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The Tanking problem
Lord.Bachus
Member RarePosts: 9,686
Its there in every mmo i currently join. There is a huge shortage of tanks, despite the fact that tanks are often the most fun mellee class to play in these games, very challenging but allowing people to shine in front of their team, because everyone notices i a tank is good at his job or not.
so why dont more people play tanks?
- tanks are scoffed uppon everytime the group fails, wether it was his fault or not
-tanks are supposed ( should they?) to lead the group and have torough knowledge of every encounter.
-tanks require the best gear ( opinion of most dps)
and probably some more....
i have learned that stepping away from the trinity ( gw2) is not the answer, it dumbs down tactical and stratecically if you dont add anything to replace it.
so how can gamedevelopers make tanking more atractive to the masses?
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Comments
BS.
Tanking is the problem.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Well you can always tweak the ratio of tanks needed by slightly increasing the group size, but it's kinda a weaker solution. (If a game requires 1 tank per group, a 5-man group means you need 20% of your players to play tanks while an 8-man group requires only 12.5% tanks.)
Another weaker possibility is to increase the skill requirement for DPS players to even things out a bit. There are several types of mob mechanics which can make it clear that it was DPSer #1's fault the party wiped. I guess you could pair a slight increase in DPS importance with a slight decrease to tank importance, to achieve a sort of balance without making the game overly challenging to group in (although some of a game's group content should provide that high level of challenge for everyone, certainly.)
A third possibility is to have boss capabilities spelled out a little better in-game, so a smart player is able to strategize around a boss' abilities a little even if it's his/her first time tanking it.
None of these things fully solves the issue, but I guess I feel that between all three of them you retain a game's tactical challenges while balancing out the importance of each role so that tanks don't feel like such a primary failure point. And a lot of that implies that games should better communicate what happened to cause a wipe (like if after a fight you had a histogram of incoming damage over the course of the fight, perhaps overlayed with an average group's incoming damage, and you could see that spike where the extra add was accidentally picked up and doubled the group's incoming damage.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Tanks require responsibility.
They need to know the encounters
They need to be geared up
More often then not you need a thicker skin, if something goes wrong its the lets blame the incompetend tank.
I loved tanking, i am good at it.
I can race trough stuff if i am with a healer that also knows what he/she is doing.
Tanking can be a blast or a disaster.
Tanking for random people is no fun, maybe you get a group with nice or fun people, but in this day and age you get the, Yooo retard can you begin ? i need to go soon ?
Yoo bro speed it up i dont got all day.
Or the anoying people that pull on purpose to make the life of the tank as misarable as posible.
This made me stop tanking for randoms and be a guild exclusive tank for 90% of my time in any mmo.
Its the people i played with that changed, not the tank or me or the healer.
The people that abuse other people verbaly with aggrasive attacks, making fun off, always knowing it better even when wrong, i have this and you suck, etc etc etc.
MMO players changed and many tanks get fed up with the abuse and /stop tanking for the random attention seekers.
Want a tank ? go roll them and do it yourself.
My 2cents
I always liked the idea of a melee wall that protects the ranged dps and healers. But I was never a fan of the most used aggromagnet tank'n'spank systems. I even preferred GW1's aggro system over that. Where the only way to tank was using CC and actual blocking the mob's path. The fun part was how you had to adapt when mobs were difficult to block with your toon. Tanking wasn't just about playing punching bag, but also keeping mobs long enough off your healer by using CC. Because some environments didn't give you the option to block all mobs. The reason that I liked this, is because it was very comparable with how pvp in that game works. There is no special tauntmagnet in that game. Especially early on before the expansions, it was possible to use your pvp group setup in pve. It just made sense. God I loved playing hammerwarrior in that game. When they introduced the hero npcs, this became less important, because of the crazy interrupt machines that hero npc's can be.
Anyway, I have played so many different MMO's. Many of which use some way to tank mobs. In every single case it was about teamplay. When you are used to play with the same people, tanking and healing becomes a lot more managable.
Problem with tanking (or healing for that matter) in PUGS (with any combat system) is that it requires coordination. Which requires a lot of communication if you play with unknown ppl. Many players just don't care, so teams will whipe and tanking and healing can become very tiring in a PUG setup because of that. Playing dps in those cases is easy and convenient. You just tag along and if the party fails, its not your fault ofc
Tanking ebbs and flows as guilds strengthen and weaken. The reality is most MMO's don't require strong guilds anymore - at least for the purposes of doing content. "The masses" are generally solo oriented people (Jeremy Gaffney says about 60%) that don't commit to a guild/group content. If the game is focused primarily on that market, there's no advantage to speccing support since support assumes a group. To increase the number of support players, you need to have compelling group content that inspires people to seek out strong guilds and allows them to feel important in those roles, not ignored or gimped.
