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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.
PvP Taunt/Hate
maouw
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Taunt/Hate systems are great for PvE but not so much in PvP (usually implemented as a hard CC - which is meh).
Can you adapt the system so it works in PvP?
Identity of the Tank is to:
Idea:
- building 'Hate' on other players prevents them from casting non-offensive abilities, but lets them cast offensive abilities as normal. The hate debuff is removed when enough damage is dealt to the tank, and then non-offensive abilities can be cast again.
What this would do:
I think this preserves the core identity of the Tank and allows them to make great plays in PvP.
Are there ways to exploit this idea?
Can you adapt the system so it works in PvP?
Identity of the Tank is to:
- be a threatening presence to the enemy
- engage the enemy on the front line
- absorb damage(and other stuff) on behalf of the team
Idea:
- building 'Hate' on other players prevents them from casting non-offensive abilities, but lets them cast offensive abilities as normal. The hate debuff is removed when enough damage is dealt to the tank, and then non-offensive abilities can be cast again.
What this would do:
- If a tank gets into the backlines, the healers and supports are screwed until DPS party members free them from the hate Debuff
- This naturally means the Tank is always a threat that cannot be ignored
- This naturally means the Tank will get focused if they reach the backlines
- This naturally means the Tank will absorb enemy DPS for his team
I think this preserves the core identity of the Tank and allows them to make great plays in PvP.
Are there ways to exploit this idea?
I wish I were deep and tragic
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Comments
I've tested this in multiple build attempt systems, if that has any weight in your mind. Doesn't work at all and always had to scrap it. Always comes out to be 'it is more reasonable to have the Tank positionally prevent attacks on others or have a very brief forced target change to themselves' than any longer term debuff based on either 'damage that must be done to the Tank overall' or 'cannot use certain abilities while under this'.
Especially in games with Summoners.
Especially if the Taunt ability is even a conal AoE.
That's my 2c on that.
One option that made me laugh was off you taunt someone like a fighter they camera lock on you so they have to face(attack) in your direction.
Was there a particular critical point of failure causing the breakdown?
The frustration of helplessness while the debuff is ongoing?
The ease of the tank reaching the backline?
When Tanks only have 'protective' abilities, this sort of thing is already very powerful, but notice what your original point was. "Can only use offense abilities". This means that other Tanks can't use their own protective abilities.
Even if you change it to 'ok some defensive abilities can be used and not others', it quickly becomes 'whichever 2 tanks land their Taunt first', because even if you allow Tanks C and D on the enemy team to still Taunt (this gets silly very fast btw), you now have one team that can heal their own tanks while those tanks beat up healers, and another that cannot. The idea being, of course, that the 'winning team' has the goal of 'landing Taunt on enemy backline' and then bursting down the other tanks.
Positionally, it can work as long as Taunt is an ability you can use while under Taunt's effect, it becomes sort of fair, more of a 'best team wins' situation, but there's a lot of nuance and complexity and eventually incredible annoyance involved. For example, can Tank C aim their Taunt at anyone other than Tank A, once Tank A landed Taunt first?
And then you have to decide a bunch of different things about how exactly summons respond to this, and worse if there are summons that also have Taunt or equivalent.
Finally, it doesn't synergize in a... let's call it 'fun' way, with the extremely high damage mitigation abilities Tanks sometimes have.
I can probably give you test data if I can find it, it's usually messy though. Unfortunately it's also difficult to summarize, as you can probably see from my meandering above.
Interesting!
So, with that being said on Tank identity, I'd ask - *should* Tanks have an effective taunt ability in PvP at all, or is their identity as a Tank strong and potent enough in PvP that it doesn't require it? Good topic!
Or you could just scrap all of that and give the tank active abilities that in the hands of a good player, have the same effect of keeping an enemy player from dealing out damage to who he wants, when he wants.
In other words the tanks presence is a taunt itself, he has to be dealt with or mitigated in some way. He doesn't need a button to artificially taunt.
The same way you would break out of a stun to break out of a taunt?
This is totally a valid concern, even if the system could work, would it be fun?
I wonder if that depends on implementation. (My guess is it would be more fun than a hard CC or a taunt because you can still DO something).
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I've heard the complaint from tanks that in PvP they have to spec into damage or else be the unit that everyone ignores because there's no point attacking a tank. This is just hearsay though, would be nice to get some in-depth feedback from tank mains about PvP. (I don't have any tank experience).
