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
However, what it will result in is me telling my tanks that their role in PvP is not to get attacked, but to debuff as many players as they can. It would take the tank class from also having the tank role, to it having a support role instead.
That does mean tanks would at least have a role in PvP, but I am of the opinion that every class should have the same role in PvP as they have in PvE.
You are welcome to disagree with that notion of you like.
Overall i feel like this is something out of joint in how classes and augments will work, and people not caring just wanting a version of what they want even if it doesn't exist, or its negative impacts to the game.
My guild and I all thing taunt and skills controlling player cameras forcefully and over durations is cancer. I'll have faith devs aren't putting things in the game to diminish the experience of player play styles from a mechanical stand point.
I've talked about it enough at this point lol.
As we've said in this thread (and others), your objections to things are almost always based on you making some early bad assumptions, and then never being willing to to have those assumptions cleared up.
My guild has PvP experience, we have a pretty good handle on understanding things you won't see.
Objections are based on facts, the dialogue of this discussion has down a desire to add a bad feature to a game that does not have it lol. You are fine with it being clunky, do nto understand how it is clunky, tab based mentality thinking switching is the solution, wont accept other methods besides a new method of your own idea. We all view it as a bad take lol.
We have gone over this experience discussion before as well, i have more experience than you playing more games and open to more things. And why i can see a bigger picture you can not.
However, this statement illustrates that you are not actually aware of what the point of experience is.
The point of experience is to understand many different ways of achieving a similar goal.
If, for example, every game you have ever played has a similar camera scheme, then when it comes to talking about camera schemes in other games, you have limited expereince in the matter.
Sure, you may hve played dozens of PvP games - but the important thing in regards to experience is the differences between the games you have played, not the similarities.
You pride yourself as a pve players so that is very debatable for me, meaning you focus on pve mmorpg, everquest included than playing pvp sorts of mmorpgs.
Not just PvP but PvE as well. Which includes action (far more than you) and tab since everquest.
You are quick to make assumptions trying to lower the value of another as if it is a goal post in your point. Even if it is unfounded assumptions of your own not backed by anything but what you want to believe. Thinking you are right and will only will do the one idea you want, and are not open to different solutions.
It shows since you try to mention a guild full of people all have the same experience as me when they have less and maybe more in some cases on different elements of mmorpgs, as if in a negative light. Ie trying to say a whole group of people don't have experience and their opinion is not valid.
Personally I'm not going to judge someone opinion based on experience but based on the points they bring up (unless they try to be negative against me). Everyone has value, and everyone is open to having good and bad takes. Again from my own group they all think yours is a bad take, with how the mmorpg genre is they just don't want people to ruin another one.
Though I suppose we can all say we are all wrong and point fingers and see who can point more lol. As i said before I'll trust the devs and see what they do and not add random features that have players take camera control of others.
That is something others have decided I must be, simply because I do indeed enjoy top end PvE, and see it as being vital to Ashes long term success.
People often "forget" that I have played more PvP MMO's than I have PvE MMO's, because that doesn't fit in with the narrative they want to tell. You do this too, I have told you in the past that I have fairly extensive PvP experience, yer you are still trying to paint me as a PvE player because that better suits your motive.
This is what we do here.
We bring up experience to point out why you can't see what it is the rest of us are talking about. It isn't a matter of needing experience to come up with a good idea (though good ideas without experience do indeed happen, they are generally luck), expereince is needed to recognize one.
If your ideas were good, we'd let you know.
See, this is another part of why it can be really hard to discuss things with you.
I don't know if the above is you simply not understanding English very well (I assume it is a second language), or if you do not understand the suggestion.
The phrase "take camera control of others" suggests the other player is in control of your camera. That isn'tthe case, and has never been the case.
Again, I don't know if the above is poor English, or if it is just a lack of understanding.
If you don't understand "not add random features that have players take camera control of others" based on this conversation you need to look inwards on that one bud. I'd be asking if you don't understand English yourself.
