Guild Wars 2

The Trinity.

Take a moment to read those two words. Take a moment to think about how often you hear them bandied about on the forums. Blamed for this, blamed for that, with the trinity you could do X, without the trinity Y is harder/easier, etc.

This is essentially a pet peeve I’ve developed, and I’m wondering if anyone else is feeling this way.

Before gw2, I can safely say I could count on one hand how many times I even heard “the trinity” in reference to gaming. To be perfectly honest, it may very well have been zero. It seems with Gw2’s existence, suddenly this is the new hot term to say because you’re a pro gamer who totally understands metagaming.

It gets blamed for when things don’t work. It gets brought up when things are too difficult, or someone can’t figure out how to get past something. Tanking, DPSing, Healing, aggro mechanics, dungeons, PvP, you name it – someone is immediately jumping to spit “the trinity!” out of their mouths as an explanation for it.

Am I the only one feeling like, seemingly overnight, an entire community has jumped on this bandwagon of now becoming immensely aware that something you always took for granted before and rarely anyone actually thought about is now vital?

Am I the only one whose sat back going “wait, all DPS parties, all healer parties and all tank parties happened way before Gw2, why are they even talking about this? They act like multi-classing generalist roles, or professions acting utilitarian didn’t exist before”

Is there anyone else who has started just rolling their eyes whenever you see the term crop up, because you are almost entirely certain that the person who brought it up likely doesn’t know kitten about what they’re talking about and is throwing out the latest slang?

Like if you go to a hip-hop concert wearing a sweater vest talking to people like “yo, yo, yo, my home G dawg?”, and everyone else just stares at you.

Did Anet accidentally give kittens a tangible term to blame kitten on? I mean, at this point I almost wish it hadn’t been brought up initially so people would have to articulate their own thoughts, instead of “Well if used the trinity we could”, “well since we lack the trinity we can’t”, etc.

Did conceptualizing traditional MMO standards create a lifeline for people to go “I liked it better the old way, you whippersnappers need to get off my lawn”?

Am I the only one whose just irritated by this sudden fad?

As a Post Script Note:

the standard DPS/healer/tank roles were defined by tabletop RPGs like DnD long before MMOs came into existence. Those selfsame tabletop RPGs eventually progressed into allowing the player more choice. Generalization, specialiation, utility, multiclassing, etc. It dissolved set roles in favor of allowing the players to customize themselves.

It only seems logical that as MMOs followed tabletop RPGs in their creation, and mirrored their progression, that MMOs would continue to follow their evolution and progress in the direction Gw2 and others are going. This, combined with the recently fusing genres of real-time action and stationary hotkey skills, seems to simply be what the future of MMOs is looking like.

I beta test more than actually buying and playing MMOS. The term has been around for a long time. Mostly uttered by people that irritate me. Some MMOs are designed so that it works well, but people latched onto it as a term and use it far too much. Like using the words “ kitten #8221; or “newb/n00b” without even thinking about what they are saying. If a game is designed where the “T” word doesn’t work, it baffles them.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that ‘trinity’ gets more mentions in a game that attempts to get away from the commonly used trinity. Saying that I’ve seen ‘trinity’ mentioned many times in other games, not least because if you’ve been playing games long enough you will remember ‘trinty’ originally meant tank, healer and CC, not DPS. So as DPS are still ten a penny they should really of changed it to the ‘duo’ (tank + healer) in games that have dumbed things down enough to the point support/CC is not a vital role anymore.

But anyway I agree that it is mentioned a lot in GW2, though I find it irritating for a different reason, which is that many GW2 players seem to think GW2 not using it is something new (the same goes for the more action type combat system), it has been fairly typical in action MMORPGs (Darkfall, Vindictus, etc) for years that there is no real healer, and / or real tank like in Rift, WoW, etc.

I only really heard it in Everquest. And since then in mmo games that copy how Everquest did its thing.

You should watch this. Basically what your talking about, and the guy brings up valid points.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eM-hWpCBoPU

The problem is that people want to see GW2 turn into the game of their design rather than go out and get a game that suits their preferences. Then, when others on the forum suggest that they might enjoy another game better, they lash back saying such things as “Don’t tell me what to play! I’ll play what I want!”. If you want a game with dedicated roles, get a game with dedicated roles! Don’t buy the hot new MMORPG and then complain when it isn’t what you wanted. It’s okay if you have complaints about small systems, or UI issues, or things of that nature, but you’re not going to get your way with massive overhauling changes to the entire game. ANet isn’t going to redo every class and bring back “the trinity”; it’s that simple. People just need to figure that out, and eventually it’ll all work itself out.

