Let's Talk About the Holy Trinity

[Solarverse]

1 minute ago, drbuzzard said:

 

Yes, at low level the game was hard. What a shock. You have minimal powers and no enhancements. Your build is barely started. 

 

As I said before, try the 30s. Back in the time you claim that things were hard, before GDN and ED, it wasn't hard if you had two clues to rub together. It's only easier now than then because IOs are so easy to get. Before the snap, it was harder even with IOs. 

 

Let me think back to the old days when it was 'hard'

 

Perma unstoppable. 

perma elude

burn +provoke = win 

Toggle IH

unlimited AOE target cap

unlimited aggro cap

unlimited debuff target cap

six slotted defenses (heck weave was 10% before GDN, CJ was 5%)

Six slotting hasten got you perma, not a lot of IO planning and expense

 

You could not actually set difficulty any higher than base. If you wanted things to be hard, you had to arrange teams carefully to make sure there was a level gap. Todays SK system is probably the only thing which is easier, and that can be compensated for with the difficulty settings. 

 

You cite Positron? Yeah, wonderful example picking the lowest level TF. Try a Manticore back in the day. It was a cakewalk. 

 

As for the trinity nonsense beyond low level take a stone or invulnerability tank, herd the whole damn map into one spot and then 7 blasters reduce everything to paste. Buff? Debuff? Control? Why? 

 

Fast forward to past GDN/ED then you go the Repeat Offender route and you blitz through the game without a care in the world. 

 

You might want to take a look at your own memory gaps before you cast aspersions.  

 

We can sit and cherry pick all day long, but we both know, regardless of your cherry picking examples, that this game is 10 times easier to play today than it was pre-IO's.

[Without_Pause]

59 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

 

Oh come on, don't pretend that this term has not been used in this way for years on these very forums. I used the term as it applies to City of Heroes. We aren't play WoW here, my man. Don't do that. I used the term exactly as I have seen it used on these forums countless times. Now all of a sudden when I use it, suddenly people want to pretend that it somehow means the same as it means in other games? I'm not buying it.

I'm not even sure I have seen people talk about that term here/Live in terms of actually being used in CoH even 5% of the time. Maybe 1%? That term was VASTLY talked about in terms of other MMOs and how CoH wasn't like them. 

[Seed22]

I always wonder, why don't people who want holy trinity do one of two things:

1.) Go play WoW. Seriously it's right there and you don't have to annoy others with holy trinity good yadda yadda.

2.) Team with low levels. Low level play is pretty reminiscent of holy trinity play you so often find in games like the above.

 

CoH should never include more holy trinity. It would only serve to inflate egos, create annoying cookie cutter garbage teams, and waste dev resources. And again, WoW is RIGHT THERE, for $15/mo you can get all the holy trinity you want! Or hell, go play CO. They have holy trinity crap in their endgame AND you get a good costume creator.

[Solarverse]

1 minute ago, Without_Pause said:

I'm not even sure I have seen people talk about that term here/Live in terms of actually being used in CoH even 5% of the time. Maybe 1%? That term was VASTLY talked about in terms of other MMOs and how CoH wasn't like them. 

 

I have personally seen, most particularly on the suggestion forums, somebody make a suggestion that leans toward making the game more difficult, be met with responses similar to, "No, we like the game as is, we don't like the holy trinity game style this game once was and that idea would only bring that back."

 

So it has been used in this way, most likely primarily on the Suggestion forums. In hind sight, had I known my use of the term was going to create such a focus on the term rather than the meaning of my post as a whole, I would not have used the term.

[drbuzzard]

13 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

 

We can sit and cherry pick all day long, but we both know, regardless of your cherry picking examples, that this game is 10 times easier to play today than it was pre-IO's.

 

You specifically cherry pick the low levels when even now it can be hard if you're not rich. 

 

When I can again herd a map of wolves into a dumpster and they all get nuked at once, I might believe you that it's easier now. 

 

What has changed with IOs is that fewer classes are gimpy traps than used to be. There are still uneven points, but the highs and the lows are closer together. That makes it seem easier since you have a much harder time finding that extreme loser. 

 

Oh, I even forgot the top silliness of the old days- original Hammidon enhancements buffing two abilities to+50%/+33%. You pump someone to +300% damage and +300% accuracy by six slotting. A fire tank could be capped to all resistance but psi at 90%. 

 

Yeah, it was so hard back then. 

[Solarverse]

2 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

I always wonder, why don't people who want holy trinity do one of two things:

1.) Go play WoW. Seriously it's right there and you don't have to annoy others with holy trinity good yadda yadda.

