Matchmaking without the Trinity: how would you do it?

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Originally Posted by Rhaja

B-but MNK tank ;__;.

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Monk tank needs to happen!

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Originally Posted by Dreamsoap

Monk tank needs to happen!

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There is a monk tank in WoW :p. In the single player FF games there never was a real holy trinity system. Steiner was in heavy armour(chose Steiner because he looks like a tank in "traditional MMOs) but he was my strongest damage dealer. They didn't "have" to make FFXIV into the trinity system :/.

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Originally Posted by Chiramu

There is a monk tank in WoW :p. In the single player FF games there never was a real holy trinity system. Steiner was in heavy armour(chose Steiner because he looks like a tank in "traditional MMOs) but he was my strongest damage dealer. They didn't "have" to make FFXIV into the trinity system :/.

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Do you not realize the inherent flaw with comparing a single player RPG to an MMORPG?

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Originally Posted by basketofseals

Do you not realize the inherent flaw with comparing a single player RPG to an MMORPG?

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There are multiple MMORPGs breaking the Trinity mold. If they wanted to go for a FF feeling, they didn't have to go with the rest of them.

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Originally Posted by Chiramu

There is a monk tank in WoW :p. In the single player FF games there never was a real holy trinity system. Steiner was in heavy armour(chose Steiner because he looks like a tank in "traditional MMOs) but he was my strongest damage dealer. They didn't "have" to make FFXIV into the trinity system :/.

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MNK in XI was sometimes treated as that backup tank. They did perfectly fine (if not outright OP) tanking for endgame merit parties. Sometimes you could even use them as an OT, depending how dangerous adds were. Perfect example of that would have been Vrtra.

Ahh the good ol' days, as far as how devs "defined" their classes/jobs. It had a lot of downsides to it, but the good was REALLY good. 30+ LS members fighting together, each party and alliance with specific roles, always meant that everyone* was invited to help out.

* = assuming there were no actual requirements to do it as a specific role/job

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Originally Posted by Chiramu

There are multiple MMORPGs breaking the Trinity mold. If they wanted to go for a FF feeling, they didn't have to go with the rest of them.

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The only MMO that's doing well without the trinity, that I can think of, is GW2, and plenty of people here have mentioned dissatisfaction with that.

More importantly, the trinity is more important than just a trope that people are comfortable with. When you force people into playing a certain way, you can more finely tune an encounter to better suit a group's playstyle. If you cannot make an encounter that is viable for every group comp and have it be challenging unless roles are so homogenized that makeup matters little.

Ironically GW2 has to an extent reintroduced a trinity set up in its new raid.

Fundamentally the trinity is valuable for both balancing and game design. It gives structure that allows for role diversity that creates a sense of variety in a game. In GW2 when they removed the trinity, healing and tank roles became useless which for people who enjoyed that style of gameplay greatly weakened the enjoyment factor of the game. A lot of people don't particularly enjoy dpsing.

The reality with gaming is the optimal will always rise to dominance, particularly in group content. Using a less optimal class by definition makes content harder for the others your playing with and makes you appear as a burden to be carried. Thus without a structure that allows for a diversity of strengths and weaknesses, you will simply have a handful of optimal roles rise to the top.

A support role is an interesting possibility but for it to work in the games meta it needs to be strong enough that you want to bring it. That also makes it something your expected to bring. For this reason, if they wanted to introduce a support role, they would need to release multiple support roles at once or convert existing classes into a support role (ie. BRD, MCH or AST). Otherwise you would have a Job that every group would need, regardless of if anyone in the static actually likes playing the Job.

The content would have to be balanced assuming you have no tank to mitigate any unavoidable single target stuff and no healer to deal with unavoidable aoe. It would have to be tuned very lightly for the sake of balance.

Tank, Damage, Healing, Support.

Content would be turned into a snooze fest. Dcuo is an example of removing the trinity for dps sake

The only solution I see would be to re-think the dungeons and add a 5 member with a support slot like Rift did (they have 5 men team instead of 4).
Considering the amount of work it would be to balance everything I would go with

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Simply put: You don't.

