cannabination's page

Is there a wiki or something for rule clarification? We're trying to play, but every game comes down to the question of whether mutineers apply to each crew member, or the total crew value at the end of the round. Fun game, though.

Thanks!

All of this is cosmetic by design, but I think the paid stuff should be mostly character customization. Additional crafting abilities available on sub accounts like cloak patterns, editing songs for bards, building styles, maybe extensions of the standard crafting professions would be cool. Other things like running animations, casting or fighting styles, emotes, and many more that I could list on could also be desirable things that don't lock out aspects of the game.

I saw DC Universe listed as an example of a possible model and have to disagree. There are a lot of cool things about that game(well, the equipment re-skinning system was cool anyway) but the F2P execution was *nasty*. No mail, no trade, a currency cap, tiny bag, tiny bank, and a meager two character slots are just a few of the things that essentially forced you to pay. I really hope that the benefits of subscribing don't make playing for free prohibitive. Don't get me wrong, I'll be paying, but people who really begin to enjoy the game will eventually want to be able to customize their characters in a way that wouldn't be there until they shell out. People who don't like the game will quit.

I'm not saying that a few inherent bonuses or starting loots are a bad idea, and I really liked Nihimon's suggestion of subscribers gaining income, I just really hope that core concepts of an mmo aren't locked out for people who just want to try the *real* game.

Nihimon wrote:

I think it's going to be fairly unlikely for someone to amass the kind of fortune that would take and then squander it on an assault like that, much less that they'd do it repeatedly.

That said, I'm not really arguing in favor of hiring an army, I'm really just trying to encourage people to think outside the box of balanced 1v1 PvP and open themselves to ideas that might, at first blush, seem unbalanced, but which really won't have the kind of impact they fear in PFO, as long as PFO is not about ranked, arena-based PvP with even teams, yada yada.

Well I do have to point out that in group economy based games, players in the largest guilds/alliences/groups with the largest armies and the deepest production structure, it's members will likely have 3x more than your average joes. So yeah you can expect those people, to be buying 3 soldiers each before attacking the neighboring town. I agree balanced 1v1 PVP isn't going to be the norm, but I do have to say, a hiring system on it's own, favors massively the group already at the top, allowing them to continue to take twice as much, which then lets them hire twice as many mercinaries, which allows them to take even more etc...

The only way to prevent an infinant expansion of them is to make them very expensive, which will put them out of the hands of the people they were intended to help.

In the economy you mentioned, the guild that will be hiring the armies and amassing the materials of war will need to get them from somewhere. If they are declaring war on other towns all the time they'll probably have a hard time acquiring resources at the same speed as the defenders, especially given their inherent advantage of defenses. Add in the fact that there will be neighboring towns that would *love* to pitch in to defeat the mighty plundering guild that's constantly raiding *them* too, and I'm not sure that it'll be much of an issue.

In an evolving, player-based world the relationships between towns will be extremely important and I would think the prime responsibility of guild leaders or whatever. A guild that wants to rape and pillage indiscriminately across the hillside is going to be under constant attack, so they'll need to be pretty huge and diverse across time zones. But since they're generally reviled across the "sandbox" they'll have a tough time recruiting, and since they'll presumably be comprised mostly of selfish people who get no enjoyment from the actual mechanics of the game it will be hard to keep them organized and focused on keeping the guild secure.

I truly hope that someone can make an "antagonist" guild work for a long period, because that will add a lot to the world. I think it would be the most difficult organization to form and hold together, and i think people who even try to form them will have a hard time becoming relevant.

Agreed. Some ability to make certain info known to your group or an individual character just by running a macro or something would be key.

This sounds like a fascinating idea! If I'm understanding you correctly, this would allow for things such as roving bands of outlaws, or tribes of orcs reproducing and building settlements? That sounds incredibly cool. As you said, I imagine the setup of the servers would come into play here, but I would like to think that this idea would be considered!

I've seen a few discussions about the "blank nameplate" idea, wherein anyone you run into to whom you've not been introduced or with whom you've not interacted before would come up as a blank nameplate. The idea of this being to increase immersion and reality while also opening possibilities for more sneak oriented play styles. I've read arguments for and against, many revolving around the feasibility of such a system. I'm not interested in started that discussion again, but I'd like to put forth a thought on the matter.

The following is predicated on the idea that the devs are interested in the aforementioned concept and that it is feasible. Both may be false assumptions, I know.

In a system where nameplates don't give you info that is impossible to know by looking at someone(i.e. name, class, possibly guild, etc.), it seems reasonable that they would populate with info that you *could* discern by sight. This would be an opportunity to allow some aspects of PnP to migrate to the MMO in a way that totally enriches game play and could be otherwise challenging to translate in terms of player to player interaction, such as charisma, intimidate/diplomacy(abilities, not skills), certain vibe-y auras, and I'm sure several more difficult to quantify effects. Someone with one or more of these traits could toggle them on to appear on their nameplate to randoms to reflect their character's attitude or demeanor, lending more rp, more immersion, and more realism. Say in the circle where in most games you'd see class, instead you see a slideshow of traits chosen by the character from among those afforded by his abilities, e.g. an angry face for intimidating, a calm face for diplomatic, a happy face for charismatic, and so on.

In a more intensive system certain abilities could provide a range of possible demeanors your character could switch on and off almost like a persistent emote. Bluff could allow you to simulate these and any of those mentioned above, and they could be applicable by attributing sets of them as preferences for npcs(Johnny the page responds best to intimidate and dplomatic, for example) and if desired there could be opposed rolls from sense motive or just wisdom. Yes, I know that bluff and sense motives are skills in PnP... for the purposes of this discussion let's call them abilities.

In a much more intensive system, each character could have a "detailed nameplate" that each player could click on and fill out like a survey, checking boxes based on their interaction with a character(i.e. generous, helpful, heroic, rude, ruthless, etc) which would be compiled server side. If a character has been attributed such a trait a given number of times in an area he could gain that trait on his nameplate. Positive traits could be toggled on and off just like the previously mentioned demeanors, but could provide buffs("helpful" could give a 10% bonus to resistances for group members > 3 levels below you, for example) and only be effective in said area. The bad ones could follow you to new areas for a certain period denoting the stigma associated with being a bandit, murderer, or what have you and scale up to the point where you start developing social penalties(more expensive items, services, possible barring from town depending on local laws). Seems like a possible way to introduce notoriety as a game mechanic rather than a function of the game forums or titles while encouraging people to be friendly... or at least discouraging them from being hateful.

