Greetings, glorious testers!
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Cheers ears, that's made me happy
Hahahaha i have no idea whatsoever where the hell did you get the idea that i believe "Tanks MUST HAVE TOTAL CONTROL of the damage". Are you for real?
I'm one of the most vocal individuals about unpredictability in PvE and many other systems in the forum may it be for mobs ai, CC rng or Threat variability mechanics.
You might be confusing me with the likes of Sathrago or something.
Aren't we all sinners?
I'm not against taunt and I have no right to oppressive the personal preferences of people who enjoy being a bucket of commanding metal in multiplayer games (even though it's no where near as cool as say Dante from Devil May Cry verbally poking sticks at monsters) AND I can get behind to a degree, personal frustrations of people passionate about this role and watching the showcase thinking it looks a bit hard and it's unnorganised but I'd like for their to be a bit of open mindedness on this especially when "core mechanics" don't translate very enjoyably and/or functionally well to PvP interactions.
We will hopefully see more polish to the current mechanics and abilities currently presented to us for lower level combat but anyway...
If a Taunt ability in the Intrepid design tank (pun!) is intended for much later levels then perhaps this is intended to be a very enjoyable and effective CC ability for both PvE and PvP that has a significant cooldown period and by doing so not only makes a Tank feel more impactful on those important target acquistions but also gives freedom and joy to other classes (especially niche ones!) looking to have some relevance to defensive mechanics and actually having some personal engagment with mobs for a change.
All classes, not just Tank, having strong core mechanics also has a negative effect on a wide variety class system, if "core" mechanics are left legacy based from older games I can only see it being detrimental to people who enjoy a bit of niche and variety to their gameplay and/or gameplan IE:
"I'm only inviting a Tank/Tank, get lost Tank/Healer, Tank/Tanks have a passive to decrease Tank core abilities cooldowns by 15%, I'm after the best!"
"You're a DD/Tank class spec? not interested and you'll be lucky to get in my guild! fukin "off tank"... you're kidding me, you'd be a laughing stock in the mmo's I come from!"
Basically I'm just after people at least attempting to widen their scope, bearing in mind a fruitful class and ability system and how that translates to PvP, core skills should be a CORE feature to the entire game, not merely some PvE simplication strategy.
tbh 98% of the time steven lost agro was because he stopped using his ability and just auto attacked (distracted i guess) or dps pulled and he was twiddling his thumbs to hit he mob while the dmg kept attacking it
I can't imagine all the work Intrepid must have placed to be able to showcase what they did. For some it wasnt enough, for others, it is fine. In the end Intrepid always requests feedback from the community to improve and/or confirm what is working, what needs more TLC. And we can all agree that everything needs and will get more attention. hehe BTW, I am not kissing ass, also I havent provided feedback for the livestream yet.
My quick two cents of the matter in this thread are:
- DPS could/should have waited a bit and/or hold back in the engagements to showcase how the tank performs.
The truth is that we dont know if Intrepid was capable of tweeking the threat generation/management from the tanks perspective or from the Enemy NPCs side. How long does the threat debuff last? Does the debuff from threat generating abilities at least scales at a higher % than other damage/healing abilities at this stage of development?A lot of unknowns ... I do love that they show what they have with and/or without hiccups.
@Voxtrium, I had a similar idea on another discussion thread: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/54858/dev-discussion-47-tanking-threat-mitigation/p7
Also, I agree that no class should hold back at their performance due to another classe's shortcomings, but I trully believe in communication, coordination and strategy. People will be people, and some are selfish, not team oriented. In a game where threat has and/or will need to be managed carefully, if a DPSer cant hold 3 seconds or start by auto attacking, to let the tank do his thing, that is a red flag for me (If Im tanking) I may need to be on my toes, or I would just communicate to them, to wait for me to start, etc. If communication cant be had, just remove and carry on.
Hopefully Intrepid (could) at least test and/or continue to create sinergies around all class abilities adressing the threat management issues as well. Incorporate certain ability rotations Snare + auto attacks ... to reduce threat (to a degree), etc...
