Are Tanks Obsolete Outside of Operations?

Okay so what we're doing here is exploring alternatives to the current Trinity queue design, which is obviously not working out right in really any MMO. There's a few solutions being tossed around, let's explore yours first.

Eliminate matchmade content
This is basically what you're proposing. Queues are for Solo players with companions (therefore why have a queue?), and Group content is for PUGs, friends, and guildies. In other words — matchmade PvE clearly isn't working, so just obsolete it and assume all matchmade players actually just want an easy solo experience, and all Group players are satisfied manually PUGing and being challenged.

I don't think this is correct, though. There are a lot of reasons players might want to team up with other players (a very unique gameplay style you don't replicate solo or with bots), but not feel comfortable with the 'classic' MMO model of chat PUGing:

• Shyness
• Lack of confidence
• Lack of experience
• Lack of gear
• Lack of social connections on server
• Lack of desire to stand in Fleet being bored while waiting for group to fill or responses to request
• Leveling and being spread across 3-4 planets in the FP's level range
• Lack of time to patiently form a group
• Lack of expertise to form a group if people aren't already doing it coincidentally when you log in
• Lack of understanding about how to go about rounding up a PUG
• Language barriers
• ...

I'm probably hitting maybe 25% of a good comprehensive list. Queued matchmaking definitely facilitates more people seeing the content:

• The queue determines whether you're in, not the PUG leader, who may have unrealistic or biased requirements.
• The queue promises everyone involved that the content can be completed with what it composes (the inaccuracy of this statement is the fault of design errors, not matchmade content)
• The queue transcends chat channel barriers, language barriers, location barriers, server barriers (in most games COUGH COUGH BIOWARE COUGH), etc
• The queue makes things much faster and more efficient for everyone involved
• ... (etc etc)

Basically what I'm saying here is that the queue legitimately does enable significantly more group-positive players to achieve that goal than you saw before the addition of queueable content.

These are just hard numbers — if you polled Blizzard about how many accounts completed, eg, Heroic Dungeons each day before the queue was implemented and after, you would probably be shocked by the difference. Even more extreme for Raid content.

So you could remove queuing, but understand that diverting all those players into a solo experience would not be considered equivalent to them, for the same reason unranked PvP would probably die off in short order if you filled WZs with 1 player + 15-31 bots.

Yes, people could still load the matches and play it, but would they be having fun? That's not an easy question to answer because humans are very, very tricky creatures — what 'should' please them on paper doesn't always succeed in practice.

You can look at GW1 as a sort-of example. In GW1 it was possible to solo most PvE content using a team of CPU-controlled allies and a great deal of micro-management.

Thus, in many way GW1 became a chat hub (player outposts) with minigames connected to it (soloable missions). While many consider GW1 to be a classic and very good game, it also never really garnered much overall attention or momentum.

And — many players still grouped up to do content, simply because they liked grouping up to do content (and it was very, very forgiving when tackled by a group of competent players).

Compare to GW2, where they 180'd that design and made it a game with no CPU allies and a heavy emphasis on cooperative player interaction. Which one seems to have captivated players' attention more?

Obviously that's not entirely fair — GW2 has a lot of other features that blow GW1 away in terms of market appeal — but it is something worth considering when you ask "Does an MMO need to require or heavily encourage player interaction and cooperation?"

That's a very poor snipjob, because you took this statement:

• You should follow WoW's example where it worked, and not the things WoW tried which didn't work

and transmuted it into this:

• You should try 1 thing WoW did which didn't work out well, and if that fails, you should give up despite the predictable repercussions

So... no. That is not what I'm saying.

It's not, though. For reasons I've explained in detail.

The fundamental issue is that players prefer to learn on-the-job and need to learn on the job. You can increase their confidence somewhat with training or practice, but only dedicated players will do that.

It's just not addressing the problem where it actually lies. Mandatory training may help somewhat (we'll see in WoD for WoW's case), but it won't address the fundamental issues.