The major flaw in this system is that griefers could report everyone they see as hateful or rude and cause problems, but if there are any kind of moderators for the game it would be pretty obvious if the same 30 people are constantly tagging someone as hateful and never tag anyone with anything positive. Possibly by making tagging only possible by physically clicking someone rather than through a menu pane or /command you could keep that to a minimum. Towns would still be a problem, I suppose... maybe the character to be tagged has to show up in some type of interaction log(or your combat log) and one could only access the interface from there.

There are probably more aspects of this that I haven't considered that would make it impossible or game breaking or w/e, but I guess that's why this is a forum post instead of an email. Do these ideas seem interesting to anyone?

Lawdy, lawdy, Nihimon... you've got some patience. I don't even think I could wait four years for an "I win button", or the ability to open Scrooge McDuck's vault. I see your point of view, for sure, just saying that I couldn't do it.

I'd imagine you're both right, at the three or even five year marks for most people. There will be some people, though, with a strong desire to hit 20/20 before they hit 20/crafting equivalent because their character concept is the aforementioned arcane trickster, arcane archer, or whatever(unless they give us some idea of what those prestige capstones will require, as you may well be able to do get on track for a PrC well before your first 20). We're also talking about a 10 year time-frame, so at some point the desire to hit that second capstone will end up happening for most veteran players.

It likely won't be the first, second, or even third priority for most characters, but it will eventually come about for a great many of them so it seems worth discussing.

It's not going to be GOD characters it's going to be (or at least the goal is) more along the line of f(x)=(2x-1)/x, wherein as time (x) approaches infinity the power (f(x)) of a character approaches the limit of "2". Obviously my numbers are arbitrary, but the basic graph of the function remains the same.

Exactly... I think. I'm not particularly math savvy, but I'm pretty sure that's an excellent expression of what I mean, but I could have never said it that way cogently.

I'd say sculpting your character is even less than half, but at the same time it's an important factor that can't get stagnant or you quit playing him. Or worse, because of the other aspects of your character(i.e. your position in a guild, settlement, corporation or w/e) you get stuck playing a character you don't like.

That's why my initial suggestion was .25%/lvl past 20, or 5% per 20 lvl block. You're right, though, that may well not stand the length of the game. Make it an even smaller percentage, or make it scale down with each 20 lvl block, whatever. I'm just worried about my character starting to feel really stagnant after the fifth year if the only advances I've made in the last two and a half are new abilities, especially if I'm just randomly branching out in abilities at that point because I fully realized my character concept at level 20, 20/20, 20/20/20, or whatever.

I have a feeling the reality of PFO will be so far removed from all the conversations we have here that, if we ever bother to come back to these early posts, we'll laugh at how wrong we were. That's not to say PFO isn't interested in hearing our thoughts and concerns; I'm sure they are.

I'm just thrilled to be given the opportunity to be part of the conversation :)

I'm sure you're right, but these conversations are the whole point of the forum as far as I can tell. Even if the devs just see one angle they hadn't considered in all these forums then I count my participation in the discussion a success, even if it was the guy I was debating's idea. If I come off a little strident it's simply because if ever is the time to raise concerns, it's in the development process.

Any yeah, it's pretty freakin' excellent that the game's developers are encouraging this type of back and forth at this point in the development process.

As I was eating dinner I considered that the defensive stats might all be gained through the "merit badges" attained by doing specific things in game rather than as passive bonus from abilities, if that's the case then this is a moot point.

Are you playing the game to have "FUN" or are you playing the game to be perpetualy more powerfull then anyone who started playing the game after you did? (or can spend more hours a week grinding then you..if that's the advancement mechansim)

If you are playing the game to be more "powerfull" then anyone else...then eventualy you are going to end up playing the game by yourself because virtualy no one is interested in playing an Open World PvP focused game as a perpetual 3rd class citizen against people they can't possibly hope to compete against in some aspect of play.

It's one thing to say you have to put in X amount of time/effort to play on roughly the same field to compete. It's another thing to say X is an ever moving/increasing number that 99.9% of the players signing up for the game can never have a chance in heck of meeting. You'll have a player population of about 10 people total.

I can see how I may have come across that way, but I'm not really a power gamer at all. I do plan to play the game a bunch though, and if my character stops effectively progressing after 2.5 years, then that's his shelf life imo. After that, he becomes a virtual npc in my eyes while I train up another character.

Again this is nothing about casual freindly either...it's that you have some FIXED amount that is used to set the bar that at least a decent portion of you target audience can hope to meet at SOME point. That dynamic falls apart where you have "infinite advancement" (in terms of power) and the bar is set by .1% of the player base of your game that the other 99.9% can NEVER hope to meet....with an EVER WIDENING GAP between the .1% and everyone else. People might not have a particular problem with a small gap in power, even in games which are focused on DIRECT COMPETITION... the problem is with infinite power advancement...what may start out as a small gap, eventualy gets wider and wider until it effectively becomes an "I Win" button...and no one but the .1% should even bother to show up. That's why there needs to be some limitation on power advancement.

What I've been advocating is adding 5% of your passive defenses from all levels, classes, abilities, or w/e past your current 20. The amount of gap between a 20 and a 20/20 in that scenario is very small. 20/20 isn't going to steamroll 20 because of 5% more defensive stats. Calling it *infinite advancement* seems a little disingenuous. I'm just talking about a little nod to the guy that's been playing for years. Realistically, make it go 5%/4%/3%/2%/1%. That way our intrepid level 20 *can* always catch up, but OG McAncient continues to improve all around after 20 rather than just gaining a slightly bigger toy box every so often.

Note here that we are JUST talking about ONE ASPECT of advancement...personal combat/adventuring power.

The neat thing about a game like PFO...is that personal adventuring/combat ability is JUST ONE ASPECT OF THE GAME. You've also got the whole faction/nation/kingdom building ASPECT of the game...and that has the potential to be much more open ended

All of that is super true, and I don't have any desire to equate that sort of "life" development with character power level in terms of why the game should be played. I'm not saying that in ten years I want to be able descend on the wings of a draco-lich and lay waste to all the kingdoms of men. What I'm saying is that I don't understand why a character who's been around for 10 years can't have some *small* defensive advantage reflecting their breadth of experience over a character who's been around for 2.

cannabination wrote:

I've agreed on the damage output since my very first post... they should be about equal. It's the *defense stats* that I'm concerned about.