My idea was to create an icon or UI notification to let us know of a random moment of opportunity when in combat to perform specific combinations to allow increase threat generation, reduce threat, increase damage, increase healing, etc ... This could even be scaled to a group interaction. This way we utilize the sinergies approach as a mechanic to balance or normalize combat. The player can always deviate and not use the moment of opportunity to follow another group strategy in place, etc. But it is there if shit hits the fan or seize it if it is beneficial. Risk vs Reward, the player decides...
I would also like to see additional ways to for the tank to keep threat other than merely a slash that generates additional threat. While a good basic ability it is far from ideal (IK its Alpha). I would love if there were multiple class combos that could prematurely mitigate threat so that threat was something always being managed instead of the tank merely casting taunt once the DPS used their long CD ability.
Nishuk isn't wrong, we have both the brains, the time and the tools to make something a bit more intricate than a good ole I am now top of the threat chain "taunt".
Look maybe having a taunt is what we end up with, but lets think of some other options yeah?
Taunt as it stands right now is used to snap tank threat == to the highest threat on the list for an enemy. This can be useful in PVP, typically used as a CC, but perhaps instead of a hard CC we typically see maybe a soft CC would be best instead. For the taunting player It would potentially feel better if melee targets were forced to run into range and auto attack the tank, and ranged targets immediately started attacking the tank, while auto attacking they could direct their character still but the animations would continue for the set duration.
Other options - Create ability combos between the archetypes that can be applied to mitigate threat. Lets be honest the real problem I have with threat is that when an archetype has a huge dmg combo on a long cd, they just blow it and the tank uses a taunt 230ms +input lag later. It is rather 1 dimensional, instead the combos could look something like this.
Each ability should have little practical application outside of threat mitigation
X = 2ndary archetype
BardX - The bard can apply a "spell" to the tank, while applied all threat the tank generates himself will decrease the bards threat Z% of the total threat generated by the tank
ClericX - The cleric can apply a "spell" to the tank that while applied will take all healing applied to the tank for the duration and subtract from the threat of the cleric casting
FighterX - The fighter can apply an ability to the tank that takes Y% of all dmg taken for a duration and turns it into threat.
MageX - The mage can apply an aura around the tank, while active all abilities in that aura generate threat for the tank at a ratio of Y% of the original threat value.
(Would need to be small like 25% decreasing by 5% per additional person in the aura to a minimum of 5%)
RangerX - The ranger can apply an affect that lowers each of the tanks ranged "additional threat generating" CD's by Y seconds.
RogueX - When the rogue does bonus damage (Like critical strikes) they will apply the additional threat generated by the crit to the tank
SummonerX - The summons used will generate threat for the tank instead of the summoner for a duration
Taunt - Immediately snaps the tanks threat to match the highest threat for the enemy however after Y seconds (like 5) all additional threat generated (by the taunt) will start decaying at a rate of 10% per second increasing by 5% per second for 5 seconds. So all additional threat generated will have decayed after 10 seconds hypothetically. This way using insane dmg combos and just matching with a taunt isn't viable standalone.
Each ability can be cast on anyone so you can use a fighter as your threat generating tank using these abilities. Most of the time you don't want to use these abilities as they don't provide actual benefits to anything other than threat generation. The taunt is still implemented in this design it is just far less OP. Honestly many wouldn't even need to spec into these abilities , using it would be completely situational, people who did raids would need these abilities, casuals probably wouldn't.
Thoughts? I really like this, but I also never played most of the 2000's era of mmo's so my depth of experience to pull from is less. @NiKr @Azherae @JamesSunderland
Lets hope for the best .. Since AOC is always trying to innovate and move the player experience forward. Any other suggestions guys?
EQ, we did get taunt at lvl 1 BUT taunt wasn't guarantee to save someone ass. and guess what, we did fine. We adapted, CC is king and few classes that has way to drop aggro were utilized
EQ Taunting can trick an enemy into focusing on you, rather than other party members who may be more susceptible to damage and death.
Each taunt has a small chance of moving the taunting player to the top of the aggro list. A successful taunt will, thus, cause the mob to turn its attention towards that player. However this also means that taunting a mob which is already attacking you has no effect - i.e., it doesn't increase your amount of aggro. Follow up with a Kick, Bash or Slam after taunting to secure your new aggro position.
