Tanks are hard to find because tanks are a group class and most modern MMOs are designed for solo play until you reach end-game. Nobody wants to level up as a tank because it takes a lot longer. If your class can switch from DPS to tank, many are afraid to do so because they don't know that part of their class.
Khm, EVERY "tank" class has also DPS option. No problem at all. Wow, Rift, Swtor, ....
Don't agree with the "tanks are boring" sentiment.
On the contrary, they're usually far more interesting to play than healers or DPS imo. Especially if you're playing a tank that relies on active mitigation (like the Death Knight or Monk in WoW).
A DPS doesn't need to account for boss mechanics as much. Outside of tank & spank fights (which are boring for everyone), the tank will usually have far more things to do than a DPS who can just cycle through targets and repeat their rotation. Kiting and moving the boss, interrupts, reacting to damage spikes, LoS pulling mobs, intercepting mobs that lost aggro...
Even leveling is as fun as you make it. You do usually kill things slower in most games, but you can pull 2x (or way more) the amount of mobs.
People don't play tanks because it's a position of responsibility, because you do get massive amounts of hate if you fail and because "big numbers" are more instantly appealing. Usually a tank is also under far more pressure to maintain their gear and to play a lot in order to run instances with guildmembers.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
I had been a healer player for the longest time, but in the last days of Vanguard, I turned into a tank player. I really loved my Dread Knight. In the last years of the game, SOE finally managed to balance them right. They are very fun solo, especially on higher levels, because of their AoE abilities, and they are okay in group because they had been no longer in the disadvantage in respect to aggro generation. Well, and about half a year later or so SOE announced they would stop running Vanguard. Sucks.
Anyway, if I would find a new MMO that would convince me, I would retry playing a tank.
Slower leveling, well I guess that depends upon the game. In Vanguard, you could go offensive mode. Less aggro generation, but a lot more dps. Except for Paladin, they still sucked in respect to dps, especially on higher levels.
But yeah, more solist abilities, especially for the Warrior, would have been great, such as runspeed and emergency teleport through items, much like Rogue. I probably would have changed the Warrior class around a lot if someone at SOE would have put me in charge of that class. Only class in all Vanguard that all out sucked in solo play, and they havent been that hugely much better in group play to justify that. In fact, they've been barely much better.
Tanks have a big responsibility to a lot of people. GOod tanks save time, bad tanks waste time. Since you only need around 1-4 depending on the game and the needs, it's not easy to find replacements either. Same thing about healers too. You are looking for people who take other people's needs before their own. That's hard. Even in games like Firefall that don't necessarily call for a group aggro-suction tank per se, it's still hard. That is also why tanks are usually the group leaders too.
Tanks are scattered around any game en masse! It's the "good" tanks you have to worry about actually, the ones who can properly control aggro and can keep your party alive during raids with good control and decision making.
I tried playing as a "tank" character in firefall, not my thing, I'm really more of a damager type player so I guess that's another factor to consider, if that type of playstyle is your thing.
I've always been a bit fascinated with tanking, and share a sort-of love-hate dichotomy with it. From everything I've been told, I'm good at it. I like the concept of it, and the strategy-developing part is enchanting when a boss is proving recalcitrant to normal tactics.
Yet I prefer to play the healer because I don't like dealing with THOSE people (well, and also because healing is simply more fun). No matter how many times I make a tank, gear her up well while levelling, tank dungeons and everything, within the last 10 levels the quality of individual I meet plummets from 'usually fun' to 'how do you even qualify as a living being' and I stop tanking right before level cap and go back to healing or play a solo dps for a change. I have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with those disruptive players (and particularly the 'hurry hurry hurry' ones). I'd rather tank for 4 or 5 undergeared newbies who will make the run a two hour affair but make doing so pleasant than one overgeared, well-oiled group that features that one guy who thinks he's god's gift to women, games, and whatever god-awful class he's chosen to play.
My reasons from my experience after playing many mmos :
1) Tanks are often the most boring class, without any abilities that stand out.
2) Tanks because of defensive are weaker classes.
3) People are scared to play them In a trinity system :
a) Your often expected to know your taunts perfectly without fault.
b) You get blamed often with others mistakes. ( you better have tough skin to take backlash )
c ) Your often expected to know the Dungeon / Raid well.
d) Your often expected to lead.
e) Your expected to handle the asshat in your group.
Just one short story that comes to mind :
Several years ago, I was playing a Warrior in Vanilla WoW. We were doing Scarlet Monastery. I arraigned the group. I took a lower level Paladin that begged me to take him. He was by far too low but since the majority were at a good level I decided to take him.
I had my game plan all together. Knowing that Scarlet Monastery has stubborn caster mobs, I planed to range pull them to us. I've done this many times, it works well.
