Started playing again last night (from the beginning with a new character to get used to things again; stopped maybe a month or so after the Architect Edition came out, not that anyone cares :P) and noticed that things are definitely running more - really annoying, as a Scrapper. I dread to think how much worse that's going to make the 5-level cave room...
Actually, the most irritating thing I encounter with mobs running away is their almost unerring tendency to run into drones (outdoor mobs, obviously), thus "kill-stealing" themselves. I'm on the verge of bugging this once a week until they fix it, ban me, or shut down the game.
Where to find me after the end:
The Secret World - Arcadia - Shinzo
Rift - Faeblight - Bloodspeaker
LotRO - Gladden - Aranelion
STO - Holodeck - @Captain_Thiraas
Obviously, I don't care about NCSoft's forum rules, now.
This happens at all levels, believe you me. I used to play back in I11 and now I just got back, it happened then it happens now.
Annoying but acceptable, unless they have a ton of health when they run in which case they could bring mobs towards you.
I noticed it ALOT more with scrappers that don't have a taunt aura Regen and SR to be specific.
The more people I meet, the more I'm beginning to root for the zombies.
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Here's the problem we MM's face. For all our pets, most of us do not deal enough damage to defeat an AV by waiting for him to come back. He'll be there all of 5 seconds taking pitiful little slivers of damage from my pets, then run away, and if I don't chase him, he'll come back fully healed. I could be there all day - literally 24 straight hours, and the battle won't have changed at all. |
Originally Posted by Ultimo_
At one point, I actually got him down to about half health (much resummoning, and many inspirations), at which point he siphoned speed and zoomed away to regenerate. It was physically impossible for me to catch him, slow him or immobilize him. Tar Patch had no effect once he hit siphon speed. If he would have stayed and fought, I would have eventually beaten him. As it was, I had to drop the mission entirely because he kept running away. This IS a problem, and I think it's fairly serious. |
Someone needs to tell the devs that tedium != Challenge. All tedium equals is tedium. All it can possibly accomplish is to make a person bored.
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Originally Posted by Doctor_Gemini
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Everyone here does realize that if you just have a little patience the running enemies will come back, right? Use the time to Rest or whatnot until they return. That's what I do. I'm not anxious to follow them to my imminent doom. I realize that I have more patience than most these days, but really, it doesn't take much.   [/ QUOTE ] "...You must learn patience." "Yeah, yeah, patience, how long does that take?" That's all well and good, but, I'm not playing a game to sit back and do nothing. This would bother me less if they didn't come back, but you would eventually find them cowering in a corner or having joined another mob somewhere down the line. As it stands, them running away is both idiotic and annoying. The other night when EVERY SINGLE MOB would have someone run off, and given that I was soloing a defender I could neither generate the damage to stop them, nor afford to have him come back while I was fighting another mob, I was ready to just log off. If it hadn't been double XP weekend I'd have quit in disgust (the session, not the game). As it was, as soon as I finished the mission I changed toons. |
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Originally Posted by LOTROMatt
Ok, I'm new, so take my opinion for what it's worth.
If you were snagging some old lady's purse...and Superman showed up and punched you in the face...would you turn and face him for a showdown or haul outta there? To me it adds a bit of realism...it ain't easy to chase 'em down...but it seems to me to make sense. This from a guy who is level 6 and has played 4 hours.  Sooo...feel free to discount this post as you feel is appropriate. |
Really, if you want enemies to run for the sake of realism, then they should run and not come back. Not only would that be more realistic, but it would solve the whole tediousness problem.
Most of the time in world history, real world military battles have not been full on attempts to kill or capture every member of the opposed force, just attempts to make them retreat. Consider the bloodiest battle of WW2: Stalingrad. What was the Russians' objective? Take Stalingrad back from the Germans. Does it really matter whether the Germans leave Stalingrad by way of being dead, or by way of retreat? No. Either way, the Russians have still accomplished their objective.
