What I'm asking is a fundamental question of MMO design - why does damage taken not take into account the number or variety of damage sources (at least in all the MMOs that I've played)?
If you as a player are using an ability that affects others, there are a vast array of options that take into account the scale of what is occuring. If you are focusing on a single target, then you generally do so with a good output for your cost (strong damage/heals/cc per mana/cast time). If you are focusing on multiple targets (cone attacks, player based area of effect, chaining spells, etc.) then you have relatively reduced output, which often yields increased total output if you hit enough targets. This is basic assumed stuff probably from early tabletop D&D days that builds into the game a notion that the scale of what you're doing is important. Even aoe-only games take this into account with scaling the size of the aoe. It allows for interesting MMO gameplay where you can choose to focus down or spread out effects depending on the encounter and situation.
Yet, there seems to be no notion of scaling for damage taken. If you are mitigating the damage taken by one swordsman, then in most games you are exactly as efficient in that task as you would be in mitigating the damage taken by two swordsmen. Not only does this conflict with realism (completely respect that many don't like realism guiding design choices), but it seems to lock out a gameplay design path that could run very deep. Magicians on the other hand may be a different story depending on how mitigation of magic damage is explained. Could damage mitigation be balanced such that tanking two swordsmen was less efficient than tanking just one? You might be able to balance around attacks taken per second, number of active targets who have damaged you in the last x seconds, scale mitigation based on damage taken over the last x seconds, just as a few top level thoughts.
Without scaling of damage taken by number/variety of sources what we generally end up with in MMOs is a standard group composition formula. "Bring the fewest number of tanks that you can and bring just enough healers to keep them up" is what I'm talking about. The classic twist to this comes through the use of damage sharing (shared cleave/aoe type) from the boss, but generally speaking you only bring enough tanks that you don't die to that specific effect and any additional tanks is wasteful.
Nothing that I'm talking about will break the paradigm of "bring enough defense to not die, then the rest goes to offense", but it might add some variety within what defense can be brought. If damage mitigation scaled then maybe you would see groups being able to bring multiple tanks and actually gain a real benefit from it. Two offtanks would take less damage overall than one offtank and maybe open up more varied group compositions. Maybe two tanks swapping aggro on a boss would take less damage overall than a single tank would. A 6 man group with more than one tank might actually not be completely terrible. You could extend this into tank build variety or equipment variety - some tanks built to avoid damage from few targets or many targets at once.
Given the comments Kilsin has made about design suggestions I have no illusions that there's much of a chance something like this would make be able to make it into the game even if it was thought to be a good idea. Despite that, I would like to know if you forum folks have thoughts on this? Has this been done before? Would it work? Would you like to see something like this? What benefits/issues would you foresee with it?
In DAoC I believe they had something like this. The more people attacking a target the easier that target was to hit. Even a lower level attacker, who didn't do a lot of damage or even land a hit to often, would cause the target's defences to lessen. Though this could be negated by certain defensive abilities. It meant that a tanky class that spec'ed for DPS wasn't overly tanky and couldn't wade into a flood of attackers and come out the other side. To do that you had to spec massively into shield skills and the like. Which mean't you hit like a wet noodle for the most part.
I still believe DAoC's combat system was one of the most well designed i've ever played with.
I like what you're suggesting, a way to implement this would be to reduce %chance of dodging, parrying and blocking, so when multiple targets are attacking you, you have less chance of avoiding their attacks.
Bringing multiple tanks would wield simialar results to bringing CC classes, I don't think it would be as effective because CC is the best defense, but it would certainly be a more viable option for unorthodox group compositions.
It really does depend on where they land difficulty wise, but I could see this being a thing for specific mob types (swarming mobs or grouped mobs that can't be split).
However in the Tower during the May stream we can clearly see that no one tank (in a standard group composition) would be able to handle two mobs for very long (especially the Gurkha) as it is, so reducing the tank's defenses further would probably tip the punishment a little too far.
