Guild Wars 2

I don’t agree on some of the smaller points like vertical progression, but yes, one of fundamental problems of gw2 “no specific role needed” is it reduces everything to lowest common denominator.

Nothing will change in the future however.

It’s funny, because I’ve never really associated the Trinity as ‘teamwork’. I mean, there’s no way to support your team if, say, the Tank or Healer goes down (excluding, say, an in battle res).

As for the teamwork in this game, I personally think it’s more down to encounter design, and less to do with the removal of strict roles.

As for vertical progression rewards, why can’t the reward for good temwork be cosmetic? I mean, if content is able to be done by zerging and with good teamwork, then that’s the fault of the content. Humans are programmed to take the path of least resistance, after all.

Back on point, if they created content that couldn’t be completed without near flawless teamwork(thus acting as the gate), why can’t it be a cosmetic reward?

I agree that there should be more difficulty-based rewards, but not that those be better stats. Rare weapon skins would be fine with me, though keeping them rare would probably involve RNG, as with fractal weapon skins when implemented.

I agree with DaiBish that teamwork is not trinity dependent. I also believe that GW2 does not need “effectiveness policing” enabled beyond what’s already available. I have no difficulty determining if a group is using teamwork or not, nor in determining if a given player is not contributing much.

TheDaiBish.9735:

It’s funny, because I’ve never really associated the Trinity as ‘teamwork’. I mean, there’s no way to support your team if, say, the Tank or Healer goes down (excluding, say, an in battle res).

As for the teamwork in this game, I personally think it’s more down to encounter design, and less to do with the removal of strict roles.

As for vertical progression rewards, why can’t the reward for good temwork be cosmetic? I mean, if content is able to be done by zerging and with good teamwork, then that’s the fault of the content. Humans are programmed to take the path of least resistance, after all.

Back on point, if they created content that couldn’t be completed without near flawless teamwork(thus acting as the gate), why can’t it be a cosmetic reward?

If the bloody tank and healer goes down then you are the only guy left, are you still a team then? No you are solo!!!!!!
What a stupid argument “Then there’s no way to support your team anymore” well no kitten because they are all dead!!!!

Noobkaka.5067:

TheDaiBish.9735:

It’s funny, because I’ve never really associated the Trinity as ‘teamwork’. I mean, there’s no way to support your team if, say, the Tank or Healer goes down (excluding, say, an in battle res).

As for the teamwork in this game, I personally think it’s more down to encounter design, and less to do with the removal of strict roles.

As for vertical progression rewards, why can’t the reward for good temwork be cosmetic? I mean, if content is able to be done by zerging and with good teamwork, then that’s the fault of the content. Humans are programmed to take the path of least resistance, after all.

Back on point, if they created content that couldn’t be completed without near flawless teamwork(thus acting as the gate), why can’t it be a cosmetic reward?

If the bloody tank and healer goes down then you are the only guy left, are you still a team then? No you are solo!!!!!!
What a stupid argument “Then there’s no way to support your team anymore” well no kitten because they are all dead!!!!

Aggressive much?

Firstly, I said Tank OR Healer. If one of them goes down in the Trinity system, that’s it. And even if it was a case of both the Tank and Healer going down, you still have 3 DPS (assuming we’re talking a 5 man group). Are they not part of the team too?

In GW2, someone could go down, and that would still be an opportunity where players could use teamwork to pull back.

The lack of team composition and role integrity in the combat system has been a gripe since day one.

I urge you to look at the encounter design, how hearts, events, and content is layed out in the game.

There is no incentive to group with certain classes for certain strengths outside of instanced content. Every class has a self-heal button.

The game is a glorified “a la carte” menu where players romp around from attraction to attraction.

From the economic systems in the game to the questing and content systems in the game, players aren’t encouraged to organize, strategize, and engage in deep methods of teamwork.

Any support is consequential, not targeted or dictated by role. This creates systemic issues on how to balance future content editions, how to make encounters difficult, or even when trying to determine a difficulty threshold.

The mechanics and systems that are integral to combat are homogenized. There is no baseline for difficulty or player skill because of the blaring flaws in design.

The tools for organization and customization aren’t there. The weapon-skill system is limiting, traits are poorly implemented and the skill system is otherwise bland and stagnant.

This MMO is clearly slated for a certain demographic. Just look at how inclusive the economic system (Trade Post) and gem store are. They don’t allow player to player trade and control the interaction through a limiting mail system.

This is a FTP cash cow that has one agenda, put out goods, control the market, pander to a demographic, and leech said demographic indefinitely.

