Randomdude1223
Well-known member
I have noticed monsters sometimes stand still and do nothing, especially when a high dungeon alert is triggered. Is this wai?
Idle mobs
- Thread starter Randomdude1223
- Start date
kmoustakas
Scourge of Xaos
They tried to update the AI right before Mabar, failed miserably and lobotomised them in an attempt to fix the ensuing lag. Which may or may not have something to do with the numerous endless loops in poorly written AI script. They also stopped pets and hirelings interracting with breakables for the same reason.
Randomdude1223
Well-known member
You'd think they'd rollback that change asap but yeah thanks anyways for the info.
kmoustakas
Scourge of Xaos
Changes are their babies they don't like to roll them back. Runearms still bugnerfed, ladder bug 2 still around, hells the list is forever.
Eoin
Mielikki says the Red Wizard is doing bad stuff
My headcanon is that they added a server load check into the AI code. Once the load hits a certain threshold it puts the AI to sleep in an attempt keep lag under control. The threshold and sleep time probably being in a configuration file that they occasionally remember to set to an appropriate values during restarts. Quest instances probably rolling a D4 at start to see if they load the defaults or read the config.
Mechgraber
Well-known member
Yes, in certain dungeons especially. This has been happening for months. Go into any of the nodes of TOEE and you'll probably see it, likely due to there being a huge number of mobs in the map (400+?).
Makes it easier when the monsters don't fight back I guess. We kept popping vengies next to dooms in r10 and no one cared because everything just stood there. Don't need crowd control when the crowd controls itself.
At first this was kind of wild, and a bit fun. It got old fast.
Makes it easier when the monsters don't fight back I guess. We kept popping vengies next to dooms in r10 and no one cared because everything just stood there. Don't need crowd control when the crowd controls itself.
At first this was kind of wild, and a bit fun. It got old fast.
FaceDancer
Olde Wurm
Idle mobs are the devil's workshop, so yeah WAI! 
Smokewolf
Well-known member
Mobs are practicing the Chinese strategy of "lying flat" in response to bad server conditions and no health benefits. Our attempts to retrieve a statement from the NPC / Mob union about the current situation, were met with more lag...
It's one thing to plow through monsters with powerful characters, but it feels very un-heroic (and boring) to kill monsters that don't try to fight back at all. Even with other persistent minor bugs we know and love, it's shocking that the changes that completely broke the AI a couple of updates ago haven't been rolled back and reconsidered.
JustHavingFunBro
Well-known member
The cynic in me says they are now hiring contractors to make these changes, and once the contractor's term is up no one really knows what happened or how to fix it.
kmoustakas
Scourge of Xaos
This has actually been the case ever since the first turnover of staff so many years ago. With (almost?) no one from the original team, they can't fix systems. They have to remake them from the start.
That's why we see so many old bugs and old mistakes re-appear. New staff doesn't know something already was made wrong. So they repeater the same mistakes and by the time they learn they've already moved to a better position in a different company.
Also, copy-pasting in this game leads to absolute disaster for example copy-pasting AI of mobs. I'm 100% the original thunderholme mobs had the mabar AI hence the lag spikes there.
Example: "What could possibly go wrong if we remove the doubleshot penalty from repeaters... oh. THAT is how doubleshot works? Nobody told me!" And of course nobody could have told them because they weren't around the first time manyshot was changed that resulted to the doubleshot changes and then we changed how doublestrike/doubleshot work in general... It's a damn rabbit hole I tell you!
rabidfox
The People's Champion
Worlds freshly rebooted. 1st quest I step in. There's zero fun in a quest full of mobs that do nothing.
Peated Problems
Active member
The first time it happened it was like when you find a bug and you feel like you're getting one over on the devs.
The second time it was sad. And now... it's just pathetic. It's less game and more meme.
The second time it was sad. And now... it's just pathetic. It's less game and more meme.
Nokowi
Well-known member
I honestly think they would be better off going back to individually coded rooms and scripts. They should be able to use AI to assist with the uniqueness and annoyances of their antiquated coding process.
Back in 2015 they turned on their current aggro system for ToEE during the rogue pass. It got a very poor response from the players council. Instead of working with these players to have interactions that make sense, they shelved the agro system for a later date without player input. Once implemented, they put a 3 year ban on talking to players that cared most about these interactions. All I can say is there was plenty of time to have these interactions working in a way that is lag free and intuitive for the player base. ToEE was the perfect test-bed to get this correct. That's 9 years of wasted time.
Hopefully what you see with mobs not moving is just a stop-gap until they get things working better.
I don't have any confidence given their history of ignoring players when they are saying "this is what I enjoy". Instead SSG removes these things in order to "mix it up". You have a player base that is too casual to notice and a player base that is too min/max to care about changes, but many other players get caught in the middle where they are not able to play what they enjoy. I would prefer if I choose when to move on to the next build for my enjoyment. I don't think SSG "mixing it up" by removing what players are currently enjoying is a good design philosophy.
Had they worked with the players most affected by lag, issues would largely have been resolved before they affected the player base as a whole.
Back in 2015 they turned on their current aggro system for ToEE during the rogue pass. It got a very poor response from the players council. Instead of working with these players to have interactions that make sense, they shelved the agro system for a later date without player input. Once implemented, they put a 3 year ban on talking to players that cared most about these interactions. All I can say is there was plenty of time to have these interactions working in a way that is lag free and intuitive for the player base. ToEE was the perfect test-bed to get this correct. That's 9 years of wasted time.
Hopefully what you see with mobs not moving is just a stop-gap until they get things working better.
I don't have any confidence given their history of ignoring players when they are saying "this is what I enjoy". Instead SSG removes these things in order to "mix it up". You have a player base that is too casual to notice and a player base that is too min/max to care about changes, but many other players get caught in the middle where they are not able to play what they enjoy. I would prefer if I choose when to move on to the next build for my enjoyment. I don't think SSG "mixing it up" by removing what players are currently enjoying is a good design philosophy.
Had they worked with the players most affected by lag, issues would largely have been resolved before they affected the player base as a whole.
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Wow, that is heinous. Haven’t seen it that bad before. Very impressive
rabidfox
The People's Champion
That quest was so bad that even the bosses at the end just stood there while I killed them. The next quest I did was fine. And then...
Some mobs moving, some just standing there. So 2 out of 3 quests today are very subpar gameplay.