Right from the start we could tell this Paladin was a heckler ( you know what I'm talking about, ONE OF THEM ).
He insisted on being the tank, and he had no ranged abilities. He insisted on NOT waiting for the group to grab agro, this pulled all mobs to us, groups and groups of them at once getting us killed. Blaming everyone around him.
Situations like this is why no one likes being the tank. Sure there are many ways of going about pulls, but when you have someone else other than the tank insisting on pulling there way you have conflict.
This is why no one likes to play a tank !.......Answer ?.....I don't know.
The reason why there arent's so many tanks are similar to why are there a lack of healer in bg/dungeon/raid/etc. It is because if you FAIL YOUR ROLE, you'll wipe the freaking group. You are expected to know the fights, know the layout of the dungeon, be aware of when to pop your CDS when the boss is performing his special attack.
Well what happens if DPS FAILS to perform their role? Boss dies slower unless he has a timer which he enrages.. Or enemy players dies a minute later... In another word.. it is less forgiving as a tank....
As a tank, there are times where i had to deal with dps who thinks they are a superstar... I mean ffs, i dont mind if dps helps me pull like 2 to 3 mobs, but if they purposely PULL like 3-4 GROUPS of mobs(he's a mage) while im buffing myself up, DIES and calls ME NOOBIE TANK L2TANK, it kinda diminishes the `fun` experience of playing a game.
These are more example...
(1) WTF TANK, MOVE FASTER... GOGOGO.. when you had to wait for you healer to drink after several pulls...
(2) WTF TANK, GET AGGRO, when you just dinged 90 with blues while dps are heroic raid geared in lfg.
(3) WTF TANK, MOBS!!!??!!.. when they blindly run into a pack of patrol when you are about to lure a boss when the rest of the groups have no problem following you.
In mmos, i usually play healers/tanks, i tend to play healers more nowadays..It feels like a cruise in pve(but not in pvp lol, but thats for another thread).
Originally posted by Rydeson. The art of using a variety of CC skills is equally rare..
Not in D3 .. if you want to survive higher greater rfits, cc (and escape skills) is a must.
we're talking MMOs I think.
close enough .. D3 is listed under the "MMO list" here, with its own forum. Not to mention the instanced dungeon is essentially similar play style as pve endgame in many MMOs.
That's odd, D3 isn't a Massive Multiplayer Online game. Not sure why it would be listed as an MMO when the most you can play with are 3 other players at a given time.
And in WoW, you played with 4 others, or 9 others, or 24 others most of the time. I don't see those numbers massive.
I don't care that most endgame content is not massive. If you can do something with a massive number of players that makes it a MMO. If you have a huge world where thousands of players play, if you can gather hundreds of them to raid a city that is a MMO.
If you keep using the word massive for 4 or 10 players that word loses its meaning and you have to find another word to replace. Thankfully words don't change their meanings only because some guy feels like changing it eitherwise we had to come up with new words everyday.
I didn't read everything, so I don't know, if this was mentioned already. But in most progress PvE games you need more tanks during the dungeon phase than later in the raids.
I see this in Wildstar again: in raids, you need 20 people, so 4 groups à 5 people. 1 group is made of 1 tank and 1 healer, so you would suggest in the raid you would need 4 tanks and 4 healers. But no, only 2 tanks are needed, the others wasted the time they invested to learn to tank.
The whole -- one tank per group but only one or two tanks per raid is a major problem with the design of the games. It really does make tanks have problems bridging that gap from a group tank to a raid tank. The fact that raid guilds tend to funnel ALL of the good tank equipment onto their primary tanks while DPS gear tends to be spread among the dps players makes it even harder for a tank to break out. This is especially bad if the tank is coming into a game late. If a tank ever needs to "catch up" they are not needed.
Really, I think there should be a spell that is for raids that combines say 4 tanks into one combined health pool. They work together but are one. This would make raiding a lot more interesting for tanks and allow some interesting mechanics.
Tanks are unpopular and rare for many reasons - most reasons have already been bludgeoned to death in this thread.
I have come to absolutely loathe MMOs that still must use a tanking role as a primary group role. This opinion has been forged by a mixture of a few things over my many years of playing MMORPGs:
1) The general attitude that players that will play tanks tend to possess. I have played a tank, healer, CC/buffer and DPS over my years and I have experienced first hand what happens to many players (even to me) when they fill that "in-demand" job - They lose patience with others. They tend to be very quick to vote-kick or drop group to requeue since their queue times are nonexistent.
2) The queue times for non-tanks. Since every group (that does worthwhile content) requires a tank - there is always a line waiting for a tank. Healers have queues too but they are generally not long as there are more players willing to heal than tank.
