Aion (Open Beta, Launch Day Info too!)

[Lantyssa]

Why would anyone socially-inclined play a healer class in a game that allows the more solo-oriented classes to heal themselves? That would gut a large portion of the empathic Bartle types who play the game.

Why would anyone socially-inclined want to force those who aren't to play with them?

[ezrast]

Every time I make the point that we don't have to endlessly reify the inflexible holy trinity, somebody responds with "designing content that way is hard." And that's all I ever get.

Total derail over here though so I'll wait until the subject comes up in another thread to bitch about it some more.

[Venkman]

You need to redefine the entire system to remove the holy trinity. That means rethinking core concepts of Tank/DPS/Healer. Back in the day they did that. Used to be Tank/CC/Healer, but they spread CC across classes in more recent games.

The reason most people just leave it as "hard" is because many of us already have the basis of comparison. UO effectively did what, well, at least what I'm asking for anyway. Leaving it entirely up to the player to decide what role they want to play in combat, and letting them change their mind on that one character. The problem with this idea is a subset of the whole world-vs-game problem. Most gamers want their hand held to a degree. So classes are a lot easier than open skill templates.

For me the answer has always been simple: Role a UO class, have quests and content direct you as a class, and then X-hours/levels into the game, "unlock" the ability to do whatever the heck you want. No big AAA developer has wanted to touch this though.

It's just easier to go with "like WoW, but..." because the people they talk to talk a different language altogether (the language of references, not gameplay).

[Mnemon]

Actually, no, I'm not saying they should nix the function of healing. What I'm saying is that, if a game is going to stick with linear/vertical classes, give the role of primary healer to more than just one or two classes. Ideally, you'd give it to everyone. Then if you had a group of tanks and ranged attackers show up (the kind of classes most people go for), then it becomes a player's choice to become the primary healer for that encounter. Consider it like the four talent tree in WoW everyone automatically has and gets automatically populated. Or that third Job everyone gets.

At this point then it becomes a question of whose the best healer based on what the player does.

Once they do that, then we can talk about mixxing tank and dps together.

And then where back to UO skill lines. And my plans will be complete! Muahaha!

SWG basically did this with the second incarnation of jedi in the game. and IMO if you took just just jedi on jedi at the time it was one of the most balanced pvp systems an MMO has had since (again ... not for people who weren't jedi, but jedi on jedi fights were amazing). A big part of it was almost every jedi had at least some healing in their template - you didn't have to worry about having a healer in your groups because most folks were self-sufficient.

personally I liked that system and don't see why other game couldn't do something similar. you still have that "trinity" but in a way where bits and pieces are accessible to the entire player base.

[Lantyssa]

The Trinity needs to die a fiery death.

[DLRiley]

Rofl. You guys need to spend more time playing korean mmorpg's. This isn't a decision issue you have to redesign the entire paradigm to work around. Make the substituting the job of the healer a significant gold sink. Want to get healed to full health instantly? XXX gold. Wanna get protted to the point that you take 0 damage for x seconds (or even minutes  ) XXX gold. Hell you can sell "special potions" at your real money transfer shop that give uber buffs that provide near high invulnerability, uber damage, or hacking speed. Even better you can let this special potions to be craftable but make the cost of materials high and the success rate at around 1%.

[ezrast]

You need to redefine the entire system to remove the holy trinity. That means rethinking core concepts of Tank/DPS/Healer. Back in the day they did that. Used to be Tank/CC/Healer, but they spread CC across classes in more recent games.

I don't get it. CoH classes are as standard as they come: tank, mdps, rdps, heal/buff, and cc. They didn't rethink or redefine anything. They just tuned the numbers so that no role is absolutely necessary. You can run with any team you want. And, while CoX in particular falls down in the area of interesting fight mechanics, there's no reason why you couldn't drop most of, say, the Construct Quarter into such an environment practically unchanged.

From where I'm standing, "Like WoW, but..." looks pretty easy, relatively speaking.

