Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
How about "Strawberry"?
Not sure where the idea came from. Just remember reading it recently.
So I went to see if I missed anything on lore for the cleric and discriptions. Surprisingly the excerpt on the wiki does not even mention the gods. Which I find odd, so perhaps they are taking a fresh perspective on the "cleric" and changing what it would normally mean. This might sound odd but read this and you will hopefully get what im trying to say.
In a world often fraught with peril, a Cleric is never wanting for friends. They can protect their allies in a number of ways, and when necessary, snuff the life out of others. As masters over the very essence of vitality, they can sense the broken and corrupted... The strands of this essence connect everything and everyone. Clerics find themselves particularly attuned to the threads that channel life and motive energy. By reinforcing these tendrils, they can heal and even resurrect those that have been wounded. By tearing them, they can steal energy from their foes, turning their enemies’ powers against them amid the frenzied heat of battle.
This would explain why all clerics can heal, but leaves room for clerics to branch out from said healing into other forms of magic and might.
Some schooling for the ignorant... The term “tank” had nothing to do with warfare prior to World War I. In fact, the entire reason the phrase “tank” came to be associated with war vehicles was due to deliberate deception. When the shells of vehicles were being developed for war purposes, they were called “tanks” to trick enemy intelligence gatherers into thinking that they were mundane containers. Because the term “tank” just meant a container for a liquid. Eventually that also came to apply to the vehicles that those “tanks” were made into; first informally then formally. With that in mind, it’s clear why the term makes no sense in a fantasy world.
Calling someone a “tank” is like calling them a “barrel” or a “vase”. It’s lazy and insulting. It needs to change. Simple as that.
Intrepid can keep it, and the company can continue to receive well-deserved ridicule over their stupidity.
Whose to say this exact same thing could have happened?
Alright now lets slap some magic and fantasy tropes on that backstory and it works for people that are extremely durable. Teehee yay we all agreeee im so happy.
And that connotation was born from the a modern battle tank. 'Tank', as we understand them, don't exist in Vera, so by lore the word wouldn't mean anything.
Sure you can claim they coined the term themselves, but that is just convenient laziness.
A well, we should rename tanks to wells
This is why you have no argument. We don't know the lore yet. We have a teeny tiny bit of it. The fact that you can claim it is immersion breaking without knowing the lore of the tank archetype in AoC is silly.
Does one select when the word was first used and its meaning then, when it had a similar meaning and popularised, when it had the current meaning regardless of past, when the most people used that name.
(very crude population numbers)
17c - which spelling is more correct tadaga (sanskrit), tanke (marathi), tangue (portugese) or tank (English) 1bil
18`s word synonymous with pond, then later water tank or storage items
1915 WW1- 1.75 bil world population probably not widely known
1970`s Boxing, first PUBs - 4bil
1980`s RPGs 5bil
1990`s MMORPGs 6bil
2020`s 7.8bil
I mean, this is why everyone called you a troll initially. This argument has been around a while.
I would say neither, one understands that language is fluid, and changes in language are simply a representation of changes in the social makeup of the population that speaks the language.
I mean, using your own post there, we can see the use of the word change over time. The word splits from having one meaning to having three meanings, depending on the context in which it is used. In the process of this, the word would now never be used in English as it was originally used - which as you point out was a synonom for "pond".
It wasn't my intention to get people angry, just really think "Tank" is a name for a rol, not for a class.
But whatever I think the mayority don't want to change the name so I think the best option here is let the thread just die.
To be fair, tank isn't a class name in Ashes. It is an archetype name.
Two archetypes make up your class, which has it's own name.
Noaani said it earlier but basically you should think of these archetype names as roles and it should not feel so horrible to you.
you have your different flavors of dps, your healer, and then you have tank. It just so happens that there is no real good name for "tank" that is as general as "tank". If you use anything else it becomes too specific and wouldn't make sense according to the class created.
It makes no sense to anyone, it's not the end of the world, but it's a thing too dumb to let it pass with the seriousness this project has.
Trust me 10 years after game release people will still ridicule and ask why "tank" is an archetype name.
It boggles my mind that you cannot accept calling the archetype tank when you will be calling the class "tank" the entire time you play the game.
Same.
Peoploe may well mock it, but then any sane person will then log in to their MMO of choice, start forming a group, and say in that games world chat "lf tank for..." and all of a sudden the whole thing will click, and they will feel just a little silly.
I will bet money that there is no in-lore etymology of Tank. It is technically a possibility, but so is you being a horse typing that nonsense on the keyboard with your hooves since I have no proof you are, in fact, a human.
I would say it's 50/50.
Steven does read these forums - much more than his post count would indicate. He is also quite keen on keeping the names as they are now. Additionally, he also isn't above tasking a junior writer with adding in some text in an obscure book or from some random NPC based on a forum thread (or several forum threads).
What won't happen though, is we won't have it plastered all over the game on launch day.
100 EUR bet that there won't be one, are you up @Noaani?
Right, people should like the name because there is an explanation, but the explanation won't be revealed to us, because the etymology of a common word that supposedly every person in the world knows is a deep and mysterious secret of the universe? Come on.
Edit: and just so we are clear:
People who have a visceral reaction to the name are not wrong for having it, just as people who don't like guns in fantasy settings are not wrong for not liking them, despite the fact that explaining guns is trivial.
We can argue whether people not liking it is reason enough to change it, but arguing that people should like something they don't is full on autistic.
To be fair, that is meaningless doublespeak. Just because Intrepid calls a class "archetype" doesn't make it so. Going by that logic, for many levels you have no class, right? Wrong, BS. We could call it a "frogball" and it doesn't make a difference. It's your class whatever they call it. More Intrepid ridiculousness.
Yeah, Steven and Intrepid can make mistakes. That's why I still stick around and support the project and look forward to the game and participate in testing even when they do stupid things and make bad decisions. Because the good doesn't outweigh the bad. But there are bad things, objectively bad things, that hopefully they have time to change between now and then.
And I will never let this die for as long as this stupidity continues. I will call out Intrepid for their mistakes.
I've never argued people should like it, and to be fair, I don't at all care if they do or not.
My argument is that until we know more about the game, there is no place to say whether the name fits the setting or not.
Further, my argument is that no matter what Intrepid calls the class, players will call it "tank".
Based on history - specifically me telling Steven he can fuck off (even if passing that message on from others) - I don't think this would be a wise bet for me to accept.
While I wouldn't put it past him to assign a task like this to someone, I also wouldn't put it past him to see that him not doing that would cost me €100, and so decide to not do that.
Clearly, that wouldn't be a smart bet on my part.
I just don't consider this to be a mistake.
If someone can prove me wrong on this with reasonably done polling till let's say the end of Alpha 1, I'll donate 1000 EUR to that person's charity of choice. Otherwise I'll donate 1000 EUR to any charity of choice designated by the first Intrepid employee who cares to name one.
Edit: Ante up, if I'm right about the above, and if Intrepid changes the name to "Defender" or another name accepted by the community, I'll up my donation to their charity of choice to 10k EUR total. That's how much it fucking bothers me.
https://strawpoll.com/qrb93f6v7
I'd have preferred something that's not easily manipulated, but options are fine so let's see where this goes.
It's got IP checking, so hopefully that's enough to weed out repeat voters.