Someone who has been adventuring for 5 years should be tougher to kill than someone who's been adventuring for 2. Please argue *that* statement.

In a heartbeat I can argue that. Because we have to keep them on a sane playing field. Obviously if 4 years down the road, any new player who starts, knows at day 1, they always be 2 leagues short of the vets playing today, aren't going to bother starting. It has nothing to do with flavor as much as "It has to be done this way or the game is going to be unfun for anyone who didn't start in the 100,000 that were proposed as the goal for the first year. IMO the proper compromise is any defense/HP bonuses, or direct damage increases will have to be in their own tree, one that can be obtained by anyone regardless of class.

Oh and he's been adventuring for 6 years instead of 2, even without HP boosts, he will be tougher to kill, regardless of HP Defense etc... Why because he will have seen and known the counter for every combination you throw at him, he will know how to get away when etc... Someone playing a game without levels/skills etc... at all for years longer then someone who has, the person who has been playing for 5 years has an edge over the one for 2 years even when you start them with identical characters.

There a several holes in this argument. I'm going to ignore them all and just say that if you make a character that has existed for 5 years equal to one that has existed for 2, there is no incentive to play for that extra 3 years. You aren't increasing in power, and therefore are not growing. How is it less fair for the guy who just started to be perpetually weaker than it is for the guy who has been dedicated to the game since release to be perpetually average? The idea that player skill is the only thing to separate players seems like socialist gaming to me. Let's hand out T-ball trophies to everyone for paying their $15 per month.

As Nihi said, when I throw numbers out there, it is just for the purpose of having a tangible idea for comparison and drawing a scale to compare A and B. A can be 3, or 100, the concept still applies.

You're missing my point. A level 20 Paladin should be able to fill his bars with abilities that work well together. As should a 20/20/20/20, but with a wider array of abilities. It's the *DEFENSES* I'm worried about.

Odds are if/when prestiges are added after the fact, some sort of reskill/respec of some sort will be added to fit whatever it is supposed to be, or it will be something obvious. Since prestiges are most likely going to be bonus perks for the vets, maybe the prestiges will be added down the road and say arcane trickster has no capstone of it's own, but requires rogue and wizard capstones. Or maybe it just has no capstone, but requires minimum wizards 3rd level spells merit badge and rogues 5th badge or so.

Why? Where did you get any of the info you used to make those determinations? Phrases like "will", "odds are", and "most likely" need some support.

Now as far as the kiting example, I would have to say you can't necessarily stay out of his reach. The opponent could charge while you are casting/firing etc... you just used an ability and your universal cool down etc... Every tactic should have a counter attack, and most likely 1-2 classes that can beat it, Whether you get beaten in it by the person who has the class as his only 20, or one of his 5 20's, the results should be identical.

I think you're missing my point again. I wasn't saying that an arcane archer is an un-killable character, I was stating it was a viable dual-class. Since we seemed to be debating whether or not multi-class characters would be viable I thought it worth mentioning.

I absolutely cannot understand the logic of two characters being equal power level(AGAIN... DEFENSIVELY) when one has lived, adventured, and experienced for 3 times as long. Why even bother with levels if a level 3 and a level 20 will have such a power disparity? That poor level three is going to take 2.5 years to get up to the 20's power level. In terms of an mmo(outside of WoW) 2.5 years is an ETERNITY. Level one guy has probably a 15% chance of sticking with the game long enough to see his level 20, and we're gonna focus the game on *that guy* rather than the guy who's already been playing(and paying) for nigh on three years? Seems extremely backwards to me.

Kryzbyn wrote:

If all abilities are earned, all abilities should be available at anytime, with one another, if they are passive.

Not necessarily:

Ranger bonus - +10% stealth chance when in the wilderness.
Rogue bonus - +10% stealth bonus in civilized areas.

A player can have both of these. They will never be available at the same time.

Similarly: Fighter - +10% hit chance with swords
Monk - +10% damage with fists.
Barbarian - Super Attack with Axe.
-Never active at the same time.

leveling up in multiple classes with give you breadth of abilities. It will not necessarily give you more to use at any one time, or more power in 1.

Similarly, depending on how large the bonuses are or what the prerequisites are, they may not scale in such a way that the bonus outweighs the players skill and gear selections.

The key word in Kryzbyn's post was *available*. The stuff you mentioned is indeed mutually exclusive, but what about HP, saves(or equivalent), SR and the like? There are no situations where those types of passive abilities would be rendered useless, so the 20/20/20/20 would have 80 levels of each?

If all abilities are earned, all abilities should be available at anytime, with one another, if they are passive.

I 100% agree with you, but then there becomes a serious power gap between a 20/20/20/20 and a 20 because the character level 80 guy has passive defenses from all 80 levels. I'm not sure why, but evidently the level 80 and the level 20 are supposed to be the same power level.

cannabination wrote:

If you spend 2 and a half years to get to level 20 and only have three decent attack skills, that alone is enough to make me worry.

I don't think the 3 attacks was literal. It was just meant as a relative way to convey the point, which is that even if you have 100 abilities as a 20 and 10,000 abilities as a 20/20/20/20/20/..., you can still only do 10 things a minute (or whatever).

As far as the defense goes, if a player is a 20/20 Monk/Wizard, then they're going to have some pretty wicked defense and some pretty awesome offense, but I can easily see PFO doing something like making your Monk Defensive Form require you to only be doing Monk-like things while it's active, so that if you started casting Fireball, you're not going to get +8 Dodge, or whatever.

That is my exact problem. If you learned all the stuff necessary to become a lvl 20 monk, you *should* be able to apply that to *everything* that you do. Maybe not at a 1:1, but you don't forget all that discipline, training, and awareness that has become second nature because you're casting a spell or shooting a crossbow or chatting with your familiar. Moreover, you *definitely* wouldn't lose the wizard will save while doing monk things, losing a mental faculty because you're throwing a punch would be bloody silly.

If you spend 2 and a half years to get to level 20 and only have three decent attack skills, that alone is enough to make me worry. I'd imagined a level 20 being able to fill his bars, even if some the abilities aren't the most powerful I'd think that since they're all from the same "archetype" that there would be enough synergy between them to make it fairly powerful.

