Questioning the MMO Trinity?

FallSe7en · 07-26-2009 05:07 AM

Found this article while stumbling - thought it was pretty relevant to COH and worth sharing.

http://teethandclaws.blogspot.com/20...out-tanks.html

tl;dr version of the article: current mmo's rely too heavily on the 'holy trinity' (tanks-healer-damage)

Perfect_Pain · 07-26-2009 05:18 AM

There is no "trinity" in this game.

There are -however- people who have never been out of Atlas Park versus people who have.

Nihilii · 07-26-2009 05:24 AM

Tons of MMOs don't rely on tanks, and that's not new. People used to focus too much on EQ while there were plenty of other MMOs, people now focus too much on WoW while there are plenty of other MMOs. This article was already outdated 10 years ago.

Umbral · 07-26-2009 05:39 AM

[ QUOTE ]
There is no "trinity" in this game.

There is however people who have never been out of Atlas Park versus people who have.

[/ QUOTE ]

The "trinity" still exists insofar as the fundamental roles of the group are concerned: damage, tank, and support. The roles are blurred significantly, if only because the game wasn't designed with the specific need for any of the non-damage roles, but they still exist. If they didn't, we wouldn't have ATs that specialize in support (Defenders, Controllers, Corrupters, Masterminds) or that have ingrained superior aggro mechanics (Tankers, Brutes).

The big issue with this is that it's difficult to actually remove the trinity from the gaming environment, though the more important question would be how to incorporate the trinity in a manner that is logical while being suitably entertaining.

Having recently finished another session of my D&D campaign, I'm rather fond of suggesting the 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons model. Defenders (the nominal "tanks") don't actually force attacks to come towards them. Rather, they simply generate rather impressive consequences for not attacking them. If you are marked (re: taunted) by the Paladin, you're going to get hit with some radiant (re: "holy") damage that you simply can't avoid be you're breaking the little duel he called on you. If you are marked by the Fighter, he'll get to take a free swing at your face because he's focusing on you and you left yourself open by attacking his friend. If you are marked by the Warden (re: nature powered Paladin), the earth itself will get pissed off and either hold you down or crack you upside the head. If you are marked by the Swordmage (re: self explanatory), you just activated a contingent magical effect that is going to make you wish you hadn't done that.

The entire point of these mechanics are to allow the ability to attack other targets but to make attacking them less appetizing. It makes more than a bit of sense too. Do you really want to attack the old dude in a dress with a stick in hand that mutters strange words and hits you with fire, especially if he's got a friend who'd covered in metal and is prepared to test you for sharpened steel allergies if you spare one second within his reach not paying full attention to him? Maybe if you can get out of the old man's friend's reach, but, if not, it'd probably be smart to try to kill the tin can man first unless you're feeling lucky.

There's also the entire debate of addressing the traditional "healer" role in the trinity as opposed to declaring it "support" or some other function neutral term and whether it should be completely function neutral as long as it serves to make everyone else function better, but that's a completely different diatribe.

Perfect_Pain · 07-26-2009 05:43 AM

I don't play on any teams like that.

I prefer 8 Controller teams or 8 Brute Teams.
I don't need a tank or a healer.

So, while others may need some "requirements" for teaming. I do not.

:edit: I recently played a game where there is no Trinity mechanism in it, or whatever... and everyones characters are the same. Like carbon copies. It really sucked. Everyone takes the same powers and while you can look different. Everyone is a jack of all trades and therefor it gets super boring super fast.

I like the way this game is set up.

Schismatrix · 07-26-2009 06:44 AM

Questioning it?
Not really.
This is the first MMO i played, although i had numerous friends who played others, but for the past five years i haven't really been questioning it so much as mostly ignoring it.
If not for occasionally teaming with players who are obsessed with fulfilling the trinity it would probably be almost totally ignored. Most of the people i team with regularly don't really care what AT's are brought to the team as long as there's some buff/debuff capability and most of the players are competent. The rare exceptions are for things like "Master of" runs.

Dr. Todt's theme.
i make stuff...

