U60 Lammania Preview 1 - Monster AI Changes

[J1NG]

Dimension Door, which used to drop aggro on traversing through it, will not do so anymore if the DD lands you close enough to the Red Named boss and they will keep aggro'ing on you and even attempt to zerg towards you to continue the fight. This can potentially cause undesired non-completable quests, either from the Boss running and getting stuck (somewhere high normally I've noticed in Lamannia, any reason why the physics of enemies, especially bosess were altered again?) or ending up somewhere they shouldn't in an effort to reach you (players need to make sure there are no fall traps or locations where Bosses can take a dive into and whom then won't teleport back to get out, or they immediately zerg towards you again).

Invisibility also suffers from the same fate. A Boss will keep aggro and never drop back to a neutral state again if within a certain proxmity whilst no one else claims aggro top spot. Even when there is no Dungeon Alert going.

Not entirely sure this change is ready for prime time, something more needs to be done to prevent accidental aggro stealing and then having a Boss do something no one wants through continued Aggro.

J1NG

 

[The Narc]

Dimension Door, which used to drop aggro on traversing through it, will not do so anymore if the DD lands you close enough to the Red Named boss and they will keep aggro'ing on you and even attempt to zerg towards you to continue the fight. This can potentially cause undesired non-completable quests, either from the Boss running and getting stuck (somewhere high normally I've noticed in Lamannia, any reason why the physics of enemies, especially bosess were altered again?) or ending up somewhere they shouldn't in an effort to reach you (players need to make sure there are no fall traps or locations where Bosses can take a dive into and whom then won't teleport back to get out, or they immediately zerg towards you again).

Invisibility also suffers from the same fate. A Boss will keep aggro and never drop back to a neutral state again if within a certain proxmity whilst no one else claims aggro top spot. Even when there is no Dungeon Alert going.

Not entirely sure this change is ready for prime time, something more needs to be done to prevent accidental aggro stealing and then having a Boss do something no one wants through continued Aggro.

J1NG

These seem like good changes but as you have said jing they may need some tweaking to be more reliable.

This means you cant run to some quest objective and then ddoor because everything will still be aggroed on yoh and still be raising the DA, a good change for the game.

 

[Triaxx2]

Honestly if you manage to lose boss aggro for 5 minutes you should get a popup asking if you'd like half XP and a recall.

 

[Boondocks Mike]

Regarding archer and caster enemies kiting less, I don't really like this change because it devalues using CC or pushing them into a corner as a melee (active gameplay elements).

The quality of the melee combat experience has definitely been chipped away at very significantly. No twitching, fewer cool abilities with unique animations and dynamic usage (Momentum Swing/Lay Waste), the absolute domination of Adrenaline usage. It's pretty stale now.

That said, if this actually reduces lag by an appreciable amount, I suppose it is not a hill worth dying on.

 

[Redoubt]

Are you (have you) looked into chain agro? Some mobs will agro at long distances and pull many groups with them as they path to the party. Reapers are specifically good at this. Frequently through doors, walls, floors and ceilings even.
Just stopping agro through solid objects could remove a lot of unwanted cycles.

 

[nobodynobody1426]

Good plan to change the pathing, as folks have pointed out you guys might want to look at the "aggro sharing" system that is responsible for the sudden massive pathing issues. A player walks by a room, a single monster on the other side "hears" the player and chain links a ton of other monsters who all can't get to the player but spend server cycles trying to anyway.

 

[PurpleSerpent]

Are you (have you) looked into chain agro? Some mobs will agro at long distances and pull many groups with them as they path to the party. Reapers are specifically good at this. Frequently through doors, walls, floors and ceilings even.
Just stopping agro through solid objects could remove a lot of unwanted cycles.

I believe enemies with Tremorsense (Oozes, Spiders, Scorpions) are particularly prone to doing this as well, since the way that ability is coded allows them to detect players through solid objects.

 

[J1NG]

This means you cant run to some quest objective and then ddoor because everything will still be aggroed on yoh and still be raising the DA, a good change for the game.

The issue here is, DD then becomes a rather pointless use spell outside of a fast travel option in very minor circumstances.

Whilst currently, it is possible to utilise it to give yourself time to regroup and gather up to take on a certain part of a quest/raid again (also enemies don't try to path at this point on the Live servers unless if "someone" is nearby, they will remain stationary and not do much more). But with the current implementation on Lamannia, the one with aggro can never leave (and MUST die there to have the Boss drop aggro), else the Boss will remain forever active and cause no end to CPU cycles used to keep them (and anyone else nearby as well in most cases) trying to path their way towards the party member with aggro.

