The RPG Triangle

[wolfmane]

The RPG triangle is my attempt to put a name to the concept of the tank/dps/healer class roles that many games have formed their core mechanics system around. In other words a game that uses the RPG triangle attempts to balance a group of players based on the role of the classes available in the game. So for example games like WoW or D&D (pen and paper) and League of Legends 'require' that a group consist of a certain type of class and that at least one of every class role is present. So for games such as these the typical 5 man group for going through dungeons or playing a round of PvP will consist of 1 tank, 2-3 dps and 1 healer. Some games that don't run direct healers often supplant that role with support classes. LoL does this and usually the classic combination is something along the lines of 1 tank, 2-4 dps and 1 support or 1dps and 2-3 support.

The point I want to make is the theme for the above examples, all the groups require a tank. So what happens if you don't have a tank? Usually the case results that you either play at a disadvantage or you can't participate in the activity at all. My issue comes in that I think I'm getting pretty tired of this paradigm. I'm starting to get irritated when I go to play a game or a match and I can't do it because the group can't find a tank or a healer.

I think I remember a post a while ago about how Torchlight is going to work around this by using a completely different paradigm. My question is, what's your opinion on the RPG triangle? Do you like it or do want to throw it in a dark spider infested basement? What do you guys have for ideas to create an alternate system to solve the issue of party balance and class roles? What do you think Torchlight is going to do for role dynamics in a multiplayer environment?

The other issue is the artificial cap on group size. Group sizes of 5 seem to be a favorite minimum number to be placed on group sizes. Do you like the idea of having a minimum or maximum number of people in a group or do you think that anything greater than one should be a party? Personally, I think one of the things that D2 did that I really liked was the idea of a flexible number of group members in a party, so that the zones auto-adjusted for the size of the group present. I didn't get to play D2 multiplayer very much though (and my memory is fuzzy) so I don't remember how good or not good it actually was.

[Zidders]

In my long experience over the years playing manymanymanymany RPG's (starting in the late 70's when I was a mere tyke with D&D on through todays MMO's), I've discovered that what makes a truly well balanced group ISN'T the kinds of classes that make up the group, it's the skills of the players who are playing the classes that make up that group. Sure, there are a lot of instances where you might LIKE to have a specialized class, like a healer or a tank, but as long as you have a group of people who know their classes well and get along, you can often surmount many obstacles that a pure 'holy trinity' group might otherwise fail at, simply because they either didn't mesh, or didn't really play their classes well or even know HOW to play their classes.

I have been in many groups over the years in D&D that were made up of rag tag assortments of classes you never would have thought could have made it through a bar fight, never mind taking on a two headed dragon...and it wasn't because the DM was going easy on us. Similar situations have arisen in Everquest...we hada group of regulars whom my mate and I gamed with quite frequently, and while we may have had the tank/cleric/mage/etc thing going, we also had some characters who were what a lot of people considered the 'weaker' classes in the game...and we still did well.

I'm very interested to see how Runic is going to go about the classes they come up with, but I have faith that, unless it is a very poorly designed game (which I doubt it will be), no matter WHAT kind of classes there are, individual player skill will ALWAYS be the deciding factor, as far as wether or not a particular character of a particular class performs well or not.

[wolfmane]

I agree with your assessment of D&D groups. I'm in particular pointing to games where it's incredibly difficult if not completely impossible to instance or dungeon without a healer or tank, WoW being the most current game in memory that I can reference at the moment.

[iconocast]

ur thinking is completley off.

the classes in arpgs(tourchlight/diablo) dont work like that,they never did.
they have more in common wit gauntlet than wow.

if u are sick of the healer/tank/dps its understandable, but the function si there to promote team work i guess. the only thing i hate about the triangle myself is healers. i would go into why i hate them but its 3am i need sleep.

[AttackGorilla]

True a lot of games that say they promote multiplayer participation, simply force it by making the game basically require redundant group mechanics that force you to play with certain people. You have identified one of the many reasons I have never really cared for WoW. There are plenty of multiplayer games out there (including some MMOs) that do not force this on the community. I agree that this is not likely to happen in Torchlight the MMo since it is an ARPG...