You're still dealing with this circuit fault:

• We want matchmade content
• We want matchmade content that uses the Trinity system
• Therefore we need matchmade content that requires a Tank
• Therefore we design matchmade content that requires a Tank
• Tanks are in short supply
• Therefore we design matchmade content that has very long and frustrating queue times
• We want our matchmade content to not have long and frustrating queue times
• Therefore we ????

You can choose to:

• Remove Tanking (Tacticals)
• Ignore the queue time issue (classic approach)
• Make a concerted effort to create more Tanks

Tanking already has the highest barrier to entry simply by virtue of what it asks players to do (go first and lead and be blamed for organizational errors).

Any matchmade system that preserves the requirement for a Tank will have higher queue times. However, it you as a designer decide that the benefits of the rich gameplay experience a Trinity can provide, outweigh the inflated queue times — then it should be priority #1 to make the limiting reagent (Tank) as accessible as possible to the playerbase.

Seriously — the role itself is a barrier to entry. It does not need any additional barriers to entry. Relaxing as many of them as possible is a fundamental starting point to preserving matchmade Trinity content.

In other words — if you start from a premise that removing Tanking is an unacceptable solution, the next best thing you can do is reduce the impact of Tank requirements on queue times as much as possible.

The only way to do that is to bend over backwards to encourage more players to try and succeed at Tanking.

No, I pointed out the one example that you gave that failed, and built on that. One thing they tried failed, so you don't want us to do that, but you do want us to try the next thing they tried to overcome people not being willing to put up with other people's crap. This is also doomed to failure, because it's not resolving the problem of having to put up with other people's crap. The solution that most of the tanks that I know, including myself, is to only group with friends/guild mates. This does nothing to alleviate the problem for others, but does alleviate my having to put up with other people's crap by removing them from the equation.

Until you can address that, having to put up with other people's crap, you're not doing anything that will, long term, solve the problem. It's a Band-Aid, at best, on a nuclear blast zone. The only thing this really does is give tanks a bit more dps potential, and really, in an Op, that isn't the problem. You need to fix John Wayne DPS, and DPS spec'd "healer" classes that queue as Healers to get into a FP and then don't throw any heals, even on themselves. Tell me how all this is going to correct that, and then we have some common ground to work from. Until then, the Band-Aid isn't going to have any long term affect.

I have to admit, I've come to like tanking quite a bit. My knee-jerk reaction to 'role-nuetral' flashpoints is to be mad, because...I wanna tank! Come to think of it, part of the reason that some 'make tanking easier' suggestions rub me the wrong way, could be that I don't want to lose my instant queue pops. But Bioware has to look at the big picture, naturally.
Well...you might be surprised. Most MMOs have a lot to offer beyond grouping, and SWTOR, even more so.
I don't see a need to separate it out. People who prefer not to group are people who prefer not to group, regardless of the reason.
What makes you think that? It seems like the simpler explanation is that they just aren't interested in grouping. I mean, is there some evidence that led you to believe that?
Yeah. Now: someone like that is NOT interested in coordination, teamwork, etc. In short, they're not interested in group play as such. So why are they in a group? To get the weekly reward, to get gear that only drops in group content, maybe to see the story. But following along, eyes to floor, isn't fun in and of itself. It's not something you'd do for its own sake. So...to me, these people aren't interested in group content, per se.

Now, they could make tanking easier so that this kind of person could tank as well as dps. But this is my point: why? Why go to all this trouble to get people to do something they're not interested in? How about instead, give them stuff they are interested in? And if, after that happens, there aren't enough people left who genuinely enjoy grouping to get a group together, because the people who aren't interested in grouping are no longer compelled to...what can I say. Too bad.

I'm not opposed to extra bribes for tanks, exactly. But...why? It seems like there's a minority who loves grouping for its own sake, and a majority who can be bribed to do it. By offering the bribes, Bioware would be catering to the minority. That's fine with me, I mean, I'm not opposed to it because it's "unfair." But what's the point? Wouldn't there be more profit in catering to the majority rather than the minority?
Well, I think there's the distinction between "interested in group play" and "willing to do it for the rewards, but would just as soon play solo if the same rewards were available." Your example of the eyes-to-the-floor dps payer captures that exactly. Again, I wouldn't call that person interested in group play, really.