3) Arbitrary mechanics. I'm tired of content created with sole intention of ramping up the number of tanks needed. I'm talking about stacking bleeds and debuffs that accomplish nothing more than demand tank switching on the boss. This also includes the "second boss or adds that spawn in the middle of the encounter" as well. These mechanics are nice once in awhile but have nearly become "necessary" to keep guilds from swapping the 2nd/3rd tanks to DPS for encounters when they are not needed.
4) This is the large one for me and likely not so big for others. The aspect of tanking does not "exist" in any other gaming genre. Some genres (co-op) have attempted to include it, but hasn't really worked that well IMO. It doesn't even really exist in the tabletop games of old that MMORPGs are derived from. It certainly does not exist in real world combat - even in medieval times.
No matter how loud the tank shouts - he is not going to reliably break his enemy's attention away from the rogue that just backstabbed him, the mage that is winding up that Armageddon spell (which will somehow not harm the tank either) or the healer that is keeping the tank alive. Tanks in MMORPGs are effectively metal boxed mouths without teeth. It makes little sense to me why any disciplined combatant is going to pay attention to the guy wearing armor that is stabbing with toothpicks and trying to bash with a shield while letting that rear line continue to barrage them with nukes. Let's not forget that the tank is immune to all those nukes as well... amazing how fantasy games disregard friendly fire.
Yes, yes - it's a game but all games require an anchor in reality to be based on (notice that most MMORPGs have normal gravity and physics rules - obviously some rules from reality must be present). I can suspend my disbelief rather easily to imagine someone throwing a massive fireball of destruction toward the bad guy's face - but I cannot believe that the bad guy is always too stupid to think the verbal slurs from the metal boxed mouth in front of him is the reason for why his face is on fire/limbs charred or blood gushing from a wound in his back.
It is actually an insult to me for developers to continually create AI so stupid as to not realize there is a healer or massive artillery back there. As long as the "numbers" pass the equation and the tank generates more agro than the healer's heals or the DPS nukes do - well golly gee... that big boss is never the wiser.
Why MMORPG gamers are so content to put up with lame and underdeveloped AI that requires a tank role this far into the genre's life cycle is just strange to me. I'd rather see the tank role be removed or at least deemphasized.
Lol indeed, what we have are dragons and old gods getting hit by a tank for 0.1% of their health (let's call it an annoying flick). While über Mage is standing 24 yards away with lightening springing from every nook of his armour flinging giant red hot face melting fireballs right into the face of the god boss- and he doesn't notice because the tank just tickled him with his 'proccing' trinket of lookatmelookatme.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Originally posted by Bladestrom Lol indeed, what we have are dragons and old gods getting hit by a tank for 0.1% of their health (let's call it an annoying flick). While über Mage is standing 24 yards away with lightening springing from every nook of his armour flinging giant red hot face melting fireballs right into the face of the god boss- and he doesn't notice because the tank just tickled him with his 'proccing' trinket of lookatmelookatme.
How about this...
You yell at some dude across the street and question his parentage... as he races across the street to beat the living shit out of you... at the same time someone throws an egg at him and hits him square in the head...
Who is the guy going to beat the shit out of first? The guy who yelled at him or the guy who just pelted him with an egg?
No, I must kill this guy who called me a twerp... those eggs don't mean a thing...
Can someone give me a real world fight situation in any part of history where one or a few people played the "tank" for a number of other people.
You won't be able to name any because its never happened. To be sure there are defensive formations, but in those everyone is part of whatever that tactic is (shield wall, pike formation etc.).
You will be able to find many rather specific "answers" to the OPs question, but the more overall answer is that it unnatural and therefore assinine those other "answers" are all just symptoms of that. Tanking "works" by destroying other game mechanics its inherently a bad design.
In reality what should happen in something like a, let's just abritrarily pick the number, 25 man raid is that 15 people should create a shield wall/phalanx formation with multiple lines where a back line fighter can take the place of a front line fighter who is tired or injured and this should be at a choke point. This is your "tank" and then various ranged fighters and possibly various support should then operate behind them.
In other cases once something engages with a fighter it should have a hard time disengaging without risking mortal danger. At the same time it almost impossible for one person to keep 2 people tied down if those 2 people have any idea what they are doing. When I get into a fight with 3 people the danger is not (initially) that 3 people are hitting me. The danger is that I cannot protect myself at all angles simultaneously. MMORPGs do not work this way, although they make some attempts at positional stuff.
There is a reason in real life why someone does not just run past you and start attacking your friend behind you. Its because they will have exposed their back and you will stab them and kill them in a very very short amount of time. Exposing your back is a big no-no in real fighting. All competent fighters avoid this at all costs, even with armor. Really especially with armor because the weakness of armor is the exposed parts and a nicely setup run at someone's back is your best chance to get to a sweet spot.
