Post NF update observations..

I've noticed somethings, I'm not going to say they are good, bad, etc.. Just wondering had anyone else noticed them.

1) Low end mobs have been given a harder bite. I had a level 8 char kill with a hit for over 130 points of damage in one hit. I was soloing and pushing my luck on purpose. Wanted to see how things went, etc.. Wondered about complaints. It was kinda funny actually. (why was I around level 8 char? Clearing map for title, I'd missed some spots.)

2) "Run Forest Run!!" Mobs chase for longer periods, and then stop run back and then return to the chase. Some seem glitched and go back and forth just out of range. Again funny to watch. (personal best train was about 25 or so)

3) NPC mesmer (phantasm and nightmare) seem to go higher than 5/8 respectively. I swear I've seen a - 15 or so in health regen. Is this the result of high levels and more attribs etc? I thought only duration climbed but not the amount (-5 phantasm, -8 nightmare).

4) Since we can plant flags and direct henchman it seems like they go out of their way and try to get nailed on purpose if you do NOT use a flag?

As I said, just wondering. Not meant as a complaint or whine.

Even if you plant a flag, heroes will run as mini-Leeroys if you have them set to attack. Put them at defend and they should be a bit more rational in their aggresiveness.

There are threads all over the net about this "broken" AI and the side effects it is having on the game.

Here's a link to one of them; if you can dig through the flames and trash, you'll find some information about it and what others have seen.

GWOnline also has Gaile asking for details on such happenings as they are trying to sort it out.

Hope that helps.

Okay thanks (both of ya).

As for more info:

Last night a guildy and I went to VOG to open the sides etc for map title, once there the agro was weird. Sure lots to fight etc, nothing new there. But when he needed to res, etc.. the mobs that made recent kill would run back and keep chasing us. They were at the bottom of the valley when he approached to res using rebirth, they charged back at top speed and hovered over the dead henchies etc.. So he would retreat, they would also, then as soon as he got near the dead (half radius away) they would fly back and stop him with interupts etc..

Also he would run back to closest portal and almost have to leave and rezone efore they would break off after chasing him all over the valley. Oh and the monk boss (lil purple squirt) runs up and back all night, he never attacks just plays tag and runs away. We finally trapped him in a nook and opened up on him. Lil sucker is funny as hell but most likely a glitch.


In mineral springs the killer chickens chase you thru the portal and beyond.




Hope it helps,

The thought occurs. The new trend for the mobs to endlessly chase us, was a decision made by the coders/devs and is not a bug imho. Now it remains to see if they "adjust" it or let it go hoping we adapt and stop complaining. which is kewl, they can do as they wish, it's their sandbox. BUT, people staying or going is their decision. Which again is fine, players come and go. I just wish both sides would own up to their true intent and not run around trying to be "PC" and call things bugs etc.. The game is working as intended in that respect, and players can stay or go. Calling it a bug seems pointless.

But what do I know, I fight imaginary creatures and die a lot

One thing that I thought was odd, was that when I was in one of the end game areas, I got hit 3 times with 107 damage deep freezes. I'm not sure if that's what the skill's damage potential is (I don't play an ele), but it wiped my hench party along with myself. I watched the damage numbers, and looked to see what was used against me, because I was quite amazed.

Mobs being overpowered is a fact of life in game. It's GW's idea of fair. Once mobs pass level 20 they (their skills, recharge times, abilities, etc..) become more powerful/faster/stronger since they have more attributes and can wreak crazy damage, etc. Some hate this, some love it, some don't care becasue they got through it already. In game you either adapt and deal to it, or move on.. I'm not trying to be flippant, just stating how things are. I've been hit for over 150 points of damage by a level 3 creature, or hit with skills/spells so fast over and over they (the mob/creature) must have zero recharge time.

I wonder though.. does anyone remember the update which said that monsters would stop chasing us all over the map? The new update, has that put it back to the way it was or has it made the chasing worse?

My best guess is this is another attempt by GW to curb bot farming. I'm not smart enough to understand why they need to protect the imaginary loot. Personally if someone wishes to pay for said stuff, gW is missing a market and should offer gold for sale and high end weapons in their store, and cut the market out from under the ebayers.

sometimes, my heros and henchman wont attack my target.

edit: oh yeh..and sometimes even attack random targets =/
koss on one monster, warrior hench on another, casters on seperate targets.

its annoying.

Yeah they love to agro, or dance in the middle of battles. LOL If they want to make the game better, allow me to attack the henchman. If they do, Menhlo better run, cause that goofy bas.... is dog meat.

lg500 made me think about that update before Nightfall. I went over to guildwars.com and on their update list I looked at the AI improvements. Seems all they did there, all the improvements went out the window.

