Quote Originally Posted by Kitru View Post
The point of the enmity system is not to determine who NPCs are attacking. Because there are other systems that accomplish what the enmity system does in a simpler fashion, the *point* of the enmity system is to create a subgame to determine who NPCs are attacking.
Yes, the point is to determine who enemies are attacking. The usage of that system is what you're referring to. The system can be used in the foreground, by tanks to actively manage and control it, or in the background, as an invisible system used only by the game itself. FFXIV chose to have it be used in the foreground while WoW chose to have it be used in the background.

The subgame you refer to is a usage of an existing system to make tanking more interesting in the absence of other interesting mechanics. It's something that WoW used for a long time too, then abandoned in favor of a different system.

WAR uses a mixture of the systems. Enmity is still important, but they have a shell of an active mitigation system in place as well, plus other things to keep track of. I think it works fine; as you noted, I'm only just starting with MAR, but it's already pretty fun, and my research leads me to believe it will only continue to be so.

I personally haven't really had issues with enmity in this game, as either a tank or a DPS. I had a pretty big stigma against it when I first started playing, but it's not nearly as bad as threat used to be in WoW. So I don't really think there's a need to remove it. I can, however, understand why people would have that point of view.