[Suggestion] Do away with holy trinity in the long run

[Fendred]

The problem causing more people to gravitate to DPS is that the encounter design is based on defeating adversaries for experience points, reputation, and loot. No matter how much you try to cover up the underlying difference in damage, people gravitate towards DPS roles because they promise to accomplish the primary goal of the game faster. Healers are more popular in FFXIV than other MMOs primarily because their damage output during the leveling experience is roughly on par with the damage dealing classes, making the conjurer/White Mage and arcanist/Scholar more appealing because they can bash things faces in just as well as any of the DPS. So for most of the game, the healer role plays more like the beloved "combat medic" people find in many group-centric First Person Shooters, where the combat medic can kill things just as well as the rest of them, but when a buddy looks like he is going down, the combat medic's specialty is keeping him up.

Tanks on the other hand have markedly lower damage when in group because the abilities that allow them to survive getting wailed on also reduces their damage output, making them hit like a wet sponge. So we have this guy with a giant axe using flashy special moves, but the payout is still so obviously less than the DPS he is playing with.

Standard RPGs can get away with these kinds of conventions because the player is controlling a team of characters instead of a single character, and the fact that the game doesn't last nearly as long. You simply can't hide the underlying mechanics in a game where people are going to be playing for years, so it is important to have an encounter design that rewards all roles equally.

And the scary part about this is that I've been making the same complaint about the holy trinity for about ten years... which is only slightly shorter than how long I've been playing MMORPGs. Can we get rid of DPS as a specific role already?

[Starkbeaumont]

so you want damage dealers to be also capable of tanking and/or healing?

[Fendred]

so you want damage dealers to be also capable of tanking and/or healing?

I'm just saying that the game experience is based around the player controlling a single character who must blow tons of stuff up to reach the end goal, so having one party member being capable of clearly outdoing the others in damage is what creates the current problems we see with tank and healer disparity.

My suggestion would be to treat all classes as DPS, but with each having a particular specialty. A tank would be a damage dealer who specializes in melee combat and wears heavy armor (or little armor, but with a high dodge/parry rate). Encounters would be designed around forcing the different players to use their specialty abilities in a coordinated manner in order to defeat the encounter. A black mage, for instance, might be conceptually similar to a sniper, where he can "spell nova" down a dangerous target from far range very quickly, like the laser probes in Minstrel's Ballad: Ultima's Bane. Other DPS might specialize in debuffing the boss in order to overcome some defense that the boss erects, etc.

[Deusteele]

You're looking for Guild Wars 2.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/

[Kitru]

The problem causing more people to gravitate to DPS is that the encounter design is based on defeating adversaries for experience points, reputation, and loot. No matter how much you try to cover up the underlying difference in damage, people gravitate towards DPS roles because they promise to accomplish the primary goal of the game faster.

Apparently you believe that the primary goal of the game is governed entirely by solo play and/or leveling. As an MMO, ARR isn't a single player game and, like pretty much every single other MMO, isn't designed primary around leveling but instead around the end game (which is why you see so very very much end game content and comparatively little end game). Even when leveling, unless you're it exclusively through questing, the primary goal is to succeed at a given piece of content as a group, whether you're doing FATEs or leveling dungeons. Considering that you say you've been playing MMOs for about 10 years, I seriously have to wonder how you've missed that, unless you play all MMOs without interacting with anyone except through chat.

Healers are more popular in FFXIV than other MMOs primarily because their damage output during the leveling experience is roughly on par with the damage dealing classes, making the conjurer/White Mage and arcanist/Scholar more appealing because they can bash things faces in just as well as any of the DPS. So for most of the game, the healer role plays more like the beloved "combat medic" people find in many group-centric First Person Shooters, where the combat medic can kill things just as well as the rest of them, but when a buddy looks like he is going down, the combat medic's specialty is keeping him up.

Once again, you demonstrate a distinct lack of recognition about what the game actually is.

First off, if you actually knew the numbers, you'd see that healers, even in Cleric Stance, heal significantly less damage than a DPS. In fact, their DPS is roughly on par with a tank outside of their tank stance, which renders your argument basically null: a tank and a healer have pretty much identical DPS so the "healers have better DPS making them more playable than tanks" is completely and utterly void.

