Aggro Icon

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Originally Posted by Rjain

Yeah I don't like the linkshell icon change either. It's like FFXIV, Blind People's Edition.

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LOL I totally agree.

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Originally Posted by elkhorn

Im a big ffxi vet myself i say get rid of the agro dot all together New players need to learn as we did starting some monsters are not cool. all the agro dot does in my opinion is turned the game into a battle style petting zoo for noobs. wheres the challenge.

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OMG I HAD TO HAVE AN UNPLEASANT EXPERIENCE WHEN I WAS A NEW PLAYER SO EVERYONE ELSE SHOULD HAVE AN UNPLEASANT EXPERIENCE, TOO!!

Please, get off your high horse. Making the game more user-friendly and accessible to newbies is nothing but a good thing. After all the negative attention FFXIV has gotten since launch, the last thing the game needs is to be scaring off potential customers with overly frustrating game mechanics that don't exist in other modern MMOs.

I'll agree that the indicator should probably be more subtle, as the current design is a little on the obnoxious side (personally, I like the idea of a red glow surrounding the enemy's name), but there does need to be something to indicate which mobs aggro and which ones don't.

Though I suppose an option to turn the indicator on and off wouldn't hurt, so long as it was turned on by default (after all, you can't expect a newbie to know that the option even exists, let alone that they would need to turn it on).

I would like the aggro icon to disappear from the screen and be incorporated into the "mob strength" colors. Say blue, green, orange, red, but with a little dot for aggro. I'd also like the "aggro" dot to go away when I'm at a rank high enough that the mobs no longer aggro.

Kolbey Trifel

I don't like the way the the aggro indicator is displayed. It seems kind of obnoxious, I would definately prefer something more subtle.

It's a complete eyesore, and has to either be changed or done away with.. I see two logical options of implementing this sort of thing, if you've decided you want it in your game. You can either (like others have suggested here) have something display around where the colored mob check icon is.. Or have the names of aggressive mobs display as a different color than normal to differentiate. I'd prefer the former.

I like the idea that hostile enemies are easily distinguishable from non-hostile enemies, but I personally feel that this glaring Red Sun of Death™ icon is obnoxious and over the top.

Personally, I prefer the way WoW and Rift do it, which is by using color-coded names instead of an obnoxious marker.

Green name = friendly NPC who will not attack you
Yellow name = neutral NPC who will not attack you unless you attack it first
Red name = hostile NPC who will attack you if you get too close

Not only are the color-coded names less intrusive, they also create less clutter, and allow players to distinguish between THREE different types of NPCs instead of only two types.

Marking hostile NPCs was a good idea, but in this particular situation color-codes work better than icons.

An alternative method to do it could be to utilize a slow "pulsating" animation on the text outline, perhaps like this:

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/2460/monstername.gif

There are probably other ideas that could work too, such as a red glow around the text, or a red underline, or any number of things which are less intrusive than the Red Sun of Death™.

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Originally Posted by Rhianu

OMG I HAD TO HAVE AN UNPLEASANT EXPERIENCE WHEN I WAS A NEW PLAYER SO EVERYONE ELSE SHOULD HAVE AN UNPLEASANT EXPERIENCE, TOO!!

Please, get off your high horse. Making the game more user-friendly and accessible to newbies is nothing but a good thing. After all the negative attention FFXIV has gotten since launch, the last thing the game needs is to be scaring off potential customers with overly frustrating game mechanics that don't exist in other modern MMOs.

I'll agree that the indicator should probably be more subtle, as the current design is a little on the obnoxious side (personally, I like the idea of a red glow surrounding the enemy's name), but there does need to be something to indicate which mobs aggro and which ones don't.

Though I suppose an option to turn the indicator on and off wouldn't hurt, so long as it was turned on by default (after all, you can't expect a newbie to know that the option even exists, let alone that they would need to turn it on).

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Run into a mob which aggros once, get killed, run into it the 2nd time, get killed and the 3rd time you'll avoid it :) I'll promise that :P

GET RID OF IT

that is all.

Agreed Agro icon is retarded. I have no idea why its here. If creature is big and mean looking and your level 1 stay away or die. For me this is beyond hand holding. I would love a function to hide this.

Taige Halig

Sneak + Invisible + Deodorize FTW! Not knowing if a mob aggros is much more better imo! :)

While I think it's nice they are making the game easier for new players I do find the icon extremely ugly.

