Hydaelyn Role-Players

The other title: "I was an a--hole down in La Noscea."

Hi,

Character is Level 20 Gladiator and level 12 Archer. I
recently transitioned from the Playstation to the PC with Keyboard and PS3
controller working in tandem.

Using the keyboard and controller combo, I did well for
several levels, beat up a lot of bad guys, solved enough
quests to take Archer from level 5 to 12, with good success
at doing well in fights and fates.

Today, I seem to have lost the capability to fight bad guys.

How I fight bad guys got me to level 20. I acquire the
target, either by X on the controller, or F11 or he starts
shooting me, or mouse clicking on the target. F11 has,
until now, been the most reliable.

As of today, solo fights became difficult to lock onto a
target. Until today, F11 always worked, locking onto the
nearest bad guy, then I watch my HP, beat him up, and win. But lately, when I know
I'm in range, F11 does nothing. So, bad guy gets to beat me
up.

Fate, as of today, is much more difficult to get F11 to work, out of about
a dozen attempts, either as archer or gladiator I might get
one lock on. I did get into one fate, I was the only one
there, and F11 worked perfectly, Later got into another fate
with one other player, and F11 worked one time, and refused
to work after that. Later, I got into another fate where I
was the only player and F11 wouldn't work. Sometimes mouse
clicking on the bad guy works, sometime, in the same fate,
it fails. I'm watchful for error messages, like my level is
too high or too low for a fate, and even when I'm not
getting those errors, F11 usually doesn't work anymore.

Confession time.

Today, I got down in La Noscea and joined a 4 player group
to enter a cave and beat up bad guys. So, I went in as
Gladiator Level 20, and I ended up ruining the quest for 3
other players, made an ass out of myself. I hope the other players are reading this; I owe them apologies.

I was standing around, hitting F11, pressing the X on the
controller, Clicking on the bad guys, nothing. I managed to
kill one bat, but the rest of time I was standing around
pressing keys, getting right on the bad guys, and being
worthless to fellow players. It was like all keyboard
functionality to fight had ceased to work. F11 is supposed
to always work; but even when I was bumped up right against
a bad guy, it would not acquire the target. Finally one of
the other players asked me to leave the game, and I had to
log out. What I did was to become a nuisance and waste of
time to other players.

I am not here to ruin games for other players, my goal is
opposite - to enjoy FFXIV and to help make it enjoyable to other players.

My first step was to look around in settings, and I don't
know what to look for. Odds are, I got sloppy, and did
something to settings without knowing it. Therefore, I went
to page 17 of the Killer Guide to Final Fantasy XIV, and I
didn't do any good there. Next, I go here and look for a fix
http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/benchmark/ Nope.

Sorry about all this rambling,

I'm not going to enter into another group effort and risk
ruining the event for others until I get everything that has
to do with acquiring targets, to be dependable. Meanwhile,
I'll concentrate on Level 12 Archer and work on bringing
Archer up to parity with the Gladiator.

There is something stupid I'm doing wrong, and I'll really
appreciate any and all advice, and even brutal advice.

Thanks much, for indulging this long winded drivel.
The Mongoose

Hmm. I don't play with the controller, but what I do for targeting is the following keybinds:

E: Target next enemy (nearest to farthest)
Shift-E: Target next enemy (farthest to nearest)
Ctrl-E: Target enemy attacking me
Alt-E: Target nearest enemy
F: Target focus target
Shift-F: Set focus target
T: Target target of target
Tab: Target nearest player
F1-F8: Target group member 1-8
And when I'm tanking: Ctrl-1 through Ctrl-5: Hotbar 3, actions 1-5 (into which I place Mark Target 1-5)

I don't use lock on or any other functionality like that. Instead, when I engage mobs, I either use E and Shift-E to target the mob with the correct mark (or the one I want to attack if solo), or I put the tank (or main assist) on focus and use F, T to target his current target. Coming from EQ originally, which is a very keyboard-heavy game, this works for me, but YMMV. Now that I've been doing more FATEs to level my secondary classes, I've been considering changing my Tab bind to work like my E and Shift-E bind, except for player targeting.

