U60 Lammania Preview 1 - Monster AI Changes

[Torc]

So with the goal of saving on path cycles to keep lag off the server we recently reworked monster AI in several ways.

1. Better De-aggro logic: Monsters will now be bit better about dropping aggro against players they have no hope of catching, and dropping aggro against players who passed them by but were never primary targets and might be long gone. Note this does not effect the duration they'll contribute to dungeon alert, only killing them or waiting for the alert to cooldown will do that once they've aggro'd and added to the alert level.

2. Skips going home: Monsters will no longer try to path home when they drop aggro. Sometimes these paths could get very long and expensive. We may eventually have them teleport home but given the players may want to go back and re-acquire them we're leaving them where they "lost the player" in this preview. Monsters on landscapes will still leash normally which is the teleport they do with the little yellow stop sign when they get pulled to far off their spawn point.

3. Archer/Casters will generally try to run from you less often when you get close to them. These AIs when they got jammed into corners would spend a lot of time failing to find a good spot, and we feel it's not worth the server cycles. An Archer/Caster will still occasionally move away from you, especially when they first aggro, but typically won't spend cycles trying to maintain distance anymore. Mobs with baked in jump back animations will still do those behaviors though.

 

[Triaxx2]

I think maybe having them teleport home after 5 minutes might be a good thing.

 

[Misadventure]

I think maybe having them teleport home after 5 minutes might be a good thing.

Except red named, aka bosses.

 

[Olorii]

Except red named, aka bosses.

If you've kited a boss for five minutes to the point where you're so far out of range you've lost it, it really doesn't matter if it teleports home, right? lol

 

[Misadventure]

If you've kited a boss for five minutes to the point where you're so far out of range you've lost it, it really doesn't matter if it teleports home, right? lol

If its full bar yeah, if its 80% thats a different story.

 

[Xgya]

3. Archer/Casters will generally try to run from you less often when you get close to them. These AIs when they got jammed into corners would spend a lot of time failing to find a good spot, and we feel it's not worth the server cycles. An Archer/Caster will still occasionally move away from you, especially when they first aggro, but typically won't spend cycles trying to maintain distance anymore. Mobs with baked in jump back animations will still do those behaviors though.

Butbut... how will we even know it's DDO if the Kobold Shamans aren't jumping on walls anymore?

 

[pevergreen]

3. Archer/Casters will generally try to run from you less often when you get close to them. These AIs when they got jammed into corners would spend a lot of time failing to find a good spot, and we feel it's not worth the server cycles. An Archer/Caster will still occasionally move away from you, especially when they first aggro, but typically won't spend cycles trying to maintain distance anymore. Mobs with baked in jump back animations will still do those behaviors though.

This feels like a positive quality of life change for melee everywhere, thank you

 

[Gavaleus]

These look like good changes. Probably fairly minimal effect on game play, but possibly (and hopefully) a non-insignificant effect on performance.

(1) Hopefully reduces impact of pathing while still discouraging excessive zerging by keeping the DA contribution, (2) means if you do end up with extra aggro it won't be a pain to go back and try to find or chase after the enemies, and (3) reduces a big annoyance for melee and tank characters (it's especially noticeable against Vixorshal in the IoD wilderness for example. It feels like he runs away from you every 3-6 seconds).

 

[The Narc]

Finally being heard is nice, I think some of part 1 has already been incorporated and unfortunately in the worst place - encounter areas, i have noticed mobs that are not in the chase are still causing DA, althiugh it does trickle off much later, it still wont change anyone running tonquest in wilderness areas, they still need a change out in those for mob counts.

Part 2 is great

And Part 3 is great on QOL and resources

Thanks SSG

 

[PurpleSerpent]

3. Archer/Casters will generally try to run from you less often when you get close to them. These AIs when they got jammed into corners would spend a lot of time failing to find a good spot, and we feel it's not worth the server cycles. An Archer/Caster will still occasionally move away from you, especially when they first aggro, but typically won't spend cycles trying to maintain distance anymore. Mobs with baked in jump back animations will still do those behaviors though.

Does this mean those cursed Skeletal Archers in the Catacombs are finally going to stop strafing quite so much? I would be awfully grateful if that happened.

 

[Zaszgul]

Can you not also reduce the number of updates per second per mob?

I.e., if your mobs currently have 10 hearbeats per second, maybe try lowering it to 8?

 

[Zaszgul]

There is probably also a lot of event-driven chaining to look at. Mobs didn't used to telepathically tell each other where hidden/invisible characters are and share aggro like they do now, especially over long distances - are you sure there isn't (near) infinite chaining associated with this kind of stuff, at least under some circumstances?

i.e.,
mob A reports player1's location to mob B
mob B reports it back to mob A
mob A reports it back to mob B again
etc

And how are they deciding how far to broadcast this information? And how often? Are mobs constantly iterating over every mob in the dungeon to see if it is within X meters to broadcast aggro? That's a lot of pathing (distance) calculations too.

 

[Synthetic]

This sounds great.

 

[glass_jaws]

So with the goal of saving on path cycles to keep lag off the server we recently reworked monster AI in several ways.

