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PvE without a Tank System/Mechanics is simply a Zerg Fest! Prove me wrong otherwise
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I find the typical tank and spank fight absolutely horrible. I don't understand how people can continue to like that sort of thing time after time.
Almost everyone seems to have played WoW. I'll give an example of my probably my favorite "boss" battle there. There is an instance there called Magisters Terrace. The third boss encounter there was Priestess Delrissa. Now what made this fight interesting was that she had 4 random mini bosses with her that different abilities. The other aspect of the fight was that there was no threat table. So in essence it resembled more like a pvp fight than a pve one. For appropriate geared players you had to us abilities that most don't ever use in pve. I loved the fight but it seemed most people absolutely hated it. I assume because it was out of the norm of the tank and spank scripted fight that almost everything else in the game was. So it was out of their comfort zone. Interestingly enough (although not surprising), the folks that liked the battle the most were pvpers.
This is how encounters should be, unpredictable. Give the npcs you fight some intelligent AI. You don't need to buff up the enemy with huge amounts of health and that can strike for a billion damage. Make them smarter and then you don't have to have tanks.
I'd really like to see what CME had in mind with their Stargate MMO, they were experimenting with the concept of cover and positional combat instead of the "holy trinity", pity the whole thing came to a halt
I'd play a game where "tank" is anyone providing suppression fire from a cover (while their allies outmaneuver the enemy on the flanks), rather than someone determined by its class.
I'm realy looking forward to GW2. Whole holy trinity always seemed retarded to me. So you fight that uber boss at the end of dungeon and he is fighting like total moron... like hitting target with highest dmg mitigation and hp and ignoring squishy tiny healer behind him ... If this is the pinacle of design, then we are all bunch of retards.
In PvP this doesnt work, and i dont see why PvE mechanics couldnt be closer to what like PvP is.
The way I see it with Guild Wars 2 is that in the end, you'll still just end up bum rushing the mob with a healer CCer and DPS, so instead of tank and spank you get you get control the crowd.
In short replacing one role with another is not what I would call innovation.
I don't care about innovation I care about fun.
That still sounds preferable to me.
Tanks exist because of health bars. A tank has a larger health bar in effect (for simplicity's sake). This then leads to a Healer who tops up that bar and then of course DPS.
Now, remove that mechanic where the number of hits on the health bar is replaced with CC or "control" options and suddenly it's more subtle because for CC you have to rework where you are standing and get the timing right so someone can get the first and hardest hits in.
It should also "feel" better. If you take a few silly blows you should take serious damage.
Well, we hope to find out more with the vids, but this is partly what I hope the shift from: Tank-Healer-DPS to Control-Support-Damage leads to.
Really tho, a dedicated healer class was worse than the tank, but I hope both change. At least with the DPS, you get some shots off first and the right ones, you have a chance of out-doing the oppy which employs a lot more tactics and gameplay imo as per FPS concerning context and anticipation more than just power of stats.
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What about the big bad, the solo boss that's supposed to scare you, and is supposed to be difficult. The giant. The dragon. The titan. The Demon. The Lich?
There's only one of them, but they're big, they're mean, and they're very dangerous.
What would an encounter look like with a big boss if there was no tanks around?
If the big boss could be stun locked, or kited, then he's really not very scary, and the encounter becomes trivial. So crowd control destroys the intent of the encounter.
If every single player in the raid is capable of surviving being attacked by the big boss, then, once again, the boss isn't very scarey. If just feels intuitively wrong that a puny mage could walk away after being bitten by a dragon.
And if some players can take the hits from the big bad end guy and some can't, then you're left with a tank and spank system, with the players who can take the hits being the tanks.
In other words, it seems to me that if you get rid of tank and spank mechanics, you are also get rid of the concept of the big bad end guy, which to me would be a serious loss, since the game would lose a large amount of the excitement and romance of the genre.
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It would look like the cave troll fight in Lord of the Rings.. Trust me when I say that Frodo wasn't tanking. The whole fight looked like a FFA .. which was awesome.. LOL During the whole epic story of LoTR, I don't recall any of the fights being holy trinity tank and spanks. I like chaos with multiple roles and mulitple outcomes.. It is what keeps bordom away..
