The problem with having “Tank” as a class name

Hello all, I believe this discussion may have come up before, but I really would like Steven and friends to reconsider the name “Tank”. Overall, they have done a good job at naming the other classes and subclasses, but they ruin the immersion of the game by using the class name “tank”. Tank was a code name given to military vehicles being created in 1915. It has been a slang term for classes and archetypes in many video games given to the role that is used to absorb/mitigate or “tank” damage. Having a class name feels very uncharacteristic compared to the other class names. It’s like naming your cat “Cat”. It’s cute and punny, but is that what they really want for their game? What class do you play? Oh, I play a tank! Yea, but like what class? TANK!! *insert meme of a tank with a face on it... drooling*

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daveywavey

Jamation wrote: »

because magic isn't real so none of this should be happening.

I don't understand, sorry. What do you mean by "magic isn't real"...?

Should there be some sort of Spoiler Alert on there?!

Maciej

Yeah, I didn't think you pushed that argument, that was just a general observation from the thread.

I don't think analogizing the feeling of immersion breaking to a plain dislike is quite on the money. There is plenty of reasons why you might dislike a thing without it being an immersion breaker. I've seen mounts I don't particularly like, but I haven't seen any mounts that look like they don't belong in the world around them, and I don't have to get them or ride them so who cares.

Suspension of disbelief is when you allow yourself to believe that things you see or read or otherwise experience are real, immersion shattering is when you notice a camera man reflected in a mirror. It's one thing to suspend a disbelief in magic and elves, and a completely different thing to wilfully ignore that camera in the reflection. The magic and the elves belong in the world, the camera does not.

Having Tank named Tank doesn't ruin the game for me, but it does make the world feel less real. Again, totally subjective.

Jamation

daveywavey wrote: »

I don't understand, sorry. What do you mean by "magic isn't real"...?

Should there be some sort of Spoiler Alert on there?!

Maciej wrote: »

I don't think analogizing the feeling of immersion breaking to a plain dislike is quite on the money. There is plenty of reasons why you might dislike a thing without it being an immersion breaker. I've seen mounts I don't particularly like, but I haven't seen any mounts that look like they don't belong in the world around them, and I don't have to get them or ride them so who cares.

Ah sorry I wasn't clear. I didn't mean dislike=immersion breaking. I more so meant along the lines of, what breaks the immersion for one person might enhance it for another and vice versa. So while one person might think "Tank" breaks immersion, another likes it. While the first might think "Shield" is great, it breaks it for the other (etc etc).

Maciej wrote: »

Suspension of disbelief is when you allow yourself to believe that things you see or read or otherwise experience are real, immersion shattering is when you notice a camera man reflected in a mirror. It's one thing to suspend a disbelief in magic and elves, and a completely different thing to wilfully ignore that camera in the reflection. The magic and the elves belong in the world, the camera does not.

Having Tank named Tank doesn't ruin the game for me, but it does make the world feel less real. Again, totally subjective.

I agree about the camera-man vs elves difference, but I guess the subjective part comes since I see the word "tank" as an elf while others see it as a camera man. I'm just more surprised than anything that this has gotten so much attention/concern cause they could call it something else and I still wouldn't care one way or the other (unless it's like...you know...bad bad).

Khronus

I think they should change the name of cleric to "healer" and changed the rest of the classes to "damage dealer" or "dps'er". Bards can simply be "offhealer". Makes sense to me.

Elo

The Ashes of Creation world should be believable even before players arrive at the portals.
It is about the word's relationship to the NPC's, the culture and lore.

Our history, in popular consciousness:
1. In World War 1, the heavily armored vehicles come to be known as tanks.
2. In gaming, the role of the heavily armored player becomes known as "tank" because they are like the military vehicle tanks.
3. In the world of Ashes of Creation, the lore and the citizens call the heavily armored player a tank because gamers in our world call it a tank, which is because of the military vehicle tanks.

See any problem? If not, then it may be impossible to communicate. It is the part that connects (2) to (3).

We know that "tank" would be part of the lore because "tank" is the only archetype name you are called until level 25. So the bard at the tavern will be singing about the tanks of old..
[song] I once knew a tank from the ocean, he went to tank school like me, but when he got back to the ocean, he sank like a tank in a tank.[/song] Are there any tanks out there in the audience... you know, my brother is a tank... I hope you're doing some good dps out there... Hey, don't log off yet.