Samuel_Tow · 07-26-2009 06:53 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Having recently finished another session of my D&D campaign, I'm rather fond of suggesting the 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons model. Defenders (the nominal "tanks") don't actually force attacks to come towards them. Rather, they simply generate rather impressive consequences for not attacking them. If you are marked (re: taunted) by the Paladin, you're going to get hit with some radiant (re: "holy") damage that you simply can't avoid be you're breaking the little duel he called on you. If you are marked by the Fighter, he'll get to take a free swing at your face because he's focusing on you and you left yourself open by attacking his friend. If you are marked by the Warden (re: nature powered Paladin), the earth itself will get pissed off and either hold you down or crack you upside the head. If you are marked by the Swordmage (re: self explanatory), you just activated a contingent magical effect that is going to make you wish you hadn't done that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Someone actually suggested something like that recently (was it you?) and I can't say I disagree with it. At the very least, I can't find a good reason not to support it. To my eyes, there are two problems with "tanks."

One is a compromise between... Well, realism and game mechanics. In anything even resembling real combat, no combatant can afford to stand around and take blows to the face while he's shooting at someone half a mile away and no combatant can afford to turn his back on the guy with the sword to take a swing at the guy with the bow. One thing we simply do not have here, or indeed anywhere, is the fact that melee combat has the tendency to LOCK combatants in combat. You simply cannot ignore people engaging you in close-quarters combat.

The Taunt mechanic strives to emulate this, but it does so in a very [censored] backwards way, if you'll pardon my expression. Combatants aren't dangerous because they're hard to kill. A block of concrete is hard to kill, but you don't see people rushing head over heels to attack them, do you? Yes, technically speaking it is possible from time to time to make someone come charging at you because you managed to get under his skin, and you could perhaps get someone to turn around and make a mistake, but are you really going to get a combatant that's currently in a mutual headlock with another combatant to loosen his grip and turn around? Who is THAT stupid? Certainly not the evil mastermind who managed to get 30 plot threads to all converge into his ultimate victory.

The other problem, and that's an extension of where the previous one left off, is a very upside-down view on power balance. There's this notion that NO character ever should have both offence and defence, so you end up with... Well, caricatures. The typical tank may be nigh-on unkillable, but he is also pretty much harmless to anything powerful enough to merit a tank in the first place. On the flip side, your typical ranger is incredibly powerful offensively, but practically dead meat if anything should happen to attack him. What the hell? Where does that even come from?

Allow me to make an aside for a second. Who ever decided that archers are fast, light, agile fighters who are weak and ill-protected? Drawing your average non-modern-technology-enhanced bow actually requires MORE strength than swinging a sword around, and many, many archers wore chest plates and chain mail, if we want to go into medieval history. That's only still no match for a mounted knight plate mail armour, but it's hardly a flannel shirt and a green hat. And people keep making them acrobatic. What the hell?

Practically speaking, a melee fighter should be MANY times more dangerous to an opponent than a ranged fighter, unless the the opponent is actively protecting himself. A typical Fantasy knight will have heavy armour, a sword and a shield, but that whole set up isn't much good if he turns his back on someone with a longsword. Granted, in a super hero world like ours, it is possible for "tanks" to be naturally unkillable even if they cross their arms, grin and bear it, but come on. The "threat" of a particular target shouldn't be a function of how tough that target is and how loud its mouth may be, but rather of how... Well, threatening it is.

As long as we have the ability in this game to IGNORE hand-to-hand combat attacks coming at us without having to stop and protect ourselves, there will never be a "tank" threatening enough to actually tank.

Interestingly, Dragonica presents us with a curious solution to this - abolish the click-n-kill basis that all MMOs are built over and you can actually allow EVERY character to be very dangerous. Because survivability and offence is in the hands of the player, this means that it's technically possible to FORCE an enemy to go on the defensive and deal with what's pinning him down first, THEN worry about who he should attack.

Think of a simple situation where a fighter and a ranger face a very tough enemy fighter. The enemy fighter will, naturally, get locked into combat with the friendly fighter. But if the enemy fighter decides to attack the ranger, instead, this will mean turning his back on the friendly fighter, dropping his guard and, naturally, getting slaughtered for it despite his toughness. The only way for the enemy fighter to attack the ranger, then, would be to either defeat the friendly fighter or, at the very least, evade him for a time.

This brings us full circle back to the much-feared tank-mage, that boogeyman of the MMO world. Because MMOs want to promote teaming, they go the frankly absurd path of crippling every character ever made such that he will NEED help filling these holes, which in turn requires teaming. Heaven forbid a character can be at least moderately good at everything. Why would anyone ever play anything else? I happen to subscribe to the vision of a game where everyone is a tank-mage, though specialising in different fields. So an archer would wear armour and be handy with a sword, a warrior would have throwing lances or axes to smack distant foes, and a wizard would be able to use his protective spells on his own damn self for a change. Of course, a warrior would still curb-stomp an archer in close-quarters combat and an archer would turn a warrior into a pincushion over distance, but neither would go down without a fight.

