Can we please NOT force "Trinity Gaming" in CoX? (Dr Khan)

[Arbegla]

2 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

You know, I read some of these threads and I wonder if some of you even understand the state that the game is currently in.

 

The game was already designed and built and ran and shut down. The current team of volunteers are trying to run the game that we used to play, not create their own. This is important because the game launched, 17 years ago, with a trinity. Tanker class, Defender class, Controller class - that was the post-EQ/pre-WoW trinity that existed in 2003 when the developers were applying the finishing touches to this game to get it ready to launch.

 

If you really wanted there to be no trinity in this game then you should have posted this on the beta forums back in March 2004. You're a little bit too late now.

 

While I can get where you are coming from, this game wasn't designed with a trinity in mind. Yes, we have Tankers, and Defenders, and Blasters, but there was never a really good push to force the Trinity. Very few encounters require any specific things, but it is easier if you have buffs/debuffs etc.

 

Reichman is literally the only giant bag of hitpoints that exists inside City of Heroes, and they have even changed the Baracuda SF so it doesn't require specific ATs.

[Apparition]

1 hour ago, Shadeknight said:

The only TF that requires specific ATs is the Baracudda SF.

Because it has mechanics for it.

You can get away with any sort of combination/set up for Kahn, though your mileage may vary based on competency on playing an ancient MMO.

TBH, we need more stuff like the Bara SF.

 

That is no longer the case as of Page Two.  The gun temporary power now goes to the team leader, regardless of AT.

[Templarstone]

For reference- 

Story Arc Updates

 

Barracuda Strike Force

 

Power of Black Scorpion (the power required to kill Reichsman) is now always granted to the team leader, regardless of Archetype

Defenders now receive Power of Ghost Widow

Masterminds now receive Power of Captain Mako

Removed broken hospital in the first mission of the Barracuda SF which caused you to get stuck outside the map

[Doomguide2005]

7 hours ago, nihilii said:

is good because it multiplies damage. That's a given. I only mean to challenge the notion debuffs are critical to the point a Khan team without debuffs is doomed.

Not necessarily just in this thread. I've seen people lament they need more -regen or -res... But -res isn't going to help during those fast Unstoppable cycles, and -regen isn't what makes a dent in his 220k potentially bumped to 300k HP. A combo of both, if you have enough to shut down his regen entirely, might let you succeed in the end.

 

Still, I think in this particular fight, there's better returns to be had in situational awareness.

 

i.e.

- unload at full strength between his Unstoppable cycles, and focus on using misc clicks, buffs, staying alive, keeping his regen in check while he's using Unstoppable.

- aggro holder should stick to melee, or if there's no aggro holder, make sure to stick in melee. Apply constant damage ideally. Being at range and "uninterrupted" seems to be what prompts him to use Dull Pain.

- watch for those Thunder Fist stunning through mez protection, and protect yourself in advance. I feel the single most likely cause of failure in a poorly organized PuG is when the team is barely making progress, then someone gets mezzed and dies, and it all goes downhill as others get distracted, try to rez him, etc..

 

Come to think of it, given that last point in particular, I'd welcome buffs more than debuffs in a weak PuG doing Khan. Making sure everyone is staying alive and well is the best way to ensure they're dealing damage.

 

But, yeah, I guess I'm more sour about this topic than I thought, now that I think about it. It's a pet peeve of mine to watch players lose fights due to their inability to switch tactics, give up, and attribute said failure to some team meta they should have had. In the grand scheme of things, if we're talking about a full team, it's obvious adding one competent debuffer is the best bang for your buck and is also more practical than expecting 7 casual players to magically improve their game.

     On top of this there's a huge difference between useful, desirable, and a required need.  And Nihilii's first post is more to the point of debuff not being required need I believe.  

     And I think one of the last times my main Claws/SR died was vs Khan.  And it was pretty much totally my fault i let him stun me and I got double tapped for over 1800 damage.  It was a turning point for her build as I worked and reworked it in Mids until she could survive her player being an idiot.

[arcane]

It sounds an awful lot like there isn’t a hard need here, yes. OP is looking like more of an anecdote of a run gone awry than a real trinity requirement.

[Solarverse]

I'm not agreeing that this particular fight requires a trinity play-style, but I for one miss the trinity play-style this game once had. This game is just simply not that anymore and it never will be again. I'm pretty sure your wish has already been granted long before you requested it.

[Luminara]

20 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

I for one miss the trinity play-style this game once had. This game is just simply not that anymore and it never will be again.

 

It never was.

