Mar

22

Musings: Scrap the “Tank”

March 22, 2007 | 10 Comments

The TankThe character archetype of the “Tank,” the burly melee fighter who stands at the front of the fray and summons the wrath of the engaged digital monster is a fixture in modern-day MMOGs. The Tank, also known as the “MT” (main tank), the “meatshield,” and the “one most likely to die if things go bad” is a featured member of the holy trinity of MMO character archetypes as the one who absorbs the damage.

In a typical encounter, the Tank will position themselves in front of the engaged monster and try to get the critter to focus all of its attacks on him/her. Tanks typically have the best armor and the most hitpoints, so they can stand there being beat on for a good long time before they keel over dead. So while they are being assailed with impunity, Tanks use their other main skill “taunt” to, I assume, say bad things about the monster’s mother to really piss it off while the Tank’s flimsy counterparts in the group deal damage without fear of being hit. When the group has a healer present, the Tank’s massive hitpoints can be constantly refreshed to full until the mob is dead.

The problem that I have with Tanks is that not only do they have no real-life analogue, but they have no fantasy literature based example either. Bilbo, Sinbad, Conan, Drizzt, Perrin, Theseus, none of these guys would stand in front of a sword and let it hit them over and over. It just doesn’t make sense.

About the closest approximation I can come up with to the job of the MMORPG Tank is the rodeo clown, whose job it is to deliberately taunt an angry bull so a fallen bull rider can escape the ring without being gored. And after that point, even the clown heads for a safe barrel to hide in until the bull can be pacified.

So lacking any real or even literary parallel, why does nearly every fantasy MMORPG (and most non-fantasy ones as well) feature a Tank character archetype?

(That’s a real question folks, not just a rhetorical one…)


 

 

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10 Comments so far

  1. Gravatar noob on March 22, 2007 2:28 pm

    I guess there is the potential for some people to think that I am singling out tanks as some kind of problem child in the current state of MMO design, but that’s not really the point of the piece, despite what the title says.

    What I am trying to do is get people to start thinking about the classes they are playing in terms other than the ones which have been served up so repetitively that most gamers have become conditioned to simply accept and look right past the obvious incongruities.

    Are tanks in MMOs implemented in the only practical way?
    It’s possible, I suppose, but in my opinion unlikely.

  2. Gravatar Joe on August 18, 2008 10:47 am

    Gameplay Mechanics. If you were to get rid of tanks, how would YOU organize group play dynamics? I submit that players invented the traditional group roles of dps, heals and tank, because they are the most efficient means of fighting boss monsters. Mmorpgs have to have relatively simple and fun/addicting gameplay mechanics to hook players

  3. Gravatar Faucet Eye on August 18, 2008 3:25 pm

    Conan the Barbarian

    Aragorn

    Chewbacca

    The Thing

    Tanks one and all, my friend. They just didn’t have hitpoints, so the mechanics are somewhat different.

  4. Gravatar Hexedian on August 25, 2008 8:23 pm

    Because it has been done, and publishers are loathe to try new things. In truth, to get rid of tanks, you would probably need to get rid of classes altogether, and probably levels as well; of course, that’s possible, but you would be trying to reinvent the whole MMORPG concept, and you would first need to tell your publisher why you want to make a MMORPG that is different from WoW first.

  5. Gravatar Dave on August 28, 2008 8:33 pm

    Here’s what I know: I play a tank in World of Warcraft and I love it. There’s something fun about making monsters attack you in the game. It appeals to me, and a lot of other people too. See http://www.tankspot.com.

    The tank is a tough guy that can take a beating. Hercules was a tank. Conan was a tank. Gimli, William Wallace, He-Man – all tanks. Tough as nails dudes that you can’t beat down.

  6. Gravatar Ephemeriis on August 28, 2008 8:50 pm

    Tanks exist because it’s a good way to quickly and easily break up group roles.

    One guy does good damage, but can’t take a hit. One guy can get pummeled for hours, but can’t kill anything. Another guy maybe has range attacks, but is useless in melee. Someone else can heal, but doesn’t do much damage.

