Increased (NOT DECREASED) Monster Agro range in last patch

I posted this in one of the patch threads but I didn't see any responses (mainly because of all the complaining about AoE nerf) I am reposting as a new thread because I am wondering if anyone else noticed this:

I hope this doesn't get lost in the Flurry of posts about the AoE nerf. I believe it adds yet another glitch to AI that will serve to make the game harder for no good reason.

I've noticed some people mentioning that the Droknar's run got harder because they added more worms.

THIS IS NOT THE PROBLEM!

The problem is, the last patch was supposed to "make monsters follow you less".

It did the EXACT OPPOSITE for some monsters. Whether this was intentional or not (and I am strongly leaning towards that it was) I do not know.

The problem is not that there are more worms on the Droknar's run, it is that they DO NOT LEAVE YOU.

They follow you all the way to the second "tunnel", past the first batch of dwarves in the first part of Lornar's to Droknar.

In addition, I've noticed that avicara with 'pending spells' now follow longer distances approximately 5 times as much since this last patch (great job ANET) and they STILL follow all the way to the end of the zone.

A couple of other ancedotes:

Was I was running in the desert with my ranger to go complete the 15 point attribute quest (by myself mind you) . I agro'd a desert worm. Now most of you who have done the 15 point quest may have encountered this worm, he sometimes appears right before you have to walk over the fallen statue. Well I made it past him and he proceeded to fight the ghost that stands there. I had the worm targetted (he doesn't follow after a certain point because the statue is treated like a bridge). Long story short, I completed the 15 point quest and the worm had dropped off my target because of the range. So I start heading back and guess what I see standing there looking all pissed off?

Yep, you guessed it.. the worm was STILL AGRO'D ON ME but STUCK!.

Then last night I was down in uw with a 3 person team (spare me your opinions on soloing please) We were at the last part of the clearing the chamber quest where you have to clear the room where the Terrorweb Dryders are. After dying and getting ressed, I noticed the spawn looked a bit wierd but it was still moving around down there. We proceeded pull to kill a lone Grasping Darkness (aka squid), and the fact that it was alone is important. This squid was also moving away from me when I pulled it.

At any rate we decided that going straight on into the chamber was too risky because of the wierdness of movement in the spawn. We decided to back out, and head to the right side entrance (people familiar with uw know it's the entrance where the last aaxte sits by when clearing them out). On the way to this second entrance to the chamber, all the monsters were clearly off the radar (just want to point that out). Well guess what, as soon as we get to the other entrance, guess what makes a beeline for us, WELL outside of agro range? (I'm talking 2 agro circles worth).. the rest of the squid group that didn't for some reason get pulled when we killed the lone squid!!! Before this patch to fix "making monsters leave you easier" I have NEVER seen anything like that. Note, we were not using AoE spells affected by patch.

Another simple test that anyone can do is to check out the new and improved ice imp agro range in Lornar's. It's easy. Take a bow out there, equip 1 running skill. Now find yourself a nice patch of Imps (make sure they are "relatively" stationary kind so you can see where their point of origin is) Shoot an imp, and turn around , walk out of their freeze if you get it and then watch them return back to their spot. Get it so they are just off your radar screen when they leave and so far that you loose the imp as a target, then turn around. Wow. Imp's that would have normally forgotten about you now remember you EVEN OFF OF RADAR.

This may be an unintended result of the "Flee-Return" code put in for AoE, but then again, how can you explain the worm's and avicara? (Plus I wasn't using Fiery Arrows or anything special AoE affected in my ice Imp example, just a regular bow on a warrior with no marksmenship)

Anyway I just thought I would bring this up since no one else was mentioning.

And before you think "oh Good this really screws the runners" note, I have no problem with either of these things being a Pro runner, if you check out the prices in Beacons, they have gone up to an average of 4k now because of what I have mentioned... so this is all good for me. I just wanted to point it out because it does affect normal PvE for balanced groups and this is not a good thing.

Hope someone fixes it.

I've noticed the same things myself, in regard to the behaviour of some mobs. I find it funny that, while mobs are supposed to stop following you sooner rather than later, I had an Avicara chase me all the way from Rankor to Droks. He followed the ENTIRE map, and stayed right behind me the whole time regardless of which running skill(s) I used.

Plague Devourers, are 2x times more deadly now for farmers. Random mobs of these interrupting scorpions, will follow you indenfintly. I ran nearly all the the way from Augury Rock to Amnoon Oasis, and the same 4 Plague Devourers that spawned right outside augury were following me this whole time!!

i mean. CMOOOOnn.. Even in regular PuG groups. say if we all get wiped out, and one guy runs to rez us later, he will run clear across the whole mission map and is still beiung followed by jades... Cmoooon !!!

