SWTOR

[Sheepherder]

That was the original plan, but I guess they backed away from it because they couldn't make the companion AI work. Actually, there was never any way the AI could work for tanking anything more complicated than a tank/spank, but healing could definitely happen.

Debuffers.  Instead of the AI tanking, it just debuffs the boss down to the point where you don't need a dedicated tank to absorb the damage they're dishing out. (thinking more of small group content here)  Make the debuffs they apply also exclude normal tanking, so as to not create a problem when players attempt to combine the two.  Or, build specialized AI scripts on a per-fight basis, as Koyasha pointed out.

Beyond that, the actual difficulty would be that the NPC's would be too perfect at the role, so who would ever want to have a human player that can make mistakes do an important job?  You'd have to program in an intentional error rate.

Or specific drawbacks.  Like making companion healers single-target only, so that even with a perfect AI that integrates all the bots into a hivemind you only gain a high probability that everyone will be adequately attended by healers if people are willing to sacrifice significant damage.  Though, if your healing game is shitty enough for it to come to that, you have bigger problems and the bots are probably saving you from them.

[ajax34i]

Regarding healing, it would be interesting (to me) to see a game where there is no in-combat healing, but the combat is such that if you maintain your rotations properly, no damage gets through whatever defenses you have, so you stay at full health.  Miss a few though and you go down pretty fast.

Would have to be "no stuns," I guess.

Anyway, back to SWTOR, sorry. 

[Kageru]

MMOs have to actually render this shit on the fly. Even if it wasn't buggy as hell, collision detection wouldn't work because it would be twiddly and arbitrary rather than cinematic and fun. Aggro management is the established way to make armor/squishie work without prohibative latency, rendering, and gameplay problems. I'm not sure there's a better alternative on the horizon at the moment.

EQ had collision detection. One encounter even relied on a wall of ogres to keep the tank from being knocked back :)

The alternative to having tanking is generally a reduction in class diversity (we're all basically DPS!), tactics (Zerg!) and degree to which the encounter can be challenging (can't do too much damage since each character is effectively soloing in the same space). A better argument is how you make tanking and healing cinematic and fun.

[ajax34i]

A better argument is how you make tanking and healing cinematic and fun.

Dramatic, fully voice-acted cutscenes every time the tank is about to die and the healer(s) need to do something?

[Fordel]

Make everyone DPS, or more accurately, make no one DPS.


Everyone gets a job or niche and DPS is just a side effect at being good at your job.

[Kageru]

Done it in champions online... it sucked there. An entire party of DPS is just a zerg rush. Why bother having party based encounters if there's no group dynamics?

Now something like the Tabular rasa base invasions or Rifts, uh.... rifts might work with that sort of model as long as all your content is in that format. But they've made it pretty clear they intend to have small group content.

Though why we're discussing this in SWTOR thread I've no idea. If there's one game that shows no likelihood of challenging the fundamentals this would be it. Then again they can't really afford to take huge risks with the amount of cash they're investing.

[Typhon]

You can't compare fantasy MMO with Super Hero MMO.  In Super Hero MMO the canon has far to many do-it-all archetypes that you cannot ignore lest you piss off your target demographic.  Arguably CoX did "don't need a healer" well, it's just that no one wanted to use knock back and perma CC because then you couldn't AoE grind.

[Sky]

Fuck that, knockback was awesome. As in fun.

That's really my problem with mmo, it seems to be fun-averse.

Happened in Rift, I played 2.1 of the beta events. First beta, had a wicked fun cleric build. Second beta, it was completely removed (sentinel and inq no longer synergized at all), so I made a new wicked fun cleric build. Third beta, it was nerfed into oblivion, so I just did the wise thing and played Fallout:NV.

[Paelos]

WAR killed me thinking knockbacks were ever fun.

