Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Should agro last forever?

    • 627 posts
    February 24, 2020 8:32 PM PST
    @Philo you do not have to minimize risks. It depends on what you think danger is.

    Theres something safe about knowing this mob will follow me forever, a snare, a root and your safe for a while.

    I agree that it will without a doubt let players grief the system and solo/duo way faster than normal xp grps. With snares, root and movementspeed. Aslong as the player runs a bit every now and then hes safe. To me thats not dangerous, it just need the right skilles and right partner. Ranger and Wizard or druid should do fine.

    But the deal breaker is the immersion and realisme, that rly dont fit at all.
    • 627 posts
    February 24, 2020 8:58 PM PST
    Make the mobs follow for awhile but not forever, Theres a BIG difference, danger will still be there but players wont have to hug zone lines to travel "safely" and actually want to explore the world.
    • 287 posts
    February 24, 2020 9:26 PM PST

    Lets take this to its extreme logical conclusion, using EQ terms. I'm a gnome enchanter and somehow accidently aggro Vox in Permafrost. If I manage to get of a Gate spell back to Ak'Anon, Vox should travel, zone by zone, all the way to me. If I log, then Vox will head back home . . . until I log back in, and then Vox would head back to Ak'Anon to smack me down. Anything less is "immersion breaking".

    • 627 posts
    February 24, 2020 9:37 PM PST
    @randomrob that would break the game compleatly..
    • 2756 posts
    February 24, 2020 10:51 PM PST

    No, aggro should not last forever. I'm not even a big fan of it lasting until zone - which is often an arbitrary thing inviting abuse and immersion weirdness.  Some monsters chasing you for minutes across huge distances and some monsters chasing you for 10 seconds.

    I would much prefer leashing that takes into account some kind of 'intelligence' in the monster relating to how it 'feels' about the player, but also how much the devs know about monster aggro being manipulated.

    Some examples of 'new' leashing behaviour (similar to the disposition system) might be monsters that don't chase far, but regenerate fast if players move away (guards) or monsters that chase far, but a replacement spawns where they were dragged from (army) and when they are de-aggroed, they despawn.

    VR are doing clever things relating to wandering and pathing and to dispositions. I hope they also make some innovation in this regard.

    • 238 posts
    February 25, 2020 7:45 PM PST

    What do you mean by forever and in what circumstances? 

    If you are asking about tank aggro then-No. I think a boss should have their own aggro mechanics based on their disposition/ or the base mechanics for the fight.

    If you are talking about zone aggro lasting until you zone, then yes and no.  I think this type of aggro limits the ability for players to solo content and makes the world feel like a dangerous place to go out and explore alone. However, I also think there are certain NPCs that shouldn't chase you to the zone lines. For example, if you are in a fort/keep and agro something that NPC shouldn't venture further than the main gate. The keep is what they are responsible for protecting and chasing you across the zone leaves that keep undefended and thus negates their purpose. 

    Overall I would like to see smart NPC behaviors when it comes to the aggro system. It is one thing for a mindless beast or untethered NPC to chase a player across the zone, however, it is a different scenario when the NPC in question is responsible for guarding a specific structure, location, etc. 

    • 70 posts
    February 26, 2020 1:13 AM PST

    No.  That stimulates "kiting".

    • 58 posts
    February 26, 2020 3:16 AM PST

    Celandor said:

    One refinement I'd like to see on any mob is a total refusal for it to suicide by chasing you into town or a guard post.  

     

    Agreed.  Some mobs might (undead, crazed, etc.), but most wouldn't.

    • 520 posts
    February 26, 2020 7:34 AM PST

    Definitely not infinite. I'd say you should gradually lose hate while not being hit by a monster and not doing any "hate generating actions" in vicinity (like sitting or healing) - if the ammount of lost hate should be fixed or grow based on hate generated is another matter.

    • 67 posts
    February 26, 2020 6:09 PM PST

    Aggro SHOULD last until you zone or log off. It makes sense in a game setting - If you were invading a castle / fortress / dungeon / forrest ect... the inhabitants would hunt you until either:

     

    They were dead

    You (the invader) were dead

    You were gone ( left the zone or logged off)

    • 2138 posts
    February 26, 2020 7:07 PM PST

    No,

    But yes.

