Crowfall

I'll take the trinity over any other alternative that I've seen in MMO's to date.

etchazz_sl said:

I'll take the trinity over any other alternative that I've seen in MMO's to date.

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What other MMO was PvP only and didn't have to please two masters (PvE and PvP)?

Player actions will be recorded in a "Book of Deeds" which determines ones' individual alignment. Possibly a blue/grey/red system ala Ultima Online.

I understand those developers trying to do something both new and innovative, getting rid of most nowadays MMO cornerstones. What I don't understand is the dogmatic will of scraping teamplay over "fun". Of course killing people is fun, but killing their team with coordinated actions should be funnier and more rewarding.

Teekey_sl said:

What other MMO was PvP only and didn't have to please two masters (PvE and PvP)?

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Planetside 2, and guess what it still has healers and tanks (quite literally even).

etchazz_sl said:

I'll take the trinity over any other alternative that I've seen in MMO's to date.

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I think what they are aiming for is not someone who just stands there casting only heals. There will be classes/spells that will buff friendly targets, but it won't be the sole focus.

etchazz_sl said:

I'll take the trinity over any other alternative that I've seen in MMO's to date.

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heh. yeah. I've said my piece on hatred of trinity more then a few times.
But yeah, I can not defend what we have gotten in mmo's for the alternative.
Plenty of non-mmos, sure. but not mmos for some reason.

I would like to see more proof of concept games I suppose. Maybe a new structure for producing in general...
40k to make a wvw only game. no crafting, no towns, no nothing. shit graphics... but a gvg, or wvw system. playtest it.
Build a non trinity party system, which works in 5 man, 10man, and 40 man pve content. how does that system then work for 200 vs 200 man?

Its the main problem we are facing in the AAA market that was created. no half measures. you need to dump so much cash into a product you can't innovate, or try new things. in an effort to not make mistakes, they are repeating the same mistakes over and over.

Morphyous_sl said:

I think what they are aiming for is not someone who just stands there casting only heals. There will be classes/spells that will buff friendly targets, but it won't be the sole focus.

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That's my understanding of it. Here's the quote from the Devs:

The term "healer" carries many assumptions with it. Which we wanted to avoid.

The intent for support to have key buffs, debuffs, physics related powers at a cost of damage or defensive is exactly what we want to do. That isn't to say in the Discipline Runestones (or combination of Disciplines) there won't be healing, it's really hard to predict. There just won't be a primary Archtype devoted to it.

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So there will still sorta be a Trinity, but it's going to be 'Support' instead of 'Healer'. In League of Legends, there's many different kinds of Supports, and many of them don't heal at all. I know it's a much different game, but it gives an idea of how Support can be a meaningful role without having to heal. Or hell, even Enchanters in EverQuest.

Teekey_sl said:

That's my understanding of it. Here's the quote from the Devs:



So there will still sorta be a Trinity, but it's going to be 'Support' instead of 'Healer'. In League of Legends, there's many different kinds of Supports, and many of them don't heal at all. I know it's a much different game, but it gives an idea of how Support can be a meaningful role without having to heal. Or hell, even Enchanters in EverQuest.

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This is how I understood it as well.

Yep, in agreement with Teekey. I made several posts to the same tune on Crowfall's forums in an attempt to sway some of the SB folks from some premature aneurysms to no avail.

Bain_sl said:

Yep, in agreement with Teekey. I made several posts to the same tune on Crowfall's forums in an attempt to sway some of the SB folks from some premature aneurysms to no avail.

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The game of Rampant SpeculationT has been kind of fun, but it's insane some of the shit people on the official forums have been running with.

The Shadowbane players are in near panic mode as each info drop reveals the game isn't Shadowbane reborn.

Its always going to be that way. People have argued bitterly over aspects of gameplay, adopting black or white positions, all the while popping Xanax and hyperventilating into a paper bag. Almost every time the answer we get is a grey-area approach which seems fairly reasonable, thus far.


