The aggro system, or lack thereof

I'm bringing the dead horse up for another beating because I didn't see any active threads about it, and I believe it's a serious issue. It's obviously up to personal preference whether or not you like the current aggro system, but I most certainly don't so I'm going to address my concerns.

As most online gamers know, almost all MMORPGs of this genre has an aggro system based on threat levels, where it's a question about managing your aggro. Enemies will attack whoever poses the biggest threat, either by dealing high damage, using a lot of detrimental effects on them (think conditions/hexes) or heals the party a lot. This creates a game within the game, and it takes a lot of skill to master this aggro system, allowing people to easily tell skilled players from the not-so-skilled. You suddenly have a responsibility of either keeping aggro (as a tank) or avoiding it, at the risk of causing deaths or becoming a healing sponge if you fail.

Guild Wars, however, has a system that is so random and simple that it becomes a matter of abusing NPC AI in order to "tank" effectively. You need to body block, you need to position people outside of aggro ranges, or you need to rely on luck and hope that the enemy starts attacking you. We all know that enemies generally attack whoever has the lowest armor, which means that having high armor contradicts its purpose - it's no longer a good thing because you can withstand high amounts of damage, but because the opponents won't even try to attack you! Suddenly we see fights becoming a chase with warriors running behind an enemy who's chasing the kiting monk, and I find this extremely annoying and ridiculously silly.

There was a thread a while back concerning this issue, and a lot of suggestions were made. Some said a "dumb" taunt-skill was the right fix, while others disagreed and said it would ruin PvE. My proposal is a system that takes into account both proximity (meaning the distance from you to your target) and the amount of threat you pose. High damage, high healing, or lots of conditions/hexes would all contribute to determining who gets attacked. It would bring a lot more skill back into the game because you'd have to know how to control yourself or risk taking aggro from the tank, or how to deliver the highest amount of "hate" in order to keep the enemy's attention fixed on you.

So I'm asking for an aggro system that actually makes the game require skill, that puts some tactics into PvE, and that you can learn/manage to prove yourself a valuable player. Don't make us choose between abusing poor AI or accepting that our monks and elementalists are permanent tanks. I know that in some cases it's possible for a warrior to be able to tank, but nine times out of ten, the above-mentioned scenario is what really happens. Tanking is technically possible, but too clumsy and illogical, and not even worth attempting if you're playing with heroes and henchmen.

If you're talking about DoA, then that's the only way you're can get through it.

/signed good idea never seen one thread like this posted though u say there were others(i believe u just saying ya know).

I'm talking about the entire game. The only reason the current system works is because you can actually make it despite your casters tanking 90% of the time. Once you get to DoA, as you mentioned, using dubious and ridiculous methods is the only way.

There have been plenty of posts, but most of them weren't very thorough, and I don't like bumping in any case. Try do a forum search for "taunt" and see.

When I first started playing GW (which was recently) I was totally shocked by the lack of a real aggro system. I haven't been around long enough to grasp how the player community feels about it, but I am definitely interested. IMHO I think it would be good for a deeper aggro system to be introduced to the game. I don't think it should be a direct clone of the systems in other games but something more would be nice. Maybe in GW2

Actually, no, they don't. Enemies in most MMOs attack the *lowest* value target, the one that poses the *least* threat. This target is also almost universally the *least* effective target for an enemy to attack.


Your suggestion is to make it much, much easier to abuse poor AI, in fact to build that AI abuse into game mechanics, so that there's no longer any choices to be made?

Peace,
-CxE

I recently started playing on assassin again.

Agro works as it should. That also means that it's not hard to survive, just know how mobs react. And yes, that means managing agro on a sin, with hero/henchies and without tanking.

Definite no for removal mob AI and replacing it with taunt.

The lack of agro management can only exist behind the keyboard. This is of course applicable to casters as well, if they are tanking, the problem is not with the AI. I can definitely confirm this with 5 casters having completed NF, some with Protector. Of course, running 3 sups is bad, and does make you an agro magnet, but that's not the problem with AI.

As a side note, a very complex agro system exists in GW. It takes into consideration damage dealt, class roles, current and maximum health, armor levels, positions, conditions, skills, etc. Anything that simplifies that is by definition "dumbing down". But mobs behave consistently and predictably. Just learn how they do it.

[QUOTE=Ensign]Actually, no, they don't. Enemies in most MMOs attack the *lowest* value target, the one that poses the *least* threat. This target is also almost universally the *least* effective target for an enemy to attack.