The point, I suppose, is to make melee DANGEROUS unless you're specifically engaged in it, which would in turn lock people in melee like it really should be. The click-n-kill system that transforms melee combat from a lockdown duel into a battle resembling an artillery duel between two battleships, only they're smaller and 5 feet apart. Trading blows is NOT melee combat, and as long as that's all we have for melee, then we will never be rid of tauntbot tanks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Barata · 07-26-2009 07:21 AM

The author does have a very valid point at times. The idea that an intelligent enemy will focus all of his attacks for many minutes on a the one character able to withstand them, instead of sending out that single attack to the "healer" who is keeping everyone alive, doesn't make sense. The author does fall short in the "collision detection section, as not all games don't have it. CoX obviously has it. Once dumpster diving became a popular exploit, it was put into place.

I think the nature of gaming, computer MMOs in particular, encourages polarizing the various "classes". In real life, there's not such a wide spread between the "health" of various individuals. But in computer games, your character is supposed to be more than real life. This ends up causing the characters to be more stereotypical. Boss characters end up being exponentially more powerful than their minions, requiring that the classes move even further into their extremes.

I don't see this as being necessarily a problem. If I want to experience something close to real life, I'll just go outside. CoX embraces the stereotypical archetypes, and that's fine because the archetypes are fun for many people. It doesn't need to be the only model, it just requires that another company choose to develop a different system.

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Chocolate_Bacon · 07-26-2009 07:22 AM

How much better does the fighter have to be at melee than the ranger? If, like you said, he's going to slaughter the ranger in melee combat it means that he's substantially better. So melee enemies have to exist at the fighter's challenge level. How do you give the ranger a chance in melee against enemies who can pose a threat to a fighter while keeping the ranger's melee abilities substantially below the fighters?

Umbral · 07-26-2009 07:32 AM

[ QUOTE ]
The point, I suppose, is to make melee DANGEROUS unless you're specifically engaged in it, which would in turn lock people in melee like it really should be. The click-n-kill system that transforms melee combat from a lockdown duel into a battle resembling an artillery duel between two battleships, only they're smaller and 5 feet apart. Trading blows is NOT melee combat, and as long as that's all we have for melee, then we will never be rid of tauntbot tanks.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, personally, I've always seen the taunt issue less as an issue concerning a flawed design of the game and more the fundamental flaw in generating an AI that can appropriately gauge and choose between the various risk factors and determine whether the risk is worth it (which is required when you're setting up the taunt mechanics that I described wherein you're never forced to attack the tank; it's just a potentially painful choice not to) without making it a simple binary "if-then-else" option wherein the AI always picked the more numerically superior option which might as well simply be the taunt mechanic we've got.

As a regular GM to a group of players that love the D&D defender marking system and regularly build their characters around exploiting that mechanism as much as possible, you've got to allow the characters that have a mechanism as such to actually use it, even when it's the safest thing for the target to do, if only because players like beating on their enemies and that's the fundamental "I get to beat on you in special ways!" mechanic the player uses for the "tank" role. A binary AI can't really do this, which is why I've regularly toyed with the idea of algorithmically set up random act tables that modify the chance of specific discrete actions based on the situation at hand and what actions were taken place previously. If it's been a while since the AI has taken a risk, it would make sense for the AI to have a greater chance of taking one, especially if the potential payout is impressively large. If it's taken more than a couple risks and they haven't panned out, it should be less likely to take a risk. Of course, the biggest problem I can imagine with it is the number of processing cycles that would need to be devoted to regularly updating the AI, which is why the only time I've actually generated a system as such was for a turn based poker game that wanted to have a more interesting and versatile AI (which was simply generating a zero-sum system for the various actions based on chance of generating a "good" hand, the comparative bet levels of any active players, and previous actions and then randomly choosing between 0 and 99 to determine which action from the list took place) and didn't really need to worry about cycles because it was only for a small time system.

Umbral · 07-26-2009 07:42 AM

[ QUOTE ]
How much better does the fighter have to be at melee than the ranger? If, like you said, he's going to slaughter the ranger in melee combat it means that he's substantially better. So melee enemies have to exist at the fighter's challenge level. How do you give the ranger a chance in melee against enemies who can pose a threat to a fighter while keeping the ranger's melee abilities substantially below the fighters?

