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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.
Comments
A pvp mmo would have a purely pvp progression, just as a pve one does. But most pvp people dislike unfair matchups, which is why the mmo genre just doesn't fit a purely pvp game and why we got all the session-based pvp games instead of pvp mmos.
In terms of players, when you are in a group, it is most efficient for players (nothing to do with game mechanics) if there is only one player taking damage. One player taking damage means only one player needing to be healed, and only one player having attacks interrupted.
If you are going to nominate one player in a group to take all the damage from mobs, then obviously that players offensive capabilities are less important than their defensive capabilities.
Drop the notion of tanks from game design and players will still find a way to make tanks work (look at GW2 for an example of this).
It is simply a case of a group of hyper-specalized players working together well will always be better and more efficient than a group of the same size, but of more generalized players.
This is literally how a group (or raid) is better and stronger than the sum of its parts.
As others in this thread have suggested, improving the tanks role in Ashes may well be feasible. However, rather than this being replacing threat/hate with a different mechanic, the thing to do would be to refine the system further.
That said, I dont see Ashes doing anything with threat/hatred that at least one other game has done, when you consider all the mechanics that have been associated with it.
What some games do (WoW and L2 are examples of this) is they throw together a basic threat system, and use it for every encounter in the game. A point is hate has a set amount, a point of damage has a set amount and a point of healing has a set amount.
What some other games do though, is they have built in modifiers. Things like armor and weapon choice affecting hate, as well as damage types, buff types and heals. These modifiers though, they are all applied to individual mob types (or individual mobs, in some cases).
What this means is that you may come across a mob type that has a -50% threat gain for anyone wearing plate armor, and another -50% for anyone using a shield. Your board and sword, plate wearing tank is literally going to be unable to generate any hate at all against such mobs.
Perhaps you have a mob that has +100% hate gain from fire damage - your elemental mages are going to have some real trouble with this.
In games like L2 and WoW, where threat/hate mechanics are static, I actually agree that the systems are kind of shit. If the OP framed the post in terms saying their experience in MMO's is limited, and they would like Ashes to not implement tanks in the way the few games they have played did, I'd agree (based on knowing what those games are).
However, the post was more framed as a "my experience is infinite, and tanks suck so Inteepid should do something no one else has done" kind of thing, and as such I disagree entirely.
However, as said above, Intrepid would do well to look past L2 (and its successors) and WoW (and its clones) for basically all combat mechanics.
If you put "PvX game/mmo" into Google no suggestive games come up.
If you put in "PvE/PvP mmo" you do get suggestions but interestingly...basically the same games displayed.
The further labelling of mmo's are almost irrelevant for an audience that is a complete stranger to them and furthermore it is fact that almost every mmorpg contains at least a good level of PvE/grind content but it's merely getting picky with the schematics IE "this game contains bullies, how dare you! (allowed pvp)" "This game likely has addicted hoarders (PvE chuggers)", If someone wanted to go reeeeally deep and I love going really deep on things, I could argue that there are bullying aspects in the likes of WoW and FF14 and of course there are loot/resource hoarders on more pvp allowed mmo's.
It clearly appears that you like certain specifics to be branded but it only creates sides, which from life experience and the history of the world is chidlish. What would be fair is in ratings ie "Rated 15+, violience, addiction, contains a high level of PvP" and this clearly illustrates to people with that particular distaste that the game is "toxic" but also serves as good parental information down the line because games like League of Legends should not be played by people still in school anyway so fingers crossed for common sense in the future!
I added this tid bit to my thread to simply illustrate how low mmorpg's had gotten since the era before other gaming genres took to the internet, I really don't think it needs explaining more.
Quests, mobs, crafting, NPC's, these are fundamentals of an MMO. Take them out, and you have a different genre - a genre that literally no one will ever create.
I think we should rethink the relationship between monsters and tank
just pretend we are the boss monster and ask “why I should kill tank first instead of others?”
Why... if you felt rage or love you know both blind men.
The tank's abilities work the other way around than in this video.