Not really, in MMO's once the first pull happens the monsters on just the closest, but it is the tanks job to build threat and taunt them off of the squishier players. Threat causes them to attack the target building the most, healing or damage, doing both increase threat.

Since when are warriors the lowest valued target? Something tells me that warriors are a very high priority target... maybe it's just the fact that nearly every pvp team will bring some form of warrior hate, whether it be a shut-down like blinding surge or wards... Warriors may not be the target of spikes, but they are important to shutdown quickly... this makes them a very high priority target indeed...

Now I think you're just arguing for the sake of it... what choice exactly are you talking about?

"OMG I WANT THE CHOICE TO HAVE ENEMIES ALL PILE ON ME WHEN I PLAY A MONK WTFOMFG ANET?????"

One of the roles warriors play is to absorb damage for the team... should all warriors come here and throw a fit because they only have two energy regen and cant CHOOSE to play a healer? Seriously, what you said is just ridiculous to me...

You know, there are different builds for warriors right? PvE warriors are usually not a threat..


Making aggro "manageable", would result in tanks tanking all the time, making the game so much more easier.

What do we players do? We focus on the monk first because he can simply keep his allies alive longer and at the same time he's weak. It's in our best intrest he gets down fast also to decrease their numbers fast so you get numeric superiority. Unless there's a very dangerous target in the group who needs to be taken care off quickly, like say an ele npc with searing flames. You can put an interupter on him or spike him to death hoping the monk can't outheal you.

An AI that plays itself to death by focusing on the tank is simply a dumb AI in my humble opinion and is way to easy to beat. It can place a melee fighter on the tank to keep the tank busy while going for casters but that's as far as an AI should go.

The downside is that we can manipulate this behaviour too. I've beaten nightfall mostly by playing the bait myself as a leeroy jenkins smiting monk while my heroes and henchies came running in and took care of business. Yes I died several times but the goal was always reached. If you know you're a target, it's actually an advantage.

It's time the warrior should play other roles than just a tank. More like a bodyguard kinda way for example. Throw yourself between the danger and your party's weakest links. Don't wait for the danger to find you, look for it. Tanking gives the warrior class a negative image in this game, a warrior should be furious, not like a sac of potatoes that can hardly move and does zero damage.

I would like to end this with a quote from Dunkoro: 'The outcome of a battle is determined before the first soldier leaves the barracks'.

There's a problem with making a better aggro system.

First of all, this game is currently build around this aggro system. A lot of the same profession (enemies, that is), with high level and thus high attack power. I have currently no idea what the heck is the priority of the monsters. I believe it's currently Monks.

Now, let's see what happens if we take the system, of say, how a pvper chooses targets. He mainly trains monks, but when a foe is particularly annoying (blinding flash, for example) or someone is dealing a load of damage (Frenzying warrior anyone?) they change target to them.

The enemies meet the pve team. The warriors attack the intitial blocker, evaluate the party, and notice the setup.
Blocker
2 Nukers
3 monks
1 warrior damage dealer
Minion master

The first thing you'll notice is that there are 3 monks. That means that they won't all be healing a lot (usual setup is 2, I believe?). However, there are 2 nukers (MS, not GoR), and they get targetted first because of their burst of damage output. They will completely ignore the 3 monks, which should easily be able to outheal the damage, and go for the damage dealers, and since the damage on 2 eles is split between the 3 monks, there's no reason for the enemies to go after the monks. Then, after the initial burst, they will go for the warrior damage dealer. He has a high dps because of his frenzy heal sig, and the monks just put prot spirit on him and the occassional heal.

This is far too exploitable. Since the aggro system in other games is kind of dumb, it can't be used in GW. Why? GW is more team-based instead of Individual or 4-player based.

And I'm not talking about WoW or something, as I have no experience with it.

Guild Wars way of dealing with aggro!

1) input high level of enemies into one zone
2) put them close to each other so that there is no gap to run around them
3) mixed it up with healer, hexer, interrupt and other build among the groups
4) No friendly AI = running into multiple mods and you being killed
5) Repeat step one for the next zone.

Heres the thing. When GW started everything was just like how the OP said. The monsters always attacked the first target to run in (usually a warrior) and stayed on them. Ever since then Anet is tweaking the AI to become more challenging. Now im looking for a middle ground.

I think that the AI should vary for various enemies. Humans/Undead/Demons etc. Should be able to determine which character the party is most dependent on or does the most damage and attack them. Reason being that these monsters would be smarter than.. plants for instance.