Secondly, you once again display the laughably flawed idea that leveling is "most of the game", which is even more ludicrous when you realize that healers can only really do the "combat medic" thing while they are solo or in a non-dangerous situation (e.g. FATEs where no one in their group is actually tanking or actually taking damage). In a dungeon, a healer will actually have to spend a majority of their time healing unless both they and the tank completely outgear that piece of content (at which point the entire argument is irrelevant because you're not doing anything remotely challenging).

Tanks on the other hand have markedly lower damage when in group because the abilities that allow them to survive getting wailed on also reduces their damage output, making them hit like a wet sponge. So we have this guy with a giant axe using flashy special moves, but the payout is still so obviously less than the DPS he is playing with.

Tanks do not have low damage at all times. You seem to be operating under the notion that tanks are *forced* to run in their tank stances constantly as soon as they get them. Tank stances can be turned off and, in fact, a good tank *will* turn it off in situations where they don't need to tank anything, like when they're soloing or offtanking. At that point, they're dealing as much damage as a healer.

And the scary part about this is that I've been making the same complaint about the holy trinity for about ten years... which is only slightly shorter than how long I've been playing MMORPGs. Can we get rid of DPS as a specific role already?

And what would it be replaced by? You're basically suggesting that there is simply tank and healer or that all DPS can swap, on the fly, to be either a tank or a healer, which still keeps the same 3 roles since you don't need 4 tanks and 4 healers in a group.

The trinity exists (and actually works quite well) because, when you're running the group content that a trinity game is built around, there are specific functions that certain players need to specialize in. Tanking and healing are the absolutely required specialized functions since they also deal damage; they're required because someone needs to be able to reduce healing requirements and make it easier on the healers and someone needs to heal the inevitable damage. DPS isn't *required* but it's present because tanks and healers are roles limited in their usefulness for a given piece of content: you only need as many tanks as there are subgroups of enemies that need to be tanked (subgroups could be a single big target or a group of smaller targets) and you only need as many healers as are required to keep everyone alive; DPS are there to fill in the remaining slots that, otherwise, redundant healers and tanks would occupy.

I honestly have to wonder if you actually *do* any endgame content and what MMOs you've actually played. I have a sinking feeling that you've never actually done any 8 man content, possibly barring the required story stuff, which is so laughably easy now that everyone is hugely overgeared that you could run it with a 4 man group, and that you've never actually done any endgame in any game previously or, possibly, have never actually played an MMO that's actually built around endgame as opposed to leveling.

[Fendred]

Regardless of me being right on the exact numbers for the healer DPS, the fact remains many people I played with were giving praise to the ability of white mages and scholars to do damage during dungeon runs. This sentiment continued all the way up till end game.

I'm also well aware of "what kind of game" FFXIV is. I'm genuinely confused by why you would suggest that I didn't, considering I just stated I played similar MMORPGs for close to ten years, and if you look at my profile I've clearly been at end game for a significant amount of time.

Thirdly, I did not say they run with their tank stances constantly on. I said "Tanks on the other hand have markedly lower damage when in group because... " I was referring to when they are playing as a group. I assumed that the reader would recognize I'm talking about dungeons and other encounters where groups are necessary, and not merely grouping up for daily quests to get them done faster.

Lastly, I can see that you are very passionate about your current view points on the game, but you have clearly misread and misunderstood the context of my post. Nothing in my post was a rant or attack on the system. I was merely stating my perspective on the current state of affairs on the holy trinity in general and the fact that I don't believe there is any satisfying solution to the DPS problem without switching to a different system. The faster you down an encounter, the sooner you get the reward, so choosing roles that maximize damage output rewards the players the most. That is by no means the only reason people will play a certain class, but rather it is a reasonable explanation for why the ratio of DPS to tanks to healers is so much more heavy towards the DPS side of things.

[Fendred]

You're looking for Guild Wars 2.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/

I think they tried something interesting in GW2, but roles are not a bad thing. A roleless system is harder for players to master and understand, because its difficult at times to know what a particular job is really capable of doing. I'm suggesting that they try a different role system as opposed to a role-less system like GW2. Plus, their current design turned most encounters into zergs, so that really didn't work out well.

Edit: Also, the story kinda sucks in GW2...

[Boots-365]

thats not right i play all the classes and they each have their forte stat them right and they all will do damage just not as much as the dps.