[Typhon]

I completely agree.  I think they should have added a debuff based upon the number of mobs you had around you to make anything other than very-brief blasts of AoE damage suicidal.  Promote knockback as the only means of controlling mobs that wasn't subjected to diminishing returns (because roots, slows and stuns are boring).  People would have bought the knockback enhancement.  Power blasters (who still have the most amazing effects and SOUNDS in any game ever) would have been gods.  Give all melee chars a leap closer.  Battles would have been this chaotic mess of bodies flying everywhere and mobility and positioning would have been king.  Definitely give added damage for knocking someone into a wall.  Sigh.  Would have been awesome, instead of the round em up and burn em down! snorfest that people demanded.

fuck. really depressing myself here.

[Typhon]

WAR killed me thinking knockbacks were ever fun.

Because of Tor Anroc!  Knockback into instant-death environment = fucking retarded.  FUCKING RETARDED!

When I re-subbed and played for awhile knockback was fun (ok! I played a Chosen! I'm biased!).  You had to watch for someone trying to run past your line and knock you back into their side.  You could remove a player from the fray for a couple seconds if they gave you an angle on knocking them off a cliff (Nordenwatch).  Remove the isntant-death due to environment shit and put a long cooldown on the AoE knockbacks and it's a good addition to combat.

They almost had the full deal!  All melee had a low-power ranged ability - allowing for some level of activity even when you get knocked back.  Instead of implementing collision (and all it's problems), embrace knockback as the primary tool in managing position/range.  Give all offensive melee a gap closer.  Give offensive ranged a blink.  Make sure that defensive melee have a decently low cooldown single-target knock back and a long-cooldown AE knockback.  Give melee strikes a mitigation debuff that is needed for ranged to do good damage (so you don't have all-ranged teams).

The Chosen had this shield wall ability were everyone behind you took less damage while you maintained it.  Setting that shit up as people try to come across a bridge was just awesome.  Positioning and mobility!

/foamsatmouth

:(  They were so close.

[Sky]

Would have been awesome, instead of the round em up and burn em down! snorfest that people demanded.

I solved it by not grouping or minmaxing. CoH was a lot of fun as a flying energy blaster. Of course, not being able to run the tougher content got old, but the gameplay itself is still some of the best mmo has produced.

I remember early in EQ having way more fun with non-optimal groups (like six wizards or six necros or a hybrid-only, etc). Unfortunately that game was balanced for boring optimum groups and that mindset has taken over mmo. Optimal, path-of-least-resistance garbage has completely trumped 'fun'. Just doing stuff because it's fun, even if it's sub-optimal.

[Lantyssa]

Knockback is extremely fun if you have it.

It's not fun if you are exclusively melee and either the enemy knocks you away or your team knocks the enemies away.

Tor Anroc was fun because Chaos must have never fought Swordmasters.  They didn't even try to move away so I didn't have any trouble lining up my punts... Snare... DoT... AREA KNOCKBACK!... I didn't even always use it I felt so bad for them, which must have led to a false sense of security.  Also the back wall of Nordenwatch.

In CoH I was an Energy Tank and a Dark Scrapper.  The roommate of the time was an energy blaster with no sense of positioning.  Shit just flew everywhere, usually as I was running up to try and hit it.  Even with combat jumping I couldn't tag it half the time.  He face planted a lot since I couldn't touch it to make it angry at me.  It wasn't fun at all.

[Khaldun]

Knockback is fine as an alternative way to do tanking in a PvP environment. Since you don't have aggro-locking mechanics, and you generally have to allow people to pass through other character avatars if you don't want to open up a major tool for griefers, knockback is a way to let tanks protect their glass cannons and healers in a rear rank.

Removing lethal environments where knockbacks allow one-shot kills is one easy step that you need to take to make it work.

There are other things. You need to limit the extent to which there are choke points that allow a small number of knockback-enabled tanks to easily prevent any attacks on vulnerable ranged damage-dealers and healers--there needs to be a high premium on coordinated action between a significant number of characters. You need to not have knockback abilities in any other class besides a tank. You need to have a long enough recharge that a coordinated rush on a single vulnerable point can overwhelm a defensive formation's ability to knockback the whole attack. You need to have a damage-dealing melee class that can resist or evade knockbacks that requires some other rock to its paper, some other counter. Etc.

