This is a delicate area that comes down to general motivation for any player to Queue up, and there are many ways to address it, such as: Daily Missions for completing a FP as Tank Direct Bribes for Queuing as Tank when Tanks in queue are low (WoW-style) Daily/Weekly Rewards for Queuing are still relevant for purchasing gear that exists beyond the FP itself Making DPS gear = Tank gear, so you don't gear any faster, you just don't need a double set (ie, a Tank still has to gear up at the same pace as everyone else, but is more excited about the gear they get to do so) It is an interesting point that a Tank who finishes grinding Gear sooner is done queuing sooner, but IMO that's a very dangerous gamble — basically assuming that the OCD desire to finish gearing is more motivating than the equivalent discouragement of grinding out a boring and uncompelling set of gear for an off-spec. IMO that kind of "malicious carrot" design is probably doomed to backfire more often than not (burnout / boredom set in first), and it's probably wiser to look at how to make Tanking more fun and appealing so that people want to do it just to do it (like DPS). Right. Unless BioWare has a motive to deliberately increase queue times (dubious), it is extremely self-defeating to inconvenience Tanks in any way, shape, or form or otherwise place any obstacle to someone considering spec'ing Tank. Let's be clear: Even if you design Tanking on paper to be so ludicrously tempting that no one would want to play any other role simply because Tank is so pampered, Tanks would still be the minority role in PvE in actual practice. But your second point is also valid — DPS play DPS because DPS is fun. Therefore, we can assume DPS would still play DPS in FPs even if Com DPS gear had Defense & Shield on it. Thus, again, making Tank fun for more people is an important part of solving any Tanking shortage. Yeah, that might be better (not where my head is, I leave stat/math stuff to other people). I might swap Absorb to Power and Defense to Crit because my OCD wants the consistent stats and RNG stats grouped together. Another solution, again, is to simply make DPS stats worthwhile while Tanking and chop the "bland" defensive stats that don't really appeal to people as much as KILL DEATH KILL stats like Power & Crit. Like 10 years ago I guess it made a lot of sense to ask people to hyper-specialize, rely on friends for DPS support, etc. But in 2014-2015 MMOs it really is pushing it to demand people keep a giant extra set of gear around just for running Tank "sometimes" or DPS "sometimes". Because the "sometimes" crowd — which has even commented in this thread multiple times — does not want to deal with that, because they're casual-casual, or don't want to invest heavily for "sometimes", etc. However, they also make excellent Queue-fillers since they're usually happy to a do a role if they can do a role (easily). Be careful, there's a difference between making Tanking much more forgiving for the average player (so they succeed at it and learn to like it) and making Tanking /follow level. Again, consider DPS & Healing: A skilled or dedicated DPS / Healer stands out immediately, shines, and feels pride and reward from excelling at their role. However, a mediocre or new DPS / Healer that is making a reasonable effort will still achieve mostly-adequate results, enough to provide positive feedback and encourage them to try it again. A skilled or dedicated Tank stands out immediately, shines, and feels pride and reward from excelling at their role. (notice the gap where the fourth point should be) So IMO that shows that you can make Tanking much easier at the low end (ie, "lower the skill floor") without also lowering the skill ceiling to a degree which turns off dedicated players (demonstrated tangibly by how DPS / Heal work). The low end is Lowest Common Denominator content — content intended for "everyone" and with no tangible barriers to entry. In current MMO design this is: Leveling content Matchmade / Queue content From PUGs up players have enough control over who joins and who doesn't, and do it at a slow enough pace, that I don't see Tank shortages as nearly the same issue (ie, not influencing the extinction rates of the role) nor is it nearly as appropriate to simplify it down (because it's both damaging and unnecessary). I do not mean any of these terms derisively — I'm using LCD as literally as possible, to indicate content which spreads to include the lowest baseline skill level of players that are willing to hit the Queue button (which is quite a few — SWTOR has a surprisingly small pure-solo population relative to other MMOs if quoted statistics are accurate). ie, it's not a comment about players as people, simply their competence or motivation about playing PvE in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Leveling doesn't need help, not because leveling queues are "okay" but because it's too much of a designer headache to balance leveling content. Players level too fast, it goes too fast, nobody has a full skill set yet — it's just not the nexus and focus of PvE or PvP. Like in an ideal world yes I'd love to see Tanking queue populations also increase significantly from 1-54 but honestly that's got to be a much lower priority that fixing it first at 55, where the population crashes together and piles up and where balance has a much more stable environment and variables to work with. All of this is correct. Bluntly, all leveling FPs are Tactical FPs already. However, that's a slightly flippant assessment — unlike pure Tacticals, runs do go noticeably smoother in leveling FPs with a dedicated Tank that knows what they're doing. Part of this is damage tuning, and part of this is simply player inexperience in the newbie range inflating the difficulty of what "should" be Tactical fluff for 4x experienced players. ie, for 4x inexperienced players, having 1 durable person for Heals to focus on is a huge relief. A good example is General Ortol — which comes to mind because my leveling healers usually have to deal with a Dead Tank within 1 flame jet cycle. Healing a DPS through Ortol's melee at level 27-30 is actually extremely nerve-wracking because their Health will spike up and down non-stop, especially if they're a 'squishier' DPS like a Sorc or Sniper. A less-experienced Healer will simply wipe it due to not having the necessary pre-cast / resource-management instincts. So, leveling FPs are weird — they kind of hybridize between Tactical and Normal difficulty depending on the overall skill balance of the group, vs. True Tacticals where difficulty is mostly determined solely by the ability of the group to follow along with an episode of Sesame Street. Juggs are actually very powerful even at low levels, I never had any Aggro issues when leveling my now-main Jug. Smash is just The End™ for threat followed by tabbing around a bit. If all else fails, Threatening Scream. Even massively spread pulls like that irritating one in Boarding Party with like 15 mobs spread 40 meters apart that someone always aggros is trivialized with stuff like Threat Scream + Saber Reflect + LOS. But that kind of goes back to the topic — Tanking right now is very forgiving and fun if you think like a Tank. I know what pulls to LOS, when to run ahead while DPS finishes stuff off and start locking down next aggro, what mob specifically to save Saber Throw for while playing Connect-the-Dots, etc. But I'm abnormal. While I'm having tons of fun John Maddening Jugg Aggro techniques, a lot of other Jugs are just deer-in-headlights while their Healer drowns in a hail of blaster fire. Is it okay for lots of other players to not have fun because a minority that think like me are having fun? That's really not an easy question. As WoW's former designer @Ghostcrawler pointed out (paraphrasing): "The Threat Game is fun for dedicated Tanks, and not fun for absolutely everyone else."