In your example you seem t be indicating that somehow tanking 2 mobs should result in less efficiency in damage mitigation, based on realism? Why? If I'm being attacked by 2 people who are taking turns swinging at me, I have the same chance to block or deflect their blows as I do if 1 person is hitting me. Not to mention is my entire life i have been training defense (ie a tank) I would have to imagine that I can defend myself successfully against many sources at once through a combination of blocking parrying and dodging (to create a glancing blow as opposed to a direct).
Porygon said:In your example you seem t be indicating that somehow tanking 2 mobs should result in less efficiency in damage mitigation, based on realism? Why? If I'm being attacked by 2 people who are taking turns swinging at me, I have the same chance to block or deflect their blows as I do if 1 person is hitting me. Not to mention is my entire life i have been training defense (ie a tank) I would have to imagine that I can defend myself successfully against many sources at once through a combination of blocking parrying and dodging (to create a glancing blow as opposed to a direct).
It makes a bit of sense (to me anyway) that two mobs would realistically reduce efficiency of a tank's blocking to some degree because I don't think they are always taking turns swinging, but really positioning would be the key to it. If you have an add at your flank then you get half defensive skills (dodge/block/parry/riposte) vs that mob but maintain full toward the target in front, and as always a mob behind drops all your defensive skills to zero vs that mob. Two mobs in front of you, I can see maybe being able to keep up against them but add a third and I think it would be fair to say the defenses should be reduced a bit even from the front.
I hope mobs are smart enough to try to go for the rear & flanks when possible.
I always enjoyed positioning being a critical aspect of tanking. Yes, the mobs should spread out a bit and it should fall on the tank's shoulders to put them in an optimal position. This includes setting up mobs in such a way that your allies can land their positional attacks without putting themselves in danger while also minimizing the possibility for mobs to hit you from flanks. If mobs are hitting you from the rear, you should be taking spike damage. If you pull a large group of mobs and have a positional lapse, there should be a high risk of getting flat lined.
I'm always up for added complexity, player skills being necessary, and logical explanations.
Simultaneous attacks certainly would be harder to block, the less tank-setric your build the more you should suffer to this but certainly all classes should. Decreased defenses on the flank and back side attacks makes sense as well.
I like these notions 2-fold as long as the single tank can still hold his role. I like them because this not only rewards good/smart tanks and attentive offtanks, it also prevents the eventual imbalance that creeps into games with time. That imbalance where 1 single adventurer swarms the entire zone for himself or power-leveling and miraculously takes 0 dmg while he and/or his companion(s) reap free rewards against hundreds of foes.
+1 : All around fantastic idea for adding strategy, additional group diversity, and scaling balance protection to all levels of the game.
~Bighealz
I say if anything have it to where lets say you have 25% block 20 dodge, and 20 to parry, and everytime you block your block slighty decays, same for dodge, and parry that way everytime you block/dodge/parry the respective skill gets lower til i say around 5% for probably dodge that way as the fights gets longer you wont be getting hit any harder but will obviously be getting hit more becuase your midigation skills are decayed throughout the fight, which refresh once your out of combat of course than you go back tot he 25/20/20, that is if your midigation is up that high of course.
Iksar said:Porygon said:In your example you seem t be indicating that somehow tanking 2 mobs should result in less efficiency in damage mitigation, based on realism? Why? If I'm being attacked by 2 people who are taking turns swinging at me, I have the same chance to block or deflect their blows as I do if 1 person is hitting me. Not to mention is my entire life i have been training defense (ie a tank) I would have to imagine that I can defend myself successfully against many sources at once through a combination of blocking parrying and dodging (to create a glancing blow as opposed to a direct).
It makes a bit of sense (to me anyway) that two mobs would realistically reduce efficiency of a tank's blocking to some degree because I don't think they are always taking turns swinging, but really positioning would be the key to it. If you have an add at your flank then you get half defensive skills (dodge/block/parry/riposte) vs that mob but maintain full toward the target in front, and as always a mob behind drops all your defensive skills to zero vs that mob. Two mobs in front of you, I can see maybe being able to keep up against them but add a third and I think it would be fair to say the defenses should be reduced a bit even from the front.
