Wait, why Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer?
You get six friends who will never outlevel you, who are always logged in the same times you are, and who cannot quit your team no matter how many times you get them killed.
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They're slow on leveling up and fall behind more and more as I level up. They never use inspirations unless I make them. They barely take any good powers, and in fact by level 50 they probably only have like five powers they even use. And even though they never quit even if they die, they get me killed plenty!
They're very inconsiderate and bad players! I don't think they even speak English, because they never respond when I complain. But even with all their failings, they're better players than my regular friends.
![Wink](images/smilies/wink.gif)
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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![Big Grin](images/smilies/biggrin.gif)
Picture the following: Every character class in the entire game is an able fighter. Every last one of them. They all have decent defences, they all have respectable offences and they're all capable in a decent fight. IN ADDITION to that, each one can do someone else. |
Why? Jack of all trades and master of none. I *LIKE* specialized characters. If I want a decent fighter, I have them. If I want a character who is weak on his own but makes a team unstoppable (and I *DO*), I have those too.
I understand the draw of specialization, but wouldn't it really make sense to let everyone be decent at fighting for his life? One would think all super heroes would need to be, in order to have survived long enough to level up, right? |
Since we're talking about people who directly oppose the bad guys, let's make a comparison with soldiers. Is every one of them a marksman? Some don't even carry a weapon. If a soldier is a doctor, do his comrades leave him to die if he can't "survive long enough to level up"? Or do they work as a team?
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And that's one big reason why I anticipate never rolling a native blue-side AT again, after GR.
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Well, I don't really think you can find the Holy Trinity origins in AD&D. Yeah, in the beginning, when the mage dies to a giant rat and the cleric dies to 2-3 rats, the fighter classes were more or less tanks and served that role for a time. But later on, the game becomes ruled by mages who can not only become totally invulnerable, but can easily wipe out most fighters with Finger of Death or similar methods of mass destruction. Granted, 3rd and Pathfinder (I refuse to touch 4th) remedied some of this high and low level power balance but, generally, good DMs, in my opinion, never relied on combat XP to provide the majority of the player rewards. Combat can be central to DnD but it doesn't have to be to level/progress so you don't really need clearly defined class roles.
I happen to think the holy trinity roles have their origins in older CRPGs, particularly things like Wizardry where only the first 3 people out of 6 could generally be meleed (granted this changed in 4 and later with long reach/ranged type weapons) but your first 3 people generally were your 'tanks' and the last 3 people were your mage dps and cleric heals. Many CRPGs followed this, partially due to technological limitations, partially due to AI limitations and partially due to designer creativity. FF1, for example, the probability of taking dmg for each spot was 4:3:2:1 so naturally you put your meatshields in the front 2 and whm/blm in the back 2. Its easy to balance and program games around well defined roles.
The first MMO I can remember was NWN (the original that was basically gold box DnD online, not Bioware's) and it basically held true to the tank, healz, dps structure. Granted, it wasn't really massively multiplayer like the games of today are, but the progression from CRPG to MMORPG meant that a lot of the first MMOs were similar in structure to the general "holy trinity" CRPG model (EQ for example). Most MMOs today still incorporate these basic elements because its easy to balance for designers and familiar to players.
When you start implementing things that have tree systems or loose roles, balancing can start to become quite the headache. I loved the original SWG with all the options for trees but it also resulted in powergaming on a massive scale because of the fact the trees were definitely not equal and the players figured it out quickly and before you knew it, nearly everyone had 2-3 rancors, then they all became BHs, then they all became commandos as devs kept trying to balance (read:nerf) the classes. I remember being quite upset over the whole pistols >> rifles issue. Balancing open trees is very, very hard and nerfs generally anger players and risks your revenue stream.
That said, it does seem that games are trying to move away from the traditional 1970s-80s CRPG models. Bioware with Mass Effect and, even more so, Dragon Age are starting to open up to a more open tree/skill based system. Granted, both of those still have somewhat clearly defined ATs but the variety in the tree system is opening up more options to branch out of the traditional "tank, support, dps" roles. Of course, the balance issue with the tree system can become brutally apparent in Dragon Age with some builds that are able to waltz through the game on hard while others will get destroyed by 3 Mabari on easy. This also generally means, the new player gets destroyed a lot because they don't know the effective power combinations. This is less risky for single player games (because you already have their money), but can be deadly to MMOs when you're trying to secure a player base/revenue stream.