Which is why I said it needs something a bit more. As right now, under certain circumstances, it's actually possible to end up keeping many enemies constantly active and it will never reduce back down either unlike how in Live it can drop back down. Which is entirely counter to what the Devs intentions are.

J1NG

 

[The Narc]

The issue here is, DD then becomes a rather pointless use spell outside of a fast travel option in very minor circumstances.

Whilst currently, it is possible to utilise it to give yourself time to regroup and gather up to take on a certain part of a quest/raid again (also enemies don't try to path at this point on the Live servers unless if "someone" is nearby, they will remain stationary and not do much more). But with the current implementation on Lamannia, the one with aggro can never leave (and MUST die there to have the Boss drop aggro), else the Boss will remain forever active and cause no end to CPU cycles used to keep them (and anyone else nearby as well in most cases) trying to path their way towards the party member with aggro.

Which is why I said it needs something a bit more. As right now, under certain circumstances, it's actually possible to end up keeping many enemies constantly active and it will never reduce back down either unlike how in Live it can drop back down. Which is entirely counter to what the Devs intentions are.

J1NG

Maybe the original devs intentions were for DD to be used as fast travel only and it was never intended to be used to fluff of aggro and give a party time to regroup, you are clearly making an assumption that this was the devs intention.

Please devs can you comment on what the original intention of the use DDoor was.

I suspect(which means i dont claim it to be fact) that the reason thungs are moving forward with aggro remaining after DDoor is that this was never the real intention for DDoor use.

I am quite fine with the devs making the game more challenging and again this looks like an obvious way to hold challenge with something that in my opinion was being used in a somewaht exploitive way. Do i use ddoor, yes, am i ok knowing if inuse it anything aggroed will keep aggro. Yes!

 

[Docjekyll]

I played a bit and found that the monsters were giving up way too easily in some cases. For example, jumping into the (epic) Orchard of the Macabre, there are areas where enemy groups appear very close together but I was finding that I couldn't get 2 or 3 nearby groups of enemies to group together at all, because enemies sometimes seemed to give up after I moved less than 10 meters. I'm guessing that the new logic involves a player move speed calculation(?) because it seemed like if I used a momentary movement ("wings") ability enemies would just give up immediately. It's one thing if I'm 50 meters away and fleeing, but it seemed like enemies were dropping aggro when I was still within range of their abilities. Like, they could literally hit me if they were still aggro'd.


Also, if I was just straight up running past all enemies on horseback, it was indeed much harder to get to RDA. However, I was also seeing the Dungeon Alert level flicker (e.g. green, yellow, green, yellow, green, yellow, green, yellow, green all within the span of 1 second as I hit the edge of one enemy group's range and entered the range of another). The resulting subjective effect for me was that dungeon alert felt less meaningful. It just kind of felt arbitrary--some enemy groups seemed to drop aggro quickly and were therefore not worth killing while others spiked dungeon alert level with no apparent correlation to monster number or type.

(Side note about server load) I wrote the above thoughts last night after playing around with the new aggro mechanics. I just went to try to reproduce the problem and compare wilderness vs quest behavior more closely, and I'm finding that monsters aren't behaving like they were last night. I don't know how DDO server compute time is allocated for monster AI, but is it possible that monsters effectively behave differently when the server is under heavier load?

 

[Drunken.dx]

Mobs with baked in jump back animations will still do those behaviors though.

So those skeleton archers that hop back 1 meter and 5 meters up on rock behind them will still do that.

 

[Torc]

I played a bit and found that the monsters were giving up way too easily in some cases. For example, jumping into the (epic) Orchard of the Macabre, there are areas where enemy groups appear very close together but I was finding that I couldn't get 2 or 3 nearby groups of enemies to group together at all, because enemies sometimes seemed to give up after I moved less than 10 meters. I'm guessing that the new logic involves a player move speed calculation(?) because it seemed like if I used a momentary movement ("wings") ability enemies would just give up immediately. It's one thing if I'm 50 meters away and fleeing, but it seemed like enemies were dropping aggro when I was still within range of their abilities. Like, they could literally hit me if they were still aggro'd.


Also, if I was just straight up running past all enemies on horseback, it was indeed much harder to get to RDA. However, I was also seeing the Dungeon Alert level flicker (e.g. green, yellow, green, yellow, green, yellow, green, yellow, green all within the span of 1 second as I hit the edge of one enemy group's range and entered the range of another). The resulting subjective effect for me was that dungeon alert felt less meaningful. It just kind of felt arbitrary--some enemy groups seemed to drop aggro quickly and were therefore not worth killing while others spiked dungeon alert level with no apparent correlation to monster number or type.