In real life the "threat" is what will happen if you do certain things. Not how many times I hit them or how many times I insulted their mother. If I engage a single person with my sword. They do not continue the engagement with me because I hit them with my sword. They continue even if they don't want to because if they don't the consequences are disasterous for them.
Thus as you can see the mechanics of tanking are almost exactly backwards from how they would in fact work. And in real life you don't tank rather it is the mechanics of engagements themselves. It is simply the natural consequences of violence that keep two fighters stuck to each. Nothing more, nothing less.
You said it. Congratulations.
Now I'm going to say it. MMORPGs are not real. They are games. As games they do not have to operate like the real world. We play them because we "like" how they don't operate like the real world. It's all fantasy and we enjoy that fantasy very much.
As per the title of this thread "Why are tanks hard to get?" I guess that would depend on the game. When I use to play City of Heroes tanks weren't all that hard to find because they were fairly popular. However...sometimes they were hard to get because of that popularity as they were in demand because of their damage absorbing/deflecting abilities, and once they reached the low 40's they were really getting powerful. The saying "A good tank is hard to find" was often quite true because the best tanks were always busy; either soloing or successfully running teams.
As for teaming with a tank, all the finer points have already been discussed adequately. It requires knowledge, learning and understanding. You learn how an archetype operates by watching another play them, you learn what they need by watching and listening and then you understand first hand by playing one yourself and you see how other archetypes play with you. If you're not willing to listen, learn and understand then you're not ready to team with others.
( Patience helps too. )
You missed the point. Congratulations.
Of course games do not have to work exactly like the real. In fact it would be utterly impossible to make current MMORPGs come anywhere close to the complexity of true combat.
The thing you are missing is that design wise they have made something exactly backwards from a known working system. This generally results in a system that doesn't work. Even worse that working system is something human are hard and soft wired and conditioned to through thousands of years of the natural world.
Its like making an MMORPG where you can only run when you move backwards. Sure you can do it. But its stupid.
Can someone give me a real world fight situation in any part of history where one or a few people played the "tank" for a number of other people.
You won't be able to name any because its never happened. To be sure there are defensive formations, but in those everyone is part of whatever that tactic is (shield wall, pike formation etc.).
You will be able to find many rather specific "answers" to the OPs question, but the more overall answer is that it unnatural and therefore assinine those other "answers" are all just symptoms of that. Tanking "works" by destroying other game mechanics its inherently a bad design.
In reality what should happen in something like a, let's just abritrarily pick the number, 25 man raid is that 15 people should create a shield wall/phalanx formation with multiple lines where a back line fighter can take the place of a front line fighter who is tired or injured and this should be at a choke point. This is your "tank" and then various ranged fighters and possibly various support should then operate behind them.
In other cases once something engages with a fighter it should have a hard time disengaging without risking mortal danger. At the same time it almost impossible for one person to keep 2 people tied down if those 2 people have any idea what they are doing. When I get into a fight with 3 people the danger is not (initially) that 3 people are hitting me. The danger is that I cannot protect myself at all angles simultaneously. MMORPGs do not work this way, although they make some attempts at positional stuff.
There is a reason in real life why someone does not just run past you and start attacking your friend behind you. Its because they will have exposed their back and you will stab them and kill them in a very very short amount of time. Exposing your back is a big no-no in real fighting. All competent fighters avoid this at all costs, even with armor. Really especially with armor because the weakness of armor is the exposed parts and a nicely setup run at someone's back is your best chance to get to a sweet spot.
In real life the "threat" is what will happen if you do certain things. Not how many times I hit them or how many times I insulted their mother. If I engage a single person with my sword. They do not continue the engagement with me because I hit them with my sword. They continue even if they don't want to because if they don't the consequences are disasterous for them.
Thus as you can see the mechanics of tanking are almost exactly backwards from how they would in fact work. And in real life you don't tank rather it is the mechanics of engagements themselves. It is simply the natural consequences of violence that keep two fighters stuck to each. Nothing more, nothing less.
You said it. Congratulations.
Now I'm going to say it. MMORPGs are not real. They are games. As games they do not have to operate like the real world. We play them because we "like" how they don't operate like the real world. It's all fantasy and we enjoy that fantasy very much.
As per the title of this thread "Why are tanks hard to get?" I guess that would depend on the game. When I use to play City of Heroes tanks weren't all that hard to find because they were fairly popular. However...sometimes they were hard to get because of that popularity as they were in demand because of their damage absorbing/deflecting abilities, and once they reached the low 40's they were really getting powerful. The saying "A good tank is hard to find" was often quite true because the best tanks were always busy; either soloing or successfully running teams.
As for teaming with a tank, all the finer points have already been discussed adequately. It requires knowledge, learning and understanding. You learn how an archetype operates by watching another play them, you learn what they need by watching and listening and then you understand first hand by playing one yourself and you see how other archetypes play with you. If you're not willing to listen, learn and understand then you're not ready to team with others.