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
Agree.
The trinity and reliance on having a tank is the problem and fortunately developers (and technology) are finally getting to a point where the fault can be fixed.
Well, there is always bribery. Giving tanks extra gear or a better chance of getting the good gear after encounters would make more people want to tank, I'm sure.
Well, I'm pretty sure I am not the only person to disagree with you here, the holy trinity may not work for every game out there, but for games designed around it it works very well.
Now, I can't really think of any worthwhile solutions to the problem. World of Warcraft tried to fix the tank problem by both, making tanks easier to play and giving the capability of doing much more dps (I guess people like big numbers).
Frankly, I don't think dumbing down the role and making it another dps is the way to go. I found it much more fun (and still do on private servers) to tank before the game's second expansion's tank/threat mechanic changes which made the role as easy to play as any dps.
But then, is there not being enough tanks really a problem? To an extent, you see, tanks being on a high demand, and there not being enough of them to meet that demand, increases social interaction. It makes you want to befriend good tanks and gives them more recognition. It after all should be the most responsible role and so the most rewarding.
The Weekly Wizardry blog
We'd have less tanking issues if devs stop creating content for 4-5 player groups and go back to at least 6-man groups. That would only bandage the issue.
The bottom line is, tanking is not fun unless you have a good healer with you that allows you to do your job to it's fullest potential. It becomes too stressful otherwise and at that point it's not worth it.
Tanks do have their troubles, like the ones you mentioned (and more), that keep people from even trying them out. Others just do not like that type of game play. Call it preferences.
The vast majority of players like dealing damage in high amount, thus the overabundance of DPS class characters. Healers suffer the same problem as not many players even care about another player, let alone heal them.
Personally, I am not a big fan of melee type combat. My camera always gets screwed up (some games the camera stays in place, other games it moves with the facing of your character) and with the massive effects going off in my vicinity, I just can not see very well much of the time.
I am also not a big fan of knowing encounters before they happen.
On the other hand, I enjoy healing others. It is more my playstyle.
I think it is a combination of the style of play and the vast negatives from other players that keeps the numbers low.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
There are a few ways to improve the situation. A less trivialized Trinity would be one(Roles less extreme, some mixed roles, taunts are possible but not the only thing, more focus on protecting of your group than just glueing the mob to your shield). One thing you can't improve are the first 2 arguments i commented. Thats a community thing and the players themself need to change that.
AI's do get smarter, unfortunately players don't. People want the same old mechanics. If you take away the taunt mechanic, then a tank is basically useless. That is what they do.
The tank is already useless in PvP.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Problem is, What you are describing is a more simplified system, not more complicated. That is the issue. As AI get better and more sophisticated, why would you rely on - Taunt - heal - DPS? That is the problem.
I would say thats not fully correct. Part of the problem are the preference you mentioned. A lot players don't have issues with roles(tank, dps, healer, support) by default but prefere a certain archtype(mage, warrior). Evenly distributed roles among all archtypes would improve the situation but usualy there is no balance(no mage-tank, hardly cleric-tanks, monks/scout-type tanks quite often less effective). As a result the possible amount of tanks is already much lower than for dps players.
The tank (as in class or toon with highest AC) does not have to become useless if you get rid of the taunting magnet mechanic. In my example of GW1, warriors were specifically used to be front line because of their higher AC, which made them the easier to heal teammembers So you wanted them to get most hits while at the same time using them to harass the other team's (or mobs) CC and healers (they were both defense and offense for this reason) Both in balanced PVP group set up and early on in PVE. So they were not used as static punching bag. AI in GW1 was still very simple and simply tended to go for squishy looking players. The key to 'tanking' in that game was standing in the mob's path or using CC (knockdown, snare etc) to get their attention. At some point the mob's attention would turn to the closer target if the squishy one kept out of reach long enough.
To me this system felt a lot more dynamic then the aggromagnet way of playing. And I really liked being able to use PVP skill setups in PVE. It somehow made more sense.
Anyway, I do think though that if you get rid of the classic tauntmagnet system, you end up with more mobile gameplay. And a lot of gamers don't seem to want that (kiddy button smashing fps stuff as some of them describe it
).
Many more players just research into "best builds" and go that route, no matter what archetype they are. They do not care about concepts.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
- When joining a pug, it is more convenient to tag along as dps. It is the easiest way if you are not familiar with the encounter.
- Classic healer, tank classes are more boring to play on your own. I always saw this as one of the main flaws in the classic trinity setup. The classes are often poorly balanced to enjoy both solo and group. DPS always fits both solo and group well. The trinity system should have easier characterbuild changing from the start to be able to switch roles. Tanks and healers were always punished the most for costly characterbuild changing.