Insects/Plants/Animals, should have a lower advance in AI. Making their attack patterns more focused on whoever catches their eye first. No doubt they should deviate from their original target and attack others. For the most part however they should stay on the "aggroing" person/persons.

The AI should be dependent on the type of species it is. I dont think that Termites have the ability to decide that because im a monk, they should come and attack me, however I think 9 ft tall demons do. Just my 2 cents

if the ai attacks the lowest priority target wouldnt it make sense to put prot spirit on a warrior and tell him to take off his armor?

If you want to get into realism, which GW has very little of, tell me which of these two scenarios look correct:

The enemy, your generic Monster With Some Intelligence is standing in its lair. In comes a group of eight enemies. A warrior with a big, heavy sword charges up into its face and starts swinging at it with precise, painful attacks. The rest of the party is most likely standing at a distance, possibly even outside of the monster's immediate view. Some of them are wiggling their hands and chanting, and one of them is shooting a bow. The monster chooses that the warrior is the biggest and most easily reached threat and attacks him.

The enemy, your generic Monster With Some Intelligence is standing in its lair. In comes a group of eight enemies. A warrior with a big, heavy sword charges up into its face and starts swinging at it with precise, painful attacks. The monster decides that the skinny guy standing all the way in the back, wiggling his fingers and causing no effect that someone who doesn't know each skill would understand, somehow poses the biggest threat. Monster proceeds to wade through the group of people stabbing and slashing at it, chasing the skinny guy in the back despite the fact that he's now running at full speed while the rest of the party is constantly wounding and battering it from behind.

Discuss?


Edited to add and clarify:

I don't want a simplified system where enemies attack whoever runs in first. I want a system where your aggro is something you can reliably manage. It shouldn't be easy, it shouldn't be a "push this button to taunt your enemy into attacking you", but something that requires skill and understanding. I wouldn't mind seeing an increased difficulty of enemies to reflect this, as long as characters can actually play the role that the game developers' own words describe. Where does it say "Warrior: the guy who's usually attacked last. He wears heavy armor for no apparent reason since monks, wearing thin cloth robes (or nothing at all, depending on which armor they've chosen), run screaming away from the monsters that always seem to target them"?

It works in every other game out there. It creates a need for thinking and strategy, rather than the concept of GW: deal a shizload of damage as fast as possible so that the mob chasing your monk doesn't kill him before you've won. Alternatively, invent some weird gimmicky build that abuses monster AI, making them wade through the traps they've just seen you place, or getting stuck on the corner of a building so that your tanks can finally tank.

In Guild Wars, the monk is usually the prime target of the AI. They will specifically go after squishies if they are close enough. Otherwise they will stand back and protect their group. I've seen it done many times. Though there are cases where the AI won't respond well to some actions its not programmed to look out for.

A tank with painfull attacks? Can't remember I encountered one sorry, except in pvp. Your logic is true if it's a heavy dealing damage interupting warrior, but those still have to be born in GW pve.

Warriors are perfectly capable of dealing good damage while remaining the most suitable tank in the party.

the system as it is now is absolute bollocks, took my warrior to elona, did the starter island missions and go to the defend whatever town it is quest. yes i soloed, yes i didnt take a snare, yes i spent 24 minutes leaving my warrior chasing a monk around in circles

makes what sould be a fun GAME into a frustrating annoying exercise in getting pee'd off very quickly

looks like the new wammo should be the wa-ele since they never get attacked yet need snares and ranged attacks

I didnt read all of that, so I apologise if Ive miss understood the concept of the thread.

But to me, it sounds like another protest to make the game harder yet again.

Ok, maybe not harder, but your obviously looking for Anet to tweak the AI in some way to make it more of a challenge and slightly harder.

My problem with that is simple.

Anet has already changed the AI in the creatures ALOT since GWs was first released. Especially in the last few months.

Examples being;

Creatures nowl run away when their health is too low.
Creatures run away from AoE, which is annoying, but understandble.
Creatures who will chase you half way accross the instance before giving up.
Other creatures will run away from you when you chase them, and run and run and run (usually into another mob).
Creatures will focus on one target and harrass them for ever.

The point im trying to make is that Anet has already done enough to make the creatures harder/more of a challenge.

People need to stop asking "to make the game harder", or it wont end and the next campaign will be entirely for elite players.

I understand why players wanted more challenging AI and harder creatures to fight. I think certain aspect are good which Anet changed, while others arent.

