This is very near what SWTOR tanks do. Instead of forced targetting or forced movement, tank taunts in PVP caused the enemy to do reduced damage to anyone except the tank.
The tank could also throw a guard (similar to FF14 cover) on a ally, and reduce damage that ally took by redirecting it to the tank... who would then use defensive cooldowns to further reduce damage to itself.
SWTOR pvp was one of the best games I enjoyed pvp in because of this actually. The only games that topped it for me was Wildstar (rest in peace forever my favorite game), and Tera. Gods I miss my wildstar Engineer.
The end result though, was that enemy players still had agency to keep attacking what they were attacking if they wanted to do reduced damage to it, or they could save their resources until the taunt wore off, or they could dump them into the tank and hope for the best, it was great.
Why not just damage redirection mechanics? I had a post on this a while back and think it would be a good element to a game like this.
You could cast it on an enemy to redirect their damage dealt, cc, player affecting spells to you or another team mate. You could cast it on an ally to redirect the same types of things from you to them. There are lots of permutations and combinations of abilities throughout the game that could do this functionality.
Why not just damage redirection mechanics? I had a post on this a while back and think it would be a good element to a game like this.
You could cast it on an enemy to redirect their damage dealt, cc, player affecting spells to you or another team mate. You could cast it on an ally to redirect the same types of things from you to them. There are lots of permutations and combinations of abilities throughout the game that could do this functionality.
I think it would be one of the good solutions.
There might be other ones too which would require the team members run to a safer spot, near the tank or where the tank created a protection area or a wall.
The Ironbreaker in Warhammer Online was by far one of the best tank class designs in an mmo to date.
The Dünir Hold Mithril Warhammers,Thanes of the Keelhaul, Dünir scourge of the oceans, Warhammer First Fleet Command of The Dünzenkell Nation, friends to the Dünir Dwarves of the Dünhold.Hammers High!
On Eso we actually had a set that did this. Using a taunt skill on an enemy allowed them to do 100% more dmg to you, but debuffed enemy dmg to your allies by 50%.
It was extremely effective mitigation, but the issue was that tanks didn't like the idea of taking damage, haha. I never saw the set in pvp unless I ran it myself.
Maybe something along those lines but a smaller buff with a lower downside, so that tanks still feel tanky.
I knew a few guys that permanently wore this set. Couldn’t kill the tank because the healer he was tethered too couldn’t die.
Yep this is exactly what we did. It was silly
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chibibreeMember, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
This was fun to talk about last week on our podcast and @Virtek agreed for the most part. The only thing he wasn't as big of a fan of was the "taking more damage" and as a healer, I can agree that it would be a little nerve-wracking if the tank suddenly was taking a lot of damage. Though, I could see a reduced amount of damage to other members besides the tank. It was an interesting thought, thank you for sharing!
The tank could focus on improving plate armor in the team, based on what kind of armor he himself has.
If the tank has armor with high defense against piercing damage but weak against slashing damage, he should be able to go near a team member and either passively or actively increase that player's armor against piercing damage. Or it could also work as a generated item which players can chose to equip or activate at the right moment to cancel specific damage types.
If the tank would "generate" some plates which he could use himself but chose to give them to other team members, it would be the case from the OP, where he suggested "slightly increased damage to the tank and substantially less damage to others "
Maybe the player who received such a "plate" from the tank, could even give it further to somebody else nearby.
GFK, I would think that in a PvP fight over a raid, the victory itself should be the reward. The winners have the opportunity for the raid loot.
I don't think that a complicated system like you propose is needed. After all, when you have a complex system, you also bring the opportunity to come up with some way to game the system, right?
Yes I agree. The only reason I think the idea if proposed will work is if it is instanced. Open world PVP will always be kill the squishy damage dealers/healers first.
In this instance the only thing I can think of that really provides and incentive to go after the tank is if they somehow offer supporting boons to healers and damage dealers.
No one is going to want to deplete their cooldowns on a tank that is taking 75% reduced damage with their own tanking cool downs.
The question that needs to be asked is "what does the tank provide in PVP, and why are the a high value target to eliminate?"
The tank needs to be made a high value target first and foremost. If its capture the flag then the tank needs to be holding the flag. If its king of the hill then the tank needs to somehow help his teammates take reduced damage.
Healers are eliminated because they heal.
Damage is eliminated because they deal damage.
Tanks need to be eliminated because they tank.
