gurugeorge
Arcane
Yes, but that's not what makes it action or not. Selecting an enemy to attack is just an interface convention. The question is whether or not actors can DO anything about incoming attacks, or whether the ability to see attacks at all is purely cosmetic. See below.Tab targeting isn't a "user convention for aiming attacks" it's literally not aiming attacks, it is selecting an an enemy to attack.
Yes, this is commonly what happens, but is not intrinsically tied to the notion of "tab-target", which is just an interface convention, that of pressing a button to direct attacks at a target. You can have a game that features this same interface convention, but once you let the attack loose, it's a physically simulated action that hits or misses based on whether or not actually hits an enemy.People use this distinction because of how tab-target games work mechanically. Enemy casts a spell at you, you move behind a corner, still get hit as the spell flies through geometry. You walk up to an enemy and take damage before their attack animation even plays out. Or you walk up, then walk away, and still get hit as their weapon swings at air.
Conversely, you can have a game which plays through an shooter-type interface, yet exhibits exactly the behavior above because it is not actually "action" combat.
I know this because there's a shitty MMO I've played that behaves in exactly the manner described, but in the console version, has a shooter interface instead...and yet it's exactly the same game mechanically. The shooter interface instead of tab-target has not changed the underlying nature of the game, only the user interface.
I get the point that people whine about tab targeting because of what Gerrard says, but to me that's absolutely trivial and irrelevant to the point anyway. Whiners could be satisfied by the tweak you mentioned, but presumably it's not common because it's just an extra layer of work for devs, for not much ROI. The point I'm making about tab targeting is about the relative ease of use while chatting, that's the only thing that interests me about it in the context of MMOs. Tabbing through targets and having the more abstracted combat is much easier when you're text chatting than faffing about trying to manually aim at things.
Action combat (or whatever you want to call it) sounds like a good idea, it sounds exciting, it sounds like something you'd want; but it's been just another nail in the coffin of socialization in MMOs (one among many, as you've said).