I also failed the actual nadaam twice because I couldn't get my target to land on the specified enemy

I think there's something about aggro and aggressive vs passive enemies that affects targeting priority and that might have had something to do with it

the enemies doing the capture thing had a different name color and they just weren't coming up as I cycled the list

I have still not bothered to learn or remember that one garlean dude with the big hammer's name and that feels narratively appropriate

Targeting is. Bad in this game.

I've tried tab targeting with like 5+ enemies aggroed on me and the game is like, "oh do you want to target the passive unaggroed enemy 20y away and not one of the five guys currently punching your face?"

and yes it is extremely narratively appropriate that you don't bother to learn Grynewaht's name, despite all of his namedays coming at once, all the time

I think he only refers to you by your name like once. The rest of the time he just calls you "Eorzean," like, not even Warrior of Light. Just "Eorzean." Even your other enemies call you Warrior of Light.

I'm not sure how it is on controller but on kb/m the weirdness from tab targetting comes from being based on distance from the centrepoint, which literally no other game does

i usually select off the aggro list now