Linked Mobs

[Cosmo3]

I understand the concept of linked mobs and it is true some were linked in original live. It was also a tactic in original live to lower your sig, pick out a mob member and kite him away from the mobs so you don't get overwhelmed. I see what I think is way too many of the normal mobs linked and when you shoot one you agro the bunch. To me that takes away from the importance of your sig which is a game tactic. It makes a low sig all but unless in a combat situation.

If mobs were very close to each other in live you sometimes got 2 but getting the whole bunch was rare. Of course there were a few exceptions to this. While on the subject of mobs, I see way more common mobs now than in original live with special abilities. Is this the intent of the DEVs to do this to make the game harder and not so much like original live? I only asked this because of the often expressed view of the DEVs, "We are going to make the game like live". If they don't want to follow live that is ok, in some instances I understand it may make the game better or may not be able to make just like live.

Thanks for any input and others views on these topics.

[Lot]

I am not a fan of the communicated agro on mobs in the emulator.

Should be able to use signature and approach a mob, attract its attention and pull back bringing just the single mob. Instead the mob communicates with every other mob within shouting range and they all proceed to attack. There were groups of two mobs sometimes that you couldn't help pull both at the same time but they were linked together e.g. the 40-51 and 46-48 RD pairs at Hasters End in Inverness.

Being mobbed by many mobs at the same time = not much fun.

One on one fights agression controlled by player skill = much more fun. Wish it could be this way again.

[Stanig[IS]]

My personal perspective would be that the mobs are acting as if they were grouped, in other words the mobs got smart and run as a group. Shoot one member of their group, and just like a player group they all target the one guy shooting them. Which to me makes logical sense.

It never made logical sense for one mob being pulled away and not screaming for help from his buddies 10k away while being slaughtered. But thats just my take.

[Cosmo3]

[quote name='Stanig' timestamp='1353467252' post='66689']
My personal perspective would be that the mobs are acting as if they were grouped, in other words the mobs got smart and run as a group. Shoot one member of their group, and just like a player group they all target the one guy shooting them. Which to me makes logical sense.

It never made logical sense for one mob being pulled away and not screaming for help from his buddies 10k away while being slaughtered. But thats just my take.
[/quote]

My take on that behavior is that you kill Sig in a combat situation, may as well do away with many of the items in the game that lowers sig. Also may as well throw away the Coma as the other mobs are going to kill you anyway. A low sig means the other mobs cant see you, thus they don't know where you are to attack you. This is just my view.

[Lot]

Its "logical" that a player engages a single mob in a fair fight and half a dozen other mobs get involved and interfere in the fight? It's "logical" that a solo player has overwhelming odds against them always? As Matsu points out, signature is meaningless in the current situation as high or low every mob in a spawn comes and attacks anyway. Only signature should affect how many mobs are drawn to a player.

[MrMichaels]

Logic, in a game? Silly!

my 2cents:

In seriousness though - I have to agree that right now sig really has no effect. With my jd and its low sig - i should be able to pop up behind someone and pop him, without aggroing his buddy 4km away, cause really he shouldnt be able to see me. Maybe instead of linking the mobs so the others aggro on you, those other mobs ability to detect lower signature ships is increased, but still a chance of them not aggroing on you.

[Terrell [BT]]

Mobs should vary in degree of alturism, IMO, but for most mobs it should be possible to separate them. Jenquai don't have the shields to take on groups of mobs at a time, when fighting mobs apropraite to their level. Instead that race is supposed to rely upon stealth in combat. (avoiding detection is our best asset in combat) Signature should matter, if my signature, plus his scan range is less than the distance between me and the mob, he shouldn't be able to detect me. If the mob cannot detect me, he doesn't know where I am, and cannot do anything until the conditions change such that I'm visible to him.

[totteswede]

I agree that it takes out a huge part of the tactics (and itemization) in the game. Some mobs being "physically" linked, like the 3-pair of RDs in some zones, is fine, but overdoing the "assist" part is killing the fun.

I had another weird thing happening to me last night. Was warping through Odins Rex, went past the waypoint with L23 Chavez, got out of warp about 12k past the nav. No mob on radar (I can see those Chavez at 9.5k distance). My sig being 2.5k and their aggro range about 4.7k (usually). I started to buff myself up while attending my other screen when all of a sudden 5-6 of those Chavez jump me. They came at me like I had aggroed them in warp (but they weren't "blinking"), which I assume shouldn't be possible...
No, I hadn't aggroed them earlier, I came straight from Arx Ymir, so no latent aggro. Can someone please check the coding for those mobs as I find it to be a bug if they aggro when I warp past them (or is that a feature I missed somehow ?).

