Break the Trinity System Please

[Delily]

^no, contextually was speaking on the examples of ones people were saying broke the game or ruined it... not saying 100% of past examples were bad design.

Games are meant for enjoyment, if implementing Supports meant more people had more fun playing the game, it's worth a look.

Necessary doesn't really factor in.

PVP isn't 'necessary', more than 8-man's isn't 'necessary', Card Game isn't 'necessary'.

Surely enough people would love to play a Support-archetype in this game to merit its consideration.

I don't think I've read a comment as wrong as "Necessary doesn't factor in". Simply because a portion of the player base thinks an idea should be fun isn't enough reason to warrant the addition of an idea, especially when that idea adds unneeded complexity to a core design element of the game. A good game is one that lays out a core design, and then sticks that as close as possible.

I'm not going to go into why adding in a support role adds complexity, there's a myriad of reasons that have been presented on this post. Your examples, do not support your claim.

FFXIV is a PvE raiding game. All other activities asides, players will spend the majority of their time in groups of varying size defeating trash mobs and running encounters. Therefore, 8 mans groups are a necessary aspect of that, since offering people different groups sizes offers people differing degrees of challenge. PvP and the card game (Triple Triad?) may not be necessary to that specific goal, but they do add something else people can do when they don't want to do dungeon dives. They are necessary in that they do not impact the core raiding game, and they do offer people some diversity because not everyone wants to run dungeons (or craft) all the time.

When don't stick to your design and don't care that much about balance, you get games like Everquest and FFXI, where's there's lot of jobs whose utility is situational. I think the designers are trying to avoid that.

[ApolloGenX]

When don't stick to your design and don't care that much about balance, you get games like Everquest and FFXI, where's there's lot of jobs whose utility is situational. I think the designers are trying to avoid that.

Can I just say as a retired bleeding edge world first raiding enchanter from EQ, that the situational usefulness was what made it so effing amazing! Some raids, I just buffed and tried to throw in my damage (which was a bit subpar, but my buffs made up for it)... and some raids, crowd control was a critical aspect of the encounter and I and my ENC comrads shined like the sun.

The difference between a good and not so good ENC was HUGE and obvious. You were CCing mobs that would destroy you in one hit and then wipe your raid. That game had something that this game didn't- variety in encounter mechanics that were based on class based skills -and- encounter mechanics that utilized support class skills. That game let everyone shine at some point... it wasn't a keyboard mashing jumprope mess.

You had pulling teams, you had tanks, you had healer teams, you had CC teams. You even had some dps teams (casters/melee). Everyone here is the same- just mashing their buttons while the entire group "jumps"!! at the same time.