why do some of us like these new targeting changes ...

There seems to be some confusion as to why some of us actually like the new targeting systems, this thread is for those to share why, it is not for anyone to convince us it sucks, if that's your goal start your own thread.

I will start with the tab targeting debate, I see it's removal as a plus because with tab targeting you do not have to know where your enemy is, in some case you may not even be able to see them, but your tab key will and that's dinkus.

I also hear alot of complaints about targeting with ranged, there is this notion that is is impossible to target one specific enemy mixed in with a group of enemies. it is not, it requires skill and proper positioning, to me that has greatly improved the way combat functioned. while i am able to fire arrows into a mob while moving and hit my desired target, it took me far more practice, sorry but with the tab targeting i was able to kite large red spiders before reaching level 20, now i have to actually pay attention, play the game and think tactically even while fighting npc mobs, that is a big plus for me as the old way bored me to death, now i actually lose track of time while enjoying this game. and that is my biggest reason for enjoying this game change.

 

I think targeting is more intuitive now, as tabbing around for a target with the old method was causing me to miss out on time attacking something, anything! Plus that target would be lost often for no reason, then I'd be tabbing again.. no problem with this new system, just make sure that reticle is placed in the general direction of a target, and if in range, I attack!

I also love that I can switch between both modes at any time.. I have also turned off the auto mode switch thing when entering combat.. that has helped my sanity as there are a few bugs when things switch automatically and back.

Combat has become a lot more interesting/engaging.

 

I like it because it fixes the issue of a single player previously having to use 2 targeting systems simultaneously. Previously some skills and attacks relied silently on this system and others only used tabbed targeting. A unified system was clearly needed and I prefer this (particularly when it gets polished), to switching to 100% tab targeting.

 

I gave it my first shot last night. At first due to muscle memory I was swapping modes like mad. After an hour or so I had grown accustom to aiming at my target. Then I realized it only mattered what I was aiming at when I started a spell. By the end of the night I was fighting 3-4 mobs at a time with a new mage, Able to water bolt snare a couple root a 3rd and burn one down before it made it to me.

From the PvP side of it.
I did some fights last night when I was around lv 15ish or so, skills were in the mid 30's. Some of the fights the guys were higher level than I. Since I have always used WSAD and had my 6-0 remapped to qertf Stacking combos and melting faces were seemless.. Oh and btw that combat roll to the left or right, if timed right will send that fire arrow into the dirt. This I like.

+9 to new combat
+10 once the bugs are gone

 

I impression is that they push the game a lot into the action genre, a lot like neverwinter, which I dislike. But at the same time it would be cool to have physics based aiming elements, which would equate to improved skill to play...
Archery, Magery, Blocking, Tactics all can use active aim. Right now there there is too much clicking when you consider the amount of work required to BOTH move and aim and stack cards.

 

Dynamic !

 

I like it because I don't have to have a set target, but just a critter in front of me... I really like how my Hali can hit several targets at once, sometimes the whole group goes down all at once... It's easy to move to the next target because I auto turn to face them, then it just a matter of rotating the camera, to actually have them targeted...

I did have some strange hits with fire arrow / frost arrow, even though I was fighting the guys in front of me fine, but not having their name plates showing, the arrows found a target way over there, within line of sight, and drew them into the battle...

 

It would be nice if people discussing the targeting changes (not only in this thread, but in all the pro and contra threads) would always mention what build they use and whether they use the mouselook mode or the cursor mode in battle. This would help me to understand many of the comments I have been reading.

 

Sorry but the new targeting system doesn't really fix this, it made it worse.

Get into some zone, wait till night (just for immersion), don't use a torch nor a light spell, look at any direction and shoot an fire arrow, you will automatically shoot at a target that is nearest to you, EVEN if you didn't see it at all with your eyes and EVEN if it was way way out of range!

 

I like it...you have the feeling of the hunt

 

I think it works really well for melee and bows. It is the first time I actually had fun using a bow in combat. I can see how it is a bit of a problem for mages. Maybe there should be a spell to mark a target so that spells find the target. If the mage doesn't mark a target then the spell hits the enemy which is in the line of fire.
I also think that a spell or arrow should hit a target that is "in the way" - simply for logical reasons. This should also apply for "marked targets". If a mage marks an enemy, casts a spell but another enemy is suddenly in the way, the spell should hit him and not go through him, not harming him.

 

I think it injects a huge dose of realism into the game. Yes I liked and exploited tab targeting with the best of them, but I have to admit this is much more like real life, and that's what the game is striving for. An archer, as I am, has to be facing the enemy to be effective. And if he is being charged by a horde he can let loose with volley after volley and hope to take some or all of them down. Either that or run
And a confession - I am now playing in targeting mode, which I swore I would never do. Remapped the glyph controls to the number pad (it's easier for me) and it's just intuitive. Hopping in and out of cursor mode is also easy.
It has been polished so much already, all we need is a little more refinement especially on the social side, and it will be perfect.

