Deliver us from Healer/Nuker/Tank

[Margalis]

The problem with most solutions in MMORPGs is they don't recognize the correct problem. As I pointed out, H/N/T is actually two very distinct problems.

#1: There are only three main specializations

#2: Most games encourage extreme specialization

When people talk about the glory days of AC, they are mostly addressing #2. When people talk about EQ having more than 3 main classes, that is addressing #1.

To get rid of healer/nuker/tank you can change the dynamics to make other specializations important, or you can discourage specialization.

I do not but the notion that as long as the game revolves around HP there will always be healer, nuker, tank. There are obvious counter-examples. Until some changes were made in FFXI Thief was just as important as nuker to most high level groups, just because of some specific game rules. (Hate management) From what I understand in EQ crowd control was very important. In a game where positioning matters big fat guys that can stand in the way of other guys might be important. They wouldn't draw aggro or get hit, just be annoying. Like in AC2 where they had those dudes that could put up walls.

[Typhon]

or you can discourage specialization.

Specialization:  One way to divert player attention from the holy trinity (quaternary, whatever) is to not use specialists.

I agree.  If every class is a hybrid, and no class is a specialist, there is no trinity.  The concern would be how to balance the tank mage.  The benefit might be more fluid gameplay - the 'tank' is the person who currently has the most hitpoints, the 'healer' is the person who is not in position to attack or who's attack is recharging.  Course, this requires players who have some capacity to think on their feet.  It would widen the gap between good players and not so good.

[Jimbo]

AC1 had a couple of the spec's going for it too.  If you hit a critter in the back it would do more damage than hitting it in the front (especially if it had a shield), so fighting against a wall or each others back was pretty common.  Buff management was essential, in that you would rock out and wipe the floor clean while buffed, but if your buff went down you were dead meat.  But it was more fluid in that every encounter didn't need the holy trinity...and then it might be something weird like someone with a butt load of jump or a buttload of lockpicking that was needed on a certain quest or dungeon.  Of course my time with AC1 was when it was with the new pk light (pink people) and the new tradeskills.  It sure wasn't like that the first year of AC.

Of course at one time AC and UO seemed the more casual friendly, the one where you could log on, get something done in 30 mins and actually advance and log out.  Not sure if it is that way still.

Just thinking out loud, but AC1, UO, Planetside, WWIIOnline, Toontown all don't have the unholy trinity in it as far as I can remember.

[Tige]

The Tank, Healer and Nuker debate needs to be put on the back burner for awhile and attention payed to the rest of the "world".  It has been allowed to dominate and steer MMOGs for too long at the expense of the rest of the game.

At the very least we should have a decent mounted and sea-going combat.  Overall mounts, ships and aerial vehicles need do more than take you from zone to zone. 

[Sky]

The Tank, Healer and Nuker debate needs to be put on the back burner for awhile and attention payed to the rest of the "world".  It has been allowed to dominate and steer MMOGs for too long at the expense of the rest of the game.

At the very least we should have a decent mounted and sea-going combat.  Overall mounts, ships and aerial vehicles need do more than take you from zone to zone. 

I like the cut of your jib, sailor. This post should be bronzed and put in the lobby of every mmo dev.

And everyone should be playing Planetside to see how mmo pvp should work. Because a lot of that line of thought went into PS.

[Krakrok]

Planetside screwed the pooch with their bullshit CaveWar expansion. It should have been PlanetSide: Waterworld with resources. A jetski with missles isn't a tank, a healer, OR a nuker.

[shiznitz]

Agreed. The cave expansion actually led me to quit. We didn't more places to fight. We needed more cool shit to fight with.

[Sky]

I completely agree on the boneheadedness of the cave expansion.

[5150]

I completely agree on the boneheadedness of the cave expansion.

Mind if I add BFR's to the list?

[Sky]

I thought those were a decent addition. But don't you need x amount of Cave kills to get one? Blah.

[Azazel]

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

As I understand it, there's a pipe under the Pacific that goes from Sydney to (I think) L.A., if that's what you're talking about.. if not, I don't have a clue what you're on about..

