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

[Mikey_R]

That's very optimistic of you. Release date of January 2027 is an incredibly tight deadline for redesigning all the existing jobs... they would have their work cut out for them even if they had presented this at the start of the year.

They have stated that all jobs have already been designed. If we are saying Berlin is too late, then it is going to be too late now. Remember, they are going to be further along with other jobs that we were not shown, they just either weren't ready to show them or they had other priorities in choosing what to show. We also know they change jobs right up to the first savage tier release, plenty of time.

That is not panic. That is feedback.

I found myself repeating points by breaking down the post, so I will summarise.

Feedback of what? 2 bullet points? We know MT and OT in this game likely not going to be the same as other games, so again, why are you assuming.

Based on what we have seen, what are the actual concerns.

And to point out:

Please do not make this restrictive.
Please do not lock jobs into positions.
Please do not create community pressure where PLD is expected to MT and GNB/WAR/DRK are expected to OT.
Please make tank identity dynamic, not positional.

Restrictive as in MT and OT roles? That is coming regardless and if you do un-restrict roles, you will likely end up with something similar to what we have now, that everyone complains about.
If this is about whether they are standing infront of the boss nor not, then you have no basis for that statement. Tank swaps are going to happen, so the OT is going to be stood infront of the boss at some point. It is an unfounded concern.
The devs cannot control community pressure, but saying PLD is expected to MT and WAR/DRK/GNB are expected to OT, well, that is their role as defined by SE. What that role entails, other than what has been shown, is a mystery. So, what have you assumed that could make people upset?
If by dynamic tanking, you assume that tanks can be both infront of the boss and stood to the side, based on who is tanking, where has it been said that it isn't like that? Adding in your own assumptions again?

Might as well do the other list whilst I am at it.

Will certain tanks be numerically or mechanically encouraged to hold aggro more than others?
Will certain tanks lose value if they are not being directly attacked?
Will party finder expectations start treating some tanks as “wrong” for MT or OT?
Will fight design reward one category in one position more than the other?

Enmity is changing across all tanks, how? We do not know, but it makes no sense for enmity gain to be lopsided.
No idea until we see the kits in their entirety, descriptions and all. We can only assume PLD will still be able to counter when they aren't stood directly infront of the boss.
We already know tank slots will be locked to MT and OT by default, the same as healers. You will be free to change it if you so desire.
Who knows? Way to early to tell.

Again, a lot of questions, no way to answer them until we get more information, which is happening at Berlin, no sooner.

That's a good example why it's not a good idea. You would have "unique" jobs that don't actually get to play that content. I don't see how anyone could think that would be a "win" for the game. Balance cannot be swept aside with "go play another job".

The problem is, there is a fine line between unique and having everything being balanced. If a job has a tool that helps in a certain fight that no other job has, how do you balance around that? What if a fight has a lot of movement that the casters do not have the tools to adapt to. etc. By the very nature of making jobs unique, you create a potential imbalance and trying to fix that imbalance is then what causes what we have now, where everyone complains about job homogeneity.

The thing to look for is, how much of a difference is it going to make and will the community care. The devs can try their best for the first part, but they have no control over the second.

[BabyYoda]

...

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?

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.

You keep saying “we need more information,” but that does not actually address the concern. It just delays the conversation.

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.

Also, reducing the concern to “can an Off Tank stand in front of the boss?” is not engaging with the actual point.

Nobody is worried that an OT will instantly explode if they take aggro. That is not the argument.

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.

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.

If SE labels PLD as MT and GNB/WAR/DRK as OT, and then designs their kits to reward those positions, the community will follow that. Acting like the developers have no influence over that pressure is unrealistic.

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

That is not being more rational. That is just shutting down feedback until a later date.

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.

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.”

So no, this is not panic.

This is exactly what feedback looks like when players see a direction that could become restrictive and say something before it is too late.

[Mukuku]

They have stated that all jobs have already been designed. If we are saying Berlin is too late, then it is going to be too late now.

You don't know that. You don't know how long would the devs need to fix an issue if and once they recognize it.

We know MT and OT in this game likely not going to be the same as other games, so again, why are you assuming.

No we do not? Why are you assuming?

Maybe you are right and the concerns are misplaced, but if that's the case the devs know that too, or maybe your assumptions are misplaced and the feedback provided is valuable.

Let the devs sort the feedback out: we might lack the full information to do that ourselves, but so you do.

[Mukuku]

By the very nature of making jobs unique, you create a potential imbalance and trying to fix that imbalance is then what causes what we have now, where everyone complains about job homogeneity.

I understand people want "uniqueness". If the devs give uniqueness at the expense of balance tough, I bet most of those same people will be first in line starting complaining about the lack of balance instead.

I think there is a lot of room for "uniqueness" in terms of "flavour". I am absolutely not convinced there is much room for "uniqueness" at the expense of balance.

[Carighan]

I understand people want "uniqueness". If the devs give uniqueness at the expense of balance tough, I bet most of those same people will be first in line starting complaining about the lack of balance instead.

Yeah that's sadly always an issue with MMORPGs: players want class-based design, but they don't want class-based design.

