What if! One character can do all the roles.

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dc...tion-all-the-roles-for-all-the-powers.310030/ ^^

Untrue. People who want to play those roles will still play them. You can't force people to play in a way they don't want to and expect them to stick around anyhow. The people you hope to force into playing roles just move on from the game instead.

Preach.

I still remember when Electricity had to always be a healer because the DPS was that awful during the AM era.


And seeing how as most groups usually ran 1-1-1-5, I'd sincerely doubt that formation would change if all powersets could do each role.


Fire's healing variation can even be called "SweetHeat BBQ." lol.

I don't know if you've actually been in a PUG recently, but that's pretty much an entirely laughable expectation based on what actually happens.

People have no compunction whatsoever against queueing in a role that they have zero intention to play - sometimes, frequently, even zero capacity to do so.

Tank, which I used as my example, is the most egregious of the potential scenarios because "some content flatly requires a Tank", and there's a point where a Raid stalls out flat because the people who queued in as a Tank did so simply to get into the Raid, and not because they knew the mechanics or in some cases, even had the gear.

By the time you ask the fifth person in a day "Can you switch to tank" and their response is "LOL I don evn hav TANK GEARS LOLOLOLO" it sinks in that this is not the exception to the rule, but rather the norm.

I cannot possibly imagine this being improved by giving everyone four Role access.

I can, however, EASILY imagine seven ******** shouting "MY DPS IS MOAR OP, U GOTTA TANK". Because if everyone had access to four roles worth of Abilities, what they would actually do is create a solo DPS that didn't need a support system to survive.

I know this is what they would do because it's literally what I did before going out to try to kill every Bounty in the game with a Controller. And aside from the fact that literally no one will let you fight Subject Doomsday solo (especially if you're winning) it works astoundingly well, and if there were a roadmap or a blueprint for it that were built into the game?

Everyone would do it.

And that's why I think it's a bad idea.

Like I said, this is untrue. It's not a bad idea. It's always been a good idea. Any suggestion that meets the needs of what most of your players want is a good idea -- that said, how you accomplish that can vary in successfulness.

You can't force players to play how you want them to and think they'll keep playing. They don't. They quit and move onto other games that let them play how they want to.

Op's specific suggestion has problems but generally speaking; the idea of letting players choose to assign any role to their powerset (and respec it later if they choose) gives them options instead of forcing them into a playstyle they don't enjoy. It doesn't necessarily imply any kind of role swapping ability on-the-fly either (meaning your hypothetical scenario never happens). They could still be locked into a role they choose during character create; it just isn't tied to their powerset anymore; hypothetically. This would inherently offer more player options instead of limit them.

If the real issue is players don't want to be healers or controllers or tanks at all and only do when forced to -- you have a much larger issue with the core premise of the game's design.

It would certainly be a good thing for the LFG, it would avoid having to spend x number of hours in LFG because they don't have a lot of players connected or motivated, look at the LFG, at such and such times they are missing such and such a role, it would help a lot more the groups to be built faster.

TESO offers this system and it's just excellent, it allows you not to get bored of a class, or at least much less and in all honesty it never happened to you to think "ah if I could play this role with my power, it would be so cool"?

I for one would love to be able to play tank with my light, plus I find that they have quite a few powers that could come close to this role!

OP's suggestion was - and I quote -

He's not talking about "Mental Characters Who Can Also Tank Instead Of Controlling" (which is a terrible idea because I already do Tank with Mental and the real truth of making that happen is "The second you attack something being tanked by a Mental character, you become the new Tank". Terrible model for party survival.)

He's talking about the exact thing I said - which is "People who have access to all four Roles in the same character". That carries with it every single potential problem that I mentioned.

You start by telling me that's it's not true then followed that by re-writing the suggestion entirely assuming it would invalidate further discussion of the primary problem in question (which already occurs).

Quite simply: Four Role characters =/= Powersets with locked, selectable roles. Apples and Oranges.

Additionally - even doing it the way you suggest instead STILL doesn't address the underlying issue of people queueing for a Role that they have no intention of playing, though it DOES - as per my original complaint - still considerably muddy the waters surrounding that issue by throwing any established level of expectation right out the window. At least now we can kind of tell what you SHOULD be capable of just by seeing you use your rotation.

So my "Hypothetical Scenario (That Already Actually Happens)" still occurs either way it goes, unless your suggestion permanently locks your character to One Role Only, which seems contrary to the proposed goal of

As for this?

This IS an MMO - content that is designed with a Healer or a Tank in mind is NOT a "design flaw".

It's "the core mechanical premise of the game".

I had this thought the other day when I got Fire and Brimstone as my weekly Omnibus raid.

Load in, and everyone is in DPS role except me (healer).

I ask in text chat: "roles?" No one says anything, nothing. No one changes roles.

Now, this toon is my main, but I also have a Fire Tank and a Quantum Troll. I know how to do every role.

