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THE PROBLEM IN ALL MMOS - TANK SCARCITY & DUNGEON GROUPS
Squeezy
Member
Reposting this from the Dev Discussion on tanks because my post seemed out of place because the question was: "Would you prefer more traditional MMORPG main and off-tank roles, or would you prefer to see combat experiences with several tanks fighting?"
However, I was talking more about having more things for tanks to do and increasing the number of tanks within a 40-man raid to help the Tank Scarcity problem.
I would prefer to see several tanks fighting in a raid and here's why:
One of the biggest problems in MMORPGs is the lack of tanks for dungeons.
We've seen this in World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft Classic, and Elderscrolls Online, where it can take a DPS an HOUR to find a group for a dungeon, but a tank can find a group instantaneously. It has become so bad in some games that tanks can charge fees for their tanking services. I think that tank scarcity occurs because, in many MMOs, guilds focus on raiding content and most raid groups have a large amount of DPS and Healers compared to tanks. Let me show you an example with WoW Classic.
Your standard raid group in World of Warcraft The Burning Crusade has a raid group of
25 Players.
2 Tanks
6 Healers
17 DPS
That is:
1 Tank for every 3 Healers
and
1 Tank for every 8.5 DPS
Now a standard dungeon group has
5 Players
1 Tank
1 Healer
3 DPS
So hypothetically, there are about 5.5 DPS and 2 Healers waiting for a tank.
Raid composition is of course not the only problem with Tank scarcity, but I think it is the largest problem.
The AshesofCreation Wiki states that group content will be "tailored for 40,16, and 8 person group sizes"
"Parties will have up to eight (8) players in a single group
Raids will have 40 man groups."
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Group_sizes
So, to correct for tank scarcity we would have the correct proportion of the 4 roles within Ashes of Creation. Tank, Healer, Support, and DPS. So as an example:
8 person group -
1 Tank
4 DPS
1 Support
2 Healers
16 person group-
2 Tanks
8 DPS
2 Support
4 Healers
40 Person group-
5 Tanks
20 DPS
5 Support
10 Healers
This part is just an example, we don't know how many players we need for each role
However, you can see that every 40-man raid team can be broken up into 5, even 8-person dungeon groups with the correct amounts of each required role.
In short - the proportion of DPS, Support, Healers, & Tanks should be the same between a 40-person raid group and an 8-person dungeon group.
Let me know what you think, and what your solution would be to solving tank scarcity.
However, I was talking more about having more things for tanks to do and increasing the number of tanks within a 40-man raid to help the Tank Scarcity problem.
I would prefer to see several tanks fighting in a raid and here's why:
One of the biggest problems in MMORPGs is the lack of tanks for dungeons.
We've seen this in World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft Classic, and Elderscrolls Online, where it can take a DPS an HOUR to find a group for a dungeon, but a tank can find a group instantaneously. It has become so bad in some games that tanks can charge fees for their tanking services. I think that tank scarcity occurs because, in many MMOs, guilds focus on raiding content and most raid groups have a large amount of DPS and Healers compared to tanks. Let me show you an example with WoW Classic.
Your standard raid group in World of Warcraft The Burning Crusade has a raid group of
25 Players.
2 Tanks
6 Healers
17 DPS
That is:
1 Tank for every 3 Healers
and
1 Tank for every 8.5 DPS
Now a standard dungeon group has
5 Players
1 Tank
1 Healer
3 DPS
So hypothetically, there are about 5.5 DPS and 2 Healers waiting for a tank.
Raid composition is of course not the only problem with Tank scarcity, but I think it is the largest problem.
The AshesofCreation Wiki states that group content will be "tailored for 40,16, and 8 person group sizes"
"Parties will have up to eight (8) players in a single group
Raids will have 40 man groups."
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Group_sizes
So, to correct for tank scarcity we would have the correct proportion of the 4 roles within Ashes of Creation. Tank, Healer, Support, and DPS. So as an example:
8 person group -
1 Tank
4 DPS
1 Support
2 Healers
16 person group-
2 Tanks
8 DPS
2 Support
4 Healers
40 Person group-
5 Tanks
20 DPS
5 Support
10 Healers
This part is just an example, we don't know how many players we need for each role
However, you can see that every 40-man raid team can be broken up into 5, even 8-person dungeon groups with the correct amounts of each required role.
