This topic crops up from time to time; the trinity exists purely because it's the strongest PVE foundation to build game mechanics around. It adds structure and provides a basic platform (tank and spank) for developers to branch out from. Obviously, it's completely devoid of logic. No dragon is going to whomp repeatedly on a heavily armoured dude whose every wound is instantly healed by another dude stood 10ft away. Especially when the second dude is wearing "armour" that offers comparable protection to a paper bag. A thin one. A wet thin one. A wet thin one of inferior quality construction. But without the trinity, your base fight is a zerg. All definition of class role would go straight out of the window. If you don't have "threat" then how do you determine which player the dragon decides to hit? Do you go by who does the most damage? Closest? But then what use would a heavily armoured warrior that does crap damage be when the dragon ignores him and chomps on yer uber-DPS rogue? Both have to be in melee range. You can't just up the warriors damage, or you screw any semblence of class balance. Who would play a rogue if warriors did comparable damage and had much better survivability? Do you add extra "threat" to a warriors attacks? Snares? .. you're back to "tank and spank". And in-combat healing. Sure, you could get rid of that and made all fights fast enough that the focus is on killing the enemy before you all die (DPS races).. but then you eliminate a complete playstyle. Lots of people enjoy playing the healer role, if you can't heal in combat then you're not supporting their playstyle.
One thing I would change about the holy trinity as it is now is the way agro works. A fun more realistic way the most heavily armored class could make a monster attack him is by placement. I believe tanking mechanics should be knockbacks, stuns and most importantly placement. The "tank" of the group should force the monster back into whatever natural narrow space he can find in the dungeons to where the monster can not get around him. This would be a fun game to tank in and I think would prove to feel more realistic than the current agro method.
There could be still a place for temporarily snap agro that only last a few minutes that draws the monster to the tank but nothing like the current get agro and hold it. What you guys think?
So what im saying the tank/dps and healer is the worst and "stupiduest" (are you being ironic?) thing ever invented for games! There is absolutely no need for them at all. I played table top RPGs for ten years before i saw it the first time. And i could not understand WTF it was all about! And the first time i saw it in a MMO (WoW).....both my and my gf quit. The Holy Trinity in MMO's comes from D&D. Different DM's run the game their own way, so I can see more political/story driven scenarios not requiring it, but any Medieval/Fantasy p&p rpg or MMORPG requires them if they have a heavy group combat emphasis. The Holy Trinity isn't as apparent in White Wolf story arcs, but combat really isn't the emphasis there anyway. ALL combat anywhere/anytime revolves around Offense, Defense, and Support. This wasn't something D&D created and everyone else copied into their games, it has been around forever. They are separated in most MMO's as a way to encourage interaction between players. If your character can do it all, there is no reason to link up with other players.
Wrong. "Aggro" or "hate" or tanking for that matter was from a time when a mob would attack the first player it would see and never change target. Players learn to play this metagame and put the toughest character first to take the aggro.
When I was a DM, smart mobs attacked whichever suited them. I would never "hold back" since my players would know and it wouldn't be challenging. Hate and aggro come from dumb mobs and is supported by lazy players.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Look at how combat worked through out all the ages. There isn't healing during the battles, there is a lot of different skilled combat types and it took strategy and teamwork to stay alive and defeat the enemy.
So make it skill tree based instead of class based and let different people mix and match dozens of different combat skills to form skirmish groups in which they can each come up with their own style and strategies for winning.
If you think about it, it is all derived from there being healers. Since you can heal it comes down to how much damage you can take/heal with how much damage you can put out during that time. Which instantly creates the trinity of damage absorption class, healing class, and damage output class. Remove the healer and the whole strategy changes.
Now you need to stay alive while killing the enemy who is trying to outlast your health while killing you. So you need strategies to deflect/dodge damage, and strategies for putting out damage. This would probably result in a class which could dodge/acoid a lot of damage, a high health class to take some focus, ranged classes to inflict damage while being able to move out of harms way, and stealth classes to get behind and add bonus damage. It opens the field a lot, and it will force people to think a lot more while fighting, since they couldn't just get a heal or drink a potion and keep mashing keys.
Look at how combat worked through out all the ages. There isn't healing during the battles, there is a lot of different skilled combat types and it took strategy and teamwork to stay alive and defeat the enemy.
So make it skill tree based instead of class based and let different people mix and match dozens of different combat skills to form skirmish groups in which they can each come up with their own style and strategies for winning.
If you think about it, it is all derived from there being healers. Since you can heal it comes down to how much damage you can take/heal with how much damage you can put out during that time. Which instantly creates the trinity of damage absorption class, healing class, and damage output class. Remove the healer and the whole strategy changes.
Now you need to stay alive while killing the enemy who is trying to outlast your health while killing you. So you need strategies to deflect/dodge damage, and strategies for putting out damage. This would probably result in a class which could dodge/acoid a lot of damage, a high health class to take some focus, ranged classes to inflict damage while being able to move out of harms way, and stealth classes to get behind and add bonus damage. It opens the field a lot, and it will force people to think a lot more while fighting, since they couldn't just get a heal or drink a potion and keep mashing keys.
You are forgetting one thing, these are fantasy games. Of course in real life we don't have healers but in fantasy we have magic and people that can heal others with this magic. If you make a military game then sure I can see you needed something besides a magical healer.
I don't see the removal of healer as a solution to this. A game without a healer could still be made with aggro/hate which in essence causes tanking. There would still be tank and dd. Why the hell there is tanking? AI->no lame aggro systems->no tanks->no trinity. All this talk that even modern armies have "tanks" is bullcrap. Sure they have tanks as in heavily armored vehicles with weapon systems mounted on them, but do soldiers shoot them with little to no effect rather than the squishy infantry beside them? -No. Those who do won't live to spread their seed. Evolution makes sure they die of their stupidity.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
I don't see the removal of healer as a solution to this. A game without a healer could still be made with aggro/hate which in essence causes tanking. There would still be tank and dd. Why the hell there is tanking? AI->no lame aggro systems->no tanks->no trinity. All this talk that even modern armies have "tanks" is bullcrap. Sure they have tanks as in heavily armored vehicles with weapon systems mounted on them, but do soldiers shoot them with little to no effect rather than the squishy infantry beside them? -No. Those who do won't live to spread their seed. Evolution makes sure they die of their stupidity.
Yeah, we do. 1 or 2 soldiers will engage them with shoulder fired AT4s while the rest of the team engages the "squishy infantry".
I agree that the talk of modern armies really doesn't have a place in this argument as, well, the majority here have no flipping idea of what they are talking about. What most of them here "learned" by playing Call of Duty and Battlefield has no accurate bearing on what happens in the real world.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
I was reading the dumbest mmo mechanic thread.They are fair amount people saying they hate the trinity in games but what do you replace it ? If people have notice but shooters are using the dps,healer,and tank mechanics for example TF2,resistance 2,Killzone 2 just to name few. Ask yourself why I can tell you the reason why the healing mechanic is used so often,It is the best active support mechanic out there and other than healing there is basically cc,buffing and debuffing.So if you are trying to diverse your game from just attacking alone and you want active non combat support class what are choices? You are making a RPG and you want combat to be more than just attacking.What are you replacing the Holy trinity with?
Played Guildwars? No trinity there, the mobs go for the easiest kill. No aggro control either so you better keep en eye on that healer all the time.
Mobs should act like humans, have you ever seen anyone tank in PvP?
The reason that the holy trinity is so popular is because it is easy to program and easy to play. I think however that it is also rather boring. In pen and paper RPGs you have to spend a lot of work to body-block mobs that go for your spellcasters, that would work well in a game too if you planned for it from the beginning and don't make the dungeons so frigging wide.
Nah, I hope Guildwars 2 will take care of the Trinity. Combat should force you to think fast, not just push a few buttons in a certain order to keep the aggro or make most DPS.
Oh, and Guildwars also have healing, including the necro healing "well of souls" (where you exhaust a body to get a AoE heal for a certain number of secs). It have no tanks at all however. Healer, Buff, melee and range is the classes there, it works like a charm even though the system is rather simple.
But you could of course scrap healer whatsoever, even for pots or nothing at all (perfect for a historical game). That would however demand a more advanced combat system than the usual EQ system with fastkeys and cooldowns. You would have to work harder with not getting hit or kill your opponent really fast but I don't think it would be boring.
Team Fortress 2- this has more than just tank/healer/dps. This has Scout, Spy, Mechanic. That's more than just a trinity.
This will full bring my point home.Everybody in TF is attacker first, it is easy stick on secondary role on attacking class.Healing classes in mmo in lot of cases is non attacking active support role it allow people who does not like attacking people to have a role in battle.It is fine if you want every class to dps but good healing mechanic allows pure support classes.Try to think pure support class mechanic that would work other than healing and still be fun.
The trinity never bother me in games,The fact that the trinity is only way to play game that is what bothers me.Ironically it is games that allow every class to be dps and multiple roles or makes other support roles cc,buffing,debuffing as important as healing are the games that break cycle.
I don't see the removal of healer as a solution to this. A game without a healer could still be made with aggro/hate which in essence causes tanking. There would still be tank and dd. Why the hell there is tanking? AI->no lame aggro systems->no tanks->no trinity. All this talk that even modern armies have "tanks" is bullcrap. Sure they have tanks as in heavily armored vehicles with weapon systems mounted on them, but do soldiers shoot them with little to no effect rather than the squishy infantry beside them? -No. Those who do won't live to spread their seed. Evolution makes sure they die of their stupidity.
Introducing 'true' AI does not necessarily mean that tanking will be omitted, however I do agree that 'standard' tanking abilities like 'taunt' and 'aggro' should not be relevant.