We are clearly talking about taunting taking control of camera and suddenly you are telling me you don't understand what I'm saying. I get you are on your limit on being respectful, this one is still reaching hard
I wish i could believe your experience, but some of the points you are bringing up seem to be lacking experience. Mixed with an absolute attitude and not seeing the bigger picture, while backing yourself with excuses (ie deciding something should be "support class" by your own bias view point even if part of that feature is already a skill shown in game). You will ignore valid points and logic and try to rework things around to your singular view point.
You are not a person anyone is looking validation for on ideas, you have some bad takes this being one of them (bunch of other people agreeing with me immensely on this one). And a lot of people don't want to spend the time to argue with you because it isn't worth it and how you approach things in a pretty negative attitude 50% of the time..
Thus, in order for me to take control of your camera in game, it would be required that I then have control of your camera.
That isn't the case.
This is why I am not sure if it is a language thing or an understanding thing. It could be either.
Nothing is worse than a one vs one when your opponent is actually 4+ vs one. It's the reason multiboxing is so controversial. We can't state whether a summoner would be useless because we haven't seen summoner, furthermore, the summoner can control the summons so player agency does come into the equation.
In a real situation no one is forced to attack anyone else in a battle. Forced target taunts are a piss poor way of implementing threat in pvp. The natural order of threat is support, dps then tank. To artificially change the dynamic means the tank is just bad all round.
Player agency is the ability for players to say "lets build a village here", working towards that, and then there being a village there. It is about making change in the games world. If you are in a PvP situation, are rooted or snared in place and only have one player in your attack range, that is the exact same situation as being taunted (except you are rooted or snared). If you have no one in your attack range, you are in a worse situation.
Neither of the above two situations are at all uncommon - they happen multiple times a day to melee characters in PvP.
The point of this thread literally is to change that dynamic you are talking of above, because it makes tanks useless in PvP, and means they are the only class that has a different role in PvP and PvE. That is a dynamic that needs to be changed.
You can claim my view point relates to why the tank is bad in the current form but I'd rather have a pure tank than a bastardised version. Player agency relates to any action a player wishes to perform. For a pvp player who I attack is the epitome of player agency. You might not grasp player agency because of your rigid disposition to raiding and raid groups in general. However, in pvp player agency is key because there are personal targets and group targets. Not just group targets.
A forced target taunt would be bad because raids could field scores of tanks and pull an opposition raid to pieces. Or, damage absorption would mean the whole TTK will be extended whilst a tank is on the field, only problem would be you can have multiple tanks again and always have a tank on the field. These sorts of methods are good on paper but in actual terms they are bad because they affect the game overall and not the interactions between classes. Player agency is an important part of any MMORPG not just table top. After all, MMORPG is based on table top.
well, tanks in PVP should be able to protect their supports and dps. one way is to have the tank give shields, reduced damage their teammates take, or take damage instead of them. debuff the opponents, cc the opponents, etc
tanks also need a way to make the enemies attack them instead of the supports and dps, because you are tankier and can take more punishment. otherwise whats the point?
forcing aggro is perfectly fine. the other options are giving the tank enough damage to kill enemies so that they are forced to dispatch you first, and we don't want that since we've seen what that does in other games, or give the tanks the ability to perma shield, cc, reduce damage for teammate, etc and just become another support that never dies plus now his teammates never die, and you also don't want that either. pick your poison.
a healthy mix of all of them Is reasonable though.
You are trying to argue semantics on forums right now, why waste pages and time doing this? Or is it that your bad attempt at a insult failed so you need to keep going with it.
This you talking about forced camera control?
I'm all for tanks supporting the support and the dps. However, support and dps need to learn to use the terrain, class and skills properly. Not rely on a tank to shield them except when the shit hits the fan. There should be ways to dismantle the opposition raid through target selection, not through gimmicks because the gimmicks look better than pure damage. There is nothing stopping a tank building for pure damage - never has been and never will be. The issue remains on what skills the tank has to build around and a forced target taunt with support skills means the tank will be a one dimensional hump of junk.
