Lamannia Preview 2: Pathing Perf Change for Blind Behavior

[Torc]

So a lot of structural changes are occurring in DDO to improve game performance. This thread will focus on one specific change to fix an issue we are seeing where monster pathing locks up on the instance level. Reports of this issue have been increasing gradually over time and we believe we've found the general cause...

This relates to monsters being either...

-Blind

-Chasing a player they already saw but who dropped into stealth afterwards (and have enough distance and hide skill to pull it off)

-Chasing an player who just went invisible

Monsters engaged in these behaviors were causing numerous pathing performance bugs all in the name of "looking really blind and ineffective" when chasing players they couldn't see for whatever reason. We've decide to rein this in somewhat because it's eating to much of our pathing budget. We are uncertain if this became more expensive due to other changes or that blind/invis guard just has become more common in the meta. We do know that this issue has an effect across multi instances so the actions of one party in a dungeon can affect other dungeons.

"I Can't See Target" behavior should now work as follows...

Monsters will now chase an echo of your location when blind or when you are Invis or doing a decent job of stealthing away. As long as the player keeps moving attacks should generally still be significantly impaired to keep the value of these conditions relevant. (Also blind monsters have a 50% miss chance still, as always)​

​

Mobile Ranged Attackers/Casters will attempt to get close to you, so will charge forward rather than shooting/casting blindly or swinging randomly around.​

​

Turreted mobs will still attack you at range but will fire at the echo (so they won't lead their target as effectively as they do when not impaired)​

IMPORTANT - This this should not affect the stealth experience for players who were never seen in the first place. This really only touches monsters who already hate you but can't see you very well for the reasons stated above.

ALSO IMPORTANT - This is going to be an iterative process. This will mean blind monsters will be more effective at continuing to engage in combat than they once were, though the player should continue to enjoy a significant advantage. We would still like to make the monsters simulate "being blind" in a more convincing fashion but not at the cost of monsters "just plain working", so assuming we see improvements (which our repro's on the issue currently indicate we will), we will gradually add/adjust nuisances back into the system slowly and in a more performant manner till we get the balance right.

-Torc

 

[J1NG]

Most interesting... When will these be first added (to Lam) so we can test their response?

J1NG

 

[Anurakh]

Be careful with iterative processes, please. DPS is disproportionately important in the game, and CCing is becoming less and less important, and builds dedicated to it are becoming more and more useless.

You're giving weapon users many more CC tools (including blind), and CC spells (including those that produce blind) are becoming increasingly useless, because you're making CC less and less effective.

 

[Torc]

Most interesting... When will these be first added (to Lam) so we can test their response?

J1NG

It should be active in this preview (preview 2). If you blind a creature on lam its behavior should be noticeable different.

 

[Positive thinking]

Thank you, really hope this helps.

Also now with more mosters rushing towards one point we will be able to once again take advantage of the gather and kill model which is much more efficient and helps us to finish quests a lot faster.

 

[FaceDancer]

Sounds like a good start! Looking forward to testing this!

 

[J1NG]

The behaviour currently is just a return to how it used to work; which in of itself wasn't ideal.

The enemies zerg to your last location, then attack your last position before maintain tracking of you all throughout and just keep repeating. Aggro is maintained.

If enemies started to track you to engage you, and you moved away hidden (stealth/invis) the enemies currently continue to track you. Unless if they can reach your current location and attempt to attack you before finding they can't, then they drop aggro. This can't happen under normal circumstances, since in order to do the above, they will need to be on top of you (close enough on the x y axis on the map), or under you to do this. AND, the z axis difference is massive for enemies to not observe you still in the same "spot", pretty much a 40 Jump z axis difference for them not to be able to continue to "observe" you.

This means that once aggro starts, there's no dropping of aggro at the moment without perches, barriers, etc. that permit the aggro'd enemies to reach roughly your location before failing in being able to attack to then drop aggro and not be able to continue to detect you.

Another step in between this might be needed that lets them drop after either a few attempts of air attacks (no rolls at all despite an attack attempt). Other options may be required also depending on your goals.

J1NG

 

[rabidfox]

Ran a stealthy repo (since I invis over and over in there) and it went well enough. Didn't find myself getting instantly slaughtered with the changes nor it feeling harder.

 

[mikarddo]

What you describe does not match what I have experienced in game.

Sometimes I have been the only one near the mobs. No blind, no stealth, no invis and no obstacles between me and the mobs. Yet the mobs just stand idle leaving me free to kill them. This is a recent issue and has happened somewhat often.

So, I am afraid you may be chasing the wrong thing, pun intended.