/Totte

[Lot]

This issue does not get the complaints and attention it deserves.

Why? Well that can be explained by players not really wishing to voice complaints and never posting about issues. And in game they often just go find the easy alternative instead. Mobs unresaonably ganging up? Ok, I am outta here -- I will go find mobs that are easier instead as I don't need the aggravation and bother of trying to defeat mobs that gang up on me.

Players get their combat action elsewhere on mobs that are worthwhile to engage in combat with and the issue is not reported.

But this is actually a huge problem in the game. There are so many spawns where if you go to attack a single mob using signature it still ends up in the sitatuation where every mob in the spawn eventually aggros on you. It is worse with the densely packed spawns multiple mobs. I think this altruism either needs turning off or toning it down perhaps making it a low random chance that altruism kicks in.

Another bad side effect of the altruism are mobs that do not agress changing course towards mobs that are in combat with a player. These mobs close to point blank range of the mob that is in combat with their nose pointed at the mob. You can almost hear them saying to the mob thats fighting "are you in trouble do you need my help?". They do not agress on the player but look stupid all following around the mob that is fighting.

[Zackman [LDEV]]

Heya !

Many mechanism where not in the EMU when it started. Now these mechanism are in (sig, scan, pack, mob socializing etc).
We never (we all) got aware of it since we were high level. Now were we start over again, we see these things in the lower level mobs rising up.


[quote name='Lot' timestamp='1353493124' post='66709']
Another bad side effect of the altruism are mobs that do not agress changing course towards mobs that are in combat with a player. These mobs close to point blank range of the mob that is in combat with their nose pointed at the mob. You can almost hear them saying to the mob thats fighting "are you in trouble do you need my help?". They do not agress on the player but look stupid all following around the mob that is fighting.
[/quote]

I bring it up internally, i saw that too and dont see any meaning in this behaviour (so called "curiosity" state).

[Stanig[IS]]

Alright im going to be very frank and honest here.

1. If you cant solo a spawn, get help from another player. Doesnt matter your profession, perception of what you should be able to do for yourself, or any other factor.

2. This is going to make even the most intendedly difficult mobs in the game (voltoi, tengu, etc) essentially weaklings because they will always be able to be isolated. THIS SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE WITH LEVEL 50+ MOBS. These are intelligent thinking beings that are not just roving drones able to be tricked into ambush time after time. Maybe we should shut their weapons off while we are at it?

3. When the game is too easy and you complain later that theres nothing challenging, I will refer to this thread.

[Pritcher[IS]]

[quote name='Stanig' timestamp='1353526193' post='66760']
Alright im going to be very frank and honest here.

1. If you cant solo a spawn, get help from another player. Doesnt matter your profession, perception of what you should be able to do for yourself, or any other factor.

2. This is going to make even the most intendedly difficult mobs in the game (voltoi, tengu, etc) essentially weaklings because they will always be able to be isolated. THIS SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE WITH LEVEL 50+ MOBS. These are intelligent thinking beings that are not just roving drones able to be tricked into ambush time after time. Maybe we should shut their weapons off while we are at it?

3. When the game is too easy and you complain later that theres nothing challenging, I will refer to this thread.
[/quote]

Ok, i dont post much here on the forum, but i must say that i reacted very strongly to your post Stanig.
Its arrogant and rude imo.
What you see people saying here is something that a very large group of the community is thinking about this issue. If this emu is to survive its advised to listen to them, without them this project is nothing...
Im not an Active Dev anymore, but ive been here since it was a JAVA project and the very first emu server was run from a server in my home. So i know that listen to the players is the most important thing here..

My 2c....

[Stanig[IS]]

Arrogant and rude? More like every bug report I have seen for the last week has been geared in the same way. Make everything easy mode because the race to 150 and being bored is paramount. This is a slippery slope when you talk about sweeping changes to the mobs, and one thats not going to be easy to pick and poke at to rebalance either. Take them one at a time, piece by piece so its a slow gradual fix that works. Not some huge reset button because of one or three specific spawns.


