Guild Wars 2

notebene.3190:

Knighthonor.4061:

that all being said, AI in trinity games like Rift and WoW, still are far more challenging than any Mob AI in GW2.

In fact i would go as far as to say that Mob AI is more predictable in Non-Trinity MMO PvE than it is in Trinity PvE. We see a clear example of this by looking at GW2’s PvE content. The Bosses are very predictable, and the Mob AI is easy to exploit, which is the reason the glass cannon Zerker has been the PvE meta all along. GW2 Pretty much proves my point. ???

If that is all true, then why wouldn’t you want to go play those? Rift is only 4 years old, this is coming up on 3? It’s a very good game, I played for about 10 months or so. Even FFXIV bent to the will of the military industrial “we must have jobs!” crowd that were irritated with the clkitten, mix-n-match, UO-style ‘throw together and wear whatever you want’ types, and the managed to move that away from a more organic game to a rigid one in ARR.

Isn’t that the whole reason there are lots of different games, so everyone can find one that fits their play style the closest?

I’m assuming this is all just a rhetorical discussion of whether a trinity leads to more challenging AI, and not a literal call to change the game, even if it alienates myself and many other people that have grown to love a trinity-less type game? Especially when there are AAA titles that have that already which are very good games and not very old? I even think SWTOR fits that bill, no?

There’s always PvP? See how challenging that AI is? Fairly unpredictable?

You are deflecting now instead of addressing the debate. Thats somewhat trollish imo. Instead of doing that, how about you stick to the topic of debate which is trinity in regards GW2 improvement?

Why must Trinity be brought up again and again with no sound standing? Why are people so infatuated with gear stats in a combat system based on active defense and mobility? Why is stat diversity more important than build diversity?

I’m going to copy something I wrote on this on reddit few days ago (also wrote something similar on the forums in the trinity thread in the HoT forums…).

Stats don’t change gameplay roles only augment them. I don’t know why stat diversity is important…we should focus more on build and skills diversity (have bosses which may require us to bring more CC (kind of like Mai Trin) or more mobility (like the Anomaly) etc.). This is beneficial to everyone; it is more flexible, has more gameplay impact, doesn’t require alternative gear sets and so is more accessible.
In GW2 it is possible for people to simultaneously contribute to more than one role precisely because stats don’t effect skills that much. If a dps guardian’s aegis is not worse than a tanky/healer guardian’s then the dps guardian has no incentive to even use support skills and so limiting their playstyle flexibility.
Stats should serve two purposes only. They should be kind of like training wheels; i.e. you should be able to sacrifice your own survivability for more damage.This should be your choice rather than be be mandated by content. They should also serve to augment specialized roles (but these roles should be niche and rare never required (since that destroys diversity again)).
The problems currently in GW2 combat system (stuff that harms gameplay and build diversity) are (in no order):

• Stacking: This is a mechanic and AI issue that trivializes gameplay and would be there regardless of stats.
• Conditions: In pve they don’t work because of technical reasons. This limits diversity a lot. Having working conditions in group play opens a lot of possibilities for high toughness mobs.
• Difficulty: This again is a mechanics and AI issue. PVE gets too easy too too fast and so people only use zerker gear. In the CDI for Raids the devs mentioned how they want to make content whose difficulty is based on knowledge of the team fight, then player skills, and then number of players and the gear that they have. Difficulty should be derived from mechanics of the fight not unavoidable damage.
• The mobs are slow in both movement and attack speed so much of the stuff that would be effective against other players is not very effective against them (e.g. torment, confusion, chill, cripple, retaliation.
  People claim that zerker being optimal everywhere is a problem. I disagree the problem is not that it is optimal everywhere but that it is optimal in roughly the same way. The same strategies mostly work everywhere and you rarely have to significantly change your builds. This is compounded because PVE is easy now with so much practice (AI change would be a great band-aid). The standard to effective zerker play should be higher (you should be more skilled to run zerker as currently it doesn’t require that much skill and so it is very prevalent in pugs).

Fixing these problems would make GW2 combat better not breaking one of the best combat systems because people don’t understand it.

[quote=4869502;Jerus.4350:]

warbignime.4610:

So I was watching Towelliee(a popular WOW streamer), and he said this:
“GW2 has the best PVP and combat out of all MMOs, If GW2 had Holy Trinity, with that pvp and dungeons ,it would be the No.1 MMO in the world” this is his quote, When I first heard of it, I thought it’s totally nuts and holy trinity is bad so gw2 don’t need it, but later when I think about. I actually think he is legit. GW2 might not be unique and a better game with holy trinity, but I really do think it would be more successful. Because as I know 90% of the people were turned down by no holy trinity, which is the only reason people play other mmo(WOW, SWTOR,etc.) instead of GW2, imagine if gw2 went with holy trinity, people often say XXX mmo is WOW killer, I think GW2 would actually kill WOW.
PS: all my opinion.

No it would not be better with a Trinity.

I never said there was no AI manipulation in trinity games, i said that the AI in trinity games are far more challenging than Non-Trinity mmos. EQ being the first Trinity mmo proves my point as well.

The argument i seen has been that AI in trinity mmos are just dumb. But i have shown that the Trinity Mob AI is more advanced than we see in Non-Trinity mmos. People used the argument of predictability, which is proven that in GW2 the mobs are more predictable.

Also somebody argued that trinity mmos are easier, but this is disproven by the fact that Trinity PvE in mmos like WoW and Rift, is far more challenging than anything we have in Non-Trinity mmos like GW2. No argument there.

i will repeat. Trinity/Non-Trinity, they both have mobs that are not Terminator smart, but trinity AI is still the lesser of the dumb two.

Knighthonor.4061:

I never said there was no AI manipulation in trinity games, i said that the AI in trinity games are far more challenging than Non-Trinity mmos. EQ being the first Trinity mmo proves my point as well.

The argument i seen has been that AI in trinity mmos are just dumb. But i have shown that the Trinity Mob AI is more advanced than we see in Non-Trinity mmos. People used the argument of predictability, which is proven that in GW2 the mobs are more predictable.