I have no problem with the Tank as a PvE class. The logic behind is ok. I also do not want smarter NPCs because that would cause the traditional PvE tank behavior (of attracting the hits) to fall apart.
What happens with the tank in PvP then? Is it still useful as a tank?
And removing mobs would be the point, if you were making a truly pvp mmo. There's already the closest thing to this. Foxhole is pretty much a pvp mmo with crafting. It's just that the progression is more social than really rpg-like. And crafting, at its core, comes from "pve". There's also no quests or npcs. But if you were to add those things into the game - you'd have yourself a truly pvp mmo with the majority of features that mmorpg players are used to.
The bulk of MMO players (all that I know that have looked at the game, at least) don't consider Foxhole to be an MMO.
An attempt at an MMO where players are the only quest objective is ripe for easy exploiting.
The stretching and contorting of the term "MMO" in order to hold your opinion of PvE, PvP and PvX simply make it not worth holding that opinion. It is far simpler to understand that people talking about PvP MMO's are simply talking about the many, many MMO's in which PvP exists in the open world, and PvE MMO's are simply those in which there is no PvP in the open world.
There is no need to contort anything with this definition, and the only time there is any confusion is when PvP players start getting needlessly stubborn.
Unfair matchups lead to losing the fight often. That feels bad for PvE too. That's why NPCs are dumbed down.
Also that is why there are more PvE players than PvP ones.
In PvP, the tank should even out the fight against a stronger group.
Still that would just slow down the fight and only give time to retreat rather than to win, as the tanking abilities are used by both sides, unlike in PvE where the NPCs do not have tanks against the human players.
In AoC I understand that time to kill is already high, so maybe the tank's influence is not needed like in PvE.
Then will the tank be a DD? Or a CC?
And to me a "pve" mmo is not an mmo
But as I've said from the start of this subdiscussion, the "pvp mmo" design pretty much went into the rust/arena battler/foxhole-like games. Though I guess even Rust could be seen as a pvx game, because there's a ton of pve there.
I just find it silly for "pve" mmos to exist comfortably, but pvx mmos not even being considered a sub-genre. A game where 99% of your gameplay is pve is not a fucking pvp mmo. And that's pretty much what L2 was, even for players that sooner or later started only participating in the pvp arena. You still had to spend a shitton of time getting gear through pve if you wanted to succeed in the arena (which is exactly the issue that a lot of pvp players see with any potential "pvp mmos").
The only way this stance can hold true is if you change "meaningful action" to "openly hostile action", in which case you are saying you dont consider an MMO to be an MMO unless it has PvP - a sentiment that is easily proven incorrect (as in - not even a valid opinion to hold).
That content then gives you your gear, gives you your progression and usually finishes out the game's story. So, in a way, you can play the game as a single player with a few "npc helpers" along the way.
Of course there's the RP and/or some mingames or smth, but pvx games can have that too, so it's not like only pve mmos can provide that kind of content.
But yes, to me, mmos that don't have you interacting with other players outside of pure cooperation are as bad as a theoretical pure pvp mmo that doesn't let you cooperate at all. If you see that pov as invalid...
Fucking too right. Lineage 2 at certain spells couldn't even hold my attention away from Tekken or my horrible League of Legends addiction for too long, like literally why bother with an avatar and mindlessly PvE for so many hours a day for only a fraction of PvP content (which defo needs forced increasing!)....when you can get PvP content on tap via other games!
This shit is off topic though and as I said in 1 reply to @Noaani I added it to my piece to show how low mmo's had gotten beyond the year 2010+. I still can't get over though how some people can be passionately aggressive over PvE content though, like literally every single PvE game in existence no matter how many complex layers are added can be broken down into patterns and often end up comfortable unless the game intentionally adds absurd stats to enemies, essentially creating the "no mistake" scenario for the player.
All this is a perspective, a "mainstream narrative".
Sexy girls, Boy Bands, skimpy clothing, drugs and alcohol, take them out and you no longer have a pop genre. No, things just change and sometimes they change back, it's not straightforward.
