David Bass You Make My Job Hard!

This David Bass Character comes on the team and now there are these "weekly round up" posts that link to all these interviews and outside discussions. (Keep up the good work!)

For some reason today's cardio was more exhausting than normal. Lots of sweat. I don't have a vine link though because I forgot my iPod and vine still hasn't gotten around to making an android version yet. Why did I forget my iPod? I was talking on my phone about Sony's press conference.

I stuck to the stairs rule today.

And I'm looking at the Group combat video.

This video is short, but it does confirm a couple of important things. First, the Holy Trinity (Tank, Healer and DPS) is the model of this game. It also confirms that group size will be 5 players for non-raid group content. (Currently)

These are important things to know and to think about. I have played Guild Wars 2 quite a bit over the last 6 months that it's been out. The non-trinity model is very interesting. It creates pretty dynamic content that requires everyone to be self sufficient and to combine their abilities in effective ways to create effects that keep everyone moving. But, several of my friends were just not happy with this design. I found that the friends that played DPS found this system rewarding and exciting. My friends who were Healers and Tanks very much disliked this model. They felt it marginalized their skills and preferred play style. So while people may say they feel like the trinity is an old model, it is the most logical for groups. And the easiest to fit into when communication is limited, such as in pick-up groups. You know they tank is going to tank and the healer is going to heal. You don't have to second guess your role. This also allows for developers to more tightly tune the content. When roles are undefined the encounter has to allow for a reasonable amount of headless chickening. And 5 does seem to be a good number. SWToR did 4, I actually thought it worked out pretty good for the content, but it made tanks and healers that much more in demand.

The don't answer a ton about group interaction in this video. A lingering question is "buffers" We all know there are tanks and there are healers, but DPS comes in these flavors. What are their side abilities, support healing, resource regen, damage buffing. Are these buffs/debuffs the primary role of any class, such that they don't do any significant damage themselves, but instead increase the damage of their party in such a way that it compensates for their blunted edge? I think of classes in other games such as the Bard and Red Mage in Final Fantasy 11. That game play was not fun, but it was in demand so you always had something to do, even if that something wasn't exciting. ... oh no, the memories have ignited, the song...THAT SONG!!!

Ok...had my roommates take turns slapping me.

My hope is that there are buffs and debuffs and that every class/spec brings some combination of them and that the meta game is about combining different classes and specs to maximize those bonuses, but not in such a way that there is only one right answer for any one buff or any killer spec that results in a player being told they are doing it wrong if they are not spec B of class X because they are useless without buff Y.