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These are some thoughts I have had for a while and as I started writing some of them in the Subclasses Thread I thought it would be good to expand on them in a separate thread in order to not highjack the existing one. OK, that out of the way, let's begin.

The Problem
I hate when multiplayer games are based on the "Holy Trinity" system of Tank, Damage Dealer and Healer/Support. I think that separating the roles like that is a significant detriment to a game and especially to an action game where one of the main things you do in an action game is learn how to effectively avoid damage while doing damage or completing other objectives. Additionally balancing the game for such a system makes the fights artificially longer than they need to be in order to check the very simple tanks of managing agro or your mana. Such balancing is also extremely unforgiving to mistakes and often relies on one or two-hit kills as otherwise there would be absolutely no challenge in the combat system due to the presence of the healer as a primary role. Furthermore in order to force tanking and healing as primary roles some games make some attacks completely unavoidable which is a huge mistake in an action game. The result of such a system are prolonged battles that end extremely quickly on any non-trivial mistake that are both dull and frustrating to the players at the same time and do not play as an action game at all.

The Proposed Solution
I think the solution of these problems in multiplayer action games is pretty easy... theoretically and kind of hard to pull off in practice. So what is it? Make all character deal relatively the same amount of damage, remove healing almost completely and de-emphasize tanking instead making the characters differentiate from one another on the way they deal damage, they way they avoid damage and what else then can do in a party. That last part is actually extremely important in a multiplayer game and is what is missing in most previous attempts to circumvent the trinity system. The ways to deal damage and ways to avoid damage should come from action games directly with some minor inspiration from RPGs while the "thing you can do in a party" should be heavily based on RPG archetypes but should enhance dealing or avoiding damage without making them trivial or inconsequential. Of course different class resource mechanics and resource management in general are also a great way to differentiate different classes from one-another but those are not really the focus of this Thread and I will not talk about them.

Ways To Do Damage
I think this is the most intuitive part of the equation. Besides damage dealt that is the balancing factor so that different attacks feel fair most attacks feel different because of a combination of the following factors - range, speed, area/need to aim, movement and wait time for effect.
Range description usually fits in melee, close range, medium range and long range. Of course there could be effective range for attacks and damage fall-off after that.
Attack speed can be really fast - an attack taking a portion of a second, really slow - having to channel the attack for several seconds, or anything in between. And there are skills that have different effects depending on how long do you channel them which can be a lot of fun as well.
Area and Need to Aim are pretty self-explanatory and they are kind of loosely tied to the range. And again here we could have different areas of an attack or aiming that have a different effect - the simplest one being a headshot in most games that deals additional damage. A similar mechanic in some games is used to target individual limbs at melee range.
The movement is very important - how does an attack move your character. Most melee moves should move your character slightly forward but there should also be skills that are stationary or that reduce your speed or move you greatly or enhance your speed. Most people underestimate that and have prefer to have the character either be completely stationary or completely mobile during all attacks but I think both are bad approaches - both feel unnatural and have a detrimental effect on the necessity or ability to avoid damage.
Wait time for effect is a bit weird as most attacks would have an immediate effect. Still a playstyle with delayed effects can be fun. The most obvious playstyle is the Damage-over-time playstyle that places debuffs on enemies that deal damage to them every second or so but it is not the only one. Another possible way to do a delayed effect attack can be putting stacks of debuffs on an enemy and then detonating them with another skill later on. Even just having a skill that just deals a large amount of damage at a later time can be a fun mechanic especially in PvP where players can react to those things.

Ways To Avoid Damage
While dealing damage is fun I think that the most important part of an action game is your ability to avoid damage and your limitations in doing so. Damage avoidance is pretty basic - taking an action in order to not take damage and as such I do not think there are that many variants for it. Most of the variance here comes from your attacks preventing you to take an action to avoid damage. Because of that I'm not a big fan of action cancelling and although I can see how it is useful in some instances I think excessive action cancelling makes a game kind of trivial. Another factor that makes avoiding action interesting is the effect that this guard action has on your character or on the attacking enemy. I think a character should have at least two possible actions of damage avoidance. That being said here are some variants of damage avoidance and I know all of those are pretty standard but I feel like I need to list them... for some reason.
Guarding - an action that rises your shield or weapon and when you are hit in that stance you either take significantly reduced damage or no damage. You guard could be limited or unlimited in terms of time or damage taken and it can be tied to some kind of resource the character has such as mana or stamina.
Dodge - an action that moves your character out of the way of an attack. Multiple flavors in terms of aesthetics - dash, blink, roll. I think that dodge with and without invulnerability frames could make for a different type of experience as well.
Post-hit-vampirism - you don't really take an action to avoid damage but if you take a particular action/attack after you are hit to recover the lost health.
Being tanky - this might sound stupid but being tanky/having a large health pool and/or natural health-regen and very little other defensive actions could be a playstyle on it's own.
Parry/Riposte - a very limited time guard or dodge in terms of animation that results in a counter attack of some sort. The counter attack effect should have a proportionate power to the time limit you have to execute the Parry action.
Consequences for enemies - stamina drain on attack and being open for attacks from other directions is the obvious downsides for the enemies but particularly with the parry/riposte system you could have mutiple negative effects on the enemies depending on the class. The simplest one is dealing some damage back. Another one is placing a debuff on an enemy or controlling them for a limited time - disabling their ability to attack or cast spells or move - and having that effect in an area could also be a very high-risk-high-reward mechanic. Regaining health can also be a consequence of a successful parry.

