The Holy Trinity

Anyone who's played fantasy MMO games can tell you about "The Holy Trinity". Every group, in order to be successful must have three key components. Tanking, Heals, and Damage. While this seems very logical, unfortunately, it makes for boring play. It's a pretty universal concept across not only fantasy MMO games, but most RPG games. They may sub the "Tank" with a "Physical Buff Guy" in a game where tanking isn't really applicable (think Console turn based RPGs), but all in all, the trinity is a staple of MMOs.

The trinity definitely has some benefits. Say you are picking up a new game, and not familiar with all of the intricate details of the game, being a gamer though, you are familiar with the trinity. This will allow you to have at least an idea of what you're getting into before you dive in head first. It can also benefit when grouping becomes involved. It's not hard to build a group around tried and true concepts that you are very familiar with. Everyone in the group knows their job's role, if you are the tank, then your job is pretty black and white. You hold the bad guys attention, and soak up as much damage as possible. If you are the healer… well... c'mon... you heal. And DPS fills in the other holes. Their job is to kill anything and everything in their way.

While the Trinity is functional, comfortable, and familiar, it's also dated. How can we move away from the trinity? What can we do to give players new and interesting ways to play games and interact with groups?

This opens up drastically to different schools of thought. One approach is to slim down the Trinity. Get rid of one or more of the roles and move into a much more homogenized style of design. The first step in this direction seems to be getting rid of the need for healers. You can't directly abandon healing, but eliminating the need for healer characters. There are some games out there now experimenting without 'healers', most of which go with an angle where all player are capable of healing themselves. This does eliminate the need for a healing role, but not by really removing it, it's simply re-delegating the task to each individual player. This works wonderfully for single-player and pvp play. When attempting to introduce this into a PvE environment though, things change. The removal of a healer also puts an overemphasis on the other roles. With healing taken out of the picture, it turns into a game of "whoever has the highest damage wins". This removes a lot of the strategy and tactical play we find in PvP.

Why stop with healing though? In theory, any of the three roles could be removed. Removing a tank could result in some interesting PvE Experiences. This would logically remove a level of player controllability of the Environment. While random elements, and making players react on their toes is a good thing, removing an aspect of play that is based around the concept of controlling the environment may not be. Part of the reason people play games is for escapism. None of us can control the real world, but in Azeroth, while tanking, I control that mob. I am the master of my own destiny. Nobody calls the shots here except me. I think taking this away from players would ultimately be a poor decision.

Removing Damage classes could also result in some interesting Hybrid mechanics. Though, without damage combat would be very interesting. One could dream up many different ways to determine the outcome of conflicts without damage, they could be time based, or point based. Unfortunately, as is the nature of MMO games, and the human race, conflict is something we really can't avoid.

We've seen some recent movement to homogenize the classes, and get more people to fit into multiple roles in the trinity lately, mostly with wow. But personally, I think the other direction is a better approach. Blending the classes, and making it so everyone is roughly the same, only gives players less individuality and ultimately hurts gameplay. With Today's WoW, really, what's the difference between a druid and a Paladin? They look different… They can both tank, they can both heal, they can both do damage. Sure there are minor details about how they do it, we can't deny the usefulness and uniqueness of a rebirth, or a Divine Intervention. But their overall job in a group, and their classes are ultimately so similar, that neither is genuinely unique.

This especially hurts the single purpose or "pure" classes. The classes that have no optional roles, they can only do one thing. With wow specifically this only affects the damage dealing classes, all tanking/healing classes have alternate capabilities. A mage for example, doesn't have as predominant of a place in Azeroth as it used to. Let me explain; Every tanking class in WoW is capable of doing reputable damage, on par with all other classes. While they may only be able to do 90% of what a "pure" dps class can do, the versatility is enough to make them more worthy of the spot over a class that has no versatility. Same goes with healing classes, every single class that has the ability to heal, also has the option of doing damage, or in some cases, tanking. With dual specializations allowing the classes to switch on the fly, it's a bad time to be a "pure" dps class. Sure, they can do marginally more damage than a "Hybrid" class, but is 10% more damage worth sacrificing the ability to heal? This is typically justified by including, what I define as, secondary mechanics. Think Crowd control, buffs, debuffs, and wipe prevention, things like that. Things that aren't *NEEDED* but are nice to have. Blending the classes, and making it so everyone is roughly the same, only gives players less individuality and ultimately hurts gameplay in my opinion.