[Kitru]

Regardless of me being right on the exact numbers for the healer DPS, the fact remains many people I played with were giving praise to the ability of white mages and scholars to do damage during dungeon runs. This sentiment continued all the way up till end game.

Which is less about the ability of healers to deal damage and more about the design of encounters such that healers have breaks large enough to afford them the time to attack without causing wipes while simultaneously having the extraneous mp to attack as well. In end game content (that people aren't overgeared for), healers can't attack because they have to conserve resources and don't have the time to break off and make attacks.

I'm also well aware of "what kind of game" FFXIV is. I'm genuinely confused by why you would suggest that I didn't, considering I just stated I played similar MMORPGs for close to ten years, and if you look at my profile I've clearly been at end game for a significant amount of time given my gear.

Because you spoke as if leveling were a majority of what the game actually is. The game is determined by the leveling process. The leveling process is there to teach you to play, provide you with a story, demonstrate growth in your character as you progress, and generate an investment in that character so that you stick with it. You specifically stated that leveling is "most of the game" which is why I assumed that you meant what you said.

Thirdly, I did not say they run with their tank stances constantly on. I said "Tanks on the other hand have markedly lower damage when in group because... " I was referring to when they are playing as a group. I assumed that the reader would recognize I'm talking about dungeons and other encounters where groups are necessary, and not merely grouping up for daily quests to get them done faster.

At which point the reader would have to wonder if you have any idea what balance is. If tanks could deal as much damage as DPS, what would be the point of bringing DPS, since tanks could deal just as much while requiring a helluva lot less healing and providing more in the way of utility (e.g. if the "main" tank dies, they could pick it up, no problems).

You're complaining about the trinity, acting as if DPS were somehow redundant while completely ignoring the fact that the trinity is designed around the specialist roles built around cooperation of individuals. The trinity wasn't actually something that developers came up with and had it become a standard. The trinity actually developed organically out of early games when players realized that the best way to work together was to specialize at certain tasks: some specialized in being targeted and minimizing incoming damage, some specialized in dealing damage without caring about their defenses because they didn't have to worry about being attacks, and some specialized in healing because they didn't have to worry about being attacked or having to attack.

The faster you down an encounter, the sooner you get the reward, so choosing roles that maximize damage output rewards the players the most. That is by no means the only reason people will play a certain class, but rather it is a reasonable explanation for why the ratio of DPS to tanks to healers is so much more heavy towards the DPS side of things.

Except that you're ignoring the fact that tanks speed up encounter completion by preventing the DPS from dying. You act as if DPS were the entirety of gameplay when, honestly, it's only a single facet. You can't DPS if you're dead and that's what tanks are there for: to prevent the boss from wiping the floor with the DPS.

By your logic, the only role that should ever get played is DPS because it can kill stuff faster which is so wrong it's giving me a headache and honestly makes me wonder how you can claim to know *anything* about MMOs.

The main reasons that people play DPS aren't that they kill faster or that they get rewards faster (which they don't; the best rewards are gained via group content and, all things being equal, DPS progress at the exact same rate as tanks). The main reasons that people play DPS are that it's a low responsibility job and that it's a straightforward job with immediately visible returns (you see big numbers fly up).

Tanking is the least popular because it has an indirect effect upon success (you contribute to success by keeping the enemies from attacking anyone else), has abstract demonstration of effectiveness (your comparative effectiveness as a tank is governed by the reduction in damage taken, which varies massively based upon the situation itself), and has a high degree of responsibility that is made more difficult when you have potent allies (stronger heals and DPS means that you have a harder time keeping aggro, which is the most obvious way for a tank to fail).

Healing is in the middle because it's still got an elevated level of responsibility, but it has easily visible demonstration of effectiveness (size of heals) and contribution to success (everyone stayed alive).

The appeal of DPS is only tangentially related to the increase in reward acquisition that you seem to think drives it. Reward acquisition for everything *except* for the leveling process is exactly the same between all 3 roles because it's group driven content. No role can effectively progress without the others so arguing that DPS is all about progressing faster is simply obtuse. The real reason that DPS is popular is completely unrelated.

[Sinaloa]

tldr;

sounds good on the paper. Any game that has tried that failed hard due to this. (alltough some are moderatly sucessfull in pvp)
The Trinity is like Democracy. It´s a flawed system but it is the best we have.