Please Reconsider Splitting Main and Off-Tank Roles Based on Job

[Mikey_R]

I think this argument is starting to contradict itself.

On one hand, you are saying we do not have enough information and should wait. On the other hand, you are saying MT/OT roles are coming regardless and that those roles are already defined by SE.

So which one is it?

Both, they aren't mutually exclusive. The devs have their idea for what they want out of MT and OT and given us 4 bullet points to explain the difference. It is about as vague as you can get and there is really no other information given except what we can find in the Paladin showcase.

So, we need more information to come from the devs. They have all the knowledge after all, we need more. However, we aren't going to see any more of that knowledge until Berlin, so we have to wait.

If we do not know enough, then players are right to ask for clarification.

If the roles are already defined and coming regardless, then players are even more right to give feedback now before those definitions become a problem.

..

Feedback during development is not supposed to wait until everything is fully explained, fully implemented, and too late to meaningfully change. The entire point of feedback is to react to the direction that was shown.

The developers used the terms Main Tank and Off Tank. Those terms already mean something to MMO players. Pretending those words are empty until SE gives us a dictionary definition is not a serious argument..

You can ask for clarification, you won't get anything until at lease Berlin.

As for feedback, feedback on what? You cannot give feedback on something you have no knowledge of, or are you saying you already know what the differences are going to be?

Again, SE have a record of using terms differently to other games, so it makes sense to go in with some caution. That was it. Just use the information provided and you won't be steered wrong.

The concern is friction.

Will some tanks gain more value when holding aggro?
Will some tanks lose value when they are not being hit?
Will encounter design reward one category more in one position?
Will Party Finder start treating certain jobs as wrong for MT or OT?
Will players feel punished for playing the tank they enjoy in the position they prefer?

Those are valid concerns.

Which you need to wait for an answer for, which is likely to be Berlin. However, there is no point trying to say the system is not going to work based on these questions.

And saying “the devs cannot control community pressure” is only partially true. They cannot control every player’s opinion, but they absolutely influence community behavior through tuning, terminology, job design, and encounter structure.

That is how metas are created.

METAs are always going to form no matter what. The question is how well that META does against everything else. If the gain is minimal, then it isn't an issue. Same here, if the differences in MT and OT are minimal, then nothing changes. Again, we need more info.

The strange part is that you seem to agree there are unknowns, but then dismiss people for discussing the possible consequences of those unknowns.

The problem is people taking the unknowns, making their own fantasy about what they think it all means and then justify arguments for or against the system being proposed. It is this that I am trying to stop. All we know is what we have been shown, that is it. Anything extra that has been tagged on is an unknown.

My feedback is simple:

Do not make tank identity restrictive.
Do not lock jobs into positional expectations.
Do not make tanks lose value when they are not playing their assigned label.
Do not turn MT/OT into another source of Party Finder policing.
Make tank identity dynamic through gameplay, not fixed through labels.

Every tank should still be able to main tank or off tank.

This isn't feedback. This is just hopes for the roles. You need something concrete to work off of in order to provide feedback. You don't know how restrictive the tanks are going to be, you don't know where they are going to be positioned etc.

If SE wants tanks to feel different, great. I want that too. But they should feel different through defensive identity, resource interaction, counterplay, mitigation style, and encounter response, not because one tank is branded as “the real tank” and another is branded as “the support tank.”

And how do you know this isn't their plan? Remember how we talked about the unknown? You keep acting like that isn't going to be the case. Wait, see what comes out and then provide proper, constructive feedback that the devs can work off of, not the imaginary image you have already made.