How to make tanks more fun to play (devs please read)

[therpgfanatic]

This essay is going to be linked to on reddit as well. http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1yagsm/how_to_make_final_fantasy_xiv_tanks_more_fun_a/)

I was reading Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XII Q & A today and something stuck out to me:

Q1: Despite the implementation of a role bonus, tanks still remain in short supply. Are you looking into any countermeasures for this?
A1: Looking at the data, we've found that there are quite a lot of tanks around level 40. While we are not sure whether or not these players will decide to continue leveling tank roles, and making it their main job, the actual numbers are increasing. If the supply of tanks remains low, we will look into introducing a special mount to help incentivize them.

Mr. Producer, this will not work. Adding a vanity mount will incentive people to FATE grind a tank Job alternate so they have another mount for their DPS main Job. A reward such as this will not convince them to tank parties in the duty finder or for Free Companies. Also people rolling a tank alt so they can more easily grind tomes in Duty Finder isn't the same as more tanks for end-game raid content.
You seem to have adopted the belief you can bribe players with items to play Jobs that they do not enjoy playing. This can work in some MMOs to an extent, but not in a game such as FFXIV where you can change classes so easily without needing to re-roll a new character.

I am not trying to be rude, but I feel compelled to explain. I believe you would get better results if you just made the tank Jobs themselves more fun to play. The root of the problem is they are not very “fun”, and so long as they lack the “fun” factor of other Jobs you will always have this problem. Bribery with items would not be necessary if they were more fun.

Please do not take my feedback as something spur-of-the-moment from a “noob”. I have not only played multiple MMOs for three decades, but in the past I worked professionally as a game systems designer on a long running MMORPG. I played a significant role in the implementation of an expansion for that MMORPG that was much beloved by the long-time players of that game, which included implementing new abilities that were designed to take advantage of nostalgic sentiments in the playerbase to improve the “fun” factor. I also made design adjustment to many sub-systems to make them more fun to play, including to help slightly change combat mechanics for a more enjoyable “fun” experience.

The suggestions I am making in this post are my expert opinion based on both my professional experience as a designer, and as my vast experience as a gamer in MMORPGs. Please take them to heart. As a designer and gamer, I see the vast potential of this game to become something really outstanding and would like to see that happen. Please consider this article a gift of appreciation, because there is a lot to love about FF XIV. It deserves more attention.

There are two aspects of balancing a class in an MMO;

1. Functional at doing its party role.
2. Fun to play the party role.

Are Paladins and Warriors functional as tanks? Yes. Absolutely.
Are Paladins and Warriors fun as tanks? Popular consensus says No, as does my own play experience. I mean really, 5% of the community rolling a tank as a main is a big demonstration there is something wrong.

I only have experience playing the Gladiator Job so I cannot comment on the Marauders right now. The overall problem I see is this; Gladiators do not feel like a Final Fantasy character. They feel like a World of Warcraft character. And as a player, if I wanted a WoW melee character I’d go play WoW. The reason I purchased this game and chose a melee tank role is because I wanted to play a Final Fantasy inspired tank, which in my mind would be a character like Orlando from FFT, General Leo / Celes from FF6, Cecil from FF4, Cloud from FF7, Steiner from FF9 or Tidus from FF10.
A lot of the fun in FF XIV comes from playing a character that resembles an iconic FF character. Isn’t that the whole reason why people enjoy the Artifact armors? It’s most certainly why 9 out of 10 characters I see have a first or last name of a Final Fantasy character; I’ve honestly lost count of how many times I’ve seen a Lancer with “Highwind”.

Let me explain in detail what I mean by, “ do not feel like a Final Fantasy character ”.
The reason only 5% of the game population is willing to be a tank is three-fold; firstly it is a lot of stress to be a tank and requires fast reflexes and expert level understanding of the game mechanics, not just his own Job but that of other Jobs because he must position to the boss to take advantage of the environment and abilities of the other party members.

The stress of playing the Job can be relieved a’bit by making some of the abilities more user-friendly (like Cover) but I’ll come back to this idea later in my post. For now we need to talk about the disconnect between what the player expects and what the game delivers.

