Battle Reform: Enmity (07/06/2011)

[Capita]

You're entire argument is on the assumption that every one of those top 5% think hate meters are a good thing. Sure, itll depend on the circles you traveled in but, I can tell you, first hand, that every non-leader WoW endgamer i have played with hates this addon. But, they used it because the guild leader demanded they use it.

This was true for all three guilds i was in.

If a hate meter exists people will demand that you use it. I does not matter if it is toggle-able. You will be using it. And it will impact your game play. I , and many other end gamers, would argue that it has had a negative impact on WoWs endgame. But, it will never go away.

It wasn't a matter of wanting it. It was a matter of needing it. The difference between FFXI boss fights and WoW boss fights was that FFXI's were mostly time sink tank-n-spanks with some very minor actual battle mechanics that made fights dynamic. WoW's boss fights were extremely fast-paced, with 10-15 minute limits before the boss automatically kills everyone. These bosses also spammed multiple AOE CC abilities, AOE damage abilities, shields, and also had such mechanics such as twin bosses needing to be killed simultaneously or else one would enrage and kill everyone if he sees his mate going down faster. Bosses that could HEAR where you are and aggro you if you made a step without thinking. Bosses that could pull you into another dimension. Etc.

All of these made fights fun. Trying to estimate your threat and sitting there dumbing down your DPS and twiddling your thumbs while your enmity goes down is not fun.

Here's the Razorgore fight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR2soJtHF-Y

One of the earliest boss fights designed in WoW and it already had more depth than most things FFXI had to offer. A crapload of mobs spawned and Hunters had to kite up to 6 mobs each, while the rest of the Druids and Mages CC'd the rest, and the Warriors and Rogues killed them. All while mind controlling the boss to kill his own eggs.

[SuzakuCMX]

Will agree to disagree, I feel this kinda of tool tip icon is unnecessary. What happens when someone pulls hate? The whole group says, "Why'd you pull hate? Can't you read your icon?" And everyone expects perfection because we have this icon guide.

When you have no icon and someone pulls hate, this gives the tank an opportunity to flex his tanking abilities and regain the mobs attention. With an emenity gauge in place, anyone pulling hate will be frowned upon.

You say this like people are okay with the non-tanks pulling hate.

[kukurumei]

It wasn't a matter of wanting it. It was a matter of needing it. The difference between FFXI boss fights and WoW boss fights was that FFXI's were mostly time sink tank-n-spanks with some very minor actual battle mechanics that made fights dynamic. WoW's boss fights were extremely fast-paced, with 10-15 minute limits before the boss automatically kills everyone. These bosses also spammed multiple AOE CC abilities, AOE damage abilities, shields, and also had such mechanics such as twin bosses needing to be killed simultaneously or else one would enrage and kill everyone if he sees his mate going down faster. Bosses that could HEAR where you are and aggro you if you made a step without thinking. Bosses that could pull you into another dimension. Etc.

All of these made fights fun. Trying to estimate your threat and sitting there dumbing down your DPS and twiddling your thumbs while your enmity goes down is not fun.

Here's the Razorgore fight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR2soJtHF-Y

One of the earliest boss fights designed in WoW and it already had more depth than most things FFXI had to offer. A crapload of mobs spawned and Hunters had to kite up to 6 mobs each, while the rest of the Druids and Mages CC'd the rest, and the Warriors and Rogues killed them. All while mind controlling the boss to kill his own eggs.

It also made boss fights extremely shallow. You can see how plugins in WoW later basically gave you a script guide to "win" on every boss, your role, etc.

Basically they're categorized under "gimmicks".

Fun in this case is subjected to repetitions because after all it's an MMO, you're expected to do it 100 times if not more. That's also half the reason why WoW has such shallow content, and extreme content.

Developers simply had to throw massive amounts of stuff at players to fool their information gathering abilities. It's a vicious cycle.

If you can expect developers to make 2 dungeons at least every season and 20 different more creative boss fights and what not...sure, but human creativity is usually not that great, especially when if you were really such a genius you wouldn't have moved on to another job description.

It's simply a matter of longevity.

[Zdenka]

It wasn't a matter of wanting it. It was a matter of needing it. The difference between FFXI boss fights and WoW boss fights was that FFXI's were mostly time sink tank-n-spanks with some very minor actual battle mechanics that made fights dynamic. WoW's boss fights were extremely fast-paced, with 10-15 minute limits before the boss automatically kills everyone. These bosses also spammed multiple AOE CC abilities, AOE damage abilities, shields, and also had such mechanics such as twin bosses needing to be killed simultaneously or else one would enrage and kill everyone if he sees his mate going down faster. Bosses that could HEAR where you are and aggro you if you made a step without thinking. Bosses that could pull you into another dimension. Etc.

All of these made fights fun. Trying to estimate your threat and sitting there dumbing down your DPS and twiddling your thumbs while your enmity goes down is not fun.