( Patience helps too. )
You missed the point. Congratulations.
Of course games do not have to work exactly like the real. In fact it would be utterly impossible to make current MMORPGs come anywhere close to the complexity of true combat.
The thing you are missing is that design wise they have made something exactly backwards from a known working system. This generally results in a system that doesn't work. Even worse that working system is something human are hard and soft wired and conditioned to through thousands of years of the natural world.
Its like making an MMORPG where you can only run when you move backwards. Sure you can do it. But its stupid.
I must congratulate you on missing the point yet again and I also congratulate you for supporting my original point. If the fact is that it would be utterly impossible to make current MMORPGs come anywhere close to the complexity of true combat then I see no point in trying. I must also congratulate the genius who came up with this system that is backwards from a known working system. It is this system that millions of people all over the world enjoy playing with. I've enjoyed playing with that system for many years now and I'm glad I encountered it.
You do make a good point in that "it's stupid", and I agree that the system is rather stupid, but just because something is stupid doesn't mean that it can't be entertaining and enjoyed by others. Since this "stupid" system was introduced in gaming trillions of dollars have been made from it and it isn't going to stop anytime soon. Capitalizing on a system that millions, perhaps billions, of people the world over enjoy using every day doesn't sound so stupid once you really think about it.
If you want realism in gaming then I suggest you look elsewhere. MMO"RPG"s are the home of the tank and the trinity, and tankers aren't going away anytime soon. If you don't believe me then just ask around. I doubt you'll get much support from the masses for the elimation of tanks just because the tanking system "is stupid".
I've got a feevah, and the only prescription... is more cowbell.
If you want realism in gaming then I suggest you look elsewhere. MMO"RPG"s are the home of the tank and the trinity, and tankers aren't going away anytime soon. If you don't believe me then just ask around. I doubt you'll get much support from the masses for the elimation of tanks just because the tanking system "is stupid".
I do think that tanks will be de-emphasized, if not outright removed. It won't be immediately but there has been more and more stir in recent years over queue times and the issues surrounding having a group of players beholden to one or two single players to be able to even begin content.
It's just not a good plan to tell the larger portion of your playerbase to stand in line while they wait 20 to 45+ minutes for someone to show up to "play the tank" - especially in content that is in intended to be repeated numerous times a day.
For the long term, I expect tanks to have the larger scale raids custom tailored to require them, but I see single party dungeon type content going tankless or becoming very lenient in letting "tanking" classes spec more toward DPS than tanking.
Something has to change though - having the majority of the playerbase (which play DPS) standing around waiting in line to do daily content is not going to convince people to keep paying a sub or continue playing the game - not when there are a multitude of options these days. The genre is not like it was back in 2000-2006 when there was only really EQ1 and WoW as the big dogs.
As I said before it's because there is much more responsibility on the tank. In thinking about it though for me it defeats the purpose if the game. It takes it from being fun and entertaining that I just want to play with to a job where I am partly responsible for another person's enjoyment.
That is not what I'm looking for from my games.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Because tanking requires coordination, placement, and being mobile (ironically) in certain situations. They need to react quickly with reactive skills, or lose 90% of HP in one hit. It really depends on the MMO though, and whether you're talking about regular dungeons, hard modes, or raids. It's a thankless role, while everyone else criticizes your ability to fulfill the role properly.
Tanks are unpopular and rare for many reasons - most reasons have already been bludgeoned to death in this thread.
I have come to absolutely loathe MMOs that still must use a tanking role as a primary group role. This opinion has been forged by a mixture of a few things over my many years of playing MMORPGs:
1) The general attitude that players that will play tanks tend to possess. I have played a tank, healer, CC/buffer and DPS over my years and I have experienced first hand what happens to many players (even to me) when they fill that "in-demand" job - They lose patience with others. They tend to be very quick to vote-kick or drop group to requeue since their queue times are nonexistent.
2) The queue times for non-tanks. Since every group (that does worthwhile content) requires a tank - there is always a line waiting for a tank. Healers have queues too but they are generally not long as there are more players willing to heal than tank.
3) Arbitrary mechanics. I'm tired of content created with sole intention of ramping up the number of tanks needed. I'm talking about stacking bleeds and debuffs that accomplish nothing more than demand tank switching on the boss. This also includes the "second boss or adds that spawn in the middle of the encounter" as well. These mechanics are nice once in awhile but have nearly become "necessary" to keep guilds from swapping the 2nd/3rd tanks to DPS for encounters when they are not needed.
