How exactly does enmity work in the lore?

We've all seen it. Almost everything in this game to simple soldiers to GODS will go for the tank (Provided they make an effort to gain aggro,) and seemingly ignore all the dps and the healer. Throughout the fight they will never get the idea "Maybe I should kill the guy who's healing the person I'm trying to kill." Unless the tank either dies or someone else gains enough hate. How does a Paladin with a sword that hits like a wet noodle convince a target to keep attacking him in the lore?

Because with all the armor they are the shiniest target on the battlefield?

I'm going to chalk this up to gameplay and story segregation.

Tanks look like the biggest, baddest [bleep]s on the battlefield, so naturally they're going to draw attention. They may not hit very hard, but it's very tough to recover in a fight if the healer doesn't have Combat Rez up (even then it can be tough) and the tank(s) die.

If the tank dies, things tend to go pear-shaped. That's the reason.

I imagine it's a case of one knight shouting FAT MOMMA jokes to another.

War ensues. {Good game!} :p

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Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

I imagine it's a case of one knight shouting FAT MOMMA jokes to another.

War ensues. {Good game!} :p

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This is actually close to what I always liked to think. :D Like, they literally trash talk enemies and have skills that purposely annoy and draw attention to themselves.

Also chalking it up to gameplay and story segregation. You also have a few enemies that don't follow aggro rules and attack whoever they want.

On a more serious note, though, I've often wondered if there's any way the game could implement "provoke" effects on player-characters. Perhaps it could work the way Charm spells already do in the game, that is, effects that force you to move towards an NPC tank. There are also abilities, like those of Siren's, that force player-characters to attack other players. It's not that hard, I suppose, to tweak the code to force players to focus attacks on an NPC tank?

On the same note, I have wondered why we've never faced enemy arcanists in the game. There have been plenty of enemy thaumaturgists and conjurers, but none in the way of enemy arcanists. Maybe the lack of an actual NPC tanking mechanic would be a reason? After all, an opposing arcanist would most likely be using a topaz carbuncle against players, and that would be meaningless if the carby can't hold player "hate".

The lore on this is somewhat vague so I personally have kind of headcanoned to fill in the cracks. Fundimentally it seems to come down to a couple of things:

1. Technique: Having methods and attacks that get and draw an enemies attention and hold it or that make the tank an annoyance that the enemy has to deal with.

2. Magic: Magic is used a lot. In this case either to pull the rage of an enemy on to themselves.

3. Positioning: Its hard to attack someone off in the distance when the guy right in front of you keeps getting in your face.

Now to get a touch headcanony. Doing damage or healing doesn't automatically equal going for the healer, even in PvP. There are a lot of ways to get something's attention beyond just raw damage.

Take Flash. Flash does no damage. Its literally just a bright flash. However also image fighting when one of the guys is constantly shining a torch in your eyes. His healer buddy might need to be taken down but your going to be very sorely tempted to punch the guy in the torch in the face first just so he will stop doing it. Knocking a guy of balance, getting in the way constantly and generally being a pest that can't be ignored will make enemies want to just get you out of the way so they can focus on killing the guy at the back in the dress.

Their are other options beyond annoyance too. Magic could be use to inspire fear or hatred. Alternatively body language can do the same if done right. Some might be instinctive. Simply look at the WARs that berserk. They literally cause terror in the surrounding wildlife driving it into a frenzy.

There is also Pain, one I imagine many of the high threat attacks use, particularly with Dark Knights. You can inflict a lot of damage without causing much pain and you can also inflict a hell of a lot of Pain without doing much damage, especially if you know what your doing and you have magic at your disposal.

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Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

On the same note, I have wondered why we\\'ve never faced enemy arcanists in the game. There have been plenty of enemy thaumaturgists and conjurers, but none in the way of enemy arcanists. Maybe the lack of an actual NPC tanking mechanic would be a reason? After all, an opposing arcanist would most likely be using a topaz carbuncle against players, and that would be meaningless if the carby can\\'t hold player "hate".

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There is an enemy arcanist in the early half of the AST quests, though I can\\'t remember if she used carby let alone it\\'s gem.

