Duncan Hard Mode Stone Summit AI Needs Work NOW.

They Fixed it! They Fixed it! They Fixed! /Jump /Cheer /Roar

Thank you Gaile, for your complements and for posting and mentioning this to the team! We're all grateful that you took attention!

~For those that do not know, her reply may be found on this page:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...0212862&page=4




The Original Rant is Below. Thank you.





~Disclaimer to All Trolls:

This is not about Hard Mode being "Too Hard". This thread is about creature AI and spawn location. If anyone comes in here saying "That's why it's called Hard Mode", it won't be dignified with a repsonse.


~This post covers hard mode, not normal mode. Hard mode has different spawn AI's, so don't compare the two.~



Duncan the Black is the final dungeon in the four dungeon process of Slaver's Exile. It is located in Eye of the North, in the Verdant Cascades South from Umbral Grotto. A master difficulty quest comes with the dungeons, and had a 2,750 gold and 15,000 exp reward. Now that we have some background information, let me tell you about each of the dungeons.


There are three besides the final one. Two of them contain one boss each, and the other contains two, one on each end of the dungeon. They are labeled "Selvetarm", "Forgewhite", and "Justiciar Thommis". The latter of the three also contains Rand Stormweaver, the fourth boss.

The Quest is simple. It's called "The Last Hierophant". The objectives are to destroy each boss on the list, and finally, destroy Duncan the Black. You can acess his dungeon "Duncan the Black" after completing all the other dungeons. If all party members have not done this, then the party cannot enter the dungeon.


Now that we have the background information, I'll cut to the chase. The Patrol AI at the beginning of the dungeon needs to be fixed. There are two patrols close to the ressurect shrine, where you load in. They are both Stone Summit groups with two healers, a blood/curses necromancer, a minion master, and a few warriors. In Hard mode they are level 26.

The first group, which spawns very close to the ressurect shrine, patrols from it's spawnpoint up to the pathway away from the door. It returns there on patrol roughly every 4 minutes. There is a problem however. When you load in, your characters and team mates load in way too close to the group. Your entire group is forced to move back to the door within abot 10 seconds after the first person loads, or you will agro the group unprepared.

Now, naturally, that's not right at all. Person one on dial up cannot load nearly as fast as person 3 on Cable, and therefore, person one loads in slower and agros the group, rendering the mission failed, because of the next part of the explaination.

Well, the group your party has agroed now raises Bone minions from your corpses. They raise 10 without failure. They are level 15, and do not die unless you attack them and kill them because of the constant healing the mob puts on them without running out of energy. I have waited over 20 minutes, and the minions still had not died, to confirm this.

This wouldn't be so bad if the second group I mentioned was not also in posession of a nasty AI. The second patrol of stone summit patrols up close to the spawn location of the first group, and the healers get stuck healing the minions. They run back and forth between the mobs, even as they split, healing the minions, then running back. If you attack them as they run, both groups are agroed.

While the healers run back and forth the groups have a single mob AI, which means if you attack any member of either group, both will come running. That's just not right. To make matters worse, that group may also raise minions, and then healers from both groups will run back and forth healing each other's minions, again, giving the group a single mob AI.

Aside from this, other members of the mob will start running back and forth for no appaerent reason. The Necromancers and warriors somtimes act like they're doing lay ups for basketball, running back and forth and not using any skills. This is a sign of a crap AI.



Hard mode is supposed to be hard, yes, but not impossible for any group that dies only once, or does not load within 10 seconds of each other. That's going over the border or more challenging and going into the realm of just plain stupid. Look at other elite areas in hard mode. None are like this:

Underworld:

Your party spawns well away from all creature agros in hard mode, and all creatures stay with their groups.

Fissure of Woe:

Exactly the same deal.

Urgoz Warren:

Your party spawns well away from harm aside from a few vampires that spawn if you move too far up, but they are not a danger if you do not load fast enough.

Domain of Anguish:

All party members load in well away from harm.