Also somebody argued that trinity mmos are easier, but this is disproven by the fact that Trinity PvE in mmos like WoW and Rift, is far more challenging than anything we have in Non-Trinity mmos like GW2. No argument there.

i will repeat. Trinity/Non-Trinity, they both have mobs that are not Terminator smart, but trinity AI is still the lesser of the dumb two.

If that is so then why do you think that is? What makes Trinity AI better and how?

I don’t if it would be more successful or not, but I would like it more with the trinity.

Knighthonor.4061:

notebene.3190:

Knighthonor.4061:

that all being said, AI in trinity games like Rift and WoW, still are far more challenging than any Mob AI in GW2.

In fact i would go as far as to say that Mob AI is more predictable in Non-Trinity MMO PvE than it is in Trinity PvE. We see a clear example of this by looking at GW2’s PvE content. The Bosses are very predictable, and the Mob AI is easy to exploit, which is the reason the glass cannon Zerker has been the PvE meta all along. GW2 Pretty much proves my point. ???

If that is all true, then why wouldn’t you want to go play those? Rift is only 4 years old, this is coming up on 3? It’s a very good game, I played for about 10 months or so. Even FFXIV bent to the will of the military industrial “we must have jobs!” crowd that were irritated with the clkitten, mix-n-match, UO-style ‘throw together and wear whatever you want’ types, and the managed to move that away from a more organic game to a rigid one in ARR.

Isn’t that the whole reason there are lots of different games, so everyone can find one that fits their play style the closest?

I’m assuming this is all just a rhetorical discussion of whether a trinity leads to more challenging AI, and not a literal call to change the game, even if it alienates myself and many other people that have grown to love a trinity-less type game? Especially when there are AAA titles that have that already which are very good games and not very old? I even think SWTOR fits that bill, no?

There’s always PvP? See how challenging that AI is? Fairly unpredictable?

You are deflecting now instead of addressing the debate. Thats somewhat trollish imo. Instead of doing that, how about you stick to the topic of debate which is trinity in regards GW2 improvement?

It doesn’t deflect it at all, if the question is really just an organic “does it improve it”. It does not for quite a lot of people that like how the game is built, and don’t require the AI to be just a little bit more unpredictable because the trinity is introduced. The trinity brings along a lot of other baggage with it that some of us are happy aren’t around, and are willing to have a little less challenging AI.

If the question is, “Will it make AI more challenging for those of us that want it”, yes, it may at that. Do I think it’s ‘good’ for the game? No I don’t.

And I still disagree because I’m using the same tools I learned in my trinity games to manipulate the same limited AI. GW2 has even made attempts to strengthen their AI but we still learn tricks to break it. Like enmies still tracking you through stealth, you can break it by letting them tag you. Or enemies that will evade when targetted, well… you just don’t target them.

No matter what they do we’ll find ways to manipulate it.

If you see less of it in trinity games I’d argue that it’s because it may just not be worth it. For example in EQ while we used a lot of the same tricks often we’d just pull a bunch of things and AE them down or mez them off because we could easily handle it and it wasn’t worth the effort to be disciplined in our manipulation. GW2 you’re rewarded far more for things like LoSing because you don’t have the same tools. We don’t have the agro mechanics to let one person take all the damage, our weak Ele needs the blinds to survive on say cliffside in a fractal 50. We don’t have the healers to counter our lazy play.

I just simply can’t agree with what you’re saying.

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Knighthonor.4061:

I never said there was no AI manipulation in trinity games, i said that the AI in trinity games are far more challenging than Non-Trinity mmos. EQ being the first Trinity mmo proves my point as well.

The argument i seen has been that AI in trinity mmos are just dumb. But i have shown that the Trinity Mob AI is more advanced than we see in Non-Trinity mmos. People used the argument of predictability, which is proven that in GW2 the mobs are more predictable.

Also somebody argued that trinity mmos are easier, but this is disproven by the fact that Trinity PvE in mmos like WoW and Rift, is far more challenging than anything we have in Non-Trinity mmos like GW2. No argument there.

i will repeat. Trinity/Non-Trinity, they both have mobs that are not Terminator smart, but trinity AI is still the lesser of the dumb two.

If that is so then why do you think that is? What makes Trinity AI better and how?

Because all mmo games have Aggro tables. In trinity games the Aggro table is used by the designers to improve group roles. So the AI is built for the Roles that we play.

In non trinity games the NPC have to be balanced in a way that makes it so they are predictable due to the random variable which is the Class/Spec that is attacking it/on its aggro chart. So that mob has to be balanced to fight a Warrior the same as they would that glassy mage.
In trinity the AI, being built around a system, can be designed to categorize groups of players on the fly and address a group of players with some kind of organization built for challenge.

I would like the trinity tbh. Playing each class feels to similiar….
You deal damage. There you have it. That’s all.

I played a bit support in WoW:WoD and it was really fresh. Really sad that GW2 doesn’t even allow you to play as a healer…

I mean anet doesn’t have to force the trinity but at least make it possible.

warbignime.4610:

So I was watching Towelliee(a popular WOW streamer), and he said this:
“GW2 has the best PVP and combat out of all MMOs, If GW2 had Holy Trinity, with that pvp and dungeons ,it would be the No.1 MMO in the world” this is his quote, When I first heard of it, I thought it’s totally nuts and holy trinity is bad so gw2 don’t need it, but later when I think about. I actually think he is legit. GW2 might not be unique and a better game with holy trinity, but I really do think it would be more successful. Because as I know 90% of the people were turned down by no holy trinity, which is the only reason people play other mmo(WOW, SWTOR,etc.) instead of GW2, imagine if gw2 went with holy trinity, people often say XXX mmo is WOW killer, I think GW2 would actually kill WOW.
PS: all my opinion.

GW2 would be more successful with a healthy dose of “real” roles (Tank, Heals, Buffer, Debuffer, Disruption…) because every profession and build is just a different version of dps with a sprinkle of pseudo role abilities.