That said, there’s a sub-community within every game community that tries to find ways to complain no matter what, so I’m sure it’ll never go away completely. That’s something we just have to live with.

Trinity in Everquest was different. that was where you needed a Warrior, Cleric and Enchanter (for crowd control) … in your group or else you were severely gimped.

The trinity in 2013 is terribly lazy design and poor coding.
It’s simply outdated to rely on 2 members taking care of all damage and everyone else DPSing.

Give up trinity-wanters it’s not going to happen, GW2 wasn’t born to be yet another wow clone with gimmicky dungeon design.

Rising Dusk.2408:

The problem is that people want to see GW2 turn into the game of their design rather than go out and get a game that suits their preferences. Then, when others on the forum suggest that they might enjoy another game better, they lash back saying such things as “Don’t tell me what to play! I’ll play what I want!”. If you want a game with dedicated roles, get a game with dedicated roles! Don’t buy the hot new MMORPG and then complain when it isn’t what you wanted. It’s okay if you have complaints about small systems, or UI issues, or things of that nature, but you’re not going to get your way with massive overhauling changes to the entire game. ANet isn’t going to redo every class and bring back “the trinity”; it’s that simple. People just need to figure that out, and eventually it’ll all work itself out.

That said, there’s a sub-community within every game community that tries to find ways to complain no matter what, so I’m sure it’ll never go away completely. That’s something we just have to live with.

Totally agreed with you on that. I got in to GW2 to get away from the trinity.

Ayanavi.1904:

It only seems logical that as MMOs followed tabletop RPGs in their creation, and mirrored their progression, that MMOs would continue to follow their evolution and progress in the direction Gw2 and others are going. This, combined with the recently fusing genres of real-time action and stationary hotkey skills, seems to simply be what the future of MMOs is looking like.

In theory yes, and what i was expecting going in. In practice this game does not deliver. This because the twin cases of trying to avoid the LFH for dungeons (the main place where trinity crops up in MMORPGs) and trying to make a esport out of the PVP.

End result is a game that reminds me of the old Ford quote, “You can get the model T in any color, as long as it’s black”. Or in GW2 terms, you can play your profession in any way, as long as it is DPS.

What ANet has done is break off two points of the triangle. Leaving some jagged edges that may look like tank/bunker and healer/support at first glance, but that do not really work out because everything else in the game, PVE reward/incentive structure on up, only take DPS into account.

Now if i could actually play my profession of choice as if i multiclassed in D&D, i would be happy. But in my frank opinion, i can’t. I need to be up on the front lines doing as much damage as i possibly can, or i am a secondary citizen.

What irritates me more is when people talk about MMOs as if they’re the entirety of gaming.
You won’t hear mention of “Trinity” in the majority of games out there, because that majority aren’t MMOs.

Kakeru.2873:

You should watch this. Basically what your talking about, and the guy brings up valid points.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eM-hWpCBoPU

Basically what i have been saying since day one on this issue. The problem is not the lack or not of trinity, it is that even when going full in with gear and traits, anything but focused DPS in GW2 just becomes gimped DPS. The various non-DPS stats are so reduced in their impact before they reach the skills that you do just as well by not going there in the first place.

And the duo of being able to stack on crit damage percentage and the dodge mechanic exasperates this issue.

This because dodge is the shortest cooldown defense ability in the game, you can have one as often as every 5 seconds if you can maintain vigor. This while block/parry, CC and heals are all in the 30 second or higher range, meaning you can dodge for 3-6 times for every block or CC you can get off. So why bother when you can banzai in as some frothing berserker, dodging left and right as need be?

And the crit damage stack allows any hit to balloon up to 2.5 times its size after armor, meaning it can recover whatever impact high armor had on the initial damage and then some, making the hard counter of the dodge much more valuable than any amount of plating you can pile on.

To sum up, the problem is not hard trinity or not, but that 2/3 of the potential builds in this game are gimped out the gate.

Whether or not a game uses ‘the trinity’ model is probably not even in the top 20 most important factors on whether or not I find it fun. The term has been around for much longer than gw2, and the ‘unnamed’ concept of tank/heal/dps even longer than that. No, it doesn’t bother me hearing the term.

