Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Caliane said:

He saying, what exactly does this solve or change? It just makes the trinity worse. 3 class roles you have to have to do anything. 4 if dps is considered a part of it and a differant role.

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It replaces the mindless DPS role with one that is more dynamic, relying on other players rather than strict gameplay mechanics which are predictable (which the DPS role does). Like was said, DPS would no longer be a role as it would be an aspect of all classes equally.

Caliane said:

Also, pure CC would fill the roll of a tank. They are negating damage. Through stuns, roots, mez, or parry/dodge/armor isn"t really different, except in the case of damage breaking the CC.

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No, not quite, at least no more than a healer can tank because he can remove the damage he takes. The difference lies in aggro and threat management, as well as damage mitigation with respect to how encounters are balanced around it.

I have nothing to say in response to Foghorn"s impatience and pretentiousness. If you are so bored of the discussion, so be it, leave it, but if you intend to continue to be a part of it, either add to the discussion or provide access to where it has previously been discussed. Hmm, it appears I did have something to say after all.

Ninajrr said:

It replaces the mindless DPS role with one that is more dynamic, relying on other players rather than strict gameplay mechanics which are predictable (which the DPS role does). Like was said, DPS would no longer be a role as it would be an aspect of all classes equally.

No, not quite, at least no more than a healer can tank because he can remove the damage he takes. The difference lies in aggro and threat management, as well as damage mitigation with respect to how encounters are balanced around it.

I have nothing to say in response to Foghorn"s impatience and pretentiousness. If you are so bored of the discussion, so be it, leave it, but if you intend to continue to be a part of it, either add to the discussion or provide access to where it has previously been discussed. Hmm, it appears I did have something to say after all.

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Well, if you want to go through the thread, it has been talked about.

Anyway, what you are describing is WoW.
Dps that are just dps, or were in early wow, were worthless. fury warriors, balance druids, elemental shaman. Classes with only dps, and no CC.
Mages whose defining use was polymorph were 100X more desired.
That is what wow is. Tank, CC, healing. Its just that tanking and healing are constant, while CC is CC, then dps while waiting for your cc to be reapplied.
Personally, I find this boring as all hell.

Ninajrr said:

either add to the discussion or provide access to where it has previously been discussed. Hmm, it appears I did have something to say after all.

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Class theorycraft (trinity v. everything else) gets discussed in depth at least 2 or 3x a year here (and discussed in passing much more) just search.

I"m just waiting for the sub-job system to get mentioned along with the inevitable hybrid v. pure class discussion.

* * *
As for me, I think fantasy MMOS should adopt CCG (or rather MTGlike) mechanics - classes have access to a broad set of abilities on semi-random timers tied to "lore" (white, black, green, etc) in addition to standard static melee abilities. With tradeoffs in terms of gear v. abilitiy access. Anyone can play whatever role they want to play -- depending on the gear they"re wearing and abilities they"ve stacked in their deck for a particular outing.

In a dps mood - you stack dps abilities into your "deck" - and put on your leather or scale gear. In a tank mood - you stack tank abilities into your "deck" and put on the plate. In a cc mood -- put on cloth and cc abilities into your deck. Mobs drop gear and "cards" for new abilities. Anyway, blah, blah, blah I"ve discussed it in detail before. Probably in this thread somewhere.

I only mention it again to point out that we can move beyond the trinity.

Cya next year for next year"s discussion.

Hey, you know what I just thought of? Mana is a really stupid system. What do you guys think? We should talk about making an MMO with no mana.

The problem with making DPS a side effect of all other roles is that it will make the perceived problem worse. If all tanks can do equal DPS to a CC/DPS class then you won"t even need to bother with the CC.. it just slows shit down. Make a group with 3-4 tanks and 1-2 healers and everyone tank something and just go to town. Otherwise you are just reshaping the same trinity and putting a different label on each of the three aspects. As long as we have the need for tanks and the need for heals then the problem is going to exist in some form or another, no matter how you shift it. The problem isn"t the DPS/CC classes. It"s the paradigm of absorbing punishment and replinishing the ability to absorb more. Everything else that happens is inconsequential.

