why does aggro = see invis?

[neclon]

I dont see why it makes sense that mobs can track me from well acrosst he map when i'm invisible and sneaking ... i know they cant see invis. and i'm not making sound. How is it they're tracking me and attacking? Getting aggro on someone gives you magic see invis abilities ?

[Razcar]

i Dont See Why It Makes Sense That Mobs Can Track Me From Well Acrosst He Map When I'm Invisible And Sneaking ... I Know They Cant See Invis. And I'm Not Making Sound. How Is It They're Tracking Me And Attacking? Getting Aggro On Someone Gives You Magic See Invis Abilities ?

Well, have you seen the colour of our characters' underwear? Smell you later...

[MrWizard]

i do not understand invis either...and if there is a bug with sneak/hide/move silently while using it is beyond me..

however, invis just makes you invis...all the sounds you make still can be heard.

also, many monsters have great 'listen skills' or innate see invisibility abilities. (like those white ghostly cats, the bezekira)

they will follow the sounds...but not attack....or shot arrows in that general direction.

its an odd AI all the way around.

just wish invis worked in pvp

[Gorkulon]

I've had this same experience meaning I've invis after being aggroed and mobs act like they see me. Makes sense that they would look for me and maybe take some blind swings but they act like im not invisible at all. I've just accepted the fact that invis only works if mobs have not aggroed on me. Invisibility really can only be used to avoid detection and not as an escape means. I wish this worked differently as well.

[neclon]

The problem is they can "hear" you from 10 miles away while you're sneaking after they've been aggrod if you chug a pot. It's stupid. To be sneaking behind a barrier invis and then have an archer take "blind shot" right at me and nail me from a mile away makes no sense at all.

[DevilButcher]

I don’t see why it makes sense that mobs can track me from well across the map when I’m invisible and sneaking ... i know they cant see invis. and i'm not making sound. How is it they're tracking me and attacking? Getting aggro on someone gives you magic see invis abilities ?

LoL this is kind of less serious question so I will give a less serious answer.

-Just as Wonder women has an invisible jet plan you can see it, but you can tell where it is because she's not invisible.

If you’re invisible, that does not mean a monster with acute vision can see things that catch there attention and shows your presents; pebbles moving under your feet, foot prints in grass or dusty foot prints marks... others less attentive people might miss.

Once they notice you and you turn invisible, either you’re running like mad not caring about how load you are or you’re using go into sneak mode so they can't hear you. But now you move so slow they will have a good chance to know where you would be.

From a mechanic MMORPG view the game would be way too easy if they made it so monster had a harder time for a mob to find you while invisible.

[oldkraft]

I use invisible whenever I have to run through an area and dont want trouble. It works.
It does not prohibit you beeing spotted, listened, smelled or the like - or, if your spot are low, physically bumping into monsters.
It drasticly diminishes the urge to track you anyway.
Lots of people dont use it, i noticed, because they expect to much from it.
Just keep moving !!! It does not say undetectable.

[DevilButcher]

I love the spell too, I feel naked without it

[AZgreentea]

Some creatures can see you with other skills, for example Spiders can sense your footsteps (soundless, invisible, or otherwise) and Ooze can too (they dont even have eyes, what do they care if you are invisible).

Other monsters can sometimes tell that you are there by your interactions. Just because you are invisible does not mean you wont leave footprints in the sand. If you get too close to them or you effect your environment, a perceptive monster will pick up on the fact that SOMETHING is there. Invisible things running around are almost always worth killing before they get into stuff.

[Orratti]

You just discovered this? Or waited four years to write a post on it. Stealth of any kind has been been broken forever. It is exactly the same problem as any stealth build has when moving out of line of sight and dropping back into stealth. Instead of mobs doing a random search for you they do a very unrandom search for you moving to you exact position looking as if they are searching but acting on a known position.