[Venkman]

CoX is why I said "no big budget AAA"... or whatever I wrote above. Posting from my iPhone sucks

CoH has a lot of good ideas. So does GW. But the genre sorts reset with WoW, which basically seemed to look specifically at solving EQ1 and DAoC problems only. Mentoring and teleport-to-me should be friggin required at this point. And yet new gamesdont need them because WoW doesn't.
 

[caladein]

The KMMORPG way of "just spam potions" leads to all sorts of hilarity, or at the very least it hasn't been done well.  If your pocketbook is what makes you survivable, it's either a money grab or you want to create a meta-game of who can protect their cadre of third-world farmers.

As someone who plays Healers all the time, I'll state that healers in PvE are full of fail.  First, few people like playing the role of support vs. face-puncher/hero.  More importantly, if the tank is doing their job you're just making bars go up in what is likely to be a less interesting fashion than the DPS make bars go down.  Requiring people to play a role that is inherently less interesting in prestige, mechanics, and visuals than its counterpart is not what I would call good design.

In (world) PvP though, you (or I at least) get to play field general which is ten times more awesome than just punching people in the face.

Whatever comes about in a post-Trinity future should hopefully still include a place for non-face-punchers.

[Threash]

So last night i was in what turned out to be the first upper abyss fortress take.  We engaged the boss about 5 mins after the fortress went active, we finished with about 12 mins left on the two hour timer.  There was around 250-300 people there, a few people crashed a few times and everyone had to turn their settings WAY down to have decent performance but i am incredibly shocked things went so well.  At around 50% the boss started doing an AoE that one shotted 5-10 people about every 10 seconds, this went on for over an hour, he dropped our main tank who was only mid 40s several times.  There was over 35 different guilds there, i was surprised at the amount of coordination it took to pull this off, halfway through several guilds who weren't involved showed up to cockblock the few asmos who decided to make an appearance, on one hand i doubt we would have pulled it off with any kind of resistance but on the other hand i doubt any defense would have lasted through that AoE long enough to present a challenge.

[Checkers]

Every time I make the point that we don't have to endlessly reify the inflexible holy trinity, somebody responds with "designing content that way is hard." And that's all I ever get.

Redgiant's comments on the subject were pretty non-standard:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=16646.msg719142#msg719142

[Kail]

SWG basically did this with the second incarnation of jedi in the game. and IMO if you took just just jedi on jedi at the time it was one of the most balanced pvp systems an MMO has had since (again ... not for people who weren't jedi, but jedi on jedi fights were amazing).

I didn't play SWG very long, and it was pre-Jedi of any sort, but this sounds a bit... weird?  To me?  You take a game with, like, forty classes, subtract thirty-nine of them, and the one remaining class is really well balanced with... itself?  I don't get it.

Why would anyone socially-inclined play a healer class in a game that allows the more solo-oriented classes to heal themselves? That would gut a large portion of the empathic Bartle types who play the game.

There's a difference, I think, between empathic and socially-inclined.  I generally roll a healer because I like helping people, but I still almost always run solo.  A healer's role in a group is still healing, yeah, but they're not "helping the team" anymore than the tank or the DPS is, in that the content would be unwinnable without any of them.  I know a lot of guild/raid leaders who play tanks, especially, and a lot of very chatty DPSers, so I don't know that I'd say that Priests are the only class which can be the life of the party ( ).

Though it is getting damned annoying leveling a Cleric in Aion.  I'm just hitting level 16, and so far I've got two attack chains.  One's on a cooldown and can't really be spammed, so most of my fights, for the last week, have been me waggling my fingers going "SOMBRERO SOMBRERO SOMBRERO" at some demon gerbil or something.  I also have something like three heals and three buffs.  Which would be neat, I guess, except there's really no reason to group, at all, as far as I can see, pre-20 or so, so I never need or get to use any of that stuff except the one big heal.

