Running enemies... Yet again!

I have a very simple question: What is it about Masterminds that make enemies lose their nerve and run away almost immediately? And I'm not talking about running 10 feet away then turning around to shoot, oh, no. I mean taking excursions into neighbouring states for the summer, then maybe settling there forever. And this isn't one enemy here and there. This isn't one specific faction or one specific enemy. It's EVERY spawn I've fought with my Mastermind. I'll attack them, do NOTHING but order henchmen to attack, and no more than 4 seconds later, or just about after one attack per enemy, the NPC villains will scatter like cockroaches.

Normally, this isn't such a big problem, since I can either immobilize them with Web Grenade, slow them with either Caltrops or Poison Gas Trap, knock them down via various Robot attacks, or out and out kill them before they go too far. But when we're talking about an elite boss, I have to start grumbling a bit. More specifically, I'm talking about Burkholder, as found in Jenni Adiar's arc.

So I see the dude spawn into distance, set my robots to Bodyguard and wait. Brukholder comes down the corridor, shoots at me once, misses, then keeps on running right past me, around the corner, down another corridor and far, far away. It felt almost like that comedy sketch where two people run at each other to hug, only it turns out one of them was going for someone else and completely misses the other person. Brukholder literally ran right past me and took almost no interest.

But I figure, OK, maybe it was the Acid Mortar that scared him, so I waited for him to come back, by which time my mortar had timed out, robots still on Bodyguard. He comes back, shoots at me once, misses again, then takes off running. He did this several times, until I realised he had no intention of attacking me, so keeping my robots on Bodyguard was pointless. Instead, I set them to Attack/Aggressive and essentially spammed Bruckholder with Web Grenade, managing to hold him about 2/3 of the time before his resistances timed out my effect. During this entire time, Bruckholder made no attempt to fight back. He just kept trying to run away as my bots shot him to ****, if you'll pardon my language.

What
The
Hell?

Seriously, what is it about the AI which makes them just not want to fight Masterminds ever? Why am I having to spend 3/4 of my time chasing runners? Why will elite bosses refuse to fight me? What possible purpose could having enemies tour the map possibly serve for the game as a whole? And why has nothing been done about it since Leandro posted a Fraps video of pretty much the same thing with Nosferatu?

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.

IIRC, Castle reported the running mobs as WAI.

Which is stupid, but that'd be why it's not fixed.

Running in general, yes (even if I still disagree), but elite bosses who never fore off more than a couple of shots can't be working as intended. I could have had 1 HP the entire fight and I'd never have been in any danger, because Bruckholder never fired off more than a couple of attacks, either at me or at my robots. All he did was try to run away.

Essentially, I fought a Mole Machine.

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.

I thought you Villain types would love seeing your enemies flee in terror at your power?

It's not just Masterminds, I noticed this happening a lot on my Brute this weekend.

I hate the running 90% of the time. Then there's that 10% where it makes me laugh.

Example: I, on my Dark/Dark Brute, hover in to a group of Nemesis. After a leisurely Soul Drain I proceed to hammer all but one Nemesis Dragoon into the ground with little effort.

He stares at me, being out of range of my melee attacks and my DoT aura.

I stare at him, waiting for Gloom to recharge.

He takes the **** off and the next time I see him he's slowly walking back from the other end of the map.

"Maybe he forgot about me, maybe he forgot ab-- OH GOD THERE HE IS!"

MM = Villain - those Rogues and Praetorians aren't totally trustworthy

Welcome to the wonderful world of Traps. Hope you wore your running shoes. You'll be needing them.

Another mission, another elite boss, another absurdity. This time it was Protean, an elite boss I probably wouldn't have been able to beat, had he not acted like an idiot. Why unable to beat him? Well, he had SERIOUS outgoing damage, enough to almost two-shot me even through bodyguard, I noticed, and enough to just about one-shot all of my bots. Not only that, but it's exceedingly difficulty to escape his Power Syphon when it's me, a Forcefield Generator and six robots that don't like to listen to commands. In fact, he caused me to retreat several times, and run away to buy inspirations once.

