I played GW’s the original and first 3 expansions before switching to WoW. Ultimately though I played GW’s as a solo game and rarely grouped with people unless I was running them through content (my favorite activity). GW2 looks promising and I’m definitely going to have to try it out.

Fixed?

I agree that many will try to shoehorn the trinity where it doesn’t belong. That doesn’t mean that it’s an inviolate cornerstone of MMO game design, or that it’s the only way to make a good game.

GW2 isn’t a WoW clone; it’s ambition lies elsewhere. I believe that’s healthy.

Huh. I’m pretty sure I’ve railed against the trinity a few times without coming at it from that angle. I just don’t like the static nature of it and the stupid AI.

Good article, Spinks. I’m really looking forward to GW2.

Oh, and the “last stand” downed mechanic reminds me of L4D.

You might now a much better way of doing it, but try explaining that to the x number of pugs that you also need.

PvP game with some pve content. pvp had dps/support/heal classes, with in 8v8 pvp only 1 player being a pure healer, though typically also only 3 pure dps players, with 4 players playing support/pressure/mitigation. In pvp tanks are worhtless (unless it’s unorganised random pvp with idiots that actually try to down a tank on their own). As the focus of the game was pvp the number of tanking skills was minimal (taunt non-existant), though the AI had a first-see-try-to-kill thing which made it possible to jump in first and get all the aggro.

Most pve-only players used the last approach on harder content and even though the game wasn’t really designed for dedicated tanking people tried it anyways. Later the AI was changed so that lowest health/armor got the highest priority and there was an outcry… tanking is impossible… GW is gonna die…

It didn’t. The pve community adapted, but instead of playing the game wihtout a dedicated tank, the pve community turned to using the terrain to optimum advantage and had the tank do complex luring far away from the party and put the mobs into a grouped position at a corner so that the tank could corner-block the mobs and prevent them from attacking the rest of the party.

Long story short, 2 expansions later people cried that GW (pve) was too easy and the developers added an elite area named Domain of Anguish with a boss called Mallyx. The pve community was so set in their tank-nuke-heal ways that it took them forever to clear those areas, did it with the most slowest group builds (focussing on maximum protection) you can imagine, just to be able to tank-nuke-heal. Even then the end-boss Mallyx was only defeated using glitches (so that he didnt attack the party and just stood there).

At some point this got patched and then the pve community erupted, it’s impossible to kill the boss!!! In the end it took some more pvp oriented players to prove that Mallyx was perfectly killable. And they didn’t use a tank.

Unfortunately around this time Anet decided to make it easier for everybody by giving free hacks to everybody (uber-consumables) and the pve-community went back to their happy tank-nuke-healing.

My point. The majority of PvE players WANT nuke-tank-heal. They will not figure out how to get past a certain point of the game if there is no trinity (original guild wars had thunderhead keep (a mission) as legendary noob-filter, most players did not pass this mission without being boosted through it), or such missions get nerfed and people cry that the game is too easy.

Sure, but boring and immersion are two different things.

As far as healing goes, I have 2 thoughts.

1) I can totally understand healers being upset about not having healing the way it is in most MMOs available. Tanking and DPSing are basically the same, you just want the monster hitting you in one role, and want it hitting someone else in the other, while healing is RADICALLY different from both of those roles. If they go through with this, it would be really nice if they can still provide that feel, really for all 3 roles, that there is a difference between damage, support, and control, if everything feels kind of the same, that is no good.

2) The way tanking and healing works in MMOs is ridiculous and is a huge blow to immersiveness. As a tank, I get hit by a dragon, burned, poisoned, etc. enough over the course of 1 fight to turn me into a fine paste, then burn that paste to ash and turn the ash into toxic waste, but that doesn’t happen because someone is basically holding my bones together with magic. It’s… absurd (and one of the reasons I like disc priests… they make more sense), and when I think about it to hard, it makes me feel less like a skilled warrior fighting a dragon, than some sort of magical golem in the dragon’s way.

I would much prefer a system where my goal is to avoid damage with the support of a class who can put up magical shields to deflect the blows that I fail to avoid. It’s much more cinematic to me.

I’d find it more immersive if the healers set up camp at the back and if anyone got badly injured, someone could take them over to the healers to get sorted out. Like in a battlefield.

I can’t quite square things in my head that you can heal during combat is all. And that as a tank I can laugh in a dragons’ face because I’m having so much health poured into me. I just always find it odd.

For me it just showed how stupid the AI/game design is. Why would a being so powerful spend all of it’s effort trying to kill the near invulnerable regenerating spiky turtle and not all the squishy vulnerable healers and casters?

Tank & Spank is just so god-awfully boring.