The reason that a 20/20/20 Can be comperable power level to a 20, is rather simple really, Both can use their skills at roughly the same frequency, say a universal cooldown you can use 1 skill every 6 seconds (or less, but lets just say 6 seconds for the sake of having a solid number that matches the P&P rules). Now the pure paladin has 3 nice attacks that he can alternate between, while the 20/20/20 has 9 nice attacks that he can alternate, they are both still doing the same amount of abilities per second, but the 20/20/20 is more likely to have an ability that takes advantage of the current weakness of his opponent.

I've agreed on the damage output since my very first post... they should be about equal. It's the *defense stats* that I'm concerned about.

Someone who has been adventuring for 5 years should be tougher to kill than someone who's been adventuring for 2. Please argue *that* statement.

First part: Yes he would get the improved will save, and the CHA bonus to all saves, again at the cost of the fighters main dump stat.

As far as the "dump stat" and "alignment" are concerned, I just think that a lot of people are trying to force this mmo into the PnP paradigm. You might well get evil points for backstabbing an innocent, but I doubt if your god will be angry at you for backstabbing demons. Furthermore, my example was of a *bard*, who could run an entire career without doing anything of moral ambiguity. Alignment restrictions just don't seem feasible with abilities... possibly the capstones could be restricted. The "lawful/chaotic" axis is the one you've got to worry about, "good/evil" is easy.

Wizard/Rogue: No armor, extra-squishy going into melee? No I think I'll sit back here and cast spells. Atat conflicts and magic attack power vs. physical.

Ever heard of an Arcane Trickster? Sneak attacking with spells is pretty sweet. Sneak attacking from invis is pretty sweet. Having hold person and sneak attack on your bar at the same time will be pretty sweet.

Ranger/sorc: Again no armor, no dual-wield, I could shoot things with my bow or just release my nigh endless stream of spells at the enemy. Again stats and M.Att vs. P.Att.

Alternately, you could say that I have the dps tool for any occasion. High armor/HP enemy? Probably low mental or magical resistances... and you have a spell for that. High resistance or speed enemy? Arrows to the face. The best part, you can always stay out of range of melee opponents(dim door, expeditious retreat, w/e they put in) and can tailor your strat to the ranged. "This guy is a caster. Have fun trying to cast through this constant stream of arrows.""Next guy is a ranger. Nice will save(or equivalent), buddy." Not to mention all the Arcane Archer buffs.

Your character building creativity not-withstanding, this system *is* going to lead to some pretty sweet possible combos, and since they're talking about releasing prestige class capstones later we can even expect them to become "legitimized". But let's say I want to hit that arcane trickster capstone and start putting my points into the rogue tree exclusively, for a year. How far do I go before I've taken something that's outside the arcane trickster tree? There's no way to tell. So instead I start throwing some points in sorcerer. But I accidentally take a metamagic(or equivalent) that doesn't fall under the arcane trickster tree. If the perk thing is works as stated above, does that mean I can't risk taking a perk until the prestige capstone is released for fear of blowing my character? Or I throw caution to the wind and assume that something will be, choose wrong, and blow my character concept. Either way, now I have to keep playing this character that cannot fulfill the purpose of his creation but is too watered down to be truly effective without it. Or I can remake my character and spend another year getting back to that point.

This is just an *example*. At release, we're not going to have any idea how abilities will synergize down the road, and if it's going to take two and a half years to get there it'll be quite sometime before we find out. So we're supposed to plan our characters based on theory-crafting. That's fine, up to the point where a decision I make a week or two after the game is released irrevocably alters my play experience for the next 2.5+ years. If you didn't see my suggestion for a compromise scroll up a few posts and give it a look.

I have no problem with the theory behind the capstones, in fact, as a long time PnPer I really like it. My problem is that pigeon-holing people for *that* long before they can even see if their character concept is effective just seems draconian to me. Remember, this is *not* PnP where you play your characters for 5 hours each week as a minor hobby. We're talking about an mmo, where 16-20 hours a week is considered casual. That's just way too much time invested over two years to restrict people like that.

I think people are kinda going off track here a little bit.

It wouldn't be a F20/Pld20. It would only be a F20 with the abilities of a Pld20 as well. That sounds kinda powerful but hold on.

He doesn't gain any of the saves or passive bonuses of being a Paladin? If no, then what was the point of becoming a paladin? If yes, then you can't deny that as a significant advantage over a pure fighter. Especially if the resistances will be based on a different, specific stat; because pally bonuses are divine and would affect all of them. From what I've been reading a level 40 shouldn't be stronger than a level 20, which I can't really understand.

And the more classes you add the more drawbacks you will run into.

Except for classes that *don't* have a large overlap. Do that same comparison with a rogue and a wizard. Or a sorcerer and a ranger. Or a paladin and a bard(bearing in mind that alignment restrictions in a skill-based system make very little sense).

cannabination wrote:

As for the capstones, I pretty much love the idea with a few minor quibbles. I like the restriction of a certain set of abilities as prereq's for the capstone, and I don't have a problem with further restricting people to that list to get the capstone.

I don't think they're saying you can only choose Fighter Archetype skills for 2.5 years. I think they're saying you can't accept a Merit Badge in another Archetype for that 2.5 years, which means you might well be able to select many Skills from the other Archetypes.

That's a good point. I hadn't made that distinction, and it's fairly important.

cannabination wrote:

Since we've been talking about Elminster... he was all of those other classes *before* he was a wizard, but you can't tell me he didn't have that capstone.

Are you sure he didn't get all 20 of his Wizard levels in a row? *grins*

He did, I think. I'm not sure I read it right, but wouldn't your previous statement mean that he wasn't allowed to accept any "merit badges" in fighter, rogue, or cleric?

As I said, I'm all about damage output being about on par, it's the defenses that I have a problem with. As I also said, the defense bits(HP, saves, whatever) could be applied fractionally, meaning that you'd get some percentage of the passive defense traits of your inactive abilities(i.e. those abilities that aren't in your "active" list).

I don't see a problem with a 20/20/20/20/20 being harder to kill than a 20. If he's got 20%(meaning .25% per level past the initial 20 levels) more base hp and saves(rather than 400%) it makes sense to me. I'm not saying that our "Elminster" character should be able to cast every spell he's ever learned and have five times our level 20's HP, but I do think he should be a bit stronger... arguing the other way makes very little sense. If someone plays this game for 5 years on the same character, imo they should be rewarded in some way. Making them perpetually equivalent to people who have been playing for a year and a half or whatever just doesn't seem very rewarding.