Edited by Moderator

I get why we don’t have trinity. It’s great in a lot of ways, but as others above have said, it takes a lot away from that group feeling, of roles. It takes it from “hey, I’m a rook, and you’re a knight, and you’re a bishop” to “wtf, we’re all pawns…” That said, I love not having to wait for healer, not being blamed for a party wipe if I am the healer, etc.

All that said, there is an “easy” fix to this. I say easy because it wouldn’t require massive reprogramming. I put it quotation marks because of balance issues.

The other parts of the soft trinity, support and control, need MASSIVE buffs. We need compelling reasons to not just spec Zerk and DPS the kitten out of everything.

I pretty much only Ele, so for example of where control/support lacks is some of the frost abilities only lasting for 1-2 seconds. In PvE, that has a completely negligible effect. My AOE heal on staff hits for piddly. I could go on and on, but you know what I mean.

Best profession/class in any MMO, IMO, was the Enchanter from Everquest (and 2 I think). This class specialized in managing aggro, stunning mobs, charming them, support to allies, and some damage. You could turn the tide in battle with well-time spells, make ridiculous encounters manageable, etc. Just posting this is giving me nerd-wood. I didn’t do great damage, but my role was important.

Rather than waiting for that monk/cleric/tank to show up, GW2 did do it right in that ANYONE can do ANY of those things…just not quite.

Make control and support more potent.

Gimme star power.

Trinity means mandatory roles, not teamwork. Teamwork simply means people working together towards a common goal.

Dungeons are short and random, so any teamwork in them is less organized and based more on intuition, but it’s there.

WvW is a longer commitment, and you’ll see a lot deeper organization and more advanced forms of teamwork in there (especially if you hop onto your server’s teamspeak/vent server).

TheDaiBish.9735:

It’s funny, because I’ve never really associated the Trinity as ‘teamwork’. I mean, there’s no way to support your team if, say, the Tank or Healer goes down (excluding, say, an in battle res).

As for the teamwork in this game, I personally think it’s more down to encounter design, and less to do with the removal of strict roles.

As for vertical progression rewards, why can’t the reward for good temwork be cosmetic? I mean, if content is able to be done by zerging and with good teamwork, then that’s the fault of the content. Humans are programmed to take the path of least resistance, after all.

Back on point, if they created content that couldn’t be completed without near flawless teamwork(thus acting as the gate), why can’t it be a cosmetic reward?

Actually, there’s more coordinated cooperation in classic trinity gameplay. The tank needs mitigation buffs (shields, resists,etc.), the healers heal & cleanse, dps can CC, etc. There are various other ways everyone supports each other.

This is also In GW2, but it isn’t as effective. There are many reasons why, but i’ll list two. First, everyone gets into downed-state way too fast. Secondly, CC and other Conditions/Boons do not last long (usually 5 seconds or less).

GW2 doesn’t mesh properly as an action-rpg & classic-rpg.

Its never going to happen, but the trinity was really the only thing missing from this game for it to retain my top spot for years potentially. I really like the dynamics behind the trinity, and dungeons/raid bosses in GW2 feel like a huge mess without it. I understand that people hate the idea of waiting on a tank or healer (often acting like divas), but the easiest way to manage that would have been to allow every class to build in a manner that let them tank or heal. That or making dungeons scale based on whether or not you had one, something I have never seen before in an MMO.

in trinity stuff, the loss of a crucial party member, the tank or healer could quickly lead to the whole party wiping, where as the Gw2 system allows the group to still perform even after losing a few members and possible recovering from those mishaps.

Now I wonder, curious really… in trinity, as a healer or tank, these vital roles, im sure some would feel satisfied and proud of doing their intended roles, knowing that the group could not have made it without them. Not so in GW2, because ..well… if u die ur comrades can still soldier on, probably even win through while u lie dead on the floor. Not very glorious, i know.. So for trinity advocates, is that sense of importance is what is desired?

I personally like the gw2 system because i like flexibility. oh… and i hate waiting for specific classes when forming party :P

Incentivize, thats how you increase team-work. There is to much “stick” in the game, it needs more “carrot” to make people take note.

The most OBVIOUS way to do so is increase drop-rates while in a party. Say 1% per member, though that’s just a suggested starting number.

Second most obvious way is to award more XP and/or Karma to players in a party. Again numbers can be suggested, say 5% e/a, but its a start.

Third option is to add content that has additonal content for parties. No not instances like we have had, but proper additonal party content. By that I mean something like an instance that has a path for a single player, and a second longer path for a few players in a group, and a third more rewarding path for full parties.