Planetside was nigh unplayable from here though. It would have been okay for free, but not for monthly money.

[Righ]

Speed of light in glass fibre = 200 000 km/sec

Circumference of earth = 40 000 km

Total round-trip delay to far side of the planet and back = 40 000/200 000 = 200ms

Which is too slow. More details in this rather good explanation:

http://www.stuartcheshire.org/papers/LatencyQuest.html

[Sky]

My friend plays BF1942 at about 200ms delay on his crappy copper. He's actually great at the game because he has learned to compensate for the lag somehow. When I was on dialup, I found anything over 150ms to be getting a bit too slow. In PS, you could probably play a support role, though.

[5150]

I thought those were a decent addition. But don't you need x amount of Cave kills to get one? Blah.

Yep, something like 100 'unique' kills and 5 captures

Heres the kicker though, 'unique' kills were, on release I think, 100 completely different people. Since this was a wee bit on the hard side it got changed down to 'not the same guy within 20 mins of killing him the last time' or something similar.

The 5 captures had to be 'significantly contested' I dont know the specifics, but the upshot is that you had to have quite a little skirmish down there for a capture to qualify

The kills were therefore the easy bit

Don't get me wrong, I got my biffer (BFR) imprint (because it was something to do) but I've never certed it (and I doubt I ever will because I like my other certs too much). I like the concept but unfortunately (at least if you play TR with our obsession with footzerging) they tend to kill off a decent fight because of how much damage they do (and how easy it is to pull one compared to the main battle tanks).

Granted it can be easy to kill one but the situation has to be just right unless you specifically cert for biffer jihad (generally the easy ones to kill are n00b pilots who havent worked out that they need ground support to keep the grunts out from under/behind them - I actually have more luck/fun killing a bailing gunner then killing the biffer.

The flight varients are just stupid though, they are basically just jack-in-the-box tanks (jump up and attack, land and regen, rinse, repeat). Also difficult to kill them because they get usually jump away really easily.

As an aside I used to play Quake/Teamfortress on any server with a 400 ping or less back in my dialup days (and they were never typicallyy less than 200). Front line grunt in PS is probably unrealistic on a 200 ping but you could probably stealth/eng, stealth/med, eng or med with a 200 ping ok - not the most exciting gameplay I grant you.....

[Krakrok]

they tend to kill off a decent fight because of how much damage they do (and how easy it is to pull one compared to the main battle tanks).

Actually, I found the opposite to be true most of the time. After BFRs were added it seemed like there were actual battle lines that formed. With BFRs on both sides, the battle lines shift back and forth between bases trading fire. I can see where they do kill some fighting inside base walls but that was about it.

[Trippy]

As an aside I used to play Quake/Teamfortress on any server with a 400 ping or less back in my dialup days (and they were never typicallyy less than 200). Front line grunt in PS is probably unrealistic on a 200 ping but you could probably stealth/eng, stealth/med, eng or med with a 200 ping ok - not the most exciting gameplay I grant you.....

PlanetSide uses client side hit detection so your ping doesn't matter a whole lot as long as it's within a reasonable range.

[5150]

they tend to kill off a decent fight because of how much damage they do (and how easy it is to pull one compared to the main battle tanks).

Actually, I found the opposite to be true most of the time. After BFRs were added it seemed like there were actual battle lines that formed. With BFRs on both sides, the battle lines shift back and forth between bases trading fire. I can see where they do kill some fighting inside base walls but that was about it.

Only if both sides had an [almost] equal number of biffers then maybe

As an aside I used to play Quake/Teamfortress on any server with a 400 ping or less back in my dialup days (and they were never typicallyy less than 200). Front line grunt in PS is probably unrealistic on a 200 ping but you could probably stealth/eng, stealth/med, eng or med with a 200 ping ok - not the most exciting gameplay I grant you.....

PlanetSide uses client side hit detection so your ping doesn't matter a whole lot as long as it's within a reasonable range.

Unfortunately the client tends to get it wrong (certainly as far as getting run over by vehicles is concerned)