What you describe is another problem i have most of the games . You play HERO, not some freaking worm, you should be definetly able to withstand some beating from boss (with righ use your class abilities) and not to die in seconds. Rising power level of players closer to bosses would be definitly welcomed change for me. Killing Onyxia solo with my deathknight felt more epic for me than killing her at 60 with 40man raid, i was hero killing dragon, not one soldier in army (i'm not saying that end bosses should be soloable).
Stunlock and kitting triviality depends on abilities, cooldowns and other conditions definetly can make their use much less trivial than classic tank and spank fight.
I dont think that this will mean end of big bad end boss, in fact it could make these fights more fun becouse your cc abilities would actualy work and you would have to use them to beat him - not like now, no silence, no slow, no stun ...
So you support the idea that the fight would be a zergfest?
And from what I remember of the LoTR films, the only reason Frodo survived was because he was wearing tank gear (a mithril shirt). If the same blow had hit Samwise, Merry or Pippin, then they would have instantly died.
I all also seem to remember some of the tougher members of the group moving to protect the weaker (i.e. tanking).
And if a monster can one-shot half the party, and strikes people at random, then the fight is either going to be quite short lasting, or most of the party are going to be auto-dead, since a random targetting system will get round to selecting them sooner or later (and an intelligent bad guy would likely not target as randomly as a cave troll).
Is a fight much fun if half the party know they're going to spend half of it lying on the floor dead, no matter what they do?
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What fun would life be if we knew with 99.9% certainty what the future is.. /shrug.. IMO I would greatly minimize death penalties and make death a lot more common place...instead of calling it death, maybe do what LoTRO does or similar
Rydeson - you're interpreting the film too literally in the terms of a particular MMO (everquest).
In that combat, some people could take the blows without dieing (Gimli, Aragorn, and to a lesser extent Frodo), and some people couldn't (all the other hobbits, maybe Legolas and Gandalf would also have died if hit).
In the film the combat was over very quickly. The Troll made very few blows, and only one connected.
That isn't something any MMO player would call an end boss. A short fight where the bad guy only made half a dozen blows and only connected once? That's a trash fight.
To feel like a proper end boss fight, most players would expect the fight to last over a minute, and for the end boss to connect at least ten times.
So what would that do if, for example, the party has six members and three of those members would die in one hit?
If the boss makes ten blows - the it's highly likely that every one of those three party members would die in the fight.
I'm not talking, as you are, of a fight with a possibility of failure (which I'd agree is good). I'm talking about a fight where for half the party there is a near certainty of death. Is that fun? What if you are one of those three people, and every single time you'd done that fight you'd been one shot, and spent half of the fight watching from a pool of blood on the floor. Is that fun gameplay?
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So what exactly is wrong with a zerg fest. For example, I'd rather play D2 than wow, even though wow's combat system is really excellent for a mmo. I just hate slow pulling and would much rather blow through the instance slaughtering every enemy in my path and doing my best not to get swarmed or beat up by the miniboss with lightning/conviction. Boy would I love to see that in a mmo format with more than three small zones for end-game.
Some people like a more tactical game that requires a little teamwork.
Of couse, I perfectly understand that others really like a zerg fest. There should be games for each - e.g. I presume you're looking forward to the next Diablo?
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Really? Are you that closed/simple minded? You absolutely have to have some utterly retarded mechanic such as a guy standing there "yelling" aka taunting/shotuing something to magically make hordes of murderous enemies want to attack only that 1 guy and ignore the ones killling them?
There are plenty of ways to "control" their enemies, and it doesnt need to be through such an outdated and horrible mechanic. Seriously, have you ever seen such a thing in any real fight? If a big brawl breaks out somewhere, and theres some moron standing in the middle of it yelling something, does every single person drop what theyre doing and jump on that 1 guy and ignor ethe people punching them in the back of the head repeatedly?
Wouldnt it make more sense that they might be a bit more concerned with say, a guy charging at them with a baseball bat taking out peoples knees (cripple/slow effect), hitting them in the head (stun/knockdown effect), injuring their arms and shoulders (weakness effects)? Or perhaps more concerned with an expert martial artist who is very efficient at crippling and taking down their opponents in the quickest way possible, rather than some jackass "yelling" something? Think about it that way and you may be able to get over your obsession with something as nonsensical and boring as taunting and tanking mechanics.