    I like the dispositional aggro. a while back someone mentioned how undead or ghosts would haunt you. Which would make sense for aggro lasting forever while you are in zone. Likewise animals would be territorial, you cross a line and they attack, you move away and they back off, if there is a nest with younglings- range is wider still and threat higher. Insects have... a hive mentality, if you dont completely kill one within a certain time or it runs back, they all start to come out with a larger range still and will follow you en masse.

     

    TL:Dr fluff

    Suicide runs for RP? that's fine. Some will remember Fippy. Which turned much darker in a raid event in 14 or 15 year later expansion where you fought Fippy in brells domain and he would vanish, where his minions would spawn and you would have to slay them to get another iteration of fippy to respawn and then you realized it was Brell sending Fippy back to Qeynos to terrorize the newbies, so distraught he would run- suicide- killing everything in his path to the guards and once dead, then appear back in your raid- much higher level and much undead powerfull and you would have to take him down to a certain percentage again untill.. Brell ripped him from the underworld and put him back up, angry, to run fanatically and murderously at level 7 to kill any newbies and himself while trying to make his point and get justice again!- to be killed and thrust back to your raid... until you killed him in your raid. Dark stuff indeed. It was a level 85 raid I think. so every time you want to the newbie zone in qeynos and saw fippy making his cry, you knew Brell had ripped him from the underworld and thrust him back to the world of the living for his own sport.

    • 888 posts
    February 26, 2020 7:21 PM PST
    It seems like most of us want some kind of intelligent, real-feeling AI for aggro that isn't easily manipulated or immersion-breaking.

    My suggestions:

    Inigo Montoya aggro:
    On rare occasions, if you kill a close ally, the mob will chase you indefinitely. If you escape, it remembers you and the next time it sees you (even weeks later), it will attack you on site and can't be taunted off you. This can be accomplished by having specified spawns have a KOS list.

    Guard Dog:
    Mob will aggro on site and chase you until you leave its territory.

    Intelligent Guard:
    They will go for help and trigger additional mobs to patrol for a few minutes (increasing spawn size).

    Provoked Aggro:
    The more damage done to them, the farther they will chase you.

    I hope the disposition system will factor in, but I really hope there will be some unpredictability to reduce meta-gaming.
    • 103 posts
    February 27, 2020 11:21 AM PST
    No.
    • 220 posts
    February 27, 2020 9:00 PM PST

    yes like a traffic jam on the highway during rush hour

    • 228 posts
    February 28, 2020 7:00 AM PST

    Running for your life should always be a viable tactic, provided you can outrun the mobs. Zone lines are an "artifical" construct in the first place and consequently, so is breaking agro by zoning. However, dragging mobs with you across zones lines would cause all sorts of problems, I suppose, so I can live with getting rid of a mob by running to a nearby zone line. Other than that, I think the distance that mobs will chase you around within the zone should vary with a number of parameters, such as the amount of agro you have generated, the likelihood of it winning the fight and its general role, i.e., is it guarding something or is it trying to find something to kill?.

    • 2419 posts
    February 28, 2020 7:21 AM PST

    Qulash said:

    No.  That stimulates "kiting".

    Actually, what you are saying is incorrect.  Kiting worked because of long duration snares and that the DoTs, on every tick, would continue to 'refresh' aggro.  Mobs chasing you, in the context of this threads, is that once you stop doing damage the mob continues to chase until you zone out.  Even in EQ2 where you had mob leashing, you could kite quite easily.

    • 10 posts
    February 28, 2020 8:22 AM PST

    I believe it should last until there is no target for the NPC to attack and it should be tiered according to the damage done to the NPC.

     

    Example: Tank runs in and shield bashed an NPC in a group and runs away, if Tank does not do something to the other NPCs in the group, they will attack whoever hits them first. If no one attacks, then they will all attack Tank for bashing their friend. If Tank is no longer a valid target, they should return to their camp, unless Bard decides to sing a song that captures their attention, then Bard will become the target of opportunity. Likewise is Cleric heals Bard, Cleric is now a target of opportunity and so on.

    Yes: I believe aggro should last until there is some sort of resolution and not reset after a certain range, it should be constant until the NPC or the Player is no longer a valid target.

     

    If Tank decides to train the zone line, and some poor AFK Loot Ninja is there, well, Tank is no longer a target of opportunity Loot Ninja is based on their reaction to Loot Ninja (disposition based on previous interactions with the NPCs)


    This post was edited by Pantherin at February 28, 2020 8:44 AM PST
    • 370 posts
    February 28, 2020 8:25 AM PST

    I think a combination of ideas could work.