 

The problem with the new targeting system is that if you're in cursor mode, the target is still based on the reticle on the screen. What it means is that the Avatar no longer attack a target in front of him, but instead the target that is in front of the reticle.

We are just replacing a tactical RPG with active screen aiming. Some people may like it, some don't. At this point, I'm used to the new control, but I just hate the fact that I can no longer get the 360 view without having to stop attacking and may accidentally hit a wrong target and pull extra mobs onto me.

 

@Moonshadow, thank you for starting this thread! Definitely needed

And @Kara Brae, you're absolutely right, this is vital information, so here we go:

Spoiler: helm's build and preferences

• I use a ranged build, mixed with magical elements from Moon, Earth, Water, Air and Chaos, roughly in this order (not touching fire, sun or death at all).
• I use the reticule mode with free attack exclusively, touching the cursor mode (in battle) and auto attack only for testing purposes
• I use mostly WASD for moving (with mouselook), except that I also have a couple of side buttons mapped to forward/backward movements
• I manipulate glyphs with keyboard (placed around WASD, 1234FGZXCV to be more precise)

I will start from "tab targeting" as well. It's okay if you're facing one or two hostiles. But suppose you've got six hostiles in your view - how do you you pick the exact one you want to target? Press tab once? Twice? Three, four, five, six times? Who knows? And the same problem presents itself each time you want to switch targets.

Enter reticule targeting. You will just gesture "that one over there" with your reticule and that's it. I love it.

Of course it still has its issues. But those issues mostly belong to bug reports, not feedback threads, in my opinion. It's a source of huge misunderstandings and toxicity when folks complain about obvious bugs as if they were design decisions.

One more thing. I've found that the cursor mode makes the use of reticule targeting pretty confusing, because you'd not expect it to retarget when you release the right mouse button, but it does (it retargets as soon as a new enemy gets under the reticule, whether or not you know about it..). It might be better if in cursor mode a new target could only be selected when holding the right button down...just a thought...

 

Did you try a targeted emote with the new system? Does not work at all, if you want to do it in a bulk of players and not, if in cursor mode. In mouse mode it works only with the chat commands, since you cannot click the entries in the emote selection window. (Or I did not find the way to do so.)

 

I actually switch between the two, i still hit me tab key quite often, it helps me keep my head on a swivel and keep things targeted while i move, i do however make the bulk of my attacks from reticule mode. I use ranged magic(fire air and chaos mostly) and archery

 

How do you resurrect a party member? Couldn't get that working...?

 

you wait for the patch, then ressurect them, assuming they havnt found an aunk already seriously though, it's broken right now, i'm sure they'll get it fixed.

 

Oh good, I was hoping I wasn't misunderstanding the new system It is so much fun!

 

I like the general idea of having a new targeting system, and I have no problem with it being a second option, but I don't like that cursor mode still has vestiges of the new system, including that damn reticle that is kind of immersion breaking because it's right in the middle of your view.

I can understand why some people like it, but I don't think there should be a hugbox thread of "why do we like it and nothing else". There is both good and bad, and I would argue that a dual system is possible, but what we have now has spill-over. I can't really see how a first-person shooter targeting system can work all that well with a third-person camera, especially when the MMO audience contains a lot of people who don't play FPS. To suddenly have such a significant change this late in the development cycle doesn't help.

And it's way too picky about where your camera is, which is a problem for those of us who like to look around a lot. In FFXI, I often unlock the camera during combat and rotate it around just to see the fight from different views, even if nothing is going to sneak up on me. It's boring to look at the back of your character all the time, and fun to see the fight up close from different angles!

I'd rather have body position determine targeting, because otherwise you have this floating magic camera in the air, and this floating sprite thingy above your head (immersion? what's that?) and your floating magic camera thingy overrides what you are facing and has you attack something else.

It's also really sensitive if you have your camera zoomed out way back, because things are smaller on the screen. I also sometimes like to be in an overhead view, for more of a 2D game view of the combat. That shrinks the view angle of individual targets even more, and now the target position is controlled by the camera roll angle rather than yaw angle! This is what happens when you cross the streams of first-person and third-person views.

Are you the Avatar that's on the ground fighting, or are you some godlike being floating behind him?

This 200%. It is no fun to cast a ranged spell (like Fire Arrow) and have it hit and aggro something that's not even on your screen, because your camera isn't directly behind the line of sight to your enemy. I like to swing my camera around a lot during combat and the combat system's obsession with your camera position is a pain in the ass. It has also been pointed out that this works badly with healing, as you can't even click on the bars in the party list to select targets.

The old "hold right button" was a pain in the wrist (I found an ergo mouse that used thumb triggers on top, much better), but the new way is a pain in the brain.