I'm not really saying any of that.
What I am saying is that tanks exist to be the ones to take the bulk of hits from enemies.
That isn't the case for MMO PvP - meaning MMO PvP is broken in this regard.
Broken to the point where people don't even realize it is broken.
Lets dissect this.
If a raid fiends scores of tanks, that means they have few DPS and healers. Since tanks can't really do a lot of damage or healing, just kill the tanks. Since you can't be taunted off of a tank if you are fighting it (as per the suggestion), the balanced raid shouldn't have an issue absolutely dismantling this tank heavy raid that can't heal or fight back.
If they do have a good number of tanks and healers, then they must be significantly outnumbering you. If they outnumber you AND have the coordernation to pull off the above, then you lost before the engagement even started.
I'm not talking about an imbalanced raid, I'm talking about the core of tanks in general. If there are 500vs 500 you might have 50 tanks. That means 1 of 50 tanks can be in the thick of battle for the entire battle. Which means any auras, absorbs or group effects can almost always be activated. Its why WoW Paladin was bad in Vanilla for PvP. The WoW Paladin was extremely difficult to kill and could respawn and be back in the fight within seconds, thus, the fight boiled down to an eternal fight with a WoW Paladin.
An amalgamated tank will equal WoW Paladin in Vanilla. Its not good for pvp in any way. There must be strengths and weakness for a class and a raid in general. We have bard to boost the general effectiveness of a force, we don't also need a tank to do the same thing. The debate is quite difficult to have because I'm reliant on limited knowledge of Ashes tank and tanks in other games. I haven't seen all the classes for ashes or even seen the new classes in pvp. Thus, the debate on how tank should operate is haphazard at best.
I agree with you that there must be strengths and weaknesses to all classes.
Healers heal others, but cant really deal any damage. DPS deal damage, but can't heal or take a hit.
A tanks strength is it's ability to take a hit. It cant heal or deal any real damage.
If players can just ignore tanks (as we all know we do), then tanks simply have two weaknesses and a strength that is just bypassed.
This is why it is broken - at least to me.
The only fix is to make it so players do not want to bypass tanks. This means that without adding damage or healing to a tank, something needs to be worked out to make players change their thinking to where tanks are who they want to kill first.
It's all well and good to state the base tank is naff. I've done it several times but the base tank is only the base and not a finished class. Augments will finish the class. There must be a balanced approach to the base class so that the augments actually change the class. Its no good to amalgamate all the augment trees into the base class and then just add flavour when the secondary class is chosen. I find the debate rather futile until we see a full class shown. I see plenty of red flags all over, hence I try to choose my words with care.
how about a tab targetted game where a bunch of archers click you and you die instantly? how are you going to use the terrain against that? or ur kit? unless u just decide to stay hidden and don't come out.
there's nothing wrong with a tank taunting to protect their allies.
also, tanks building for damage..sure u can, but I'm talking about a character that doesn't die, can kill you in 2 seconds as if it was a dps hitting you, cc, etc. we don't want that to happen
I can't tell you if you can die in 2 seconds. TTK was meant to be 30 to 60 seconds but of course we've seen very little pvp since people were dying in 5 seconds or less. That was in a 3vs3. In your scenario you'd need multiple rangers on one target. What use is one taunt for a set duration in such a circumstance?
the point is to save your healer, give him time to back off a bit, etc. your taunt will be on cd, but so will be the archers skills and you just saved your teammate.
the tank walks/dashes to the enemy party...
you played l2 right? archers would do 1 damage to tanks with crits...daggers couldn't kill tanks, and mages definitely didn't want to attack tanks because of reflect. so that's why you taunt. tanks also have ultimate defense, etc plus tanks are tankier than other classes and its easier to heal them.