Because the tank is often the party leader (since he / she is responsible for positioning the mobs and setting kill order) most FF players are going to identify the main tank as your typical FF protagonist like Cecil, Tidus, Cloud, Lightning, etc. The FFXIV is an expansion of the overal FF brand so this expectation of the main tank having a similar play style to these iconic characters is important to satisfy; “I get to be Cecil / Tidus / Squall / Cloud / Lightning” needs to be the #1 reward for playing a tank. Yet tanks currently do not feel like these iconic characters and that is causing a lot of frustration in the playerbase. There are several reasons why tanks don’t “feel” right and I’ll get into that later.

Secondly, unlike many Jobs the FF XIV Gladiator does not have many iconic FF abilities from past games. Near as I can tell, many of the Gladiator abilities have never appeared in FF games before, and the few that are iconic (like Riot Blade) do not function at all like they did in prior games. This means the nostalgia factor of having a character with iconic abilities is not helping to recruit players to the Job like it does for White Mages, Black Mages, Dragoons, or Summoners.

Think about it. Dragoons have jumps, Summoners can call iconic summons, White Mages have Holy and Black Mages have Flare. The Gladiator level 50 ability is...Circle of Scorn? What the hell is that? It looks like Shock but it’s not called Shock and does not function like I’d expect Shock to function. And why is an ability very clearly meant to be Blitzblade called Rage of Halone? I suspect that in development it was intended for the Gladiator to have iconic FF abilities but someone veto-ed it late in development. If this is the case, whoever it was that changed these names, you are partly responsible for why many players don’t want to be Gladiators.

I would highly suggest a dramatic retooling of the Gladiator class ability names to be more iconic to the franchise. Personally these are the name-swaps I would like to see:

• Change Rage of Halone to ‘Bladeblitz’ (based on the animation this is clearly what it was supposed to be called).
• Change Riot Blade to ‘Runic Blade’ (Celes’ FF6 ability, which seems to be what the FFXIV Riot Blade was inspired by but someone instead gave it FF6 Terra’s limit break ability)
• Change Circle of Scorn to ‘Shock’ (General Leo’s FF6 ability, and based on the FF XIV animation, what Circle of Scorn is inspired by).
• Change ‘Spirits Within’ to ‘Hallowed Bolt’ (Orlando and Aegis’ iconic Holy Sword ability from FFT, using the revised translation from the PSP version WotL. Since “Spirits Within” is clearly a holy attack that adds Silence I’m pretty sure this is what the move was inspired by). Also remove the HP decrease reduces Potency penalty, that is completely unnecessary and reduces the usefulness of the attack for no good reason.

(Yes I get that Spirits Within is a reference to the movie. Unfortunately the movie was no Advent Children. I and many other gamers feel no special attachment to it, and reference will do nothing to attract players to the Paladin job)

Some FFXIV legacy players might scoff at these suggestions but I think they would do a lot to encourage people to play the Gladiator / Paladin class. With how the abilities are named right now it is NOT clear how this Job has anything to do with past Final Fantasy characters; you’d need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of FF games to get the references. It needs to be more obvious. I suggest you make the name changes now while the game is still early in its life-cycle, while the player made guides can still be easily updated.

I'm not trying to be rude but you need to understand what the players want. Nobody buying this game cares about brand new made-up gods like Halone that do not appear in the main story of FF XIV, and have never been in previous FF games. We have no sentimental attachment to “The Twelve” because they are never introduced, and they NEVER appear in the storyline, so we have no reasons to care about them. Unlike the Primals they do not have three decades of legacy supporting player attachment to them.

Therefore, naming abilities after The Twelve is meaningless to the player. Names have power; if you had instead called Rage of Halone “Omnislash” or “Renzokuken” the playerbase attachment to the Gladiator would be significantly higher, and therefore the desire to play one much more prominent. Then when a mediocre damage ability is named something very notable like Riot Blade, the poor use of a powerful name detracts from the experience. I was initially excited to unlock Riot Blade, but then I realized it’s not part of the DPS rotation, but instead a way to recover MP for Flash spamming. Riot Blade is an iconic limit break for a beloved FF protagonist, Terra and it did tremendous damage. Thus you have inconsistent branding issues with the Gladiator class and it detracts from the enjoyment of the game while playing that class.