Remember that I'm exaggerating the degree of changes necessary in order to make a point, because it's just easier to get overall concepts across with hamfisted examples. Tanking does not have to be absolutely ravaged and destroyed top to bottom in order to bolster its standing in player populations, and you absolutely can (must, in fact) leave plenty of room open for optimal Tanks to still shine. As a random example, imagine if there was a significant (ludicrous, even) +Threat Bolster in Matchmade content. Good Tanks still shine and have a server rep because in HM Op+ / PUG+ content Threat still matters and requires planning and awareness. However, this environment also supports the level of cooperation needed for this to be a reasonable gameplay mechanism. Bad Tanks can now keep Aggro off their group in fluff / spam content, therefore, Bad Tanks keep queuing (which is good, because now Queues that require a Tank pop faster). Good Tanks in fluff / spam content now have a new hobby — exploiting the Threat bonus to do ludicrous stunts and gimmicks they couldn't pull off before. etc. If you just walk in with a baseball bat and start smashing Tanking on the brain, you won't accomplish what you want — DPS & Heal are compelling because they're forgiving at the low end, but also extremely rewarding at the high end. That gives people something to work toward and feel proud of, without punishing them disproportionately when newer or unconfident or tired or... etc. That's the sticky balance we're trying to work toward. It is non-trivial when dealing with a role as complex as Tank.

This is actually a huge issue with any Tank changes, btw. PvE & PvP are different universes / dimensions / whatever is more separate than dimensions. Tanks are in an interesting place in PvP IMO because they're not necessary but they're also not useless if present,* which is a boffo spot for Tanks to be in but very hard to duplicate in PvE. So yeah, a lot of the stuff being discussed / proposed here could have serious and potentially dire washover effects in PvP content. Unfortunately I don't PvP, so my perspective on this is near-zero and it's going to fall to someone else (preferably someone paid to do it ) to sort out how to reconcile PvE solutions with PvP balance needs. * Warning — Hearsay — May be wrong

Unfortunately this is a technical limitation according to BioWare. Remember that SWTOR's codebase is basically written in crayon on 19th-century IBM punch-cards.

Try to imagine what RL is like for them. That always quickly flips me from anger to sympathetic pity.

I don't remember ever getting Hammer at level 23 before... that range should be Athiss & Mando, shouldn't it? Did BioWare bloat the level range of leveling FPs recently?

That's because (as you eventually point out somewhere inside those archaeologically-deep paragraphs ): Tanking requires a very unique personality, mindset, and skillset Is "hard" Is much more heavily affected and penalized by other player actions than the other 2 Roles since your entire job is equivalent to herding cats 24/7 It's not because of Group Finder or PUGs, it's because the role is overly-reliant on total group cooperation to function correctly, unlike DPS & Heals which can soldier through and do their own thing fairly effectively in almost all circumstances. I do not believe this is actually correct, for many reasons: Impatience with Tanks, pressure on Tanks, and 'sabotage' of Tanks are all signs that in matchmade content, the role is too reliant on total cooperation from other players to function correctly. In other words — the social repercussions are a direct extension of the over-burden the role currently places on the player doing it We only remember the "evil" players, but most players actually aren't that evil. I am very sceptical that most people choose not to Tank because other players were mean to them once, vs. feeling genuinely incompetent or disinterested in the role's pressures and requirements. Extending from this, new Healers and new DPS are also abused heavily sometimes. Don't forget this — all roles get brutalized by impatient players when they're new. In fact there's many Tanks (!) that are quite cruel or impatient with newbie or "slow" Healers or DPS. Yes, yes, damn rapscallions, get off my matchmade lawn, etc etc etc. This is irrelevant. You have two choices: Keep matchmade content in-game that you Tank for, even if it means Tanking for upstart punk ingrate rapscallion brats that don't respect the intense rainbow comraderie of love and bonding that killing robots together should bring us. Stop Tanking matchmade content. As in, literally, because the Queue doesn't need you any more, because it's balanced for DPS + Healers and their upstart selfish lack of concern for group harmony and intimacy, and they have successfully achieved content designed without needing you to exist. Pardon the tongue in my cheek on some of that, but I'm serious: That social dynamics have changed with the introduction of anonymous matchmade content is obvious and accurate, but also completely irrelevant because that's how it is and it's not going away. Ah-ha! I found the problem. This is not 10 years ago. Look, I genuinely sympathize with you that Matchmade content is a little hollow and soul-less much of the time due to its very nature. But let's remember something else: 10 years ago you didn't have matchmade content so the comparison is much less relevant. You can still do all of the following cozy things: Play with Friends of like mind Play with Guildies of like mind Get a high % of good queue pops with nice people who are happy to cooperate (bonus! not available 10 years ago!) Get a good % of sane PUGs that cooperate and work together But life moves on, tech moves on, innovation moves on, and gaming moves on and we're in an era where you also have to deal with the reality of a queue filled with anonymous random people who just want to kill robots, get loot/comms/etc, see the story (or spacebar it), etc etc etc. It's really becoming very clear that the situation for Tanks is: Compromise or Die.