This is basically why WoW took the "screw this" approach and just:

• Dialed Tank threat modifiers through the ceiling, such that 1-2 AoEs will usually hold aggro on very nearly anything (assuming you keep attacking them)
• Made Tank gear equivalent to DPS gear
• Made Tank survival an engaging minigame / rotation such that by "playing" (like a DPS does) you're also "surviving" (in a way you are tangibly aware of)

With those changes, yes veteran MMO Tanks find matchmade content laughably depressing — but they have HM / NM (Normal / Heroic) for Tank skill still mattering.

Meanwhile, uncertain Tanks who step into matchmade content don't really have to stress about:

• Threat / Aggro
• Gear
• Their own survival (if wearing appropriate-Rating gear for the content, and pressing Buttons every GCD)

This means the only thing a Tank is "missing" when fresh on content is fight patterns / positioning / etc. When that's the only obstacle, it is much less intimidating, and much less frustrating for other players (since the only concern is explaining "Put this mob here when it glows red").

I'm not going to lie — even given all that, Tanks are still the queue-breaker, and Tanks still have to deal with enormous frustration and abuse from other players. It's not a magic wand that fixes everything.

But it is a significant improvement and encourages significantly more Tanks to queue up and try it. There really, truly is a difference.

The key point is that you need to:

1. Convince people to try Tanking (zero barriers to entry)
2. Give them a positive-feedback experience that makes them want to do it again (design matchmade content to be easy to succeed at Tanking in)

DPS is a popular role because it meets both of these criteria. Your leveling gear is your entry DPS gear. And most of the time, showing up and pressing buttons as DPS will reward you with dead bosses — it's a positive-feedback experience.

That does not mean that doing max DPS in HM / NM is easy. Likewise, making Tanking forgiving and encouraging at the entry level would not mean making Tanking stupid or trivial in dedicated content.

(I'm sorry if I seem like a lunatic here, but again, this is probably the topic in MMOs I'm most passionate about. I've struggled for years across multiple games watching endless players frustrated by lack of Tanks and the effect on their gameplay, and reconciling that with my own personal happiness as a Tank.)

Actually it worked, which is why I'm arguing for it.

So... uh...

For how long? I can assure you, even in games where I ran a tank where the gear spec was identical to being a dps on the same class, the problem remains, it's not I'm unwilling to tank, it's I'm unwilling to tank for PuGs. No amount of bribery is going to overcome decades of putting up with other people's crap to do what I enjoy doing, but hitting the queue with a full group of people, even if they suck, that I know is infinitely preferable to hearing all about how I suck for refusing to tank somebody else's stupidity. Nothing that you've suggested, or that WoW has done is going to fix that issue permanently, as I said, it's a Band-Aid, it may look good for a while, but that behavior is going to resurface, and when it does, people that haven't experienced it before will be out, and people like me, that have seen it everywhere they've ever played will just be laughing.

Nothing that you've suggested has made me willing to forego my current GF strategy of hitting the queue with a group of friends instead of randomly, and hoping I get a good pull from the pool. I have three tanks and a healer that won't ever be in a queue on their own, no matter what anyone does to try to "bribe" me. They can't pay me enough to run a FP with 3 random people, when I can run the same FP with friends/guild mates, and have a good time, no matter how it comes out. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

This is why you need to separate out matchmade content, and PUG+ content. In a coordinated environment you can leave Tanking much more complex and involved because Tanking inherently requires an unspoken contract with everyone else present to work out well.

It's just asking too much to expect matchmade content to also support detailed and patient Trinity design with Tank emphasis. You can do it, but everyone is just shooting themself in the foot.

They do, but it's not important here, because we're struggling to address issues with the Trinity system which inherently doesn't affect group-disinterested MMO sideliners.