4) This is the large one for me and likely not so big for others. The aspect of tanking does not "exist" in any other gaming genre. Some genres (co-op) have attempted to include it, but hasn't really worked that well IMO. It doesn't even really exist in the tabletop games of old that MMORPGs are derived from. It certainly does not exist in real world combat - even in medieval times.
No matter how loud the tank shouts - he is not going to reliably break his enemy's attention away from the rogue that just backstabbed him, the mage that is winding up that Armageddon spell (which will somehow not harm the tank either) or the healer that is keeping the tank alive. Tanks in MMORPGs are effectively metal boxed mouths without teeth. It makes little sense to me why any disciplined combatant is going to pay attention to the guy wearing armor that is stabbing with toothpicks and trying to bash with a shield while letting that rear line continue to barrage them with nukes. Let's not forget that the tank is immune to all those nukes as well... amazing how fantasy games disregard friendly fire.
Yes, yes - it's a game but all games require an anchor in reality to be based on (notice that most MMORPGs have normal gravity and physics rules - obviously some rules from reality must be present). I can suspend my disbelief rather easily to imagine someone throwing a massive fireball of destruction toward the bad guy's face - but I cannot believe that the bad guy is always too stupid to think the verbal slurs from the metal boxed mouth in front of him is the reason for why his face is on fire/limbs charred or blood gushing from a wound in his back.
It is actually an insult to me for developers to continually create AI so stupid as to not realize there is a healer or massive artillery back there. As long as the "numbers" pass the equation and the tank generates more agro than the healer's heals or the DPS nukes do - well golly gee... that big boss is never the wiser.
Why MMORPG gamers are so content to put up with lame and underdeveloped AI that requires a tank role this far into the genre's life cycle is just strange to me. I'd rather see the tank role be removed or at least deemphasized.
Nice shootin', Tex! Good stuff.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Comments
Khm, EVERY "tank" class has also DPS option. No problem at all. Wow, Rift, Swtor, ....
Agree with your arguments about 3), less or not at all on 1) or 2).
Don't agree with the "tanks are boring" sentiment.
On the contrary, they're usually far more interesting to play than healers or DPS imo. Especially if you're playing a tank that relies on active mitigation (like the Death Knight or Monk in WoW).
A DPS doesn't need to account for boss mechanics as much. Outside of tank & spank fights (which are boring for everyone), the tank will usually have far more things to do than a DPS who can just cycle through targets and repeat their rotation. Kiting and moving the boss, interrupts, reacting to damage spikes, LoS pulling mobs, intercepting mobs that lost aggro...
Even leveling is as fun as you make it. You do usually kill things slower in most games, but you can pull 2x (or way more) the amount of mobs.
People don't play tanks because it's a position of responsibility, because you do get massive amounts of hate if you fail and because "big numbers" are more instantly appealing. Usually a tank is also under far more pressure to maintain their gear and to play a lot in order to run instances with guildmembers.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
I had been a healer player for the longest time, but in the last days of Vanguard, I turned into a tank player. I really loved my Dread Knight. In the last years of the game, SOE finally managed to balance them right. They are very fun solo, especially on higher levels, because of their AoE abilities, and they are okay in group because they had been no longer in the disadvantage in respect to aggro generation. Well, and about half a year later or so SOE announced they would stop running Vanguard. Sucks.
Anyway, if I would find a new MMO that would convince me, I would retry playing a tank.
Slower leveling, well I guess that depends upon the game. In Vanguard, you could go offensive mode. Less aggro generation, but a lot more dps. Except for Paladin, they still sucked in respect to dps, especially on higher levels.
But yeah, more solist abilities, especially for the Warrior, would have been great, such as runspeed and emergency teleport through items, much like Rogue. I probably would have changed the Warrior class around a lot if someone at SOE would have put me in charge of that class. Only class in all Vanguard that all out sucked in solo play, and they havent been that hugely much better in group play to justify that. In fact, they've been barely much better.
Tanks are scattered around any game en masse! It's the "good" tanks you have to worry about actually, the ones who can properly control aggro and can keep your party alive during raids with good control and decision making.
I tried playing as a "tank" character in firefall, not my thing, I'm really more of a damager type player so I guess that's another factor to consider, if that type of playstyle is your thing.
I've always been a bit fascinated with tanking, and share a sort-of love-hate dichotomy with it. From everything I've been told, I'm good at it. I like the concept of it, and the strategy-developing part is enchanting when a boss is proving recalcitrant to normal tactics.
Yet I prefer to play the healer because I don't like dealing with THOSE people (well, and also because healing is simply more fun). No matter how many times I make a tank, gear her up well while levelling, tank dungeons and everything, within the last 10 levels the quality of individual I meet plummets from 'usually fun' to 'how do you even qualify as a living being' and I stop tanking right before level cap and go back to healing or play a solo dps for a change. I have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with those disruptive players (and particularly the 'hurry hurry hurry' ones). I'd rather tank for 4 or 5 undergeared newbies who will make the run a two hour affair but make doing so pleasant than one overgeared, well-oiled group that features that one guy who thinks he's god's gift to women, games, and whatever god-awful class he's chosen to play.