There seems to be a huge amount of focus on tailoring the game to casual players. I'm not gonna lie, I'm really excited about this game and when it comes out I want to play it for hours and hours on end. I don't need to power level my way to "max level" in the first week or the first year, but at the same I want PFO to be my *primary* game.

The "skills on a timer" thing would be awesome, if there was something pro-active I could do to supplement it. I want to feel like I'm achieving something in the time I play, and I'm really confused how I'm supposed to feel about being told that the character progression system is optimal for people who want to use PFO as a secondary game.

Is there going to be incentive for someone who *likes* the game enough to play it for long periods? I never played EVE, so excuse my ignorance of the system, but all of a sudden this sounds like some sort of suped-up Evony or something to me. I don't mean that to sound rude, but I feel like I'm being told to be less excited, interested, and ultimately passionate about the game.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this. If you're 20/20 and you're the exact same power level as a 10/10 or a 20, I sorta dig that as far as output. But as far as your ability as someone with twice the character level to soak or mitigate that damage being equal, I'm a little dubious.

It seems to me that if it'll take a significant period of time to hit 20, then there has to be some sort of reward for doing it twice other than a bigger toy-box. I'm on board with limiting the number of toys you can play with to your "level", but you've gotta functionally have more HP and better saves having seen and been through twice as much as a "person".

If skills will only give access to new abilities(which is awesome) then the only way to generate hp is through abilities, yes? If you can only have 20 active at a time, there's no way to implement that disparity which I find breaks immersion right off the bat. If I'm misunderstanding how HP and such will work then I apologize, but it seems to me that if you keep doing cool stuff you would keep getting stronger in all regards, not just the versatility of your abilities. As everyone is always so quick to point out, we aren't playing PnP... these characters will continue to develop new abilities until the end of time.

I guess I'm picturing Elminster, who's at least 20W/10C/5F/5R (disregarding all the demi-god stuff and just focusing on character levels. You can say that he couldn't have that level distribution in PFPnP, and you're right, but apply it to the context of this discussion) getting taken out by a 20 wizard. They might have the same number of spells per day(assuming Elminster took all spells), but Elminster has all those extra HP's and saving throw bonuses that imo *have* to carry over even if it's fractional and that's not what you call them.

As for the capstones, I pretty much love the idea with a few minor quibbles. I like the restriction of a certain set of abilities as prereq's for the capstone, and I don't have a problem with further restricting people to that list to get the capstone. My problem is restricting them for 2.5 years. Would it be possible to lessen the amount of time that one needs to remain "faithful" without lessening the time it takes to get 20 "levels"?

I was thinking one year of making "fighter only" choices opens up the fighter capstone assuming you meet all the prereqs. That way you could build your character however you wanted at the beginning with a little room for error for your "end game"(read as: 20 ability) build. Enabling a youngster to pick up CLW, for example, wouldn't bar access to his capstone for the sake of an ability that would be totally useless 2.5 years into his "life". There would still be a considerable amount of time invested to actually *achieve* that capstone(1 year, minimum) but it could be a goal for anyone who decided to make that investment rather than a one time decision at generation.

Since we've been talking about Elminster... he was all of those other classes *before* he was a wizard, but you can't tell me he didn't have that capstone.

How are you to know what you're going to want to do with your character in 2.5 years? That just seems like a really long time to pigeon hole people.

I really have no interest in training a skill to ride anything more challenging than a palfrey until you include the Owlbear(As I was about to post this I started thinking that Owlbears didn't get through the OGL. If that's the case I apologize but stick with me, I have a point). Owlbears are freaking awesome, and I'd waste months to train the ability to ride one on every character.

They're stupidly powerful(and cool... don't forget cool), but on level with a Pegasus? A Wyvern? What level of Animal Handling is sufficient for each of these? Is there a Hunter-esque "stable" for your various mounts, or do you have to boot your Riding Dog to the curb when you get your Displacer Beast? If you get a stable(and we'll just *assume* that you have all the necessary land and building materials for your menagerie), how do you keep a Wyvern, a Hippogryph, and a Pegasus in the same building without them tearing the place down to kill each other? Who is going to feed these beasts that require such high Handle Animal while you're away? Do you need to come by and walk your Gryphon every day, or is it content to sit in your stable snarfing down hundreds of tons of livestock every year while you use your Wyvern and your Nightmare?

I tend to agree with Squiddybiscuit about restricting it to equines and maybe riding dogs. While fantastic mounts sound really cool, that slope is awfully slippery and all of a sudden you've got one seriously convoluted mess to both balance and code.

One other facet we seem to have skipped over is Figurines of Wondrous Power. I'd love to see the standard horse whose safety you'd need to constantly assure(like Red Dead, anyway) and Figurines that would essentially work like a WoW mount(however many times per day). If there are flight mechanics in the game, this would be one way to introduce flying mounts without all the headaches that *should* come with a flying mount, so if that's the case it might not be the best idea.

A sort of Venn diagram of character aptitude? Would you then pick your "groups" upon creation? Seems like a cool idea.

Why is that silly? You set out to make the best two-handed fighter of all time, and you did it. Congratulations. You've learned all there is to learn. Now go do something else.

Because I didn't set out to make a Paladin.

You are making the choice. You are choosing where to put those talent points.

That's the most obtuse statement I've read in quite some time. If you *force* me to pick shooting myself in the face or jumping from a bridge, you can't say that I *chose* to kill myself.

I thought a lot of people wanted to remove the traditional tank/dps/heal/control rolesets from the game. Isn't that one of the points of a skill-based system? That you can actually branch out to whatever role(s) you want?

Read my next post, I realize the incongruity of some of my statements about this. I want the choices to be there, I'm just worried about the slippery slope. The difference between a character that can fulfill multiple roles and a character that can fill *every* role. You can say that he'll be a "jack-of-all-trades" so he'll be a "master of none" all you like, but given a year or two years or however long to level up, if there's no max level it's gonna happen unless something creative is done to prevent it. *That* is what I'm trying to get to, Scott... a solution.

This is the sort of discussion in which I'd like to see a Blue post. Seems like we're discussing some really good stuff here, but we may just as well be pissing in the wind.

Edit: There is a post from Ryan regarding the skill system here.

I feel a little schizophrenic as I think about this. We know we're not going to have classes, I know I don't want the trinity and I know I don't want homogeneous characters. Seems to me they're two sides of a coin, and I feel like short of some revolutionary skill system(a third side to said coin, I guess) we've no choice but to wind up with one or the other.