Maybe I am a bit old school or am too nostalgic but I loved not knowing which enemy would come chasing after me in FFXI. Learning the mobs is an important part of any MMO to me and I feel like this icon not only takes away from the beauty of the game but also some of the sense of danger, which if I'm not mistaken, the dev. team is trying to create that danger.

At the very least have an option to toggle the aggro icon.

Seeing the responses to this...I think the community may be part of the problem with FFXIV. I don't think I've ever seen such a sustained "stop whining" "just learn the game n00b" etc kind of attitude as I have with responses to the game adding basic functionality that is considered industry standard. This is not the attitude the developers or the players can have if FFXIV is to relaunch and expand to a sustainable playerbase and business model. The game should be welcoming, not punish people at every opportunity for not knowing something they had no way of learning before. Trial and error gameplay is a game design philosophy that has been outdated for 15 years.

As far as the actual icon, the implementation was a bit ostentatious, so I think the name coloring system would probably be the least intrusive option. After all, most people who would play this have probably played another MMO, so they know a red name=bad. On the other hand, they might think that starburst is a quest mob or something. What they most likely wouldn't think is that aggressive enemies are completely unmarked, since every other MMO I can think of besides FFXI has marked aggressive enemies in some way.

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Originally Posted by TubalaTrommler

I actually find this icon to be more confusing than no icon, I keep expecting them to be part of a leve or something =/

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+1 to this

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Originally Posted by OJtheLIONKing

Trial and error gameplay is a game design philosophy that has been outdated for 15 years.

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If it was outdated I don't think so many people would be demanding it.

I think what would help everyone the most, is just to have the ability to toggle it on or off. If you have the option to be warned or not about a mob that will aggro you, it pleases both sides of the argument. I don't see how having a toggle feature is that big of an issue. I personally, like the surprise of sometimes not going, that is really exciting for me. Though others that don't like that should be able to have the ability do know, before they get in aggro distance.

As yet another FFXI veteran, I'm not a big fan of the AggroIcon... and speaking of WOWish adjustments, I don't really like bigass ladybugs/dodos, and omg, chigoes... But i'm kinda skipping out of subject I know.

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Originally Posted by Suburp

As yet another FFXI veteran, I'm not a big fan of the AggroIcon... and speaking of WOWish adjustments, I don't really like bigass ladybugs/dodos, and omg, chigoes... But i'm kinda skipping out of subject I know.

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I considered the large ladybugs and the like was more FF-like...

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Originally Posted by OJtheLIONKing

Seeing the responses to this...I think the community may be part of the problem with FFXIV. I don't think I've ever seen such a sustained "stop whining" "just learn the game n00b" etc kind of attitude as I have with responses to the game adding basic functionality that is considered industry standard. This is not the attitude the developers or the players can have if FFXIV is to relaunch and expand to a sustainable playerbase and business model. The game should be welcoming, not punish people at every opportunity for not knowing something they had no way of learning before. Trial and error gameplay is a game design philosophy that has been outdated for 15 years.

As far as the actual icon, the implementation was a bit ostentatious, so I think the name coloring system would probably be the least intrusive option. After all, most people who would play this have probably played another MMO, so they know a red name=bad. On the other hand, they might think that starburst is a quest mob or something. What they most likely wouldn't think is that aggressive enemies are completely unmarked, since every other MMO I can think of besides FFXI has marked aggressive enemies in some way.

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As I stated already, even WITH the icon, people still choose to attack non-hostile enemies first when it comes to behests...

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Originally Posted by OJtheLIONKing

Seeing the responses to this...I think the community may be part of the problem with FFXIV. I don't think I've ever seen such a sustained "stop whining" "just learn the game n00b" etc kind of attitude as I have with responses to the game adding basic functionality that is considered industry standard. This is not the attitude the developers or the players can have if FFXIV is to relaunch and expand to a sustainable playerbase and business model. The game should be welcoming, not punish people at every opportunity for not knowing something they had no way of learning before. Trial and error gameplay is a game design philosophy that has been outdated for 15 years.

As far as the actual icon, the implementation was a bit ostentatious, so I think the name coloring system would probably be the least intrusive option. After all, most people who would play this have probably played another MMO, so they know a red name=bad. On the other hand, they might think that starburst is a quest mob or something. What they most likely wouldn't think is that aggressive enemies are completely unmarked, since every other MMO I can think of besides FFXI has marked aggressive enemies in some way.

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+1 to you.

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Originally Posted by Rjain

If it was outdated I don't think so many people would be demanding it.