(Side note about server load) I wrote the above thoughts last night after playing around with the new aggro mechanics. I just went to try to reproduce the problem and compare wilderness vs quest behavior more closely, and I'm finding that monsters aren't behaving like they were last night. I don't know how DDO server compute time is allocated for monster AI, but is it possible that monsters effectively behave differently when the server is under heavier load?

Monsters treat mounted players differently, their less likely to aggro and if they do aggro they break aggro quicker, and if the target is mounted and a decent distance away they'll remove themselves from the dungeon alert level to, so dungeon alert doesn't stick to much if you move through a landscape mounted. This is by design.

 

[Torc]

Dimension Door, which used to drop aggro on traversing through it, will not do so anymore if the DD lands you close enough to the Red Named boss and they will keep aggro'ing on you and even attempt to zerg towards you to continue the fight. This can potentially cause undesired non-completable quests, either from the Boss running and getting stuck (somewhere high normally I've noticed in Lamannia, any reason why the physics of enemies, especially bosess were altered again?) or ending up somewhere they shouldn't in an effort to reach you (players need to make sure there are no fall traps or locations where Bosses can take a dive into and whom then won't teleport back to get out, or they immediately zerg towards you again).

Invisibility also suffers from the same fate. A Boss will keep aggro and never drop back to a neutral state again if within a certain proxmity whilst no one else claims aggro top spot. Even when there is no Dungeon Alert going.

Not entirely sure this change is ready for prime time, something more needs to be done to prevent accidental aggro stealing and then having a Boss do something no one wants through continued Aggro.

J1NG

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying bosses aren't dropping aggro if you use a Dimension Door? I they appear to be in my testing. Is there a particular quest you can point me to?

 

[J1NG]

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying bosses aren't dropping aggro if you use a Dimension Door? I they appear to be in my testing. Is there a particular quest you can point me to?

The quest I was testing at the time on Lamannia and found this issue occuring was in the Saltmarsh quest "Back to Basics" on Reaper 10. Magus Winfred (Thaumaturgist), would, even with no DoT (Damage over Time) effects on time, or any Dungeon Alert, after using Dimension Door, due to the proximity of where you travel to not being far enough away from the them, they would continue aggro on you, and will zerg over to the starting spawn point in quick order.

Invisibility would be of no aid either. Before or after use. They will continue to attack nearby. It's not until you run away (invisible) far enough away from them into the quest where they will finally stop aggro and attacking the air around them where they last knew you to be located at.

They also appear to have developed Kobold leaping skills, as quite a few occasions I found them on an invisible ledge.

J1NG

 

[Torc]

The quest I was testing at the time on Lamannia and found this issue occuring was in the Saltmarsh quest "Back to Basics" on Reaper 10. Magus Winfred (Thaumaturgist), would, even with no DoT (Damage over Time) effects on time, or any Dungeon Alert, after using Dimension Door, due to the proximity of where you travel to not being far enough away from the them, they would continue aggro on you, and will zerg over to the starting spawn point in quick order.

Invisibility would be of no aid either. Before or after use. They will continue to attack nearby. It's not until you run away (invisible) far enough away from them into the quest where they will finally stop aggro and attacking the air around them where they last knew you to be located at.

They also appear to have developed Kobold leaping skills, as quite a few occasions I found them on an invisible ledge.

J1NG

Interesting....I shall investigate. Thank you for this report.

 

[Edrein]

So with the goal of saving on path cycles to keep lag off the server we recently reworked monster AI in several ways.

1. Better De-aggro logic: Monsters will now be bit better about dropping aggro against players they have no hope of catching, and dropping aggro against players who passed them by but were never primary targets and might be long gone. Note this does not effect the duration they'll contribute to dungeon alert, only killing them or waiting for the alert to cooldown will do that once they've aggro'd and added to the alert level.

2. Skips going home: Monsters will no longer try to path home when they drop aggro. Sometimes these paths could get very long and expensive. We may eventually have them teleport home but given the players may want to go back and re-acquire them we're leaving them where they "lost the player" in this preview. Monsters on landscapes will still leash normally which is the teleport they do with the little yellow stop sign when they get pulled to far off their spawn point.

3. Archer/Casters will generally try to run from you less often when you get close to them. These AIs when they got jammed into corners would spend a lot of time failing to find a good spot, and we feel it's not worth the server cycles. An Archer/Caster will still occasionally move away from you, especially when they first aggro, but typically won't spend cycles trying to maintain distance anymore. Mobs with baked in jump back animations will still do those behaviors though.

So with this in mind can we please change the fear effect in the Acolyte of the Skin tree to use the cower in place fears instead of the run away fear?

 

[Cordovan]

Closing this thread as we prepare for preview 2 opening shortly.