Quote Originally Posted by kikix12 View Post
Doubtful. "Tanking" is unrealistic. The closest to tanks in real life was the roman phalanx.

For a "tank" to work, the concept of enmity would need to be completely removed and the enemy should always go after the weakest link in the party, except if opportunity struck. That means that a tank would need to use skills and actively move to stop attacks rather than draw the attention. That's possible, but it either would make positioning more important to a point where dodging is possible, and at that point why tank if it's easier for the victim to avoid the attack altogether, or tanking would require extremely high reflexes making it even worse to play.
If you want to know what I'm talking about, play a pen and paper RPG. When I did, I had to actively make stupid decisions as a game master to avoid wiping the party up with basic monsters like goblins or orcs, just because "tanking" is simply not realistic.


Also, most people don't play tanks because majority of people prefer dealing damage. It's as simple as that. Tanks would be played the most if they dealt the most damage, but at that point, why have DPS?! There's nothing really to consider here. Playing supportive characters is a less common interest and every single game in existence shows exactly that.
While I don't at all think that the Macedonian phalanx is particularly iconic of "tanking", let alone the limit of such a space-making role in real life, I have to agree that we cannot have actual tanking so long as AI considers only who stacked an alternate-damage value (enmity) highest. Tanking works well enough in games like Overwatch precisely because they have the ability to thwart offenses against their team (via interception paired with their mitigation) despite not necessarily being the most desired target -- certainly not in the long run.