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Originally Posted by Ageofwar

I would like to point out that the trinity system is not used for Palace of the dead and..... some of the party for the higher floors can be quite crap when its like DPS, DPS, DPS, DPS

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PoTD is also VERY EASY with the mobs having next to no hitpoints or "oomf." There's only a few mobs int hat whole dungeon that hits hard or has a lot of hitpoints

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Originally Posted by Annah

PoTD is also VERY EASY with the mobs having next to no hitpoints or "oomf." There's only a few mobs int hat whole dungeon that hits hard or has a lot of hitpoints

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The traps can make this a fairly big concern - when you have a trap that summons a group when you are already fighting a group.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

What excuse do all the other dungeons have? PotD enemies have more going on than enemies in all the normal dungeons.

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PotD dungeon mobs also has about 80% less hitpoints and attack power than regular dungeon trash. You can solo POTD at the matched ilvl (aether)...you cannot solo a dungeon with matched synced ilvl

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Originally Posted by Celef

The only solution I see would be to re-think the dungeons and add a 5 member with a support slot like Rift did (they have 5 men team instead of 4).
Considering the amount of work it would be to balance everything I would go with

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Except that it would take even more work and time to balance everything around 5 people, including older content.. they would have to change everything to fit the new style of 5/10/30 Meaning tacking MORE HP to already over inflated bullet sponge bosses we already have. More damage from bosses means each tank class has to be re-balanced to be able stand their ground and all DPS get a nerf due to adding more roles and the fact that support increases DPS all around.

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Originally Posted by Yellow

Tank, Damage, Healing, Support.

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I can just smell those 1-3 hour 4-man queues now. Thats only for healers.. DPS will be worse as we'll be waiting for all those supports, that are going to be rarer than tanks, to show up.

To tie in with my earlier rant about what I saw in Dragon Nest before it did away with the trinity only to reinstate it in an even stronger form afterwards, the biggest community-related downside to doing away with the trinity system is essentially encouraging special snowflake types, in a game that puts very heavy emphasis on teamwork. Why work together when your class in theory can be built to do everything at once?

Even now, you already see a higher population of the more toxic players of this game gravitate towards the Warrior class especially, and there's a reason behind that.

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Originally Posted by Telsyr

I can just smell those 1-3 hour 4-man queues now. Thats only for healers.. DPS will be worse as we'll be waiting for all those supports, that are going to be rarer than tanks, to show up.

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Not really sure where this assumption that a 'support' role would be played by such a tiny percentage of players that it would cause the entirety of the Duty Finder to become near-inaccessible. XIV has a pretty big playerbase and as long as they developed a support role to be fun and worthwhile I don't think it would be as bad as people assume. Not saying it wouldn't increase the wait times, but nobody can know for sure unless they actually implemented it, otherwise it's just theory. The entire thing could be circumvented by having support and dps sharing the same slot in 4/8 man parties. They've already split Melee / Ranged so it's not impossible for them to have different levels of the same slot / role.

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Originally Posted by Connor

Not really sure where this assumption that a 'support' role would be played by such a tiny percentage of players that it would cause the entirety of the Duty Finder to become near-inaccessible. XIV has a pretty big playerbase and as long as they developed a support role to be fun and worthwhile I don't think it would be as bad as people assume. Not saying it wouldn't increase the wait times, but nobody can know for sure unless they actually implemented it, otherwise it's just theory. The entire thing could be circumvented by having support and dps sharing the same slot in 4/8 man parties. They've already split Melee / Ranged so it's not impossible for them to have different levels of the same slot / role.

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Support roles have a long documented history of being the least represented role in RPGs by huge degrees. Most players are about being the "hero" or the one that does a lot of damage. The trinity formula represents the most prominent roles, where even then, there's a significant difference in activity between them (tanks and healers nearly always being lowest).

Recalling my time in the earlier days of XI, purely support roles like BRD were the most sought after jobs in the game. Even if you were mediocre at it, people wanted you to join them. They were such an important role for groups to have, but they were very rare to find people willing to play it. Obviously even rarer to play it well.

