Deliver us from Healer/Nuker/Tank

[pxib]

Are we stuck with this trinity and its hybrids? Are they inherent in the combat mechanic? If not, what other metrics might  measure "classes" (whether game defined or skill selected) besides their suvivability and damage capacity? Why are Nukers so popular that groups must constantly "looking for healer/tank"? Can that popularity be diffused without being defused?

[Typhon]

As long as the base mechanic for players to interact with npc's that grant xp is damage I think games are going to be a variation of classes that do damage (+/-) and damage suppression (active/passive), i.e. nuker/healer and enchanter/tank.

Specialization:  One way to divert player attention from the holy trinity (quaternary, whatever) is to not use specialists.  One way to do this would be to simply not have classes that could do combat healing, and balance combat based on that.

Different Player/NPC interaction:  Another way to get away from the holy trinity is to add additional modes of interaction with NPCs.
Example 1: a thief class must sneak into a camp and steal an item to gain exp.  PC interacts with NPC by avoiding them.
Example 2: a holy man must convert a town to the worship of his god while surviving/neutralizing agents of the opposite faction. PC interacts with NPC via influence.

I'm sure there are other examples, but I think the first question that gets raised with 2 is, do players want a more sophisticated (and therefore more complicated) game?  Do they want to do more then just bash something over the head?  What percentage of your players want this?

[Merusk]

Will we be delivered from it? No. In WoW things were looking headed away from it, because all of the characters have fairly similar HP pools.  You can allow 'squishies' to take a few hits and absorb some damage - until you hit the 55+ game.  Then it becomes heal/tank/nuke. However, even before that point you still find players will only do instances with 'the optimal!' group.  I don't think anyone - devs or players - are able to think outside the box at this point.

 If you try, people will bitch that their percieved class doesn't heal/nuke/tank well enough and hey, why don't I have a bazillion more hp/ac mp/damage than that guy, whose role is 'other than mine.'

As to the scarcity of Healers: In a number of games it's just damn boring. Not many games give you things to do besides watch HP bars and make sure they don't hit 0. Also, healing classes usualy do such pitiful damage (Because of the trinity mindset) that they level so slow the majority who try them get frustrated and quit long before capping-out.  It's also percieved as an effiminate role,  because (of course) it's in-game nurturing, and "only women want to help people."  Men should be out there nuking/ bazooking/ hacking and slashing shit up, getting things done!  So you'll have very few people attracted to the role.

[Sunbury]

Asheron's Call 1 didn't have a dedicated healer class, since it was skill based on class based.

All melee could heal themselves with healing kits (including in combat) if they bought that skill.

A melee class could even buy the Life Magic skill and heal themselves and others.   In fact almost every standard template included Life magic, but more for the debuffs than for the healing.  Potions were also fairly common, and endlessly usable in combat.

I don't think anyone played as a pure healer, you technically could if you wanted to.   Also you could kill mobs using only Life magic, since it had drains and damage spells also.

This was all countered in AC1 by NOT having insane hitpoints at high levels like every other game.  In AC1 you started with between 5-50 hp (your choice based on attribute allocation), and grew when all buffed around 400ish.

It was also balanced by having to break combat, do a healing animation, then restart combat, during which you were more vulnerable.  So one had to decide when to do it.  Also heal was likely to fail if healing from low health.

[Sky]

It's based on the way the world works. Why would it go away? What would replace it?

And that's not the trinity from EQ, anyway. So there's one delivery for you, in a way.

How about moving away from games based on killing altogether?

[tazelbain]

Find a replacement for hit points.

[El Gallo]

AC1 also had little to no grouping beyond "a few people soloing together" at least when I played it (for a few months after release).  The thing about tank-heal-dps is that it is a solid foundation upon which to build a game based on cooperation and interdependence.  Now, you don't have to have a cooperative or interdependent game, but then you have to justify yoru monthly fee and find some other way to ensure retention. 

[shiznitz]

You don't need to replace hit points, just make them fixed at character creation. The tank/healer paradigm is a result of the level-based progression system. A UO/AC1 skill based system could solve alot of the exponential power curve problems. I loved how in UO that even a maxed character could die from enough low level mobs.

[Xilren's Twin]

Are we stuck with this trinity and its hybrids? Are they inherent in the combat mechanic? If not, what other metrics might  measure "classes" (whether game defined or skill selected) besides their suvivability and damage capacity? Why are Nukers so popular that groups must constantly "looking for healer/tank"? Can that popularity be diffused without being defused?