     

    Once you are on a NPCs threat table you should remain on it until you zone, it dies, or you die. Certain mobs should chase you to the zone line based on their type. Certain mobs should chase you to the edge of an area they are guarding, then return. The mobs that don't chase you to the zone line should then reagro you if you cross a certain area of radius near them much larger than the normal agro range. Say the normal range is 20M the mob you previously agro'd could be 100M. 

    • 1273 posts
    February 28, 2020 8:49 AM PST

    Slight side note/question:  Why are people even against kiting?  It was (and probably will be in this game) a legitimate way for solo players to earn experience.  It's not cheating, it's not without risk, it's not faster.  The only time I ever felt the need to kite back in the day was if I either couldn't find a group or I just didn't have enough time that day to commit to a group.  Kiting was always a back up plan.  I just find it odd that it's even an issue.


    This post was edited by Ranarius at February 28, 2020 8:50 AM PST
    • 1399 posts
    February 28, 2020 11:11 AM PST

    Ranarius said:

    Slight side note/question:  Why are people even against kiting?  It was (and probably will be in this game) a legitimate way for solo players to earn experience.  It's not cheating, it's not without risk, it's not faster.  The only time I ever felt the need to kite back in the day was if I either couldn't find a group or I just didn't have enough time that day to commit to a group.  Kiting was always a back up plan.  I just find it odd that it's even an issue.

    I know, it only seems a problem for those that can't do it. It's like a jealousy thing. They assume it was an easy exploit that raked in the experience and they couldn't do it so nobody should be able too. There are thankfully going to be a lot of things in pantheon that some classes can do that other classes can't. 

    Fortunately I have never once heard a pantheon developer suggest they were going to try to limit or stop anyone from kiteing. It's a valasy way to play the game. I've also never heard them say they would make it easy to do either. I would assume the dispositions could really make it difficult just by there nature.

    • 2138 posts
    February 28, 2020 12:49 PM PST

    randomrob82 said:

    Lets take this to its extreme logical conclusion, using EQ terms. I'm a gnome enchanter and somehow accidently aggro Vox in Permafrost. If I manage to get of a Gate spell back to Ak'Anon, Vox should travel, zone by zone, all the way to me. If I log, then Vox will head back home . . . until I log back in, and then Vox would head back to Ak'Anon to smack me down. Anything less is "immersion breaking".

    Hard to program. Too much system resources needed to have that occur for every player that pissed off Vox whenever those players logged in, let alone to establish a perrogative or hiearchy logic tree in Vox to prioritize who to go for first at any given time. With relative server population density, she could be "deciding" who to chase down first for a very long time which may end up appearing in game as a non-attackable vox, in statis, while she decides. Plus having to prioritize her targets whenever a player dies or logs. A player deing and respawning will also have to be coded as a sub-loop perhaps based on time as it will cause a period of time when a player is not "present" but logged in, in the world because their location will have then changed and she would have to change her projected path for that player. Once that is sorted then she can go on and calculate the projected path for the next player. Provided all players stay put? maybe...a day? before she starts on her trek for the first player who I am sure will be waiting patiently and not zoning, LOL. I'm theorycrafting.

    On the other hand, the other suggestions based on disposition, are doable and very NPC centric. By that I mean one-sided, how the NPC's react to what is thrust upon them. From an RNG perspective I suppose one could throw in a line to say, attack closest NPC randomly to give the world a little "immersive" color. Be kind of cool to be running by and see a griffon being hacked away by some guards at an outpost, yeah?. < theorycrafting

    Plus there are some unique dispositions are already in place, like "alarmist" for example.

    Anything that singles out a certain player for memory is easier in an RPG because there is only one, but in an MMO it may be better to think along the lines of generalities and cut offs, or aggro hiearchies, or FTE type things, anything you can put a cap on or a border around or a line that says if it goes beyond or below this number, then X behavior occurs.


    This post was edited by Manouk at February 28, 2020 12:50 PM PST
    • 287 posts
    February 28, 2020 1:32 PM PST

    BamBam said: @randomrob that would break the game compleatly..
    for sure, and that's the point. No matter what, the "leashing" issue is immersion-breaking. Having a bright-line rule that aggro stays until zone is helpful in that there is no grey area as to when/how you should lose aggro.

