Are Tanks Obsolete Outside of Operations?

Well, if bribery is how it gets halfway done, then it won't get completely done. Tanks tank because the activity itself is fun for them and they have chosen to get good at it. Bribery does nothing but placate the egos of desperate bribers. Face it, tanking is for the most part a thankless job. It's also not an easy job. There are not enough players who want to engage it at a result.

As a former front line scout, no offense taken with your bad military analogy. We are taught to adapt. Wuss desk jockeys look for bribes as a way out of having to work for something. But that's just my experience.

It's apt, in a way.

What making Tanking easy to get into does is shorten queue times — content where high-quality Tanking is much less important than just someone willing to do it, and capable of doing it to an adequate degree, possibly with some coaching and direction.

You can still leave Tanking difficult to master (as WoW does), because that only matters in "real" (note quotes, don't hate me) content like HM / NM Op, places where you're PUGing at worst and have much more control over the selection and much less urgency about it (vs. a queue that needs to pop in a timely fashion or people get disgruntled).

Essentially the idea is to open the bottom end of Tanking by making it much more tempting, much more rewarding (in a generic / non-spiritual sense), and much easier to reach an adequate level of function for without inconveniencing people.

Queues are lowest-common-denominator coop (but it's very important to exist), so they can survive on LCD Tanks too.

The best Tanks still stand out, get recruited to guilds, get +Reputation with their server, etc. Ones that optimize their gear are noticeable. It doesn't diminish the value of a good Tank, it just brings up the baseline value of a bad or mediocre Tank and makes them 'good enough' for getting queued content done.

That in turn allows Queues to keep using Trinity instead of deleting it entirely (which instantly obsoletes Tanks, because if people can survive without a Tank... they will jubilantly stop waiting for Tanks to show up and be bossy and do less DPS).

Yeah, something like that.

The literal equivalent in WoW would be more stuff like (this is their Active Mitigation system influencing stat values):

• Haste (Alacrity) noticeably increases Resource regen, and Tanks can spend those Resources for defensive buffs (eg, if Heat Blast had no CD and you used Flame Burst to generate stacks, more Flame Bursts faster = more consistent defensive buff uptime, so you value resource gen)
• Expertise (Accuracy) is valuable to Tanks because the activation of defense buffs / resource gen can Miss, and Missing it can get you killed if it messes up your timing or waste resources
• Crit (Crit ) triggers additional benefits in Tank spec, such as giving you a +15% bonus to Shield Chance every time you Crit (random un-balanced example)

There are some examples, though, of simpler conversions yeah, which may be more in line with SWTOR's system / limits.

I don't think anyone would seriously complain if there was a system like you suggested:

• Power → Defense
• Crit → Shield
• Surge → Absorb
• Alacrity → ?
• Accuracy → ?

Since your set of gear would still be totally functional in either spec. I don't think anyone's really discouraged from Tanking in the moment because of low DPS while doing the job, it's more the burden of an entire specialized set of gear which penalizes you when not Tanking.

Modern MMOs can't make the bizarre assumption that someone who's Tank spec right now wants to be Tank-spec 24 / 7 every time they log in.

That absolutely was the classic system, but it's just not the standard anymore, and people will favor the "cooler" set of gear or the one that makes them feel most powerful when soloing.

Again, there are absolutely a minority of players (hi) who are perfectly happy being the slower, un-killable wall of duracrete whether grouped or soloing. But that is the problem: they are absolutely a minority, reflected in queue times.

I really hope its coming to that, gone would be the days of trolling tanks, tanking just so they can be nasty to the group without getting kicked.

Now all we have to worry about are the DPS that still think they're tanks......

You said it ... PUGging at worst. We aren't talking about tanks who are accomplished and get scooped by raid guilds. We're talking about growing more tanks. Changing the program at high level just creates a wall for the borderline tanks ... which will be the lion's share of them - or they'd already be tanking is a guild.

For my money, here's what's needed: training. Up and coming tanks need to be personally taught how to tank. How to have their heads on a swivel. How to recognize mob threat levels in a moment's notice. How to aggro without taunting. How to move mobs around the field to better set up DPS attacks while keeping the healer(s) clean. How to work around a core set of abilities so as to preserve certain abilities for "oh sh**" moments. How to recognize certain attacks and call fopr interrupts. How to mark and assign targets based on comparing player strengths and weaknesses with mob strengths and weaknesses.

I could make this list go a full page. And nothing on it would have anything to do with gear or nerfing a "lesser" version. Existing tanks just need to share the wealth that is knowledge without chastizing mistakes. OJT ...

WoW tried the "training" approach. It just made people not bother with training, because LCD players who log in don't want to spend time in "class".

For sure, if SWTOR had the WoW equivalent of Proving Grounds — little solo mini-instances with an artificial "group" of CPU players to practice with — it would definitely help some nervous players get more confident. And it could be used to brush up on some basic skills.

Unfortunately PGs are one of the least-used features in the entire game.

It won't motivate enough people, it's just not how you fix queued Trinity content. I was so stubborn for so long about this, but the reality is that most players just aren't very motivated. "Bad" is a dangerous word because most players could be "good" if they were motivated (but they're not, because it's just 1 computer game).