Seeing as no one in the raid wanted to change roles, I decided I would "heal tank". Wouldn't be the first time I've had to do something similar (FGSr, tank had to afk a few after the Grail fight. I "heal tanked" up until Zeus fight. No one died so I call that a success). Same episode in COP, I became intimatly familiar with this style of play when the water soldiers in Poseidon fight always swarmed the healer and pug DPS ignored them to focus the boss. Fun times.

Anyway...I go into this FBr and try to hit all the adds first for aggro and just shield and heal and kite as often as I could.

When big boy came out I thankfully got his aggro (healers can be good at that without even trying lmfao) and I kept him turned away from the group, getting all the meteors and rocks thrown my way to dodge etc. That move where he blasts fire at me REALLY hurt but I was able to heal it fast enough. (I think with Electric's burst heals it's relatively easy). I also have 100 extra SP in health so I'm sure that helped.

Same with Lex, I kept his aggro, yada yada. Same with the add waves. Shield, block, heal, kite. Shield, block, heal, kite.

Don't get me wrong, I was able to pull it off but it SUCKS to have to work that hard. I've heard of sweaty DPSes but sweaty healer is a new one yeah? lol How about that 7 DPS 1 Healer comp lmfao

TL;DR I would love to be able to do all roles on one toon. Especially if I can transfer my artifacts from my alts to my main.

They want players to have access to all roles. YOU interpreted that to mean that they should have the ability to switch to any of the 4 roles at anytime. Which you reject and hate. But they didn't say that.

I re-explained the suggestion [possibly expanded on it] in a way that makes it clear that they could have/probably meant (variations of this suggestion go back to beta) that they just want any of the powersets to be able to play any role -- not necessarily at the same time, and not necessarily on-the-fly.

You're talking about imagining here but you're not demonstrating any. You're more interested in nitpicking their suggestion instead of finding the merit in it.

No it isn't. The 4 role trope is a fantasy role trope. It is not fundamental to MMOs as a whole. It is not the core mechanical premise of the game and not required for MMOs. The game was designed around DPS and Defence only. Healing and then control were added later in beta because someone on the investor level wanted the game to be more like WoW.

I know someone who used to do this. They spent a fortune on this game. They set their armories up for each role and carried around a bunch of power respec tokens. It was insane and I clearly remember a Darkseid War Factory run where we kicked a tank and he asked if anyone else could heal and then bam hit his respec token and armoried into his tank. I personally thought that was a waste of money but who am I to tell people how to spend their money.

While its an interesting idea, you think creating a 1 powerset is a lot of work? You'd have to do this for 15 powersets? In the time that it would take this tiny dev team to do that, you could create DCUO 2 by throwing darts at a keyboard before they're able to do what you're asking.

I like the concept don't misunderstand me. I'd like to rely less on bad players that don't know how to heal when I'm tanking or vice versa.

And unfortunately their is a massive skill and ability gap in this game and it keeps growing with more P2W mechanics like allies/artifacts. Sure artifacts aren't required to do content, but they really really help and they're expensive/extremely time consuming to level up...and allies are arguably worse because they're more expensive, but are less beneficial in their current form.

If they ever tried this, they better let us use more than 4 armories.

I also see it as a final nail in the Alt coffin. A greater grind on your main to get 4 sets of gear +4 or 5 artis (at least) and less of a need for 'Ok, I'll get on my troll and run that....' when forming a group means only hardcore alt fans will still want high end alts.

The whole point and fun for me about having Alts is so I can have every role/power for a specific character and not feel that it is pointless to log onto my other characters, so I am not so much a fan of the idea, however I wouldn't mind if every power has a built in mechanic for each role, like the Sorcery's guardian can really use some tlc for Sorcery tanking, as well as Mental healing etc.

I would make a quantum toon if it was a tank powerset simply because I want to be super durable and be inspired by Blue Marvel. If and when they do, I hope the new power will be for all roles instead of two.

I had been thinking about something similar to this. Instead of a role that can do everything, how about a role that's meant for ONLY defence and/or offence boosting? Their self damage, defense, and healing abilities would be next to none, there would be a lot of power consuming, but giving back to the players would be the greatest good.

We need a Wizard role in this game

If Armories just saved absolutely everything.

Players could buy a power change, and use of their Armory would allow them to toggle between the two powersets, so they could access an additional role.

Since it would be Powerchange and Armory dependent, it would be a paid function.

And as an additional bonus, it would let us change things like Body Types, because we could buy the change tokens and then save it, to get an Etrigan or Shazam style change from a small character into a bigger character.

There is not a single powerset where I enjoy both of their roles. I like Nature Healing, but I dislike Nature DPS. I like Munitions DPS, but dislike Munitions Controlling. I like Atomic Tanking, but not Atomic DPS. I like Fire DPS but not Fire Tanking. And so on. If I could purchase tokens and be able to Armory change between Nature Healing, Atomic Tanking, Gadgets Controlling, and Munitions DPS, I'd run all four roles.

But as it is right now, I just play alts, and every character I have is assigned a single role.

Imagine Rage Healer.

But I have a better idea: what if we can simply save sets for our two roles without needing two armories, so each and every single freaking piece of gear wouldn't require us to check on our builds then reconfigure our armories manually?