Some New Player UI and Misc ?'s

[Tristik]

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Hello everyone. *culled to 1000 characters* Ref: 16 Gladiator

1. When a mob dies, there's a letter in a box at the right of nameplate health bar. Like there'll be a F, or a V, or an O. What is that?

2. Is there a list of the symbols that also show up on the left side of the nameplate? At first I thought that was a neutral/aggressive indicator, but now I'm thinking it may be a 'con' type symbol?

3. Is there a clear system to show what is a neutral reaction mob and which mobs will attack when you get too close? I haven't noticed anything visually different in the two types of mobs.

4. How does that HP/MP/TP bars at the bottom of the screen work? When solo, it just shows yours, but it seems to jump around to "Others" or "All" randomly when fighting with friendly NPC's. Haven't partied with other players yet so was wondering how that thing actually works, but turned on the option to show bars as if in party and have been ignoring the bottom ones.
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[Estellios]

1. That is just there to identify enemies of the same type among one another. The letters are the same for everyone in your party so you can just tell people to attack Enemy Z and Z will be the same enemy for them too.

2. The symbols are for agressive, non-aggressive, and I believe there are two more for quest-only enemies that you typically have to weaken with an item. That one has an aggressive and non-aggressive variant.

3. Aggresive enemies have a red icon to the left of the nameplate.

4. "Others" and "All" refers to your targeting filters when using a gamepad. By default, the game will switch to the "Others" filter when you take out your weapon (so you can only cycle through NPCs and Enemies), and change back to "All" when you put your weapon away. The HP/MP/TP at the bottom of your screen is always your own.

[Niwashi]

*culled to 1000 characters*

When that limitation gets too troublesome, you can post the first part of your message, then click "Edit Post" at the bottom of your post and add the rest. When editing an existing post, it doesn't check for that length restriction. (I do recommend having your entire post written ahead of time though, so you can just cut the excess and paste it back in when in Edit mode. You don't want to leave just the first bit there the whole time you're writing the remainder.)

2. Is there a list of the symbols that also show up on the left side of the nameplate? At first I thought that was a neutral/aggressive indicator, but now I'm thinking it may be a 'con' type symbol?

I'd like to find a good listing for that, too. I've learned to recognize several of those symbols, but have yet to find a good resource that shows and explains them all. It seems really strange for this sort of thing not to be part of the game's main documentation, but I've never found it anywhere.

3. Is there a clear system to show what is a neutral reaction mob and which mobs will attack when you get too close? I haven't noticed anything visually different in the two types of mobs.

Well, at least two of the symbols by mob names indicate this. There's a blue double blob symbol (if it's supposed to picture anything, I've never figured out what) that indicates a mob will not attack unless you attack it first, and there's a mostly red triangular symbol that indicates the mob will aggro when you get too close. Those are the two most common indicators, but some mobs have other symbols besides those two, and I don't know what all the others mean.

4. How does that HP/MP/TP bars at the bottom of the screen work? When solo, it just shows yours, but it seems to jump around to "Others" or "All" randomly when fighting with friendly NPC's. Haven't partied with other players yet so was wondering how that thing actually works, but turned on the option to show bars as if in party and have been ignoring the bottom ones.

The "Others" or "All" doesn't actually relate to the HP/MP/TP bars, although by default it shows up near them. It's refering to how you're set to target mobs. Under Character Customization and Targeting, you can either set your targeting to be based on whether you have your weapon drawn or not, or set several ways of manually changing it.

For instance, as a PS3 player, I have mine set so that L1+[square] changes my targeting to "Enemies", meaning as I cycle through different targets it will only select mobs. Then if I use L1+[circle] it changes to a "Custom" setting where it only targets player characters (which is useful on healing classes). Or if I press L1+[triangle], it changes to "All" and target cycling will be able to target anyone and anything. These are all configurable to whatever you want. (The L1+[square], etc. is obviously PS3 based, but I'm pretty sure there's an equivalent for PC players who want to change how Tab target cycling works to fit their current objectives.)

[Tristik]

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Thanks for the clarification folks.

So I can pretty much ignore the all/others thing then since I'm on PC and my targeting controls work like every other MMO I've played then. I didn't notice the bars on bottom were always mine as I thought I saw them jumping around when the text changed. Obviously I just wasn't paying close enough attention. I like it in the upper left better anyway considering that's where I'll be looking for party bars, I assume, so I'm gonna leave that option on.

I was pretty sure that symbol to the left was aggro/non-aggro, but I've ran practically straight through even level mobs with the red-symbol-in-triangle symbol and not been attacked. Must have just be an occasional mis-step by the game code when that happens.
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[Niwashi]

I was pretty sure that symbol to the left was aggro/non-aggro, but I've ran practically straight through even level mobs with the red-symbol-in-triangle symbol and not been attacked. Must have just be an occasional mis-step by the game code when that happens.

Some of them are a bit slow. If you run past them fast enough you can sometimes get out of range before their aggro kicks in. Aggro seems to be at least partially positional as well. They're more likely to aggro if you run in front of them than if you run past behind them.

[Estellios]

Most enemies only aggro if they see you. Depending on the size of their model running through them won't technically count as "in front".