Action combat!
No! Tab Target!
How about combat thats more actiony than WoW, and kind of like WildStar and Darkfall but not?

FFA! Full loot!
No! Factions and inventory loot!
How about different rule sets, but we'll encourage people to go to each of the worlds, for progression and loot?

I want PvE!
No! No PvE for anybody!
How about PvE is in, but its not a big deal, there are some big monsters, and its mostly for materials?

D&D style character creation!
No! LOL style MOBA characters!
How about Moba-like archtypes that you can customize into your own builds?



How this shit will all turn out is anybody's guess, but so far i get the impression they've at least sat down and thought this through.

Hah. Pretty good interpretation. I've been debating with a lot of the ex-Shadowbane players over there and they won't agree to any compromise.

They insist that the best loot should drop exclusively in the Dregs (FFA). I agree FFA should provide better rewards since there is higher risk - but I tried suggesting that valuable resources like Gold mines should spawn very rarely in the other worlds, but drop lower quality ore and in less quantities...and they still refused to see why that would be a good idea.

I guess people just so badly want 'their' game that they don't even care if it unbalances gameplay and negatively affects players who aren't them.

But then again, this is basically how most MMOs go: People want to be the Haves and make everyone else the Have-Nots.

Teekey_sl said:

They insist that the best loot should drop exclusively in the Dregs (FFA).

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If I had to hazard a guess, I'd assume that it will. I'm as anti-trammel as anybody (see page 1) but I think they know the entire game can't be Somalia, thus the varying rule sets between worlds. I do think that ArtCraft is aware piece of shit PKs, like myself, enjoy attacking hapless crafters and roleplayers and will attempt to lure people into the more harshly ruled world for loot, materials, maybe even progression, etc, while providing them with more mild planets to have virtual tea parties away from the Flexes and Dunmars of the game in Dregs, where places like The Shadow is more suited for people like Tuco to sit on the Iron Throne of GvG combat, but if you want to get to the good shit and reside in the PvP restricted worlds, you gotta drive through Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd to get it.

If this isn't the case and there is no incentive for people to travel from Care-a-lot to Mogadishu, then all is lost.

Yeah, I'm still maintaining fairly high optimism that this will be a game I can enjoy. The developers have yet to make an announcement that has turned me off from the game and in general really seem to have their shit together to be such a small team. Posts like the one where they mention not making the same mistakes as GW2 helped a lot. It would be nice to see a developer genuinely learn from the mistakes of their peers.

Bain_sl said:

Yeah, I'm still maintaining fairly high optimism that this will be a game I can enjoy. The developers have yet to make an announcement that has turned me off from the game and in general really seem to have their shit together to be such a small team. Posts like the one where they mention not making the same mistakes as GW2 helped a lot. It would be nice to see a developer genuinely learn from the mistakes of their peers.

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While i share your optimism, to be completely fair anyone can say "yeah they sucked, ours won't suck" without yet having revealed why it won't suck for the same or similar reasons.

Big Flex_sl said:

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd assume that it will. I'm as anti-trammel as anybody (see page 1) but I think they know the entire game can't be Somalia, thus the varying rule sets between worlds. I do think that ArtCraft is aware piece of shit PKs, like myself, enjoy attacking hapless crafters and roleplayers and will attempt to lure people into the more harshly ruled world for loot, materials, maybe even progression, etc, while providing them with more mild planets to have virtual tea parties away from the Flexes and Dunmars of the game in Dregs, where places like The Shadow is more suited for people like Tuco to sit on the Iron Throne of GvG combat, but if you want to get to the good shit and reside in the PvP restricted worlds, you gotta drive through Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd to get it.

If this isn't the case and there is no incentive for people to travel from Care-a-lot to Mogadishu, then all is lost.

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Well, from what we've seen of crafting materials, it makes little sense to restrict crafting materials to specific worlds because they're primarily for specialization, and will be valued differently based on class, role, etc.

However, I 100% agree that the Dregs (FFA) should provide higher rewards because there is higher risk.