How often in a comic does the hero actually capture their nemesis, rather than just get them to run away?
edit: I think you can tell I was a bit frustrated when I posted this. I'm playing this thugz/ff mm, and not just every AV is running away from me. Pretty much every enemy, period. It's like I'm a child on recess and some mean kids are playing "keep away" with me, or something. I'm thinking I might have to shelf the toon, cause it's just not worth the frustration dealing the drama every single battle. At least it doesn't happen as much when I'm on teams.
Um dont the bad guys normally run from the good guys? Dont the small time thugs fear the megavillians? Just saying.
You know, I can understand Minions and Lieutenants running around like neckstump-challenged chickens when certain things start flying - Maybe even the bosses. But Giant Damn Monsters - Robots and lightning demons and rock creatures, oh my - shouldn't flee just because some puny mortal put down Caltrops, or tried to set their gleaming metal hides on fire.
Not long ago I tried to take on Scrapyard with my Thugs/Traps mastermind and a handful of others, and we couldn't do it until I dismissed my Arsonist, because the encounter started with Scrapyard exhorting his union of mooks to stand firm for the working man, and then not three seconds later, he provided the inspiring example of fleeing like a cross between a paranoid jackrabbit and a frightened schoolgirl. This is a damnedly stupid effect to which to subject Archvillains/Heroes and Giant Monsters!
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Very much so. And even repeatedly stacked Taunt doesn't work to bring them back before they've had their little run around the block, more often than not. And then there's Rommy and his regular insistence that he go and check the front door of his castle when someone tries to pull him, whether its with a taunt power or an attack of some sort. Heck, look at him funny when you get within aggro range and he figures its time to see if the pizza guy is at the door. Highly aggravating when you're trying to beat the clock.
| This is a damnedly stupid effect to which to subject Archvillains/Heroes and Giant Monsters! |
Hurray atleast bosses no longer runaway , once you pop a shot at them ..
during escape missions .
Not as fun as it used to be beating it to half health and chasing it .
But beats them ignoring you totally and running for the exit , once you zoned in .
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Caltrops is supposed to make everything run. It has a very high mag Avoid/Fear. Unless it's immobilized, it's going to run if it's standing on Caltrops, regardless of critter type.
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Originally Posted by Kyria_Shirako
You know, I can understand Minions and Lieutenants running around like neckstump-challenged chickens when certain things start flying - Maybe even the bosses. But Giant Damn Monsters - Robots and lightning demons and rock creatures, oh my - shouldn't flee just because some puny mortal put down Caltrops, or tried to set their gleaming metal hides on fire.
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I really wish they would do away with or tone down the runaway thing with mobs. I can not even enjoy playing my dark/dark scrapper anymore because as soon as the fear and DoT aura powers hit them they scatter to the four winds. This is not fun at all for me, I do not like chasing my prey nor waiting for them to come back only to have them run again if i do not kill them fast enough.
My favorate time a mob ran away was when my thug mastermind re-visited mercy island mentoring someone, and a arachnos shot something at me, i turned around and he was running away from me saying "Now you know who's really in charge of the rogue isles!". So i was like "Heck yea! It's ME!". LMAO
But when playing a hero i notice every single encounter in skyway has at least 1 mob who runs off. EVERY encounter! Shoot a troll, 1 jumps off the bridge in terror of my awesome ability "shoot gun".
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Several types of spawns outdoors are supposed to have one enemy run away. You get extra influence for most of them if you defeat the ones who run.|
Originally Posted by Eschia Mousehold
My favorate time a mob ran away was when my thug mastermind re-visited mercy island mentoring someone, and a arachnos shot something at me, i turned around and he was running away from me saying "Now you know who's really in charge of the rogue isles!". So i was like "Heck yea! It's ME!". LMAO
But when playing a hero i notice every single encounter in skyway has at least 1 mob who runs off. EVERY encounter! Shoot a troll, 1 jumps off the bridge in terror of my awesome ability "shoot gun". |
Enemies in missions are only supposed to run when they can't hit you for a certain amount of time (to prevent players from extreme range hover-sniping or exploiting a bug in melee/ranged attack behavior), or if they're low on health. But many will run when they're debuffed, some will run as soon as your character aggros the spawn, or even just randomly start running away for no clear reason. Those are the ones which we've been trying to get the developers to fix. Enemies like Mooks lieutenants, who start running as soon as they see you, then start to come back, then run away again, then turn around and come back, then run again... and never fire a single shot at you.
