Knockaround guys

[Luminara]

No, not the film.

 

Something's been nibbling away at the back on my mind for a long time.  I noticed it on the original servers, but never paid much attention to it.  This week, while I was hammering away at badges for Legionette, I ran the Founder's Falls safeguard mission numerous times, and it started to gnaw at me again.

 

Certain critters, Council/5th Column Wolf critters and Crey * Tanks, for example, can be kept on their backs with practically any K* attacks.  A gentle tap is enough to knock them down/back/up.  One of my cats pawing in the litterbox will send them flopping and bouncing around.  They're so susceptible to K* that it's even reliable when they're in the middle of an animation, and we've all seen critters ignore 100% Chance to K* powers when they're animating something (because the animation sequencer is a dick).  Yet, there's no K* weakness listed in their attributes, and this is not something which began after the KB code overhaul, it was happening from the earliest days of the game.

 

There's an unaccounted, unrecognized variable at work here.

 

I suspect that this is occurring due to an unexpected interaction between MovementControl/MovementFriction and K*.  The critters which seem to be affected by K* in this way all have extremely high MovementControl/MovementFriction, and K* is, essentially, movement imposed on the target.  And if it is an interaction between MovementControl/MovementFriction and K*, wouldn't that also have some implications in our use of combat mobility powers and travel powers which offer high MovementControl/MovementFriction, leading to our extreme dislike of K* on our characters specifically because the very powers we've relied on for in-combat mobility have been making K* more likely to happen to us as well?

 

I also find myself wondering how many of the K* powers were balanced with lower damage because they were tested against the wrong critters, against critters which had excessive MovementControl/MovementFriction, and gave the impression that they were too strong to warrant a higher damage scalar, even with low K* chances, because they were so "good" under those test conditions.

[Without_Pause]

So buff Claws? 

[Yomo Kimyata]

I suspect that these are the same mobs that, when stunned, wander aimlessly at *extremely* *high* *speeds*.

[srmalloy]

6 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I suspect that these are the same mobs that, when stunned, wander aimlessly at *extremely* *high* *speeds*.

If I remember Positron's description of what happens there, if you stun a mob when the server has already given it 'orders' to move somewhere, its movement gets interrupted while the "hit and stunned" animation plays, and its movement animation gets changed to the 'stunned stagger" -- but when all that completes, the movement that was already 'ordered' gets carried out, but because the stunning animation took time, there is less time for the mob to complete its movement, so its speed while completing the queued move will be faster.

 

Finishing the queued action is why you can stun or defeat a mob after it activates an attack but before the animation completes, and if the attack isn't flagged interruptible, it will still go off.

[Yomo Kimyata]

13 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

If I remember Positron's description of what happens there, if you stun a mob when the server has already given it 'orders' to move somewhere, its movement gets interrupted while the "hit and stunned" animation plays, and its movement animation gets changed to the 'stunned stagger" -- but when all that completes, the movement that was already 'ordered' gets carried out, but because the stunning animation took time, there is less time for the mob to complete its movement, so its speed while completing the queued move will be faster.

 

Finishing the queued action is why you can stun or defeat a mob after it activates an attack but before the animation completes, and if the attack isn't flagged interruptible, it will still go off.

 

Perhaps, but this effect is most noticeable with warwolves and crey and I don't see it with, say, Council or Carnies, so, hmm?

[TheZag]

[Marshal_General]

The Clockwork are also susceptible to kb to the point that kd often becomes kb.

[UltraAlt]

15 hours ago, TheZag said:

Edited February 11, 2022 by UltraAlt

[Luminara]

16 hours ago, TheZag said:

 

If my conclusion is accurate, there is likely no fix.  Movement after a K* occurs isn't a flagged or notated type of movement, nor is it likely that it could be flagged or notated, as the duration is varied in multiple ways.  A Suppress MovementControl/MovementFriction flag couldn't be tied to the K* magnitude without potentially infringing on a player character's mobility unnecessarily.  Nor would a suppression tied to the expected duration of the K* work, for the same reason.  There would inevitably be suppression of the movement variables when no suppression would be warranted, leading to situations no less frustrating than being knocked around.  Imagine, for instance, trying to jump away from a critter, only to discover that you can only jump straight up because your MovementControl and MovementFriction have been suppressed.

 

The movement code and/or the related variables would have to be rewritten from the ground up, and probably the K* code rewritten again in concert, to resolve this by redefining what constitutes movement altogether and treat K* as an entirely separate, non-movement, mechanic.  I doubt we'll see that happen, given the scope of such a project.

 

1 hour ago, Marshal_General said:

The Clockwork are also susceptible to kb to the point that kd often becomes kb.

 

This has nothing to do with K*-weak critters.  I specified that with the following line.

On 2/10/2022 at 9:38 AM, Luminara said:

there's no K* weakness listed in their attributes

 

[srmalloy]

20 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

Perhaps, but this effect is most noticeable with warwolves and crey and I don't see it with, say, Council or Carnies, so, hmm?

The warwolves and Crey tanks have faster movement than other mobs, so they'd appear even faster if their movement was compressed.