Bring back Aggro, resource management, bring back consequences!

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

What's next? Mobs can't have more than a single AI script because we couldn't then have active mitigation? We can't have involved rotations because then we couldn't make use of Interject? None of these things conflict with each other.

Considering how they handle multi-targeting attacks, it likely actually is impossible within their framework.

In its real case, any attack a boss launches that targets more than 1 player simultaneously, is actually the boss + a bunch of invisible entity copies of the boss that copy its buffs/debuffs hiding under the map all targeting different players, since FF14's enemy framework can only have a single valid target for an enemy for any one attack. So for your idea, the boss wouldn't be able to track more than one target as far as latent and active aggro unless it was physically 2 bosses on the field and one of them ran a different script from the main boss.

You can actually see an instance of this in EX2 where the boss aggro name physically changes to whoever they're targeting for the shared raid AOE hit on the sword attack, since its launched by them directly and not one of the copies that are responsible for other attacks in the fight, like the 2x water stack.

Some other fun examples include:

-Garuda, Ifrit & titan all cast a jail on a different player during uwu, even though Garuda & ifrit are off the field and hidden.
-E12s's boss has a second copy that targets the #2 in hate specifically for both hits, while the main boss only ever targets #1 for both hits.
-E8s boss has the same deal with ahk morn as E12s's boss does.
-Every instance of Limit cut is actually 4 instances of Cruise Chasers with different targets set for their mechanic
-Photon in TEA is casted by two to eight hidden Cruise Chasers in the Brute/Cruise phase at a set time. This results in an interesting situation where if you kill BJ/CC too quickly, the Photon meant to drop the tank's HP to 1 in the later half of the phase will instead happen during the lead-up to timestop: https://www.twitch.tv/ffxivmomo/clip...4L5HyFi7gz3rvy

TL : DR, boss AI has a ton of jank hidden under the hood, likely making a lot of complex interactions effectively impossible.

[Shurrikhan]

TL : DR, boss AI has a ton of jank hidden under the hood, likely making a lot of complex interactions effectively impossible.

What I'm asking for, though, doesn't require multiple simultaneous targets any more than is presently the case. It merely requires a greater variety in who is targeted and what tanks can do about it such that being merely at the top of the Enmity table isn't the be-all and end-all of target selection prior to separate "raid mechanics" (or "double-tank busters" alone), and that space gives tanks more to do.

Mobs should at least have an illusion of some small degree of intelligence, and thereby allow for more to be involved in tanking than merely having their stance on and sometimes leading about a cylinder as mechanics fall or, at best, emanate from said cylinder.


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Now, to get the extent of gameplay mentioned before for if I had as much resource as I wanted (i.e., under that pipe-dream heading of "ideally"), that boss/mob/NPC script would also have to be susceptible to change given particular conditions -- able to be manipulated. That's a very separate story from how many enemies a single attack can target, however.