WoW vs. Guild Wars: Aggro
I'm not sure what brought it up, but found myself focusing on this small aspect of the games in comparison. I had to do some research, as experience hasn't shown me everything I needed to compare...
Aggro: The state of being the target of a given mob. (My own definition, I'm not actually quoting anyone).
Getting/Pulling Aggro:
You walk too close to a creature, or hit it with an attack, and it attacks you. Simple, neh? Guild Wars is simple in this respect, but gets major points for being user-friendly. You have a visible aggro radius on the mini-map - touch any mob with it and they'll come after you. On "hard mode" that radius is larger. There are certain exceptions like spotters which can attack you at a much larger range and mobs that don't show up on the mini-map until you aggro them.
World of Warcraft has something similar, though much more variable and basically invisible to the player. The radius varies depending on the level difference between the character and the mob. Sneaking around much lower level critters than you is easy. Higher level, difficult. You get a feel for "at level" range, but skirting around a group is more often a "let's see if this works" prospect.
Holding and Losing Aggro:
This has mystified me in GW. Given multiple targets, mobs will tend to attack the squishiest targets (lower armor, health, and caster-type weapons make you a bigger target). Apparently, mobs "lock on" once they actually start attacking someone (not just when they start running toward someone), and it seems the only way to shake them off is to do something to break that lock. Things like AOE attacks cause them to peel off out of the area and re-target. Knockdown effects can break the lock, as can outrunning or sometimes maneuvering to block the mob's path.
In WoW this is a whole sub-game of combat. Tank-type classes/specs are built to generate additional threat and he who has the most threat has aggro with the mob (not absolutely true, but that's the gist). Threat is generated primarily based on damage done to the mob and healing done in the area. There are also some direct aggro-management abilities - tanks can "taunt," jumping to the top of the aggro list immediately, and most non-tanks can drop their aggro by vanishing, ice-blocking, feigning death, etc. This brings about a strategy in a group where the tank works to generate the most threat possible so the others in the group can pump out their damage/healing without overtaking him. In some boss fights, this is the challenge/point and failing to keep the boss on the tank will lead to the group's demise.
Thoughts:
I prefer WoW's handling of is. There's not much surprise there. It may be some measure bias just because I first really got into it there, but I like being a tank. I like being able to be a tank. WoW lets me do that. It gives me tools and says "here, hold their attention and keep them from attacking your friends." It's not very realistic for mobs to bang away on a plate-armored paladin who keeps getting healed from the sidelines, but most of the hard encounters in the game are balanced around that tactic, so it works.
That said, I can see why GW deals with it the way it does. The whole combat system of the game is really designed around PVP combat. That's apparent just from the "you get to choose the eight skills you have access to in the field" setup. Given that, it actually makes sense that mob AI would be programmed to go after "softer" targets. They're the ones that usually put out the most dramatic damage or do healing, and they're most likely to die first. It makes sense the AIs would flee out of AOE spells, because that's what players would do. The PVE mob AI emulates PVP player choices (not perfectly, but game AI isn't going to be perfect) because that's how combat in the game is made to work. This just doesn't really lend itself to tank-healer-dps play. In order to pull that off in PVE, as I understand, your tank would have to run up and actually start getting hit by everything in a group before anyone else did anything to pull them off (or somehow position himself so he couldn't be gotten around, but I don't see many narrow areas), then avoid using anything that would break that "lock." I'm sure it is possible to play that way, but I haven't really seen it done so far and usually the group attacking together (and hopefully focusing fire some) seems to work just fine.
Aggro: The state of being the target of a given mob. (My own definition, I'm not actually quoting anyone).
Getting/Pulling Aggro:
You walk too close to a creature, or hit it with an attack, and it attacks you. Simple, neh? Guild Wars is simple in this respect, but gets major points for being user-friendly. You have a visible aggro radius on the mini-map - touch any mob with it and they'll come after you. On "hard mode" that radius is larger. There are certain exceptions like spotters which can attack you at a much larger range and mobs that don't show up on the mini-map until you aggro them.
World of Warcraft has something similar, though much more variable and basically invisible to the player. The radius varies depending on the level difference between the character and the mob. Sneaking around much lower level critters than you is easy. Higher level, difficult. You get a feel for "at level" range, but skirting around a group is more often a "let's see if this works" prospect.
Holding and Losing Aggro:
This has mystified me in GW. Given multiple targets, mobs will tend to attack the squishiest targets (lower armor, health, and caster-type weapons make you a bigger target). Apparently, mobs "lock on" once they actually start attacking someone (not just when they start running toward someone), and it seems the only way to shake them off is to do something to break that lock. Things like AOE attacks cause them to peel off out of the area and re-target. Knockdown effects can break the lock, as can outrunning or sometimes maneuvering to block the mob's path.
In WoW this is a whole sub-game of combat. Tank-type classes/specs are built to generate additional threat and he who has the most threat has aggro with the mob (not absolutely true, but that's the gist). Threat is generated primarily based on damage done to the mob and healing done in the area. There are also some direct aggro-management abilities - tanks can "taunt," jumping to the top of the aggro list immediately, and most non-tanks can drop their aggro by vanishing, ice-blocking, feigning death, etc. This brings about a strategy in a group where the tank works to generate the most threat possible so the others in the group can pump out their damage/healing without overtaking him. In some boss fights, this is the challenge/point and failing to keep the boss on the tank will lead to the group's demise.
Thoughts:
I prefer WoW's handling of is. There's not much surprise there. It may be some measure bias just because I first really got into it there, but I like being a tank. I like being able to be a tank. WoW lets me do that. It gives me tools and says "here, hold their attention and keep them from attacking your friends." It's not very realistic for mobs to bang away on a plate-armored paladin who keeps getting healed from the sidelines, but most of the hard encounters in the game are balanced around that tactic, so it works.
That said, I can see why GW deals with it the way it does. The whole combat system of the game is really designed around PVP combat. That's apparent just from the "you get to choose the eight skills you have access to in the field" setup. Given that, it actually makes sense that mob AI would be programmed to go after "softer" targets. They're the ones that usually put out the most dramatic damage or do healing, and they're most likely to die first. It makes sense the AIs would flee out of AOE spells, because that's what players would do. The PVE mob AI emulates PVP player choices (not perfectly, but game AI isn't going to be perfect) because that's how combat in the game is made to work. This just doesn't really lend itself to tank-healer-dps play. In order to pull that off in PVE, as I understand, your tank would have to run up and actually start getting hit by everything in a group before anyone else did anything to pull them off (or somehow position himself so he couldn't be gotten around, but I don't see many narrow areas), then avoid using anything that would break that "lock." I'm sure it is possible to play that way, but I haven't really seen it done so far and usually the group attacking together (and hopefully focusing fire some) seems to work just fine.
I'd say throw this on the guild page, but things there are kinda slow :/
ReplyDeleteYeah, slow there. I still could, but it's still a comparison more than a WoW-specific discussion, so I'm not sure there's enough point to putting it there.
ReplyDelete