Unfortunately, this probably means that most MMOs for the near future will be still 'tank, heal, dps' because its proven,already out there and successful. I'm sure eventually someone, somewhere will figure out a balanced open tree system suitable for online play and easy to learn that will bring changes to the MMORPG genre. Until that day, most new MMOs will probably still try to be newer shinier versions of WoW because its familiar and successful.
It has to do with the way damage is dealt and mitigated. Thats it. If the specific game`s universe allows for controll and buffing type of damages next to ranged and mellee, then you have more than tank/mage/dmg dealer as classes.
While a certain way of dealing damage to a foe might be more efficient and more powerful than another thus allowing for high or low dps among archetypes/roles/classes , the armor is something that can never be restricted to a specific class. Usually the more armor the less skills in dealing damage.
Another game design matter is the way victory is achieved when dealing with a foe or another player. By team or by solo. When you have both in a game there is no more balance due to giving the same opportunity to a solo (or various team sizes) player to achieve what a team achieves.
I don`t think that a game enourages team play or solo play, but a game is designed for one or both therefor balance might occur or not.
The more you complicate things and add other elements to the games like resistance, buffs and debuffs, regeneration etc the more you have a need for classes as some have better numbers than others. By definition, if you resist more damage than me and if you can take more hits than I can , then you are a tank(er) so I would like you to go in first while I have some mitigation through your characters defense. But if I can control more aspects of a fight and control better than you the behaviour of an enemy than I am a controller and will put that to use while/if also dealing damage.
Knowing you are good with your fists and you have to go in mellee range in a battle you will make sure you are well protected and can take on a lot of hits as you will probably be surrounded by enemies. But if you know you will fight from a distance, there is no need to defend yourself that much as you already have a form of mitigation towards mellee damage. So you already have 2 classes. Tanker and Blaster.
If you deal damage through a pet or more than you will need to be able to aid them as much as possible since as a pet they are not very strong as a proper class, so you will have acess to support/aid/damage type of powers, which pretty much will make you a controller as you will probably help your pets fight immobilized or stunned foes. And another class is born.
Role Playing Games or Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. You are someone with special abilities and you will be defined as something, most likely one of the three standard classes.
P.S. written at 8 am , after a 12 hour shift, excuse any off topic nonsense.
"Giving up" is not the right way to think about it. The right way to think about it is, using CoH as the example, everyone starts off with Defender damage and no range. Then Defenders got range and buffs. Scrappers got more damage and self-defense. Blasters got more damage and range. No one really "gave up" anything to get what they got, except from a relative perspective.
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I'm not going to use ATs to describe it, but suppose we all started from a base of being able to deliver a punch and take a punch and do reasonably well in a scrap, then we all went from there. We would still have specialists, but all of those specialists would come armed and ready, so to speak. The question, then, remains if everyone can take care of himself, what's the point of teaming? To this, I answer "scaling difficulty." Solo difficulty is easy enough for everyone to take care of his own tasks, but when you group, the difficulty (and associated rewards) ramps up significantly, to where people with a non-combat speciality find themselves using it a lot more often.
Well, isn't that what City of Heroes already does? No, not by a long shot. The core problem with City of Heroes is that not all ATs are even remotely on the same level when it comes to solo performance. With a Mastermind, I can fall asleep on the keyboard and when I wake up, I'll have levelled up twice. With a Scrapper, I can essentially march through mission like I own the place and only really need to concentrate if I happen to aggro the map. With a Blaster... "ZOMG It's a boss! Not good! Not good!" Yeah, it kind of goes like that. In fact, it's especially hard for me, because I want a uniform difficulty setting between all my characters, which means I've put it somewhere in the middle of their abilities. That shows me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, just how serious the gap between the solo experiences of the different ATs is.
Why do I want a uniform difficulty setting? For one, just so I can gauge relative strength, but more than that, so I can ensure a consistent experience, both literally and as "XP." I've been through this before, with a character who did really well, but took BLOODY AGES to level up to anything, which just ended up with me shelving it until his AT was tweaked, and even now I have to sort of exploit the system with him. The simple fact is that taking ages and ages to complete missions, growing a beard faster than you can put enemies down and taking months to level up (literally, I'm not joking) is just not fun. And the only alternative is to hop on a team and have someone level up for me. No, thanks.
