Lamannia Preview 2: Pathing Perf Change for Blind Behavior

[Positive thinking]

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

Assuming they can fix the issue you have outlayed here, having all the mobs rush to the entrance with agro could be quite advantagous for speed running with several ddoors present in a quest. One person to complete the quest and a bunch of ddoors to gather agro from multiple locations and herd them all tonthe main entrance to mass AOE all quickly in one go, this has some great potential in quite a few quests.

 

[Blerkington]

Monsters that can't pass an opposed skill check to detect us when stealthed shouldn't be chasing an echo of our position, period.

It makes zero sense that something unable to perceive us can somehow follow us. What they should do is go into a finite search pattern and return to their original position if unsuccessful.

Nor should monsters aware of our presence but outside of (or with blocked) sight and outside of hearing range gain knowledge of our location if we leave stealth.

This is your chance to address two of the most stupid and broken parts of the current stealth system. So please do that instead of trying just to replicate the nonsensical mess we have now.

 

[Kitty2Meow]

Just ran a quest in Lam to test, Ettercap Incursion
. Start sneaking to the first group of mobs, stop at about 20m
. Out of sneaking, then sneak again immediately, and wing away
. Mobs start to chase me while I am sneaking as if they have true seeing on, and got ranged even far away. So if a player who only can sneak, and if the mobs have range attack, that player may not be able to run away as the range attack will knock him/her out of sneak
. Tested two times in EE and Reaper, same result

Went back to live server to test again, same quest, Ettercap Incursion
. Start sneaking to the first group of mobs, stop at about 20m
. Out of sneaking, then sneak again immediately, and wing away
. Mobs only go and stop at the location of where I started sneaking and stay there attacking aimlessly to try to find me

The new changes in Lam will make high skills in hide and move silently not as effective once mobs see you. If you still try to run away, there is a very high chance that you will get yellow or red DA, which will make the server lags more.

Another solution or different approach maybe more ideal.

Let's say using the current live server setting, mobs go and stop at the location of where a player started sneaking and stay there attacking aimlessly to try to find him or her for like 5 seconds. If mobs can not find anyone, lose the aggro and just stay there; this may release the pathing resources?

 

[J1NG]

So it looks like you sort of can lose aggro, but again, it involves some weird interaction;

1. First, Blind or prevent enemies from being able to track you by going Invis. This is the first step.
2. You need to be VERY far away immediately in order to lose aggro after letting these blinded enemies or enemies that have aggro on you get close to you. Then, telelport; either through DD or taking portals or respawns like jumping over the edges in Sharn (or recalling out; which you obviously can't do in Reaper to come back in after in the same instance).

These two in combination; by blinding the target from still being able to track you and takes you far enough away that enemies FINALLY stop them from having aggro. Otherwise, aggro is maintained and it looks like every player that Daigo Parry's Justin Wong in Street Fighter 3; their moment has come and they will stop at nothing to achieve it (killing you in this case in DDO).

J1NG

 

[Positive thinking]

So it looks like you sort of can lose aggro, but again, it involves some weird interaction;

1. First, Blind or prevent enemies from being able to track you by going Invis. This is the first step.
2. You need to be VERY far away immediately in order to lose aggro after letting these blinded enemies or enemies that have aggro on you get close to you. Then, telelport; either through DD or taking portals or respawns like jumping over the edges in Sharn (or recalling out; which you obviously can't do in Reaper to come back in after in the same instance).

These two in combination; by blinding the target from still being able to track you and takes you far enough away that enemies FINALLY stop them from having aggro. Otherwise, aggro is maintained and it looks like every player that Daigo Parry's Justin Wong in Street Fighter 3; their moment has come and they will stop at nothing to achieve it (killing you in this case in DDO).

J1NG

It sounds like we have reached the end of stealth and agro loss in the game, i would get TR’d and respect before this goes live.

 

[Kimbere]

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.

I can confirm. I see the same any night I run quests and in pretty much any quest.