AND as an extra thought; Have parts that are only do-able with certain classes or races; Like a target on a wall that opens a gate that only 1500 distance long range attacks can hit (ie ranger LB), or a gap under a wall that an asura is required to enter to activate a switch, or a corpse that needs a necro to revive it to give the team crucial info to clear the event. And or time/kill completion scores that reward better teams of players.

That kinda thing would open up a helluva lot more people in parties and playing as a team.

generalraccoon.3857:

in trinity stuff, the loss of a crucial party member, the tank or healer could quickly lead to the whole party wiping, where as the Gw2 system allows the group to still perform even after losing a few members and possible recovering from those mishaps.

It’s even worse in GW2. If the party leader leaves, the whole group is disbanded. If 2 people vote him out, the whole group is disbanded. Trinity gameplay is easily solved by giving every class a tank/heal spec. Some MMOs already do this. LFG tools remedy this problem also.

These issues of waiting in the past have already been resolved by many different methods, even before GW2. This excuse no longer holds.

Noobkaka.5067:

TheDaiBish.9735:

It’s funny, because I’ve never really associated the Trinity as ‘teamwork’. I mean, there’s no way to support your team if, say, the Tank or Healer goes down (excluding, say, an in battle res).

As for the teamwork in this game, I personally think it’s more down to encounter design, and less to do with the removal of strict roles.

As for vertical progression rewards, why can’t the reward for good temwork be cosmetic? I mean, if content is able to be done by zerging and with good teamwork, then that’s the fault of the content. Humans are programmed to take the path of least resistance, after all.

Back on point, if they created content that couldn’t be completed without near flawless teamwork(thus acting as the gate), why can’t it be a cosmetic reward?

If the bloody tank and healer goes down then you are the only guy left, are you still a team then? No you are solo!!!!!!
What a stupid argument “Then there’s no way to support your team anymore” well no kitten because they are all dead!!!!

If your team is stupid enough not to ress then yea your solo!

Improve teamwork? It’s already amazing !

Relax, become one with zerg. Your thoughts with their thoughts. Your auto-attacks with their auto-attacks. What could be more cooperative than 20 people working in auto-harmony?

I agree that the feeling of teamwork in PvE is very diminished compared to many other games in the genre, and needs to be fixed. In particular, control and support roles don’t seem to be effective for what one gives up to use them. It leads me to feel like anything other than maximum DPS is of limited use which causes all of my characters to essentially have the same goals and many have the same or similar optimal stat distributions for a particular type of content.

I don’t think Trinity is the answer here, though interestingly enough, Trinity in this game would be less damaging than in just about any other because every class can reasonably assume at least two roles comfortably and effectively in Guild Wars 2.

The problem seems to me to be a combination of quite a few factors:

• Most Combo Field and Finisher combinations aren’t worth the time it takes to execute them, so they are done almost at random with Water and Fire + Blast being the exceptions.
• Most control skills don’t last long and have a large cooldown which causes them to require a high DPS situation to be effective. Control doesn’t work well with control, while DPS works well with more DPS.
• Most healing weapon skills and utilities are very limited.
• Downstate gives every player the most coveted ability in Trinity games: mid-battle resurrection. With that, the penalty for going down is mitigated and even normalized whereas it would be a crippling event in Trinity games that would cause players to potentially think more defensively.
• Equipment improves DPS far more than healing, control, or support with the same stat expenditure.
• Encounter design often encourages killing the enemy as quickly as possible and fails to support any form of defensive strategy.
• It’s difficult to quickly grasp the effect a player’s support has on another player.
• To get an appreciable amount of healing, one must sacrifice significant amounts of DPS.
• Players are asked to rely upon dodge to survive; defensive stats and abilities still aren’t enough for many critical encounters.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not for changing all of those things dramatically; I even enjoy some of these features like dodges and downstate, but the combination of all of those things encourages players to feel that the best support is DPS, and the best control is more DPS.

nexxe.7081:

generalraccoon.3857:

in trinity stuff, the loss of a crucial party member, the tank or healer could quickly lead to the whole party wiping, where as the Gw2 system allows the group to still perform even after losing a few members and possible recovering from those mishaps.

It’s even worse in GW2. If the party leader leaves, the whole group is disbanded. If 2 people vote him out, the whole group is disbanded. Trinity gameplay is easily solved by giving every class a tank/heal spec. Some MMOs already do this. LFG tools remedy this problem also.

These issues of waiting in the past have already been resolved by many different methods, even before GW2. This excuse no longer holds.

