Anti-kiting behavior?

[Daria]

Every once and a while, while killing outside (not a dungeon), I notice that if I'm kiting, the beastie being attacked hits some hidden boundary, turns invincible and runs back towards its origin. This is infuriating!!! Often its a sliver from dying. So, what is the rationale here, I didn't think this game was anti-kiting. Sure I know you can move circularly or some such excuse, but its unnatural and should not happen this way IMHO!

D.

[Canadane]

This isn't Vana'diel. Mobs in this game tether back to their spawn point if taken too far.
They just want you out of their territory, they don't wanna kill you.

[Enkidoh]

What Cana said. Enemies here in FFXIV are generally 'leashed' to a specific section of the field so if you run from them, pretty quickly the mob will hit the end of their 'leash' and deagro from you (their HP and hate are immediately reset and they return to their 'haunt' so to speak). This is prevent the FFXI situation of training enemies around the open world or dungeons, specifically, to stop FFXI style EXP parties from being run (a deliberate design choice from the start). It's also to make life easier for new or lower level players especially in starting zones.

Having said that, there is some content that does allow that sort of thing, Eureka being a specific example, but the general overworld and normal dungeons for instance enemies are always leashed. That is definetely working as intended.

[Jeeqbit]

This is normal in the MMORPG genre. The rationale is simple.

If the enemies never leave you, then you can't run away from them and are forced to fight them. This is a problem if you don't want to fight them and just want to run away. To prevent this, they go back to their origin if you get too far and stop attacking you.

The downside to this is, as you said, sometimes a mechanic will cause them to stray too far and return. The upside is it doesn't take forever to get away from them.

There is a content in this game where they take a very long distance to stop attacking you and that's Bozja. You have to run so very, very far to lose them and it's extremely annoying, because they aren't quick to kill. You can't mount while fighting either, so you're forced to run across half the map just to escape them.

[Frizze]

And no one else is saying it, but anything that the game intends you to kill shouldnt require anything close to kiting. Quest NPCs will be either the level of the quest, or the level of you. The game wont let a level 70 take on a level 80 quest(as an example). The only overworld enemies dangerous enough to even think about this with are the A and S ranks, and you arent intended to solo those.

[Dreadlime]

From what I've seen of the game so far, jousting seems to be more compatible with XIV's mechanics than kiting.

[Jeeqbit]

Kiting works in dungeons, but you'd ideally run in a circle so the DPS don't have to move much, and so their AoE reaches the enemies. This is mainly necessary if the mitigation/heals aren't enough, which is rare but is particularly the case in older dungeons, especially leveling dungeons. It can give novice healers time to cast a heal spell at levels where tanks lack a lot of heals of their own.

I agree that in the open world, kiting isn't really a thing because the enemies do not have much HP. The most challenging enemies are typically the ones in Heavensward areas, but they never scale enemies that way in any other expansion. If you kite FATEs, you will often run out of the FATE area, and this is common due to enemies spawning at the border (a baffling decision on the developers' part).

Usually if a regular enemy needs kiting, it's either intended for a party or it's a quest enemy that is meant for you to use a special item on to reduce its HP.