Faster Minion Movement Speed

[aelgus]

I'm a huge fan of masterminds, really the only AT I like to play.  One thing I consistently notice about them is that their minions are always lost, stuck, or in general just lagging behind the team.  Ninja minions seem to manage to keep up a bit thanks to their ninja run ability.  It would be nice to see something equivalent to that for the other powersets. 

 

Maybe the owner's "Sprint" and "Swift" powers now also impact their minions?  This would give masterminds an ability to slot these powers up in order to help their minions keep up with the team.

 

If a reason against it is due to PvP balance, then maybe make it that they are only under this effect while they are within the 40' radius, or while under the Supremacy radius...or just have it be a unique ability that gets disabled during PvP.

 

As stated, I really love the AT.  I think this quality of life adjustment will let mastermind minions better keep up with teams, resolve a lot of the poor AI and pathing issues, and really enable us to contribute a bit more.

 

Also, yes I know going kinetics will enable them to run faster, but having every mastermind I make be kinetics just so my minions run faster to keep up with the team is not very appealing to me.

Edited October 25 by aelgus

[Rudra]

Except for the Necromancy set, where the pets seem to actually be slower, MM pets do have the speed to keep up with your MM character. Until you activate travel powers. A few things work against pets for keeping up with the MM. The first is that the pets will not start running to your MM until they are outside of the assigned area for them to be considered to be at your MM. (This area has to be sufficiently sized so that your pets are not all clustered against your character as if they are trying to run inside your character like NPCs do on CO.) So until you move far enough away that your pets realize you are leaving, they just wait. So they start off lagging behind. The 2nd thing that works against pets is the terrain. Like any other NPC in the game, any errors or changes in map geometry is something they will find and get stuck on until the game figures out how to navigate past it. The 3rd thing ties into the 2nd. The game's AI processing is... limited.... So just like you see with NPC escortees when navigating stairs, ramps, or any other area where the pathing beacons may be less than perfect, the game has to figure out how to get from the last pathing beacon to the next. And the game gets confused very easily. And the 4th thing is their combat level. Movement speed caps increase as you level up. So your T1 pets are slightly slower than your T2 pets which are slightly slower than your T3 pet. (In the case of my ninjas, since my run speed was not at cap, this meant my T2 and T3 pets were actually faster than my MM, but the first 3 things prevent them from keeping up. In the case of my T1s, they were slower, so they had everything against them for keeping up. [Edit: At even though my T2 and T3 pets are faster than my MM? They still can't keep up. See issues 1-3 above.])

 

Even using Speed Boost on your pets runs into the 4 problems. The difference with Speed Boost is that your pets speeds are now fast enough that by the time the game finishes sorting out terrain concerns, AI pathing concerns, and the delay before the pets start to move, they are able to overtake your MM. ... at least... most of the time....

Edited October 25 by Rudra

[aelgus]

I'm confused at what you're stating Rudra.  Yes, the AI pathing is terrible, which is the cause of most of their lagging behind issues.  Fixing AI is crazy hard, adding more movement speed to compensate for dumb AI, crazy easy.  While it doesn't fix the underlying issues you outlined, I think it would compensate for it sufficiently without adding any "game breaking" elements.  Also, I noticed they seem to path better in general when they move faster.  Almost like they second guess themselves less once they calculate they are making progress...don't seem to turn around / get stuck / etc. as often.

 

Also, for reference a 50+1 MM pets running speed:

zombies = 28.92 mph

grave knights = 28.96 mph

lich = 28.99 mph

 

genin = 50.39 mph

jounin = 50.44 mph

oni = 50.47 mph

(ninja's get slightly faster run speeds from their train ninja and kuji-in zen abilities)

 

punk = 28.92 mph

enforcer = 28.96 mph

bruiser = 28.99 mph

 

battle drone = 28.92 mph

protector bot = 28.96 mph

assault bot = 28.99 mph

 

demonling = 28.92 mph

demon = 28.96 mph

prince = 28.99 mph

 

I don't have a 50 beast MM, but my lvl 41 beast has:

wolves = 39.26 mph

lioness = 39.30 mph 

dire wolf = 39.35 mph

 

I don't like the merc power set, so I do not have one.

 

A 50+1 Kinetics MM speed boost adds 25.06 mph unslotted.

 

A 50+1 Mastermind base run speed is 14.32 mph

   swift (1 slot) adds 7.04 mph

   sprint (1 slot) adds 17.22 mph

Taking us to 38.58 mph

Athletic or ninja run adds an additional 20.05 mph, moving us to 58.63 mph

 

Since Ninja's have Ninja run, I think that's a neat unique feature and one that should stay special to Ninja's only.  This would allow them to maintain their inherently faster speed.

Allowing swift and sprint to effect pets would only add 24.26 mph, or basically a speed boost, but at the cost of having it toggled on.