Here's the Razorgore fight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR2soJtHF-Y

One of the earliest boss fights designed in WoW and it already had more depth than most things FFXI had to offer. A crapload of mobs spawned and Hunters had to kite up to 6 mobs each, while the rest of the Druids and Mages CC'd the rest, and the Warriors and Rogues killed them. All while mind controlling the boss to kill his own eggs.

When we killed HLK25 only .13% of all guilds that killed a ICC boss had killed him before us... so top .2% and I can honestly say that the better your guild in WoW was, the less need there was for a threat meter.

Yes, it was require... did I have it minimized? Yes, because I knew there was no way possible to pull threat off our tank. I often bursted as much damage as possible 2s after the start of the fight and never even had the red screen flash saying I was close.

The only class that even came close in WotLK was Warlocks and we had them shatter at 85%. No other players in our guild -ever- had to worry about pulling threat off the MT. We 1 tanked Lady Deathwhisper Heroic also, and by the time our tank hit 0% threat generation it was enough threat to last the entire fight with no1 pulling off him as well.

Maybe the guilds around the top 5% area still needed it (ie tanks needed to learn how to generate threat quicker/better) but the more you go to the very top, the less threat management became an issue. Actually the less everything became an issue.

I used to do fights with all mods off because they were so simple and scripted. After 2-3 attempts you basically knew when stuff was going to happen without add-ons. I did HLK without add ons a few times and so did other people.

Scripted is scripted... no matter how "fun" or "intense" WoW fights were, they were scripted to a tee so you always knew what was going to happen at what exact time. Though AoEs, insane healing parts, etc have nothing to do with threat or meters...

FFXI fights were fun in that mobs "raged" automatically when they were about to die (started spamming WS's) and that it was random so you didn't know if you would get 5 hurricane wings in a row, for instance.

I will admit that threat meter was more prominent in BC, but with the tanking threat gains in WotLK and TotT it became more of a token utility at best.

[Capita]

It also made boss fights extremely shallow. You can see how plugins in WoW later basically gave you a script guide to "win" on every boss, your role, etc.

Basically they're categorized under "gimmicks".

Fun in this case is subjected to repetitions because after all it's an MMO, you're expected to do it 100 times if not more. That's also half the reason why WoW has such shallow content, and extreme content.

Developers simply had to throw massive amounts of stuff at players to fool their information gathering abilities. It's a vicious cycle.

If you can expect developers to make 2 dungeons at least every season and 20 different more creative boss fights and what not...sure, but human creativity is usually not that great, especially when if you were really such a genius you wouldn't have moved on to another job description.

It's simply a matter of longevity.

I wouldn't exactly call threat management "depth". But I guess that's where our opinions differ. My idea of depth is a fight that forces players to think up different strategies outside of simply wondering when they can attack without pulling aggro. Depth to me is making a boss that reacts to situations. A boss that simply stands there and spams an ability every now and then? Not so much. A boss that simply hits hard? Not so much. A boss that reacts to certain abilities, can only be killed by a utilizing a specific method, and may randomly decide to crush the tank in one swing unless he is distracted at the very last moment. A boss that actually has a personality, like Vaelastrasz buffing the entire raid at the very last moment before he goes insane. Or Nefarian having all the abilities from every class and actually using them. Professor Putricide experimenting on his own body with his concoctions, ending up deformed. Call them gimmicks, but they make me feel like I'm actually fighting a boss instead of just a strong mob with high HP. That, to me, is depth.

When we killed HLK25 only .13% of all guilds that killed a ICC boss had killed him before us... so top .2% and I can honestly say that the better your guild in WoW was, the less need there was for a threat meter.

Yes, it was require... did I have it minimized? Yes, because I knew there was no way possible to pull threat off our tank. I often bursted as much damage as possible 2s after the start of the fight and never even had the red screen flash saying I was close.

The only class that even came close in WotLK was Warlocks and we had them shatter at 85%. No other players in our guild -ever- had to worry about pulling threat off the MT. We 1 tanked Lady Deathwhisper Heroic also, and by the time our tank hit 0% threat generation it was enough threat to last the entire fight with no1 pulling off him as well.

Maybe the guilds around the top 5% area still needed it (ie tanks needed to learn how to generate threat quicker/better) but the more you go to the very top, the less threat management became an issue. Actually the less everything became an issue.

I used to do fights with all mods off because they were so simple and scripted. After 2-3 attempts you basically knew when stuff was going to happen without add-ons. I did HLK without add ons a few times and so did other people.

