Remove the mob aggro and hit caps?

[Ignitros]

Is there a way to remove the aggro and hit caps? Maybe make it something you toggle on and off by selection or choice in game menu?

[Rudra]

Aggro caps were added to the game to stop Tankers from herding entire maps and hit caps were added to stop Blasters from obliterating those herded mobs. So they aren't going to be removed or made optional.

 

Edited November 24, 2024 by Rudra
Edited to change "zones" to "maps".

[Glacier Peak]

39 minutes ago, Ignitros said:

Is there a way to remove the aggro and hit caps? Maybe make it something you toggle on and off by selection or choice in game menu?

There is not. The Homecoming team has indicated they do not support changing the aggro cap beyond what they've already done.

[DrRocket]

Also they were able to add challenge by leaving support classes exposed, since the taunter can't keep all the aggroe...

[Ghost]

8 hours ago, DrRocket said:

Also they were able to add challenge by leaving support classes exposed, since the taunter can't keep all the aggroe...

Oh no.

How DARE there be any type of possible challenge in this game!

 

[Uun]

Just to be clear, the aggro cap and target limits were implemented by the original devs in 2005 (I5).

[Snarky]

16 hours ago, Ignitros said:

Is there a way to remove the aggro and hit caps? Maybe make it something you toggle on and off by selection or choice in game menu?

I came into the game on live late.  2? Years in.  I bought the “Good vs Evil” edition at a local game store and started a villain on Liberty.  Fing ghost town lol.  And yet….

 

Even then you could find an “old timer” dying to tell you stories of Tankers herding all of Perez Park in a parade or herding countless mobs to a dumpster where a Blaster would melt the trash.  And I am sure you can still find these wizened creatures.  
 

as stated above the OG devs quickly realized the game was unbalanced without agro caps and hit caps. The random? Number they selected has now become the basis for balancing mob placement in every mission TF SF and Trial created since then. What you are asking is like requesting if driving through parks could be optional.  The city is just not designed for it.  

[lemming]

21 minutes ago, Snarky said:

 And I am sure you can still find these wizened creatures.

I was there.   It was boring AF for anyone not the tanker.

[Greycat]

2 hours ago, lemming said:

I was there.   It was boring AF for anyone not the tanker.

 

Seconded. I remember many, many times having the rest of the team just be told "wait here" while the tanker and maybe an emp ran off, herded the level and brought them to a point (for one blaster to nuke.)

 

Aggro caps are a *good* thing. If they hadn't introduced them, I'm pretty sure we'd have been seeing a shutdown much earlier than 2012, and nobody'd have bothered trying to bring it back.

[biostem]

They will remove the aggro caps once they implement AI intelligent enough to realize said tanker isn't the real threat...

[Jacke]

On 11/24/2024 at 12:18 AM, Ignitros said:

Is there a way to remove the aggro and hit caps? Maybe make it something you toggle on and off by selection or choice in game menu?

 

Besides what @Rudra and @Snarky have said, if the Aggro Caps were removed, there would be a whole lot more Tanker defeats.  Those halcyon times in the past were also before things like the Global Defense Nerf and Enhancement Diversification.  Just allowing mobs above the Aggro limit to attack in Issue 27 Page 5 made Farming more complex as the Farming Build had to be exacting not to fall to more attacks.  Removing the Aggro Caps on Tankers would be brutal, especially for less than optimal builds.

[Excraft]

18 hours ago, Greycat said:

Seconded. I remember many, many times having the rest of the team just be told "wait here" while the tanker and maybe an emp ran off, herded the level and brought them to a point (for one blaster to nuke.)

 

This was fun for a while, but did get old quickly and I'm glad they did add the aggro caps.  The game is much more interesting with aggro caps than without.

[Telifusious]

First: the aggro cap, the hit cap and the taunt cap all affect different things. 

The aggro cap is bad and makes the game very boring. A lot of the player base stopped playing because of it and that's when the game became a "wait for the next patch" game. 

the hit cap and the taunt cap are fine with the current state of the game, but the aggro cap needs to be removed, imo. it will speed up the game's pace and make this old game more exciting for what it lacks. its not a bad thing to push the limits of some of these powerful builds. living on the edge and surviving is what made this game one of the best mmos. 

A lot of the problems with herding was fixed with the hit cap, and when mob body collision was added, stopping mobs from jumping into each other. 

 

i love Coh, this game has had me since beta, but it's too slow to hold my attention for long. i can't even get my girl or my old buddies to play for long over the other games, we really only come back for the nostalgia. Even when we reflect on the game we always talk about how the aggro cap, not the taunt cap or hit cap, takes away a big part of the games edge. 

Edited Wednesday at 12:04 AM by Telifusious

[biostem]

4 hours ago, Telifusious said:

The aggro cap is bad and makes the game very boring

OK, but I find "dumpster diving", back when there were no aggro limits, extremely boring and un-fun as well, so how do we reconcile your suggestion?

