Z-Axis / Leashing
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- John Adams
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Z-Axis / Leashing
To not derail other threads, I'll ask you all your experiences with this Z-Axis "bug" - not really a bug, but was EXTREMELY annoying in my own final days of playing Vanguard, when fighting some trees in Flordiel and they would knock me back, then the fight was over. Very frustrating. So my solution was to pull them to a cliff wall with my back to it so they could not knock me back and lose aggro.
The solution to this seems to be a broader Z check before disengaging. Maybe Sigil/SOE didn't take the mobs "size" into consideration during their calculations? We certainly could. Mobs have a center, and the bigger they are, the farther you are away from that center when checks are being done. The Radius is what we really want, based on their drawScale size.
That's my one solution. I won't get rid of knockback (or course). The need for Levitate is kinda a strat, so let's not just get rid of that either. Instead, let's fix the mobs.
Part 2 of this is Leashing - I hate leashing. In any game. If something is pissed at me, it should stay pissed at me until one of us is dead. But that said, is a Leashing mob/encounter actually part of the game strategy? Again, not wanting to change the general gameplay that you are all used to, just wanting to fix a few things that were oh-so-annoying.
The solution to this seems to be a broader Z check before disengaging. Maybe Sigil/SOE didn't take the mobs "size" into consideration during their calculations? We certainly could. Mobs have a center, and the bigger they are, the farther you are away from that center when checks are being done. The Radius is what we really want, based on their drawScale size.
That's my one solution. I won't get rid of knockback (or course). The need for Levitate is kinda a strat, so let's not just get rid of that either. Instead, let's fix the mobs.
Part 2 of this is Leashing - I hate leashing. In any game. If something is pissed at me, it should stay pissed at me until one of us is dead. But that said, is a Leashing mob/encounter actually part of the game strategy? Again, not wanting to change the general gameplay that you are all used to, just wanting to fix a few things that were oh-so-annoying.
Re: Z-Axis / Leashing
Leashing is useful for some things, afterall you don't want character to rush into a lowbie filled area with a hundred mobs on his tail. And also it makes it so one person can't grab all the mobs and kill everything to get quest drops, leaving another group standing and staring, and having ot wait for repops. I also used leashing as a strat when I was soloing and I needed to kill mobs that would aggro more mobs than I could handle at once. Such as I would hit one with an arrow, cast a snare on one of the mobs away from the social aggro area, run until the others leashed and go back to kill the snared mob. We used leashing in APW as well.
The annoying thing was when you were trying to kill a mob and it does stuff like knockback that throws you out of combat. This happened *a lot* during POTA trials and the GMs refused to do anything about it. (It was really bad when you almost finished a trial and it knocked you up and out of the trial zone, thus forcing you to fail.)
I really hated that levitate was a 'cure' for this, especially since in APW there were only two levitates that would work - Necro and Rogue. So a lot of stuff simply was not doable unless you had a necro with you. (You can be careful and not get tossed into the sewers. You can't do anything about Z-axis resetting).
The annoying thing was when you were trying to kill a mob and it does stuff like knockback that throws you out of combat. This happened *a lot* during POTA trials and the GMs refused to do anything about it. (It was really bad when you almost finished a trial and it knocked you up and out of the trial zone, thus forcing you to fail.)
I really hated that levitate was a 'cure' for this, especially since in APW there were only two levitates that would work - Necro and Rogue. So a lot of stuff simply was not doable unless you had a necro with you. (You can be careful and not get tossed into the sewers. You can't do anything about Z-axis resetting).
Re: Z-Axis / Leashing
The fact that mobs leashed was used often when pulling mobs. Almost always used to bypass what seemed to be a harder encounter. 3 mobs together? Tag one, jump of some stairs, mobs leash, tag one while the mobs run back and he'll come solo instead of with his buddies. Removing the ability to leash pull mobs would bring back some difficulty.
- John Adams
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Re: Z-Axis / Leashing
[quote="Apaelias"]Removing the ability to leash pull mobs would bring back some difficulty.[/quote]
This was what I was thinking. Let's see how the discussion pans out. I may hate leashing (as an immersion factor) but it's part of the game, and to Jak's point it makes sense... but man, I miss "Train to zone!!!"
This was what I was thinking. Let's see how the discussion pans out. I may hate leashing (as an immersion factor) but it's part of the game, and to Jak's point it makes sense... but man, I miss "Train to zone!!!"
Re: Z-Axis / Leashing
Another thing to keep in mind, there was a bug that if you leashed a mob over a chunk line, it might permanently be 'lost' until a server/chunk reset. I don't know if that will be an issue for you guys, but it was a big pain if someone leashed a quest mob and it would never respawn.