The best conclusion I can make in my head is that some people see the fantasy world as a playground, or stomping ground, for a bunch of real-life people to use (like a MOBA). But other people expect the game to follow the traditions of fantasy novels, or any fictional world for that matter. (Unless the story involves transported people from our setting to the fantasy setting, or the story is purposefully goofy.)

Jamation

Elo wrote: »

Our history, in popular consciousness:
1. In World War 1, the heavily armored vehicles come to be known as tanks.
2. In gaming, the role of the heavily armored player becomes known as "tank" because they are like the military vehicle tanks.
3. In the world of Ashes of Creation, the lore and the citizens call the heavily armored player a tank because gamers in our world call it a tank, which is because of the military vehicle tanks.

....

(Unless the story involves transported people from our setting to the fantasy setting, or the story is purposefully goofy.)

I think most people understand what an Earth Tank is...

I guess the reason I'm not too worried is because I do think Sanctus could very well have been closely linked to an Earth style of development. Remember, Verra is the world we will be going to, Sanctus is the world we are coming from

We know next to nothing about Sanctus, and they don't plan on revealing a lot before release saying that even the information that will be given out won't be done until beta.

However, Sanctus is where we (the player) will have lived, grown up, learned history, etc etc. Sanctus, a land with basically no magic, has been surviving for thousands of years *(Thousands and thousands of years go by. A long dark age passes.) What do people that used to have magic, but now don't do? They adapt and develop technology *(They had to rediscover technology, because so much of their current technology was based on magic, so they had to figure out how to interact with the world.)

Thousands of years? With various cultures? All crammed into one world? Of course war is going to break out at some point! Just look at our own history. And with each battle and war the weapons used would've probably gotten stronger and stronger. So could some form of tank existed in Sanctus? Absolutely. So is it realistic that the machines we know as Tanks existed, in some form, on Sanctus a possibility? Of course.

The lore also heavily implies that the Soul is what travels between the different planes of existence, so it makes sense that when everyone escaped Sanctus they wouldn't have brought this technology with them. (I'm going to assume this "sanctuary" at some point also grows corrupted or the people were destroying the world so badly they had no choice but to flee or at least split the population). Now they just entered a foreign land and aren't developing these weapons of mass destruction again? Perhaps it plays into the reason they had to leave Sanctus to begin with, or perhaps we will see it introduced in a later expansion. Who knows.

But if the hang-up is that a "Tank" never existed is the problem, well...I don't think anyone can actually say it didn't.

Because if anything, remember this:
*Sanctus is a key story arc, that will likely have very little revealed about it prior to the Betas.

*Source information: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Verra

Noaani

Maciej wrote: »

Jamation wrote: »

I don't mean to belittle anyone that thinks this is important, but why does it matter what it's called in the end? If a single word is all it takes to break immersion, then there is something else going on.

Funnily, I came into this thread thinking "surely it's obvious that it is immersion breaking". The main takeaway, for me at least, is that whether it is immersion breaking or not is super subjective, so pushing that argument either way isn't going to be productive.

At best, the argument of it breaking immersion lasts until the moment Intrepid provide an in game reason for the name.

That could be as simple as the fact that someone back in Sanctus thought a person in full plate armor looked a little like a metal water tank - which when you look at the origins of the naming of actual tanks, is pretty legit as far as reasoning goes.

The thing is, as soon as Intrepid provide that reason, not only is the name no longer immersion breaking, but it actually adds to immersion.

Most arguments against it amount to "I don't like it, but I don't know why, so I will make up reasons as to why I don't like it and see what sticks".

Elo

Well I hope not. If we are all being transported from a world called Sanctus that used to have guns and airplanes then it kind of ruins that fantasy feeling for me.

Noaani

Jamation wrote: »

I think most people understand what an Earth Tank is...

It is a vessel for holding a large amount of water or other liquid.

Tanks as armored vehicles were named after these tanks, no small part due to the fact that the British wanted to keep their development secret, and referring to them as water carriers rather than Landships made them seem significantly less interesting to foreign intelligence.