It is probably part of the aggro mechanic. An enemy can only be aggroed on a player it can see. Once an enemy spots you it aggros, in order for it to stayed aggroed it has to still see you. In ddo an enemy doesn't just become alert, it aggros on a specific player. In a game like metalgear solid or tenchu stealth assassin there is only one player so while an enemy can be alert and searching or actively attacking its aggro is, in a way, unset at all times. If the enemy were to actually lose sight of you it's aggro would reset. The mob would return to it's original position and become inactive as if it never saw you in the first place and not bother searching for you at all. This would appear even more dumb. So a compromise must have been reached. The mob has a search graphic where it behaves as if your location is unknown followed by a radar-like "ping" that gives your exact position. This allows the monster to maintain aggro and also allows you to be able to move unseen between pings. The best way that I can think of to fix this sort of thing is to lengthen the time between pings giving you a chance to reset the aggro. An opportunity to get out of line of sight and either charm a monster, summon a monster, or range a barrel or crate so that you can continue on safely without aggro.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Once agroed, it is very difficult to actually lose agro. And sometimes, even when you do lose it, it reagroes on you if you get close. Although this may just mean that you were not really far enough away to completely lose agro anyway.

Most monsters, even if you have agro, have to find you in some way to attack you. They do a sonar like attack the air thing to home in on your location.

But sometimes, especially with casters and archers, they will attack straight at you.

The thing you need to realise, is that you are still Invisible. One guy sucessfully attacking you does not mean all of the monsters are doing so.

So...do not attack him.....or otherwise break whatever stealth you have left....
Drag him off to a quiet corner of the dungeon and deal with him alone.
Or just keep going until he falls behind somewhere and cannot follow.


Keep moving....force them to keep doing their sonar attack and keep looking for you. There are also several buggy effects from when you are Invised that can also work to your advantage.

Yes you will still have agro, but it des not mean that you have to fight the whole dungeon or even be damaged by the guys who are agroed on you.


(My assassin uses Bluff to assassinate mobs that are actively agroed on me and chasing me)

[Mercureal]

I've noticed this same issue for years in all sorts of fantasy games that use the concept of invisibility. I've always thought it boiled down to the difficulty of simulating something like invisibility in a computer program, where the enemies don't exist independently from the 'universe' you're adventuring within. Sure, at some level the game rules say that you can't be seen - but the overriding objective of enemies in any game is to find you and kill you, and the computer is implementing both sets of rules. I think it'd be hard to make invisibility work without subjecting the monsters to an algorithm that mimics completely random activity.

[QuantumEntanglement]

Some of the best info on stealth playstyle comes from Ghoste. He has done a lot of testing and the link to his videos here:

http://www.youtube.com/ArcaneConstruct

contains a few with titles like stealth test and experiment where he demonstrates quite rigorously what is broken about stealth. The problem could be compounded by the fact that it is even hard to get a dev to fully understand what is precisely wrong with the stealth and aggroing interaction mechanics. That was the underlying reason he made some of those test video demonstrations. He makes a comment in one that they were to answer a specific dev requesting clarification.

What seems to be obvious is that the way the AI works is that any monster that gets aggro on you can lose track of where you are if you stealth/invis. But they gain immediate knowledge of your exact location (no matter that you are in stealth with skills to high for them to notice you otherwise) every time they swing a weapon or make an attack. That's why if you're fast enough to make fairly long trots away from the last point you stealth, you can lead a point to point game of chase the air where I last was.

I'm tempted to believe the opinion of one poster who feels that Turbine doesn't like the stealth, considering it if not an exploit per se, the next best thing. I mean even with how busted the mechanic already is, they felt the need to add yet another useful distraction action, busting breakables while stealthed, to the list of things which now force you out of stealth?!?! Why? It's a fringe style of play for the tactician minded that I'm sure very few players actually have the patience for that actually solves the same lag source issue of activated mobs they added dungeon alert to try and fix. Well, when done right it does. Done right, stealth players like us add precisely zero active monsters to the server load. Save maybe some named objective kills or bosses. And they wanna make it harder to do this? But we help more than DA.

