Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
Than taunts will be balanced around complex PvE content and has potential to be overpowered in PvP (aka constant access to camera control on many players and forcing them to only be able to attack the tank). But you can't nerf it because it is needed for pve?
Make a game with no taunt skill then.
Ashes doesn't have one so far.
FFXI only has one of them and most endgame tanking doesn't even require it.
The only problem with making a Tank with no Taunt skill is that then people ask you 'wait how does this work in PvE then?' or they go 'what's the point of a person who just soaks damage when you can avoid them anyway'.
I think your answer to this is 'more CC'.
Tanks should not be a CC bot.
Mine is mainly
- several ways to defend singular and multiple targets
- few reposition abilities that target other players (push, pull, etc)
- a few reflective abilities (self/party buffs included)
- a variety of attacking skills with aggro effects
- a singular and an aoe taunt
Those all together would comprise roughly 30 abilities (especially if we have a few general self buffs on top). To me these seem unique enough to create a truly tank archetype and I would expect only small general similarities on other archetypes (smth like "bards give a def buff too" or "mage has repositioning too, but it's self-targeted").What do you have in mind, that would make tank unique and which would be then made better through taunt?
This would also add some flow to the pve (and potentially pvp at high skill play), where dpses might get backstab augments or just use their backstab abilities on each mob turn, while the overall aggro system would allow for a more random switching of mob aggro (at least in some encounters).
in other words, a pvp taunt would only control your camera for 3-6 seconds out of its 10s continuation. The effect itself would be slow enough to allow you to adjust your movement to it (and not to be as jarring as a 180° snap turn).
I'm just going to give a easy example to show the point, instead of a normal cc having a longer cd like say 10+ secs. The taunts CD is much lowered and you have access to multiple skills meaning you have far more cc than intended for pvp. It needs to be like this for difficult pve challenges.
Could you try this one again? Parser failed.
I can mock up a really specific example situation if you like, I have a lot of them left over from design discussions on exactly this for my own.
I'm never a fan of reflective dmg but that is me personally, i don't view that as being a core tank kit (doesn't mean it won't exist i think swtor had it on my tank skill on a high cd)
[*] several ways to defend singular and multiple targets
[*] few reposition abilities that target other players (push, pull, etc)
[*] a variety of attacking skills with aggro effects
[*] Strong Survivability
[*] Disruption
These are sones i agree with though, taunt is just a means to make it easier to aggro so its kind of a short cut and a branch of the same idea of tanks holding aggro.
What makes it unique is how it approaches those general concepts though. Defending a target and multipkle is a easy one, don't give other classes as much pull on skills that can reposition your enemies or even skills that can clock them off for a short while, Suriving and tanking is a no brainer given the class, disrupting what the enemies do.
The main disagreement we have is the aggro part in pvp and the idea people need to be forced to attack the tank. I believe there should be a role to varying degrees based on your build and what you want to gain and sacrifice. But if you can make the class make players want to attack the tank and do so, you are fulfill the role of aggro.
Tank identity shouldn't be you are doing nothing if you aren't aggroing players 100% of the time. With the other traits those should have a impact on the fight on what you are doing for battles. All of which can lead to causing players to want to attack the tank (aggro) to difference lengths depending on your play style and how you build. One set up might have a high chance for players to want to attack the tank, while a another set up might have player not attack the tank as much but he is high disrupting the other team with what they are doing. Leading to instances for healers for example being like i need this guy off me, he is stopping all my heal effects or reducing them greatly, causing enemies to than aggro on you later.
You will have more available access to taunts than CC in cooldown if game is designed around difficult pve content to hold aggro and taunts are the tool primary used for that.
Alright, thanks, that's a difference in experience. I actually don't play that many games that have multiple or easily accessible Taunts, I'm really curious to see if Ashes turns out to be another game that just doesn't really have one.
Note that I'm not suggesting that Ashes should be that way. Whatever works for them/the playerbase. I do prefer my games without Taunts but I feel that Ashes is already designed around having them for whatever reason Steven decided, and it's designed in a way that makes it hard to 'turn back now'.
Honestly i have no clue, i think it was mentioned they would have taunts but at the moment they don't. Which is kind of a good thing. But its something we will have to wait and see nothing is really set in stone. If they have it working without taunts that is good.