Twobit--you"re making the mistake of trying to apply that concept to Warcraft. That wouldn"t work (for exactly the reason you describe). A game needs to be designed from the ground up to support its combat design.

Simply out, design content where you don"t (or can"t) use three tanks/two healers. Say the mobs hit for too much for the healers to heal through, or there are too many of them for the tanks to hold aggro on. That brings me to another point: The concept of "AE tanking" needs to die. It causes one person to do all the work, leaving the rest of the group without much to do except spam their damage buttons or heals. What terrible design! Chuck it!

The fundamental goal I discuss amounts to,make more people matter. I saw a mention of the "Holy Trinity". What is the Trinity? That"s the folks who matter. Who complained about it? The people whodidn"tmatter. Instead of breaking up the folks who matter, I want to improve the people who don"t.

Make no mistake, I acknowledge other ways of accomplishing that goal. Get rid of tanks, get rid of healers, "hybridize" everyone, and that"ll also result in a system that can work (ironically, damage as a class role still dies). Everyone matters, and it even has a few advantages. I see such design as comparable to an "action RPG", with the former setup more tactical in nature.

Which is better? Neither--or both. They"re different systems, both viable, that would result in vastly different games. Frankly I"d like to play both those conceptual games. There"s more than one way to skin a cat. A market full of clones of the same thing seems boring to me.

Danth

Danth said:

Simply out, design content where you don"t (or can"t) use three tanks/two healers. Say the mobs hit for too much for the healers to heal through, or there are too many of them for the tanks to hold aggro on.

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Which leads to exactly what I said, requiring a "debuffer" class. Same problem, different archetype label.

Whether it be tank/healer/cc, tank/healer/dps, tank/healer/debuffer, tank/debuffer/dps.. the problem is the same. The roles may shift, but the interdependency still exists. And you know what? It"s not really a problem. That"s what a group role playing game is for.

Twobit Whore said:

Which leads to exactly what I said, requiring a "debuffer" class. Same problem, different archetype label.

Whether it be tank/healer/cc, tank/healer/dps, tank/healer/debuffer, tank/debuffer/dps.. the problem is the same. The roles may shift, but the interdependency still exists. And you know what? It"s not really a problem. That"s what a group role playing game is for.

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I think party members should make each other stronger, not be unplayable without them.

Or, a specific class combination at least. I"m not suggesting I should be able to solo a raid boss.

FoghornDeadhorn said:

That"s why this discussion is pointless for me to wade into. We"ve been over this, been over this before. It"s been played out in theory and in practice. You should understand the question fully or you"re way back in the mechanics comprehension line.

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Nobody is asking your opinion, you could always just not participate in the discussion instead of constantly throwing in snide remarks without actually ever making a point. If you"re going to tell people their idea"s are horrible, you should at least take the time to point out "why" you hold that opinion, because I can"t escape the feeling that you"re attacking this discusssion with all sorts of pre-conceived notions that have very little to actually do with the point at hand.


The idea is to solve the current issues of, among other things, scarcity of tanks and healers as opposed to DPS, tanks and healers who struggle with content outside of raiding due to lack of DPS, DPS having boring and repetative play styles that have more to do with mathematical equations than they do with actually playing a game, and hopefully see a shift towards more dynamic PvE content instead of the same tired tank and spank fights.

I think the idea of DPS as restricted role is kind of incongruous with fantasy RPG gaming as a whole. I mean you look at D&D, from which EQ drew so much inspiration, and all classes there are quite capable of laying the smack down, even clerics and druids and most definately warriors. When you first heard of EQ or UO or whatever, I can"t imagine anybody picked up the game and said "you know what"d be fun? playing a class that is completely ineffectual at actually killing anything but just soaks up or heals damage while others do the work." I doubt anybody who bought WoW for the first time with no idea about MMO"s picked the warrior class because they wanted to stand there with a shield and maximise their threat output while somebody else killed the boss. They did it because they wanted to grab a big sword and tear shit up.

