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Revisiting the "Holy Trinity" of MMORPG Classes

Posted by Soulskill on from the or-druid-as-the-case-may-be dept.

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."

3 of 362 comments (clear)

  1. Rock, Scissors, Paper by bickerdyke · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  2. The Trinity by argStyopa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  3. Re:So get rid of healing by wtbname · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ahem.

    http://tf2wiki.net/wiki/Medic
    http://quakewarswiki.net/wiki/Medic

    Plenty more where those came from...

    So by "of course" you mean, "of course i don't really know anything about the subject, but I'm going to run my yapper anyways."

    Oh right, slashdot...