That being said disccusion made me like the idea of taunts being a form of close kind of status I think could be fun to play with in terms of effecting playing mentality when it comes to combat and the effects.
In my experience a "taunt" is a high value aggro skill. It equals a ton of dps w/o doing said dps. And then a lot of other tank skills just have an additional aggro effect, but their main effect would be smth else and the aggro value would be fairly low. Iirc you were present in the thread where I went over all of this before.
The tank would have several skills that would generate aggro for them, but it would only have 2 proper taunts (single and aoe). And depending on the balancing, those taunts might have longer CDs. My idea's single taunt would have a 10s cd, because the effect is 10s, and the power balancing of the skill would come from the amount of aggro it generates per effect application. So it would still be strong in pve, but you wouldn't be able to just cast it on several dudes within just a few seconds in pvp.
But what exactly would make those people attack you? Your annoyance factor would have to be through the roof for people to choose you as their main target. And non-taunt annoyance would definitely be very hard to balance.
As for decreasing healer's output, I could maybe see that as a tank ability, though I'd prefer it to be a healer's job, to vary up the gameplay of that archetype.
Also, as I said before, L2's tanks did exactly what you proposed there with taunts
The same thing would apply in action part of the game as well, if Intrepid manage to design some action-targeted heals. Well, that is if the camera move is implemented.
This is why we've been saying that forced targeting/camera works quite well as a mechanic. It can be applied to different situations on different classes, while also being unique (unlike a plain CC or debuff or super strong dps).
I'm not mistaking anything, tuant is designed as a easier method of obtaining aggo, bot them do the same thing get mobs to attack you. One way is easier than the other...
Cd of skills and such are most likely going to be affected making things shorter, I still don't see a world where you permanently have someone taunted every few seconds being good controlling their camera. Debuff last for 10 secs and skill last for 10 secs like what... I said this before ill say it again, physically taking control form someone is not fun, you are talking about taking control the entire time pretty much until and if the tank even dies.
If you ask this kind of question to most people if they would be fine with something like that I am sure the answer will be no. I need to personally also see how they will design taunts cause part of me is most likely assuming the worse in having access to 3 variations which might not be the case. Also again if you lower your cd you will be able to taunt more often (again unsure on gearing system but i except as in most tab games you will find ways to lower cd)
This is why i keep saying it depends on how the design the class and how it works to do so and why i gave examples before. You are trying to create instances where people have REASON to attack you instead of other people first. Ill give examples again *my dmg is reduced hitting others besides the tank and ill spend more time doing dmg to them than the tank ~ tank is first one in doing CC on our team and doing dmg and using cc and snares ~ tank is disrupting my healers and mages and without healing I'll end up dying ~ I need to hit the tank to remove this debuff else I'm nerfed in what I'm doing and can't accomplish the task ~ tank is hitting objective he have to stop him ~ etc
On the healer note, if you have disputing effects on a tank to stop cast times, and channel you will be stopping healing. If we are talking about effects that reduce total healing that is another convo, based on how the game plays i except there to be a lot of ways to customizes your class.
Forced camera control again is not good, if you are saying it is the same thing i'm talking about in effect, than the better choice is the one that does not directly reduce the experience of a player and in fact the other option.
Edit* To add that is one step away from being full throne and liberty combat with taunting and I'm not even memeing lmao.
If they added camera controls on a bunch of classes what is that term angry joe uses "YOU DONE F****D IT UP!"
I'd have to ask are you sure you aren't out of touch with what gamers want now adays. Push back would be throne and liberty levels if everyone was controlling each others cameras.
Those would have to be some pretty frequent disruptions then and the only ones I can come up with would be either stuns (potentially mini-stuns) or silences. And if the tank can cast either of those often enough to strongly disrupt healers (or anyone else for that matter) - to me that sounds kinda op.
And just to make it perfectly clear, cause I'm not sure if I did, the taunt debuff that I had in mind wouldn't control you over the course of the whole 10s. You'll still be able to retarget to whoever you want or spin your camera to whatever other direction. You'd just need to pay more attention and be more careful, if you're the target of a tank. And this would be doubly true if abilities will go off at the end of the animation, rather than the start. The taunt would just retab you to the tank and/or pan your camera/reticle to him every 5 secs.