Re: Z-Axis / Leashing
I remember both not being able to scratch Flory trees and soloing Majordomo by using the "jump off the stairs". Also remember Trials bugging when they leashed because you touched the wall.
Leashing is pretty much necessary. For those trees, it seemed appropriate, punting you was their defense, but in the end, Vanguard was a bit much lev-dependent. I would have preferred if lev was a way to get you from point A to point B, but there were not many places this was useful. I didn't really like floating through most of APW, especially as a tank, lev is kinda gross as you want control and pinpoint precision wherever you want to place or face the target. Maybe there is a medium between lev being useless and having to have a necro make you bounce and slip all night? The knockback is more fun than that, I'd rather play dodge the sewer. Physik and Thelaseen mobs were great as their knockback was most likely fatal. I'm not sure if there was much outside of Flordiel where it didn't really hurt you but just reset the encounter.
As a valid mechanic, from what I saw, monk split pulling was the most frequent use of leash and I think everyone likes this.
Leashing is pretty much necessary. For those trees, it seemed appropriate, punting you was their defense, but in the end, Vanguard was a bit much lev-dependent. I would have preferred if lev was a way to get you from point A to point B, but there were not many places this was useful. I didn't really like floating through most of APW, especially as a tank, lev is kinda gross as you want control and pinpoint precision wherever you want to place or face the target. Maybe there is a medium between lev being useless and having to have a necro make you bounce and slip all night? The knockback is more fun than that, I'd rather play dodge the sewer. Physik and Thelaseen mobs were great as their knockback was most likely fatal. I'm not sure if there was much outside of Flordiel where it didn't really hurt you but just reset the encounter.
As a valid mechanic, from what I saw, monk split pulling was the most frequent use of leash and I think everyone likes this.
- John Adams
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Re: Z-Axis / Leashing
Well put, alizarinblaze. I can see "leashing" as a strat, for sure. When I talk about "fixing it", I certainly do not mean to damage it, but maybe make it less annoying, or more accurate... if possible. For the most part, we're going for the Just-Like-Live design here, hoping to fix some of the communities biggest complaints along the way (again, if possible).
Thanks everyone for the input.
Thanks everyone for the input.
Re: Z-Axis / Leashing
From a coding perspective, Z-axis leashing does make sense to me. If the mod can't find a path to the player but didn't reset, then it'd be stuck in a loop. Not only would this cause extra performance hit on the server from the constant pathfinding attempts (especially if a lot of mobs were stuck), but it could also lead to griefing. Imagine someone pulling all the mobs in an area and then sitting somewhere they can't reach. Any other players coming through would have to deal with the mass of mobs, which would give free XP to the griefer since he initially tagged them. Downside of course as mentioned is the reset when mobs knock back the player.
One possible change is to have a delay before the mobs reset if they can't reach the player, instead of instant. Just a couple seconds so that if the player is knocked back they'll land before the leash, but if they intentionally go somewhere unreachable the mobs will reset. The downside to that is a lot of split pulling required using terrain for that instant leash (like jumping off stairs or a hill nearby), and that delay would prevent that from working. If you want to keep that instant reset for split pulling, maybe only have the delay if the player was knocked back from a mob?
Personally, when it comes to mobs that knockback and reset, I'd want to see a fix of some kind for that. However for the intentional instant Z-axis leashing to split pull mobs, I'm on the fence on if it should be kept or not.
One possible change is to have a delay before the mobs reset if they can't reach the player, instead of instant. Just a couple seconds so that if the player is knocked back they'll land before the leash, but if they intentionally go somewhere unreachable the mobs will reset. The downside to that is a lot of split pulling required using terrain for that instant leash (like jumping off stairs or a hill nearby), and that delay would prevent that from working. If you want to keep that instant reset for split pulling, maybe only have the delay if the player was knocked back from a mob?
Personally, when it comes to mobs that knockback and reset, I'd want to see a fix of some kind for that. However for the intentional instant Z-axis leashing to split pull mobs, I'm on the fence on if it should be kept or not.
Re: Z-Axis / Leashing
I will agree that the knock back leashing was really annoying at times, but at the same time figuring out how to split a pull with z axis was sometimes entertaining, and occasionally necessary. It gave less well geared groups a chance to kill mobs that they wouldn't necessarily be able to handle all at once. Leveling up without a real group I know figuring out how to split something sometimes was the difference in being able to complete your objective and needing help/giving up.