1. Better De-aggro logic: Monsters will now be bit better about dropping aggro against players they have no hope of catching, and dropping aggro against players who passed them by but were never primary targets and might be long gone. Note this does not effect the duration they'll contribute to dungeon alert, only killing them or waiting for the alert to cooldown will do that once they've aggro'd and added to the alert level.

2. Skips going home: Monsters will no longer try to path home when they drop aggro. Sometimes these paths could get very long and expensive. We may eventually have them teleport home but given the players may want to go back and re-acquire them we're leaving them where they "lost the player" in this preview. Monsters on landscapes will still leash normally which is the teleport they do with the little yellow stop sign when they get pulled to far off their spawn point.

3. Archer/Casters will generally try to run from you less often when you get close to them. These AIs when they got jammed into corners would spend a lot of time failing to find a good spot, and we feel it's not worth the server cycles. An Archer/Caster will still occasionally move away from you, especially when they first aggro, but typically won't spend cycles trying to maintain distance anymore. Mobs with baked in jump back animations will still do those behaviors though.

Any chance you can increase the time between the jump backs? Bosses (especially kobold bosses like BOB) with jump back do it non stop, and it becomes a very frustrating experience of non stop chasing for melee. Obviously a melee only issue, but still frustrating.

 

[Scrag]

These are horrible changes in light of the xp changes.

Now, not only have you prioritized DA as the de facto way to gain experience, youve also destroyed attempts to use this by emphasizing de-aggro.

Is your goal simply to piss off as many people as possible at once trying to force this slowdown + mandatory conquest on everyone?

 

[Zaszgul]

And how are they deciding how far to broadcast this information? And how often? Are mobs constantly iterating over every mob in the dungeon to see if it is within X meters to broadcast aggro? That's a lot of pathing (distance) calculations too.

So after more thought, I realized that you probably aren't doing pathing calculations to determine distance when aggro sharing, because mobs can aggro each other through walls (i.e., where there is no path available). But, you need to start doing full pathing calculations for aggro sharing. Because mobs that get aggro'd through walls will naturally have a very hard time getting to you, resulting in very complex pathing to find you (like, as bad as "circumnavigate the entire dungeon" bad). Which also causes them to activate even more mobs as they traverse further and further through the dungeon on their odyssean journey to find you. And since it is already recognized that both complex pathing through the entire dungeon and aggroing large numbers of mobs is very bad for performance... you have to stop that from happening anymore.

Of course, this could significantly degrade performance when aggro sharing. Which is how often? Might grind the game to a halt very easily in some circumstances.

Alternatively, recognize that aggro sharing is going to degrade performance no matter how you implement it, and just get rid of aggro sharing entirely.

 

[SilverScreen]

Overall I think these are pretty good changes!

 

[Arcanaverse]

Feedback

I didn't get a chance to really dig into testing (yet), but on the surface these seems like excellent changes.

Point 2 though... I imagine it'd be pretty difficult, but would it be possible to simply despawn the monster after it drops aggro?

Just thinking like... fewer things loaded into the instance may be better for lag.

Either running back to respawn them/to their original spawn point would certainly teach me to defeat it along the way and not skip it. Would be more synergistic with the DA changes in getting us to defeat what we see is my thinking.

I appreciate the effort to keep them closer to where they got lost to reduce the runback, but I'd sacrifice this to reduce lag as well if it helps.

 

[droid327]

3. Archer/Casters will generally try to run from you less often when you get close to them. These AIs when they got jammed into corners would spend a lot of time failing to find a good spot, and we feel it's not worth the server cycles. An Archer/Caster will still occasionally move away from you, especially when they first aggro, but typically won't spend cycles trying to maintain distance anymore. Mobs with baked in jump back animations will still do those behaviors though.

This is nice and sounds like a good place to save cycles

That being said, maybe select ranged mobs should have a "tumble through players" type ability that lets them escape from being cornered so easily.

 

[The Narc]

Feedback

I didn't get a chance to really dig into testing (yet), but on the surface these seems like excellent changes.

Point 2 though... I imagine it'd be pretty difficult, but would it be possible to simply despawn the monster after it drops aggro?

Just thinking like... fewer things loaded into the instance may be better for lag.

Either running back to respawn them/to their original spawn point would certainly teach me to defeat it along the way and not skip it. Would be more synergistic with the DA changes in getting us to defeat what we see is my thinking.

I appreciate the effort to keep them closer to where they got lost to reduce the runback, but I'd sacrifice this to reduce lag as well if it helps.

Sure despawn then but keep them on the danger alert count, the new chamges make end bosses more difficult depending on the dungeon alert count and the isea is too not let players on soveriegn xp pots speed run thru the quest to the end boss. I think that mobs that hear your footsteps should also agro once it gets to the first stage of red that gives true seeing instantly bumping up kore danger alert to deter speed running with invisibility and leap of faith or similar abilities should atill agro things along the path of the leap again to deter speed running to the end of the quest not killing mobs. Also any mob that is bluffed or has diplomacy used on them should instantly after a few seconds so this cant be used to speed run.