I doubt any cd would be cut in half, that being said the idea of force target is aids, all you need to do is have auto attack and it be throne and liberty gameplay just about with auto combat. There isnt a game that should have anyone having influence on your camera like that over the duration of 10 seconds with seconds before they do it again, let alone one second ever.
In pve mmorpgs you have disrupting skills that are not CC, but simply stop any channeling or charge skill, those were common for tab target mmorpgs. You mix that with hard cc, etc and you can do qoute a lot. It isn't op either it is just hoe the gameplay as, you are trading off dmg to be tanky and disrupt enemies. So the balance gives you a chance to kill them still on the right rotations and knowing what to counter. (im not saying you counter every single skill they have available balance is key)
I thought it happened 3 times over 10 seconds with your idea? If it is 2 times still annoying you are doing what you want than constantly lose control (even if it was one time it still be too much because camera control is just not fun). I understand the concept it is to make it annoying so you attack the tank, and again there are other ways to do that without lowering people that use action and also nerfing action combat in some form because of it. As well as again other issues that come with it clunky movement during effect, randomly being taunted at rng and kited, taunted in groups and kited, clunky feeling camera, losing control of camera.
The negative effects of the gameplay need to be weighed for people using preferred style and the balance and difficulty of it.
The problem with your damage reduction suggestion is that you seem to be failing to account for how players (or specifically, guilds) will use it.
I think we can all agree that in order to have the desired effect, the damage reduction would need to be set at no less than 50%, be permanant, passive, and AoE. If it is not all of these things, it can essentially be ignored.
If I am running a guild in a game where tanks have this ability, half of my guild will be tanks. The rest will be split between DPS, healers and support.
Now, obviously the damage reduction isnt going to stack, that would be too much. I would assume it also wouldnt apply to other tanks - that would just be silly.
However, what my setup means is that if you kill off a tank in order to get rid of that damage reduction, there is another tank right there ready to reapply it. If you kill that one off, there is another, then another. By the time you have killed all my tanks off, the first ones killed are well and truly back in the fight.
In the mean time, I have essentially invulnerable DPS. If you decide to go for them or my healers, they have that essentially permanant 50% damage reduction, and a shitload of healers to top up what little damage they do sustain.
The notion of a tank such as you are talking about can only ever be viable in a game design kind of way if there is a fairly low limit on how many players can be present, or in a game where dead players can not rejoin the fight.
In an MMO like Ashes though, players such as myself will honestly abuse the fuck out of it.
The point isn't to make people invulnerable that is where balancing comes into play in the amount that seems most fair. The point of the skill working in that way would be during the effect of the tanks skill (which shouldn't be infinite else it will have to be balanced around a skill that never end). It is about protecting your team and a mix of aggro. This is why I brought up the numbers, they could kill the tank or by killing the team and ignoring the tank you are spending more resources where if you focused the tank first it would have been faster.
Yes people can cycle defensive skills when another is on cd or dead, this isn't exclusive to any one group. Different team comps will focus on different strategies.
Again this is why i reference a lot of things matter in how skills will work, ttk on players, their defensive skills and itemization.
If we assume it has a limited duration, and that it cant just be chained by different tanks, then it will just be ignored and DPS will burst on the healers and DPS when it is not active.
The problem here is, you have still not given me a reason to go after the tank, all you have done is given me a temporary window where going after other classes will be less beneficial. Even if that window gave 100% damage reduction, all it is to me is a window in which I wait. Perhaps our tank puts up that same damage reduction ability so their DPS cant kill us while we are waiting, then both sides can just sit there waiting together.
Perhaps I missed something here, but your entire premise here seems to rely on only one tank being present. If tanks had this ability, and if this ability was ever strong enough to make someone want to go after that tank first, organized guilds would be running 25 - 50% tanks. You kill one tank and another takes its place. This would make it so that going after the tank is never the best option, because you would never get to the point where there is no tank present.
I just explained why you would go after the tank, if the strategy you are going to do is wait for the skill to go down when they pop it in the middle of the fight and run, that gives them time since you are choose not to fight. The reason is kill the tank and the defense buff will be gone making it easier to kill the others. There is no reason why other tanks can't chain it, and the protection would be given to their group not all people around them.