Here's what I've found... when you aggro a creature, you can indeed break aggro more quickly if you can get away fast enough. HOWEVER... and it's a big however.. the creatures NEW aggro range covers not only its original location but also everywhere the creatures group was in combat as well!

They retain a "memory" of where they fought, and will aggro within that memory, regardless of current position.

Try this with the smites... it's painfully obvious.

And much more challenging. :-)

It's not always true. Yes, it's broken, but over a few FoW and SF runs, there have been times when a resser came back over where the "memory" should be and was able to res us.

If the enemy is dead, they won't attack you.

Devourers are just another example of anet's hypocrisy in this update.

That, my friend, has earned itself a place in my forum sigs all over the internet

I certainly hope the joke intended came through...

I can confirm this. I though I was going crazy. It's like monsters are teritorial now. They don't like it if you're on their turf even if you are WAYYYYY outside aggro range.

Thank you, John Madden.

I've had earth elementals run away from me with on non-AoE hit and keep running till dead. This update is seriously screwed up and in completely the wrong direction.

But I've always had benny hill problems which has ended up with a dead me after 500m (I am an ele, I usually die sooner if I turn and run)

while i have seen this problem in some places in the game it does not happen in others.

so far i have only seen this in areas that are exploited. devourers following you more on grif runs. smites inside of UW. worms in forge run.

i can go to a place that is never exploited and happy walk away from them and they never follow. i go to a places that have exploitations and see them annoy the hell out of you.

its compensating for an exploit in that area. don't know if it was planned or not. forge is not such a big deal seeing as you CAN fight through it. i know i've done it as lvl 16 before. hard as hell but can be done. good drops btw seeing as no one ever farms there.

I think you might be right. It's added a new twist on UW trap runs... although the only problem really is separating the "trappers" that simply tag along and screw up pulls with the new agro from the ones with skill.

Hey Rangers! Here's something I've found out... if you have traps ahead of the bunch, it'll screw things up. Something steps into those traps, next thing you know they are running away before hitting the main body of traps. You need to trap tight in the UW now out of necessity.

Not true ... I'm sometimes farming in a place that is not overfarmed, and some things I was able to sprint past and leave them behind me now are trailing after me for a looong time.

Overall I feel really happy that 95% of my GW playing time consists of PvP now, after reading about all the crap that has been inflicted upon PvE areas.

there is no such thing as a place not overfarmed. there are no secret havens anymore.

Heh this happened to me last night. The agro thing is definitely screwed up:

Was showing trying to show a guildy how the difference between a mursaat token and ecto (someone was trying to pull a scam). Started killing them outside Grotto with me her and a bunch of henchies. Pulled too many (there's that big group of 2 sets of mursaat that roams towards Grotto) so started to run and for about 9 or 10 "bubbles of agro". Half the henchies dead, they finally stopped following. I let the henchies start rezzing and started heading back. Well of course Lina runs forward to rez another hench which re-agro's some of the trailing mursaat we had just run from. So start running again.. only notice its only 2 mursaat (elementalists) .. so with 5 henchies.. figure.. go ahead kill them, so finish them off and proceed to let lina continue to rez which she does. this is about a minute later mind you, one henchie is now left dead, and what do i notice in the upper left corner of my screen running super fast towards me? It's the rest of the mursaat group!

Man that's some INSANE agro range. I don't care what you guys say about it being only in "special exploited places" because this is clearly not such a place.... someone needs to fix this, I wasn't even using any RUNNING skills!

I was just having a general wonder about perdition rock.

I entered the area and killed the initail hydras.

Then i went to move past the flesh golems, they were running towards me as soon as they appeard on the mini map, not even close to the aggro bubble.

I've had this happen a few times in the areas around Droknars... I don't need this kind of welcoming committee! =\

Don't really think so. The Mursaat exhibited in Ring of Fire, and I've yet to hear of anyone farming that.

I was just about to apply a life siphon to some hydras (2 hydras and a ranger boss actually) but they charged at me before i even got in casting range.

Same thing happened earlier when i met a warrior hydra boss. I'm not complaining...it's certainly different anyway.

It's just a shame that the monster drops are still toilet quality. It's detracts greatly from the fun and it's almost pointless killing stuff for a stupid hydra claw...especially a level 26 boss!

I submitted a bug report earlier because the warrior boss dropped absolutely nothing and i was well past the "no drops period" which occurs after rezoning.

Increase the difficulty/monster AI by all means but PLEASE Anet...make those buffed-up monsters drop worthwhile items.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Flawed logic i'm afraid.

If these updates continue to bork the game up for existing players, noone's going to buy the update no matter how 'nice' it is.
There's rumourerd estimates that around 30% of players have quit already due to the latest (broken) nerfing updates and ANet's blatent refusal to keep the majority of players happy. It's an expansion, so you'll need GW to play it, so current GW players are the one's who were going to buy it. And the numbers seem to be falling by the day...

