Group roles (new ideas)

[azekah]

So, a thought that had been kind of nagging me for a while is the role of the Tank in a group.You get spells to gain hate, but what are those spells doing? Taunts? Ridicule? If I'm in a fight, and Mike is calling me an idiot, but Jon is bashing my face in, will I just ignore what Jon is doing? Well that is how it works in MMO's...What I mean is, taunting doesn't really make sense.So we have this idea though, that in MMO's there are four roles. Tank, healer, dps, support.But where did this come from anyway? I don't know much about the history of MMO's but who said that this was the way it had to be?What would really make a lot more sense would be that the tank and dps share the same role.So you would have Tank/dps, healer, and support roles.The tank would be the one doing the most damage, therefore would keep aggro, the healer would be trying to keep the tank alive, and the support would be making the job of the tank/healer easier.So...if you have a 6 slot group, what do u do with the other 3 slots?One idea...Give the support roles the ability to stack their buffs/debuffs. So, if you have 1 support, you tank is 10% stronger, get 2 and he will be 20% or conversely for the mob debuffs. But so that they don't become buff bots, make their buffs more of a spell or attack, so you have to continually be engaged to give your buffs to the tank/or debuffs for the mobs. The support/healers should also be able to offer up some dps, but no where near the tank. Basically, the whole group is focused on the tank/tanks target, giving him the uber power to defeat all they encounter. I think this would really help with ppl actually working together, rather than trying to top a parse. Instead of trying to add as much dps as you can, your giving your tank the ability to deliver more dps.Of couse how this is setup could be any number of ways, and there is room for diversity.Anyway, just some thoughts that I think would make the group setup make more sense, and maybe more fun?

[Razlath]

<p>I have always looked at Taunts as something that while a game mechanic and thus prone to not make sense from time to time, does have enough RP basis to work.</p><p>After all, you aren't just calling the mob an idiot, that would be silly, and typing out /taunt doesn't really build hate.</p><p>When a tank uses a taunt they are performing a combination of RP actions.  One they are bellowing something particularly attention grabbing at the mob.  This may be something like: "My armor and strength are so great you will surely not even be able to place one scratch upon me!" (ok so my taunts suck but hopefully you get the point).  Two they are making a general target of themselves by swinging around large weapons with ease, stomping about in their armor, pounding their chest, etc.  Basically they are making themselves *look* like a massive threat.  Three they are doing some damage which they then exaggerate (Something like: "Oh look I nearly took your arm off with that one!"<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />" width="15" height="15" />.  Basically the tank is enraging the mob beyond all sensible actions.  This is why a normal character can hold hate through DPS alone.  They are not boasting or exagerrating their damage, they are not jibing the mob for its weakness, they are a threat and the mob has the cuts to prove it.</p><p>However, the person talented at making themselves seem like more of a threat (tanks basically) is going to get more effect out of the damage they do.  The goal isn't to actually be more of a threat than your sneaky friends behind the mobs, but to convince the mob you are.  </p><p>Also, party positioning used to make a big difference in RP believability.  Why go around the big scary guy in full plate with a sword marked with the blood of your fallen friends when you could just mow him down real quick instead?  After all, that healer isn't doing THAT much to help right?  Of course with the tank calling out: "Ha I could take you on by myself you hit like the grandmother of the gnoll I caught stealing my trash!  Cleric let me handle this!  *cleric proceeds to be somewhat sneaky about saving tank's butt*  Heck there was a chance in the past the mobs didn't even *know* the finger wagglers were there.  Can you see the little 100 pound wizzy in a dress hiding behind the 500 pound musclebound ogre in full plate swinging a couple of oversized axes at your head?</p><p>Of course with everyone thinking they need to melee, and the game encouraging it, things start to break down in there.  Not to mention allowing any race to be any class.  Other than flying up and poking you in the eye, just how distracting is a Fae anyway?  But the basic RP concept is still a lot more valid to me than why dungeons constantly repop every 5 minutes while you are clearing them out, and why you can kill the same named 3 times in an hour.  At some point you have to suspend disbelief for any RP game, and for MMOs that point can come even sooner.  I personally like the mechanic the way it is.  It can be abused, but in general I think it makes the game playable.  As someone who played Guild Wars which had no real taunt mechanic I would never want to play another game without it.</p><p>**editted to fix my ratonga slip .... allowsing was supposed to be allowing**</p>