I feel you are looking for a reason to ignore it which means it is a win condition for the tank on a higher level. They effectively protected their whole team and the other team didn't want to risk fighting the tank. Which is very good zone control if you ask me.
Like i said if they do not want to try to burn done the whole team they focus the tank to stop him from keeping his team protected. Hence again a reason to focus the tank.
We can say the same thing about the camera control taunt. At the end of it you just move on and attack who ever. Saying things are window aren't a way to negate their overall effect as everything can be called a window. But when you are fighting or trying to push something not taking action is not going to get you to win.
It is literally a failure to exercise a zone of control. You attempted to create such a zone, and the rival players ignored your efforts.
Indeed you could.
However, a well played tank would annoy their rival so much (ie, use the mechanics of the game to taunt the player) that said player would want to go after the tank. Being taunted off your target as you are about to land that big backstab or nuke is indeed annoying.
The idea of the forced target (forced target is the point, camera control is simply one way of forcing a target in an action game - forcing the reticule to be on the tank is another method that I have yet to really consider) is to actually taunt the player, not the character.
With this version of taunt, the DPS and healers are still vulnerable. This means it is still viable to outplay your rival. Flanking and distraction become massive factors in PvP.
With your version, tanks have a one button ability to prevent them from being outplayed. Even if you distract them, even if you flank them, one button press and it doesnt matter.
I see what's happening here, now that I've factored this back to New World and the other things I know you play.
You see 'time' as a win condition factor because of the game types in the majority in your experience.
We see 'resources used to do damage' as the win condition factors. If you can just 'pause and not spend energy' the condition isn't a loss for you. In your experience it is valid zone control. In mine it definitely isn't.
Also the whole 'when you are fighting, not taking action is not going to get you to win' comes from the same position. But there are definitely many games where not taking action will lead to you winning.
You can correct me on this and I'll go back to trying to occasionally work out your reasonings, since if it isn't your primary experience, I'm back to 'not understanding why you believe this'. Oh well.
We will have to disagree with this one, if you strategy to to run out of the area "Zone of their influence" That is because their influence is effectively pushing you out, hence they are controlling the zone at the moment. Any point you are being pushed away that means you are losing the fight at the moment and are retreating. Else you wouldn't leave their zone of influence.
Forced camera movement is not what actions games do by the way, this is even more so the case when you are talking about pvp.
Spamming taunt is not going to make the person only go after the tank, that is up to the choice of the player what they want to do and what their shot caller has them focus on. Being annoying isn't a tank exclusive talent, any class could spec to be annoying.
This is the case because you want the taunt to forcefully take control from the player so they have to attack the tank showing their is already a flaw What a player woul de do is use their cc as they break away to root or stall the tank and use their mobility to get away (granted you want pve taunt to work the same so you have an annoying long range factor to deal with. Though it get into another discussion, it would also mean other classes need equally as powerful mechanics.)
My version isn't about one skill that is one example, the whole kit of the tank matters and there is other variations and takes you can do on it. It is about elevating the whole level of the tank kit through the use of taunt. That defensive ability was another idea based on something they already have in the game and a way a augment could work.
Your idea seems to be tank can't do anything unless they taunt which makes 0 sense to me. There is plenty of reasons players will attack tanks, and plenty of ways to work with their kit to push that further without forced camera control or trying to use auto play feature on tab players. no one likes the game playing for them in a way like that.
This has nothing to do with new world and just logic. If you are choose to run instead of burning down the tank and focusing the team that is your choice but you are giving up ground and also giving the other team time to recover and also build resources back up. If you focus the tank and kill them the protection the team would be gone and you can focus on attempting killing the rest of them.
There can be many wins and losses it fights it isn't just about the final outcome but what leads to that. How many pushes does your ball need to do against the other small or large. Pushing in only to lose some members, break formation and get pushed back is a loss for that small battle in the scale of the large war. You can also reference this to BDO as well just as much when people are pushing you, did you beat their ball or did you lose to it.
Time is going to be a thing for ashes of creation as well when you are talking about sieges, all of that will matter. If you are talking about random open world PvP with 0 conditions i guess it is up to the players mind set on who wins at that point or the kill tracker.
