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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.
Tanking and Threat systems. Making it more than a simple aggro table.
Lash
Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Why are threat systems often removed from other MMOs? Personally I think it comes down to them being too simple without enough interactions. They do not get the design they need to be good and it leads players to disliking the system. I do not want to see Ashes fall into the same path of trying to make threat management a thing and then removing it when players do not like it.
A few basic issues I feel existing threat systems have.
-Tanking often comes down to dealing damage or using +threat abilities to hold threat/aggro
-DPS players do not like waiting to deal damage.
-Threat management is not interactive or is too binary.
-You learn almost nothing from dying to a miss pulled boss.
Tank players interacting with threat/aggro. Thinking about threat in a more logical way.
-To solve the issue of players not wanting to wait or not being willing to wait to deal damage I believe it should be easy for a tank to get initial threat/aggro. When you first pull, the mob would not be aware of what the biggest threat to it is so it would just hit the tank that is in its face. As a mob gets lower life it would reassess who is actually the biggest threat to it. Meaning a mob at 50% life would view dps players as a better target to hit than the tank.
-Would a mob know who to direct their anger towards if they step into a trap that it did not see anyone place? Is this mob even smart enough to realize what the healer is doing?
-Mobs with tendencies or weaknesses that cause changes in threat. For example a mob that particularly hates healers or one that dislikes fire damage. This would make it so not every scenario you face as a tank is the same. In some fights you would need to focus your attention on protecting the Healer while in others you might have to protect the mage.
Giving a tank the tools to manage the threat of their party.
-Like how a healer manages the health of their party, I believe a tank should manage the threat of their party. This would take a robust UI for displaying threat and skills to interact with it.
-The tank should know if a DPS/Healer is going to pull threat and be able to react to that happening with various skills. Examples listed below for how this could work.
Tanking abilities that are more interactive or interesting then a +threat mod on a damage ability.
-I feel there is a large design space around threat abilities that is not being utilized in many games. I feel these abilities should focus on protecting your team or tricking your foes into attacking you instead as a tank. Here are a few examples of abilities I think could work.
-Illusion ability
-At least one of the secondary archetypes might use some kind of illusions. It could be an interesting threat ability to simply make a target ally look like the tank to trick the mob. This would have dual purpose in that it might also have a use in PvP.
-Targeted Aoe threat reduction
-A more simple idea where you can drop a ground targeted circle under an ally that reduces their threat generation. This could be a nice ability that requires communication with your team. For example letting a dps know you have your ability up to save them so they can pop off on damage. As a ground targeted spell the ally would need more awareness to stay in the circle and the tank would need awareness to not waste it because the target has to move. A small damage reduction would give it some utility in PvP.
-Shield wall
-A magical shield wall that blocks projectiles and generates bonus threat for every attack blocked. This would serve as both a way to protect your team and it would encourage properly timing your ability to maximize threat generation.
-Redirecting healing
-An ability that absorbs the healing the tank is receiving and allows them to press the button again after a few seconds to release the stored healing. This gives you an overhealing interaction and gives the tank all the healing threat instead of the healer.
-Elemental conversion
-Allows the tank to temporarily convert allied elemental damage into a new type before the target takes the damage. This would give the tank some interaction with mob threat tendencies and weaknesses.
-Pocket sand
-Temporarily blind the target to make them not realize where attacks are coming from. Allies generate no threat while the target is blinded.
This is not to say that DPS should not have to manage threat in any way. There is room for communication that allows a tank to help the dps deal more damage instead of just pulling aggro and dying. Giving the tank the responsibility over the entire group while making the other players personally responsible for their threat I think is the best way to do a threat system. If you do not give the tank enough tools to interact with threat you might as well not even have the system in the game. This is also outside a CC system that would also help you manage threat in a more binary way,
What do you all think they should do with the tanking system. Do you have more ideas for abilities you might like to see? This is only my own opinion and I could be way off on what people would like.
A few basic issues I feel existing threat systems have.
-Tanking often comes down to dealing damage or using +threat abilities to hold threat/aggro
-DPS players do not like waiting to deal damage.
-Threat management is not interactive or is too binary.