Sylosi.6503:

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that ‘trinity’ gets more mentions in a game that attempts to get away from the commonly used trinity. Saying that I’ve seen ‘trinity’ mentioned many times in other games, not least because if you’ve been playing games long enough you will remember ‘trinty’ originally meant tank, healer and CC, not DPS. So as DPS are still ten a penny they should really of changed it to the ‘duo’ (tank + healer) in games that have dumbed things down enough to the point support/CC is not a vital role anymore.

It’s not that CC is vital but that CC is generally made unuseable because the devs decided to make bosses immune to CC for some unexplainable reason.

Ellisande.5218:

Sylosi.6503:

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that ‘trinity’ gets more mentions in a game that attempts to get away from the commonly used trinity. Saying that I’ve seen ‘trinity’ mentioned many times in other games, not least because if you’ve been playing games long enough you will remember ‘trinty’ originally meant tank, healer and CC, not DPS. So as DPS are still ten a penny they should really of changed it to the ‘duo’ (tank + healer) in games that have dumbed things down enough to the point support/CC is not a vital role anymore.

It’s not that CC is vital but that CC is generally made unuseable because the devs decided to make bosses immune to CC for some unexplainable reason.

And CC is not CC in the classic sense, they are PVP interrupts masking as CC via attached 1-3 second effects (daze, stun, knockdown, fear). Their primary job is not to keep some mob out of the fight for extended periods, but to stop that big spike for actually happening by interrupting it during windup.

The trinity here yet? No? Still broken then.. nevermind!

I’m fine with not having a trinity..

But what GW2 has instead doesn’t work any better, and is worse, to me it is really in need of a direction…

they say there’s no trinity but i feel like my guardian gets the lion’s share of the aggro. coincidence? i don’t think so.

The same people complain about lack of trinity will complain about something else as a way to justify their own failings in the game.

It’s like an American moving to Germany then complains about Germans not speaking English instead of accepting that they need to learn German.

DancingPenguins.9875:

The same people complain about lack of trinity will complain about something else as a way to justify their own failings in the game.

It’s like an American moving to Germany then complains about Germans not speaking English instead of accepting that they need to learn German.

That is a terrible analogy . It is nothing like that.

The Trinity.

No

Just no

Kakeru.2873:

DancingPenguins.9875:

The same people complain about lack of trinity will complain about something else as a way to justify their own failings in the game.

It’s like an American moving to Germany then complains about Germans not speaking English instead of accepting that they need to learn German.

That is a terrible analogy . It is nothing like that.

Indeed, it maybe a terrible analogy…. But it is telling the truth.

Without Trinity is a core feature and the spirit of GW2, end of story.

Ayanavi.1904:

The Trinity.

Take a moment to read those two words. Take a moment to think about how often you hear them bandied about on the forums. Blamed for this, blamed for that, with the trinity you could do X, without the trinity Y is harder/easier, etc.

This is essentially a pet peeve I’ve developed, and I’m wondering if anyone else is feeling this way.

Before gw2, I can safely say I could count on one hand how many times I even heard “the trinity” in reference to gaming. To be perfectly honest, it may very well have been zero. It seems with Gw2’s existence, suddenly this is the new hot term to say because you’re a pro gamer who totally understands metagaming.

You haven’t been in the gaming community for very long, or you don’t pay attention very well. The first time I can think of hearing about the trinity was well over 10 years ago, before I had ever even played (or heard of) an MMO, it was the best way of setting up your party in most TBS games like Final Fantasy, and a great (but back then, not the only viable) way of setting up your party for dungeon delving games.

And no, the trinity is not to blame for all the problems a game may have. But in a game such as WoW, where the game is designed around it making it the only viable playstyle, it removes all strategy and even the need to think. In my opinion, when enforced as it is so frequently in online games, it causes such mindless play that I would say even zerging is more strategic.

I could agree if the removal of the trinity actually did anything for the gameplay or the combat depth, but it really doesn’t. As a result, the encounters have to be designed with numerical difficulty rather than mechanical difficulty. There’s no healer paradigm to directly, efficiently mitigate damage on a constant basis. Removing a paradigm in a timeless group system, it really does nothing good for this game depth wise. Many love it because it enforces a casual environment. No need to actually put any real work into your team role when combat consists only of dodging red circles, spamming off cooldown, and reviving within seconds when a teammate goes down. Down state is essentially the crutch by which this game hobbles after the excision of trinity roles. They could have just made each class effective in each role by specialization, but they decided to homogenize everything.