Party Skills
This is the final piece of the puzzle and it is the most easy to mess up and result in a trivial game or felling like those skills do not matter and thus the game lacks teamplay in multiplayer. While those skills can be very useful in solo play, having them used appropriately in multiplayer really elevates the game. There are 3 general types of skills you could have here - control, stat manipulation and providing information.
Control - this is the type of skill that controls the battlefield in some form. There are aggression control skills that forces the enemies to attack a particular target, usually but not always the caster of the skill. There are ground control skills that create obstacles on the floor that prevent enemies and allies from moving or attacking through but in a 3 dimensional game those could also be elevations or pits created by that skill that allow allies to take higher ground or enemies to fall into a pit and be disabled and an easy target for long-distance fighters. Another type of control skills are the position control skills that move an ally or an enemy to a particular position. And the final type of control is direct disables - stuns(no action), disarms(no weapon attacks), silences(no spells), root(no movement), slow(reduced movement).
Stat manipulation - this is the type of skills that directly manipulate an RPG character's stats. Usually those are either positively affecting an allied character stats or negatively affecting an enemy character's stats commonly know as buffs and debuffs. Mixing those up into a single skill that has to be cast on a single target could be fun and tactically challenging. Shielding an ally or healing them also falls into that category but those two have to be extremely sparingly used as they tend to trivialize damage avoidance.
Providing Information - I don't see many of those types of skills in multiplayer action games but I think they could be extremely beneficial to the whole experience. Those would be the skills that provide information to your allies but do not have a direct effect on them, rather giving the whole party the option to utilize that information to their benefit. Examples of those would be revealing enemy placement in an unexplored room or highlight traps, incoming attacks or enemy weak spots to allies. A common mechanic in Turn-based strategy games are places of power that provide temporary buffs to units standing on those places - it is possible to implement such a mechanic in the game but have those places visible to only certain character with certain skills that can reveal them to their allies. It is possible to have the reverse done as well - having cursed places where you try to lure your enemies to reduce their stats.

So this is what has been rattling in my head for quite some time now. I would love to find out what you think about it.
 
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I'm not a fan of this for a few reasons. But the main one is that if everyone is the same there is no identity to character archetypes beyond cosmetics and that's deal breaker for me right out of the gate, it's just bad design. As a related but not the same example, remember any MMO where you are the chosen savior of the universe, just like the 500 players in the same hub. When everyone is special, no one is special.

That said, I agree that "hard roles" are a problem as a matter of opinion, but obviously some people like them.

I have a different fix that instead focusses on how each can play differently in my design outlines on the suggestion forum and that there is enough crossover where you don't "NEED" exact party compositions to do a dungeon, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.

This comes in the form of everyone has an innate drain/regen of sorts (revenants are the ones that are the most funky, but everyone can regain stuff as part of their undead hunger). This means everyone can heal, but some people will be better suited/specc'd to that (in my designs ghouls and revenants have easiest access, while whights have the ability to serve as a party healer should they wish to).

This eliminates the strict need for a healer.

Tanking: While everyone can theoretically tank through movement abilities except the wight who can serve as a healer type and thus do off tanking strats (ie, just heal themselves whenever they get hit for a chunk) and additional durability, defensive layers and avoidance mechanisms like wraith phase and such allow for lots of possibilities, the revenant is most suited to the task, but vampires, ghouls and banshees can also easily sub for this. bear in mind tanking only really needs to happen for dungeon and raid bosses in most cases. General trash sqauds anyone should theoretically be able to manage with their power sets. That said, if you really wanted, why not make your lich a tank? It's technically doable the way I have it set up, you'd just be sacrificing a lot of the other more potent stuff they can do.

DPS: everyone does dps to varying degrees and speccs into dps as a player to varying degrees. Not everyone does the same damage though, because some classes have more utility than others do, and have different weaknesses/strengths. This is essential to make every class play experience feel different, which not only makes the game more fun and replayable, it also caters to different playstyles rather than to the 1 size fits all approach.
 
But the main one is that if everyone is the same there is no identity to character archetypes beyond cosmetics and that's deal breaker for me right out of the gate, it's just bad design.
I am sorry to say that but that sentence alone makes me pretty much doubt that you've read through the original post. The whole point of the post is to show ways that characters can be different without pigeonholing them into a classical trinity role.
 
