Lamannia Preview 2: Pathing Perf Change for Blind Behavior

[Mindos]

from Tumbling but instead got this extra UI element I now forever stuck with

I thought there was an option to hide the Tumble UI?

 

[Phoenicis]

I thought there was an option to hide the Tumble UI?

There is, but he is talking about the borked functionality that limits you to 2 tumble charges then basically roots you unless you invest extensively in tumble & mobility.

Side note: If you are generating purple alert while killing all or almost all mobs in a quest I'd like to know what quest.

 

[Torc]

So, near as I could tell from testing, the most major issue, is that on initial combat/aggro initiation on enemies and then applying stealth/invis/blindess:

1. The enemies will never stop even after swinging at your last location and repeat this until you can lose aggro entirely by being non-detected (stealth/invis) and then immediately at a distance that is much greater than what enemies can use to chase after you after taking a Dimension Door, otherwise, they will chase you down even to the start of a quest whilst each enemy swings at your last location and repeats it again and again. No amount of running at Superman or Flash speeds will ever let you lose aggro with the current version in play.

2. Or, enemies need to be able to occupy the same x y axis on a map and detect for you after swinging (and not hitting anything) and then you sitting tight until they lose aggro (easier with less enemies) - I am assuming this is the "player is dead" check as well to tell enemies to stop swinging. So long as you can (again) gain enough distance away from them then, you will no longer have aggro (but the distance needed is silly large to avoid enemies from retriggering). This obviously can't be done everywhere as the Devs specifically try to avoid having things for players to perch on to enable something like from happening.

3. But, so long as any enemy has your aggro still, group aggro mechanics means everyone will start up again periodically (and you are unable to lose aggro). This means normal Reapers will ruin everyones day immediately.

4. It also means that casters when facing a teleporting enemy that comes into the vincinity (and aggros on them first as they qualify now) can no longer rely on going/being Invisible and letting that enemy swing in the air. This is terrible for a multitude of reasons, since an Invisible Healer could spam heals in general safely, but once aggro'd the Healer will no longer be able to just concentrate on healing, but need to avoid the enemy as well if the rest of the party is not attentive enough to pull the enemy away from them.

So from that, we can tell that the missing part is for enemies to stop after a few attempts at tracing your last location and failing to get a result without magically knowing where you are even when you are quite far away (otherwise they will keep repeating with no end to it). (Point 1)

I literally dragged ALL the "blinded" enemies from A Sharn Welcome from the Bear room all the way back to the start, and only using DD after going invis stopped the aggro; otherwise each "blinded" enemy will just keep running to your last location and keep doing so until they have swung at your present location (x y axis on map) at least once before they drop aggro. (Point 2)

So the satisfaction (in code) that they have checked that you're no longer there is not being fulfilled currently. (Point 1 and 2) I am assuming once that is put in, this should work more as intended.

I would request that this not be deployed to Live servers yet (especially in its current incarnation), as we have no idea if the changes made for the next iteration will cause other uninteded results. Unless if the Devs would like me to deploy 24 characters each Purple Alerting a Dungeon and then retreating to safety to cause server performance issues for everyone, because - you know I would be happy to do that (for science!).

J1NG

Thank you for your diligence here.

So indeed in the new flow actively blind monsters appear to be bugged, chasing the player's "echo" after loosing aggro which is VERY BAD, so we'll be resolving that before this touches live. Along with a few other issues we've found.

In other news we've figured out how to improve on teleport deaggro, so DD'ing should be very reliable about dropping aggro unless the mob is literally at the quest entrance with you. The logics original distance checks had issues with dungeon's that had lay outs like A Sharn Welcome.

A Sharn Welcome is a rather interesting case because of it's circular structure, pushing at some weaknesses in the current logic that rely on straight line distance checks to decide when to do things. It's a good place to bang on this system.

We've looked a little at teleporting monsters (devils, etc), who in the current live logic still teleport to the player not the location where they think the player is (which is good because that can be in a wall right now). In our current testing of the new mode if the player is moving, the devil/whatever isn't likely actually fire their attack in the right direction. So it might require a little more activity get the benefit but we're thinking maybe that's not a bad thing.