Would you like the short or the long list of changes ive personally made this week to address actual overbalance issues?

[Cosmo3]

[quote name='Stanig' timestamp='1353526193' post='66760']
Alright im going to be very frank and honest here.

1. If you cant solo a spawn, get help from another player. Doesnt matter your profession, perception of what you should be able to do for yourself, or any other factor.

2. This is going to make even the most intendedly difficult mobs in the game (voltoi, tengu, etc) essentially weaklings because they will always be able to be isolated. THIS SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE WITH LEVEL 50+ MOBS. These are intelligent thinking beings that are not just roving drones able to be tricked into ambush time after time. Maybe we should shut their weapons off while we are at it?

3. When the game is too easy and you complain later that theres nothing challenging, I will refer to this thread.
[/quote]

I didn't realize this was a pissing match. As far as the mobs reactions, we have been told we want it like EnB LIve, the question is do you want it that way or not. AS I have pointed out the mobs being linked to the point they are now takes away an important game strategy as well as equipment. If this is your intent you have seceded.

[shadowxsx]

I think there should be a limit to the amount of chain argo not infinite.

If mob A is attacked then it sends out a "distress signal" to those within range and that should be the limit. As I am only hitting 30 on my main now I have not seen it as a higher level, before I stopped playing a while back (most of my played toons were 150s) it was mob A is attacked sends argo to those within range, those within range send argo to others then those send out to others in range so you could get an entire spawn attacking at once. At any equal or within your abilities mob you can handle a few at a time with a decent possibility of winning, yet a survival game where each argo'ed mob argos more and more till the entire spawn is after you anything short of a raid group in that level range can not handle that situation.

By that I mean mob A sends out a "help me" to those within range (lets say 5k just to give a range) then those mobs are group B. Group B should not also resend the "help me" from mob A to group C and group C to group D etc. That means it becomes a overwhelming survival type of fight where there is no end as mob A and group B may respawn by the time group D is done.

It may have been years since live but the argo system was never an infinite spawn argo, it seemed to me like what I am describing more. I am only saying what I have seen in the past as the argo system does not seem that aggressive to me at this time, yet I have not gotten onto a tightly packed aggressive mob zone yet as some of what I did in the past when my toons were 150s pre-live. It may or may not have changed and since I do not have experience post live I can not say it is how it was in the past now. Edited November 22, 2012 by shadowxsx

[Stanig[IS]]

[quote name='Lot' timestamp='1353468310' post='66692']
Its "logical" that a player engages a single mob in a fair fight and half a dozen other mobs get involved and interfere in the fight? It's "logical" that a solo player has overwhelming odds against them always? As Matsu points out, signature is meaningless in the current situation as high or low every mob in a spawn comes and attacks anyway. Only signature should affect how many mobs are drawn to a player.
[/quote]

Youre missing my overall point entirely Lot. In this mechanic you described sig 0 = i win. Even high sig intended toons (progen and terrans) can get very low sigs approaching zero, heck with some raid equipment you can get to zero. What this does is give you an absolute advantage without a check. Especially when you factor in range advantages. Plop your TE with a zero sig and 7k range over 5k from the spawn point, and just keep farming and nothing but one mob ever comes to find out whats killing them one by one.

The check being they can call for help. I dont know about you but when theres a mob I cant for the life of me crack solo, i get a buddy to help me kill it. So why are the mobs not allowed the same freedom? They "group up" in a sense.

The whole thing about the others cant see me so they cant attack me is nullified because the mob youre shooting can, so hes telling his buddies where to look. "Hey come here, help me" "Why i dont see nothing, lemme get closer, OH THERE IT IS" Does that make sense?

My attitude earlier is purely based on this point, to me this whole thread sounds like a cry for easy mode, just so the game itself at its core is ridiculously easy. This mob mass aggro is one of the only things keeping mobs in certain places even remotely difficult, take it away and we might as well just hand you levels and equipment.

Can it be fine tuned? Most likely, Zack is working on an option to turn it off and on for specific spawns. That being said...

Do you get what im saying at all? Im irritated because rather than work together, we just throw the baby out with the bathwater and ask to line up the mobs for easy peasy kills. I meant what I said and I will say it again, if we keep removing all aspects of difficulty from the game, it wont even be a game anymore. Thats the point we just hand everyone 20 billion credits and every uber in the game again and sit around angry about the next content push.