Players, like Towellie did, use the words “holy trinity”, but I’m pretty sure that’s just default for wanting more actual and meaningful roles.

It’s disappointing to see such potential wasted.

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Why must Trinity be brought up again and again with no sound standing? Why are people so infatuated with gear stats in a combat system based on active defense and mobility? Why is stat diversity more important than build diversity?

Options shouldn’t be traps. Imagine how lame it would be if someone dressed themselves up in full berserker gear and then got toasted by raid damage every single time they encountered a dungeon boss.

Now, obviously, it’s not the same thing for somebody to just find that their dungeon runs are taking far too long and getting boring, but it still feels like you’ve just been trapped.

In theory, the only true ‘zerker problem’ for the most part is a presentation issue — there’s no real in-game communication on what individual prefixes are even meant to be used for — and it doesn’t help that, as far as I’m aware, at least some of the prefixes really are only supposed to be used in experimental builds.

But this is really a separate issue to the trinity question.

Knighthonor.4061:

But i have shown that the Trinity Mob AI is more advanced than we see in Non-Trinity mmos.

You’ve provided nothing to that effect. You referring to this?

Knighthonor.4061:

The Bosses are very predictable, and the Mob AI is easy to exploit, which is the reason the glass cannon Zerker has been the PvE meta all along. GW2 Pretty much proves my point. ???

Nope. You seem to have forgotten, but people put content on farm in trinity MMOs as well. Including content aimed at a far more hardcore audience than any of GW2’s content.

Just as in GW2, the vast majority of content in a trinity MMO is predictable enough to be memorised, and so that players can easily anticipate anything that the boss might do. In fact, this is one of the major things that allows tanks and healers to be effective — it shows when a tank or a healer doesn’t really know the content they’re doing and is just improvising.

Also somebody argued that trinity mmos are easier, but this is disproven by the fact that Trinity PvE in mmos like WoW and Rift, is far more challenging than anything we have in Non-Trinity mmos like GW2. No argument there.

MMOs like WoW and Rift have more challenging PvE because they have examples of PvE content that’s specifically targeted at far more hardcore audiences than anything in GW2 is presently aimed at. That has nothing to do with them being trinity MMOs.

Neox.3497:

I played a bit support in WoW:WoD and it was really fresh. Really sad that GW2 doesn’t even allow you to play as a healer…

That’s not true, actually.

For the most part, filling bars — especially when it’s just to cover someone else’s mistake — is just a chore.

But in reality, the real meat of the healer’s gameplay isn’t about filling bars, it’s about anticipating and responding to danger — and when there’s no need to heal in a trinity MMO, you DPS.

Feedback? Wall of Reflection? Virtue of Courage? Power Break? Power Cleanse? Every single one of those is a healer skill, even though they have nothing to do with filling bars.

The situation in GW2 as far as healers are concerned isn’t too far removed from e.g., FFXIV handing every scholar an AI pet fairy who takes care of most of the basic filling of bars that might be needed. Or what Rift does with its Chloromancers.

Knighthonor.4061:

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Knighthonor.4061:

I never said there was no AI manipulation in trinity games, i said that the AI in trinity games are far more challenging than Non-Trinity mmos. EQ being the first Trinity mmo proves my point as well.

The argument i seen has been that AI in trinity mmos are just dumb. But i have shown that the Trinity Mob AI is more advanced than we see in Non-Trinity mmos. People used the argument of predictability, which is proven that in GW2 the mobs are more predictable.

Also somebody argued that trinity mmos are easier, but this is disproven by the fact that Trinity PvE in mmos like WoW and Rift, is far more challenging than anything we have in Non-Trinity mmos like GW2. No argument there.

i will repeat. Trinity/Non-Trinity, they both have mobs that are not Terminator smart, but trinity AI is still the lesser of the dumb two.

If that is so then why do you think that is? What makes Trinity AI better and how?

Because all mmo games have Aggro tables. In trinity games the Aggro table is used by the designers to improve group roles. So the AI is built for the Roles that we play.

In non trinity games the NPC have to be balanced in a way that makes it so they are predictable due to the random variable which is the Class/Spec that is attacking it/on its aggro chart. So that mob has to be balanced to fight a Warrior the same as they would that glassy mage.
In trinity the AI, being built around a system, can be designed to categorize groups of players on the fly and address a group of players with some kind of organization built for challenge.

Care to elaborate on how enemies are designed for Eles rather than Warriors?

The general game play of GW2 focuses more on hard hitting attacks that are meant to be avoided. In other games they had these but at a frequency of maybe 1-3 a minute, where we have them every couple seconds on some bosses. We ahve to rotate our active defenses to maintain.

A tanks biggest challenge in other games is quickly grabbing agro before anyone else is hit, taht’s really not much different than getting things blinded, tossing a reflect or hitting the team with an Aegis, that or everyone being ready to defend themselves with a dodge/block/invuln.

All the aspects that make trinity games challenging are here, the only difference is we don’t have tank/healer checks. That’s really all the general attacks are in trinity games. There’s nothing more challenging about running agro rotations and healing rotations. In fact I’d argue that in many ways having a tank makes things easier, it’s far more controlled, once it’s set you don’t have to worry about anything but specifically designed attacks that are meant to hit the rest of the team, which again, come in far slower and less often than they do in GW2.

The reason I gave up on EQ after 15 years was simply that it got too easy. It got to the point that I’d have to pay attention to avoid some mechanic maybe a couple times a minute if there even were those. The rest of the time I actually had a macro (legal there) set up such that I could top raid DPS charts by pressing a button and walking away from the computer. Hardly difficult or active play that GW2 provides. Not saying all trinity games are that simple (DCUO surely wasn’t) but the fact that a trinity game exists like that is pretty much proof that it’s not the trinity system that creates challenges, it’s the game itself and how it’s designed.

Are there more challenging games than GW2, absolutely, but only because the devs wanted to create a higher level of challenge, not because they were trinity.

