Apply the No Level code to critters spawned from Mysterious Gifts

[Luminara]

I spent most of yesterday afternoon running around various zones with one of my level 50+ characters.  Out of consideration, I went to level-appropriate zones initially, but discovered that almost none of the spawns were, in fact, level appropriate.  Barring a couple of presents which spawned some 48's and 49's, all that shit conned grey to me.  Presents in the Fab, grey-cons.  Presents in north PI, grey-con.  After one-shotting enough of them to get the Cold Warrior badge twice, I found myself wondering why I was bothering.  No drops.  No inf*.  And not a population of 100,000 players sharing the same space, so no real concern of leaving a high level spawn that might decimate a lowbie.

In other words, I realized there was absolutely no incentive to defeat those spawns.  If they'd conned white, or even blue, I'd have continued to beat them down, just for the Candy Cane drops, but even that was off the table.  Removing the Alpha Incarnate enhancement wouldn't have turned those wastes of time into something rewarding, either, so I gave up and adopted the "Fuck it, they'll despawn or someone else will deal with them" attitude, went to a lower level zone with a higher Mysterious Gift density with an easier collection route and went about the business of working on Toy Collector.

 

With 200 presents to open for the Toy Collector badge, and only 100 critters required for the Cold Warrior, it's easy to acquire the badge before one is 1/3 of the way through Toy Collector, so there's no impetus provided on that front, either.  As it stands, the game actively encourages players not to deal with those spawns by providing zero rewards while also offering identical foes, which do reward the player's investment of time, in Father Time's missions.

 

Yeah, I became that asshole, at the event design's prompting to do so.  "Don't bother with this crap, Lumi, just click and go."

Winter Horde critters spawning from Mysterious Gifts need to spawn with no level, giving players a reason to defeat them (event drops, regular drops, inf*, XP), and not putting lowbies at serious risk of insta-gib if they stumble across abandoned spawns.  And other players wouldn't feel like garbage collectors when they came across abandoned spawns, they'd get something for the time they spent cleaning them up.

 

I'll probably be an asshole again later today, when I start working on the badges with my main.  And again when I go after the badges on other characters.  I don't want to, but that 2-3s I spend using an AoE/PBAoE, plus the travel suppression time, for 0 inf*, 0 drops, 0 badge progress, makes being an asshole the most viable option.  That's not good design, and it really should be addressed.

[Myrmidon]

While I would love for this to be applied to any outdoor mobs in 30+ level zones, I’ll second this option.

[Akisan]

I'm usually against the scaled-level mobs, especially in outdoor areas, but this would be a marked improvement going the other way too - I usually avoid presents like the plague when I'm not at or over a zone's maximum level.  Only had to fall for that trap once on Live:  Picture a level 10 scrapper, just into Steel, sees a present just lying there on the way to the university.  Surprise, the present barfs out 3x Frostlings... at level 19.  Instant Hosp trip (followed by a rather dicey escape from the far side of Steel, since this was before easy jetpack access...).  I'll occasionally try my luck if I'm mid-range for the zone, but that's only if I'm feeling exceptionally bold that night.

[laudwic]

While I am against scaled-level mobs for most things outside of events, this is an event that should have them.  I've started two new blasters to try the new primary/secondary and the revamped one.  I was grabbing presents last night, and when the spawns were purple, well it was not a pleasant Gomer Pyle moment, 'surprise, surprise, surprise.'

 

I would prefer if the mobs in events, especially ones that just appear, be scaled-level rather than being surprised by the level that pops up.

[Shenanigunner]

I went gift-hunting in PI last night and got nothing but gray mobs (Click/Spawn/Burn/Move On). Until I got a purple mob, 50s.

 

It's... pretty erratic. There must be some way to scale holiday mobs a little more evenly.

 

BTW:

• /bind ADD "targetcustomnext base myst"

You're welcome.

[Aurora_Girl]

I don't see why the ToT mobs can be levelless but the Winter ones can't...other than *generic code rant*

[Zhym]

6 hours ago, Luminara said:

In other words, I realized there was absolutely no incentive to defeat those spawns.

There is one incentive to defeat the spawns, although it's more of a "be a good member of the community" type incentive (or, in the spirit of the holiday and the presents themselves, "Nice").  As I understand it, presents respawn more quickly when the snow beasts are cleared.   Of course, a selfish player (hello, Vigilantes, Villains, and Rogues!) could decide that's other people's problems, and some do.  But for people who don't want to be Naughty, there is that slight incentive to defeating the spawns.  And the advantage of having them spawn at zone level is that at least clearing them is usually quick.