A tank in albion is someone with a ton of armor/damage mitigation, first to go into combat and uses a weapon that groups the enemy, like an AOE pull or it can be a single target disrupt/stun. The tank is used as the engage or as a disrupt since skills can be interrupted by stuns or CC.
Yep, tanks seemed to have an important role in PVP in Albion. Works fine like that. As it is the engager the enemies have the choice to focus the tank as it is the closest and it is causing havoc or they can ignore the tank and try to reach for the more squishy targets. I don't see why it has to be more complicated than that. I can't remember tanks having a 35 seconds stun lock ability, and that would of course be boring.
I would rather see the tank protect the team with actual gameplay, rather than casting a spell that dampens the damage to other characters on the team. A spell like that could be a fringe spell for certain specs, but it sounds a bit boring as an important gameplay mechanic to me. Also, it might encourage a tank to be behind the squishy targets and not in front.
Dark Age of Camelot had an ability called intercept for tanks, you could target one person in your party and as long as you stayed within melee range of one another the tank took the damage.
This is very near what SWTOR tanks do. Instead of forced targetting or forced movement, tank taunts in PVP caused the enemy to do reduced damage to anyone except the tank.
The tank could also throw a guard (similar to FF14 cover) on a ally, and reduce damage that ally took by redirecting it to the tank... who would then use defensive cooldowns to further reduce damage to itself.
SWTOR pvp was one of the best games I enjoyed pvp in because of this actually. The only games that topped it for me was Wildstar (rest in peace forever my favorite game), and Tera. Gods I miss my wildstar Engineer.
The end result though, was that enemy players still had agency to keep attacking what they were attacking if they wanted to do reduced damage to it, or they could save their resources until the taunt wore off, or they could dump them into the tank and hope for the best, it was great.
I miss my wild Star engineer too. And I don't think I've ever had as much fun in an MMO PVP setting as I did with hutball. You're making me want to go play my sith juggernaut right now. I'm all for getting something like that tethered shield mechanic again, it was very useful in PVP settings.
If you think about what a taunt is vs a fixation effect or a distraction, you can come up with some unique options for integral gameplay that doesn't force players to be treated like NPC's in PvP regardless of temporarily impairment durations.
Taunt/Agro ability changes enemies target (from someone else in your group to you and the enemy needs to retarget (reclick) that initial player's name to focus on him again, but tank can take agro on himself again. Give tanks hammer stuns/shield stuns,agro/taunt mechanics and some form of pulls. Best and most fun tank pvp role.
Taunt/Agro ability changes enemies target (from someone else in your group to you and the enemy needs to retarget (reclick) that initial player's name to focus on him again, but tank can take agro on himself again. Give tanks hammer stuns/shield stuns,agro/taunt mechanics and some form of pulls. Best and most fun tank pvp role.
I am typically not a fan of forced targetting in PvP. I am also one of the people that really loved the taunt/guard mechanic from SWTOR that reduced and redirected damage so it more was a choice of was attacking the tank worth it over attempting to burn down their guard target or force them to switch to unprotected members of their group.
I should also clarify, I dislike forced targeting because in most cases it really don't derail me when i am taunted because re-targeting isn't usually too hard so it ends up being something where my down time is minimal vs. damage reduction where it affects me for the duration of the taunt (4 secs or whatever).
I should also clarify, I dislike forced targeting because in most cases it really don't derail me when i am taunted because re-targeting isn't usually too hard so it ends up being something where my down time is minimal vs. damage reduction where it affects me for the duration of the taunt (4 secs or whatever).
When the caster is spamming firebolts at the dagger who is running to him to 1shot him with a blow or a backstab there is a high chance of a dagger dying before he can even reach the caster. If tank is constantly taunting the caster in this scenario there is much bigger chance for the dagger to reach that caster, because 4/10 of casts will jump on tank just because he was annoyingly changing caster's target. In massive world pvp it's huge and it cannot be compared to anything like wow or other western games.
I should also clarify, I dislike forced targeting because in most cases it really don't derail me when i am taunted because re-targeting isn't usually too hard so it ends up being something where my down time is minimal vs. damage reduction where it affects me for the duration of the taunt (4 secs or whatever).
When the caster is spamming firebolts at the dagger who is running to him to 1shot him with a blow or a backstab there is a high chance of a dagger dying before he can even reach the caster. If tank is constantly taunting the caster in this scenario there is much bigger chance for the dagger to reach that caster, because 4/10 of casts will jump on tank just because he was annoyingly changing caster's target. In massive world pvp it's huge and it cannot be compared to anything like wow or other western games.