[Paelos]

I would prefer not running through people instead of knockbacks as a way to control pvp tanking.

[Sky]

Knockback is extremely fun if you have it.

It's not fun if you are exclusively melee and either the enemy knocks you away or your team knocks the enemies away.

In CoH I was an Energy Tank and a Dark Scrapper.  The roommate of the time was an energy blaster with no sense of positioning.  Shit just flew everywhere, usually as I was running up to try and hit it.  Even with combat jumping I couldn't tag it half the time.  He face planted a lot since I couldn't touch it to make it angry at me.  It wasn't fun at all.

Oh, I get it.

But the problem imo is with the melee mechanics, not the knockback, which was one of the most fun and super-heroey things about CoH (imo). Give the dark scrapper a shadowstep to allow them to stay close to mobs. Energy tank gets an energy whip or something to pull enemies into range. Whatever.

[Typhon]

Maybe when internet 2.0 reduces latency to LAN-like levels we can have collision detection.  I agree that it's desirable. 

I still think that knockback is fun.  I think Champions Online came the closest to how it should work - to actually knock back you need to charge up whatever power you are using - giving a bit of a tell that you are trying to knockback.  Unless you are trying to knockback, powers should only really knockdown.  This should make it easier for characters with knockback to not (accidentally) piss off their melee-range-bound friends.  I think that Khaldun is right, there should be chars with abilities that temporarily reduce/negate knockback.

[Lantyssa]

But the problem imo is with the melee mechanics, not the knockback, which was one of the most fun and super-heroey things about CoH (imo). Give the dark scrapper a shadowstep to allow them to stay close to mobs. Energy tank gets an energy whip or something to pull enemies into range. Whatever.

That would perhaps be acceptable.  They didn't provide that much mobility, however, so it wasn't fun playing with his blaster.

For solo play it is a blast.  The game needs to account for that if both are going to be present.

[Count Nerfedalot]

so, um, is SWTOR going to have knockback or not? 

[Venkman]

Knockback sucks if your combat engine entirely relies on you standing in one spot, carefully timing your moves with a really long ass GCD, and when you get knocked back it just means stun while you're sitting there with your thumb up your... nose.

DCUO and CoH had fine knockback. You got knocked back, you looked like it, your body flew through the air normally, you landed on your back, you hand to stand back up and dust off. All of this took a few seconds, but the animations effectively masked it.

Knockback in EQ2 sucked though. You got bounced back, you flew through the air as if you were standing up on some floating disk. You landed and then had a second or two of standing there waiting for your abilities to become accessible again.

Don't remember if anyone got knocked back in the SWTOR demo. I do remember lots of timers and stun things though.

[Margalis]

Tanking in MMOs is generally extremely stupid, and it gets stupider as you fight humanoid opponents. You use some sort of taunt (you insult their mom?) and then they lose all sense and only attack you, even though you are wearing full plate and hitting them with a wet noodle while the guy right next to you is naked but jabbing them in the eye with fork. Makes sense?

There are a million ways to accomplish what tanking accomplishes without it being based almost solely on taunts. Stuns, snares, pushes and pulls, physically blocking people, giving damage dealers abilities like turning invis, etc. Give a tank a move where if a guy is near him and then moves away from him the tank can trip them and they fall on their ass for two seconds...

I assume that a lot of the enemies in SWTOR are going to be humans, which makes taunt mechanics that much more dumb. Tanking without relying on taunts works in wargames, SRPGs, DOTA-clones and real life. I don't see why it's so super impossible to make it work in an MMO and be more than "press taunt when the cooldown is up."