Your mentioning of them taking up DPS slots is indeed likely to be the best approach on the matter. Introducing a full fledged support role to the DF is not a good idea. It's very possible to create a support job that focuses primarily on damage boosting, since "support" can reflect any role.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

Recalling my time in the earlier days of XI, purely support roles like BRD were the most sought after jobs in the game. Even if you were mediocre at it, people wanted you to join them. They were such an important role for groups to have, but they were very rare to find people willing to play it. Obviously even rarer to play it well.

Your mentioning of them taking up DPS slots is indeed likely to be the best approach on the matter. Introducing a full fledged support role to the DF is not a good idea. It's very possible to create a support job that focuses primarily on damage boosting, since "support" can reflect any role.

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I totally get why people would be incredibly wary of the addition of a full-on support role, but as an optimist I like to think that there's enough players expressing interest in it that it wouldn't significantly increase DF wait times. It's one of things where nobody could really know unless they actually done it, but naturally it'd far too much of a risk to implement a 'support' role as a distinct thing by itself.

Personally I'd love to see a job where the whole focus would be to boost the damage / survivability / etc of others instead of dps'ing, if not purely because it's be a great change of pace from the usual dps-frenzy that all current jobs/roles have in the current game.

My main problem with adding a dps/healer/etc that focuses primarily on supporting others is that I honestly don't think the developers could do it. Currently they believe this is exactly what Bard and Machinist are, 'support' jobs whose focus is to support the party. But I don't think there's a single player here who would take a great-support but middling-dps Bard/Machinist over one with high personal DPS. Not to mention the fact that they have such limited 'support' that very rarely gets touched anyway because of the damage penalties on anything that doesn't increase raid dps (the sole reason for this being because if Foe Requiem / Hypercharge had a damage penalty nobody would ever use Bard/Machinist). Both only have a single ability that can increase another's dps, but it's incredibly limited by large MP requirements or cooldowns and requires no forethough or strategic use. The entirety of their 'support' is available at the press of one button and that's all we get.

I fear that even if they added more 'support dps' they would be the exact same, dps with a single button that's somehow supposed to completely distinguishes them from normal dps. I honestly believe the only way they can implement support jobs into the game properly is if they design them as a full-on support, because in my eyes there's nothing 'support' about Bard or Machinist at all.

I know I constantly sound like a raving, deluded lunatic on these forums, but as someone who has wanted to play a support class in this game since I first levelled Bard in 1.X, their implementation of them is a constant source of disappointment. I know many probably just see my posts and think 'play a different game', but I've always loved this one since it was my first ever experience with an MMO, so I still hope that one day they can finally find some way to implement real support jobs.

They could always do this:

Instance Server: Hey Duty Finder! I got an opening, find me some victims, I mean players.
Duty Finder: On It!
Duty Finder: Let's see, I need a tank, ooh, I see one! Snagged!
Duty Finder: I need a healer, I see three of those, picking the one who has waited the longest.
Duty Finder: Manual says I need 2 DP, jumping Jehosaphat! How do I pick just 2? Screw it, taking 2 at random, they'll never know the difference.
Duty Finder: I need a Support, whatever that is. Support? Support? Hell with it, have a DPS instead.
Duty Finder: Take them away Instance Server, I need to look up what a support job is.

It could default to 1-1-2-1, if it cannot find a support after a period of time it changes to 1-1-3 instead. Would make DPS happy since the population is about 1-1-3 anyway.

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Originally Posted by Istaru

They could always do this:

Instance Server: Hey Duty Finder! I got an opening, find me some victims, I mean players.
Duty Finder: On It!
Duty Finder: Let's see, I need a tank, ooh, I see one! Snagged!
Duty Finder: I need a healer, I see three of those, picking the one who has waited the longest.
Duty Finder: Manual says I need 2 DP, jumping Jehosaphat! How do I pick just 2? Screw it, taking 2 at random, they'll never know the difference.
Duty Finder: I need a Support, whatever that is. Support? Support? Hell with it, have a DPS instead.
Duty Finder: Take them away Instance Server, I need to look up what a support job is.

It could default to 1-1-2-1, if it cannot find a support after a period of time it changes to 1-1-3 instead. Would make DPS happy since the population is about 1-1-3 anyway.