The success rate of Taunt is quite low, especially against targets which are higher level than the tank, and against any target when the tank is lower level. For Warriors, the most reliable source of hate generation is generally white dps.
When most humanoid NPCs are successfully taunted, they publicly emote "I'll teach you to interfere with me %t." If an NPC is a non-humanoid, or if the taunt is unsuccessful, then they won't say anything.
Taunt is not recommended for controlling wife aggro.
Also on another p99 page
Hate Management
The general concepts of Everquest hate mechanics are very common in MMORPGs. The following example illustrates a simple case and demonstrates the mechanics of hate:
Three players approach a froglok. The froglok, being ornery and scowling to all of these adventurers, immediately aggroes and begins attacking. Cerate Salve, a barbarian shaman, Pint, a dwarf paladin, and Calias Darkstar, a high elf wizard. Calias, being a typical wizard, decides to quickly retaliate with Sunstrike, dealing 1615 damage. Cerate, underestimating the froglok, forgoes casting a slow and also nukes with Ice Strike, but only for 675. Pint slashes the beastly amphibian for 200 damage. In this scenario, the froglok was already in melee range of all three adventurers, so Calias gains top hate and gets smacked by a slimy fist. He immediately dies, because wizards are basically made of glass. The froglok now turns to Cerate, who caused the second most damage and is now top hate.
Range
If Cerate were wiser, they would have cast their spells from afar. Players who are within melee range of a monster have their hate directly compared, but when they are some distance away, this value is effectively reduced. The exact reduction isn't documented but it's probably divided in half or something similar. (Please revise if an exact reduction is demonstrated or better estimated.) Calias probably would have drawn aggro even if he were far away because of the recklessly large nuke he cast. Besides, a mob will wipe its hate toward a player if the distance from the mob to said player is more than 1300 units.
Abilities
If Calias were wiser, he would have waited for Pint to do more damage first before engaging. When the tank has a head-start, his hate number will be higher when you land your nuke. Warriors are especially slow at generating hate since their damage is primarily melee damage, which has reduced hate overall (see Sakuragi's Warrior Guide for specifics). Paladins do have additional tools for generating hate: such as the Taunt skill, and blind and stun spells, which deal hate equivalent to hundreds of points of damage that spells can do. Other spells, such as debuffs, snares, slows, and poison DoTs also generate large amounts of hate, over and above any damage they might do (if any). Resisted spells and spells which do not take hold seem to generate the same hate as landed spells, if not more. Healing usually generates very little aggro, although an early Complete Healing can certainly draw an NPC on the cleric.
Players who have too much hate can reduce it through a variety of skills and spells such as Hide, Feign Death, Concussion and Cinder Jolt.
Root
Pint sighs, knowing Calias and Cerate too well, and casts Root on the froglok and steps as close to the beast as he can. The beast turns from Cerate to Pint who is now much easier to reach.
While rooted, NPCs behave differently. They temporarily ignore (but do not forget!) their hate table and simply attack whichever player is the closest to them, if any are in melee or spell range. Root can be an excellent tool for the temporary control of aggro, but your tank must either expect, notice, or be notified of the NPC being rooted in order to ensure they step closer than other melee characters in the fight.
Other
Some other factors to consider are sitting, which temporarily generates large amounts of hate (sit hate seems to be forgotten immediately when the player stands). Faction and level differences also are rumored to have effects on hate. Passive differences between classes which affect hate generation are also unconfirmed (given the wide differences between the abilities and damage bonuses of various classes, it would be difficult to test).
There are potential good reasons for this.
Let's assume that Ashes is not as far along in terms of development of classes and balance as we might hope.
Taunts can work three ways normally (there are more but these are the ones most people understand).
"This Taunt adds a lot of threat value."
"This Taunt moves positions on the hate list."
"This Taunt forces the mob to attack the Tank for a duration ignoring both the threat value and hate list."
Without an in-depth explanation of this, the word 'Taunt' implies different things to different people and thus their perceptions of games.
Without knowing the precise concept of 'Taunt' in a game, showcasing it would have taken far more than an hour, since it would require an explanation of what Taunt type it was, and how strong, and so on.