Practicing wouldn't help you because of one very important point no one realizes: Tank strategy changes in every single location and every single pull based on content-specific concerns. People can get Gold or Endless 30 in WoW Tank Proving Grounds (solo practice zones) and then absolutely fail in real content because they haven't been trained in how specific pulls gimmick-affect them, how to interact with certain classes, etc etc etc. With no other changes made, even if people do the Practice (most won't without heavy and extreme bribery, and then to bare-minimum needed), they still won't be prepared for actual varying content and will still flop hard and will decide "I'm bad at Tanking" and un-tick the box. The only way to address this is to give people the same confidence about succeeding that they have when they queue as DPS or Healer. And yes, that means "dumbing-down" matchmade Tanking pressure and requirements. That's okay — the role is too "smart" already. It can stand to be lobotomized in low-end content. Preserving the role's existence is much, much more important than stubbornly trying to have 50 cakes and also consume them in every possible area of the game. For the sake of discussion — what exactly are you imagining "going wrong" in Group Finder if you show up as Tank? What possible outcomes are discouraging you from trying?

The problem is, again, this immediately separates you out from the vast majority of players and makes your perspective less relevant. I struggled for years to realize this in my own arguments about "socializing" Tanking skills. If you have learned to love Tanking as it is right now, you are a unique and minority personality and what would or would not attract you to the role is not what will attract more players in general. This is correct, but every change ever made to MMO design ever to make gameplay more accessible to more people has "diluted the experience". Grognard eyepatch-wearing Ultima Online or EverQuest veterans don't consider anything we do in WoW or SWTOR or GW2 an "MMO" because it's pampered with baby powder from level 1 to 55/60/90. Meanwhile the population of interested MMO players has healthily increased in parallel to this dilution. Again, the trick isn't to say "We must make more Tanks without diluting the Tanking experience". Flat-out — That is not going to happen. Instead, your goal is to selectively dilute the Tank experience on the low end, where inconvenience to other players (Queue times) is driving them toward an attitude of gleefully discarding the Tank role (Tacticals). Alternative #2 is to accept the OP's hypothesis — that, basically, Tanking is going to gradually become obsolete in Queued content. Allow that to happen, and leave Tanking for PUG+ where it can be properly coordinated and indulged as a role. Again — you have to realize the slope this role is on. Once you begin deleting Tanking from one area of gameplay, people become more comfortable with lacking it. That spiral will obsolete Tanking in general, because if people don't want to play the role already, even fewer will want to play it when it's a hyper-specialized set of gear, spec, and skills used only in an ultra-minority of hand-picked content. Look at what happened to the classic MMO "Crowd Control" and "Party Support" jobs when WoW made queued content requires 3 roles: Tank, DPS, Healer. They evaporated — "support" classes like Paladin & Shaman were converted to "Heal", "Tank", or "DPS" in absolute terms, their support tools diluted/deleted, and they were repositioned to provide competitive performance in those roles. "CC" gradually expired as a tool in dungeon design because the queue couldn't guarantee you'd have CC-capable classes. Essentially, those roles went extinct because they became redundant/nonexistent in one huge area of content. There is an absolute log-jam going on here and complacency because you "like it how it is", is going to result in Tanking withering away, maybe not "tomorrow", but sooner or later. WoW proved it doesn't on the important caveat that you shift that interest into something else. First of all, you can make Tanking extremely forgiving in low-end content without making it brainless or trivial in high-end content. There are hundreds of switches and levers to play with to achieve that. Second, you can reduce the pressure on Aggro by focusing the player on something else. WoW chose to refocus your energy on your Rotation instead, where attention and awareness determine your survivability as much, or more than, your gear choices. Again Sin is a good example here. Even if Dark Charge automatically made all enemies within 40 meters attack you at all times (ie, you're a walking Taunt button), Sin would still be engaging because you won't survive that attention without constantly engaging your rotation every GCD and maintaining your defense abilities. You don't need to make it that crude, but you do need to bring things way down in terms of the gap between an experienced & skilled Tank and a newbie or mediocre Tank in low-end content (which is where most mediocre players will stop anyway). People keep saying this and I am going to keep stressing that it is so, so incredibly wrong. You are thinking from the perspective of a dedicated player that logs in and thinks things like "I will spend 30 minutes adjusting my mods to maximize my mitigation" or "I will take 1 hour to practice this patch's rotation changes, so I don't mess up in Group Finder". You're projecting that dedication onto a general populace that doesn't have it. Like it or not, spit on them, deride them all you like — these players make up the vast horde of population supporting your game and filling your queues. They are the army of gerbils that make this entire factory work by running on their wheels. Most players are extremely discouraged by embarassing or epic failure, to the point they won't try again or will avoid the role permanently because epic failure as Tank is extraordinarily extra-epic. DPS and Healer are much less intimidating roles in Matchmade content because they can see great success even with mediocre play. A Tank cannot, because Aggro going all over will expose their mediocrity brutally and swiftly. If Group Finder consisted solely of simplistic Tank + Spank bosses where your only requirement was to walk forward and hit it, and Tanks had no separate gear requirement to be effective, Tank populations would skyrocket because anyone queuing as Tank would succeed at Tanking. Ironically then, it's very likely not Bosses that discourage Tanking — it's the trash leading to them. On Bosses all roles are about equal in tactics-pressure, need for explanations, etc. On trash, Tanks have a disproportionately massive pressure to know exactly what's going on. I am very confident that most players give up on Tanking because of sour and terrifying experiences with Trash pulls going wild and infuriating their group members, since even a clumsy Tank tunneling most bosses will be merely an annoyance, and is much more easily corrected — "Move to blue spot when he turns green". Basically you need to simplify down matchmade content without necessarily diluting "harder" content. What are the jobs in matchmade right now? DPS kills things. This is simple and easy to understand for any player of any skill level. Healer makes bars go back up. This is simple and easy to understand for any player of any skill level. Tank... initiates pull, attacks all mobs several times to generate initial Threat before falling back on tauntboosting, kites problem mobs (like exploding zombies) away, positions back to wall in case of KB mobs, uses defensive buttons (but only sometimes, it depends), doesn't really "kill" things just kind of hits everything in even amounts, sometimes hides behind corners, sometimes moves stuff around, sometimes doesn't so Are we seeing the issue yet? One of these roles is not like the other. It has no obvious purpose to a player following a simple ruleset. You can say the Tank role should be "Holds enemy attention while DPS kill things and Healers heal things". The problem is that, in practice, it actually becomes the paragraph listed above, because "hold enemy attention" is actually not an obvious task and requires a massive sub-division of minor details with no clear or hard rules. So, yes, I'm not shy about saying this: Tanking currently requires way too much from an average player compared to DPS & Healing. Until you address that, Tanking will always be an annoying queue-killer role for most players. As long as it remains that way, Tacticals and similar will proliferate. This isn't going to just magically "stop" at Tacticals. If nothing changes to make Tanking more palatable to more players (and thus an acceptable queue requirement), don't be shocked if 12 months from now we're introduced to Tactical Operations in Group Finder.