Edit #2:

Stealing shamelessly from a skills-based MMO, Star Wars Galaxies featured branched professions; each branch required XP in the associated skill to advance (making weapons grants weaponsmithing XP, other people using weapons you made also grants you weaponsmithing XP; making healing kits boosts healing XP, which is used exclusively to gain healer/medic/doctor abilitites) Each level in each branch granted specific abilities, bonuses, proficiencies, and all the mechanical benefits.

Hit points might be granted by progressing along the combat trees, or along the survival tree, or by equipment. Spells are unlocked by the spell trees (perhaps a tree for each school of arcane magic, plus one for each divine power source) while the ability to cast more spells more often, or with less preparation, would come from its the casting trees.

There is a cap to the total number of profession levels that a character can have at any time: They can be given up at any time, but experience spent on them is lost. It is never required to acquire any given ability.

Respeccing a character, then, is exactly the same process as leveling one up to begin with, except that you have your existing skills until you choose to lose them to acquire the new skills.

I love the sound of this...

What's wrong with encouraging players to diversify their character (or forcing them to, once they've utterly mastered a particular skill)?

I see a huge problem with a roleplaying game that *forces* you to change your character. If I plan to make the bast 2h fighter of all time, and 6 months later I have all those feats and am effectively "max" level, I'd think it silly that I randomly decided it was time to lean how to heal. It's one thing if a character makes the *choice*. It's something else when they *have* to do this for lack of anything else to do.

cannabination wrote:

I guess what I'm trying to say is that in this system we'd wind up with a great many fighter/rogue/wizard/clerics after the first group has been playing for a few months, and that just seems like a different kind of homogeneous class system.

Wouldn't we see this in a skill-based system anyway? Given enough time, people will become masters at multiple skill categories.

I guess, to some degree. But unless measures as stated before(make it so feats incrementally increase your skills each time you put spend a point on a feat) then *every* character will be this 4 class wonder. I find that to be extremely tired. Seems like that's going a long way in the other direction from encouraging people to socialize.

"Why bother finding a healer, we can both heal a little. No real reason to find a tank, we can both wear beefy armor. CC? Nah, we've both got that too. I can pick locks and disarm traps, can you? Yeah, but whatever."

Sounds awesome but it seems dangerous in an mmo. It does sound like the optimal solution, assuming it can be balanced.

Edit: One problem I can see with this system, though, is that at some point all characters will be forced to start choosing abilities outside of their character design for lack of anything else to do with those "feats". In a single player hack and slasher like skyrim that might be fine, but in this world that seems problematic. I guess if there were a) something else to spend feats on that buffed your character or b) so many available feats that no one could ever perfect multiple trees(doesn't really seem possible), that might be a solution.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that in this system we'd wind up with a great many fighter/rogue/wizard/clerics after the first group has been playing for a few months, and that just seems like a different kind of homogeneous class system.

The way I'm imagining most respecs working is just a few feats here and there as people figure out what helps to build the character they want. I'd be fairly surprised if a large percentage of people decide that their entire character concept is broken and useless, rather I think it'll be about fine-tuning and trial and error with certain "feats". That seems perfectly reasonable and should, imo, be encouraged.

I just have a real fundamental problem with the instant relearning of an entirely new skill set, so I think there's probably some sort of happy medium to be found that marries the two concepts. I like the idea of simply building on the same feat tree and make the "Ranger abilities" next to useless without proper attire/buffs.

The possibility of that will depend on how "leveling up" works. If there's no "level cap", then there can't be a true capstone ability, rather several capstone abilities one can work toward simultaneously. I can't imagine how that system would work, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible.

I think it *should* be arduous to respec your character, let alone switch from a Ranger to a Necromancer. I get the image of an utterly superficial game play when someone who has spent months(years, in-game) learning to bust out all these crazy bow shots can just wiggle their nose and drop some gp in the coffers to pretend like that never happened and instantly *poof*, know how to summon undead and drain the life from the masses. IMO, if you have a Ranger and you want a Necro, start an alt.

I agree to a point, but I just hate the "full respec". Whatever mechanic you want to make, just make it gradual. One "feat" per week, or per level, a B.o.P. consumable that you get for completing some crazy dungeon or achieving something in the game that lets you swap out a feat or two, something along those lines.

Charlie the Ranger respeccing into Charlie the Necromancer just pisses me off.

We seem to be talking about two separate things, "skills" and "feats"(using "feats" for discussion's sake, use "abilities" or "powers" or whatever you like).

In a skill based system, you theoretically start with a 1 in every skill, and then it levels up as you use it, right? How would you respec that? Furthermore, *why* would you respec? If your sword and board style just doesn't have the burst damage you were looking for(jokes), then you'd just start using a 2-hander or twf and start leveling *that* from 1. Why would you want to lose all the time and effort you've put into your sword and board training to be able to do that?

With regard to "feats", I'm for the D&D system where you can trade out a feat at each level. I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to fine-tune aspects of your character as you progress, but you should have some sort of vision when you start, and it shouldn't be possible for it to unravel to the extent that you need to start from scratch.

Starting from scratch should take as long as getting there the first time. I'm in favor of the "Restart at level 1 button" if you want a full respec. If you're going to have the ability to make alts, why wouldn't you just keep that character and start a new one? Does he really have *zero* redeeming value? No crafting skills or merchant skills or gathering skills you could use betimes? If not... what where you thinking?

I dunno, the full respec just seems silly in a forum where we're always talking about "immersion" and putting the RP back in MMORPG.

I always wondered what the allure of guilds was about.

Does adventuring require group play? Or is crafting the only way for solo play to work?

In reverse order:

No, you can definitely adventure solo. The areas where it will be safe to do so will likely not be the most profitable(in terms of xp and loot), but if you can deal with that there's no reason you couldn't have a great time playing solo for your whole experience. You can head out into less protected zones as long as you aren't afraid of getting killed by roving groups of bastages. This game seems as close to DnD as you're going to find in a real time environment(in spirit and practice, not the rule-set), so it's totally going to be worth a look.

As for the guild thing, it's nice to have a group of friends to play the game with, even if it's just a chat channel. People you can rely on to come and heal when you need it, come teach a lesson to the skull that's camping your corpse, enchant your new sword, supply you with cheap mats for your profession, provide a market for your profession, or craft that rare breastplate that people are charging way too much for. Even if you play the game solo 100% of the time, it would still be worth getting into a guild just for the added networking. Better for you, since you'll likely end up being a "casual" player, you wouldn't need to find one that met certain game-play criteria and could focus on finding a group that you just enjoy talking to.

