Could have SE unknowing set FFXIV to fail....

[Sylve]

Well, Guild Wars II did the same thing. I actually prefer the trinity, so most of the jobs have the same value because they're needed roles.

I detested group play in GW2. I had a level 80 Engineer, never could get into party because i was apparently "Not doing it right" by using the gun with the healing shot and the Healing Turrets. Tried the Warrior after that. "What, no shield? GTFO!" when i tried doing dungeons.

The 'Holy Trinity' works because MMOs CAN'Twork any other way, currently.
For as long as combat is auto target DnD dice rolls with stats, we can't break away from it.

GW2 tried it, but the moment any class had the ability for restore someone else's HP, or to control a mobs target priority, they got forced into that healer or tank role. And if no one was around that could do either? Well, the dungeon turned into a fustercluck real fast.
There is nothing at all wrong with having Roles for players. Roles help to define and give personality to a given Job.

I'd love to see an MMO that played more like Monster Hunter in its controls and combat.
But you cannot simply retrofit an existing MMO to drop the trinity system. Ironically, TERA *could* have dropped the trinity system. I'm not really sure why they went with the Tank/Healer/DPS Roles, given how the BAMs functioned.

I don't think we'll ever see an MMO without the trinity system in some form.

[Haprimac]

Trinity' works because MMOs CAN'Twork any other way, currently.
For as long as combat is auto target DnD dice rolls with stats, we can't break away from it.
...
I don't think we'll ever see an MMO without the trinity system in some form.

Going slightly off topic here, but since this is only my second mmo and my first mmo was Lord of the Rings Online, I'd like to point out that I hadn't even heard of this trinity stuff before this game. LotRO had solid classes and pretty much all of them had primary and secondary roles.

I would write about the classes here, but I doubt anybody would be interested and I have difficulty to keep it short and sweet. x') But the point is that the game pretty much plays even with 'full support classes' and you could do dungeons without a pure tank/healer as long as you used careful coordination, crowd control and minor support heals. It was one of the things that really made the game fun. You weren't restricted to play certain roles or classes to complete dungeons or raids, you just needed to have a good plan. And you could really make the classes your own! In this game you're "doin' it wrong" if you don't play in a certain way and use certain rotations, but in LotRO you could constantly improvise and try out different things.

The sad thing is that I've pretty much lowered my expectations when it comes to dungeons in this game. It's always the same old. It doesn't help that you play the classes the same way in every encounter.

[Lord_Zlatan]

LOTRO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.[/I]

This guy gets it.

What you say is true, but as always only to a certain degree. A Captain (which was a full blown support class like FFXI BRD) could solo heal lower tier content (3-6man) with the right setup of other Classes. Guardian (optimal for a tank) could be a full on DPS if it equipped a Greatsword and other gear fitting for the role. Conversely, the Dual Wielding Champion could just equip a shield and now its a tank. I even tanked on my Hunter when the level cap was 65.

All of these cute ideas got thrown out the window when it came to raiding. You would never bring a champion to tank Sammath Gul or have a Captain solo heal in OD. Possible, yes, but only by completely outgearing the content from top to bottom.

That game was awesome ; ;

[Sylve]

This guy gets it.

But ... What you describe (and from a brief visit to youtube) LOTRO had the Tank/Heal/DPS Trinity that every other MMO has. On that Raid boss, there was someone holding the attentions of said boss while someone else healed him. That .. Thats the Holy Trinity.
You may be thinking of something else, like classes having multiple Roles (Like WoW, example the Druid. Depending on spec and gear it could Tank/Heal/Magic DPS/Melee DPS)

We don't have that. But i think it works better than the multi role system, as with a multi role system, half to a third of a class' skills cannot be utilized for the chosen Role.

[Massterchef]

Stuff

stuff[/I]

The only difference between lotro and FF meta was that they had a support class with healing capabilities in captain. It had the exact same trinity that exists in XIV Tank/Healer/DPS. Endgame raids at the time like ToO/erebor required pure tanks/healers before they completely broke the system with HD and stopped producing any new raids...not to mention LoTRO is in heavy decline. But going back to XIV, dungeons like AK have been completed with 4 DPS at 2.0, and I'm sure if people were willing to put in the time current dungeons could also be completed without pure tank/healer. However similar to LoTRO without pure role classes, time spent completing a dungeon will take longer.

[Lord_Zlatan]

stuff

Read my post about LOTRO and I said the exact same thing as you, and its the same in all games... in middle/intermediate content all of these outside the box things work... try it in a true endgame situation and they will rarely work.

As an aside, Captain was different in that the 3 specs truly did different things... it had a healer shell but buffed different things in different specs.

On topic... Ive done WP as a WAR w/ 3 BLMs. Ive tanked Low Level dungeons on WHM and BLM (purposely). I've DPSd as a PLD. I've DPSd as a WHM. Ive tanked as a DRG. All on purpose, all with a game plan in mind. I would never dream of doing any of those things at all endgame.

FFXI permitted things like that to happen end game. There was a boss(es?) that were much easier with a BRD tank... the game allowed it to be so. Id like a fraction of that present in FFXIV at the end game level.

[Niwashi]

The only difference between lotro and FF meta was that they had a support class with healing capabilities in captain. It had the exact same trinity that exists in XIV Tank/Healer/DPS.

No. LotRO uses a four role system with Tank/Healer/DPS/Support, and the game is structured so that the Support role is every bit as vital as the other three. (In fact, you ideally want two Support classes in a group, one focusing on buffs and another on debuffs/crowd control, so it could be thought of as five roles, though two of them fall under the category the game just calls "Support".)

Each class there also has a more versatile set of abilities, so it will be really good at one of those four roles and passable for simple or intermediate content in a second role. The ability to take on a secondary role is replaced here in this game with the ability to simply switch to a different class or job when you want to play a different role (something you can't do in LotRO except by switching characters completely, as each character can have only one class).

There isn't really a replacement here in FFXIV, however, for the missing Support role that LotRO uses. Instead, SE just tacked a few random support abilities onto classes that need to be primarily filling one of the other three roles. I see that as the biggest weakness in FFXIV's battle system, as it eliminates the most dynamic of the parts we could play.