Corpse aggro

[Volt]

Not sure what forum is best for this but I put it here.

I just came to think of a feature in VG that I find very cool: corpses can have an aggro range.

I first realized it when I was two-boxing in Thelaseen "dungeon":
There are some large bridges connecting the islands. On either bridge there is a wyvern with one or two (memory is hazy here) humanoids pathing back and forth, and also a pair of humanoid guards on either side. Kill any pair of guards and stand back a bit and wait for the roamers to come. The roamers will stop their pathing and instead look around until the corpses are despawned. Then they will return to their pathing.

(It was also fun but in a more painful way when there was this bug that corpses did not despawn, and you would aggro about all of Trengal Keep by getting close to a corpse.)

I know this is just cream on top of something already really good. But if we haven't catched this already and want to ever catch it .. well it is about time. But what should be catched? Would this behavior really be in any log? Or ask a kind member with video skill to at least catch it on a video?

[John Adams]

For this topic, I'll move it to the Game Features because it sounds like something we should not forget, and get further input from players.

To the point, this is probably something we could script in LUA, since that's where pathing will be configured. I doubt it would be in a packet, since that decision would be made server-side. That is an interesting observation, I had never known it did this.

[falloutdc]

I died a few times in small dungeons because of this

[Deltharien]

Those same mobs in Thelaseen would also camp a wiped group until everyone released. When we first ran across corpse campers, we blamed it on aggro not clearing properly when we died. Then we noticed they even camped their friends' corpses until they despawned. I had the bright idea of FD'ing my way into Thelaseen to grab some books while no one was there to roll against me. I was forced to FD in a busy area due to low health, and went AFK while my health regen'ed. I came back to a few mobs camping my 'corpse', and watched as more wanderers rushed over. I learned pretty quickly that even FD wasn't safe in some places. They didn't just camp their friends' corpses, they would camp *any* corpse, even a fake one.

I've seen it happen in TK, VT, and DT as well. Not every mob was a corpse camper, but once one locked on, the anchor of the 'aggro chain' was set. You stand up from FD and here comes the whole $^#@ dungeon. Besides being interested in necrophilia, the corpse campers also seemed to have a larger assist radius, whether they were triggering nearby mobs to aggro, or were rushing to join a nearby fight. It's like they had their 'awareness bit' set on high.

Wandering mobs no longer saw corpses as 'part of the landscape'. Thinking back, I only ever recall being corpse camped outside of Thestra in Siren's Grotto, but getting a group to hunt outside the 'quick path to cap' was almost impossible, so maybe I just didn't get to notice. Then again, maybe this was a feature that didn't get added every area once the rush to release was on.

This is just another feature that set VG apart. My precious had a tricksy AI, it did.