All these elite areas in hard mode are different from Duncan. Why does Duncan the Black in hard mode require a 40 dollar a month cable subscription to complete? That's not more challenging. That's just rediculous. The AI's need to be fixed NOW.



Simple fixes:

There are two things that need to be fixed here, and they are simple.

1. Spawn the party further toward the door and not on the patrol route of a group, so they're not in danger of agroing. Either this, or change the patrol pattern or spawnpoint of the first patrol as not to cross with the party member's loading area.

2. Fix the mob AI's to separate them as groups. The members should not run back and forth over a distance of 500 feet. Make them separate for good around 200 feet. The healers healing their allies minions makes sense, but not when they have to run 500 feet to do it. They seem to be a single party rather than two mobs.



Thanks for reading. Sign, not sign, support or do not support, I just needed to get this out there for the sake of many groups I've been in that have had these problems.

/not sign

I Beat the Dungeon & Duncan in HM with my guild and we dont have too much trouble.

If your group aggro at the beginning just run far away from the res beacon and try again, also you can use consumables for DP & buff and with the just pve skills is really easy.

Ts or Vent help a lot too

Is nice when you face a real challenge in the game, just try again with a diferent Build or Formation and enjoy the game.

P.D: My english suck i know

you're obviously in the wrong groups

The point is that it's not a challenge, it's rediculous to the people that cannot load in fast enough. And evern when you do run away, the groups will still merge, leading to the AI bug I talked about...

And not everyone has a Mic of TS and Vent, or can afford to pay the Vent charge.

We are using consumables. We are testing different builds. The skills are not the problem. The Mob AI's are whacked.

/sign

I agree. People who disagree with the OP are being quite selfish, but I bet they will bite their asses when it happens to them.

50% of all in-going groups receive some kind of aggro and when that happens there is a 90% chance of someone rage-quitting. We don't want this in the very beginning!

yes. i have the same exact problem. i have an 8mb connection btw. but i have a 64mb card. so i load in slow, and i always make the mob agro onto me. ive gone into the zone with HH's to test it out, and yeah, because of the way the mobs are made - having ONE person agro wrong whilst loading causes

a) party wipe - batch of everlasting minions to be born
b) now u have DP and minions to kill
c) now the healer from the other mob is running back and forth to heal the minions, and so if u hit him, the other mob will agro aswell, should u decide to kill the mob with the minions in it.
d) resulting in your party being wiped, another fresh batch of minions being made and the cycle starts again except now ur party has more DP.

please fix this intro mob.
for everyone with a bad graphics card or a slow connection, this REALLY is a problem, try to understand guys, im sure anet didnt make that mob to act this way ie...to kill u because u load too slow.

ps. to the guy who /notsigned u really not getting the point here, its not that we cant take the challenge, its the fact that we're stuck in this cycle of being supermobbed and minions being raised and increased DP that renders the party useless. sometimes both groups start to kill u on spawn near the shrine aswell.

Yes, it's a problem. It's also not the only place where this is broken. There's zones on all continents which suffer from this, I can immediately remember several portals in sulfurous wastes that are like that, and even much worse. Same goes for some other dungeons.

Mobs walking not only into spawn area, but also a locking you into respawn area aren't sign of good playtesting.

"Hard Mode in Eye of the North is delayed so that it may receive extensive playtesting"

/foot in mouth

(that's not a real quote but I'm sure someone from Anet somewhere stated this)

Arena Net doesn't know how to play their own game like we do.

What they probably do is /Command
100000 health
100000 energy
100000 damage

And then they test it!

A lot of areas in Guild Wars have a horrible design, it's like having a monkey place random mobs on a map.

/signed
I hate stuff that punishes slow loaders (being one myself).

Instead of complaining here, where you will only have the input of the peanut gallery, go to the Guild Wars Wiki and state the problem to Gaile or one of the other devs directly. Complaining on fansites is not effective!

That's how they tested Mallyx and insisted he wasn't a problem. Then they'll nerf any skills that are deemed effective against him.

Some people lack the knowedge to use Wiki (personally I have to say it's somewhat limited and primitive) unlike a Forum like Guru.