@ Matthew

cannabination wrote:

On that same line, games like bejeweled and peggle would make good mini-games that would be both simple and familiar enough to people that the curve wouldn't be too bad. Off the top of my head I'd say they go well with Enchanting and Fletching, respectively. Clearly brand new and totally engrossing games would be preferable, but we can't expect a team as small as Goblinworks to create this incredibly ambitious mmo and several quality mini-games on top of it. I'd think this would be the *perfect* thing to offer up to the community for development, once that middle-ware were chosen.

And here we learn that we are thinking to two very different concept when speaking of "minigames". I think of something game related, like selecting the ore for making a sword and hitting the metal just right, you think of something that is totally outside the main game.

I agree that bejeweled could keep you interested almost forever, but it will break immersion too.

-* - * - *-

Then there is a problem with what will happen in a PvP game when you are doing a complex minigame and someone attack you.
You care forced to leave it with loss of material/time/resources?
You can't leave it and you will be slaughtered without the capacity to defend yourself?
You can leave and resume it when you...

I was trying of think of ways to make these mini-games actually *possible* rather than just a good idea. If we're talking about a mini-game for each craft, I guess multiple mini-games/craft if you want to be able to achieve different types of "success" then we're talking about a metric crap-load of mini-games. Which all need to be conceptualized, coded, and maintained by a development team that isn't exactly rocking Blizzard's resources nor PopCap's experience level with the product.

As I said, clearly new and fantastic games would be preferable, but it seems more likely that we'd end up with maybe a few fun ones and then several tedious, boring, or broken games that would require as much constant retooling as the actual mmo they are trying to enhance. My suggestion was to find middle-ware of existing games to eliminate all that consideration. If they could lure PopCap away from EA to write unique mini-games that would be awesome(but is totally unlikely), but my general point is that these games would be much easier managed by a company designed to create them.

Even existing games would need to be retooled so that they would end reasonably quickly to prevent getting ganked during a particularly successful game of whatever, and that really is a consideration for gathering professions. That's really a tough one, especially if immersion is the alpha goal.

If that "logging off at a moment's notice" is in any way predictable I'd think you could manage to just avoid grouping up when you know you might have to leave. There should certainly be enough to do solo that you can find ways to play both ways. They've stated that they will be eventually bringing in F2P accounts, so if nothing else you can give it a shot before you drop any real flow. It might take a minute, but realistically with the player cap/month it might take a minute for all of us to get in, paying or no.

As Scott said, though, if you really do need to log off at completely random intervals then you're going to find it very tough to get things accomplished without an extremely understanding group of friends.

Edit: After thinking on it a little further, it really depends on what you might want to do in the game and what is eventually made possible by the devs. Even if you have to log off at totally random intervals there's no reason why you couldn't have a long and productive career as a master crafter of some sort, or some similar non-com job. Of course, reliability would still be somewhat of an issue, but at least you would never be in the position to bounce on your buddies in the middle of a dungeon or something. This type of character option leads me to believe that if nothing else, PFO is your best chance for an mmo.

cannabination wrote:

Zesty Mordant wrote:

So the only appeal of creating is that some other goon can come along and destroy your creation? We'll have to agree to disagree on that point.

If no one can kick over your sand castle, why build it?

...to express ones creativity? In the context of PFO, I don't believe I would ever build something intentionally so some else could destroy it. That might be the inevitable consequences of building something, like the tide sweeping away a sand castle, but the reason for building something in PFO would be to, more than likely, protect other things.

Wise man say "Every castle made of sand must fall into the sea, eventually".

I dunno what you've read, but the campaign setting we're talking about here isn't exactly Candy Mountain. I didn't at all mean to suggest that nothing should ever be done for creativity's sake, but rather that in an area as hostile as this you'd better do it in a safe place if you want it to last. A great many sand castles will be kicked over in the making of this production. I suppose the question would have been better asked "If there are no threats to your sand castle, where is the achievement or fun in making it?" What is the value of something no one wants?

Moro wrote:

Second Life cannot really hold true to being much of a sandbox without any combat. Part of the allure of a true sandbox is that the sandcastles rise and fall via player actions and interactions. Kicking another persons sandcastle over is as much a part of a functional sandbox as all of the intricacies that go into building a sandcastle.

So the only appeal of creating is that some other goon can come along and destroy your creation? We'll have to agree to disagree on that point.

If no one can kick over your sand castle, why build it? This takes place in GOLARION, not Farmville. At the same time, if building a strong sandcastle(literally) isn't your bag, pay rent to someone who likes it and chase your fireflies all day long. Chances are the guy who is going to commission yon gigantic castle will also defend it.

On topic, we seem to be glossing over the fact that you don't need to be able to tame a wild hippogryph to learn to ride one, but that's pretty irrelevant. There have been a great many examples of things that can be done to make training and operating a flying mount so close to prohibitive that only the most focused and well planned trainers can accomplish it and how to limit the actual power of the ability. In the PFO I'm imagining it'll be a lot easier for a wizard to fly around than an archer on a gryph, and he'll be doing it a lot earlier. As far as safe transport is concerned, I'd be more concerned with teleports than flying mounts in terms of breaking the game. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be available to players.

Back off topic, the actual design of most fortifications is to keep the Mongorians off your "sand-castle", right? Will there be crafting skills like engineering and architecture enabling new building advancements, such as the portcullis, murder-holes, secret entrances, and the like? Seems like an easy enough system to implement if you standardize the discovery process, and those folks would certainly be able to find work. Although I'm thinking you'd not necessarily want to contract that kind of work to a random who could sell your weaknesses to a rival. That might be a little difficult to regulate.

Tying the two together, these building skills would have significant in-game effects and a master builder would carry such power that he'd need to put a lot of time into learning a largely non-combat role. He might need to understand tactics, but this guy doesn't want to actually *own* or *defend* the castle, he just wants to design it, see that it's built, get paid, and move on. Just like someone who loves the idea of tending and training herds of horses or whatever isn't likely to have the time to pick up spell casting or spontaneously learn to shadow step, nor does he want to. I hope that PFO *does* attract all the non-combatants out there, because that will be what turns it from a reasonably standard mmo into an engrossing and dynamic world.

