Limit the ability to push other players

[srmalloy]

Just now, I exited the SG portal into Kings Row, and while I stood there, another character popped out of the portal and proceeded to push my character out of the way... pushing her all the way to the lip at the NE corner of the platform overlooking the Wentworth's building. I can understand the logic of characters pushing other characters out of the way when they zone in from a teleport point like an SG portal or the Ouroboros portal or entering/leaving a mission door -- although I would prefer that the character arriving first get priority, with subsequent arrivals being displaced to a clear spot instead -- but I think there needs to be a limit on how much one character is allowed to push another; pushing another character around until they're stopped by a railing is not, in my opinion, acceptable. Can this be looked at?

[lemming]

I think what happens is two characters arrive, collide, and both get moved.  To the same spot, which then repeats the action, etc...   When I dual box, I can watch both my chars glide across.  Maybe a random direction gets chosen to avoid cascading collisions?

[Rudra]

55 minutes ago, lemming said:

I think what happens is two characters arrive, collide, and both get moved.  To the same spot, which then repeats the action, etc...   When I dual box, I can watch both my chars glide across.  Maybe a random direction gets chosen to avoid cascading collisions?

Yeah, this is what I always see too. Both characters keep shifting each other into a new spot, repeating the process indefinitely until they run into something they can't be pushed through.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

2 hours ago, lemming said:

I think what happens is two characters arrive, collide, and both get moved.  To the same spot, which then repeats the action, etc...   When I dual box, I can watch both my chars glide across.  Maybe a random direction gets chosen to avoid cascading collisions?

STO actually has this exact same problem sometimes.

[lemming]

It's also the reason fold space often puts the targets in a line

[srmalloy]

10 hours ago, lemming said:

It's also the reason fold space often puts the targets in a line

I see that with Wormhole, too; with my Grav/Traps controller, when soloing and facing a large spawn, I have to remember to trail the trip mines I'm putting down out to the northeast to cover the 'tail' of a transported spawn so I'm not left with live mobs after the wormhole.

 

Curiously, this 'tail' extending to the northeast is the same direction that spawns used to shift during invasion events -- it was easiest to see this in a Rikti or Nemesis invasion in Kings Row where the players would group up north of the plaza where Blue Shield was, and the Rikti/Nemesis would spawn in further and further northeast until they 'fell off' the road, spawning in down on the dirt area to the east of the road. The HC staff fixed that (although I could wish that the incoming spawns were more spread out -- there's no reason why mobs with ranged attacks need to spawn in at melee range to everyone, and it rapidly hits the engine draw limit for mobs, making it impossible to see/target incoming enemies), so perhaps this can be something the HC staff could look at as well.

Edited June 3 by srmalloy

[gameboy1234]

23 hours ago, lemming said:

I think what happens is two characters arrive, collide, and both get moved.  To the same spot, which then repeats the action, etc...   When I dual box, I can watch both my chars glide across.  Maybe a random direction gets chosen to avoid cascading collisions?

 

I think it's basically a bug in collision detection.  The CD runs, finds a collision between two players, and attempts to move them away from each other.  Unfortunately the code uses the wrong variable or doesn't calculate the vectors properly, so both players move in the same direction.  Which as you point out just results in exactly the same thing happening over and over again.  It's a pet peeve of mine and I've long since despaired of getting anyone to look at the code.

 

Separately, I think your idea about giving priority to players moving less, or already at a spot and stationary, is a good idea.  I'm pretty sure this code is different though.  The game should check speeds (actual speed, not max speed of the current power being used) and just give priority to players moving slower (Hover, for example) or stopped.  Figuring out how to make this "feel good" will take a bit of work, but I think if this can be done it'll make collision detection feel better and work more intuitively for players.

 

[PoptartsNinja]

I've always wondered if the code is trying to move coliding hitboxes towards (0,0,0 (or whatever the behind-the-scenes ingame point for the top corner of the map is) in an attempt to get them unstuck. That would explain why everything usually moves in the same direction.

 

If it is moving them towards a fixed point, I wonder if it's possible to randomize the X and Y coordinates to get them to move towards random points on the map.

[Shin Magmus]

NO PUSHING!

 

Be excellent to each other. 

[biostem]

Sort of tangential to this topic, but I think being in "TF mode" should not override the AFK auto-logout.  I don't have the data, but I wouldn't be surprised if many of the people hanging out, seemingly AFK, at the SG portal, (or other such POIs), were in TF mode to avoid being auto-logged-out...

[Super Atom]

hard disagree, i like to push roleplayers off the atlas square into the water when they're afk

 

Bath time for roleplayers

Edited June 6 by Super Atom