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Most people AREN'T demanding it. It's just that a lot of people on this forum don't want to accept that FFXIV is seriously flawed. A vast majority of the potential customers who would have purchased FFXIV have been scared off by the game's bad design, leaving only a few veterans from FFXI who still cling desperately to outdated design philosophies when the rest of the game industry has evolved and moved forward.

Hint: FFXI had a lot of fundamental design flaws as well, but people were more forgiving of such things back in 2002-2003 because MMOs was still a new concept back then and people didn't quite know what to expect from the genre. These days, people have higher standards.

I'm fine with the icons the way they are, but then I play at HD resolutions on a modern monitor. Put in a toggle for those who have a problem with it to turn it off.

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Originally Posted by Rjain

If it was outdated I don't think so many people would be demanding it.

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Yes, because most of us are former FFXI players--so am I. To an average FFXI player who has never had an aggro indicator, this is natural. However, to people who have played almost any other MMO, this is a baseline, expected feature. Like so many other things in FFXIV, this is something that garners a response of "how was this not already in the game" from people who are used to intuitive interfaces.

I stand by my statement. Games from the PS2 on have been more intuitive and simpler to get into than older games where you simply beat your head against the wall until you eventually broke through. Punishing people for not taking the logical leaps others take is not a welcoming design philosophy. Yeah, some mobs like beastmen will probably aggro, but to people who've played, say, Guild Wars or WoW, they may be used to low level zones being completely aggro free no matter what the mobs look like, and be rather aggravated that there's no GUI indication at all. That's not the way to attract new people to the game.

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Originally Posted by Rhianu

leaving only a few veterans from FFXI who still cling desperately to outdated design philosophies when the rest of the game industry has evolved and moved forward.

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Moving forward is having a giant red dot that spoonfeeds information to you?

You know, I heard there was some sort of big design revelation Nintendo was gonna do that involved watching the game play itself. Perhaps that's just a rumour but if that's how the "industry is moving forward" then being a game designer myself I'd have to say I'm out.

A lot of people like the discovery factor in MMOs. Things becoming more easy, information fed directly to your eyes without warrant... that's not a new trend, and if it is, it's a pretty bad one. But then again, maybe that's why I hate most games that come out these days.

These high standards of yours are inadequate unfortunately.

I don't think its a bad idea at the moment, at least until there is a way of avoiding aggro, ie. sneak/invisible. But I'm sure they could come up with a more subtle way of doing it.

Turn on/off give us the possibility to decide if this feature break or not our immersion.

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Originally Posted by Rjain

Moving forward is having a giant red dot that spoonfeeds information to you?

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If you go back and read my previous post in this topic (post #46), you'll see that I actually said I too found this red marker to be a little over the top, and suggested using color-coding instead.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ull=1#post1518

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Originally Posted by Rhianu

If you go back and read my previous post in this topic (post #46), you'll see that I actually said I too found this red marker to be a little over the top, and suggested using color-coding instead.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ull=1#post1518

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Very good. They can implement that, sure, but they'd better make it optional. I do not like being told the most basic of things.

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Originally Posted by Rjain

I do not like being told the most basic of things.

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Well then you're in the minority. Most gamers prefer to have basic information made readily available to them, especially in an MMO.

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Originally Posted by Rhianu

Well then you're in the minority. Most gamers prefer to have basic information made readily available to them, especially in an MMO.

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No, I'm not in the minority, as evident by this thread. Don't make an excuse that everyone in this thread is an XI veteran. I liked XI but I didn't even play it that long. In fact, I played WoW a lot longer.

I'm just not a casual gamer. I'm a gamer that likes to dive in and find things out. I like to know what I'm doing, I like to know how systems work, but I don't want to be told by the game "don't go here yet" or "don't fight this yet" or "watch out for this". That is ridiculous. At least for me.

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Originally Posted by Rjain

No, I'm not in the minority, as evident by this thread. Don't make an excuse that everyone in this thread is an XI veteran. I liked XI but I didn't even play it that long. In fact, I played WoW a lot longer.

I'm just not a casual gamer. I'm a gamer that likes to dive in and find things out. I like to know what I'm doing, I like to know how systems work, but I don't want to be told by the game "don't go here yet" or "don't fight this yet" or "watch out for this". That is ridiculous. At least for me.