[Luminara]

3 hours ago, Templarstone said:

Defenders now receive Power of Ghost Widow

Masterminds now receive Power of Captain Mako

 

And no-one receives the Power of Greyskull.  😞 

[Solarverse]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

 

It never was.

It was for me...accept Controllers added a 4th to that. But yeah, for me, when this game first came out, it was almost always trinity style gaming. Very rare did I team with players who did not play that way, and I pugged like crazy with random players on three different servers.

[Apparition]

35 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

It was for me...accept Controllers added a 4th to that. But yeah, for me, when this game first came out, it was almost always trinity style gaming. Very rare did I team with players who did not play that way, and I pugged like crazy with random players on three different servers.

 

 

Yeah, it really was great playing a Scrapper or Blaster and having to wait a hour for some Tanker and Defenders to take pity on your poor damage dealer self and pick you for a TF.  Good times, good times.

[Solarverse]

4 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

 

Yeah, it really was great playing a Scrapper or Blaster and having to wait a hour for some Tanker and Defenders to take pity on your poor damage dealer self and pick you for a TF.  Good times, good times.

Meh, I am not talking about herding, man. I never said that.

 

[macskull]

10 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

The current team of volunteers are trying to run the game that we used to play, not create their own. This is important because the game launched, 17 years ago, with a trinity. Tanker class, Defender class, Controller class - that was the post-EQ/pre-WoW trinity that existed in 2003 when the developers were applying the finishing touches to this game to get it ready to launch.

That's not really a "trinity," and you're missing two of the five launch ATs from that list anyways. I'm pretty sure if you said "trinity" to any RPG player from the last two decades the vast majority would respond with some variation of "tank/DPS/heal" - except that was never a thing in CoH because 1) this game was intentionally designed so you never needed all three (or sometimes, even two of the three) to be successful and 2) this game was accidentally designed to be laughably easy to the point where pretty much any character can solo most content successfully.

[Solarverse]

1 minute ago, macskull said:

That's not really a "trinity," and you're missing two of the five launch ATs from that list anyways. I'm pretty sure if you said "trinity" to any RPG player from the last two decades the vast majority would respond with some variation of "tank/DPS/heal" - except that was never a thing in CoH because 1) this game was intentionally designed so you never needed all three (or sometimes, even two of the three) to be successful and 2) this game was accidentally designed to be laughably easy to the point where pretty much any character can solo most content successfully.

I think a lot of what is being said by EVERYONE is speculation. For me personally, when this game first came out, people were looking for 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 1 debuffer, 2 blasters, 2 scrappers and 1 controller. Now that is what players typically strived to get, even on regular missions. Of course exceptions were made, but in general this is what I would see in Broadcasting. People would even drop the team if you didn't have a Tank or Healer or Controller...people would even drop teams if there were no DPS. No DPS meant the missions would take forever...because back then, only the damage dealers dealt any real amount of damage...aside from Fire Tanks that is.

I mean, that was my experience. It may not be a "trinity" of three, but it still fit in to that same play-style.

Now, did the Devs intend it to be this way? That depends on when you ask.

In the old days, players going to the boards complaining about not doing enough damage were told to play Blasters or Scrappers.

Player coming to the boards complaining of dying too easy were told to team with Tanks or role as a Tank.

People complaining of not being able to heal themselves were told to play a Healer.

Now if you ask people today, they would tell you the complete opposite.

Did the Devs intend to this game to be played Holy Trinity style? I think so...at least in the beginning. But, like I said, that depends on when you ask that question and to whom you ask the question.

[Solarverse]

11 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

You know, I read some of these threads and I wonder if some of you even understand the state that the game is currently in.

 

The game was already designed and built and ran and shut down. The current team of volunteers are trying to run the game that we used to play, not create their own. This is important because the game launched, 17 years ago, with a trinity. Tanker class, Defender class, Controller class - that was the post-EQ/pre-WoW trinity that existed in 2003 when the developers were applying the finishing touches to this game to get it ready to launch.

 

If you really wanted there to be no trinity in this game then you should have posted this on the beta forums back in March 2004. You're a little bit too late now.

I don't see this game as a Trinity style game at all anymore. That has been blown out of the water when they came out with IO Set bonuses and various buffs to classes over the years.

However...I do agree with you completely. I do believe that this game was designed for the Holy Trinity play style straight out of the gate...and honestly, I preferred it that way. Now, clearly some who have posted do not agree with me when I say this game was designed that way...but this is from my personal experience of playing the game. My memory of what this game was seems to be drastically different than what other posters recall...or at very least our perspective on how the game was played is completely different.

