The gang on the Multiverse did a rundown of upcoming MMORPG's this week. They noted that there seems to be a general trend of backlash against class-based games in general and the "holy trinity" in particular these days, and they blame the rise of solo play. I'd suggest that their cause and effect may be reversed. In my view, the holy trinity mechanic complicates the process of looking for groups to point where developers are forced to offer more solo options as a concession to the difficulty of finding a group.
As the gang reminded me, the forthcoming Guild Wars 2 will supposedly eschew the traditional dedicated healer class, instead giving all character the tools to watch their own health bars. This might sound like a way to address the problem of the holy trinity, but I'm wondering that the devs may be giving players what they say they want instead of what they actually want.
Causes of "LF2M tank and heals"
In every game that I've played, the most common difficulty in assembling a group is finding players to fill the tank and healer slots of the "trinity". People who are down on solo play will jump to blame it for this problem - DPS characters often solo faster, they would argue, and therefore the system encourages players not to play tanks and healers. The truth is more nuanced than that.
I only lasted a bit over a month in FFXI back in 2006, which was about as solo-unfriendly as games have ever been. The tank and healer shortage was in full effect in that game, and I'd routinely see groups spend so long looking that the four bored DPS would try asking more DPS with tank or healer subjobs to try and fill the missing roles (which tends not to end well when the group also insists on trying to pull the toughest possible mobs for max exp).
Meanwhile, over in WoW, the fact that it's easier to level solo is nigh meaningless, because dual spec allows players to switch from the best solo spec to the best tanking/healing spec at the literal touch of a button. As Spinks points out, there are other issues involved in picking up WoW tanking at this stage in an expansion cycle (chiefly the learning curve), but I don't think you can argue that solo leveling alone accounts for the fact that tanks get groups nigh instantly, while DPS wait for 15-30 minutes.
The dirty little secret is that DPS IS EASIER. As a DPS, you need to know two things: what order to push your buttons in, and where to stand. The order in which you push the buttons may vary slightly based on the situation (perhaps you're saving cooldowns for a burn phase, or AOE'ing adds), but that's usually not that unpredictable. The where to stand part means being in range of the boss and not standing in the fire, and even the second part of that role is more than many DPS (myself sometimes included) can handle.
As a tank or a healer, you still need to be aware of the two things DPS need to know (what buttons to push, and where to stand) but you also need a far greater awareness of what the other members of the party are doing. I was once the last player capable of removing a curse from the main tank left standing in a 40 man raid, and that one minor responsibility - far less than a real healer would have to handle - was enough to make that fight the most stressful experience I have ever had in an MMO. Being a tank or healer is harder, carries more responsibility, and many players simply do not want this level of complexity to their hobby.
Distributing heals, responsibility
So back to GW2's little revision, in which everyone has to heal themselves. The practical effect of this change is that, instead of one player shouldering the responsibility for everyone's health bars, everyone has to add their own self-healing on to their other responsibilities. If I'm right, this means that GW2 DPS WILL BE HARDER than DPS in other games due to the additional task. The really good DPS, who always top the meters and move out of the fire and do whatever misc utility their classes have, will really shine under this system. Those of us who struggle to react quickly enough with someone else watching our health bars may not fare so well.
The point of asking for the removal of the trinity is to make it easier to assemble groups. It's simply not fun to have five people lined up outside a five player dungeon only to be told that they all have to sit on their rears because none of them is a healer. However, the new problem may be that this system further emphasizes the difference between a good player and an average one. The average player no longer does average DPS, they do 0 DPS because they failed to watch their health and they died. The irony is that this may leave players - especially the good ones - unwilling to do PUG's at all. If that's the case, a change that was intended to facilitate grouping may actually make it more difficult.
ROM's Take On The Daily Quest
As you can see, I've currently got 70 of a daily quest item I need 10 of. The teeth, sandals and pelts are also worth daily quest turnins. The scary part is that I got most of those items in the course of doing routine quests in Runes of Magic. What exactly are they trying to accomplish?
Self-completing daily quests
WoW uses daily quests as a way of delaying players from completing endgame rep grinds. Because you pay Blizzard by the month, they'd much rather have you spend 20 hours over 20 days than even 30 hours over a weekend. So, the daily quest offers larger payouts in exchange for limiting players' income.