Some of the design decisions I’ve seen (like Odin’s sword Zantetsuken not being a very good lv50 weapon stat wise) make it appear you don’t fully grasp the appeal of a FF MMO to fans of the franchise. The majority of people who decide to play FF XIV want to experience a Final Fantasy universe and use iconic Final Fantasy abilities on characters that look and feel like iconic Final Fantasy characters. We do not want yet-another-Tolkien-inspired-fantasy-setting with the bulk of the game concept bored from Everquest and World of Warcraft. The MMO market is flooded with “Not-LoTR” worlds and I personally am tired of those games...the most enjoyable parts of FF XIV are the end-game content focused on nostalgic things, like the Empire from FF6, Ultima Weapon from FF7 and the primal fights. Sunken Temple is obviously the Stillshrine of Miriam from FF12. I even liked the Demon Wall, and I’m going to assume Cutter’s Cry is supposed to be Antlion’s Den from FF IV. I am looking forward to Crystal Tower as well. But a lot of the other dungeons are forgettable and its because they could have been in any other game.

Story wise, there is tons of nostalgia infused into the game. So I believe you must understand that nostalgia is important for the players, otherwise it'd not be there. And while the story is very good and filled with references, the GAMEPLAY is lacking in the nostalgic "feel" of a FF game. Sure, my Gladiator looks really bad-ass doing his FF style attack animations but he looks bad ass while doing very little damage. It's hard to feel epic when that is the case.

So when it comes to the problem with tanks, not applying the same level of care you took to creating the storyline as to the gameplay of Gladiators and Marauders is what is causing much of the disconnect. You copied the form of World of Warcraft tank classes, but you failed to infuse any of Final Fantasy’s heart into the Jobs to make them your own. You need to fix this.

The nostalgic elements that have defined the Final Fantasy universe for three decades is what drew me and many others to this world. Personally I was very reluctant to buy the game and try FFXIV when it was first released because I took one look at the ability lists for Gladiator and Paladin and it didn’t seem very FF inspired to me. I feared a repeat of FFXI’s “Everquest with Final Fantasy flavor-text” experience that I did not want again.

Because hardcore MMO gamers like myself research these games before buying them (we want to ensure our time and money won’t be wasted on a game we won’t enjoy), I believe the developers missed a huge opportunity to take advantage of the nostalgic sentiment that we have for iconic melee characters like General Leo, Terra, Celes, Cloud, Squall, Tidus, etc, when they designed the Gladiator class. At least change the darn ability names. I believe this is a small and not time consuming tweak that would have a huge impact.

(I would also suggest renaming many of the Marauder and Warrior abilities, too, probably drawn from the melee ability lists of games in the Final Fantasy Tactics series but I don’t have the time or inclination to level up a Warrior just to examine their ability animations).

The third reason is that playing a tank -- at least a Paladin -- is harder than it ought to be on the PS3. I have no experience with the PC version so it may be different but because the targeting system is so crappy I have trouble provoking mobs that are attacking the player. By “crappy” I mean the targeting system often skips over mobs that are directly in front of my character and jumps to a mob at the back of the room. There are encounters like in Aurum Vale where I fight the game’s controls more than the monsters; the fruit are nearly impossible to select with only a controller (suggestion: it’d be easier to trigger a fruit by walking over it just walk over it) because of the poor target selection system for the PS3. I can literally be standing in front of an fruit but unable to select it no matter what direction I cycle through, forcing me to constantly reposition myself until I get the fruit or die trying.

I know I could use a mouse and keyboard but I have managed to play many RPG games on console without using a mouse and keyboard. I know you can improve the PS3 targeting so it is more intuitive and user-friendly, and I encourage you to do so, it would be awkward to control a mouse + keyboard + use a PS3 controller since a controller requires two hands to play, and I’m unlikely to be growing another pair of arms this lifetime.

(OR just don’t create encounters requiring me to click on half a dozen things while tanking. )

The damage of the Paladin is below my expectations for a Final Fantasy Paladin character, especially when the character is pre-level 50. This makes them unfun to play, because the expectation isn’t met. If you want more people to stick to a Paladin until level 50 you must improve the DPS of the Job from lv 1 to 50 and polish the gameplay so I no longer feel like I am fighting the limitations of the game rather than the enemies onscreen.