If you are going with a strict class based system of static skill sets, a level based progression/power curve and, most importantly, primary focus on combat then yes, you're pretty well stuck with the trinity.  You're optons are to go with a different system, like GW and their swappable skills, or a fully skill based system

OR

Stop making combat not only be 95% plus of your gameplay but also having only two combat outcomes, victory or death.

Xilren
Edit: english is hard

[Numtini]

If we were rescued, would we really be happy? There will either always be roles that are required or it will just be a horde of DPS classes (or templates) zerging (or soloing). 

I think WOW's done a good job at offering variability for healing classes. I can fill multiple roles with my two healers. And I have no trouble soloing.

Also, from what i remember, the original Holy Trinity was Warrior, Cleric, and Chanter. It was mez, not DPS.

[HaemishM]

The problem stems from the assumption that combat has to be mostly hits, i.e. that all characters need to start with a base 50% chance to hit the target and go up from there. There is no defense involved, no active thought put towards having to defend yourself from attacks. Everything either hits or misses, or is automatically parried.

Combat needs to be about manuevering for the right shot and taking it when it's offered. It needs to be about careful (or frenetic) avoidance of damage as opposed to absorbtion of damage. You'll never get away from the tank paradigm if damage absorption is more efficient than damage avoidance.

From a realistic perspective, damage avoidance in melee combat SHOULD be preferable and more efficient. In real melee combat, getting whacked with a sword, even if it didn't penetrate your armor, should stun you for a second. It should knock you off your corn flakes, reeling for a second. But in MMOG's, it's actually better to take a hit and absorb the damage than it is to miss. I thought City of Heroes might make this up with the scrapper Super Reflexes set, but it doesn't. In real melee combat, not getting hit means you don't have any shock to the system.

Twitch would help that a lot, but it isn't a panacea. You could still make defense important in a non-twitchy system, just by making dodging/parrying/damage avoidance an active necessity, as well as making hits stun the player or open them up to more hits.

[Sky]

It's no surprise I'd rather duck behind a parapet and let a grenade sail over my head than rely on my catassed level to roll the dice for me while I sit drooling, awaiting the outcome passively.

Also,

[shiznitz]

It's no surprise I'd rather duck behind a parapet and let a grenade sail over my head than rely on my catassed level to roll the dice for me while I sit drooling, awaiting the outcome passively.

Also,

DDO is going to ROCK!

[Sky]

I'm in several beta tests ;)

[El Gallo]

I'll take that as an admission that DDO won't have grenades and will therefore suck!

[Dren]

If your only concern is the actual make-up of the group then I'd suggest the following for WoW (since that is what I'm currently playing and most familiar with.)

Presenting Theme Based Instancing:

- Evil Corrupted Caverns! - All holy effects cause pain to the user and/or cut by 3/4 effectiveness.  Magical Healing?  Uh uh.  Bandages?  Yep.
- Nexus of Anti-Magus - All arcane magics cause pain to the user and/or cut by 3/4 effectiveness.  Mages need not enter.
- Antielemental Core - All elemental magics cause pain to the user and/or cut by 3/4 effectiveness.  Nerf of a lifetime.
- Hive of physical damage resistant creatures (ok, I'm running out of names or just don't care anymore) - Physical attacks are reduced by 3/4 and reflected damage 1/4 of each strike.

Each of these instances would have nice rewards that people WILL want so now you are forcing people to think differently about group mix.  The optimum group has now changed depending on what instance you want to hit for that week, etc. 

To make it more interesting, make many of the rewards for each instance the best rewards for the classes that are restricted in that instance.  Forced cooperation anyone?

Just an idea.

[Alkiera]

To make it more interesting, make many of the rewards for each instance the best rewards for the classes that are restricted in that instance.  Forced cooperation anyone?

I liked your idea until you got to this line.  I saw it coming, was was cringing in preperation.  I got most of the way thru, and you hadn't said it yet, so I almost started to breathe easy... and then you said it.

What kind of magical item would be stored in an anti-arcane-magic nexus?  Would the anti-magic nature of the place drain it of power?  besides that, there's the matter of wanting items in a place where you are completely, or nearly completely, useless.  Like being an enchanter on a big mob raid in EQ...  Where you'd hit your 'make my buff hit everyone in range' AA ability, then hit the big mana regen power, another chanter would do the same with the group haste power, and then you'd go /autofollow on someone because a monk, necro, SK, or bard was single-pulling everything.  You sucked at damage, often stuff in the zone(Kael, Skyshrine, snake place on the moon) was immune to your CC effects, you'd already buffed everyone, and your debuffs were worthless if a shaman was in the raid.

