Break the Trinity System Please

[Shadex]

The trinity system continues to dominate design because the MMO player base continues to be dominated by those who want the fastest, shortest, easiest path to anything. Take vanilla WoW for example and the frequent need for polymorph and rogue stuns for CC. After a while players started to complain it slowed them down and just wanted to faceroll through instances faster and faster to get their p#@+ 73w+z. As time progressed more and more CC opportunities were removed and players attempting to use it were shunned.

Fast forward to now where players still complain about how long things take and how hard they are so developers will give them what they want and continue to churn out cookie cutter tank, heal, DPS content designed, crafted, packaged, and sold to put Happy Meal smiles on a chicken McNugget generation of gamers. There are a lot of CC/support interested players out there, myself included. I don't find the role dull at all. But, like the cash shop, so long as there is a majority of players that don't want to mess with the deeper complexities of encounters and just like 'make boss HP 0 before mine' design, we are stuck with the trinity for a while.

[Mugiawara]

No.

Go play GW2.

GW2 is a great game, NOT having a trinity broke it for me, surprisingly.
I left the game because of it. Did my first dungeon and it felt so bad...I was sorta
kinda the Guardian tank thing but I didn't feel like one.
But I DO want more support/heal roles, so I'd break for it...if it works
well enough, it was just so bad in GW2. >.<

[Relaeh]

Meow mix is for kitty cats, not Galka's

[Veji]

No.

Go play GW2.

Seconded. Its a mess. It really is. I mean, it "works" but its awkward and you die alot. I <3 Trinity.

[Dyvid]

Adding a fourth pillar creates new problems to an old system.
Tank ---- Healer ---- DPS ---- Support.

Now imagine queue times by adding that fourth and the actually amount of people that would play it. Then you have to re-balance all the fights and encounter to make need of a supoort role. Not worth the effort for minimal gain.

[Niwashi]

Then you have to re-balance all the fights and encounter to make need of a supoort role.

Yeah, I regret that the game wasn't designed for all four roles from the outset, but agree that trying to change it mid-stream after the game has been out this long presents a lot of difficulties, so probably won't happen.

Limiting themselves to only three presents some other difficulties, though. With their initial set of classes/jobs, SE has done a really good job of making each one both unique and relevant, but it's going to get increasingly hard to maintain that fact as they start adding more. A fourth combat role for support classes would increase the number of ways they could branch out with new jobs.

[Feyniphia]

I'd rather they keep the Holy Trinity in the game. =x

[Gextiv]

Heard of the abomination known as GW2? Terrible. I think nothing can top the trinity.

Thus I must express my complete opposition to OP's idea, in hopes that it will not come to fruition.

[Sylve]

Rift tried to break the Trinity model, There were a number of Support specs that could be used and a group wouldn't form without one. Which led to people flagging themselves as support even when they were not in order to get a faster queue.

But the reason it took so long to fill that slot is because in the minds of the majority of MMO players, if its not doing LEET DEEPS its not worth playing.

[myahele]

I don't think a support role is too necessary. Just give more support abilities to healers.