Taunt, threat and Narc

We have not received permission from Voxtrium to share the quoted post.

Yeah, sounds great and like something that those older pve mmos would have (and some did have iirc). I'd definitely like this kind of variety of the same concept across different classes. And this could be done either through tool abilities or even augments on particular abilities, whichever fits the risk/reward approach better when it comes to SP/AP distribution.

NiKr wrote: »

A shame that Narc didn't do the least bit of searching, but yes, there will be a taunt. But for some absolutely dumbass reason the TANK showcase didn't show literally the biggest part of the tank's skillset in 99% of mmos. And for an even dumber reason taunt is supposed to come on later in the character's life.

This is literally what the people complained about when it came to class identification and the "I don't want to waste 25 lvl w/o my core abilities" issue. I dearly hope that Intrepid rethink this asap. I don't need 10 abilities with threat gen to be a tank. I need a single taunt that would pull the mob to me immediately.

There are potential good reasons for this.

Let's assume that Ashes is not as far along in terms of development of classes and balance as we might hope.

Taunts can work three ways normally (there are more but these are the ones most people understand).

"This Taunt adds a lot of threat value."
"This Taunt moves positions on the hate list."
"This Taunt forces the mob to attack the Tank for a duration ignoring both the threat value and hate list."

Without an in-depth explanation of this, the word 'Taunt' implies different things to different people and thus their perceptions of games.

Without knowing the precise concept of 'Taunt' in a game, showcasing it would have taken far more than an hour, since it would require an explanation of what Taunt type it was, and how strong, and so on.

And then, it might not even have been decided/set in stone. We have been shown very easy to program and easy to balance abilities. I didn't even want to give feedback because all I can say is 'well this didn't LOOK like what I enjoy/hope for'.

As reminder, this is the exact 'problem' I lived through back in 2005. Without understanding the hate mechanics, you cannot tell which of those three Provoke is without lots of testing. And so, we got endless arguments over what exactly it did.

This of course allowed many people to play the way they wanted when they could find groups, but also resulted in a large number of people not being considered good for groups, too.

So, for you, what is a taunt? If you must pick one of those three for the 'main one'.

Azherae wrote: »

So, for you, what is a taunt? If you must pick one of those three for the 'main one'.

As it's usually the case with L2's mechanics - the basic "+threat" one. Just a single mid-ranged ability that generates quite a bit of threat on a fairly short cd.

I'd obviously want a wide variety of taunt applications and threat manipulations. I just found it quite silly that taunting wasn't even mentioned during the showcase, even though I'd imagine that a "taunt" ability is what most people think of when they hear the word "tanking". Especially considering that there will be a taunt ability.

I totally get that it might not have been developed properly yet, but then I'd ask "why showcase the tank w/o one of his most basic and identifying abilities?" ESPECIALLY when we've already seen tank in alpha1.

I think I'm just a camel and I'm nearing one too many straws on my back. Depending on the next stream I might want to distance myself a bit from the game, cause I'm falling into doomerism more and more lately.

@Voxtrium

Yes, what you describe is my game experience.

I don't expect you need me to go into too much detail about it, as the thread itself doesn't seem to be related to that. If you think it would help, ping me again. I may take a while to respond, though, since my 'group role' here is lower now that they're shifting.

Anyways here's your pages if you want them, about as useful as they can be without context...

Bard:
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Foe_Sirvente
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Adventurer's_Dirge

'Cleric':
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Tranquil_Heart
Main healers are not allowed to have large enmity-shedding abilities as part of their active kit for balance reasons, it is passive or gear based. They rely on others.

'Fighter':
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Full_Break
Warriors are not allowed to shed enmity as part of their active kit. Their option is 'when you are doing too much damage, switch to this to help Tank and other DPS do more, for total party effectiveness without as much enmity gain.

'Mage':
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Enmity_Douse
Mages are allowed to do this because it is on a huge timer like many things in that game, and the playstyle of mage means that you coordinate this (the Tank uses Cover and so on to protect Mage while they rack up as much damage as possible and then Douse at the end before they die).

Ranger:
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Stealth_Shot
Usual. Not allowed. Had enough trouble with those '4xRanger' parties. Without this limitation, then 'best DPS' quickly becomes 'only DPS' within certain phases/leveling/boss meta. If you want it MANAGED between DPS you call...

