What triggers mobs to run away?

[MTeague]

On 5/11/2020 at 9:38 AM, XaoGarrent said:

...Diabolique is living, breathing proof that purple triangles was a mistake.

Except for the "living" and the "breathing" parts  🙂

[MunkiLord]

5 hours ago, XaoGarrent said:

I just had an ITF yesterday where Romulus spent a solid 10 minutes trying to run away from my DM/Ninjitsu Scrapper. I jumped in first, and before anyone else could so much as drop an ability on him, he immediately started running. He took off like he had a plane to catch from the moment I threw the first punch, and then proceeded to just endlessly run all over the damn place. He went as far as to jump on top of the roof and start climbing the rocks above and behind it.

 

It was both hilarious and incredibly frustrating. Resulted in the team wiping multiple times.

Archvillains fear Scrappers. So do the other ATs, that's why everyone wants to be a Scrapper. 

[Chrome]

fricking Tar Patch makes bad guys run...granted very very slowly, but it is annoying

[Peacemoon]

1 hour ago, Chrome said:

fricking Tar Patch makes bad guys run...granted very very slowly, but it is annoying

Starting to believe -res is a big cause, as someone mentioned earlier in the thread. 
 

So far I’ve noticed two types of run away during ‘regular combat’:

1) The ‘I don’t like this’ flee where they run away a little bit but then get brave again and come back and fight. Probably triggered by debuff discomfort.

2) The ‘RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!’ flee where nothing and no one will stop them (even taunt). Seems to be triggered when all their friends have been brutally murdered.

 

For the sake of this discussion presume we’re talking about regular mission combat and not scripted AE/outdoor run always.

[Turric]

I feel like, and this is completely subjective, that it is happening more often lately. Having read through other comments, it may be the -res because my dark melee scrapper can't get anything to sit still and neither can my warshade. Other characters, like my street justice scrapper or claws brute, the enemies take their licks without issue, for the most part.

[MunkiLord]

It's my understanding that it is various things. Enemies not being able to hit you, whether because of floored recharge, to-hit, or high player defenses, though I think the debuffs matter more since those directly impact the enemy. Enemies try and run from almost every patch, taunt auras can override some of this behavior to varying degrees. One shotting enemies can also cause other mobs to flee. 

 

As extreme power levels become more and more common, people are simply hitting these various triggers more often. 

[Silverado]

7 hours ago, Peacemoon said:

Starting to believe -res is a big cause, as someone mentioned earlier in the thread. 

As Luminara said, most patch/rain type powers have a built in "avoid" mechanic.

It beats me why people decide to ignore the one reply in this thread that is actually accurate.

[Peacemoon]

10 minutes ago, Silverado said:

As Luminara said, most patch/rain type powers have a built in "avoid" mechanic.

It beats me why people decide to ignore the one reply in this thread that is actually accurate.

I’m talking about my radiation debuff toggles which are toggles and not patch/rain type powers. I think people know mobs run from rain powers, this is basic stuff.

[Silverado]

1 hour ago, Peacemoon said:

I’m talking about my radiation debuff toggles which are toggles and not patch/rain type powers.

Ah my bad then. I was mislead by you specifically quoting a tar patch comment

[Peacemoon]

4 minutes ago, Silverado said:

Ah my bad then. I was mislead by you specifically quoting a tar patch comment

It’s okay, I often create these really vague threads by accident where we all end up talking about different things 😆

[Lost Deep]

9 hours ago, Peacemoon said:

So far I’ve noticed two types of run away during ‘regular combat’:

1) The ‘I don’t like this’ flee where they run away a little bit but then get brave again and come back and fight. Probably triggered by debuff discomfort.

I've mostly seen this is in ranged mobs, leading me to believe it's a moment of 'wait, I have a gun, I should be trying to shoot this guy at a distance, not punch him in the face.' In any case I don't mind this, there are times where the guy moves into a different mob and it becomes awkward to finish him but they're few and at most call for a little thought to solve. .

9 hours ago, Peacemoon said:

2) The ‘RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!’ flee where nothing and no one will stop them (even taunt). Seems to be triggered when all their friends have been brutally murdered.

This is the annoying one. The worst thing is that when the flee cycle finishes, they're still 'in combat' with you as far as they're concerned. So they come back to get beat on again. If they ran off to join a different spawn group, that'd be one thing? But they always, 100% of the time, come back to try and fight you sooner or later. It's just stupid.