A single infatryman can take out a tank with the proper equipment. I think it is not very smart to draw real life comparisons here. What you have to realize here is that MMOs are not supposed to replicate reality, but offer an enjoyable gaming experience to their subscribers.
The Holy Trinity in MMO's comes from D&D. Different DM's run the game their own way, so I can see more political/story driven scenarios not requiring it, but any Medieval/Fantasy p&p rpg or MMORPG requires them if they have a heavy group combat emphasis. The Holy Trinity isn't as apparent in White Wolf story arcs, but combat really isn't the emphasis there anyway. ALL combat anywhere/anytime revolves around Offense, Defense, and Support. This wasn't something D&D created and everyone else copied into their games, it has been around forever. They are separated in most MMO's as a way to encourage interaction between players. If your character can do it all, there is no reason to link up with other players.
Oh really? I played D&D since the 80s and I can tell you that the warriors couldn't "tank" there. They could body block, true and they always walked in front but they didn't have taunts and crap, that is from computer games and have come into RPGs after it. Warriors also tried to get mages and rangers up close to makes things harder for them but that is very far from MMO tanks.
D&D just tried to make all classes useful and balance, that is the reason why mages do more DPS while they have few HPs and no armor. But any sane GM always tries to take out the mage first followed by the cleric, or the other way around depending on the situation.
I also played Warhammer fantasy roleplaying, GURPS, Palladium and many more games since I started in 19184, and the only games with the trinity in have been coming the last 10 years, and they have always been less fun to play than, say Warhammer.
In every single fantasy RPG I played 'cept the last D&D edition is combat about players and GMs trying to outsmart eachother. Often do you use maps and some times figurines to get everything right and the players have always been forced to move tactically or die. There have been no tanking there but real tactics. If you get close to a archer he cant fire, or if he does you are gonna cut him badly. That is logic. That someone in a plate armor says something rude and you chose to attack him instead of the mage that is killing your group however is just retarded. Pen and paper RPGs is rarely retarded and the mobs there are often smart (unless you have a stupid GM of course).
Having played with PvP PUGs in trinity based games such as AC, DAoC, WoW, WAR, Shadowbane, Lineage 2, and most recently Aion; I just have to laugh at everyone saying "People don't just attack the tank characters, they go after the healers."
In all of the games mentioned above I have witnessed, more often than not, ranged and melee DPS characters only attacking the tanks and other melee DPS characters while the casters and healers sit in the back doing their thing.
I have no idea what the reason behind this is considering I always try to go after the healers. So I don't really understand why people just engage the first thing they see (usually a tank or melee DPS character) and stick to that person until they realize they aren't going to die because they are getting healed. Then they switch to a lower health melee character instead of running after the healer keeping the first person alive.
Maybe one or two people will break away from the melee pack, but the majority of the players in the conflict stay within melee range of each other. Would be a good psychological experiment to find out why.
Edit: Keep in mind, I said in the first sentence this is PUG behavior. The pre-made and guild groups always have leadership directing where and who to attack so they don't fall into the same trap that a leaderless PUG suffers from.
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
To me the "holy trinity" spawns into two debates: 1) About ability balances and 2) hate mechanics. One spawns the other. I'm personally for 1 but not for 2.
A developer knows that he can not make any one class clearly more "powerful" (playble, pwning, whatever) than any of the others. They all have to have a need. So that means he can either make them all equal (which is what most FPSs do) or he can make then strong in one area and not the other. The classic rock-paper-scissors. This is what most RPGs opt for as it leads to character development and complexity.
Given that the base gameplay mechanic of an RPG (or an FPS which is why you see some of it carry over, see Borderlands) is to remove all "life points" from the other person before they remove yours that leaves a couple of core areas that a character would care about; Damage (DPS), Damage Mitigation (Armor), Damage Recovery (Healing), and Damage Avoidance (Dodge/Parry). So if you give characters strength in one of these and weakness in the rest you end up with what we basically have: tank (high mitigation)/DPS (high damage)/healer (High Recovery).
Sidenote: Why you don't see more Damage Avoidance characters I don't know other than its end effect is basically the same as someone heavily armored but taking more spiked damage.
Yes, you could add in CC but that's really just a way of decreasing the immediate DPS/Health pool you are attacking. You could also add in buffs/debuffs but realistically these just change the rate of damage/healing. Useful for complexity but they impact core mechanics, they aren't them.
And yes, you could argue for classless skill point based systems, but they still use the same mechanics. The only difference is that a player gets to decide where they want their power and their weakness. But any decent skill based system won't let them break the balance.
All of this adds up to the core of why RPGs are group based... it's a game of covering each other's weaknesses thus making a strong whole.
And I agree it's more satisfying that just giving everyone each skill as it creates complexity, depth, strategy and interdependance.
In fact, I think they should make add complexities to make it more engaging.
But that brings up the hate mechanic which I think is less there because it is good and more because it is easy and how it has been done. I think they should revamp the AI the same way they do so in FPSs. An FPS used to be very easy because you knew, the guy runs at you in a straight line. So you hide behind cover and blow him away. But they have made it better and the players adapted.
They should do the same with RPG mobs. But the first step is they have to balance the mobs with the characters. Most mobs in an MMO are strong in all of the aforementioned areas. They need every mob to have its weaknesses and an AI to match. They need the AI to match the intelligence level of the mob. A bear should attack the guy hitting it and ignore the healer. An orc should not.
There are effective strategies for all of these when the opponent has weaknesses. This is why it works in PvP. The orc rushes your healer? That's fine, he self heals while all the DPSers focus on him... etc. Going for the range DPS, then you take damage on the way as people DPS you from behind. And with this strength/weakness and AI different in every mob the encounters become far more engaging rather than having the same key rotation all the time.
One big advantage to putting PvP level AI in the mobs and getting rid of the hate mechanic is that combat becomes fluid and situational. Then you can take range, blocking, terrain, time and far more into account. The game becomes far more dynamic and less static with people watching bars to make sure they don't over-aggro.
So to conlude what is a really long post and address the OP: You don't replace it, you deepen it and replace the hate mechanic with worthwhile AI.
What you have to realize here is that MMOs are not supposed to replicate reality, but offer an enjoyable gaming experience to their subscribers.
That is true but how enjoyable is it when every mob in the game is more or less a total idiot? Sure, you could tank stupid goblins but intelligent opponents should actually act smart.
Or they should be able to taunt you too. That is just logic and fairness. And how fun would that be?
The thing is that combat evolves a lot in most game genres but we have come nowhere since EQ, the mobs are as dumb as ever and I for one thinks PvE is getting rather goring. Combat should have more tactics in them. Choose a good position, have your soldiers get in close with the enemies range classes. Body block with them, let your thief hide until he can get in a killing blow or close to it.
Combat should at least be 25% realistic, not 1%. 100% wouldn't be fun but this just isn't close enough for me.
Most fantasy worlds don't have the sort of healing MMOs have. Yeah, there are healers, but they can't constantly heal near-dead people back to full health.
Anyhow, anyone trying to pretend this is remotely how the real world works really needs to rethink things. If medics are just like healers, then that's like saying that if you have combat without healers, then the people in that combat retreat, get healed over a period of months (or longer), then go back to the front lines, it's just like the MMO system! Fact is, it isn't. Combat in real life has a lot of interesting things going for it, but medics work on a completely different time scale than the actual fights. In real life though terrain, locating the enemy, countering his tactic that you don't know of in advance, and other things are the primary concerns in combat -- DPS matters, sure, as does your ability to take damage, but HPS is NOT a mid-combat concern (it's a logistics concern which is totally different).
For gameplay purposes in fantasy or sci-fi games though, healing can be ok. You can keep healing and still eliminate the Holy Trinity. You do need some significant changes to how the game works. Collision detection pretty much a must if you are going to have melee combat. The ability to confuse and separate the enemy is also important (this can show up in many ways). I'd say that you should probably decrease the healing output and damage intake, so combat allows a bit more time for tactical thought (more fun that way, I think), and give healers other things to do (making magical walls or other obstacles to impede the enemy, buffing allies with various spells, etc). Line of sight should become an important issue, one that matters to both players and enemies, so abilities that impact the sight of the enemy could matter a great deal. Of course there are potentially tons of abilities that could be used to help out other players that we don't see now and could help make things more realistic.