Since CoH Beta, street mobs have always had members that run as soon as the encounter initiates. In Atlas its very easy to spot with Hellions and it happens everytime.
- The hellion yanking on the purse of a victim will run
- The hellion with his arms crossed in a three person mob is going to run
That being said, Fear effects worked alot different back at CoH release, I remember getting lectured by an angry tank for dropping things like Spectral Terror and Tornado. Spectral Terror, for instance, would be cast and almost the entire mob would run for their lives. Very annoying to a tank who just had herded a room, and rightfully so.
So the devs changed it to the system we had recently where the mob would stop what they were doing and do the peeing-their-pants emote and things were a lot better, maybe not as realistic, but better.
Now it looks like maybe the devs forgot what it was like way back when. When a player with poor judgment would cast a Spectral Terror by the Reactor during a Respc Trial (ahem... me), and it would instantly send a good portion of the room running laps around the reactor room until they discovered the open door. Those that did would scatter throughout the entire building. Not fun to have to go back to the main rooms to look for stragglers when the trial won't complete.
In my opinion, I liked it the way it was before this latest "improvement" to the "run-away-for-no-apparent-reason" logic. On huge maps when you finally get to the bosses room only to find that your mission to "Defeat Boss whatever" is now "Defeat all untill you find whoever belonged in that room" sucks! This is multiplied by infinity when fighting Vahz because zombies will cease moving after a few seconds after any bosses or Lt's in their mob are defeated. If they were fleeing at the time I killed the last Lt in their mob they could be anywhere. Sure, they will be found later just standing somewhere. I have found them in the middle of another mob, on a ceiling beam in a tall room, and I even found one in the middle of one of those destroyable lab objects in the tech room with the 4 buff/debuff lab objects. How he got there I can't figure out, the point is, that this is rather silly to change the system that was working fine and now have to play hide and seek with enemies.
Yes, that feature that shows the final mission objective is helpful but 1) it does not work all the time and 2) it does no good if the mission has multiple objectives.
Outdoors, I don't really have any issues with it, it seems fine. Indoors? The occasional runner? Sure why not. Roll it back to what it was. It's just way too often now and very frustrating.
I think we have fifteen pages detailing exactly the magnitude of sheer stupidity the AV/GM running bug represents. I just failed a Virgil Tarikoss with what was otherwise a functional team because we couldn't pin down Bat'Zul. A Virgil Tarikoss. This is the kind of failure that otherwise brings shame on your entire family. I've thought about it; There is no other aspect of the game that I find frustrating within even an order of magnitude.
So far the only TFs I have failed in the last year have failed because of AV scattering when we didn't bring a Tanker or a Brute. When is this crap going to get fixed, or do we have to live with having a Tanker or Brute on absolutely every TF team?
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Originally Posted by Phanatique
They are programmed to run away after X amount of time of not landing a hit on their opponent. There are probably other triggers too.
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Resistance based toos with alot of hp/regen FTW!
Mobs running away is worse now then a few days ago.
Not even boss/av mobs, pretty much any mob I engage with my MM or Corruptor. What is annoying about it is that the even con mobs (whites) stick around more then the yellows, reds and purps. It is really fun pulling a mob to an area where your pets won't get extra agro and then engaging the critter, to have it turn and run all over the map. Barely even touched it's health, and it isn't as if it couldn't hurt me or my pets, they do. But... one fish eye from either me or my pets and off it goes screaming in panic. Also fun when you irradiate a mob with an aoe debuff and it goes off and irradiates others that were no where near it.. all because you looked at it cross-eyed. So now.. because of whatever is causing the problem, you have new friends wanting to invade your personal space without regard to your wishes.