 

[J1NG]

Ran a stealthy repo (since I invis over and over in there) and it went well enough. Didn't find myself getting instantly slaughtered with the changes nor it feeling harder.

If you're stealthed/invis'd already and don't provide aggro (detection) to enemies, there is no difference functionally from how it is from live.

The issue is the old "I've been waiting my whole life for this moment" from enemies come up when they basically chase you until either you die (there is not good cut off point, even using Dimension Door doesn't immediately drop aggro anymore), or they can't reach you whilst you are not detectable. This was how it used to work on live.

This iteraction requires another step in between to stop enemies from continuing the aggro (which we also had at one point on live also, before an update broke everything). So this definitely still needs work.

J1NG

 

[rabidfox]

If you're stealthed/invis'd already and don't provide aggro (detection) to enemies, there is no difference functionally from how it is from live.

Every time I pulled a lever/opened a door & re-invis'd I picked up mobs on me. While they chased more, it didn't stop me from doing that quest.

 

[rabidfox]

What you describe does not match what I have experienced in game.

Sometimes I have been the only one near the mobs. No blind, no stealth, no invis and no obstacles between me and the mobs. Yet the mobs just stand idle leaving me free to kill them. This is a recent issue and has happened somewhat often.

So, I am afraid you may be chasing the wrong thing, pun intended.

That would align with this comment:

We do know that this issue has an effect across multi instances so the actions of one party in a dungeon can affect other dungeons.

 

[droid327]

Every time I pulled a lever/opened a door & re-invis'd I picked up mobs on me. While they chased more, it didn't stop me from doing that quest.

I know they really want to discourage zerging but I wish mobs had a more realistic behavior when it comes to dropping aggro against players that are a significant distance away or otherwise unreachable. It sucks having that one mob you left way behind that just holds a grudge all quest long, especially on Reaper where it prevents you from accessing OOC heals

 

[J1NG]

It looks like after dropping aggro, enemies can repick up aggro for no reason at all now as well. This means that instead of performance issues from pathing, you still have pathing issues (different ones) AND you can't lose aggro now so enemies are always active. Something that was altered a while back to prevent combat and pathing performance issues when enemies wouldn't relent after leaving the area. So it looks like in the end, you've just traded one issue for another at the moment.

More work needs to be done (possibly another step in between to help enemies drop aggro which appears to have been removed from the previous addition prior).

J1NG

 

[J1NG]

Oh, it's not related. But given that the Djinn is in the Hall of Heroes in Lam, would it be possible to enable the Festive Buff so I can test it out more? Or the Devs actually specific exactly what the buff is supposed to do? As the testing I've done so far doesn't suggest that it works the same as the normal Elixirs of Discovery.

Will continue testing the pathing stuff.

J1NG

 

[J1NG]

Here's an interesting discovery. It appears that if you recall out of the quest, and re-enter, the enemies will then drop aggro properly and it stays off once the aggro is lost again. But the first entry in (and this will be the case for everyone) you will not be able to lose aggro normally.

J1NG

:: edit ::
Spoke too soon. It appears there's a group aggro thing going that helps each of the aggro'd enemies maintain aggro on the player and constantly keep trying to path towards you to attack. Leaving and entering the quest only breaks it that one time. Subsequent times can be retriggered again and there's no way to break it off fully using stealth or Invis at this time and even using DD may not work depending on distance.

 

[Broken Old Monk]

Is this Lamania a preview of update 73? or is that still to come? cause if it is, not seeing all those mentioned monk improvements but did noticed improvement with the end boss challenge rating in one the new quests I read most thought was too easy seemed tougher.

 

[Aelonwy]

This means that once aggro starts, there's no dropping of aggro at the moment without perches, barriers, etc. that permit the aggro'd enemies to reach roughly your location before failing in being able to attack to then drop aggro and not be able to continue to detect you.

J1NG

It looks like after dropping aggro, enemies can repick up aggro for no reason at all now as well. This means that instead of performance issues from pathing, you still have pathing issues (different ones) AND you can't lose aggro now so enemies are always active. Something that was altered a while back to prevent combat and pathing performance issues when enemies wouldn't relent after leaving the area. So it looks like in the end, you've just traded one issue for another at the moment.

More work needs to be done (possibly another step in between to help enemies drop aggro which appears to have been removed from the previous addition prior).

J1NG

Bolding the salient point... this is exactly what I was afraid of, once you have any attention at all they alert others and hunt you down no matter how far you go, no matter how much gear and skill and feats/enhancements for stealth, no matter if your invisible or they are blind. That is NOT realistic, its not immersive, its not even about challenge... its about funneling everyone into the same course of action. *please read in caveman speak* Dungeon stamp make mobs. Player must fight mobs. Stamp. Stamp. Stamp. No fight mobs? MUST MAKE FIGHT MOBS.