Well, i consider the whole party disbandment by leaving an issue seperate to this matter, which is teamplay within the combat mechanics.

But being not a big MMO chaser, (i came to this game for its… initial promises of not being like the …usual MMO..but lets keep that gripe out of this topic :P ) id like to know how the matter is addressed in the past.

In trinity stuff, the loss of a crucial party member, the tank or healer could quickly lead to the whole party wiping, where as the Gw2 system allows the group to still perform even after losing a few members and possible recovering from those mishaps.

This isn’t really about trinity, but about an inability for most characters to resurrect other characters in combat. Tanks and healers both had the means to recover from an untimely demise once they were ressurected, but most games disallowed that ability.

Now I wonder, curious really… in trinity, as a healer or tank, these vital roles, im sure some would feel satisfied and proud of doing their intended roles, knowing that the group could not have made it without them. Not so in GW2, because ..well… if u die ur comrades can still soldier on, probably even win through while u lie dead on the floor. Not very glorious, i know.. So for trinity advocates, is that sense of importance is what is desired?

That’s part of it. I’m sure many people do take pride in excelling at their roles, as I did. What trinity did is clearly define what one is supposed to bring to the table and how it was to interact with the game; both players and NPCs alike. Players could be safely evaluated against what they were supposed to bring to an encounter, and it was the developer’s responsibility to make each class fulfill its role adequately.

Without trinity, it shifts the responsibility on what to evaluate and how on the playerbase, while the development team never has to commit to the viability of any role other than DPS being able to stand on its own in any type of content.

I personally like the gw2 system because i like flexibility. oh… and i hate waiting for specific classes when forming party :P

I like the GW2 system partly because waiting for specific classes got a little old, though I could deal with it. Mostly, though, I like it because a player’s conception of a character can fit more roles. Instead of marrying Warriors to a tank role, leaving DPS Warriors without a place or a voice, the decoupling allows a player to choose the style of their character reflected as the class (such as Warrior) and the role (Healer) which combines into a unique build (Shout Heal Warrior) which straight up doesn’t exist in other games.

@KingEsoteric:

hey thanks for the clarification.

1. I dont really knw what other games had in regards to rezzing so I cant really say. My only other MMO experience was EVE online.. In GW2 though, my group and I usually could rez dead party members up in combat through some strategizing and such (lure boss away, or shadow refuge etc), to which im happy with the way it is right now.
2. I really do despise the current emphasis on dps though :P
3. Decoupling role from class is a good thing, i think most can agree to tht. and while heal warriors are cool thing (to me) I m still uncertain as to the need of a party member to be exclusively in one role, no matter what class/profession he’s performing that role in. i guess i prefer something with more..flexibility.
(……..or maybe specific roles like that means 1 character can have differing builds but with current BiS issue… ughh..nvm :P )

For me, i prefer GW2 combat with a much deeper combat encounter.

Somebody mentioned military and sports above as a trinity point of view. I will say the same but with a non trinity aspect.

I love military teamwork. And think GW2 combat is best represent modern military concepts. Reason? Somebody being gunner, somebody being marksman, somebody being medic, somebody flank… sounds like roles in trinity, infact, everyone of them are able killer, suppressing team and flank team can swap, support can turn into flank, while flank can turn into support, it is actually very flexible. For basket ball team, point guard, power forward, center etc, sounds like trinity role… infact, they should be all able to score, to defense, to pass, to body block…. it is as flexible as GW2 combat roles.

Therefore, i love GW2 combats, combat roles and the “REAL” teamworks that provided. All we need is more complex and interesting encounter that able to deepen the combat depth of GW2.

hey thanks for the clarification.

No problem! I enjoy the discussion.

1. I dont really knw what other games had in regards to rezzing so I cant really say. My only other MMO experience was EVE online.. In GW2 though, my group and I usually could rez dead party members up in combat through some strategizing and such (lure boss away, or shadow refuge etc), to which im happy with the way it is right now.

The misconception is that if a tank or healer died, the group died. Usually, though, that’s because they could never get the tank or healer back up and contributing. Most games blocked the use of resurrection skills in-combat, with limited ability to resurrect players during combat. For instance, in WoW, the tank may die to a boss, so the boss went stomping around for the next most threatening player to destroy. The trick was to in-combat resurrect the tank (in Wow, only 3 classes could do this in some form), then somehow get the boss back to the tank, which a few classes could do pretty easily. The tank then had a taunt ability, which instantly make the tank as threatening to the boss as the player with the highest threat level, and forced the boss to attack the tank. It wasn’t hard to recover most times: the developers of most trinity games just didn’t want the players to be able to.

