Leashing, aggro and you

[kmoustakas]

With all the recent defiler of the just runs, I believe I have figured out a bit what causes the issues in mabar, deathwyrm, fire on thunder peak and defiler and so on.

The majority of script-trigger-spawn monsters, fire up an algorithm of what to attack. Monsters that are already static do not unless something happens that causes them to investigate aggro. So, when mabar gargoyles, deathwyrm skeletons, abishai executioners appear en masse, they all fire up 'find something to attack'. They way they choose is broken, thus you used to see executioners spawn in south east corner and decide to attack someone piking northeast without ever having met or seen.

The easiest place to notice this is arena challenges in eveningstar. With the 15% xp bonus going on, we went to run them. We had one person stand in front of each spawn point, 2 in the middle and one was piking at the entrance of the challenge. On entry, almost all the mobs would RUN ignoring everyone else to the guy piking at the entrance!

Now, when this happens in big numbers - aka 20 players in a mabar instance and 40 gargoyles trying to decide whom to attack - you get upload lag. The servers give you information correctly but they don't accept information back. In other words, the server knows the monster is attacking your toon but is ignoring whatever your computer is telling him your toon is doing because he's too busy trying to decide which character to attack.

I believe that for the majority of the encounters, a simple 'attack the first thing that comes NEAR you, then IF something damages/aggroes you START doing intelligent calculations on which warlock to attack first' would fix a big chunk of it.

I'm pretty sure the majority of the TOEE lag on release was also related to this as the monsters usually script-trigger-spawn. When I ddoor and run back through, I can see them appearing out of thin air in front of me. I bet having two-three suchs triggers spawn mobs at once would cause the exact same thing.

As an afterthought, whoever thought leashing the executioners in dotj would fix lag INSTEAD of having them not randomly aggro 1 in 12 of the party irrelevant of location (I know thats not the exact maths) is not very smart.

[FranOhmsford]

This sounds suspiciously like it works similar to the standard tab targeting in DDO: I.E. tab for some unknown reason targets the FURTHEST Mob away in a group first rather than the NEAREST to you!

If mobs are targeting the furthest player from them and the Devs could change that to "target NEAREST Player {UNLESS Intimidate, Bluff or something else happens to change your target}" it would probably be the single best change in DDO EVER!

P.S. A hireling throwing Nimbus of Light should NEVER take Aggro from a Player UNLESS that player WANTS to shed Aggro! I.E. It should take quite a few 20dmg Nimbuses to get a 2k hp mob to leave the player alone and attack the hireling even if the player is doing nothing whatsoever to the mob!


Same goes for the Arti/Ranger/Rogue pew pewing at the back {even if they are doing far more damage per second than a hireling could do in an hour!} - Intimidate has such a long graphic and small area of effect that there's literally no way to stop the mobs running straight past you to attack the ranged character! {Unless you bottleneck them of course}.
Heck Ranged characters hit so often that even if you get a couple of cleaves off as the mobs run past they'll STILL carry on towards the ranged character! {EVEN IF they've got like 10hp left!}.

I don't want to derail but Bluff and Diplo suffer the same issues as intimidate - Really long graphics & cooldowns and more often than not the mob's dead by the time you've bluffed or diploed it in a group anyway!
Oh and massively high requirements to work in the first place thanks to mob CRs being broken!

[bartharok]

Hmm... if the mobs attack the first thing in their line of sight, it would mean thatit quite likely that they will attack something further away from them, since theres likely to be more targets the further away you get.

[Faltout]

The easiest place to notice this is arena challenges in eveningstar.Different classes draw different aggro. I've had this happen multiple times in there. Being on my cleric, every monster would aggro on me initially and run towards center where I was. At some point I partied with a multiclass sorc/paladin/don't remember and suddenly all monsters would aggro on him running not towards center, but towards the gate he was standing in front of.

That's the reason why in arena fights you DO NOT stand in front of gates and instead gather everything to the center.