Let's take a pretend fight against the Dragon. We'll assume the Dragon is smart and has a lot of battle experience, so even if you have minor taunt abilities or the like won't work -- it would be possible to have very short-duration taunts in a non-HT game, the key to breaking HT is making is so no one can constantly tank, but temporarily distracting an enemy off an ally that is in bad shape with an ability that has a somewhat long CD should be ok. So this Dragon is going to go after the what it deems to be the biggest threat at the moment. We'll assume a "classic" fantasy party of a Warrior, a Wizard, a Rogue, and a Cleric. The Wizard enables the group to sneak up on the enemy by obscuring their presense. Then the Warrior charges in there first and does a bunch of damage. The Dragon attacks the Warrior, does a decent bit of damage, the Cleric heals some of that (but heals are on CDs, so no permanent healers). The Rogue then backstabs the Dragon while the Wizard shoots it with lightning. Dragon uses its breath weapon on the Warrior, Cleric, and Wizard (they probably should have spread out a bit more, but in any case the Dragon would have tried to hit 2 of them at least) and attacks the Rogue with its tail. The rogue manages to dodge (rogues don't have a lot of armor, but they are good at avoiding damage), and the Cleric puts up a defensive shield, blocking most of the breath weapon and protecting the party. The Cleric then heals the warrior up some more (we'll give the dragon another attack or two on him), and the Dragon realizes this Cleric is pretty dang annoying, and moves in. Now the Cleric could take some hits from the dragon, but because there is limited healing, avoiding damage as much as possible is idea. So the warrior uses an ability to charge and push the Cleric out of the way of the attack and behind him forcing the Dragon to attack him or waste more time trying to deal with the cleric. Meanwhile the Rogue finally gets slammed with a nasty tail attack and knocked against a wall, taking loads of damage. The Dragon sees the Rogue is about to bite it and wants to finish that Rogue off before a heal can get him, so he shoots a blast of fire at him, the wizard tries to get up a wall of ice between the Rogue and the Dragon, but is late and the Rogue gets taken out of the fight. The Dragon isn't doing so well now though, as he's taken a lot of Damage (the Wizard, Warrior, and Rogue were all attacking him during all of this, of course). So the Dragon grabs the warrior in his mouth, and then attacks both the wizard and the cleric. The wizard, courageously, stands behind the cleric and makes on ice slick on the floor, the cleric tries to shield them both, but still takes a bunch of damage and is near death before the wizard casts a spell to shove the dragon back on the ice slick, during this time the warrior manages to bust out, but he's not doing very well. The Dragon breaths another wave of fire of these three, and the priest isn't able to cover the warrior (he's too far), so the warrior bites it. The Dragon, near dead, is finished off with a burst of lightning from the wizard (who has managed to remain remarkably unharmed).
Now this isn't the greatest example of combat without the HT system, but I think it demonstrates that it is far from unimaginable. It would require coding that takes into account positions and terrain to an extent, particularly character-made terrain (like walls of ice). You have similar classes to HT games, but much of the raw mechanics of how things work is different. Attacks by enemies do less damage, healing is less frequent, the health of different characters is closer together, and the enemy AI is programmed differently (particularly smart AIs, though if you go up against something really stupid, then you could develop tactics that would work against it and not against something smarter, and vice versa really). Of course, another important addition is you don't have taunting (at least not as a main-stay ability).
Of course, there ARE plenty of games out there without the HT, though most of them, obviously, aren't MMOs. Battletech games don't use it (whether tabletop or not), nor does D&D, nor does any roleplaying game really. There are tons of others as well (it would really take too long to name them all, but if you can think of a game that isn't an MMO and has combat in it, then it is HIGHLY unlikely it uses an HT system). In short, there are literally hundreds of things to replace it with, though perhaps the general nature of those things could be condensed down a lot (Battletech might be a lot like an FPS in a number of important ways for instance, though there are substantial differences).
Obviously, it's completely devoid of logic. No dragon is going to whomp repeatedly on a heavily armoured dude whose every wound is instantly healed by another dude stood 10ft away. Especially when the second dude is wearing "armour" that offers comparable protection to a paper bag. A thin one. A wet thin one. A wet thin one of inferior quality construction.
Its not completely illogical as you may think. As the "Tank" you are in essence the most "Threatening" in appearence. In an RPG sense, you taunt, boast, and shout to get the dragon's attention and force it to focus on you. Now, from a third person perspective (meaning You - who is watching this from an outside stand point), yes it could seem not so logical. But you forget that you have outside knowlege of the game and its mechanics. Of course you would go for the healers first and ignore the Guy who does the "least amount of damage and can soak an amazing amount of health). The "Dragon" you are fighting does not. He is merely "acting" within the games mechanics.
If you were to think of this in an RL perspective.
Lets say you and I were to come accross a Grizzley Bear in the Wild. Now, I'm a big guy (6'2 / 280lbs / Muscles Galore). And you're a little skinny guy (but with a spear). I'm fairly certain I could taunt and shout and keep that Bear's attention on me while you sneak up behind him and stab him. If he turns to you and goes to strike you, I could again grab his attention (maybe even physically grabbing his head and pulling it back to face me) and make him "believe" I am more threatening...because I am bigger, louder, more intimidating and my stance is imposing (my arms are out stretched and I'm raoring up like he is). His focus is going to naturally be on me - because I am the most threatinging being of the two of us. His natural reaction is going to assume that I am who he should focus on for his survival...and not the little guy who has a sharp object that can sever his artery and kill him.
See? So its not so illogical after all is it? Hehe.
I agree that Tanking does have role playing logic, but not for the reason you suggest.
What many people seem to confuse, and not realize, is that Tanks create HATE.
In most Tanking MMOs, Hate is also called Threat, because it is basically using the same Mechanic.
Just take a look at it.
They dont call them TAUNTS<------- for nothing right? If I call you a bad name, you will most likely get mad. If you a evil dragon, and in comes a group of humans into your layer, but one of the humans walk up to you, and smacks you with a Shield, and calls you a Pussy, Iam sure you would be pissed, and ready you pwn that human's ars.
Thats call Hate. And iam sure you have also heard that Term before.
DPS and HEALER ----> causes Threat.
TANKS----> Cause Hate.
Also some classes that tank, have lore abilities that also explain why they can cause so much hate.
For example in WoW (since I like WoW's Alliance [excluding Draenie] Paladin lore) the Paladins have Mental Powers. Which allows them to magically effect enemies' emotional hatred towards the Holy Warrior. Now if something extremely hated ya, Iam sure it would lash out at you.
Originally posted by tro44_1 I agree that Tanking does have role playing logic, but not for the reason you suggest. What many people seem to confuse, and not realize, is that Tanks create HATE. In most Tanking MMOs, Hate is also called Threat, because it is basically using the same Mechanic. Just take a look at it. They dont call them TAUNTS<------- for nothing right? If I call you a bad name, you will most likely get mad. If you a evil dragon, and in comes a group of humans into your layer, but one of the humans walk up to you, and smacks you with a Shield, and calls you a Pussy, Iam sure you would be pissed, and ready you pwn that human's ars. Thats call Hate. And iam sure you have also heard that Term before. DPS and HEALER ----> causes Threat. TANKS----> Cause Hate. Also some classes that tank, have lore abilities that also explain why they can cause so much hate. For example in WoW (since I like WoW's Alliance [excluding Draenie] Paladin lore) the Paladins have Mental Powers. Which allows them to magically effect enemies' emotional hatred towards the Holy Warrior. Now if something extremely hated ya, Iam sure it would lash out at you.
And that still requires the enemy to be an emotional moron to work. Might make sense with mooks and guys that are dumb in Lore, but anyone who is remotely intelligent is going to ignore the pithy crap the tank is doing to try to get hate. It's a poor warrior that lets emotions cloud his judgment. And "lore" reasons for abilities that can never be resisted or avoid is pretty weak justification for magically manipulating someone into attacking you to the point that it dies because that's just how bad a tactic focusing on you is.
Really, any attempt to try to justify HT beyond a kludge primitive games that couldn't have collision detection use is pretty doomed to fail, imho.
Obviously, it's completely devoid of logic. No dragon is going to whomp repeatedly on a heavily armoured dude whose every wound is instantly healed by another dude stood 10ft away. Especially when the second dude is wearing "armour" that offers comparable protection to a paper bag. A thin one. A wet thin one. A wet thin one of inferior quality construction.
Its not completely illogical as you may think. As the "Tank" you are in essence the most "Threatening" in appearence. In an RPG sense, you taunt, boast, and shout to get the dragon's attention and force it to focus on you. Now, from a third person perspective (meaning You - who is watching this from an outside stand point), yes it could seem not so logical. But you forget that you have outside knowlege of the game and its mechanics. Of course you would go for the healers first and ignore the Guy who does the "least amount of damage and can soak an amazing amount of health). The "Dragon" you are fighting does not. He is merely "acting" within the games mechanics.
If you were to think of this in an RL perspective.
Lets say you and I were to come accross a Grizzley Bear in the Wild. Now, I'm a big guy (6'2 / 280lbs / Muscles Galore). And you're a little skinny guy (but with a spear). I'm fairly certain I could taunt and shout and keep that Bear's attention on me while you sneak up behind him and stab him. If he turns to you and goes to strike you, I could again grab his attention (maybe even physically grabbing his head and pulling it back to face me) and make him "believe" I am more threatening...because I am bigger, louder, more intimidating and my stance is imposing (my arms are out stretched and I'm raoring up like he is). His focus is going to naturally be on me - because I am the most threatinging being of the two of us. His natural reaction is going to assume that I am who he should focus on for his survival...and not the little guy who has a sharp object that can sever his artery and kill him.
See? So its not so illogical after all is it? Hehe.
I agree that Tanking does have role playing logic, but not for the reason you suggest.
What many people seem to confuse, and not realize, is that Tanks create HATE.
In most Tanking MMOs, Hate is also called Threat, because it is basically using the same Mechanic.
Just take a look at it.
They dont call them TAUNTS<------- for nothing right? If I call you a bad name, you will most likely get mad. If you a evil dragon, and in comes a group of humans into your layer, but one of the humans walk up to you, and smacks you with a Shield, and calls you a Pussy, Iam sure you would be pissed, and ready you pwn that human's ars.
Thats call Hate. And iam sure you have also heard that Term before.
DPS and HEALER ----> causes Threat.
TANKS----> Cause Hate.
Also some classes that tank, have lore abilities that also explain why they can cause so much hate.
For example in WoW (since I like WoW's Alliance [excluding Draenie] Paladin lore) the Paladins have Mental Powers. Which allows them to magically effect enemies' emotional hatred towards the Holy Warrior. Now if something extremely hated ya, Iam sure it would lash out at you.