[macskull]

4 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

I think a lot of what is being said by EVERYONE is speculation. For me personally, when this game first came out, people were looking for 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 1 debuffer, 2 blasters, 2 scrappers and 1 controller. Now that is what players typically strived to get, even on regular missions. Of course exceptions were made, but in general this is what I would see in Broadcasting. People would even drop the team if you didn't have a Tank or Healer or Controller...people would even drop teams if there were no DPS.

The situation you are describing still happens in the game today. I've lost track of the number of times I've seen "need heals" or "need a tank" for stuff in LFG. Hell, I vividly remember an exchange with another player when I was looking for an 8th member for a speed MLTF run - the player asked whether they should bring DPS or support and I replied with something like "don't care, just get here," and they could not wrap their head around the idea that I did not care what they brought so they called me stupid and joined a different team which ended up finishing the first mission by the time we'd finished the entire TF.

 

A good player knows that with rare exceptions the person at the keyboard is far more important than what character they're playing and that's been true since launch day.

 

[Solarverse]

4 minutes ago, macskull said:

The situation you are describing still happens in the game today. I've lost track of the number of times I've seen "need heals" or "need a tank" for stuff in LFG. Hell, I vividly remember an exchange with another player when I was looking for an 8th member for a speed MLTF run - the player asked whether they should bring DPS or support and I replied with something like "don't care, just get here," and they could not wrap their head around the idea that I did not care what they brought so they called me stupid and joined a different team which ended up finishing the first mission by the time we'd finished the entire TF.

 

A good player knows that with rare exceptions the person at the keyboard is far more important than what character they're playing and that's been true since launch day.

 

Especially with today's game. There has been no team make-up that I felt couldn't accomplish anything in this game since IOs came out. That is cute though how some players still feel that they have to have a particular team make-up though. I'm not one of them...not since IO's. Now for nostalgia, I love when it happens by chance though, but I don't strive for it.

[Mr. Vee]

Not that it matters at this point but there's a difference between 'the original devs intended holy trinity' and 'the early game was holy trinity', as the latter could just be due to people expecting it from having played other games. I wasn't around back then so I can only speculate but the fact that we still have folks expecting the playstyle from other games leads me to lean toward the latter.

[ForeverLaxx]

3 hours ago, Solarverse said:

For me personally, when this game first came out, people were looking for 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 1 debuffer, 2 blasters, 2 scrappers and 1 controller. Now that is what players typically strived to get, even on regular missions.

I don't normally like to play the "I've been here a long time" card, but I first picked up this game in its release year. I played it practically every day until it was shut down. The moment I heard that the source code was leaked and the game was about to be public again, I got back on the train that very day (unfortunately I was not "invited" to the super-secret cool-kids-only-club original private servers).

 

I say this not out of any misguided sense of seniority, but rather, to tell you that this thing you say the game was built around? It wasn't. It never was. I was soloing content on my Blaster back in 2004, hovering over the chasm in Hollows to avoid hazard spawns on my way to Frostfire and stocking up on purples and break frees to survive. I was invited to teams, and invited many others, who understood the game was deliberately designed as a "take who you can get, it'll probably work" mindset.

 

The people who insisted on the old standard team composition still existed. Hell, they exist to this day and I don't think it's ever going away. That was always a player-imposed limitation and was never part of the original design. Just because you agreed with, and tended to see newer players trying to build "trinity" teams, does not mean that's how CoH was designed to be played. Our IO-laden future is just an extreme version of what players were already doing.

 

You're pining both for a version of the game that never existed, and a version of the game that exists today if you want it to.

Edited June 17, 2021 by ForeverLaxx

[Sunsette]

I think there is some overlap in the discussion between discussion of the "hard" trinity where gameplay requires the three core roles of tank, damage, support, and a "soft" trinity: the existence of a gameplay meta that supports and takes advantage of a diversity of roles and processes. The term was intended in the former sense but the latter is often protested in various games to some extent.

 

The wider proliferation of player competence (both numerically and w/r/t information) has done a lot to 'flatten' the meta feeling from the early days of CoX and I'm not surprised some people miss it. I know I tend to not enjoy group content that's bigger than like, 3 people, because everything starts feeling very samey.

 

Honestly surprised this topic is still sticking around though, because like... it's Reichsman. 

Edited June 17, 2021 by Sunsette

[Solarverse]

20 minutes ago, ForeverLaxx said:

I don't normally like to play the "I've been here a long time" card, but I first picked up this game in its release year. I played it practically every day until it was shut down. The moment I heard that the source code was leaked and the game was about to be public again, I got back on the train that very day (unfortunately I was not "invited" to the super-secret cool-kids-only-club original private servers).