While on the subject, I'll just go ahead and throw this out there. If I as a shadowmage throw up a firewall or cloud kill from out of line of sight that doesn't land on anything and then from out of sight, provide a distraction technique (breakable in the middle of it or summoned pet or shot arrow on the ground) to get nearby mobs' attention, then they come to investigate. They are unaware as yet that I'm there or where I am (not even that magical "ha I've already seen you once" kind). If I stay stealthed with sufficient skills to not be detected and don't bump them, when they walk into my firewall or cloud and take damage, sure it can be argued that they would obviously know AN enemy caster is around. They would be justified to raise an alarm on script. But they should only go into the hunting pattern. The real "looking around trying to find you" pattern as opposed to the "I really magically know where you are, but am gonna pretend I don't and fake search for you, always coincidentally going closer to you" one. They don't do either though. They beeline right to where you are without ever having aggroed on you at all. I bet a trap making rogue that sets one up in stealth and makes noise to draw mobs into it gets the same exact magic you might as well stand up treatment. There's no way to defend that in my book.

[diamabel]

There are two aspects to stealth/invisibility.

First - NPCs are rather stupid. To prevent the AI to be fooled or its behaviour abused by players you can't avoid implementing some NPC cheating (I can only speculate on what the devs implemented). The AI will strictly adhere to the implemented behaviour (for good or bad). In addition the devs granted some NPCs certain abilities (e.g. see invisible, true seeing or "apropriate" spot and listen skills) to make it harder to stealth certain parts of the game/dungeons.

Second - Even if you are stealthed or invisible doesn't mean that you will be undetected by every creature. Different creatures will have different kinds of senses. Humanoids will rely on sight, hearing and to a lesser extent olfaction. Some races will have an extended sight (and thus not be limited to the visible spectrum). When faced with creatures that rely mostly on sight and hearing stealth and invisiblity can help staying undetected. Especially during nights (races with some kind of infravision and used to darkness might have troubles in daylight). Invisiblity and stealth won't avoid leaving marks (e.g. footprints on sand/mud or broken/bend grass/reed). It won't avoid creating noises (e.g. stepping on leaves/twigs). Another example of detection would be walking through a shallow river/pond/fountain while invisible. If you implemented stealth and invisiblity in a realistic way its usefulness would be rather situational.


Dunno, but it seems there are different expectations concerning stealth & invisibility.

[Gorkulon]

Once agroed, it is very difficult to actually lose agro. And sometimes, even when you do lose it, it reagroes on you if you get close. Although this may just mean that you were not really far enough away to completely lose agro anyway.

Most monsters, even if you have agro, have to find you in some way to attack you. They do a sonar like attack the air thing to home in on your location.

But sometimes, especially with casters and archers, they will attack straight at you.

The thing you need to realise, is that you are still Invisible. One guy sucessfully attacking you does not mean all of the monsters are doing so.

So...do not attack him.....or otherwise break whatever stealth you have left....
Drag him off to a quiet corner of the dungeon and deal with him alone.
Or just keep going until he falls behind somewhere and cannot follow.


Keep moving....force them to keep doing their sonar attack and keep looking for you. There are also several buggy effects from when you are Invised that can also work to your advantage.

Yes you will still have agro, but it des not mean that you have to fight the whole dungeon or even be damaged by the guys who are agroed on you.


(My assassin uses Bluff to assassinate mobs that are actively agroed on me and chasing me)

Most of the time when mobs are still aggroed on you you will pop out of your stealth regardless of whether you attack them or not.

[neclon]

If you’re invisible, that does not mean a monster with acute vision can see things that catch there attention and shows your presents; pebbles moving under your feet, foot prints in grass or dusty foot prints marks... others less attentive people might miss.

You win for most of these situations =) (and for understanding the gravity of my post). Yes I can see runing around a corner and quaffing invis pot and sneaking not necessarily being enough because once you know someone is there invis you might listen really hard for their breathing or look for footprints in the dust (whereas you wouldnt otherwise). Although kicking pebbles around is pretty noisy.. you would assume someone with 35+ in move silent is picking his footsteps pretty well.