And if the dragon was intelligent enough to:
1) understand the language being spoken to him
2) understand the concept of insults and take that into consideration
Then he would most assuredly be well instructed on mages, priests and warriors as well as battlefield tactics and know that the typical role of a priest is to heal others so if I eliminate him, the others won't last long. He would also know that the abilities of a mage can be much more potent than a warrior waving steel around so I need to finish him next.
I guess it depends on your definition of a Dragon. I certainly don't ever portray them as the mindless beasts that some on this thread make them out to be. Having grown up mainly playing against the Dragons in D&D, they aren't mindless automatons. They wield magic, they shapeshift and interact with all other races (especially in the Dragonlance setting). Your argument may better be served by swapping "Dragon" for "mindless beast".
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Originally posted by tro44_1 I agree that Tanking does have role playing logic, but not for the reason you suggest. What many people seem to confuse, and not realize, is that Tanks create HATE. In most Tanking MMOs, Hate is also called Threat, because it is basically using the same Mechanic. Just take a look at it. They dont call them TAUNTS<------- for nothing right? If I call you a bad name, you will most likely get mad. If you a evil dragon, and in comes a group of humans into your layer, but one of the humans walk up to you, and smacks you with a Shield, and calls you a Pussy, Iam sure you would be pissed, and ready you pwn that human's ars. Thats call Hate. And iam sure you have also heard that Term before. DPS and HEALER ----> causes Threat. TANKS----> Cause Hate. Also some classes that tank, have lore abilities that also explain why they can cause so much hate. For example in WoW (since I like WoW's Alliance [excluding Draenie] Paladin lore) the Paladins have Mental Powers. Which allows them to magically effect enemies' emotional hatred towards the Holy Warrior. Now if something extremely hated ya, Iam sure it would lash out at you.
And that still requires the enemy to be an emotional moron to work. Might make sense with mooks and guys that are dumb in Lore, but anyone who is remotely intelligent is going to ignore the pithy crap the tank is doing to try to get hate. It's a poor warrior that lets emotions cloud his judgment. And "lore" reasons for abilities that can never be resisted or avoid is pretty weak justification for magically manipulating someone into attacking you to the point that it dies because that's just how bad a tactic focusing on you is.
Really, any attempt to try to justify HT beyond a kludge primitive games that couldn't have collision detection use is pretty doomed to fail, imho.
This is to you and the Guy/Lady with the K name above.
In WoW they have a Mechanic called Rage. Why is it called Rage? Isnt Rage a emotion?
See where Iam going with this yet?
The Dragon would have Emotions. Some Monsters are less Emotional then others yes, but thats when mechanics like mobs being Un-Tauntable, comes into the picture.
And some mobs can randomly Target players, which repesents the idea of tactical targeting, but again, the Emotional side is still in play.
Its not Dumb, as you both seem to be putting it.
If a group of mobs come into your mob's space, and starts dishing it out between one another, iam sure both mobs will be targeting the leaders.
In our tanking situations, the leaders are always they Tanks. (Lore wise I mean. Look up the word Paladin for example. In wows Lore, Armored Warriors have always lead the Allience and Horde in battle) These leaders are a tactical target, and a emotional hated target.
Originally posted by tro44_1 I agree that Tanking does have role playing logic, but not for the reason you suggest. What many people seem to confuse, and not realize, is that Tanks create HATE. In most Tanking MMOs, Hate is also called Threat, because it is basically using the same Mechanic. Just take a look at it. They dont call them TAUNTS<------- for nothing right? If I call you a bad name, you will most likely get mad. If you a evil dragon, and in comes a group of humans into your layer, but one of the humans walk up to you, and smacks you with a Shield, and calls you a Pussy, Iam sure you would be pissed, and ready you pwn that human's ars. Thats call Hate. And iam sure you have also heard that Term before. DPS and HEALER ----> causes Threat. TANKS----> Cause Hate. Also some classes that tank, have lore abilities that also explain why they can cause so much hate. For example in WoW (since I like WoW's Alliance [excluding Draenie] Paladin lore) the Paladins have Mental Powers. Which allows them to magically effect enemies' emotional hatred towards the Holy Warrior. Now if something extremely hated ya, Iam sure it would lash out at you.
And that still requires the enemy to be an emotional moron to work. Might make sense with mooks and guys that are dumb in Lore, but anyone who is remotely intelligent is going to ignore the pithy crap the tank is doing to try to get hate. It's a poor warrior that lets emotions cloud his judgment. And "lore" reasons for abilities that can never be resisted or avoid is pretty weak justification for magically manipulating someone into attacking you to the point that it dies because that's just how bad a tactic focusing on you is.
Really, any attempt to try to justify HT beyond a kludge primitive games that couldn't have collision detection use is pretty doomed to fail, imho.
This is to you and the Guy/Lady with the K name above.
In WoW they have a Mechanic called Rage. Why is it called Rage? Isnt Rage a emotion?
See where Iam going with this yet?
The Dragon would have Emotions. Some Monsters are less Emotional then others yes, but thats when mechanics like mobs being Un-Tauntable, comes into the picture.
And some mobs can randomly Target players, which repesents the idea of tactical targeting, but again, the Emotional side is still in play.
Its not Dumb, as you both seem to be putting it.
If a group of mobs come into your mob's space, and starts dishing it out between one another, iam sure both mobs will be targeting the leaders.
In our tanking situations, the leaders are always they Tanks. (Lore wise I mean. Look up the word Paladin for example. In wows Lore, Armored Warriors have always lead the Allience and Horde in battle) These leaders are a tactical target, and a emotional hated target.
It IS dumb -- pretty much by definition it is dumb to ignore the realities of the situation and just go with raw emotions. That tank can't do crap for damage and would be infinitely easier to kill if the Big Bad just took a few seconds to kill the healers. I don't know what sort of life you have, but most people are not so crippled by their emotions as you expect these mobs to be. In a fist fight, if there's some guy who is NOT hitting you, but yelling insults at you, you don't focus on him and ignore the big bruiser who can pound you. Heck, if there's a guy who can't hit you worth a darn and just insults you, you still do go straight for them (unless it is to use them to block the attacks from others).
Or let's put this in a more realistic perspective even within the game. If you are PvP in a game that allows cross-faction talk, and one guy is spewing profanity and insults but he is NOT a threat, only the idiot pvpers go after him first. If you are playing against a bunch of morons who can't manage to contain their emotions at all, then that insult tactic would be a pretty good way to get them all killed, but most people are just not that stupid. There's no reason the monsters should be as so much more idiotic.
Or consider a 3rd example. Let's say there's a boss fight with 2 bosses. One boss shouts out insults ALL the time, everyone finds him annoying and hates him. However, the tactics of the fight are such that trying to kill him first just won't work (e.g. the other boss heals perhaps). No group of players remotely in their right mind would keep attacking that guy even in the FIRST encounter once they see the other guy healing him up.
Originally posted by tro44_1 I agree that Tanking does have role playing logic, but not for the reason you suggest. What many people seem to confuse, and not realize, is that Tanks create HATE. In most Tanking MMOs, Hate is also called Threat, because it is basically using the same Mechanic. Just take a look at it. They dont call them TAUNTS<------- for nothing right? If I call you a bad name, you will most likely get mad. If you a evil dragon, and in comes a group of humans into your layer, but one of the humans walk up to you, and smacks you with a Shield, and calls you a Pussy, Iam sure you would be pissed, and ready you pwn that human's ars. Thats call Hate. And iam sure you have also heard that Term before. DPS and HEALER ----> causes Threat. TANKS----> Cause Hate. Also some classes that tank, have lore abilities that also explain why they can cause so much hate. For example in WoW (since I like WoW's Alliance [excluding Draenie] Paladin lore) the Paladins have Mental Powers. Which allows them to magically effect enemies' emotional hatred towards the Holy Warrior. Now if something extremely hated ya, Iam sure it would lash out at you.
And that still requires the enemy to be an emotional moron to work. Might make sense with mooks and guys that are dumb in Lore, but anyone who is remotely intelligent is going to ignore the pithy crap the tank is doing to try to get hate. It's a poor warrior that lets emotions cloud his judgment. And "lore" reasons for abilities that can never be resisted or avoid is pretty weak justification for magically manipulating someone into attacking you to the point that it dies because that's just how bad a tactic focusing on you is.
Really, any attempt to try to justify HT beyond a kludge primitive games that couldn't have collision detection use is pretty doomed to fail, imho.
This is to you and the Guy/Lady with the K name above.
In WoW they have a Mechanic called Rage. Why is it called Rage? Isnt Rage a emotion?
See where Iam going with this yet?
The Dragon would have Emotions. Some Monsters are less Emotional then others yes, but thats when mechanics like mobs being Un-Tauntable, comes into the picture.
And some mobs can randomly Target players, which repesents the idea of tactical targeting, but again, the Emotional side is still in play.
Its not Dumb, as you both seem to be putting it.
If a group of mobs come into your mob's space, and starts dishing it out between one another, iam sure both mobs will be targeting the leaders.
In our tanking situations, the leaders are always they Tanks. (Lore wise I mean. Look up the word Paladin for example. In wows Lore, Armored Warriors have always lead the Allience and Horde in battle) These leaders are a tactical target, and a emotional hated target.
You seem to only be able to talk about WoW and to not have any experience with gaming (table-top or MMO) outside of that. For you, WoW seems to be the only way but of course if that's all you know, well, it makes sense. The only thing I can tell you is that there are many other ways of doing it, many that were in existence long before the tank/healer/DPS trinity.
Speaking for myself, I'm not saying anything is "dumb". I'm also not talking about "rage" and other artifiical mechanics, either. The debate above was a philosophical one about sentience. At least that's where I was speaking from. You, it appears, are talking about wow's game mechanics at face value. So I'll bow out of this back and forth as we aren't talking about the same thing.