That said, I’m comfortable with the way it is, but being able to resurrect any player at any time does contribute somewhat to the problem of the current DPS emphasis, which I too do not like.

3. Decoupling role from class is a good thing, i think most can agree to tht. and while heal warriors are cool thing (to me) I m still uncertain as to the need of a party member to be exclusively in one role, no matter what class/profession he’s performing that role in. i guess i prefer something with more..flexibility.
(……..or maybe specific roles like that means 1 character can have differing builds but with current BiS issue… ughh..nvm :P )

Role definition is simply about community and developer understanding that fosters player collaboration with and developer commitment to the supported styles of play in the game. That may sound minor, but is actually a big deal. In a game like GW2, a player wouldn’t need to be shackled to a role; a new role is what, 4 silver away?

I honestly think the game doesn’t need a true hard-line trinity, but trinity setups do provide some benefits to the players, and ANet needs to provide some of those benefits without actually instituting a trinity. They can do that by simply allowing the game to support the other styles of play without actually mandating their inclusion with the design of the content.

I agree that the feeling of teamwork in PvE is very diminished compared to many other games in the genre, and needs to be fixed. In particular, control and support roles don’t seem to be effective for what one gives up to use them. It leads me to feel like anything other than maximum DPS is of limited use which causes all of my characters to essentially have the same goals and many have the same or similar optimal stat distributions for a particular type of content.

Very good post. My point wasn’t that we need a trinity – its that the trinity was an avenue for teamwork in the best of other games. Think of sports.. if you think of a basketball team.. every player can shoot, pass and dribble – even the big centers. But when you play you let the PG do most of the dribbling – and the center does most of the ‘finishing’ around the hoop.

The essence of teamwork is doing things differently because you were working with teammates – and because of these actions your team can rise to new heights. This holds true for the military and they like.

People say that the trinity can lead to simple regimented roles. That’s absolutely true. Its not an automatic fix. But that doesn’t mean that this game doesn’t need to think a bit more about how to make it teamwork oriented.

Its not even that there is zero teamwork – it’s that its inaccessible especially for players who are starting out. You will hear from players that all they do is autoattack or hit 1-5 on every weapon. Yes these are ‘bad’ players – sure. But for a lot of the content there is no reason to do better. But its worse then that – and this was my initial point – you can’t even really see how others are doing.

Arenanet wanted to break new ground by busting up the trinity. But they need to add more teamwork back into the game – even if they never want the WoW trinity. I don’t care how they do it..

But its one of the main things missing from the experience of most of the players IMHO. I like GW2 – I hear all the bad reviews they get on the internet (and here) and I think that with some tweaking they could really fix things.

I see nothing wrong with support/control/dps – if they wanted to go that way. But they need to let players see who is doing what – and how well they are doing – and make it actually pay off to do those roles. Right now – the consensus is you really want to concentrate on damage..rather then the roles.

I don’t think that was a design goal because of the way the gearing is. They need to sit down and hash out how they can make it a bit better for the more serious players and yet not wreck things for the super casuals.

If anything, enhancing the game to where more support/heal-oriented and control/support-oriented characters would usher in a need for a more challenging game.

Make mobs more challenging. No more stack. No more DPS piles. Give us a real reason to cripple, freeze, stun, interrupt, etc. Make heals powerful and really make a reason for everyone to jump in that water field and blast back from near wipe.

Then give us tools to communicate VoIP? Even a simple text-based announcement of a field going down….

Getting off topic, but if we do get better teamwork options and therefore more challenging mobs, communication could become an issue for casual/pugs.

nexxe.7081:

Actually, there’s more coordinated cooperation in classic trinity gameplay. The tank needs mitigation buffs (shields, resists,etc.), the healers heal & cleanse, dps can CC, etc. There are various other ways everyone supports each other.

In which case, it’s still more of a case of everyone is focusing on what they’re doing:

• The Tank isn’t worried about what DPS is doing until they pull aggro, or the Healer until the Healer isn’t healing / mitigating damage enough.
• The DPS doesn’t care about the Healer or Tank as long as they’re doing their job. Very rarely have I seen DPS also double as CC, although that’s mostly down to the introduction of Enrage Timers.
• The Healer isn’t worried about what the Tank or DPS are doing.

without the ability to help turn the tide of battle if something goes wrong (say, the Tank or Healer goes down, outside of maybe having a battle-res).

There’s no co-ordination in the Trinity for this reason: it doesn’t require people to be in sync, since you’re focusing only on what you’re doing.