Granted a lot of the groups I hung out with were the pull everything in sight that won't leash and kill them all types so if you make things not leash as easily they would just pull everything in zone at once. Speaking of pulling everything can the cap of 10 mobs on certain AOE's be reconsidered? The cap was added because at the time a lot of mobs dying at once would cause many people to lock up or crash, but most people have better computers now... Also mobs not leashing from distance would actually make a lot of things easier. Pick a very safe place to pull to and send the monk out to find mobs across the zone if he wants. Powerleving would be easier too.
Hmm What if you set mobs who had knock back abilities with a leash only if a character gets x or y distance away and it ignores leashing from any z axis movements kinda like how flying mobs were? So you can't leash a mob that knock backs by jumping off stairs or anything but you can still run away if you need to. Mobs without knockback abilities leash as they did on live (dead? sunseted? hmm not sure what to call it now). Would still need to position things so you didn't fly too far backwards, but the up and down that you couldn't control at all would no longer be a factor. If you get rid of any z axis splitting it would limit some peoples game play or potentially make agro dropping classes necessary for some encounters.
Not having most kinds of lev stripped in various places could also help. I know over the years a lot of changes were made to the lev, and most of them didn't make a ton of sense. Like kdq went from no fly but lev worked to you can fly but you can't lev. All in one buff made necro lev no longer unstrippable. Xenu cloak lev was unstrippable for a short time then got added to the list that could be stripped. Same with the boots of icewalking. Personally I feel don't give us abilities if you don't want us to use them. Having a mob strip certain kinds but not others meant certain kinds of lev became required for things rather than the more open vision of having a varied make up being able to accomplish things.
Granted a lot of the groups I hung out with were the pull everything in sight that won't leash and kill them all types so if you make things not leash as easily they would just pull everything in zone at once. Speaking of pulling everything can the cap of 10 mobs on certain AOE's be reconsidered? The cap was added because at the time a lot of mobs dying at once would cause many people to lock up or crash, but most people have better computers now... Also mobs not leashing from distance would actually make a lot of things easier. Pick a very safe place to pull to and send the monk out to find mobs across the zone if he wants. Powerleving would be easier too.
Hmm What if you set mobs who had knock back abilities with a leash only if a character gets x or y distance away and it ignores leashing from any z axis movements kinda like how flying mobs were? So you can't leash a mob that knock backs by jumping off stairs or anything but you can still run away if you need to. Mobs without knockback abilities leash as they did on live (dead? sunseted? hmm not sure what to call it now). Would still need to position things so you didn't fly too far backwards, but the up and down that you couldn't control at all would no longer be a factor. If you get rid of any z axis splitting it would limit some peoples game play or potentially make agro dropping classes necessary for some encounters.
Not having most kinds of lev stripped in various places could also help. I know over the years a lot of changes were made to the lev, and most of them didn't make a ton of sense. Like kdq went from no fly but lev worked to you can fly but you can't lev. All in one buff made necro lev no longer unstrippable. Xenu cloak lev was unstrippable for a short time then got added to the list that could be stripped. Same with the boots of icewalking. Personally I feel don't give us abilities if you don't want us to use them. Having a mob strip certain kinds but not others meant certain kinds of lev became required for things rather than the more open vision of having a varied make up being able to accomplish things.
Re: Z-Axis / Leashing
I always thought leashing was better for immersion. If a cheetah can't catch a gazelle within a period of time, it gives up. And for almost any territorial animal, it will give up as soon as you leave the territory. Also, leashing is pretty much a necessity in a seamless world, unless you don't have mobs cross chunk lines (and even then you have to wipe their hate list when their target leaves the chunk).
However, leashing in VG had several issues about when to leash. My main was a psi, and without a charmed pet I could only solo by kiting. I used to regularly have mobs leash on me for no apparent reason, going from almost dead to full health. The worst place was probably the golems on the cliff above the swamps in the north side of the Ruin Falls chunk. Even if I ran in a tight circle (getting hit from time to time) I would still have the golems leash on me regularly. Sometimes they would leash and then not even move after leashing. I think there needs to be some better checking on distance from "home" to prevent premature leashing.
I think the golems were bad because they wandered within a small area. While I tried to always keep them within their pathing area, they would still leash unpredictably.
However, leashing in VG had several issues about when to leash. My main was a psi, and without a charmed pet I could only solo by kiting. I used to regularly have mobs leash on me for no apparent reason, going from almost dead to full health. The worst place was probably the golems on the cliff above the swamps in the north side of the Ruin Falls chunk. Even if I ran in a tight circle (getting hit from time to time) I would still have the golems leash on me regularly. Sometimes they would leash and then not even move after leashing. I think there needs to be some better checking on distance from "home" to prevent premature leashing.
I think the golems were bad because they wandered within a small area. While I tried to always keep them within their pathing area, they would still leash unpredictably.