[Kageru]

Getting rid of the holy trinity makes pretty good sense in a PvP game where any character may have to defend themselves. Having to balance "tank" class with and without healing is pretty much impossible too. However that would probably be a pretty boring PvE game. It would end up something like UO and CO where everyone tanks, heals and does DPS and tactics is pretty much down to "zerg it!".

Just another reason why PvP and PvE portions of a game shouldn't be balanced with the same ruleset.

[ezrast]

Fair enough.

Why would anyone socially-inclined play a healer class in a game that allows the more solo-oriented classes to heal themselves? That would gut a large portion of the empathic Bartle types who play the game.

Do you really expect to take a group into Fire Temple without a healing class? And if so, can I get a group of 5 clerics to go into Fire Temple with enough of the tanking and DPS skills of other classes to do the same?

The bold part is, in fact, precisely what I expect. But you're still framing the situation wrong - you're assuming that "primary healer not required" implies "all classes can self-heal", because you're still seeing healing and tanking as elements of the game that have to be present in any party. What I'm saying is that this much rethinking isn't necessary; that, even if a group already has four nukers - pure squishy ranged dps - a healer or melee shouldn't add overwhelmingly more effectiveness to the group compared to a fifth glass cannon.

[Falconeer]

Ok, this has been said (and mocked) many times now, but this game rocks in PvP. The Abyss is a blast, artifact takes are pretty cool and and fortress runs are awesome. Balaur meddling is icing on the cake. DAoC lives again and it's a shame it takes so long to get to the juicy part. Flaws are everywhere in Aion but PvP works great. This is what the game is about, and this the game delivers.

[Venkman]

The bold part is, in fact, precisely what I expect. But you're still framing the situation wrong - you're assuming that "primary healer not required" implies "all classes can self-heal", because you're still seeing healing and tanking as elements of the game that have to be present in any party. What I'm saying is that this much rethinking isn't necessary; that, even if a group already has four nukers - pure squishy ranged dps - a healer or melee shouldn't add overwhelmingly more effectiveness to the group compared to a fifth glass cannon.

Except in order to pull that off, you need to allow for the encounter to dynamically adjust to the configuration and power of the party that shows up. Like CoX and D2 do. But unlike almost every single other MMO, including all dikus.

So instead of a long series of eventually-predictable canned content scripted (and built, and QA'd) to act a certain way every single time, you have constantly fluid conditions (or six or seven ways a dungeon gets configured, but still, a lot more than just one). THAT is why I say it's a fundamental rethink. It is exactly what Cryptic did. And it's exactly what nobody with "like WoW but" is wanting to do.

It's not just about healers. It's about the roles required at all. X tanks, Y dps, Z healers. You can't just toss the Healer-required thing without getting into all these edge cases that allow for anyone wielding anything to show up.

[Checkers]

Do you really expect to take a group into Fire Temple without a healing class? And if so, can I get a group of 5 clerics to go into Fire Temple with enough of the tanking and DPS skills of other classes to do the same?

The bold part is, in fact, precisely what I expect. But you're still framing the situation wrong - you're assuming that "primary healer not required" implies "all classes can self-heal", because you're still seeing healing and tanking as elements of the game that have to be present in any party. What I'm saying is that this much rethinking isn't necessary; that, even if a group already has four nukers - pure squishy ranged dps - a healer or melee shouldn't add overwhelmingly more effectiveness to the group compared to a fifth glass cannon.

I think you're intentionally disregarding the major point Redgiant was making.  I don't want to speak for him, but I think his comment was more that healing classes (and in my opinion, tanking classes) fulfill a social role by-way-of these traditional gameplay elements.  I think it's a good point.  I play a healer-type almost exclusively in these games now.  I'm not playing healers because I love staring at bars all day.  I like the social role.  I like being relied upon.  I like contributing to my group in a way that games with an "every man for himself" play-style can't facilitate.  I have absolutely zero interest in playing any kind of MMORPG where everybody is some variation of a DPS class.  

