Revert Mob Rendering

[Rudra]

Would it be possible to revert the way mobs are rendered in the game? On any open instance city map where you have to find multiple bosses like the Freaklympics city map or have to find multiple hostages/glowies like the Eternal Nemesis Council vs. Nemesis city map, the objectives too often simply don't render until the map is cleared. So you can hear Freakshow bosses talking, but they aren't rendered and available for attacking until you clear out a significant portion of the map. Or you can race around the map looking for hostages and several don't actually render until you clear out a significant portion of the map. In all cases, in places you specifically searched already.

[Greycat]

...

 

About the only time I see things not render is in the middle of MSRs. I don't think I've ever had that happen in a mission in HC.

[srmalloy]

I've had occasions -- always out in a zone -- where I will find mobs that are invisible, with only their shadows rendered (which implies that it's a bug, because characters with a stealth power active don't have shadows), but are nonetheless targetable, and if I move around, I can get them to render.

[Astralock]

I can't say that I've ever experienced this outside of Hamidon and Rikti mothership raids.  Try turning your world detail up to 200% under graphics options.

[srmalloy]

There are a few examples -- one is in the grassy area east of the wall separating the rest of AP from the Argosy Industrial section -- where the 'instanced outdoor mission' functionality causes issues. In that location, you see a spawn of Clockwork under a tree that will disappear if you move closer, and reappear if you back away. I don't think this is the cause of the issue Rudra is describing, though, because the instanced outdoor functionality isn't widely used;the Paragon devs, IIRC, reported that they had problems with making it work right, so it was pretty much limited to Matthew Habashy's and Aaron Thierry's arcs in AP, outside of Praetoria where it was first used.

[Coyotedancer]

That one Freakolympics mission on the big King's Row map is just prone to that. Some of the boss groups won't spawn immediately and have a habit of showing up in areas you've already explored. It's been that way since the Live days.

 

It doesn't seem to happen on other missions using that map (In the Terra Conspiracy arc, for instance, or a few missions from The Instant Army-), so it may be something about the mission design rather than the map or the game engine. 

[Rudra]

It was a change implemented back on Live because of the Marcus Cole single player mission crashing out the game from number of spawns. (Edit: You could do the mission, but when you went outside as Tyrant to stomp the Arachnos forces gathered to put you down, the game lagged badly for some players or simply crashed out for others.) So on specific maps where you can have sufficient mobs to exceed the lowered render capacity, spawns are simply not rendered. And since they are not rendered, they can neither react to and attack the player or be attacked by the player until sufficient numbers of rendered spawns fade out from defeat allowing the game to then render additional units already on the map. It makes those not-rendered units impossible to find.

Edited September 27, 2022 by Rudra

[Greycat]

18 hours ago, srmalloy said:

I've had occasions -- always out in a zone -- where I will find mobs that are invisible, with only their shadows rendered (which implies that it's a bug, because characters with a stealth power active don't have shadows), but are nonetheless targetable, and if I move around, I can get them to render.

 

Ahh. That I know is a .. bug? ... with several Shadow Shard maps. Annoying as hell.

[srmalloy]

6 hours ago, Greycat said:

Ahh. That I know is a .. bug? ... with several Shadow Shard maps. Annoying as hell.

I generally assume that it's a piece of sloppy code in the rendering engine.