Really powerful cowards?

OK, I've been around the block a few times in City of Heroes, so I'm not usually taken aback by suddenly surprising perfectly normal behaviour, but something is starting to feel really odd here. Let me preface this with a two-sentence rant: The Praetorian minions are far too frikkin' powerful, with each one possessing the kind of powers you'd usually see on a lieutenant, and they come in large packs. I certainly hope they get tweaked and normalised with Going Rogue and/or Issue 17, because some are horrid while others are "level 50 Hellions."

Well, something I've been noticing while fighting these very powerful enemies utter cowards. In fact, their cowardice has saved my life probably as many times as my actual skill and powers. This has to be a new thing, because I've been fighting enemies in this way for some time, and I've never seen them scatter like cockroaches like this with such consistency. Yes, this is a post about enemies that run away. But, look. I'm aware that this is normal. I know that if you wipe out a boss and his four minions, the fifth minion will usually turn tail and run. That's normal, to the point where I've learned to spot the one who'll run and either shoot him in the back or prevent him from running in some fashion. But this is... Much more pronounced.

Here's what we'll do: let's look at an example. I'm fighting Diabolique's minions (right now, in fact), and the spawns consist of between 6 and 12 ghosts, typically with two lieutenants and the rest being minions. I'm playing an Energy/Energy/Force Blaster who is basically able to spawn-wipe the things on a good day, or just lay into them if Aim and Build Up are still recharging. I know for a fact that if I let all that rabble of ghosts get close to my character and all slap her with Midnight Grasp at the same time, I'm teleporting to the hospital. But this almost never happens, and it's not because I just that damn good.

Now, fights go one of two ways. Either Boost Range + Power Boost + Aim + Build Up + Energy Torrent + Explosive Blast + sweep up after myself, or Repulsion Bomb + Explosive Blast + wing it from there. The former tactic rarely leaves ghosts lying around, usually a lieutenant or two, but they ALWAYS turn tail and run. Absolutely, positively always. And on the rare occasion I leave a few of them behind, like say four or five (it happens), they all take off and run away with a sliver of health left. Now, I can KIND OF understand this logically, since they're hurt and probably scared (do ghosts get scared?), but it doesn't make sense with AI behaviour at all from what I remember from before.

But OK, even if we give the game the benefit of a doubt and say overwhelming damage is what scares them, what about when overwhelming damage doesn't happen? I don't always have Aim and Build Up recharged and I don't feel like waiting 50 seconds between every spawn, so a lot of the time I'll go without them. I'd expect this to mean that I'd get ghost-swamped, but I don't. I hit them with Repulsion bomb, they all flop, I hit them with Explosive Blast, they fly next to me... And then turn tail to run away. At one point no less than six ghosts, some of them undamaged, just... Left. They could have killed me, but they didn't. I didn't scare them, I don't have any sets that could be doing Fear and I'm not doing too much damage that, say, a full-tilt Scrapper couldn't do if he felt like it. So why are they running from me?

And I know ghosts have that thing where they run away and turn invisible, but it's not just that. I fought Evil Bastion's minions yesterday, and they did the same thing - take out, say, three out of seven and the rest will try to run. Maybe I notice it more because ghosts and flying robots move so fast that if they decide to run, they REALLY run, but it's been bothering me even with something as simple as Crey. For the most part, doing anything to a spawn will cause Tanks to turn tail and run like little girls, but if it's not the time, the ACTUAL girls will turn around and run away like little girls. In fact, fighting them on my Archery/Devices Blaster, I think I had more mines time out than got stepped on, because enemies would never approach to fight me. They'd always run away after taking a single pot shot. And it's not like they're just backing off like an Eagle or a Mook Hitman would. They run WAY AWAY. On Diabolique's street map, I spotted a ghost fly across two blocks at which point he went out of Target range, and I've seen Tanks and Evil Bastion's goons run through rooms and rooms and rooms, like they're looking for the lifts to run in and rest.