To fix queue times, the first thing you need to do is make a decision:

• Queued content is serious content you can matchmake for. If this means a high failure rate or extremely long queue times, then so be it. Quality > quantity.
• Queued content exists just to allow anyone to see everything we offer. It should have forgiving failure rates and very short queue times. Quantity > qualtiy.

Option #1 pleases hardcore and dedicated players (this does not mean obsessive / high-playtime... just hardcore & dedicated RPG / MMOers). It excludes almost everyone else, who just shrugs and logs out without doing much.

Option #2 offends hardcore & dedicated players, but makes everyone else happy because they actually get to play.

The thing with Option #2 is that hardcore/dedicated players still have HM / NM and equivalents, whereas in Option #1 they want those and also queued content to cater to them. It turns the entire game into a hardcore/dedicated PvE environment.

That's satisfying to the dedicated and basically renders PvE a mysterious failfest / exclusionary activity for everyone else, and that's bad for a game that should be appealing on a massive scale to everyone involved.

I think to make a healthy modern MMO, you need to accept this dichotomy:

• Queues are for quick content snacks and are not meant to be difficult or strenuous. Queues open up content to everyone, and reward appropriately given that, with breadcrumb rewards (like Dailies) to encourage experienced players to pad out the queue population / carry people.
• PUGs and Guilds and Friends are for serious content meals. In these situations, you have control over your group members, better organization, voice chat, trust, tactical understanding, etc. etc. etc.

Trying to make queued content 'serious' or 'spiritually rewarding' is essentially demanding the entire player population that can press the button, to perform at a certain baseline level.

That is just non-tenable, because any given MMO always has a huge spread of population skill and dedication and no satisfactory way to filter queues based on that (and if it did, queue times would just skyrocket for everyone).

The smarter approach is to simply make queued content the LCD of PvE coop — balance it around an assumed low baseline, deliberately making it Baby's First PUG. For many, many players, that's actually still very challenging / scary!

Skilled players in queues are then outliers that bolster / carry their group. This is acceptable, because it's much better than the alternative of unskilled players hopelessly albatrossing down their group until the group either votekicks or disbands.

Difficult or proud content can and should still exist, but it shouldn't be in matchmade random groups. You're just creating too much of a serious conflict-of-interests between what Queuing encourages and what "Serious" content requires.

In that context, Tanking for Queued content should be extremely easy and forgiving. Remember, again, that what we — as experienced MMO players — consider "easy and forgiving" is not for the average player that is just bumbling along. It can be very difficult or even exciting for some of medicore skill, even if we're falling asleep at the keyboard.

And that's OK. Stuff that keeps "us" awake should be in PUG+ content — places where you inherently spam it less, run it less, have fewer people asking or needing to do it, etc.

So, yeah. You really need to knock down as many barriers to entry as possible for Tanking in queued content. Good Tanks will still excel at their job, and will still be of great value in "serious" content. Barriers to entry include:

• Unappealing specs. I'm sorry, but most Tank trees are boring, with boring skills, and boring rotations, and no flashy abilities as part of the cycle. They inherently discourage people.
• Unappealing rotations. Tanks don't... do much. They just kind of plink through their standard cycle like a DPS, except with none of the real benefits of DPSing due to the stat handicap. Players don't feel a huge reward for playing "better" like tightening up their DPS rotation or healing smartly — once Threat is locked down, it's just of a relaxing cheek-on-keyboard experience.
• Separate gear sets and stringest stat requirements. Nobody wants to deal with this. Nobody will bother. If they hear "You can't Tank in that gear", they'll just... not Tank.
• Struggling for aggro. This never makes sense to experienced Tanks because we understand, by memory and instinct, how to organize and control every pull in the game we've ever run into. But for most players attempting Tanking, seeing Aggro going all over the place is terrifying and extremely demoralizing — they get yelled at, people die, they never Tank again.

You need to just rip off the bandage and change this for queued content levels of play:

• Make Tank specs flashier and cooler. Death From Above useable at melee range, chance to reset its CD. Force Lightning chains to up to 5 targets within 10m of your initial target. etc. Bribe people conceptually / visually.
• Give Tanks more interesting rotations. Make them work toward something. We have some rudimentary ideas in-game now (Heat Blast, Force Scream, Force Lightning), but take it all the way so that playing Tank well even on a training dummy feels as good as playing DPS well.
• Drop the "separate Tank set" thing. It's an MMO classic staple, to be sure, but it's outdated and it discourages entry-level Tanking. Let it go. 1 gear set for Tank or DPS, with high-level play optimizing one role or the other but not being crippled at the low end.
• Absolutely ludicrous Threat bonuses. This is always offensive to skilled Tanks (it's offensive to me... I love organizing aggro), but the reality is that holding aggro should happen more-or-less automatically for every spec, because this takes away one of the huge stresses of Tanking for most players. WoW saw great success (in terms of willing Tank population) by making Threat very very easy in Tank stance. It could be as simple as a massive +Threat Bolster inside queued content only.