You could have any mmo without quests, you could make an mmo focusing heavily on found objective drive via Guild Leaders, mobs and bosses just appear and are only visually causing problems but none of this info is ever highlighted from any NPC and near the "problem area" there can be an NPC saying "shiiiit! help!" or whatever but no quest/reward scheme. When the guild dispatches and eliminates all threats, they get mob loot as usual and then around town they get snippets of "thanks for the help!" and even town/npc growth as a result but no quest!
Outside the box!
Are you suggesting we should all find the worst example of things we dont like in MMO's and use that to justify our perspective, rather than attempting to find the best example of the thing we are arguing against?
If you say you only consider an MMO to be an MMO if there is meaningful interaction between players, and I then say that many PvE games have this, it is essentially dishonest of you to ignore that and start talking about the games that dont have it. I mean, I literally never said that all PvE MMO's do it.
I'm at the point on these forums where I am just going to call out bad-faith arguments, rather than entertaining them - and this is one such argument.
And I'm interested in Ashes exactly because it's going for what I consider to be a good mmo design. A combination of pve and pvp, that pushes people to party up and that then lets them socialize/politicize/whateverize.
If Ashes wasn't going to do that - I wouldn't be here. And if it changes its design goals, I'll probably leave. What drew you into Ashes? The ephemeral promise of top lvl pve in the open world or the hope that they'll change their stance somewhat and will have more instanced bosses that would match your very high standards for them?
And to swerve this as least a bit back to topic, those pve mmos were the biggest reason why the tank are the way they currently are. You suggested to just refine the classic threat system, but that doesn't address the tank's role in the pvp part of the game. Do you think the classic threat system can be somehow fitted to pvp or do you just want it to be a separate thing, just as pve should be separate from pvp for it to be the best self?
As to your comments about PvE content, you are again missing (ignoring) the point.
Yes, most (not all, nust most) PvE content can be broken down.
The thing you are missing is - that is the point. You get a new encounter, you break it down, you work on it for a few weeks (or months - or years), and then you kill it. Then you kill it a few more times for loot, and generally, well before you and your guild are sick of taking on that encounter, you have moved on to the next one.
In a proper PvE game, you dont generally kill encounters more than a handful of times. It isnt like L2 or Archeage where the same content is viable year after year.
Knowing these are the types of games you come from, I actually fully understand why your opinion of PvE is what it is. All I am trying to do is tell you that your opinion of PvE is shaped from games that are not PvE games.
The thing is, a good developer will be ahead of players in terms of encounters. There shouldn't be a period of more than a few weeks between when players kill the hardest mob on the live servers and the next, even harder mob is released. When this happens, it's almost like starting a new game. You have to figure things out again from the start.
Yes, games where an encounter is viable for years on end make PvE content tedious. I fully agree with you on that.
My disagreement with you though isnt based on that. My disagreement with you is based on the simple fact that the above situation is a result of shit developers/development, and players should be pointing to said developers as being at fault rather than pointing to PvE content as a whole as being at fault.
You seem to be perpetually unwilling to accept that your experience in MMO's is not infinite.
If you want to talk about games since 2010, then the point needs to be made that no one has even attempted a serious PvE MMO since before then.
While some would point to GW2, the simple fact is that it doesn't have the volume of content, nor does ESO.
This is why no one has attempted a PvE MMO in that time - and why UE5 is the first solid hope of a PvE MMO that people have had in well over a decade. I have suggested before, make it so taunts either force or compel targeted players to attack the tank.
Make it a 'magic' effect if you need to (in the same way most CC is). While this will initially see some players complaining that they can't freely target who they want, it won't take long before most players make the conscious decision to target tanks first.
This will see PvP combat reflect PvE combat much more closely than it is now, in terms of structure.
Playing with other humans who make mistakes or still learn the local unwritten dungeon habits is more fun than playing with scripted NPC companions...
I was thinking on two mechanics
1) bunker - would teleport all team members near the tank, including the fallen ones and give them a short time invulnerability time, enough to heal and revive the fallen members
2) shield vs shield - the tanks would not only protect but would also push back against the shield of the enemy tank.