Cheers.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
I was reading the dumbest mmo mechanic thread.They are fair amount people saying they hate the trinity in games but what do you replace it ? If people have notice but shooters are using the dps,healer,and tank mechanics for example TF2,resistance 2,Killzone 2 just to name few. Ask yourself why I can tell you the reason why the healing mechanic is used so often,It is the best active support mechanic out there and other than healing there is basically cc,buffing and debuffing.So if you are trying to diverse your game from just attacking alone and you want active non combat support class what are choices? You are making a RPG and you want combat to be more than just attacking.What are you replacing the Holy trinity with?
I don't hate the HT, but I do dislike it somewhat. it makes games in this genre pretty limited and predicteble.
You give example's of multiplayer games, to me it's logical that it's there as for me multiplayer games are far more limited when comparing it to a MMORPG's. And with multiplayer games it's all about combat, where with MMORPG combat should be part but definitlly not all there is to a MMORPG, else we might aswell call this genre "Action Online Games"
But I also must admit that the HT makes games in this genre lack the challenge I really would like to see, as anyone with a little focus in a HT group will alway's WIN, unless you are a bad player or unexperianced, keep in mind I am a niche gamer in MMORPG and I simple like more challenge, doesn't mean HT groups can not be challenging cause I am sure for allot of people it can be quite challenging, but I aint answering for everyone I am merly answering for myself as I see no use for it in a MMORPG. Unless the game is offering allot more then just HT professions.
Myself replace the HT with just random professions, when I group I do the same and hope I enter or creat a random group of professions, it sure feels comfortable when I don't have healing skills and someone else does have them, but not having healing skill or anyone with these skills in the group makes my experiance a more challenging one, again mainly speaking for myself.
Originally posted by tro44_1 I agree that Tanking does have role playing logic, but not for the reason you suggest. What many people seem to confuse, and not realize, is that Tanks create HATE. In most Tanking MMOs, Hate is also called Threat, because it is basically using the same Mechanic. Just take a look at it. They dont call them TAUNTS<------- for nothing right? If I call you a bad name, you will most likely get mad. If you a evil dragon, and in comes a group of humans into your layer, but one of the humans walk up to you, and smacks you with a Shield, and calls you a Pussy, Iam sure you would be pissed, and ready you pwn that human's ars. Thats call Hate. And iam sure you have also heard that Term before. DPS and HEALER ----> causes Threat. TANKS----> Cause Hate. Also some classes that tank, have lore abilities that also explain why they can cause so much hate. For example in WoW (since I like WoW's Alliance [excluding Draenie] Paladin lore) the Paladins have Mental Powers. Which allows them to magically effect enemies' emotional hatred towards the Holy Warrior. Now if something extremely hated ya, Iam sure it would lash out at you.
And that still requires the enemy to be an emotional moron to work. Might make sense with mooks and guys that are dumb in Lore, but anyone who is remotely intelligent is going to ignore the pithy crap the tank is doing to try to get hate. It's a poor warrior that lets emotions cloud his judgment. And "lore" reasons for abilities that can never be resisted or avoid is pretty weak justification for magically manipulating someone into attacking you to the point that it dies because that's just how bad a tactic focusing on you is.
Really, any attempt to try to justify HT beyond a kludge primitive games that couldn't have collision detection use is pretty doomed to fail, imho.
This is to you and the Guy/Lady with the K name above.
In WoW they have a Mechanic called Rage. Why is it called Rage? Isnt Rage a emotion?
See where Iam going with this yet?
The Dragon would have Emotions. Some Monsters are less Emotional then others yes, but thats when mechanics like mobs being Un-Tauntable, comes into the picture.
And some mobs can randomly Target players, which repesents the idea of tactical targeting, but again, the Emotional side is still in play.
Its not Dumb, as you both seem to be putting it.
If a group of mobs come into your mob's space, and starts dishing it out between one another, iam sure both mobs will be targeting the leaders.
In our tanking situations, the leaders are always they Tanks. (Lore wise I mean. Look up the word Paladin for example. In wows Lore, Armored Warriors have always lead the Allience and Horde in battle) These leaders are a tactical target, and a emotional hated target.
You seem to only be able to talk about WoW and to not have any experience with gaming (table-top or MMO) outside of that. For you, WoW seems to be the only way but of course if that's all you know, well, it makes sense. The only thing I can tell you is that there are many other ways of doing it, many that were in existence long before the tank/healer/DPS trinity.
Speaking for myself, I'm not saying anything is "dumb". I'm also not talking about "rage" and other artifiical mechanics, either. The debate above was a philosophical one about sentience. At least that's where I was speaking from. You, it appears, are talking about wow's game mechanics at face value. So I'll bow out of this back and forth as we aren't talking about the same thing.
Cheers.
Thats because WoW uses the HT concept, and is a branch from the DnD TT (damn even WoW has a DnD RPG TT game).
The concept still follows. As I explained before. Leaders are normally Armored in RPG (DnD the Cleric and Warloard for example)
in WoW, the leaders are Paladins and Knights (for Alliance), and they Protect the weak and others [Role Playing wise]. This Protection fits the Idea of Tanking as well.
Also Like I said above. Killing the Leaders is a tactical plan. an in these cases, the Leaders are up front Meleeing you.
Also with Taunts being thrown out their mouth(or what ever hole on their body), that causes even more hatred towards the leader in emotional ways.
in WoW, the leaders are Paladins and Knights (for Alliance), and they Protect the weak and others [Role Playing wise]. This Protection fits the Idea of Tanking as well. Also Like I said above. Killing the Leaders is a tactical plan. an in these cases, the Leaders are up front Meleeing you.
There is nothing tactical about trying to defeat the member of enemy team that is least likely to fall. Since most MMO 'tanks' have low DPS, any mob with even a half a brain would completely ignore the tanks and focus their attack on the weak members and the support members of the enemy team.
-- Whammy - a 64x64 miniRPG - RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right? - FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
Comments
One thing I would change about the holy trinity as it is now is the way agro works. A fun more realistic way the most heavily armored class could make a monster attack him is by placement. I believe tanking mechanics should be knockbacks, stuns and most importantly placement. The "tank" of the group should force the monster back into whatever natural narrow space he can find in the dungeons to where the monster can not get around him. This would be a fun game to tank in and I think would prove to feel more realistic than the current agro method.
There could be still a place for temporarily snap agro that only last a few minutes that draws the monster to the tank but nothing like the current get agro and hold it. What you guys think?
Wrong. "Aggro" or "hate" or tanking for that matter was from a time when a mob would attack the first player it would see and never change target. Players learn to play this metagame and put the toughest character first to take the aggro.
When I was a DM, smart mobs attacked whichever suited them. I would never "hold back" since my players would know and it wouldn't be challenging. Hate and aggro come from dumb mobs and is supported by lazy players.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Look at how combat worked through out all the ages. There isn't healing during the battles, there is a lot of different skilled combat types and it took strategy and teamwork to stay alive and defeat the enemy.
So make it skill tree based instead of class based and let different people mix and match dozens of different combat skills to form skirmish groups in which they can each come up with their own style and strategies for winning.
If you think about it, it is all derived from there being healers. Since you can heal it comes down to how much damage you can take/heal with how much damage you can put out during that time. Which instantly creates the trinity of damage absorption class, healing class, and damage output class. Remove the healer and the whole strategy changes.
Now you need to stay alive while killing the enemy who is trying to outlast your health while killing you. So you need strategies to deflect/dodge damage, and strategies for putting out damage. This would probably result in a class which could dodge/acoid a lot of damage, a high health class to take some focus, ranged classes to inflict damage while being able to move out of harms way, and stealth classes to get behind and add bonus damage. It opens the field a lot, and it will force people to think a lot more while fighting, since they couldn't just get a heal or drink a potion and keep mashing keys.
You are forgetting one thing, these are fantasy games. Of course in real life we don't have healers but in fantasy we have magic and people that can heal others with this magic. If you make a military game then sure I can see you needed something besides a magical healer.
I don't see the removal of healer as a solution to this. A game without a healer could still be made with aggro/hate which in essence causes tanking. There would still be tank and dd. Why the hell there is tanking? AI->no lame aggro systems->no tanks->no trinity. All this talk that even modern armies have "tanks" is bullcrap. Sure they have tanks as in heavily armored vehicles with weapon systems mounted on them, but do soldiers shoot them with little to no effect rather than the squishy infantry beside them? -No. Those who do won't live to spread their seed. Evolution makes sure they die of their stupidity.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Yeah, we do. 1 or 2 soldiers will engage them with shoulder fired AT4s while the rest of the team engages the "squishy infantry".
I agree that the talk of modern armies really doesn't have a place in this argument as, well, the majority here have no flipping idea of what they are talking about. What most of them here "learned" by playing Call of Duty and Battlefield has no accurate bearing on what happens in the real world.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
I only read the first post.
But what about support classes? Bards! Red Mages! Other things, maybe!
Played Guildwars? No trinity there, the mobs go for the easiest kill. No aggro control either so you better keep en eye on that healer all the time.
Mobs should act like humans, have you ever seen anyone tank in PvP?
The reason that the holy trinity is so popular is because it is easy to program and easy to play. I think however that it is also rather boring. In pen and paper RPGs you have to spend a lot of work to body-block mobs that go for your spellcasters, that would work well in a game too if you planned for it from the beginning and don't make the dungeons so frigging wide.
Nah, I hope Guildwars 2 will take care of the Trinity. Combat should force you to think fast, not just push a few buttons in a certain order to keep the aggro or make most DPS.