I have to talk about the damage again. The damage of the Paladin is below my expectations for a Final Fantasy Paladin character, especially when the character is pre-level 50 and is going to do a lot of soloing for his quests. The low damage has made him unfun to play, because the expectation isn’t met. If you want more people to stick to a Paladin until level 50 you must improve the DPS of the Job from lv 1 to 50 and polish the gameplay so I no longer feel like I am fighting the limitations of the game rather than the enemies onscreen.

I leveled my Paladin up with the hope that if I reached 50, he'd become more fun to play. And he did, though only slightly. Circle of Scorn looks rad but is no Shock.

It is inconsistent with the Final Fantasy brand for any fighter protagonist to do little damage. I feel like my Paladin has a huge chest capable of absorbing blows, but very scrawny arms to hit back with. I whittle down enemies as if I was hitting them with a wet noodle. Furthermore the MMO battle mechanic of tanks do little damage but generate high threat is a very antiquated idea that modern MMOs no longer use because it has always resulted in less people willing to play tanks, because soloing is more challenging that it should be and while tanking you feel like a punching bag rather than an epic front line warrior. Plus if you lose a single DPS party member it can be nearly impossible to clear certain DPS check encounters like the Demon Wall; lose 1 DPS and you are screwed. There should be no problem with a tank doing decent DPS while tanking -- somehow WoW managed to retain its status as most subscribed MMO after making huge DPS increases for its tanking classes several years ago.

Higher DPS for the Gladiator Job can be obtained simply by removing nearly all the Gladiator abilities from triggering the global cooldown. This will also improve utility since I find that if I actually do a Halone combo rotation during a boss fight requiring stuns that my stun is nearly always stuck in a global cooldown. So any situation where I off-tank a primal fight, I am pretty bored. It makes my chara basically a flash, stunner and auto-attacker. It is NOT fun to monitor cooldowns like this while I do 30 points of damage with auto-attack while on Shield Oath, and this needs to change if you honestly expect people to want to play tanks as a main character. Most players will not tolerate it, because it’s not fun.

I cannot speak for Warriors because I haven’t played one, but these are the following changes I would make to Paladins:

1. Cover needs to be a toggle like Sword and Shield Oath. It needs to apply to the entire party and work more like it did in previous Final Fantasy games, or at least like its FF6 incarnation. It should trigger its damage absorption effect when any party member is at 25% of their max HP, and let the tank absorb that damage while also generating threat for the tank on the attacking mob. This change will reduce 50% of the stress caused by the limitations of Provoke (it often makes me the top aggro but then I quickly lose it ‘cause I have to wait on global cooldown triggered by Shield Lob / Rage of Halone) and the crappy targeting system on the PS3.

2. Move Circle of Scorn to level 30. A tank needs an AoE attack at a lower level so he can participate in FATEs in a way that is more fun than spamming Flash on mobs that die in 2-3 seconds from other classes who spam AoE. If you make the player wait until 50 you will do nothing but discourage him from playing a Paladin at all. I literally fell asleep playing in some of these FATE groups because it was so god awful boring to participate in any situation that didn’t require me to tank, and most of the Fates I was in someone else was tanking.

3. Remove global cooldown triggering from the following abilities:
Fast Blade
Savage Blade
Flash
Riot Blade
Shield Lob
Shield Bash
Rage of Halone

The regular cooldowns, animation locks and TP cost on the abilities are sufficient to prevent constant spamming of the skills. Having nearly every attack ability trigger Global Cooldown is unnecessary for balanced play in this game. The only thing you are doing is making Gladiators feel like they are weighed down by stones. The movement gameplay is twitch-based with the constant need to move around red AoE areas and grab add patrols during encounter, but the actual attacking of foes is about constant waiting on a global cooldown. It’s just inconsistent and not very fun at all. I find myself button mashing partly because I’m frustrated.

(I would suggest making similar changes to other melee classes too, global cooldown shouldn’t be on so many attack skills. It really detracts from the fun of the game, and you can easily rebalance the NPC monsters for the resulting player DPS increase by increasing all NPC HP by 20-40%).

4. Also make Shield Bash not cancel the Rage of Halone combo anymore, so I can use my stun the way I’d use it in any other MMO; as an interrupt that doesn’t screw up my burst rotation. It will also let me off-tank primals while still able to do a DPS rotation, because nothing is worse than seeing Ifrits Eruption start casting while my character has just used Fast Blade because I was trying to do more than be an auto-attacking stun bot.