Somehow, somewhere along the way DDO lost its way and the dungeon designers lost the flavor of Dungeons & Dragons where PLAYERS make the decisions on how and where and what mobs they face to solve an encounter and complete a quest. They want us to be Murder Hobos Online and some players are fine with it. Good. Great. Let them have fun. But NOT everyone wants to play that way nor should we be forced to do so. Yes, I know its not fair to compare this game to pen & paper but the closer they can come to player choice mattering in encounters, quests and dialogues the more immersive the game becomes and the less it feels like endless, boring repetition. The more everything becomes: here's your cookie cutter group of mobs (MobGroup1) go 20 paces copy/paste (MobGroup1) go 20 paces copy/paste (MobGroup1)... kill kill kill ad infinitum. Over life over life over life... oh look another hallway another go 20 paces copy/paste (MobGroup1).

The game can ill afford to lose any more immersion and making it further tedious well... player engagement seems to be speaking for itself.

My hubby and son love to murder hobo, they are Conan driving his enemies to slaughter. I like dialogue options that send enemies away or make enemies my allies. I like optionals that change how the end fight is fought. I like alternate paths and secret passages and having different options based on LORE or class. If every mob that has aggro is never going to drop it no matter how far I go or how stealthy or invized I am or even if the mobs are BLIND all that says is the only tactic that counts is how fast you kill - the most important metric in any quest is conquest. How sad and monotonous.

 

[Positive thinking]

If you're stealthed/invis'd already and don't provide aggro (detection) to enemies, there is no difference functionally from how it is from live.

The issue is the old "I've been waiting my whole life for this moment" from enemies come up when they basically chase you until either you die (there is not good cut off point, even using Dimension Door doesn't immediately drop aggro anymore), or they can't reach you whilst you are not detectable. This was how it used to work on live.

This iteraction requires another step in between to stop enemies from continuing the aggro (which we also had at one point on live also, before an update broke everything). So this definitely still needs work.

J1NG

Somewhere in the middle, going thru a portal to another area of the dungeon or a ddoor should break aggro, but i am okay with them chasing down runners that are detected but invisible, because this will mean mobs chase zergers that go invisible and dungeon alert will have more meaning for the benefit of all players playing the game, i would even be fine with purple alert after 20 seconds having an automatic teleport to a zerging target to right out kill the zerger that is putting stress on the servers for all others.

 

[kmoustakas]

So a lot of structural changes are occurring in DDO to improve game performance. This thread will focus on one specific change to fix an issue we are seeing where monster pathing locks up on the instance level. Reports of this issue have been increasing gradually over time and we believe we've found the general cause...

This relates to monsters being either...

-Blind

-Chasing a player they already saw but who dropped into stealth afterwards (and have enough distance and hide skill to pull it off)

-Chasing an player who just went invisible

Monsters engaged in these behaviors were causing numerous pathing performance bugs all in the name of "looking really blind and ineffective" when chasing players they couldn't see for whatever reason. We've decide to rein this in somewhat because it's eating to much of our pathing budget. We are uncertain if this became more expensive due to other changes or that blind/invis guard just has become more common in the meta. We do know that this issue has an effect across multi instances so the actions of one party in a dungeon can affect other dungeons.

"I Can't See Target" behavior should now work as follows...

Monsters will now chase an echo of your location when blind or when you are Invis or doing a decent job of stealthing away. As long as the player keeps moving attacks should generally still be significantly impaired to keep the value of these conditions relevant. (Also blind monsters have a 50% miss chance still, as always)​

​

Mobile Ranged Attackers/Casters will attempt to get close to you, so will charge forward rather than shooting/casting blindly or swinging randomly around.​

​

Turreted mobs will still attack you at range but will fire at the echo (so they won't lead their target as effectively as they do when not impaired)​

IMPORTANT - This this should not affect the stealth experience for players who were never seen in the first place. This really only touches monsters who already hate you but can't see you very well for the reasons stated above.

ALSO IMPORTANT - This is going to be an iterative process. This will mean blind monsters will be more effective at continuing to engage in combat than they once were, though the player should continue to enjoy a significant advantage. We would still like to make the monsters simulate "being blind" in a more convincing fashion but not at the cost of monsters "just plain working", so assuming we see improvements (which our repro's on the issue currently indicate we will), we will gradually add/adjust nuisances back into the system slowly and in a more performant manner till we get the balance right.

-Torc

You mean to say the script that makes mobs run around like headless chickens is causing lag? Who would have thought!