This is the only thing I really don’t like about ffxiv. I have fallen in love with the game and nearly everything about it up to this point and this is the only thing I would like to fix but I can’t find a way to fix it.
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This is the only thing I really don’t like about ffxiv. I have fallen in love with the game and nearly everything about it up to this point and this is the only thing I would like to fix but I can’t find a way to fix it.
source
I don't know what advice really to give, I play with console and controller and have auto-target equipped, otherwise I use the party list, but obviously that only works with a fixed number of active targets. I hope someone has some answers in the comments. Good luck with finding a solution.
What I personally use for situations like what you described is to use a "target nearest" keybind and then just orbit around that enemy to line up my aoes
I use the enemy target list to switch targets in tightly packed mobs. It takes a bit to get a feel for figuring out who is who but it allows you to click through each enemy quickly.
TSLAYP.
Yeah, targeting with line attacks can be a little painful at times. Not sure I have a fix to give either. I have it set up so that it auto-targets the nearest enemy as soon as I use an ability without any target kinda like in WoW.
And if it's the wrong enemy, I just tab until I do and in the worst case scenario I click the normal way, but by that time, the tank usually stopped running already and the enemies are grouped up. Anyway, I do understand your feelings, as I main a Dragoon, and Dragoon normal GCD AoE rotation is all line attacks.
I found this really interesting because I play with a controller and just move the left stick to see the enemy and simply press the X key, or left or right d-pad to target what I want.
Or just up and down for party target.
It may not be a terrible idea to post this issue on the official formus. It’s it’s an issue than maybe it can get fixed by the devs, or you could get advice from other players that see the post.
Have you tried using right click instead? Maybe that will work for the style you're going for.
I only suggest this because the right mouse button on my mouse is starting to show signs of wear and tear (double click with a single click) and it causes problems when I'm trying to move the camera when it ends up selecting a target instead… Or maybe it's just my mouse issue. Regardless, hope you find the fix you're looking for!
Oh and for tab targeting, switching it to Cone Targeting made it as close to WoW tab targeting as it gets for me. Better than whatever the default is for my style of play.
The reason you don't have this issue with the HUD is because the HUD is separate to the Game Engine, this is a game engine issue. The HUD is an entirely different system which is overlayed over the render window which is the game engine. The HUD has seen the most love and the highest amount of attention by the devs since ARR released and has seen multiple iterations over the years, getting updated every single expansion. The HUD was written from scratch for FFXIV by the devs while the game engine unfortunately wasn't, which is why the HUD is wonderful and the game engine is clunky, I'll explain…
Luminous Engine was designed for the PS3, not the PC, which is where all these issues derive. When ARR was being made, the primary focus was to get FFXIV into a smooth runnable state for Playstation. That was top priority. Everything else was secondary, the developers managed to meet all their goals, but it was extreme crunch, there was a lot of spaghetti code and poor documentation, which came back to bite them in the butt down the track because for a long time the devs had no idea how they could implement things they wanted to implement because they simply did not have any time to experiment or reverse engineer to figure out how to, not till recently now they have the budget, expertise and development team size to do so.
So, welcome to issues with a bad game engine which the devs are keenly aware of and have mentioned in the past, but most of the community who play the game seem to be oblivious to for the most part. Unfortunately this is one of the issues which will never be fixed because it is on the framework level, deeply rooted within the game engine itself and it was never addressed by Square Enix because FFXIV runs on a game engine which was designed to run on the Playstation 3 and was ported to the PC, without getting too technical here, the mouse cursor is 'hooked' from the HUD into the engine, it doesn't move in the engine, it is fixed in the engine like on old consoles, what we see is on the HUD level and the engine is told wherever the mouse is is centre of target instead, because it was designed for previous gen consoles it doesn't natively recognise a mouse cursor – the devs hooked it onto the engine using the framework which links it to the HUD which is why it has these weird issues because it is bug prone, the PC version of FFXIV has always been a port of a console game, where the cursor is fixed to the screen in a single position and the camera moves the cursor, not the mouse, so there is a bug conflict whenever you move both at the same time on PC.
The development team put every effort they could spare into attempting to make it an enjoyable and functional experience on PC and slowly over the past 10 years they have with each expansion managed to improve the experience over time and have updated the engine over time. The developers solution to this problem was to sidestep it rather than address it, that came in two separate updates, a new camera system they added half way through ARR that restored 1.0's camera and a selection system they added in an update they added in Stormblood that gave players additional targeting options to tab cycle by proximity so they didn't have to click on enemies to initiate tab selection first (press tab to select nearest enemy automatically), a 3rd solution was later added for dynamic targeting few in the community are aware of which highlights a target with an arrow and box symbol called focus target, focus target has to be applied manually and using a macro, this is the same as a focus target system in games like Legend of Zelda, your camera and character will have a fixed directional movement in proximity to the target. The problem is… the original issue is still there and the game has all the original settings as default, so new players have to suffer all the old systems, so they have to manually go into their game's settings and change them to the better system themselves, it is one of the most requested things people ask for help with in Novice Network.
But even still, little things like this issue linger because it was sidestepped instead of fixed; The engine is getting a massive overhaul for 7.0, here is hoping this issue is one of the issues getting addressed alongside the increased texture resolution and reworked lighting systems.
Personally I just click my aggro table for specific targets.
I'm a controller player but I understand the targeting frustrations. I think by this point most of us that have been playing for a while "just deal with it" and kinda forget how frustrating it is when you're starting out. Hope you're able to get some traction on this or if failing that at least find a setup that works for you.
It's mostly just a thing you get used to. Though I'm not sure what's going on with your click targeting. It should work but it seems like you're holding down the mouse button for slightly too long which causes it to drag the camera instead of just clicking.
As for advice, I'm assuming that when you're talking about all this and specifically with aoe, you're mainly talking about when you're in a dungeon. When it comes to that, I would say don't worry about targeting/lining things up precisely while you're still moving and the tank is still grabbing stuff. Just target what you can and build up the things you need for your class (so for monk just get your damage buff), and then once the tanks stops moving and things group up, then you can worry about properly lining things up and hitting everything.
Also another thing that can help is instead of worrying about targeting a specific enemy to line things up, instead just move your character to line things up based on whatever you're targeting.