If you’re going to have a character be nigh-unkillable or take an entire team’s worth of coordination to take down, they should not also be able to consistently be highest damage. Tanks should tank. They should be there to absorb or prevent damage. Turning them into unkillable turbo-dps is a bad design and it leads to other roles feeling less important.
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What game genre is your definition of “Tank” coming from? And is it not the Class Based Shooter genre?
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Try reading the whole post next time.
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DPS players didn’t want that and whined and *****ed about it for 6 years straight until they got their way AND one tank removed per match. Too bad. Learn to adapt.
/topic.
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So you’re obviously trolling and baiting.
WoW, SWTOR, HotS, GW2, FFXIV to name a few.
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That, or “every single class-based game” isn’t a legitimate answer to their question.
Only one trolling here seems to be you.
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So absolutely nothing to do with shooter games huh?
Here’s a list of class based shooter games where the Tanks/Heavies,
absolutely have both strong survival and good firepower.
Team Fortress 2
Apex Legends
Gundam Evolution
Paladins
Dirty Bomb
Hawken
TRIBES
PlanetSide 2
Bleeding Edge
Lawbreakers
Titanfall 2
Deep Rock Galactic
But at least you basically answered my question by only referencing MMORPGs and MOBAs.
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My point, if poorly articulated, is that Overwatch is a game about give and take. DPS, on average, do higher damage at the expense of survival or able to heal up/protect teammates. Supports give up damage and survival for the ability to heal and other utility to enable their teammates.
Both of those roles give up on two things in order to specialize in one.
Tanks have damage, survival, and utility. They sacrifice nothing.
You can’t take away from their utility or survival because then they wouldn’t be tanks. That just leaves… drumroll! Damage.
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If the tank is doing more damage than the 2 dps, those are either terrible dps players or a god emperor tank player. Ive hardly, if ever, seen a tank do more damage than the 2 dps.
Edit: just to clarify my point! There is one tank but two dps. The tank, individually, is probably going to have the most damage usually. This is true. There is never a point in the match that they aren’t in the heat of battle. They are the front line and they are constantly hitting and getting hit back. This is why they usually have high damage numbers. Tanks usually dont flank. They are at the spear head of the battle every time. To give a real comparison to stats, you need to add up the 2 dps roles together. For example: the tank just achieved 13k damage. The dps acheived 9k and 10k. On the surface, it looks like the tank was doing the majority of the damage but when you add up the dps damage, its actually 19k. So per role, no. The tank is not doing the most damage.
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Tanks aren’t the highest damage. They do “competitive damage”, meaning that when viewed at a glance, they tend to match the damage levels of all other heroes in other roles. But often times, players view the numbers but don’t take in consideration what it means for Tanks to be able to do those numbers.
A good example is Reinhardt, he can do some serious damage with his hammer, 85 damage per swing, and it cleaves, so it can hit multiple targets at once. But the problem here is that the hammer is a melee weapon, and requires Reinhardt to get in close, and expose himself to lots of damage in order to do this. So naturally, he has tools that allow him to get in close and do that kind of damage, but it will be split between defending himself and others, as well as wading through a lot of space against an enemy team comprised mostly of ranged attackers who do not need to close the distance.
Now obviously, map design plays a huge part in the effectiveness of Tanks, in addition to various map and game objectives tend to cater to more sustaining types like Tanks. This is what led to the evolution of the GOATS metagame. But Tanks are big targets, and they kinda need that resilience and danger they present in order to be looked at as a threat. If they do decide to cut down the damage-output of Tanks, you run the risk of Tanks being a non-threat and being easily managed, contained and killed. A while back, there was experimental that did this; and hopefully it was a teaching moment to a lot of the players of why Tank damage couldn’t be cut and why Tank-design is such a huge problem for games like Overwatch.
Tanks don’t exist in any genre except MMO, and then transplanted into the MOBA-setting. Moreover, Tanks in Overwatch aren’t given a definition in-game, and instead are represented by a Shield icon. So when players start noticing issues with some Tanks doing or leading the charge in dealing damage and/or mitigating and controlling damage and crowds, players begin to realize that the Tanks aren’t doing merely advertised, they’re doing everything.
It is a reason why Tank designs outside of MMOs are such a huge problem.
The concern was the irrelevance of the entire role; not necessarily anything to do specifically with Tanks absorbing damage, but that was a huge part of the issue in Overwatch’s core design. Blizzard understood this, but they didn’t think Tanks would be all that popular - and they were correct.
But they didn’t count on the competitive scene and their penchant for min-maxing and analyzing everything. This is what led to GOATS, and the 2/2/2 composition didn’t really improve things since the Tank-roster included some of the most diverse play-styles available in the game. Still does.
WoW, SWTOR, GW2, and FF14 are all MMOs, which is where the origin of the Tank-design comes from (and prior to them, MUDs).
HotS is a MOBA, and adapted from DOTA, which later adapted the Tank/Warrior-role into the game. In MOBAs, Tanks are controllers, aka, Wizards/Bards in DnD, Enchanters in Everquest.
Doesn’t have a Tank. It has the Heavy, he’s not a Tank.
Doesn’t have Tanks.