This behavior was a pain before, but has gotten much worse since the servers came back up yesterday evening.
I've been noticing the AI been running away a lot in mishes even if they are of higher level and they are not missing much. I dont have many defense based toons so a purple Freak boss really hardly have trouble hittign my toons, even the defense based ones at times. But aftera takign a few hits they up and run.
At one point it was a mob here or mob there that take flight but now it's almost to the point of at times two per group flee at your first attack even if they didnt take damage (notwithstanding CoT and Cabal as they always have seem to be skittish due to their pure range attacks.)
-Female Player-
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Originally Posted by mauk2
Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words.
"Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L! |
Mmm...
I am sure most of us have "Game Mastered" one time or another, and often we would modify the game's rules; thus the age old practice of house rules.
I have found a veritable challenge when trying to make things real and yet keep the game playable and enjoyable.
Some games, approaches quite a great deal of realism and detail, and a single fight takes hours because we have a thousand and one charts to go through... At the end, the game is hardly played, because not only was it too real, it was too slow! Then you have the oppsite end of the spectrum, all playability, but so fake the content feels odd or contrived. So where would this happy in middle would be? That varies from playing group to playing group.
In the case of CoH, ha ha ha, it does not make sense for baddies to run when engaged, with a few notable exceptions. The main reason they should not run is for playability, higher playability = fun, less playability = tedium = less fun.
I did mention notable exceptions, now, did I? Here is one, it is a reasonable AI tactic to go to the closest mob group of its own alignment for re-enforcements, That is a Skull would run towards another group of Skulls, kinda have her tell the other group what is happening and get them to return with him. It would be stupid! if the Skull ran towards the Hellions a rival gang.
In general for playability purposes, mob groups should be amply spaced and not placed next to each other as if holding hands. A mob out of the group, when the group gets pounded would run towards a friendly faction mob group for re-enforcements and bring such re-enforcements with her. The go get help mob should be a minion taking the message, not a LT or Boss who is directing and leading the battle.
But perhaps the mob running, has little to do with realism and more with developer attitudes. lately I have seen a notable increase of player received "grief" like attitudes given by likely a small group of developers. For instance you may have noticed that TF entrance missions have been changed to randomly be increased to be at far end hazard zones, higher use of the long rectangular maps such as sky,ip, and steel, and it so happen the actual entrance is as far away as possible from the logical entry point to the zone; another form of grief is the noticeably increased to SS and Flight drift; and we go on. Some mentally challenged individual may find this forms of grief to be excusable as "challenge", but the truth is its not challenge is tedium and annoyance.
In someways, I wish the devs would simply stop wasting time in such endeavors and spend more time fixing broken stuff.
Stormy
Fortunately, I've not had anywhere near the amount of problems you all have detailed. Perhaps the problems been exaggerated, or perhaps I'm just lucky. But I totally agree that the fleeing mobs *is* a pain. It isn't fun. Realistic perhaps, but not fun.
All that being said, perhaps mobs should have 2 types of run away. A 'fall back' and a 'flee' type AI. The 'fall back' is just to break LOS and most likely shouldn't apply to GMs (and maybe AVs). The 'flee' is full-on running away. And if a mobs flees, it should count as defeated. XP awarded, drops happen, and the mish requirements fulfilled. This would be very in line with the comic genre, as many a hero wins the day by only getting the baddies to flee. I think it would also allow a fun new tactical option to the players in that they could try to get the baddies to flee, and that may be faster and more efficient in some cases that defeating the opponents. If the Devs then feel that this is too easy, just lower the flee likelihood numbers.
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I'm not sure I agree at all with shenanigans being called when referring to this idea.|
Originally Posted by Comicsluvr
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I think it makes sense that any enemy, realizing that they are outmatched and in danger of being arrested or worse, would try and flee.