 

I say this not out of any misguided sense of seniority, but rather, to tell you that this thing you say the game was built around? It wasn't. It never was. I was soloing content on my Blaster back in 2004, hovering over the chasm in Hollows to avoid hazard spawns on my way to Frostfire and stocking up on purples and break frees to survive. I was invited to teams, and invited many others, who understood the game was deliberately designed as a "take who you can get, it'll probably work" mindset.

 

The people who insisted on the old standard team composition still existed. Hell, they exist to this day and I don't think it's ever going away. That was always a player-imposed limitation and was never part of the original design. Just because you agreed with, and tended to see newer players trying to build "trinity" teams, does not mean that's how CoH was designed to be played. Our IO-laden future is just an extreme version of what players were already doing.

 

You're pining both for a version of the game that never existed, and a version of the game that exists today if you want it to.

Like I said, it's pure speculation...by both of us. We really don't know to tell you the truth. However, if I were a betting man, I would put my bet that the Developers originally built this game around the Trinity place style. But, that is just my opinion. I could just as easily be wrong, so I don't claim to be right no more than I would claim a prediction of a horse race, I simply would put my money on the trinity idea more than I would the opposite.

Here is my main reason why. When Jack Emmert was first talking this game up and showing people the first sneak peak at this game, it was VERY different. There were no classes. Power only. You could even mix and match powers to fully customize a character and he was advertising it as such. Somewhere down the line they dropped that idea and added, Tanks, Healers, Damage Dealers and Controllers. So basing my opinions off of this, I would place my bets on a Trinity play style intention from the Devs rather than a game not based on it.

But, like I said, you could very well be right and I could be wrong, but it's all speculation since to the best of my knowledge, a Dev has never spoke on this.

[Solarverse]

2 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

I think there is some overlap in the discussion between discussion of the "hard" trinity where gameplay requires the three core roles of tank, damage, support, and the existence of a gameplay meta that supports and takes advantage of a diversity of roles and processes. The wider proliferation of player competence (both numerically and w/r/t information) has done a lot to 'flatten' the meta feeling from the early days of CoX and I'm not surprised some people miss it. I know I tend to not enjoy group content that's bigger than like, 3 people, because everything starts feeling very samey.

Yeah, I think you hit it spot on.

[Razor Cure]

I can't speak for how the game was when it first came out, as I only started on CoV back in..issue 10 I think? But i DO vividly recall my first toon ( a fire melee/invul brute), finally hitting level 50 in Grandville. All that time I had been forming teams, basically taking any mix of ATs (since I didnt really know what the others DID anyway. lol). Then someone in chat was talking about forming an RSF. I had no clue what that was, and asked, then did some research of my own on the wiki (I still dont understand how a new player can join something advertised as a 'super hard long tf' and not look into it).

 

To sum up, back then, RSF was basically Stone Brute +7 Corrs, with MAYBE a pity spot. Naturally, being the 3 week game vet I was, I thought this was some elitist bullshit and the TF really couldnt be 'that' hard. So I formed one with a few friends, and following the recommended info, we ALL got nukes and shivens. Can you picture that today, a TF demanding every member have 3 nukes and 5 shivens, or they arent going? Madness!

 

So we set of, and were kicking ass (as kicking ass as a mixed team of random ATs could) and had little trouble until the Vindicators. That was a very very tough fight, with quite a lot of deaths. But still, we did it, and went into the last mission all pumped. Well...anyone who TRIED an RSF back then without the Stoner/7 Corrs will know..that last mission was utterly, stupidly hard. Even buffing all shivens with nukes, debuffing the avs, we got utterly utterly spanked. That was with us charging in..and basically getting insta-gibbed.

 

Then we reset the mission (because it was totally awesome with Numi and Sis BUFFING the heroes..funny how STF never had that issue) and tried pulling. Again, anyone who ever tried that knows..it was basically impossible. I think we managed to pull ONE and that was it. Every pull after that, trying for about 2 hours, failed. The heroes would just rush over. And we died. A lot.

 

I am sure some people did manage to finish RSF with a mixed team, and maybe we could have, using trays of purples and restocking every kill etc, but thinking about how HARD that was compared to every other bit of content in game (except maybe Hami) was utterly insane. I heard that when RSF first hit Live, the devs couldnt even finish it, and offered a life time sub to the first team who did. No idea if that was true, but the RSF, as it was on Live (pre IOs etc etc) was as close to 'requiring' a Trinity game style as to make it not worth trying otherwise.