They kinda want "performative" class-design, really. They want the feeling and the concept of being unique, and feeling good for having skills that work well in specific situations, but in the end that situation went no better with them there and would have gone no worse without them there, so it's balanced independent of who is there.

In a lot of ways more aggressive attempts at remedying this are were things ought to go, but it's difficult to retrofit them into an existing game:

* GW2 just removed tanks and healers or well, trinity-style roles (nevermind the 6 base roles of older games). Yeah you can heal others, but everyone has a heal for themselves anyways, and some of those also heal those around you. Some classes more, some less, doesn't truly matter as everyone can survive on their own anyways. It also went aggressively after buff/debuff stacking in the traditional sense (while also embracing it), removing class-unique buffs/debuffs where possible in favor of a dozen each of shared effects that just stack if applied by multiple people independent of which class.
* In a more general sense, one could take lessons from WoW's experiments with talent-triplets instead of trees: The key here was that a DPS got given a choice between 3 talents of which none affected their DPS. Naturally it did not matter whether they were fully balanced, as this would only be something players care about when it affects their damage. So it'd be okay to have 4 tank classes, so long as they don't differ at all in the skills they do damage with, or the skills they tank with (*: You are here, in case I wasn't obvious enough about this :P ). This is one way of solving this problem, but while it is easy enough to apply to a small amount of classes (tanks for example) it is tricky to apply across the board, it quickly becomes too obvious how copy&paste classes are and hence how unnecessary their existence even is.
* A different approach entirely is to *not* balance classes. Make it easy to swap. We have that already. Then each fight is specifically made for a specific setup. You need to bring those specific classes, lest the game won't let you join. It's a pretty radical solution and I don't think anybody tried it, but on paper it could work.

Uniqueness is... not easy to do.

(edit)
Note the inherent downside of the second approach in that it effectively reduces swapping your entire class to the same impact as choosing a non-DPS affecting talent as a DPS in WoW. And that system was dropped very quickly again in WoW because of how it lacked impact and uniqueness.
And that's the class system we have here, that ought to tell people how in need of being replaced entirely the current class system is (which is luckily happening now, finally).

[Terhix]

I understand people want "uniqueness". If the devs give uniqueness at the expense of balance tough, I bet most of those same people will be first in line starting complaining about the lack of balance instead.

Subrole split is orthogonal to balance though, unless you want to make an argument that having tanks, dps, and healers to begin with is "lack of balance" and we should all be the same role that can tank and heal and dps equally well as needed.

The honest argument is that splitting tanks into subroles is not required to de-homogenize tanks and bring them job identity back, and that's true. It's also true that the current state of tanks does limit the design space, as a lot of mechanics that would be natural for the role that require constantly getting hit are off limits because all tanks must also function as offtanks.

[Carighan]

Subrole split is orthogonal to balance though

It is not.

Or more specifically, it is enabling tighter balance. Because it creates more specific contexts in which classes need to be fully balanced. MTs only need to be balanced if they're the one currently getting punched. OTs only need to be balanced if they're not. Neither needs to be balanced in the other role, and not against each other either (at least not too tightly).

Now of course, utopian-lense you could say "But just balance everything 100% as-is?!?!?!?!!!!!". Yes, that's what people have been asking for since 1999 in MMORPGs. Has it ever happened? Not in the slightest. But over the years certain ways of mitigating the impact of imbalance have been found. For example, it's okay if some classes are not as durable as others, and that's okay. We call the former "DPS" and the latter "tanks". We balance this by taking some damage from the latter players, but designing fights so that usually they can't just be left out as only they are durable enough to withstand direct attacks.

Are these classes balanced on a target dummy? No, of course not. Are they balanced as a game design? Yes, if done correctly. Splitting into roles does not go against balance, unless your understanding of balance ends at "What DPS number do I produce with programs I'm not allowed to actually use, at a target dummy".

[StriderShinryu]

They kinda want "performative" class-design, really. They want the feeling and the concept of being unique, and feeling good for having skills that work well in specific situations, but in the end that situation went no better with them there and would have gone no worse without them there, so it's balanced independent of who is there.

"Performative" is a great word here. So many players do definitely and very loudly say they want jobs to be unique and for specific roles to be not just honoured but even enhanced, but then as soon as it comes out that maybe their job isn't going to be top DPS then it becomes a big problem. As soon as their job isn't the perfect fit for the role they want to play, or as soon as someone else's job has tools they don't have then there's that record scratch moment and suddenly it's not good and all of that stated desire for individuality and role enhancement goes out the window.

We definitely do need more information on the whole tanking split, and maybe the choice of Main Tank and Off Tank is too provocative (or at least too bruising to some people's egos), but it's very clear at least some people are not coming at this clear eyed. As you say, we're still going to be playing the same basic game so the world actually isn't ending.

[Terhix]

(...) Splitting into roles does not go against balance (...).

That's why they are orthogonal, unless you want the word to mean something I don't. I'm not sure why you felt the need to disagree when we made the same argument to Mukuku, mine was from first principles and your was by way of example with GW2.

[Pimsan20]

Wouldn't it be better to make them counter tanks and debuff tanks as the dev want? Like they don't have to remove the ability switching between off tanks and main tanks. But the idea for having tanks that can counter attack and the other debuffing is interesting idea.