New AI Engine Broke Ghola-Fan 'Chaos' Room

[Shadow_Flayer]

A few weeks ago I was running Ghola Fan for some reason, something I had not done for probably five months. I have always enjoyed that quest, what with the monkey rebellion you can encite, the switch you can use to kill your party off, and the hall of traps you can send your rogue down while telling him there really are boxes for all the traps. Good stuff.

Anyway, there is a room in the quest where a number of ogres operate traps. One of the traps is a chaos orb; kill the ogre controlling it, no more orb. There are sonic, acid, fire, cold and force traps. Nice stuff. I always enjoyed that room, and it was a nice foreshadowing of the Twilight Forge ogre-manned traps.

Well, with the new AI where mobs pounce on you once they are aware of you, the room is completely broken. Basically, instead of manning their traps, every ogre (sans one maybe) comes running to the door. Most of the party never even gets to see how fun the room looked. The danger of the room is gone since, even if the traps were still going off, you fight everything in the hallway away from danger.

Is this really the way the room was originally supposed to work? If so, lame. If not, please change it back.

[Ziggy]

aye i remember that room. it was pretty cool.

[Tavok]

Agreed.

[Kire]

Ran ghola fan recently and i remeber that room and all you have to do to set the traps off is go running into the room before the ogre's are dead/ just tell someone who is new to the quest (preferbably a squishie) to run into the room before the last ogre dies or we cant get the key! hehe works every time =D

~Kire

[Memnir]

The new AI has broken most places where mobs are supposed to raise an alarm/map a trap/etc...

Water Works part four has a gong that the kobols would always hit to get one of the ogres' attention. Now - one of em runs at the gong for a second, then changes course to rush the party.

Garrison's Missing Pack has these gongs - one per side of the split; where one side lets out wolves & the other side summons a kobold ambush. I've seen that work the way it used to/is supposed to for the first time in months. Ran it again, and they did not hit the alarms again.

Kobold's New Ringleader there is a gong that the kobold guards used to hit after the ice trap & bring the kobolds waiting in the room to the right swarming out. Now they ignore the alarm in favor of zerging at the PCs.

Ect...

Kinda ruins the flavor of a lot of these quests, in my view. You could use soem tactics to keep them from ringing the trap, and that was always fun to pull off. Now it seems like the only mob-based alarms that go off are new ones that you cannot interput and are on a trigger other than the mob activating it (think Crucible after the water run).

On the whole, the new AI works well. But, there should be an allowance for mobs to do the stuff they used to instead of just rushing at us like hyped up berzerkers.

[Ron]

The new AI has broken most places where mobs are supposed to raise an alarm/map a trap/etc...

Another one from a level 2 dungoen:

Smuggler's Warehouse (where you collect the 10 gems). Used to be in the first big room you came to, one of the kobolds (once he sees you) would run out of the room to hit a lever that dropped a gate, and you had to use either of the other two doors instead. Now he just charges you and the gate is never dropped.

[The_Rocking_Dead]

I'll take a look at it.. it's a good thing I happened to be looking at the boards tonight, because this is somethingt hat could easily slip under the radar. This is year-old content, and I'm working on totally new stuff now, so I don't have time to personally run each and every bit of old content myself. In that case, I appreciate helpful adventurers like yourself reporting such issues, so thank you!

Just in case you weren't aware, we also have a handy-dandy bug reporting tool built into the game, which you can access from the help menu. If you notice funkiness like this again, or anything that's suddenly behaving differently that we didn't make mention of, please go ahead and report it. We do receive all those bugs in our database, and we do take a look at all of them - which inevitibly means we will get to fixing them. In fact, that is the best way to get us to notice a bug like this. Like I mentioned before, I probably would have missed it completely if this thread ended up getting buried.

I'm going to go ahead and try to get this fixed for you though. Sharp eye, and thanks for the feedback!

[Memnir]

Will do, Rocking, and thank you for the reply.
I was unsure if this was a bug, since it seemed like the new AI acting as intended. I was sad since it seemed like so many "little touches" in the older dungeons I like were casualties of progress. I'm glad to know that this is not what was intended - and will bug report it any time I see it. Since I'm leveling a few new alts in the harbor now - I expect to see it often.


Thanks again for the reply, TRD.

[smodge13]

Just in case you weren't aware, we also have a handy-dandy bug reporting tool built into the game, which you can access from the help menu.

the problem is this "handy" bug tool take ages to open, and sometimes when you try to type or navigate the menu, nothing happens, no i havent bug reported it for these very reasons.

[Cheg]

Yeah, the in-game help menu totally blows. It's great to wait 5 minutes and still not have it load.

[Yndrofian]

same things happens in the Twilight Forge, with all the ogres manning the traps in the beginning hallways

[Harbinder]

same things happens in the Twilight Forge, with all the ogres manning the traps in the beginning hallways

They aggro and run out at you. One thing a caster could do...drop an extended Symbol of Persuasion the first hallway, then cloudkill on one side, they'll aggro on you and come out and charm.

Watch em burn baby!

[Ron]

I'll take a look at it.. it's a good thing I happened to be looking at the boards tonight, because this is somethingt hat could easily slip under the radar. This is year-old content, and I'm working on totally new stuff now, so I don't have time to personally run each and every bit of old content myself. In that case, I appreciate helpful adventurers like yourself reporting such issues, so thank you!

With all due respect, surely SOME devs must be running the old content? Do you mean to tell me NO ONE at Turbine has run through Smuggler's Warehouse in the last few months? Are you all playing nothing but level 14 characters?

If so, I think that's a big mistake, and I find it more than a little disturbing.

I'll be sure to bug report them in the future. I'm with Memnir, I wasn't really sure if it was a bug or just a casualty of the new AI.

[Falcone]

A related issue that I noticed the last time I ran the Twilight Forge: The ogres leave their stations to hunt us down, but their trap jets keep blasting away. This isn't as bad an issue as the Ghola Fan room, but it's a bit strange. If they're making the decision to come fight me instead of firing an acid or fire jet across the hall, fine, but the jets should probably stop firing once ogres make that decision. They used to stay on those platforms regardless, and Improved Precise Shot obsoleted that behavior, but the current behavior seems a bit silly in this context.

[DagazUlf]

Just ran Ghola Fan last night, and that room worked exactly like the OP stated.

Kind of a bummer as I was leading a guildie through the quest who had never been there before....

[Mad_Bombardier]

A related issue that I noticed the last time I ran the Twilight Forge: The ogres leave their stations to hunt us down, but their trap jets keep blasting away. This isn't as bad an issue as the Ghola Fan room, but it's a bit strange. If they're making the decision to come fight me instead of firing an acid or fire jet across the hall, fine, but the jets should probably stop firing once ogres make that decision. They used to stay on those platforms regardless, and Improved Precise Shot obsoleted that behavior, but the current behavior seems a bit silly in this context.

From my recent experience in the TF, the guns appear to be tied to the Gunner's life, not his presence on the pedestal.

[Spookydodger]

This has happened in other quests, too, especially ones where normally they would hang back and draw you in.

Tears of Dhakaan comes to mind.

[Battery]

it happens just about anywhere the mobs used to run to sound alarms, they just attack you instead.