Which is another note to add, as the only NPCs to use Topaz are the Arcanist\\'s training you from Limsa. Alphinaud and Urianger use Carbuncle types we can\\'t; Ruby, Obsidian, and Amber.

It's a bit iffy, really. In the Hall of the Novice, the tank NPC claims to "keep them occupied" while you do your job, so it's probably the closest you'll get. Lorewise, you wouldn't be able to just run past (or THROUGH) an armed person to kill someone else without finding a weapon inside your neck on the way. No real excuse for ranged enemies, tho.

Otherwise, yeah - gameplay/story segregation. Many of the fights you lorewise do alone, you actually do with 7 other players.

I always imagined that if we got a TV show based on the game the tank characters would physically get in the way of enemies so that they have to be dealt with.

My headcanon is that techniques like Rage of Halone and the Butcher's Block combo are simply fighting techniques designed to force the enemy to pay attention to the tank. Both involve heavy and unsubtle wild swings that are rather ungraceful when compared to the sleek movements in the dps combos.

Lore for RoH could be something like:
"Rage of Halone, as the name suggests, is originally a sword-and-board fencing style developed and perfected by the Knights of the Ishgard during the span of the millenia of the Dragonsong War, designed to be used against dragonkind. By forcing the dragon's attention towards the heavily armored and shield-bearing knight, the dragon exposes it's vulnerable flank to the lances of Dragoons. Centuries of use has seen this technique and it's variations spread and be adopted across every corner or the Aldenard continent, adapted not only towards dragonkind but to foes of all shapes and sizes alike."

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Or in this case, an abstraction necessary to cultivate team based gameplay.

I've always had the thought that "emnity" is a sort of wavelength that's transferred whenever you use an action, a sort of wavelength that resonates with the target's soul/soulstone etc that just really really pisses them off

Since we're still on the topic, sometimes, real-world analogies are best for figuring out the "realities" of game mechanics.

In this case, think of all the defender roles in team sports, for example, the defenders of football (aka, soccer), linebackers in American football or the defensemen of ice hockey. These are players who don't typically make it to glamorous scoreboards, but are nevertheless highly valued for their ability to tackle, take down and draw fouls from attacking players.

...which, in a nutshell, is what a "tank" is, in an RPG like this.

(Although, to be sure, the prestige is reversed in RPG-land, with tanks typically getting more kudos than damage-dealers. To me, that's not fair, but oh well. ;) )

And to extend the analogy further, think of healers, bards and machinists as the "midfielders", the team members who don't usually do the scoring, but provide the essential tactical support that makes offensive play possible.

And, of course, the strikers are your run-of-the-mill damage-dealers, who are perhaps as much a prima donna in RPG-land as they are in real professional sport. :p

There really are, very few cutscreens where the rest of our party even exist. Sometimes our party of adventurers are mentioned, but most cases... it seems like we the WoL solos everything.

well I think its attacks laced with mental argmenting magic's that cause enemies to "focus" there attention on the Tank due to how much of this "tuining" their causeing, all things emit this "tuining" hence why Tank classes have a way to amplify how much they emit thus causing a mental breakdown in "Priority Identification" for any & all ppl/Mobs being afected by the Tanks argmented waveforms of mental energy... think if it this way if u see something u'r mind says "Hay thats scares the crap outa me watch it & kill it PLEASE!" then u will do just that outa fear & self-preservation this is what Tanks cause in their enemies with their attacks in Tank stance (a DPS or healer can distrupt this if they cause the same effect by doing to much, IE: Gaining arrgo). Arrgoless enemies just have enouf mental control that a Tanks "Jedi mind tricks" don't work on them is all.

This is my therory... which I probably came up with on the spot once

In 1.0 the lore for Gladiator, GLA purposely wore shiny gear and fabulous things to draw the attention of the enemy. I assume its just like other rpgs at that rate, the heavy, shiny, armor attracts the enemy's eye, whether its beast or human, in my middle of the battle its like "AHH SHINY ATTACK", and only the smarter beast/humans don't go straight for the tank. I think this has literally be the lore for enmity since D&D.