Also, the movement direction is naturally inverted from the way that cursor targeting works. If the object is to the left of your cursor in cursor mode, you move the mouse left. If the object is to the left of your reticule in the new mode, you move the mouse right. When the mode switches automatically, suddenly your mouse input inverts! Is there an inversion option that we can use to fix this? If not, we need one.

One of the more important things when making a new kind of UI is to have experience with other kinds of UI and what made them good and bad. In my case, that's mostly FFXI, which I use with a joypad controller. (FFXI targeting mechanics stuff in blue so you can skim past it easier)

I am used to FFXI with a controller, which is based on tab targeting. It doesn't have a cursor targeting mode, because it was made for Playstation 2, but its default mouse configuration is so annoying (I think it's how it works with the menu mode) that I either flip the mouse upside-down or use a trackball or trackpad to keep it from getting bumped. On PS2, I simply didn't plug in a mouse. It's not perfect, but damn it sure is comfy to sit in a couch using only a controller, and only have to pick up a keyboard to chat or go CLI mode when healing in a group (the CLI works well, you can cast any spell, no hotbar limits, and I can type in the next one while the current one is casting). Also, the main third-party extensions (via DLL abuse) extend the CLI as well.

One thing FFXI has is a very specific sense of what your target is and the camera is entirely disconnected from this. On a controller, your camera and body position are controlled by two separate joysticks, and since they are self-centering, there is no getting bumped like with a mouse. In keyboard mode, the default is that the arrow keys control the camera, and the numpad keys control your movement (which is very hard to get used to when I don't have a controller handy).

But the reason it can do this is that there are a relatively low number of key binds because it uses a JRPG style menu system. This is a case where something like "tab targeting" works well. You can get used to counting the number of ups/downs/lefts/rights do to certain commands. In SotA, I don't need to bring up, say, the titles list at a moments notice, so instead of taking up a key (that could even get hit by accident) it could go into a menu that contains a lot of other stuff. It also brings up 20 items of hotbar equivalent via either ctrl-digit or alt-digit, or the controller left/right triggers, which can each execute a 6-line CLI macro.

On the other hand, it doesn't have the floating modeless windows like SotA does because of its Playstation 2 origins of being able to run on a standard TV set with keyboard completely optional (with a very clunky screen keyboard for chats), so it was as much for screen space as keyboard space. Different driving decisions, different annoyances, but very comfy to use from a controller, and keyboard mode available to go hardcore.

(By the way, is there a way to completely unbind a key in SotA? Say I really don't want my titles list on a key, and I want to use its key for something else, can I clear its key bind entirely?)

There's also how FFXI handles body position vs enemy position. The main thing is you have a cone range, and if the enemy moves, you can be unable to hit it which is annoying. But normally it has a "lock-on" mode during combat which locks your body to face your target, and your camera to a small range behind you. If your target moves sideways out of range, just bump your body movement and the facing will be automatically corrected.

There was actually a little of that in the previous release of SotA. If you cast a targeted spell like Fire Arrow, it would re-align your body position to face the targeted enemy. I liked that.

Well that's a problem that I can certainly relate to with FFXI.

It has tab targeting (with shift-tab to go reverse), but there are some differences. You can easily un-select the current target and then the targeting starts with yourself. And if you are using a controller, instead of whatever order the game picks, you can D-pad left and right by target X-order. That works well with the overshoot problem where your brain lags one target behind and you have to oops go back... as long as your target isn't moving and causes an X-order change! There is also up/down on the D-pad to select party members from the list.

The problems with FFXI tab targeting are that it tabs through everything (only certain contexts filter for just enemies), sometimes its idea of X-order is goofy, and sometimes it targets stuff behind you, but it always tries to limit to on-screen and not behind an object. But really only works when there are just a few enemies.

It completely fails when you are in a large scrum of enemies mixed with allied NPCs in an FvF-style battle. I have had times when I am unable to engage an enemy before someone else kills it, because there is no quick way to cherry-pick. There is also F8 to select the thing most directly in front of you, but it's also got wonky X-order issues, and no mode to only pick enemies, making F8 completely useless in those FvF scrums.

So yeah, I feel your pain about tab targeting with a lot of hostiles, it's one of the most annoying things with my FFXI experience.

One thing I don't like about the new targeting, even in "classic" cursor mode, is that the ONLY way you can see your target's bars at the top of the screen (confirming which one is your target) is by moving your camera (and thus the whole screen view). You can still cast targeted spells when there isn't an explicit target, but you can't be sure that there's a monster just off-screen that it will hit instead. I guess an "is it on screen" filter on targets could help a little.

Also, when sufficiently zoomed out, even if you go completely overhead, you can't target the reticle on something that is nose-to-nose with you (a common situation in combat). Go ahead and try it.