What I want to see is a game where everybody is a combatant. Sure it would require putting a lot more thought into content design, and making it much more involved and interesting, but I don"t see that as a bad thing. Designers need a kick up the ass as far as raid content goes because there"s only so much they can do with the current tank/spank/dodge the void zones/*insert gimmick here* model, and frankly that shit bores my tits off after doing it for so many years. I just don"t see how much further this genre can be taken by people like Curt unless they"re willing to do something radically different and break out of the current paradigm we"ve been stuck in since EQ. WoW with different names and better graphics is only going to take you so far.

tl;dr

Bottom line is that it"s frustrating to see us restart these conversations from the beginning every 2-4 months. I"d like to see this board actually progress in discussions where when we revisit a subject we"ve already covered all of the basic points, but I suppose that would require posters who are educated on the subject and have been through the loops to continue to bother posting. Zehn is one of the board"s most popular posters because despite the fact that he"s as nutty as a woodpecker you can"t throw anything new at him and his posts about mechanics design are not agnostic of what ACTUALLY happens when certain known design paradigms are followed. The solutions he offers may not be the #1 choice for infinity but at least he has the goddamned basics down.

Carry on.

FoghornDeadhorn said:

tl;dr

Bottom line is that it"s frustrating to see us restart these conversations from the beginning every 2-4 months. I"d like to see this board actually progress in discussions where when we revisit a subject we"ve already covered all of the basic points, but I suppose that would require posters who are educated on the subject and have been through the loops to continue to bother posting. Zehn is one of the board"s most popular posters because despite the fact that he"s as nutty as a woodpecker you can"t throw anything new at him and his posts about mechanics design are not agnostic of what ACTUALLY happens when certain known design paradigms are followed. The solutions he offers may not be the #1 choice for infinity but at least he has the goddamned basics down.

Carry on.

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There"s only so many new topics that can be discussed, particularly when the entire genre insists on each game just being a 10% shift from the previous game. And again, to my knowledge this discussions has never actually taken place on this board since I started reading here in 06, but feel free to correct me if I"m wrong. The concept of pure CC classes existing in a tank/healer/DPS (ala enchanters, or god forbid, bards and healers, for those who played DAoC) game has been discussed ad infinitum yes, but that"s "not" what is being put forward here. If you can link me a thread where the concept of equalizing DPS and replacing it on the trinity with CC/debuffing was discussed in detail, then I"ll happily step down and drop the subject.

FoghornDeadhorn said:

tl;dr

Bottom line is that it"s frustrating to see us restart these conversations from the beginning every 2-4 months. I"d like to see this board actually progress in discussions where when we revisit a subject we"ve already covered all of the basic points, but I suppose that would require posters who are educated on the subject and have been through the loops to continue to bother posting. Zehn is one of the board"s most popular posters because despite the fact that he"s as nutty as a woodpecker you can"t throw anything new at him and his posts about mechanics design are not agnostic of what ACTUALLY happens when certain known design paradigms are followed. The solutions he offers may not be the #1 choice for infinity but at least he has the goddamned basics down.

Carry on.

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Yeah, the whole discussion is going in circles and never getting all that deep.
Its like trying to do a crossword puzzle without actually writing any words in. We are looking at each word and not really writing anything in, so just looking at the surface and not getting anywhere. Because we are talking about a hypothetical game without anything to build off of.

Every 2-4 months? They happen every month now.

Caliane said:

Yeah, the whole discussion is going in circles and never getting all that deep.
Its like trying to do a crossword puzzle without actually writing any words in. We are looking at each word and not really writing anything in, so just looking at the surface and not getting anywhere. Because we are talking about a hypothetical game without anything to build off of.

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Only 10% of this thread -- if that -- is about Copernicus. The rest is just armchair design. The thread itself has gone through the same discussions many times, but they"ve been had in other threads for years and many of those have gone well beyond where most of these discussions end. Sadly.