And you do need to separate that out, because you would see people running easy solo content for the same reason you see people running solo Dailies — it's easy and solo. That doesn't mean those players were queuing for matchmade content before, and are now relieved.


This is an inaccurate assumption. Most eyes-to-the-floor players are intelligent and interested, just not lead-the-pack types.

This is clear because in the vast majority of groups that don't know, if you explain tactics, most players will eagerly make an effort to follow those tactics regardless of role. The outlier troublemakers / idiots stand out to us, but in my experience they are not the majority.

Most players are perfectly happy to cooperate in group tactics, and in fact quite excited to learn and watch things work out when they do it right. That's a very different thing than being motivated to lead the charge and explain everything — that is a much more minority personality type, both in-game and IRL.

Yes it is, because they're playing while doing that. They're not on /follow.

They just want someone else to lead and signal when, where, and how to play. Whether that's a spunky DPS or a dedicated Tank or a demented Healer (<.<) isn't important, just that someone else is carrying the torch because they're not confident in their own ability to do so.

Well, you don't have to. You can leave things how they are: Tanks are rare, content requires Tanks, queue times are extreme for DPS. It's just "how it is".

MMO developers keep eroding that across the board, though. So they clearly have reason to believe that's not an acceptable formula. Hence Tacticals, Tank Bolster, and boosting SM Ops to 2:14 instead of 2:6 Tank ratio.

If you keep following an attitude of "Well obviously anyone that doesn't like Tanking now, or is intimidated by it, is just too inferior and pathetic a player to be worth caring about" — Tanking is going to go extinct.

No one wants to put up with the minority of available Tanks, and devs are increasingly going to respond to that, especially in new games. It's really a difference between stubbornly going down with a sinking ship (Change Nothing / Let the Losers Deal With It) or swimming for a new shore (Redefine what Tanking is and does in a more broadly-appealing way).


I just don't agree here. There's far too many players in the queue at all times for it to be strictly about completing Dailies & Weeklies.

I'll concede if BioWare shows up with numbers heavily suggesting otherwise, but based on my own observations and experiences, I think most players love playing their class & role, are exciting but group content, but just can't provide everything that matchmade content currently asks for (hence the proliferation of Tacticals and SM and Bolster and ... ).

If BioWare truly believed no one wanted to group in their MMO, why would they keep attacking the issues from new directions and trying to make grouping more doable for more people?

The problem with this argument is it's irrelevant.

As I've stressed — Tanking will always be the minority role because of what it asks of the player, and how easy it is for other players to disrupt a Tank's "art form".

You can either:

• Remove Tanking from matchmade content
• Increase Tank quantity in matchmade content as much as possible

WoW went for #2. It is working.

• Are Tanks still a minority / queue breaker? Yes. Usually. Not always. I've sat in queue as Tank for up to 5-10 minutes sometimes on busy nights or odd hours of morning (ZOMG?!) while waiting on a Healer or 3rd DPS. That simply never happened in WOTLK. Ever. It's not lack of players — it's quantity of willing Tanks who want their fast queue and can serve as Tank adequately due to the changes.
• Are there more people Tanking than ever before? I concede not having actual data, but I'm confidently going to say "Yes", because: it's easier to do it now, aggro is a breeze, and matchmade content is very forgiving to Tanks (players are not, but the content itself is).
• Is Tanking still challenging and demanding in serious coop content? Absolutely, yes. Perhaps more than ever in some ways due to the subtleties of Active Mitigation.

This is the sad reality you have to face down: if you want Tanking to be required in matchmade content, you can't punish matchmade content by artificially slowing it down waiting for a Tank to show up.

If your argument is "Then just remove Tanking from matchmade content and don't touch my role" — okay... but don't be shocked when Tanking starts getting gradually phased out of non-matchmade content too, because the community is steadily learning to enjoy not playing with a Tank around, and the devs respond to that.

This has been a great discussion guys but I'm plum burned out and going out for the night.

Will pick this up again tomorrow.