Improve Monk Combat!

[Angelus_dead]

They already did that.

No, they did not. What they did do is extend the range of melee attacks, allowing a Monk to punch barrels from beyond the length of his arms. That's a fast and simple way to sometimes reduce the severity of the problem, but it's not the good way to fix it.

But what they should do is use latency to compute the origin of attack arcs to be temporaly consistent with creature locations. That's not exactly easy, but it's something that's been documented in the network programming literature for 30 years. Lots of competing games do it better. (Not generally MMORPGs, but FPS)

The problem appears to be that the player's game client sends a message for a melee swing at location XYZ, but by the time the message arrives at the server the monster has moved away from that location, since the network packet from your house to Turbine's datacenter takes time to travel. There are roughly two ways to deal with it (both involving complexity and herustics):
A. Multiply velocity times measured latency to use an updated position for the attack origin.
B. Keep a history of creature positions over the past 1-2 seconds, and search for hits using the historical positions that correspond to the time that the attack action was performed.

It's a fairly hard programming job, but it's something important for an action networked game.

[Missing_Minds]

It's a fairly hard programming job, but it's something important for an action networked game.

And it is something we do not know if they can legally do or not.

These issues started back in Mod 3 when they licensed out a "new" AI back then.

We do not know where the separation of AI logic, and network traffic/position placement occurs. Nor do we know how much of the AI "code" Turbine has the legal right to attempt to modify.

And until recently they certain didn't have the funds to attempt to fix it in the manner you are describing. They did the best they could at the time.

I do agree, what you described, is the correct way to fix combat positioning detection, and like you I've long known this as well.

[AMDarkwolf]

its actually abusable the other way.

A melee(monk) backpedaling away from a chasing mob whose swinging his axe at you. Your a good 2-3 toon lengths away from the mob at all times, striking with every swing, but hes missing (no combat miss msgs) you.

(Yes I've bitten off more than I can chew and was being the cowardly monk fleeing the angry orge)

[Missing_Minds]

its actually abusable the other way.

A melee(monk) backpedaling away from a chasing mob whose swinging his axe at you. Your a good 2-3 toon lengths away from the mob at all times, striking with every swing, but hes missing (no combat miss msgs) you.

(Yes I've bitten off more than I can chew and was being the cowardly monk fleeing the angry orge)

You should do that with a 2 hander. Often times you'll make them flinch enough so that they can never catch up to hit you.

[Gumbolo]

its actually abusable the other way.

A melee(monk) backpedaling away from a chasing mob whose swinging his axe at you. Your a good 2-3 toon lengths away from the mob at all times, striking with every swing, but hes missing (no combat miss msgs) you.

(Yes I've bitten off more than I can chew and was being the cowardly monk fleeing the angry orge)

Uhm, it's still easier to abuse w/ thf or twf as fist requires you to be right next of em