I have some thought on tanking.
Recently, my
wonderful sister Anna shared an article on Facebook and tagged me in it. The subject of this article was someone who
was new at tanking was talking about why tanking was difficult in World of
Warcraft. He also discussed how it was possibly a flaw of game design since so
few people tanked, and so much expectation is put on that one player. He of course pointed to the things we all
know about, impatient players, hard learning curve etc… the article is included
Here in PC Gamer magazine and I suggest giving it a read. So don’t my paraphrasing and take on it, read
through it is well worth your time. I
agree with most of what he says.
I have been
tanking on and off since Wrath of the Lich King, Matt Rossi has pointed out
several times on Blizzardwatch’s podcast that once people know you can tank,
you often end up in that role even if your intention is to become DPS. Good tanks feel thin in this game, and part
of that is because of pressures like this.
The other part is because folks in raid finder, Looking for group, and
elsewhere do have a tendency to be verbally abusive and will often blame things
going wrong on said tank. This means if
you don’t have a thick skin you don’t tank very long.
Or you become like
me. I won’t tank for anyone I don’t
know. It is not worth my time and effort
to suffer verbal abuse at the hands of someone I don’t know. I will queue as DPS thank you, and wait the
extra thirty minutes. I won’t lie, part
of the social anxiety I have developed dealing with people in World of Warcraft
has come from tanking. I am wary of
pugging people into groups, or tanking for strangers because I never know what
I’m going to get. And I know if it’s bad
it will often be directed at me whether I have deserved it or not.
On the other hand,
I believe 95% of players in this game are decent people who aren’t looking to
tear folks down. The loud voices in
trade chat and in groups are often a vocal minority who like to talk loud
because it makes them feel like they matter.
The problem is, you can tank five groups in quick succession, but if you
get a person in that fifth group that does nothing but tear you down and get
abusive it stands out to the point where you think it’s everybody. I know one person who is dps that stopped
running group finder stuff because he says he has never had a good
experience. I personally can’t say if
that’s true, but it sure feels like the game is full of negative individuals
sometimes.
Now, do I think
this is Blizzard’s fault? No. I think the game is designed for specific
types of groups, and that if you were to make everything dps with no heals or
tanks it would feel more sporadic and less organized. Do I think there should be DPS only content?
Well, they tried with Scenerios, and my guess is they went away after a small
percentage of players used them compared to the amount of time Blizzard had to
use to design them. I could be wrong on
that, but for better or worse we are used to the tank, dps, and healer dynamic.
Now, I wish they
would stop gating my content behind mythics, or that the dungeons like the
arcway that are gated behind content could be queued for in LFG, but those are
minor complaints. My playing hours right
now pretty much make that content hard for me to get to. I sure am not going to tank them for
strangers. At the same time, I don’t
know if there are enough people on in my guild most of the time that need to
run them. That leaves me sitting on
quests that are filling up my quest book and that are a bad feeling.
How do we fix tanking?
I hate to say this, but Blizzard can’t.
There is no magical button that is going to change how the group
dynamics work. There is no bit of
programming that is going to change characters expectations of quick and clean
runs. The only people who can change
this are the player base.
Players need to
openly call out folks that make tanking hard to do. Players need to set the expectation, that if
you start tearing someone down, that is tank or otherwise, the group will kick
you. Folks need to be a little more
understanding and patient. The only way
we fix that is one player at a time.
The other half of
this coin, there are some bad tanks out there.
I’m not talking about folks that are learning, but tanks that take for
granted that they are important. Those
tanks that are abusive to the groups running with them and tear down other team
members are as big a problem as any negative, sweary dps. (You thought I was going to totally be on
just the tank’s side in this blog right?) One run with a tank like that and you
might see why a dps would lash out at a tank here and there.
I think a tank
that gets kicked from a LFR, or LFG should have a time penalty before they can
queue again. Why? Because it kills the
attitude of, “If they kick me I will get right back in again,” and likewise dps
should have a similar penalty. Not
because I’m a jerk, but there should be a consequence when you exhibit bad
behavior. Yes this could be
abused. In my experience 90% of the
folks that get kicked deserve it.
At the end of
the day folks we are all human, and need to treat each other as such. If we are going to fix this issue in game we
need to do it one player at a time, just making the decision to be nice to each
other. I’m not asking you to be
everyone’s friend. Or even to like other
people. Just treat them with the respect
they deserve.
Lag
