Mobs in combat seem different

[wjrasmussen]

In my insomnia filled mental haze today, I was playing a scrapper doing radio missions.  It seems like the mobs are not as stupid as they used to be as my aoe melee attacks a thwarted by movement in a way that seems to have changed from what I remember. 

 

Character has a rotation setup and sands of mu (for example) is in there.  Used to go off without a hitch, but now, mobs seem to just reposition so I works only on the target mob and sometimes one more.  IIRC, could you line up a nice group hitting 5 mobs without much of a problem.

 

This isn't a complaint.  It is praise if someone came up with this change.  Just curious if something changed that I don't recall.

[JasperStone]

3 hours ago, wjrasmussen said:

In my insomnia filled mental haze today, I was playing a scrapper doing radio missions.  It seems like the mobs are not as stupid as they used to be as my aoe melee attacks a thwarted by movement in a way that seems to have changed from what I remember. 

 

Character has a rotation setup and sands of mu (for example) is in there.  Used to go off without a hitch, but now, mobs seem to just reposition so I works only on the target mob and sometimes one more.  IIRC, could you line up a nice group hitting 5 mobs without much of a problem.

 

This isn't a complaint.  It is praise if someone came up with this change.  Just curious if something changed that I don't recall.

Mobs are becoming self aware ....

 

 

[TheZag]

One of the devs must be using chat gpt to write code and its slowly implementing skynet.

 

[Snarky]

 

[rolandgrey]

A friend and I have been seeing stuff like this a lot, too.  Probably one moment that really surprised us was when a group of Longbow performed an honest-to-goodness ambush, not a programmed "Charge at them from the spawn point!" one, but one where we attacked somebody and then the mob jumped down from upper platforms to medium platforms, then fired upon and kept distance from us while their Warden closed in with a small support team.  We still made it out of that, but it was one of our longer fights in that mission and it hurt us a lot more than the average fight.

 

Though, lately we're just bothered by the penny pinching of the various factions.  Longbow has been keeping their Wardens from us unless we increase mob size to dangerous size (two guys vs. mobs meant for six guys at least; though that's not a guarantee either).  Other factions have been just as stingy, much to our grumbling.

 

Then we'll do a Safeguard Mission at +0/X3, an run into Ice Mistral.  Shake our damn heads...

[wjrasmussen]

17 hours ago, Snarky said:

 

It has been a very long time since I have listened to this. Thanks!

[Spaghetti Betty]

I was recently playing through Faultline, and came to Arbiter Sands in the mish where you have to fight him and destroy the 3 subs. Well, he randomly decided to super jump over from where he stands to the opposite catwalk and nail me with a web grenade, rendering me completely unable to chase him. What a god.

[BjorJlen]

23 hours ago, Snarky said:

 

 

Kinky...

   Me loves it, thanks Snarky! 😀

[Sanguinesun]

I believe much of these examples expressed in the thread are related to the aggro related changes last fall.  

[Player2]

A.I. is learning.

 

Soon it will be coming for you in the home.

[ivanhedgehog]

I dont like the changes. I feel we got the worst of both worlds. If you are going to say that over 16 mobs ignoring you was unrealistic, having half the mobs in the radius of a nuke is just as unrealistic. Just my feelings on it.

[Saiyajinzoningen]

I too have noticed mob irregularities.

They seem to run diagonally instead of directly towards my char when aggroed. 

this could be a problem for narrow cones.

[BjorJlen]

   After doing several missions myself and keeping an eye out for any changes to enemies AI, I too have found that there does appear to be "some" changes. For example, I was fighting a lone (5th Column?) bad guy after taking out the rest of them, and as soon as he changed into his Werewolf form, he immediately turned around, ran to the nearest closed gate (we were in a warehouse at the time), and opening it, revealed more of his friends to fight with him as backup. All the while ignoring the attacks me and my Beast's were hitting him with (I was on my MM at the time). This not only surprised me, but also made me smile.

   Why? Because finally I was fighting an enemy who had more brains than a bag of rocks lol. Now I like easy kills as much as the next person, but being an old school fart who still remembers "smart" AI enemies from the Half-Life games, this was a very refreshing change. So while some may dislike this "apparent" change in AI (generally speaking only of course), I actually am quite fond of it. For it makes the game far more interesting and challenging sometimes, without actually needing to up the challenge rating so to speak. And as always, fighting thinking bad guys is far more fun to me than just putting down clones of dumb ass's. Some may enjoy that; I do not so much lol.

   So if this is in fact something the GM's have implemented in the game (generally speaking), even as a test so to speak, then well done I say. Now all you gotta do is teach them true tactics & teamwork, and it will be even more fun... 😁 Just my view though...

Edited June 20, 2023 by BjorJlen
Dang spelling errors... :(

[wjrasmussen]

On 6/20/2023 at 8:33 AM, Saiyajinzoningen said:

I too have noticed mob irregularities.

