reduce enemy's score
- increase allies's score
The game is going to focus on these verbs with a very tight focus; the 'damage (per second)' and 'healer' roles. These are the only two that really matter, because the only way you can win is with enough uses of that first verb. Hell, you don't even need the second verb, just have a high enough score on your team that the other team can't possibly reduce it to 0 in time. This strategy used when attempting a "defeat the boss in less than X minutes" challenge -- just one verb, used over and over again.
There are two more roles that are emergent properties of this system (which means they will appear whether you plan for it or not):
- improve allies's performance
- impair enemy's performance
These are the 'buffer' and 'debuffer' roles. 'Tanks' from EverQuest, WoWarcraft and other DikuMUD-based MMOs fall into the 'debuffer' role because they force the computer-controlled enemies to chose an sub-optimal target for their "reduce enemy's score" actions. To be exact, their actions are going through the the tank as a bottleneck, so that allies can focus all their "increase allies's score" actions. If they can't be that bottleneck (such as dealing with a PvP team of opponents), the tank's debuffs are ineffective, and the enemy's ability to reduce your team's score is unimpaired.
If you want to get rid of this "four-part trinity" inherited from DikuMUDs, then you have to get rid of the hitpoints mechanic as the only means of resolving contests.
This seems to follow a dungeons and dragons dribble... It mentions D&D several times, and then decides to make suggestions that D&D uses (and even says to do what D&D does). This reads more like a hidden D&D promotion.
Look, I know people love the game, but this article has overdone it...Mod me troll if you like because I offended a "review of a legendary game", but this article provided very little insight. At least the discussion on slashdot is far more useful.
The recent "Faction Champions" scene in WoW's Trial of the Crusader deviates from the typical encounter as it is a more "PvP" style fight, but still the mobs aren't actually intelligent; they do have some aggro, they just drop it a lot and go immune to attempts to recover it, and they still don't do smart stuff like getting out of area damage spells or attempting to break crowd control; if a DM was running the mobs in this encounter, it would be considerably different still.
Obviously without true AI, an MMO has an extremely difficult time trying to optimize the game's reaction to the player(s) in the encounter, and the game's designers have to fall back upon certain assumptions - the alternative without a much better AI is to just make every encounter a free-for-all where the mobs have no aggro at all; this would mean that every class would have to invest in heavier armor (which most games - RGPs and MMOs both - deny from the magic using classes).
Besides, real warfare often utilizes the trinity itself, through on a macroscopic scale. The front ground troops are the tanks - they're in the midst of the battle. Aerial attacks are kind of the DPS, and hospitals behind the lines are the healers. If you want to look at medieval warfare, you still had the infantry (often with shields) as tanks, archers behind, and.... ok, so no healers.... but 2 out of 3 ain't bad ;)
R.I.P. Roleplaying....
Ok, so yeah, I'm an old D&D player. But dangnabbit, I miss just playing my characters. They had quirks, flaws, personalities...
I was never just a fighter, I was a poor guardsman, a greedy mercenary, a disgraced nobleman with a drinking problem. I was a farm boy sworn to get rich and bring my family out of poverty. My characters had motivations beyond Epic Loot.
Danged Min/Maxers! Someone aught'a make a game with only 5 levels, player made content, and let social structures dictate power, just like in real life. Lets face it, even the most badass swordsman WILL get taken down by an angry peasant mob. And he should.
And permanent character death too!
Stupid kids don't know what they're missing. Get off my lawn!
-T
(Oh gods, I'm only 30....)
The only way you fall into these rolls is by falling into them. In every game I've ever played, I mix it up a little. I've been known for weird, difficult combinations that are very hard to beat. Like in Runescape I had the best armor in the entire game but I also did mad damage with sick attack skills. So I was a well armed damage doer. Also my highest stat, believe it or not, was actually magic. There's also a 4th class I'd like to suggest is true for most games and that's "disgustingly rich" or sometimes called "skillers." They avoid combat AND healing and just try and get money and power in the game and show off and stuff. They're usually seen walking around in rare, flashy outfits with discontinued and other rare items and stuff.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Eve Online has this trait - you are partly your "character", and partly the ship you happen to be flying.
Invisible Agent
This post is a mirror; when a monkey stares in, no hacker gazes out.
UO never even used a class system, and its PvP back then outshines any wannabe PvP you encounter in today's MMO's
I had heard the term tank and healer before MMO's, but for the most part they were simply called "Fighter" and "Cleric". The term "DPS" wasn't around, but you always wanted a Wizard (and possibly a Rogue). Those have always been the four core, and picking one of the hybrid classes usually a very poor substitute for the real things.
At least the "Trinity" has become roles rather than specific classes. That's at least some progress.
I like Blizzard when it comes to game design, but when it comes to even the pretense of originally they fail on such an epic level you need to have your eyes closed and your head shoved a meter up your own asshole to miss it. The blatant ripping off of Warhammer for both Starcraft and Warcraft was pretty obvious and clear... but seriously, "Yogg-Saron"? Is the expansion going to have "Cthulhu-Voldemort"? Eh, I guess they pay homage to the ideas they raid, pillage, and then watered down and Disney-fy.