I think it's determined by what issues the CMs compile and return to the devs and the devs, in turn, are ready to comment on in a definitive way. It's not really the subject, or how it's posed (assuming it's not lock-worthy), but just "Do we have something relevant to say? Do we want to based on other considerations? Do we have time to address it properly in a forum response?" That kind of stuff.

Notwithstanding the significant inaccuracy of this assumption... Sin is in fact the exception to the rule on this point, and an excellent target for the other Tanks to be driven toward, something I was going to directly address in my next post (but I kind of got distracted by going outside after breakfast ). The simple but elegant Dark Protection cycle keeps you engaged and interested in Sin's rotation from fight start to fight finish. That's important, because if Threat is made easier, every spec will need a different reason to care / feel engaged with their Tank, something WoW made brutally obvious when Cata's Threat boosts made many Tanks fall asleep and lose all interest in their job even as they spiked the Tanking population due to more players being able to 'succeed' in low-end content. Juggernaut is "ehhh" right now. Powertech on the other hand is, IMO, a complete and total clustercluck right now. Sin absolutely shines in this area of discussion. Its rotation is smart, elegant, fluid, genuinely fun, and genuinely rewarding. This is how all Tanks should play (in the design sense, not literally clones of Sin). The trick is to balance three conflicting groups: People who like just hitting everything that lights up People who like engaging rotations with room for depth People who are wearing their pants on their head and will glaze over and space out if you start discussing "rotations", "TPS", "EH", "mitigation", etc. That means having rotations that are "adequate" for low-end content if bumblefudged by the oblivious, "adequate" if played Whack-a-Mole style, but "exceptional" if people actually pay attention and maximize their potential. Jug & PT are seriously lacking in the third category since in a best-case scenario you're just improving your DPS if you tighten your rotation because you really can't bumble the survival stuff if you're pressing buttons every GCD. Again, this doesn't matter right now because the "art" of locking down pulls provides sufficient engagement for Jug / PT most of the time. But if you bring Threat up to make it easy for low-end players to 'succeed' at low-end Tanking, you need to fill the 'engagement void' with something else. Sin already does — an engaging rotation that has depth and is rewarding. Jug & PT, though, are skin-deep and that will get exposed if the Aggro Game is toned way down.

Could someone explain what there even is to spoil?

Now we're mad at the developers for thoroughly testing things before release? DAMN IT BIOWARE, RELEASE MORE BUGS For example, there should be Colicoids sipping wine on the Promenade.