    They’re all very simple and specialized roles which may or may not have real-life/literary/fictional counterparts – but it makes the job of the game developer much easier.

    You don’t have to worry about any one class being overpowered, because they’ve got built-in drawbacks. And you don’t need to work too hard to make people group up, because the game mechanics do that for you.

    In games where a single character can, more or less, do it all themselves you’ll see very little incentive to group up. Look at something like Diablo II or Hellgate, where the entire game could easily be soloed… Even when you were doing multiplayer there was seldom any actual cooperation.

  7. Gravatar Jamie B. on August 29, 2008 12:07 am

    I would venture to guess that one aspect of an answer to your question would be that game developers are too budget-tight/lazy/dumb to provide better AI for monsters/NPCs. If they had better AI, you can bet your ass they’d attack multiple player characters, thus spreading out the damage and mitigating the need for a “tank.”

    Of course, this “answer” only applies to computer games, and not to RPGs like D&D – in that case, the DM is just fail. :)

    Time for anecdata:

    In the couple of times I’ve dabbled in D&D, having a tank barely helped, because at starting levels everyone gets their ass kicked by everything. Sensible.

    In the time I’ve played WoW, I’ve come to despise tanks. Mostly because they are THE, number one, most difficult-to-find class on my server. ARGH. In this situation especially, I am fully of the opinion that the tank-system needs to be revised. It is ridiculous and fun-reducing to be forced to rely so fully on one character.

    RAWR. :)

  8. Gravatar noob on October 28, 2008 1:44 am

    Looks like I missed the proverbial boat here. I was shocked to find (fairly recent) comments on this piece… I wish I had stopped by a couple months back.

    Apparently this piece must have gotten some play somewhere to have attracted people to this site a year after the fact.

    So, having missed the opportunity to actually engage in some kind of timely discourse, I’ll weigh in with my repetitive statement that it may be that doing away with the “tank” archetype is impossible.

    I realize that RPG and MMORPG folks do not want to exist in a world where a single arrow through the neck, or dagger in the back would do in a character independent of their “stats.” Hit points are the convention here, it’s not like some Counter-strike style twitch game.

    So should there be a happy medium? Is there some way to include a little bit of realism to the fantasy, or is the convention really the only way?

    Faucet Eye mentioned a few examples of tanks, but only one of the four applies.

    The only one of the four mentioned (Aragorn, Conan, Chewbacca and The Thing) that fits the current “tank” archetype is The Thing. A blaster or lightsaber would kill Chewie as certainly as it would an armored stormtrooper. Swords and arrows would quickly end Conan’s reign if he were to simply puff out his chest and say “go ahead and put it in me… that’s what your mom said earlier today.” And Aragorn certainly did his best not to require elven healing despite the comeliness of his favorite nursemaid.

    Only The Thing talks trash at his opponents while allowing himself to be bludgeoned, shot at, exploded, flung or death ray-ed until either he, or his foe finally gave in to exhaustion.

    Maybe this is what fantasy games had in mind all along?

  9. Gravatar VGC on March 6, 2009 1:46 pm

    In D&D descriptions, HP is not necessarily represented in hits taken. While that is the way it is seen in WoW, in D&D, HP represents not only physical damage, but fatigue, perhaps even luck. If a fighter has 130 HP, and by the end of the fight, he has 25, that doesn’t mean he lost two arms, he just spent a whole battle dodging, twisting, getting smaller cuts or hits, and made successful dodges. Maybe a 50 damage hit is a stab to the face, but a 10 damage hit is just the fatigue of dodging arrows and axes.

  10. Gravatar Yoinx on June 14, 2009 6:04 pm

    Some MMO’s use tanks, but offer other choices as well.

    For instance, EVE online has the normal tank setup in PVE, but you can also spider tank. Everybody does some repping (healing) so, if any person takes aggro everyone can focus on keeping that guy alive WHILE doing their damage.

    You could do the same in WOW with a group of nothing but pallys in theory as well.

    So, tanks arent *needed* they just make it easier.

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