Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Mob chains and limitations

    • 35 posts
    March 20, 2016 11:51 AM PDT

    Over the course of various games, there's been a wide variation over the length of mob chains. Inasmuch, some travel/content has been trivialized at the dungeon level because mob chains are somewhat ridiculous (and combined with mounts, you just run past 'em)-- this is prevelant in FFXIV. 

    I think plenty of us remember the "TRAIN TO ZONE" warnings of Crushbone or Karnor's Castle. There were sometimes annoying, often dangerous, but they reinforced a valuable point: Poor decisions yield poor consequences that you can't just "outrun". 

     

    So what's the mix here between sanity and crazed floods of mobs? What say ye?

    • 613 posts
    March 20, 2016 12:00 PM PDT

    Quozzel said:

    Over the course of various games, there's been a wide variation over the length of mob chains. Inasmuch, some travel/content has been trivialized at the dungeon level because mob chains are somewhat ridiculous (and combined with mounts, you just run past 'em)-- this is prevelant in FFXIV. 

    I think plenty of us remember the "TRAIN TO ZONE" warnings of Crushbone or Karnor's Castle. There were sometimes annoying, often dangerous, but they reinforced a valuable point: Poor decisions yield poor consequences that you can't just "outrun". 

     

    So what's the mix here between sanity and crazed floods of mobs? What say ye?

    oh yes I remember that.  Would have been nice to have mobs with snare or something to slow or stop the offender.  Lol that payback thing would come back in spades.  

     

    So so far most games now limit the distance of mob roaming of the act of following.  Is that realistic?  Not at all.  I agree consequences are needed.  

    Giant train!  As the bum hops out of zone.   Now that I think about it, it was really annoying. 

     

    Ox

    • 1095 posts
    March 20, 2016 12:06 PM PDT

    I like trains. Pulling Tangrin around Field of Bone for lulz. :)

    • 2419 posts
    March 20, 2016 12:40 PM PDT

    Trains make sense, especially if who's chasing you is a sentient species.  You're an invader, you're killing their kind and have been for some time.  They despise your very existence and, suddenly when they get the upper hand and you run for your life to escape them they, and any of them you come across on your way out,  should chase you until they can go no further (the zoneline).  Don't blame the coding, pathing or aggro mechanics for trains...blame the players.  They are trying to avoid the consequences for their poor decision and you're paying the price.

    • 2130 posts
    March 20, 2016 1:00 PM PDT

    I will say that, and I've said this before, I do not believe real life and implications of sapience are a good reason to implement a mechanic in a fantasy game. The reality of the situation is that trains have an extremely high potential for abuse. While I personally feel that it's a worthy tradeoff for the mechanic I think it's important to not downplay the fact that training has historically been a catalyst for abuse more than anything else.

    • 117 posts
    March 20, 2016 1:51 PM PDT

    I like the few lessor known games that have tried to go back to an eq style game on mobile both did a mix you could train your. Self and your party but mobs outside there spawn point or path would not attack and could not be attacked by other players 

    • 220 posts
    March 20, 2016 2:00 PM PDT

    Trains are a gift for enchanters trying to make a name for themselves.  Live or die, abused or accidental, I love trains! (and no i dont support abuse, but whatever mechanics are in, some @ssh@t will find a way to abuse others with them.  Its human nature) 

    • 66 posts
    March 20, 2016 2:25 PM PDT
    Bring on the trains
    • 128 posts
    March 20, 2016 3:35 PM PDT

    Definitly want to see trains again. Or in a smaller sense: Kiting for xp.

     

    Always had fun kiting mobs that could kill me in one hit, but gave a good junk of xp after 10min of kiting. It was possible to get better xp by taking greater risk. Even solo. And that is missing from current MMOs alltogether. Sure you can find harder mobs, but they either slam you into the ground or proove no challange at all. Either way the xp stays the same.

     

    Bottomline: Bring back consequences and freedom of choice. Trains are a big part of that.

    • 1714 posts
    March 20, 2016 3:44 PM PDT

    It's easy to say in retrospect that one of the reasons we loved zones like Unrest and have such vidid memories of them is because of the trains and forget that we weren't so happy about it at the time. That said, I love the dynamics introduced by having zones instead of a seamless world. 

    • 67 posts
    March 20, 2016 4:44 PM PDT

    Choo-Choo!

    Heck yes... Mob trains please! And no short leashes - or at least, not for every mob type. Have some chase you a short distance, others only until you've left their "territory", etc.  Make it interesting, require players to have to learn about how different mobs behave, along with how they aggro, etc. Keep the world interesting.

    Many people over the years have argued that mob trains are there only to "punish the player and slow them down". They've said similar things about xp loss on death, etc. In both cases, I feel they're missing the point altogether.

    The knowledge that mobs can link up and chase you down is supposed to make people more careful while pulling mobs, or while traveling through a zone.  Just as knowing you can lose xp if you die is supposed to make you play more cautiously, use more strategy and timing and your knowledge of different enemies (such as, you know, how they aggro, how far they'll chase, etc), so death becomes a rarity.

