Bring back Aggro, resource management, bring back consequences!

[Malthir]

I've been moaning with alot of other Drks on this forum lately but I've come to realise that really what most of us are talking about, boring mechs and tanking no longer being fun is IMO cause by a lack of responsibility and consequences.

Aggro
Originally Dps could pull aggro off a bad tank, not all moves gave enmity and if I remember correctly most of those moves only gave enmity while in tank stance. This added consequences to the game, DPS and healers had to use moves to lower their aggro.

Tanks stance wasn't perfect, and at high-end ARR the meta was to tank without it. However removing it was a terrible plan IMO. Instead they should have made aggro gain more difficult if you weren't stance switching, made tank stance OGCD and then in each expansion they could have focused each tank classes mechanics around their stance and subsequently TP which I'll get onto next.

Resource
TP while not brilliant was better than our current system of spam all you want you have unlimited resources. Originally players had to think about their rotations, every weapon skill cost TP and speaking from the tank side that was always present in mind. It wasn't too hard for low skill players to handle (I should know I was/am one) and removing this lowered the skill ceiling not the skill floor.

Movement
Sprint used to cost TP, this used to wind me up back in ARR but I've come to realise that If you need to sprint in combat, you messed up, and therefor you get punished. The problem was that it only punished melee and tanks and not magic users.

Imo they should bring back a cost of using sprint while in combat via some form of debuff "less x done for X seconds" making it class specific for example, tanks have lowered resistance for X seconds or even making it slow you for X amount of seconds after use while in combat. It wouldn't fix wall to wall instance pulls but it would certainly go along way towards reducing it.

I realise this was our fault. We as tank players moaned about difficulty or the tediousness when really the difficulty and taking your time is what made the game fun and gave us the sense of achievement. The devs clearly have had to lean into the wall to wall instance design, if you look at all the recent expansion instances, it's two mob packs, boss room, two mob packs, boss room. Even the boss fights had to go to AOES everywhere turning boss mechanics into dance dance revolution, because we can sprint without consequence in combat anything short of a room full of AOE's wouldn't even graze us and since tanks never have to worry about loosing aggro the only mechanics they can do is don't step in stuff.

IMO to get tanking and in general combat mechanics back to a fun and health place, first we need to bring back consequences of us playing badly, be more unforgiving for our mistakes.

[Danelo]

I’m not saying this is a bad idea, especially considering that I for one thought getting rid of stances/aggro would lead to a more in depth DPS rotation since tanks didn’t really have to worry about enmity anymore… I was wrong… buuuut sQEX wants to simplify the role and adding enmity management as it was previously won’t happen. I will hold my breath for a mid-expansion rework to DRK before seriously considering aggro management is coming back.

[Cabalabob]

I miss aggro management, especially from the stormblood era where it really felt like a team effort to let tanks stay out of tank stance and use less enmity combos.

But I have to say no to resource management. Or rather, we still have resource management, it’s beast gauge, black blood, cartridges, shield gauge and MP. They got rid of TP for a reason, it was a bad mechanic. It wasn’t something you managed yourself, it was just a resource that ran out and then you had to sit there picking your nose until it built back up again and it wasn’t even your fault when it happened, it’s not like MP on current DRK where if you don’t have MP for TBN it’s because you spent too much on edge of shadow, if you ran out of TP it was because you had been doing your regular rotation but the BRD or MCH forgot their tp regen.

[AziraSyuren]

Aggro management was terrible. Awful. No good. I could write an entire thesis on why it's an awful idea.

I don't really care about the rest, but fuck aggro management.

[Tyjacon]

Aggro management was terrible. Awful. No good. I could write an entire thesis on why it's an awful idea.

I don't really care about the rest, but fuck aggro management.

I, for one, would be interested on knowing your reasoning for this. (Not an entire thesis, but a summary would be nice.)

I may be in the minority but I actually agree with the op.
Push one button and never lose aggro is boring, hence the reason I haven't picked up a tank class since 2.0.
Having to manage aggro on a mob by the entire party and not just going ham on it was to me more exciting.
Having to plan your burst damage around the tanks abilities to generate emnity, having to manage your TP during a fight so not to run out was more exciting to me than just spamming your skills until the mobs die.

But then again I came from XI, a game where you had to actually participate with your party, not in spite of.

[aveyond-dreams]

I, for one, would be interested on knowing your reasoning for this. (Not an entire thesis, but a summary would be nice.)

I may be in the minority but I actually agree with the op.
Push one button and never lose aggro is boring, hence the reason I haven't picked up a tank class since 2.0.
Having to manage aggro on a mob by the entire party and not just going ham on it was to me more exciting.
Having to plan your burst damage around the tanks abilities to generate emnity, having to manage your TP during a fight so not to run out was more exciting to me than just spamming your skills until the mobs die.

But then again I came from XI, a game where you had to actually participate with your party, not in spite of.