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I hate to break it to you, but you are. Take WoW or City of Heroes, the people constantly demand more information. CoH used to hide everything from you like FFXI, but it was due to player demand that they gave exact numbers for damage output in the tooltips. Hell, WoW gives you DPS information and FFXI doesn't, so what did people do? Use third party parsers just to get that info. More information is better for most players. The fact that the vast majority of people play MMOs that give this information should be an indication for you.

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Originally Posted by OJtheLIONKing

I hate to break it to you, but you are. Take WoW or City of Heroes, the people constantly demand more information. CoH used to hide everything from you like FFXI, but it was due to player demand that they gave exact numbers for damage output in the tooltips. Hell, WoW gives you DPS information and FFXI doesn't, so what did people do? Use third party parsers just to get that info. More information is better for most players. The fact that the vast majority of people play MMOs that give this information should be an indication for you.

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What on earth does that have to do with enemy aggro and having the option to turn it off?

Is it that hard to make an OPTION to turn something OFF?

Keep the ugly icon for all I care so long as the damned thing can be eradicated from my screen.

Third party tools aren't allowed in 14. And in WoW, they're a complete option. You can get all the information you want, but half the time you have to track it down yourself. Third party tool talk just completely goes off-topic.

looks ok i guess

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Originally Posted by Rjain

I'm not a big fan for the aggro icon. I can understand its purpose for newer players or people that just want to know what enemies aggro or not, but a lot of people (like myself, obviously) prefer the surprise and danger of not knowing what aggros and what doesn't. In addition, when you're in an area that has tons of aggressive enemies, it looks downright ugly to see dozens of red dots all over the place.

Please include an option to turn the aggro icon off, or at least make it more subtle.

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An option to turn it off isn't good enough, because this icon is grander in scope and shows you the direction they are taking the game.

Surprisingly, I am okay with the question marks above NPCs heads, but I feel the direction the developers are taking with these new icons is to make this game totally unremarkable. By this I mean, half the adventure is the unknown. Knowing that a mob aggros for certain, by token of its aggro indicator, removes that sense/thrill of adventure. It's a similar feeling with the NPC quests.

It only takes one memorable experience with an aggressive mob to remember its behaviour. So the indicator is of no use for seasoned players, and all it manages to achieve is to remove that first experience for new players - it removes their sense of wonder. "will this mob attack me?" etc.

Wouldn't you agree?

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Originally Posted by Rjain

What on earth does that have to do with enemy aggro and having the option to turn it off?

Is it that hard to make an OPTION to turn something OFF?

Keep the ugly icon for all I care so long as the damned thing can be eradicated from my screen.

Third party tools aren't allowed in 14. And in WoW, they're a complete option. You can get all the information you want, but half the time you have to track it down yourself. Third party tool talk just completely goes off-topic.

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Hey, I'm all for the option to turn it on and off, and I dont like the icon either, I'd prefer it be indicated by name color. My point was not "people will use third party tools" but "people prefer information to ignorance" as a counter to your opinion is that of the majority. I have no intention to use third party tools in ff14, and I didn't in FFXI, but notice I mentioned people used them in XI because they were not being given information they got standard in other MMOs.

/agroicon off command pls

It is fine for people who want it on, I would love for the ability to take it off.

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Originally Posted by Rjain

No, I'm not in the minority, as evident by this thread.

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Do you know what the term "anecdotal evidence" means?

This thread does not present an accurate picture of all gamers. In fact, this entire forum is heavily biased to favor SE and the outdated design philosophies that were present in FFXI. If you were to look at the general gaming community as a whole, I guarantee you would see a much different picture.

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Originally Posted by Rhianu

Do you know what the term "anecdotal evidence" means?

This thread does not present an accurate picture of all gamers. In fact, this entire forum is heavily biased to favor SE and the outdated design philosophies that were present in FFXI. If you were to look at the general gaming community as a whole, I guarantee you would see a much different picture.

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I'm agreed with you here. I was excited about the new official forum, but by only allowing the people who were patient enough to put up with how FF14 has played for this long (which, according to unofficial measurements is only a fraction of those who were interested in how FF14 looked even in its worse days) they are going to get a bad idea of what they need to do to attract more players. Many of the people who are posting on here are extremely stubborn former FFXI players who are stuck in 2004, but this game needs to not only be up to industry standards but set new ones.

either let us take it off or redesign the icon.

The icon is stupid.
I've not read a single post of someone who actually liked it.
End of the discussion.

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Originally Posted by Rinsui

The icon is stupid.
I've not read a single post of someone who actually liked it.
End of the discussion.

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I like the idea behind the icon, but as I've said before I think color-coded names would be more effective.