I hope mobs are smart enough to try to go for the rear & flanks when possible.
I feel like This is the norm. Most games have a decreased defensive effectiveness for any mob not in front of you.
Yes, positioning makes the most sense here and is a good argument for why collision matters.
With collision mobs are fourced to encircle you in order to swing at you, assuming its melee.
Therefore, if flanking positions offer less mitigation from the target, then you have effectivly accomplished what your suggesting.
IE: Two tanks can either seperate mobs and take less or no flanking damage or one tank must take increased flanking damage from every mob over 1 (can't keep them in front of you).
Iksar said:Porygon said:In your example you seem t be indicating that somehow tanking 2 mobs should result in less efficiency in damage mitigation, based on realism? Why? If I'm being attacked by 2 people who are taking turns swinging at me, I have the same chance to block or deflect their blows as I do if 1 person is hitting me. Not to mention is my entire life i have been training defense (ie a tank) I would have to imagine that I can defend myself successfully against many sources at once through a combination of blocking parrying and dodging (to create a glancing blow as opposed to a direct).
It makes a bit of sense (to me anyway) that two mobs would realistically reduce efficiency of a tank's blocking to some degree because I don't think they are always taking turns swinging, but really positioning would be the key to it. If you have an add at your flank then you get half defensive skills (dodge/block/parry/riposte) vs that mob but maintain full toward the target in front, and as always a mob behind drops all your defensive skills to zero vs that mob. Two mobs in front of you, I can see maybe being able to keep up against them but add a third and I think it would be fair to say the defenses should be reduced a bit even from the front.
I hope mobs are smart enough to try to go for the rear & flanks when possible.
I say if they are at your flank or behind you the only defensive skill you should be able to do is dodge, simple becuase if you try to parry/ or anything else than you technically would have to turn to them to do so which meanstheir no longer at your flank but in front of you, but this is just my way of thinking. and as for the two people hitting at you at the same time or taking turns, i refer back to my decaying methit simply just makes a lot of sense to me.
Liav said:It's a huge leap in logic to say that collision is necessary for positioning. That's a huge can of worms.
From the mobs point of view, if I can just stand inside my buddy then my target can effectivly position all of us to the front.
If collision is involved, then I either have to get in line behind my buddy or encircle my target.
Not sure how thats a huge leap.
I don't know if "pure collision" is needed, but some degree yes. I think once you get to X amount of mobs in a certain radius, they start to space out a bit. The more emphasis we can put on positioning, the better. I would much rather deal with some of the ideas proposed here compared to the DDR stuff (stand here, run here, circle back while all staying 15M from each other, one person gets debuff and then X amount of players need to converge on them within X seconds to "soak" the damage and prevent single player detonation)
Mobs should hit really, really hard while they aren't debuffed. Pulling a mob (and especially a group of them) and setting it (them) into position should be a challenge. Needing to adjust the mob should require some skill, awareness and coordination. If the tank tries to adjust positioning and moves a bit away while a rogue continues to beat on the mob, the mob should turn around and whack them due to "vicinity aggro." This logic helps prevent ping ponging the mobs which can be exploited.
It's also possible that the collision factor only gets applied under certain criteria such as mob types, race, archetype, disposition, con (solo/duo/heroic/epic), level gap, etc.
I'd say that mobs should be difficult enough individually that they would kill you out of sheer power before positional adjustments would be necessary. For instance, 2 raid trash mobs should be more than enough to dumpster a single tank. I don't want to see AoE trash clears.