Or *until* your enemy is defeated... I can see that as a slippery slope, but on principal I totally agree, Mel.

Aion has an interesting wrinkle in this regard. There are open world "dungeons" that aren't instanced. I.e., several quests taking place in a village, encampment, cave complex, or whatever filled with elite and boss mobs. This resulted in some seriously crazy PvP in the bowels of the area for the right to fight whatever boss you happened to be in front of, or even for a mining node or quest item. It's a super contentious way to set up a zone, but it was also really fun and you *never* felt safe in those areas. Aion had factions, it might not work in an "us vs. the world" type game. However; in a PvP leaning game contention is kind of the point, right?

Upon further reflection, there are tons of opportunities to use mini-games in the sandbox. Tower defense and defense of the ancients formats would work their way brilliantly into player created quests/dungeons and specialized pvp areas. These would need teams of their own, as previously stated, but since Goblinworks has already professed desire to use middle-ware I'd think that would be simple enough with games that have been open source(or close enough) since WC2. Seems like that would cut down on the design element, assuming they could be made compatible with the game's engine.

On that same line, games like bejeweled and peggle would make good mini-games that would be both simple and familiar enough to people that the curve wouldn't be too bad. Off the top of my head I'd say they go well with Enchanting and Fletching, respectively. Clearly brand new and totally engrossing games would be preferable, but we can't expect a team as small as Goblinworks to create this incredibly ambitious mmo and several quality mini-games on top of it. I'd think this would be the *perfect* thing to offer up to the community for development, once that middle-ware were chosen.

Alternatively, make the minigame optional, but have participation in the minigame yield a slightly increased (or additional) result.

For instance, if you had a crafting minigame you could craft normally (just press the Craft button and wait until it finishes) or play the short minigame and create a stronger item, or have a chance to discover a new item recipe in the process (I like the latter idea better, frankly).

I love everything about this thread, and would also worry about forcing players to draw out their crafting experience by forcing them to play games to cut down trees or weave a shirt(loom game seems *awesome*). Making the games optional seems like the perfect solution to me.

So many cool things could be done with this idea... mini-games to achieve specific functions(i.e., one to achieve maybe material or time saved for bulk items and others to achieve the aforementioned critical success or recipe discovery on a MW+ item). Throw game specific leader-boards up on the web somewhere(OoG preferably, or maybe in crafter guild halls) for the crafting focused characters and you've got a really nice, innovative feature that's specifically *not* focused on "end-game".

Clearly there's a point where if a game becomes too easy it becomes un-fun. Is that point different for everyone? Of course. I do thing it's a bit off to keep harping on the fact that "it worked for Blizzard". I feel like Ryan has mentioned how he wants to learn from their mistakes often enough(not to mention his comparatively tiny goals in regards to a player-base) that we can quit saying that things should be _____ because WoW was and it's popular.

In this case, the powers that be have *planned* for a large percentage of players to quit playing. What I've seen so far that makes me *really* excited about this game is that rather than catering the game to those people, they're planning to create a world for the people who *want* to be there.

Clearly he's not planning to to tune a game to be so impossible that it falls into the "Demon Souls" genre and be maligned for years, and the assertion that the only other option is WoW-style face-roll content is just disingenuous.

It's one thing to provide a counter-argument for the sake of discussion, but it's entirely different to seek out specific statements and quote them out of content just to blast holes in them for the sake of argumentativeness is something else.

Confucius say "If you aren't adding to a discussion, you're subtracting".

Mel, would the screen have to be realistically black to clover your ideas of what constitutes a realistic night? If stealth based skills, for example, work better at night then that will influence your decision when to sneak into the guard post. Add in nocturnal mob sets, some cricket/tree frog noises, some different npc behavior in towns(near taverns or w/e) and you're starting to look pretty realistic... even if you can see down the street. I'm sure there are myriad other things you could add to differentiate day from night in meaningful ways.

That said I think that there has to be some sort of happy medium between the realistic inky blackness of night and the "slight tinge" to the screen that you're arguing against. I love the idea of the deep, shadowy forest and the gloomy, fetid swamp and I think there's a way to achieve that ambiance without making it so pronounced that it causes people to turn away from the game.

Like people needed more encouragement to recruit Aussies than their accent.

If you could outfit squads of troops or whatever for each guild/town/faction, that would keep a consistent market for low level goods as the world expands. If there were a mechanic that encouraged people to visit a crafter of the appropriate level for the item(some sort of level range in the cost formula possibly, or a +1 to some relevant stat, idk) that would get new people introduced to the economy and give them a way to make some cash.

I've been playing PF too long to expect it to be easy :D

expecting that 4500 players will perfectly fit all required roles in economy is far fetched.

I disagree completely, I've already started compiling a guild designed to do just that and there's at least one other with the same goal. In any game with an economy people will take advantage of voids in the market. See vanilla WoW enchanting recipes as an example. At least as far as what we want to survive in the harsh new world, I think there will be enterprising folk to fill all your needs.

With two guilds trying to provide market security on top all the individual gatherers, crafters, and adventurers pouring their wares into the mix I think we'll be alright. At least as far as the content that the majority of those contributing have reached. It would be a little unrealistic to expect Elder Red Dragon gizzards to be available for your potion of Fire-breathing(or w/e) four days after release.

I doubt if the market will be stable right away, I'm not sure that 4,500 people with radically different goals will be enough "sample size" to get a fully rounded gathering/crafting infrastructure. That really isn't too important, though, because that initial group will have enough to do just breaking ground on the enormous starting area.

In regards to player holdings, Ryan mentioned an abandoned town in the blog post. Maybe we'll have access to some of that without the income necessary to actually *build* the buildings.

Since this is alleged to be a skill based game I think the Trinity will sort of break up its self. I can imagine several different types of "tank" that don't fulfill the standard expectation of a tank(avoidance, dr, whatever).

As an example I did a lot of off tanking in Kara as a resto shaman. Through creative play by both a player and a group lots of things are possible.

I'm not saying that people won't be looking for the specific role of a tank or whatever, but I think each tank will be a lot different from the next. Assuming everything is balanced... this seems like a colossal undertaking for the devs.

Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer...there is nothing inherently wrong with these roles. I think the biggest problem is that these have become the only roles.

The Dedicated Buffer, the Debuffer, the Controller, and the Puller (and more that I am surely forgetting) have been forgotten or had their role spread out amongst the Trinity.

This.