Enmity Management, Do we want it back?

[Shurrikhan]

This is the exact reason why I asked the question in the first place. Get someone else to say how they would want an enmity re-work, which, hopefully, gets them to think about what it actually means to have an enmity system. Even if they did post a reply (which at this point I am not expecting one), I would have pointed out that the system they made was essentially the same as it used to be, just with added fluff for no reason.

I understand that you intended your question to almost purely rhetorical, but you're drawing conclusion that have very little to do with the responses thus far given. So unless this was intended only as a rhetorical trap for a specific person, rather than any interest in the idea...

>> What "rehaul" would be necessary to have potentially interesting Enmity?

<< Arguably nothing that would need to be called a "rehaul". Even small changes would allow for an Enmity system that feels entirely different and capable of far more gameplay interest.

>> Ahh, then it must be irredeemable. Any of those additions or adjustments can only ever be mere "added fluff for no reason".

??? Again, would being able to use at-cost active Enmity tools to redirect mechanics and manipulate mob behaviors just be "fluff", let alone 'more of the same'?



The problems with the Enmity system as it was previously implemented was that it...

• took up many more buttons that would otherwise be necessary on discrete actions (ones useless for anything but increased Enmity, outside of Flash and Overpower),
• arbitrarily sabotaged its ability to enter or exit its active use on all but Warrior (since the rest had GCD and MP costs to enter and possible even also to exit active threat),
• that the tank stance was typically an rDPS loss, making it effectively just an Enmity stance,
• was singular and unaffectable except by Enmity purges (Tactician, Refresh, Lucid Dreaming), such that one could simply tank stance at the start of the fight until reaching an estimate Enmity requirement to have stayed just barely above the highest-Enmity DPS's Enmity lead over your normal actions accumulated by the time the boss dies, and never touch said tank/Enmity stance again,
• stacked its multipliers multiplicatively (making Enmity actions largely useless outside of Tank stance), and
• was fundamentally based on damage (giving no punishment for using it during raid buffs unless you'd hold onto Tank stance for a GCD too long because you haven't yet learned that Tank stance and Enmity was really just a The Price is Right minigame at the openers of fights).

But, those issues were the result of tangential and arbitrary decisions.

Those weren't problems of/with Enmity; they were the opportunity costs of Tank Stance, the poor tuning of tank stance relative to healers' available offensive output and free party ST healing per minute relative to tank damage intake, the lack of other uses for tools that carried increased Enmity, the multiplicity of Enmity multipliers, etc., etc., all narrowing its interactions down to about as bloated, stale, and somewhat unintuitive a form as was possible.



Again, I don't want Enmity back anything like it was. (Nor do I particularly care whether it comes back at all, so long as it doesn't return in its old bloated form.) But its past state has more to do with the design decisions that surrounded it, not the mere the fact that there existed a table that influenced Enmity targeting (of auto-attacks, most secondary auto-attacks, some special attacks, some casts, some afflictions, etc. -- essentially, whatever one decides it should affect for that particular mob).

Similarly, I don't necessarily want Enemy TP back from 1.x, but for issues pertaining to how it was affected by certain debuffs and largely lacked available influence apart from that (leaving it stale and unintuitive while simply decreasing the reward of burning a mob down quickly), not the mere fact that it existed as a way to vary mob attacks, attack pacing, and thereby behavior by a (mob-specific) formula for how its actions' granular resource (TP) was generated over time, from damage dealt, damage taken, and specific attacks/afflictions made or made against it. The basic idea is fine; it's just also largely unnoticeable until you attach to it its available interactions. It's those interactions that form the gameplay, which the game could then do quite interesting things with that enhance the game... or even incidentally make the game more dull for even having them.