-You learn almost nothing from dying to a miss pulled boss.
Tank players interacting with threat/aggro. Thinking about threat in a more logical way.
-To solve the issue of players not wanting to wait or not being willing to wait to deal damage I believe it should be easy for a tank to get initial threat/aggro. When you first pull, the mob would not be aware of what the biggest threat to it is so it would just hit the tank that is in its face. As a mob gets lower life it would reassess who is actually the biggest threat to it. Meaning a mob at 50% life would view dps players as a better target to hit than the tank.
-Would a mob know who to direct their anger towards if they step into a trap that it did not see anyone place? Is this mob even smart enough to realize what the healer is doing?
-Mobs with tendencies or weaknesses that cause changes in threat. For example a mob that particularly hates healers or one that dislikes fire damage. This would make it so not every scenario you face as a tank is the same. In some fights you would need to focus your attention on protecting the Healer while in others you might have to protect the mage.
Giving a tank the tools to manage the threat of their party.
-Like how a healer manages the health of their party, I believe a tank should manage the threat of their party. This would take a robust UI for displaying threat and skills to interact with it.
-The tank should know if a DPS/Healer is going to pull threat and be able to react to that happening with various skills. Examples listed below for how this could work.
Tanking abilities that are more interactive or interesting then a +threat mod on a damage ability.
-I feel there is a large design space around threat abilities that is not being utilized in many games. I feel these abilities should focus on protecting your team or tricking your foes into attacking you instead as a tank. Here are a few examples of abilities I think could work.
-Illusion ability
-At least one of the secondary archetypes might use some kind of illusions. It could be an interesting threat ability to simply make a target ally look like the tank to trick the mob. This would have dual purpose in that it might also have a use in PvP.
-Targeted Aoe threat reduction
-A more simple idea where you can drop a ground targeted circle under an ally that reduces their threat generation. This could be a nice ability that requires communication with your team. For example letting a dps know you have your ability up to save them so they can pop off on damage. As a ground targeted spell the ally would need more awareness to stay in the circle and the tank would need awareness to not waste it because the target has to move. A small damage reduction would give it some utility in PvP.
-Shield wall
-A magical shield wall that blocks projectiles and generates bonus threat for every attack blocked. This would serve as both a way to protect your team and it would encourage properly timing your ability to maximize threat generation.
-Redirecting healing
-An ability that absorbs the healing the tank is receiving and allows them to press the button again after a few seconds to release the stored healing. This gives you an overhealing interaction and gives the tank all the healing threat instead of the healer.
-Elemental conversion
-Allows the tank to temporarily convert allied elemental damage into a new type before the target takes the damage. This would give the tank some interaction with mob threat tendencies and weaknesses.
-Pocket sand
-Temporarily blind the target to make them not realize where attacks are coming from. Allies generate no threat while the target is blinded.
This is not to say that DPS should not have to manage threat in any way. There is room for communication that allows a tank to help the dps deal more damage instead of just pulling aggro and dying. Giving the tank the responsibility over the entire group while making the other players personally responsible for their threat I think is the best way to do a threat system. If you do not give the tank enough tools to interact with threat you might as well not even have the system in the game. This is also outside a CC system that would also help you manage threat in a more binary way,
What do you all think they should do with the tanking system. Do you have more ideas for abilities you might like to see? This is only my own opinion and I could be way off on what people would like.
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Comments
I would like to see some way of threat generation that is not just based on how much damage you do. Maybe threat generation can be done by amount of damage mitigated/ evaded/ absorbed. We also know that tanks will be a more CC focused archetype, so maybe CC abilities can generate more threat than damage abilities.
I think there should be a note on boss fight complexity as well. Tank & Spank is always a bad boss fight design. I would like for casters to have to be careful when they use certain abilities, and melee have to be aware of their position.
Something which would allow the PvE content not to fall down to rather binary "holy trinity" system. And yes, the word "binary" about trinity was used with intent.
Like in case there is a big group of mob coming and u used your taunt. It would be like a mass taunt
This is something I agree with.
A more complete hate system is a good thing. Not even complex - just complete.