It also makes sense that they would come to such a realization faster if they couldn't land a hit on their attacker versus if they were actually hitting them.
It's better that they try and run than be mindless sheep, isn't it?
-- Vivian
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New arrivals to this thread: The complaints tendered here are not about enemies running away under normal conditions. The problem is abnormal fleeing behavior or triggers, such as enemies running away without being attacked by or attacking the player, enemies running away and not returning at all, or only returning several minutes after they've completely dropped aggro (the time it takes them to walk back from wherever they ran to), or enemies running away after a single hit or debuff.|
Originally Posted by Doctor Vivian
I'm not sure I agree at all with shenanigans being called when referring to this idea.
I think it makes sense that any enemy, realizing that they are outmatched and in danger of being arrested or worse, would try and flee. It also makes sense that they would come to such a realization faster if they couldn't land a hit on their attacker versus if they were actually hitting them. It's better that they try and run than be mindless sheep, isn't it? -- Vivian |
We're cool with "Crap, I missed nine times in a row" or "I've been attacking for twenty seconds and haven't hit yet, panic time". This is working as intended.
We're not cool with "Oh, player character in the room... cat's on fire, gtg" or "Hey, this debuff reminds me, my lunch is in another zone, bbl". This is NOT working as intended.
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I'm down with this for the most part. "Fall Back" and "Flee" should be the two types. Also, if flee occurs inside a mission then you get full xp for that "kill" or defeated foe. Outside (not on mish but just hunting) you should get partial xp, but if it's a defeat 'X' of this type mish and you get a 'flee' then you get full xp and the deduction of total amount to defeat.|
Originally Posted by Madadh
Fortunately, I've not had anywhere near the amount of problems you all have detailed. Perhaps the problems been exaggerated, or perhaps I'm just lucky. But I totally agree that the fleeing mobs *is* a pain. It isn't fun. Realistic perhaps, but not fun.
All that being said, perhaps mobs should have 2 types of run away. A 'fall back' and a 'flee' type AI. The 'fall back' is just to break LOS and most likely shouldn't apply to GMs (and maybe AVs). The 'flee' is full-on running away. And if a mobs flees, it should count as defeated. XP awarded, drops happen, and the mish requirements fulfilled. This would be very in line with the comic genre, as many a hero wins the day by only getting the baddies to flee. I think it would also allow a fun new tactical option to the players in that they could try to get the baddies to flee, and that may be faster and more efficient in some cases that defeating the opponents. If the Devs then feel that this is too easy, just lower the flee likelihood numbers. |
I've been getting back into CoX and I've played almost during every major change except during I15-I18. There is a huge difference from past to present and I'm borderline on wanting a change but the way myself and madadh put it I could go for.
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Originally Posted by Luminara
New arrivals to this thread: The complaints tendered here are not about enemies running away under normal conditions. The problem is abnormal fleeing behavior or triggers, such as enemies running away without being attacked by or attacking the player, enemies running away and not returning at all, or only returning several minutes after they've completely dropped aggro (the time it takes them to walk back from wherever they ran to), or enemies running away after a single hit or debuff.
We're cool with "Crap, I missed nine times in a row" or "I've been attacking for twenty seconds and haven't hit yet, panic time". This is working as intended. We're not cool with "Oh, player character in the room... cat's on fire, gtg" or "Hey, this debuff reminds me, my lunch is in another zone, bbl". This is NOT working as intended. |
I have to say after having been gone for a while that I am NOT comforted by the fact that this thread, and thus the problem, continues TWO AND A HALF YEARS LATER.
"Comics, you're not a Mastermind...you're an Overlord!"
I cannot stand running mobs. I petition the devs to create a new setting for the Difficulty Slider named "Stand and fight like a man!" (or woman) that eliminates the silly AI running.
Shard Warrior - 50 MA/Regen/BM Scrapper
Founding Member and Leader : Shadow-Force
Co-Leader: Council of Heroes
"Whatever evils come this way... we will be there to stop them."