Uh, any evidence of this, or are you just making shit up?

Regarding aggro, you all need to take a step back and rethink things. Just because you are used to a rigid aggro circle doesn't make it the best or most fun choice for the game. In fact, all an aggro circle implies is predictable, stupid enemies!

This is coming from someone who is not a big MMORPG gamer. Guild Wars was my first game of this type, and it took me a while to realize that the aggro circle was rigid and was represented by the little circle on the radar. Before that it seemed like a bit of a free-for-all to me (I mean, I assumed there was an aggro range, but I didn't know if it was line-of-sight or what).

As long as the missions are beatable (and they are) we really don't have any room to complain about random exceptions to the aggro circle rule. In fact, this unpredictability would be considered a feature in an FPS game. It's only in the world of MMORPG, where people carve out little unintended niches (like farming), that it ruffles people's feathers. As fun as farming can be, it's clearly not the way aNet intended us to play the game. Running, maybe. Farming, no.

Yes, I can see the day when our new characters enter post-searing only to be destroyed half an hour later by an aggroed Glint....

You know... with all the people out killing all these "bad" guys... it only makes sense that they've had enough and now attack with much more vigor.

Seriously, people call the aggro 'messed up' or 'broken', but really it's just different and offers a whole new set of challenges.

Actually... it's a lot closer to aggro in PvP games, if you think about it... ;-)

I am gonna laugh if the AI gets soooo "aggrevated" that they start camping town zones so as soon as you are out you are annhilated. Then, they run off to where you get rezed and spawn camp you.

No... wait til the Mursatt start farming people for drops.

mursaat: hey there lil lvl 3, you know what spectral agony or infused is?

lvl 3 nub: uhh no, is that weapon?

mursaat: BZZZZZZTTTTT, ya you might say that, thanks for the drop nub!

lvl 3 nub: OMFG DEATH GLITCH HAXXOR NOOB!!!

you might not have heard of it but its been done. can't do it alone but you don't need more than 3 people to do it. best thing to do is find the groups with just casters. stay away from jade armors as they steal 10 energy per hit. hate those bastards.

i noticed the same things about the aggros. i'm kinda pissed off with the game right now. i mean it's not only the nerfing of AOE and the new aggros but it's the fact that NOTHING else improved. as sum1 above stated, why the hell should i go waste time killing these monsters for things like hydra claws or other random shit? if they feel like making the game harder, hell the NEED to make it more rewarding.
and on pvp well, it's closed unless ur high rank... so i'm stuk in the nub arenas most of the time coz pve is kinda dead to me. just the rare UW and FOW when we have favor.
good thing i have a decent guild and we gvg from time to time. but man i wish players in tombs would not be so arrogant.

I think your missing the point.. the Original Poster was stating that Anet claimed that monsters would leave you a lot easier in the last patch. This is clearly not the case (or amazingly they neglected to mention that it only applied to "certain monsters", and others have been drastically increased. Personally I haven't noticed any difference in ability to be able to get away from most monsters, other than it's been made worse) . So you can say what you want about how this makes the game more interesting etc, but keep that little fact in mind. Go look for yourself on www.guildwars.com at the update note history. It clearly says they made it easier to get away from monsters. Instead, we are finding it is the opposite case for many of the harder monsters.

I don't know about you, but I like to be able to recover from a bad pull in some of the higher level end areas without having to worry that 2 minutes later, after our group has rezzed and reformed and decided to pull again, that we aren't ambushed by the group that hasn't lost agro on us.
Personally that's just me.

I have seen none of these issues anywhere in the game, I can take my warrior and aggro any group, run from it and aggro another without the first group even so much as twitching once they return to their original position(that may be your problem, you don't wait for them to return to their original starting point and resume their normal sequence of events).

You might be on to something.. It could be like I said that this only affects roaming groups. Worm's might fall under this category, dunno since you can't see them, and avicara's generally roam... interesting. I know the Mursaat I encountered this with definately were roamers.

There's one little problem with this scenario, all monsters have coded patrol routes, some may seem like they're roamers but they aren't, they just have a very large patrol pattern.

Actually, it affects groups you were in combat with from what I've seen. You can aggro a group and run away, they leave you be. However, you aggro a group and fight and run a bit and fight... the whole area of combat inclusively becomes their new aggro, which can get quite huge.

I realize that but what point are you trying to make? The patrollers, roamers whatever. . still have no "point of origin" to return to other than the path that they were on. and that could be the problem.. Since they never return to exactly where they were on their route before you encountered them, they can never return to point of origin so to speak.. dunno it's speculation but it's definately there and I can emphatically say it was NOT like this before the patch, regardless whether you have experienced it or not.