I just dont get why it is so hard for people to grasp the stupidity of tanking mechanics in most games. Its one of the main reasons why i almost never play any form of tank class, unless the mechanics in that game have other methods of controlling the enemy besides taunting. Saying no tanking = zergfest is like saying every fight, war, skirmish, etc ever throughout the history of the world was a zergfest because we didnt have some magical taunting and tanking ability, and no fight has ever been won by anyone through any form of skill and strategy.
I'm wondering: does EVE Online have trinity or a tank system, is that the only way team combat can be played in EVE?
I know Planetside didn't really have trinity, and also COX and Guild Wars had different team combat.
Tank mechanics, holy trinity, it's easy play, because people know very quick what their role will be in the group without much explanation, so it also works well in PUG's.
But if you're not in a PUG, other team setups can work well too in the mentioned games, especially if you're aware of the capabilities and role options of the other classes.
Then it won't end up being a zergfest as you often see in PUG's.
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I say use a aura base system for your classes. one-hander/shield users get a damage reducing aura, tome/book users get a health gen aura, staff users get a mana gen aura and dual weapon/two-hand users get a damage increasing aura. Each classes' auras are as strong as the damage they maintain. Get killed and that aura is gone, thus making the fight that much harder but not impossible. Then bosses would have a reason to take out that pesky tanking aura.
Also it would keep players moving as auras would have limited ranges. Get out of range from the health regen aura and risk dying that much sooner. Need more mana? Keep in range of your staff user's aura. Having all the same auras would be challenging but not unheard of. I don't know....
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Technically, EVE Online had a very primitive PvE first-in-first-targeted aggro system for a long time (as it is not a PvE focused game), and wasn't really based on trinity (everyone could tank to a certain degree and heal if needed based on modules fitted, so the first to be targeted would have the support of all others).
Apocrypha added a degree of complexity as new enemies in wormholes are way smarter and switch targets, and as there is no aggro system at all (you can't "taunt") tanking is actually mostly a choral effort made of networks of low-yield armor/shield boosting modules and electronic warfare (if tank is insufficient, you have to warp out, and to warp out you need to get rid of warp disruptors, usually present aboard small and fast ships, hard to hit with big guns, but easier to disrupt with targeting jammers).
Antipathy, your arguments are completely flawed.
You say that once the tank is removed, half the team is "atuo-dead." That is just not true, and I hope you said that as an argument and not really because you believe it. It would of had the same effect as saying "I'm so bad at playing an MMO, I need someone to take all the damage, or else I'm auto-dead." Now I'm sure that is not true, but c'mon, saying something like that is just stupid.
Also, tanking mechanic is NOT teamwork. If the team relies on ONE PERSON that much, it is no longer teamwork, it becomes more of a babysitting and/or over-seeing situation. If you would compare it to sports or pretty much anything, teamwork is only good when the TEAM is important and works as a TEAM. Take soccer, basketball, football, tennis, war... all the positions are equally important. Of course, there are better or smarter players such as captains, but they are more important because of their skill, not their position. In tanking, more than one person may be doing something, but the tank is the only NEEDED player.
Think about it really hard... would you REALLY want the furture of MMO gaming to be based on simple A.I.? Let's face it, the A.I. in tanking mechanics are not sophisticated at all. Press a button, and all surrounding mobs attack you.
Arguments often appear flawed when you neither read, nor understand them.
I was talkling about a combat against a single powerful monster, who hits hard enough he can kill people with one blow. If you want such entitities in a game, then that to me means you need to accept some sort of tanking mechanic.
I could certainly imagine games where such entities don't exist, but I believe that's quite a fundamental change, and you end up missing ou on a large amount of the romance of the genre.
You mention sports teams. However, some of your examples are somewhat poor (tennis - LoL!). I'd also point out to you that in a game such as football (soccer), a position such as "goalkeeper" could very easily be equated with that of a tank in an MMO. And no football team will get very far without a goalkeeper.
