In the case of SW:TOR, I think the Holy Trinity will hurt the game — it’s going to destroy the identity of the classes. The Sith Inquisitor, previously referred to as the class inspired by Emperor Palpatine, is going to be a healer? Don’t know about you, but I don’t associate the Emperor with life-giving magic.

The feller on the podcast said that if everyone is the same (i.e. all DPS) it results in chaos… well I wouldn’t mind a little chaos in my Star Wars battles. It should be chaotic. It’s a battle. It’s silly how in WoW everyone stands in a predefined position, and the action is carefully choreographed like a square dance.

Colby here – I’m the guy that posed that MMO trinity question in the podcast. Sorry it’s taken me so long to jump in to the comments, but I’m grateful that there’s a space to continue the discussion!

Admittedly, I did feel slightly put off by Josh’s initial response (ala seamonkey’s comment), but as the conversation continued, I think Josh did a good job of addressing the concern. On the one hand, he’s right. Arthas vs. Super Hero lone wolf just doesn’t really work in an MMO, which is all about community and playing with friends. And it’s also true that the LOTR-esque “group of companions team up to conquer an evil greater than any of them individually” can also be a great story. I think the thing that makes it a little hard to swallow in WoW (and especially ToR, more on that later) is that the Warcraft universe has a great hero/villain pedigree, and having invested a lot of time and interest into that universe, it chafes just a bit to not be able to rise to the level of those heroes, and instead always be weaker than them. I’d love to go toe to toe with Illidan. I’m sure Malfurion, Thrall, or Tyrande could. But no matter how heroic I may be, I’ll never be as cool as them. Know what I mean?

Anyway, the real meat of the question, and of this conversation, was more about getting away from the trinity, and I’m glad to see that I’m not alone in my desires. I agree with Josh that MMO’s should largely be about co-operating with your teammates and pulling off difficult feats with coordinated efforts, but I do think there can be other/better options than just the tank/healer/dps roles. Others have offered some good reasoning and suggestions in this thread already, but I’m particularly fond of the idea of getting rid of “aggro” as we typically think about it, and the healer role as well. Anyone who plays MMO’s knows that it’s always tougher to find tanks and healers than dps, and the reason is obvious: most people have more fun hitting/shooting the bad guys than being hit by the bad guy and/or playing heal bot for your friends (or even worse, for a bunch of strangers). Sure, there are people who enjoy being a tank or healer, but they’re the exception to the rule, generally speaking, so why not allow all classes to have some utility (cc, debuff, buff) and then dps about on par with each other, giving everyone very large health pools and some self heal ability, and let them go to town?

Some would argue that if everyone’s role was essentially the same that it would get boring. Perhaps. I don’t think I would feel that way. After all, there’s still a huge difference in playstyle between, say, a Jedi Knight and a Smuggler. Just because their dps is roughly the same doesn’t mean the difference between the two classes is negligible. Think of TF2: lots of different classes, lots of different ways to play, but by and large, everyone (with maybe the exception of the Medic) is essentially doing the same thing (killing the enemy); they’re just going about it in very different ways, and it works great.

In the end, particularly with Star Wars, I really hope they can get away from the Trinity style (though unless something changes between now and launch, it doesn’t look like they will). Standing behind the Vader equivalent and stabbing him over and over with my lightsaber would just be silly, frankly. I’m sure they could get it to the point where even boss battles were more about our group taking on the boss and his group (army?), where everyone can feel both like they’re part of a team and yet still heroic.

P.S. Maybe there’s still time to get Bioware to change their minds here… to the ToR forums! Charge!!!

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The MMO question of Trinity or not. I’m on the side of needing something new. The trinity breaks down because it has unequal parts. Healing seems to always be the weakest part. Regardless of what mmo you are playing if it employs the trinity you are playing the same game. You are playing the UI game, target UI health bar, cast heal. Timmins was spot on. I had a longer comment but the website ate it. Sorry.

As for the “holy trinity” thing. The reason that everybody thinks that the trinity is such a good things is because that is pretty much the only way it has been done in modern mmos. And it has more to do with the idea of managing aggro than that it has to do with being the best way to do it. In a game that does not do “aggro” in the traditional mmo sense I believe a system that does not use the “holy trinity” could work very well.

Love the podcast!

I’d love to see further developments of the ‘living world’ idea. Too many MMO’s currently seem to be trying to shoehorn a single player experience into a multi player field. You perform the same quests as everyone else, you see the same sights as everyone else, and because of that we end up with people being forced into the same old specializations of healer, tank and DPS.

Contrast that with Wurm, where a quest can vary between persuading a bunch of people to build a statue in your honour, digging a tunnel to your village, or just trying to get two angry cattle up a steep hill, and the idea of a healer, tank and DPS becomes completely nonsensical.

