Thoughts on the new Halloween EBs

[Clave Dark 5]

47 minutes ago, Player2 said:

That said, I would actually love to see the Halloween monsters all show up a little bit more outside of Halloween.

Lots of good ideas in here for AE arcs if these beasties get ported into the AE system.😀

[Tachstar]

Observation: at level 30 my beasts/time MM had very little trouble with these EBs, but at level 31 things changed dramatically. The vamp dude clobbered her easily while she and her furry friends tickled him (literally and figuratively) with their puny attacks. Ah, CoX -- the only game I know of in which a character can become weaker as they level up. /e laugh and cry at the same time

[MistressOhm]

... check your enhancements.  I've never had that kind of issue with simply leveling up, as long as everything was still active.  

[srmalloy]

There are some breakpoints in the game you step up to a higher level range for mobs, and the mobs in the new level range get better or different powers. Mobs from the 21-30 group might not have an attack that mobs from the 31-40 group have.

[gec72]

Encountering an ancient vampire while ToTing the door (way off in the islands of Talos) to the mission I had just completed -- and leveled to 25 in -- came as a bit of a shock to my Symph/Sonic Dom. During the battle I went through two cycles of domination, burned all of my insps, died, revived, burned through some more large insps (I mail copious amounts of these from high alts to myself), thought I had him until he healed (again), then thought I had him AGAIN (I was greatly aided by keeping his Dark Servant confused) when...he suddenly despawned.

 

A cool mob that certainly was an effective trick, but probably a little too much for that character. Something I might try on my higher level alts, but maybe not at lvl 25.

[MistressOhm]

The "Despawn" bit is annoying, you've worked your butt off to whittle them down and just when you think you've got them on the ropes "POOF!".    I understand how they work (it's basically a set of attributes for aggressiveness, taunt/aggro, and how long they'll try to take you down before wandering off/despawning) but there's still that element of feeling cheated when it happens.  

 

Basically, if they cannot attack you for 60 seconds (any reason), they'll spend the next 20 seconds trying to reach a door, and either they reach it, or they despawn.  

 

Placate shows how this works really well.  They originally aggro on whoever clicked the door, and this is hardcoded so that they can't be taunted away.  But when you placate them, that aggro gets deleted.  And they don't aggro on anything else.  They just stand around for a minute and then bail.   

 

 

[Luminara]

15 minutes ago, MistressOhm said:

Placate shows how this works really well.  They originally aggro on whoever clicked the door, and this is hardcoded so that they can't be taunted away.  But when you placate them, that aggro gets deleted.  And they don't aggro on anything else.  They just stand around for a minute and then bail.   

 

PA taunted them off of my Ill/TA without a single failure.  They ignored my Robotics/Rad mastermind and went after the henches, as long as I didn't spam attacks.  And I had several EBs aggro onto my characters after someone else clicked an ran, dragging them right onto me.

 

Their aggro behavior isn't as inflexible as you suggest.

[MistressOhm]

10 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

PA taunted them off of my Ill/TA without a single failure.  They ignored my Robotics/Rad mastermind and went after the henches, as long as I didn't spam attacks.  And I had several EBs aggro onto my characters after someone else clicked an ran, dragging them right onto me.

 

Their aggro behavior isn't as inflexible as you suggest.

 

I filed the despawn behavior as a bug, and this is the reply I received:

 

 

Based on the code string posted, and the explanation, if they are getting taunted off, or trained onto others, that's an issue.

 

Edited November 1, 2022 by MistressOhm

[Luminara]

3 minutes ago, MistressOhm said:

I filed the despawn behavior as a bug

 

I didn't comment on their spawning and despawning behavior, I addressed their aggro behavior.  Which worked normally, per every test I ran.

[MistressOhm]

Did you read the thread I posted?  The code used for ALL ToT spawns including the EB's was quoted in the linked reply.  

[Luminara]

14 minutes ago, MistressOhm said:

Did you read the thread I posted?  The code used for ALL ToT spawns including the EB's was quoted in the linked reply.  