So actually, if the people vehemently speaking out against the trinity system would actually stop and think for a second…

What we have here in GW2 is extremely homogenized class design. The depth and specialization (very little; mostly ineffectual in the broad scheme) comes from gear, rune, weapon and sigil choices. Many people don’t see this, but what this does is actually take the complexity and integrity out of role specialization. You’re very pigeonholed into what you can do and how integral your role (if you can even call it that) is.

For you GW1 players out there, i mean the ones that are actually familiar with the game, the pvp, and weren’t just turned away because it was instanced and you couldn’t jump (can you believe these people? They don’t even have a leg to stand on with their ignorant opinions about GW1)..remember Alliance Battles…remember HA…remember GvG.

The trinity worked well in GW1 and it wasn’t simplistic, boring, tank and spank, or DPS race like many ignorant people seem to think of the trinity. Part of this was because of energy costs. A monk couldn’t sit there and save a warrior all day long if the warrior just facetanked. I’d even go so far as to say that after the Defy Pain nerf, there was no such thing as tanking in GW1. The point here is that the GW1 SKILL SYSTEM made the otherwise BORING trinity system shine like a greased furball that it is. Personally, i want that design philosophy back in this game.

What we have in GW2 just encourages a complete lack of real, meaningful synergy between classes. One exception would be the Mesmer’s Time Warp. But skills that effective would be on shorter cooldowns in GW1, which made the skill system seem more deep and rewarding to customize with. What we have here in GW2, the skill design, well it’s just obviously and lazily blanket balanced for all game modes with little regard for player choice or real balance.

Consider encounter design in GW2. Bosses are able to nullify knock downs and CC. Why? Because they’ve homogenized the skill system to the point that no single class can really have a meaningful, unique role in a consistent manner…in a team environment. Bosses also have ridiculously huge health bars to feign content difficulty and cover up poor design. The mechanics used, or rather, necessary to be successful in combat? Dodging red circles, pressing your insta heal button, and reviving players. Basically, it’s like an arcade game.

In closing, i could agree with this game not having a trinity system if:

-GW1 wasn’t so successful with a trinity-like system.

( It was)

-GW2 was actually designed better and more tightly to make up for it.

(it’s not)

GW2 didn’t foster a solo attitude.

(it does)

Removing the monk or healer (i mean direct, efficient, worthwhile to specialize into) role actually added depth to the game.

(It didn’t)

They came up with a better Band-Aid rather than Down State.

(They didn’t)

Bosses (encounters by association) weren’t horribly, shallowly designed and even acknowledged to be so by developers.

(They were)

The game wasn’t so homogenized and simplified from GW1 where it counts (gameplay, combat depth, customization, etc.)

(It definitely is.)

Just my 2 cents.

Would be nice if CC was longer in pve, toughness affected threat a little more, and healing coefficents were a little higher on friendlies than on self.

I love the gw2 system, the potential for some really meaningful gameplay is there if the numbers are tweaked a little

There is nothing wrong with the trinity but at the same time I dont think its the only valid structure you can have for group play. Strickly speaking GW2 hasnt entirely removed the Trinity either, but merely spread out its functionality and demanded a higher level of co ordination of abilities between classes.

For example, I have recently been running dungeons on my Engineer as a support build mainly using the Elixer gun and a few utility kits. Careful placing of feilds, positioning and use of Fumigate combined with weakness the Elixer gun places on its target allow me provide a great deal of healing while setting up fields for almost constant condition removal.

As mainly a healer in Trinity based games, the feeling was very much similar. The difference was that my teammates had to have the foresight to take advantage of the fields I had set up and respond to them. It required playing smarter for both them and me.

My brother plays a warrior built as a control build and finds things similar. The biggest difference for a ‘tanking’ style is that you simply cant stand still taking hits. You have to use you skills cleverly and time them effectively and manage kiting effectively. You have to move around and try and avoid enemy hits rather than just getting punched in the face.

Ive heard people refer to this as a soft Trinity. Now I do enjoy playing my healers on other MMOs but I dont like the idea of them changing GW2s style cause I rather like the difference. For small groups it creates far more dynamic combat.

For clarification – This thread has nothing to do with whether or not Gw2 successfully or unsuccessfully managed to implement an atypical playing style.

It is entirely about how, even though I am aware this isn’t a new term, the community seems to have latched on to the phrase “the trinity” and use it as if it’s literally the only word in their vocabulary.