One game i’m reminded of is Tabula Rasa (sadly not around any more), where at the beginning of the game each class got a Shotgun for close range Cone Damage attacks, a pistol for medium range attacks, and a rifle for long range. These skills were upgradeable to the point where each class could be an effective damage dealer, in all kinds of situations and then depending on what classes you chose later on you essentially got better at a particular aspect of combat. In the late levels (40 or so) it even got the point where specific classes would have abilities that would damage specific enemies better, so no matter what archetype you chose you were still needed in the combat.

For instance I remember going into a dungeon type area, and in the early parts the team members each kind of did their own thing, where I as the healer occasionally had to use my healing tool to make sure everyone’s health was alright. If I’m not mistaken however each class had the ability to use items to heal themselves, it’s just that medics did it better. Later on in the instance we would eventually get to a difficult point where we would essentially drop into a formation where the class based combat mechanics were more viable than everyone running around doing their own thing. In that particular game, the role of the tank however was more like a general in that he would tackle the harder enemies. While we did somewhat fall into that trinity again, as the healer I had the ability to switch to a weapon and be just as effective in combat as the other guys. In this way while the team fighting together was no doubt the strongest option, each player had the ability to have that save the day moment in each fight.

I was more excited about TOR until this E3, where the point that really struck home with me was that if I wanted to I could play this game completely by myself if I wanted. however the gameplay footage shown seemed to fall back on the customs established by WOW and Everquest. I’m hoping that up until the release Bioware will show more the particular abilities for each character and how each can be a well rounded fighter.

The problem with the tank-healer-dps configuration is simple: The healer is bored. The dps doesn’t get to use all of the interesting game mechanics to keep themselves alive, and the tank’s role is higher pressure than many people want to be subjected to, and often you will die through no fault of your own.

Just try running a wow instance, at appropriate level, with a hunter, a warlock, and a mage. (or any other 3 ranged dps, really) It’s very doable. And it is very interesting, because of several reasons: everyone is responsible for their own survival, and the fight discussions for tough pulls sounds more like a team fortress 2 strategy discussion than a basic tank and spank.

What I would love is for TOR to focus, instead of turning group play into a mess of aoe and a bunch of stuff stacked in front of the tank so you can’t even see who is who, to a more tactical feeling setup, like a battleground plays out, where there are, say, 4 of you, 7 of them, and you need to coordinate how we will work together to keep all these guys from effectively focusing us down one at a time, while letting us focus them down.

And in a circumstance like this, it WOULD feel like an epic confrontation. Any one of you COULD be facing arthas down. Arthas wouldn’t be alone, and maybe you would need a bit of help against arthas in the form of buffs from party members, and maybe the occasional frost nova so that he doesn’t overwhelm

This would also deal with the massive problem that mmos have: how do we make all the classes viable for soloing, given that when you are alone, a priest can’t heal mobs to death? wow basically does it by making the healing capable classes into two or more completely different classes where it is ridiculous to try solo questing as a holy paladin at level 70.

Remove healer completely, make everyone responsible largely for their own survival, and make the fights more about crowd control, positioning, and other tactics. Just like a battleground generally works out, but without the pressure of playing against real people, which a lot of people really aren’t into.

Nice podcast guy… thanks!

As for the Tank/Healer/DPS trinity in RPGs it only exists because the games are built that way. You can still have a game that requires teamwork and doesn’t follow that familiar formula. In fact, playing WoW with a less than conventional party can be quite an interesting problem-solving experience and require even more teamwork than the proven “best practices” trinity approach.

But to the question, “will games always use this approach” I say it doesn’t have to be this way, but it’s also hard to break conventions without upsetting people. It depends on the game though. Imagine if Portal was turned into a class based MMO with regenerating health. No need for a “healer” and teamwork would require timing-based coordinated puzzle solving. Perhaps each specific class would provide a unique ability. Think Trine.

The formula: Create a game with several different game mechanics. And rather than let everyone have full access to those mechanics, divide them among the specific classes. Then promote the use of all combined mechanics to achieve goals… teamwork, synergy, voltron-style. Whatever you want to call it.

There’s a ton of fiction out there, such as comics, movies, and shows, where teams of unique characters all work together to overcome some obstacle and these squads of heros don’t always follow the typical RPG game trinity configuration. And for such fiction, it’s natural to think, “Oh man that would be a cool game.” But then we all complain about how crappy fiction-to-game conversions are.

Tank/Healer/DPS is a sweet spot that lots of people can appreciate and it’s easy to understand. Until we get something different that blows us all away with how super fun it is, games will continue to appeal to what we’re all used to.

I must hurry to finish Mass Effect 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, and Just Cause 2 !!! I am half way through them now…

aaaaaahhhhhhhh! hurry, hurry, hurry…

On the MMO front, I stay away from them mostly because I don’t like playing in groups, dependent on others. I have always hoped there might be an MMO where you quest and adventure on your own, but the world is still populated by other adventurers for you to talk to, steal from or trade with. You could still quest together, but it would be an “outside the game” bargain negotiated between you and another player and there would be nothing stopping them from going back on the deal. I guess I am alone in wanting this, as it has never happened… who knows.

And on the lowest scoring game front, I really loved Risen and was upset you have it a 65… great RPG, very PC focused.