Anyway I think the most important thing when trying to "save" Tanking in the eyes of the majority player population (ie, make them non-averse to the role requirement) is to make any solution as simple as possible — do only what is necessary to increase population to palatable levels that balance out queue times. To do that, the first thing we have to do is zoom out and ask: "Why don't more people Tank?" This is probably a study worthy of a PhD thesis so let's not expect any absolute truths to come out in a quick brainstorming session, but I can come up with a list of fairly safe guesses from both my own observations, talking to others, and my own experiences getting into MMOs: Tanking requires specialized gear. Whether this is fair or not conceptually, it annoys people and intimidates people and discourages people. It's a barrier to entry for "GenPop". Tanking is hard. That's pretty vague, but we'll dissect it more below. Tanking is scary and annoying. You have to lead. People yell at you. Not knowing tactics can wipe groups much faster than DPS or Heals. Any group that outgears content treats you like a third wheel that doesn't exist. The list goes on — Tanking requires thicker skin than other roles. Tank specs are bland. Well, they are — most Tank specs have a theme of being "defensive" and... not much else. It's appealing to Tank personalities (like me), but probably not very appealing to most players, who want something gratifying and cool. Tank rotations don't matter. A DPS is doing high DPS and killing things. A healer is keeping people alive. A Tank establishes initial Threat, and then... hits buttons, because hitting buttons. It's not very visceral or satisfying. More? Let's look at "Tanking is Hard" in more detail. Why is it hard for most players? Mistakes cause deaths. If a healer can't heal people, it's usually the deceased's fault for doing something stupid. If a Tank lets Aggro slip, it's usually the Tank's vault for not being omniscient and getting distracted. There is a lot of pressure to generate Aggro and not lose it, and it's very scary when you find yourself drowning under a seemingly-hopeless tide of wild Aggro. You need to have a very good plan for some pulls / bosses. Iif you flub that plan or someone disrupts it by doing something unexpected, you can enter a state of panic where you can't figure out how to recover because your habitual tools are on CD and people are dying / screaming. ... ??? Wow. Actually, is Tanking hard? I mean I don't see any of the following aspects of Tanking as particularly hard, certainly no harder than doing good DPS or healing through a difficult boss: Survival. Gearing correctly, being in the correct Stance, being in the correct Spec, and learning to press your CDs — all very, very easy for anyone to correct — take care of nearly all of this. The rest is just pressing buttons and resource management so, eg, you're Force Screaming on CD or keeping a good Heat Blast uptime or not dropping Dark Protection. Maintaining Threat. Once Aggro is initially locked down, as long as you're continually pressing buttons (and especially once you learn to taunt-boost), you can pretty much AFK and grab a latté. Leading. This actually isn't very hard — walk forward, hit stuff. In a worst-case scenario, the group can point you in the correct direction, or you can follow the lead of the OCD angry impatient DPS. Tactics. Again, this actually isn't very hard. Most SWTOR bosses have simplistic overall strategies that can easily be explained in Group chat. Even an inexperienced Tank can be directed fairly easily with a little coaching and (worst-case scenario) 1, maybe 2, wipes to learn what the Simon Says indicators are for adds spawning, etc. It seems like that most intimidating thing about Tanking — beyond unnecessary barriers to entry we've discussed ad nauseum, and which should absolutely be removed if BioWare has any sense about them — is the fear of failure, which is perceived (rightly) as having greater consequences for Tanks than other roles. But where do Tanks actually "fail"? It's not Survival. Teaching someone "PRESS THIS BUTTON WHEN..." is within the grasp of anyone, like teaching DPS players to push their DPS cooldowns. This isn't making or breaking most Queue content. It's not holding Threat. Once initial Aggro is established, especially if you teach a newbie Tank about taunt-boosting (but even if you don't!), it's usually glued on. It's not Leading. Anyone can successfully wander forward and start pulls if they feel confident that they'll be able to do their job right once it begins. It's not Tactics. To clarify, every role fails about equally at tactics, and every role needs explaining about equally in Group Finder for the fights to go properly — Heals or DPS that don't know tactics can and will wipe groups. So this is an equal-opportunity issue that probably doesn't stop anyone from queueing, including Tanks. That leaves the following major areas for Tanks to seriously, undeniably fail: Aggro. Locking down correct initial Aggro, keeping it off Heals (which can spell Party Wipe in short order), and keeping it off overgeared or OCDedicated DPS that don't following your target or kill order, etc — is terrifying, and the most discouraging experience for most new Tanks. Because people get (justifiably) very angry when your job is to keep deadly mob attacks off of them... and you don't. Thus, I believe the single most discouraging factor to any new Tank is the difficulty adapting to a mindset of "Hit everything, let everyone else focus kills", coming from a character-lifetime of focusing down 1 thing at a time while soloing, as well as while DPSing for Groups. Basically: You would probably see a huge spike in willing Tanks if establishing Aggro to a baseline non-party-wiping degree was extraordinarily easy, similar to how easy it is to keep your shoulders down as DPS or Heals and just focus on one thing (your current mob, your group's health frames). So then let's recap what seems to be the biggest discouraging factors keeping more players from stepping up to Tank queueable content: The stress of establishing and locking down initial Aggro, which is prone to extreme failure and inciting the fury of your groupmates. Unnecessary gear barriers, discouraging membership in Role that, at baseline, is already the least-tempting to people. Social factors related to the treatment of Tanks and lack of respect for the role's efforts. Blandness and lack of flashy "OMG COOL" Star Wars effects. Even if you're not doing slaughterhouse-level DPS, you should feel like it visually to reward your efforts. AFK-and-fall-asleep rotations once Threat is locked down — "Why am I even here? Oh yes, to move this boss 20 meters every 30 seconds." Basically: Make Tanking as Easy and Appealing as DPS at a baseline level, while still allowing room for dedicated and expert Tanks to clearly shine and stand out and feel proud of their skill — just like a mediocre DPS is adequate, but a great DPS is a godsend. Right now we have a situation where a mediocre Tank is a punishment, and a great Tank is a godsend. We need to close this gap, so mediocre Tanks aren't afraid of queuing and don't punish their group by being there. I will discuss my own views on how to best do this... after breakfast.