[/ QUOTE ]

The difference between the ranger and the fighter are moreso in that the ranger is the more dangerous and maneuverable fighter, and the enemy is intended to know this, but the fighter's purpose is to specifically act as the equalizer saying, "You can either attack me even though I pose a lesser but harder to hurt threat and let the ranger do his higher damage thing or you can attack the ranger and give me the opportunity to hurt you in new and interesting ways that will make you regret hurting my friend". The concept is that, while the fighter is harder to hit and will deal less damage than the ranger in a vacuum, making the ranger the much favored target not only because he's easier to hit, more dangerous, and squishier, the fighter's presence serves to make that normally obvious choice less obvious by making the obvious choice riskier.

It's the difference between having the choice of a 50% chance to hit against the guy that deals 5 damage and a 75% chance to hit against the guy that deals 10 damage and the the choice between having a 50% chance against the guy that deals 5 damage and a 75% chance to hit against the guy that deals 10 damage but will allow the guy that deals 5 damage to hurt you. In one of those scenarios, the choice is obvious simply because the guy that's harder to hit is simultaneously less dangerous. In the other, it's more vague.

It's also important to remember that the role of the fighter and the ranger operate synergistically: the fighter gets to deal more damage than he would otherwise because there is an opportunity to get free attacks and the ranged gets to be safer because he's not the target of preference any more. In a vacuum, the ranger would be dealing more damage than the fighter but be squishier. Within the team context, while the ranger will still deal more damage than the fighter and the fighter is still going to be harder to kill, they're both going to be doing better than they would have otherwise.

Johnny_Butane · 07-26-2009 08:35 AM

I agree with many of the points made in the article. It sums up nicely part my issue with Tankers in CoH and illustrates the cause of it.

The developers trying to play up to an forced, artificial convention of traditional MMOs, took a character archetype that when going off of expectations from comics, PnP games and other media, should have had amazing offensive potential, and transformed them into mediocre damage dealing decoys.

I've spent two and a half years trying to make the developers recognise this mistake and make reparations to it.

This is is an excellent paragraph from the closing of the article:

[ QUOTE ]
Players want to feel like heroes, not fragile rag dolls; by imbuing all characters with greater survivability, granting players a host of abilities to protect their friends and allies, and moving towards a more tactical system of combat, MMO players will all be empowered to face more challenges, and will no longer be reliant on a single tank to soak up all the hurt.

[/ QUOTE ]

The flipside to that is making tanks(Tankers) feel more like heroes (or in our case super heroes) by not gimping their offensive abilities and flying in the face of the AT's conceptual roots just to serve this absurd trinity.

CoV was a move away from the trinity, seeing more hybrid ATs that were individually stronger. The problem there, was that the content for teams was identical to CoH's and thus catered to the trinity style of play. There we come to the notion that CoV ATs don't team well. And that's true. There's many conflicts and some of the villain ATs don't mesh in a team situation as well as they could.

So, red side represents progress made on the AT end of things, but the team content never adapted and also the team dynamic was far from optimal.

I look forward to future super hero MMOs where the roles are more loose and you can switch them as the situation demands. Both of the upcomming games allow you to switch from tank to DPS on the fly for example. I look forward to seeing how that works out.

Nothing would make me happier for upcomming games to do well and demonstrate how backwards and idiotic the trinity is, how outdated and foolish CoX's AT and power system is for still trying to play up to it and how CoX's devs fail for not trying to advance beyond it any further and for keeping some ATs slaves to the trinity.

.

Westley · 07-26-2009 08:42 AM

[ QUOTE ]
There we come to the notion that CoV ATs don't team well. And that's true. There's many conflicts and some of the villain ATs don't mesh in a team situation as well as they could.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well that would make sense then... considering that they're VILLAINS. If villains ever team, in comics, it's almost always reluctantly and they're usually one-upped in their teamwork by heroes that team more naturally.

Looks like they kept the flavor just fine to me.

Inquizitor · 07-26-2009 08:56 AM

Villain team...I don't know that saying the don't mesh well is the right way to say it exacly. Overkill is more the word. The Villain AT's are all focused around damage. This makes them very effective in solo play and team play.

