Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
This is easily debatable but I think the only argument against it would be the name sounds like it focuses on the defense aspect of tanking and doesn't acknowledge the control/offensive component of the role.
Yeah you’re just choosing your archetype and sub archetype. Together they make a named class. Don’t sweat over the word “tank” when again, it’s just the archetype.
When the tank/dps/healer meta was created. WE the people created the term because it fit the job description. We will all definitely still use the term and say "ok now we need a tank" when forming a group but that does not make it right to call someone a tank lol. It has no value as a title when considering the word itself came to be from a modern day machine and a container to carry liquids or whatever the word actually means. We are all here to be taken away into this virtual world of wonder and it stops when having to choose something that is overwhelmingly considered lame.
I will be tanking today as a tank/tank.....it's just plain dumb.
That you play as until level 25. This was a convincing argument when the assumption was that you'd start as a Guardian, Paladin, etc., but you don't, you play a Tank for a considerable length of time.
I wonder if we'll need to start up the "pie vs cake" debate again.
Oh that's easy. Pie
Level 25 is probably 25% of the time it would take to level to the cap, if even that
90% of the game will be played at the level cap.
This means that you are arguing in regards to around 2.5% of player time.
Not a great basis for an argument.
I've never seen anyone so involved in a discussion they think don't matter as you, Noaani. Moving the goalpost does not address any of the concerns folks have over the name.
Obviously cake it is.
There is a difference between being here to try and change the game, and trying to change people's perception of the game.
One is futile, the other has merit, if the person in question has an understanding of an aspect of the game that is likely wrong or misguided.
You have made that argument before in this thread and I opted to only point out one of the flaws in your reasoning at the time. That flaw should have been enough for you to not bother with making that argument any more, but since you made it again I am simply pointing out further issues with trying to make that point.
Sometimes, if I think people can handle it, I'll point out several issues I can see with things people have said. If I don't think people can handle it, I'll point them out one at a time.
That isn't shifting goal posts. It isn't my fault you are clinging to an argument with multifaceted flaws.
I agree that it breaks immersion, much like it would if there were other in-game names like Spell DPS, Knife DPS, Bow DPS, Heals, etc. Tank is a generic team, not a genre-defining RP term, appropriate for an mmoRPg. Spellweaver invokes imagery, imagination, fantasy, and adventure. Ranged DPS is a term used by gamers as a short-form archetypal colloquialism. I feel the same about Tank.
It seems like a small thing, and because of that, should be a easy enough adjustment. I like some of the proposed options in this tread: Defender, Protector, or even Shield.
Love the conversation, and desire from the community to help the Devs make this game as great as it can be. Appreciate the folks at Intrepid considering these thoughts.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP31ixSBO7GHKLBefWVcJaA
It should be fairly simple to add "Role: Tank" (or "Role: Melee Damage" etc. for other archetypes) to the character creation UI. Between that, the detailed description, and the iconography, the burden of relying on the name itself to convey what the archetype does should be fairly low.
Funnily, I came into this thread thinking "surely it's obvious that it is immersion breaking". The main takeaway, for me at least, is that whether it is immersion breaking or not is super subjective, so pushing that argument either way isn't going to be productive.
I was wondering how a single word could impact overall immersion. So I wasn't pushing an argument, but now I guess I will explain further because why not.
As you said, it's subjective. So no matter what word is used, someone isn't going to like the "immersion" created. Which puts the issue into the "not everyone can be happy" category. I personally am not a fan of the term "fighter" as it's open ended on what it means. What type of fighter? Does that make every other archetype not a fighting class? What happens if fighters are fighting for different sides?
But in the end it doesn't matter because it gets the point across and I suspend my disbelief as I do when I see
children flying on broomsticks or dogs playing basketball. Suspension of disbelief is a fundamental concept in any piece of story telling, which includes video games. I'm not going to get hung up on the details in order to ruin my own enjoyment. If that was the case every fantasy story I've ever watched or read would be a miserable experience because magic isn't real so none of this should be happening.
Basically, I'm confused how people so invested in immersion can't suspend their disbelief for a high fantasy role playing world.
I don't understand, sorry. What do you mean by "magic isn't real"...?
Should there be some sort of Spoiler Alert on there?!
I don't think analogizing the feeling of immersion breaking to a plain dislike is quite on the money. There is plenty of reasons why you might dislike a thing without it being an immersion breaker. I've seen mounts I don't particularly like, but I haven't seen any mounts that look like they don't belong in the world around them, and I don't have to get them or ride them so who cares.
Suspension of disbelief is when you allow yourself to believe that things you see or read or otherwise experience are real, immersion shattering is when you notice a camera man reflected in a mirror. It's one thing to suspend a disbelief in magic and elves, and a completely different thing to wilfully ignore that camera in the reflection. The magic and the elves belong in the world, the camera does not.
Having Tank named Tank doesn't ruin the game for me, but it does make the world feel less real. Again, totally subjective.
Ah sorry I wasn't clear. I didn't mean dislike=immersion breaking. I more so meant along the lines of, what breaks the immersion for one person might enhance it for another and vice versa. So while one person might think "Tank" breaks immersion, another likes it. While the first might think "Shield" is great, it breaks it for the other (etc etc).