Everything else aside, the idea of there being a maximum aggro amount (can only have 6 players grouped, so how about 6 mobs aggroable at a time?) sounds like a good idea to me.

Id also go so far to say (as ive also mentioned internally) that perhaps only talk about group aggro mobs above mob level 30, that way the concept of the lower level solo player isnt infringed on. Once over 30 though, mobs may very well come at you with their whole family. Just another compromise idea, but I really do not like the idea of making every spawn in the game a pluck fest.

[Mattsacre]

Well in live there were deliberately linked mobs (notably those RD near hasters) and on the other end of spectrum, "dumb mobs", mobs that you could take out of a group and never agro any other of the mobs, sometimes while sitting right within the cluster. But most mobs, ESPECIALLY the class type mobs (i.e. enforcers,centriata, sabine, sharim etc etc.) had a search pattern reaction. If you snuck up on a mob and popped him, but you had low enough sig (or comaed them) and the other buddy of your target couldn't see you, they would go off in a random direction at their full thrust speed, looking for who popped their buddy. If there were more than one, they would usually go off in differing directions, sort of like a "search grid", if they chose the direction that you happened to be in this would make you have to hustle to stay out of their scan range.

You guys may also be forgetting something, namely effects of players skills on mob behaviour is NOT working as SHOULD be intended, for instance, read the skill discription of TE hack/biorepression, at a certain level it's suppost to supress the mobs "call for help" from it;s buddies, so, with the current hit one agro all thing how is that skill going to work right? How about before mentioned coma device? Can;t see them, how you shoot them? Your target communicated your wereabouts how exactly?..HE CAN'T SEE YOU! JE forced contemplation..you force a mob to look at their bellybutton for a while, while they are counting their bellybutton hairs they also send out morse code to buddies that someone, somewere in the sector is being attacked, come here and see?

A jenny teleports a mob far away and has a low sig, should that mob still be able to thrust right back to the jenny and engage the jenny even if that same jenny has moved off to another angle? He was out of sight range, why does he know right were the jenny is now an not go back to were he was attacked (teleported from) and look for the jenny? A PS/PP menaces a mob, that mob is suppost to thrust away from the PS/PP in fear for X amount of time, when that time expires why does he still lock right back on that progen, even if the progen is half a sector away by now? Oce again i can see them returning to the scene were they was attacked and searching around if they aren't still within sight range, but a sector away? NOT

Same goes for the other underappreciated skill, enrage, PW/TE's skill at a certain level is suppost to enrage the mob so much that they forget anything else except getting to that warrior for X amount of time....so they are so pissed off that they radio to all the entire faction to come to that sector and kill the TE/PW for them....they are supost to be in a blind rage..why are they calling in a hit? Same goes for grav link, live at upper levels of skill it had a field effect, you trapped your target and everything within that field also, understandably it aggroed the mob hit, and everything in the field, but NOT the ones 3k outside that field that haven;t seen you yet, the most they could know is their buddies are acting a bit drunk, not how or why

[Lot]

Stanig the amount of signature does not matter high or low, players in live used to use their signature to attract mobs then back away and fight just those mobs that they could manage. All we request is that the agro communication gets switched off to allow players to play like that again. Players right now have to avoid the mob spawns that communicate agro as the player just becomes unfairly overwhelmed.

Why have you got it in your head that players are looking for easy mode? All they want it a fair fight.

Stop telling us we to group up too, that is not the answer.

[Zackman [LDEV]]

[quote name='shadowxsx' timestamp='1353550091' post='66808']
I think there should be a limit to the amount of chain argo not infinite.

If mob A is attacked then it sends out a "distress signal" to those within range and that should be the limit. As I am only hitting 30 on my main now I have not seen it as a higher level, before I stopped playing a while back (most of my played toons were 150s) it was mob A is attacked sends argo to those within range, those within range send argo to others then those send out to others in range so you could get an entire spawn attacking at once. At any equal or within your abilities mob you can handle a few at a time with a decent possibility of winning, yet a survival game where each argo'ed mob argos more and more till the entire spawn is after you anything short of a raid group in that level range can not handle that situation.

By that I mean mob A sends out a "help me" to those within range (lets say 5k just to give a range) then those mobs are group B. Group B should not also resend the "help me" from mob A to group C and group C to group D etc. That means it becomes a overwhelming survival type of fight where there is no end as mob A and group B may respawn by the time group D is done.