2.) Team with low levels. Low level play is pretty reminiscent of holy trinity play you so often find in games like the above.

 

CoH should never include more holy trinity. It would only serve to inflate egos, create annoying cookie cutter garbage teams, and waste dev resources. And again, WoW is RIGHT THERE, for $15/mo you can get all the holy trinity you want! Or hell, go play CO. They have holy trinity crap in their endgame AND you get a good costume creator.

 

I could ask. Why don't people who wanted the game to be easy go play Hello Kitty? Nope, they instead flooded the forums with their whiney posts and got this one changed instead. See the flip side to that?

[Seed22]

3 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

 

I could ask. Why don't people who wanted the game to be easy go play Hello Kitty? Nope, they instead flooded the forums with their whiney posts and got this one changed instead. See the flip side to that?

No because it never happened lmao. But here you are whining for holy trinity. You and people who hold the opinions like you, are the only ones constantly bitching and moaning for some solvable reason or another. I have and will NEVER see a post like you describe, but I WILL see your type of post.

Edited September 25, 2023 by Seed22

[Solarverse]

3 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

 

You specifically cherry pick the low levels when even now it can be hard if you're not rich. 

 

When I can again herd a map of wolves into a dumpster and they all get nuked at once, I might believe you that it's easier now. 

 

Fire Tanks had to build a certain way to do that. Only certain mob types would work.

 

I could say the same about Fire Farmers today. I could also say the same thing about Tanks and Brutes who can solo the ITF on +4 x8 with all debuffs on that Debuff the Tank and all Buffs on for the mobs, plus no inspirations and no Temp powers. I mean, there is no way in hell a Tank back in the old days could pull that off...no way in hell. We ahve Tanks and Brutes that can do it today though. Overall, I think we can both agree that the game has been made a lot easier today than it was back then. We can both sight examples to the contrary, but I think we can both agree that overall, the game is much easier today.

 

3 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

What has changed with IOs is that fewer classes are gimpy traps than used to be. There are still uneven points, but the highs and the lows are closer together. That makes it seem easier since you have a much harder time finding that extreme loser. 

 

Yes, they used to be squishy, and that is why squishies needed Tanks and characters who could heal. This is why I used the term "Holy Trinity" because players needed each other back then, much more than they need each other now. Now, you ahve Blasters running around with Cap Defense who are actually taking the Alpha of +4 mobs...to me that is just insane. All I am saying is that I miss the times when players actually needed each other, it promoted a much less chaotic play style in my opinion...since it would seem not all agree.

 

3 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

Oh, I even forgot the top silliness of the old days- original Hammidon enhancements buffing two abilities to+50%/+33%. You pump someone to +300% damage and +300% accuracy by six slotting. A fire tank could be capped to all resistance but psi at 90%. 

 

Yeah, it was so hard back then. 

 

Tanks were a silly thing back then. However, players still needed them and the game was not played in chaos style like it is today. Blaster did not run off on their own and clear half the map in those days just for example. We have differing perspectives on what things used to be like, that's for sure. I'm not saying that you aren't bringing up valid points though.

[Solarverse]

8 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

No because it never happened lmao. But here you are whining for holy trinity. You and people who hold the opinions like you, are the only ones constantly bitching and moaning for some solvable reason or another. I have and will NEVER see a post like you describe, but I WILL see your type of post.

 

Okay dude...

[TheOtherTed]

34 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

Of course you will pick nits about it, it's about the only argument you have left.

Ad hominem detected and processed appropriately.

 

From your very first post, my default hypothesis was that you were seeing the old game through Solarverse-colored glasses.  As of yet, you have offered nothing to make me doubt that hypothesis.  There's a present for you; you have a fixed goalpost around which to stake your own.

 

35 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

More difficult mobs promotes that order of gameplay because more difficult mobs will have serious consequences to chaotic gameplay. That is your quaternity (since we are mincing words here) you are looking for. The game being more difficult promotes player to actually play with order.

That isn't a quaternity - a quaternity is an assemblage of 4 components (usually with religious implications, but that's neither here nor there).  What you provided is a statement about the potential effects of higher difficulty on player behavior.  That is something completely different.  In fact, I explicitly acknowledged it earlier; I'll repeat it here, in case you missed it.

 

1 hour ago, TheOtherTed said:

What I loved about teaming was that moment when the chaos of a handful of random heroes (or villains) suddenly gelled into a coherent fighting force as members of the team started to understand their own abilities in relation to that team's compostion.  Unfortunately, that usually didn't happen until a team wipe, but, hey, omelettes, eggs, etc.