This is a very, very difficult decision design-wise IMO. Offering HM or other "serious" queues has the advantage of allowing dedicated players to form groups faster, to multitask while doing dailies, etc. On the other hand, you have no way of filtering out people who really shouldn't be there, because designing adequate algorithms to detect "player competence" is really, seriously much harder than it might sound on paper. So it goes down two directions: Leave the queue active for "serious" content. If the queue tends to be a fail-filled wipefest, shrug — People wanting to avoid queue RNG can just PUG it, which they would be doing anyway without a queue. Therefore, adding the queue doesn't hurt anything. Only allow queuing for "fluff" content (SMs, Tacticals, etc) — stuff you definitely expect a matchmade group plucked from 4-16 random people on the server to be able to do. This removes "false advertising" for many players, getting a queue pop and expecting to be able to complete it (when it's actually far beyond their play ability, even if they meet the gear requirements) and reduces frustration for experienced players (getting a queue pop with 50% of the players incapable of completing it, doubling your time-to-finish with votekicks, etc). Neither option makes or breaks Tanking, so it's a bit tangential to this topic, but it is worth considering. What would you honestly prefer? I really don't know the answer, myself. Did having a queue for HM Kaon / Lost Island do more harm or more good? Czerka HMs?

Doesn't that cycle through targets, though? Couldn't you just keep pressing it until you got the generator?

This has been a great discussion guys but I'm plum burned out and going out for the night. Will pick this up again tomorrow.

The problem with this argument is it's irrelevant. As I've stressed — Tanking will always be the minority role because of what it asks of the player, and how easy it is for other players to disrupt a Tank's "art form". You can either: Remove Tanking from matchmade content Increase Tank quantity in matchmade content as much as possible WoW went for #2. It is working. Are Tanks still a minority / queue breaker? Yes. Usually. Not always. I've sat in queue as Tank for up to 5-10 minutes sometimes on busy nights or odd hours of morning (ZOMG?!) while waiting on a Healer or 3rd DPS. That simply never happened in WOTLK. Ever. It's not lack of players — it's quantity of willing Tanks who want their fast queue and can serve as Tank adequately due to the changes. Are there more people Tanking than ever before? I concede not having actual data, but I'm confidently going to say "Yes", because: it's easier to do it now, aggro is a breeze, and matchmade content is very forgiving to Tanks (players are not, but the content itself is). Is Tanking still challenging and demanding in serious coop content? Absolutely, yes. Perhaps more than ever in some ways due to the subtleties of Active Mitigation. This is the sad reality you have to face down: if you want Tanking to be required in matchmade content, you can't punish matchmade content by artificially slowing it down waiting for a Tank to show up. If your argument is "Then just remove Tanking from matchmade content and don't touch my role" — okay... but don't be shocked when Tanking starts getting gradually phased out of non-matchmade content too, because the community is steadily learning to enjoy not playing with a Tank around, and the devs respond to that.

This is why you need to separate out matchmade content, and PUG+ content. In a coordinated environment you can leave Tanking much more complex and involved because Tanking inherently requires an unspoken contract with everyone else present to work out well. It's just asking too much to expect matchmade content to also support detailed and patient Trinity design with Tank emphasis. You can do it, but everyone is just shooting themself in the foot. They do, but it's not important here, because we're struggling to address issues with the Trinity system which inherently doesn't affect group-disinterested MMO sideliners. And you do need to separate that out, because you would see people running easy solo content for the same reason you see people running solo Dailies — it's easy and solo. That doesn't mean those players were queuing for matchmade content before, and are now relieved. This is an inaccurate assumption. Most eyes-to-the-floor players are intelligent and interested, just not lead-the-pack types. This is clear because in the vast majority of groups that don't know, if you explain tactics, most players will eagerly make an effort to follow those tactics regardless of role. The outlier troublemakers / idiots stand out to us, but in my experience they are not the majority. Most players are perfectly happy to cooperate in group tactics, and in fact quite excited to learn and watch things work out when they do it right. That's a very different thing than being motivated to lead the charge and explain everything — that is a much more minority personality type, both in-game and IRL. Yes it is, because they're playing while doing that. They're not on /follow. They just want someone else to lead and signal when, where, and how to play. Whether that's a spunky DPS or a dedicated Tank or a demented Healer (<.<) isn't important, just that someone else is carrying the torch because they're not confident in their own ability to do so. Well, you don't have to. You can leave things how they are: Tanks are rare, content requires Tanks, queue times are extreme for DPS. It's just "how it is". MMO developers keep eroding that across the board, though. So they clearly have reason to believe that's not an acceptable formula. Hence Tacticals, Tank Bolster, and boosting SM Ops to 2:14 instead of 2:6 Tank ratio. If you keep following an attitude of "Well obviously anyone that doesn't like Tanking now, or is intimidated by it, is just too inferior and pathetic a player to be worth caring about" — Tanking is going to go extinct. No one wants to put up with the minority of available Tanks, and devs are increasingly going to respond to that, especially in new games. It's really a difference between stubbornly going down with a sinking ship (Change Nothing / Let the Losers Deal With It) or swimming for a new shore (Redefine what Tanking is and does in a more broadly-appealing way). I just don't agree here. There's far too many players in the queue at all times for it to be strictly about completing Dailies & Weeklies. I'll concede if BioWare shows up with numbers heavily suggesting otherwise, but based on my own observations and experiences, I think most players love playing their class & role, are exciting but group content, but just can't provide everything that matchmade content currently asks for (hence the proliferation of Tacticals and SM and Bolster and ... ). If BioWare truly believed no one wanted to group in their MMO, why would they keep attacking the issues from new directions and trying to make grouping more doable for more people?

Actually it worked, which is why I'm arguing for it. So... uh...