[Peacemoon]

44 minutes ago, Lost Deep said:

I've mostly seen this is in ranged mobs, leading me to believe it's a moment of 'wait, I have a gun, I should be trying to shoot this guy at a distance, not punch him in the face.' In any case I don't mind this, there are times where the guy moves into a different mob and it becomes awkward to finish him but they're few and at most call for a little thought to solve. .

This is the annoying one. The worst thing is that when the flee cycle finishes, they're still 'in combat' with you as far as they're concerned. So they come back to get beat on again. If they ran off to join a different spawn group, that'd be one thing? But they always, 100% of the time, come back to try and fight you sooner or later. It's just stupid.

Very occasionally they won’t come back they will time out, deaggro, get lost and then return slowly to their spawn point. 

Have you seen it in a kill all mission and somehow you missed a mob in the middle of the map? Sometimes you genuinely missed it - not helped by the fact on some maps ‘mob groups’ are terribly spaced out, and only aggro at an individual level rather than triggered as a whole group (which I also find annoying), but other times the mob was missed because it took off and ran away, and managed to escape without notice and did what I mentioned above, deaggroed and only walked back slowly to its spawn point after a few minutes delay.

 

The only good thing about the run away is the satisfaction of finishing a runner off with an AR/ snipe to the back of their head... (a heroic snipe; of course!). 

[Luminara]

-Res has not been, historically, a trigger for flight behavior.  The HC team may have made a change, intentionally or inadvertantly, but it's never been a problem in the past.  But given that no-one's started a thread asking why enemies are running away from Sonic Blast attacks or Sonic Resonance debuffs, why Acid Arrow and Disruption Arrow are scattering enemies, et cetera, I think the logical conclusion here is observational bias.

 

Test before making any assumptions.  Every debuff can be tested, and you can alter variables such as personal defense totals to discover whether this is a real issue or misperception.  I'd gleefully do it, but I lack access to the necessary equipment.

[Hero_of_Light]

Me

[Eva Destruction]

On 5/13/2020 at 1:23 AM, RialVestro said:

That's actually a loaded question. There are many MANY reasons a mob could be triggered to run away. Just look in AE, you'll find a list of different triggers for mobs to run. Health reasons which can be set at various levels. If a certain number of NPCs has been defeated or if a specific NPC has been defeated it could trigger the survivors to run. Some enemies are triggered to instantly start running as soon as you even get near them. They could start running because of some other objective in a mission was completed.

This is a different mechanic, where enemies are scripted to run to the mission door when certain conditions are met.  If they reach the door, you fail the mission.  There are only a few missions that do this, because players found it incredibly annoying.  It has nothing to do with ordinary mobs running away.

[Coyotedancer]

On 5/12/2020 at 10:49 AM, XaoGarrent said:

I just had an ITF yesterday where Romulus spent a solid 10 minutes trying to run away from my DM/Ninjitsu Scrapper. I jumped in first, and before anyone else could so much as drop an ability on him, he immediately started running. He took off like he had a plane to catch from the moment I threw the first punch, and then proceeded to just endlessly run all over the damn place. He went as far as to jump on top of the roof and start climbing the rocks above and behind it.

 

It was both hilarious and incredibly frustrating. Resulted in the team wiping multiple times.

Yeeeah… Sometimes the goons are just complete and total cowards.

 

 

This is Psychic Rusty.

Running from Xhelethe, my Katana/WP Scrap.

Before she even got a chance to attack him. 

 

The fliers are the ones that really annoy me the most though. That's mostly a matter of relative movement speed. They get to jet off like bats out of proverbial hell... And we can't effectively chase them because some nutball thought that MOVEMENT SPEED SUPPRESSION while we were in combat was a Good Idea. <_< I hate that. A lot. 

 

 

Edited May 15, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[pyrocumulus]

Ancedotally, I can report that my fire/traps corruptor's DOT stack of Rain of Fire+Caltrops+Acid Mortar provokes the strongest flee AI I've seen in the game.

 

Leveling solo/duo, it actually allowed me to take on much stronger spawns than normal, as it completely neutered incoming damage, but now I'm 50 I had to take Web Envelope to get them to stay put.

 

The strongest melee flee reaction I've seen was from duoing a Widow and Crab, again I suspect because of the toxic DOT components of both our attacks.

[Hardboiled Hero]

I've seen people say that mobs usually run from fire damage unless they are also taunted..  Is this because fire damage usually comes with a DoT?  would this be the same as any other debuff, or do DoT's have a bigger effect than most debuffs?  Or is it something else altogether?

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 minute ago, Hardboiled Hero said:

I've seen people say that mobs usually run from fire damage unless they are also taunted.. 

My fire/fire blaster would disagree.