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This is always how I imagined a 'support' role to work too. I think this way perfectly allows a 'support' role whilst not creating massive queues

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Originally Posted by Connor

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Believe me when I say I'm with you in wanting an actual support role job. That was the primary reason I leveled BRD here (I was one of those BRDs in XI that I mentioned). I also share the same criticisms about the devs not being able to properly introduce the concept. You've already pointed out the BRD/MCH aspect, but also consider how they treated AST upon release. Gimping it just like they did BRD/MCH, seemingly under the premise that the RNG cards are so powerful that it warrants subpar primary role output. Clearly, they were wrong on the potency of these jobs' support effects leveling things out with all the buffs that followed.

I don't have faith in the devs actually gauging proper mechanics to such a role, given this games history, but that's why I do think they can start with the DPS aspect. A job that is still DPS, but has a focus on party output, rather than individual, which is something ALL roles and jobs are focused on.

For example, maybe it'd have reduced output like BRD/MCH by design, so an acceptable amount of DPS by itself. The party functionality however involves using an ability that sacrifices self output, for increasing a targeted party members output (not an aura, but a direct link). Say it reduces your output by 20%, but it increases a party members by 25%. Or if that's too potent, then 20% reduction on you but 15% increase with one party member. You can distribute that link to multiple members though, increasing overall output while you take greater hits to personal DPS for each additional link. 1 link - 20%, 2 links - 30%, 3 links - 40%, and so on while that bonus to party members remains constant (e.g. 15% increased output on each link).

THEN we can gauge interest properly on the idea of people helping the team, rather than focusing on themselves. I mean, think about how often BRDs/MCHs may not use buffs/debuffs or how often healers in pugs don't actually heal because they rely on the other healer to do it for them.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

I don't have faith in the devs actually gauging proper mechanics to such a role, given this games history, but that's why I do think they can start with the DPS aspect. A job that is still DPS, but has a focus on party output, rather than individual, which is something ALL roles and jobs are focused on.

For example, maybe it'd have reduced output like BRD/MCH by design, so an acceptable amount of DPS by itself. The party functionality however involves using an ability that sacrifices self output, for increasing a targeted party members output (not an aura, but a direct link). Say it reduces your output by 20%, but it increases a party members by 25%. Or if that's too potent, then 20% reduction on you but 15% increase with one party member. You can distribute that link to multiple members though, increasing overall output while you take greater hits to personal DPS for each additional link. 1 link - 20%, 2 links - 30%, 3 links - 40%, and so on while that bonus to party members remains constant (e.g. 15% increased output on each link).

THEN we can gauge interest properly on the idea of people helping the team, rather than focusing on themselves. I mean, think about how often BRDs/MCHs may not use buffs/debuffs or how often healers in pugs don't actually heal because they rely on the other healer to do it for them.

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Yeah, I've mentioned before in another thread but I think jobs with mechanics like this would go a long way in encouraging more team play as well. They could even simplify it by having a dps job with support abilities that are on the GCD with a base MP cost like Brave (increase physical attack), Faith (increase magical attack), Barrier (increase defense), rather than just the standard 'support aura'. They would still have access to direct damage abilities but would be able to sacrifice personal dps to increase everyone elses. The buffs could be short duration so their dps doesn't become too high. I think a job like this would be a great way to implement a support job in a way that fits well into the dps role whilst still having a support mechanic that's interesting and engaging, requiring awareness of the battle situation. It would also facilitate team work since buffs are multiplicative, so communicating with team members about stuff like when you're popping personal buffs, when a dps check is coming up, etc, would become much more important

You don't.

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Originally Posted by Welsper59

(snip)

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To add to this, when Dragon Nest reshuffled all of the classes into a trinity system, they actually mentioned having a fourth 'Support' category as well.

If a Support category exists, it's not obvious which classes are actually in there. We still argue whether or not the devs still consider the Support class category a real thing, or if they've abandoned the category. (While they admitted that class composition in raids should adhere to a trinity system, they still leave it up to the player to figure out which classes go where. And it's very, very obvious who the tanks and healers are, while all of the DPS are just everywhere else.)