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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
This is basically it.
In a game with a dedicated support class (bards), they should be the primary source of buffs, debuffs and CC. That is what a support class does, just as a healer should be the primary source of heals.
It is fine (preferable) for non-bard classes to have access to some buffs, debuffs and CC, but the bard should be the primary source.
Thus, tanks should always be behind bards in terms of buffs, debuffs and CC.
When you consider the difference in HP pool and defenses between a tank and basically anyone else, the level of outright annoyance a tank would need to deal out in order to make a logical person attack them before healers would actually ruin the game.
I mean, even if you gave tanks the exact same healing ability as a healer, or the exact same DPS as a mage, or the exact same buffs, debuffs and CC as a bard it still makes sense to go after that healer, mage or that bard first because you will be able to kill them faster due to them having less HP and class based defenses.
The more I think on this specific discussion point, the more I am sure that there is no point in which a tank can remain balanced while also having players opt to go after them first, other than by giving tanks the ability to force rivals to target them for some duration.
And also, I'd assume bard's reductions and tank's one would stack together, right? So this would trivialize pve to a pretty big extent, which would require Intrepid to overtune mobs' atk stats, which is its own problem.
The only way to boost a tanks defence and the tanks operability is to give threat stacks in pvp. We can already build to ignore physical defense and magic defence. A small debuff of 1% per stack with ten stack max would be very affective at making a tank a threat.
Also, healers don't deal with healers. Healers are either a group effort or targeted by healer killer classes. A healer on healer fight can last for hours with good mana management.
And the same could apply the other way. The enemy player could've been assist-killed faster, because you managed to taunt the enemy healer's strong single target cast once or twice. Or this was done to your healer and someone on your side died.
General debuffs (especially stack-based ones) would be much slower in their effect and would most likely not prevent the things I mentioned. Or at least they'd prevent them in the later stage of the fight, where the tank might get some attention either way because everyone else is either dead is incapable of proper battle.
I meant the "reduce incoming/outgoing healing on target", "change incoming healing to dmg on target", "burn mana (in all kinds, shapes and forms)" and all the other interactions between healer classes. I wasn't talking about just "kill the dude" stuff.
Also, tanks being a more viable first stage target would work perfectly with a deeper inter-healer gameplay. Instead of the party's main goal being "just kill their healer and we're good", the pvp approach becomes "reduce their healer's viability, concentrate on the tank and protect our own tank". Add to this some short-range debuffs on the bards that synergize with the healer debuffs or tank's actions and you have yourself a pretty deep interconnected and complex pvp fight.
"Assist-kill the healer before tank manages to stack his taunt" is not that complex imo.
You want to make the tank ill effective overall. A forced target taunts does little in the way of good gameplay for a tank. It's just a gimmick. Your scenarios are rare at best. A stacked debuff is rapid engagement with multiple sources of threat much like the current tank build. It can also be refreshed until a target is dead. Tank would be a rolling bulwark instead of a roaming glow stick.
Yuuup, thing is they are trying to ignore the core concept and reduce it to say it is just debuffs, etc and say it shouldn't have that.
They are ignoring the functionality you are trying to get across that will work different than any other class and the same thing I was trying to get across.
Sadly the bias makes them want one thing and nothing else. That way they can view any affect as a buff / debuff and say tank shouldn't have that. If they were being logical they would view the effect we were trying to get across with tank as its own effect do to certain conditions *ie must be within short range of tank, must hit tank to remove effects, disruption, survivability of tank, etc.
Generic elements like only healers can deal with healers is another way to shut it down any other ideas. Normally people think classes should have element of tools to pick from that let them deal with a wide variety of situations, instead of having very base generic type combat with little customization in approaching challenges.
sadly no matter what you won't convince them, they would need to see the actual negative effects of what they want before they understand (that being a large player game saying things are bad). But 0 reason to take that risk.
As I said before, Forced Target taunt is the 'easy' solution. I have been working on the 'Hard' one for literally years. I have spent way more hours designing/developing/testing the sort of thing you want, @Mag7spy than 'caring about how a Forced Target Taunt works'.
Now, you can conclude that I just 'haven't worked hard enough at it' when I say that even after those years of design I'm still not confident that it would be better, but right now I'm only echoing what NiKr says. It is possible to put much more effort into thinking about this than into the 'posting in this thread' and still come to the same conclusions.
I've been working on this technically 'longer than Ashes has been reasonably well known to the public' and the design still has holes. All you've done so far in this conversation is 'bring up solutions that have already failed to produce Steven's apparent goal'.
It doesn't need to be perfect is the thing, looking at the other tools the class has is also important. The main core shouldn't be about forcing people to attack you but overall disruption and your effect on the battlefield.
One example is if a line of dps go in and are dying quickly not able to do anything. Where if you have tanks and bruiser types going in not dying, some some dmg, and hampering the effectives of the enemies they are fighting stopping dmg being done to the rest of their allies, reducing their healing, wasting their cooldowns, causing additional movement etc.
I'd say having features in the class that naturally provide both repulsive effects that push people away to be more defensive and also effects that cause people to want to attack them. That should be the identity at the core any the multiple means to approach that.
Y'know what, fine, I'm in a 'mental autopilot' mode today anyway.
The first wrong thing here is that in game balance for a properly competitive game, it DOES need to be perfect or as close to perfect as possible. A designer should be able to look at something and go 'within my goals, this is not perfect enough'. Most players can do that, which is why we're foolishly here arguing with you.
Because YOU keep going 'The class kit should achieve the goal and not cause this specific problem we hate!"
So tell me this, are you up for a long conversation about all the details of this? I've got years of data to go through with you if you are.
Or are you going to just go 'well the Devs should solve it, just not in a way that upsets me'.
And one more time just in case you aren't focused on it, and I will repeat this as many times as is necessary:
"I don't even want forced taunt, I just am not willing to ask Developers to try to make an Open World PvX Fantasy Trinity Based MMORPG without it.
Here's the first (flawed) part of my group's design answer:
"The Paladin can put a Mark on a Target. Whenever that Target attacks a target other than the Paladin, the Paladin gets to use an extra melee attack/recharges a resource/lowers a cooldown (depends on which form of the game is being considered). A Target can only have one Mark from one Paladin, and they have an indicator which Paladin applied the Mark to them."
Based on your perspective so far, this + zone control should be enough. Basically, this 'should be able to replace a Taunt'.
I'm down to listen and ready but I don't want o go in circles, I had to do that already in this thread with 3 people. I said my part so I'm fine with leaving it at that over just debating it.
our view points are different on things we most likely would have to have a longer talk to come to a better understanding but we have made some progress so far.
I also don't view any game as perfect, even the most competitive games are constantly having reworks done with balances and adjustments.
I'd said my view point on it with some methods that could be done and that there are other methods. The thing is what has irked me is the concept where there is only one way to do thing and nothing else can ever work kind of mentality, on top of picking the worse way to solve it without considering how others will feel and how it will affect gameplay.
Your idea
Could be one way to solve it for sure, I'd expect multiple since there will be augments that will make things feel a little bit more unique per class. Could be a more dmg focused tank type if you gain dmg or lowering your cooldowns, a lot of ways to view it tbh.
Based on my suggestion of being within a certain range it could work like that with the mark as well. Though that alone isn't enough it depends on how the rest of the kit functions between your cc, snares, disrupting types of effects, dmg reduction types of effects, etc.
Again i mentioned a lot of this stuff so i don't really want to repeat myself on everything again and we end up going back in circles. What i talked about was creating situations where it is beneficial to attack the tank and having skills around that. If something causes that, than that is good to me as the point we are trying to get across is have players not ignore the tank. If it does that is it not a successful class since people aren't just ignoring it?
This is more than i wanted to write as well, since I'm working now.
Alright, well I certainly wouldn't want to make you repeat yourself.
If you think of any flaws in that solution, lmk, otherwise let's just assume Intrepid will solve it, and you can count me as 'having provided an alternative'.
To me that seems like the biggest potential flaw so far. The biggest annoyance for the enemy with this mechanic would most likely be "the entire tank's party get incoming damage reduced by big % per hit from the marked target not against tank". The mark would then go on the highest enemy dps most of the time, to maximize its usefulness. And unless the aura's aoe is high or the grace period is long - the dps will just move or get moved away from the tank, at which point the tank either gets immobilized somehow or his Mark is just on CD so the enemy dps gets some good shots against anyone else.
Pretty much any other boost to the tank wouldn't have enough annoyance (unless we're making an OP tank). This also disregards any buffer/healer-type class, so tank's role gets reduced somewhat, but I'd be willing to be ok with that considering that main goal is to just decrease incoming damage to your party (even if stopping buffer/healer accomplishes that in the long run).
You're ruining a good thing here my dude.
I'm on Mag's side now. Clearly the rest of the design will handle all that.
Isn't it best for a designer to be able to feel the positive vibes from someone believing in them and supporting them as long as the design sounds alright to that person?
You're not embracing the spirit here.
An alternative to something that 'people don't like' was offered. Shouldn't we trust/believe that it will work if balance is right? And who needs perfect balance anyway?
I'm sure if there are flaws, either the designer (me) will solve them or Mag will think of a way to assist. Just trust me.
If only there were some sort of resource that an attacker could run out of when facing a target with too much defenses to be brought down before it ran out...
That might help a bit, I guess.
But alas, if BDO has taught me anything, it's that this sort of thing can't exist.
That is a answer to any assumption you just teleport out and come back into the fight. Could be mis understanding if you are meaning something else...
I'm not going to explain every single detail on this kind of thing, it is pretty obvious there are plenty of ways to approach it and prevent people from doing this. Don't see a reason to explain it as it feels like common understanding.
We also don't know all the skills and how things will work so making too many assumptions on what the game will exactly be like doesn't work either. I'll only give pretty open answers until there is more concreate show casing of classes.
You can pick apart anything that is based on incompleteness of a game, but getting stuck in exact details sounds silly as well.
You can make a lot of changes to make it possible but whether it would make good gameplay is another matter entirely. Never have I been able to drain an enemy of resources on any of my raid spec tanks before my raid spec tank was ignored.
Oh, agreed. I think we all understand that there are plenty of ways to approach a problem.
Explaining the details or specifics of the problem or the solutions just seems overly specific.
Except when it comes to Forced Taunts of course, which are clearly not a way to approach the problem and the specifics of which don't matter.
You play on Na right?
Yeah like I said, this sort of thing can't exist, your experience proves it.
So yeah, ultra-defensive Tanks never have the potential to counter anything. They're also not one of the ways you can actually approach this and still have good gameplay in the type of MMO you're talking about. It's a shame, but it is what it is.
Indeed. Console no less. I'm one of those people.
why....ugh. No you are def trolling me. You have a pc
And the Mark isn't really meant to limit movement abilities either. All it does is empower the Paladin if the Marked target attacks someone else or attempts to disengage from that Paladin (depending on the game, TableTop is more forgiving than 3D MOBA type battle simulations).
Obviously we just choose the most balanced form of empowering the Paladin based on the game type it's being applied to, so no worries there.
I don't want to argue with you. If you prefer to believe that I choose to play games on PC when I have a PS5, please continue to assume that.
For everyone else... I have a gaming laptop and a PS5 and I prefer to game on the PS5 whenever I have the option.
As I said. I'm one of those people.
Also, I'd imagine that forced movement will go through roots. As in, if you get rooted but then someone else pushes you - you'll move, while still remaining in roots. I could be wrong in that assumption, though this would yet again make the game shallower than I'd like it to be.
Oh, and any full immobilization (stun/anchor/etc) would obviously prevent dps in the first place, so its coupling with the Mark wouldn't really matter.
I mean, is that not the very problem we've been trying to solve here this entire time? Your top of the line tank didn't deserve enough attention to make someone spend most of their resources on you rather than your mates.
Or did I misread/misunderstood what you wrote?
But you are in the alpha for AoC so your gaming pc I'm sure is good enough to run things. Have you played on pc at all with BDO?