[bryldan]

Just about everyone mmo comes from D&D which had these fundamental roles in place. While they didnt have taunting tanks they had the roles of tank/dps/healer.If you look at old times taunting was effective in terms of drawing someone to you and it still is in todays society. You insult someone they get mad and if you insult them in the right way by pushing there buttons they get furious at you.Why do you think the tank should do the most of the damage? When he is more training into the avoidance of dmg whereas the dps is training in the art of doing dmg. They are two completely different things one is defense and one is offense. Then you have to take into consideration those that train in the art of magic they are considered dps and wear cloth due to a lot of reasons (whichever reason you want to take out of however many that there are.)

[valkry]

<p>Tank = <img src="http://www.itsadventuresouthwest.co.uk/main/en/images/activity_snaps/act_TANK.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="300" border="0" /></p><p>DPS = <img src="http://wiki.battle.no/images/b/b0/Artillery.jpg" alt="" width="391" height="400" border="0" /></p><p>Ok, One of these things can do massive damage, but is pretty fragile. The other thing can survive hits, but may not do as much damage. Now which one should you put on the front line, in the bad guy's face & which should you hide off to the side in a protected area? </p><p>In MMOs/D&D the tank was never about doing damage, it was about getting in the way of the baddies, <b><u>taking their hits</u></b> & distracting them enough that so that the fragile party members lived to do <b>massive damage. </b>Taunting is a game mechanic for the way a heavily armoured unit can place itself in a critical position to defend another unit, and limit the bad guys physical access to the less armoured unit.</p>

[azekah]

Interesting, but a little off. An actual "tank" is one of the most offensive parts of a military.The only real difference in your analogy is range. (ie brig vs ranger)

[Jrral]

Well, the roles originally came from the D&D canonical trio of fighter, priest, mage. It didn't have rogues (the equivalent of scout classes), fighters were the melee damage classes. When rogues were added, they were a support class (scouting, sneaking, disarming traps, that sort of thing) with some high-damage sneak attacks but if you were one you really didn't want to get into a stand-up fight (bards were an exception, but the requirements for becoming a bard were high enough to keep them uncommon).But when it comes to MMOs, fighters became a problem. With heavy armor <i>and</i> high damage, a group with a healer and 5 fighters would overwhelm most content. So they split the two aspects of fighters, armor and damage, and balanced them out. The total would stay roughly constant but the exact balance between the two would vary. The ones that leaned towards more armor at the expense of damage became the plate tank types we see today. The ones that leaned towards damage at the expense of defense merged with the AD&D rogues to become today's scout classes.

[Sedenten]

<p>Razlath's post hit the idea spot on, I think.  One taunt isn't just some lame attempt to throw a joking taunt at the NPC--there's a lot more involved, and in a lot of cases it does take real skill to put on the impression that you are more of a threat than you really are.</p><p>As for the "tank" label being applied to whoever is keeping high hate on a target, I believe that harkens back to some of the original D&D and other tabletop rules.  I do remember when Armor Class was explained in one of the earliest rulebooks, there were examples given as to what exactly the values were meant to mean.  In old D&D, the higher your AC number, the closer to "naked" you were.  The lower, or more negative, your value, the harder to damage you were.  The heavier the armor or more potent the magic you had active (from rings, etc.), the lower your armor class would drop:</p><p>AC 10:  human wearing clothAC 9:  human wearing quilted armorAC 8:  human wearing leather armorAC 7:  human wearing studded leather armor...AC 0:  human wearing full plate armor...AC -10:  Sherman <b>Tank</b></p><p>I've seen the sherman tank designation used in a lot of older rulebooks.  I believe the old Wizardry PC game manual even used that terminology to refer to someone who was "hard to damage" with a -10 AC rating.  The term never really was meant to say that the person was king of aggro generation, but rather the person that could simply absorb damage the most efficiently.  So I think when Everquest and the first MMORG's came out, people used the term "Tank" to refer to the member of the party that attempted to take the brunt of the damage off the rest of the party.  The term kind of stuck, but I don't believe it was the "official" designation set forth by Sony.  The same can be said of the terms "crowd control" (for enchanters or classes that control NPC's) and "mobs" (comes from the old MUDs).  </p>

