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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9820693" data-attributes="member: 6790260">People keep saying this.It is not as true as they would like it to be.The roles did not originally come from MMOs. That they have similarities is not surprising--MMO roles came from D&D, originally! But the most centrally important source, much more than MMOs, was soccer, as I said previously. That's where the names come from, everything except Controller. That's where the idea of "marking" comes from--it's literally called that in soccer. AND where "zone" defending comes from, as that's a different style of defensive play in soccer--one locks down particular enemy players, the other locks down specific areas.4e looked at stuff MMOs were doing. Why wouldn't it? WoW was and is an absolute juggernaut in terms of finances. If there's anything to be learned from it, wouldn't you want to at least try? But MMOs weren't even the primary source, let alone the only source. MMOs were not "copied" in any meaningful way--they were studied and folks tried to take useful information from them. Raising their specter as though it were some critical error or grievous sin or whatever, instead of being one fairly small part of 4e's design.Further? "Control" absolutely already is a role in some MMOs! It's not there in all of them, but it definitely is there. GW1's Mesmer is a control and resource specialist, for instance, which meant few people played main-class Mesmers, but LOTS of people played <any other profession>+secondary Mesmer, because having those resource-restoring skills is super helpful as a dabble.And..."control" doesn't describe what MMO tanks do, except in one very narrow sense that flatly doesn't apply to D&D. The MMO tank kit is 100% centered around damage mitigation and aggro generation. That second bit--aggro generation--is outright mind control. Do more threat than anyone else, and the monster is mind controlled into attacking you and no one else. Someone else overtakes your threat? Sucks to be them, because now they're getting all the damage and you, the tank, aren't taking any (other than AoE damage). Different games handle healing in various ways, but nearly all MMOs have tanks taking crazy amounts of damage, which means healers have to spend most or all of their time purely focused on pouring HP into the tank(s)."Control" in MMOs refers to things like "sheeping" in WoW, "binding" in GW2, "sleep" in FFXIV, etc.--which are all effects directly inspired by the D&D Magic-User/Wizard.The problem, of course, is that the D&D Wizard is the "I literally do EVERYTHING (except heal)" class, so any role it gets assigned will always be a narrowing of scope. Which is a good thing, because the Wizard as it exists is outright bad design because that degree of versatility is harmful to the overall gameplay experience. But the Wizard Supremacists don't like being told that.</blockquote>

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