Getting a group together so they can kill stuff while you twiddle your thumbs and collect lewts is a non-functional idea.  Getting a pickup group for such a place will be nigh impossible without a reward of some kind for the people actually fighting.  Say, you can only get in if you have a mage in the group, but kills inside are worth more exp than normal for the level, for everyone but the mage.  So you'd want to do your own instances, for the items, and other instances, for the nice exp.  Or set it up so everyone gets a quest at the begining, which is completed by getting the mage to the crystal of item-handing-out or whatever at the end, with a big exp/cash/faction reward.  You need to set it up so people would rather do these, if possible, than just hunt somewhere the mage would be useful for exp.

Alkiera

[Krakrok]

Star Wars: Obi-wan on the Xbox has a pretty good sword attack/block system. Granted it's with lightsabers but at least your sword hits the enemy sword and it's not both of you flailing around in mid air while the dice roll. I don't remember but Jedi Academy II probably had a similar mechanic. The thumb stick might be more conducive to moving the lightsaber around though as it feels pretty natural.

Is it so much to ask for swords that actually hit each other? Even if you only fake it via graphics on the client side.

[Sky]

I hate forced grouping. If a game has to force grouping by restricting gameplay, it's failed. EQ2 is the ultimate bag of shit in that regard.

Games like Planetside reward grouping while not penalizing solo play. It's just that four guys working together are going to steamroller a guy playing alone, but four guys playing alone can sometimes beat four guys playing together. Or a solo player can support a group of players with peripheral tactics, setting up towers and AMS, etc. This also has a nice side effect, you can swap roles on the fly to adapt to the situation, instead of being stuck in a single role so you need other people to play.

You need other people to play because it's more fun, not because the game code says so.

And combat...if you hit someone, you hit them. They may have mitigation via armor, but you hit if you hit. If you miss, say they duck behind the parapet I mentioned earlier, you miss. "Twitch" gameplay is really the only style that makes sense for combat, imo. Otherwise it gets boring fast and rewards the folks who play the longest, which is a pretty naked way of saying you have to buy your power, directly or indirectly, and that's lame, not to mention it doesn't translate across titles in the genre, unlike FPS skills.

[Lum]

Ah, to get away from Three Boring Classes...

[schild]

Boring classes are a symptom of a boring game. You could make the most amazing class ever...EVER - and if the game wouldn't let you do all the things your brain says the class should do it wouldn't live up to expectations. Oh, and it would be boring. Like walking around in Guild Wars against invisible walls.

Boring groups are a symptom of everyone thinking everyone else is of the LCD. Odds are that the drooling retard on the other computer saying "ur" and "lolfagz" and eating urine cakes thinks you are some sort of mongoloid fucker who spells everything out and shouldn't be playing with his "High Technology."

As far as the whole "combat sucks" thing happening here... 
 

Aren't they cute?

[Xanthippe]

For a level based, killing mobs kind of game, City of Heroes/City of Villains - at least in the 32 and below game - does not mandate this set.  Certainly City of Villains does not - there is no "tank" class nor a "healer" class.

There's damage, crowd control, debuffing, buffing (which includes healing) and pet powers (I might be missing one or two).  The powersets are combinations of these: masterminds are pet/buff, dominators are medium damage/control, brutes are heavy damage/self buff, corrupters are medium damage/buff, stalkers are stealth/damage. 

Brutes can tank, if there's a buffer or two in the group who can heal, but it's not required.  There are many different ways to play, depending upon what the group makeup is.  I have rarely been in a group where we needed a particular powerset to be successful; some group makeups are more successful than others.

But the game hasn't been out that long, maybe it's just that the min/maxers haven't dictated what The Way To Play Is.

My experience with City of Heroes was similar, although I never participated in the practice known as "bridging" (I'm not exactly sure what it was, but I assume it was something similar to that mind-numbingly-boring xp spawn of lawn gnomes in Modernagrav in DAOC - a way to level quickly with little risk), and my highest there is level 32.  I don't know what the whole Hamidon thing brings to the game, and how that affects things (the big endgame monster that drops elite goodies).

And yes, they are cute but what are they?

[Mr_PeaCH]

Some thoughts in no particular order...

collision detection

twitch combat

no healing during combat if 'nukers' magic is being used  (or large chance to fizzle)  'healers' compensated with more in a crowd control role and/or being armored and effective in combat

frail, unarmored nukers go down in one hit (or thereabouts)

friendly fire very real and dangerous (archers and nukers; esp. AOE stuff)

[Soln]

Find a replacement for hit points.

