Lamannia Preview 2: Pathing Perf Change for Blind Behavior

[lppmor]

Some close quarters quests (such as the Factory in SAVING DORRIS, and the sewers in FASHION MADNESS) are very weird currently. The mobs simply stand still until attacked or until you get to melee range.

@Torc Are these changes in Lamannia also addressing this kind of pathing issue?

 

[Torc]

Some close quarters quests (such as the Factory in SAVING DORRIS, and the sewers in FASHION MADNESS) are very weird currently. The mobs simply stand still until attacked or until you get to melee range.

@Torc Are these changes in Lamannia also addressing this kind of pathing issue?

If your just walking around and seeing problems without actually using blind/invis or stealth I'm not sure whats going on there. I will investigate.

 

[Torc]

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.

What quest did you hit this?

 

[Monkey_Archer]

If your just walking around and seeing problems without actually using blind/invis or stealth I'm not sure whats going on there. I will investigate.

The problem of monsters standing still doing nothing, unable (or unwilling) to path to players, has been an issue for many months now. Sounds like the blind/invis pathing issue is a completely separate issue.

I noticed that this can be easily replicated with the shadows at the end of the quest "The Darkness and the Light". Just jump off the high ledge and feather fall down and all the shadows stop moving for ~20 seconds or so. Its as if theres a ~6 second tick rate check to path, and if they cant find a path they just stop trying.

 

[Mindos]

Wasn't the old way to handle mobs chasing you while you were sneaking/invis to:

1. Get very far away.
2. Make sure you are also out of line of sight.
3. Break stealth/invis.
4. Move some distance
5. Go back into stealth/invis.

I think this used to make the mobs run to the spot you came out of stealth/invis and let you continue?

 

[Epicsoul]

If your just walking around and seeing problems without actually using blind/invis or stealth I'm not sure whats going on there. I will investigate.

Unsure if this is relevant to you, but I 100% encountered behavior (on live servers) with mobs just standing still in quests where invis, blind, nor stealth of any kind were being used. This behavior became terrible and increasingly often after U69 patch 3. I'm hoping it was a halo effect from the issue these changes are trying to address.

 

[lppmor]

If your just walking around and seeing problems without actually using blind/invis or stealth I'm not sure whats going on there. I will investigate.

Yes. This has nothing to do with blind/invis/stealth. Just try Finding Doris and you will see.. when you reach the room with war forges, after the spiders/rats/bats.

 

[Valerianus]

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.

/rant on

i'm quoting @J1NG because he is the Ultimate Master Tester, but by all means, i'm brainstorming for everyone, including obviously @Torc

i can only help with brainstorm cause i installed lamannia once and then uninstalled, my mind is unable to properly test with method and numbers.

so i'll just humbly try to give ideas and inspiration.


do you see differences if it is 1 mob or 2+ ? my brainstorm is about aggro-sharing. can it be that they don't drop aggro because mobs are playing ping-pong with it, thus not dropping it even if you exit the instance, going on pingponging it one another as long as the instance is active while telepathically sharing your position, never resetting cause they reset but it get instantly re-shared by a non-yet resetted mob cause maybe it is resetting a fraction of millisecond after, but enough to "aggro-infect" all the others again?

moreover, if 2 different instances of a quest are created on the same server, are we sure they are waterproof and independant from one another? we are technically sure...but are we practically ?

maybe those issues with unresponsive mobs is the same potential issue, but reversed, mobs are telepathically telling one another to stand still until aggroed. you aggro one and it tries to tell the others you are there but the info about to just stand there until aggroed happens before the alarm.

maybe i am insane, maybe i make sense, maybe players have been saying for years and years that aggro-sharing was weird and now finally someone (Torc be our hero please) will check how it works in all of its ramifications, surely unintended, when mixed with that part of the Ancient Code, potentially some aggro\pathing 3rdpartythatdoesntexistanymore-code, nowdays labeled, whatever the source, as "hic sunt leones" or, since this is D&D, "hic sunt dracones"

don't hate me, or do if you wish, whatever, i'm just trying to be helpful in the only way i can, some messy brainstorm.

i love you all


/rant off

 

[DarkSkysz]

Blinded mobs rushing to your last know location is really interesting. Easy way to group them up.

 

[J1NG]

What quest did you hit this?

I apologise as I had to IRL afk there for a while. Initial quest I've been trying this in is A Sharn Welcome.

I will be going around to other quests as well where previous incidents of DD were not able to drop aggro properly or became problematic (enemies retains aggro and keeps alert in dungeon constantly high and enemies restarting aggro when next to each other and becoming a permanent resource hog) to see what happens.