Samhaim.8956:

+1 ^

Well it all go backs to Zerker problem, as bad as holy trinity is, it is still way better than all zerker.

I’ll take playing with my own build and slapping some zerker gear on every now and then over having to be forced to wait for a healer/tank to do content any day of the year.

How about playing with your own build and slapping some tank or healer gear on every now and then and not have to wait for a healer/tank at all.

Knighthonor.4061:

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Knighthonor.4061:

I never said there was no AI manipulation in trinity games, i said that the AI in trinity games are far more challenging than Non-Trinity mmos. EQ being the first Trinity mmo proves my point as well.

The argument i seen has been that AI in trinity mmos are just dumb. But i have shown that the Trinity Mob AI is more advanced than we see in Non-Trinity mmos. People used the argument of predictability, which is proven that in GW2 the mobs are more predictable.

Also somebody argued that trinity mmos are easier, but this is disproven by the fact that Trinity PvE in mmos like WoW and Rift, is far more challenging than anything we have in Non-Trinity mmos like GW2. No argument there.

i will repeat. Trinity/Non-Trinity, they both have mobs that are not Terminator smart, but trinity AI is still the lesser of the dumb two.

If that is so then why do you think that is? What makes Trinity AI better and how?

Because all mmo games have Aggro tables. In trinity games the Aggro table is used by the designers to improve group roles. So the AI is built for the Roles that we play.

In non trinity games the NPC have to be balanced in a way that makes it so they are predictable due to the random variable which is the Class/Spec that is attacking it/on its aggro chart. So that mob has to be balanced to fight a Warrior the same as they would that glassy mage.

In trinity the AI, being built around a system, can be designed to categorize groups of players on the fly and address a group of players with some kind of organization built for challenge.

So, which game are you on the design staff for? “Mobs categorizing groups of players on the fly?” What nonsense. If that were true, then different group compositions would elicit different behavior. That does not happen.

Mobs in both systems are built around the numbers the player characters have and the numbers the mobs have. Mob behaviors in both systems are similar. They attack according to an aggro table, do damage based on the level of challenge the developers want to offer and take damage accordingly. They also have other scripts like follow, pathing around obstacles, leashing, etc. Some games even have mobs that kite. Trinity game mobs are every bit as predictable as GW2 mobs.

The one difference in challenge levels is that in group content in a trinity game, tank defenses allow the tank to ignore excess (overkill) damage whereas anyone else takes that excess damage if hit. GW2 bosses indiscriminately do the same damage to everyone (barring critical hits).

Take off your rose colored grasses. You prefer the trinity. That’s fine. However, it is not inherently superior, it’s just different. All the people who prefer the trinity? That’s fine, too. But let’s not forget that there are some kitten-awful boring trinity boss encounters.

The problem is see in this thread is the of peoples opinions. Sure you can have them but no every opinion is correct. GW2 has no hard/hardcore content as it is made for the a casual player to be on the same level as a regular constant player.

Its fashion wars 2, not raid wars 2. You simply cannot have hard, challenging and time consuming content without a good reward. In this case, the regular player base would do these raids while those who enjoy being casual would be at a disadvantage.

GW2 rewards are mostly based on RNG luck to get a shiny weapon, if it were to reward you with a better armor/weapon at the end of a 1+ hour raid that gave you 25% more stats than what the casual players had, there would be an uproar. Creating an even more elitist community where the new players would have to spend a year just to catch up to the elitists and the casuals would just quit.

WvW would be dominated by elite PvErs and then they wouldn’t play PvP because they don’t keep their gear they spent weeks on to farm for.
This is the dilemma. Make a game where the highest stats only give you roughly 5% increase while a casual player can feel like they can compete at the same level OR, make a game you have to farm for hours to get items that give you a significant advantage over other players ie. WoW PvP.

This is what ‘holy trinity’ end game is focused on. You need a party to do hard content when they all fulfill their roles and WANT to play it.

I have played a healer in every mmo that has one, and usually get treated two different ways. Abused for not keeping a self righteous dps’er alive or no communication. You hardly ever get a thanks when puging. Im used to it but it severely impacts new players.

I haven’t found a study or a poll on DPS characters to tank/healers but my guess is its roughly 40%.
Newer games like Tera, Rift, Black Desert etc all have healers/tankers but they do a significant amount of damage these days so they are in theory a hybrid and not part of a trinity until someone tries to force them into the role.

Not healthy for any game.

Casual gameplay doesn’t mean that everything has to be easy, it just means that the time investment either has to be incremental or limited.

You can’t have 4 hour sagas where you can’t stop mid way and call it casual, You can have intense challenging 15-30 minute battles where you’re pushed to your limit.

I wouldn’t call myself hardcore compared to my old days in MMOs, I simply don’t ahve the ability or desire to do 4 hours raids anymore, but, I very much desire a 15-30 minute battle that has me failing consistently where I may take the full 2 weeks of trying to finally succeed.

Again, Casual means you don’t invest everything into the game, it does not mean that you can’t handle a challenge.

How to start a long drawn out thread that includes the same arguments that have been rehashed over and over:

Make the subject Holy Trinity

LOL

Panites.6798:

The problem is see in this thread is the of peoples opinions. Sure you can have them but no every opinion is correct. GW2 has no hard/hardcore content as it is made for the a casual player to be on the same level as a regular constant player.

Its fashion wars 2, not raid wars 2. You simply cannot have hard, challenging and time consuming content without a good reward. In this case, the regular player base would do these raids while those who enjoy being casual would be at a disadvantage.

GW2 rewards are mostly based on RNG luck to get a shiny weapon, if it were to reward you with a better armor/weapon at the end of a 1+ hour raid that gave you 25% more stats than what the casual players had, there would be an uproar. Creating an even more elitist community where the new players would have to spend a year just to catch up to the elitists and the casuals would just quit.

WvW would be dominated by elite PvErs and then they wouldn’t play PvP because they don’t keep their gear they spent weeks on to farm for.
This is the dilemma. Make a game where the highest stats only give you roughly 5% increase while a casual player can feel like they can compete at the same level OR, make a game you have to farm for hours to get items that give you a significant advantage over other players ie. WoW PvP.