And then, it might not even have been decided/set in stone. We have been shown very easy to program and easy to balance abilities. I didn't even want to give feedback because all I can say is 'well this didn't LOOK like what I enjoy/hope for'.
As reminder, this is the exact 'problem' I lived through back in 2005. Without understanding the hate mechanics, you cannot tell which of those three Provoke is without lots of testing. And so, we got endless arguments over what exactly it did.
This of course allowed many people to play the way they wanted when they could find groups, but also resulted in a large number of people not being considered good for groups, too.
So, for you, what is a taunt? If you must pick one of those three for the 'main one'.
I'd obviously want a wide variety of taunt applications and threat manipulations. I just found it quite silly that taunting wasn't even mentioned during the showcase, even though I'd imagine that a "taunt" ability is what most people think of when they hear the word "tanking". Especially considering that there will be a taunt ability.
I totally get that it might not have been developed properly yet, but then I'd ask "why showcase the tank w/o one of his most basic and identifying abilities?" ESPECIALLY when we've already seen tank in alpha1.
I think I'm just a camel and I'm nearing one too many straws on my back. Depending on the next stream I might want to distance myself a bit from the game, cause I'm falling into doomerism more and more lately.
Yes, what you describe is my game experience.
I don't expect you need me to go into too much detail about it, as the thread itself doesn't seem to be related to that. If you think it would help, ping me again. I may take a while to respond, though, since my 'group role' here is lower now that they're shifting.
Anyways here's your pages if you want them, about as useful as they can be without context...
Bard:
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Foe_Sirvente
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Adventurer's_Dirge
'Cleric':
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Tranquil_Heart
Main healers are not allowed to have large enmity-shedding abilities as part of their active kit for balance reasons, it is passive or gear based. They rely on others.
'Fighter':
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Full_Break
Warriors are not allowed to shed enmity as part of their active kit. Their option is 'when you are doing too much damage, switch to this to help Tank and other DPS do more, for total party effectiveness without as much enmity gain.
'Mage':
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Enmity_Douse
Mages are allowed to do this because it is on a huge timer like many things in that game, and the playstyle of mage means that you coordinate this (the Tank uses Cover and so on to protect Mage while they rack up as much damage as possible and then Douse at the end before they die).
Ranger:
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Stealth_Shot
Usual. Not allowed. Had enough trouble with those '4xRanger' parties. Without this limitation, then 'best DPS' quickly becomes 'only DPS' within certain phases/leveling/boss meta. If you want it MANAGED between DPS you call...
'Rogue':
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Trick_Attack - Usable while set as Support Job (i.e Secondary Archetype)
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Accomplice
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Collaborator
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Hide
Regarding Hide:
When the user has the attention of an enemy that tracks by sight, all enmity is erased.
Hide can be used on Undead enemies as long as the user's current Hit Points are at or above 75%.
While Hide will work on these monsters, since they detect by sound, if you don't walk out of aggressive range within a few seconds, they will become aggressive toward you again.
Hide can be used on monsters that normally track by scent if rain weather or double snow weather are in effect. Even works on monsters that detect by sound but track by scent.
Summoners are their own whole 'thing', but generally they are a 'Bonus Damage Coordinating DPS' with the ability to dismiss the summon if it gets to the top of the hate list and they expect this to disrupt party formation or cause the enemy to react by doing an AoE attack in an unwanted direction. (FFXI mobs generally will prioritize their longer range abilities if someone gets hate from further away, and a few prioritize cleaving attacks if multiple people in range have similar hate values, such as 2 DPS near a Tank, multiple abilities can hit people who are not top of list as long as they would hit the Top of List also)
That concludes this trip back to the 00's.
Tank had no 'Taunt' in Alpha-1 though? Maybe I misremember...
It was probably under consideration even then. As novercalis points out, EQ uses the other types. FFXIV is now changed/simplified further to the point where it doesn't really even matter which type it has.
Leaving poor Steven in the very unfortunate position we saw in the stream. How do you showcase that a Threat-Ability can 'fail to get threat' without 'playing suboptimally and having it 'not work'?
How many people would just argue because 'An ability that just adds threat but can be ignored isn't a real Taunt'? Or that it would not work in PvP (and for whatever reason don't like the temporary forced targeting).
