Should encounters have aggro mechanics?

[metiman]

Also there's nothing wrong with your mage getting attacked. It's combat. That's the sort of thing that is supposed to happen. I wonder how people would feel if you were also only allowed to attack the enemy with the most hit points and best armor.

[Uomoz]

Did I say anything about aggro abilities?

[TrashMan]

In old games you could place your fighter between the enemy fighter and mage - they'd just waltz right trough/around.

 

I'd really like if a fighter could protect a mage by blocking acess to him.

 

Attacks of Opportunity were great (cause of frustration as well) in Temple of Elemental Evil.

A good skilled fighter with a big weapon and combat reflexes would whack everybody who'd try to waltz past.

 

I know...and if he head keen weaposn with Greater Critical... mwahahahahaha

 

I once had a fighter kill 4 people during their turn. A bandit tries to get past him - WHAM crit, cleave the next guy - crit, great clave - crit - cleave ...

 

You could have something similar.

Like a "Area Denial" stance that causes your fighter to auto-attack anyone attmpeting to pass trough his thretened area - and if he hits (enemy gets a penalty to his defenses) the enemy is grounded for a while, but so is the fighter.

[FlintlockJazz]

I know I'm quoting myself, but further idea on the shield wall idea: just as with attacks of opportunity gets to be avoided by a Tumble roll in DnD, certain skills or class abilities could give certain characters the chance to 'slip through' a shield wall. If it's specific to certain character classes such as rogues, you then give them the role of being able to actually make surgical strikes on key targets as opposed to just dealing large damage (and makes more sense), as they tumble through threats to try and reach their target.

 

I hate the MMO aggro system. I'd prefer something like Tale suggests here:

 

Not really. I would like to see attitudes and behaviors. Something with more variety. Maybe Barbarians hate mages and all beeline for mages. Maybe another type of enemy likes to prioritize party members in heavy armor. And maybe some base it off how much damage is being done to them. This kind of information could be revealed in a beastiary.

 

Also, I'd argue that you can counteract monsters going for weak characters without having to resort to aggro systems: spells such as Hold, magical impassable walls like a wall of fire that they have to go around, or knockdown spells. You also will then focus on environmental factors such as where you can bottleneck them, and if possible implement an actual 'shield wall' mechanic whereby warrriors can form a line (not necessarily right next to each other due to the numbers people are limited to, but close enough that they could attack anything going between them perhaps) that prevents monsters from passing through them (which would make having multiple warriors more desirable than usual too), that could be activated with a click resulting in the warriors automatically forming a line and moving as one character to make it easier to form and control. Hey, I love me my shield walls! :D

[metiman]

What is a shield wall? Some kind of spell or a bunch of real shields?

[Caerdon]

Maybe all melee warriors should have a Zone Of Control which hampers the movement of enemies? And why not a skill that makes ZOC larger and/or more effective? An another skill that helps you ignore enemy ZOC to some degree? I don't know if ZOC has ever been implemented in a real-time-with-pause game, but there's not reason why it couldn't be made to work just fine.

[FlintlockJazz]

What is a shield wall? Some kind of spell or a bunch of real shields?

 

A real life Shield Wall is when people with shields would stand together in a line with their shields in front to form a wall, over which they could attack with spears or just steamroller forwards and trample their enemies. For cRPGs, I'm proposing some system to mimic this whereby you could get your warriors to actually form a line and block enemies getting past them except with special abilities like a rogue 'tumbling' past.

Edited October 5, 2012 by FlintlockJazz

[metiman]

Oh I see. That is an interesting idea.

[trulez]

No.

[khango]

I haven't read the thread, just stopping by to say

NO

I would add something more but I don't feel like getting banned before seeing the backer forum badge at least once.

 

I'm so close to posting a rant.

 

It feels like the forums and project are getting co-opted by 'special interests' -- namely MMO players and turn-based-rpg lovers who don't have a $@%! clue.

 

I cast Abyssal Fury upon them. Repeatedly.

[Karranthain]

Absolutely not.

 

I'd play a MMO if I wanted to deal with aggro mechanics.

Edited October 7, 2012 by Karranthain

[RiceMunk]

Kinda yes but kinda no.

 

In the context of a simple AI, it makes sense that monsters etc. go after whoever is dishing out the most damage but this can be exploited by kiting and whatever.

A very resounding no to taunt mechanics, though. Those are just silly in almost all cases where they end up being used in cRPGs.

If we want to give fighters etc. the ability to "tank" enemies, I'm more in favour of D&D-like opportunity attack-mechanics. The enemy AI could then go with a sort of cost/benefit decision on whether they want to get smacked by whoever's attacking them and go deal with someone else or whether they want to finish with whoever they're engaged with at the moment.