A “Call for Help” Difficulty Option

[Myrmidon]

After some discussion earlier in another thread, there is an idea for a difficulty option that came up.

 

How about adding an option for enemy groups to call for help from other surrounding group? If possible, have some way for the boss of a spawn to cast some form of low-grade taunt (perhaps something similar to a one pulse Rise to the  Challenge) on their attacker that calls other units within line of sight and a certain radius?

 

Any suggestions or ideas?

[VileTerror]

The idea I had is a bit convoluted, but would probably make sure the aggro is directed accordingly.

 

- Mob 1 Boss has a Power which triggers when X number of allies from their mob are defeated (checks body count, casts if threshold is exceeded)

- Mob 1 Boss casts "Call for Help" on enemy player (or player pet)

- Target of "Call for Help" gains an Auto Power which instantly summons an invisible Pet (the "Help Pet") who follows the Target for the duration of its life

- Help Pet has massive AoE Taunt Aura that penetrates terrain (is that possible?)

- Mob 2 gets Taunted by Help Pet, who is "owned" by the Target of "Call for Help" rather than the Mob 1 Boss, and therefore correctly identify the target as hostile

- Mob 2 comes rushing over to join the fight, since their AI says "they just poked us!"

- Help Pet despawns, leaving Mob 2 in range of the Target of "Call for Help"

[boggo2300]

As came up in the other thread, I think a taunt pet from the first mob boss, shadowing it's pc target to draw aggro from all nearby mobs would probably be the most simple mechanically to implement and would give pretty much the exact visible outcome of the mob boss calling in the nearby reinforcements

 

this would be pretty damn awesome for immersion, and well just plain fun!  I really hope we can come up with something the dev's can, and want to implement, I know it's been a long term gripe of many many players that nearby mobs just stand there ignoring their friends being reduced to a muddy smear on the floor!

[Lines]

I'd love this. Something that would add a little more engagement to combat. You either take them all on, or use the map and some tactics to divide and conquer.

 

I think the enemy AI does need a stern talking to. As it is, those lemmings way too happy to appease the metagame

Edited January 2, 2020 by Lines

[boggo2300]

14 minutes ago, Lines said:

I'd love this. Something that would add a little more engagement to combat. You either take them all on, or use the map and some tactics to divide and conquer.

 

I think the enemy AI does need a stern talking to. As it is, those lemmings way too happy to appease the metagame

One of the best things about this is it's actually tricking the broken AI to act well, like a real working AI 😄

[Vanden]

That sounds like it's just going to end up making the entire map aggro at once but with extra steps.

[Galaxy Brain]

I mean at this point thats where the challenge is. My newly lvl 32 blaster can Nova entire +3 spawns in 1 shot with just BU and an Acc/Dam IO in Nova, and repeat that about every 65 sec thanks to /Time's version of BU and some FF procs. While awesomely fun, it is a bit 🤔 in terms of challenge at times.

[Infinitum]

14 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

After some discussion earlier in another thread, there is an idea for a difficulty option that came up.

 

How about adding an option for enemy groups to call for help from other surrounding group? If possible, have some way for the boss of a spawn to cast some form of low-grade taunt (perhaps something similar to a one pulse Rise to the  Challenge) on their attacker that calls other units within line of sight and a certain radius?

 

Any suggestions or ideas?

This a great idea i think.   Afterall bad guys never seem to run out of cannon fodder henchmen anyway.  haha

[Lazarillo]

I mean, in practice, would this really work?  There's already an aggro cap, and I'd imagine running at x8 is getting you very close to that (and if not, you can just rush multiple groups).  As Vanden said, this just seems like it'd result in aggroing the whole map, and not everyone is built to handle that sort of thing.  If you want to fight multiple mobs at once, well, just do so.

[VileTerror]

That's why I suggested the invisible pet, Lazarillo.  It would draw in additional enemies, and when it despawns those enemies would then switch over to the players.  And since it would, under my proposal, only spawn in if the first mob lost a tonne of minions, then it's not like the player has a lot of aggro on them any more.

