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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."
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
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/
When I was a kid, we were so poor we only had rock and paper.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If we're being honest, all O"RP"Gs are Death By Spreadsheet, and Epic weapons would deal +5 to SQL.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Wanna come play an MMO with me? I'm always the third guy from the right in the frontline shield phalanx. There was this one time, where i was sitting there, like usual, and this calvary got to close, and I was like *block* and I totally kept him from getting through the frontline.
It was awesome.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
There is some sand in your vagina; you might want to clean that out.
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Nerds!!!!