To me, a complete hate system should have (at a minimum) taunts to increase the hate count for tanks
abilities to lower hate count for some DPS and healers (an anti-taunt, basically), buffs some tanks can place on other players to pull a portion of that players hate on to the tank (negative hate for the target, positive hate for the tank), buffs some DPS can place on the tank to transfer a portion of their hate to that tank, and also abilities that increase a tanks position on the targets hate list, or an anti version of this for some DPS to lower their position on the hate list (honestly unsure if many people would understand this concept - someone let me know).
I would also like to see buffs, debuffs and CC have a more respectable hate generation to them in the same way dealing damage and healing does. A tank stunning a mob should add a good amount of hate for that tank, even if the stun has no inherent taunt component to it. Likewise, casting a debuff on an encounter that slows it's attack speed should see the player that cast the debuff gain a good chunk of hate.
Disclaimer: I'm pro-Bard, so I'm always reluctant to encourage any other arch/class having CC!
That said, Tank needs to work in their role and there needs to be some depth to that role. I would like to see 2 or 3 simple game mechanics that interact and overlap to give Tanks something to think about rather than just spamming one type of aggro via various abilities. Others here are more passionate about Tanks so I'll leave the stage for them.
My thoughts: Tough! Penalize them if they don't wait until the Tank has completed their initial stuff on the front line.
The DPS roles are more attractive to an immature demographic because they (the immature demographic) impatiently need to prove themselves in an aggressive role to address their insecurity.
There are plenty of DPS players that are cool headed enough to wait for the right opportunity if that is the best interaction with the game mechanics (META). This doesn't need to just apply to burst DPS from Rogues, everyone should need to think about when to move forward and commit, or at least have their own opinion (for later!) if they are loyally following the shot caller.
Hate does two basic things, it introduces a teanwork element and it makes using certain tactics risky. Even with basic ai, a comprehensive hate system increases the strategy to defeat a target. The team doing positive things for itself needs an element of danger for itself no matter what strategy it is using. Play it too safe and resources might be too low in the next encounter. Play it too risky and you /might/ need to burn more resources anyway.
I think the tp system from FFXI is a missing piece in most other hate systems for similar reasons. For those not familiar. Your basic attack generates points that fill your ws meter. Taking damage fills this, meter some amount that scales depending on the damage receive. Mobs have a similar meter (scaled differently if I recall correctly) and therefore the more you attack them the more often they do big abilities. There is gear and class abilities to reduce how much tp you give the enemy. The enemy rarely has tp wipe abilities but they still exist. But your tp meter lets you do weaponskill chains for big damage with your teammates and is an extra reward for attacking.
I call it a missing piece to other hate systems, because it gives a more visceral and easy to understand way the team is affecting the mob, and it also increases the risk of dps just always doing the big attack whenever tanks mitigation tools are on cooldown. It's also a way to increase the strategy required without increasing the complexity of the ai too much. You sort of build in the mobs adaptability this way and give enemy designers a more direct tool to tweak decision making now that you dont have only one 'threat' in play for the player team to worry about. But it also gives a bonus for tactical strategies that isn't just binary cooldown based rotations. Without this system the number of mitigating tools Noaani listed seem a bit too many. With it they seem far more reasonable.
If you build a system with a given number of tools, and balance it around that - but then add more - then you are taking that risk away.
If you add in all of those different tools at the start though, and then balance them all with the system at the same time, then that risk level can still be where ever the developers want it to be.
This is why I'd want to see a complete threat system right from the start, one that has all the different means of interacting with it in place so that it does increase the available strategies for even simple encounters, as you suggest.
Also, the threat tools I listed above were some of the tools (not all) available in EQ2. It would be too many to have on any one class, absolutely. In that game though, they were spread out over different classes making each tank feel different, and each group function different depending on what classes were present.
There were times in that game where - as a DPS caster - I had no need to even think about hate because the groups makeup was such that I wouldn't be able to pull from the tank if I tried (and I did try). However, there were also times - potentially even with the same tank on the same content - where I had to be super careful, as the makeup of the group on that day didn't give as much threat to the tank, or remove as much from myself.
