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New Dev Diary about Unity, Pantheon and MMOs

    • 2886 posts
    July 7, 2019 8:22 AM PDT

    GoofyWarriorGuy said:

    One thing I've been contemplating is the fact that many of the dungeons seem to be part of the larger outside zone. This means players will not be able to 'play it safe' by fighting near the zoneline in a dungeon so they can zone out if they get in trouble. Zoning out would require training the mobs all the way across the outdoor part of the zone too.

    Imagine if a bad pull in Unrest required you to run all the way out and across Dagnar's Cauldron to Butcherblock until you safely zoned.

    Not to mention the fact that the zones themselves might very large. So you might be running for 5 minutes until you got to the zone.

    Of course, they may use the disposition system to make enemies not want to run too far away from their dungeon. So perhaps after a distance they will give up and head home.

    Great point. In other threads, I've talked about how I hope that the disposition systems allows for different types of mobs to have different radii in which they'd chase someone. You could call it "Bloodlust." For example, mindless undead creatures might chase someone all the way across the zone. But a guard-type creature may only care about chasing you away from the area it was assigned to protect. That sort of thing is great for immersion. And you're right - because the zones are larger, it allows for that sort of thing. This forces players to learn more about the specific creature types and dispositions and also makes you be even more careful around those creatures that will chase you to the end of the zone. Love it.

    • 1281 posts
    July 8, 2019 12:00 PM PDT

    Bazgrim said:

    Great point. In other threads, I've talked about how I hope that the disposition systems allows for different types of mobs to have different radii in which they'd chase someone. You could call it "Bloodlust." For example, mindless undead creatures might chase someone all the way across the zone. But a guard-type creature may only care about chasing you away from the area it was assigned to protect. That sort of thing is great for immersion. And you're right - because the zones are larger, it allows for that sort of thing. This forces players to learn more about the specific creature types and dispositions and also makes you be even more careful around those creatures that will chase you to the end of the zone. Love it.

    It could also depend on the type mob. A mindless skeleton may chase forever where a humanoid guard would eventually know it has ran off the enemy and go back.


    This post was edited by bigdogchris at July 8, 2019 12:01 PM PDT
    • 40 posts
    July 24, 2019 1:06 AM PDT

    This is an interesting discussion. Other games have had varying implementations.

    In EVE Online, one of the pirate factions hates me a lot, and I can guarentee if I am, for instance, mining for 30 minutes, their ships will come looking for me. Even though its not in a region where "rats" normally appear. I know they are there for me, because there are 6 other mining ships and I'm the only one they target lock. And there are some NPC types that if you piss them off, they will follow you until you log off.

    In Tera, I can run through a dungeon to get to a quest mob, and most of the mobs will only follow until the next passageway. But some will decide they'll follow me until I stop, so I end up being glad I'm a Sorcerer with good AOE attacks. But 99% of the time, anyone standing in a "safe" place (like a passageway with no pat) doesn't get aggro from the train coming or going. 

    In Blade and Soul I've had a couple that follow me for a very long time.

    I remember some of the horrendous trains in EQ. If you were in a camp deep in a dungeon, it was a very long way to the zone exit. We could at least gate or evacuate most of the time, if the Wizard pulled the string fast enough. But then we had to fight back to the camp..... 

    Trains are a fact of life in MMOs if the population is high enough. It will be interesting to see how single-minded the mobs are when they decide to quit chasing and head back.