Doesn’t have Tanks.
Does. But I don’t think every Tank in Paladins is also heavy on control like Overwatch.
Lawbreakers didn’t have Tanks.
Titanfall 2 definitely did not have any Tanks like those of the traditional Overwatch variety or MMO-style.
Not really.
Tracer has two defensive skills, one that also doubles as a mobility option. Genji also has defensive skills, both of which can be used aggressively. Reaper has a defensive skill and a mobility option that, with quick timing, can help escape danger or death. And Soldier has a defensive skill with Biotic Field, healing himself and allies.
Supports have some of the largest projectiles in the game, as well as being capable of one-shotting or eliminating targets with the same level of difficulty as a Tank would on some of them. Further all Supports can self-heal actively, as well as passively. And every one of them have defensive skills tied abilities, passives, or ultimates. So they aren’t giving up anything here.
Now it is true that Supports technically don’t have any Damaging abilities (save for a specific few…), but there are plenty of Supports that can inflict competitive damage along with everyone else. Lucio’s quite capable of causing environmental kills more frequently that Roadhog, Pharah or Wrecking Ball would be.
Tanks have more than that. They also have mobility, control, and group-wide defenses.
In general, the Damage-role has some of the hardest mechanically inclined heroes in the game, while the Tank and Support roles have some of the least.
Great example is Reinhardt vs. Genji; which one is harder to aim, Reinhardt’s Hammer or Genji’s shuriken? Cassidy’s Peacekeeper or Winston’s Tesla Cannon?
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- You’re wrong.
- What makes you think Overwatch has more in common with World of Warcraft than Team Fortress 2?
Then you don’t know what the purpose of a Tank or Heavy is all about in a PVP objectives based game.
- Better at standing on the objective than other classes, without dying
- Give their team a positioning advantage over the enemy team.
- i.e. Allow your team to stand in desirable locations to achieve a win-condition to get the objective.
- Which includes making a location safer for your team
- Displacing the enemy team out of locations they want to be in
- Making the location unsafe for the enemy team
- Ideally block or cancel or kill big damage threats. Which in Overwatch would be Ultimates and Instakills.
For example, by your definition, Hammond isn’t a Tank. Which is just dumb.
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Greyfalcon is one of the oldest and wisest of the OG message board members. He’s freaking Yoda and Obi-Wan’s secret love child, and Mace Windu was his Godfather. The least you could do is show a little respect and not just call anyone who challenges you a troll.
That being said, he did -in fact- ask you to state the name/s of a game that has influenced your perception of what a tank “should” be. Can you or can you not provide references/examples?
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Thanks, but to be honest, if my ideas are good, they should stand up by themselves.
It shouldn’t matter if I say it, or somebody else said it. If it’s a good idea, then it’s a good idea.
If they are bad? Then they are bad.
I’m right more often than other people, but I’m also wrong pretty often as well.
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Tanks trade range for self sustain.
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Typically your ideas DO stand on their own merit. I just thought it important to point out that they’re talking to someone who has been there and done it since the beginning. You’ve done the theory crafting with the other OG’s, so you have the experience to back up your opinions/observations.
If you told me I was wrong about something, I’d stop and take a serious look at what I previously thought was right.
this take instantly discards your whole opinion
tanks tradeoff is range, not damage
Try going back further than WoW or EQ.
- Originally started as an MMO
- One of the game designers, Jeff Kaplan, was the Raid and Dungeon designer for WoW along with Jeff Goodman.
- Jeff Kaplan along with Rob Pardo and Alex Afrasiabi used to play EverQuest together, that’s also how Kaplan and Afrasiabi got jobs at Blizzard; despite having little technical skills at the time.
While Overwatch was reinvented towards the Hero-based arena shooter akin to Team Fortress 2, it invested heavily in MMO-archetypes and vernacular; calling the Defender/Frontline Tanks, instead jargon more commonly associated with frontline defenders.
I do. I also know that every competitive game that has had them in the past, has had trouble balancing them because of the status as an MMO-archetype.
Irrelevant. You can simply eliminate the Tank-role and incorporate better defenses and more rounded heroes in this line.
DnD has been doing this for years dude without the need for “Tanks”. Fighters, Wizards, Rogues, Bards, Clerics. Spells like Hold Person, Charm, Sleep, etc. exist to help players manage and control crowds without the need for a “Tank”.
Using Overwatch examples, there a ton of heroes that can cancel or block Ultimates without needing to be a Tank. Here’s three examples; Genji with Deflect, Lucio with Sound Barrier, Ana with Sleep.
That used to be the case, prior to Orisa.
The hasn’t been the case for years now.
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Well, at least you put a lot of effort into your bad takes.
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what range? tanks are called the easiest role for a reason, you don’t have a range limit of 10 meters and that’s a problem, for example, a hog that can deal dmg at 20m, a dva that can fly, etc., which brings you closer to your goal. Tanks should have reduced dmg and that’s it. I play a tank sometimes and this role compared to dps or supp is very easy
tank players want to do the most in the game without making an effort without looking at the balance of their class and this is bad for the game I recommend learning the word balance
Uh, dunno which tanks you play, but my Muradin is pretty lethal. 