To me, this is a far better solution than adding in an omnipresent mechanic that results in all content feeling the same - a system where the same content can feel different based on classes present is preferable (imo) to a system that makes all content feel more the same.
That said, that mechanic from FFXV sounds like it could be interesting if added to specific encounters in a game.
FFXI not IV or V, very large distinction relative to what I am talking about.
I'm agreeing with a lot you are saying here. It's crucial to have these systems in early and present.
However your assumption about sameyness are making assumptions that are incorrect. In addition its not a system that works well without being universal.
I can assure you with a lot of confidence that it being a universal mechanic does not make fights feel samey. Different classes and specs use and approach of these universal mechanics vary wildly. That thing you said about different tanks feeling different as a result? Doubly true. Different dps have vastly different strategies for solving the multifaceted problems that arrives when both systems are present. Same for support especially when it comes to subjob decisions. It allows mobs to be a lot more responsive and dynamic, something your proposed system alone could be improved massively with including this mechanic. I know that's a big deal for you and all you have is my experienced opinion, but it's not that different in effecting the 'sameyness' as from your approach (which is not at all imo.)It works well with your approach and FFXI has a lot of emergently similar abilities to ones you listed as a result. It creates far more dynamic and variation in fights when both layers are present.
It being a universal mechanic means it is fine tuneable. If you do not make it a universal mechanic the fine tuning relative to builds and gear is lost.
It leads to a lot more depth and is fairly intuitive/easy to teach the basics, with plenty of room for mastery with more experience.
Players should be paying more attention to the flow of combat and how their actions affect others, rather than primarily focusing on hotbar rotations.
However, I am even more sure that it is even more possible if mechanics like this are used sometimes, rather than used all the time by all classes, even if each class uses them differently.
I am not a fan of any one mechanic or system being used by every class on every encounter. Even if it is a good mechanic or system.
What makes you sure?
Edit: rescinded. Adds nothing to the conversation.
What makes me sure that it is possible to not have content all feel samey if they all share a mechanic? The simple fact that there are other mechanics that can also be added to make content feel different.
I am going to assume you misunderstood me here, as I was agreeing with you - I just think it is better without these universal mechanics.
Hmm your right I misunderstood you. My gap in understanding your perspective is that if you don't have it as a universal mechanic, like hate, then the ability to integrate it into gear and over all class strategy and balance is lost. Do you have a reason to think it is possible to make it a sometimes mechanic while achieving that?
I have played a number of encounters that add abilities to players that are only used on that encounter.
In some cases, those encounter specific abilities mesh with the existing class abilities the game has, and in some cases, those abilities are the only way worth a damn to damage the encounter (by design).
If you designed an encounter with abilities like this you would give players an option of which ability they wanted, and then you would make these encounters harder than normal.
Take this idea of yours here, and you take the idea from @bigepeen earlier in another thread (corridor dungeons). Make it so that any raid zone in Ashes that is influenced by a religious metropolis uses that corridor system, and any raid encounter that is influenced by a military node uses your mechanic here - add two more (economists and scientific), and you have content that really feels different based on node influence.
With that, you could then have these abilities that your system is to use able to be picked up at a military metropolis.
To me, this kind of thing seems like it would be FAR more interesting than just slapping a mechanic like this on all encounters.
Your perspective is pretty clear and I now have learned yet another thing you consider important to game design approach. I hope you get to feel EQ2 vibes in a games combat again. Whether it be ashes or elsewhere. I think we are seeing one anothers perspectives at least.
Keep Tanks badass by keeping them physical, then give them more physical moves. The "shielding allies" stuff makes perfect sense but it should be more physical like physically getting in between enmies and allies. As it is every person has physical solidity so this is possible.
Disrupting enemies makes sense for Tanks given they can attack immediately after being attacked without the same stagger or knock-back issues as every other class.
So if more enemies have CC that depends on what they're hitting then Tanks simply are great Brawlers that don't get knocked down which is completely thematic and useful.
You're dead on with threat being way too simple. Most enemies with any sort of instinct should target weaker individuals and avoid the Tank, while the Tanks' job should be to not get juked and put out of the fight.
Tank = Brawlin' Best.