Azrayne said:

When you first heard of EQ or UO or whatever, I can"t imagine anybody picked up the game and said "you know what"d be fun? playing a class that is completely ineffectual at actually killing anything but just soaks up or heals damage while others do the work.

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Does it count if when I heard about/got UO, I wanted to play a merchant and not do any killing at all?

Caliane said:

Does it count if when I heard about/got UO, I wanted to play a merchant and not do any killing at all?

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No, that just makes you weird

Caliane said:

Does it count if when I heard about/got UO, I wanted to play a merchant and not do any killing at all?

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fuck mindlessly killing stuff. that gets old. my favorite character was a treasure hunter!

Eh, the biggest problem we"re facing is that it"s not for a lack of ideas the discussion isn"t moving forward, it"s simply the lack of technology. And even that particular discussion route we"ve been down before and it ends with the extinction of the human race. I think it was even covered in a SeaQuest DSV episode.

Short of posting whole design doc"s, what else is there? Don"t you dare fucking romanticize about the "good old days" of these boards Dead. 99% of it was people bitching about what a bug ridden piece of shit EverQuest was and the remaining 1% was Furor bitching about what a bug ridden piece of shit EverQuest was and us being that much more entertained by it.

Maybe when we were young and innocent and all we really wanted for Christmas was a non-shit interface and the ability to maybe solo.

Yes, shit gets regurgitated. If nobody ever repeated anything that had already been said on the internet there"d be only one page with only me taking because I"m fairly certain I"ve said everything that"s possible to ever say. Well, my page and a Harry Potter fanfic page because I won"t go near that shit.

Let"s just be thankful for small favors at least eh? There"s no more "My Jboots feel slower..." threads and there sure as fuck aren"t nearly as many as, "Let"s make up possisble MMO classes! Get this, an elementalist, he would be like a ranger and a mage only with a sword, awesome yeah!" threads as there used to be either.

And thanks to the existence and constant re-bumping of this thread and the uberworlds forum we haven"t seen a "Hi, I"m a mmo developer, post what you think would be awesome in MMO"s!" thread in ages to make me gouge my fucking eyes out as everyone talks about how their favorite feature is a slick UI and fun gameplay. Oh, and some non-mandatory PvP.

So we have two options really, let this thread die the silent death it deserves until Curt pulls some more Brad McQuaid on us with his, "The game is going great, I"m really excited about it, I think you will be too!" posts.

Or we can continue to agree to ignore the fact that this has all happened before...and will happen again.

Besides, I"m sure you"re all -dying- to know what I think the class roles would be and how they would be spread. Eh? EH?!?

Ninajrr said:

Players merely need to be trained back into it. WoW has trained players to be reckless, there is no reason another game cannot train them to be more cautious.

It is funny though, going from WoW to a more dangerous MMO and playing it similarly for the first few weeks. When I tried out Vanguard I cannot tell you the number of times I tried to hall ass through a camp rather than walk around it only to find myself dead and on a CR. The thing is, Vanguard forced players to jump into that playstyle immediately, there was no retraining, they assumed the players would be able to adapt immediately--I think this was a huge fault of theirs and many other modern MMOs that try to differentiate themselves difficulty-wise from WoW.

If you want to keep your players, if you want skilled players, if you want players to enjoy themselves: train them how to playyour game.

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Vanilla WoW had use for CC and aside from overgearing dungeons, a BRS run for example required some intelligent use of it.
People were trained, people were doing just fine, I doubt that removing these little obstacles and making everything an AE fest got them new subs.

They mixed up accessibility with retard-friendly: one thing is making raids with 25 or even 10 players, one thing is for every class to use 2-3 hotkeys and be able to do well enough.

Zehn - Vhex said:

There"s no more "My Jboots feel slower..." threads...

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"Hey guys, we did Onyxia, isn"t she doing more deep breaths than she used to?"