On blue side you are stuck with AT's thats origional design tried to emulate the holy trinity when it was completely unnesicerry. We have the glass cannons, the "healers" The Tanks. Nothing in CoH does teh stupid amount of damage you see in other MMO's though. You don't NEED the holy trinity here. You can play that way if you want but this is the promary problem with the tank. Whene the glass canon can be buffed to the point he can off tgank you don't reallty need a Tank at all. He becomes dead weight on the team since his only other option is to do subpar damage and subpar control.

Steampunkette · 07-26-2009 09:11 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I agree with many of the points made in the article. It sums up nicely part my issue with Tankers in CoH and illustrates the cause of it.

The developers trying to play up to an forced, artificial convention of traditional MMOs, took a character archetype that when going off of expectations from comics, PnP games and other media, should have had amazing offensive potential, and transformed them into mediocre damage dealing decoys.

I've spent two and a half years trying to make the developers recognise this mistake and make reparations to it.

This is is an excellent paragraph from the closing of the article:

[ QUOTE ]
Players want to feel like heroes, not fragile rag dolls; by imbuing all characters with greater survivability, granting players a host of abilities to protect their friends and allies, and moving towards a more tactical system of combat, MMO players will all be empowered to face more challenges, and will no longer be reliant on a single tank to soak up all the hurt.

[/ QUOTE ]

The flipside to that is making tanks(Tankers) feel more like heroes (or in our case super heroes) by not gimping their offensive abilities and flying in the face of the AT's conceptual roots just to serve this absurd trinity.

CoV was a move away from the trinity, seeing more hybrid ATs that were individually stronger. The problem there, was that the content for teams was identical to CoH's and thus catered to the trinity style of play. There we come to the notion that CoV ATs don't team well. And that's true. There's many conflicts and some of the villain ATs don't mesh in a team situation as well as they could.

So, red side represents progress made on the AT end of things, but the team content never adapted and also the team dynamic was far from optimal.

I look forward to future super hero MMOs where the roles are more loose and you can switch them as the situation demands. Both of the upcomming games allow you to switch from tank to DPS on the fly for example. I look forward to seeing how that works out.

Nothing would make me happier for upcomming games to do well and demonstrate how backwards and idiotic the trinity is, how outdated and foolish CoX's AT and power system is for still trying to play up to it and how CoX's devs fail for not trying to advance beyond it any further and for keeping some ATs slaves to the trinity.
.

[/ QUOTE ]

This entire post is a series of logical fallacies.

Tankers are not all about damage dealing. They're all about taking hits constantly. Just because you happen to think "Superman" when you think of a Tanker doesn't make him a tank. Superman is a Super-strength Scrapper with SR, Invulnerability, Fly, Superspeed, Superjump, The Body Mastery Epic Pool, and a buttload of useless pool-powers (Super Ventriloquism, anyone?)

To expect a game to let you create and play the "Perfect" character is silly. You'd get bored within the hour and give up on the game. This is why every "Superman" game that's ever been released has sucked. They try to avoid "God Mode" but with superman there really isn't another mode.

You've spent two and a half years trying to force your philosophy on others.

Please, by all means, enlighten me as to a method to ensure all archetypes are well-played if a single archetype has as much or more damage than a scrapper and all the survivability of a tanker. How much of a buff would you have to give the other archetypes AND the villains to keep the game both fair and challenging? You can't? How shocking!

As for the Villains not teaming well, or being a "Break" from the trinity? You're just being silly, now.

Villains aren't team-oriented, generally speaking. those who -do- work on teams together have obvious and exploitable weak-points so that a hero or team of heroes can defeat them. However in a one-on-one fight a villain should have an almost equal chance of success against a hero.

Scrapper versus stalker. If the stalker doesn't flee after the AS then the match -should- be fairly even. The scrapper took a LOT of damage, but their overall damage output -is- comparable (especially with placate and a second assassin strike) And the Stalker has only slightly weaker defenses than the Scrapper. Functionally they fill the same role (Melee burst damage and possible off-tank)

Brutes and Tanks follow a similar axiom. Tankers have better defenses and more hit-points with, initially, a similar damage output. So in the beginning of a tank/brute standoff the tank would be winning. As the fight progressed, however, the brute's fury would come into play more, balancing the fight out again.

You can do this with -every- class, excepts Dominators. (Corruptor/Defender, Blaster/Mastermind) Dominators and Controllers have a Binary system of "I Win" in their ability to hold their foe. Which makes it a "Who strikes first" victory.

And finally, your assertation that "Open" archetypes will be the ultimate saving grace of MMOs.