[Samprimary]

It would be cool if someone could work out a way to make D&D 4th ed "tanking" work in an MMO system. Defenders weren't 'tanks' in the general sense, but in a much cooler and more dynamic way. They're painful to ignore and they enact a degree of defensive control over the battlefield situation. Futhermore, the roles of the other characters didn't hinge on the defender 'holding the aggro,' and could expect to get beat up a lot over the course of the fight as well.

[Samprimary]

At the same time, of course, I would also want a pony.

[Fordel]

WAR actually had some systems similar to the 4e defenders, didn't it?


At least I recall reading about some skills that made attacking anything behind the tank be a bad idea. No idea if those actually worked of course.




Guild Wars is also a taunt-less system.

[Kail]

WAR actually had some systems similar to the 4e defenders, didn't it?
At least I recall reading about some skills that made attacking anything behind the tank be a bad idea. No idea if those actually worked of course.

As I recall, there were three "main" tanking abilities, though my recollection may be faulty: one which increased the damage the tank did to a target until the target attacked the tank, one AoE thing which decreased the amount of damage enemies nearby did to everyone but the tank, and one channeled "hold the line" kind of thing where allies in a cone behind the tank gained something like +75% dodge as long as you could keep the spell channeled.

It kind of worked, but tanks were still generally a bit superfluous in PvP.  The "hold the line" thing was nice, as I recall, but too expensive to use all the time.  The other two abilities didn't really do much, since even with the bonus damage, tanks were rarely more of a threat than the squishies they were protecting, even excluding the fact that they were also harder to kill.  A bigger problem, I suspect, was that the pacing was way faster than in something like a tabletop RPG.  In a tabletop game, you plan your moves and examine the consequences of attacking the tank vs. attacking the squishies he's guarding.  In WAR (or most MMOs), you see a guy in a robe waving his hands, you better make sure he's dead in five seconds or you will be, you don't have time to worry about all this dicking around with debuffs and target switching and so on.

Still, at least tanking had a function in PvP, which is more than I can say for a lot of MMOs.

[Venkman]

Exactly. The paradigm of tanking only makes sense in a Braveheart style run-at-your-enemy/inertia+mass fest. But that doesn't work in MMOs where the battlefield is more open, the movement more fluid, and (for most players) the coordination more about reacting to what's happening than planning ahead and executing Futbol/Football-style coordination.

[Lucas]

Nice video showing the Jedi Knight appearance progression (well, at least 'til the early mid-game experience):

http://www.swtor.com/media/trailers/jedi-knight-progression

[Samprimary]

kill every character animator.

[Ratman_tf]

Nice to know they're going to have outrageous shoulder pads.

[Paelos]

I liked it!

[Chimpy]

Nice video showing the Jedi Knight appearance progression (well, at least 'til the early mid-game experience):

http://www.swtor.com/media/trailers/jedi-knight-progression

The caption made me laugh:

As you progress in Star Wars™: The Old Republic™, your character grows more powerful, gains experience, discovers new skills, and acquires more advanced gear.

Also, what the fuck is with MMO designers and shoulder pads?

[UnSub]

Shoulder pads are another area to design for that provides a lot of empty space to fill. Completely impractical (especially when they become bigger than the character's head) but it's an area that costume designers can have free reign.

I laughed a the "I HAVE THE POW-AH!" move, followed by the hydoken.

[Paelos]

Also, what the fuck is with MMO designers and shoulder pads?

Otherwise a Jedi would just be wearing a robe? This brown robe is inferior to that brown robe?

I know a lot of people hate the shoulderpads, but honestly they are the one of the three defining pieces of armor on your character. Helms, Shoulders, and weapons. Nobody can see anything else at a glance.

[Engels]

Something that makes your toon look like a douche should still be a bad idea no matter how much 'real estate' it provides.

[Malakili]

Also, what the fuck is with MMO designers and shoulder pads?

Otherwise a Jedi would just be wearing a robe? This brown robe is inferior to that brown robe?

Fine with me.

Seriously though, if they add in an appearance tab they could side step the entire issue, I'm not sure why this feature hasn't become 100% standard in MMOs.