But using the resource example, I just don't think there is value in restricting resourcescompletely. In fact, I think providing a very rare Gold mine will be a good point of contention to spice things up. Here was the example I game them:

For example: Perhaps on God's Reach (Faction War) there's only 1 Gold Mine, so it's highly contentious and very rare. However, it's also low quality. Instead of providing 1 STR per bar like the Gold in the Dregs, it only provides .25 STR.

It could also provide Gold at a much lower rate. This is just an example, but imagine the mines in God's Reach only spawn 10 nodes per day - but the mines in the Dregs spawn 50+.

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I think using a model like this will give people a taste of what's available and urge them to take bigger risks to get better rewards.

Big Flex_sl said:

While i share your optimism, to be completely fair anyone can say "yeah they sucked, ours won't suck" without yet having revealed why it won't suck for the same or similar reasons.

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Agreed, thus why I said it would be nice to see. They haven't actually shown anything yet, but they certainly know what to say to click with me.

The problem with scrapping the trinity is that the concept of the trinity is actually the last in a long line of abstractions that depend on each other; changing it is like removing a support frame from your home, do it without altering other stuff and you end up with a pile of shit. If you want to change healing, you've really got to look at how fights in MMO's are abstracted from the top down, and still make your paradigm reflect what people are used to in the "real" world; which means support, front lines and "long range/spy" (If you want more than just a brawl/Kung fu MMO). It's not hard to see where the trinity came from, every human war has it. The issue is you can't alter ONE aspect of the current abstraction (Replacing logistics/replenishment=healing) and then wipe your hands and say you're done. You have to look at every other abstraction and ask how that was also altered; for example, the existence if hit points itself is an abstraction meant to allow players to take on the experiences of what would have traditionally been multiple people in a fight (IE be heroic tales, which are often amalgamations of a bunch of individual soldiers over the course of a war. Or an exceptionally lucky guy who often still gets stuff credited to him he didn't do heh.)

The only way I can see support changing, without a huge advance in AI, is in a game where where damage is more about long term strategy, and not discreet encounters. So healers are meant to reduce downtime, or increase your ability to do X (Like pursue the enemy or farm ect). This is actually more how original D&D was designed. So in an MMO that treats PvE like another type of resource gathering; where the focus on PvE is efficiency and NOT difficulty (Like in a MOBA), then yeah, it could work. Just think about PvE in a MOBA, it's not like the mobs are difficult--the goal isn't just to win, it's to win with enough HP to continue to farm expediently. OR "winning" a battle isn't about just killing your opponents, but it has to work into the goal of being able to take objectives---and support would let you translate discreet encounters into bigger strategic victories, they wouldn't be solely about winning the encounter. Then yeah, I could see it working. It's just going to take a pretty huge shift in how PvE is viewed by the developers. Difficulty per encounter can't be as much of a consideration as the difficulty in the strategy of an entire area/dungeon. (Unless they have great AI, then this can all change.)

Teekey_sl said:

I fully understand the concern over lack of Trinity in a game with PvE, but it doesn't seem like nearly as big of an issue in a strictly PvP game.


There's some speculation that the multiple worlds are going to be time limited psuedo-Battlegrounds. Still so much we don't know, but the Export conditions of Win, Kneel, and Lose indicate there's some sort of structured battle.

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This is something I hope they talk about. I'll avoid speculating but it feels kind of disappointing if the alternate worlds are just "battles". Maybe though the whole export thing means that whatever means of accessing or leaving the world requires someone to be in control of a method of travel, and there are battles for that method? I'd think that would be boss. So the guild who "owns" the portal, or who are able to fight and temporarily take it or jump through it, can leave with 80% of their shit, someone who declares fealty, can leave with 50%; and people who don't, only get 20%.

Just pulling stuff out of my ass, of course. But meh, I hope it's not just a big resource gathering BG. (I'm not even sure how you'd get a win scenario on a FFA one given that...)