[Malchore]

<p>I don't think the idea of aggro and taunting was ever in table top games.  I've played D&D and a fair number of other table top games in my life, but aggro is not a concept that was used.  The Game Master is human and free to decide which player his monster(s) will attack.</p><p>When these games were put to computer software, the designers quickly came to the realization that there has to be some mechanic to model mob behavior - specifically how will the mob know which player it wants to attack?</p><p>Hence the concept of aggression (aggro) was needed as a way to measure hate.  But how does one increase or decrease aggro?</p><p>Answer: damage.  But some classes can output much more damage than others, and therefore will always have aggro.  How to allow players to control mob aggro?</p><p>Answer: a mechanic called Taunt that adds an amount of aggro to the hate list.  It's nothing more than a way to allow the tank to artificially inflate his aggro value without doing damage.</p><p>I can remember reading about "imagination" and how we as D&D players should understand combat mechanics.  When your warrior swings a sword and "hits" the oppenent for damage, it didn't really happen.  The whole concept of hitpoints, armor class and damage is a way to model the attributes of a character's skill and gear in such a way as to make them better able to survive battles, but ultimately it's a way to determine who wins a battle.  The lesson here: you aren't really causing damage to a mob during battle.  Instead you work to lower your enemy's hitpoints to zero before your own hitpoints reach zero, which means you were the victor of the battle.  You can imagine the battle any way you want.</p>

[Razlath]

<p>Aggro and taunting as mechanics were not used primarily because they were not necessary.  At least in my table top games that was the case.  When the fighters declared their actions, it was usually amid some great bluster and dice were delivered to the table with flair and arrogance.  I always liked it when a tank would say... I hit the monster!  Instead of I try to hit the monster (even though the roll hadn't been made yet).  The squishies stayed in the back, and often declared their actions as casting around the fighter, or sometimes even from cover.  Ahh the number of times the wizard asked... can I see the monster from under the table?  Not to say all the squishies were always hiding.  When they didn't they got attacked, but as long as the fighter was making a bigger spectacle of himself and there weren't extra monsters lying around things tended to stick to him.  ;}</p><p>Basically I kept a hate list in my head.  I didn't *know* that was what I was doing, and it wasn't like I tracked hate numbers.  But I could tell who a monster was mad at based on party actions and attitudes.  The computer needs more than a gut feel for that.  Thus we have a mechanic introduced.</p>

[orchard54]

Whenever I find myself saying "thats not realistic/logical!!!" I shortly remember I'm playing a fantasy game full of magic, dragons and unicorns.<img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Eviljoe2]

I realize most of the OP and the replies have been about the history of Taunt etc.. but I did want to touch on something else here.When it came to the tank you said it should do the most DPS etc..and you also indicated you wondered why it had to be this way.It all comes down to balance...imagine if the tank did the most DPS....does that mean you would make them weaker and more fragile?  If not, they would be an unstoppable, solo force.Every type tank/healer/dps/support is a trade of...If you want to take a punch without folding...be a tank, but just don't expect to be able to kill the mob in 7 seconds.You want to kill the mob in 7 seconds?? Fine, but don't expect to be able to take too many hits...  Otherwise, the worlds would be full of one class, the best class that was ALWAYS wanted in groups but did not need them.Think of it like the rock, paper scissors thing.....which is better?Well, none, rock smashes scissors, but paper covers rock...so paper is the best...oh, wait....scissors cut paper.On a side note I heard somewhere that was an analogy for life....the rock represents power...the paper represents money and the scissors represent intelligence.....when you think about it...it holds true usually.