Note that the "gelling" I refer to has little to do with the makeup of the team, and far more to do with the spontaneous actions of the individual players.  They stepped up their game, just as you say, but usually only did so after a very chaotic "The spit got real" moment.  The team composition was usually pretty random, and therefore couldn't always be described as a "trinity" or "quaternity" or any other -ity.  More often than not, the team was willing to bump up the difficulty afterwards.

 

I acknolwedge that much of this is anecdotal, but it was a pattern that I consistently observed.

47 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

They wait for the Tank to gain aggro before attacking, the Controllers wait until the mobs stack before they unleash their Immobs, Debuffers apply their debuffs once Tank has aggro either by Taunt, or by Area toggles that taunt. Suddenly it becomes no longer chaos, but order.

Interesting that you call that order.  I call it boring.  That's not to say I didn't strive for some sort of team composition, but I had my own "color wheel" of ATs which allowed for a lot of oddball combinations.  Or sometims I went with a team of 8 from 1 AT just to see what happened.  Granted, I'm working with old memory now, but I don't recall a team composition that couldn't step up and deliver when the going got tough.  Again, that says more about the players than about team composition.

 

Please note, though, that I also said this:

1 hour ago, TheOtherTed said:

What killed my interest in teaming?  Well, I'll tell ya - it was when we had a small influx of new players in the year or two before sunset who had "trinity" gameplay so firmly ensconced in their heads that they couldn't conceive of anything else.  It didn't make them better - it made them clueless, and it made them flat out reject any advice that went against it.

Later in the game, when it was supposedly easier, my experience is that many people felt the need to complain whenever anything went wrong, and as far as I could determine from their mode of talking (or berating or complaining), it was because someone (never the speaker, of course) wasn't doing their assigned job.  We're talking easy mode stuff here; default difficulty or lower.  To their credit, those people would step up for that mission, but as soon as the mission ended, at least one would bail with some choice parting words, which in turn led others to bail with hard feelings against the people who had already left.  No words could convince them to stick together, and I had no doubt that they would repeat the cycle with their next team.  That "gelling" had apparently disappeared in the wake of the most holy trinity.

 

TL:DR version - all this talk of trinity or quaternity or game design here means much less than the attitudes of people who play it.  That's my alternate hypothesis - another fixed goalpost for anyone to dance around if they so choose.

[TheOtherTed]

Post-script:  I agree with you, @Solarverse, that things like IOs, Architect, and DFB made the game too easy and, in the case of the latter two, did a terrible job of introducing people to game mechanics.  Even seeing the "hospital" in The Hollows for the first time made me leave the zone in frustration (although I've visited it frequently in HC for nostalgia's sake).  However, I still need to be convinced that the challenge you seek, the "order" that you apparently need, is unattainable even in the game's current form.

[Solarverse]

8 minutes ago, TheOtherTed said:

Post-script:  I agree with you, @Solarverse, that things like IOs, Architect, and DFB made the game too easy and, in the case of the latter two, did a terrible job of introducing people to game mechanics.  Even seeing the "hospital" in The Hollows for the first time made me leave the zone in frustration (although I've visited it frequently in HC for nostalgia's sake).  However, I still need to be convinced that the challenge you seek, the "order" that you apparently need, is unattainable even in the game's current form.

 

It's not that it is really unobtainable, it's simply the fact that players in general will always gravitate toward the path of least resistance. Door sitters for example, the most common setting on TF's being +0's, the constant "Speedy" runs you see advertised where they run the mobs at the lowest possible setting, the blasters who are fully IOed out running off and wiping out half the map, things like this. By having such options in game, people tend to gravitate toward things that make the game easier. I'm not even sure anything can be done about it and to be honest, I am just too damn old to put up that fight.

All I wanted to accomplish here is that I have seen time and again how players like-minded to myself take a ton of heat for having our mindsets. I simply wanted people to understand where our mindsets come from and to cut people some slack who miss the ways of the old. If I can convince even one person on these forums to understand, then my job is done.

Edited September 25, 2023 by Solarverse

[Solarverse]

13 minutes ago, TheOtherTed said:

Ad hominem detected and processed appropriately.

 

From your very first post, my default hypothesis was that you were seeing the old game through Solarverse-colored glasses.  As of yet, you have offered nothing to make me doubt that hypothesis.  There's a present for you; you have a fixed goalpost around which to stake your own.

