To make sure proper context is provided, the "holy trinity" of MMOs means having the core roles of tank, healer, and damage dealing in a group to deal with player vs. environment (PvE) encounters. A good majority of MMOs make use of this group setup and the responsibilities of each member of the group are pretty straight-forward - most of the time.
ArenaNet has been using the lack of this group setup as a major part of their hype machine for Guild Wars 2. While this certainly ramped up talk about how people are discontented about the "traditional" MMO group design, this discussion has been around for a very long time.
Group cooperation is never really an issue. No matter how a game is designed, having proper communication and planning will always be superior to just getting 4-5 random people together and just hope everyone knows what to do.
No, a lot of the talk revolves around damage dealers having trouble finding groups - because few people decide to take on the tank and healer roles.
Being a tank or healer in a group is about taking on a lot of responsibility. The tank usually ends up controlling the flow of the encounters while the healer ensures the right people stay alive long enough to finish the fight. Both roles have to make decisions on the fly and mistakes by either are the most visible and so blame easily falls on one of the two...or even both. I have personally seen the extra responsibility take it's toll on players and it often leads to tanks and healers to play a different role, refuse to run random groups, or just stop playing altogether.
So damage dealers can't find groups because of few tanks and healers. Tanks and healers get burned out easily and stop playing their characters. It's a vicious cycle, and it won't stop until people just wake up and realize they need something that is sadly lacking with the human race in general:
Personal Responsibility.
So my little gaming article now has become a social commentary piece? Online gaming has always been a social hub, whether one likes it or not. There is no doubt the worst of people can show up in an online game, but also can the best of people. You can tout all you want on how good or terrible an MMO is; terrible graphics, great game mechanics, balanced classes, etc, but the social aspect are online gaming's true heart.
The lack of personal resposibility means that the dislike of the "holy trinity" boils down to a social problem rather than a game design issue. In the past few years, games like World of Warcraft and RIFT have been putting more emphasis on personal resposibility. Concepts such as avoidable damage in encounters puts part of the resposibility of staying alive on each individual. The encounter Ultraxion in World of Warcraft is a good example as it becomes very obvious who failed to activate the ability to avoid the instant death attack. Encounters such as these are always the hardest in the game, not because the fight is designed to be hard, but because individual failures can cause the whole group to fail.
And that, in my most humble opinion, is exactly how it should always be.
Removing the "holy trinity", such as in Guild Wars 2, does the exact same thing other MMOs have been working towards for a while now. Granted, not having a dedicated tank or healer, it becomes even more important for individuals in GW2 to make sure they do their part in controlling the encounter and staying alive. It has to be clear though, that repeated failure to do so is not about being stuck in the "holy trinity" mindset, but about not able to, or not willing to, go the extra steps to ensure the group is a success.
I suppose the question is whether I dislike the "holy trinity" myself. No. Neither will it's absence bother me. No matter how a game is designed, it will always be the player that makes a group a success of failure. Always.
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