Have faith in Intrepid, the difficulty of open development is high, and theirs is only 'half open' because they want to save some stuff for later and have it not be 'figured out', but probably don't want to reintroduce their NDA.
Tank is one of the single hardest things to showcase in a game, in my experience. People who actually HAVE games on hand have trouble demonstrating the tanking mechanics in the complex ones.
I hope we can lift at least THIS straw 'off your back'.
This kinda circles back to the "streams should probably be a bit more scripted" debate this forum has had for the past god knows how long, but that's obviously off topic so whatever. I just think that even just a mention of "we'll also have a more direct way of gaining threat, but that's not developed enough to show" would've been much better.
Yeah, I get it. And this is partially why I think that I should distance myself. I'm beginning to feel that I'm putting a bit too much unwarranted blame on Intrepid, so taking a break might help with that. But I'll make the final decision after the next stream cause I think it'll be the one that shows whether Steven decided to implement the current feedback and they might reveal more plans for future streams (boss/dungeon ones supposedly being the soonest ones).
I do want taunts to evolve beyond the legacy methods of perfect control:
Azherae did a good job outlining the most common 3 types of taunts:
"This Taunt adds a lot of threat value."
"This Taunt moves positions on the hate list."
"This Taunt forces the mob to attack the Tank for a duration ignoring both the threat value and hate list."
WoW's taunt is the second and third, it makes the tank match the current highest hate and forces target aquizition for 3 sec. 8 sec cooldown
Lineage 2's taunt is the first and the third, it generates big threat numbers and forces target aquizition for 3 sec. 6 sec cooldown
I think all 3 taunts are important for any tank to have in a game with threat mechanics, but i believe WoW and Lineage 2 fails in the implementation of the threat mechanic because it allows for Perfect control over the monsters(other than some bosses in L2 that have RNG AI and resists taunts) with their ridiculously low cooldowns. i believe taunts such as the 3rd should have long 30 sec cooldowns due to how powerful they are, the second could be reasonable at 20 sec cooldowns, the first type is the type that can simple be slapped in damaging skills and would be fine at 10 seconds or so depending on the threat amount it generates.
I want PvE to have all types of mechancs that challenges Taunt and Threat mechanics RNG AI, taunt resistance and to go steps fowards with thrat points shuffling and threat points random gain or generation of nearby players(especially this one to make bosses attack even players of other parties not attacking it but attaccking your parties for example.)
And obviously i want other players in the party to have the necessary tools to manage such threat variations alongside their tank. with threat point transferences and reductions.
I want Tank's threat generation to be more varied not only with skills that generate more threat, but with other mechanics such as more threat gain on presisily timed active blocks, more threat gain when moving away from telegrafhed skills, or when protect allies being targeted by the monsters.
But most importantly I want taunts to be an emergence resource, not a constant, boring, static "you have to press me on cooldown to have perfect control all the time" type of skill like it was in the past.
Extra: I would love for taunts to be like DMC Dante's Taunts.
Sayng things like "You scared?" "Come on wimp" to your enemies is priceless.
Aren't we all sinners?
I'm not sure it is a "dumb" reason. It comes down to the learning path the devs have in mind. If you manage to create and hold aggro as a tank without taunt, it means that the taunt can be used to bind a secondary target because the tank learned to keep aggro of the main target without it.
Now, granted, there is more than one way to teach things like this which might or might not work better. I guess we will find out in Alpha 2. I wouldn't be surprised to see them switching skills in some classes during and after that depending on player feedback.
With all that being said, I would think another perfectly possible piece to consider is the skill trees. I think the 4 augmentation schools are also the primary "themes" of an archetype and the skill trees will allow players to lean into specific themes of the ones an archetype has. So you might be able to increase threat generation in other ways, which reduces the reliance on a taunt.
I agree with Narc insofar that a taunt is a VERY simple way to change the treat priority in PvE. And while that has its merits I think so simple and powerful skills should be introduced later or shouldn't be usable very often in a fight to make sure that the class with such a skill is more than just this skill. I think it would be great if a tank could be played even without having the taunt in his hot bar (it seems characters will be limited to having approximately only 50-60% of their active skills available in their hotbar).