 

Did you read my reply, in which I said that I specifically tested the aggro behavior of all of the EBs and found that they obeyed standard aggro mechanics when they were Taunted, another entity built up more aggro, the door clicker left them in the dust and another player character was in aggro range, or they were attacked after losing target on the original door clicker?  They obeyed the expected aggro rules in every case.  If they were Taunted, they stopped attacking my character and attacked the Taunter.  If my character was out-damaged, they aggroed on whatever was dealing more damage to them.  If they stopped chasing a door clicker because they couldn't catch him/her, they aggroed on the next available character (mine).  If I attacked an EB which someone else left behind in a click and run, it broke off pursuit and aggroed on my character.

 

I didn't read something on the forums and assume it to be true, I tested this.  Extensively.  I know that they can be aggroed by something other than the character which clicked the door, despite your assertion to the contrary, because I spent time testing how they interacted with my characters after reading that they ignored pets in another thread.  That comment piqued my interest and pushed me to investigate whether it was a problem with pets in general, specific pets, or a problem with the aggro mechanics, or player expectations.  I found that PA immediately and irrevocably Taunted the EBs away from my Ill/TA controller.  I found that the Robotics henches could pull aggro off of my mastermind as long as I wasn't using attacks, sticking to buffing/debuffing/healing the robots instead.  I also found that Singularity could not pull aggro, with either the controller or dominator I used, and that made sense, as the pet has no Taunt and low damage.  Having exhausted the list of pet-based characters available to me, I moved on to testing how the EBs responded to my other characters.  I had several EBs stop chasing other player characters and attack my Shield/Elec tank, my Ice/Stone brute, my Street/Shield scrapper and my Kinetic/Willpower scrapper when they loped through my PBAoE toggle radius, in PI and in Kallisti Wharf.  I attacked EBs which I saw running past and successfully aggroed them, with a variety of archetypes at levels ranging from 34 to 50+.  In every case, the initial aggro sent them to the door clicker, but all of the aggro mechanics which should have shifted their attention away from that character functioned as expected.

 

I also tested Placate with my Night Widow, and found that it worked as expected, and Misdirection with my Dark/Martial dominator and that also worked.  So clearly, the aggro mechanics were properly functioning for that type of Threat manipulation.  What I did not do is Placate and walk away, or wait for them to despawn, but based on all of my other test results, I have no reason to expect that they would not aggro onto anyone happening past or attacking them, as that's what happened to my characters several times.  If they remained permanently aggro-free after a Placate, even when a condition warranted aggro (you attack again, another player ventures near enough to aggro the critter after the Placate duration expires, another player attacks, a pet attacks), that would be a bug.

 

Nor do I accept your insistence that any of the behavior I witnessed is "an issue".  If these EBs were coded to be laser-focused on the door clicker and ignore all aggro mechanics, they'd make short work of every mastermind, even through Bodyguard mode, especially that damned mummy; Illusion controllers would be fucked so hard and fast that they'd never go near a door again; and everyone without Barrier or at the level minimum for them to spawn would've been on the forums, making the "ZOMG U NEFFED FARMS" bitching look like warm, fuzzy group hugs, to highlight a few examples of the repercussions of such a design.  Regardless of what you presume after looking at the string @Faultline posted, or even what @Faultline himself said, the HC team would not design critters which excluded player participation if they weren't on the "right" archetype or using the "right" powers or at the "right" level.  That's just not how they do things.

[MistressOhm]

So then your tests are revealing there's much more going on than the code provided to me that's defining the ToT mob spawn behavior.

 

I'm not a dev, so ... you'd probably want to take that to a dev, if it's a concern.  if you feel it's normal, that's great.  

[Kinestron]

Huh, I was by myself on the last day of ToT and the EBs did focus on me solely instead of my robots. Every single one of them. I don't spam attacks either since my End goes down quick when I do.  I was fine with the mummy by hovering and he only got my health down to half one time but I never had to summon Maintenance Drone since he never attacked them.  Same happened with my mercenaries/traps. I didn't think much of the behavior when i can make them dance around caltrops as my guys whittle them down.  Playing in a league they got pulled off of me all the time. I survived solo-wise with all my MMs. Not saying anything either way but that was my experience. /shrug

 

Anyways, I loved all the new EBs. Whoever designed them did an awesome job and they were a nice surprise this season.

Edited November 2, 2022 by Kinestron