Hi FreeLanceWizard,

I'm taking your advice as far as I can, at both skills of my character (Lvl 20 Glad., and Lvl 12 Archer) and sticking to the Level 12 Archer for now.

Instead of remapping targeting keys to E, F, etc, I mapped them to the M1 thru M5 keys on the left of the Razer keyboard for convenience,.

It appears that the best way to prepare for future "tanking," is to fight as much as possible in Fates, and so I'm concentrating on fates. Even so, not all the targeting seems to work when needed.

Target Next Enemy.. Partial success
Target Enemy attacking me ... Works about half the time
Face the target ... Usually works
Tab key ... works when Target Nearest enemy fails to work.
Target focus ... Not tested so far, well, I hit the keys during a Fate and nothing happened, probably because I'm not "tanking."
Hotbar 1 for weapons choices ... OK after targeting success

I really wish that Square Enix would provide a "non-retribution," practice scenario for "tanking," where players could go in, learn how to do it, practice, make mistakes, and get proficient, before going into a scoring situation.

Well, that's not going to happen, so I'll concentrate on Fates and any other advice that turns up.

I'll be searching around for a FFXIV "Novice" web forum site, if you know of one, I'd appreciate.


Thanks much!
The Mongoose

Mongoose have your tried the Guildhests? The are little mini instances that you access through the duty finder, it will put you in a party and they are very short, about 5 mins long. You could do them over and over to practice until you feel ready to do the first dungeon.

The targeting in general in this game drives me absolutely yonkers. I hope they fix it. I've never played a game with tab targeting before, but it seems like the AI could be a lot better; as in the tabbing focuses on the mobs nearest you first, rather than the ones three malms away.

It is also very hard to click on targets. The click boxes should be larger.

(10-03-2013, 09:11 AM)Magellan Wrote: [ -> ]The targeting in general in this game drives me absolutely yonkers. I hope they fix it. I've never played a game with tab targeting before, but it seems like the AI could be a lot better; as in the tabbing focuses on the mobs nearest you first, rather than the ones three malms away.

It is also very hard to click on targets. The click boxes should be larger.

^THIS.

I also hate it when you're in the middle of getting mobbed and then targets overlap and you end up hitting a non-aggro enemy and so it joins in eating you alive. :[

It seems to be exactly the type of tab targeting FFXI had, which I started with and quickly got used to, based on visible targets on your screen starting with the closest one and moving left to right across the screen, regardless of distance from the target.

When I moved to other games that used different systems, it threw me for a loop for a long time. Of course, that was like ten years ago and coming back to this I'm going @_@, but I expect it'll begin to feel like old hat again soon.

That being said, I doubt they'll "fix" it. Though maybe if people are vocal enough. They are doing a lot more listening to player complaints than they have in the past.

Hi Aeslyn Grey, and others,

Thanks very much for replying, and for boosting my morale! I updated my profile to indicate being a Novice, and Level-13 Archer, and I plan to avoid switching back to Gladiator for the rest of the levels. So far, I think that Archer is more fun than getting up close and personal with the enemies as a gladiator. Well, that's just me, everyone is different.

There's a ton of stuff I should have read prior to Aug 27th, particularly the FFXIV Realm Reborn Dictionary. Prior to Aug 27, I casually played FF-13 in order to become a good FFXIV player, and ended up getting the crap beat out of me.

Aselyn Grey, thanks for turning me onto Guildheists. I'll be looking for them. I did see a YouTube video about guildheists where it was stressed that "spam healing" causes bad things to happen. But I have to keep looking (for Guildheist examples and for actual Guildheists) to find out, step by step, how to engage in a guildheist properly. I have done individual Leves with mixed outcomes.

Thanks again,
Mongoose