[Tanuki]

my thoughts on the "triangle" is Tank > ranged > caster > tank .... or at least it should be! So far I have yet to see a game that didn't end up like this : Tank > ranged < caster = tank. I mostly blame it on the fact that too many game makers (PnP and video types) lack sufficient balls to stand up to the ungodly amount of players who expect casters to be invincible and throw a fit when ranged types can kill them before they can finish casting (as they should! that's generally the whole point of the class after all.) oh and "healers" shouldn't exist at all, every class should have some kind of supporting skill set. having an entire class dedicated to sitting in the back row spamming heal skills on other players just to offset the excessive damage output that exists solely to justify the inclusion of a healing class is, frankly, stupid.

[Jerich]

I think the RPG triangle is popular because of two main reasons. First they encourage group play and second because the player base understands the roles.

Encouraging Group Play
I think the main reason the RPG triangle is popular because it encourages group teamwork. All successful team sports have roles: Basketball has centers, forwards and guards, Baseball, has 1st base, pitchers catchers etc. Even cricket and soccer have various offensive and defensive roles. Any game is too chaotic for someone to do everything at once. A person can, however, master their individual role. Once we have that down, the game affirms something human inside of us... the desire to be a contributing part of a group that is larger than ourselves.

Roles that People Know
Core sports are popular in a sense because people know the roles. For instance, when I join a basketball team, I naturally gravitate towards being a center because of my height. The short fast people usually play guards. The Healer - Tank - DPS / Crowd Control holy trinity is popular for this very reason. People understand what is expected from them if they are going to do one of these roles. Tanks mitigate damage, healers triage damage, and dps / crowd control neutralizes threats. Tons of game players are already experts at one of these roles.

ARPGs are Different
The traditional roles, however, haven't worked in ARPGs. The action is too fast and the player field too spread out to facilitate healing and tanking. Mouse clicking also makes strategic positioning difficult. While I believe deep and meaningful group play is possible in a game like this, It will look a lot different than Wow. Something more akin to a great tower defense game, where players are rewarded for mixing their towers because of enemy weaknesses seems more appropriate.

[cybrim]

Jerich... That was awesome TDARPGMMO!

[cybrim]

I think that if you had a "Totem Summoner" that would be cool, kind of like the Dryad from Sacred 2 fallen angel meets D2 barbarian Totem meets Command and Conquer morale towers, they could have a healing totem skill tree, a varied totem aura skill tree, and an attack totem skill tree. There arn't many Totems/towers in MMOs.

[Jerich]

In a sense each character is like a moving tower. Some are long range and others are short range. Each is most effective against a specific type of enemy.

[wolfmane]

So in your example you're using a tower defense analogy. I'm not sure how the holy trinity is much different from a tower defense game. You have some long range tower and some short range towers and each is more effective against a certain type of enemy. So my question is, where do you make the distinction on what is 'more effective'? Say you have an enemy type (enemy A) you want to face that is best countered with a long range tower, but by happenstance you don't have any long range towers. Traditionally when this kind of setup occurs over a period of time players will start to develop the mentality that in order to fight enemy A they must always have a long range tower present in order to be successful. This change in mentality can be more or less severe based on how 'more effective' you make a long range tower counter enemy A.

Second this brings up how much solo vs. group play you want to encourage. Let's say you're a long range tower that is soloing and you encounter a group of enemy B, which is most effectively countered by short range towers. How hard is it going to be for you to progress if you mostly solo, or will it be a trivial matter because the game focuses on always being in a group? The same analogy can be applied to the famous elemental resists argument. You spec for ice, then part way through the game, you encounter a bunch of ice resistant or immune enemies. Should you be able to progress through on your own or do the designers feel that edging you into group play to overcome such encounters would be better?