J1NG

 

[Lichcrak]

Rest in peace contagion. Hopefully your sacrifice lets mobs move normally one day.

 

[ChicagoChris]

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

Can you also look into monsters stuck in a "trying to flank their target" loop? This is pretty obvious and has been documented in many videos.

My thoughts would be to give the monsters a limit to the number of flanking attempts (ie try to flank but don't try again for 60 secs) to keep them from aimlessly trying to get to their target's flank.

 

[Torc]

Can you also look into monsters stuck in a "trying to flank their target" loop? This is pretty obvious and has been documented in many videos.

My thoughts would be to give the monsters a limit to the number of flanking attempts (ie try to flank but don't try again for 60 secs) to keep them from aimlessly trying to get to their target's flank.

If your talking about when a monster just orbits you really fast? I have a little. Been fixing it on a case by case basis until we find a more global solution (not sure when it got introduced)... it seems to affect monsters who want to get really close to you. Are there particular monsters you see this happen with a lot?

 

[ChickenMobile]

Just tried the new stealth mechanic and not sure I like it at all.
If you are a class which relies on sneak attack, it makes it almost impossible to break aggro because they immediately run after you full speed.

Even with 80+ in hide/move silently the kobolds in Stealthy Repossession were almost immediately finding me again after initially being spotted and chased me throughout the whole dungeon even though I was stealthed & invisible for over a minute.

Surely they should deleash after a few seconds of not finding you?

 

[Torc]

Unsure if this is relevant to you, but I 100% encountered behavior (on live servers) with mobs just standing still in quests where invis, blind, nor stealth of any kind were being used. This behavior became terrible and increasingly often after U69 patch 3. I'm hoping it was a halo effect from the issue these changes are trying to address.

Yes that is the behavior we are trying to fix. We believe that blind monsters in OTHER dungeons can throttle the path system on the whole server box and cause problems in other people's quests who are not using those effects at all.

 

[ChicagoChris]

If your talking about when a monster just orbits you really fast? I have a little. Been fixing it on a case by case basis until we find a more global solution (not sure when it got introduced)... it seems to affect monsters who want to get really close to you. Are there particular monsters you see this happen with a lot?

Never thought of it as a monster type issue - just quite obvious. I'll try to doc which monsters do this - I'm thinking hobgobs of the top of my head

 

[Terpilar]

Are there particular monsters you see this happen with a lot?

Specters have a bad case of it.

 

[J1NG]

Yes that is the behavior we are trying to fix. We believe that blind monsters in OTHER dungeons can throttle the path system on the whole server box and cause problems in other people's quests who are not using those effects at all.

You had a functioning hide/invis and detect by enemies and chase for x amount of time working at one point. Then DDO had a physics update and then everything went to pot. Enemies that also were not half kobold were now finding themselves on invisible ledges or able to perform feats that were not possible previously, including going up vertical surfaces to attack their enemies (doesn't have to be the player, it can be neutral targets marked as enemies for them too), Doom Reapers "hopping" to gain height to attack enemies taking refuge on ledges above, also part of why I had to contact you guys about the "projectile collision" issue (it was noticed after the physics updates) that permitted attackers to, well you know already so I won't say the rest.

I'm not 100% convinced the current approach will target the source of the problem unless if you are attempting to recreate all the steps to create that initial working system (for how DDO is now), since if it really was part of the physics update, it means you'll need to roll back not just the physics, but all quests that have relied on the new physics as well.

Anyway, heading back onto Lam...

J1NG

 

[J1NG]

Yeah, it looks like so long as there is any ONE "negative effect" on a target, including being Blind, that blind target will remain aggro'd and share the aggro too, causing enemies that lose aggro to pick it right up again.

So I would assume you need to adjust the sharing of aggro scripts to prevent his from happening too many times and any negative effects that don't do any damage to cease aggro as well.

J1NG

 

[J1NG]

LOL, you have a big problem here, especially for A Sharn Welcome, enemies that follow you to the start from a DD and if you get to a certain location, cause enemies to want to path to you but end up leaping off the ledges, get rebound and also spawn at the entryway and keep repeating.

But that's not the worst part, enemies will get stuck in a "clump" after respawning at the entryway and take up the same position as they try to path towards you again, and I can't imageine that being good for server resources for pathing, as they're all basically occupying the same spot and can't separate whilst clumped as I think they're all trying to calculate a path away from each other too but because there's more than 2 in the same spot, they can't do that, so they end up taking a VERY long time moving before they succesfully move away from each other and fall again.

J1NG