Oh, and Guildwars also have healing, including the necro healing "well of souls" (where you exhaust a body to get a AoE heal for a certain number of secs). It have no tanks at all however. Healer, Buff, melee and range is the classes there, it works like a charm even though the system is rather simple.
But you could of course scrap healer whatsoever, even for pots or nothing at all (perfect for a historical game). That would however demand a more advanced combat system than the usual EQ system with fastkeys and cooldowns. You would have to work harder with not getting hit or kill your opponent really fast but I don't think it would be boring.
This will full bring my point home.Everybody in TF is attacker first, it is easy stick on secondary role on attacking class.Healing classes in mmo in lot of cases is non attacking active support role it allow people who does not like attacking people to have a role in battle.It is fine if you want every class to dps but good healing mechanic allows pure support classes.Try to think pure support class mechanic that would work other than healing and still be fun.
The trinity never bother me in games,The fact that the trinity is only way to play game that is what bothers me.Ironically it is games that allow every class to be dps and multiple roles or makes other support roles cc,buffing,debuffing as important as healing are the games that break cycle.
LOL yeah it's called playing a healer
I'm not here to complete my forum PVP dailies.
Introducing 'true' AI does not necessarily mean that tanking will be omitted, however I do agree that 'standard' tanking abilities like 'taunt' and 'aggro' should not be relevant.
A single infatryman can take out a tank with the proper equipment. I think it is not very smart to draw real life comparisons here. What you have to realize here is that MMOs are not supposed to replicate reality, but offer an enjoyable gaming experience to their subscribers.
Oh really? I played D&D since the 80s and I can tell you that the warriors couldn't "tank" there. They could body block, true and they always walked in front but they didn't have taunts and crap, that is from computer games and have come into RPGs after it. Warriors also tried to get mages and rangers up close to makes things harder for them but that is very far from MMO tanks.
D&D just tried to make all classes useful and balance, that is the reason why mages do more DPS while they have few HPs and no armor. But any sane GM always tries to take out the mage first followed by the cleric, or the other way around depending on the situation.
I also played Warhammer fantasy roleplaying, GURPS, Palladium and many more games since I started in 19184, and the only games with the trinity in have been coming the last 10 years, and they have always been less fun to play than, say Warhammer.
In every single fantasy RPG I played 'cept the last D&D edition is combat about players and GMs trying to outsmart eachother. Often do you use maps and some times figurines to get everything right and the players have always been forced to move tactically or die. There have been no tanking there but real tactics. If you get close to a archer he cant fire, or if he does you are gonna cut him badly. That is logic. That someone in a plate armor says something rude and you chose to attack him instead of the mage that is killing your group however is just retarded. Pen and paper RPGs is rarely retarded and the mobs there are often smart (unless you have a stupid GM of course).
Having played with PvP PUGs in trinity based games such as AC, DAoC, WoW, WAR, Shadowbane, Lineage 2, and most recently Aion; I just have to laugh at everyone saying "People don't just attack the tank characters, they go after the healers."
In all of the games mentioned above I have witnessed, more often than not, ranged and melee DPS characters only attacking the tanks and other melee DPS characters while the casters and healers sit in the back doing their thing.
I have no idea what the reason behind this is considering I always try to go after the healers. So I don't really understand why people just engage the first thing they see (usually a tank or melee DPS character) and stick to that person until they realize they aren't going to die because they are getting healed. Then they switch to a lower health melee character instead of running after the healer keeping the first person alive.
Maybe one or two people will break away from the melee pack, but the majority of the players in the conflict stay within melee range of each other. Would be a good psychological experiment to find out why.
Edit: Keep in mind, I said in the first sentence this is PUG behavior. The pre-made and guild groups always have leadership directing where and who to attack so they don't fall into the same trap that a leaderless PUG suffers from.
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
To me the "holy trinity" spawns into two debates: 1) About ability balances and 2) hate mechanics. One spawns the other. I'm personally for 1 but not for 2.
A developer knows that he can not make any one class clearly more "powerful" (playble, pwning, whatever) than any of the others. They all have to have a need. So that means he can either make them all equal (which is what most FPSs do) or he can make then strong in one area and not the other. The classic rock-paper-scissors. This is what most RPGs opt for as it leads to character development and complexity.
Given that the base gameplay mechanic of an RPG (or an FPS which is why you see some of it carry over, see Borderlands) is to remove all "life points" from the other person before they remove yours that leaves a couple of core areas that a character would care about; Damage (DPS), Damage Mitigation (Armor), Damage Recovery (Healing), and Damage Avoidance (Dodge/Parry). So if you give characters strength in one of these and weakness in the rest you end up with what we basically have: tank (high mitigation)/DPS (high damage)/healer (High Recovery).
Sidenote: Why you don't see more Damage Avoidance characters I don't know other than its end effect is basically the same as someone heavily armored but taking more spiked damage.
Yes, you could add in CC but that's really just a way of decreasing the immediate DPS/Health pool you are attacking. You could also add in buffs/debuffs but realistically these just change the rate of damage/healing. Useful for complexity but they impact core mechanics, they aren't them.
And yes, you could argue for classless skill point based systems, but they still use the same mechanics. The only difference is that a player gets to decide where they want their power and their weakness. But any decent skill based system won't let them break the balance.
All of this adds up to the core of why RPGs are group based... it's a game of covering each other's weaknesses thus making a strong whole.
And I agree it's more satisfying that just giving everyone each skill as it creates complexity, depth, strategy and interdependance.
In fact, I think they should make add complexities to make it more engaging.
But that brings up the hate mechanic which I think is less there because it is good and more because it is easy and how it has been done. I think they should revamp the AI the same way they do so in FPSs. An FPS used to be very easy because you knew, the guy runs at you in a straight line. So you hide behind cover and blow him away. But they have made it better and the players adapted.
They should do the same with RPG mobs. But the first step is they have to balance the mobs with the characters. Most mobs in an MMO are strong in all of the aforementioned areas. They need every mob to have its weaknesses and an AI to match. They need the AI to match the intelligence level of the mob. A bear should attack the guy hitting it and ignore the healer. An orc should not.
There are effective strategies for all of these when the opponent has weaknesses. This is why it works in PvP. The orc rushes your healer? That's fine, he self heals while all the DPSers focus on him... etc. Going for the range DPS, then you take damage on the way as people DPS you from behind. And with this strength/weakness and AI different in every mob the encounters become far more engaging rather than having the same key rotation all the time.
One big advantage to putting PvP level AI in the mobs and getting rid of the hate mechanic is that combat becomes fluid and situational. Then you can take range, blocking, terrain, time and far more into account. The game becomes far more dynamic and less static with people watching bars to make sure they don't over-aggro.
So to conlude what is a really long post and address the OP: You don't replace it, you deepen it and replace the hate mechanic with worthwhile AI.
That is true but how enjoyable is it when every mob in the game is more or less a total idiot? Sure, you could tank stupid goblins but intelligent opponents should actually act smart.
Or they should be able to taunt you too. That is just logic and fairness. And how fun would that be?
The thing is that combat evolves a lot in most game genres but we have come nowhere since EQ, the mobs are as dumb as ever and I for one thinks PvE is getting rather goring. Combat should have more tactics in them. Choose a good position, have your soldiers get in close with the enemies range classes. Body block with them, let your thief hide until he can get in a killing blow or close to it.
Combat should at least be 25% realistic, not 1%. 100% wouldn't be fun but this just isn't close enough for me.
Most fantasy worlds don't have the sort of healing MMOs have. Yeah, there are healers, but they can't constantly heal near-dead people back to full health.
Anyhow, anyone trying to pretend this is remotely how the real world works really needs to rethink things. If medics are just like healers, then that's like saying that if you have combat without healers, then the people in that combat retreat, get healed over a period of months (or longer), then go back to the front lines, it's just like the MMO system! Fact is, it isn't. Combat in real life has a lot of interesting things going for it, but medics work on a completely different time scale than the actual fights. In real life though terrain, locating the enemy, countering his tactic that you don't know of in advance, and other things are the primary concerns in combat -- DPS matters, sure, as does your ability to take damage, but HPS is NOT a mid-combat concern (it's a logistics concern which is totally different).
For gameplay purposes in fantasy or sci-fi games though, healing can be ok. You can keep healing and still eliminate the Holy Trinity. You do need some significant changes to how the game works. Collision detection pretty much a must if you are going to have melee combat. The ability to confuse and separate the enemy is also important (this can show up in many ways). I'd say that you should probably decrease the healing output and damage intake, so combat allows a bit more time for tactical thought (more fun that way, I think), and give healers other things to do (making magical walls or other obstacles to impede the enemy, buffing allies with various spells, etc). Line of sight should become an important issue, one that matters to both players and enemies, so abilities that impact the sight of the enemy could matter a great deal. Of course there are potentially tons of abilities that could be used to help out other players that we don't see now and could help make things more realistic.
