ENMITY

I'm not quite sure what you mean exactly.

Enmity is the state of being or having an enemy. If you're talking about enemies adapting to your prior actions then I think it's pretty much always a good idea. Most enemies in RPGs/platformers/etc behave off of instinct, so it makes sense for them to adapt to you - whether that means running away from you or becoming more aggressive. Platformer-wise the original Rayman did this with great success. If you were always defeating a certain enemy a certain way, eventually those enemies would learn how to adapt their behaviour to make it impossible or much harder for you to defeat them that way. I always thought it was one of the best unmentioned features of the game.

RPG-wise I think it would be neat to see something similar. Let's take the typical Slime monster as an example. Your first encounter with it is just a regular simple battle. You may defeat it mainly with physical attacks, or maybe you relied on magic to take it down. The slime in that area should slowly begin to adapt to this, so if you mainly deal with slime monsters with physical attacks the adapted slime would have better physical resistance; if you defeat them with magic, the adapted ones would have more magical resistance.

To take it further, more sentient enemies might begin to target a specific character that you rely on for skills.

There's nothing wrong with a static and predictable system as long as the behaviour it governs in enemies makes sense. I'd much rather play a game where the enemies behave according to a complex set of patterns in response to player behaviour than one where enemies behave according to a randomly determined algorithm.

UPRC
I honestly feel that threat management should stay in MMORPGs where it belongs. It just doesn't feel right in any single player experience.

Wow, that's general and has no evidence behind it!



I am ALL FOR Threat management. Karsuman and I even released a battle demo (it's shit, but interesting) a few years ago where one of the primary mechanics was that each character had a Threat meter - Elesca was good at absorbing Threat from weak or hurt allies, Rucian could spend his Threat to heal the party, Arian could disperse his Threat with a smile. Threat was the percent chance that the ally was going to be targeted, typically increased with damage or particularly nasty hexes. Aladhi casting a Pyroclasm on the enemy party is going to bring in a lot of Threat, so a tank had best get it off him ASAP.

Basically, I think it's wonderful, dynamic and adds a lot of (yes, I'm repeating myself) dynamic action to the stale tradin'-blows RPG battle system. It adds a flow to battle - you let your mages blow shit up, then have your tanks get the attention back on themselves while your support characters shift from buffing your damage-dealers to recouping lost resources or even reviving a poorly-protected ally.

In my current project, targeting is somewhat random, but predictable. Characters are Solari, Lunatics or Arcanists (weak to Lunar damage, Solar damage, and nothing, respectively) - this is something you can immediately tell about a person or creature, and is displayed with a little icon next to enemy names for YOUR needs. Similarly, enemies will attempt to cast their Lunar spells on Solari. Current HP also plays a role; naturally, hurting characters are more likely to be attacked (note: in this game you have 20 characters (5 out at a time); there will be a reserve character if you can't revive or heal in time).

Tanks are still important, though! Of the four tanks, two Provoke (making a specific foe much more likely to attack them), one Covers (taking an ally's damage for them for a turn), and the last one has more immediately defensive abilities and passively makes all enemies more likely to attack her (it's not as strong as Provoke, but still useful/reliable). In addition, one character can greatly raise an ally's chance to be targeted and another can greatly reduce it.

Summary: Enemies have basic AI, but you can mess with it by tanking properly, which is essential.



Regarding "puzzle" targeting: ew, gross. There's more to worry about in a fight - dynamics are important, but a gimmicky way of dealing damage is just a gimmick. For some bosses, yeah, sure, that's fine. For every area in the game...? Bleh. Sounds annoying as fuck.

author=WonderPup

author=UPRC
I honestly feel that threat management should stay in MMORPGs where it belongs. It just doesn't feel right in any single player experience.

I can see that point of view. I'm just tired of games where the enemy seems to target players at random. That doesn't make any sense in combat, and it feels sloppy to allow things to run off of a random number generator like that.

Actually, even in those old RPGs from NES and SNES days there were small ways to influence who got attacked. In DQ games, the person first in the party generally got attacked more often, with the frequency decreasing until the last person in the party.

An enmity based system is rather nice. It was executed beautifully in FF11, and I'd like to see it again.

The only problem that I have with it is that in an RPG (Which is generally and mostly turn based), this can be a sort of game-breaking hidden stat. I mean, tanking with a paladin while a mage nukes is a nice idea, but eventually when that paladin is able to take a beating for almost no damage while the mages get free reign with focusing heals on the Paladin, it's going to get kind of repetitive and easily driven. Even if the "hate" only lasts for a couple of turns, it still offers 2 turns of no damage(HIGH DEF vs Monster attack vs Healing) and Magical Firepower + the 4th member (If you have 4 members in your battle party) is pretty much overdrive.

To solve this you could have "enmity spikes" which basically means, a chance an attack from the player on an enemy while that enemy is focusing on another target infuriates it *deep breath* and instantly sheds all "hate" for its target, and switches to the attacker which initiated the "enmity spike".

just my two pennies. Yes, I'm denying the two cents because

I'm...

(•_•)

( •_•)>⌐■-■

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British.

From my testing, the only thing I noticed that affected targeting was front/back rows (60/40%). I didn't explicitly test for HP-based targeting, however, and don't care to since there is no reason to ever use 2k3.

A character who holds threat needs not be a tank. You could easily use a threat system along with dummy characters, like the Teddy Bear in Earthbound.

Also, who says that just because the tank dies, everyone else does too? In a typical RPG, most characters take similar amounts of damage depending on gear. Having one character use Threat Generating abilities makes it easier for the player to heal, while still outputting damage. (I'd use Protect/Shell more often in FF games, if I could ensure the person I was buffing would be getting attacked. )Now that damage is mitigated, I just have to keep him healed (and heal anyone who might take splash/all-target damage) and keep him buffed while my other characters deal damage. If he dies, it doesn't mean my other characters are significantly less viable in taking damage. I just no longer have a designated meat shield.

author=prexus
Also, who says that just because the tank dies, everyone else does too? In a typical RPG, most characters take similar amounts of damage depending on gear. Having one character use Threat Generating abilities makes it easier for the player to heal, while still outputting damage. (I'd use Protect/Shell more often in FF games, if I could ensure the person I was buffing would be getting attacked. )Now that damage is mitigated, I just have to keep him healed (and heal anyone who might take splash/all-target damage) and keep him buffed while my other characters deal damage. If he dies, it doesn't mean my other characters are significantly less viable in taking damage. I just no longer have a designated meat shield.

Uh if he doesn't take any less damage, then adding threat to him makes healing vastly harder because he will be at the brink of death far more often than if the damage were spread out among everyone. Even if the only reason he's taking less damage is because of defensive buffs, it still has the same effect as if he naturally took less damage - the other characters don't have the defensive buffs and so when the tank dies they start getting wailed on for 2x as much damage as the tank was taking.

I like the idea of off-tank in a pinch more than tank dead = gameover. Threat focused gameplay can definitely work in a turn based RPG, haven't seen it that much though.

author=UPRC
I honestly feel that threat management should stay in MMORPGs where it belongs. It just doesn't feel right in any single player experience.

I disagree.
Also, I think that if a certain player statistically/naturally better, he/she would pose more of a threat to an enemy, and the enemy would want to get rid of this person.
Threat management = must