in PVP (and pve too) the tanks need to somehow make the enemies hit them instead of their party members. so how are they going to do that? you either give them enough damage so that they are a threat and can kill you, and you don't want that because then whats the point of playing other classes when you have a class that solo kills everything and doesn't die (look at fiesta or forsaken world back in the day) and can also aoe everything and kill them...or you don't and now they hit like a wet noodle and you can just ignore them, making the char almost useless in PVP
so how do you propose tanks force their enemies to attack them and not their party ?
and obviously in a 500 vs 500 u probs gonna die if all 500 hit you..but do u prefer the tank to die after using aoe taunt and his ultimate defense, buying time for his team so that they can aoe the enemies, or you want the healer to die? and ofc notice that you have multiple tanks.
Healer shouldn't be places in a position to be nuked by masses of enemies. We have collision and also any class can be melee or ranged. It all depends how effective one healer becomes at max level. I don't see aoe taunt as being good in pve or pvp.
A single target taunt is much more effective and allows a tank to mitigate the biggest threats rather than having a boss and all the adds on the tank in all situations. Pvp is the same. In an ideal world you would wipe players without losing a player. That takes coordination, tactics and also communication.
A tank who charges in to suicide would not be in my raid group for long. Better uses of combat res are required - like a dead healer. It is difficult to state how 500vs500 will pan out because in a1 we only had 3 classes at level 15 in sieges.
If damage augments to a tank give it enough DPS to make tanks a threat in PvP, then DPS augments on a DPS class will essentially make them destruction gods.
The problem isnt around how any one game balances classes, it is about the base notion of those classes.
If the base idea of a tank is a class capable of taking a hit (armor, damage reduction, high HP pool etc) and players in PvP can just ignore that, then taking that broken class and augmenting it isnt going to fix it.
The fix needs to be in making that class capable of taking a hit actually able to make use of that fact in PvP.
You will need to neutralise a tank with the current skill set because hard cc will steamroll through healers and dps. Sure, you can body block a tank but in the dev stream tank annihilated both cleric and mage at the time. Though the players weren't the best.
I'm not sure what your aim is in terms of the tank because from my stand point a tank can be melee or ranged. Thus, there are two different approaches one can take to build. Furthermore, you can horizontally enchant weapons to do physical or magical damage thus the tank has further options to specialise in killing methods.
All that is required would be to make sword and board offensive and the tank would be balanced. Too many games make sword and board defensive though. Because we get augments, weapon skills and class skills the class skills must be balanced around survival because any class can use any weapon combo.
Simple.
My aim is for tanks in Ashes to function as tanks.
Not as DPS. Not as healers. Not as CC. As tanks.
Tanks are designed to be the one to take the hits. That is their primary role, function and design goal when creating a tank class.
All of the means by which a tank can add DPS are kind of pointless tangents, honestly.
The games TTK will be based on DPS classes and the DPS they can deal. When Intrepid add more damage, they will also add more defense.
Since all of the methods tanks have for increasing DPS are also available to DPS classes, and since those DPS classes will always start off with a better base than a tank class for dealing damage, tanks will literally always remain at the bottom of the pile in terms of danger via damage.
Same with tanks going after healing builds. Put everything you have on to healing, make yourself as unkillable as you can, and watch everyone just ignore you.
Saying tanks can add DPS or add heals or add CC in order to be effective in PvP isnt the point. Doing these things means the tank is no longer functioning as a tank
Your comments on a sword and board build kind of highlight how accepting people seem to be of a broken paradigm.
Sword and board should obviously be a defensive build - drop the shield for a second weapon or go two handed if you want an offensive build. Sword and boars is the "these here are my peeps, and if you want to get to them you'll have to go through me" build.
So no, the fix isnt to make sword and board an offensive build. The fix is to make the defensive nature of sword and board actually matter in PvP. If you put your best sword and board stance on, grit your teeth and scowl the above line to some rival, and those rivals just ignore you and go straight after your peeps, then it is the whole paradigm that is broken.