If it were not for early tanks rudimentary similarity to metal water tanks, we may well know them now as landships rather than tanks. I would have a hard time finding a link from a person in full plate armor to the word "landship", but I have no issue in establishing a potential link in a fantasy setting between someone in full plate armor and a metal water tank.

In fact, that link seems to me to be even more than the link between such water tanks and what would otherwise now be known as landships.

To me, the issues here only start when people look at "landships" as being where the tank class got their name from. If people take a step back and look at the reason landships are now called tanks, those issues should melt away entirely.

Sadly, most people aren't willing to expand their horizons in this manner.

Maciej

Jamation wrote: »

Ah sorry I wasn't clear. I didn't mean dislike=immersion breaking. I more so meant along the lines of, what breaks the immersion for one person might enhance it for another and vice versa. So while one person might think "Tank" breaks immersion, another likes it. While the first might think "Shield" is great, it breaks it for the other (etc etc).

That's possible, but I don't think that's the conundrum we're having here. The most often proposed alternatives (Defender, Guardian, etc.) aren't objected to because they are immersion breaking (Guardian is currently a class name, and nobody makes 15 pages long threads about it), they are objected to because they aren't as precise as Tank in describing the role of the archetype. So it's not my immersion vs your immersion, it's more of subjective immersion of some portion of the playerbase vs does the name function as an accurate descriptor and satisfies the standard Intrepid set out for the names.

Jamation wrote: »

I agree about the camera-man vs elves difference, but I guess the subjective part comes since I see the word "tank" as an elf while others see it as a camera man.

Yeah, I get that. As I said before, I've grown more appreciation to the fact that Tank is a perfectly acceptable fantasy term for some folks here. We all have our idiosyncrasies.

rikardp98

Noaani wrote: »

Jamation wrote: »

I think most people understand what an Earth Tank is...

It is a vessel for holding a large amount of water or other liquid.

Tanks as armored vehicles were named after these tanks, no small part due to the fact that the British wanted to keep their development secret, and referring to them as water carriers rather than Landships made them seem significantly less interesting to foreign intelligence.

If it were not for early tanks rudimentary similarity to metal water tanks, we may well know them now as landships rather than tanks. I would have a hard time finding a link from a person in full plate armor to the word "landship", but I have no issue in establishing a potential link in a fantasy setting between someone in full plate armor and a metal water tank.

In fact, that link seems to me to be even more than the link between such water tanks and what would otherwise now be known as landships.

To me, the issues here only start when people look at "landships" as being where the tank class got their name from. If people take a step back and look at the reason landships are now called tanks, those issues should melt away entirely.

Sadly, most people aren't willing to expand their horizons in this manner.

Did you know that most water tanks are in plastic and not metal? Metal water tanks = rust = holes = no water

Noaani

rikardp98 wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Jamation wrote: »

I think most people understand what an Earth Tank is...

It is a vessel for holding a large amount of water or other liquid.

Tanks as armored vehicles were named after these tanks, no small part due to the fact that the British wanted to keep their development secret, and referring to them as water carriers rather than Landships made them seem significantly less interesting to foreign intelligence.

If it were not for early tanks rudimentary similarity to metal water tanks, we may well know them now as landships rather than tanks. I would have a hard time finding a link from a person in full plate armor to the word "landship", but I have no issue in establishing a potential link in a fantasy setting between someone in full plate armor and a metal water tank.

In fact, that link seems to me to be even more than the link between such water tanks and what would otherwise now be known as landships.

To me, the issues here only start when people look at "landships" as being where the tank class got their name from. If people take a step back and look at the reason landships are now called tanks, those issues should melt away entirely.

Sadly, most people aren't willing to expand their horizons in this manner.

Did you know that most water tanks are in plastic and not metal? Metal water tanks = rust = holes = no water

I fail to see the relevance.

We are talking about potential water tanks in a fantasy setting where we can be fairly sure plastics don't exist, or about water tanks in 1916, only a few years after plastics became commercially viable, and many years before they became commonplace.

