Pets confusing raids

[srmalloy]

I've participated in a number of Hami raids where people in the league are running around with Hamidon Bud pets out; this results in confusion during the bud phase, where you can't tell whether tab targeting is just picking a target way off in the distance rather than the bud right in front of you, and you can't tell for sure without mousing/clicking on it to tell whether it's a 'real' bud or a pet.

 

I'd originally thought of asking that Hami Bud pets be counted as "live buds" for the purpose of preventing Hami from respawning, but it was pointed out that this opens the door to griefing, by people who leave their bud pets out specifically to keep Hami from spawning for the next run. As an alternative, if the Hami Bud pets could be configured to not be summonable in the Hive or the Abyss, that would solve the problem as well.

 

A similar problem I've seen happen is when someone summons an MDC into the bowl during an MSR. Eventually, the MDC will capture the target, both for players and pets, and while lore pets, MM henchmen, and players can change target to a real one, once a (say) Fire Imp targets the MDC, its player has no way to tell it to ignore the MDC and target something else except by dismissing and resummoning it. This will result, depending on where the pets are when they change target when their current one is defeated, in all of the non-controllable pets eventually winding up targeting the MDC again. Unfortunately, I can't think of an easy solution to this issue, as there are some missions where nothing happens for some time, and an MDC would provide a distraction.

[Greycat]

... MDC? Trying to think of what that is. The target dummies?

[Glacier Peak]

3 hours ago, srmalloy said:

As an alternative, if the Hami Bud pets could be configured to not be summonable in the Hive or the Abyss, that would solve the problem as well.

What? The mini-pets can't be targeted and follow the owner. How is there confusion about whether they are Hamidon Buds? And why is the suggestion to take them away from players?

[srmalloy]

8 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

What? The mini-pets can't be targeted and follow the owner. How is there confusion about whether they are Hamidon Buds? And why is the suggestion to take them away from players?

The tab targeting follows an abstruse internal logic; you can be standing next to a hostile mob, but the tab targeting picks a mob way off in the distance because it's the 'next' target according to the server's internal target list. So you can't always tell from using the tab targeting whether the 'bud' is a pet. And with the movement logic of the 'real' buds varying between running for the hills and jumping back into the scrum of bud killers, you can't use a bud's moving in any given direction while the league is killing buds to distinguish between the genuine buds and the pets. The only way to tell for sure is to try to click on it to target it, which can, due to lag, fail to select a hostile bud immediately on clicking, so when the 'bud' dashes off without being selected and disappears into the cluster of players, Lore pets, and visual effects, you don't know if you just didn't click accurately enough, or it was a pet. Their presence adds unnecessary confusion to the bud phase, where the point is to eliminate all the dropped buds so Hamidon will respawn.

 

And the suggestion is not to 'remove' them from players, but to disable the power in the two zones where its use makes completing the cleanup from a Hami raid more confusing.

[srmalloy]

8 hours ago, Greycat said:

... MDC? Trying to think of what that is. The target dummies?

Yes, the summonable target dummy you can get as a reward for an optional side goal during a high-difficulty Aeon task force.

[Glacier Peak]

This suggestion sounds like a terrible idea to me and I don't support it then. 

[lemming]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

The tab targeting follows an abstruse internal logic; you can be standing next to a hostile mob, but the tab targeting picks a mob way off in the distance because it's the 'next' target according to the server's internal target list.

Control Tab for targeting nearest target

[srmalloy]

5 minutes ago, lemming said:

Control Tab for targeting nearest target

Doesn't always work; I've used ctrl-Tab and gotten a mob forty feet away from me instead of the one right in front of me. The tab targeting in the game is squirrelly, but not broken enough for me to report it as a bug, particularly because it's not readily reproducible, because the precise set of conditions where it occurs is virtually impossible to duplicate. Virtually all of the time it's an annoyance, not something game-breaking, so with more than forty years of experience being on the other side of bug reporting, I'm not going to drop something in the lap of the programmers if I can't demonstrate a way to consistently reproduce the problem.

[SeraphimKensai]

A solution to the MDC in the bowl is to run an instanced raid and say you'll boot people that summon them.