I agree about the camera-man vs elves difference, but I guess the subjective part comes since I see the word "tank" as an elf while others see it as a camera man. I'm just more surprised than anything that this has gotten so much attention/concern cause they could call it something else and I still wouldn't care one way or the other (unless it's like...you know...bad bad).
It is about the word's relationship to the NPC's, the culture and lore.
Our history, in popular consciousness:
1. In World War 1, the heavily armored vehicles come to be known as tanks.
2. In gaming, the role of the heavily armored player becomes known as "tank" because they are like the military vehicle tanks.
3. In the world of Ashes of Creation, the lore and the citizens call the heavily armored player a tank because gamers in our world call it a tank, which is because of the military vehicle tanks.
See any problem? If not, then it may be impossible to communicate. It is the part that connects (2) to (3).
We know that "tank" would be part of the lore because "tank" is the only archetype name you are called until level 25. So the bard at the tavern will be singing about the tanks of old..
[song] I once knew a tank from the ocean, he went to tank school like me, but when he got back to the ocean, he sank like a tank in a tank.[/song] Are there any tanks out there in the audience... you know, my brother is a tank... I hope you're doing some good dps out there... Hey, don't log off yet.
The best conclusion I can make in my head is that some people see the fantasy world as a playground, or stomping ground, for a bunch of real-life people to use (like a MOBA). But other people expect the game to follow the traditions of fantasy novels, or any fictional world for that matter. (Unless the story involves transported people from our setting to the fantasy setting, or the story is purposefully goofy.)
I think most people understand what an Earth Tank is...
I guess the reason I'm not too worried is because I do think Sanctus could very well have been closely linked to an Earth style of development. Remember, Verra is the world we will be going to, Sanctus is the world we are coming from
We know next to nothing about Sanctus, and they don't plan on revealing a lot before release saying that even the information that will be given out won't be done until beta.
However, Sanctus is where we (the player) will have lived, grown up, learned history, etc etc. Sanctus, a land with basically no magic, has been surviving for thousands of years *(Thousands and thousands of years go by. A long dark age passes.) What do people that used to have magic, but now don't do? They adapt and develop technology *(They had to rediscover technology, because so much of their current technology was based on magic, so they had to figure out how to interact with the world.)
Thousands of years? With various cultures? All crammed into one world? Of course war is going to break out at some point! Just look at our own history. And with each battle and war the weapons used would've probably gotten stronger and stronger. So could some form of tank existed in Sanctus? Absolutely. So is it realistic that the machines we know as Tanks existed, in some form, on Sanctus a possibility? Of course.
The lore also heavily implies that the Soul is what travels between the different planes of existence, so it makes sense that when everyone escaped Sanctus they wouldn't have brought this technology with them. (I'm going to assume this "sanctuary" at some point also grows corrupted or the people were destroying the world so badly they had no choice but to flee or at least split the population). Now they just entered a foreign land and aren't developing these weapons of mass destruction again? Perhaps it plays into the reason they had to leave Sanctus to begin with, or perhaps we will see it introduced in a later expansion. Who knows.
But if the hang-up is that a "Tank" never existed is the problem, well...I don't think anyone can actually say it didn't.
Because if anything, remember this:
*Sanctus is a key story arc, that will likely have very little revealed about it prior to the Betas.
*Source information: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Verra
At best, the argument of it breaking immersion lasts until the moment Intrepid provide an in game reason for the name.
That could be as simple as the fact that someone back in Sanctus thought a person in full plate armor looked a little like a metal water tank - which when you look at the origins of the naming of actual tanks, is pretty legit as far as reasoning goes.
The thing is, as soon as Intrepid provide that reason, not only is the name no longer immersion breaking, but it actually adds to immersion.
Most arguments against it amount to "I don't like it, but I don't know why, so I will make up reasons as to why I don't like it and see what sticks".
It is a vessel for holding a large amount of water or other liquid.
Tanks as armored vehicles were named after these tanks, no small part due to the fact that the British wanted to keep their development secret, and referring to them as water carriers rather than Landships made them seem significantly less interesting to foreign intelligence.
If it were not for early tanks rudimentary similarity to metal water tanks, we may well know them now as landships rather than tanks. I would have a hard time finding a link from a person in full plate armor to the word "landship", but I have no issue in establishing a potential link in a fantasy setting between someone in full plate armor and a metal water tank.
In fact, that link seems to me to be even more than the link between such water tanks and what would otherwise now be known as landships.
To me, the issues here only start when people look at "landships" as being where the tank class got their name from. If people take a step back and look at the reason landships are now called tanks, those issues should melt away entirely.
Sadly, most people aren't willing to expand their horizons in this manner.
That's possible, but I don't think that's the conundrum we're having here. The most often proposed alternatives (Defender, Guardian, etc.) aren't objected to because they are immersion breaking (Guardian is currently a class name, and nobody makes 15 pages long threads about it), they are objected to because they aren't as precise as Tank in describing the role of the archetype. So it's not my immersion vs your immersion, it's more of subjective immersion of some portion of the playerbase vs does the name function as an accurate descriptor and satisfies the standard Intrepid set out for the names.
Yeah, I get that. As I said before, I've grown more appreciation to the fact that Tank is a perfectly acceptable fantasy term for some folks here. We all have our idiosyncrasies.