As to the thesis of the OP, I think that's a much more complex question than it is usually portrayed as. I'll just say this: if I were designing CoH from scratch today, I would not use the tank/blaster/defender archetype-role system. I'd basically create skill tree-like options that start from a core, then allow branch outs to various options: think VEATs, but more complex. But unlike VEATs, I would not lock players into a single branch. Rather than force players to make decisions about what they want their tradeoffs to be for all time, I would allow players to make situational tradeoffs intrinsic in their powers and abilities. |
I'm not sure I'd be capable of creating decent builds in such a system, myself, as I'm not good at making tradeoffs unless they are system-mandated, but that's my own personal failing and not something I would hold a system to task with. As long as what I make is DECENT, the imperative is on me to make my own variety. Or not, if I choose not to. The point is, I'm not actually opposed to the spirit of the Champions build system when I describe it as a "frikkin' mess," but rather to its execution. It's overly complicated, and nothing you do ever has a really noticeable effect, so it's very hard to gauge if I'm doing the right thing.
I'd still be in favour of a system that started everyone off a baseline of self-sufficiency, though.
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.
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Because MMORPGs are trying to focus on the MMO part. The RPG part is important as the core function of the game but if your MMO part is ill-conceived, you don't get the desired numbers. The RPG is your car's engine and core parts, the MMO is the frame, seating, and final presentation. And you won't get very far without one or the other. The engine gets you from point A to point B but if the frame and controls are beyond ugly and broken...well, you work with the frame and controls directly on a day-to-day basis. You won't even consider the vehicle if the feel/presentation looks like crap even with the best engine.
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Everyone is treating me like I'm trying to take away their team-mates, but I'm not. If anything, I'm trying to do quite the opposite - giving people the ability to take care of themselves AND have team viability actually gives you BETTER team dynamics, because the people who would normally never play a team character will anyway, because you're gonna' have a specialization other than killing stuff one way or the other. Put in the very simplest of terms, I am not going to team when I don't want to. Making it harder for me to solo will not make it more likely for me to team, it will make it less likely for me to play at all, thus LOSING one customer for the MMO.
I'll fall back on my stand-by: Just because I CAN team doesn't mean I HAVE to. Make me want to team, don't make me hate not teaming.
Because FPSes are not anything the same as an RPG where balance is concerned. They're not even in the same race unfortunately. Sure, everyone can be boiled down the same exact thing...but then you're not offering any variety and well, Counter-Strike is cheaper. |
Ah, but they aren't even in the same league as the damage-focused units are they? They can defend themselves, sure, but that doesn't mean they're anywhere near the level of someone with four chainsaws and a rocket launcher. |
It just comes back to how you define "decent". I think it's fine in all honesty. The game isn't hard enough to force anyone to be any stronger than they currently are. |
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.
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As others have said, CoV gets closer to this balance. And I do find that it does mean people are less willing to team and when they do, often don't try to work as a team. I love Villains when a team works together in creative ways to steamroll missions, rather than just the tank, hold, blast, rinse and repeat pattern more prevalent in Heroes, but other teams can be sheer hell as members just do their own thing despite it resulting in the deaths of team mates.
One solution could be to make the teaming bonus greater for smaller teams. On a team of 8 I find that i tend to use my 'specialist' skills almost exclusively - my blasters for example rarely do more than cycle through their attack chain, with smaller teams I need to use their full range of mitigation skills as well just to keep me and others alive. For me small teams are much more fun because of this, but the xp rewards aren't as good, so most leaders are intent on getting and keeping a full team (with the resultant standing around outside missions waiting while they recruit) and people will leave a team if it drops below 8.
There are so many ways CoX could solve this problem by creating missions with different objectives. For example, a mission where you have to support a squad of Vanguard, by buffing, healing, and tagging them for rez when they fall in combat, or a mission where you get XP for avoiding contact with the enemy and gather information without getting caught? And before you say "well how can you do missions like that without the needed powers?" I say, temp powers like we already get like the costume stealths.
"Samual_Tow - Be disappointed all you want, people. You just don't appreciate the miracles that are taking place here."
There are so many ways CoX could solve this problem by creating missions with different objectives. For example, a mission where you have to support a squad of Vanguard, by buffing, healing, and tagging them for rez when they fall in combat, or a mission where you get XP for avoiding contact with the enemy and gather information without getting caught? And before you say "well how can you do missions like that without the needed powers?" I say, temp powers like we already get like the costume stealths.