[Lazarillo]

It seems like a convoluted suggestion for something that can already be achieved by smacking multiple mobs yourself, though, with the added negative effect of bringing about potential aggro cascades on people who don't want them.

[Vanden]

How does the invisible pet help, in practice? What are you picturing would be the functional difference from just putting a taunt aura on a player or their pet?

[VileTerror]

If the source of the taunt aura is an enemy, then other NPCs allied with that enemy may not register the aggro at all.
If the player is already at their aggro cap at the moment of the taunt aura applying directly to them, then we may end up with weird behaviour where enemies already engaged with the player drop their aggro in favour of the distant enemies gaining it.

The invisible pet is used to avoid aspects of the code which would be disruptive to the intended plan.

 

And, as ever, I believe this is meant as an optional difficulty toggle; not something mandatory for every player.  Something for the players who are looking for more of a challenge (or possibly other reasons). 

[Vanden]

But you specifically said that the call for help isn’t supposed to kick in unless most of the mobs in a spawn are already defeated, so why introduce an extra step to get around the aggro cap when it shouldn’t be in play to begin with?

[VileTerror]

Because it very well may be with the speed that some players are chewing through enemy mobs these days.

[Lazarillo]

6 minutes ago, VileTerror said:

And, as ever, I believe this is meant as an optional difficulty toggle; not something mandatory for every player.  Something for the players who are looking for more of a challenge (or possibly other reasons). 

Trying to make it optional just feels like it's adding even more rigamarole for a system that already exists, as noted, in the form of "chuck an extra fireball at the next mob over".

[Myrmidon]

9 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

Trying to make it optional just feels like it's adding even more rigamarole for a system that already exists, as noted, in the form of "chuck an extra fireball at the next mob over".

That is definitely something to consider and the Devs can look into that if they show any interest in the concept.

[Galaxy Brain]

@parabola had a cool idea in the works in regards to having content also scale per team member outside of the normal diff slider. This could also help?

[Riverdusk]

I wonder how much this would basically just turn every mission into a farming map.  Also, how much of a hit to system resources it might add.

Edited January 2, 2020 by Riverdusk

[Galaxy Brain]

2 minutes ago, Riverdusk said:

I wonder how much this would basically just turn every mission into a farming map.  Also, how much of a hit to system resources it might add.

I doubt it, farm enemies dont fight back like normal enemies

[VileTerror]

THAT is the right kind of question to ask, River!  What sort of impact would this have "waking up" more enemies?  Are there already elements of code in place to limit this?  For example, if we theoretically had an 8-person team of Masterminds, and they somehow made all of their Henchpets completely invulnerable, and each aggrod exactly 16 enemies, would the server be able to handle over 900 AI-controlled entities without any significant issue?

[Galaxy Brain]

Ambushes in missions can already stack up to be like, x24 spawns so I think there is precedent.

[Lines]

17 minutes ago, Riverdusk said:

I wonder how much this would basically just turn every mission into a farming map.  Also, how much of a hit to system resources it might add.

 

There could be some limits in place. The one alteration I'd have to the suggested methods is to not try and make the taunt penetrate the environment and allow LoS to remain a factor. That way, at most, only the current room could potentially be aggro'd by this mechanic.

 

An obvious one is to limit the range of the taunt, so that once a certain proximity has been cleared out then nobody else will arrive. Another might be to flag mobs at random as vulnerable or resistant to this particular taunt, so that not the whole group responds.

 

I'd rather see a change done directly to the AI rather than a 'hack' solution with a pseudopet, but I have no idea what either entails.

[Saiyajinzoningen]

i can totally see a wolf howling for more wolves or something like that or ppd calling robots from the sky this is a great idea

[Haijinx]

8 hours ago, Vanden said:

That sounds like it's just going to end up making the entire map aggro at once but with extra steps.

That is kind of the idea.  If you are a member of the Team of Bad Guys and all your buddies 100 feet away are getting walloped, should you go help them out?

 

Or .. just let the people invading your base rest, recover, and then take you out when they are ready?