I am sorry to say that but that sentence alone makes me pretty much doubt that you've read through the original post. The whole point of the post is to show ways that characters can be different without pigeonholing them into a classical trinity role.
If it helps I can try responding to parts individually, but at the end of the day, I just disagree strongly with a lot of the propositions. I did read it, I just didn't pick it apart because I figured you'd actual understand my argument. The fact that you responded to only 1 piece of it makes me wonder if you didn't read my response.


Furthermore in order to force tanking and healing as primary roles some games make some attacks completely unavoidable which is a huge mistake in an action game. The result of such a system are prolonged battles that end extremely quickly on any non-trivial mistake that are both dull and frustrating to the players at the same time and do not play as an action game at all.
This is not representative of what I have proposed so far.


Ways To ....
None of this directly supports your proposition or counteracts mine, I concede it's accurate, but it's also not relevant. You can still have characters better suited to certain roles while making everything available to everyone, it's just a question of what they sacrifice in the process.

In the designs I've put forth so far, each has a unique mobility (or in one case, lack thereof because of other mechanics), A unique mechanic that helps define the class identity, and a method of feeding/regen.

That said, the unique mechanics I presented specifically do cater to making a class move more in one direction than another (otherwise they wouldn't be unique. abilities will always serve some kind of basic role, either healing, dealing damage or eating damage because those are the foundations of what characters do as primary activities, and yes, I also included utility abilities you descibe as party abilities that should be baseline for some classes), but that's not like you can't circumvent that. The key to the designs I put forth so far is that they all "can" do whatever, but that doesn't mean they will necessarily excell at it the same way.

I think the main argument You're having and that I'm having aren't compatible at all, and that is question of viability.

Can any class succeed in X content solo or participate in group content with success? The answer for what I've put forth is unequivocally yes. That said, is everyone going to be suited to the same task with equal effectiveness? Absolutely not nor should that be the case. If they are, then there is no actual mechanical difference to give each class identity.

Simply put, viable means "can complete" not "can complete to maximum effect". Not everyone can be the best at everything all the time, otherwise again, nobody is special and everything is the same.

Not all, but many players, will gravitate to what is most effective and this is how metas form. The only game I know of that strictly forces (sorta) group compositions in this regard is world of warcraft, and even then, i'm pretty sure you can still opt to not use the dungeon finder, opt your own custom party, and enter the instance manually. They just do this as a service because people want to be bothered for the most part spamming for a tank and a healer, because most people don't want to take the path of most resistance, they just want their loot as quickly and efficiently as possible. That said, you also can always over level a dungeon and go in and solo tank the whole thing as a wizard (I've done this), so like... even in the worst example of your gripe, it's not expressly valid.

I think the key thing is you think Im disagreeing with you, but I'm not disagreeing with your point, just your solution philosophy, which I've already accounted for, and doesn't disagree with your points.
 
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What you are proposing is essentially the failed Guild Wars 2 group format. The problem with it is that it relies on the trinity for balancing but distributes the healer role among everyone which leads to the same problems that you have with the trinity. Eventually the system regressed back to the same-old-same-old in all MMORPGs.

The trinity emerged from Everquest which had a system that allowed for hybrid characters as the easiest way to do content. Then content got balanced around it so it became the only way to do content. There are quite a lot of games that force the class roles with their balancing - it is the primary group composition method of virtually all MMORPGs after all.

You are claiming that if you don't have those roles then every character would be the same which is simply not the case. If you look at aRPGs like Diablo you find characters that play vastly differently with vast customization within each class that do not have roles like tanks or healers. A good character design would be one that makes the character play differently without it having a preset party role. You will still have some characters with more health than others and you will find options for glass cannon or tankier builds but at the same time all characters are able to do decent amount of damage and would not die in a group if there are no characters to tank damage. The elimination of the dedicated healer role is a no-brainer - it just prolongs fights.
 
I'll just hop in with some of points into the reason it's a Holy Trinity. The reason behind it isn't just for balance, but also player enjoyment. While a large amount of players want to be dealing damage and seeing high numbers, not everyone will enjoy that. Remarkably, for the side of healers, those who tend to play as healers are also to a degree the highest level players who take on crafting. Healers in that respect are also a huge source of the rarest thing to regain in games, health. Even in games like Warframe, where healing isn't as rare as a resource like Energy, health is still vital, which is why for the longest time health was prioritized for any frame. As for tanks, they are meant for those who might want a middle ground, not as focused on support, but still able to throw out some support when needed.
The whole idea of the Holy trinity of DPS, Tank, and Healer is a result of hit and misses. Those games that actually succeeded, were contained in that. Meanwhile other games that decided to abandon that trinity all together, really didn't fair well. On top of that, the whole idea of the holy trinity also works for PVP. Because any player should be able to tell what an enemy player is capable of by their gear alone. That's why games like TF2 puts and emphasis on the classes silhouette. Heck one of the biggest advantages in PVP games is to try to hide what your class is altogether so that you give your opponent as little information as possible. The Tried and True Holy Trinity works because either anything in it is contained within that trinity and things work, or if there isn't an established trinity, not as many people will even bother. The whole point of a trinity basically, is to offer every player their own choice of possible play styles.
 
