The aggro system, or lack thereof

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.