Enemy targeting player-- a bit too well?

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FruitLord wrote:

aggro

Eww. Must we really bring that concept into PoE?

Bosses, at least, should be complete dicks. Taunt and other "hey, attack me" abilities should only last for a very short while. Having the boss single-mindedly run after someone squishy while tanks are desperately trying to get its attention adds a feeling of terror to the game. And then the boss should switch its attention when the players least expect it, turning "well he's not after me" into instant panic and pot spam.

Aggro is a concept period it was already here in POE.

Aggro switching probably shouldn't just be a flat %.. it needs to account for various factors such as damage, distance, effects, level, class. These parameters can be biased towards high or low values depending on the monster ai.

Additionally, an aggro switch should be combined with a timer to not switch again so they don't bounce between targets.

To further prevent bouncing a second set of rules could be employed after X switches.

The question should be "What would a human in this situation do?"

I mean, if you were a titanic enemy besieged on all sides by puny mortals, what would you do?

Surprise them. Take them off guard. Maybe suddenly decide to fixate on the least threatening guy, especially if it's Hardcore and I want to take him with me. Start throwing big rocks at the archer and see if he can get out of the way in time. Or throw the tank out of the way with some knockback, and then rush the squishy little Witch who better toss up a frost wall/teleport the hell out of there or become witch soup.

Fortunately, this is a game, so we can have skills to hijack the boss's thought processes.

But what shouldn't happen is the boss just sitting there trading hits with the tank while he's pelted with arrows and ice spears from bored ranged attackers who just sit there blasting away until he dies.

Honestly my biggest problem with the system as it stands is if a melee party member is whacking the back of something, there is a good chance it will still ignore them and continue on to the poor ranger/witch who is kiting it around.

Bosses this is *less* of a problem for I feel, since I'm perfectly fine with AI that attempts to pick off a weaker character if it's intentional. But in large mobs it's annoying to see enemies largely ignore other players who are clearly closer and more of a threat to them.

I totally agree with Slicer, I just want these things to be intentional AI that some mobs do. Maybe goatmen should always target the ranged attacker over the meleer-- he has a leap attack. But meleeing skeletons shouldn't slowly shamble past my pack of minions as they all wail on him.

It's not a *huge* deal since most things end up dying before this becomes a strange occurrence and bosses being kited around by a ranged attacker will end up on the melee player simply because the kiter is not as likely to keep attacking. The largest place where it annoys me is with minions. Currently they move so slow and enemies target the first thing they see, it makes me feel like something in the game isn't functioning properly somewhere.

The solution? I'm unsure. I think Zeto has the best solutions so far, but I know AI is hard work to tweak and there already is much on the table. It would be neat to see different enemies target different kinds of players though. I sure would hate goatmen even more if they always tried to slap my shit specifically as a ranged attacker. I don't really want enemies to be kited more easily, but with the current targeting it actually isn't that hard for two ranged attackers to trade off kiting since they have tunnel vision on their target so much.