What you are proposing is essentially the failed Guild Wars 2 group format. The problem with it is that it relies on the trinity for balancing but distributes the healer role among everyone which leads to the same problems that you have with the trinity. Eventually the system regressed back to the same-old-same-old in all MMORPGs.

The trinity emerged from Everquest which had a system that allowed for hybrid characters as the easiest way to do content. Then content got balanced around it so it became the only way to do content. There are quite a lot of games that force the class roles with their balancing - it is the primary group composition method of virtually all MMORPGs after all.

You are claiming that if you don't have those roles then every character would be the same which is simply not the case. If you look at aRPGs like Diablo you find characters that play vastly differently with vast customization within each class that do not have roles like tanks or healers. A good character design would be one that makes the character play differently without it having a preset party role. You will still have some characters with more health than others and you will find options for glass cannon or tankier builds but at the same time all characters are able to do decent amount of damage and would not die in a group if there are no characters to tank damage. The elimination of the dedicated healer role is a no-brainer - it just prolongs fights.
I think this is where our thoughts are actually diverging.

Lets be pretty clear here. D3 doesn't have raids and dungeons in the same respect. The loot drops are not enhanced in quality nor is the story progressed meaningfully differently than it would be if you just played solo.

if you can do everything yourself, then there is no reason to group up unless A) there is incentive, B) you feel like it. B is a valid answer but it's not valid as the ONLY answer because many people will not choose option B and that makes it undermined in premise as the clear solution.

What it sounds like you want is to not have group activities because you're against protracted battles that require group coop.

I think that's a valid opinion to have.

I don't think it's a realistic one unless the concepts of dungeons and raids are abandoned, and for an ARPG that usually spells death. I'm not sure why ISOs get away with it and ARPGs don't, but that's kinda the historical precedent.

The question is really, is my class viable to participate in a role? if you're going to accept group activities that are tuned to be for groups so that loot output quality is greater (ie, higher investment for better reward).

If your class is viable, and can even sub multiple roles, and so can everyone else, then you're good to go.

If you think boss monsters and big loot drops that require a group activity are bad, then you're just against the concept of dungeons and what they provide.

The difference is the investment of your time and skill to manage those things, and a result you get a greater reward. If this isn't the case, essentially you are doing D3, which is, there are no raids, and no drops are increased in quality because other players exist or not. Quantity may vary, as well xp, but the loot itself is still the same drop unless they artificially inflate it, which still ends up with the same problem as the dungeon.

You kinda need to pick which way you want to go. It's a cake vs eat it too kind of thing.

Either dungeons are a valid premise and require a team comp to complete, or they don't and the reward structure is removed and they are no longer dungeons but instead just a group PvE crawl like D3.

Being able to sub into other roles is about the best thing you can do to make a compromise here if dungeons exist, which I did in my designs. There is no situation where you have an epic dungeon with epic loot that you can walk in and solo like you can in an ISO like D3. The exception I already noted was that you can out level it, but then it's not epic challenge or loot, it's basically farming trash.

I think your main issue is the problem with how coop dungeons exist as a design. I'm not saying it's completely impossible to fix that entire thing or that you are wrong to dislike it, but your solution proposal doesn't fix what you're pointing out is the design flaw, and I feel like if it was an easily solveable problem it would have been done already. Because this is not the first time dislike of this subject has arisen on the net ;)
 
I'll just hop in with some of points into the reason it's a Holy Trinity. The reason behind it isn't just for balance, but also player enjoyment. While a large amount of players want to be dealing damage and seeing high numbers, not everyone will enjoy that. Remarkably, for the side of healers, those who tend to play as healers are also to a degree the highest level players who take on crafting. Healers in that respect are also a huge source of the rarest thing to regain in games, health. Even in games like Warframe, where healing isn't as rare as a resource like Energy, health is still vital, which is why for the longest time health was prioritized for any frame. As for tanks, they are meant for those who might want a middle ground, not as focused on support, but still able to throw out some support when needed.
The whole idea of the Holy trinity of DPS, Tank, and Healer is a result of hit and misses. Those games that actually succeeded, were contained in that. Meanwhile other games that decided to abandon that trinity all together, really didn't fair well. On top of that, the whole idea of the holy trinity also works for PVP. Because any player should be able to tell what an enemy player is capable of by their gear alone. That's why games like TF2 puts and emphasis on the classes silhouette. Heck one of the biggest advantages in PVP games is to try to hide what your class is altogether so that you give your opponent as little information as possible. The Tried and True Holy Trinity works because either anything in it is contained within that trinity and things work, or if there isn't an established trinity, not as many people will even bother. The whole point of a trinity basically, is to offer every player their own choice of possible play styles.