Happy to disagree with you there. If you are measuring effectiveness because of an eastern MMO or BDO style MMO in forcing a re-target then I just don't see enough similarities to all the content I have seen/played for Ashes to make any sort of comparison in this case. Sure if you can taunt 5 times in 5 seconds to keep forcing the target to change, but with the speed of this game I really don't see it having nearly the same effect.
With that said, A2 will make many things clear and I am more than happy to eat my shoes if I am wrong but based on the content we are being given I think a forced target spell wouldn't even make it on my tank hotbar if given other choices.
Edit: Again, for context thinking through what you are talking about. If I force taunt a ranger who is mid powershot I will switch target and eat that spell which feels like a good use of it but any player of minor skill will just re-target and then my spell is on cooldown again for X seconds. Unless the force target locks them onto me for X seconds or is on a GCD/sub 1 second CD (then we are talking about what I feel is an Agency problem) it just doesn't really read well into the game as it looks now.
I think I was more refering to eastern mmo like Lineage2, nothing new school like BDO. Because in L2 it was the case and it worked perfectly. Not 5 times in 5 seconds, but if bard (buffer) gives 30% physical attack speed buff (which influence the cooldown of your physical skills) then in theory and in past experience there really could be 2 nice taunts in 5 seconds.
You are right about A2 clarifications, but this is why we can speculate right now based on previous experiences and in this case if as Steven said Ashes pvp is 95% as L2 pvp was then it should be the case. And in this case there wouldn't be an extra "forced target spell" for pvp, it would be the same your normal agro/taunt skill that you use on bosses in pve.
If you're 3 vs 3 someone then yes, retargeting is not an issue (even tho you could spend that time somewhere else rather than being able to mouse click on players name who's running around all over the place on your screen), but in the normal ashes PvP which would be from 8 vs 8 to 200 vs 200 it would be another story "quickly retargeting".
And yeah you're right, it would be a nonsense if agro would lock your enemies target on you for X seconds.
Talked about this awhile back as there is multiple things you can do besides simply lowering damage. Taunt can be a debuff that increases the tanks effectiveness of their skills allowing them to CC a target more often, lowering movement speed, attack speed, etc. With the debuff only being removed upon hitting the tank, which leads to a natural change of camera within player control than forcing janky and clunky gameplay with forced targeting. Something that does not work in action combat and is very disorienting.
They have a skill in the game already that makes it so dmg done to team members is applied to the tank, that skill could be further augmented to make it so their team takes reduced dmg when they obtain their full class. Making it so if players attacked the tank first they would be killing the group faster, over trying to kill 5 other members that are now really tanky. Again naturally creating situations where you feel threat is higher towards the tank considering killing him / disabling him first or at very least second to the healer.
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The tank could also throw a guard (similar to FF14 cover) on a ally, and reduce damage that ally took by redirecting it to the tank... who would then use defensive cooldowns to further reduce damage to itself.
SWTOR pvp was one of the best games I enjoyed pvp in because of this actually. The only games that topped it for me was Wildstar (rest in peace forever my favorite game), and Tera. Gods I miss my wildstar Engineer.
The end result though, was that enemy players still had agency to keep attacking what they were attacking if they wanted to do reduced damage to it, or they could save their resources until the taunt wore off, or they could dump them into the tank and hope for the best, it was great.
You could cast it on an enemy to redirect their damage dealt, cc, player affecting spells to you or another team mate. You could cast it on an ally to redirect the same types of things from you to them. There are lots of permutations and combinations of abilities throughout the game that could do this functionality.
I think it would be one of the good solutions.
There might be other ones too which would require the team members run to a safer spot, near the tank or where the tank created a protection area or a wall.
Yep this is exactly what we did. It was silly
If the tank has armor with high defense against piercing damage but weak against slashing damage, he should be able to go near a team member and either passively or actively increase that player's armor against piercing damage. Or it could also work as a generated item which players can chose to equip or activate at the right moment to cancel specific damage types.
If the tank would "generate" some plates which he could use himself but chose to give them to other team members, it would be the case from the OP, where he suggested "slightly increased damage to the tank and substantially less damage to others "
Maybe the player who received such a "plate" from the tank, could even give it further to somebody else nearby.
Yes I agree. The only reason I think the idea if proposed will work is if it is instanced. Open world PVP will always be kill the squishy damage dealers/healers first.