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I'm not sure how I'd make a stealth mission, myself, but it wouldn't be just something that rewards you for not fighting. Stealth, as we have it, is either on or off for the majority of the game. Just turning on, say, Greater Invisibility (or Hide) and running around an instance is not something I'm prepared to dole out big rewards for. There would have to be some kind of mechanic which made sneaking around actually involving, with raised alarms, too much killing and so forth penalising the final reward. I'm not sure the game is currently capable of anything decent in this vein, however.
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.
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Everyone CAN kill things.
Just some ATs are better at it. My Rad/Sonic takes offense at the notion that he can't kill things. In the right situation he can approach blaster level damage. But what he specializes in is keeping the team safe through making it's opponents weaker. Even the lowliest Empathy defender can kill things if you build for it. A duo of Emp/Sonics can be one of the nastiest combos in the game. Sure, if you take nothing but team support powers and skip your attack powers, never even slotting the one you HAVE to take, you're damage output is going to suck. That's a build choice and not a disadvantage inherent to the AT. The defender's strength is keeping their team alive through making them stronger or their enemies weaker, a tanker keeps their team alive through agro management, a controller keeps their team alive by limiting their opponent's actions, blasters and scrappers keep their team alive through killing their opponent before their oponent can kill them. All can defeat enemies, but some do it better than others. The ones who are better at defeating things are worse at other things. Blasters and Scrappers excel at killing things, but they don't bring much else to a team. You never invite a blaster for their debuffing ability, you invite them to kill stuff. Same with scrappers, except scrappers have the added bonus of being one less teammate a defender has to worry about keeping on their feet, because after level 35 almost all scrappers are self-sufficient. I don't consider my Rad/Sonic defender to be a "support" character, because I built him to deal damage. I could have just as easily built him to buff and debuff exclusively, but I didn't. CoH gives you much more leeway to break the mold than some other games. A defender doesn't HAVE to be a "healer" any more than a tanker has to be a pure agro magnet. You can build a scrapper to tank or a controller to deal damage, you can build a blaster to control. They won't be as good at any of those things as the AT that was designed to do it, but it IS possible. I ignore the idea that because I made a defender I must be a healer. I just don't like anything dictating to me how I'm going to play. If I want to build a scrapper to control, I can. It doesn't mean it will be any GOOD at it, but it is my decision. |
It all depends on what you want to do in game. I enjoy soloing and teaming so I do both. If a player wants to just solo then stick with ATs that do it easily... Tanks, Scrappers, Blasters and Controllers (not all power sets but I have ILL/EMP 50 levels that not only solo well they solo MALTA). Defenders are, as the name implies designed to DEFEND but even they can solo. Myself I love Task Forces and Trials, Battling Giant Monsters, and taking on AVs in Peregrine and most of those require a good strong diverse team. Yeah there are the exceptions... There are people that battle GMs and win soloing but frankly I am not spending the Influence to enhance and the TIME to do that...not when I can earn the came badge as a member of an 8 man team in a fraction of that time and move on.
It all boils down to what does an individual player want to do. Me I like to try different things I have 40 characters I play and that includes Tankers, Scrappers, Blasters, Controllers, Defenders and Warshades. I have different powersets to see what they do and so I can devise strategies that make them all work. Some solo just fine, others thrive in a team environment while others can do both well.
The game is designed to be played by teams even though some ATs can colo nicely. There are TFs and Trials no solo artist will ever be able to do unless they break down and join a team. There are specific missions, although avoidable, that require 2, 3 or more people to click glowies at the same time.. if you don't have AT LEAST that many team mates along there is no way to succeed. If all we had was 100,000+ players running around soloing constantly they might as well have made the game something you could upload onto your PC and play offline. Now would I be hurt and dismayed if the Devs suddenly decided to give my Defenders damage like a Blaster or increased the damage resistance of my Blaster? No not a bit but I think (heck I KNOW) they purposely designed weaknesses in each AT to make teaming more appealing.
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" [x] as an AT do (not) have adequate levels of [y] to make up for the (dis)advantages applied for (not) having [z] as a [primary, secondary] factor. "
[Scrappers] as an AT do not have adequate levels of [support function] to make up for the disadvantages applied for having [damage] as a primary factor.
[Defenders] as an AT do have adequate levels of [support capabilities] to make up for the disadvantages applied for not having [damage] as a primary factor.
[Scrappers] as an AT do have adequate levels of [defense] to make up for the advantages applied for having [damage] as a primary factor.