This is what ‘holy trinity’ end game is focused on. You need a party to do hard content when they all fulfill their roles and WANT to play it.

I have played a healer in every mmo that has one, and usually get treated two different ways. Abused for not keeping a self righteous dps’er alive or no communication. You hardly ever get a thanks when puging. Im used to it but it severely impacts new players.

I haven’t found a study or a poll on DPS characters to tank/healers but my guess is its roughly 40%.
Newer games like Tera, Rift, Black Desert etc all have healers/tankers but they do a significant amount of damage these days so they are in theory a hybrid and not part of a trinity until someone tries to force them into the role.

Not healthy for any game.

I dont see why we cant have both. Casual Trinity Raid Dungeons and Hardcore Trinity Raid Dungeons.

i simply enjoy both Trinity and Raid Dungeons. Doesnt mean i am not also casual player.

Jerus.4350:

Casual gameplay doesn’t mean that everything has to be easy, it just means that the time investment either has to be incremental or limited.

You can’t have 4 hour sagas where you can’t stop mid way and call it casual, You can have intense challenging 15-30 minute battles where you’re pushed to your limit.

I wouldn’t call myself hardcore compared to my old days in MMOs, I simply don’t ahve the ability or desire to do 4 hours raids anymore, but, I very much desire a 15-30 minute battle that has me failing consistently where I may take the full 2 weeks of trying to finally succeed.

Again, Casual means you don’t invest everything into the game, it does not mean that you can’t handle a challenge.

I fully agree with you, but as a human being we always look for the easiest and best rewarding road to go down. Sure there are outliers but most of the population works with way.
CoF 1 was farmed because it was easy, fast and rewarded well for the time dedicated. CoF3 I don’t think has ever been farmed, sure once you know the mechanics and how it works but its so challenging in a pug group that people just don’t do it.

This is why a holy trinity or hard content will never properly work in GW2, and I don’t mind. I enjoy GW2 for what it has, meanwhile there’s a monumental amount of other games to play if I want challenging PvE content.

I would have bought it either way in support. I don’t care what WoW or any other MMO is/are doing. I refuse to pay to chase a carrot.

“I have ‘proven’ this as ‘fact’ by declaring my opinions…” :/

Panites.6798:

Jerus.4350:

Casual gameplay doesn’t mean that everything has to be easy, it just means that the time investment either has to be incremental or limited.

You can’t have 4 hour sagas where you can’t stop mid way and call it casual, You can have intense challenging 15-30 minute battles where you’re pushed to your limit.

I wouldn’t call myself hardcore compared to my old days in MMOs, I simply don’t ahve the ability or desire to do 4 hours raids anymore, but, I very much desire a 15-30 minute battle that has me failing consistently where I may take the full 2 weeks of trying to finally succeed.

Again, Casual means you don’t invest everything into the game, it does not mean that you can’t handle a challenge.

I fully agree with you, but as a human being we always look for the easiest and best rewarding road to go down. Sure there are outliers but most of the population works with way.
CoF 1 was farmed because it was easy, fast and rewarded well for the time dedicated. CoF3 I don’t think has ever been farmed, sure once you know the mechanics and how it works but its so challenging in a pug group that people just don’t do it.

This is why a holy trinity or hard content will never properly work in GW2, and I don’t mind. I enjoy GW2 for what it has, meanwhile there’s a monumental amount of other games to play if I want challenging PvE content.

True, people want to be rewarded for their time and effort. That however doesn’t mean there isn’t room for challenging. Properly reward the challenge (it doesn’t have to be gold) and people will do it. Look at fractals, people regularly do fractal 50’s even though the rewards simply aren’t up to par. They do have a special reward though, and that’s enough to get people doing them. I really hope they expand on that type of gameplay.

Kinda sorta?

What I would have done is made stronger combo spells with classes, and made teamwork even bigger part not just dps it down quickly and dodge.

What I mean is, Spells, and skills being the tank and only when combine with other players.

Fire+Ranger mud skill+ Clay wall, that bosses has to smash through for extra damage or debuff. Giving players time.

Guard+Warrior skill combos could make a warrior of light forcing the boss to miss a lot.

I mean it would have to rebalance, but I was hoping for a deeper combo system, that require team work instead of zerk and dodge.

I think we are moving away from the original topic but we can come to an agreement. Holy Trinity has its advantages and cons, just as a game without it.

Sure this game could be improved on but its a fantastic game and that should unite us. I mean look at all those dye names, i would’ve hated to have the job of naming them all lol.

Never going to happen. I like it the way it is. It makes it different than all those cookie cutter mmo’s out there.

Just here to state my opinions on the subject:

I don’t think the intention of arenanet was to make a game with no trinity, nor was that their statement. I think they always intended to make a game where different roles were necessary i.e. support, dps, tank(ish), with the condition that all classes could be run in a manner that would fulfill multiple of these roles (you can play a tanky guardian, a healer guardian or a dps guardian). We see this in dungeons when some of your party mates must run support utilities like condi clear and stealth, and in pvp when there are bunkers and thieves run around to decap and cap points (support role)

Algreg.3629:

1. a popular WOW streamer is nothing more than a single person with personal opinions and tastes. Playing and streaming does not turn you into a market analyst or even a knowledgeable player.
2. GW2 is extremely succesful, as far as I can see, second to WoW only in the genre. Ever thought that may be the case partly because of the lack of “trinity”? Is that a more improbable guess than the hypothetical “what if”-scenario you present?
3. Your “90 percent” is just a number anyone can draw out of the hat. My personal – and likewise only anecdotal – impression is completely the other way round.

Can you explain how gw2 is “extremely successful”?

What do you mean gw2 is “second to wow only in the genre”?

notebene.3190:

abbetd.5912:

Another thought just occurred to me as I was reading some of the other responses to this thread: imagine the forum QQ that would spawn overnight as people demanded that healers and tanks get priority on full maps (ie at Teq time.)