Your scenario about the invis healer is interesting. This gets a bit into how powerful should an invisibility effect be in combat. I'm not sure where we'll land exactly yet on the monster knows your there and your invis behaviors, but we are not touching opening aggro mechanics at this point. So currently an invis healer who is able to maintain a distance of like 15 meters against enemies who can't see invis, won't even make it on the hate list, and that's not likely to change, at least in this pass. Since our healing doesn't build aggro like other games this strikes me as still pretty worth while already. This distance can even be closer if they actually have a decent hide skill.

-T

 

[rabidfox]

A Sharn Welcome is a rather interesting case because of it's circular structure, pushing at some weaknesses in the current logic that rely on straight line distance checks to decide when to do things. It's a good place to bang on this system.

No Refunds might be another good one to look at at for vertical based agro stuff; while not stealth related, I've agro'd the upstairs before by simply jumping while on the ground floor on occasion.

 

[Zaszgul]

No Refunds might be another good one to look at at for vertical based agro stuff; while not stealth related, I've agro'd the upstairs before by simply jumping while on the ground floor on occasion.

Agreed. I usually aggro the entire downstairs when grabbing an upstairs crest - full red alert barreling up the central staircase.

 

[Abramax]

Talking about aggro, is anything going to be done to stop imbue builds from getting aggro for no reason?

 

[Frieling Slyhand]

How will these changes affect invisibility guard effect? Was thinking about crafting the Cloak of Strahd augment, but don’t want to waste runes if it won’t work. https://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Essence_of_the_Cloak_of_Strahd

 

[nix]

My theorum is that ssg have no intention of ever supporting stealth tactics and that they only leave all stealth mechanics in as noob traps

 

[nix]

does invisibility actually mean anything in the monster AI?

 

[Broken Old Monk]

It works better if got a high move silent skill and are sneak I noticed....... but if not invested in that skill or using it, it does often seem like you cast invisibility in real life and may believe you are and feel safe sneaking about, but ultimately you are seen still or so thats how the AI been behaving for forever least ten years now.

 

[FaceDancer]

Out of curiosity, will any of this work affect or influence NPC behavior or pathing?

My NPC's have been exceptionally durpy* and it seems to go back to when mobs started misbehaving as well.

Is this part of the same problem or something else that needs to be looked at?

*Not keeping up (laggy/slow/no response to main characters moving away from NPC's)

 

[Broken Old Monk]

Yeah i noticed too in certain quests the entire party of hires just stop working for a long while all standing grouped up like huddling for warmth in the freezing cold.

Kind of How my Hires behave sometimes....usually when i need them to watch my back the most.........wasn't always the case and isn't always the case, but it is happening.

 

[rabidfox]

My assumption is it will help with braindead hires/mobs to the extent of the whatever impact the current invis/blind has on the pathing system. I also assume there's multiple layers of things going on there, so it's likely just removing one of the sources that can cause them to go wonky.

 

[Ptalon]

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.​

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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

How about being Invisible giving a 50% miss chance, like it is suppose to do......

 

[Positive thinking]

How about being Invisible giving a 50% miss chance, like it is suppose to do......

I thought it already did except when mobs had true seeing, i was oblivious to this. Can someone confirm how this works?

 

[LurkingVeteran]

I think it at least used to, but it doesn't stack with Displacement which most invis builds have anyway (arcanes, Shadar-Kai, UMD). Put another way, if you can cast invis, then you can probably cast displacement. So the net effect of invisiblity on miss chance, for most builds that use it, is basically zero. It's a non-factor.

 

[rabidfox]

Edit: the u73 release notes had it listed as going live yesterday and now show no mention of these changes.

 

[J1NG]

Edit: the u73 release notes had it listed as going live yesterday and now show no mention of these changes.

It's hard to say. Currently, Live resembles pre U73 Live but also mixed in with what was observed for this change too.

Likely it wasn't deployed yet, or the incomplete version was deployed so far and really wasn't meant to be deployed with U73 hence the weird reaction mixture of the enemies.

The key thing would be: Is anyone still observing non-moving/pathing enemies?

J1NG

 

[Mindos]

Starting to feel like the threads are all bleeding together. SSG really keeps us in the dark don't they? We are the mushrooms.

 

[FaceDancer]

Thank you for your diligence here.

So indeed in the new flow actively blind monsters appear to be bugged, chasing the player's "echo" after loosing aggro which is VERY BAD, so we'll be resolving that before this touches live. Along with a few other issues we've found.

-T

I'm getting the impression from Torc's comment here that it hasn't gone live yet. So hopefully in 73.1?

Looking back @ the release notes, there's no mention of pathing changes.