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Having no tank requires more teamwork than having a tank. Tank 'n' spank is very simpliified version of combat and very formulaic. Formulaic combat is not tactical, it's just boring. Not to mention the aggro-minigame is freaking ridiculous. Having no tank is how fights should be, because in PvP, there are no tanks. No tanks. That means you have to think both offensively and defensively. Will you use your control/utility skills for offense or defense? Who will you engage? Who must you protect/keep alive? In short: You have to think.
Combat without tanks is not "Zergfest". On the contrary, it makes combat more tactical because of added emphasis on control and utility skills. It makes combat more dramatic, surprising and exciting. It is a good thing. Guild Wars showed this. It works.
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How about instead of having a superman in every group, they replace tanking systems with dodge and parry mechanics? Problem solved wouldn't you say?
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Woaw Ive had this account for over a year and never once logged in to post into the forums, but seeing the ammount of BS said in this thread is ridiculus. You wish the remove the Tank and the Healer archtypes because you dont like tank and spank, now removing those 2 archtypes only leaves on DPS/DD ranged or melee. Making everyone a pwnsome win button boss soloing ninja ..... thats just completely unlogical.
Instead of such retardation you probably want to say that you wish bosses and instances to be more interactive more unpredictable, but not by creating a 1 class game. Perfect example of the crap you say would be so great is in the newly released Martial Empires, give it a go. It has 3 classes with 3 weapons who all share common skills theres no tanks and no heals just strange pew pew and the pve is worse then any other.
Before you bag every MMO for having tanks and healers sit back and think a bit or just go develope such a game and see how well you do.
Now please cont. QQ
Long time reader, 1st time poster...
I've played alot of MMOs, played all roles, i even though i really enjoyed tanking and healing (except raid healing, that's just really bad design), most of the greatest fun i had was doing "tank and spank" content without a healer or tank, it required more awareness from all players, various strategies and not just standing there mindlessly.
I think only people that are afraid of any kind of responsability or are attached to one specific role can't envision pve without the trinity.
It seems Knighthonor/Mysticforce, the OP, has created a new account again. Seems like you have a lack of intelligence and imagination, still clinging onto archaic ways and not adapting or accepting to change. You need to step out that little box and try out new things for a change. I get the feeling that you don't want change in the MMO genre, but keeping it the same old conventional way which is causing the genre to be stagnant.
The Tank play style mechanic is a dumb type of "combat" as it does not involve any true strategies and tactics. Combat without a Tank is NOT a zergfest, it is hectic battles which requires quick thinking to counter and overcome your opponents tactically. That is what REAL battles are like in real life. You don't see a person only going after the taunter while the people throwing rocks at him gets ignored, he'll go after everyone all at once. How is Tank and Spank heroic or even high level play style?
Wait wait wait... so what you guys are telling me is that you prefer being a Tank, that the enemy ALWAYS BLINDLY smacks around - with Healers at your back constantly making sure you are alive, while attempting to whack-a-mole here and there to make sure the rest of the raid is still alive - with DPS that stand in 3 spots the entire fight, constantly pressing 12342567212342 the entire time as opposed to:
8 Men/Women enter and each of them have a job to do, they all have to stay alive so if the baddie they are attacking starts to twist and his tail is coming, they need to evade - if he breaths fire - they have to get behind shields or if none are available they have to get out of range some how while managing to survive. If the fight comes down to a 5% HP boss against 2 remaining party members, you prefer the trinity of "BURN BURN BURN" over the potential epic feeling of victory you get when felling a major bad guy when the fight is down to the wire?
Let us not kid ourselves, a lot of people prefer playing Devil May Cry, Call of Duty, and Starcraft 2 to Chess. Essentially what a holy trinity is, is a device/system where everyone knows the pieces hence Chess. Everyone has a defined role and dammit, you can't step out of that defined role no matter what. I prefer the system where if a monster that is designed for a party to fight decides to attack someone, that person has to survive using what they have and the other 7 either have to choose to help, or hurt. Dynamic systems like the one I just mentioned are much more appealing in multiplayer games. Sure you can learn the bosses moves but what if he attacks a weak link and cripples your party? Then you have to step it up and adapt. In a trinity system, you just wipe and make sure the tank picks up aggro next time so the other members of the raid can step into familiar roles.
Thanks for reading.
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