Of course, there are fight mechanics that do require people to be co-ordinated. However, them mechanics, for the most part, don’t specifically require the Trinity (Sindy in ICC comes to mind).

nexxe.7081:

This is also In GW2, but it isn’t as effective. There are many reasons why, but i’ll list two. First, everyone gets into downed-state way too fast. Secondly, CC and other Conditions/Boons do not last long (usually 5 seconds or less).

I wouldn’t say it isn’t as effective, just that it’s not as obvious. I mean, what gives you the bigger impression of co-ordinated teamwork:

• Healer / Tank dies, encounter fails (unless, of course, an individual decides to use a combat res).
• Player A goes Down, Player B either uses a Rally skill, or a skill to get the boss away, while two others res the Downed player.

However, as I stated, I do feel encounter design is the biggest culprit.

It doesn’t require people to use protective boons, or CC, and any fights that might can easily be brute-forced with damage (The Lover’s fight in AC comes to mind. Brilliant mechanic; need to be aware of team-mates position, need to use CC ect that can be overrided by either sheer damage or using the boulders).

Heck, you could have all characters just be damage, but still have the ‘teamwork’ aspect.

For example, if the crystal mechanic on the Flame Effigy in CoF was more pronounced, and maybe had a negative effect, meaning everyone had to share the duty.

Team work is up to the players, there is nothing a dev can do to improve it.

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

Team work is up to the players, there is nothing a dev can do to improve it.

Actually they can, by creating content that requires teamwork.

TheDaiBish.9735:

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

Team work is up to the players, there is nothing a dev can do to improve it.

Actually they can, by creating content that requires teamwork.

reply for both of you…

they could start by drastically improving professions.

either one of you ever play coh when it was around?

Swagger.1459:

TheDaiBish.9735:

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

Team work is up to the players, there is nothing a dev can do to improve it.

Actually they can, by creating content that requires teamwork.

reply for both of you…

they could start by drastically improving professions.

either one of you ever play coh when it was around?

Nope.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Swagger.1459:

TheDaiBish.9735:

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

Team work is up to the players, there is nothing a dev can do to improve it.

Actually they can, by creating content that requires teamwork.

reply for both of you…

they could start by drastically improving professions.

either one of you ever play coh when it was around?

Nope.

then you missed out on one of the best profession, ability, combat and teamwork systems ever created in the history of mmos.

Swagger.1459:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Nope.

then you missed out on one of the best profession, ability, combat and teamwork systems ever created in the history of mmos.

I might go look it up to see, just to get some context as to what you mean.

TheDaiBish.9735:

There’s no co-ordination in the Trinity for this reason: it doesn’t require people to be in sync, since you’re focusing only on what you’re doing.

I have to disagree here, and I think it’s because you and I have somewhat different concepts of co-ordination. Yet I still think there is significant co-ordination between the trinity roles. Aside of the fact that a player handling one task while another player handles another to complete a common, previously agreed-upon goal is by definition co-ordination, it appears you want something more dynamic than that. I think a lot of trinity games still have a level of that more dynamic co-ordination.

Yes tanks have to tank, but their job isn’t simply to roshambo with the target, they have to use their snap-aggro abilities as well, so they need to be aware of who and where the DPS and healing team members are. They need to be aware of their own life and use their SoS abilities on time, and communicate when they’re using them. For example: WoW Warrior’s Last Stand.

Healers do heal, and they mostly stare at their healing bars, but part of their role is condition cleansing and protection, which requires both positional and temporal understanding of what the DPS and Tanks are doing. An easy example is the typical AoE pack in WoW, where one needs to know who is AoEing, and importantly, who is going in first. They also need to move themselves out of the way while the DPS needs to control the AoE space as to not allow leakage into the healers. They also need to understand any abilities that may cause a disruption in healing and alert the targets that need to be healed to use their own SoS abilities.

DPS deals the damage. But they also have to coordinate CC and interrupts as needed. Often times, they’re the eyes of a raid as the tanks and healers are preoccupied. They often use CC to temporarily protect party members from random aggro, adds, or leaked enemies from an AoE pack, as the healers protect and heal whatever team member is likely to be assaulted next, and the tank scrambles to recover control.

Trinity allows for a basic level of role definition and execution. Tanks tank. Healers heal and develop complexes. DPS deals damage, pulls agro, and complains. But there’s a level of coordination between and within roles as players progress into more difficult content. A simple quest doesn’t require all of that. A lot of dungeons don’t. But the upper end of content absolutely requires more coordination rather than assist-targeting and mauling their DPS rotation.