“We keep failing because too many DPS and not enough tanks or heals can get on the map. There should be priority queuing for these needed roles for events. QQ.”

I remember the last time I played WoW, which was about a 10 month stretch a year into WotLK (which was a really good time; not what this is about) and the first two characters my friend’s helped me bring up were my Pally (they didn’t have a reliable tank in their little guild, or no one else would do it) and my Priest (which, they also kinda wanted because all they wanted to do was DPS and see how big their… numbers were).

Never much of a dungeon person (in any game), but eventually got really comfortable in those, uh, can’t even remember what they were called…one was like a harder Frost run or something and there were lesser runs? I got pretty good with my Tank and Healer with my friends to the point where I got comfortable queueing up alone. Always zipped right in.

Probably end up with a queue like that for dungeons. They’d probably have to yank something like Teq out of an open world setting to let raids of people queue for them. And then it would just be…WoW. Which…we have already.

The third I brought up was a Druid which I went DPS with (though had a healer spec too, but it wasn’t as good as my Priest). Went to queue one day…holy smokes. Zipping right in – not so much.

I played hunter, shadow priest , and wind walker monk. Dungeon queues on a good day had me waiting twenty minutes or more. Daytime during the week, during school/business hours, I’don’t wait as long as an hour. That’s one of the main reasons I moved away from Wow.

The dungeons would probably be less chaotic if there were one.

The standard holy trinity? No.

However, if they could enhance the current soft trinity (Damage, Support, Control) while maintaining GW2’s current ability of not needing any specific role (just losing efficiency) I think combat could be greatly developed.

The solution being having armor where the 1-2 of the stat slots have much more useful support/control skills. For example, support could have something like <reduce utility cooldown by X%> where if you used your utilities for simple damage you would lose dps compared to a pure dps build, however, you would have improved flexibility. Another potential stat would be to remove +healing and make it so it improves the effectiveness of all boons (ie might is a +30 Power bonus instead of a standard +25). Control skills would focus on increasing defiant bar damage/control time, shorter CDs on control effects, and possibly dealing increased damaged to CC’d enemies. Hopefully, with something like this people will be able to have more defined roles, without specific roles becoming required.

Panites.6798:

Jerus.4350:

Casual gameplay doesn’t mean that everything has to be easy, it just means that the time investment either has to be incremental or limited.

You can’t have 4 hour sagas where you can’t stop mid way and call it casual, You can have intense challenging 15-30 minute battles where you’re pushed to your limit.

I wouldn’t call myself hardcore compared to my old days in MMOs, I simply don’t ahve the ability or desire to do 4 hours raids anymore, but, I very much desire a 15-30 minute battle that has me failing consistently where I may take the full 2 weeks of trying to finally succeed.

Again, Casual means you don’t invest everything into the game, it does not mean that you can’t handle a challenge.

I fully agree with you, but as a human being we always look for the easiest and best rewarding road to go down. Sure there are outliers but most of the population works with way.
CoF 1 was farmed because it was easy, fast and rewarded well for the time dedicated. CoF3 I don’t think has ever been farmed, sure once you know the mechanics and how it works but its so challenging in a pug group that people just don’t do it.

This is why a holy trinity or hard content will never properly work in GW2, and I don’t mind. I enjoy GW2 for what it has, meanwhile there’s a monumental amount of other games to play if I want challenging PvE content.

CoF3, 2 and AC3 also have forced waiting periods. It doesn’t matter how good you get at running those paths you’ll still be forced to wait through those points.

Towelie popular? Not in my opinion, he’s no Lirik, that’s for sure.

I think part of what brought me to GW 2 is the whole no “Trinity” system that GW 2 has going for it, however, during the Beta phases, and I can’t quite remember or not if they had dungeons available or not, either or, I didn’t really do any of the dungeons during the Beta (if you could), so I really couldn’t say how much I actually didn’t enjoy not having a set healer.

Upon launch, I wasn’t in too much of a race like quite a few people to get to max level either, I wanted to enjoy the game, along with my friends. So we did… Until we arrived at the first dungeon, and I remember after that day, most of my friends had abruptly halted, and or quit playing Guild Wars 2. Why? Because there was no “Holy Trinity” in place.

The first time I experience a dungeon (in my opinion), I’d love to see that it’s challenging, but, the first time I experienced a dungeon in Guild Wars 2, I wouldn’t even call it challenging, I’d call it silly, and not a whole lot of fun. I’m not too sure how much the dungeons have actually changed now a days being away from Guild Wars 2 for a LONG period of time, but before, it was just getting mercilessly stomped, and wiped, over, and over, until one of us could last long enough to have the party revive and make it back to the boss room before the last player was downed/killed. This is alone what drove away many players from the game, including my friends.

I myself still have yet to do a single dungeon past Ascalon Catacombs, and the end-story dungeon (which was mandatory). But by then, I had found a neat little item which could be spammed, and scaled the amount of healing it did. The “Seed Turret”, which to this date, I still used, but very disappointed that the Cooldown time on it is 30 mins. They could have been a bit more lenient with it’s Cooldown, and maybe dropped it to 10 mins. Still a useful item, but very limited as to when it should be used now.

Long story short, I can’t say I’m all up for the “No Holy Trinity” system, since it drove out the people I enjoy playing games with. But if you’re willing to go as far as ask would it make Guild Wars 2 more popular? I would have to say not so much. Guild Wars 1 and 2 for me at least, was mostly about the story, and I really wish there was more content to do with the personal story.

warbignime.4610:

NoTrigger.8396:

warbignime.4610:

Arikyali.5804:

We have a soft trinity, and that is enough. We don’t need a dedicated trinity. Instead of tank, DD, and healer, we have damage mitigation, DPS, and boon support.

No we don’t have soft trinity, we have all zerker.

it would be cool if you would stop telling other people “thats bs” “all zerk” “other builds not viable” when your game knowledge and understanding is abysmal?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0HNyu0Pw8Q

watch it and learn.

