Draegan said:
You"re still gonna get people playing Tanks, Healers, Damage. And pre-reqs for any of the good skills are gonna force you down a certain path anyway. Skill Based systems only allow for more useless hybrid builds. Dev"s still have to account for certain abilities in their dungeons no matter which way you paint it.
As has been said a wider variety of options available to the players should allow the developers a wider range of content design. If the content continues to only be designed with the holy trinity as the only option then that"s how things will continue to be.
But there is nothing, except for dev time, preventing an encounter being designed that can be both a normal 5-man Tank n" Spank for a typical Tank/Healer/CC/DPSx2 group but also how a couple of alternative ways to kill the Boss that take advantage of other skills the game allows.
Lets say for example there is a game using a skill based system that still allows for people to make the "Pure" templates but also includes a number of skills that would be considered outside the norm. For this example 5 of those skills are: Climbing, Demolition, Entice, Invisibility, & Lockpicking.
Group Makeup:
1 - Pure Tank
2 - Pure Healer
3 - Hybrid CC w/ lockpicking, invis, & entice (though I guess entice could be considered a CC skill)
4 - Pure DPS
5 - Hybrid DPS w/ climbing & demolition
In an area above part of the Boss" patrol path is a ledge with some large boulders on it and in an adjacent room behind a locked gate is another mob you typically end up fighting further in the instance. When the group enters the area with the Boss they notice the boulders above his patrol path & the mob in the adjacent room. They notice there is path off to side of the room that would give a climbing path for their hybrid DPS to get to the area beneath the boulders and would let him place some explosives under the ledge that would bring the boulders crashing down onto the boss.
However this path has a number of pulls in the way that a normal group would just be able to bypass. So the group proceeds clearing the path and as the climber prepares to do his job, the CC hybrid makes his way back down and towards the locked down taking advantage of his ability to invis to avoid aggro"ing the Boss. As the DPS hybrid sets the explosives and moves away from them, the CC hybrid begins picking the lock.
As the explosion rains boulders down on the Boss the CC hybrid opens the door allowing the mob in the adjacent room to wander in and check out the commotion, at which point he entices him to engage the now severely injured and unable to stand Boss.
At this point the rest of the group engages in the fight on the Boss while the CC hybrid continues to use his entice skill to keep control of the other mob. But entice can only last so long so the group must get the Boss down before it is up. Thankfully the boulders have brought the Boss down to 50% and because he can"t get out from beneath them disallows him his typical bonuses to evade & dodge plus prevents use of his AoE stomp attack. However he does gain the ability to launch boulders at the players and he is enraged from the amount of damage he has taken. With the enticed mob acting as the tank on the Boss, the group"s Tank can start building up aggro on the enticed mob knowing the CC hybrid has a huge threat value with the mob.
If things go well the Tank should be able to get to the top of the mobs threat table before the Boss is killed. If not and the group can"t burn down the mob quick enough before he kills the CC hybrid then the DPS hybrid is going to have to use his long cooldown (like way long given the usefulness) stun grenade to disorient the mob and clear the threat table.
There is nothing about the tech currently available that would prevent such an encounter. The only thing that would be required is spending the time designing the encounter to allow for it and testing/balancing as best as it can be done. It is more work from the encounter design perspective but it gives players more options & improves replayability which are 2 things MMOs have been regressing on lately IMO. I think we are all in agreement things can take longer to be delivered as long as we see that extra time was well spent.