Blah blah blah, and so on.
I mean, yes, you go into an inferred (and later directly discussed) red herring about the inability of the game to properly break free of the "go here, punch guy in face, collect loot" paradigm as an attempt to affirm the primary argument, but fail to really go into stronger an argument than:
(1) Damage-heavy, support-light characters solo fast but add less to a team. (Arguably accurate premise.)
(2) Damage-light, support-heavy characters don't solo fast but add more to a team. (Arguably accurate premise.)
(c)Thus, there is a disparity that must be fixed by blurring the distinction between (1) and (2).
You haven't sufficiently defined the "disparity" that makes (1) better than (2) or (2) better than (1) or why both (1) and (2) need to be more of a (1.5) in definition. It boils down to pure opinion in that you have the opinion that (2) is not what you would consider "decent" in terms of soloing and whether others do or don't share that opinion. Or in another direction, that the potential reward teams offer override the potential value (1) will get out of soloing and by extension, are obligated to team but being inferior to (2) while doing so.
Just a side note, yes, this is just fostering the discussion, nothing more--for those of you less inclined to read things in a detached sort-of-way.
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Red: ~Undoing of Virtue on [3 guesses]~
That's actually something I've always wondered about. Our "stealth" missions are a joke, in that no mission ever is designed for stealth, even those that have a briefing which claims they are. Practically speaking, you get rewards for two things in a mission - objectives and enemies. However, by and large, objectives give pitiful rewards and the end-of-mission bonus, while nice, is very small. The bulk of the experience gained in a mission comes from enemy defeats, which makes stealthing missions actually PENALISE you with less experience.
I'm not sure how I'd make a stealth mission, myself, but it wouldn't be just something that rewards you for not fighting. Stealth, as we have it, is either on or off for the majority of the game. Just turning on, say, Greater Invisibility (or Hide) and running around an instance is not something I'm prepared to dole out big rewards for. There would have to be some kind of mechanic which made sneaking around actually involving, with raised alarms, too much killing and so forth penalising the final reward. I'm not sure the game is currently capable of anything decent in this vein, however. |
"Samual_Tow - Be disappointed all you want, people. You just don't appreciate the miracles that are taking place here."
That's kind of the problem as I see it, though. This "base" you just describe is, quite frankly, very terrible. It's a base insufficient in doing ANYTHING without having some kind of specialization on top of it. Just Defender damage, hit points and no range is a character gimped from the very onset, so those that don't get the ability to fight as a specialization plain cannot do that. Yes, sometimes you can fudge a fight under some circumstances kind of, and sometimes you can even break even, but the point remains that the basis is just far too frikkin' low.
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If you think Defenders should have stuck their hands in the offensive cookie jar more than the buff one, you can always play a heroic corruptor after GR releases. One game design principle I personally believe in is "something for everyone" not "everything for everyone." In trying to make things that some people will like, you may make things others will like less. This is intentional. Some people will like a class that takes more buff and less damage than a corruptor, and those people should have the choice to play a defender. Those that would rather choose the reverse have the choice to play a corruptor. So long as side-switching is allowed (post GR) there's no rule that says the devs should strive to make everyone love both defenders and corruptors, or to replace one with the other.
(Power set availability issues cloud the issue, but that's really a side issue).
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Having all character types equally combat capable in an MMO would be problematic:
- Even if they were, they would not be perceived as being equal. "That guy does 5% more damage than I do under specific circumstances! Nerf him!"
- If they can all solo equally well, then they must also contribute equally well to teams or the team-oriented ones have an unfair advantage.
- With no one 'needed' on a team there are no roles for people to learn, which makes teaming more problematic than it already is for some players.
- With all players eqully combat capable, there is less room for customization. "But I want to put all of my points into doing more damage!" and conversely, "I want to give up combat capability in return for support ability!"
None of this is impossible to overcome, but the question becomes "Why reinvent the wheel? How does overcoming all of these problems in order to do things differently help the game? Is it worth the extra money (playtesting, development) to even try?"
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
Here's what I'm thinking as far as the "all ATs should have base stats that allow them to do combat." Right now that's already possible, as Arc said, just not necessarily at the speed at which people want.
Now if Defenders are boosted to a level where people are satisfied with the damage they do and the speed at which they kill, most other ATs would be pointless. Why play less capable ATs like Blasters if the damage isn't worth it? So if a Defender's damage is boosted up significantly, the damage of all the other ATs would have to be increased proportionally as well. So Defenders would get a 50% increase (random number), and so would everyone else. At that point, nothing has changed (except enemies die faster all around), and Defenders are still considered slow by comparison, and low damage dealers.