But it needs to stop, because people are never happy with the AI or the creatures.

Compare prophercies to factions, to Nightfall and you see a trend of how Anet tends to make their creatures more of a challenge.

Their responce to "making the game harder" is to increase mob sizes, increase the number of mobs in one area and increase the number of creatures in a mob who can interupt or knock down.

Theres no improvement on challenge or intelligence there. Its purely adding to frustration with interupts.

Nightfall for example had a vast number of the creatures able to ressurect. Something we hadnt really seen before and it didnt really add any challenge, more frustration.

And in the ROT, they simply pact large mobs right next to each other, to make it harder to attack one without provoking others. Thats not improved AI, its just increased creature numbers.

If people continue to ask for the creatures to be made harder AGAIN, they will just continue this trend to some insain result.

I personally never saw any reason for Anet to increase the difficulty of creatures from once they did Factions.

But they seemed to do it in Nightfall. Something I obviously saw as unneeded.

I suspect that most people who ask for harder creatures, are those who spend most of their time in elite missions. Which means they wouldnt be happy until there IS an entire campaign which is just an elite mission in essence.

Your idea about having them target according to healing, and dmg and other aspects is good. But I suspect your a warrior and you have the armor and health to withstand such things. Being an elemental myself, with low armor and health, I couldnt see dmg dealers or any elementals lasting very long. The same with monks if they were primary targets.

Its a good idea, but I would rather stick with an almost randomised targetting system, otherwise it would alienate elementals and healers. People would choose not to play as those professions knowing they would be primary targets.

As it is, you MIGHT be a primary target, but its not guaranteed. If you system was in place and there were no tanks in a team and the elemental was the primary target being the highest dmg, they wouldnt stand a chance.

It could also be the case that the elemental wasnt a dmg dealer, but they would still get targetted first being an elemental because their expected to have high yeild.

I would stick with creatures randomisig their primary targets.

But if they cange anything....

I say they only change their AI and the way they react to situations.

DONT change their skills or give them more interupts or ressing, DONT increase mob counts, and DONT increase the dmg they deal.



But thats my two pence worth.


So im /signed on improving reactions to situations in the AI

but /notsigned on any changes to creature skills, dmg or mob levels/counts.

I get what you are saying, but the solution to this is to create a difficulty system for those who like to play hard. So they can put the game on extreme and have the system whip them up while the rest can play how they feel.

Hey fish, you should read my entire post before responding. Most of your reply had very little to do with the original topic.

Unless you think that the game would get harder by making tanking possible

The Ai and Anet are perfectly aware of this illusion of grandeur and just ignore you which is what I would do too. You're simply not enough of a threat compared to other opponents. If you would chase in my casters and interupt them and would bring heavy havoc, I would be forced to adjust though.

Also the Ai has casters too so they know what a caster is and what not. I'm not talking about plants or other low intelligent creeps.

Realism has been ignored in almost every aspect of this game. The only thing resembling realism in this game is a vague adherance to the law of physics, modified to suit a high-magick fantasy world. My concern is 100% playability, which should have been clarified in my earlier post.

LOL.

So true. However common sense does not apply here. Not like the warrior can hack at someone wearing a silk nightgown with an axe and do little damage. Wait that does seem to be the case.

/signed

Not specifically the system that OP has mentioned, the idea of 'threat' and 'hate' does remind me alot about 1 popular MMORPG (with which one can indeed differentiate a skilled tank and a non-skilled one). I'm going to sign this because difficulty isn't an issue since it can be adjusted with, for example, what's done in DoA; an aggro system will help to add more depth and playability to GW PvE.

What I'm trying to say is that warriors themselves made Anet program the AI it is today. Because of the playability. It's just too easy to let a warrior tank. I understand you like to play the role as a tank but there's no real challenge in it, not for you and not for your party members. If 100% playability equals an easy setup with a tank while the other party members fire of some nukes while watching TV, that's just way to easy in an already easy game.

Maybe I'm getting you wrong so my apologies for that.

I'm from Everquest 2 and I talked about 'taunts' before. I don't want them in this game at all. People said it would dumb down the game and I thought about it and agree.

But........

Threat level is something that Everquest 2 did do nicely.
If my priest in Everquest 2 start spamming healing spells at a blinding rate the monsters would literally turn around a B-line to me no matter how far I was.
If a wizard in the backlines started firing off their full load of damage spells, they'd get the monsters attention fast! In Everquest 2 one of the biggest parts of playing a 'glass cannon' was to manage how often you spike, because you didn't want the enemies to suddenly focus all their attention on what they suddenly perceive as the biggest threat. I thought it all reflected how a enemy would react in a battle very nicely.