Really ? Dude just because they are there does not mean they are viable, zerkers are the most efficient and rewarding way to play the game , you might be able to ru n dungeon with other build, but zerker will do it much faster and easier.

Actually the fact that non zerker can be used successfully does mean that it is viable. That is what the word means.

Knighthonor.4061:

I never said there was no AI manipulation in trinity games, i said that the AI in trinity games are far more challenging than Non-Trinity mmos. EQ being the first Trinity mmo proves my point as well.

The argument i seen has been that AI in trinity mmos are just dumb. But i have shown that the Trinity Mob AI is more advanced than we see in Non-Trinity mmos. People used the argument of predictability, which is proven that in GW2 the mobs are more predictable.

Also somebody argued that trinity mmos are easier, but this is disproven by the fact that Trinity PvE in mmos like WoW and Rift, is far more challenging than anything we have in Non-Trinity mmos like GW2. No argument there.

I’ve failed to see where you’ve proven anything really aside from a few ‘my opinion is fact’ statements.

AI in both GW2 and Trinity games are equally dumb and predictable.

The difference is where in GW2 things like stacking are doable because the AI is weaker or the mechanics aren’t enforced nearly enough, in Trinity games the AI is actually programmed to constantly attack the person shouting things about their mother/father/guinea pig while tapping them with their weapon while ignoring the person keeping that person alive, and everyone else who is actually causing the boss harm.

All in all though, being the appropriate level (actual level 30 as opposed to downscaled level 30, for example), I found the dungeons in GW2 to be much more challenging on the first few run-through than level cap raiding in a few of the Trinity games I’ve played.

Knighthonor.4061:

that all being said, AI in trinity games like Rift and WoW, still are far more challenging than any Mob AI in GW2.

In fact i would go as far as to say that Mob AI is more predictable in Non-Trinity MMO PvE than it is in Trinity PvE. We see a clear example of this by looking at GW2’s PvE content. The Bosses are very predictable, and the Mob AI is easy to exploit, which is the reason the glass cannon Zerker has been the PvE meta all along. GW2 Pretty much proves my point. ???

Actually it doesn’t prove any point. Trinity MMORPGs don’t even HAVE a proper AI. In Trinity games the players dictate what the AI will do by manipulating a simple bar, that bar is affected by set amounts (there is no random element). There is absolutely NO AI in a game where a mob is focusing on a character with high defenses while a healer behind him is keeping is alive. That’s not AI, and Mob AI in Trinity is easy to exploit “by design”, just use a Taunt skill and the mob AI is exploited. Because without aggro management, those mobs would’ve attacked a different target (probably the healer or a high dps character) but instead they focus on the one who is exploiting their AI.

So no, Trinity MMORPGs don’t even have a worthy AI, and that’s by design. It’s like playing a board game where the “enemy” is played by the players, like moving a bad person when a player rolls a 6 on the dice roll. As I said, non-Trinity games have the POTENTIAL to have better AI because the mobs there are not exploited by the game mechanics.

The problem with GW2 is that the AI is using the “other” form of dumb AI, set patterns. Just like most Raid Bosses in Trinity MMORPGs and old school arcade game bosses (like Mario and Sonic) the other “dumb” MMORPG AI is the one that follows a set pattern of attack.

For example, watching Shatterer use his scream attack while there are no players in front of him: “Look he is attacking… the air!”

Aggro management eliminates AI from the game so Trinity games have no AI worth speaking off (by design) while unfortunately non-Trinity games use the scripted AI version where mobs use their attacks on timers and not with intelligence.

And one mistake lots of people make regarding AI in video games: Better AI doesn’t mean HARDER game and more CHALLENGING game. It means enemies reacting in an intelligent way. An example:

The Grunts in the Halo games had some amazing AI behind them. If you killed one using stealth, the others could panic and start running around like headless chickens, screaming the epic line “they are everyehere!” If you killed a good percentage of their forces they would do the same, morale drops and all that. If there was a more powerful enemy type nearby, they would go to them and ask for help, or even hide (and cower) behind them.

One of my favorite encounters in the first Halo game, was when I used a plasma grenade on a Grunt. Those grenades attach on a foe and explode after a set time. The little Grunt with the grenade had a morale failure, run towards a more powerful enemy trooper and shouted: “Take it off me!”, the poor guy tried to run away but in the end they were both killed by the explosion. That’s GOOD AI and it has nothing to do with challenge or hard encounters.

Were they challenging and hard to defeat? No, they were by far the easiest opponents. But they had great personalities and that’s what a “GOOD” AI is all about. It’s called “Artificial Intelligence”, emphasis on Intelligence, a good AI makes mobs react like real animals / creatures / soldiers, with morale failures (and boosts), running away screaming for help, hiding to regenerate etc

I honestly think the lack of trinity is one of this games biggest selling points, surely at least one of it’s biggest points of difference from the rest of the market.

I love the fact this game is not “LF monk then go” or tank and spank. Also as a mainly solo player I enjoy the fact I’m not locked out of content based on trinity mechanics. The self sufficiency given to every player is quite refreshing. In saying it also has it’s downside which is a huge lack of pugging outside anything but end-game or dungeons. The LFG might as well be called LFTaxi as that’s all it’s really used for yet I can just rock around having fun and don’t need to worry if a healer or tank is around to back me up.

I’ll give Anet props on this one, even though people bemoan it at times. MMORPG is an over saturated market and I honestly think many of these games have failed directly because they have followed the trinity mechanics, just with a different skin.

WoW owns that turf.

I must admit though….I so miss playing my Defender in City of Heroes. One of the most rewarding MMO experiences and memories I have is playing that game as a pure healer and buffer, so I get the attraction of the trinity. I had similar experiences in GW1 on my monk and Rit but I get the fact Anet didn’t want to go that way in this game and it’s all the better for it.

There’s to many games following that formula. Kudos to Anet for doing something different, even if meatshields are still pretty meta.