 

[biostem]

TBH, I feel like the best solution would be to reverse-engineer whatever mechanic allows MM pets to be respawned when you zone, and allow MMs to forcibly "collapse" their minions onto themselves then redeploy them as they were, (with some timer/cooldown for balance purposes)...

[Rudra]

10 minutes ago, aelgus said:

I'm confused at what you're stating Rudra.  Yes, the AI pathing is terrible, which is the cause of most of their lagging behind issues.  Fixing AI is crazy hard, adding more movement speed to compensate for dumb AI, crazy easy.  While it doesn't fix the underlying issues you outlined, I think it would compensate for it sufficiently without adding any "game breaking" elements.  Also, I noticed they seem to path better in general when they move faster.  Almost like they second guess themselves less once they calculate they are making progress...don't seem to turn around / get stuck / etc. as often.

They don't make less mistakes. The rate at which MM pets run into the 4 issues I listed does not change when they move faster. They make up the ground faster. Speed Boosted pets are a good example. If you watch your speed boosted pets, you will see them snag on every little thing they can find on the map, but once they get past that snag, their speed gets them to you that much faster. Net result? They seem to be affected less, but they aren't. The reason why they run back is the same reason why NPCs we have to escort run back. They need to get to their last good pathing beacon to figure out their path forward. That doesn't change just because they move faster. And when they run into geometry issues, they stick to them just as long as they do when they aren't speed boosted. So, no, increasing their movement does not resolve the 4 issues.

 

As an added thought, a problem that arises from increasing pets' speed also happens to show up well on speed boosted pets. When something triggers them to run, such as a damage patch or a fear effect, their speed moves them away from you that much faster, so they end up getting farther away from you. While their increased speed also means they get back to you at a faster rate, so they spend just as much time away from you, it also increases the number of spawns that aggro because of your pets. So increasing MM pet speeds only shows as an improvement if they get a massive boost to their speed, because as I said, my ninjas are faster than my ninja MM, and they still can't keep up, but it also comes at a cost of less pet control and more potential aggro.

 

Sometimes, easy fixes aren't the way to go.

[Glacier Peak]

Henchmen

[aelgus]

38 minutes ago, Rudra said:

They don't make less mistakes. The rate at which MM pets run into the 4 issues I listed does not change when they move faster. They make up the ground faster. Speed Boosted pets are a good example. If you watch your speed boosted pets, you will see them snag on every little thing they can find on the map, but once they get past that snag, their speed gets them to you that much faster. Net result? They seem to be affected less, but they aren't. The reason why they run back is the same reason why NPCs we have to escort run back. They need to get to their last good pathing beacon to figure out their path forward. That doesn't change just because they move faster. And when they run into geometry issues, they stick to them just as long as they do when they aren't speed boosted. So, no, increasing their movement does not resolve the 4 issues.

 

As an added thought, a problem that arises from increasing pets' speed also happens to show up well on speed boosted pets. When something triggers them to run, such as a damage patch or a fear effect, their speed moves them away from you that much faster, so they end up getting farther away from you. While their increased speed also means they get back to you at a faster rate, so they spend just as much time away from you, it also increases the number of spawns that aggro because of your pets. So increasing MM pet speeds only shows as an improvement if they get a massive boost to their speed, because as I said, my ninjas are faster than my ninja MM, and they still can't keep up, but it also comes at a cost of less pet control and more potential aggro.

 

Sometimes, easy fixes aren't the way to go.

 

I strongly disagree.  They do make less mistakes by having less time/opportunities to make them as they cover more "positive" ground towards the correct beacon with the faster movement speed.  I've noticed that they do path substantially better with speed boost, and that they are much better able to keep up with teams when it is active.  Do they still struggle to keep up at times and get lost/stuck?  Yes, but faster run speed still significantly improves their ability to keep up.

 

I have a number of 50 MMs.  From my experience, demons are the absolute worst pathers with what I suspect is due to their larger frames causing them to get stuck more frequently.  My demon/kinetics greatly offsets this to such an extent that I can no longer play any of my other demon builds as I find them to be intolerable by comparison.  Also, I rarely have an issue with my Ninja MMs due to their Ninja run ability making their gameplay fun with nearly any secondary powerset.  As for speed boost on Ninjas -- I definitely think the gains plateau and may not be as noticeable on fast petite Ninjas as opposed to the other extreme, collision prone slow and bulky demons.

 

Now I am not disagreeing with the pathing issues you've highlighted; I think you did an amazing job identifying and outlining the primary issues.  I just disagree with your statement that faster movement speed would not help to "alleviate" the issue.  I do not believe the juice is worth the squeeze in resolving the primary issues, but it may be worth it to help alleviate some of the effects.

Edited October 25 by aelgus

[Gobbledigook]

Their slowness is the main reason i do not play MM's.