[Nonesuch2008]

I've always wanted to know the math behind this one, but as a rough estimate:


Summons = ~75% Incite
Hirelings = ~50% Incite
Caster-class player = ~30% Incite
And so on, down the line


I can't count the number of times one of my melees has hit a mob for 70% of its total HP, but yet the mob maintains a beeline for one of the targets mentioned above. So that loading screen line about 'monsters tending to attack whomever has done the most damage to them' normally makes me chuckle. It's true when facing, path blocking, or intimidating, but the rest of the time it's more likely to follow that incite pattern listed above.

[LavidDynch]

The easiest place to notice this is arena challenges in eveningstar. With the 15% xp bonus going on, we went to run them. We had one person stand in front of each spawn point, 2 in the middle and one was piking at the entrance of the challenge. On entry, almost all the mobs would RUN ignoring everyone else to the guy piking at the entrance!



They will attack/aggro the one who first entered the challenge. Those mechanics doesn't apply to Defiler.

[Enderoc]

I seriously think that your social skills- Intimidate, Bluff, Diplomacy all are calculated passively each encounter. It just seems that way.

[Steelstar]

The easiest place to notice this is arena challenges in eveningstar. With the 15% xp bonus going on, we went to run them. We had one person stand in front of each spawn point, 2 in the middle and one was piking at the entrance of the challenge. On entry, almost all the mobs would RUN ignoring everyone else to the guy piking at the entrance!


Some interesting thoughts in this post. I will note that the Arena Challenges are not a good testing point for aggro mechanics, the monsters in there use a unique detection script similar to what Raid Bosses use to prevent indefinite hiding. (You are correct that it does seem to favor pikers over nearby people, but that's a by-product of the unique detection system in that Challenge. Also: In our bug queue!)

[Mellkor]

Some interesting thoughts in this post. I will note that the Arena Challenges are not a good testing point for aggro mechanics, the monsters in there use a unique detection script similar to what Raid Bosses use to prevent indefinite hiding. (You are correct that it does seem to favor pikers over nearby people, but that's a by-product of the unique detection system in that Challenge. Also: In our bug queue!)


Anti-Piking code! I love it!

Can we beef it up? say, destruction of the most used bound item? Massive XP loss? Destruction of digested tomes? The list can go on, but those 3 are a good start!

[Amoneth]

You should come in a Chronoscope with me and my guildies. It became a running joke that the Conjoined Abishai would go for my toon every single time, it would just run straight past everyone else and slap me in the face, whether I was invisible, in stealth mode, no matter what class I was at the time and no matter where I stood in the end 'room'!

[Trillea]

You should come in a Chronoscope with me and my guildies. It became a running joke that the Conjoined Abishai would go for my toon every single time, it would just run straight past everyone else and slap me in the face, whether I was invisible, in stealth mode, no matter what class I was at the time and no matter where I stood in the end 'room'!

Is your toon named Wi?

For those that don't know - http://asheron.wikia.com/wiki/Wi_Flag - Turbine, you re-using old Asheron's Call code? :D

[Silverleafeon]

I seriously think that your social skills- Intimidate, Bluff, Diplomacy all are calculated passively each encounter. It just seems that way.

A ranger expert and I theorized and tested somewhat that having a high diplomacy, without actively pressing the diplomacy skill button) (testing was pre motu) would definitely under our observations make mobs less inclined to target said toon.

So, yes I agree.


Also, yes its rather difficult to press intimidate while mobs rush in and out of your range of intimidation.
Btw, start attacking after pressing the intimidate button, you can apparently attack part way thru the animation w/o ruining intimidation attempt?

[IronClan]

Anti-Piking code! I love it!

Can we beef it up? say, destruction of the most used bound item? Massive XP loss? Destruction of digested tomes? The list can go on, but those 3 are a good start!

Yeah this would have an awesome effect on the player base: kid fell down and needs a bandaid? Opps there goes your Sightless helm... Wife can't get car to start, needs you to jump the battery? Bye Bye +7 tome... I know you're kidding but come on...

[Mellkor]

Yeah this would have an awesome effect on the player base: kid fell down and needs a bandaid? Opps there goes your Sightless helm... Wife can't get car to start, needs you to jump the battery? Bye Bye +7 tome... I know you're kidding but come on...