I want to be clear, I don't disagree with your points here, but I think OP is valid to have an opinion to not like this as a fact of the matter.

The problem is the onus is then to create a solution, that requires group coop, where player abilities don't matter at all, while everyone is unique and different.

To me it seems kind of a rock and a hard place. Yeah, I totally get why this can, at times, feel super sucky (especially as a caster player, nobody wants more DPS, get me a tank/healer!), but it's also the thing that does the job, and really the closest thing you can do to get this to function is to have classes that can spec jump (which is something they do soft in D3 that they used as an example through gear and bar swaps), and that's about it. Either that or dungeons are no longer a thing, and like you said, that kinda isn't a good recipe for success with ARPGs.
 
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I'll just hop in with some of points into the reason it's a Holy Trinity. The reason behind it isn't just for balance, but also player enjoyment. While a large amount of players want to be dealing damage and seeing high numbers, not everyone will enjoy that. Remarkably, for the side of healers, those who tend to play as healers are also to a degree the highest level players who take on crafting. Healers in that respect are also a huge source of the rarest thing to regain in games, health. Even in games like Warframe, where healing isn't as rare as a resource like Energy, health is still vital, which is why for the longest time health was prioritized for any frame. As for tanks, they are meant for those who might want a middle ground, not as focused on support, but still able to throw out some support when needed.
The whole idea of the Holy trinity of DPS, Tank, and Healer is a result of hit and misses. Those games that actually succeeded, were contained in that. Meanwhile other games that decided to abandon that trinity all together, really didn't fair well. On top of that, the whole idea of the holy trinity also works for PVP. Because any player should be able to tell what an enemy player is capable of by their gear alone. That's why games like TF2 puts and emphasis on the classes silhouette. Heck one of the biggest advantages in PVP games is to try to hide what your class is altogether so that you give your opponent as little information as possible. The Tried and True Holy Trinity works because either anything in it is contained within that trinity and things work, or if there isn't an established trinity, not as many people will even bother. The whole point of a trinity basically, is to offer every player their own choice of possible play styles.
The end result is the opposite though - you are stuck with one of 3 archetypes that play exactly the same no matter what the class and the build is because of the rigid role structure those games enforce. You can have support builds and party synergy without having healers and strictly defined roles in general.

I think this is where our thoughts are actually diverging.

Lets be pretty clear here. D3 doesn't have raids and dungeons in the same respect. The loot drops are not enhanced in quality nor is the story progressed meaningfully differently than it would be if you just played solo.

if you can do everything yourself, then there is no reason to group up unless A) there is incentive, B) you feel like it. B is a valid answer but it's not valid as the ONLY answer because many people will not choose option B and that makes it undermined in premise as the clear solution.

What it sounds like you want is to not have group activities because you're against protracted battles that require group coop.

I think that's a valid opinion to have.

I don't think it's a realistic one unless the concepts of dungeons and raids are abandoned, and for an ARPG that usually spells death. I'm not sure why ISOs get away with it and ARPGs don't, but that's kinda the historical precedent.

The question is really, is my class viable to participate in a role? if you're going to accept group activities that are tuned to be for groups so that loot output quality is greater (ie, higher investment for better reward).

If your class is viable, and can even sub multiple roles, and so can everyone else, then you're good to go.

If you think boss monsters and big loot drops that require a group activity are bad, then you're just against the concept of dungeons and what they provide.

The difference is the investment of your time and skill to manage those things, and a result you get a greater reward. If this isn't the case, essentially you are doing D3, which is, there are no raids, and no drops are increased in quality because other players exist or not. Quantity may vary, as well xp, but the loot itself is still the same drop unless they artificially inflate it, which still ends up with the same problem as the dungeon.

You kinda need to pick which way you want to go. It's a cake vs eat it too kind of thing.

Either dungeons are a valid premise and require a team comp to complete, or they don't and the reward structure is removed and they are no longer dungeons but instead just a group PvE crawl like D3.

Being able to sub into other roles is about the best thing you can do to make a compromise here if dungeons exist, which I did in my designs. There is no situation where you have an epic dungeon with epic loot that you can walk in and solo like you can in an ISO like D3. The exception I already noted was that you can out level it, but then it's not epic challenge or loot, it's basically farming trash.

I think your main issue is the problem with how coop dungeons exist as a design. I'm not saying it's completely impossible to fix that entire thing or that you are wrong to dislike it, but your solution proposal doesn't fix what you're pointing out is the design flaw, and I feel like if it was an easily solveable problem it would have been done already. Because this is not the first time dislike of this subject has arisen on the net ;)
Raids and Dungeons the way you see them in MMORPGs are the worst possible game design that can exist. In an action game if there is a dungeon that can be completed in a party then it should be completable without one if the player is sufficiently skilled. A battle where you do the same thing over and over again and the single challenge is whether 20 people could do it perfectly for 10 minutes without a single mistake is not a well designed battle. As with the previous point - having a rigid party structure does not have anything to do with having more difficult content to complete. And neither does story.