This is basically why WoW took the "screw this" approach and just: Dialed Tank threat modifiers through the ceiling, such that 1-2 AoEs will usually hold aggro on very nearly anything (assuming you keep attacking them) Made Tank gear equivalent to DPS gear Made Tank survival an engaging minigame / rotation such that by "playing" (like a DPS does) you're also "surviving" (in a way you are tangibly aware of) With those changes, yes veteran MMO Tanks find matchmade content laughably depressing — but they have HM / NM (Normal / Heroic) for Tank skill still mattering. Meanwhile, uncertain Tanks who step into matchmade content don't really have to stress about: Threat / Aggro Gear Their own survival (if wearing appropriate-Rating gear for the content, and pressing Buttons every GCD) This means the only thing a Tank is "missing" when fresh on content is fight patterns / positioning / etc. When that's the only obstacle, it is much less intimidating, and much less frustrating for other players (since the only concern is explaining "Put this mob here when it glows red"). I'm not going to lie — even given all that, Tanks are still the queue-breaker, and Tanks still have to deal with enormous frustration and abuse from other players. It's not a magic wand that fixes everything. But it is a significant improvement and encourages significantly more Tanks to queue up and try it. There really, truly is a difference. The key point is that you need to: Convince people to try Tanking (zero barriers to entry) Give them a positive-feedback experience that makes them want to do it again (design matchmade content to be easy to succeed at Tanking in) DPS is a popular role because it meets both of these criteria. Your leveling gear is your entry DPS gear. And most of the time, showing up and pressing buttons as DPS will reward you with dead bosses — it's a positive-feedback experience. That does not mean that doing max DPS in HM / NM is easy. Likewise, making Tanking forgiving and encouraging at the entry level would not mean making Tanking stupid or trivial in dedicated content. (I'm sorry if I seem like a lunatic here, but again, this is probably the topic in MMOs I'm most passionate about. I've struggled for years across multiple games watching endless players frustrated by lack of Tanks and the effect on their gameplay, and reconciling that with my own personal happiness as a Tank.)

That's a very poor snipjob, because you took this statement: You should follow WoW's example where it worked, and not the things WoW tried which didn't work and transmuted it into this: You should try 1 thing WoW did which didn't work out well, and if that fails, you should give up despite the predictable repercussions So... no. That is not what I'm saying. It's not, though. For reasons I've explained in detail. The fundamental issue is that players prefer to learn on-the-job and need to learn on the job. You can increase their confidence somewhat with training or practice, but only dedicated players will do that. It's just not addressing the problem where it actually lies. Mandatory training may help somewhat (we'll see in WoD for WoW's case), but it won't address the fundamental issues. You're still dealing with this circuit fault: We want matchmade content We want matchmade content that uses the Trinity system Therefore we need matchmade content that requires a Tank Therefore we design matchmade content that requires a Tank Tanks are in short supply Therefore we design matchmade content that has very long and frustrating queue times We want our matchmade content to not have long and frustrating queue times Therefore we ???? You can choose to: Remove Tanking (Tacticals) Ignore the queue time issue (classic approach) Make a concerted effort to create more Tanks Tanking already has the highest barrier to entry simply by virtue of what it asks players to do (go first and lead and be blamed for organizational errors). Any matchmade system that preserves the requirement for a Tank will have higher queue times. However, it you as a designer decide that the benefits of the rich gameplay experience a Trinity can provide, outweigh the inflated queue times — then it should be priority #1 to make the limiting reagent (Tank) as accessible as possible to the playerbase. Seriously — the role itself is a barrier to entry. It does not need any additional barriers to entry. Relaxing as many of them as possible is a fundamental starting point to preserving matchmade Trinity content. In other words — if you start from a premise that removing Tanking is an unacceptable solution, the next best thing you can do is reduce the impact of Tank requirements on queue times as much as possible. The only way to do that is to bend over backwards to encourage more players to try and succeed at Tanking.

Okay so what we're doing here is exploring alternatives to the current Trinity queue design, which is obviously not working out right in really any MMO. There's a few solutions being tossed around, let's explore yours first. Eliminate matchmade content This is basically what you're proposing. Queues are for Solo players with companions (therefore why have a queue?), and Group content is for PUGs, friends, and guildies. In other words — matchmade PvE clearly isn't working, so just obsolete it and assume all matchmade players actually just want an easy solo experience, and all Group players are satisfied manually PUGing and being challenged. I don't think this is correct, though. There are a lot of reasons players might want to team up with other players (a very unique gameplay style you don't replicate solo or with bots), but not feel comfortable with the 'classic' MMO model of chat PUGing: Shyness Lack of confidence Lack of experience Lack of gear Lack of social connections on server Lack of desire to stand in Fleet being bored while waiting for group to fill or responses to request Leveling and being spread across 3-4 planets in the FP's level range Lack of time to patiently form a group Lack of expertise to form a group if people aren't already doing it coincidentally when you log in Lack of understanding about how to go about rounding up a PUG Language barriers ... I'm probably hitting maybe 25% of a good comprehensive list. Queued matchmaking definitely facilitates more people seeing the content: The queue determines whether you're in, not the PUG leader, who may have unrealistic or biased requirements. The queue promises everyone involved that the content can be completed with what it composes (the inaccuracy of this statement is the fault of design errors, not matchmade content) The queue transcends chat channel barriers, language barriers, location barriers, server barriers (in most games COUGH COUGH BIOWARE COUGH), etc The queue makes things much faster and more efficient for everyone involved ... (etc etc) Basically what I'm saying here is that the queue legitimately does enable significantly more group-positive players to achieve that goal than you saw before the addition of queueable content. These are just hard numbers — if you polled Blizzard about how many accounts completed, eg, Heroic Dungeons each day before the queue was implemented and after, you would probably be shocked by the difference. Even more extreme for Raid content. So you could remove queuing, but understand that diverting all those players into a solo experience would not be considered equivalent to them, for the same reason unranked PvP would probably die off in short order if you filled WZs with 1 player + 15-31 bots. Yes, people could still load the matches and play it, but would they be having fun? That's not an easy question to answer because humans are very, very tricky creatures — what 'should' please them on paper doesn't always succeed in practice. You can look at GW1 as a sort-of example. In GW1 it was possible to solo most PvE content using a team of CPU-controlled allies and a great deal of micro-management. Thus, in many way GW1 became a chat hub (player outposts) with minigames connected to it (soloable missions). While many consider GW1 to be a classic and very good game, it also never really garnered much overall attention or momentum. And — many players still grouped up to do content, simply because they liked grouping up to do content (and it was very, very forgiving when tackled by a group of competent players). Compare to GW2, where they 180'd that design and made it a game with no CPU allies and a heavy emphasis on cooperative player interaction. Which one seems to have captivated players' attention more? Obviously that's not entirely fair — GW2 has a lot of other features that blow GW1 away in terms of market appeal — but it is something worth considering when you ask "Does an MMO need to require or heavily encourage player interaction and cooperation?"