They seem to run diagonally instead of directly towards my char when aggroed. 

this could be a problem for narrow cones.

That makes me laugh too.

[wjrasmussen]

On 6/18/2023 at 7:15 PM, ivanhedgehog said:

I dont like the changes. I feel we got the worst of both worlds. If you are going to say that over 16 mobs ignoring you was unrealistic, having half the mobs in the radius of a nuke is just as unrealistic. Just my feelings on it.

Well, we made AOE powers and players used them on mobs.  Fix->  don't let mobs get into AOE.

Kind of like the burn change back in issue 2 or 3?

[wjrasmussen]

On 6/20/2023 at 9:40 AM, BjorJlen said:

   After doing several missions myself and keeping an eye out for any changes to enemies AI, I too have found that there does appear to be "some" changes. For example, I was fighting a lone (5th Column?) bad guy after taking out the rest of them, and as soon as he changed into his Werewolf form, he immediately turned around, ran to the nearest closed gate (we were in a warehouse at the time), and opening it, revealed more of his friends to fight with him as backup. All the while ignoring the attacks me and my Beast's were hitting him with (I was on my MM at the time). This not only surprised me, but also made me smile.

   Why? Because finally I was fighting an enemy who had more brains than a bag of rocks lol. Now I like easy kills as much as the next person, but being an old school fart who still remembers "smart" AI enemies from the Half-Life games, this was a very refreshing change. So while some may dislike this "apparent" change in AI (generally speaking only of course), I actually am quite fond of it. For it makes the game far more interesting and challenging sometimes, without actually needing to up the challenge rating so to speak. And as always, fighting thinking bad guys is far more fun to me than just putting down clones of dumb ass's. Some may enjoy that; I do not so much lol.

   So if this is in fact something the GM's have implemented in the game (generally speaking), even as a test so to speak, then well done I say. Now all you gotta do is teach them true tactics & teamwork, and it will be even more fun... 😁 Just my view though...

Love it.  For me, when I realized it, I got the Neo Upgrades moment. lol

[MyriVerse]

In my experience, they seem dumber than usual, as if they're indecisive, and they get stuck on things more.

[Arbegla]

1 minute ago, MyriVerse said:

In my experience, they seem dumber than usual, as if they're indecisive, and they get stuck on things more.

 

I do notice that most of the NPCs you have to lead out of various places are just plain dumb, but I'm not sure that's really a change one way or another. Especially in small cave maps, its just slow torture trying to lead NPCs out on escort missions.

[ZemX]

13 hours ago, Arbegla said:

I do notice that most of the NPCs you have to lead out of various places are just plain dumb, but I'm not sure that's really a change one way or another. Especially in small cave maps, its just slow torture trying to lead NPCs out on escort missions.

 

Always been that way.  What's particularly annoying is we KNOW this was done on purpose because the pathing AI has no trouble following you when it's an enemy coming to kill you.

 

As for the rest though, I am always skeptical, even when I am the one thinking something has changed.   Always reminds me of good old Everquest where nearly every patch someone would post that a popular magical item (Journeyman Boots) had been nerfed.  They'd time themselves running around and swear on a stack of holy scriptures that they now ran slower than before (the item in question being something that was supposed to make you run faster).  Yet as far as I can recall, nothing was ever done (at least for as long as I played that game) to nerf the speed buff this item gave.

 

tl;dr Perception Bias is a hell of a drug.

[Snarky]

19 minutes ago, ZemX said:

 

Always been that way.  What's particularly annoying is we KNOW this was done on purpose because the pathing AI has no trouble following you when it's an enemy coming to kill you.

 

THIS.  There are some VERY smart NPCs that follow.  But most, even in "newer" content?  Dumb as a drunk after an all night bender.  Why?  There is only one answer.  The Devs wanted to make players lives suck.

[wjrasmussen]

4 hours ago, Snarky said:

THIS.  There are some VERY smart NPCs that follow.  But most, even in "newer" content?  Dumb as a drunk after an all night bender.  Why?  There is only one answer.  The Devs wanted to make players lives suck.

Dev are the real problem.  Love the devs.

[Spaghetti Betty]

2 hours ago, wjrasmussen said:

Dev are the real problem.  Love the devs.

Nerf devs!

[Captain Fabulous]

20 hours ago, Arbegla said:

I do notice that most of the NPCs you have to lead out of various places are just plain dumb, but I'm not sure that's really a change one way or another. Especially in small cave maps, its just slow torture trying to lead NPCs out on escort missions.

 

7 hours ago, ZemX said:

Always been that way.  What's particularly annoying is we KNOW this was done on purpose because the pathing AI has no trouble following you when it's an enemy coming to kill you.

This is because most NPCs that con white are given a ridiculously low perception radius and aren't considered teammates, which makes it very easy for them to lose you or not see you thru any kind of stealth. It's not a bug. It's absolutely by design.

[wjrasmussen]

6 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

Nerf devs!

Love your name!