[Alchemystic]

On 11/20/2021 at 1:32 PM, Faultline said:

 

That code is a flag called IgnoreCombatMods and it can be set in a few different ways: on the critter itself (applies everywhere), on the SpawnDef (applies to the specific spawn point the critter is created in) or as an AI behavior (applies to a specific critter after the behavior is given). For making all the mobs in a zone not have a level regardless of source, you could have a small script that hooks on entity creation and gives them the AI behavior as soon as they are created, after checking that they're not a player or player pet. This would cover all critters regardless of the source of spawning and be a lot easier than editing all the spawndefs, but still has the edge case where certain player pets that are "orphaned" after creation would be picked up as mobs and given the behavior.

 

There is no intention of doing that in HC at this point in time.

 

 

[lemming]

Hunt in the PvP zones and they con equal.    And there are way more presents it seems.  I figured I may as well do a bunch of explorations and wound up being completist on some redside history badges and got a decent chunk of presents done

[Aurora_Girl]

3 hours ago, Tyrannical said:

 

 

 

But then why do it on ToT and not these?

[Alchemystic]

1 hour ago, Aurora_Girl said:

 

But then why do it on ToT and not these?

 

Assume spaghetti code

[Troo]

I like to complain about people who complain.

[PeregrineFalcon]

39 minutes ago, Troo said:

I like to complain about people who complain.

Hey! That's my job!

 

Go get your own job, Troo. Quit trying to steal mine.  😒

[Luminara]

2 hours ago, Aurora_Girl said:

But then why do it on ToT and not these?

 

The developer quote used as a "/jranger without saying /jranger" was taken out of context.  In context, @Faultline was responding to a request to make entire zones levelless.  That quote, and I suspect the intent of it, doesn't apply to this suggestion, or in this context.  Mysterious Gifts aren't zones.  Winter Horde don't inhabit entire zones.  This suggestion has a level of specificity which isn't addressed in @Faultline's post.  He said they're not going to apply levelless code across the board.  This is specific.  One type of spawn, one category of critters, one method of spawning those critters.

 

There's also no code argument to apply here.  @Faultline states, in that very quote, that one of the methods of applying the flag is by spawn point.  The spawn point is already defined as the Mysterious Gift, there's no digging, no untangling, no unnecessary drama to making the change.  Flag the SpawnDef, done.  If anything, it's an unintended argument for the suggestion, not against it, because it's already been stated to be possible.

 

Entire zones is a no-go, but specific spawns during special events is already done with Nemesis, Rikti and Halloween critters, so Winter Horde are an exception to the norm.  They can do it, and there's plenty of reason for them to do it.  But it's up to them.  I just brought it up, they have to decide whether it's worth their time.

[Aurora_Girl]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

 

The developer quote used as a "/jranger without saying /jranger" was taken out of context.  In context, @Faultline was responding to a request to make entire zones levelless.  That quote, and I suspect the intent of it, doesn't apply to this suggestion, or in this context.  Mysterious Gifts aren't zones.  Winter Horde don't inhabit entire zones.  This suggestion has a level of specificity which isn't addressed in @Faultline's post.  He said they're not going to apply levelless code across the board.  This is specific.  One type of spawn, one category of critters, one method of spawning those critters.

 

There's also no code argument to apply here.  @Faultline states, in that very quote, that one of the methods of applying the flag is by spawn point.  The spawn point is already defined as the Mysterious Gift, there's no digging, no untangling, no unnecessary drama to making the change.  Flag the SpawnDef, done.  If anything, it's an unintended argument for the suggestion, not against it, because it's already been stated to be possible.

 

Entire zones is a no-go, but specific spawns during special events is already done with Nemesis, Rikti and Halloween critters, so Winter Horde are an exception to the norm.  They can do it, and there's plenty of reason for them to do it.  But it's up to them.  I just brought it up, they have to decide whether it's worth their time.

 

Thank you Lumi. I was wondering if I had lost my sense of reading comprehension. 

[Alchemystic]

10 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

The developer quote used as a "/jranger without saying /jranger" was taken out of context.  In context, @Faultline was responding to a request to make entire zones levelless.  That quote, and I suspect the intent of it, doesn't apply to this suggestion.

 

That's one hell of a strawman.

 

I supplied the quote to provide recent information about how level spawn coding works, since it was brought up by both @Myrmidon and @Aurora_Girl

 

 

Edited December 2, 2021 by Tyrannical

[PeregrineFalcon]

Both Winterhorde and TOT mobs should be level-less.

Edited December 2, 2021 by PeregrineFalcon

[TheZag]

I thought the quote was to show it was possible,  not to be a no.  Just shows how 2 people can read the exact same thing and get opposite meanings.

 

But even if its possible doesnt mean its quick.  If they have to edit the spawn defs individually for hundreds of present locations is very different then 1 edit per zone or 1 edit covers them all.