a gamer friend offered this commentary to me after reading the reddit
still raises the same questions that won't be answered until the game is really playable in a decent state:
--Oculus Rift: Cool technology that is finally starting to pan out in the real world (Did you see john Carmack just became their chief technological officer? that's great news as he's always been on the bleeding edge techwise, much more so than as a game dev). While I'm planning on snatching one eventually, it still won't have much mainstream effect on MMOs for a while due to technical and sociological limitations; Obviously can't see keyboard when using it, eyestrain remains a real issue, it has a hefty price tag still for a toy, and it's not usable for many due to family interactions, or any need to keep an eye on anything outside of game.
--Not talking about PvP: It's too early for them to talk about it, they need to keep a stack of reveals they can dole out later, that's understandable. If we assume they want to change the field for pvp too (fair assumption I believe, given how giddy a couple of the speakers looked when asked PvP questions), they will avoid an instanced pvp focus. We do know based on lore and a couple of hints that we won't have two opposite factions, that system has very often proved problematic for balance so that's good. It's likely some sort of open world pvp servers is part of the plan, it would be in line with the mostly sandboxy world and most of the examples they used throughout this last week.
--No trinity: The concern for me isn't so much a change of template but more the possible lack of a any specialization. GW2 is the prime example there, unless you are trying for speedruns and maximizing synergy, the huge majority of groups are 5 people soloing in close proximity, that's a disaster for me. The modern trinity unlike the original warrior-cleric-enchanter stranglehold can work well, when healers and tanks are fun and efficient outside of dungeons. Even the good AI excuse is somewhat flawed because PvP tanks and healers exist (warhammer online was great for tanks, healers much more commonly).
That said, I understand that not quite 1/5th or 1/6th of the players really want to play a tank or a healer, so making them an option is something I can appreciate.. Yet how are they going to address the soloing-within-a-group problem? There are only so many options here, the ennemy's hit points must reach zero before your team's, so you have two non-mutually exclusive paths, protect/regenerate your HPs, or take theirs down.
Damage is obvious, whether it's done through melee, nukes, DoTs, or more esoteric means like traps, pets, environmental damage.. That's the core of the GW2 problem, the DPS side offers many options, but few strategic choices. Now defense is where things get more convoluted. We have the tank/healer paradigm of course to make enemy damage irrelevant, or we can stop enemy from doing any actions (crowd control), reducing those actions' effectiveness (debuffs), protecting from them (shields/runes), or avoiding them altogether(kiting, dodging, LoS..).
So options do exist, and we've used them in the past extensively along with or instead of tanking, but I fail to see what problems we fixed that aren't just moved around. If you give the defensive side too small of a focus, you end up with the GW2 DPS strategic emptiness. If you spread your focus on all the possible defensive actions.. you end up with none of them having any actual strategic weight, and by comparison damage once against wins the fight. If you focus on any of them too heavily, you are back in the same position except your players are forced into incorporating one of a small group of skills into all builds.
So really getting rid of the trinity.. Okay, sure. While I tend to tank a lot I also play other archetypes and I don't mind change, I'm just not convinced the solution will be any better. GW2 free for all, or a reliance on another paradigm just don't look like improvements to me, at best a status quo. Of course that's all for group play.. for solo play, sure I can see the appeal, but too much solo play makes for some dull MMOs
