I remain an enthusiastic observer of the ongoing Guild Wars 2 development. In particular, I like that they’re challenging the MMO trinity of DPS-healer-tank. And of course, whenever I find myself liking something, I get all upset and manage to find some aspect of it that gets me all bent out of shape. Clinically, I’m not sure that’s neurosis, but, hey, shake what yer mama gave ya.
Depicted: legitimate trinities.My primary point of contention is one of fundamentals. First off, who’s the authority who claimed that DPS-healer-tank is a “trinity”? Who imparted divine status on this mode of content consumption? It’s not a holy trinity. It’s a default. Many games have proven that you can deliver a steady, spooled, subscribed-to stream of content by rolling with the proven model. Forgive me for getting all fired up oevr semantics, but I don’t see anything divine in doing the same thing over and over, especially when it’s what most of the medium already does.
And that brings me to my second quibble. Don’t start your design with a negative. Don’t build your premise on what your game isn’t. The Halo franchise wasn’t established when a Bungie guy ran into a room and shouted, “I’ve got it! Let’s not build an RTS!”
Of course, all this is a bombastic way of saying that in design, you need to know what you want your player to experience. It’s not enough to break an existing model. It’s not enough to cast your design in terms of what it’s not. The pivotal piece of your game… is what it is.
Over at RPG.net, the term “fantasy heartbreaker” often arises. (Russell and Ben have even adopted it as an eye-winking moniker for their own journal.) The “fantasy heartbreaker” is a title that casts itself in terms of another game — D&D — and distinguishes itself only in the differences. “My game is like D&D, only the elves are dinosaurs.” “It’s like D&D but the combat is way more realistic.” “It’s like D&D with a much better magic system.” The “heartbreaker” comes in terms of the idea being, well, really not good enough to support its own weight, despite the doomed, loving myopia of the designer. “It’s like Vampire, but you’re a Highlander instead.” “It’s like Changeling, only it exchanges folkloric themes for gratuitous SCA fan service.”
Now, I don’t say of any of this to cast the stink-eye on ArenaNet. They’re smart, skilled developers and they know what they’re doing. I can guarantee you they had this whole conversation and decided what they wanted to do with GW2, even if it started with a critical look at other games in the market and their own initial title and a list of ways in which they wanted to depart from that experience. That’s fine, so long as it results in a definitive statement of what their design is and doesn’t languish in what their design isn’t.
Subtractive design is a productive method of game design. In subtractive design, you pare away what didn’t work in a previous design, trim the excess, shear off the experience that’s not central. It leaves behind an integral core. It’s valid. Negative design, however — choosing your direction as a derivative of where you know you don’t want to go — well, that’s a disastrous and all too often well-traveled path.
I think that this whole “We don’t have the trinity/grind/etc” thing is more a matter of marketing than a show of their design ideals.GW1 didn’t had the trinity in the first place.
GW1 had the trinity. It’s just a trinity in which tanking was a bit weird and relied more on exploiting faulty AI than using your character’s abilities.
They also got around the usual model a little bit by allowing you to slot NPCs into the roles normally occupied by other players. While you certainly lost interpersonal dynamic, it also alleviated a lot of the flake factor of other players, particularly in pick-up groups.
@Dawngreeter For what I heard GW1 was more about dps-healer-cc[crowd control], some people call it a zerg fest.The problem isn’t that the roles of tanker/healer/dps exist but that this are usually the only 3 roles and they always use the same tactic [tank-n-spank] for all battles. And these battles always have the same outcome.@Justin Achilli I think this is a better solution than making the whole game solo friendly. And I still prefer the concept that you talked about [somewhere] in this blog about mechanics that put players together. But games only suffer from that because of the huge power gap between levels.
I wonder where the ‘Trinity’ (DPS,CC,DD,Healer etc) actually came from.I started playing MMORPGs at around 1999-2000 with Asheron’s Call and AC had a very Customizable character creation and from what I know people rarely focused only on one role, no one went “oh I’m going to play a Healer”, sure there were specialized ‘extreme templates’ that players made but I think the group gameplay Dynamic was alot more liberated then and people usually created Solo-characters rather than characters that only work in a group, Same with Ultima Online I believe.I think the whole ‘Trinity’ concept entered MMORPG gaming along with Voice-chat and the dumbing down of character creation to specific defaulted templates. I could be wrong but I think its something that migrated from D&D that also features defualt Archetype ‘Classes’ that take on group-oriented roles.The Reason for the creation of the ‘Trinity’ seems to be the premise that Classes(in D&D,WoW etc) Never play Solo and always stick together because the players being in a group is a given that doesn’t change.WoD is more flexiable in that regard but even then some Storytellers and Players see it as a game in which characters must play in a Coterie/Group so they resort to make their characters in a Healer/DPS/Tank fashion.Personally I think that a game in which a group becomes something that is a given and thus taken for granted is far less dramatic than a game in which players have a viable choice of going solo.I’m not saying that all players should play solo, I’m only saying that without some contrast things tend to be somewhat dull, light is meaningless without shadows and group is meaningless without the possibility of going solo and vice-versa.