There doesn’t need to be trinity, there needs to be more viable builds and a condition damage rework for PvE. Trinity just helps to make less viable builds.

Turgut.4397:

There doesn’t need to be trinity, there needs to be more viable builds and a condition damage rework for PvE. Trinity just helps to make less viable builds.

What builds aren’t viable?

The only ones that could be argued are maybe unviable are condition builds. You can run anything with anything… but 5xRampager geared Condition build is probably the worst you could do.

As a WoW “fanboy” I realy miss role of healer. I don’t know how people can get bored with a healer role which was the most demanded probably in every “trinity” MMO. Still, for no reason, I enjoy GW2.
But according to topic: think what would happen if dodge was removed. Zerks wouldnt be so popular. Probably there is a solution for PvE other than removing dodge, but i’m thinking about it for ages, and it’s the easiest thing to do which comes to my mind to remove zerk meta, stacking, and meleeing every content.

kuben.9826:

As a WoW “fanboy” I realy miss role of healer. I don’t know how people can get bored with a healer role which was the most demanded probably in every “trinity” MMO. Still, for no reason, I enjoy GW2.
But according to topic: think what would happen if dodge was removed. Zerks wouldnt be so popular. Probably there is a solution for PvE other than removing dodge, but i’m thinking about it for ages, and it’s the easiest thing to do which comes to my mind to remove zerk meta, stacking, and meleeing every content.

So the answer is to change the game’s core design…

This is an action game, built on actively defending yourself. The sooner people accept that and learn to dodge the sooner they can enjoy the game for what it is, which is quite a beautiful game design and honestly much tougher than the majority of gameplay in other MMOs.

Jerus.4350:

kuben.9826:

As a WoW “fanboy” I realy miss role of healer. I don’t know how people can get bored with a healer role which was the most demanded probably in every “trinity” MMO. Still, for no reason, I enjoy GW2.
But according to topic: think what would happen if dodge was removed. Zerks wouldnt be so popular. Probably there is a solution for PvE other than removing dodge, but i’m thinking about it for ages, and it’s the easiest thing to do which comes to my mind to remove zerk meta, stacking, and meleeing every content.

So the answer is to change the game’s core design…

This is an action game, built on actively defending yourself. The sooner people accept that and learn to dodge the sooner they can enjoy the game for what it is, which is quite a beautiful game design and honestly much tougher than the majority of gameplay in other MMOs.

Oh, I really accept it, but it (dodge option) changes PvE so drastically, that You should implement whole bunch of stuff to make the opposite of “stacking zerk meta speedclears”, which unfortunately they didn’t implement.
Btw i think that, sooner or later, they’ll do something about core game mechanics. Idk what, idk when but something will happen eventually. I bet.

warbignime.4610:

So I was watching Towelliee(a popular WOW streamer), and he said this:
“GW2 has the best PVP and combat out of all MMOs, If GW2 had Holy Trinity, with that pvp and dungeons ,it would be the No.1 MMO in the world” this is his quote, When I first heard of it, I thought it’s totally nuts and holy trinity is bad so gw2 don’t need it, but later when I think about. I actually think he is legit. GW2 might not be unique and a better game with holy trinity, but I really do think it would be more successful. Because as I know 90% of the people were turned down by no holy trinity, which is the only reason people play other mmo(WOW, SWTOR,etc.) instead of GW2, imagine if gw2 went with holy trinity, people often say XXX mmo is WOW killer, I think GW2 would actually kill WOW.
PS: all my opinion.

I watched a bit of Towelliee’s stream the other day and honestly this is the last person that anyone should take advice from when it comes to GW2. He knows nothing about the game or depth of combat whatsoever, it was a constant stream of “I don’t know what’s going on”, “I don’t know what’s going on”, “I don’t know what just happened”, “What was that?”, “I don’t know what’s going on.”

Does it matter? Arenanet is going to overhaul their game to appeal to people who are going to go back to WoW when a new expansion gets released.

Trinity is useless in PVP.
Players are immune to aggro.
Only AIs stalk tankers.
Perhaps, 1/5 among tanker class skills are useless in PVP.

I would love to see a slight shift toward the trinity. I think allowing for some dedicated tanking and a need for buffing and healing in combat could help make the PvE more rewarding and complex.

That said, Arenanet have to be careful not to stray too far from what makes their game special. Still, they need to find a way to make PvE content more challenging and complex.

Karizee.8076:

warbignime.4610:

So I was watching Towelliee(a popular WOW streamer), and he said this:
“GW2 has the best PVP and combat out of all MMOs, If GW2 had Holy Trinity, with that pvp and dungeons ,it would be the No.1 MMO in the world” this is his quote, When I first heard of it, I thought it’s totally nuts and holy trinity is bad so gw2 don’t need it, but later when I think about. I actually think he is legit. GW2 might not be unique and a better game with holy trinity, but I really do think it would be more successful. Because as I know 90% of the people were turned down by no holy trinity, which is the only reason people play other mmo(WOW, SWTOR,etc.) instead of GW2, imagine if gw2 went with holy trinity, people often say XXX mmo is WOW killer, I think GW2 would actually kill WOW.
PS: all my opinion.

I watched a bit of Towelliee’s stream the other day and honestly this is the last person that anyone should take advice from when it comes to GW2. He knows nothing about the game or depth of combat whatsoever, it was a constant stream of “I don’t know what’s going on”, “I don’t know what’s going on”, “I don’t know what just happened”, “What was that?”, “I don’t know what’s going on.”

Sounds like he can give excellent feedback on the effectiveness of the NPE.

Klowde.9876:

and in pvp when there are bunkers and thieves run around to decap and cap points (support role)

PvP has more well defined roles because in PvP(unless you are playing hotjoin) you can’t just swap your everything(armor, weapon, trait, utilities and even class) any time you are out of combat and the skills are off cooldown.

Why is it hard for people to grasp that having an old system doesn’t need to carry over to other games? ANet has done a really good job so far with breaking that status quo with GW2. What they need to focus on is more challenging content for PvE.