If I had to give it a comparison, I feel as if every time I hear some kitten go “the trinity!” I’m being subjected to someone going “swagyolo!”

I could really care less what you guys think of the success or lack there of when it comes to Gw2, there are enough threads debating that already.

The question posed was who else was feeling similarly annoyed by the abrupt massive popularization of this phrase.

Lutinz.6915:

/snip: The difference was that my teammates had to have the foresight to take advantage of the fields I had set up and respond to them. It required playing smarter for both them and me.

I think this bears highlighting. IMO, the WoW-style trinity system uses personal skill to benefit a group. As a good healer, you help the group. In GW2 system, your effect on the group is, to varying degree’s, dependent on the group!

Put another way, in the traditional trinity, the efforts of 5 individuals working independently determined the success or failure of the group. In GW2, the efforts of 5 individual’s working together determine the success or failure of the group.

This is pretty much the source of all the hate in a classic trinity: “Learn to play noob healer! Not my fault, the tank sux! Yeah, well you did like 2,500 dps on the last boss you noob. I did that much on my healer!”

Not to mention the difficulty finding someone to fill that the required tank/healer role. To be honest, I liked the healer playstyle a lot in WoW, and do miss it sometimes here. But I finally got my guardian up to 80 last night, and spec’d into an Altruistic Healer…. and man, I am seeing some green numbers pop on the group!

I think ANet could buff the healer spec’s slightly, but I do not want to see a classic trinity here. Or Healbot. Or Recount. Or Deadly Boss Mobs.

digiowl.9620:

Ayanavi.1904:

It only seems logical that as MMOs followed tabletop RPGs in their creation, and mirrored their progression, that MMOs would continue to follow their evolution and progress in the direction Gw2 and others are going. This, combined with the recently fusing genres of real-time action and stationary hotkey skills, seems to simply be what the future of MMOs is looking like.

In theory yes, and what i was expecting going in. In practice this game does not deliver. This because the twin cases of trying to avoid the LFH for dungeons (the main place where trinity crops up in MMORPGs) and trying to make a esport out of the PVP.

End result is a game that reminds me of the old Ford quote, “You can get the model T in any color, as long as it’s black”. Or in GW2 terms, you can play your profession in any way, as long as it is DPS.

What ANet has done is break off two points of the triangle. Leaving some jagged edges that may look like tank/bunker and healer/support at first glance, but that do not really work out because everything else in the game, PVE reward/incentive structure on up, only take DPS into account.

Now if i could actually play my profession of choice as if i multiclassed in D&D, i would be happy. But in my frank opinion, i can’t. I need to be up on the front lines doing as much damage as i possibly can, or i am a secondary citizen.

This is very well stated.

It is a hot button word now, you use it and people will only read what they want to. Why it is suddenly the be all and end all of peoples dreams I don’t know.

Ayanavi.1904:

For clarification – This thread has nothing to do with whether or not Gw2 successfully or unsuccessfully managed to implement an atypical playing style.

It is entirely about how, even though I am aware this isn’t a new term, the community seems to have latched on to the phrase “the trinity” and use it as if it’s literally the only word in their vocabulary.

If I had to give it a comparison, I feel as if every time I hear some kitten go “the trinity!” I’m being subjected to someone going “swagyolo!”

I could really care less what you guys think of the success or lack there of when it comes to Gw2, there are enough threads debating that already.

The question posed was who else was feeling similarly annoyed by the abrupt massive popularization of this phrase.

Games are no different than anything else we create. We are creators, but we don’t create ex nihilo, we create after ourselves.The answer is simple and you only need to understand how humans naturally approach meeting objectives in a group context. Do they just get together and “go for it” or do they typically identify roles/tasks and approach the objective with at least a tacit plan of action based around their roles.

For me, it isn’t a question of do we do the trinity or not. The question is more how do humans naturally function in groups where meeting an objective is the organizing element. What dynamics are typically present when the group behavior is efficient, successful, and satisfying? The trinity is one method of organizing combat that has worked. Are there other ways to organize? Probably.

Ayanavi.1904:

The question posed was who else was feeling similarly annoyed by the abrupt massive popularization of this phrase.

Not really. The term has been widely used long before GW2, so there’s nothing inherently abrupt about seeing it used now, neither in volume nor in it’s (in-)correct usage. That it would crop up more often on these forums and in the more heated discussions about GW2 was to be expected.