I think there is a need to have multi target fights. If everything is single target, it becomes way easier to manage positioning, debuffs, etc. Control is listed as a sphere in the quaternity and it should be important. Rather than allowing players to shitstomp huge swarms, though, we should be split tanking them, mezzing, pacifying, disarming, stunning, etc. All of those little things need to make a comeback and every class who offers some form of disablement will be able to contribute toward surviving the fight. I much prefer raid encounters to be about survival than just burn fests. I'm not disagreeing with you Liav ... I think mobs should be really really hard but I wouldn't go so far as to say that a tank should never be able to tank 2 trash mobs. Some of my favorite fights ever were fighting 4 epic mobs (that required perfect positioning due to collision) as a solo tank that pushed the limits of the entire raid on managing their debuff rotations.
Liav said:I'd say that mobs should be difficult enough individually that they would kill you out of sheer power before positional adjustments would be necessary. For instance, 2 raid trash mobs should be more than enough to dumpster a single tank. I don't want to see AoE trash clears.
I can agree with this as well, especially if they can be single pulled, shoot if i see my group pull 3 dungeon mobs let alone raid mobs i want to feel the "oh ****" feeling and be doing everything i can to prevent a wipe, granted i want postinoing to be important but making the mobs hit hard make postioning even more important.
oneADseven said:I think there is a need to have multi target fights. If everything is single target, it becomes way easier to manage positioning, debuffs, etc. Control is listed as a sphere in the quaternity and it should be important. Rather than allowing players to shitstomp huge swarms, though, we should be split tanking them, mezzing, pacifying, disarming, stunning, etc. All of those little things need to make a comeback and every class who offers some form of disablement will be able to contribute toward surviving the fight. I much prefer raid encounters to be about survival than just burn fests. I'm not disagreeing with you Liav ... I think mobs should be really really hard but I wouldn't go so far as to say that a tank should never be able to tank 2 trash mobs. Some of my favorite fights ever were fighting 4 epic mobs (that required perfect positioning due to collision) as a solo tank that pushed the limits of the entire raid on managing their debuff rotations.
Yes, im sure there will be certain fights where you will have to fight more than one mob by design, and we will ahve to adjust and make smart decisions, and have a big group effort to conquer the encounter, like you mentioned. like im sure their will be certain mobs that will spawn in more mobs, and alarm them into the fray, so this makes it even more so.
I dunno AoE groups were pretty fun back in the day.
But, this is about mitigation of multiple mobs, or as the OP is suggesting is the norm now, multiple mob encounters don't seem to apply additional mitigation issues. At least I think that is what the OP is suggesting/asking about.
To be honest I'm not really sure if that is the norm in todays MMOs; in EQ at least position mattered alot and it was common to have more than one mob to tank before things could be put under control by the CC sphere.
A very well geared tank could likely handle two trash mobs but at the cost of increased heals and therefore less mana for the fight ahead.
And many strategies on raids often included off tanks to deal with adds that could not be controlled otherwise. Because ya, a boss and additional mobs beating on the main tank just wasn't acceptible.
I also like the idea that off tanking would be required, it gives all the tanks, not just the best geared tank, something to do on the raid besides output their meager DPS.
I agree that a tank shouldn't never be able to tank two trash mobs. I just don't think collision would be a good idea.
One thing that I just thought of that would be cool here would be conditional dispositions. Instead of the base layer of dispositions, an additional layer could spring up when certain conditions were met.
Let's say a given mob type has a conditional disposition of flanking if their target is engaged with at least, say, two other mobs. A geared tank might be able to face tank a normal 3 pull, but a specific mob type would require an offtank unless they want to get hit in the back.
Regardless, this isn't really that related to the OP. Dark Age of Camelot did indeed reduce the effectiveness of your avoidance based on the number of assailants, however DAoC is primarily a PvP MMO so what works there may not make quite as much sense in PvE for balance purposes.
I feel like alot of people are generalizing how hard they want mobs to be. I think there should be varying degrees of mob difficulty. Certain raid trash mobs should be impossible to tank 2, but others might require your tanks to balance 2 or 3 without losing threat. If you are always only tanking 1 mob, it becomes akin to WoW tanking in tbc where you could just slap some abilities in your keyboard and not lose threat.
