Oh, PLEASE... make selectively clicking on an enemy optional

I've refrained from posting in this thread, but there are a few questions that have been bugging me about this suggestion...

A scenario: a marauder is attacking an enemy. He clicks and holds to name-lock and initiate his attacks. The enemy dies. The nearest enemy is a few yards away. Would he be able to simply hold his attack button and hover over the next enemy to acquire name-lock and move within melee range? Or, would this mechanic require the next enemy to already be within melee range? The first would seem odd, as a player could constantly move and attack with one click as long as there are enemies on the screen. The second would make more sense, as you should have to manually initiate the movement.

Would this work for anything other than normal attacks?
If not, it almost seems a waste as skills tend the make up the majority of attacks.

If you're using single-target attacks, you have to name-lock unless you get a lucky hit. If you mis-click, you miss the target. Aiming is one of the few parts of the game that requires physical gaming skill from the player. Many enemies run away from you, requiring you to click on them to get name-lock. Hovering seems counter-intuitive to this system. Would you be able to get name-lock by simply hovering on a ranged enemy after attacking another within melee range? That seems far too easy.

Managing your targeting is one of the challenges of the game. You have to watch your health, mana, and where you're aiming. If you could just hold and hover to attack, melee tanks could simply sit in a group of mobs and move the cursor in a circle, concentrating on flask usage until everything is dead. Again, this seems like it just makes the game easier.

How would it be balanced for ranged and casters to get the same effect?
If a bow user is to hit an enemy, he has to click on it or fire at a point collinear with himself and the enemy. The same is true for projectile spells like Fireball and Ice Spear. Would hovering offer the same effects for these characters? They could hold shift and fire randomly in the general direction of the enemy, but it's far easier to actually click on the enemy. Sure, they could just spam AoE, but melee has/will have plenty of AoE as well, so that point is invalid.

Overall, I have to agree with BrecMadak's post: this would make the game easier by removing one of the small elements that requires physical ability on the player's part (aiming). Is it really too much to ask that you click on your enemies to attack them?

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WhiteBoy88 wrote:

If you're using single-target attacks, you have to name-lock unless you get a lucky hit.

Fixing this would be a first step, yes. "Aiming to click on a monster" is neither an interesting nor a particularly rewarding skill.

Fix what? You have to swing at your target; clicking on an enemy shows that you are intending to hit it. Are you suggesting that you should be able to stand still and simply swing your weapon around to hit things without specifically aiming at them?

Personally, I find it extremely rewarding when my character attacks the enemy I aimed at and clicked on. Aiming at your enemies with the intent to hit them isn't what I would call a minuscule aspect of the game, after all. Considering that there is almost no other required physical gaming skills, I think aiming and clicking has a good place in this game. It's a far more interesting and rewarding skill that simply placing your cursor over the enemy.

The list tag is broken and ate my post :( I don't have time to retype it now.

I am going to have to be against this, simply for the fact that some other posters have listed. Their literally is only "clicking" required for this game, if you are that lazy that you cant "re-aim" your cursor for the next monster that is incoming, then seriously, go do something else.

This is something that is literally useless. You should not be able to hold the mouse button down, for the entire duration of a dungeon.

Player Enters Tidal Passage
Player Holds down Left Mouse button
Player moves with Left Mouse button
Player Attacks cluster of enemies without releasing left mouse button
Player continues to move through Tidal passage



Are you serious? Why even play the game if all you have to do for each section is click the left mouse button, normal attack. To move, run, target, retarget, and continue to move afterwards?

Come on guys... You want the game to play itself for you too?

No, I want a game that requires more than just attacking every single enemy in sequence until all are dead. This is purely convenience and not fighting the UI. It's a component of every major game in the genre, and none of them have suffered for it. This is only useful when you have a horde to fight through; if there were actual threats, you'd need to respond to those by being more judicious with the mouse. It does not replace any meaningful player skill.

If clicking on an enemy is difficult, that is an interface bug and should be treated as such.

But, clicking on enemies isn't any more difficult than pointing at them. You still have to aim effectively with the cursor. I don't see how you can blame the UI if you mis-click. If you miss, chances are either you or the enemy were moving, which makes clicking them slightly less easy. That, or your cursor wasn't really aimed at the enemy, and hover-attacking won't fix your aim.

Removing the necessity of clicking is just for the sake of laziness, in my opinion. I'm not saying it won't work in the game, I just think it's nowhere near worth the time and effort to add it when the system works perfectly fine as it is.

If you don't want to click on each mob in a horde, use AoE.

You haven't noticed that it's damn-near-impossible to click on the stupid little spitters? With right-click driving, you don't have to: if you are holding down right-click, and there is a spitter between you and where your cursor is, you'll start attacking it.

And your point about AoE is exactly my point: this is not an important part of the game. Most builds avoid it. And GGG already said that AoE is too important and they want to bring melee up to snuff. This is one of the ways. Because it allows you to deal with large hordes seamlessly and fluidly.

There is no loss of challenge, except if you include, e.g. the glitchiness inherent in trying to click on a spitter. This is because the real challenge of the game is about positioning. It's about not getting surrounded, not getting ambushed. Taking down enemies using all of your skills.

Right-click driving doesn't let you do all that. It only lets you actually attack the things you intend to attack and saves your mouse button from lots of needless clicking.

To me, the issue isn't so much about how much clicking is required, as about coming up with an interface mechanic for melee attacks that has a similar functionality to shift-clicking for ranged attacks - the ability to direct an attack in a direction rather than caring exactly who you're targeting.
"Right-click driving" just happens to fit that functionality.

I really really find annoying fighting ranged enemies with melee, they run asap you get close to them, that kiting is annoying specially when you are surrounded by 5+ archers, that hit as hard as you and move as fast as you.

In my opinion ranged enemies should move slower.