Thoughts on "The Holy Trinity" and endgame instances
I read Belghast's blog post earlier today about EQNext and how they're planning to abolish the holy trinity. I didn't watch the stream myself, but the theme of the post was that Tank's like tanking, and Healer's like healing, and a lot of game developers feel the need to remove these roles, not realizing there are players who actually enjoy them.
I fall well into the "I enjoy tanking" camp, and am more recently a member of the "I enjoy healing" camp, as well. There's this feeling of satisfaction that tanking gives me, knowing I'm the one who is face to face and toe to toe with the big bad boss. Healing is fun as well, since I feel busy and above all else, useful. I hate to suggest that DPS aren't as useful as Tanks or Healers, but they're much more easy to come by, and with the exception of DPS checks and enrage timers, its easier to imagine a party finishing a boss fight long after one of the DPS dies off. Granted, without DPS, a tank and a healer accomplish nothing--especially in the case of those all-too-common DPS checks.
While discussing this, a couple of points that I found interesting were brought up. In short, it was suggested the system is being replaced because there aren't enough players to tank or heal. Many players prefer to DPS and often will turn to tanking or healing simply to fill the needed role, not because they enjoy it. The low number of Tanks and Healers can be traced back to two problems: you're essentially locked into a role based on your class choice, and healing and tanking need to allow for different mechanics to be more fun or rewarding for those who would prefer DPS.
These issues, interestingly enough, only feed an idea I've had floating around my head, regarding a future game idea. To allow more players to fill these roles, either classes and roles must be unmarried--and I feel Rift is doing a good job of that, especially with the upcoming 3.0 souls that I can't wait to get my hands on--or the process of starting a new character and getting it dungeon ready must be drastically shortened. Both of these immediately seem like steps nobody would be willing to take: mages don't tank, and leveling to the level cap should take longer than a day or two. While I challenge both of these views, I'm going to focus on the latter.
What I would like to see, however, is an endgame focused game that got rid of the leveling charade. I love lore and story and good plot twists as much as the next person, but after experiencing it the first time, it quickly becomes a grind to get past all the content to the end. The way I imagine a leveling-free game is as a mix of modern FPSs and the tiered gear system common in many MMORPGs: you sit in a lobby, you pick your "load out" (this time being pre-saved skills/spells/gear) which defines your role, and you queue for a random or specific instance. You can queue as a group or solo. In-need roles could be incentivized with extra currency or drop chances depending on how in-need the role is.
While on the subject of changes to Instances/Dungeons/Raids, I would really like to see the introduction of a tutorial run. Basically, you can run through any instance in a tutorial mode, (where you don't get the drops you would get in regular mode) the difference from normal mode being that the party is made up entirely of AI that walk you through the battles, giving hints about the various boss tactics. This would enable players to slowly learn a dungeon on their own, seeing the boss fights and formulating their own idea of how to handle them, before going into a public game. Nothing is more frustrating than going into a dungeon for the first time and expected to know how to do every fight. Similarly, an overly aggressive party could explain every single aspect of a fight, ruining any "learn for yourself" moments that would come from playing through the first time.