In this instance the only thing I can think of that really provides and incentive to go after the tank is if they somehow offer supporting boons to healers and damage dealers.
No one is going to want to deplete their cooldowns on a tank that is taking 75% reduced damage with their own tanking cool downs.
The question that needs to be asked is "what does the tank provide in PVP, and why are the a high value target to eliminate?"
The tank needs to be made a high value target first and foremost. If its capture the flag then the tank needs to be holding the flag. If its king of the hill then the tank needs to somehow help his teammates take reduced damage.
Healers are eliminated because they heal.
Damage is eliminated because they deal damage.
Tanks need to be eliminated because they tank.
IDK its a tough balance .
Yep, tanks seemed to have an important role in PVP in Albion. Works fine like that. As it is the engager the enemies have the choice to focus the tank as it is the closest and it is causing havoc or they can ignore the tank and try to reach for the more squishy targets. I don't see why it has to be more complicated than that. I can't remember tanks having a 35 seconds stun lock ability, and that would of course be boring.
I would rather see the tank protect the team with actual gameplay, rather than casting a spell that dampens the damage to other characters on the team. A spell like that could be a fringe spell for certain specs, but it sounds a bit boring as an important gameplay mechanic to me. Also, it might encourage a tank to be behind the squishy targets and not in front.
Atleast that's what I got out of one of the tanks PvE shield skill or spell.
defensive buffs and de-buffs
CC
sustained damage
good area of effect
mitigation when focused or holding a point
variates with build
I miss my wild Star engineer too. And I don't think I've ever had as much fun in an MMO PVP setting as I did with hutball. You're making me want to go play my sith juggernaut right now. I'm all for getting something like that tethered shield mechanic again, it was very useful in PVP settings.
I am typically not a fan of forced targetting in PvP. I am also one of the people that really loved the taunt/guard mechanic from SWTOR that reduced and redirected damage so it more was a choice of was attacking the tank worth it over attempting to burn down their guard target or force them to switch to unprotected members of their group.
When the caster is spamming firebolts at the dagger who is running to him to 1shot him with a blow or a backstab there is a high chance of a dagger dying before he can even reach the caster. If tank is constantly taunting the caster in this scenario there is much bigger chance for the dagger to reach that caster, because 4/10 of casts will jump on tank just because he was annoyingly changing caster's target. In massive world pvp it's huge and it cannot be compared to anything like wow or other western games.
Happy to disagree with you there. If you are measuring effectiveness because of an eastern MMO or BDO style MMO in forcing a re-target then I just don't see enough similarities to all the content I have seen/played for Ashes to make any sort of comparison in this case. Sure if you can taunt 5 times in 5 seconds to keep forcing the target to change, but with the speed of this game I really don't see it having nearly the same effect.
With that said, A2 will make many things clear and I am more than happy to eat my shoes if I am wrong but based on the content we are being given I think a forced target spell wouldn't even make it on my tank hotbar if given other choices.
Edit: Again, for context thinking through what you are talking about. If I force taunt a ranger who is mid powershot I will switch target and eat that spell which feels like a good use of it but any player of minor skill will just re-target and then my spell is on cooldown again for X seconds. Unless the force target locks them onto me for X seconds or is on a GCD/sub 1 second CD (then we are talking about what I feel is an Agency problem) it just doesn't really read well into the game as it looks now.
You are right about A2 clarifications, but this is why we can speculate right now based on previous experiences and in this case if as Steven said Ashes pvp is 95% as L2 pvp was then it should be the case. And in this case there wouldn't be an extra "forced target spell" for pvp, it would be the same your normal agro/taunt skill that you use on bosses in pve.
If you're 3 vs 3 someone then yes, retargeting is not an issue (even tho you could spend that time somewhere else rather than being able to mouse click on players name who's running around all over the place on your screen), but in the normal ashes PvP which would be from 8 vs 8 to 200 vs 200 it would be another story "quickly retargeting".
And yeah you're right, it would be a nonsense if agro would lock your enemies target on you for X seconds.
They have a skill in the game already that makes it so dmg done to team members is applied to the tank, that skill could be further augmented to make it so their team takes reduced dmg when they obtain their full class. Making it so if players attacked the tank first they would be killing the group faster, over trying to kill 5 other members that are now really tanky. Again naturally creating situations where you feel threat is higher towards the tank considering killing him / disabling him first or at very least second to the healer.