Find a way to replace combat as the only real mode of experience gain.

[Murgos]

Healer, Nuker and Tank are all artifacts of health value manipulation.

One lowers other peoples health values quickly (nuker), one is difficult to lower the value on (tank) and the third raises the value (healer).  If you can think of other things to do with the number then you can have a new meaningful class.

Or, get rid of the health bar.

[Lt.Dan]

What you need is three health bars, one for body, one for mind and one for actions.  That'd be cool.  Then you could make some damage permanent and only able to healed by a fourth class. That'd be cool too.

[El Gallo]

Thread has been won! GG, next map.

[Margalis]

They key problem is aggro control. The only reason the holy trinity exists is that tanks can reliably keep aggro. Remove that ability and your trinity is shot to hell.

Take any game with that trinity, makes mobs attack characters on a purely random bases, and the holy trinity will immediately go away.

Edit: The underlying problem is that combat is entirely predictable and is easily min/maxed. You could create a game where combat was predictable and not have a holy trinity, but you would still have an obvious "best" configuration. If you know exactly what will happen and every combat is basically exactly the same people will quickly hit upon whatever works best. The real solution is make combat less predictable.

[Pococurante]

I wouldn't call the trinity a factor of hp management as much as I would class-based systems.  Right?  I think the earlier post was dead-on - take a page from Raph and go with skills/point pools.  If I want to template myself as a healer that's my business, not some idiot socially-stunted dev who thinks I can't make my own friends.

I'm also very sympathetic to the argument that when everyone can do everything no one needs each other anymore.  But I then have a Signe moment and condemn them all to eating raw pumpkin with a propane torch as utensil - slim down the point pool if it's that bad. (Signe did I say it right? ;) )

I really do not think we'll see the global network infrastructure that can truly implement defense twitch in the near future.  Not unless someone has finally perfected that negative ping code.  I really wish you console freaks would stop demanding the speed of electricity from Asia to Europe to the US (sorry AUS - you guys chose to identify with Asia so suck it up) defy physics as we understand it today... :P

Console people - adrenalin addiction is real.  Mainline in the privacy of your home if you have to but please, hide the needles from the children.

[Trippy]

I wouldn't call the trinity a factor of hp management as much as I would class-based systems.  Right?

Not really. A skill-based system might give you more flexibility in defining your role but the archetypes are still there, they just might not be explicitly labeled and in the case of "unbalanced" skill-based systems you might be able to be more than one archetype (aka the "tank mage").

As others have said, the problem revolves around this statement for defeating Lum's "Mobile Bags of Improvement" (MBI):

player's damage per unit time as a percentage of MBI's hit points > MBI's damage per unit time as a percentage of player's hit points

The different archetypes spring up from manipulating the various numbers on either side of that statement. You can tweak things so that certain archetypes disappear (e.g. give everybody the same hps and damage mitigation to remove tanks) but everything will still revolve around damage and hit points. The other alternative, like others have said, is to give players other means of advancement outside of popping MBIs (assuming we're talking about RPGs).

Edit: fixed typo

[Trippy]

They key problem is aggro control. The only reason the holy trinity exists is that tanks can reliably keep aggro. Remove that ability and your trinity is shot to hell.

Take any game with that trinity, makes mobs attack characters on a purely random bases, and the holy trinity will immediately go away.

Actually no. PlanetSide, which is pure PvP combat still has the role of the tank in infantry combat (i.e. the Maxes).

[Krakrok]

Actually no. PlanetSide, which is pure PvP combat still has the role of the tank in infantry combat (i.e. the Maxes).

No, in Planetside, tanks really ARE tanks :P

Maxes aren't any different than a regular infantry in my view. It's just a different configuration of variables like more armor + more ammo + special mode - turning time - flexibility (base caps/vehicles/selfrepair) - etc.. All the "infantry" classes in Planetside are just slider bar variables on how much ammo you want to carry, how much damage you can do, how much armor you want, and how fast you want to be able to move. The more you take in one the less you get in everything else. And pretty much three shots from the right gun against your loadout will kill you.

So you have the following and say 510 points to spend on those four "attributes":
-Damage 0-255
-Speed 0-255
-Ammo 0-255
-Armor 0-255

Something that might be interesting would be the Planetside expanding flexibility level system coupled with the Guild Wars expanding flexibility skill system. You fill up your Planetside inventory with Guild Wars skills. Maybe the more powerful the "skill" the more blocks it takes up in the inventory. It might make an interesting way to impliment fantasy RPG style elements (spells) in a Planetside style game without being your generic Hexen "shoot the magic staff instead of the gun" FPS.