 

That isn't a quaternity - a quaternity is an assemblage of 4 components (usually with religious implications, but that's neither here nor there).  What you provided is a statement about the potential effects of higher difficulty on player behavior.  That is something completely different.  In fact, I explicitly acknowledged it earlier; I'll repeat it here, in case you missed it.

 

Note that the "gelling" I refer to has little to do with the makeup of the team, and far more to do with the spontaneous actions of the individual players.  They stepped up their game, just as you say, but usually only did so after a very chaotic "The spit got real" moment.  The team composition was usually pretty random, and therefore couldn't always be described as a "trinity" or "quaternity" or any other -ity.  More often than not, the team was willing to bump up the difficulty afterwards.

 

I acknolwedge that much of this is anecdotal, but it was a pattern that I consistently observed.

Interesting that you call that order.  I call it boring.  That's not to say I didn't strive for some sort of team composition, but I had my own "color wheel" of ATs which allowed for a lot of oddball combinations.  Or sometims I went with a team of 8 from 1 AT just to see what happened.  Granted, I'm working with old memory now, but I don't recall a team composition that couldn't step up and deliver when the going got tough.  Again, that says more about the players than about team composition.

 

Please note, though, that I also said this:

Later in the game, when it was supposedly easier, my experience is that many people felt the need to complain whenever anything went wrong, and as far as I could determine from their mode of talking (or berating or complaining), it was because someone (never the speaker, of course) wasn't doing their assigned job.  We're talking easy mode stuff here; default difficulty or lower.  To their credit, those people would step up for that mission, but as soon as the mission ended, at least one would bail with some choice parting words, which in turn led others to bail with hard feelings against the people who had already left.  No words could convince them to stick together, and I had no doubt that they would repeat the cycle with their next team.  That "gelling" had apparently disappeared in the wake of the most holy trinity.

 

TL:DR version - all this talk of trinity or quaternity or game design here means much less than the attitudes of people who play it.  That's my alternate hypothesis - another fixed goalpost for anyone to dance around if they so choose.

 

Fair enough.

[drbuzzard]

Back in the day (again, pre GDN, Pre ED).

 

Take a blaster. Give him fighting pool. Weave was 10%. Six slot it with hamiOs. You have 30% defense. Add in combat jumping six slotted with the same. You are at 45% and there's softcap. That blaster could nuke a map full of things if they were close together. They could also be running their nuke at 400% accuracy and damage. 

 

You want to know why it is easier today? Because they balanced across sets and ATs, and then because of the snap and the low population of the survival secret server, they made IOs easy to get. If someone didn't know about IOs, I'd bet the game was actually harder. If they didn't find the forums or MIDs they would have a hell of a time in the game. 

 

Before the snap up to the shutdown date, I had one character with appreciable IOs, and almost all of those were uncommons because I couldn't afford better. I played every day, and I still had only sparse rares. If I got a purple I sold it immediately because I needed the influence. If you were not a dedicated farmer, you did not have the best toys. 

 

Now I have 100+ characters decked out with IOs including purples and whatnot. Honestly the economy makes it easy if anything. 

 

Then again we now have 4* ITF and AEON. These are not trivial. I can't imagine we'll see anyone solo those. You need a good team of competent people who can follow directions. I've inflicted the nightmare of 4* PUG ITFs on myself before. I won't again. 

 

Is the easy stuff easier for more people? Probably, but that's as much an artifact of us playing a near dead 20 year old game as anything. It is not inherent to the game rules beyond economic calculations. Hard stuff can still be hard, and the hardest stuff is harder than anything ever was. 

 

Before GDN and ED people had builds which trivialized the game. It took a lot of time and effort to get there, but it was certainly possible. Game breaking builds (a subset of all, but there were quite a few) were easier to achieve then to be honest. All you had to was read the forums and follow a cookie cutter build with SOs. 

 

The only window of hard that you describe was post those nerfs and pre IOs. That isn't that many issues. Issue 5 was GDN. Issue 6 was ED. IOs appear in Issue 9. You're talking a mighty small window of that weak time. There were three issues where it was pretty hard, and if you joined Repeat Offenders (like I did) it was still trivial without any trinity. 

[arcane]

Hami-O’s were not half as easy to get back in the day, so I wouldn’t consider them in then vs now comparisons. Personally, my computer wasn’t good enough for the raids.