The reason why there arent's so many tanks are similar to why are there a lack of healer in bg/dungeon/raid/etc. It is because if you FAIL YOUR ROLE, you'll wipe the freaking group. You are expected to know the fights, know the layout of the dungeon, be aware of when to pop your CDS when the boss is performing his special attack.
Well what happens if DPS FAILS to perform their role? Boss dies slower unless he has a timer which he enrages.. Or enemy players dies a minute later... In another word.. it is less forgiving as a tank....
As a tank, there are times where i had to deal with dps who thinks they are a superstar... I mean ffs, i dont mind if dps helps me pull like 2 to 3 mobs, but if they purposely PULL like 3-4 GROUPS of mobs(he's a mage) while im buffing myself up, DIES and calls ME NOOBIE TANK L2TANK, it kinda diminishes the `fun` experience of playing a game.
These are more example...
(1) WTF TANK, MOVE FASTER... GOGOGO.. when you had to wait for you healer to drink after several pulls...
(2) WTF TANK, GET AGGRO, when you just dinged 90 with blues while dps are heroic raid geared in lfg.
(3) WTF TANK, MOBS!!!??!!.. when they blindly run into a pack of patrol when you are about to lure a boss when the rest of the groups have no problem following you.
In mmos, i usually play healers/tanks, i tend to play healers more nowadays..It feels like a cruise in pve(but not in pvp lol, but thats for another thread).
And in WoW, you played with 4 others, or 9 others, or 24 others most of the time. I don't see those numbers massive.
4 players tops is not massive however you spin. Is not massive even when a website says so.
and you have .. and yet most of WoW end-game gameplay is not massive.
You are mistaken. I am not arguing 4 players is massive. I am arguing that most MMO gameplay is NOT massive, and hence, D3 is close enough.
If you keep using the word massive for 4 or 10 players that word loses its meaning and you have to find another word to replace. Thankfully words don't change their meanings only because some guy feels like changing it eitherwise we had to come up with new words everyday.
I didn't read everything, so I don't know, if this was mentioned already. But in most progress PvE games you need more tanks during the dungeon phase than later in the raids.
I see this in Wildstar again: in raids, you need 20 people, so 4 groups à 5 people. 1 group is made of 1 tank and 1 healer, so you would suggest in the raid you would need 4 tanks and 4 healers. But no, only 2 tanks are needed, the others wasted the time they invested to learn to tank.
Same situation happened before in ESO.
1) Tanking is the role that requires most knowledge of the content. If the tank doesn't know wtf he's doing, your pug ain't goin nowhere.
2) Most MMOs ignore the PvP tanking role so going tank often means you'll be useless in PvP.
3) Tanking has no e-peen value with big numbers, unlike dps and heal. Nobody ever goes "OMG look at my 40k blok BITYCHeZ !!!!111"
The whole -- one tank per group but only one or two tanks per raid is a major problem with the design of the games. It really does make tanks have problems bridging that gap from a group tank to a raid tank. The fact that raid guilds tend to funnel ALL of the good tank equipment onto their primary tanks while DPS gear tends to be spread among the dps players makes it even harder for a tank to break out. This is especially bad if the tank is coming into a game late. If a tank ever needs to "catch up" they are not needed.
Really, I think there should be a spell that is for raids that combines say 4 tanks into one combined health pool. They work together but are one. This would make raiding a lot more interesting for tanks and allow some interesting mechanics.
Tanks are unpopular and rare for many reasons - most reasons have already been bludgeoned to death in this thread.
I have come to absolutely loathe MMOs that still must use a tanking role as a primary group role. This opinion has been forged by a mixture of a few things over my many years of playing MMORPGs:
1) The general attitude that players that will play tanks tend to possess. I have played a tank, healer, CC/buffer and DPS over my years and I have experienced first hand what happens to many players (even to me) when they fill that "in-demand" job - They lose patience with others. They tend to be very quick to vote-kick or drop group to requeue since their queue times are nonexistent.
2) The queue times for non-tanks. Since every group (that does worthwhile content) requires a tank - there is always a line waiting for a tank. Healers have queues too but they are generally not long as there are more players willing to heal than tank.
3) Arbitrary mechanics. I'm tired of content created with sole intention of ramping up the number of tanks needed. I'm talking about stacking bleeds and debuffs that accomplish nothing more than demand tank switching on the boss. This also includes the "second boss or adds that spawn in the middle of the encounter" as well. These mechanics are nice once in awhile but have nearly become "necessary" to keep guilds from swapping the 2nd/3rd tanks to DPS for encounters when they are not needed.