Yes. That's why they're playing this game. The ones that truly don't never even bother queueing, but they're a sizeable minority which really doesn't affect this discussion. I believe the vast majority of MMO players are in the middle group — socially-positive, but not extremely dedicated or motivated. The problem here is that you can't separate out more people running it because they don't group anyway (thus it's just another solo Mission for them) and the people running it simply because it's easier than any other version of group content (which it would have to be). If you made a solo FP which was as difficult as soloing an on-level Heroic 4 or getting Endless 30 PG in WoW or otherwise a significant accomplishment, it would see little interest or completion rate. People already get flustered defeating Class Story bosses that ask you to interrupt or move out of a circle. That is exactly the case, though. Also that tried it and don't have the confidence to ever do it again. The ability to queue anonymously and keep your head down, eyes to the floor, and follow along with the group opens up content to a significant additional number of players. Tank is the role that really can't do that, which is why Tank is a problem spot for queue times. If we lived in a magical world where everyone was like "First time Tanking this? No problem! We'll take it slow. A few wipes? No problem! I'm sure you'll figure it out" ... yeah, maybe. That is very unrealistic though. And I can't really blame people. Repairs cost money, and wipes/explaining everything costs playtime. It's just not fun to hold a truly oblivious Tank's hand, while an oblivious DPS or Healer can usually pull you through if they press buttons. Right, this is part of the "Bribery" part. You can lure more Tanks into the queue by bribing them, and you can likewise lure more players into Tanking by bribing that role specifically. WoW basically gives Tanks a free Cartel Pack if they queue for matchmade content, in addition to the normal bribes of Commendations & gear drops. It's enough to motivate many more players to sniff around and contemplate the role. It's not, because the fact we have long queue times is specifically because there's a huge line of DPS waiting for a smaller number of Healers and much smaller number of Tanks. If no one but Tanks & Heals was interest in group play, you'd be waiting in queue for a few DPS to trickle in. That is correct, most people want to press button, see lazers, and have fun while keeping their head down and not being blamed for things. This is why you design the DPS role to be so forgiving — a good DPS stands out, but a bad DPS is "okay" if they can follow basic instructions. You end up in a similar situation if you open the low end of the Tank skillfloor. Like DPS, a bad one becomes "adequate" with a little nudging, while a good one is still a godsend to your group. Interestingly, Healing appeals to a certain kind of personality which is attracted to MMOs so there's usually much less issue with Healer quantity, even though it's a very demanding role. DPS like what group content provides, including the ability to kill stuff without stressing about their own survival, the challenge of interacting with mechanics, the excitement of the spectacle, etc. Keep in mind many players don't see "DPS" as some incredible role. It's more of just "playing" — it's their normal playing state, it's the natural default role of gaming. Tank & Heal are weird side-jobs. But you're correct that Tanking & Healing especially aren't the same without other players. This is partially why it would be so damaging to eliminate queued cooperative Trinity content — you'd be dealing a huge blow to casual Tanks & Healers. (you may deem that acceptable) Addressed above. The shortage exists because so many DPS enter the queue. That's kind of evidence that a lot of DPS want to play in a group — they're waiting in line for the necessary backup to survive doing so. You're not wrong for exploring this line of thought — it's a very valid option in a huge list of solutions to a very complex problem. Again, this is a topic very dear to my heart because I love Tanking and I love cooperative play and I love queueing and meeting all sorts of random people, so it touches on many of the things I love about MMOs as a genre. That's why I'm nutter about discussing it. Let me go over what you're proposing in a little more detail in the next post to split this a bit conceptually.

The fact that you dislike player interaction, yet are still drawn to a genre centered entirely around the goal of player interaction, is not in fact a statement about the general need for MMOs to support and encourage player interaction. It is acceptable, in fact extremely positive, if an MMO also supports shy or independent players that would prefer to do their own thing in isolation. At some point, though, it needs to both encourage and justify interacting with other players or it just becomes a single-player game with worse everything. Adding solo queueable content (??) is a good way to very quickly bore and burn-out the playerbase, similar to releasing an FPS that can only be played against bots. Of course there will be people who are happy with it, but those people would also be happy with just questing and dailies — you're targeting an audience that doesn't really exist. What we're worried about here is how to target queuable content for people that want to group with other players and interact, but don't have the skill or confidence or whatever to do "serious" PUG+ content. This is the audience that gets frustrated and discouraged by Tank-dependent queue times, and this is the audience that will influence the gradual erosion of Tank as a trinity role.