I think the tanks just wield the largest, meanest-looking weapons. Who would you be scared of more? A man with 2 knives, a man with a magic compass, a man with a pistol, or a man with a greatsword? A properly swung greatsword would technically do the most damage (more than a single shot from a handgun anyway), if we were looking at this from a strictly realistic standpoint.

As for enmity, I always think it's just a measure of how much you're blocking the enemy's way to other targets, or how threatening you appear to the enemy.

The level 5 Gladiator quest actually has this 'mostly' covered IMO. It has you use the /me emote to command the enemies attention. Although we obviously don't use emotes during combat (yes, there are people who do anyways) it does show that tanks have gone through training on methods to make themselves the focus of attention, and probably give the illusion that we are the greatest threat to them, and so must be destroyed first.

So what about Nidhogg, Alexander, Carrier Craft, Sophia, quite a few of these are fairly "intelligent" or "crazed" to ignore enmity generated and yet does not acts on said thoughts, Alexander and Carrier Craft could just commune and conclude that the best course of action would be to eliminate the rear line due to their near-immunity toward hatred or tank's "getting in the way" attitude, while Nidhogg would be obviously blinded toward the humans and just destroy all around instead of focusing on that one puny being that happened to be apart from others, and Sophia as intelligent as she is (having lore wise planned to destroy Allag from the inside by allowing herself to be captured and releasing Primal Bahamut from its prison.) could chose to simply tip the scale so far down you FALL off instead of just enough that they "might fall off". So, yeah. Just a few of the examples.

I think you have to think of the fights somewhat abstractly.
Enmity isn't just a representation of how angry things are with us, but also how well we're covering attacks, deflecting blows, etc. Nidhogg probably does go for the healer in "reality" but with high enough enmity we throw our shield Captain America style at his head and the fire he breathing ends up missing.
Every possibility would be a nightmare to implement though, so we have aggro bars instead :).

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Originally Posted by Jandor

I think you have to think of the fights somewhat abstractly. Enmity isn't just a representation of how angry things are with us, but also how well we're covering attacks, deflecting blows, etc.

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Wow, abstraction! It's been a veeeeeery long time since I've seen anyone bring up this crucial point in explaining RPG concepts.

Long, long ago, back when table-top RPGs were cutting edge, and computer games amounted to no more than Lode Runner or Pong, there were players who asked a very pertinent question:

How is it that a Level 9 Fighter could have more hit points (9 hit dice, or 9d10, which ranges from 9 to 90 hit points, or a median of 50 hit points, before bonuses) than his sturdy, 4 hit dice heavy warhorse (ie, 4d8+12, or 16 to 44 hit points; median 30 hit points)?

Does this mean that a Fighter (of whatever race) is literally fitter than a horse? That he has more blood, meat and bones to lose than an actual horse, which could be up to 10 times more massive than a human?

Of course not! :p

It was explained that "hit points" are really no more than an abstraction of a number of real-life factors. For example, sheer size, and physical and mental stamina; the fighter's combat skill, which allows him to roll with the punches, and allow him avoid attacks that would have otherwise been fatal to less experienced warriors.

Hit points are also an amalgamation of a player-character's sheer will to live; a Level 9 Fighter could have sustained a multitude of blows, each of which would have logically killed a Level 1 mortal, but sheer willpower (as represented by his higher hit-points total) keeps him going.

For simplicity's sake, having more hit points just means any given character or NPC is harder to kill. But exactly how he is harder to kill is up to a player to imagine and role-play.

But in a time of increasingly graphic computer and video games — where every blow is literally represented on screen as a splatter of blood and gore — that aspect of imagination in RPGs has long since been forgotten. As a result, virtually all players today literally believe that a character with more HP has got a lot more blood to lose than the average Joe.

In short, having a gazillion HP doesn't literally mean a sneak attack, knife to the heart, which causes a mere 10HP in damage, wouldn't kill a player-character. It just means that, under normal combat circumstances, when the character is alert and ready, such a blow would have been deflected and result in no more than a mere flesh wound.

So, yes, enmity is a similar abstraction. Don't take it too literally. And if you really, really have to, use your imagination to rationalise how the noble paladin manages to keep insulting an elder dragon enough to keep the wyrm's focus. ;)