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, Gobbledigook said:

Their slowness is the main reason i do not play MM's.

Just resummon and they are there instantly. 

[biostem]

7 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Just resummon and they are there instantly. 

While you're not wrong, it can be a major nuisance to resummon, wait, upgrade, wait, and upgrade all your minions again...

[kelika2]

faster minions would help out a lot

[PoptartsNinja]

IIRC minion speeds were set to be slightly faster than a player without swift who wasn't running sprint, so they'd be able to catch up with their summoner. Now that swift is inherent, they're basically permanently slower than summoner.

I really wish they'd just inherit the movement speed (+5 mph so they'll always be able to catch up if they snag, maybe +15 for dogs and ninjas) and movement modes of their owner (so if you pick up fly, they can fly. If you pick up teleport, their teleport tether range is reduced to something that'll fire more frequently like 150 feet rather than the 300+ it is now). That would make them uniquely vulnerable to slows, so it might be worth looking at proliferating slow resistance in the MM Epics, but I think "always slightly faster than their summoner" was the original design intent, they just never got re-evaluated once the fitness pool became inherent.

 

The snag to adding movement modes is, of course, super jump. I'm sure there's some way to get out-of-combat minions to register if their owner has held the jump button down for longer than 1 server tic and trigger them to jump for the duration the jump button is held (+1 server tic).

 

I just don't know if making mastermind pets less irritating will ever be a priority.

 

 

Honestly, I'd rank pet movement a lower priority than figuring out a way to give mastermind pets 50% positional AoE resistance.

Edited October 26 by PoptartsNinja

[Kaika]

6 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

Just resummon and they are there instantly. 

 

"Instantly" is a very odd way to put it when you have to spend about 10-15 seconds minimum summoning and buffing them, maybe more if you have a buff heavy secondary.

 

I love my MM, they can be absolute monsters and very fun to play, but you lose so much effectiveness waiting for your pets to show up on teams that aren't slow. Group fly and group teleport can help with this but it's also a wonderful way to end up on many black list. Speed boost helps but you have to go kin for it or just hope someone else has it. I think increasing the base movement speed definitely will help but I'm not sure it would solve the issue considering how common it is for minions to get stuck on stuff. I would like a button thats instantly teleports your pets too you, if you get far enough the game already does it,  it would also serve as a nice way to counter pets running off without having to micro too much.

[Techwright]

12 hours ago, biostem said:

While you're not wrong, it can be a major nuisance to resummon, wait, upgrade, wait, and upgrade all your minions again...

While I agree, I'd point out it should be a little shorter than that by dropping the second "wait", as a player can target a second minion and hit the second upgrade to deliver it to all while the first upgrade is finishing its visuals on the originally-targeted minion.

 

I should qualify that statement by saying I've only tried it on robots and thugs.  I'd assume the mechanics worked the same on other minion sets.

[aelgus]

Remaking the mini-onions is definitely something I do frequently when they lag behind way too much...but sadly it bugs out on you if you try to do that and they're on a different map level.  Always have to be careful if you try to dismiss them and they're on a different floor.  They disappear from your control bar, but not from the game so you still have control but can no longer see them in the control bar and have to manually target and dismiss them to fix the bug when they finally catch up.

[Rudra]

4 minutes ago, aelgus said:

Remaking the mini-onions is definitely something I do frequently when they lag behind way too much...but sadly it bugs out on you if you try to do that and they're on a different map level.  Always have to be careful if you try to dismiss them and they're on a different floor.  They disappear from your control bar, but not from the game so you still have control but can no longer see them in the control bar and have to manually target and dismiss them to fix the bug when they finally catch up.

If they are on a different floor and they don't simply teleport to you, then they are most likely stuck on something. If they are stuck on something to the point where they cannot be recalled, then dismissing them is almost guaranteed to fail in aggravatingly interesting ways. Most notably, by removing the pet from your control without despawn, which will prevent you from summoning a replacement.

[Maelwys]

Sometimes Toggling and Untoggling Group Fly repeatedly can shake 'em loose.
Otherwise, you can try "/release_pets" (which unlike "/petcom_all dismiss" doesn't care about their animations)
But the only surefire way is to exit the mission map.

[Rudra]

4 hours ago, Maelwys said:

But the only surefire way is to exit the mission map.

Even that sometimes requires multiple attempts to have work. (Edit: They will exit with you, but they may not be under your control for the first try or two.)

 

Edited October 26 by Rudra

[aelgus]

Kind of funny having to try to take Group Fly just to unstuck your pets...I'll definitely try out the /release_pets command next time I'm bored waiting for them on a different floor!

[xanthx]

The mechanics for Teleport Ally are already in place, it be nice if Masterminds had an inherent power that let them summon all henchmen in a 10,000 radius. 

 

0.5 second animation

6 second cooldown

No endurance cost

Cannot be used in combat