Edited Wednesday at 04:31 AM by biostem

[Super Atom]

no

 

but also could we get Beta server mini-events where Homecoming does silly things like remove aggro cap/hit caps for like a week  just for funsies and to also help people understand why we don't do that

[tidge]

From my perspective, the increased PBAoE radius for Tankers (on HC) more than makes up for whatever "fun" Tankers could derive from herding enormous numbers of critters. I was playing a Tanker since Launch day, and except from being able to easily survive hundreds of Rikti Monkeys (after first expansion) it was usually more fun just to play a Scrapper.

[battlewraith]

The reason people waited around for a tanker to herd an entire map or sat in a dumpster waiting to blow things up was because the other classes were a lot squishier back then and people were looking for an efficient way to grind xp quickly. There were no double xp buffs available from vendors. There were no incarnate nukes or destiny shields. Etc. I often had blasters bugging me to team (on a dm/inv scrapper) because they couldn't handle aggro. 

 

It's always amusing to hear people justify nerfs because things were boring or unfun. I mean...did someone have a gun at your head making you wait on a tank? I was around from the beginning and did not have a problem avoiding this sort of thing if I didn't want to do it.

 

I agree with the post above that the aggro cap at least should go.

 

 

[Ghost]

 

I seriously doubt people left in droves because the aggro cap was put into place.  
 

As for “fun”.  
Fun for who?  The tank and blasters?

oh yippee 🙄🙄🙄

[Oklahoman]

It's hard to imagine it would even be possible to code this, and probably the benefit to the community might not be that great, but I've always thought it would be fun if AE could allow you to create stuff where you could tweak some rules like this in exchange for considerably lower (or possibly no) rewards. So, you wanna know what it's like to herd an entire map? Go run AE #8675309 and let me know how it was.

[kelika2]

ok but pets have enemies become tethered to their spawn spot, like if you go too far away they just run back and reset

 

i mean, the leader on the map or someone else ordered them to guard and stay there

[Troo]

On 11/23/2024 at 4:18 PM, Ignitros said:

Is there a way to remove the aggro and hit caps? Maybe make it something you toggle on and off by selection or choice in game menu?

On 4/22/2025 at 5:03 PM, Telifusious said:

The aggro cap is bad and makes the game very boring.

 

Hi there one post wonders. It is my opinion players can actually affect the aggro cap (just bring a pet, that's one way). Holding aggro, well that's a different story.

 

Troof, there is currently a very clever aggro cap which is quite high. It is (player + #teammates + #pets) * 17 = Aggro Cap "(the limit is unknown at this time)"

 

"The aggro cap for a single character is 17 enemies. A character can get the attention of others, but only by shedding the aggro of one of their current enemies, either by defeat or by extension: attacking a non-aggroed enemy will release one of the currently-aggroed enemies from the character's aggro list. A character with pets can aggro more than 17 enemies, since the pets have their own aggro list (the limit is unknown at this time)."

 

Sooooooo if a player or team has enough pets they could theoretically aggro way too many targets. 

The way targets behave currently could easily overwhelm even the toughest characters.

 

Note: Good luck keeping those teammates alive.

 

 

ps: I'm surprised no one mentioned +#/8 as a way to increase spawn sizes. I guess that's not aggro or hit caps.

[Ghost]

One post wonder 🤭🤭🤭

[Greycat]

On 4/23/2025 at 7:05 AM, battlewraith said:

The reason people waited around for a tanker to herd an entire map or sat in a dumpster waiting to blow things up was because the other classes were a lot squishier back then and people were looking for an efficient way to grind xp quickly.

 

 

... or because that was the *predominant way teams ran.* It was insanely boring, and for many teams if you tried to do *anything* else you got complained at and/or kicked.  It was right on the list with "If you don't want to be bombarded with blind invites on your emp when you hit 42, go on hide" and "jump in a dumpster and spam burn." I didn't want "an efficient way to grind XP," I wanted to *play the game.* There was even *less* reason back then to rush to 50 - no Incarnates, no inventions, and if you wanted to run a lower level TF or mission, you had to hope someone ELSE was running it (and that you - or the person who was exemping you - didn't have a connection issue, or you'd be booted.)

8 hours ago, Ghost said:

One post wonder 🤭🤭🤭

 

I don't wonder at all. >.>

[battlewraith]

2 hours ago, Greycat said:

... or because that was the *predominant way teams ran.*

 

Which, if true, means that the majority of people at the time were doing something you didn't like. You were in the minority. And you're celebrating the fact that the playstyle you didn't like got nerfed, so that people like you--instead of playing with each other--got to draw on the pool of people who were nerfed into playing your way. That is the people who stayed around.

[tidge]

17 hours ago, Greycat said:

There was even *less* reason back then to rush to 50 - no Incarnates, no inventions,

 

The *only* reason to rush to 50 was that HEATs got unlocked by having a level 50. Obviously this wasn't a thing *until* HEATs showed up.

 

I'm still not entirely sure what the motivation to rush to level 50 is on Homecoming. I can sort of appreciate a player wanting to see what a full level-50 kit can do, but I've never really bought into the argument that goes like "I'm bored with pre-45 content... so instead I want to run level 45+ over-and-over-again."