For me I would like trying and focus thought on why core mechanics are specifically away or bizarre for PvP interaction, as I believe it to be rather shoddy craftsmanship of a game that relies heavily on both for that massive enjoyment factor and essentially a hard focus on different PvE and PvP mechanics results in a seperated audience causing unnecessary frustrations (or "toxicity").
If taunt has to stay as a core mechanic in the eyes of a fair few players for not only legacy reasons but what they enjoy on a personal level ie "I keep it locked in my head but everytime I taunt I like to act like I'm a cool boss and everything I say to entice a mob to me is cool as fuck, I would watch the movie!" then I strongly feel the ability needs to be forced into a mechanic that is respectable and enjoyable for PvP.
= IMO it warrants a thread in itself for what would be an acceptable comprimise and what would be truly enjoyable for Taunt to be a fantastic and on demand ability for tanks =
I'll provide an example of what I think would be great:
In League of Legends, a game of great and interactive PvP gameplay (with minor but acceptable PvE challenges merged in such as landing last hits, hard clearing and obtaining "rights" to Dragon and Baron) there is the champion RAMMUS.
Rammus's taunt is a very short distance taunt but a very effective CC that away from duration, ends up being better than most due to the pulling factor. It's at a very short distance because of its strength, if it had a longer range it would easily disrupt the healthy gameplans of people he's interacting we, enemy or ally (for allies if he taunted at a ranged distance they'd have the trouble of knowing when to follow up to their opponent exposed) but let's translate that into Ashe's (not Ashe!).
Instead of the train of thinking of where we don't want taunt/easy tank threat as over bearing and easily resolving a regular or hard PvE situation "lets slap a hard cooldown on it!" lets make Taunt a skill that CHARGES.
So you see the Taunt icon, from a good visual of the icon itself this Taunt has stages lets say its color and animations change, grey is inactive and it goes through 5 changes say.
The first change you have a taunt as short as Rammus, 2nd/3rd/4th it's growing in effectiveness and that effectiveness is up to good balance (not just range could be not that or more), the 5th and final stage is a Tank's "secret weapon!", a taunt of decent distance and he bellows out, loud and commanding with the possible inclusion of a animation (or up to your personality/voice choice or the cosmetic shop) something along the lines of what Gandalf stunned a Balrog with at the bridge.
ADDITIONALLY using a lvl 5 taunt includes for a brief moment a second activation of in some way going to the target! (could be a dash, could be a pull depending on class or tools!)
There can be a heap of things to include, benefits and negatives, like vs dumb creature a version 1 taunt will always succeed and be brilliantly effective but may be rattled from an ally if it unfortunetly lucks the debuff "Focused Mind", a stage 2+ taunt will never be unlucky.
For pvp the ranged lvl 5 taunt could need delivery time or the Tank is locked in a bit of an animation that could be interupted but the effect is likely to work but what should this quality taunt do to a player, it could have their movement denied and they may ONLY go in the direction of the Tank and only aggressive abilities are enabled for them, there's a lot to discuss when it comes to this but I'm trying my best to bridge the PvE+PvP gap.
= SCENERIO = > (In battle vs elite mobs)
Archer/Tank > baiting an elite and kiting, his goal is the tank "meet my tank!" (Taunt ver 1 "melee taunt")
Tank > "hopefully this will stick to me, I hope he understands"
Archer/Tank > "Understandable
Healer > "We have a problem!!!!! Archer "tank" man do somethin bro!" (1 elite cc'ing and damging the fuk out of someone)
Tank > "no need!" (activates 'Protector's Resolve', loses HP to temporary maximise X amount of Tank abilities)
Tank > (lvl 5 ranged taunt, follow up of the skill that range shackles the neck of this sizeable creature, almost choking it to death and pulls him in like a boss).
@Noaani you might learn something from a balanced and thought out perspective instead of continuously stamping a closed PvE narrative, especially in my thread which tries to make apparent of outdated gameplay systems that only succeeded back then or for a small audience or in WoW's case, brings a cruise liner of casual players that are only interested in the story/quest progression and couldn't care less about anything else that the game offers to any deep degree!
Yep, this caused some confusion when I was talking to a friend about it. I was used to No.3, and they were used to No.1, and it took me some time to realise why I was getting so confused!