While nothing really requires trinity design (or at least, I certainly don’t think so), trinity design helps define which of those tasks fall on each of the players while giving consistent progression and experience for a player through their chosen role. While it’s not necessary, it’s very useful in some ways. I do agree that technically games can work without it, but some of the function that trinity design provided still needs to be addressed in some way.

I’m only bringing this up because I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what trinity can and can’t do or did or didn’t allow. Even if GW2 said you needed at least one controller, one support, and the rest as DPS, but let anyone be any of the three on virtually any class, that would be a monstrous step up.

TheDaiBish.9735:

However, as I stated, I do feel encounter design is the biggest culprit.

Absolutely agree.

If ANet makes bosses in the game as complex as a player’s profession, I bet teamwork will pop up right away. And by that, I mean this…
Instead of a Boss uses attack skill once every 4-5 seconds, how about giving it 10 skills each with 0.25s – 1s cast time and with different cooldowns, and let it go nuts ? You know, like a player ? I am bloody sure players will quickly learn to play in teamwork and utilizing every game mechanics just to stay alive, or keep wiping. Instead of just DPSing the crap outta every pathetic boss.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Back on point, if they created content that couldn’t be completed without near flawless teamwork(thus acting as the gate), why can’t it be a cosmetic reward?

I think the problem is that without distinctly superior “rewards”, players will by and largely avoid more difficult content. Challenge alone has pretty much ALWAYS been a terrible motivator for players.

If you have two things that give roughly the same rewards (and the differences are only cosmetic), the overwhelming majority of players are going to whichever one is perceived to be"easier" or “less time consuming”, and abandon the longer, more difficult one.

Well i am not sure if you need teamwork in pve (as i mainly pvp). But in spvp and in wvw you will see the difference between a group working together (teamwork!) and not working together…

And saying there are no roles is also incorrect. In spvp and and in wvw you will see different roles (for spvp e.g. there are roamer, bunker etc.). But the difference is probably that those roles are most of the time mode dependent unlike the trinity which is more or less universal.

I think the currunet system of more self dependent classes is a lot better than the trinity system. Well it maybe needs more polishing…

KingEsoteric.2067:

I have to disagree here, and I think it’s because you and I have somewhat different concepts of co-ordination. Yet I still think there is significant co-ordination between the trinity roles. Aside of the fact that a player handling one task while another player handles another to complete a common, previously agreed-upon goal is by definition co-ordination, it appears you want something more dynamic than that. I think a lot of trinity games still have a level of that more dynamic co-ordination.

Point conceded. I wasn’t thinking of it like that. I was thinking more along the lines of while in combat, rather than the pre-encouter bit.

I wouldn’t exactly call it dynamic though, since the roles are fixed. The only Trinity mechanic I could really see as requiring co-ordination is when two tanks need to swap because of debuff (Sindy from ICC comes to mind) and the whole blowing cooldowns for burst.

As someone who played all roles at one point or another, I never saw it the level of co-ordination you’re stating, and yet we always managed to do the content without too much trouble (apart from the occasional lag spike or disconnect). While in combat, the only thing I done was focus on what I was doing. Outside of the co-ordination you mentioned about forming up for a common goal, while in the fights, I didn’t worry about what anyone else was doing. Very much like in GW2, I relied on them to know what they were doing.

KingEsoteric.2067:

I’m only bringing this up because I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what trinity can and can’t do or did or didn’t allow. Even if GW2 said you needed at least one controller, one support, and the rest as DPS, but let anyone be any of the three on virtually any class, that would be a monstrous step up.

Or, instead of looking at Control, Damage and Support as pre-defined roles, we look at them as aspects of combat, and you place the roles inside the encounter mechanics. Not only does this give much more freedom when designing encounters, but it also gives the player freedom on how they’ll tackle the encounter.

Taking the lover’s from AC:

That would either require two people heavily invested in CC, two in damage and maybe a support/aoe hybrid OR everyone can go for damage, but everyone brings a bit of everything and co-ordinates when they’ll use it.

Heck, even just having the damage aspect of combat could require co-ordination.

For example, CoF1 Effigy.

Make the crystal mechanic more pronounced so it can’t be ignored (maybe a stacking damage reduction alongside the regen?), have a stacking debuff that applies when you destroy a crystal. That way, players would have to rotate out to take over the role of destroying the crystals. Sure, it’s pretty basic, but it’s just an example.

chemiclord.3978:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Back on point, if they created content that couldn’t be completed without near flawless teamwork(thus acting as the gate), why can’t it be a cosmetic reward?