[drbuzzard]

14 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

 

It's not that it is really unobtainable, it's simply the fact that players in general will always gravitate toward the path of least resistance. Door sitters for example, the most common setting on TF's being +0's, the constant "Speedy" runs you see advertised where they run the mobs at the lowest possible setting, the blasters who are fully IOed out running off and wiping out half the map, things like this. By having such options in game, people tend to gravitate toward things that make the game easier. I'm not even sure anything can be done about it and to be honest, I am just too damn old to put up that fight.

 

People seeking the path of least resistance is not new nor unique to this game. It is in fact a universal part of the nature of gamers. Not all gamers, but I'd venture a majority. 

 

I'd say AE farming really trivializes farming, but there was no shortage of dreck farms, wolf farms, ninja farms, council farms and any other repeatable map which could be easily cleared. 

 

This is a very old game played for nostalgia as much as anything. People being powerful makes them happy, and making too many hurdles to get there would drive the population even lower. What you want fixed could well shut things down as it becomes a ghost town. There are hard options. Play them. Wait for more as I expect they are being worked on. 

[Solarverse]

8 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

 

Then again we now have 4* ITF and AEON. These are not trivial. I can't imagine we'll see anyone solo those. You need a good team of competent people who can follow directions. I've inflicted the nightmare of 4* PUG ITFs on myself before. I won't again. 

 

 

 

It's been done. @Bill Z Bubba can attest to this.

[drbuzzard]

1 minute ago, arcane said:

Hami-O’s were not half as easy to get back in the day, so I wouldn’t consider them in then vs now comparisons. Personally, my computer wasn’t good enough for the raids.

 

Yes, they were damned rare. I certainly admit that, but if we're talking extremes, that's certainly an extreme. IOs were damned rare before the snap. Scarcity is the issue, and I don't see introducing scarcity to a small geriatric game as a solution. 

[drbuzzard]

1 minute ago, Solarverse said:

 

It's been done. @Bill Z Bubba can attest to this.

 

Fair enough. I don't like AEON so I don't play it much (in any version). I'd be shocked as hell if a 4* ITF ever happened solo. 

[Solarverse]

Just now, drbuzzard said:

 

Fair enough. I don't like AEON so I don't play it much (in any version). I'd be shocked as hell if a 4* ITF ever happened solo. 

 

It's the opposite. I can't attest for AEON, but I can assure you ITF +4 x8 with players debuffed and mobs buffed, plus no Inspirations and no Temp Pwoers...has been done, multiple times...solo.

[drbuzzard]

Just now, Solarverse said:

 

It's the opposite. I can't attest for AEON, but I can assure you ITF +4 x8 with players debuffed and mobs buffed, plus no Inspirations and no Temp Pwoers...has been done, multiple times...solo.

 

I know about +4x8 ITF. I've seen that done plenty even with debuffs. I'm talking 4*. That's a completely different ballgame. 

[Solarverse]

Just now, drbuzzard said:

 

I know about +4x8 ITF. I've seen that done plenty even with debuffs. I'm talking 4*. That's a completely different ballgame. 

 

Ahhhh, okay okay, I gotcha now. Sorry for the misunderstanding there.

[Andreah]

I don't have a lot to add.

 

Opinion-wise, I don't like games with mandatory trinity systems. Honestly, aggro systems to me are a crutch for developers unable to tune mob AI elegantly between totally stupid and overwhelmingly smart.

 

One thing I will stress is there's a critical distinction in my mind between games with:

 

1) Defined roles for which game mechanics were implemented around specifically to create distinct niches for players to choose from.

 

and

 

2) Emergent roles which arise from interplay of complex game systems designed to follow first-principles or produce some degree of verisimilitude.

 

 

The first one tends to be weird and kludgy to my mind, usually not making sense in its own right but existing only to make sure whichever predefined role the game has are distinct from each other. I dislike having to fit my play into someone else's limited ideas of how it will be fun.

 

I love (2) when it happens, because it also provides for room for more complex tactics and strategies to be developed apart from "Tank will aggro the boss, dps will beat down its hp, and healers will keep us all live while we do it." 

 

 

[Without_Pause]

Part of the issue for ease of play is that stuff like IOs and Incarnates pointed towards an end game which never fully got added. Using Incarnate abilities on non-Incarnate content is a bit obvious in how that's going to lead to one-sided content. 

[Solarverse]

1 minute ago, Without_Pause said:

Part of the issue for ease of play is that stuff like IOs and Incarnates pointed towards an end game which never fully got added. Using Incarnate abilities on non-Incarnate content is a bit obvious in how that's going to lead to one-sided content. 

 

I think that is probably the largest issue right there. Having said that, I think these Devs are doing a pretty decent job at trying to fill that gap in.