Targeting: Lingering Issues

For a game in which hitting the active party-target is so important (as opposed to any other attacking foes,) and where enemies usually attack in groups of identical mobs, the red-color name,which distinguishes a target as the active one, does not carry over to the Target Frame. Neither does the Enemy Sign which the game developers included in hopes to allow players distinguish a mob from its brethren. (Nor do Ally Signs, for that matter.)

Targeting has been one of the egregiously faulty areas in the design of this game's UI, and the new development team has dedicated quite a bit of energy to its re-hauling. But for a game in which, by design as well, combat can be such a confusing melée, the lack of a clear designation for the party target (or of an assist command, or a <bt> marker for macros or text commands) truly makes no sense at all.

Right before the end of last year, we were promised an /assist command by the next update planned by that development team. After all the changes that came shortly afterwards, the promise was neither reiterated nor kept by the new team.

As of the latest timetable included in the 10th Letter from the Producer, the display on a target's frames is greyed-out as completed with patch 1.17.

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Improvements to targeting mechanics >> Examination of additional information display on unit frames (complete as of 1.17)

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"Examination of target indicator customization, and addition of an 'attacking enemies only' type to targeting system" seem to be under consideration but, to my mind, this would not solve the issue. So often, by the time I manage to target (and double check it is indeed the right mob) in a busy party fight, said target is too close to death for me to be able to cast anything on it.

R

While there are a few issues with targeting, I do think that the lack of a /assist command is among the major

Another small targeting issue I've had is when selecting a sub-target for a friendly spell (for example, I am fighting a goat and want to cast Cure on a party member), their name doesn't get highlighted in your party window. It gets highlighted if you select them as a main target, but having it during sub-targeting as well could save you those fractions of a second that can be crucial when using skills like Cover, etc.

I was complaining about this earlier. I don't understand why the target frame text isn't the same color as the hovering name text.

I want to be able to select an enemy in a group for an attack like you can select a party member for a cure

Quite honestly I have never played any MMO for any length of time aside from FFXI so I don't know how group targeting is normally addressed but it needs to be better than it is currently in the game. I think with the implementation of auto attack they can make it work like this: when you engage a group of mobs the game would automatically dictate the "alpha" mob in the group which is automatically targeted using a <bt> type targeting method, at this point to cycle through the mobs you would have your targeting set to "enemy" and just tab through them and I suggest that in this scenario the game should ignore other mobs (so that when you tab it only cycles through the red name mobs) however I don't know how they would treat an agro or a link in this case.

EDIT: they should also show a mob party list, much like the one they show for player party, so you know what you're targeting because in the chaos its easy to get lost.

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Originally Posted by Brannigan

Another small targeting issue I've had is when selecting a sub-target for a friendly spell (for example, I am fighting a goat and want to cast Cure on a party member), their name doesn't get highlighted in your party window. It gets highlighted if you select them as a main target, but having it during sub-targeting as well could save you those fractions of a second that can be crucial when using skills like Cover, etc.

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In total agreement with you about this source of endless frustration... I was resorting to memorizing the party frame list order in order to be able to navigate blind, with only the target frame as a help. Knowing where every member was positioned on the list, in order to quickly decide whether up or down was a shorter path to targeting them; it was only partial help, since parties keep on changing and people drop out and newcomers don't end up in the same slot.

If we are going to ask for the ideal situation, having both a permanent frame for the aggressive target (gotta keep an eye on those DoTs and debuffs), and either the party frame, or in case there's no party, a separate friendly target frame definitely would make things easier. If both permanent and temporary targets are shown in the party frame, that would definitely be a wonderful bonus.

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Originally Posted by Alzelia

I want to be able to select an enemy in a group for an attack like you can select a party member for a cure

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Like Mack suggests in the post after yours, Alzelia, maybe a separate aggressive party frame should list all the members of the simultaneously attacking group. There's mention already in the latest letter from the producer that they are considering having an additional targeting filter that would allow cycling through attacking mobs, but the additional frame would round it up.