Is the threat system broken?

[Question2005]

The wiki says that monsters target the first player they see or the player who has done the most damage to them (modified by threat).

This clearly isnt true. When I did the grotto after TRing, i hid at the end of the corridor after opening the door to the priestess room. One of the sahaugin pushed its way past the NPC adventurers (who were blocking the doorway) to run at me even though i was hiding in the rear and doing absolutely nothing. I obviously had zero threat at this time and the NPC adventurers who were doing damage should have a threat higher than zero.

It is also extremely common to see enemies ignore the front liners to run at the people in the back who are doing nothing. Park a healer hireling far behind you and enemies will ignore you to run at him, even if you are doing damage to them and he is just staring at the wall.

When I did chains of flame yesterday, I kept seeing enemies ignore the front liners to go after the healer hirelings who were parked in another room...even though there were multiple doors/walls in the way and the enemies couldnt possibly have seen them.

This makes me wonder if enemies are bugged and ignoring LOS/distance considerations..hirelings parked in another room will constantly try to attack enemies through walls/floors so im wondering if maybe NPCs are bugged in general and ignore LOS/distance factors? Even if you leave a hireling at the dungeon entrance, they will constantly try to attack enemies everytime someone else in the party aggros an enemy. Even if it means standing in place and hitting the air with a quarterstaff.

[DYWYPI]

The Grotto NPCs might be a special case. Hirelings can be Aggravation Magnets; especially if they have magical auras or guard effects surrounding them.

The other pecular monster behaviour is mostly dungeon design or the current illogical "(mis)behaviour" of some of the monsters. Than can easily cause illogical "chain-reaction aggravation", and so forth with regards to a Character in Sneak, etc.

Refer to the following thread: Question for the Devs: Why isn't Stealth Supported in Reaper?. That thread covers similar experiences, i.e. the successfully Sneaking Rogue won't be high on a monster 'Hate list' but gets illogical "chain-reaction aggravation", in some cases.

[Sunnie]

Mob aggro is definitely wonky and in dire need of a thorough overhaul, but not completely broken. Monsters will sometimes ignore the players in front and run straight for any ranged characters in the back, diplomacy doesn't always shed aggro even when you succeed the check, sometimes mobs will share aggro so far that you immediately get a dungeon alert and sometimes they won't. So far this life one of my hirelings hardly got attacked at all and every mob went straight for me instead, the next hireling drew aggro like crazy and I hardly got attacked before dealing a substantial amount of damage. Both were clerics bought with platinum, the first was level 2 and the second level 3. It's very much a case of things mostly working in many circumstances, and it being fairly difficult to replicate the exact circumstances when they don't.

[Valerianus]

first off, summons and hirelings are hate magnets, and moreover is widely believed that caster types are up in the aggro list.

that said, yes the system is broken anyway, because the mobs shares aggro - detection instantly even with no los.

what happened in the grotto? you were sneaking and behind but:

1- you were detected already, they all know where you are, and nope, they need no los.

2- you were sneaking and they made the spot-listen check, and they get mad, really mad when this happens. they ignore some raging barbarian hitting them cause they are mad at you.


do you want to play the tank role and be sure to get a lot of aggro in a large area before someone else does?

sneak in. really. it usually works like a charm to fail a sneak. (assuming no one got aggro thru walls or doors)


to answer your, i guess, next question, yes, it is known by players that aggro-shared aggro-detection-chain reactions-los are bugged but not acknowledged by the devs in any way. the issue is confused or dismissed as a stealth-only issue and scorned by many posters.

[janave]

TL;DR

It is a hot mess right now

[hp1055cm]

The wiki says that monsters target the first player they see or the player who has done the most damage to them (modified by threat).

In general this is true, but there are many inconsistencies with the way aggro works.
It also changes from time to time - frequently after game updates.

Hirelings add a complexity level to aggro management that is difficult to quantify; and they have their own individual quirks. Reapers in particular will zero-in on and slaughter hirelings. Usually it is best to keep them behind you, even if parked. You have to actively manage them to increase their usefulness/survive-ability.

If you are a melee type, and can handle the aggro yourself, run into the room/group and then retreat a little. Keep yourself between the hireling and the mobs. Or run in first and engage casters/champions yourself to keep them off hirelings/others.

Play-style has a lot to do with how you try to manage aggro. It is different for ranged toons that like to kite mobs while running backward; or for casters that use AOE spells.

Some mobs are restrained to a small area so you can't pull and cluster them all - they "white-dot" and reset back to their original locations. Other mobs can roam the whole dungeon looking for you (usually the ones you want to bypass like oozes).

One fun thing to do is let the mobs cluster around the hireling, then call it to you so it teleports away. The mobs will continue swinging at air where the hirelings used to be for 5-10 seconds making them easy targets.

[PsychoBlonde]

I find it weird that bluff seems to be more successful than intimidate in getting aggro back. Yeah, they turn away for a second or two right when you bluff them, but then they're back and cannot be shaken.

This may just be a result of mobs having lower required bluff checks than intimidate.

[AbyssalMage]

Agro has been broken from the inception of the game. The formula used is borked (always has been, again). There is an actual post about it from ~2010 that was recently (last year or so) resurrected. Basically the first half of the "formula" (i.e. coding) works. It is the second half of the coding (i.e. implementation) that is bad and I personally don't think it is an easy fix because it would have been fixed years ago if it had been. I suspect it is on the level of Handwraps bad.