I feel that the trinity is a good thing, but needs some spice. I'd like to see the minor mechanics get more room in the spot light. I remember the Bard in Final Fantasy was an incredible part of the party. Sure, they did a little healing, they did a little damage, but their job was to support the others. A bard would make your group far, far stronger than it is without the bard. Every group wanted a bard, it wasn't even a question, if you could get a bard, then you did, end of story. I know WoW is currently looking at the "bring the player, not the class" attitude, but I feel that this ultimately hurts the classes themselves. I feel that over homogenization of classes takes us further away from the concepts of a virtual world. If everyone is going to ultimately be the same, we might as well be playing a first person shooter, like quake. Everyone is the same, we all start equal, and that's the end of it. In an environment that is designed to create a world, the distinctiveness between the classes is of vital importance.

I want to play a support class again. I don't want to do damage, I don't want to heal, I don't want to tank. I want my job to be making others stronger, or weaker. I want Abilities that make the monster vulnerable to my archer's attacks, as well as make my healer's spells more likely to crit, and make my tank deflect attacks twice as often. I want to cripple the monster with non-damage abilities, and bolster my party with my power. Heck, you could even make classes out of each of the secondary mechanics.

How about a class where the sole purpose is weakening the opponent? Not killing them, but weakening them. A pure debuffer. A class who's able to slow a monsters movement, and make him so vulnerable to attacks that he turns the raging hounds of hell into a puppy that can be conquered by the physcially weak magic user? It may sound kind of hokey, but think about it. It could be a Shamanistic Witch Doctor type class. He specializes in debuffs, curses, hexes, voodoo, etc. He has the ability to manipulate a monster any way he wishes. He can increase vulnerability to a certain school of magic, or physical attacks, this would give him the fluidity to fit into any group. But how can we make this interesting to play? What if these debuffs are short duration, say 15~30 seconds and have to be refreshed often. They can weave 4~5 debuffs at once, this would turn it into a game of upkeep. You could expand on this giving them an auto-attack like ability, that from ranged, adds 2 seconds to the debuff timer for the lowest timed buff. This could be really interesting on multiple mob fights. The debuffer would first have to establish debuffs on multiple mobs, then would have to work with each mob through spell refreshing or quick updating due to "melee refresh" when appropriate.

While I like the idea of pure buff classes and pure debuff classes, merging them into one pure utility class seems the most logical. Having the ability to buff and debuff all at once gives the class good versatility ensuring that they are always useful. Stealing a few ideas from WoW could really make this class shine. Let's take the totem mechanic, allowing area specific buffs/debuffs, and pair it up with the aura ability of the paladin. Allow this class to have these totems attached to their character, with the ability to drop them off wherever they like. This would allow them to remain mobile, and do pre-emptive setup when called for. These totems could do lesser buffs/debuffs while the higher level more powerful abilities would require constant player maintenance and upkeep. This could be insanely useful in an arena or battleground situation as well.

No matter how you do it, you have to give the player enough o keep them busy and keep them engaged. The bard class did it well, with forcing the movement in order to apply specific buffs to specific groups (the magic users stood together, the melee stood together, so bards were always running around like headless chickens). You can't simply cast a spell, then stand there looking pretty. So, let's make these spells a channeling effect, i.e. they have to be maintained in some fashion. In my mind, the goal of a class like this would be to establish the buffs/debuffs, and then maintain them, all the while keeping themselves alive.

This could be done a number of different ways, we could take the FFXI approach and force large amounts of movement on the characters. Having them run around going from person to person, or area to area refreshing buffs. Or we could give them some form of skill stacking similar to the skill chaining idea. Have them build up the power of the spells gradually. This would be great for boss fights, and fights that are longer than just a minute or so. Maybe the spell can stack, and the player gets 10 debuff slots to fill how they see fit? They can stack 10 levels of "Increase fire damage 2%" or they can put 5 stacks of "Weaken attacks 1%" and 5 stacks of "Slow attack speed 1%". The combination of what's possible is nearly infinite. For the short duration fights, it could be possible have instant activate aoe abilities, that only last a few seconds, and have a moderate cooldown. This would be great for "trash pulls "where there's a large number of mobs that are typically dealt with very quickly.

I believe that expanding on the holy trinity could help to bring Fantasy MMOs forward. We could develop types and styles of gameplay that break the molds, yet still remain fun and keep the games fresh and interesting for new players and old players alike.