The question is not whether your class fits a role but why do you want to have only one tactic to be viable in battle that requires 3 strictly defined and relatively boring roles? The MMORPG genre has been stagnating and dying for years now because every single game plays the same. There are 5 games in it that are kind of profitable and still release content regularly but that is about it. If you are having fun playing Elder Scrolls Online then play Elder Scrolls Online. But here's the thing - a lot of people really dislike that game because of it's crappy half-way there combat system that does not allow you to play the game as an action game.
 
I will say this, the Holy Trinity does work for specific kind of games/settings. As for DHS, while I can see you building for a possible healer, considering the might of the undead, it'll probably be something like Warframe, where healers are only nessecary for very specific game modes and those are the end game ones where you must protect a squishy NPC or where healing is optional, but recommended to keep things alive for the best loot. All the rest of the time, you're an army of one and really don't need a healer because you literally tear through everything. With a team of four, I will say this in Warframe, while a healer isn't nessecary you do end up with a arm of one with four players, where one player just kills everything and the rest of the team isn't really needed and left with little to do. Since DHS is looking to be a similar style to Warframe, you could definitely ignore healing for the most part outside of personal healing skills. So, I agree in DHS, it'll probably look like any sort of designated healer is pointless until maybe a certain degree or game mode if one occurs.
 
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I will say this, the Holy Trinity does work for specific kind of games/settings. As for DHS, while I can see you building for a possible healer, considering the might of the undead, it'll probably be something like Warframe, where healers are only nessecary for very specific game modes and those are the end game ones where you must protect a squishy NPC or where healing is optional, but recommended to keep things alive for the best loot. All the rest of the time, you're an army of one and really don't need a healer because you literally tear through everything. With a team of four, I will say this in Warframe, while a healer isn't nessecary you do end up with a arm of one with four players, where one player just kills everything and the rest of the team isn't really needed and left with little to do. Since DHS is looking to be a similar style to Warframe, you could definitely ignore healing for the most part outside of personal healing skills. So, I agree in DHS, it'll probably look like any sort of designated healer is pointless until maybe a certain degree or game mode if one occurs.

This is probably about accurate and reflects more of what I was proposing more accurately as well.

While I'm agreeing with you and the spirit of what you're saying, there is a big "BUT" I have to tack on.

Warframe doesn't have group activities. It has "bring other people because you get more loot that way" activities.

There is literally nothing in that game I can't do half asleep for hours on end, and frankly it's a serious problem with the game design overall, and the builds I use are generally available at MR 8 or so if you know what you're doing, so you can basically quit the game at that point even though you've only been playing for about 2 weeks. I used to teach people how to play their game, but I more or less quit doing that because they would realize very quickly what I realize: it's an endless treadmill and once you understand the systems there is no joy or satisfaction to be had because there is no challenge, and without challenge, rewards fall flat. That said, you can have a lot of fun in that game until you realize that and know exactly why that is true because you understand the underlying systems that make it that way.

At a certain point there is no challenge, there is no goal, there is just endless grind for no good reason other than making their steam metrics happy.

I would certainly not use warframe's meta systems as a point of reference. They do mobility well and microtransactions decently ethically. I won't go into the problems I have with their game here, because it's kinda A) mean and rude to do that and B) doesn't really relate to this game. I will say though, with warframe more you move away from those 2 topics the more you discover how much of a giant mess their game is if you peek behind the curtain. Admittedly yes, every frame in the game is viable, and that's good. To say that makes it balanced though... is very inaccurate, and to be fair, balance isn't everything, people don't actually want things exactly balanced, there's essays on that in game theory, with WF though, it's just busted.

I would say better things to look at for balancing classes would be things like The Last Epoch or to a lesser extent, Grim Dawn (think between D3 and PoE, more complexity, but you don't need a spreadsheet and custom loot filter to play it).

While they aren't ARPG's they do understand the way to make each class different, customizable, independent, and manage how things are done in a group, and yes there are nitpicks with those, but overall regarding class building they do it very well, I would argue better than PoE because PoE is a mess in a similar way warframe is.
 
Raids and Dungeons the way you see them in MMORPGs are the worst possible game design that can exist.
I think I pretty definitively found the answer. to my question.

You don't like those things and don't want to see them in this game.

That's fair. You are allowed to want that.

I don't think that's in line with what I've read so far. as I've seen multiple videos talking about dungeons and heard others mention that raids are expected.

That said, have you spend much time with Destiny 2 raids? Destiny 2 has it's own problems, but their raids are very praiseworthy and it is an ARPG.

There are challenges in their raids, firstly, are not completable solo because they require multiple people doing multiple things. These things are very often not healing or tanking.

In some cases it triggering events across a dungeon while synched, and platforming maze runner stuff that requires skill synch up with other players to make sure you can progress and not eat it. I'm not sure how any of it would translate to DH, but it's possible to make raids have very little to nothing to do with what you're complaining about, and to be real, everyone in those games is the same. The amount of diversity between specs classes and any current gear is pretty negligible.

