Active Targeting

EsORising

Wouldn't it be great to have a active targeting system? A system that requires aiming and particle collision. For example: someone shoots a magic skill that's going to do massive damage then you move to the left, right, or jump over it and don't get hit. Even better a dk or temp blocked the projectile from even hitting you. Right now it's more of a soft targeting system and you can still hit your target facing 180 degrees, jumping in the air and not looking in your targets direction, as long as, there are no other targets that passed by your cross hairs. It's possible that active targeting would fix a lot of the issues with PVP Balance and Bots while making pve and pvp more interesting.

Bots wont be able to function correctly because they cannot lock on to targets.

For Pve an aiming system would add a whole new dynamic and tanking system. It would allow people to hide behind the tank and not get hit by aoe's by hiding behind the tank. Boss battle can be more intense and there can be weak spots on bosses or technical know-how instead of just whaling away no the boss with everything you in your arsenal. For example hit the boss in the front nothing happens but hit the boss in the back and do major damage. This would mean someone would have to bait the boss to get it to expose it's weakness and add skill to the battle. Winning Boss battles will be something players would have to learn by trail and error.

Pvping would be a lot more interesting and night blades would have a better chance or tricking people up by running behind them. This would also compensate for them being kinda weak at the moment on a fair one vs one fight (no first hit sneak). Active targeting would even make stamina builds and sprinting more useful. Archers wouldn't be able to hit you from the other side of the map as easy, but increasing the damage snipe would make it interesting because it would be easy to dodge but stiff penalties if you got hit by it, which would also make sneak a lot more useful. Templar s wont be able to spam one skill and win in pvp, but at the same time the aiming system with collision detection will allow tanks to block projectiles and ranged attacks from hitting allies. Hell even skills that AOE on collision damage would be cool, such as, hitting the floor or shield with a skill that explodes on impact off a hard surface and then blocking wouldnt be the best option, so templars would have to identify it and absorb it instead of block it. Aiming would make it harder for staff users, which are pretty much what everyone's running right now because its just better than the rest. Also imagine massive pvp with floating death bombs flying by which weren't aimed at you but can hit you if you cross it's path, or vice versa someone used skill and moved out of the way or behind an ally so that person can absorb or die for his personal gain.

It's probably a lot more complicated than it seems but so is redistributing all the skill damage to balance everything out. An active targeting system might balance everything out and just make everything that much more fun, skillful and creative. Adding a system like this would add skill and balance to the pvp system, as well as, countless aspects to pvp such as tanks blocking projectiles and daggers being able to confuse you by running in different directions .

Just overall it would be a different dynamic that would bring improvements and put some skill requirement into pvp. Right now it's all about having the right build with a staff and it's kinda of weird seeing everyone running the same stuff. If this ever gets implemented it would bring so many different interesting, creative and skillful aspects to the game.

What does everyone else think about active targeting and do you think it will ever be implemented?

dharbert

This would increase lag x 10,000. No.

AlexDougherty

It would make the Molag Bal fight impossible for the Sorceror (It pretty close to that already IMO)

In fact apart from PVP all it would do is make the game difficult, and as I am enjoying it at the moment, et me say NO NO NO NO NO.

AshySamurai

Interesting, but have a few problems.
1. Even now I sometimes die only because one my feet was in AoE. And sometimes not. Totally random. And you want to make this system far more complicated.
2. Some skills are too fast for this. There no sense because it hit you anyway. With your feature those skills become fotm.
3. Some skills are too slow. Like uppercut - this skill will be useless because you will not be able to hit anyone in PvP.

Merlin13KAGL

OP, I think you underestimate the extra processing required to essentially track the physics of all attacks.

I understand the issue with divine curve balls that take place and track you no matter what. (Mage guards in Cyro were able to track and attack me through 2' of stone masonry at a Gate, just yesterday, for instance. I was standing directly below them, no LoS, and they didn't run down the stairs.)

On the other hand, many of the attacks you mention can be dodged or blocked if you time correctly. With that, it's a one time check for the server (time when the attack would land vs if you're there or not.) Dodge/block is the keyword - you cannot out-strafe a projectile.

Also, you couldn't properly implement this without adding friendly fire to the mix. So your hope for the DK to step in and save you would be aggravated by accidentally killing the DK with your own skill fire when he strafes in front of the guy you were hoping to hit.