So I really think that all skills should have a threat level. Even heals. Threat management adds depth to battles. If you are spiking damage/healing on a target, you have to space it out or be prepared to get a lot of enemy attention!

Again you assume that I want it to be easy. I'm not interested in a game that I can play while not watching the screen, I just want something better than the current system where mobs usually ignore the character who is obviously supposed to be a tank, and relentlessly charges the person who's the least suitable for it. I want a system where that's avoidable if you're good at it. I find it endlessly frustrating to play a warrior who never gets hit, or a monk who has to run in circles all the time. The whole idea of having good armor and defensive skills is completely contradicted when the enemies are programmed to always attack the one who doesn't.

i'm surprised that there are no "GO PLAY WoW" posts

If they added threat levels, they should make many of the warrior, dervish, ect skills have the higher ones. That way if a monster starts attacking someone that can't handle the attacks very long, everyone would take 2 seconds and let the warrior/dervish/ect do a combo attack to get the attention of the enemy.
If the enemy is trying to attack a target that can't handle the attacks at all, then the whole group would have to focus on either snaring/or damaging the enemy to get their attention to anyone else, but the person the group wants to protect.
I think it's more realistic that way, and requires a little more of any profession being capable of helping each other out the odd time. Right now battles kinda feel like it's everyone doing there own thing regardless of what's going on. Sometimes I feel like most of the time there is no need to react within a battle, just act.

If you did a threat system as i just briefly read about.

You can place a character in each end of the party and then just spam when they're at the other end. Kinda like ping ponging the monsters around until they are dead.

/vote for insect AI behaviour, completely random.

Well isn't that a wonderful opportunity to not play as a tank but as a full damage dealer/interupter or whatever as you don't get that many hits and you have the armor anyway in case you do get hit. You're too focused on the tank role and on getting hits. Warriors have so many other powerful offensive spells that hardly ever get used. The hammer warrior practically doesn't exist in pve. Why? because people think a warrior should tank. And now that they can't tank effectively they blame the aggro system instead of looking to play another role with their warrior. But that's my view on it.

Either Anet lets you tank or they don't let you tank. Or they can let you tank and make it so you can't stand the heat long. Either way they can't let you tank without risks as that would be too easy and that's not what you want either.

Ooooh yeah, that's bad. They couldn't make it so that is possible. This is a tricky fish, I reckon.

OMG you are right.

Token ... GO PLAY WOW YOU NOOBS!

About realism.

GW is quite realistic. But not from "Ima big bad warrior" perspective. From military perspective.

You have your army - team. On even grounds (GvG) the battle will be long, with ups and downs. Battle fatique or strategic or logistic flaw will determine the outcome.

Taunt, is a soloist mechanic. It completely eliminates the team.

This is where the disconnect happens. Some keep asking for duels. Others for taunt. But neither of these fit.

GW is about assembling your army, coordinating your skills, anticipating enemy equipment, then assuming proper strategy and proceeding towards victory.

Unfortunately, most (with exception of 2 or 3) missions in PvE can be won without it, and another dozen or so are made very easy if these tactics are followed. DoA has now finally been debunked as possible with non-gimmick, yet still very conservative holy trinity build. So apparently, there is some truth in all of that.

But yea, go play WoW or something. While not needed 95% of the time in PvE, preparation, coordination, and team awareness is what makes GW what it is. Taunt simply has no place in it. Some understand that all too well, others never will:

Your mistakes:
- You went in solo
- You didn't prepare
- You didn't realize you were fighting a superior opponent

Nothing wrong with the game. Change your tactics, and become part of team. No, a warrior doesn't need a snare or be /E, when there's 7 other characters that can bring it or fill other roles. This is what GW is about.

I'm pretty sure Ensign proved that warriors have the highest dps of all characters and one of the highest dmg spikes in the game with the eviscerate, executioners strike combo.

Why do people forget so soon?

For what it is worth, I totally share the OP's arguments. Whatever warrior-haters may say, the aggro control was a subtle skill, and it indeed differentiated between a good and old player. The current chaos makes the fights much less manageable and a great deal more annoying. Personally, I rather detest the current AI (the one before Nightfall was just right).

I hope that this concern will be addressed properly.