Innovation Fail
I’m pretty easy on innovation. I love Gears’ cover system innovation, even if other games had worked out most of the quirks. I agree with Brandon Reinhart that Warhammer isn’t getting enough credit.
This post on WoW Insider, however, is where I draw the line. Emphasis added:
In short, the way Blizzard has traditionally made tanking work – made sure the tanks are causing more threat than everyone else, so the mobs will attack them – is by keeping their damage low, but raising their threat with threat-increasing auras and threat-boosted abilities. This is not the tack they’re taking in LK, based on some trends that have been emerging in blue posts over the last month or two….
Instead of focusing on adding extra threat to various abilities, they seem to just be boosting tank damage. This is pretty brilliant.
“Taunting” is, essentially, an AI exploit that has been “designed” into a staggering number of games. Moving very slightly away from that exploit is not brilliant. Making the decision to take the system that you copied 100% from previous games, and pull a little harder on lever A than lever B, is not innovation. It’s just playing around with the mechanisms you’ve already got in place– something gamers do every day.
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Gotta have to agree with you there, a little more lever A does not constitute brilliance. I always wonder when I read something like this on the web-o-tron if the intent was sarcasm…
My biggest problem with the WoW tanking model is that some tanks (warriors specifically, but BArE dURids too) have an inverse relationship between their gear and their threat generating ability. The problem is that these tanks rely on having a certain amount of damage inflicted upon them to keep rage up, and then they use that rage to use high-threat abilities - but the primary stats of tanking gear reduce incoming damage, and thus rage. This is particularly noticeable when the tank is overgeared for an instance - the mobs can’t hit them hard enough to generate rage to out-threat the dps (the problem is compounded if the dps is also overgeared). This means that in running the same content - theoretically as everyone is gearing up - the tank does not scale their threat output at the same rate the dps does (healing is a bit better off, because the tank should be taking less damage, so they heal less, and thus get less threat). It seems like one of the really basic math problems to figure out in a modern MMO - if the gear in this instance ups DPS damage by 5%, it better up tank threat by a similar amount.
I’m actually fine that tanking generally puts out low dps numbers - that’s part of specialization and teamwork. But in my relatively sad tanking gear, I found myself having to put on DPS pieces for tanking when running friends/alts through regular 70 instances towards the end of my WoW career. Would any other class consider wearing gear outside their selected role, so they could actually perform that role?
In a similar vein, simply upping tank damage seems like a cheap escape route. Why bother with class mix if everyone can dps?
September 30th, 2008 at 1:53 am
The holy trinity of MMO class design (dps/tanking/healing) is doomed in the long run.
The broader view of team roles as “damage” and “support” are where it’s at as long as we’re talking *killing things* as the primary method of progress.
Lend me $30 mil and I’ll show you what I mean.
September 30th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
I thought the trinity would die off sooner– WAR didn’t even need it, since it’s a PvP game for crying out loud– but it’s proven surprisingly resilient.
I think, however, that fantasy MMOs are going to mostly end for now at WAR and WoW. Other settings will lead to non-trinity gameplay. Games with guns, for example, make tanking ridiculous.
October 1st, 2008 at 4:42 pm
“Other settings will lead to non-trinity gameplay. Games with guns, for example, make tanking ridiculous.”
I don’t know, I can easily see a misguided team saying, “How are we going to fit tanking into a range-heavy mechanic?” and then spending 6 months trying to make it work.
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:43 am
Only 6 months of flailing? That seems optimistic.
I agree that logically tanking does not make as much sense in other genres (with some exceptions, like City of Heroes). I guess it depends on how much of the standard PvE MMO equation you take - but certainly playing a class role to succeed in groups in a cornerstone of that equation. I guess I’m wondering if you’re suggesting more class specialization (there are many types of support/dps, and you need some mix of different types to succeed); or less (we just need 3 dps and 2 support to get through this instance - it doesn’t matter what kind).