'Rogue':
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Trick_Attack - Usable while set as Support Job (i.e Secondary Archetype)
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Accomplice
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Collaborator
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Hide

Regarding Hide:
When the user has the attention of an enemy that tracks by sight, all enmity is erased.
Hide can be used on Undead enemies as long as the user's current Hit Points are at or above 75%.
While Hide will work on these monsters, since they detect by sound, if you don't walk out of aggressive range within a few seconds, they will become aggressive toward you again.
Hide can be used on monsters that normally track by scent if rain weather or double snow weather are in effect. Even works on monsters that detect by sound but track by scent.

Summoners are their own whole 'thing', but generally they are a 'Bonus Damage Coordinating DPS' with the ability to dismiss the summon if it gets to the top of the hate list and they expect this to disrupt party formation or cause the enemy to react by doing an AoE attack in an unwanted direction. (FFXI mobs generally will prioritize their longer range abilities if someone gets hate from further away, and a few prioritize cleaving attacks if multiple people in range have similar hate values, such as 2 DPS near a Tank, multiple abilities can hit people who are not top of list as long as they would hit the Top of List also)

That concludes this trip back to the 00's.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

So, for you, what is a taunt? If you must pick one of those three for the 'main one'.

As it's usually the case with L2's mechanics - the basic "+threat" one. Just a single mid-ranged ability that generates quite a bit of threat on a fairly short cd.

I'd obviously want a wide variety of taunt applications and threat manipulations. I just found it quite silly that taunting wasn't even mentioned during the showcase, even though I'd imagine that a "taunt" ability is what most people think of when they hear the word "tanking". Especially considering that there will be a taunt ability.

I totally get that it might not have been developed properly yet, but then I'd ask "why showcase the tank w/o one of his most basic and identifying abilities?" ESPECIALLY when we've already seen tank in alpha1.

I think I'm just a camel and I'm nearing one too many straws on my back. Depending on the next stream I might want to distance myself a bit from the game, cause I'm falling into doomerism more and more lately.

Tank had no 'Taunt' in Alpha-1 though? Maybe I misremember...

It was probably under consideration even then. As novercalis points out, EQ uses the other types. FFXIV is now changed/simplified further to the point where it doesn't really even matter which type it has.

Leaving poor Steven in the very unfortunate position we saw in the stream. How do you showcase that a Threat-Ability can 'fail to get threat' without 'playing suboptimally and having it 'not work'?

How many people would just argue because 'An ability that just adds threat but can be ignored isn't a real Taunt'? Or that it would not work in PvP (and for whatever reason don't like the temporary forced targeting).

Have faith in Intrepid, the difficulty of open development is high, and theirs is only 'half open' because they want to save some stuff for later and have it not be 'figured out', but probably don't want to reintroduce their NDA.

Tank is one of the single hardest things to showcase in a game, in my experience. People who actually HAVE games on hand have trouble demonstrating the tanking mechanics in the complex ones.

I hope we can lift at least THIS straw 'off your back'.

Azherae wrote: »

Tank had no 'Taunt' in Alpha-1 though? Maybe I misremember...

That's kinda my point though. Yes, we saw a few new abilities from the tank, but outside of that it seemed fairly similar to what we had in alpha1. But we didn't see one of the basic abilities, even though Steven said post-showcase that this ability will be present in the game, even though there was 0 mention of it during the showcase itself.

This kinda circles back to the "streams should probably be a bit more scripted" debate this forum has had for the past god knows how long, but that's obviously off topic so whatever. I just think that even just a mention of "we'll also have a more direct way of gaining threat, but that's not developed enough to show" would've been much better.

Azherae wrote: »

Have faith in Intrepid, the difficulty of open development is high, and theirs is only 'half open' because they want to save some stuff for later and have it not be 'figured out', but probably don't want to reintroduce their NDA.

Tank is one of the single hardest things to showcase in a game, in my experience. People who actually HAVE games on hand have trouble demonstrating the tanking mechanics in the complex ones.

I hope we can lift at least THIS straw 'off your back'.

Yeah, I get it. And this is partially why I think that I should distance myself. I'm beginning to feel that I'm putting a bit too much unwarranted blame on Intrepid, so taking a break might help with that. But I'll make the final decision after the next stream cause I think it'll be the one that shows whether Steven decided to implement the current feedback and they might reveal more plans for future streams (boss/dungeon ones supposedly being the soonest ones).