Imaro
Legend
They really don't play the same. At all. A defender marks someone in order to force a confrontation. The mark influences the marked target to stay near them, or attack them, or else suffer some penalty.
The striker's extra damage mechanics encourage the opposite. A target who has been designated as a quarry, or who is flanked, has incentive to get away from whoever quarried or flanked them, so as to avoid suffering penalties.
They're the same only in the sense that they both involve choosing a foe to suffer a disadvantage. The means of choosing the foe, the disadvantage suffered, and the tactical consequences that flow from that decision are entirely different.
Uhm...we agree here, in my earlier post I said that these were the exception. I actually think these are more varied than the actual powers in mechanical application and effect.
They're different, and its ok to prefer mechanical differences, but where your argument drives us batty is when you assume that a lack of full fledged mechanical sub systems somehow translates into tactical similarity. This is not the case.
No one used the word "tactical". Play != tactical. Some people said they felt similar in play, not that their tactics were the same. A spell from 4e and a spell from 3e could promote the same tactical play, yet have very different mechanics for resolving that spell. This I think may be the dissconnect. In 4e whether that spell effects or doesn't effect it's target is always resolved the same...for every spell (roll d20 +mods) vs. defense. This could be what causes the samey feeling not the tactics, and it could be even more pronounced for players not interested or good at tactical combat.