In short - the proportion of DPS, Support, Healers, & Tanks should be the same between a 40-person raid group and an 8-person dungeon group.
Let me know what you think, and what your solution would be to solving tank scarcity.
ᚺᛖᚨᚱᚦ ᛟᚠᚦᛖ ᛊᚺᚨᛞᛟᚹ ᛁᛗᛁᚱ
2
Comments
Then sit back and watch people who enjoy being both survivable and doing 'good but not the best' damage, learn to tank if they don't already know how.
If each group should consist of 1 per Archetype in Group Content, then it needs to be ensured, that the same principle holds true for raid content.
People tend to have little patience in those games because they have made players disposable. If someone new tried to tank instead of helping them and guiding them along we see far to often the "Get out of here noob!" Mentality.
Not having a dungeon finder should help. Is easier to lift up a newer player then spend the next hour looking for an established one.
Several weeks ago ran a dungeon with a new tank and we helped them best we could. Shame more people don't do that.
I disagree here, dungeon finder definitely makes players disposable and I'm not at all arguing for a dungeon finder queue system. But, for example in WoW classic TBC, there is no dungeon finder, and IT STILL can easily take a group of 3 dps and 1 healer an hour to find a tank.
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It does indeed take some time. However that is how I started healing way back in Guild Wars. Couldn't find a healer so I did it. Need more people to take the initiative and just do it.
I am hard core against anything almost in anyway resembling GW2's failure of a class system. Roles should be important. NOT a bunch of dps with a self heal dancing around a loot pinata.
Not really how they are setting the class system up.
Your primary archetype will set your skills and role.
Secondary will argument what you skills do a little bit.
Lot of mixed views here in the forums as to how far you can go. Need to wait for more information and alpha 2/beta's.
Yeah, that's pretty much the exact same feedback I gave in the official thread, so I agree.
1 of each archetype per party of 8, and 5 of each per raid should be close to optimal in a majority of PvE encounters. Variation is great, and we should also get that, where some encounters call for more tanks, or more healers, or 10 bards for that matter. But as a rule of thumb, 1 each per party and 5 each per raid for optimal conditions, while still allowing for player experimentation and other combinations also working.
I feel like that pressure on 1 person's shoulders is what scares people off from picking up the role.
Yes and No. I think many people, including myself are scared of the main tank role, but at the same time only needing two tanks for a 40 man raid and then needing 1 tank per group of 8 for dungeons would cause the same exact issues we've seen in many other MMOs.
Maybe, if there were a designated 5 tanks per 40 player raid team, people would be less pressured and more enthusiastic to pick up that role.
ᚺᛖᚨᚱᚦ ᛟᚠᚦᛖ ᛊᚺᚨᛞᛟᚹ ᛁᛗᛁᚱ
They already said that Tank Secondaries are not meant to be primary/main tanks the same way Heal Secondaries will not be main healers.
I don't think there should be a formula to beat PvE content, a magical number that always needs to be followed. In other words, I think some PvE content should be beatable with 1 tank, 10 healers and 29 DPS. Other piece of content, needs 10 tanks, 5 healers and 25 DPS. You get the point.
In my opinion, most people think that playing as Tanks and Healers is less fun than DPS because killing people is more fun than tanking or healing. However, if you make Tanks and Healers killing machines, the game becomes unbalanced and then there will be a scarcity of DPS classes.
Funnily enough, I never played as a support class in any MMORPG I've ever played - and I played quite a few - but I was a main support position 5 in DotA for a few thousand hours and got to 6k MMR by doing so. Why? Because being a support in that game was very rewarding for me, and often more fun than being the carry.
So, to answer your question, how to solve tank (and support) scarcity? Make those classes (and roles) fun: they might not win 1v1s frequently, but they can turn the tides of group fights via intelligence and skill.
Fortunately...
Also, I think the beneficial result is that guilds become the best approach to organize teams for content. Unfortunately, the LFG mindset has grooved an expectation for instant gratification to play through dungeons - at the price of social interaction, player significance, and meaningful gameplay.
So part of my thought here is that by guilds being the largest denominator it will slow down the overall approach on dungeons. If folks are on, great let's go. If not, we can move back to planned content sessions - making calendar / planning tools MUCH more valuable for interaction than Dungeon Tinder.
This is all goodness in my book.
