(Suggestion) Removing the aggroe icon for monsters.

[RayIRL]

out of all the things wrong with this game we got the dev team working on a stupid icon!?? i do not hate SE to much anymore for making a bad game i hate all you people bitching all the time.

I agree, so many people moan that the game needs radical change and then when something simple and useful like an aggro icon is added they moan that the devs have killed the game. Personally all I what to see are some areas with mobs that need to be tackled by parties and a few more missions (not quests). Last thing I want is a load of crappy quests that you need to complete like in WOW and Rift. That would be going too far but an agrro icon isn't really that big of a deal.

[Duuude007]

I had previously made a post that could be useful to include here:

RE:Bring back "Too weak to be worthwhile"

In FFXI, I found it very useful to determine the worthiness of fighting monsters for sp, by their "con". easy prey would give a basic expectation of sp on an easy mob, but was not considered too low to be considered a "trash mob". Too weak to be Worthwhile was used on monsters that were just that, a trash mob.

I suggest we add a new tier for monsters below blue currently in game. It can be gray, to indicate one will likely earn less than ~60-100 sp a kill

[reci]

How about a "scan" skill, juste like there is in many FF games? No agro icon nor lvl indicated (as it seems the dev are talking about currently), but once you use the skill on the mob, you have the relevent information (+elemental strength or hp/mp even).

[Jinko]

Great news, displaying the enemy level is a much better idea than the current con icon.

[Zhinse]

It seems like we're going to get some more repositioning of monsters and that the future content is going to have longer battles and more of them. It seems like this is all relating to the instances that are going to come sometime.

FFXII had a nice target and target information interface

[Roaran]

I think there is one issue I have with providing all this information, and I believe its important. First, when you engage a new monster (prior to the aggro icon addition), the only source of information you were able to gather was from the model of the monster and it's behavior. Not all information is easily gathered this way, but it is still possible. For example, a new monster may look real nasty, like a hog or a flan, the angry faces kind of make it obvious. Then, theres the idle animations, are they violent and aggressive?

Now, when we add these features, that remove the need to use the model themselves, and instead shift this information on to UI features that take away from the atmosphere, the outcome is players will rather than look at the very nice models, will instead look at the UI widgets for their information.


Here's the point of this post:

Where do we see the future of MMO's going in relation to the collection of monster information.

Do we see MMO's 10 years from now still supplying 2 dimensional icons on the screen to show a monster's specific attributes?
Or

Do we see MMO's 10 years from now breathe more life into their monsters and their games by making monsters relay this information through behavior/animations or through the design of the models.


If the latter seems more interesting and more likely to be the way of 'next-gen' games. Square-Enix will either be a company that pushes the envelope towards this goal, or one of the MANY companies that resorts to old mechanics for 'safety'.


That said, I do welcome the toggling option, but I realize that by offering the option in the first place, there will be little or no work done to improve the interesting behaviors of the monsters themselves prior to engaging.

[Sigmakan]

If there are going to be several icons I'd like to see them much much much smaller and have them below the monsters name (or next to the name in the targeting box).

I'd caution them cluttering up the main window too much, especially if, like they said, they are creating more tactical battles with several monsters. Your whole screen could get cluttered up with a bunch of icons.

[Frebaut]

The best part is they will have an on/off for stuff. What stuff not sure but i would think eventually everything..lol

[solracht]

If you're bothered by this information being shown in the game, yet under any circumstance you ever looked up enemy levels or aggro/linking conditions on the FFXI wiki, then you're a hypocrite.

If you're bothered by other people being able to read the information without trial and error, then you've been in denial: people have been looking at this information for the longest time.

If you honestly were one of the few that did not look up this information, then good news: Nothing has to change. Toggle the feature off.

With the option to toggle this feature, I don't see how anyone can be complaining about lack of immersion after thinking about it rationally, unless you want to argue that accessing an out-game website is somehow more immersive than staying in the game. Nothing has really changed.

[Sojiro]

If you're bothered by this information being shown in the game, yet under any circumstance you ever looked up enemy levels or aggro/linking conditions on the FFXI wiki, then you're a hypocrite.

If you're bothered by other people being able to read the information without trial and error, then you've been in denial: people have been looking at this information for the longest time.

If you honestly were one of the few that did not look up this information, then good news: Nothing has to change. Toggle the feature off.

With the option to toggle this feature, I don't see how anyone can be complaining about lack of immersion after thinking about it rationally, unless you want to argue that accessing an out-game website is somehow more immersive than staying in the game. Nothing has really changed.

It blows my mind that for some people a toggle doesn't seem to be enough. No it HAS to be MY WAY for everyone that plays or i'm not happy >.>