So unless the suggestion is to reduce the stat difference between ATs and bring them all closer to one another, trying to boost the "weak" ATs to a point where they can deal significant damage just creates a mess and doesn't solve anything.
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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- If they can all solo equally well, then they must also contribute equally well to teams or the team-oriented ones have an unfair advantage.
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That's why I keep accusing people of missing the point and suggesting we distance ourselves from contemporary design, because this just doesn't work as a redesign of current systems. I don't want to just give everyone more damage and more resistances, because those who cannot contribute are designed to have more damage and resistances to compensate. Their very presence is a cause for the problem as much as the presence of the opposite. In very simple terms, the existence of Scrappers (by far my favourite AT) and their being melee fighting specialists in itself precludes the possibility of such a design. Because, as it would give less self-sufficient ATs more self-sufficiency, it must give Scrappers something else, and that just muddies the waters far too much.
Think of it in terms of Dungeon Siege, for instance. While you could be a pure fighter (and I was) or a pure non-fighter there, nothing stopped everyone, even mages, from dabbling into fighting, and nothing stopped fighters from dabbling into magic. And even as an indestructible pure fight a lesser fighter and part made still outstripped me by a lot. That's sort of what I have in mind - fighting not as an ability that has to be balanced against, because it's IMPOSSIBLE to give it to everybody, but fighting as a baseline and a basic skillet, from which everybody starts.
People keep telling me what "decent" means is subjective, but it's not a question of what I find decent, it's a question of the vast fluctuation between even POTENTIAL ability between the ATs. No matter what I consider to be decent or appropriate, chances are some classes will be below or some classes will be above it, or possible both. What I want is a uniform baseline, possibly differing by approach, which gives everyone a certain degree of self-sufficiency regardless of their class, and then gives them class specializations on top of that.
If anything, the older D&D frameworks were a lot like this. Rangers were both adept fighters and adept with a bow, clerics wielded magic, but also wielded heavy armour and a decent weapon and even mages had a variety of bubbles, shields, magical armour spells, magical weapons and offensive capabilities which made them strong fighters. Warriors, frankly, were the only ones shafted, as all they could do was fight, while everyone could fight AND do something else. Well, axe pure warriors and leave everyone the same, and you're close to what I'm talking about.
Let me put it this way - I'm talking about a system that has no pure fighters and no pure non-fighters. Everyone is a fighter, and everyone has a specialization aside from that.
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.
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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.
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People keep telling me what "decent" means is subjective, but it's not a question of what I find decent, it's a question of the vast fluctuation between even POTENTIAL ability between the ATs. No matter what I consider to be decent or appropriate, chances are some classes will be below or some classes will be above it, or possible both. What I want is a uniform baseline, possibly differing by approach, which gives everyone a certain degree of self-sufficiency regardless of their class, and then gives them class specializations on top of that.
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I don't consider that an advance in game design. If anything, the homogeneity it mandates is to me a step backward.
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I never said anything about boosting anything. I'm talking about a redesign and a mentality shift away from "fighting" as a perk that some have but others don't, and into "fighting" being a base skill set that everybody has. A design which starts everyone as a decent fighter and offers everyone the skills needed to become an even better one, if he should choose to go for them. Such a system wouldn't really allow for any pure fighters, as everyone can be a fighter AND something else, so a pure fighter would be inherently weaker all around.
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![Stick Out Tongue](images/smilies/tongue.gif)
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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I honestly haven't paid much attention to the rest of the thread... so some of the points I'm about to raise have already been brought up.
Two games that I have directly played have tried to break from the Tank / Healer / Damage Dealer formula, those being WarHammer Online and Planetside.
In Planetside pretty much all players start with a base soldier classification with a sub-machine gun, a pistol, and some inventory space. They can upgrade their armors with cert points, buy vehicle certifications, or go Engineer / Medic classifications. In the game you could also take various MAX armors, as well as light and medium tanks, and eventually BFR's. Since all players started out on relatively equal footing, battles often came down to skill. A couple of Lightnings, which were the light tanks, actually stood a fair shot against the Heavy Tanks Vanguard, Prowler, or MagRider in the hands of a skilled pilot. A player equipped with just a Suppressor could in fact take out somebody equipped with a JackHammer.