It may have been years since live but the argo system was never an infinite spawn argo, it seemed to me like what I am describing more. I am only saying what I have seen in the past as the argo system does not seem that aggressive to me at this time, yet I have not gotten onto a tightly packed aggressive mob zone yet as some of what I did in the past when my toons were 150s pre-live. It may or may not have changed and since I do not have experience post live I can not say it is how it was in the past now.
[/quote]


Thats not how it works.

You hit "MOB A" and Mob A will call for assistance to the buddies being in the same spawn group and within a certain range. Mob B will only call for help again if you damage Mob B actively.
If Mob B is getting damaged, it will also call for help - but not any other Mob from the SpawnGroup MOB A wasnt calling already since Mob B is now at the same position (cords) like Mob A was, cuz Mob B is approaching you after being called.

BTW, this and many more mechanisms are in the server like always - for a very looong time already.

Lately i see some complaints about these mechanisms and i start to wonder if this is only because we were all used to uber gear and having everything served on a plate, now were we all noobs again we are "surprised" that the game is actutally challenging again at lower levels.


There are already OL150 toons on this server, after just a week!
I remember how hard the grind was on the original game (month) and for me that puts some things into the correct relativation.

[Lot]

No Zackman the issue has always been known about, I have a feeling it may have been talked about before too.

Try to remember that some players will always want to be first to OL150 and that other players with uber equipped 150s still play new characters too and have experienced this issue and knew about it. Not everyone is out there trying to reach OL150 and get uber equipment inside a week, or even a month, they settle for getting there eventually. The exceptions are never the rule.

I am afraid you developers are getting biased and may be there is a little bit of this "mob altrusim" affecting your own collective judgment.

If you asked me how long I expect it will take me to reach OL150 for the first time, to get all my characters back to OL150, get back most of the uber items that I used to have, get back most of the recipes the answer is: A VERY LONG TIME INDEED! Several months up to a year.

in the meantime, there is still this issue with mobs ganging up on me! Especially those Chavez. Organics do it too!

[wmtyrance]

This is something that i'm glad someone brought up. I don't blame the devs for this. I have been around since the begining of this project. And most of the players posting back then were always wanting for things to be harder. I was probably one of the few who just wanted to play the game like it was back in live. While i do enjoy the game, it is not like it was in live. And the biggest thing you notice is having a low ship sig.in this game is now useless. And i'm sure that there will be more post like this now that the game is live and some people will not like the changes. So don't blame it on the devs blame it on the hardcore players that seem to always get what they want in mmo's these days because they live on game boards. I already know players from back in the old live days that were excited to be playing again but notice how the game is diffrent in alot of ways and some don't like the changes.

[Zackman [LDEV]]

I'm not sure i can follow, i'm confused:
Lot says, this has been from the beginning like that (which i can confirm from the code side) and you (Castagere) talk about "changes" now.
I'm lost.

[Lot]

Castagere was referring to the difference in mob behavior between live 2002-2004 and the emulator, those are the changes.

[wmtyrance]

The changes are how mobs react. Alot of them do seem to gang up on you more than they used too. I'm not a coder so i don't know how this works. Look at the claimjumpers in Carp. I had a JD and would use summon on one mob. Even with my low sig. More would come in after i summon one. That didn't happen so much in old live. Zack i'm not really complaining about this its just something different i noticed. The point of summon was pulling one mob from a group. And it was a stronge skill a JD had but now its tricky to use. Mobs call for help alot more then they used too. It just means i have to play differently than i used too. In old live i could sit back and use summon all day and not have to flee from being ganged up on. And in old live having a low sig was one of the best things to have. Now not so much. Zack like i said its just something different i notice in this version of the game.

[Stanig[IS]]

Just to play the devils advocate here, but do any of you have proof that this was the behavior? I mean yeah sure we have about three people in here saying thats how it was, but remember we have been around now longer than live almost 10 years ago. Memories get fuzzy. Even mine.

I seem to recall a great deal of mobs did in fact cluster aggro you, even with solar sail sig. Especially tengu and vrix. I know the vrix arent a factor here for this, but they did exactly that, you hit one and I dont care where you were, they all swarmed you.

So my question before we go any further, can anyone actually confirm that you could "sit still in front of a mob and it couldnt see you and wouldnt attack if you had a zero sig"? Maybe if you were cloaked...