[Margalis]

Planetside isn't a good example. In real life we have tanks for a reason. The problem is not tanks. That whole combined arms thing exists for a reason. The army has tanks, which are good up close and have good defense. Then it has missiles, which are basically nukers. Then there are mechanics, aka healers. But then there are infantry for taking over cities, medics, etc.

In any game that represents warfare of some sort you are going to see tanks. And you are going to see specialization. That's the nature of war really. My point is that the more you can control the situation, the more specialization you see.

Air force guys learn how to use guns because there is a chance they will have to do some ground fighting. If they could control the situation 100% and never have to fight without planes they would just skip that entirely. Mechanics need to know how to handle guns for the same reason. And it's nice if someone in a tank crew knows some mechanics, even if they aren't a mechanic. Because you never know when you need to fix something or get into some situation you didn't quite expect.

If you can exactly control and predict the situation having well-rounded guys doesn't make sense. Specialists have higher strengths, but also higher weaknesses. If you can avoid the weakness by controlling the situation obviously the high strength is what matters. If you can't control the situation well the weaknesses come into play and it encourages jack of all trades.

But even that isn't the whole story. Control = specialization is one part. But then you have, even if everyone is very specialized, how many specializations are there? There doesn't have to be three. For example in a game where you encounter group mobs a lot there may be 4: nuker, healer, tank, crowd controller. In a game where you have to take over enemy bases there may be a thief/spy class.

So there are really 2 things in play. To summarize, because it's a bit unclear:

The more you can control and predict the situation, the more speciailzed roles can be because you can effectively eliminate their weaknesses.

The number of different specializations depends on the game mechanics.

My personal opinion is that over-specialization is bad because it leads to the perfect group syndrome, where one configuration is just way better than others and certain classes are shunned.

[Trippy]

Actually no. PlanetSide, which is pure PvP combat still has the role of the tank in infantry combat (i.e. the Maxes).

No, in Planetside, tanks really ARE tanks :P

That's why I said infantry combat.

Maxes aren't any different than a regular infantry in my view. It's just a different configuration of variables like more armor + more ammo + special mode - turning time - flexibility (base caps/vehicles/selfrepair) - etc.. All the "infantry" classes in Planetside are just slider bar variables on how much ammo you want to carry, how much damage you can do, how much armor you want, and how fast you want to be able to move. The more you take in one the less you get in everything else. And pretty much three shots from the right gun against your loadout will kill you.

So you have the following and say 510 points to spend on those four "attributes":
-Damage 0-255
-Speed 0-255
-Ammo 0-255
-Armor 0-255

Maxes have high damage (though they only do high damage against one type of target), high movement speed (run mode), large inventories for ammo, special armor abilities (jump jets, shields) and over triple the armor of the next highest armor infantry cert. Hence the uberness of "Max Crash Teams". They are actually more like tank mages than pure tanks given how powerful they are. Their disadvantages include relatively long reequip time on their armor (so you can't zerg Maxes), slow turning speed (vulnerable to circle strafing), and the inability to do anything other than fire their weapon (i.e. can't repair or use a medical applicator on themselves or others, can't hack, etc.) so they need help if they want to survive for extended periods of time. But they are a true tank class because of their high armor. When you need some sort of infanty to soak up a lot of damage you send in your Maxes.

[Hellinar]

Get rid of the destination and focus on the journey

Most MMORPGs are implicitly focused on the destination. What level did I reach today? Or at least, how many bubbles did a get towards the next level? As long as that is the case, there is pressure to min/max, and thus look for an “optimal” group. And designers respond by tuning experience gain to an optimal group. The holy trinity rules.

What I want to see is a MMORPG that focuses on how you get to the next level, not how fast.  A MMORPG with really different classes and races, with quite different ways of getting to the experience cap. Soft cap experience and loot gain to something not far above the expected average leveling speed. Sure, someone can focus on being the highest level around, but they won’t be months ahead of the curve.

Without a cap, the only way to prevent one class being “uber” is to nerf their skills or equipment. One slight slip, just one “exploit”, and everything is thrown out of whack. So I never get to play the rogue who lives by stealth and pickpocketing. Too exploitable. The only way to slow people on their way to the next level is to make encounters just doable with optimal group. Hence the holy trinity. In a capped game, most combinations would work in some way on an encounter, with each providing a different play experience. I play these games for Adventure, or try to. And that means it’s the journey, not the destination that counts.