They could balance the defence vs push or give the unused energy to dd players in the team. Tanks should be less vulnerable against dd , to encourage each team to focus on the others while the tanks also fight using this shield vs shield mechanic.
I'm having some trouble attempting to follow along with your premise here.
Do you agree or disagree with my statement that the more people are present, the more specialized each person should become?
The 'Tank fantasy' is whatever you want it to be as long as it does the above.
That's why this thread is so weird, though I can't fault the OP for not having experiences.
To me, it just feels really silly.
FFXI made the Ninja class intending for it to be a DPS/Debuffer.
Players looked at the 'shadow clone' ability it has which negates single target attacks and went 'That's a LOT of MP saved, y'know... let's make it a Tank'.
The Devs didn't support this for a while. They fought against it a bit (relatively, because again, anything can Tank if you really want it to, but they basically didn't want it to, so I mean that they fought against 'the community perspective of it being a tank').
AoE abilities destroy all shadow clones and still do full damage. The ability has a long recast. The class has good evasion but couldn't DPS well while built for evasion and also for using the shadows. Square Enix just left it. And players kept going...
"Nope, that's a Tank. Let's start getting these people geared up and work out strats."
So they did. Strats for dealing with 'things that outpace the recast'. For dealing with 'magic and AoE defense'. For 'figuring out how to make sure that the class could save someone else other than by just hitting Provoke'.
The Devs eventually gave in and gave the class an Enmity Boosting stance when in front of enemies, and that's about it. Players just all found their own way, because someone decided "I can see how to use a long recast ability that negates strong single-target damage to maximize MP/Survivability".
The game contained like, one actual Taunt skill for 10 years or so. Everything else is 'affect the enemy so they're actually annoyed because you stopped them from doing something'.
If I'm tanking and I lose the mob, I Provoke (/WAR - I don't actually play this), Flash(/WHM - high level option only), use a DPS Spike option (innate to class), use a big heal on myself or them (usually them, /WHM again), or the other person just switches to their Defensive mode until it's hit them enough for it to be off them.
Most of the rest of this thread is just discussions of 'I think this SHOULD be this way' and 'I never experienced anything OTHER than this way' while I'm over here like 'what are you guys even talking about?'
Some days my Paladin tanks, some days I tank, some days our Monk tanks, sometimes our Summoner Summon-Tanks, sometimes our Dark Knight tanks, and sometimes our Bard tanks. Whoever's abilities will win the MP/Survivability ratio 'contest' in any given moment is the 'best tank', and some days you can just ignore that too because all you want is for the mob to be ineffective at stopping your DPS before it dies.
The very concept of a 'Tank Class' is artificial to me, but simplicity helps, so I'm not willing to crusade against it. Even if the majority of people have the 'Tank Fantasy' of 'being the walking juggernaut totem that shrugs off blades and laughs in the face of explosions', it's up to the game to lean into that. If the game is full of mobs that kill through stacking Bleed damage and your Tank Class doesn't come with Anti-Bleed, whichever class has Anti-Bleed is the Tank.
When the enemy is going to drop massive AoE/conal lightning bolts on you every few seconds, you don't call me, the Paladin, or the Monk.
JustVine summons Ramuh and we work out how to get enough MP to her so that the Summon can Tank.
That should be down the players tact, whether that be from themselves or beknown or unbeknown to them a developers choice, it's convoluted.
If you're in a 2hr+ epic boss fight, the devs expect you to employ probably a lot more than 1 healer and the Healers would perhaps spec accordingly, one for HP filling and the other more prioritized in conserved mana for MP/Resource healing.
In certain games, perhaps EQ2, similar classes have completely different weaponry and armorment tied and each have their purpose in dealing with certain adds or a certain condition. I am not generally in favor of hardened constrictions within classes themselves, if you are a highly experienced Ranger you are highly experienced Ranger and I don't see the achievement or sense of fulfilling enjoyment from 2 rangers with different main/sub/armor choices performing drastically different things in a game with an already complex world, pve, pvp and skill system. If that game was classless like Ultima Online or Albion that would be a different story.
