From the WotC Boards: Mearls on 'Aggro'

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Very true, I think what is at stake here is being the lead in innovation. People say D&D inspires this and that game, now the tables seem to be turned.

Inspiration comes from somewhere. No one sits around in a dark room, waiting for it to strike.

Well, other than Michael Keaton in Batman Returns, but that was silly.

IMO what was great about 3e's design was the introduction of feats.

*cough* inspired by Diablo *cough*

 

[Epic Meepo]

Incidentally, the Original D&D rules encouraged the DM to have certain monsters decide what to do against PCs based upon their Charisma scores. Low Charisma, monster wants you dead; high Charisma, monster wants you as a prisoner. In a round-about way, that suggestion implies that monsters will direct their deadliest attacks against characters with the lowest Charisma. In other words, if you squint at Original D&D and turn it kinda sideways, it already has a crude aggro mechanic built in.

So why not playtest full-blown, modern day aggro mechanics? In my mind, it's fairly obvious that they're rather useless in a pen and paper game, but does it really hurt for game designers to confirm that guess with a few good trial runs?

 

[Gloombunny]

Rejecting a MMO concept out of hand simply because it's a MMO concept is as bad as adding a MMO concept just because it's a MMO concept.

This is very true. On the other hand, though, I'm a little disheartened to hear that they didn't reject the aggro concept out of hand for being freakin' stupid on its face...

Well, it depends on the MMORPG, and even then, good dev teams continue to refine it over the life of the game.

The problem is that, currently, AI can't be made smart enough to react intelligently in an MMORPG, especially when there might be thousands or even millions of combats going on simultaneously.

So we get aggro instead, where offensive things add a set number of points, and the player character with the highest point total "wins."

I'm as eager as anyone to see this replaced with better AI, but until we see a LOT more processing power, both server side and on user end, I don't think it's likely to be showing up any time soon.

Obviously good AI is processor-infeasible, but aggro doesn't even try to emulate what a good AI would do. It doesn't consider how vulnerable targets are, even when some are drastically more fragile than others. And the entire aggro concept was developed specifically so it could be artificially manipulated by taunt skills.

Guild Wars is an example of MMO mob AI done better than the usual aggro concept, and it's very rudimentary. Monsters tend to attack whoever's nearest, but also have a rudimentary sense of which characters are easier to kill and sometimes break off to attack those characters. Getting them to attack the warrior instead of the spellcasters is done by having the spellcasters run away when it gets close and the warrior stand in its way or use attacks that impede its movement. No taunting or other such nonsense at all.

(I'll certainly admit that tanking in WoW can be fun. But it's not the kind of fun that belongs in a roleplaying game, because the in-game situations it leads to are painfully silly.)

 

[Mortellan]

*cough* inspired by Diablo *cough*

Well I'll be...I didn't know that, but I had a feeling someone would know where feats came from so I threw it out there. Now knowing this I see absolutely no reason to be coy in saying that 4E will be partly inspired by video games as well.

 

[Gloombunny]

In my mind, it's fairly obvious that they're rather useless in a pen and paper game, but does it really hurt for game designers to confirm guess that with a few good trial runs?

When you put it that way it does sound a lot better. I guess my concern is that they may have actually expected it to work, which would not speak well of them.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

And the entire aggro concept was developed specifically so it could be artificially manipulated by taunt skills.

Eh, it was developed specifically so monsters wouldn't just attack whoever was closest. In subsequent games, the mechanic has taken on a life of its own, but the original idea was to have monsters act a little smarter than "guy nearby, me attack" while getting plinked (or even outright blasted) from a distance.

(I'll certainly admit that tanking in WoW can be fun. But it's not the kind of fun that belongs in a roleplaying game, because the in-game situations it leads to are painfully silly.)

Pfft, it's not half so silly for the tanks as it is for the hunters flopping up and down on the ground like they're having a seizure (replace hunters with monks and necromancers in EQ1), as though the monster is supposed to say "oh, they just dropped dead suddenly, NO problem!"

 

[Ahglock]

Obviously good AI is processor-infeasible, but aggro doesn't even try to emulate what a good AI would do. It doesn't consider how vulnerable targets are, even when some are drastically more fragile than others. And the entire aggro concept was developed specifically so it could be artificially manipulated by taunt skills.

No agro doesn't take into account vulnerability much(they usually take into account distance though). All it pays attention to is threat. How much is this target effecting me. Now wizards etc. create high threat by doing lots of damage. But things like sunder armor in wow create a lot of threat as well hopefully more than the DPS classes.

That isn't that illogical though debuffs can jack you up. If a fighter had an ability in D&D to destroy protection so for the next 2 rounds all physical damage against you was doubled. You'd see him as a big threat to be dealt with fast.

Now I agree forcing the issue with mmorpg agro rules is a bad idea in a pen and paper game and that should of been obvious from the get go. But the idea of threat isn't a bad idea. Give the fighters abilities so its a good tactical idea to deal with them first and ignoring them to go through the ranks at the mage is a really bad idea. Sure in some cases it will still be done and might be the right decision, but by giving fighters super threatening abilities you can create "agro" control by just making it so the DM playing the monsters as he should will attack the fihgter.

 

[Ahglock]

Mearls, remember when you said in that interview that an RPG should never tell the players how to play it? You were right!. Remember when you said that 2nd edition showed you how not to make a game, because it mostly wanted take out the parts that the designers didn't think were fun. You were right about that too! Put down the saw! Stop amputating things and start fixing things. If there could be a bit less, 'We are taking this out because it isn't fun.', and a bit more, 'How can we make this more fun for the players who like it?', I might actually come around to 4e.

This is my only worry about 4e. Yes X was bad in 3e, that doesn't mean remove X it means fix it. Stop throwing the baby out with the bath water because you screwed it up in 3e. Just fix it, keep it but fix it.

 

[Gloombunny]

No agro doesn't take into account vulnerability much(they usually take into account distance though). All it pays attention to is threat. How much is this target effecting me. Now wizards etc. create high threat by doing lots of damage. But things like sunder armor in wow create a lot of threat as well hopefully more than the DPS classes.

That isn't that illogical though debuffs can jack you up. If a fighter had an ability in D&D to destroy protection so for the next 2 rounds all physical damage against you was doubled. You'd see him as a big threat to be dealt with fast.

But it is illogical, because ultimately the things the tank is doing are nowhere near as threatening as what the DPSers are doing. Not to mention the healers. It doesn't take a tactical genius to realize that you can kill the tank much faster if you first kill the extremely fragile guy who's constantly healing him.

Now I agree forcing the issue with mmorpg agro rules is a bad idea in a pen and paper game and that should of been obvious from the get go. But the idea of threat isn't a bad idea. Give the fighters abilities so its a good tactical idea to deal with them first and ignoring them to go through the ranks at the mage is a really bad idea. Sure in some cases it will still be done and might be the right decision, but by giving fighters super threatening abilities you can create "agro" control by just making it so the DM playing the monsters as he should will attack the fihgter.

That's, um, not an aggro system you're describing there. The whole point of an aggro system is that it shortcuts the design work of making "attack the fighter" a reasonable option and just makes the monsters do it anyway.

 

[Li Shenron]

It's little dismaying to hear that they were actually trying out an aggro system at all, but they did finally scrap it, so that's good.

Yeah, on one side it's scary to think that they were even considering it...

But, on the other side I'm actually glad that they tried it, so they had the proof that it was going to be a failure. Otherwise we would have had proponents of it for the next few years