So Why is Threat Invisible?

There is nothing "invisible" about threat; in fact, it is just the opposite. Unlike DPS, or even healing, where you are always wondering if you are doing enough, threat is right out in the open. Are the mobs focused on me, yes or no? If no, do something abut it. You do not need a meter to tell you if you are able to get, and maintain, the mobs attention. Just watch your monitor.

Lazy players are lazy.

Threat management in EQ 2 was actually a major game mechanic. EQ2 had a much much more indepth combat mechaincs . It was a much more chalenging game, pulling and threat mechanics were actually an art form and was required knowledge for a groups success. SWTOR is a stripped down version of WOW. Taunt every six seconds and tab around and AOE. this game is marketed at new MMO players and younger gamers i would not even call it casual as casual veterans are fastly disenchanted as well unless they reroll or focus on the fluff game which is thin as well.

This is what bad tanks are made of.

Bad players will always be bad as well.

Terrible players will keyboard turn and mouse click your abilities all day long until something goes wrong and then fight to try and get the mob back.

A good tank will monitor threat levels on all targets and learn to adapt to situations before they become a problem. Good tanks watch those values and notice a particular mob slowly losing interest and realize they need to put more pressure on that particular one BEFORE it goes to someone else.

Making threat level visible to me, truely isnt necessary as a tank. As many pointed out, if the NPC is attacking me, i know i have threat.. simple.

However, I would like to see a target-of-target be implimented as in some cases its hard to determine if one or several mobs surrounding you and your group truely are targetting you. This is in essence a "nice to have"...

Threat visibility i dont think is necessary for this MMO though, and DPS just needs to learn you dont mash keys just to mash them, but to be systematic so u dont pull aggro.

[EDIT]

I would also like to add i am Jugg-Tank, which most know that we are primarily single target tanking... And those that do use Juggs know that tanking HM is quite interesting as a healer can pull aggro from us before taunt CD is even up...

Jugg needs a definitive Threat Generation buff, and i hope that BW is all ove this... It can get quite frustrating in boss fights when you are barely able to maintain aggro as Soresu Form seems to be lacking its intended ability.. or it needs a buff.

Wrong, bad tanks are those that need to constantly look at flow charts, so they can know, "Am I doing this right? Am I doing this right? Am I doing this right? Am I doing this right? Uh-oh, it has been 5 seconds since I last checked, am I doing this right?" Once you know, you know.

This breads bad DPS.

A good DPS watches threat values and learns exactly what they can do before pulling from the tank. A good DPS will ride the tanks threat as close as the game mechanics allow.

Terrible players think this way. Bad players play the game several seconds behind good ones (ie you play RIGHT NOW where the good player was several seconds ahead of you and stopped something bad from happening). Bad player are reactionary, good players are preventative.

Good players watch all values in real time and know exactly what's going on during any point in the fight. Good players don't check to see if they're doing it right, good players check to make sure things are in order and as they should be.

When they put in DPS meters threat meters aren't really needed. Tank threat = tank DPS multiplied by a threat coefficient.

Well, by that logic, a GOOD tank wouldn't NEED those threat meters, because they'd know how their abilities work, and know how the abilities of other classes work. Back when I used to tank in EQ, DAoC, CoH, etc, they didn't have such things. You were known as a good tank by virtue of being, well, a good tank, who knew your stuff.

Now? Now you can just run an addon (or it's part of the game) that shows you all the information that you used to have to LEARN, and lets you just poke buttons when the game prompts you to, by showing you a falling number.

So really, what you're describing as a "good tank" to me is more of a "lazy tank". They want the numbers in front of them so they don't have to really THINK about it. They can just go "oh look, mob #4's threat level to me is dropping, okay, click on it and hit my button, there, got it back".

Too many meters, mods, and other things takes the "art" out of playing a game well. It removes a lot of the actual SKILL, to me.

You keep saying "a good X watches the meters". Why does being TOLD when to push a button make them "good?" It doesn't make them "good" at it. It just teaches them to react to a specific number. There's no skill in it, just watching a number and mashing buttons until that number gets too high, then pushing a different button to make it go down again.

Twenty pages and nobody has been able to explain how a game that has to be balanced around the idea that you're going to grab aggro because there's no way to tell how close you are to the tank until its too late is going to be HARDER than a game balanced around the idea that you won't be pulling aggro because you have the tools to avoid doing so.