I know what I'm saying here is absolute anathema to dedicated Tanks. I hated it when WoW started "dumbing down" Tanking in mid-WOTLK forward. Unfortunately I also saw:

• More interest in Tanking
• More willing Tanks
• Improved queue times
• Overall improved changes to Tank gameplay once they let go of some of the grognard MMO gospel

Again, this is my favorite role. I'd rather make some difficult changes to its rules and identity, and keep it alive as a Trinity role, than watch everything slowly degenerate to Tactical / GW2 level and delete Tanking entirely.

Why is it that, ever since gaming went mainstream, this nonsense has happened in practically every game? Complexity nerfed, identities blurred, roles discarded, limits lifted. Are average people really that stupid compared to the nerds (and I use that term lovingly) that used to dominate this space?

I swear, the worst thing to happen to gaming was when it became popular.

On the upside, the best thing for tanks to do in the current climate is... keep tanking! Any way you cut it, the presence of dedicated and available tanks will improve the situation before and after balancing changes.

I'd hate to see group content 'devolve' to being one mindless clusterf*ck after another instead of having simple changes made that help support the trinity concept, which I feel allows for better and more challenging content design.

I do think removing the gearing penalty would help, as would removing some of the current 'perceived' barriers.

I hadn't really thought about threat, but that can be a bit of a challenge for new tanks, especially with no way in-game to observe threat levels.

Having a threat buff in queue-able content could help, as could better visibility into threat from within the game (I honestly hate that the game has a huge gap regarding access to real time information in-game).

One thing that does sometimes turn me off tanking in SWTOR are all the obnoxious stuns and knock-backs present on trash mobs.

I sometimes feel as a tank my role is to run in, get chain CC'd, while the rest of the group gets to do their thing.

This is more an issue with the older content, though some of the newer stuff seems to have fallen back on the original 'we really don't know how to make trash interesting, so we'll just give every strong or better mob a stun and bump' design methodology.

Anyways, encounter design goes hand in hand with class design. The two have to work well together. If all a player see of a tank is someone who runs in, get stunned and punted around, and maybe use a few basic abilities while everyone else gets to use their flashy cool moves, it is doubtful many players are going to want to perform the role.

And yes I agree that encounter design for queue-able content should be of the shorter more forgiving type, and probably tuned such that myself and similar players find it 'meh', as long as the majority finds it to be a moderate challenge and leaves feeling they accomplished something.

Instead of merely reducing queue times, another possibility would be to just drop them straight to zero:

• Group versions (Hard/Nightmare) are serious content, i.e., require the traditional MMO roles and group dynamics, etc.
• Solo versions exists just to allow anyone to see everything we offer. They have no queue times at all.

I haven't yet played any 'Tactical' flashpoints or story mode instances. But being role-neutral, it sounds to me like it would just be everyone attacking things, and not a whole lot of...well...tactics, or group coordination or organized teamwork. If so, what's the point of being in a group at all?

Maybe the approach of trying to figure out how to reduce queue times doesn't really go to the heart of the issue. The purpose of the queue is to get a group together. But what's the reason most people want to get in a group in the first place? Because they really love group play, or just because getting in a group is the only way to do that content? If they had a choice, would they solo it instead?

You're perceiving it wrong.

You see this:

• Content used to be hard and special for dedicated players
• Now it's easy and lame because more people are doing it

The reality is this:

• Content used to be hard and special for dedicated players and there was an entire population that never saw it or completed it
• Now additional easy and lame content has been added so more people can do it

The content you always did is still there:

• Difficult
• Tactical (in the actual sense, not the twisted BioWare sense)
• Trinity'd
• PUG'd manually or run with Guildies / Friends

But it now has an alternative for less-capable or dedicated players:

• Queuable
• Forgiving
• Spammable
• See-the-sights difficulty level

What you're mis-perceiving is this:

• I am a dedicated player
• I can queue for matchmade content
• Therefore, matchmade content is targeted at my level of skill / play

That is the error MMOs have been making, and are starting to realize. Historically, there was no matchmade content. Everything was "Hard Mode" or up, and people who couldn't cut it in that level, simply didn't do it.

Now devs are realizing a more appealing alternative:

• Leave manually-organized hard content as-is
• Add softball alternatives for players that don't aspire to more, are adequately challenged my forgiving content, are happy with matchmade groups, etc.

The problem is you still need people to Tank it if you're going to leave the Trinity system in place. That leaves the following split decision:

• Remove Tanking from queuable content. Tanks now exist only in hand-formed groups where Tank-balanced difficulty is acceptable. (topic of this thread)
• Significantly increase the Tanking population by forcibly reducing the entry barriers and skillfloor of the role at the low end.

Option #1 probably works, but it's also inverting the situation — now matchmade content is fun for everyone else, and not Tanks. If you love Tanking, but want the Queue Daily, or a quick run before bed — SOL to you. Respec DPS or be a third wheel.

This is why we come down to Option #2 — in matchmade content, make Tanking much more forgiving / appealing, while leaving Tanking basically as-is in "serious" content (within reason based on global necessary changes).

There is really no other way to preserve the role when you've got the tension between unacceptable queue times, and still wanting Tanks to have a place in queued content.