I would imagine the Tank role has become more important as NPC AI has become more intricate. Early games that didn't have much in the way of AI targeting didn't need a Tank, but NPCs nowadays have complex targeting routines that demand organisation and tactics. I'm not saying the only tactic is a Tank, but controlling the battlefield goes a long way.
@Wandering Mist - I don't recall any Taunt skills in Guild Wars 1. I remember the Warrior having mainly damage skills with some blocking and high-HP ones thrown in (Defy Pain elite FTW), but I don't remember any "Taunt for X seconds" like they have in other games. If anything, I'd say Guild Wars 1 had no Tanks at all, rather an additional DD profession, which seems like it's what the OP is talking about (TL:DR, so may be completely wrong there
The reason to kill a tank is that he does enough damage to be annoying and CC everyone. So he's hard to ignore and getting rid of him is rewarding.
When caught out of position he should be quite easy to burn down by 2 or 3 dps, not having high kill potential by himself.
The tank sets up high kill potential for his teammates, spaces up the fight so that the damage trade is in favor of his team. The fine line between absorbing enough damage so that your team has the perfect window, or overstepping and getting focused down fast.
It's all about getting to the limit of your utility and resources as a tank, that's how you make a diference. Not executing targets.
In a front to back fight the tank has 2 options, peel enemies from his teammates or engage on a high priority target setting up a one two punch and a quick kill, giving the enemy as little time to react as possible. The judgement on what to do is what makes a good tank.
As a tank player, a raid boss tank is not fun, because it's just an overpowered character.
Argueably depending on your own objectives and personal preferences.
I've been leader/co-leader of a few guilds and I love interacting with people and due to the competitive nature of the select mmo's I enjoy the most I'll only have an interaction with those that have met certain conditions that I've deemed "worthy of my audience" although I do not conduct myself in such a high manner at all, to anyone (xD).
I'll even go as far as to highlight past game experiences, even people who haven't played mmo's and I stumbled on a seasoned Path of Exile player, I talked with him in DM's a lot and he was completely new to mmo's, so I discussed everything with him and based off his preferences and gave him the "hardships" info of certain class choices he decided on one and it turned out brilliantly and he played the game better than most, it's the mentality factor that holds back most people and I raised him all the way from a fresh character and gifted him whatever gear and money he needed.
In short, A LOT of people don't have enough passion or a good enough mentality to play with the top 1/3 of an mmorpg and I'd much rather the beginning/mid content be decided more by myself via hiring some NPC's to help with sustain or whatever then be a victim of constantly looking for decent people in mmo games where money is a factor and the highest levels earn more than you.
OBVIOUSLY to counter the potential "anti-social" aspect from utilizing NPC's over players, a gold sink/xp penalty and possible other crippling factors have to be applied.
@Marcet in an attempt to keep this post on f'ing topic xD
Hard to imagine in a games like L2 or Archeage where high end Tanks have enough passives to laugh off 5+ high end damage dealers and in great agreement that a "raid boss" tank is overpowered and anti pvp interactive, it's 1 person/player and it goes against general PvP fundamentals that make player vs player experiences a treat but for the mmo obviously the group vs group has to be appreciated but still, 1 person.
With the rest of what you said it is a fair personal preference although I argue with "It's all about getting to the limit of your utility and resources as a tank, that's how you make a diference. Not executing targets". Who's...to say that there can't be some agency for a "tank" or "plate armored + shield + weapon" character, I believe you mean damage dealing not prioritized and fair one but I'm not going to tread on anyones fantasy of possibly being Captain America and laying down some specialized pain or have that shield even do a bit of slicing/execute action
Correct, there were no taunt skills in GW1, but there were still tanks (I define a tank as a character who has a lot of survivability, designed to get hit a lot). Like I said before, this worked because of body blocking combined with the narrow corridors that were in most levels.
It’s more than an aggro bot that holds the most pathetically basic mobs so someone can press their macro sequence and get those big numbers across the screen.
With that said, advanced AI and players make for interesting tank kits. They don’t need aggro all the time. Sometimes people can get behind the dude with a shield.