4) This is the large one for me and likely not so big for others. The aspect of tanking does not "exist" in any other gaming genre. Some genres (co-op) have attempted to include it, but hasn't really worked that well IMO. It doesn't even really exist in the tabletop games of old that MMORPGs are derived from. It certainly does not exist in real world combat - even in medieval times.
No matter how loud the tank shouts - he is not going to reliably break his enemy's attention away from the rogue that just backstabbed him, the mage that is winding up that Armageddon spell (which will somehow not harm the tank either) or the healer that is keeping the tank alive. Tanks in MMORPGs are effectively metal boxed mouths without teeth. It makes little sense to me why any disciplined combatant is going to pay attention to the guy wearing armor that is stabbing with toothpicks and trying to bash with a shield while letting that rear line continue to barrage them with nukes. Let's not forget that the tank is immune to all those nukes as well... amazing how fantasy games disregard friendly fire.
Yes, yes - it's a game but all games require an anchor in reality to be based on (notice that most MMORPGs have normal gravity and physics rules - obviously some rules from reality must be present). I can suspend my disbelief rather easily to imagine someone throwing a massive fireball of destruction toward the bad guy's face - but I cannot believe that the bad guy is always too stupid to think the verbal slurs from the metal boxed mouth in front of him is the reason for why his face is on fire/limbs charred or blood gushing from a wound in his back.
It is actually an insult to me for developers to continually create AI so stupid as to not realize there is a healer or massive artillery back there. As long as the "numbers" pass the equation and the tank generates more agro than the healer's heals or the DPS nukes do - well golly gee... that big boss is never the wiser.
Why MMORPG gamers are so content to put up with lame and underdeveloped AI that requires a tank role this far into the genre's life cycle is just strange to me. I'd rather see the tank role be removed or at least deemphasized.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
How about this...
You yell at some dude across the street and question his parentage... as he races across the street to beat the living shit out of you... at the same time someone throws an egg at him and hits him square in the head...
Who is the guy going to beat the shit out of first? The guy who yelled at him or the guy who just pelted him with an egg?
No, I must kill this guy who called me a twerp... those eggs don't mean a thing...
You missed the point. Congratulations.
Of course games do not have to work exactly like the real. In fact it would be utterly impossible to make current MMORPGs come anywhere close to the complexity of true combat.
The thing you are missing is that design wise they have made something exactly backwards from a known working system. This generally results in a system that doesn't work. Even worse that working system is something human are hard and soft wired and conditioned to through thousands of years of the natural world.
Its like making an MMORPG where you can only run when you move backwards. Sure you can do it. But its stupid.
I must congratulate you on missing the point yet again and I also congratulate you for supporting my original point. If the fact is that it would be utterly impossible to make current MMORPGs come anywhere close to the complexity of true combat then I see no point in trying. I must also congratulate the genius who came up with this system that is backwards from a known working system. It is this system that millions of people all over the world enjoy playing with. I've enjoyed playing with that system for many years now and I'm glad I encountered it.
You do make a good point in that "it's stupid", and I agree that the system is rather stupid, but just because something is stupid doesn't mean that it can't be entertaining and enjoyed by others. Since this "stupid" system was introduced in gaming trillions of dollars have been made from it and it isn't going to stop anytime soon. Capitalizing on a system that millions, perhaps billions, of people the world over enjoy using every day doesn't sound so stupid once you really think about it.
If you want realism in gaming then I suggest you look elsewhere. MMO"RPG"s are the home of the tank and the trinity, and tankers aren't going away anytime soon. If you don't believe me then just ask around. I doubt you'll get much support from the masses for the elimation of tanks just because the tanking system "is stupid".
I've got a feevah, and the only prescription... is more cowbell.
I do think that tanks will be de-emphasized, if not outright removed. It won't be immediately but there has been more and more stir in recent years over queue times and the issues surrounding having a group of players beholden to one or two single players to be able to even begin content.
It's just not a good plan to tell the larger portion of your playerbase to stand in line while they wait 20 to 45+ minutes for someone to show up to "play the tank" - especially in content that is in intended to be repeated numerous times a day.
For the long term, I expect tanks to have the larger scale raids custom tailored to require them, but I see single party dungeon type content going tankless or becoming very lenient in letting "tanking" classes spec more toward DPS than tanking.
Something has to change though - having the majority of the playerbase (which play DPS) standing around waiting in line to do daily content is not going to convince people to keep paying a sub or continue playing the game - not when there are a multitude of options these days. The genre is not like it was back in 2000-2006 when there was only really EQ1 and WoW as the big dogs.
That is not what I'm looking for from my games.
Nice shootin', Tex! Good stuff.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.