Yeah, but you wouldnt be running away, you would just be ignoring them and carrying on killing the DPS and healers.
Why would anyone run away due to their opponent having damage reduction that was fully expected?
Indeed.
This is why going after healers is meta in most MMO PvP - their heals preventing you from killing the DPS is just annoying - but you had better believe that killing the DPS is the goal (they are the ones killing you).
Thus, in order to make a tank be the thing that players want to go for first, they either need to do more damage than a DPS, more healing than a healer, or be more annoying at preventing you going after others than anyone else.
A damage reduction wont do that.
Sure you want to give tanks a full suite of CC abilities, but that just takes away from the support role (buff, debuff and CC are what support bring, no one should do any of those three better).
If you focus the tank first they won't have added dmg reduction, it is something that is only applied to the allies not the tank.
The thing is dmg reduction will help to do that as well the other components of the class with how they design it. It isn't just one skill feature that does that. These are all features that come together in being annoying and preventing people from doing what they want to do, aka in this case killing healers.
Again i have mentioned other important aspects of tanks in the other pages, and nor should a tank be able to forever prevent people from doing what they want to do. Its about smart use of your kit and group play.
There should always be risk for healers as well, and the reason of trying to make things overall logical and generic honestly just sounds like very boring design aka kill tank > kill healer > kill dps. There needs to be more interesting flow around that. As well as healers able to have ways to get around, dodge, fight, etc out of certain situations and be mindful of danger. Though part of me doesn't really want to get into explaining all of that but when things are generic it will start to feel boring and all the same.
Make tank kit fun and useful, and have moments of powerful instances, while always having a overall impact on the battle. And having survivability is a pretty big deal in doing that as well.
Tanks have built in damage reduction from their armor and class abilities. They also have about twice the HP of most other classes - often three or four times the HP of healers. Also, tanks can't heal themselves or others (generally, some can obviously), but healers obviously can which increases the effective HP pool of anyone player with a healer ally nearby.
As such, if I was up against a tank and a healer (and any number of DPS), if the tank cast a 75% damage reduction ability on the healer, a permanant one, the fastest way for me to kill that group is still to go after the healer first.
The thing is, if there is a 75% permanant damage reduction ability, you have broken PvE. All of a sudden, the best character to tank content with is your highest DPS with a 75% damage reduction buff from the tank.
This is why we mean by there not being a point where this can be balanced. Even if it is insanely overpowered and PERMANANT (which to your credit you have said it should not be), it is still faster to go for the healer.
So, I'm now talking about a permanant ability that reduces damage by 75% on one target. I'm going to assume you believe that is an overpowered buff (as do I). The problem is, it just outright isn't enough in a game with normal tanks to make it mathmatically the best option to go for that tank to remove that damage reduction. If that buff applied to all group members an argument could be made that the tank would be the second to be taken out once the healers are gone, but healers are still at the top of the list (meaning the tank isn't performing it's role).
At this point, this ability is just an outright damage reduction buff and should be given to either healers or support. By putting it on the tank instead, you are taking away from those other classes being able to perform their role - all in a failed attempt to be able to get the tank to be able to perform its role.
I agree they shouldn't be able to do that forever, the target force taunt wouldn't do that either.
A tank may well be able to keep one player focused on them using all of their taunts. Problem is, while your tank may attempt to maintain MY focus, the others in my group are going after youre healer. What your tank needs to do is hold those taunts until such time as someone dangerous is going after a healer, and then taunt them off said healer back on to the tank.
If they can manage to do this at the moment of maximum annoyance to that player, then you have a great tank that is using their abilities well. This is the point where players make the decision to go after the tank first. If you are up against a good tank who is simply preventing you from killing a healer, then your best option is to go after that tank first.
And I know you said that even one would be bad, but after the first application I'd see it as a skill check (even if I wasn't a tank). You have your preferred target and then the tank aggroes you and you know that the aggro will reapply and change your camera if you don't have the tank in direct view. So now, if you want to keep fighting your preferred target - you gotta keep your preferred target in between you and the tank at all times.
And now you're fighting 2 people, you gotta use your positioning and move prediction to not get annoyed by the tank. To me this would be peak of action combat. "Tank reduces dmg" is the most tab targety design ever, even if it's in an aura around the tank (cause tab games have auras too).
Enough! Enough good people!
I was already convinced taunt was a stupid, outdated, gimmicky mechanic!
No need to write more pages to demonstrate it!
PS. My pitchfork is still close at hand, only need to lit the torch and I'm good to go. Just say when.
I think any form of damage reduction buff that can be applied to others is a slippery slope. I also think it's a bard skill. I'd rather not have auras to contend with either because I hate static combat.
I kinda of thought Threat could be a complete mirror of what it does in PvE:
Highest Threat = PvE Mob Only Attacks You / Highest Threat = PvP Player Wants to Attack You
This can be achieved by if your Taunted, then the threat meter becomes relevant. If you are not Taunted, you can ignore the mechanic. This is an mirror opposite in PvE that players always need to be careful of Threat at all times or the PvE Mob can attack you. In PvP, you ignore it unless your Taunted.
Being Taunted means doing less damage unless the PvP Tank is NOT at the top of the Threat Meter. Attacking/debuffing/ect the Taunting Tank, healing/debuffs/other effects of the Taunting Tank targeting you or any ally, and other players damaging you causes the Threat Meter to drop.
This achieves the affect that if the Tank is weak (can't cause enough Threat based upon damage, or can't reach the target to cause enough Threat), then you can ignore the Tank. But if the Tank can damage you with abilities, place debuffs (snares/slows/ect), then the Tank will be at the top of the Threat Meter, regardless if their damage is going to immediately kill you.
That is all there is to it. If you ever have a Taunt on you, a small Threat Meter can appear and if that bar is maxed, you will deal reduced damage (could be a flat 50%, it could be an increasing % based upon how far that Threat Meter is, have to play around with this). This also allows Threat mitigation/Threat transfers/ect also work during PvP. You can tell your party that you have Threat (maxed bar), maybe your a Monk and can FD which will completely wipe threat, or have Threat Reduction from abilities or another party member has Threat Increase to take the Threat Meter from you to allow them to continue targeting another target other than the Taunting Tank.
The Taunting Tanks would have a clear role in finding the highest DPS/most threatening class and Taunt that target and attempt to get maximum Threat against that target, while debuffing/damaging the target just like any PvP fight. AoE taunts could work the same, in that if the the multiple targets that are AoE taunted, if they are part of the top order (so 5 targets are AoE taunted, and Targets #1, #2, #3 are the top 2nd, 1st, and 3rd, they have a full Taunt Meter, Targets #4 and #5 won't be affected until they reach 5th top or better), then they will deal reduced damage except against the Taunting Tank.
Taunts all have durations on them. AoE taunts would be short in duration due to the nature that they can chaotically affect a fight, just like any AoE CC. So, most of the time, a Taunting Tank would be single target, working on a target to maintain high threat to reduce their damage or completely direct damage at the Tank. If the Tank's healer/healers could keep the Tank up, while the highest Threat Meter target might not be able to apply effective DPS to the healer, the rest of the group could easily DPS the healer as they are not under the effects of Taunt, or are but not the highest in the Threat Meter.
There can still be the idea of forced taunts, where a short duration taunt that automatically makes the Taunting Tank the highest on every target's Threat Meter, so if your taunted, you deal reduced damage.
Just an idea.
Tanks shouldn't reduce damage on others in a tab target game - perhaps redirect damage to the tank, but not reduce it.
Damage reduction in a tab target game should be the split betewen healers and support.
Obviously some games have tanks that can offer damage reduction to allies, but in general that seems to me to be because This would make summoners near useless in PvP. Additionally, if I am coming up against a guild that I know happens to run several tanks, I'd just tell my summoners to log in on an alt for this fight - rendering the tanks useless as well.
In regards to player agency, the term is kind of undefined. It has meanings ranging from players being able to affect change in the world, to players being in control.
The only consistent thing with the various definitions of player agency is that they all have no place at all in PvP discussions. Player agency in Ashes is in regard to the node system, not PvP.
Truthfully, as a term, player agency has no real place outside of tabletop RPG's, as that is still the only place it can be realized.