Maybe since we've seen "better" (then) we are more frustrated with what we have now? Gaile herself even said the AI was rolled back to the way it was since Prophesies... maybe old bugs from ages back snuck back in?

Good thinking lg500.

Rollback? Oh gees..

Degen never gets higher than -10 no matter how much degen you're stacking. But the excess degen does add to any regen that the target has though.

had a hard time finding it, but:

As we can see, the claim that the AI targeting has remained unchanged is false. Probably not a lie, probably a bug. Number 2 refers to the update where the AI was updated (from the list at guildwars.com) and number 3 refers to it being "fixed" back to prophesies AI... which, as we can see from #1; this isn't working like it should.
Problems abound all over now, as the AI update meant for Nightfall isn't working. Mobs stand in AoEs, as do heroes and henchies (again); "kiting" doesn't work, instead we have "Flee! The sky is falling!"; and many peoples favorites... the perma-lock and insta-monk targeting system.

WasAGuest, Well then they need to introduce snares, not slow downs but snares. That stop them from fleeing.

Sid Soggybottom, ok that explains it. We can have say a -3 necro degen and phantasm, adding -5, and then get nightmare for -8.. yikes.. Makes sense, it sux, but makes sense lol

Oh how I know - trust me when I say I am 100% against the current AI. It has completely and utterly ruined my game play experience in GW these past few days. I was only passing on what I know.

Biggest problem to over come is the fact that posts all over the place about this "bugged" AI appeared all over the net after the post 31st update. As usual, through our "support system", the issues were quickly buried in piles of garbage and flames from those not having the most extreme issues.

When Gaile finally commented on it, it was "news" to her... which of course I believe, considering the flameboys did their best to derail, or simply confuse the "bugs" with more "oh it's just farmers upset cause the AI is smarter"... so there was lots of trash to dig through to find the problems.

Anyway, good thing is that they are at least working on it; and hopefully it's not deemed working as it should be. From the amount of complaints from 'different' people, Anet would be ticking off a whole lot of people if left as is.

Two reasons, based on in-game and out-of-game economics:

In-game, that could create a system where to get anything decent via trading would almost require you to buy gold. Gold selling services, in short, introduce more gold into the hands of the people who have the real-world money to afford it, inflating prices for the people who don't. (There's a spoof on this somewhere in the world of online gaming comics - it may have been Penny Arcade, but I'm not sure - where someone had a game where you essentially had to swipe a credit card in order to get anything done.)

Out-of-game, there has been discussion among at least the American tax people about taxing earnings in MMORPGs. At the moment, converting real world money to gold or vice versa is against the EULA and thus technically illegal, so from a legal standpoint there is no conversion from in-game gold to real-world economics and therefor in-game gold is untaxable. However, if an exchange rate was set between in-game money and out-of-game money (which ANet or NCSoft offering gold for sale would essentially be doing) this would mean that in-game money could potentially be taxed. Which would just make life more difficult for everyone (well, except the people receiving the tax money).

When every corsair and his dog carries throwing nets, why can't we?

At one time if a mob started to cast a spell on you and you ran it would chase you until it got the spell off. I hadn't seen that in quite some time so I do not know if it was ever fixed or I've just been lucky. I've been mostly farming and I fight/kill everything anyway so not near the chance to see it happen.

The nightfall enemies seem to spam their spells much more often than the older chapters (or, more likely, it seems they have more short recharge skills than before - short recharge a medium to long cast time makes this behavior horrid). I do know that you would run into some mobs in prophecies that were *really* hard to get away from because when you stopped to let them get their skill off they had another being trying to cast on you before you could move.

I may be that, I haven't really payed that much attention.

I also noticed that the heroes set on aggressive seem to decide if they need to run out and attack based more on their attack range than where they are at. That is - a warrior notices that he needs to move 2 aggro bubbles to attack, a ranger with long bow notices just half an aggro bubble so the ranger runs forward and attacks. Thus it is pretty much all the wands, staves, and bow wielders that run out and grabbed aggro (setting them to defensive fixed this). I also wonder if this may have something to do with it - at least in my experience it was mostly caster mobs that really chased but one would need more than my anectdotal observations (I never really payed *that* much attention).

And, of course, there had to have been some changes to the AI. As any developer knows, software can sometimes do some funny stuff - especially more complicated code. So it may just be some strange bug, I know I've had them in software I've written that took weeks of work to figure out what was going on.