Rubbish. Editing a wiki takes 0 brain power and there are reams upon reams of helpful documentation. Anyone finding it difficult is being wilfully obtuse, especially if they have shown themselves able to handle the obscure bbcode used in forums.

Then you wouldn't mind reporting this on Gaile's Talk page would you?

Editing a wiki does take some skill and took me a while to master. However, adding a comment is easy and the hardest part may be actually finding where to put the comment!

this mob was there since day one on Normal mode, slow loaders=party whipe sometimes. its not that big of a deal, annoying yes, but if your party is too stupid to run away from the shrine then thats their fault

1. That problem exists just as much in normal mode.

2. That's not an AI problem; it's a level design problem.

3. /Signed for moving the spawn point back and/or changing the patrol paths so they don't come within aggro range of the spawn point.

well written patiently explained post.

Anything that improves Gameplay is a good thing.

/signed.

No mobs should come within aggro range of res shrines and portals on their own, period.

I still shudder at the memory of the area in Domain of Pain right outside the portal from Gate of Fear...

/signed.

I can't believe its gone unfixed all this time. NM and HM.

Please fix the patrols. Pretty please.

You can die off spawn in FoW, don't propagate falsehood.

I've heard no count of that happening?

Summary of the OP:

"Don't flame me for saying hard mode is too hard.

Hard mode is too hard."

Slaver's Exile is not the only place where patrols will grief on you the res shrine.

/signed

Res shrine camping is annoying at the best of times, but to punish load speed rather than poor agro control is not acceptable

Thank you for not getting the point at all, and while you were at it, contributing nothing worthwhile.

Try reading the replies and the actual body of the OP.

This mob isn't a res shrine mob, it's an entry mob - you load, you aggro, period. If your team has DSL connections and good vid cards, cool, you might kill 'em if you're expecting them. If you have one or two slow loaders, you're eff'ed up. Better have the slow loaders not take heroes, but if you're pugging, it can become a problem (in 2 years I was never asked if I was a slow loader).

I agree a fix would be nice, and no, I'm not complaining that it's too hard and such.

/signed

There have been other areas where you get mobbed upon entry occasionally, but this is different.

1. It's not just a fluke spawn location, it happens every time if you don't move back fast enough.
2. You can't get back there by just going through a portal by a town. And you can't return to a town or another area by going through a portal if things go badly. You're stuck, and have to get there all over again. It's not that hard to get there but it does take some time... which is annoying given that it's completely unnecessary.

Punishing slow loaders is not a "challenge". It's just stupid.

Please, sir.

It's spelled 'ridiculous'. There is not an 'e' in that word.

Hard mode is supposed to be difficult, not annoying.

So /signed

Sometimes the wandering group to the left (on spawn) will aggro. It's not as bad as Slavers but you can rack up minor DP.

Gj reading the thread, srsly go and uninstall windows and throw your computer off of your roof, When you ZONE (aka LOAD) into the dungeon, you have literally 10 seconds to back up or 2x aggro, now.. If someone has a slower computer, and they don't move back, its their fault? No its Anets..! Change the patrol

/signed

Like 1/100, not worth bringing up

There should never be a spawn right by a door, period, for exactly the reason that often groups will load into an area piecemeal and one should not be forced to fight a mob short handed because of a person on a slow connection.

So? The point was that it occasionally happens.

Areanet is too busy making things like fading text and double NPCs and Skills to fix bugs like this.
But anyway, they won't fix it, but /signed for the thread of hope.
That only complicates the problem. Fail.

And occasionally I err 7, does this mean I should petition for A net to wake up and meet my every need?

While I have no idea whether it should be fixed, that was a very well written OP.

?_? That's odd. That's exactly what it looks like you are doing.

I doubt that anet will fix the patrol issues. They have the tendency of breaking a bit more than they fix.

Perfect examples:
Text Fade (strains Eyes and was an unnecessary change)
Dishonorable Hex (wastes time, oppresses players, ruins PvP entirely)
/report (gives emo's too much leverage esp. if people simply have bad connection problems).