[Venkman]

Being a Healer or Tank or DPS is fine. These archetypes work well and players are used to them. But it's obvious fewer people like playing healers than Tanks or DPS, as obvious as it was back in the day when you replace "healer" with "CC". So drop healing as the single role of a class and let someone choose to perform that function in an event.

Basically, it should be "who wants to heal this time", not "full group standing here for an hour hoping a healer signs up to join us".

[Draegan]

Then you get into the argument how do you balance everyone if they can heal?

[Mnemon]

SWG basically did this with the second incarnation of jedi in the game. and IMO if you took just just jedi on jedi at the time it was one of the most balanced pvp systems an MMO has had since (again ... not for people who weren't jedi, but jedi on jedi fights were amazing).

I didn't play SWG very long, and it was pre-Jedi of any sort, but this sounds a bit... weird? To me? You take a game with, like, forty classes, subtract thirty-nine of them, and the one remaining class is really well balanced with... itself? I don't get it.

Well SWG didn't have traditional classes. Non-jedi had 32 professions you could spend points in. About half of those were combat professions, with lower professions like Marksman, hybrid professions like Bounty Hunter that required you train up certain skills in two lower professions, and Master Professions which required you to master a lower profession like Ranger.

After patch 9, jedi basically had five "professions" they could spend points in. You had the lightsaber tree that almost everybody mastered. You had the healer tree - with heals but also debuff cleansing. You had the defender tree that was basically a tank tree. You had the enhancer tree which was basically a mixed bag of force management skills, running speed enhancements, a paladin like shield, and some debuffs. And you had the powers tree which was basically lightning, area intimidations an some other stuff.

The key though was most people had the same baseline of master lightsaber (primary form of attack and defense) and at least a couple of lines of healing. How they spent their other points after that defined their strenghts and weaknesses and how they played their class.

To compare this to Aion, its like everybody has the option to grab a ton of Gladiators skills and some basic Cleric skills. From there you could mix and match grabbing from the rest of Cleric as well as skills from Chanters/Scouts, Sorcs/SMs and Templars.

[Nebu]

Then you get into the argument how do you balance everyone if they can heal?

Easy.  DPS and HPS are inversely related.  Similarly DPS and Armor/avoidance should be inversely related.  Then you get the spectrum of choice from glass cannon or glass healer all the way to hybrids. 

Seems like a development discussion topic that has been talked to death. 

[ezrast]

I think you're intentionally disregarding the major point Redgiant was making.  I don't want to speak for him, but I think his comment was more that healing classes (and in my opinion, tanking classes) fulfill a social role by-way-of these traditional gameplay elements.  I think it's a good point.  I play a healer-type almost exclusively in these games now.  I'm not playing healers because I love staring at bars all day.  I like the social role.  I like being relied upon.  I like contributing to my group in a way that games with an "every man for himself" play-style can't facilitate.  I have absolutely zero interest in playing any kind of MMORPG where everybody is some variation of a DPS class.  

Oh, absolutely - I tend towards group support roles myself (I abhor soloing), and that goes right along with what I've been saying. Some people like to heal, and other people don't. That is exactly why strict party comp requirements makes no sense; they ultimately prevent players from playing together, and that should be a cardinal sin in this genre.

Except in order to pull that off, you need to allow for the encounter to dynamically adjust to the configuration and power of the party that shows up. Like CoX and D2 do. But unlike almost every single other MMO, including all dikus.

This is what I'm not convinced of. If I understand you correctly, you're still assuming that certain team comps must be significantly more powerful than others (hence the requirement for difficulty scaling). But I've never been given a reason why this *must* be the case. With proper balancing (i.e. better than CoX's) and judicious use of force multipliers across classes, I don't see any fundamental reason why nearly all comps can't be viable.

Easy.  DPS and HPS are inversely related.  Similarly DPS and Armor/avoidance should be inversely related.  Then you get the spectrum of choice from glass cannon or glass healer all the way to hybrids. 