Let's take a pretend fight against the Dragon. We'll assume the Dragon is smart and has a lot of battle experience, so even if you have minor taunt abilities or the like won't work -- it would be possible to have very short-duration taunts in a non-HT game, the key to breaking HT is making is so no one can constantly tank, but temporarily distracting an enemy off an ally that is in bad shape with an ability that has a somewhat long CD should be ok. So this Dragon is going to go after the what it deems to be the biggest threat at the moment. We'll assume a "classic" fantasy party of a Warrior, a Wizard, a Rogue, and a Cleric. The Wizard enables the group to sneak up on the enemy by obscuring their presense. Then the Warrior charges in there first and does a bunch of damage. The Dragon attacks the Warrior, does a decent bit of damage, the Cleric heals some of that (but heals are on CDs, so no permanent healers). The Rogue then backstabs the Dragon while the Wizard shoots it with lightning. Dragon uses its breath weapon on the Warrior, Cleric, and Wizard (they probably should have spread out a bit more, but in any case the Dragon would have tried to hit 2 of them at least) and attacks the Rogue with its tail. The rogue manages to dodge (rogues don't have a lot of armor, but they are good at avoiding damage), and the Cleric puts up a defensive shield, blocking most of the breath weapon and protecting the party. The Cleric then heals the warrior up some more (we'll give the dragon another attack or two on him), and the Dragon realizes this Cleric is pretty dang annoying, and moves in. Now the Cleric could take some hits from the dragon, but because there is limited healing, avoiding damage as much as possible is idea. So the warrior uses an ability to charge and push the Cleric out of the way of the attack and behind him forcing the Dragon to attack him or waste more time trying to deal with the cleric. Meanwhile the Rogue finally gets slammed with a nasty tail attack and knocked against a wall, taking loads of damage. The Dragon sees the Rogue is about to bite it and wants to finish that Rogue off before a heal can get him, so he shoots a blast of fire at him, the wizard tries to get up a wall of ice between the Rogue and the Dragon, but is late and the Rogue gets taken out of the fight. The Dragon isn't doing so well now though, as he's taken a lot of Damage (the Wizard, Warrior, and Rogue were all attacking him during all of this, of course). So the Dragon grabs the warrior in his mouth, and then attacks both the wizard and the cleric. The wizard, courageously, stands behind the cleric and makes on ice slick on the floor, the cleric tries to shield them both, but still takes a bunch of damage and is near death before the wizard casts a spell to shove the dragon back on the ice slick, during this time the warrior manages to bust out, but he's not doing very well. The Dragon breaths another wave of fire of these three, and the priest isn't able to cover the warrior (he's too far), so the warrior bites it. The Dragon, near dead, is finished off with a burst of lightning from the wizard (who has managed to remain remarkably unharmed).
Now this isn't the greatest example of combat without the HT system, but I think it demonstrates that it is far from unimaginable. It would require coding that takes into account positions and terrain to an extent, particularly character-made terrain (like walls of ice). You have similar classes to HT games, but much of the raw mechanics of how things work is different. Attacks by enemies do less damage, healing is less frequent, the health of different characters is closer together, and the enemy AI is programmed differently (particularly smart AIs, though if you go up against something really stupid, then you could develop tactics that would work against it and not against something smarter, and vice versa really). Of course, another important addition is you don't have taunting (at least not as a main-stay ability).
Of course, there ARE plenty of games out there without the HT, though most of them, obviously, aren't MMOs. Battletech games don't use it (whether tabletop or not), nor does D&D, nor does any roleplaying game really. There are tons of others as well (it would really take too long to name them all, but if you can think of a game that isn't an MMO and has combat in it, then it is HIGHLY unlikely it uses an HT system). In short, there are literally hundreds of things to replace it with, though perhaps the general nature of those things could be condensed down a lot (Battletech might be a lot like an FPS in a number of important ways for instance, though there are substantial differences).
Its not completely illogical as you may think. As the "Tank" you are in essence the most "Threatening" in appearence. In an RPG sense, you taunt, boast, and shout to get the dragon's attention and force it to focus on you. Now, from a third person perspective (meaning You - who is watching this from an outside stand point), yes it could seem not so logical. But you forget that you have outside knowlege of the game and its mechanics. Of course you would go for the healers first and ignore the Guy who does the "least amount of damage and can soak an amazing amount of health). The "Dragon" you are fighting does not. He is merely "acting" within the games mechanics.
If you were to think of this in an RL perspective.
Lets say you and I were to come accross a Grizzley Bear in the Wild. Now, I'm a big guy (6'2 / 280lbs / Muscles Galore). And you're a little skinny guy (but with a spear). I'm fairly certain I could taunt and shout and keep that Bear's attention on me while you sneak up behind him and stab him. If he turns to you and goes to strike you, I could again grab his attention (maybe even physically grabbing his head and pulling it back to face me) and make him "believe" I am more threatening...because I am bigger, louder, more intimidating and my stance is imposing (my arms are out stretched and I'm raoring up like he is). His focus is going to naturally be on me - because I am the most threatinging being of the two of us. His natural reaction is going to assume that I am who he should focus on for his survival...and not the little guy who has a sharp object that can sever his artery and kill him.
See? So its not so illogical after all is it? Hehe.
I agree that Tanking does have role playing logic, but not for the reason you suggest.
What many people seem to confuse, and not realize, is that Tanks create HATE.
In most Tanking MMOs, Hate is also called Threat, because it is basically using the same Mechanic.
Just take a look at it.
They dont call them TAUNTS<------- for nothing right? If I call you a bad name, you will most likely get mad. If you a evil dragon, and in comes a group of humans into your layer, but one of the humans walk up to you, and smacks you with a Shield, and calls you a Pussy, Iam sure you would be pissed, and ready you pwn that human's ars.
Thats call Hate. And iam sure you have also heard that Term before.
DPS and HEALER ----> causes Threat.
TANKS----> Cause Hate.
Also some classes that tank, have lore abilities that also explain why they can cause so much hate.
For example in WoW (since I like WoW's Alliance [excluding Draenie] Paladin lore) the Paladins have Mental Powers. Which allows them to magically effect enemies' emotional hatred towards the Holy Warrior. Now if something extremely hated ya, Iam sure it would lash out at you.
And that still requires the enemy to be an emotional moron to work. Might make sense with mooks and guys that are dumb in Lore, but anyone who is remotely intelligent is going to ignore the pithy crap the tank is doing to try to get hate. It's a poor warrior that lets emotions cloud his judgment. And "lore" reasons for abilities that can never be resisted or avoid is pretty weak justification for magically manipulating someone into attacking you to the point that it dies because that's just how bad a tactic focusing on you is.
Really, any attempt to try to justify HT beyond a kludge primitive games that couldn't have collision detection use is pretty doomed to fail, imho.
Its not completely illogical as you may think. As the "Tank" you are in essence the most "Threatening" in appearence. In an RPG sense, you taunt, boast, and shout to get the dragon's attention and force it to focus on you. Now, from a third person perspective (meaning You - who is watching this from an outside stand point), yes it could seem not so logical. But you forget that you have outside knowlege of the game and its mechanics. Of course you would go for the healers first and ignore the Guy who does the "least amount of damage and can soak an amazing amount of health). The "Dragon" you are fighting does not. He is merely "acting" within the games mechanics.
If you were to think of this in an RL perspective.
Lets say you and I were to come accross a Grizzley Bear in the Wild. Now, I'm a big guy (6'2 / 280lbs / Muscles Galore). And you're a little skinny guy (but with a spear). I'm fairly certain I could taunt and shout and keep that Bear's attention on me while you sneak up behind him and stab him. If he turns to you and goes to strike you, I could again grab his attention (maybe even physically grabbing his head and pulling it back to face me) and make him "believe" I am more threatening...because I am bigger, louder, more intimidating and my stance is imposing (my arms are out stretched and I'm raoring up like he is). His focus is going to naturally be on me - because I am the most threatinging being of the two of us. His natural reaction is going to assume that I am who he should focus on for his survival...and not the little guy who has a sharp object that can sever his artery and kill him.
See? So its not so illogical after all is it? Hehe.
I agree that Tanking does have role playing logic, but not for the reason you suggest.
What many people seem to confuse, and not realize, is that Tanks create HATE.
In most Tanking MMOs, Hate is also called Threat, because it is basically using the same Mechanic.
Just take a look at it.
They dont call them TAUNTS<------- for nothing right? If I call you a bad name, you will most likely get mad. If you a evil dragon, and in comes a group of humans into your layer, but one of the humans walk up to you, and smacks you with a Shield, and calls you a Pussy, Iam sure you would be pissed, and ready you pwn that human's ars.
Thats call Hate. And iam sure you have also heard that Term before.
DPS and HEALER ----> causes Threat.
TANKS----> Cause Hate.
Also some classes that tank, have lore abilities that also explain why they can cause so much hate.
For example in WoW (since I like WoW's Alliance [excluding Draenie] Paladin lore) the Paladins have Mental Powers. Which allows them to magically effect enemies' emotional hatred towards the Holy Warrior. Now if something extremely hated ya, Iam sure it would lash out at you.
And if the dragon was intelligent enough to:
1) understand the language being spoken to him
2) understand the concept of insults and take that into consideration
Then he would most assuredly be well instructed on mages, priests and warriors as well as battlefield tactics and know that the typical role of a priest is to heal others so if I eliminate him, the others won't last long. He would also know that the abilities of a mage can be much more potent than a warrior waving steel around so I need to finish him next.
I guess it depends on your definition of a Dragon. I certainly don't ever portray them as the mindless beasts that some on this thread make them out to be. Having grown up mainly playing against the Dragons in D&D, they aren't mindless automatons. They wield magic, they shapeshift and interact with all other races (especially in the Dragonlance setting). Your argument may better be served by swapping "Dragon" for "mindless beast".
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
And that still requires the enemy to be an emotional moron to work. Might make sense with mooks and guys that are dumb in Lore, but anyone who is remotely intelligent is going to ignore the pithy crap the tank is doing to try to get hate. It's a poor warrior that lets emotions cloud his judgment. And "lore" reasons for abilities that can never be resisted or avoid is pretty weak justification for magically manipulating someone into attacking you to the point that it dies because that's just how bad a tactic focusing on you is.