---------------------------

It's funny most of the answers assume I don't know how stealth and invis work. I appreciate the helpfullness in the answers. I do know how it works, though. It's in the cases where, by all the rules of D&D I should NOT be detectable as easily as they are running up to me, that bug me.

1. get aggro by a group of mobs
2. quaff invis pot, run off a cliff
3. sneak for 100 meters and hold still, none of them have me in their visible range, they're busy running around the path to get back to where i jumped off.. but they dont go to where they last saw me
4. watch mobs run directly to my current hiding, invis, holding still sneak position behind a rock or something and bash me on the head

Conclusion: they track your exact position independently of their senses (they know where you are without seeing you go there, without the benefit of any move silent checks and fails) Smell? that doesn't seem to help em when i assasinate them hah! I'm right on top of them then.

We're talking about ogres and gnolls and maybe a hill giant... not devils or slimes

[DevilButcher]

1. get aggro by a group of mobs
2. quaff invis pot, run off a cliff
3. sneak for 100 meters and hold still, none of them have me in their visible range, they're busy running around the path to get back to where i jumped off.. but they dont go to where they last saw me
4. watch mobs run directly to my current hiding, invis, holding still sneak position behind a rock or something and bash me on the head

Conclusion: they track your exact position independently of their senses (they know where you are without seeing you go there, without the benefit of any move silent checks and fails) Smell? that doesn't seem to help em when i assasinate them hah! I'm right on top of them then.

We're talking about ogres and gnolls and maybe a hill giant... not devils or slimes

Part of tracking is ruling out where your not. I don't need to see where you went and hid.
You might think your super ninja hiding behind that box in an empty room but really it’s the only logical place to hide, even to an ogre.
Yes they seem to track you very well DDO, but it does sometimes take them a little time to catch up to you, they will fallow/find you because there is a logical "path" to you.

You want to leave them really baffled, don't leave a path to where you are.
They can't fallow you in to a Dimension Door spell, just up to it.
Same goes if you Sap them and go maybe 3x the bluff distance from them. They will have no clue where you went when they wake up.

Almost Every rogue I make has Passage Mark for Dimension Door because of this. But that's me.

[Draccus]

This is all the more reason why rogues are such a challenging class to play. We have zero room for error. A single mistake can be a disaster. Think about a solo WF Sorc or wizard or a solo cleric or FvS. They can play as poorly, clumsily, and stupidly as they want and still fully recover with a full heal and a persistant AOE spell ticking damage the whole time. Easy mode. Ooops! I ran into a room full of epic mobs! What ever will I do? Firewall, jump, full heal, epic win. (Ok, I realize it's not QUITE that easy, but it's certainly not very tough)

But a rogue makes one mistake and all hell breaks loose.

I was running a solo monastery on normal yesterday. I could have blow through there like a barbarian and just killed everything (on normal...elite is a different matter) but I always stealth it because it's such good practice. I make it to the second level easily. I pull the lever and drop the barriers easily. As I'm rounding a corner heading to the puzzle, I bump a scorpion. I bump one scorpion in a dungeon with 100s of mobs. One mistake. One tiny mistake and I am surrounded by 15 scorpions, two drow wizards, two drow clerics, and three mockery monks.

If this was on elite, I'd be dead in nearly an instant. Fortunately, on normal, it was just a long, long fight with a lot of running around and buffing (who buffs going in on normal?) and healing.

All from making one tiny mistake.

People can say a lot of things about rogues but Easy Mode isn't one of them!

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Most of the time when mobs are still aggroed on you you will pop out of your stealth regardless of whether you attack them or not.

That is only if they hit you. (or under some other strange circumstances like Blur protecting you from a hit)

And even if you pop out of stealth, it still doesn't mean everything now knows where you are, or that you cannot go back into stealth mode and force them to keep looking for you again...

And especially if you are Invisible... as poping out of stealth does not cancel Invisibility.

[Razcar]

All from making one tiny mistake.

People can say a lot of things about rogues but Easy Mode isn't one of them!

Approve (e.g. Well Said, Informative, Positive Contribution) a.k.a. +1