Seems like a development discussion topic that has been talked to death. 

But then every class either does well in a group (performs one thing with maximum efficiency) or solo (performs every task with passable effectiveness) but it's impossible to be good at both. If you're going the everybody-can-dps-and-tank-and-heal route, it makes more sense to give everybody the same potential DPS/HPS/survivability, and just flavor it differently.

[tmp]

But then every class either does well in a group (performs one thing with maximum efficiency) or solo (performs every task with passable effectiveness) but it's impossible to be good at both.

Not sure if it's right way to look at it -- performing one thing with maximum efficiency isn't necessarily the only way for a class to do well in a group, when you consider their maximum specialization comes at cost of necessity to have another group member to perform another specialized role. Or in other words, 1 max dps + 1 max healer ~= 2 x half healing, half dps. One isn't superior over other in total performance despite having min-maxed members.

[Nebu]

As a solo player you don't need to heal well if you kill things before they get to you.  Similarly, someone with outstanding armor/avoidance requires less healing as a soloer.  Having DPS and healing in opposition seems to balance pretty well for both groups and solo.  Yes, there would be some flavoring required, but the current problems in any game with a pvp component exist when healing classes also are able to do significant dps.  If the game is purely pve, then I don't care if everyone can dps and heal at cap.  You're just whacking foozles for a spin at the slot machine. 

[KallDrexx]

Then you get into the argument how do you balance everyone if they can heal?

I think that's the wrong question (especially since no game is truely balanced).  The real question is how you allow players to differentiate themselves while giving everyone the ability to heal.

[ezrast]

But then every class either does well in a group (performs one thing with maximum efficiency) or solo (performs every task with passable effectiveness) but it's impossible to be good at both.

Not sure if it's right way to look at it -- performing one thing with maximum efficiency isn't necessarily the only way for a class to do well in a group, when you consider their maximum specialization comes at cost of necessity to have another group member to perform another specialized role. Or in other words, 1 max dps + 1 max healer ~= 2 x half healing, half dps. One isn't superior over other in total performance despite having min-maxed members.

Only if the character can somehow fulfill each of their roles simultaneously, i.e. the heal rotation and the dps rotation are identical. Which is feasible, I guess, but it's not what the original setup was leading towards - it was "who wants to heal this time?", not "is one third and two quarters of a healer enough to get us through this dungeon?"

Then you get into the argument how do you balance everyone if they can heal?

I think that's the wrong question (especially since no game is truely balanced).  The real question is how you allow players to differentiate themselves while giving everyone the ability to heal.

The answer to the first question is "a lot more easily than when half the people can heal and half can't," and the answer to the second is "the same way games have been differentiating healer classes for years."

[Lantyssa]

That's the thing I loved about my Disciple in WAR.  It was a mixture of each and I could change up my focus somewhat during a fight simply by which abilities I used.

[Shatter]

That's the thing I loved about my Disciple in WAR.  It was a mixture of each and I could change up my focus somewhat during a fight simply by which abilities I used.

DOK's and WP's were also considered to be the most OP classes in Warhammer. 

[Venkman]

Not sure if it's right way to look at it -- performing one thing with maximum efficiency isn't necessarily the only way for a class to do well in a group, when you consider their maximum specialization comes at cost of necessity to have another group member to perform another specialized role. Or in other words, 1 max dps + 1 max healer ~= 2 x half healing, half dps. One isn't superior over other in total performance despite having min-maxed members.

Only if the character can somehow fulfill each of their roles simultaneously, i.e. the heal rotation and the dps rotation are identical. Which is feasible, I guess, but it's not what the original setup was leading towards - it was "who wants to heal this time?", not "is one third and two quarters of a healer enough to get us through this dungeon?"

This. But this is only one path to take, the path that says: starting with classes, let's do to heals what we did to CC: give it to more classes. So the role of primary healer is decided by those who show up, not who they can get at all.