It seems to happen any time more than 5-7 mobs are aggro'd at the same time. Most of them just stand there frozen and don't move, don't attack, etc.

It makes clearing the dungeons easy, but it's terribly boring, too.

 

[rabidfox]

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.

I've made a ton of posts on here and discord about braindead mobs standing around the past 6 months complete with videos under a ton of different situations. There's several things I've noted and bug reported that make things worse and more likely to have mobs bug out on me. Based off what Torc says here, it's likely people doing similar things on the same server I'm on (in different quests) is compounding the issue:

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.

It's not my first rodeo with seeing a fix for lag/etc. that didn't magically fix it all. I'm hopeful (based off things I've noticed) that this will improve things, but I equally wouldn't be suprised if there's more facets to the mobs standing around & not pathing than just this. But with how bad mob pathing can get and how boring it is to do quests where they just stand around, I'm glad to see SSG is taking an active approach to fix things.

 

[Terranigma]

Whatever this changed, it does seem to fix an issue I've noticed in regards to invisibility and sneaking that has been around since... introduction of reapers? For many years there was a change made that if you snuck by an enemy with invisibility with sneaking on (assuming the enemy can not see invisibility), got out of range of the enemy, and then performed an action that attacked something in a completely different part of the dungeon, the original foe would aggro you once invisibility wore off. I seem to no longer be able to reproduce this on the current Lammania build, meaning I can once again combine invisibility and sneaking without having the whole dungeon catch up to me angry when the invisibility comes off.

 

[PsychoBlonde]

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

Realism would have enemies that remember you forever. What's UNrealistic and videogamey is having intelligent creatures that just . . . forget that someone tried to KILL THEM.

 

[rabidfox]

Realism would have enemies that remember you forever. What's UNrealistic and videogamey is having intelligent creatures that just . . . forget that someone tried to KILL THEM.

Kobold shows up 5 quests later to get revenge; Kobold never forgot.

 

[droid327]

Realism would have enemies that remember you forever. What's UNrealistic and videogamey is having intelligent creatures that just . . . forget that someone tried to KILL THEM.

They can remember me the rest of their lives, i just want them to stop trying to follow me once they've lost my trail, or are incapable of moving to get me anyway lol

Go back to your post and return to guard duty

 

[Terpilar]

Realism would have enemies that remember you forever. What's UNrealistic and videogamey is having intelligent creatures that just . . . forget that someone tried to KILL THEM.

They can remember me the rest of their lives, i just want them to stop trying to follow me once they've lost my trail, or are incapable of moving to get me anyway lol

Go back to your post and return to guard duty

Realistically, the enemies once aggroed would have good reason (hey, who just killed Bob?) to stay wary for the rest of their guard shift (this instance), perhaps give them a +10 or +50 % or whatever in perception, akin to taking 20 in pnp. But nothing which might contribute to any shade of DA here, I think we'll all agree.

 

[kmoustakas]

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?

You mean the shills can no longer claim this is WAI because the monsters are trying to avoid you? What's next, you're going to fix monsters running to your original location rather than your current thus going past you and incentivising you to ignore them and keep going forward?

Despite me sounding so mean and dejected, I appreciate you for trying to fix all this. It's gonna be so hard because there have been problems piling on top of problems pilling on top of problems and all swept under the rag pretending it's not there for so many years there's a whole ecosystem of problems under the rag!

 

[Tyran Thraxus]

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.

I agree; what is the point of playing a game that forces you through a linear murder spree? I want the OPTION to murder everything, but also the OPTION to stealth, and dialogue options. Murder hobo style is SO boring.

If these changes ruin my stealth play even more than it already has, then I am so done.

 

[nobodynobody1426]

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?

I've seen it with all the melee type monsters, they rush at you then fight with each other over who can stand at your back. Of course I don't like them doing that because I can't hit them, so I end up circle strafing.

For the whole invisible / blind / stealth thing, shouldn't monsters lose aggro if such a target is more then X distance? Making them chase you
indefinitely has issues when combined with "group aggro communication" and silly monsters like "Reapers".

