Another thread about AI

Ok, are you sure?

Ohh, if I want to get a chump off my back I use AoE?

Wait, didn't you just say that these issues aren't related?

/confused

Not related to chasing. Related to close-in melee. Which this thread is decidedly not talking about.

Thanks.

Ok, thank you I get it now

I really urge the designers to look at the examples in the thread on GWOnline. People describe there very thoroughly -- where, how, what effect they get with the mobs. There are screenshots. All this is very, very easily reproducible. Please give me a shout if you want to observe this behaviour, I will gladly reproduce some of the situations for you -- the ones I've seen and experienced personally, and which I can show you at any time.

A few more questions, then -- do the designers realize that these current as intended "behaviors involving mob attraction, monster range and persistence, etc." actually totally destroy and nullify the whole concept of aggro bubble (or "danger zone") of a player, and that they render such skills as Rebirth and Lightbringer's Rebirth Signet totally useless? Because in the cases of nearly total wipe-out it's easier and faster to die with the party and get rezzed all together on a shrine than to run away and then painfully try to rez the rest of the team while being targeted by mobs from a few aggro circles away. Obviously, this does not leave a chance if something goes wrong in a mission where we cannot use shrines.

I was just reminded of way back before Factions was even released. I used to do ToPK runs a lot, and I problably did 50+ runs in my time there.
I remember sometime between March 2006 and when Factions was released, having problems with the monsters chasing me all the way to the spawn point in the Courtyard map.

So that update in November 2005, didn't fix it.

I really do think this chasing and over-aggroing effect is intended. I noticed that it seems to only happen with mobs that are (story-line wise) more intelligent. Jade Brotherhood, Avicara, Grawl, Outcasts, Kournans, Margonites, Heket, etc. All of these are known to be more intelligent mobs than say Undead, Plants, Trolls, Drakes, Skales, etc.

I'm thinking that they introduced a kind of 'memory' on the intelligent AI mobs. If they almost wiped out your party, and one or two of you remain, they're more sensitive to your presence, ie: much larger aggro when you try to res. If you 'angered' a certain mob (might be random, like a mood swing), they will never break aggro until they or you are dead.

I've also noticed that certain types of mobs who leave spirits behind can actually aggro once you've aggroed the spirit. This only happens sometimes, though, especially in DoA. Again, it all seems intended. I have no problem with it, even if it is aggrevating sometimes. Honestly, complicated/overlapping patrols are intended as well, and they aggrevate me more than odd behaviour. It's a dangerous world out there, try to be careful.

So like since the users do this all the time for the devs, then could we get some info on the dev/test team. Like age, gaming history, hours spent playing gw, what type of hardware they use, do they have a 8 inch monitor and 3 aggro bubbles look like 1?
Ive been playing video games since atari (yea big deal) but Ive been an avid pc gamer since the early 90s when Doom and Wolfenstein came out. Have played first person shooters since 1999. Though not familiar with mmos until Guild Wars, I know games, can differentiate bugs from intended programming and am familiar with how maps for games are made.
To me, I really dont think the enemies were intended to be so sensative to aggro from 3 to 4 bubbles away. Maybe this was introduced to stop runners so that 1 aggrod mob will chase them into the next mob not giving the runner enough time to heal? Though theres no logic to that, ruining casual pve players fun in order to stop runners.
So, go to the Fissure of Woe. Start fighting a shadow army, preferably behind the fort at the start, let a member or two die a bubble away from the mobs starting point, everyone else run like the dickens 5 bubbles away or completely out of compass range. Then have them slowly go back in making thier way to thier fallen party member. The mob will lock on and will do a yo-yo effect as I call it with your group making ressing the dead member possible, but it will cause a chain reaction and everyone will die trying to res. the other dude. Cause the abyssals hit hard. And with a monk ressing another monk, leaving no monks there to heal or prot the ressing monk, or 1 monk trying to heal 4 people why one necro dude with like 250hp is trying to res the other dead guy, its annoying. Thats if they can get a res off without being interrupted.