By contrast, ROM offers its version of daily quests starting at level 1. Unlike daily quests in other games, these dailies can be completed more than once a day - the limit is 10 daily quests per day, and that can be 10 different quests or the same quest 10 times.
Also unlike typical MMO quests, the items for these quests will drop from the relevant mobs whether or not the player is on the quest (or has already farmed enough drops to complete it). It seems that there are daily quests pointing at most quest areas, and it's not hard to hit ROM's cap of 10 daily turn-ins in an hour or two of normal gameplay. If you're playing more than that, or find yourself farming mobs that happen to drop daily quest trash for other reasons, you might end up with more tokens than you can turn in.
ROM Daily Quest Incentives
ROM daily quests do award exp and TP (skill upgrade points). As Indy points out, players who don't like playing the optimal secondary class for their preferred role can instead farm up the daily quest tokens on their main and switch over to the secondary for the turn-in credit. Even so, the real draw to the system seems to be the "Phirius Tokens".
With perhaps a few exceptions, each daily quest awards 10 tokens regardless of what level the quest itself is. The system appears to be designed so that players who spend 1-2 hours per day online will be pulling down most or all of their daily allowance (up to 100 tokens, some group dailies excluded) every day. These tokens can then be used to obtain effectively free samples of cash store items.
The token shop carries exp potions and consumable item enhancement tools, and, most intriguingly, a 30-day rental of the famous $10 mount for 1400 tokens. In other words, if you complete 50% of the maximum daily quests every day (or 100% every other day), you can avoid paying for the mount, which many people view as the one nigh indispensable item in the shop.
Do the devs win?
I'm guessing that the developers' theory is that impatience will win out over frugality.
- Perhaps players won't want to set aside such a large portion of their tokens (and wait two weeks before securing their first mount rental).
- Perhaps players will get in the habit of using the other consumables like teleport runes or item enhancers with the other half of their tokens.
- Perhaps the knowledge that you've got a stack of monster pieces that you can turn in right now if you pay to reset your quest limit is more tempting to some players than getting the same bonus via paying for an exp bonus potion.
- Perhaps the sheer quantity of drops will clog player bags until they give in and pay to rent additional bag space.
Then again, all of these scenarios revolve around the assumption that the player is looking to play normally every day. Without the monthly access fee, that's not necessarily a safe assumption. If you're the type of player who spends different amounts of time online each day (or juggles multiple MMORPG's), it's easy enough to farm up several days worth of turnins in advance and sign on each day for just long enough to collect your tokens.
I do see a decent number of the more exotic looking mounts, which are only available via the real money side of the item shop, in game, so clearly some players are opening their wallets to pay for these prettier, slightly faster rides. For that matter, I'd be willing to pay not to have to do daily quests every day just to retain mount access if the daily quests weren't literally throwing themselves at my feet. I wonder what this does for the game's bottom line, though, because it seems like I can have the one thing in this game so far that I would have considered paying for without going out of my way to pay for it.
Early Impressions of Runes of Magic Classes
As is somewhat traditional, I've spent my first few days of investigating Runes of Magic on trying out all of the various character classes. This takes on special significance in ROM because each character gets to pick TWO of the game's eight classes. You can switch out which class is your primary class in town, and your secondary class offers some of its own abilities as well as some unique variations on your primary class themes.
Without further ado, here are my initial gut reactions having taken each class through to level 10 (a bit over an hour). The list is arranged in approximately the order in which I enjoyed the classes, take that for what you will.
Warden
The Warden primary is ROM's pet class. They can also use some mana-based melee attacks (these are available to your other class when Warden is your secondary). Because the Warden is an elf-only class, it cannot be combined with the human-only Priest or Knight.
Unfortunately, this class left me feeling like my job was to serve a support role for my NPC pet. The pet's autoattacks do more damage than my Warden melee abilities, and it was actually more time efficient for me to act like a ninja looter and go loot corpses and quest items while the pet did the fighting. I paired this with the scout and found myself leaning almost exclusively on the Scout's cross-class abilities for personal DPS over the Warden's own attacks. (Perhaps a second melee class would have been a better choice.)