 

Does a targeting macro by name only select Hami buds that can be killed? I guess I've never tried as well typically just rain down enough AoE that they all die within about a minute anyways. I personally haven't noticed many people keeping them out during raids (on Everlasting), mostly just while we're waiting for the raid to start.

 

Perhaps your Raid Leaders can ask people to dismiss them?

[Excraft]

4 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

This suggestion sounds like a terrible idea to me and I don't support it then. 

 

Is having your cosmetic pet really that important for a Hami raid?  Especially if it's causing confusion for others as described above.  I agree that tab and Ctrl Tab targeting can be sketchy and not always reliable. 

[mistagoat]

While I have been fooled a couple times I don't think this needs to be addressed. During the bud cleanup in the bowl it's basically just target (anything) and fire (or follow and attack if melee I guess) and don't stop firing until there are no more targets. Since the player buds are not targetable they have no impact on this strategy. So if you're looking at 6 buds in the water while spinning 360 and hammering "Tab" and you still have no target then your job is done, /e popdance till the TP come through.

 

I will admit that it would be courteous for folks to turn them off but it doesn't seem an issue that needs to be dealt with.

 

The target dummy is a whole other can of worms, not sure what can done about that beyond the suggestion that SeraphimKensai offered.

 

 

Edited August 15 by mistagoat

[Rudra]

If the OP is going to suggest not allowing pets for Hami' and MSR raids, then maybe tell people before starting the raid to dismiss their vanity pets to avoid confusion?

[Greycat]

mm. I don't run on Hami raids like I used to, but I could see that being a slight issue during the "Did we get all the buds" check. MSRs tend to be even more chaotic, especially when people target through someone else's MM pets because acutal targets aren't displaying on screen for them because - well, MSR.

 

If they're being used, intentionally or otherwise, in a way that's disruptive, I could certainly see something being put into place that prevents them from being summoned, especially as they don't serve a combat purpose. (There could be a *very* slight argument made for Electrical Affinity, since you need a friendly target for some of those, but... you have the rest of the league, so...)

 

I'm kind of surprised the hami bud pets are targetable. (Never picked one up... might have a recipe on one off my characters.) Making them untargetable would probably help as a first step, though that wouldn't fix (and actively work against) the target dummies.

[mistagoat]

3 hours ago, Greycat said:

I'm kind of surprised the hami bud pets are targetable. 

They are not targetable via target next/closest/farthest. I don't think players can even click on them but I'd have to double check that.

 

Edit: just checked in game, they can not be targeted or clicked on in any way. Aside from the visual they essentially don't exist, they don't even have collision.

Edited August 15 by mistagoat
stated

[Excraft]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

I'm kind of surprised the hami bud pets are targetable. (Never picked one up... might have a recipe on one off my characters.) Making them untargetable would probably help as a first step, though that wouldn't fix (and actively work against) the target dummies.

 

You can't target them, but they can still cause confusion as explained above. 

 

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

If the OP is going to suggest not allowing pets for Hami' and MSR raids, then maybe tell people before starting the raid to dismiss their vanity pets to avoid confusion?

 

Not everyone is going to listen or abide by the request, and no doubt there will be those who summon them just to be trolls.  As an example, people have been asked to not spawn Kronos Titans during the weekly SNS over on Torch, yet every week there's been at least one.  First time people were asked not to spawn them, there were like 4 of them.  That should give you some idea of how well asking nicely works.

[Glacier Peak]

4 hours ago, Greycat said:

I'm kind of surprised the hami bud pets are targetable

To be clear to everyone, the Hamidon mini pets ARE NOT TARGETABLE. That's why this suggestion is a head scratcher to me. Why take away something from someone who earned it or otherwise acquired the Hamidon mini pet just because you can't be bothered to tab target? 

 

Edit: Bind your tab button with the below and we all get to keep using our Hamidon Bud mini-pets.

 

/bind Tab target_custom_next notteammate notmypet

Edited August 15 by Glacier Peak

[lemming]

While I do see the issue with the MDC confusing pets and possibly an issue in a MSR, I know that Veracor used a MDC during Hami raids to heal off of.

 

And on the tabbing, I did rebind my next closest target because for awhile my laptop left tab key was broken...