This "intended behavior" is killing the game for me! There is hardly any point in taking rez now

Thanks your your reply Gaile, but I am still confused as to the state of affairs. When you check back with the devs and designers, can you please get them to confirm if the behaviour reported here, and on GWOnline, is:

a) Intended by the designers

or

b) Not intended, but the devs are unable to reproduce the reported behaviours

?

A guildie and I had a very weird instance of corpse-camping tonight. We were 2-manning it with 6 heroes, and my 3 hero squad bit the bullet because I forgot to cancel their flag while kiting from a bad pull. (So I wasn't paying attention very well, sue me! :P)

Now, there's 5 of us: 2 players, 3 heroes, all belonging to my guildie, standing at a safe distance while the angry mob slowly makes its way home. When they're all settled, I move toward my dearly departed ones to cast rebirth. Alas, when I get within radar range of the enemy group, they all charge toward me. There's no way I'm going to be able to pull off a rebirth.

Back to the drawing board. Guildie and I decide to move in both at the same time, from different angles, hoping one of us can get close enough. The enemies all charge me again, and I run them around a bit until they hurt me too bad to go on with it. I flee. At that time we noticed that the enemies totally ignore my guildie. He can just walk in and res my heroes. As long as he doesn't aggro them, they ignore his presence.

He can stand one step short of aggro circle contact and nothing happens. I get within radar distance and they charge me like a pack of rabid boars. Mind you, he HAD aggroed them before. He was the one doing the pulling.

Sure does sound like a bug to me.

Gli, that's very interesting. What classes did you play, you and your guildie, and where?

Even if you had stepped into agro range, they may have ignored you. I had a similar experience in UW where the smites were perma-agroed on a team mate. I was able to walk right up to them and they all ignored me except one that advanced, but one step back from me and he went back. The instant my team-mate started to come down to help, the entire group woke up and went for him, he wasn't even on radar! Iwas ranger, he was rit

Thanks for posting Gaile, and I hope the devs are going to look into this seriously. So often I feel like we're being ignored, and it bothers me a lot.

Regardless of whether it was a bug or intended, the fact remains that it's causing major grief for everyone that encounters it, and that alone warrants Anet's attention. Yes the game needs balance and so on and so fourth, but above all else, the game needs to be enjoyable and a rewarding experience. Thing that compromise this, are very serious matters.

Both warriors, in Ferndale, near Murgra Swiftspell. Dredge assassins charging our squishy backline while they were taking a pounding from warden mesmers. Didn't look good so we bolted to reapproach. Except I forgot about the flag.

Gaille, You havent really told us what the Dev team is doing to fix this problem though. Its not possible that the dev team is going out and not getting this same problem unless they are not playing the same game as we are.
Either this "Bug" or "Intended change" is slightly odd. I've been playing this game for nearly 1 1/2 years now and there have been very many odd changes. The A.I is constantly "Evolving" or changing, at some times for the better, at some for the worse. My question would really be as to why for the first several days at the release of NF the A.I seemed to be working flawlessly. Making the game aggro although a bit realistic, much more fun to play with.
I personally have had this problem in many many situations. I was running through Lornars Pass to get to Droknars Forge with my warrior and was followed from the spawn point to the end by a lone Avicara Guile. I stopped to regen in the temple of grenth and he caught up to me. Considering I was on a 25% speed boost the entire run I'd have to say this is amazing 0.o
I've seen mobs running with speed boosts after me occasionaly. A necro in the Domain of Secrets caught up to my dervish running with Avatar of Balthazar on. Now that was quite a trick. I was solo'ing Quansong Spiritspeak on my Ritualist and once he was aggro'd he would chase for quite a distance and would re-aggro from much more then 2 aggro bubble's away. If this is an intended update then the purpose of the aggro bubble no longer exists. It is nothing either then a tool for determing who and what is in ear shot of you because obviously it no longer has anything to do with the aggro. Once something is aggro'd in The Stygian Veil it wont drop aggro. It takes skillfull kiting and a scarifice of one player to break aggro.