    • 627 posts
    February 29, 2020 2:01 AM PST
    @Rob i disagree :)
    • 133 posts
    February 29, 2020 10:38 AM PST

    If I'm being honest, I kind of like the idea of having both a mob that follows you until you either take ot to a guard or leave the area, I also like the idea of a mob that leaves you alone after a certain amount of time. Both have different things I like about them. I like the idea of having to run to safety because of the mob, having to get help from a guard or other player, it gets you to be cautious and wary of your surroundings. On top of that, I like the idea that a mob will leave after a while because in some cases, you can't get to help or out of the area fast enough. I could see having a mix of both, where you would have to leave the area or go get help because aggro lasts...what...5 minutes in real life; but after that said 5 minutes if you are out of its line of sight or you have outrun it, it gives up and goes back to where it was. To me anyways, it gives it a feel of dynamics and gives the illusion that its thinking on its own. That's just my opinion anyways lol

    • 70 posts
    February 29, 2020 2:16 PM PST

    If forced to choose utter black from utter white, I would clearly want NO LEASHING over ALWAYS LEASHING.

    The real answer as many have said, would have a system of aggro formulas dependent on parameters:

    - mob category (random roamer, patrol, guard post, citizen, bodyguard, citizen, etc)

    - environmental subdivision (i.e. marking up zones by regions of interest such as fort region, rampart region, guardpost1, guardpost2, faction boundary, etc)

    - faction associations (who owns a region and how much their faction hates whatever faction(s) you and others have, some more intensely than others)

    - class affinity (some mobs innately hate certain classes or archetypes more than others, because of supposed past experiences or they are smart and know to kill healers first just like players do :)

    - action affinity (same idea as class affinity, except based on what kinds of actions you take on or near them, like healing vs dps vs cc, etc)

    - intelligence level (humanoid, social, animal, etc - informing how likely they are to stray from assigned duties as well as blindly run int self-endangerment areas while chasing you)

    - weather/daynight cycle sensitivity - visibility in bad weather, blowing rain/snow, bad eyesight at night can all influence the calculations of how far a given mob would chase a given player/NPC

    - perception of wealth - some may chase you more simply because you look richer, duh

     

    Most of this works at a per mob basis, with some aspects also tailored differently per player/NPC. If done well the effects would appear much more organic and varied than typical MMOs, as different mob behavior would be  exercised even within the same small group of mobs.

    For example,

    - a guard that chases you outside of the fortress might chase a more hated faction player a bit more and chase them longer. He stops at his fortress boundary for everyone except hated factions which he chases for an additional 100 feet.

    - a roaming semi-intelligent patrol may start chasing YOU, you run to your group and everyone starts running away, and the patrol members notice a more hated individual in your party and actually start chasing THEM, so if everyone ran in different directions you would see a split chase

    - a smart group of mobs chase a group and a cc'ing mob roots the healer, while an overly hateful reaver chases after any dwarves in the player group. They have a large territory and the chase goes for a while, then it starts raining very heavily and the mobs turn back early, although the reaver continues chasing after a particular dwarf with very bad faction against his kind - even a bit past the territorial border despite the heavy rains.

    These sorts of interactions appear at a macro-level to be sophisticated and varied, but like most all game systems are driven by quite simple combinations of calculations.

    The best part for me, is that these are hard to treat like constants by players. Some variables that affect all this are hard if not impossible to control as players, hence they resist being broken down to a simple "wait N minutes then pull X mobs from Y distance". Even when you know all the detailed calculations involved and how the different informational categories such as the ones I listed above are defined, you still can't easily distill all that down to a simple "that mob won't chase you past X feet" statement unless you take the time to practically interview each player about how hated they are here, etc first. Players learn it more as heuristic ranges and conditions, which seems more immersive and dangerous.

    Certain MMO tropes have always just bugged me, which this could fix. Things like:

    - all mobs chase ONE particular person instead of splitting up and chasing different people for different reasons

    - all mobs stop chasing at the same time, or exactly the same distance

    - event the smart mobs never act really smart, they should instead cc and chase people which are perceived as the biggest threat to them (measured in a variety of ways)

    - mobs always seem to have their self-preservation turned off, instead of chasing you up until it wouldnt' be worth it to them


    This post was edited by redgiant at February 29, 2020 2:24 PM PST