I've fought against people proficient in "dual wielding" and I have to say in my experience it does provide a significant advantage in situations where you'll be fighting multiple opponents and/or with little to no armor. No, it's not the type of style you'd use against a knight in full plate, but such heavily armored opponents only represent a very small sample of the type of warriors that existed throughout history.
the 'heavy armored knight' you speak of, which supposedly existed in a 'small sample', was the defining factor of medieval battles.
you may be erring by thinking that only early 15th century full plate armor is 'heavy armor'. it is not the case. in every period there has been a 'heavy armor' classification in comparison to the weapons that were used in warfare. in 1066 it was heavy chain mail, and broadswords were used against it, in high middle ages it was plate on chainmail and elaborate maces and warhammers were used to pierce it, in early 15th century it evolved to full plate armor, and exquisite halberds, and increasingly, firearms were used to pierce it. longbows and crossbows were rather exceptions, for they were able to pierce any armor at any given time, and in venetian republic it was mandatory that every single male in a venetian ship should know how to operate a crossbow, and own one.
japanese warfare prior to 19th century was way too immersed in forms and styles. its doubtful that they could hold their own in a real battle against a medieval army employing the brutal, inhumane and dishonorable warfare methods of european middle ages.
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of course hundreds and hundreds of them are going to die. though, not to a 'handful' of machine gun nests. dont judge d day with the movies you have seen, for for a movie you cant rebuild the entire atlantic wall. it would be too expensive.
you are landing thousands of soldiers into narrow beaches. of course hundreds were going to die. you need to compare the scale.
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Stop making MMOs which is based on simple damage manipulation
For instance, there are several game types which doesn't require (or avoids the requirement) healers in the slightest: Tower defense, shoot-em-ups, artillery (or Worms) style.
Then there are several game types which doesn't involve destruction in the conventional (one-on-one) sense: Strategy games (though technically tower defense falls into this), constructive (though tends to be more social), puzzle.
Then there's the other obvious option of implementing pure versatility/power for characters: Diablo series, RPGs with no set class
lets mix jedi into the next dragon age game. and also put superman in it. and while we are at it, we should put gandalf in star wars. after all, 'realism' is not needed in fantasy games, right ? its fantasy, so each one of them can be stupidly hilarious delusions from hell.
there is realism in every game. EVERY game, fantasy or not, has to be realistic IN ITS OWN WORLD. thats why you dont have jedi in wow, and you dont have sauron in star wars.
each world is a reality set in itself. they have to be consistent. some things stay similar in every world. after all, in each goddamn world your avatar has a body, and uses tools doesnt it.
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another game with party of 4, consisting of tank, healer, cc and dps. isnt it the same shit every fscking game, and each of them resemble the other after you played 10 of those games already. where is fun in that. would people watch football matches if every other game resembled the other in this detail.
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Without Tanks, each class would have features that would help them participate in and survive many different encounters like heavy armor, strong avoidance, or some class or magical abilities that allow them to disengage from direct combat.
Er, what? This is in large part already true of games like WoW. Mages, for instance, can buff their own armor through spells, can blink away from combat, and can go invisible.
Without specialized DPS, all classes should be able to do damage in order to defeat enemies. Some classes might specialize in damage type, like area of effect (AoE) damage; others might be able to exploit enemy weaknesses, and some might just be good at swinging a sharpened bit of metal in the right direction at a rapid rate.
This is just dumb. Of course all classes can do damage in order to defeat enemites! Each class is itself balanced and able to solo its way through the world, though some specialties make certain aspects of a solo environment easier.
Class specialization narrows the choices your character can make within these roles, but the specialization doesn't DRIVE the roles of tank, DPS, and healer. Rather, these roles come from a particular optimzation of group cooperation. The point of tank+healer is to minimize the number of party members soaking up damage, minimizing the number of healers needed, maximizing the number of solely-damage-producing members. This maximizes the DPS your party can put out. Multiple classes have healing abilities, both for themselves and for others, so you could mix up the roles and all provide DPS+healing, but it's less efficient and easier to screw up due to misstep or miscommunication.
Originally in EQ Enchanters were considered to be the worst possible class, because they did less damage than the other casters. And then people realised that mass crowd control (even at the risk of crowd controlling yourself, which I did, often, in the confined spaces of Lower Guk) was ludicrously powerful. Took about a year for that to happen.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
You had a huge line of DPS spells that stacked on nearly everything. Letting you do absurd amounts of damage.
You had crowd control spells that had their different advantages and disadvantages. The best being the snare line. Most importantly these allowed your DPS to syncronize with your own escape mechanics that not many classes had.
You could play dead, so when you/party did screw up you could just say "see ya" and not die.
You could rez with exp restore. So when you/party did screw up, you could help people out.
The class was the most enjoyable class I've ever played in an MMO. It was overpowered, yes, but the utility spells just put the class on top. Jack of all trades, master of all.