With point b) in the OP it's been like that for ages. I'm kinda surprised people are complaining about that tbh. Seems more like a design decision more than a bug.

No, honestly, you are not being ignored. The fact that I've been active in threads on this, that we've provided initial response, and that we pledge to continue to look at reports (especially those providing explicit details -- thanks guys!) are all proofs that there's no "brushing under the rug" or "let 'em deal with it" attitudes in place!

QA is continuing to monitor the thread on GWO and will be monitoring this thread as well. They have a very good team member assigned expressly to that process, and the reports that they read and pass back to the designers are always given close attention. QA will take the specifics that players provide, because those are oh so helpful in getting to the bottom of this situation, and they will present them in a report that gives a lot of details and replication information and, of course, their findings in attempting to recreate the issues. (Yes, you need to replicate them, you really do, in order to respond as necessary and appropriate without running around in circles with unverified reports that end up being wrong, or provided without enough details to prove. No offense intended, of course, but sometimes players do report things that are not bugs, or give information that is unrelated to the bug, so we have to take a analytical look at things.)

No one knows more than we do that the game needs to have the fun factor firmly in place. No one understand more than we do that changes brought about for reason or for cause must always keep the fun factor in mind. The design team would not put in changes that unnecessarily frustrate players or drive them away. Now, they would make changes that are intended or needed. Maybe they'll make the occasional change that players don't understand, and it's good to discuss. The designers have the overarching view in mind, and you can be sure, "fun" is the most critical of all elements!

I feel that I should say again -- although I'm not going to make an analogy that someone misunderstands like I did earlier with the whole references to a past change -- that sometimes it takes a while for us, as players, to learn to adapt to necessary or intended changes. But if something is bugged, or glitchy, or inherently unfair, the designers will most definitely want to know, will know, and will address the issue.

Thanks a lot for understanding that it may take a bit of time, but for trusting that we will continue to analyze this.

hm, this reminds me of a car problem I had a while back......sometimes it would just die for no reason (went to doctor appt....came out car dead, called hubby to come and jump it, 10 minutes later car starts without any problems....hubby wouldnt believe me until it happened to him.-----take it to repairman. 'uhm we cant repeat what you did, bring it back when it happens and then we will look at it'... ..geez thanks. and with that I have had 3 new batteries in my car in three years, you'd think that there is something a bit suspecious when the battery needs to be replaced every 12 months on a late '90s car!)

Had this happen the other night with my hubby doing a quest....whole team gets wiped....me an olias are running away, he bites it....I ran aways a way....came back to olias and was rezzing him.....the enemy was still there, took a few trys to get him rezzed but finally did and he ran away to his flag far far away......they killed me off. Now there is no one who does not have a dp from this encounter and then the enemy leaves us alone to rez the rest of the group. So I guess you all need to die once to get the aggro off of you.

The AoE nerf (over a year ago, not months @_@) was made to stop farmers from having an easy time.

The "throw a firestorm at your buddy" concept (a tactic that is never used) is just a way to illustrate a work around.

Lol, Gaile already shot down what I wrote no need to quote it Anyways I wasn't really saying I agreed with it just how I understood it (which turned out I was misunderstanding Gaile's point). I know that monsters will just sit in the AoE until that are at X% of their health now and I know that before they would flee, and before that they would sit in it indefinitely.

Anyways if the Devs need to reproduce results just have one of them attempt a drok's run when those ice golems follow you from the first set of worms all the way to the 2nd set...well I think you can guess how that turned out.

*Stops to use heal sig*
*notices Rust*
*cancel's sig*
*casts smite hex, only to remove the slow hex that was just reapplied*
*turns into worm food* XD