Then the next time I fought him, he was a pushover. Why? Well, he lost about 10% of his health, and he took off running. I was able to web-grenade him in just about in place, and my robots shot him into raw stakes without him firing off a single shot in return, or indeed fighting back at all. Had I not been able to immobilize him, however, Protean would have continued to run through the curiously selective fire that burns me but not him, making it impossible for me to take him down.

You know, this ranges between making the game unplayable to making it too damn easy, and that cannot be working as intended.

*edit*
I just about gave up on using Traps summons. I kept the Forcefield Generator up and did use Web Grenade, but Protean ran around so much there was no way to make use of anything else. He'd just leave it behind.

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.

Yeah, something is seriously out of whack with Enemy A.I. at the moment. They seem to have had added cowardice programming recently...or again. I lose track. Either way, its seriousl annoying and could bear looking at with some scrutiny.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

As I recall, Burkholder is supposed to be something of a coward and opportunist. It's possible that his "run" AI setting is cranked to 11 to simulate screaming, pants-wetting wussiness. It's annoying, but at least it's sort of plausible.

Regular mobs running away so much is a nuisance. I've got the impression that debuffs, especially AoE debuffs, really push the "Run away!" button. That can make it a royal pain for some sets, including Traps. I try to make sure my debuffers always have a good immobilize (or an excellent slow or two), but sometimes it's not enough, or concept doesn't allow for it.

Worst of all, in my opinion, are panicky giant monsters. Deathsurge and Scrapyard are notorious in this regard; I've chased Scrapyard over half the island with a single lowbie corruptor. Even if running away is WAI for most mobs, giant monsters really ought to stand their ground more.

Hey Sam, is your MM Alpha slotted? Is it possible that mobs are more inclined to flee from our Alpha slotted characters? Hmm...

It's not just traps; it's the frankly retarded AI. I've have chased numerous minions, bosses, lieutenants and Elite Bosses across dozens of maps. I even made my own thread about it.

The problem isn't when one or two do it for concept; it's when they ALL do it regardless of circumstance. Even the new bluside arc, "Bad People, Good Intentions" was marred by the Zeus Titan E-B running around the Sky Raiders' floating fortress. My first redside GM was Scrapyard and we must've spent an hour chasing him round the dockyards and we weren't even winning.

And don't get me started on the uber-cheat of them all: Director 11. Level 54 and still runs like a little (beeswax) only he gets to leave mines eveywhere around him (even if he's not there).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

I did those arcs with my tanks and none of the enemies seemed to run at all.

Its you, Samuel.




Your reputation precedes you.

The biggest difficulty I've found in soloing Giant Monsters is their habit of running all over creation -- the first GM I soloed on my bots/traps took 45 minutes, because Babbage insisted on taking the grand tour of Boomtown. I've gotten better at controlling them so they run *through* the poison gas cloud rather than away from it, but it's still annoying.

I bet the enemy AI is programmed to run around looking for Synapse so they can footstomp him

The pattern I notice is that enemies will start running when they start accumulating masses of DoT--regardless of actual damage dealt, which is further bolstered when the enemy can't hit the player be it due to high defence or floored tohit.

This makes things unnecessarily tedious for trap players (hello, acid mortar), MMs (where the majority of damage dealt is through a steady stream), widows, spines/thorny players, etc...

I have seen Rommie and the Nictus Take off for a trip around the World when truing to pull him. Also Rommie cannot use stairs to well, when being pulled to the grass.

Last night I was running Posi 1 and 2 with some friends. I anchored Darkest Night onto a clockwork boss. Not long after, another boss aggro'd and came running over. The very second he touched the Darkest Night debuff effect he took off running. I understand that it is part of the run away code that mobs will flee if they detect they are very strongly debuffed. But come on! A single Darkest Night? I didn't even have Tar Patch down at the time.

Hmm, I'd have to ask what powerset for Mastermind, but typically, there are a lot of powers in the MM powersets that cause AI scatter/fear. For me, the Incendiary Missiles are really bad about it because they create burn patches.