All in all I think they are the most brilliant use of raids I've seen. yes, shooty shooty is part of it, and you do want people that can eat, deal and heal damage, but it's really not the main focal point because those are just distractions to make it harder to focus on the thing you're doing.

I guess what I'm saying is, try not to hate on the baby before it's born. They said there's gonna be dungeons. That could change, I doubt it, but maybe. That said, take a look at the track record of the team. Lots of good stuff that is ahead of it's time. Maybe give it a chance and see what they come up with.
 
I don't think that's in line with what I've read so far. as I've seen multiple videos talking about dungeons and heard others mention that raids are expected.
Pretty sure it has been said multiple times that the whole game will be soloable and that the max party size is 6 so no idea what you are talking about.

Dungeons in MMORPGs are not dungeons in general - you can have dungeons and not have them require group play at all. The problem with dungeons in MMORPGs is that they are a string of encounters that play pretty much the same. Bosses included actually. The only gameplay variety is boss mechanics that have nothing to do with the combat system in general and thus nothing to do with the trinity. You said it yourself - you have group gameplay in Destiny that has nothing to do with combat roles. So if the fun gameplay is actually not based on rigid combat roles then why would you want to have them at all?

Let's leave non-combat mechanics aside for a moment. When is the last time in an MMO where you completed a dungeon with 5 control-based mages? Or with 5 tanks each taking on a single enemy in a group so they would not be overwhelmed by the damage? Or with 5 DPSs when you focus on kiting and nuking down enemies? All of these require a lot of coordination and teamplay. And also those are styles of gameplay that you would see in a group-based cRPGs. Why are those gameplay styles not possible within an MMO group then? Because those games are specifically balanced in a way not to allow it. Every character in a cRPG has a decent survivability and damage to start with and the most useful skills are rarely the ones that exclusively deal damage or absorb damage.

The reason I dislike the trinity is not because I dislike group play but because I do like it and the trinity kills it with dull mechanics that make the combat encounters a chore instead of pleasure. Most trinity fights are based on gear checks and a little bit of skill and I want it the other way around. It is not a problem exclusive to trinity-based games though. Warframe actually has the same problem - combat is a clusterfuck and you cannot rely on your skills as a player to keep you safe so in the end the game devolves into a mindless killing fest where you as the player are overpowered as fuck which is actually the reason you can play Warframe half asleep. I would want a combat system where gear is de-emphasised and player skill and teamplay is the focus and that cannot happen with mechanics that do not allow for the player to play skillfully.

Also I am not sure how you reached the conclusion that I don't like team play when a third of my original post is based on ways to make characters play well in a group.
 
I will say this, the Holy Trinity does work for specific kind of games/settings. As for DHS, while I can see you building for a possible healer, considering the might of the undead, it'll probably be something like Warframe, where healers are only nessecary for very specific game modes and those are the end game ones where you must protect a squishy NPC or where healing is optional, but recommended to keep things alive for the best loot. All the rest of the time, you're an army of one and really don't need a healer because you literally tear through everything. With a team of four, I will say this in Warframe, while a healer isn't nessecary you do end up with a arm of one with four players, where one player just kills everything and the rest of the team isn't really needed and left with little to do. Since DHS is looking to be a similar style to Warframe, you could definitely ignore healing for the most part outside of personal healing skills. So, I agree in DHS, it'll probably look like any sort of designated healer is pointless until maybe a certain degree or game mode if one occurs.
The holy trinity has worked in the past before everybody and their mother got tired of it. It has never worked in an action game at all. I don't think Warframe is a good example of a skill-based action game as a lot of the skill of a player is lost among the hordes of enemies and the overpowered player characters you have at end-game. When imagining a combat system for this game I would rather go to Monster Hunter and Dark Souls or to spectacle fighters like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta and Nier where timing and and player skill is the focus of the combat system.
 
The holy trinity has worked in the past before everybody and their mother got tired of it. It has never worked in an action game at all. I don't think Warframe is a good example of a skill-based action game as a lot of the skill of a player is lost among the hordes of enemies and the overpowered player characters you have at end-game. When imagining a combat system for this game I would rather go to Monster Hunter and Dark Souls or to spectacle fighters like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta and Nier where timing and and player skill is the focus of the combat system.
I would strongly push away from DS/MH

The reason I say that is because of two things:

I honestly hate monster hunter as a game, the monsters are fun, but then literally everything else is boring and I feel like half the reason the monsters are fun is because you're getting a reprieve from the endless boring slog in between monsters.

Dark Souls has a different problem with combat though in that it's definitely automatically alienating to literally all casual players, plus it's hard to feel like an immortal bad ass if you get shanked because you accidentally rolled the wrong way. I would say combat elements are definitely great to plunder from there, but definitely not the pacing/difficulty spikes. I think it's fine for players to ramp up difficulty on a slider, but definitely not this as a base.