Having worked on the core systems of an MMO, myself, it's difficult to balance enemies versus each of the archetypes to make the fights challenging without being one-sided in either direction. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to try and develop challenging (but not one-sided) encounters in a system wherein the most important variables (The player character's abilities) are unknowable?

How do you balance X versus N when you've no idea what X -or- N are? You don't. You make N a random number or an educated guess and you hope for the best.

Class systems are a strong way to balance and define abilities. Avoiding the Holy Trinity has nothing to do with getting rid of classes. And you're just deluding yourself if you think it will.

-Rachel-

Inquizitor · 07-26-2009 09:16 AM

Champions online is open Archtype.

As was SWG before they destroyed it by closing the classes

LostHalo · 07-26-2009 09:20 AM

[ QUOTE ]
If it's been a while since the AI has taken a risk, it would make sense for the AI to have a greater chance of taking one, especially if the potential payout is impressively large. If it's taken more than a couple risks and they haven't panned out, it should be less likely to take a risk.

[/ QUOTE ]

You can sort of see this in action with games that feature troop desertion. Sort of.

One game that actually comes closest to pulling it off (but not quite, your people can do some boneheaded stupid-AI actions) is Dwarf Fortress. Considering that's an ASCII art game that can manage to slow down high powered PCs in the right situation due to the hideously complicated systems of interaction the creator has constructed, you can imagine what would happen to an MMO server that tried to do the same.

Blue: ~Knockback Squad on Guardian~
Red: ~Undoing of Virtue on [3 guesses]~

Aura_Familia · 07-26-2009 09:55 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Champions online is open Archtype.

As was SWG before they destroyed it by closing the classes

[/ QUOTE ]

And even then both of those systems are/were NOT 100% open.

Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!

Perfect_Pain · 07-26-2009 09:58 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Champions online is open Archtype.

As was SWG before they destroyed it by closing the classes

[/ QUOTE ]

I already addressed that in my previous post in this very thread... See EDIT

Psyonico · 07-26-2009 10:01 AM

[ QUOTE ]
There is no "trinity" in this game.

There are -however- people who have never been out of Atlas Park versus people who have.

[/ QUOTE ]

I dunno... I rather like the trinity of Defender-Defender-Defender

No

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

I think you underestimate our fools, sir.

Why /duel is a bad idea

Perfect_Pain · 07-26-2009 10:25 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
There is no "trinity" in this game.

There are -however- people who have never been out of Atlas Park versus people who have.

[/ QUOTE ]

I dunno... I rather like the trinity of Defender-Defender-Defender

[/ QUOTE ]

I once did a Positron TF on an 8 Defender team, and it was THE MOST FUN EVER...

Barata · 07-26-2009 10:54 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I agree with many of the points made in the article. It sums up nicely part my issue with Tankers in CoH and illustrates the cause of it.

The developers trying to play up to an forced, artificial convention of traditional MMOs, took a character archetype that when going off of expectations from comics, PnP games and other media, should have had amazing offensive potential, and transformed them into mediocre damage dealing decoys.

I've spent two and a half years trying to make the developers recognise this mistake and make reparations to it.

This is is an excellent paragraph from the closing of the article:

[ QUOTE ]
Players want to feel like heroes, not fragile rag dolls; by imbuing all characters with greater survivability, granting players a host of abilities to protect their friends and allies, and moving towards a more tactical system of combat, MMO players will all be empowered to face more challenges, and will no longer be reliant on a single tank to soak up all the hurt.

[/ QUOTE ]

The flipside to that is making tanks(Tankers) feel more like heroes (or in our case super heroes) by not gimping their offensive abilities and flying in the face of the AT's conceptual roots just to serve this absurd trinity.

CoV was a move away from the trinity, seeing more hybrid ATs that were individually stronger. The problem there, was that the content for teams was identical to CoH's and thus catered to the trinity style of play. There we come to the notion that CoV ATs don't team well. And that's true. There's many conflicts and some of the villain ATs don't mesh in a team situation as well as they could.

So, red side represents progress made on the AT end of things, but the team content never adapted and also the team dynamic was far from optimal.

I look forward to future super hero MMOs where the roles are more loose and you can switch them as the situation demands. Both of the upcomming games allow you to switch from tank to DPS on the fly for example. I look forward to seeing how that works out.