Maciej

If we want to shoehorn Tank (liquid container) as the etymology root here (which I've been convinced isn't necessary), I'd like to point out that in plenty of languages that didn't straight up import the English word, namely: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finish, Polish, and probably more that I didn't bother checking, the word for Tank (vehicle) has nothing to do with Tank (liquid container). The easiest here is the German Panzer, which literally translates to just Armor (although it is a shorthand for Panzerkampfwagen - armored combat vehicle). The Swedish word is literally Combat Vehicle, Finish is full Armored Combat Vehicle, French Char for heavy vehicle comes from Latin and has similar root as English Chariot, and Polish is probably weirdest with its Crawler (loosely translated).

Dunno if the game is ever to be localized, but there is that.

Noaani

Maciej wrote: »

If we want to shoehorn Tank (liquid container) as the etymology root here (which I've been convinced isn't necessary), I'd like to point out that in plenty of languages that didn't straight up import the English word, namely: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finish, Polish, and probably more that I didn't bother checking, the word for Tank (vehicle) has nothing to do with Tank (liquid container). The easiest here is the German Panzer, which literally translates to just Armor (although it is a shorthand for Panzerkampfwagen - armored combat vehicle). The Swedish word is literally Combat Vehicle, Finish is full Armored Combat Vehicle, French Char for heavy vehicle comes from Latin and has similar root as English Chariot, and Polish is probably weirdest with its Crawler (loosely translated).

Dunno if the game is ever to be localized, but there is that.

With this point, you are still making the assumption that the class is named after the vehicle, which is exactly what I am saying is not an assumption that should be made.

This point is only valid if the localized version of the tank class in this game uses the word from the associated language for the vehicle.

I somehow doubt they will do that though. It is far more likely they will either not translate it at all, or will use the language appropriate word for the liquid storage vessel.

Jamation

Maciej wrote: »

That's possible, but I don't think that's the conundrum we're having here. The most often proposed alternatives (Defender, Guardian, etc.) aren't objected to because they are immersion breaking (Guardian is currently a class name, and nobody makes 15 pages long threads about it), they are objected to because they aren't as precise as Tank in describing the role of the archetype.

Wait what? This makes it sound like Defender/Guardian are the things being objected against?

Maciej wrote: »

So it's not my immersion vs your immersion, it's more of subjective immersion of some portion of the playerbase vs does the name function as an accurate descriptor and satisfies the standard Intrepid set out for the names.

Wait was this to describe the thread to me or for something else? I'm a little confused today on this reply.

Those two statements are separate issues though. They might have overlap, but in general are two different points. The first, the subjectivity of immersion, would still be immersion vs immersion as the word "Defender" would play into the same problems I have with "Fighter". Because of this, every term used would break immersion for someone. Sure a 16+ page thread might not pop up, but that can be said about a lot of things. And I think the vocal minority are just...very vocal on this one making it appear as a more important issue than it actually is.

The second part about "standard" seems a little high and mighty if that's what people are complaining about. That'd be like a fan-fiction writer telling an author that they could've written the story better than them. A certain level of creative freedom must be given to the people actually putting in the work to create and fund the game, otherwise why would they want to invest their time making something that they can't even recognize as their own? The game isn't out yet, but people are complaining about something as small as a 4 letter word and how it is impacting a "standard"? That's just...not right.

Marcet

Noaani wrote: »

At best, the argument of it breaking immersion lasts until the moment Intrepid provide an in game reason for the name.

That could be as simple as the fact that someone back in Sanctus thought a person in full plate armor looked a little like a metal water tank

So you prefer to manipulate the lore and change it mid development to say that people in Sanctus thought armored people looked like water tanks??

Instead of simply admitting Steven was lazy when giving the name to this archtype?? hahhaha

And then on top of that you try to suggest that it was our fault for not realizing all along it was WATER TANKS?? hahahahahahah no shame at all man.

Maciej

Jamation wrote: »

Wait what? This makes it sound like Defender/Guardian are the things being objected against?

I've pushed both as suggestions (former due to 4e precedence, latter due to it being the most upvoted suggestion on reddit), and both got objected to as to being less adequate than "Tank". Our friend Noaani here even went as far as to claim that Tank is the only suitable term ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Jamation wrote: »

Those two statements are separate issues though. They might have overlap, but in general are two different points. The first, the subjectivity of immersion, would still be immersion vs immersion as the word "Defender" would play into the same problems I have with "Fighter". Because of this, every term used would break immersion for someone. Sure a 16+ page thread might not pop up, but that can be said about a lot of things. And I think the vocal minority are just...very vocal on this one making it appear as a more important issue than it actually is.