 

Thankfully now it is basically as people here are saying..bring what you want. WHich is awesome. But it still pisses me off when I remember those mixed team, almost impossible RSF runs..then look at how piss easy STF was, even before IOs and incarnates.

 

 

 

 

[Luminara]

5 hours ago, Solarverse said:

when this game first came out

People were accustomed to the trinity mindset, since that's how every other MMORPG worked, and expecting CoH to conform to it.  Of course they were forming trinity teams.  People do what they're trained to do, or what they know works.  They stick to a tried and true method.

 

But that's not how the game was designed, it's how some people chose to play it because the MMORPG market revolving around the trinity model and mindset trained them to play that way.

 

2 hours ago, Solarverse said:

When Jack Emmert was first talking this game up and showing people the first sneak peak at this game, it was VERY different. There were no classes. Power only. You could even mix and match powers to fully customize a character and he was advertising it as such. Somewhere down the line they dropped that idea and added, Tanks, Healers, Damage Dealers and Controllers. So basing my opinions off of this, I would place my bets on a Trinity play style intention from the Devs rather than a game not based on it.

 

That was the alpha stage.  It was changed not because Cryptic felt that a trinity model was better, but because play testers were making characters with all four travel powers and no attacks, or every heal available and no attacks, or all defensive powers and no attacks, and they couldn't level.  The alpha was trashed and they started over, with archetypes designed around the basic concepts used in comics to guide players as well as guarantee they'd never find themselves incapable of progressing.  It was never to impose a trinity model on the game, it was to prevent players from shooting themselves in the foot.

 

2 hours ago, Solarverse said:

a Dev has never spoke on this.

 

They talked about it several times on the original forums.  I'm sure you can find the posts if you dig around in the Wayback Machine.

 

5 hours ago, Solarverse said:

There has been no team make-up that I felt couldn't accomplish anything in this game since IOs came out.

 

IO sets didn't break the trinity model, they just made it more obvious to more people that it wasn't applicable here.

 

3 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:

The people who insisted on the old standard team composition still existed. Hell, they exist to this day and I don't think it's ever going away. That was always a player-imposed limitation and was never part of the original design. Just because you agreed with, and tended to see newer players trying to build "trinity" teams, does not mean that's how CoH was designed to be played. Our IO-laden future is just an extreme version of what players were already doing.

 

Words of truth.

[arcane]

10 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

It never was.

It was absolutely closer than it is now. If you had a pug with 8 DPS there would genuinely be some conversation about someone switching over to support. Or if you had a level 54 AV you might actually feel like you kinda needed someone to have -regen. It was never mandatory no, but it was certainly more beneficial to think that way than it is now. 
 

I would be interested to see the evidence of your assertions. Just because they didn’t design a “hard” trinity doesn’t mean they didn’t intend the “soft” kind we saw before IO’s. I’d be interested to see a dev saying at i0 that the game was designed so that 8 blasters would be as good as anything else, roles were never intended to exist, etc. Going to need the receipts on that one.

Edited June 17, 2021 by arcane

[Solarverse]

36 minutes ago, arcane said:

It was absolutely closer than it is now. If you had a pug with 8 DPS there would genuinely be some conversation about someone switching over to support. Or if you had a level 54 AV you might actually feel like you kinda needed someone to have -regen. It was never mandatory no, but it was certainly more beneficial to think that way than it is now. 
 

I would be interested to see the evidence of your assertions. Just because they didn’t design a “hard” trinity doesn’t mean they didn’t intend the “soft” kind we saw before IO’s. I’d be interested to see a dev saying at i0 that the game was designed so that 8 blasters would be as good as anything else, roles were never intended to exist, etc. Going to need the receipts on that one.

I remember running Synapse in year or or two and it was even to a point that a Fire Tank was not allowed to Main Tank it due to the Clockwork King having Psionic Damage. At the time, the only Tank that could really take the pain was a Stone Tank. Clockwork King was no joke in those days. I suspect he has been nerfed pretty bad since those days, but who knows. I just remember Rad Defenders debuffing the hell out of him or else the DPS couldn't beat out his Regen and healers healing like crazy to keep even the Stone Tank alive and being on hand to rez the squishies after he popped Psionic Wail (which is something I have not seen him do in ages) and controllers locking him down...forget it. I don't see any teams in those days defeating him without the holy trinity....but, who knows. Like I said, my recollection seems to be at odds with others, so that's just my personal experience. I most certainly don't want to turn it in to some argument for sure...maybe I was just that bad of a player and didn't realize it, lol.