Nothing would make me happier for upcomming games to do well and demonstrate how backwards and idiotic the trinity is, how outdated and foolish CoX's AT and power system is for still trying to play up to it and how CoX's devs fail for not trying to advance beyond it any further and for keeping some ATs slaves to the trinity.

.

[/ QUOTE ]
If you want an offensive melee toon, play a scrapper. You seem to want the tank to be as indestructible as they are now, but to have the power of scrappers or blasters.

As much as the article, and you, despise the archetype system, it's in existence now only because of one reason..... it works. If it didn't work and players didn't find enjoyment from it, people wouldn't play these games. That's the simple fact of it. This system is proven and many many people play it because it brings them enjoyment.

That's not to say that some other system wouldn't work too. The main problem the writer of the article and JB have isn't that the archetype system is bad, just that they want to play a different way. And I'll agree that there's definite room for improvement on our system. Anyone who thinks the devs, or any dev of a game for that matter, should totally scrap the system and bring on something new is rather foolish. SWG did it and we all know how well that went over with everyone. Those types of changes aren't suited for existing games and are usually reserved for a next-generation or sequel. To make the massive changes JB talks about really is more appropriate for CoX2. Doing them within CoX right now would mean a total rewrite of the entire game with the exception being you could reuse the graphics. They'd need to rewrite the AI, all the villains and their powers, every power a hero has, the enhancement system, leveling..... pretty much everything. With no archetypes, we wouldn't be able to keep our existing toons, so they really should be deleted. And most developers do not want to alienate and lose existing subscribers who have shown they're happy with the current system, so they'll refrain from making those massive changes on an existing game. Another reason why there's EQ and EQ2.

I agree that a different system could be VERY fun and I'd love to try it. It's outside the scope of what you can do to an existing game though.

Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break

The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens

Emberly · 07-26-2009 10:57 AM

Tanking is the worst mechanic ever. It's like a virus that infects game design and player expectations. Good on you folks who like tanking, though, I don't begrudge anyone their fun. I just wish that we could eliminate the idea that teams need tanks. Incidentally, same goes for every other AT, and doubly for "healers," whatever that means. I've done every single piece of content short of the Hamidon without a tank on the team, and went a lot better for it. Blaster-tanking Lord Recluse without a death for the win!

Barata · 07-26-2009 11:09 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Tanking is the worst mechanic ever. It's like a virus that infects game design and player expectations. Good on you folks who like tanking, though, I don't begrudge anyone their fun. I just wish that we could eliminate the idea that teams need tanks. Incidentally, same goes for every other AT, and doubly for "healers," whatever that means. I've done every single piece of content short of the Hamidon without a tank on the team, and went a lot better for it. Blaster-tanking Lord Recluse without a death for the win!

[/ QUOTE ]
This has been a common complaint in the forum for some time.... that no particular archetype is needed. I'd love to try some of the groups that PerfectPain mentioned, like an all-defender task force. I think all the various archetypes would be fun on a single-archetype team. Well, except Khelds. Tried that once. It wasn't pretty.

Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break

The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens

Johnny_Butane · 07-26-2009 11:30 AM

[ QUOTE ]
If you want an offensive melee toon, play a scrapper. You seem to want the tank to be as indestructible as they are now, but to have the power of scrappers or blasters.

[/ QUOTE ]

And if you want a powerset that's not available for Scrappers, or would like something half way between and don't want to be chained to the Fury mechanic you're out of luck.

From the looks of it, the upcomming super hero MMOs don't make the distinction between the melee class that deals damage and the one that tanks. Instead there's a system of stances.

This allows the same character to tank or deal damage OR even split the difference and be halfway between the two should they choose.

This also allows ranged characters not to have to be glass cannons and allows characters who want to heal and support to have soloability when they're not teamed.

In short, you're allowed to pick your own role, have a greater measure of flexability instead of the developers forcing you into one as they did and still do here.

[ QUOTE ]
To make the massive changes JB talks about really is more appropriate for CoX2.

[/ QUOTE ]

Allow me to give you a little golf clap.

[ QUOTE ]

I agree that a different system could be VERY fun and I'd love to try it. It's outside the scope of what you can do to an existing game though.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which is why we're not going to see any core progress until the devs stop milking this game and break ground on a sequel. The devs admit the old systems are holding them back, yet it seems they wont do what it takes to move forward. I'm going to have to assume that until they announce CoH 2. After over five years, I'd like to see core progress made and I really shouldn't have to look to the super hero MMO down the block for it.

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