- Then there is that tanks and healers have more responsibility. And are easiest to blame when the group fails.
This is why I think healer and tank classes are less popular in classic trinity. Apart from preference, tanks and healers are more demanding while at the same time suffering more limitations in varied gameplay. So, even if you like to play healer or melee tank, you might not roll one because you can't be bothered to deal with with the crap from other players or you would also like to lvl fast or something. They are just too limiting.
Then the description was too short and trivial as your last sentence actualy shows something i didn't wanted to create(as said taunting might still be there in a limited way but only as a minor role within the tanking concept, different possible approaches to tanking with different advantages/disadvantages, more roles than thoose three you mentioned).
Better AI doesn't make trinity obsolute by default. A good trinity-system(not arguing about the bad systems as they realy suck) can still work with good ai and should even outperform a gw2-like system. the issue is better AI doesn't mean the AI is cheating. Of course you could create an ai that alays kills dps and CC's healers but that system would be just as artificial as the current dumbed down ai. A mob doesn't know by default who plays exactly what role and the weakness of the group. The tank would be the most prominent danger(again in a good system the tank is more than a character that is reduced to taunts/defense but can do some damage as well and would be at leas a danger if the mob would run past it and expose its weaker back to the tank) and its not that unlikely that the mob will try to take on this danger first. In addition the tank might simply block the way for the mob, intercept some arrows with his shield or throws the mob back. Even taunts are possible to enrage the mob or trick it into doing a mistake, works on humans just not 100% success chance like the bad-taunting systems work. Better AI might get the mob to think of alternate strategies to bypass the tank but unless its hardwired it won't ignore the tank.
Why do so many people get hung up on taunt? In pretty much every trinity game, taunt usually has a cooldown and is almost never used and is instead saved for emergencies when the tank actually loses aggro. Sometimes I wonder if the people complaining about taunt have ever played a tank.
And what's really bizarre about all this is that the trinity is more natural than some weird mob AI that bounces from threat to threat.
It would take less than 5 minutes of internet searches and some light reading to find out that "dps" (archers, pikemen, etc) usually hung out in the back lines while "tanks" (infantry, phalanx, etc) took the front lines.
Archers go pew pew, fall back behind the infantry, infantry advances while archers shoot to the opposing armies back ranks, and "healers" generally stayed far back at camp (although some armies had combat medics that took to the field) and tended to the wounded.
People who say "it's not realistic for a mob to stand there beating on a heavily armored enemy while a squishy person keeps them alive." Are forgetting some of the most basic rules of combat. Do not expose your flank or your back to your enemy.
That's something that has slowly faded from RPG's. Traditionally, ANY time you or an emeny exposed their back - backstab penalties were incurred. So it was generally a bad idea to do something like . . . run past an enemy. Nothing will get you killed faster than leaving yourself defenseless.
Trinity is a small scale version of non-modern military engagement. That's not to say that another system can't be developed that will be more entertaining in a video game, but I have yet to see a successful non-trinity system in place (that includes GW1).
AHH - GW1 was trinity based.
There is a VERY easy answer,most games people are playing solo 99% of the time.Tanks shine in groups not soloing.
I love to play a tank but get so little chance to do so,i end up hardly ever playing one.I don't mind games giving choice on how to play but grouping should offer a big bonus which would encourage more.Right now every single developer is copying the same routine,solo solo solo then join some random group to do a dungeon.This is real amateur game design and tells me these guys can't think or afraid to think so they just keep copying each other.Why even bother to hire important system designers and producers if all your going to do is copy the last 500 game designs?
In FFXI i remember when there were a ton of Paladins and Ninja tanks,the shortage was healers,that is because past level 10 the game became a grouping game,it was NEVER a solo or questing game.Now everyone just grabs the best possible dps and grinds out quests,a far fetch from a role playing game when you never play a role nor need any roles but just follow a paint by numbers questing game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
This is just flat out false.
In capture the flag maps, a tank can do pretty well.
You obviously didn't play Age of Conan. It had probably the best set up for PvP tanking (at least early on) for any game that's been released.
Your examples demonstrate your glaring ignorance in warfare and tactics. Infantry was the backbone of any army. Still is. To capture something, you need to have "boots on the ground", but by no means is infantry "the tank". Infact, even the modern main battle tank is not a "tank" in the trinity sense. Neither one's purpose is not to intentionally draw fire to itself and soak damage.
The archetypical tank role is absurd and unrealistic. It has no equivalent in real life. Stop making yourself look like a fool and claiming that it does.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky