Literally ANYTHING to stop ranged henchmen from brawling

[Weylin]

Remove brawl?

Pet immobilization aura?

Give them an instant-recharge ranged attack?

Make Stay and GoTo override their urge to attack a target?

 

Literally anything. I do not care. My patience for their unfathomable imbecility has reached its absolute limit.

The cries of my team mates, as robots sprint and jump and push them around, desperately trying to get that one single slap in... rings in my ears.

The sparks of defeated robots who ran up to an Arch Villain for 0.1 seconds... burned into my eyes.

The massive hordes of pissed off Freakshow Stunners, aggroed by a robot who disengaged from Group Fly and spazzed off into the horizon... immobilizing me for 3 minutes straight.

 

god im so done

[ryuplaneswalker]

1 hour ago, Weylin said:

Remove brawl?

 

1 hour ago, Weylin said:

Give them an instant-recharge ranged attack?

 

Both of those would break the attack chain AI pretty bad.

[TheAdjustor]

You can thank Castle for this. It used to be before he "FIXED" if you slotted for a decent amount of recharge they wouldn't run into battle and cycle their ranged attacks.

[Lazarillo]

49 minutes ago, ryuplaneswalker said:

Both of those would break the attack chain AI pretty bad.

Then just "a second ranged attack identical to the first one with the same endurance, recharge, and relative damage values as the melee attack"?

Edited September 16, 2019 by Lazarillo

[HelenCarnate]

Increase the range of their brawl attack to 80' range?

[ryuplaneswalker]

20 minutes ago, TheAdjustor said:

You can thank Castle for this. It used to be before he "FIXED" if you slotted for a decent amount of recharge they wouldn't run into battle and cycle their ranged attacks.

And back then the melee pets were broke, because they would sit back and spam their crappy range attack.

 

2 minutes ago, HelenCarnate said:

Increase the range of their brawl attack to 80' range?

That is the thing I have suggested for "ranged" pets forever.

[TheAdjustor]

1 minute ago, ryuplaneswalker said:

And back then the melee pets were broke, because they would sit back and spam their crappy range attack.

 

That is the thing I have suggested for "ranged" pets forever.

Either way it wasn't a fix.

[HelenCarnate]

I vaguely remember this being a common complaint and there being no solution that didn't break things but I don't recall what was suggested and how it broke things. That was a long time ago.

[ryuplaneswalker]

2 minutes ago, TheAdjustor said:

Either way it wasn't a fix.

That depends on how you define fix, it fixed a massive problem melee pets had at the very minor cost of Ranged pets running in which is a quality of life issue more than anything else. Pets getting murdered by Melee AOE is a problem with how accuracy works with levels and the fact pets are very often in the purple patch nowadays.

[Weylin]

What about toggled holds on ranged pets? Does that break the AI at all? Do they continue to shoot while rooted in place but still able to activate powers?

Edited September 16, 2019 by Weylin

[Sovera]

I'm not a coder, and in any case I'm not in front of CoH's code. Obviously it cannot be a simple answer or it would have been done already. I mean, it seems obvious that if removing Brawl is bad, then create a basic attack with Braw's endurance, recharge time, active time, and substitute that for the MM pets.

 

But *because* it is is so obvious there must be something under the hood stopping it from happening.

[Steampunkette]

"Hold This Position" Temp Power.

Targets Pet-Class Allies Only, TAoE Mag 100 Immobilize, Range 50ft, Area 15ft Radius, Toggle Duration, 0.01 End/Sec.

Use the same code to make it affect only the Caster's Pets as the Upgrade Powers.

 

Could work as a kludge.

 

 

 

[Black Zot]

I don't buy that no Brawl breaks MM pet AI.  There are already ranged pets in the game with no brawl that work just fine.  The Lich, the Protector Bots ... AI breaking is not an excuse when you've got two working templates to copy-paste from.

[Shazbotacus]

5 hours ago, Black Zot said:

I don't buy that no Brawl breaks MM pet AI.  There are already ranged pets in the game with no brawl that work just fine.  The Lich, the Protector Bots ... AI breaking is not an excuse when you've got two working templates to copy-paste from.

This, so much this. It makes absolutely no sense that this somehow "can't be fixed," and even less sense that it's a thing in the first place. Lich AI is phenomenal compared to the rest of the ranged henchmen; literally all it does is run to 40 feet while cycling its ranged attacks. I've never seen it get closer than that, and I presume it's because of the range of its Tenebrous Tentacles. Protector Bots behave similarly but with the addition of using their shield and healing power on other henchmen.

 

But most of all, thank you so much for observing this as well. I thought I was alone in knowing this and losing my friggin' mind.

 

9 hours ago, Sovera said:

I'm not a coder, and in any case I'm not in front of CoH's code. Obviously it cannot be a simple answer or it would have been done already. I mean, it seems obvious that if removing Brawl is bad, then create a basic attack with Braw's endurance, recharge time, active time, and substitute that for the MM pets.

 

But *because* it is is so obvious there must be something under the hood stopping it from happening.

It's also possible the original devs had some really questionable logic behind insisting that ranged henchmen should be wasting their advantage of range to use one terrible attack power. They did mostly good with City of Heroes don't get me wrong, but everyone makes mistakes or holds on to some flawed reasoning like the "cottage rule" which they could never drop long enough to hand out an overhaul or two for the powers and sets that desperately needed it *cough Mercs cough*. [REDACTED; FALSEHOOD] That's just harsh speculation though, and also another problem; we'll never know for sure because, quite frustratingly, they never said anything on the matter. Not a single thing, no acknowledgement at all, so now all we have is speculation.

Edited September 16, 2019 by Shazbotacus

[PaxArcana]

+1,111,111

 

Because, seriously, when I was playing MMs on Live (through the end of i13), it did NOT happen that often, not even close!

[TheAdjustor]

11 hours ago, ryuplaneswalker said:

That depends on how you define fix, it fixed a massive problem melee pets had at the very minor cost of Ranged pets running in which is a quality of life issue more than anything else. Pets getting murdered by Melee AOE is a problem with how accuracy works with levels and the fact pets are very often in the purple patch nowadays.

I call B.S. It "Fixed" melee by breaking ranged pets and nerfing all the pets that gained improved damage from recharge boosts. That's right it wasn't just ranged mastermind  pets he broke, he broke controller pets as well and nerfed melee damage pets like fire imps.  Calling it a QOL issue that ranged pets would charge in and expire is also completely off base. While it may not have made my Bots/Dark unplayable it did take most of the fun out of it.

 

 

Edited September 16, 2019 by TheAdjustor

[TheAdjustor]

3 hours ago, Shazbotacus said:

This, so much this. It makes absolutely no sense that this somehow "can't be fixed," and even less sense that it's a thing in the first place. Lich AI is phenomenal compared to the rest of the ranged henchmen; literally all it does is run to 40 feet while cycling its ranged attacks. I've never seen it get closer than that, and I presume it's because of the range of its Tenebrous Tentacles. Protector Bots behave similarly but with the addition of using their shield and healing power on other henchmen.

 

But most of all, thank you so much for observing this as well. I thought I was alone in knowing this and losing my friggin' mind.

 

It's also possible the original devs had some really questionable logic behind insisting that ranged henchmen should be wasting their advantage of range to use one terrible attack power. They did mostly good with City of Heroes don't get me wrong, but everyone makes mistakes or holds on to some flawed reasoning like the "cottage rule" which they could never drop long enough to hand out an overhaul or two for the powers and sets that desperately needed it *cough Mercs cough*. That's just harsh speculation though, and also another problem; we'll never know for sure because, quite frustratingly, they never said anything on the matter. Not a single thing, no acknowledgement at all, so now all we have is speculation.

They were perfectly willing to break the cottage rule, instant healing ring a bell ? And they were certainly willing to liberally interpret it when they wanted to, energy transfer comes to mind on that as well as many other examples.

[Shazbotacus]

59 minutes ago, TheAdjustor said:

They were perfectly willing to break the cottage rule, instant healing ring a bell ? And they were certainly willing to liberally interpret it when they wanted to, energy transfer comes to mind on that as well as many other examples.

Oh shoot, that’s right I forgot about that. Got me there. Sorry guys I did a silly.

 

Ranged pet AI still needs a fix tho. Gimme Lich and Prot Bot AI pls.

Edited September 16, 2019 by Shazbotacus

[TheAdjustor]

17 minutes ago, Shazbotacus said:

Oh shoot, that’s right I forgot about that. Got me there. Sorry guys I did a silly.

 

Ranged pet AI still needs a fix tho. Gimme Lich and Prot Bot AI pls.

Couldn't agree more. I started remaking  my Bots/Dark and by the time I got to the kill contaminated in outbreak, I was sick of the little guy charging the enemy.

[General Idiot]

I could be wrong but if I remember rightly some of the demon summoning pets actually do lose their basic melee attack when you use either both upgrades or just the second specifically on them. If it works for them, one would think it reasonable to assume it'd work or could be made to work for other pets.

[DR_Mechano]

Agreed This doesn't just affect MM pets but controller pets like the Phantasm which has all but 1 of its abilities at range and then will run in and slap something and thus get one shot by an AoE. Someone needs to go through and replace brawl with a power that is basically just brawl with a 80ft range that's if you can't just flat out remove brawl itself.

[krj12]

One if the reasons I quit on MMs after trying Thugs back in the day.   The "ranged" fire blaster running in every time and

getting splatted, while my brute henchman hung back and threw rocks.

 

Drove me absolutely nuts,  and I've had zero desire to try the AT again.

 

[Shazbotacus]

It is off-putting. I may still love the AT myself, but that makes it more frustrating. I hope the Homecoming team can do what Paragon would not.

[Bossk_Hogg]

4 hours ago, TheAdjustor said:

They were perfectly willing to break the cottage rule, instant healing ring a bell ? And they were certainly willing to liberally interpret it when they wanted to, energy transfer comes to mind on that as well as many other examples.

They completely changed what fears did as well. Before it just made things run off, now it has the "cower in place until struck" effect. The cottage "rule" was a guideline at best to prevent power SETS (not powers) from no longer resembling themselves. 

 

Removing brawl or giving it a range would be most welcome. Also ditching the stupid hurl from bruiser. 

Edited September 16, 2019 by Bossk_Hogg

[Weylin]

We do have a beta server to test all these different things on.

Maybe some way to test several at once to see which ones cause problems or not?