Really, any attempt to try to justify HT beyond a kludge primitive games that couldn't have collision detection use is pretty doomed to fail, imho.
This is to you and the Guy/Lady with the K name above.
In WoW they have a Mechanic called Rage. Why is it called Rage? Isnt Rage a emotion?
See where Iam going with this yet?
The Dragon would have Emotions. Some Monsters are less Emotional then others yes, but thats when mechanics like mobs being Un-Tauntable, comes into the picture.
And some mobs can randomly Target players, which repesents the idea of tactical targeting, but again, the Emotional side is still in play.
Its not Dumb, as you both seem to be putting it.
If a group of mobs come into your mob's space, and starts dishing it out between one another, iam sure both mobs will be targeting the leaders.
In our tanking situations, the leaders are always they Tanks. (Lore wise I mean. Look up the word Paladin for example. In wows Lore, Armored Warriors have always lead the Allience and Horde in battle) These leaders are a tactical target, and a emotional hated target.
And that still requires the enemy to be an emotional moron to work. Might make sense with mooks and guys that are dumb in Lore, but anyone who is remotely intelligent is going to ignore the pithy crap the tank is doing to try to get hate. It's a poor warrior that lets emotions cloud his judgment. And "lore" reasons for abilities that can never be resisted or avoid is pretty weak justification for magically manipulating someone into attacking you to the point that it dies because that's just how bad a tactic focusing on you is.
Really, any attempt to try to justify HT beyond a kludge primitive games that couldn't have collision detection use is pretty doomed to fail, imho.
This is to you and the Guy/Lady with the K name above.
In WoW they have a Mechanic called Rage. Why is it called Rage? Isnt Rage a emotion?
See where Iam going with this yet?
The Dragon would have Emotions. Some Monsters are less Emotional then others yes, but thats when mechanics like mobs being Un-Tauntable, comes into the picture.
And some mobs can randomly Target players, which repesents the idea of tactical targeting, but again, the Emotional side is still in play.
Its not Dumb, as you both seem to be putting it.
If a group of mobs come into your mob's space, and starts dishing it out between one another, iam sure both mobs will be targeting the leaders.
In our tanking situations, the leaders are always they Tanks. (Lore wise I mean. Look up the word Paladin for example. In wows Lore, Armored Warriors have always lead the Allience and Horde in battle) These leaders are a tactical target, and a emotional hated target.
It IS dumb -- pretty much by definition it is dumb to ignore the realities of the situation and just go with raw emotions. That tank can't do crap for damage and would be infinitely easier to kill if the Big Bad just took a few seconds to kill the healers. I don't know what sort of life you have, but most people are not so crippled by their emotions as you expect these mobs to be. In a fist fight, if there's some guy who is NOT hitting you, but yelling insults at you, you don't focus on him and ignore the big bruiser who can pound you. Heck, if there's a guy who can't hit you worth a darn and just insults you, you still do go straight for them (unless it is to use them to block the attacks from others).
Or let's put this in a more realistic perspective even within the game. If you are PvP in a game that allows cross-faction talk, and one guy is spewing profanity and insults but he is NOT a threat, only the idiot pvpers go after him first. If you are playing against a bunch of morons who can't manage to contain their emotions at all, then that insult tactic would be a pretty good way to get them all killed, but most people are just not that stupid. There's no reason the monsters should be as so much more idiotic.
Or consider a 3rd example. Let's say there's a boss fight with 2 bosses. One boss shouts out insults ALL the time, everyone finds him annoying and hates him. However, the tactics of the fight are such that trying to kill him first just won't work (e.g. the other boss heals perhaps). No group of players remotely in their right mind would keep attacking that guy even in the FIRST encounter once they see the other guy healing him up.
And that still requires the enemy to be an emotional moron to work. Might make sense with mooks and guys that are dumb in Lore, but anyone who is remotely intelligent is going to ignore the pithy crap the tank is doing to try to get hate. It's a poor warrior that lets emotions cloud his judgment. And "lore" reasons for abilities that can never be resisted or avoid is pretty weak justification for magically manipulating someone into attacking you to the point that it dies because that's just how bad a tactic focusing on you is.
Really, any attempt to try to justify HT beyond a kludge primitive games that couldn't have collision detection use is pretty doomed to fail, imho.
This is to you and the Guy/Lady with the K name above.
In WoW they have a Mechanic called Rage. Why is it called Rage? Isnt Rage a emotion?
See where Iam going with this yet?
The Dragon would have Emotions. Some Monsters are less Emotional then others yes, but thats when mechanics like mobs being Un-Tauntable, comes into the picture.
And some mobs can randomly Target players, which repesents the idea of tactical targeting, but again, the Emotional side is still in play.
Its not Dumb, as you both seem to be putting it.
If a group of mobs come into your mob's space, and starts dishing it out between one another, iam sure both mobs will be targeting the leaders.
In our tanking situations, the leaders are always they Tanks. (Lore wise I mean. Look up the word Paladin for example. In wows Lore, Armored Warriors have always lead the Allience and Horde in battle) These leaders are a tactical target, and a emotional hated target.
You seem to only be able to talk about WoW and to not have any experience with gaming (table-top or MMO) outside of that. For you, WoW seems to be the only way but of course if that's all you know, well, it makes sense. The only thing I can tell you is that there are many other ways of doing it, many that were in existence long before the tank/healer/DPS trinity.
Speaking for myself, I'm not saying anything is "dumb". I'm also not talking about "rage" and other artifiical mechanics, either. The debate above was a philosophical one about sentience. At least that's where I was speaking from. You, it appears, are talking about wow's game mechanics at face value. So I'll bow out of this back and forth as we aren't talking about the same thing.
Cheers.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
I don't hate the HT, but I do dislike it somewhat. it makes games in this genre pretty limited and predicteble.
You give example's of multiplayer games, to me it's logical that it's there as for me multiplayer games are far more limited when comparing it to a MMORPG's. And with multiplayer games it's all about combat, where with MMORPG combat should be part but definitlly not all there is to a MMORPG, else we might aswell call this genre "Action Online Games"
But I also must admit that the HT makes games in this genre lack the challenge I really would like to see, as anyone with a little focus in a HT group will alway's WIN, unless you are a bad player or unexperianced, keep in mind I am a niche gamer in MMORPG and I simple like more challenge, doesn't mean HT groups can not be challenging cause I am sure for allot of people it can be quite challenging, but I aint answering for everyone I am merly answering for myself as I see no use for it in a MMORPG. Unless the game is offering allot more then just HT professions.
Myself replace the HT with just random professions, when I group I do the same and hope I enter or creat a random group of professions, it sure feels comfortable when I don't have healing skills and someone else does have them, but not having healing skill or anyone with these skills in the group makes my experiance a more challenging one, again mainly speaking for myself.
And that still requires the enemy to be an emotional moron to work. Might make sense with mooks and guys that are dumb in Lore, but anyone who is remotely intelligent is going to ignore the pithy crap the tank is doing to try to get hate. It's a poor warrior that lets emotions cloud his judgment. And "lore" reasons for abilities that can never be resisted or avoid is pretty weak justification for magically manipulating someone into attacking you to the point that it dies because that's just how bad a tactic focusing on you is.
Really, any attempt to try to justify HT beyond a kludge primitive games that couldn't have collision detection use is pretty doomed to fail, imho.
This is to you and the Guy/Lady with the K name above.
In WoW they have a Mechanic called Rage. Why is it called Rage? Isnt Rage a emotion?
See where Iam going with this yet?
The Dragon would have Emotions. Some Monsters are less Emotional then others yes, but thats when mechanics like mobs being Un-Tauntable, comes into the picture.
And some mobs can randomly Target players, which repesents the idea of tactical targeting, but again, the Emotional side is still in play.
Its not Dumb, as you both seem to be putting it.
If a group of mobs come into your mob's space, and starts dishing it out between one another, iam sure both mobs will be targeting the leaders.
In our tanking situations, the leaders are always they Tanks. (Lore wise I mean. Look up the word Paladin for example. In wows Lore, Armored Warriors have always lead the Allience and Horde in battle) These leaders are a tactical target, and a emotional hated target.
You seem to only be able to talk about WoW and to not have any experience with gaming (table-top or MMO) outside of that. For you, WoW seems to be the only way but of course if that's all you know, well, it makes sense. The only thing I can tell you is that there are many other ways of doing it, many that were in existence long before the tank/healer/DPS trinity.
Speaking for myself, I'm not saying anything is "dumb". I'm also not talking about "rage" and other artifiical mechanics, either. The debate above was a philosophical one about sentience. At least that's where I was speaking from. You, it appears, are talking about wow's game mechanics at face value. So I'll bow out of this back and forth as we aren't talking about the same thing.
Cheers.
Thats because WoW uses the HT concept, and is a branch from the DnD TT (damn even WoW has a DnD RPG TT game).
The concept still follows. As I explained before. Leaders are normally Armored in RPG (DnD the Cleric and Warloard for example)
in WoW, the leaders are Paladins and Knights (for Alliance), and they Protect the weak and others [Role Playing wise]. This Protection fits the Idea of Tanking as well.
Also Like I said above. Killing the Leaders is a tactical plan. an in these cases, the Leaders are up front Meleeing you.
Also with Taunts being thrown out their mouth(or what ever hole on their body
), that causes even more hatred towards the leader in emotional ways.
There is nothing tactical about trying to defeat the member of enemy team that is least likely to fall. Since most MMO 'tanks' have low DPS, any mob with even a half a brain would completely ignore the tanks and focus their attack on the weak members and the support members of the enemy team.
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