Scout
The Scout is an archer ranged dps class, with abilities powered by a "focus" bar (starts full, drains and refills rapidly, like a WoW rogue's energy bar). As a secondary, this class confers the ability to equip bows and use some of the Scout's attacks.
Unlike your typical MMO archer, this class is perfectly happy to continue shooting arrow attacks while mobs are in melee range. I'd thought that the Warden melee abilities would be useful while waiting for focus to regenerate, but I found that they did too little damage to be worth using. Supposedly this class also gets some good synergy with the healing classes via higher level elite skills.
Warrior
This class is a melee DPS, powered by a rage bar that builds up while dealing or receiving damage. You have a variety of one and two handed combo attacks, where one ability chains into another for greater impact.
I was very underwhelmed with the way that the rage bar works in ROM. It feels like you both gain and lose rage very quickly, and end up either watching autoattacks while waiting on rage or suddenly staring at a full bar just as the mob dies. I think I'd like this class better paired with another class that offers melee attacks (Rogue, Warden, Knight) so that I'd be able to use the resource bar for the other class while waiting on the rage bar.
Priest
This class is the human racial take on healing. It's also a popular secondary choice because it grants access to healing abilities. (In particular, Warriors, Scouts, and Rogues don't use mana for any of their class abilities, so that mana bar is fully available for low downtime self-healing while solo.) This class is human-only, and therefore cannot mix with Warden or Druid.
I had a lot of trouble playing this class, which was the only class where I died repeatedly. Like the mage, you're completely dependent on your mana pool. Unlike the mage, your spells don't do a ton of damage, so you can simply end up screwed if you get into trouble with a low mana bar. Many players pair the mage with the priest (or the druid) because the two are pure casters that offer each other good passive bonuses to their primary roles. The issue is that this also exacerbates the weakness of being mana-dependent.
If I ever try this class again, it'll be paired with a non-mana-user. Even then, I might end up dreading the time I have to spend leveling the priest side of the character.
Rogue
ROM rogues need to wait for higher levels to get the abilities to stealth and dual wield, but otherwise will be familiar to anyone who has seen WoW's take on the class.
I don't really have much to add to that. The Rogue melees well, and is powered by a rapidly regenerating energy bar that leaves your mana bar (if applicable) available for whatever your other class does. Works as advertised.
Mage
This is your caster DPS class, offering some utility spells as a secondary.
As Yeebo told me a year ago, this class is comically overpowered at low levels, killing foes in one or two shots. It is mana-dependent, but that matters less when you only need to scrape together enough MP for one or two spells to make it through a fight. I might be inclined to pair it with the knight for additional durability (and also for the Knight's own sake), because a caster really isn't going to be set up to take advantage of melee/archery when they need a fallback plan.
Knight
This is a heavily-armored mana-based tanking-focused class, with holy damage and a variety of aggro management skills. As a secondary, it offers boosts to survivability and healing. It's also the other human-only class, so it cannot be combined with Warden or Druid.
This was probably the biggest surprise of the eight classes for me. I looked at the spell list and was mostly ready to write the whole thing off. The crucial thing I missed was that the class has not one but two combo point mechanics, one of which passively regenerates mana. This means that you can spam attacks until you're running low, switch into pure regen mode for a mob or so, and then jump back into the action with a full mana bar. Assuming you're not paired with a priest, you have no inherent means of regenerating health, but you're designed to tank, so you can mow through a bunch of mobs on one health bar.
Though the priest is a tempting combo - with self heals, you go fully zero-downtime while soloing, and the priest secondary does offer a token ranged spell for pulling - I'm thinking mage as a pairing for this class. The two complement each other very well - the mage gets durability and a holy-based nuke, while the knight can actually afford to USE the more costly mage utility spells.
Druid
The druid is the elves answer to the Priest. Druids have many more offensive spell options and slightly fewer healing options. There's also a "nature's power" combo mechanic that is built up by casting certain basic spells and spent on more powerful abilities (most or all of which are high level). Can't be paired with Priest or Knight.