Obviously a secondary tank wouldn't match a Full Tank on their own, but if a few party members cross-classed with Tank, maybe you could manage
Even if people have to yell in town "group looking for tank" versus sit in a auto fill queue, a tank shortage is still going to be a tank shortage. I don't see how ashes will be different than any other MMO here.
So when a new player wants to play, say, a bard - he can look for a server where there's not enough bards. Obviously there's a high chance that alts would be helping out with that issue, but I'd assume any group of people would be more happy to have a pure main archetype than making one of their members play a class they didn't want to play.
Considering that, every server is supposed to be different, i do believe, that a quick infosheet would be very appropriate when hovering over each server. In other games this is usually provided through the playerbase themselves thanks to an API. Here intrepid should cover it imo.
It could display information like class and races distributions. Location of Metropoli, a quick gaze into the top sheet of leaderboards as well as other KPIs collected by Intrepid, like No. of WB Kills in the last 7d, No. of PKs, No. of Guikd Wars, No. of successful and unsuccessful caravans.
Stuff like that. Things describing the situation on the server from different Angles
I like the idea, but that would mostly just apply to new players trying it out. Most people who play with friends would all head to the same server despite what class distribution it has.
Also, would that data count for activity of those archetypes? ie: a bunch of people made bards and then switched to something and don't play them anymore or something that would throw off the numbers.
What I meant with that first part is more of that people joining with groups of friends won't be as worried about class which would lead to even bigger imbalances wouldn't it?
The mindset of I like playing a mage and all my friends are here... So I'm going there to be a mage even if that's the number one archetype on the server.
But even if we assume that it's not a full stack of people and they did go against that design - one (or even a few) group of friends is nothing in the face of the potential 10k players on the server.
But I think I get what you're saying, if people just choose servers w/o looking at the stats or caring about minmaxing their party (which will obviously be the case for quite a lot of people) - you'll get unbalanced servers. At least initially.
But I think that would be fine. Content will be mainly pushed by the minmaxers who will be in optimal stacks (so theoretically "1 of each"). All the other people will just be playing at their low-mid pace and probably doing solo or small group content. This setup would bring some imbalance to the archetype stats at release. But then, every new player who have chosen some archetype and doesn't have a friends group (of which there'll be a ton) can look for the server that has a fitting imbalance. And now this person can easily find a group to play with, because statistically his archetype would be needed there.
Obviously they'll have to put in work, because some parties might've gone for a quick alt switch to make their party optimal, but if you're leveling a main with the explicit desire to go deep into the game - I'd assume any party who's lacking a main of that archetype would be glad to get you. At least I know I would , if I was in that kind of situation.
Never had a tank shortage in L2. Tanks were awesome to play in an mmo without instances or PvE gear. They were far from unpopular.
AoC WILL BE different from all the mmo out there that are designed (and design classes) around treadmill instanced gameplay.
It's all about the design and the developer's goal for that design.
People dont know what a tank is and how much fun it is. Meh... Ive said enough. Let them worry... there will not be an issue.
I like playing brawlers - and tanks are usually the best base class for it, but it can be really hard to find that niche. I don't mind tanking PvE content - I don't really like PvE content, but if necessary, I'm happy to slap a shield on and off we go. 99% of the time, I like swinging a big hammer - but the point is, I can and do tank.
Part of the scarcity (IMO) is the restriction; look at raid teams. People don't play tank because sometimes they can't get the slot. Sometimes there's nothing for a tank to do outside of PvE group content - it's a headache to quest alone or do solo activities when you do damage with a pool noodle. It's not really that fun.
Giving tanks viable non-tank specs without the need to regear will go a long way to increasing their availability. Tanking has always been a 'sometimes' activity - you don't need a sword and shield tank for a majority of game content*, so why force them to always be one?
* Think about it, tanking exists solely for group content, and often you're doing stuff on your own.
Meh - Tanking solo can be pretty fun too. As long as you can eventually take the 7 mobs you pulled down.
Post-WotLK tank dps was ridiculously over-tuned. It made Blood DK and Vengeance fun as hell - being the most aggressive tank - but just stupid as a solo spec to pull 10-12 mobs and dps them down so quickly.
My hope is that tanks are calibrated with an appropriate, mutual give and take between damage output & mitigation, based on spec & augments that can be tuned for group v solo play.