Except in order to pull that off, you need to allow for the encounter to dynamically adjust to the configuration and power of the party that shows up. Like CoX and D2 do. But unlike almost every single other MMO, including all dikus.

This is what I'm not convinced of. If I understand you correctly, you're still assuming that certain team comps must be significantly more powerful than others (hence the requirement for difficulty scaling). But I've never been given a reason why this *must* be the case.

It's only the case in "like WoW but..." discussions. Raids are about boss mobs designed with the same specialization mentality that leads to primary tank/healer/DPS stuff, because your boss mobs are being positioned to the players as "best" enough to hold the "best" gear. You can't have mobs killing in one or two blows without a specialized tank to soak and taunt and a specialized primary healer(s) to keep them alive.

WoW PvP is much more fluid. I actually would like to see more PvE encounters designed like the intended version of Battlegrounds for example (not the actual outcome of course). These are much more fluid encounters requiring each class use either different abilities, or their primary ones in different ways. Nobody is standing there in an array of 40 people throwing moar dots against a pre-canned boss they only arrived at after hours of cutting through mobile time sinks.

I never got to CoX late nor endgame, but from what I've heard, they sound more like the latter than the former.

[Threash]

That's the thing I loved about my Disciple in WAR.  It was a mixture of each and I could change up my focus somewhat during a fight simply by which abilities I used.

I don't know how far you got in WAR but in the endgame there was absolutely nothing you could do besides sit in the back and heal.

[ezrast]

It's only the case in "like WoW but..." discussions. Raids are about boss mobs designed with the same specialization mentality that leads to primary tank/healer/DPS stuff...

I see; I was interpreting "like WoW" much more loosely than you meant it. I do suspect that the more fluid/tactical situations you describe will become more and more common in PvE in the future, and I think I was subconsciously arguing with that assumption in mind - the more strategic depth there is, the easier it is to find viable party compositions.

And yeah, CoX arch-villains are mostly tank-and-spank affairs, with the "trash" being more challenging than the AV itself, though if I recall correctly a couple of the villain side fights were a little more interesting. The trash fights, though, can get pretty chaotic with a fair amount of potential for situational awareness and tactical acuity, depending on your class.

[Lantyssa]

DOK's and WP's were also considered to be the most OP classes in Warhammer. 

The suggestion was that everyone would have these abilities...

I don't know how far you got in WAR but in the endgame there was absolutely nothing you could do besides sit in the back and heal.

Late teens with my DoKs.  I'm not suggesting they take everything from WAR, or even lift entire classes nor balancing from it.  In the early levels though it was fun.

(Why any PvP game has power differentiating levels anyways baffles me.)

[01101010]

I'd say if you were to build a PvP MMO, you should really conceptualize levels out rather than up.

[waylander]

Curse Network to NcSoft Korea.

I don't agree with all of his points, but what I do agree to is:

1. PVE is very boring, very repetitive, and mob XP is a joke
2. Grouping seems to be penalized, and even elite mob grinding isn't good XP
3. Quest chain rewards for exp and loot are way out of whack
4. Itemization is horribad!
5. RVR/Forts have poor performance, and the rewards are terrible
6. The PVE death penalty is ridiculous

If they don't fix those things in short order, then I see AION USA taking a similar path that Warhammer and AOC had with a good initial launch while bleeding subs over the first six months. All three games basically cater to the same population, and that population has twice said that RVR/Siege games can't have a bad grind to level, RVR/Sieges need to have good performance, and the PVP end game needs to feel rewarding.

When you run out of quests as you get higher in levels the thought of grinding mobs that give 17k exp isn't too appealing when you need 15, 25, etc MILLION to level.

[Checkers]

I don't get complaints about the death penalty.  The penalty for PvP deaths is 1 kinah.  I think it's reasonable and even less irritating than most death penalty systems.  I rarely die without feeling grateful that I don't have to worry about repairing my gear, for example.