This was my overall favorite. The spell casting power level feels about right in a niche between the mage and the priest. As a secondary, I have a melee accuracy buff and a nice heal+regen spell that will make a melee character very happy. Since I can't pair it with Knight, I paired this with the Rogue, and found that I was satisfied with both sides of the pairing.
The combinations
Overall, it's an interesting system. If I was going to play four characters covering all eight classes, they would be:
1. Druid/Rogue (my probable main, at least for now)
2. Knight/Mage
3. Priest/Scout
4. Warrior/Warden (my two least favorites in the pairings I tried them in, but they actually might play well together, since you could open combat with the Warden's mana-based attacks and switch over to Warrior rage attacks later)
That said, there are subtle or not-so-subtle advantages to other pairings that could shake up the experience without having a system that is so wide open that it takes forever to find a good spec.
Without further ado, here are my initial gut reactions having taken each class through to level 10 (a bit over an hour). The list is arranged in approximately the order in which I enjoyed the classes, take that for what you will.
Warden
The Warden primary is ROM's pet class. They can also use some mana-based melee attacks (these are available to your other class when Warden is your secondary). Because the Warden is an elf-only class, it cannot be combined with the human-only Priest or Knight.
Unfortunately, this class left me feeling like my job was to serve a support role for my NPC pet. The pet's autoattacks do more damage than my Warden melee abilities, and it was actually more time efficient for me to act like a ninja looter and go loot corpses and quest items while the pet did the fighting. I paired this with the scout and found myself leaning almost exclusively on the Scout's cross-class abilities for personal DPS over the Warden's own attacks. (Perhaps a second melee class would have been a better choice.)
Scout
The Scout is an archer ranged dps class, with abilities powered by a "focus" bar (starts full, drains and refills rapidly, like a WoW rogue's energy bar). As a secondary, this class confers the ability to equip bows and use some of the Scout's attacks.
Unlike your typical MMO archer, this class is perfectly happy to continue shooting arrow attacks while mobs are in melee range. I'd thought that the Warden melee abilities would be useful while waiting for focus to regenerate, but I found that they did too little damage to be worth using. Supposedly this class also gets some good synergy with the healing classes via higher level elite skills.
Warrior
This class is a melee DPS, powered by a rage bar that builds up while dealing or receiving damage. You have a variety of one and two handed combo attacks, where one ability chains into another for greater impact.
I was very underwhelmed with the way that the rage bar works in ROM. It feels like you both gain and lose rage very quickly, and end up either watching autoattacks while waiting on rage or suddenly staring at a full bar just as the mob dies. I think I'd like this class better paired with another class that offers melee attacks (Rogue, Warden, Knight) so that I'd be able to use the resource bar for the other class while waiting on the rage bar.
Priest
This class is the human racial take on healing. It's also a popular secondary choice because it grants access to healing abilities. (In particular, Warriors, Scouts, and Rogues don't use mana for any of their class abilities, so that mana bar is fully available for low downtime self-healing while solo.) This class is human-only, and therefore cannot mix with Warden or Druid.
I had a lot of trouble playing this class, which was the only class where I died repeatedly. Like the mage, you're completely dependent on your mana pool. Unlike the mage, your spells don't do a ton of damage, so you can simply end up screwed if you get into trouble with a low mana bar. Many players pair the mage with the priest (or the druid) because the two are pure casters that offer each other good passive bonuses to their primary roles. The issue is that this also exacerbates the weakness of being mana-dependent.
If I ever try this class again, it'll be paired with a non-mana-user. Even then, I might end up dreading the time I have to spend leveling the priest side of the character.
Rogue
ROM rogues need to wait for higher levels to get the abilities to stealth and dual wield, but otherwise will be familiar to anyone who has seen WoW's take on the class.
I don't really have much to add to that. The Rogue melees well, and is powered by a rapidly regenerating energy bar that leaves your mana bar (if applicable) available for whatever your other class does. Works as advertised.
Mage
This is your caster DPS class, offering some utility spells as a secondary.
As Yeebo told me a year ago, this class is comically overpowered at low levels, killing foes in one or two shots. It is mana-dependent, but that matters less when you only need to scrape together enough MP for one or two spells to make it through a fight. I might be inclined to pair it with the knight for additional durability (and also for the Knight's own sake), because a caster really isn't going to be set up to take advantage of melee/archery when they need a fallback plan.