The op I made was a result of sitting in a LoL queue for 15 minutes and getting kicked out of a group selection multiple times because someone would realize that no one on the team had chosen a tank character and would bail out of the selection. It didn't matter that the enemy team might not have had a tank player either, there was the potential that they could have had a tank and that our team would then be fighting at a disadvantage. Not many people enjoy fighting at a disadvantage, perceived or otherwise. The holy trinity exacerbates this problem. Having something setup to be 'more effective' could also mean to some players that conversely it's 'less effective' at other things and becomes a perceived weak class against things it doesn't counter. While providing job roles that are easily understood certainly motivates group play, ironically it can also get in the way if no one can fill a specific job. What happens to a soccer team when they can't field any forwards, or a basketball team without a center?

mouse clicking also makes strategic positioning difficult

I'm not sure what you mean by this. There are many mouse movement driven games out there that require strategic placement. I know it's not Risk, Disgaea, X-com or any other turn based system but that doesn't mean there isn't strategy between standing in front of or behind an enemy in an ARPG or whether you're in a good position to move out of a flamewave or not.

[AttackGorilla]

As if there were intrinsic auras built into player types...? I think that would be AWESOME. Runic should definately give everyone auras and each player's aura would be skilled up alongside lvling. Aura types should be adjustable across spectrums during lvling rather than being stuck with 1 of 5 preset static aura types (for example you could level up the aura potency or its range of effect, etc. or how much elemental protection it provides, etc.). The auras would indeed help promote teamwork and groups in an ARPG. good job (hope they incorporate this)

Also this would allow people to be healers, through aura, but still be actually in combat.

It would be doubly awesome if you could get a "focus aura" skill that would let you concentrate your aura on a particular person in your group at higher intesity rather than spreading it thin to everyone.

If people think auras would be too strong then Runic could always tie auras to Mana (or whatever its called in Torchlight) so that your mana drains slowly as you have an aura activated (and aura turns off if mana is depleted).

[Jerich]

It sounds to me like your main arguments against the holy trinity not necessarily the interdependence they create and the problems said interdependence causes when one of the main archetypes is scarce. While this is an issue, there are ways to lessen the scarcity issue.

For instance, the random queue in World of Warcraft works well for setting up groups. Everyone can get a group given time (but scarcer roles just get a group a little faster).

ARPGS
Groups in a game like Diablo II tend to work more like an ant colony than an interconnected team. If we take this analogy futher, each member roams to gather up the nutrients (experience) and the characters only roughly overlap their spheres of influence. Diablo is like this primarily because every class is an island unto themselves and there is little percieved benefit from sticking together. Only during scripted encounters (bosses, the throne of destruction etc)... do players coelesce.

LOL allows for deeper gameplay due to class interdependence. The best strategy is usually not for everyone to spread out and solo. Instead, there are a variety of team strategies. I necessarily like LOL, but that is mainly because I prefer PVE to PvP.

I believe games should offer a bit of both worlds while trying to mitigate the annoyences of group play (like waiting in long queues).

[wolfmane]

What you say is true, but what happens when you mix the two, MMO and ARPG? Which side do you end up on, solo or group? Some of what you're saying indicates that they're at opposite sides of the spectrum. ARPG tends to be a more solo environment, where ARPG everyone is a unit unto themselves. I don't have the answers to those questions, I just thought I'd ask the community.

The WoW random queue took forever for them to implement and doing a group queue similar to that or LoL does facilitate some quicker group setups. However, you're always going to have queue dodgers and people that group up and then leave in the middle of a dungeon. These kinds of things still constitute a decent chunk of time just dealing with personnel logistics rather than playing the actual game.

[Tanuki]

easy: interlocking support skills (aka buffs) as well as combo moves.

like others were saying with auras: each class has their own but maybe with the twist that each individual aura has a different effect depending on the effected class: like a warriors defense buff would increase the defense of other warriors but for a caster under the effect it instead translates to more confidence (as they feel more secure with warriors defending them) and thus get a faster casting speed. while the combo moves could be like the magic sword techniques with Vivi and Steiner in FFIX where in having multiple classes together will open up entire skill trees depending on the classes involved: Ember Lance + Arrow Rain anyone? or how about casting a turret spell on a warrior class that in turn runs around for the duration with the thing(s) strapped to his back?