Generally speaking I hate when games over cater to casuals at the expense of hardcore vets (warframe again) but also like, you don't want to explicitly alienate them either.

I also think the DMC/Bayonetta is good, but also needs to ramp up to that at like endgame levels, not start there, I honestly feel like the vampire sword demos we've seen of the combat so far are a good "starting place" for combat pacing, but that it should go up from there and get more complex. Just my two cents on that, most of it is opinion/conjecture admittedly.

I feel like as you go up in power and gain more abilities that will open up more complex battlefield strategies.
 
Baseline DMC/Bayonetta is pretty easy, each game has a bunch of difficulties on top of the 3 base ones so that it would be challenging for a long time. Dark Souls/Monster Hunter have pretty similar combat system. Dark Souls screws players over with unknown mechanics and wasting their time by repetition but it is otherwise pretty normal in terms of difficulty. It is really weird that you complain about difficulty and catering to casuals in the same post.
 
Baseline DMC/Bayonetta is pretty easy, each game has a bunch of difficulties on top of the 3 base ones so that it would be challenging for a long time. Dark Souls/Monster Hunter have pretty similar combat system. Dark Souls screws players over with unknown mechanics and wasting their time by repetition but it is otherwise pretty normal in terms of difficulty. It is really weird that you complain about difficulty and catering to casuals in the same post.
Try to understand where I'm coming from:

I don't want to necessarily suggest building the game solely for me because I want it to succeed.

I like caster types but still did mock ups for all types of gameplay styles.


For example in another thread, I know that if veteran players get bonuses I will benefit from that, but still speak against it because of the impact that has on newer players.

I feel like it's a responsibility to not only advocate what you want to see, but also keep in mind principles that are good for the overall health of the game.

So while in some cases I might like or not like something, I need to advocate for what the best decision is, not just what my lizard brain wants. That's why I will sometimes have dual focus in my posts like that to show the pros/cons of an idea. It's not that I'm unable to separate or not contradict myself, but rather that I want to find the best solution and represent multiple sides of an issue to that end.

I do think having MH style battles in there for boss monsters would be cool though, to clarify, but I think that would be still suplemented by other content where as in MH, the "content" in between monsters is all padding.
 
The game is called Monster Hunter - of course there is no content between monster fights. The whole game is one big boss rush. Anything between battles is there so you can rest.

You don't know what the best decision about the game in general is - nobody does. Don't claim you speak for everybody - you speak only for yourself and to claim anything else is hubris.
 
The game is called Monster Hunter - of course there is no content between monster fights. The whole game is one big boss rush. Anything between battles is there so you can rest.

You don't know what the best decision about the game in general is - nobody does. Don't claim you speak for everybody - you speak only for yourself and to claim anything else is hubris.
I am not claiming to speak for anyone else, I believe it should be understood that people only speak for themselves unless peer reviewed documents are produced to propose something as a fact rather than an opinion. I find it's best to presume that is the case with people because dialect is a thing and people have different manners of speaking across the globe. It saves a lot of time.

I also don't know the best answer. Please note my intention is to FIND the best answer. That doesn't mean I know what that is.

but rather that I want to find the best solution and represent multiple sides of an issue to that end.
 
OK, let's not beat around the bush anymore. I don't like you and here's why. Heads up - this is going to be quite rude and quite long but non-the-less - true.

First of all - trying to highjack a topic about something very specific. Albeit a pretty dead one but still. The opening post is quite big and full of examples of how characters can be different without having vastly different balancing for dealing damage and tanking between classes and dismissing it with "there is no identity to character archetype" proclaiming boldly that it is "just bad design" without any argumentation and then proceeding to present a thinly though out and undetailed "alternative" that has nothing to do with the original idea is just insulting.

When I give you an example of your ideas realised in a game and the problems that occur in said game with said system you start telling me what I think and what I like and dislike. And again you dismiss the real-life examples and argumentation.

Then you latch on on a completely different thread about games I have mentioned as potential combat system inspiration and start talking about things in those games that have nothing to do with the combat. Your comments about Monster Hunter and Dark Souls are like saying you don't like pizza because sometimes the coke you drink with it is flat - it literally makes no sense.

And as a finale the things that I really find insufferable - you claim that you are considering multiple viewpoints while clearly presenting your own heavily biased opinions as facts and tooting your own horn about how great you are.

You probably feel like you have not done that but that is what things look like from my perspective. I don't want to quarrel with you or wish you any ill - I just want to inform you of how things look like to me. I don't have any desire to continue conversing with you as I find it extremely frustrating. I also do not want to discuss the situation as I find it pointless and distasteful. I am seeking neither apology nor conflict. I wish you everything good and hope you enjoy your stay with the community and eventually the game and I am sorry that I had to write this post. I hope our encounters in the future are enjoyable to both of us. Have a great day!