Now, I don't necessarily mind this, as it does keep my Blaster alive, but when I'm literally leaving behind two enemies each spawn because they ran away and I didn't feel like growing a beard waiting for them, something feels wrong here. I know "enemies are running away more" is right out there with "they nerfed accuracy" on the scale of "By the way, did I mention I was an idiot?" but come on now. For the past two weeks, I have literally not been able to finish a fight without having to either chase someone or wait for someone to return. And now I had to fight Diabolique to top it all off...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You really need to include a tl;dr version for your posts. :P

I honestly thought this post was going to be about Freak Tanks. Big wusses.

Hopefully it's a bug. Not the Freak Tanks, but those guys.

Ghosts always run. I remember doing an Arachnos Ghost Story on a NRG/Dark Corruptor and every time I hit one of them with Darkest Night he'd run like heck, and if I forgot to drop the DN he'd usually come back with 3 or 4 of his pals that he'd run through and aggro'd... I hit a personal record of 9 faceplants for a single mission while trying to complete that one.

I wonder if they've ever considered implementing the WoW AI where certain foes always run when their HPs get low, and come back with reinforcements. Frustrating sometimes, until you learn how to handle it, but much more challenging, and realistic, than the random runs we get at the moment.

Anyway, it's always fun taking out a fleeing opponent with a ranged attack - the tier 1 Dual Pistols is great for that. Something about the pose just exudes contempt for the cowardly foe

It's not just Ghosts, though. Siege's robots were running all over the place, too, with both lieutenants often taking off running at the same time. And just now, fighting Marauder's troops, they tended to run a lot, too, though admittedly not as much as ghosts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

The title of this thread has inspired me to try and create a character that is reluctant to fight, using mostly defensive abilities but then unleashing all hell once backed into a corner.

Hmm power sets?

I've noticed the same behavior with the Circle of Thorns' Thorn Casters. More like Thorn Pansies, really. They usually flee as soon as they realize I know they're there. Earth Thorn Pansies -I mean, Casters, are the worst, since they like to drop Quicksand before charging off in the direction of not where the fight is happening, making it impossible to run them down and actually lower their HP.

It's not so bad on my Blasters, but melee characters suffer a lot. Especially Brutes, who of course fight best when enemies are attacking them, not fleeing in terror.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=124124

Yeah ghosts always run - whether it's annoying depends on what you're playing.

Imho the worst "really powerful coward" in CoH is Agent Crimson in EB/AV form in the final mission of Shadow Spider's second arc "Crimson Hunt" in Grandville. You have to defeat him to complete the mission/arc, but he runs for the mission entrance at half-health and he runs about as fast as most players with Swift+Sprint do - plus he has resists/protection against immobilises and slows that takes persistence to overcome, and taunting him has zero effect on his desire to escape. Add to that the fact that he's running away through a sewer map (with office+cave areas at the start of the map), with all those narrow doors killing your line of sight to him when you first start chasing. If you have no way to lock him down before he runs then it's just an exercise in futility unless you can land a lot of burst damage on him to finish him off fast. If he escapes the map you fail the mission and arc.

Not so much powerful cowards, but DAoC had some resourceful cowards - outdoors you could run into scouting type enemies who had a longer sight/aggro range than most monsters and upon sighting players they would run away and then come back with lots of their friends to attack the players. But if you killed the scout before he got away then obviously the reinforcements wouldn't come. I always thought that was quite a fun little AI routine - it made sense that one little goblin would run away when faced by several players, then come back with lots of his mates.

Runners were deadly in EverQuests 1 & 2 as well, because they could "infect" any un-aggroed enemies of the same faction that they ran past with threat towards you, so those un-aggroed enemies would become aggroed with you at the top of their hate-list - it could bring several spawns down on your head, which was rather deadly if you had fought deep inside a dungeon with respawns popping up behind you (especially as you struggled to cope with more than one enemy at a time in EverQuest). It made stopping runners a major priority, something that you don't really care about in CoH because aggro can't be passed on like this - but really EverQuest's AI in this case is a lot more logical and more challenging too. It's surprising mob AI doesn't work like this in CoH because we're a lot more capable of dealing with multiple spawns.

Ghost of Scrapyard was always the worst runner in my book, half the time he ran off and got droned, and since hes a GM hes immune to mezzes basically