[Jerich]

but maybe with the twist that each individual aura has a different effect depending on the effected class: like a warriors defense buff would increase the defense of other warriors but for a caster under the effect it instead translates to more confidence (as they feel more secure with warriors defending them) and thus get a faster casting speed.

I really like this idea.

- Jerich

[AttackGorilla]

Class specific auras would probably work better for the feel of Torchlight, although I personally don't care for these types of restrictions.

[Tanuki]

I wouldn't really think of them as restriction, as the class designs would stay largely the same, but then again class balancing is actually dependent on the opponents they fight instead of the classes themselves.

*ughhh* it's still early for me and i didn't sleep well last night so my brain gears are breaking teeth and I'm not able to properly formulate what I want to.

in my opinion real class balancing isn't a matter establishing who they are strong/weak against but instead ensuring that all the classes have a way of interlocking with each other: the strengths of one compensate for the weakness of another and all that. I think that is where most games screw up savagely, they don't balance classes to work WITH each other, but instead only focus on how the work against each other.

oh and to get this sorta back to the topic, how is this for a refined triangle: " Defensor > Disruptor > Cannon > Defensor "

I think that nicely sums up the rolls.

[tigerbunny]

Its fairly clear that modern games are moving away from tank and spank. These days most healer class do decent damage as well, and it is not impossible to solo level with them, see AOC, Aion, WAR etc. I think even better is something more like guildwars' system where there is no such thing as tanking and there is little need for pure healers outside of organized PVP. GW still had somewhat pure healers, but no stupid agro control like a lot of MMOs do.

I think that relying on the trinity in game design ends up contributing to lazy game design. It dosn't take much thinking if all the mobs are designed in such a way that they simply overpower non tanks and groups without healing support. Good games allow for multiple ways of dealing with things and don't force players into a mold. Generally, uncreative games lead to an uncreative community where everyone is forced into certain roles or specific group compositions to deal with certain content. I just think of the different games I have played and realize that in guildwars I could generally take 8 decent players and if we were thinking, it didn't matter what classes we took so long as we had somewhat of a mix and still do whatever content we wanted at a reasonable pace. Or if I look at diablo 2, it really didn't matter what classes were there, sure it was nice to have conc pally in the party if you had some physical characters, and a lower resist necro + sorcs was always good, but the game was designed in a way that you could get through to content without such synergies, it was just that you group was exponentially more badass when you did have them going on.

I don't think there should be any content in games that is simply not possible without a tank + healer, it should just be a lot harder/slower.

The other thing about not using such narrowly defined class roles is that small scale pvp is much easier to balance instead of being a game of rock paper scissors where to group that lacks enough healing or has too much of it is basically screwed.

[kvdk]

the best thing to do, is to make it so all instances scale, depending on who enter...


for example, if only a magic class player enters, the instance is rigged to favor magic combat, so the magic player can do it without trouble, but with a little less EXP and rewards
where as, a melee class enters, the instance is rigged to favor melee, but also with less EXP and rewards
and as a team enters, the instance is also rigged to favor that team...

but the less the instance needs to be rigged, the better the rewards & EXP will be, making it worth it to try and get a good team together


next to that, it would be best not to have any "default" classes, but allow people to create their own class...

for example, one could focus all their skillpoints into heavy armors, heavy weapons and melee skills, in order to become a tank
or one could focus all their skillpoints into light magic, in order to become a healer/revver
or focus all their skillpoints into light armors, to become an assasin or ranger type player
focus in a cirtain element to become a fire mage, or water mage....

or, not focus at all..
you could have a melee player, with the ability to rev others, at the price of not being able to use the best armors & weapons...


that would allow players to choose their own playing style...

a bit like the system they used in spellforce 2, dungeon seige and similar games , where classes are the result of the skills you select, instead of a choice you make when you start playing would be a perfect example of this...


but if this gets added, it should be made possible (but not easy) to do some quest, and get the ability to respect once... (per time you finish the quest)