None of those are excuses to PIKE :P

[davmuzl]

Also, yes its rather difficult to press intimidate while mobs rush in and out of your range of intimidation.
Btw, start attacking after pressing the intimidate button, you can apparently attack part way thru the animation w/o ruining intimidation attempt?

You don't have to wait for the intimidate animation at all. You press the button and the check is made immediatly. You don't even have to stop attacking (as long as you aren't spamming something else at the same time).

Doesn't make it much easier to grab aggro tho. Sometimes you want more than one mob and it can be quite hard when some ranged character took aggro and is running ibn circles.

[visibleman]

This sounds suspiciously like it works similar to the standard tab targeting in DDO: I.E. tab for some unknown reason targets the FURTHEST Mob away in a group first rather than the NEAREST to you!

Speaking as an archer, we like that it targets the furthest. If only Tab would prioritise Purple/Red/Orange/ then trash...

[Paleus]

None of those are excuses to PIKE :P

Cat walked right up to you and vomited everywhere....that count?

I ask because that happened to me during a ToD raid (ask your grandparents what that was kids). By the time I recovered from the shock/clean up I was in the marketplace. I suppose that might be a better solution than destroying XP/gear, just banish back to the marketplace. Boots of anchoring optional.

[Mellkor]

Cat walked right up to you and vomited everywhere....that count?

I ask because that happened to me during a ToD raid (ask your grandparents what that was kids). By the time I recovered from the shock/clean up I was in the marketplace. I suppose that might be a better solution than destroying XP/gear, just banish back to the marketplace. Boots of anchoring optional.

No.

The proper thing to have done was to ignore said vomit, help complete the quest, and then deal with the cat. :P

One person can be the difference between success or failure for all!

The only acceptable excuse is life threatening injury, but only to yourself. You are allowed to stop and call an ambulance, but while waiting, you should be playing until the ambulance takes you away. Unless on a laptop, then take it with you so you can keep playing until the end of the quest/raid.

[Faltout]

No.

The proper thing to have done was to ignore said vomit, help complete the quest, and then deal with the cat. :P

One person can be the difference between success or failure for all!

The only acceptable excuse is life threatening injury, but only to yourself. You are allowed to stop and call an ambulance, but while waiting, you should be playing until the ambulance takes you away. Unless on a laptop, then take it with you so you can keep playing until the end of the quest/raid.
And don't forget to plug your brain to a screen so someone can continue playing per your instructions in case you end up in a coma. :rolleyes: You know those EE CitW raids take some hours, so you better not bail on your ana guarding duties.

[1Soulless1]

No.

The proper thing to have done was to ignore said vomit, help complete the quest, and then deal with the cat. :P

One person can be the difference between success or failure for all!

The only acceptable excuse is life threatening injury, but only to yourself. You are allowed to stop and call an ambulance, but while waiting, you should be playing until the ambulance takes you away. Unless on a laptop, then take it with you so you can keep playing until the end of the quest/raid.


Does a Mad wife/GF count as a 'life threatening injury'? How about if I want to pike the market place mailbox and send Souless 1 cp at a time? are either of these acceptable?

[Therrias]

Speaking as an archer, we like that it targets the furthest. If only Tab would prioritise Purple/Red/Orange/ then trash...

When did this happen? Tab has always targeted the closest mob on all of my characters. I have often wished it were the other way around on my ranged characters.

[Eth]

When did this happen? Tab has always targeted the closest mob on all of my characters.
Same here.


I have often wished it were the other way around on my ranged characters.
You can target the furthest mob. Assign a key to "target previous" and press it twice.

[Therrias]

Same here.


You can target the furthest mob. Assign a key to "target previous" and press it twice.

Hmmm. They must have changed the tab default from target next to target previous at some point? That means you should be able to change the tab key binding to next or previous based on your preference.

[Eth]

Hmmm. They must have changed the tab default from target next to target previous at some point? That means you should be able to change the tab key binding to next or previous based on your preference.

I have "next" on tab and "previous" on capslock. I prefer to have both usable. Has the nice side effect of screaming in party chats frequently.

No idea what currently standard is. I think "next" is on tab and "previous" is not assigned at all.