Having tanks scream at me for not pressing what otherwise appeared to be a useless button got really boring after a while. They are the tank, keeping enemies focused on them is not my job if I am playing Red Mage or Black Mage (at the time). I can only imagine the kinds of problems that tanks would be experiencing if this was still the case with new SMN out, which already has enough firepower to disrupt aggro early on in dungeon pulls.

Additionally, when I'm playing a tank I do not like to have to work extra to keep things focused on me. I want a decent rotation as a tank that builds enough aggro to keep things on me, which is the case for my current favorite tank, Paladin. The aggro juggling as old Dark Knight was a terrible experience and the fact that the spell Flash was even in game at one point seems so bewildering looking back. That ability should have never left FFXI. They were all needless complications to what should have been a fun experience, not the headache inducing runs from back in the olden days.

[Mikey_R]

I, for one, would be interested on knowing your reasoning for this. (Not an entire thesis, but a summary would be nice.)

I suspect a few of their ideas would mimic my own thoughts I outlined in post #16 and as I said in that post, that is just scratching the surface, though, in bullet points:

-Redundant combos
-Annoyance of Lucid/Diversion/Quelling
-Gear/skill levels of everyone

These points mainly come from the flaws in the system that was in place up until Stormblood.

Also, managing TP was not fun. Before Holy Spirit/Equilibrium TP restore, tanks had no way to restore TP/not use TP. Even playing perfectly, you will run out and then what? You are being punished for...playing too well? How about AoE? They cost alot of TP, ~120 per GCD IIRC, you ran out quickly. Paladin's alternative? Flash, you get punished by doing no damage. Warrior? Equilibrium only restored TP in Deliverance, the DPS stance. DRK was the only one who really didn't have to much of a hard time just because of the MP restoration power it had. TP was just a punishing mechanic and was not interesting.

[AziraSyuren]

I suspect a few of their ideas would mimic my own thoughts I outlined in post #16 and as I said in that post, that is just scratching the surface, though, in bullet points:

-Redundant combos
-Annoyance of Lucid/Diversion/Quelling
-Gear/skill levels of everyone

These points mainly come from the flaws in the system that was in place up until Stormblood.

Also, managing TP was not fun. Before Holy Spirit/Equilibrium TP restore, tanks had no way to restore TP/not use TP. Even playing perfectly, you will run out and then what? You are being punished for...playing too well? How about AoE? They cost alot of TP, ~120 per GCD IIRC, you ran out quickly. Paladin's alternative? Flash, you get punished by doing no damage. Warrior? Equilibrium only restored TP in Deliverance, the DPS stance. DRK was the only one who really didn't have to much of a hard time just because of the MP restoration power it had. TP was just a punishing mechanic and was not interesting.

Yeah, it's mostly just this.

Aggro management was only a mechanic if you were either bad or had a party that didn't play nice. Otherwise, it was just a nuisance.

That's not a skill worth testing. That's just luck masquerading as talent.

It's also ridiculously overpowered to be able to press one button and have 20% more DPS over someone who doesn't.

[Malthir]

I suspect a few of their ideas would mimic my own thoughts I outlined in post #16 and as I said in that post, that is just scratching the surface, though, in bullet points:

-Redundant combos
-Annoyance of Lucid/Diversion/Quelling
-Gear/skill levels of everyone

These points mainly come from the flaws in the system that was in place up until Stormblood.

Also, managing TP was not fun. Before Holy Spirit/Equilibrium TP restore, tanks had no way to restore TP/not use TP. Even playing perfectly, you will run out and then what? You are being punished for...playing too well? How about AoE? They cost alot of TP, ~120 per GCD IIRC, you ran out quickly. Paladin's alternative? Flash, you get punished by doing no damage. Warrior? Equilibrium only restored TP in Deliverance, the DPS stance. DRK was the only one who really didn't have to much of a hard time just because of the MP restoration power it had. TP was just a punishing mechanic and was not interesting.

That's not an argument against TP or aggro, that's an argument that they implemented it poorly.

The difference being, the concept of resource management is good, they added TP restorers because it was implemented badly that you had no way of returning TP, that was a smart move.
However SE took the approach of just rip the whole system out instead of fixing it.

To give an analogy, imagine your houses heating system allowed you to control temperature but it wasn't working right in one room of your house. Instead of checking what needed fixing and replacing certain parts the plumbers removed the entire heating system and it was replaced with a static heating system that gives you no control and your house is stuck on 22°C permanently.

I don't think anyone here is advocating for the exact old aggro system to be brought back, or TP management system. What is being said is that the game is becoming less fun because it is becoming shallow, mechanics and gameplay feel empty especially for tanks. For those who are saying tankings is already too busy, what is it you're busy with, not trolling, genuinely I want to know? Certainly not tanking! If by busy you mean the rotations, then you're complaining about being DPS as that is the exact same thing they are doing, you are currently functionally no different from a DPS class, and I would like to point out that Tanks have the simplest DPS rotations in the game.

[Alzinor]

But then again I came from XI, a game where you had to actually participate with your party, not in spite of.

y mate but this is not XI, it's XIV, two different battle systems, it is like comparing a RTS and a shoot em up.
XI is not as active in battle as XIV is.