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@Azherae
Haha, I see, the tankiness of the tank in the backlines means he'll be there for a while huh?
That's good insight - thanks.
I guess it depends on what games you've played. In those I've played any stun had a % to land and the taunt was pretty much 100% but you could avoid it just by spamming target somewhere else. But ye there are milion ways to do that, what I've seen (not tested yet personally) tanks build hate by using their skills, we will see how all this works.
I won't go into too much detail on it (which for me means only one page today), but the solution in Cardinal is to simply make it so that Tanks can put people under an effect (not by Taunting, but taunting them would work too) in which 'when that person does not attack or target the Tank, or tries to attack someone else, the Tank's damage against that player just naturally doubles (or more, it's seriously strong, intentionally so).
This way, Tanks can continue to build Tanky, while still becoming borderline ridiculous DPS if you choose not to target them. It also works to make 'Dark Knight' style characters, and works decently in PvE (given the design style my group likes where the Tank's job is to stay just ahead of the threat of others, not necessarily to never lose the enemy's focus)
By funneling this through the Tank's capacity to do damage, you make it so that even if the Tank did land this effect on multiple targets at once, the 'threat' of the effect can only be applied to one at a time for most abilities (i.e. not AoE). The 'status' can even be allowed to stack (don't think it works the same way for an MMO like Ashes, underlying assumptions are different).
But the Two Tanks problem is solved even if it doesn't.
Tank A provokes some set of people, attacks one of them, that one 'needs to' stop attacking someone else or be subjected to a massive incoming DPS. Other members of that set of people are still free to do what they were doing, but if they choose not to target the Tank, any AoE ability still poses a large threat.
But they can. They can figure out 'who is that Tank attacking?' and do things. What they can't do is 'continue to pile onto some person the Tank is trying to protect', most of the time. If the Tank's AoE is ready, they'll just all get cut down together.
So let's say they scatter, or stop attacking the target, or even that only some of them stop attacking that target. The effect wears off. Tank B applies it. They've already countered it. They're in no additional danger other than the fact that at least one of them (Tank B's current attack target) has to mitigate 'what happens if they attack anyone other than Tank B'. Others are free to continue doing things.
Or they attempt to apply some CC to the Tank so that they aren't able to dish out that damage, but that's still 'I had to use this ability on the Tank instead', and now you're throwing CC at the class probably most built for resisting it.
I prefer not to give more details, as noted. I am not saying this would work for Ashes, but if it would, they can have it (or rather, whatever interpretation of it they come up with is clearly theirs), I'm moreso offering the result of my own work so that if you find the direction of it, useful, you can use it for any further discussion.
I'd prefer the idea (back in some other tank threads months ago) that a tank can take hits (or at least significantly reduce damage received) for allies within a close proximity.
Then the tank:
- Still is a threatening presence. Leave him alone and you can't damage his allies efficiently
- Has to be on the frontline (or your fighters / rogues become exposed & vulnerable). Or you can place a tank near the backline folks so that pesky ranger can't snipe your healer.
- Absorbs damage \o/
While this also incentivizes players to stack near the tank, but in that case just use aoe.
Unless the type of battleground has some sort of control point that they have to push me off of I will often get ignored as they go for the squishy targets first. A taunt mechanic of some sort would make tanking in PvP more exciting... But I'm used to not having it...
Do you have any better suggestions for a way to make PvP combat function similar to PvE?
In PvE, tanks can taunt mobs so the mobs attack the tank rather than the DPS or healers. This allows DPS and healers to function as a part of a team.
In PvP, players can and do just ignore the tank, and they go after the DPS and healers.
Most PvP players just say that yeah, of course they do, why go for the tank when the tank can't really do anything?
They don't see the glaringly obvious, inherent problem with that.
A good PvP game should strive to see tanks function as tanks. As soon as you have this, you put an end to cheesy tactics like (but not limited to) mageballs. A mageball simply can't work if they can't all target the same players.
This is why I do not understand the lack of desire for wanting taunts to function in PvP. It is, as far as I.am concerned, the single largest fix MMO's in general can make to PvP.
It's really easy to just say "but having the tank pull me from my target all the time would be really annoying". All I can say to that is, ya, that's the point. A tank taunting you is supposed to be so annoying that you opt to go after that tank first, so that you then have the freedom to go after the DPS and healers. That is the tank being a tank, which is what we should all want.