In addition to giving Gladiators / Paladins the burst damage they need to be effective in PVP, these changes will also make the Job x100 more fun. As it stands right now the class feels slow and frustrating because it feels like almost Gladiator attack ability triggers global cooldown.

5. I would also make all the defensive panic buttons trigger their effect before the animation begins, rather than at the end of the animation. Currently some of the effects like Hallowed Ground, Tempered Will and Awareness happen after the animation sequence ends; the effect should begin as soon as I trigger the ability. Because not all of the abilities work the optimal way, this makes it hard to use as a panic button and not intuitive to players. This is an internet based game; the status effect triggering 0.5 second server side after the server registers that I triggered the ability, can mean it actually took 2 seconds for the ability to trigger from the time I pressed the button on my controller. This is especially true if I am lagging or in a fight with a lot of animations that causes me to lag. Please change your code so the status effects trigger before the animations, not after.

6. In Circle of Scorn’s place at level 50, I would instead make the Level 50 Gladiator ability something more iconic to the Final Fantasy series.

I would suggest giving Gladiators a powerful single-target attack with a x15 threat multiplier (same as spamming 3 Halones) that is not chained to the Halone Combo. This is because we need more burst for PVP and we need something more effective to generate threat + damage on a single target that we’ve lost aggro on. Right now all we can do is spam a non-comboed Rage of Halone, which makes it hard to do things like pickup adds. Make it cost 180 TP; the same amount of TP as 3 Halones. Cooldown should be 200 seconds. Potency probably at 300-350. Obviously I am just throwing out numbers here, so this new lv50 attack will need to be play-tested for refinement but I think the numbers I suggest are a good starting point for playtesting.

Personally I would give this level 50 ability the name of Riot Blade (after changing the existing Riot Blade to Runic Blade, like I suggested earlier) but other suggested names are Braver, Climhazard, Finishing Touch, Omnislash, Slice & Dice, Spiral Cut, etc really just pick any limit break from an iconic melee character appearing in Final Fantasy game, ideally the central protagonist since they nearly all use a sword.

Again the reward for playing a tank is that the players gets to be a main protagonist inspired character like Cecil, Terra, Squall, Cloud, Tidus, etc

Other mild “quality of life” tweaks:


Remove TP cost from Sprint, the existing cooldown is sufficient for balance. Draining all the TP is highly unbalanced in PVP since MP based Jobs are not penalized the same way melee Jobs are, and it makes the ability useless in PvE. I suspect the idea for draining all TP was for it to resemble the Escape mechanic in prior FF games, and possibly also diminish its over-use in combat encounters, but if melee players spam Sprint during boss fights it will only serve to balance them with the Black Mages who currently do it. And given the wide radius of many AoEs I don’t see the issue with a tank on Sprint having an additional 2 seconds to get out of the way.

Add Esuna to list of cross-class skills for Paladin. MP doesn’t get used for anything but Flash spamming, so if I’m off-tanking I have nothing to do with my MP. This is a wasted opportunity for more utility. Esuna would let me remove effects from myself and other party members alongside the Healers. Also Cecil had Esuna so as a player I wonder why don’t I have it?

Consider changing the limit break system from party based to something more personal to the character, like in all prior Final Fantasy games.

Currently in terms of utility and value to the party, the Tank limit break is vastly inferior to the damage limit break, and party members refuse to let the tank use it at all. Those who do get mocked by other players. The tank limit break may as well not even exist, and when you make a player feel like his limit break contribution is not as important as others, it is no wonder many don’t want to be a tank. We never get to limit break.

On that note, allow characters to earn limit breaks they can use during battle. For example, have earning Gold in the Odin FATE unlock the Odin Limit Break summon move, or have a quest where the Warrior earns Cloud’s Omnislash limit break while the Paladin earns Aegis / Orlando’s Holy Explosion ability. This would be more fun!

And fun is what playing a game is about. The Job must be fun to play in order to get players to want to play it. If you make Warriors and Paladins more fun to play then you will see more players selecting them as a main Job.

Thanks for reading.
-Carey