Knight
This is a heavily-armored mana-based tanking-focused class, with holy damage and a variety of aggro management skills. As a secondary, it offers boosts to survivability and healing. It's also the other human-only class, so it cannot be combined with Warden or Druid.
This was probably the biggest surprise of the eight classes for me. I looked at the spell list and was mostly ready to write the whole thing off. The crucial thing I missed was that the class has not one but two combo point mechanics, one of which passively regenerates mana. This means that you can spam attacks until you're running low, switch into pure regen mode for a mob or so, and then jump back into the action with a full mana bar. Assuming you're not paired with a priest, you have no inherent means of regenerating health, but you're designed to tank, so you can mow through a bunch of mobs on one health bar.
Though the priest is a tempting combo - with self heals, you go fully zero-downtime while soloing, and the priest secondary does offer a token ranged spell for pulling - I'm thinking mage as a pairing for this class. The two complement each other very well - the mage gets durability and a holy-based nuke, while the knight can actually afford to USE the more costly mage utility spells.
Druid
The druid is the elves answer to the Priest. Druids have many more offensive spell options and slightly fewer healing options. There's also a "nature's power" combo mechanic that is built up by casting certain basic spells and spent on more powerful abilities (most or all of which are high level). Can't be paired with Priest or Knight.
This was my overall favorite. The spell casting power level feels about right in a niche between the mage and the priest. As a secondary, I have a melee accuracy buff and a nice heal+regen spell that will make a melee character very happy. Since I can't pair it with Knight, I paired this with the Rogue, and found that I was satisfied with both sides of the pairing.
The combinations
Overall, it's an interesting system. If I was going to play four characters covering all eight classes, they would be:
1. Druid/Rogue (my probable main, at least for now)
2. Knight/Mage
3. Priest/Scout
4. Warrior/Warden (my two least favorites in the pairings I tried them in, but they actually might play well together, since you could open combat with the Warden's mana-based attacks and switch over to Warrior rage attacks later)
That said, there are subtle or not-so-subtle advantages to other pairings that could shake up the experience without having a system that is so wide open that it takes forever to find a good spec.
Pondering DDO Veteran Status
DDO is running a special where a different item goes on sale for 50% off each day in July. This coming Sunday will discount the "Veteran" account status to 498 Turbine Points ($5 at the 5K/$50 exchange rate).
To Buy or Unlock
Veteran Status allows new characters to start at level 4 (more significant than it sounds because the DND ruleset caps out at level 20, I'd guesstimate that we're talking about something like 5-10 hours of solo play). This option can be unlocked on a per-server basis by earning 1000 favor, but I'm not entirely satisfied with that approach for several reasons.
First, I'd have to earn 1000 favor - my highest character so far has 300, and it gets slower and more difficult as you go because it's more difficult to solo the hard difficulties of upper level quests.
Second, I'd have to focus on a single character instead of messing around with alts, which is the opposite of how I've been playing the game so far (and would probably require more content purchases, since I've focused on lower level content unlocks to date). Moreover, any alts I create in the mean time would not have access to the Veteran unlock, so I'd want to do that sooner rather than later.
Third, the unlock version is limited to a single server, and I have characters on all seven servers.
Finally, I'd quickly bump up against the character slot limit (you get a total of 4 if you've ever paid) if I was trying to roll all my alts on the one server where I hypothetically had Vet status.
But is Vet Status a Good Thing?
Overall, I'm reasonably convinced that it makes more sense to pay to unlock the Vet toggle if indeed I want it. So do I want this unlock?
My original reaction was that this seemed like a silly thing to pay for. Level four doesn't take that long to earn, I might still want to go back and complete some of the lower level quests for gear (you get a lackluster starting package of equipment) and favor, and, ultimately, why does it make sense to pay to get out of playing the game?
The thing that has me reconsidering is now that I actually have a fair number of charaters in the level 3 range with 50+ favor (in fact, only one of my 15 characters has made it past the level 3 wall). I've seen the content enough times that having the option of starting with higher level stuff sounds more appealing.