I think the problem is that without distinctly superior “rewards”, players will by and largely avoid more difficult content. Challenge alone has pretty much ALWAYS been a terrible motivator for players.

If you have two things that give roughly the same rewards (and the differences are only cosmetic), the overwhelming majority of players are going to whichever one is perceived to be"easier" or “less time consuming”, and abandon the longer, more difficult one.

I can see your point, although I don’t necessarily agree on the bolded comment, simply because if this was true, hardly anyone would play PvP orientated games and game-modes (not specifically GW2 but in general), since the allure of them sorts of play-styles is overcoming the challenge other players present to reach the top. Heck, Sudoku is another example. People do these sorts of puzzles for the challenge.

Personally, I’d rather play something that was satisfying and challenged my skill as a player, but yielded no rewards other than the satisfaction of knowing I could beat it, than to repeatedly do brain-dead stuff for amassing shiny pixels.

Lexandro.1456:

AND as an extra thought; Have parts that are only do-able with certain classes or races; Like a target on a wall that opens a gate that only 1500 distance long range attacks can hit (ie ranger LB), or a gap under a wall that an asura is required to enter to activate a switch, or a corpse that needs a necro to revive it to give the team crucial info to clear the event. And or time/kill completion scores that reward better teams of players.

That kinda thing would open up a helluva lot more people in parties and playing as a team.

I agree with some of your points, but not this one. Requiring a specific profession for a specific dungeon would only create gaps in what is required for that dungeon, therefore increasing wait times as well as leaving a bad impression. “Rangers are only useful for that one dungeon where people need 1500 range to do it.”

Personally, I’d much rather see improvements to support and control aspects of the game. I want to see healing power become much more effective, and perhaps a way to do this is to consider giving heals a chance to critically heal, and for Regeneration to have a chance to critically heal per hit. That would make Precision an interesting stat for support characters, and also allow them to build their kit around critting, like Sigil of Water, etc. Stuns, Knockdowns, Fear, etc. also need to see improvements. Give people who want to be tanky the ability to taunt a mob for 5-10 seconds, and when the effect wears off, the mob will continue to randomly attack people as usual. Imagine how useful taunting would be on the Ice Elemental/Dredge Mining suit boss fight in the Dredge Fractal.

No need to make profession specific requirements; just buff the other two elements of gameplay to make them as useful as DPS.

Swagger.1459:

then you missed out on one of the best profession, ability, combat and teamwork systems ever created in the history of mmos.

I miss my ice controller, bubble defender and fire blaster groups

What we don’t need is a trinity. We need more roles than 3. Let everyone play what they want to play. The rest is up to encounter design.

As for forcing people to play a certain build etc etc, try to get into one of the speedrun parties for any given dungeon in the game and see how often you’ll be forced to play berserker’s.
PvE is already a DPS kittenfest.

What I see is people saying “if one important person died with the trinity system you wipe except if you get a battle res off”. Do you know how many times you can res someone in this game? Thats the only real teamwork i see is people ressing from a downed state. Im finding one of my spectral abilities less and less useful and usually only use it right on top of myself. The only other thing that takes teamwork is Teq and we all know how that turned out for the majority of the population.

For there to be teamwork they would have to release an expansion and rework pretty much everything.

ATMAvatar.5749:

Swagger.1459:

then you missed out on one of the best profession, ability, combat and teamwork systems ever created in the history of mmos.

I miss my ice controller, bubble defender and fire blaster groups

indeed, there are many things I miss from that innovative game. sadly, because it was not your traditional sword, sorcery and dragon game, it did not get the props or following it deserved.

I find it interesting that in “modern” games people are impressed by certain features that coh had implemented long before they were even around. between “profession” offerings, vast powers/abilities, gameplay and qol features, amazing combat, ease of pick up and play, build flexibility and variety, power customization, amazing animations and effects… none of these newer games (gw2 included) holds a candle to what was offered. so when I hear things like “there is such great depth to characters and combat” and “look at all this ground breaking stuff” around here, my desire to play mmos dwindles. I’m keeping up some hope in anet to make a turn around though, so i’ll wait to see what direction they are taking when the content patch comes in spring.

Holy trinity was not removed, it was just hidden and made less class specific. The fact that this game has limited team work is because the content is so easy that most of it does not require any teamwork at all and because the game is not spoon feeding folks their roles.

We run a very synergy based group for WvW. Everything in our group is based on team work and it is just as effective in this game as games with a more obvious holy trinity.