 

[droid327]

I agree; what is the point of playing a game that forces you through a linear murder spree? I want the OPTION to murder everything, but also the OPTION to stealth, and dialogue options. Murder hobo style is SO boring.

If these changes ruin my stealth play even more than it already has, then I am so done.

If you want this, the way to do it would be to propose a way to have stealth play be as risky and take as much time as combat.

The game has to be balanced around risk:reward and time:reward, with a modifier for skill required. That was the reason stealth got nerfed so hard before - it was letting people zerg quests with near-zero chance of death, and all it really took was pumping your stealth stats high enough to make you undetectable.

Likewise with social optionals...its OK occasionally, but that cant be a whole alternative gameplay mode, because all it requires is having high enough stats and knowing what option to choose.

 

[Purr]

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

Hobos also immediately jumped to mind.

 

[lppmor]

Just one point to consider Torc:
What are the probabilities of theses changes to improve the game VS The probability to ruin stealth/invis play.

From past experience we know everything is hanging by a thread (talking about the game infrastructure, code, etc). Please consider the benefits vs the risk before putting everything live.

 

[Positive thinking]

Mob AI changes have been the downfall of smooth gameplay since they started messing with it after hardcore season one. Hardcore season two had the worst lag since the devil event in the marketplace, with group freezes while mobs kept moving. Then they change this and then they changes that, all in attempt to make the mobs more immersive, mob interaction has been in a spiral since then. Players want them to be smart but they cant be, not without taking way too many resources and bottlenecking the game into lag. All the changes dont make the mobs any smarter it changes the tactics of the players to find the best way to deal with the new AI.

To give a simple example of two different phases;

Phase one: open a door, mobs in room are melee, casters, ranged. Ranged and casters stay planted and fire what they can at you with casters limited by the range if the spell they are using. Melees charge. Door opener keeps agro pops in and out of door so ranged/casters dont look for a new location to get line of sight, melees arrive door opener steps to side, melees get annihilated seperately without facing attacks from ranged or casters. Select ranged weapons and attacks for group target nastiest caster then all other remaining casters while popping in and out of door, charge ranged to clear room. Of course the same can be done on the corner of a hallway, this is the way old AI use to be.

Phase two: devs make changes so that casters and ranged charge with melees as soon as they break line of sight with players. Players adjust and can either get a slight difference in timing that the melees arrive at the door or make them come all at the same time, party adjust using heavily based AOE attacks set at the door upon arrival because now all mobs are gathering together for easy annihilation.


The results dont change from pages one to phase two just the tactics of the players, but there is a change in the calculations that the mobs are making, likely more calculations and with the games spaghetti code provably causing all knids of lag. (Note: the ranged guy that use to be shooting his arrows at the wall, as dumb as it was, was not causing more pathing calculations)

Note if you take phase two of the above examples and have one person grab agro and go back thru a door and around the corner with someone else blocking the door, the mobs just pile up at door for AOE kill.

Of course they started messing with the who has agro calculations for mobs so that they think on things like; lets go get their summons or lets go get the class pet or lets go get their hireling or my favourite lets go get the player in the group with the least hit points, again all calculations that add to mobs over piling calculations. Try summoning a monster and timing it just right so that it appears after the mobs have picked their first target, or at the sametime call your class pet that you put on stay or your hireling you oarked at the beginning of the quest, its easy to confuse the mob AI because they are coding it to do too many things at once, oh wait jump on a perch at that sametime and call your class pet there or jump off something so you are feather falling one place to another where the mobs cant path to you in mid air.

In conclusion to my long rant, all these things they did to try and make mobs smarter havent changed anything they are just more likely what causes the mobs to lag out and freeze because of bottleneck calculations.

 

[Frieling Slyhand]

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

So more nerfs. If these kinds of nerfs actually worked I would be ok with it. But they never do. This will definitely affect how I play and I am not happy about it.