In dungeons, there's a difference between aoe clearing and being able to pull 3 mobs and survive. There's plenty of places in eq where you can't tank 3 mobs for a full duration without burning disciplines and mana bars. But it wasn't an automatic wipe.
I just want the fights to be difficult enough where you can tell the difference between a good tank and a bad tank. And if you only handle single mobs. I dont think that's possible.
Thanks for the responses guys.
@kellindil - awesome, that sounds like what I was thinking of. Like Liav, I wonder how if would impact a PvE focused game.
@porygon - The swordsmen analogy was just used to say that being overwhelmed is a thing that can happen. If you're fighting a single swordsmen who strikes you once per second, then you can use your shield/weapon to block/parry an attack once per second (random length of time) based on physical limitations. You would be pretty safe. If you have 10 swordsmen all attacking you simultaneously, then you probably can't use your shield/weapon to block/parry their attacks ten times per second. I wasn't trying to suggest that I know much about combat, but just that if 10 sharp things are coming at me at once, then at least 9 of those are probably gonna skewer me real good.
Balance concerns: The implementation of a system like this could be balanced in soooo many different ways to accomplish different effects. Some are worried that it would make tanking too tough - you could balance around that. You could take Pantheon's current state and only change it for when you are tanking 5+ mobs. I think it's great that everyone has expressed what types of gameplay they want to preserve or get rid of, but these are balance issues that are caused by the balancing process and not the mechanic development process quite so much (but that's true for every mechanic that goes into a fight). If the devs want you to be able to tank 4 dragon whelps at once at lvl 50, then they can balance to that goal regardless of whether or not a mechanic of this sort was in the game.
Positional attacks: These types of abilities and mechanics are great and fill a nice little niche that adds some flavor. However, I have only ever seen positional attacks be used well for players attacking monsters, but never the other way around. If mobs are given a significant advantage for attacking the player from the rear, then the player as a consequence gains an advantage for trying to keep enemies on their front. Whether you use collision or "intelligent" enemies that actively seek out rear attacks, you incentivize a dance between the player and the enemy. While this dance might be a fun representation of footwork, it would probably lean too much in the direction of the DDR style twitchy combat that the devs have stated that they're trying to avoid. I think positionals great for players, but not so much for enemies.
While I would like to see a mechanic of this sort just because it makes sense to me, I think the most important factor here is how it impacts the use of multiple tanks. In a game where classes are true to their roles and while they can spec, a warrior still always feels like a warrior, then having a purpose for warriors is vital at all stages of the game. If tanks are essential in group content at a ratio of 1-6, but are only needed in raid content at a ratio of 1-20, then that's an issue for me. I think most games of late have skirted around this issue by allowing their tanks to just spec dps and everyone just shifts their playstyle to accomodate the raid needs, but it has been suggested that Pantheon won't allow that to happen. I think it's a potential issue worth addressing, although it is 100% based on extrapolations from previous games, so it might not be an issue at all :).
Porygon said:I just want the fights to be difficult enough where you can tell the difference between a good tank and a bad tank. And if you only handle single mobs. I dont think that's possible.
I think there is plenty of room for tanks to shine when handling single mobs. Are they positioning well, are they nailing their interrupts, are they holding aggro, and how well are they holding it? I want this game to make DPS have to really stop and think about what they are doing and when so I'd like it if holding aggro was a real job for the tank. If you have a good tank you will know it because the DPS will be able to do quite a bit more DPS without taking aggro in a situation where a lesser skilled tank would have them be more limited in damage output.
It also allows the game to have a higher emphasis on the CC role and to an extent the off-tank role. Groups might want two tanks in the event they can't find a CC focused class, or one tank and an extra healer to allow the single tank to hold two mobs when needed. It's a very large gripe I've noticed of tanks that groups only ever really want/need one so having one mob be a big enough threat to a tank that two is almost a death sentence really opens that door a bit.