Guild Wars 2

The problem:

Consider a fight, with hostile monster (let’s call him Bob), chasing fleeing player A. Nearby, player B is standing around idle, perhaps AFK entirely. Player A runs past player B, and Bob says “aahhh, fresh meat!” Bob then proceeds to eat player B’s face off. Yum!

The consequence:

Player A might be fleeing a fight going poorly. Or might be simply ignoring Bob and Bob’s friends and just running through the area. Or in the worst case scenario, player A might be maliciously dragging Bob over to player B, “for the luls.”

In addition to the idle player B scenario, player B might be already fighting Bob’s friends. Nothing say fun like being in a fight and having someone else drag a whole bunch more to you (and then, typically, fleeing — since the lured Bobs will stick around to fight).

The solution:

Alter the aggro table so that proximity is not the only deciding factor on what Bob attacks. If Bob is chasing player A because of a previous fight, make Bob smart enough to remember that it’s player A that hurt him, not player B. As such, Bob will ignore player B unless player B also attacks him. Hooray!

I’m sure it’s not quite as simple as I make it out to be, but for a game with tons of cooperation involved, it strikes me as really poor design that someone can “grief” other players simply by training things onto them.

I don’t think that would work so well because then it would essentially turn all enemies into neutrals.

Can’t really think of a way in which this could be griefable, unless the player in question is AFK, at which point, don’t go AFK in the middle of an area.

Goatjugsoup.8637:

I don’t think that would work so well because then it would essentially turn all enemies into neutrals.

Only if someone else is fighting an enemy already.

Consider “Bob” standing out in a field. Not neutral, but not attacking anyone. Player A walks up, and Bob sees him, and poof, attacks. Just like it is now.

Player B walks up to the fight, and Bob is already concentrating on player A. So Bob doesn’t stop attacking player A, unless player A dies, or player B also attacks Bob. Not too different from how it is now.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Can’t really think of a way in which this could be griefable, unless the player in question is AFK, at which point, don’t go AFK in the middle of an area.

I’ve had people drag enemies over to a vista — where I should have been safe, since no enemies are normally in that particular spot (not saying all vistas are safe, but the one I was at… yeah, you get the idea). I wasn’t entirely AFK, but looking on the map for the next thing for map completion. Suddenly fighting four things that someone dragged over — and then that someone left, because those things started attacking me instead of him. Could that have been intentional? Sure.

I’ve been in fights with groups of enemies. Some chucklehead runs through, followed by five or six enemies. Directly past me, where the fight is already not going too well. Chucklehead leaves, but the enemies are closer to me than him, so they start attacking me instead. I die. Could this be intentional? Absolutely.

I’ve watched people drag extra enemies into dynamic events, in hopes that it would fail. I watched those same people go out and drag in some more. Could that be intentional? Without question.

I could go on. These aren’t definitive proof that someone is griefing, but the game is set up so that it’s very easily done.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Can’t really think of a way in which this could be griefable, unless the player in question is AFK, at which point, don’t go AFK in the middle of an area.

It can be. I’ve been in a fight with mobs and someone ran more right to me. I couldn’t tell you for sure if it was intentional or not, but I can see it being problematic.

+1 to OP. I also don’t see why a monster should aggro to you once its out of its camped position (provided that you don’t hit it.)

But if I get attacked by an enemy, and run away, and run past someone who’s AFK, doesn’t it make more sense for an enemy to attack the one that doesn’t run?

Also, stop going AFK in the middle of an area where enemies spawn. If you die doing that, it’s your own fault.

misterducky.4876:

Also, stop going AFK in the middle of an area where enemies spawn. If you die doing that, it’s your own fault.

As mentioned a few times already, this is only one of a few different scenarios where training enemies is a problem.

If I go AFK in a spot where events/enemies normally appear, I fully agree. It’d be my own fault if I got killed.

On the flip side, though, if I go AFK where enemies don’t normally show up, and someone else drags enemies over and I die, it’s not my fault. It’s the fault of the other person and the poor aggro system based on proximity.

To respond to your first paragraph, it makes a certain amount of sense — unfortunately it’s at the cost of potential griefing, something that GW2 is usually pretty good about preventing. I’d favor a system that’s a little less “realistic” in terms of preventing situations where someone can interfere with another’s game play.