That's fair, though I think it also matters how big that minority really is, if it is a minority at all. To my knowledge nobody has done any polls on the matter. The closest to anything quantifiable would be the reddit thread from 2020, which had 66% upvotes, which isn't really saying much, and I reckon most folks downvoting (as plenty of folks in this thread) are just tired of it coming back rather than opposed to the change as such, but that's just my conjecture. My best educated guess is that the actual majority/prularity opinion on this whole is issue is "don't really care either way", and should the name change there would be little to no pushback asking "bring Tank back".

There is the old joke from WoW, which I think it applies to most human endeavours:
- How many World of Warcraft players does it take to change the lightbulb?
- What do you mean "change"!?

Jamation wrote: »

The second part about "standard" seems a little high and mighty if that's what people are complaining about. That'd be like a fan-fiction writer telling an author that they could've written the story better than them. A certain level of creative freedom must be given to the people actually putting in the work to create and fund the game, otherwise why would they want to invest their time making something that they can't even recognize as their own? The game isn't out yet, but people are complaining about something as small as a 4 letter word and how it is impacting a "standard"? That's just...not right.

Not a formal standard per say, I'm just referring to the criteria Steven gave in the Q&A from 2017 that daveywavey linked where he directly addressed it, paraphrasing:

Name should be bland not to overshadow class names.
Name should make clear what role the archetype embodies, so that when you're choosing the archetype you are not confused about it.

Those are both pretty reasonable. With those criteria Tank is a great fit, and I'd agree with mcstackerson that Defender, while adequate, is not as good. That said, I do think other archetypes aren't as snug of a fit as Tank is, and your point on Fighter is a pretty good example, so opting for something less ideal but also arguably less problematic should be fine. Either way we will have more than just the name to go by when choosing the primary archetype in the character creator.

Noaani

Marcet wrote: »

So you prefer to manipulate the lore and change it mid development to say that people in Sanctus thought armored people looked like water tanks??

I'm not writing for this game, so I have no control over the lore.

If what you are trying to say here is that I would prefer it if Intrepids writers manipulated the lore for whatever reason, I would then point out to you that writers manipulating lore is what most of us would call "writing", and that absolutely is something i want Intrepids writers to do.

And then on top of that you try to suggest that it was our fault for not realizing all along it was WATER TANKS?? hahahahahahah no shame at all man.

I am saying no such thing. I am simply saying that you don't know that this isn't the case.

Since water tanks are where tanks got their name from, it does make absolute sense that tanks as a class (specifically an armor wearing class) could get it's name in the exact same way.

To say that this couldn't happen would be something of a mistake, as that is how tanks that we have got their name.

Basically, I am saying that in a fantasy world like Verra/Sanctus, it is perfectly, 100% reasonable to assume tanks as a class could have arrived at that name in the exact same manner as tanks that we have arrived at that name.

Again, I am not saying that is the case, I am saying that you don't know that is not the case, and as such have no place saying that this *IS* an issue for you.

The best you have is to say that without an in game reason for this being the name of the class, you have an issue with it.

That is literally the best argument you have here.

Jamation

Maciej wrote: »

Those are both pretty reasonable. With those criteria Tank is a great fit, and I'd agree with mcstackerson that Defender, while adequate, is not as good. That said, I do think other archetypes aren't as snug of a fit as Tank is, and your point on Fighter is a pretty good example, so opting for something less ideal but also arguably less problematic should be fine. Either way we will have more than just the name to go by when choosing the primary archetype in the character creator.

Ah thanks! I don't really have anything to add, just wanted to say thanks. That was well thought out and explained! Thanks for the clarity!

Marcet wrote: »

So you prefer to manipulate the lore and change it mid development to say that people in Sanctus thought armored people looked like water tanks??

We don't know the lore of Sanctus so it can't be "manipulated", but I explained earlier how an actual literally pew pew shooty tank could easily have been a part of Sanctus' history.

Cypher

This would solve it all:

Currently, Tank + Fighter = Knight.
I propose instead that “Tank” be replaced with “Knight” and then Knight + Fighter = Crusader

Problem solved for everyone involved.

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