There are three targetting methods right now, and they effectively allow for all conditions: Single target, AoE round/rectangle, AoE cone.

Much easier to process (and react to) those three possibilities than what you speak of.

While there would be vastly different outcomes in many situations, and it would make things more interesting in many ways, I simply don't think the current system could handle it.

I'd be happy for consistency with the current design.

@AshySamurai‌ , have experienced all these things. WIth the 'foot in circle' thing, it's a little unbelievable that your skilled character would not feel the damage and be a bit more responsive to it. (The audible "Ouch" that takes place hardly justifies it and you shouldn't have to watch your Health bar as the main indication of damage taken.)

Watched a DK shooting away at an enemy the other day while he was clearly on fire, not of his own accord. I tend to think one would notice this.

Want it to lessen my effectiveness? Fine. It should, in fact. But I would also not just stand there and die if some basic level of built in character awareness was present, as it should be.

Also, sometimes the red doesn't seem to correspond to the actual damage zone. I've been in circumstances where there was no red, yet AoE damage or DoT's were obviously taking place.

My character slayed a Daedric Prince. Pretty sure he/she'd have sense enough to not get hung up on a blade or grass underfoot and would clearly realize that where he/she was standing was currently causing some major discomfort.

EsORising

Based on the comments so far people like tab targeting and dislike the idea because it would make the game harder? Weird.. It's not that it makes the game harder it just takes more skill, aiming, timing and strategy. I guess some translate that as hard and others translate that as fun. I guess spam 1 through 5 till target is dead is popular.

EsORising

dharbert wrote: »

This would increase lag x 10,000. No.

How? There are games with better graphics that have implemented this already that also run smoother than ESO.

GnatB

OP: Play an action game. This is an RPG.

xarguideb17_ESO

I'd rather implement friendly fire than this.

Vizier

xarguideb17_ESO wrote: »

I'd rather implement friendly fire than this.

This...

OP's idea would be cool but they'd have to slow down the way folks move and jump and switch directions etc. Projectiles would have to be very fast and gap closing would have to change drastically. It's just not..not happening.

Lord_Kreegan

People presuming this must be done on the server are ignoring the fact that ideally it would be done on the client; distributed processing is inherently many, many times more powerful than isolating calculations to a central machine.

I for one would love a true LOS implementation. I am very, very tired of dying to attacks through walls, rocks, trees, etc.

But I would be absolutely ecstatic if ZOS would just fix the bug that allows (in PvE) mobs to move on top of me, occupying the exact same position, thus disabling my ability to melee with weapons and use any skills. I have died more times to that than to attacks through walls, rocks, trees, etc.

There is nothing more frustrating than having all of my skills suddenly become non-reactive as I press the keys or click the mouse...

...oh, wait a minute... that happens anyway.

kongkim

Deletet.. Wrong topic.

PBpsy

dharbert wrote: »

This would increase lag x 10,000. No.

I think the problem is more that the servers can't even handle this system let alone a collision based system. It would just die.

Lord_Kreegan wrote: »

People presuming this must be done on the server are ignoring the fact that ideally it would be done on the client; distributed processing is inherently many, many times more powerful than isolating calculations to a central machine.

Yes but this is a online game which means if anything so essential is done client side, people will eventually(a couple of hours) find a way to break it and cheat. There is no doubt about it and no amount of effort and resources ZOS would put into it would stop that.

EsORising wrote: »

dharbert wrote: »

This would increase lag x 10,000. No.

How? There are games with better graphics that have implemented this already that also run smoother than ESO.

Graphics has absolutely nothing to do with lag. Lag is due to your connection to the server and or the ability of the server to process the amount of data it receives form the hundreds of players at the same time.

xarguideb17_ESO

I don't see this happening in eso. This is a dream.
In which mmo has this been implemented, i am curious? Was it a server or a client feature?

Cheaters are going to cheat anyway. There are different weapons against that.

I would rather have character collision in cyrodiil than this.

I am all in for hardcore features. For example full corpseloot, exp loss at death, friendly fire and so on, but eso will never implement such changes, because it wants to appeal to the masses.

xarguideb17_ESO

I come from a generation that started mmos. That generation was all about text based games called muds, where everything was possible...

xarguideb17_ESO

My fav mud was MUME.

xarguideb17_ESO

Now finally we can have graphics in our mmos

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