However, despite the versatility of each player, in the middle of combat, things still fell into the Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer formula. The MAX armors went in first, the Heavy Assault and Special Assault right behind, followed by the Engys and the Medics. If you had the advanced engy or advanced med certs, you probably spent more time on the backlines healing and repairing than you did firing your weapon. If you were a Heavy Assault, you probably spent more time with your ammo fully stocked and laying down suppressive fire.
So, in practical case, when a game did break the mold and allow players to have multiple aspects of a single archtype, players still automatically fell into playing to the strength of one archtype or another.
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WarHammer Online did pretty much the same. Pretty much every class could be an offensive class, with the buffers and healers getting massive attacks.
However, once things actually got into battle, once you actually started a tower hold or a tower offensive, things broke back to the stock archtypes. Tank Types went in first, soaked up the first round of damage, followed by the damage dealers, followed by the healers. Even though Archmages could do more than simply heal, once the fight started, that's pretty much all they did with occasional bursts of damage. Even though IronBreakers could do more than play defense, as soon as a tower hold started you'd see waves of IronBreakers turn around and nail Shield Wall, covering everybody fighting on the ramps from behind, while setting up the grudge and defense buffs on Bright Wizards or Warrior Priests.
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So? Why?
Well, part of it comes down to attention span and focus. It's very easy in a combat situation to focus on one aspect of your avatar. Be it damage, healing, defensive buffs or so on, most players only have the physical capability to react to a single event at a time. In the same manner, most players only have the physical capability to focus on performing one event at a time.
As it can be witnessed in games where players can break from the traditional molds with their avatars, most don't. Most players simply fulfill a combat role that they have the abilities to fulfull.
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Another aspect of the formula is that these are just games, but, we can also draw data from real-life events. Ask a Military Recruiter about the different service opportunities available in a standing military. You will probably receive information about the medical corps, the engineering corps, the front line infantry, the back-lines intelligence, the missile command, and so on. If you enlist in the US Military for example, you have to a pick a Military Occupational Specialty, or M.O.S. You are then trained in this particular field, your chosen M.O.S.
Yes, there are some service units, such as the Navy Seals or Army Rangers, that fulfill multiple combat roles. A Navy Seal, for example, receive not just standard medical training, but underwater medical training : http://www.navy.com/about/navylife/o...eals/training/
However, very few enlisted, or commissioned, soldiers in the US Navy become Navy Seals. Very few enlisted or commissioned soldiers in the US Army become Rangers. Not everybody has the capacity, both mental and physical, to handle the multiple jobs such elite soldiers can handle.
In the same way, not every gamer has the mental or physical capacity to play and focus on something more than the Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer.
Yes, somebody could say the formula is a basic one, but it works to enable the most amount of players to have access to any particular game.
I think one of the key problems is mission design. Having more innovative missions where damage is of less importantance would shift things from just needing to kill enemies. Examples have been given on ways to improve stealth missions.
I sort of disagree with the thought process of Scrappers being self sufficient simply because some enemies actually can give certain power combos a hard time, we just don't have enough for it to be noteworthy.
I think one of the key problems is mission design. Having more innovative missions where damage is of less importantance would shift things from just needing to kill enemies. Examples have been given on ways to improve stealth missions.
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GW has some nice gimmick missions though. Would be a good place to start.
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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There was no triad concept in D&D. "Aggro" was largely a function of how the gamemaster perceived that any given opponent would react to any given situation. Almost every class had ways to mitigate damage. Every class was capable of delivering similar amounts of damage, (or capability of defeating specific types of enemies in the cases of clerics versus undead, etc). Every class was capable of healing because the majority of healing was, at least in my groups, a function of items, not necessarily a function of class. The cleric usually had other things to do.
I suppose the cleric class was the closest nod that D&D had to today's triad model because of the inherency of their healing spells, but by and large, clerics had other, more important things to do in a given encounter than stand back and heal the rest of the party like a healer does in a modern MMO.
In fact, pnp D&D, at least the way we played it, was a lot closer to what Sam is describing than any MMO, including CoV.
Edit: All of that being said, since this game is evolving to the point where the specialized classes are becoming more and more 'niche' with each development, I would say that the empathy defender and the entire tank AT probably need some sort of look-over as to what they actually do... especially if, as many suspect, the tank will probably be replaced by the brute in desirability for teaming after GR drops.