There's also the matter of the poor scaling of the Dungeons and Dragons Ruleset. Whether you're planning to multiclass or just a late bloomer, there are any number of reasons why a low level DND character might just be too fragile and not so fun to play. If you start out four levels ahead of the curve, you get to skip past some of the less pleasant short term consequences of longterm decisions.
Lastly, there's the difficulty of re-specing characters. This too can be blamed on the ruleset, but that does not make it less irritating. Of my 15 attempts at characters, a dozen are not worth playing beyond their next favor award because of character decisions that did not work out so well. With Veteran status, I'd be able to take new alts on a test drive and immediately pitch them (or do a delete and re-roll "respec") without having to sink a fair number of hours into seeing whether my crazy new idea even works.
I haven't made a final decision yet (I have until Sunday, since that's when the sale is), but I'm leaning towards taking the discounted paid unlock. I'm going to spend more money on the game eventually (things like the Half Orc race and the new Red Fens AP are going to cost more points than I have, and sound like they'll be worth the money), so the main opportunity cost is that this would clean out my existing point balance. Even so, discounts of 50% don't happen that often, so I won't cry too much if I miss a 30% sale on a single adventure pack because I spent the last of my points on this upgrade (assuming I don't earn more while trying out new alts).
To Buy or Unlock
Veteran Status allows new characters to start at level 4 (more significant than it sounds because the DND ruleset caps out at level 20, I'd guesstimate that we're talking about something like 5-10 hours of solo play). This option can be unlocked on a per-server basis by earning 1000 favor, but I'm not entirely satisfied with that approach for several reasons.
First, I'd have to earn 1000 favor - my highest character so far has 300, and it gets slower and more difficult as you go because it's more difficult to solo the hard difficulties of upper level quests.
Second, I'd have to focus on a single character instead of messing around with alts, which is the opposite of how I've been playing the game so far (and would probably require more content purchases, since I've focused on lower level content unlocks to date). Moreover, any alts I create in the mean time would not have access to the Veteran unlock, so I'd want to do that sooner rather than later.
Third, the unlock version is limited to a single server, and I have characters on all seven servers.
Finally, I'd quickly bump up against the character slot limit (you get a total of 4 if you've ever paid) if I was trying to roll all my alts on the one server where I hypothetically had Vet status.
But is Vet Status a Good Thing?
Overall, I'm reasonably convinced that it makes more sense to pay to unlock the Vet toggle if indeed I want it. So do I want this unlock?
My original reaction was that this seemed like a silly thing to pay for. Level four doesn't take that long to earn, I might still want to go back and complete some of the lower level quests for gear (you get a lackluster starting package of equipment) and favor, and, ultimately, why does it make sense to pay to get out of playing the game?
The thing that has me reconsidering is now that I actually have a fair number of charaters in the level 3 range with 50+ favor (in fact, only one of my 15 characters has made it past the level 3 wall). I've seen the content enough times that having the option of starting with higher level stuff sounds more appealing.
There's also the matter of the poor scaling of the Dungeons and Dragons Ruleset. Whether you're planning to multiclass or just a late bloomer, there are any number of reasons why a low level DND character might just be too fragile and not so fun to play. If you start out four levels ahead of the curve, you get to skip past some of the less pleasant short term consequences of longterm decisions.
Lastly, there's the difficulty of re-specing characters. This too can be blamed on the ruleset, but that does not make it less irritating. Of my 15 attempts at characters, a dozen are not worth playing beyond their next favor award because of character decisions that did not work out so well. With Veteran status, I'd be able to take new alts on a test drive and immediately pitch them (or do a delete and re-roll "respec") without having to sink a fair number of hours into seeing whether my crazy new idea even works.
I haven't made a final decision yet (I have until Sunday, since that's when the sale is), but I'm leaning towards taking the discounted paid unlock. I'm going to spend more money on the game eventually (things like the Half Orc race and the new Red Fens AP are going to cost more points than I have, and sound like they'll be worth the money), so the main opportunity cost is that this would clean out my existing point balance. Even so, discounts of 50% don't happen that often, so I won't cry too much if I miss a 30% sale on a single adventure pack because I spent the last of my points on this upgrade (assuming I don't earn more while trying out new alts).
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