Idk what class you played, but as a Hunter pulling 17k DPS, my experience with pulling aggro was the opposite the higher we went. Even with Feign Death and Distracting Shot, we'd still manage to pull threat sometimes on fights like H Festergut, and especially H Sindragosa (after we just started tanking her stacks), before they came off their cooldowns. Pulling threat off one of the Blood Princes was pretty devastating too, especially Keleseth since he could 1-shot anyone that didn't have orbs on him. That's a lot of threat to be pulling in 30 seconds. 27k Aimed, 18k Chimera, and 17k Auto chain crit pulls a ridiculous amount of threat. With 80% crit rate, that happens quite often.

Plus I'd blame the whole threat thing on WotLK itself. Tank threat was so OP. Pallies could hold AOE threat with 4 abilities. I'm speaking more along the lines of TBC, and I hear Cataclysm is the same as TBC, where people actually had to watch themselves or else they'd wipe the raid.

Anyway, that's beside the point.

The point is, a threat indicator is such a MINOR addition that it shouldn't even be considered a factor in determining whether a game is too easy or not.

[Capita]

Anyway, I'll end with this.

You guys probably think I'm some WoW loving asshat. That is not the case.

I'm a Final Fantasy nerd, through and through. I've played every single Final Fantasy title created, and I have a Griever necklace that I wore religiously for a good few years before retiring it. I played FFXI and camped HNM's with the rest and the best of them, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

I played WoW for years, but only because I was forced to quit FFXI for a couple years (I was 18 and needed to adjust to college life), and I figured I was so far behind my peers already that there was no point to picking it up again. So I picked up WoW because it appealed to my slightly more casual gameplay. No more sitting around for 12 hour shifts waiting for an HNM spawn, because I couldn't afford to. I got good at it, and eventually started doing endgame with some of the best guilds.

But it wasn't Final Fantasy. If anything, it was just to hold me over until the next Final Fantasy MMO where I could hopefully meet up with my former FFXI friends and play with them again. I actually made several threads on multiple FFXIV fansites searching for those same friends 8 years later after XIV was announced, and some of us actually found each other. I wanted memories of trudging through Valkyrm for the first time. Spelunking inside Crawler's Nest. Camping under the Boyahda tree. But not those exact memories. I wanted different ones, because it's a different game. But I wanted the Final Fantasy feel.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v186/teffie/convo.jpg

About 3 months after release. One of my fondest XI memories right there with my static party, who I had been with since the very beginning. Actually, XI had pretty much all of my fondest memories in my entire MMO gaming experience. It had the best stories. I actually had fun going through quests, and seeing how everything panned out. Especially with Shadow Lord and AF1 tours.

That said, it's time for a new game, but with a Final Fantasy feel. We don't need another XI. We need a game that appeals to both casuals and hardcores because the old ways of playing MMO's (EQ, FFXI) just doesn't work in this age of MMO gamers. I want this game to survive, and the only way it will is if it appeals to more people.

Be hardheaded and shortminded all you want about such minor things as the enmity icon and the aggro icons making the game easier, but I'm fairly sure you're the minority when it comes to the entire gaming population. As much as you hate to admit it, Blizzard did a lot of things right with WoW, and I feel that the FFXIV dev team is doing the right thing by attempting to cater to both groups, while still keeping the Final Fantasy feel. I'm more worried about losing the classic SE storytelling than some stupid enmity gauge.

[Morticous]

I don't understand the bullshit thought process of just "Turning the indicator off" "You can toggle it", In this case toggling is more retarded then the entire MTV channel it's self (since it stopped playing music). You cant mix players with these features toggled off with players who do use the feature.. Either we take this shit out, use the bestiary method and questing for the hate indicator, or create a server where they are auto turned off and a server where they are auto turned on.

I'm sick of this shit being force fed to me. Personally im fine with the second option.. therefore everyone can have the stupid indicators and MOB levels... you simply have to work a little bit to get them.

[Crica]

You cant mix players with these features toggled off with players who do use the feature

Don't then.

Play with your friends and linkshell mates who enjoy playing with it off and don't play with players who enjoy playing with it on or with players who do not mind playing with anyone who has it on or off.

You are the one limiting yourself, why should the rest of us have to limit ourselves as well?

You have serious control issues - if you can not control how other people play a game, you are not going to enjoy the game.

[Morticous]

Don't then.

Play with your friends and linkshell mates who enjoy playing with it off and don't play with players who enjoy playing with it on or with players who do not mind playing with anyone who has it on or off.

You are the one limiting yourself, why should the rest of us have to limit ourselves as well?

You have serious control issues - if you can not control how other people play a game, you are not going to enjoy the game.

You clearly didn't read the post and the reasoning behind it... it creates problems. I dont give a shit what you do but the second i have this trash turned off and i do something that you would have seen with it turned on, I'll be flamed. Good try though. learn to read.

[Crica]

I dont give a shit what you do but the second i have this trash turned off and i do something that you would have seen with it turned on, I'll be flamed.

Not if you are playing with your friends and linkshell mates who have it all turned off as well - then you all will be doing the same thing - pulling agro when you did not have to.