    If you pay attention, learn the mobs and how they aggro, if they're social, etc, and are careful in your travels, or pulling for a group, mob trains should be a rarity. Just as dying and losing xp (or whatever penalty VR decide on) should be a rarity if you're choosing targets carefully, working well as a group and not pulling stuff you can't handle, or being reckless. If you're regularly getting mob trains, or dying frequently, you're doing something very wrong and need to re-evaluate your strategy. That's the point. It keeps encounters more interesting, it makes the world more dangerous, and it helps keep the leveling process much more interesting than if it were just mindlessly playing whack-a-mole with no fear of failure.

    Modern MMO devs have coddled players to the point of almost any achievement (except the absolute most difficult content found only at end-game) being hollow, because it's attained with little to no challenge. One of the most egregious examples I've seen of this was people cemetery hopping in WoW. Never, until that game, did I ever hear of people dying on purpose, and respawning at cemeteries as a convenient means of traveling across a zone more quickly. Dying should never been seen as a convenience in a MMO. There's just something very wrong with that whole picture.



    This post was edited by Wolfsong at March 21, 2016 5:11 AM PDT
    • 130 posts
    March 20, 2016 7:57 PM PDT

    Open the floodgates, mobs ahoy!  I remember chilling at ZI in Karnor's, people would shout which side of the zone line they were dragging trains.  Ha!  Fond memories.

    • 95 posts
    March 20, 2016 8:04 PM PDT

    I am fine with trains still occuring. You might have some mob AI that could distract them, but they do not forget if they are still chasing.

    Where you might be able to advance things is having more varied zone lines. Instead of just 1-2 static locations you might have 4-5 in outdoor zones that connect making the call "TRAIN TO ZONE" a bit more hectic. Obviously only where practical such as your connections between zones like Greater or Lesser Faydark that are close together. The distant zones however you would likely still have the reduced zone enterances due to the distances travelled. 

    Dugeons on the other hand like the Karnor's of olde, was perfectly fine as it was developed.

    What I would also like to see is using their perception systems have some skills or limited way for the player to know if mobs are tied together and will pull if you aggro them. Some kind of indication that you might need to explore the advanced pulling tactics, CC, or some alternative. 


    This post was edited by Janthu at March 20, 2016 8:06 PM PDT
    • 67 posts
    March 21, 2016 5:16 AM PDT

    Janthu said:

    I am fine with trains still occuring. You might have some mob AI that could distract them, but they do not forget if they are still chasing.



    Oh, I like the sound of this. So, in other words, have certain creature types who are "natural enemies" of each other (no pun intended), so if you're being chased by a wolf, for example.. and know that there's an area with some wild sheep, you can run them through there, and the wolf is likely to stop chasing  you and go after the sheep instead?

    If that's what you were getting at, that's a very cool idea! Give players another way to deal with such situations.

    • 31 posts
    March 21, 2016 9:58 AM PDT

    I would love to see a mechanic that mobs "remember" the last few folks on the agro list even if they zone out.  The hated player zones back in and, guess what - lots of friends move to welcome them.

     

    Not sure if that would fix the abuse issue but it might.

    • 1714 posts
    March 21, 2016 11:40 AM PDT

    Kickaha said:

    I would love to see a mechanic that mobs "remember" the last few folks on the agro list even if they zone out.  The hated player zones back in and, guess what - lots of friends move to welcome them.

     

    Not sure if that would fix the abuse issue but it might.

    So all the player with aggro has to do is zone back in and train the entire zone again with 0 risk to themselves? 

    • 10 posts
    March 22, 2016 9:37 AM PDT

    Personally Im all for trains.

    For me it was the advent of trains in OS or KC that made combat interesting and need skill rather than being a borefest of total predictability.

    They were also a great way to get people talking!

    • 31 posts
    March 23, 2016 4:02 PM PDT

    Krixus - I said I dont know if it would fix the abuse but what happens now is just as bad. 

     

    Current behavior:

    Innocent_player_01 is fighting a mob "near" the zone and a massive train runs by chasing Evil_bastage_01.  Knowing all he has to do is zone out and he immediately drops agro and will dump his train on Innocent_player_01.

     

    Desired behavior:

    Innocent_player_01 is fighting a mob "near" the zone and a massive train runs by chasing Evil_bastage_01 who zones.  Evil_bastage_01 zones back in "knowing" he has dropped agro but instead gets gang tackled by the 5 mobs at the zone (who have waited 30/45/60 secs to drop agro and chase someone else - like Innocent_player_01 - who has had time to dispose of the mob he was fighting).

     

    Anyway, its a thought.

    • 72 posts
    March 24, 2016 11:31 AM PDT

    Kickaha said:

    I would love to see a mechanic that mobs "remember" the last few folks on the agro list even if they zone out.  The hated player zones back in and, guess what - lots of friends move to welcome them.

     

    Not sure if that would fix the abuse issue but it might.

     

    As long as it's not as bad as the pre-pre alpha video that after a wipe and 5 minutes of talking the named boss shows up at the revive point to wipe them again.

    That did make me laugh though.

    • 31 posts
    March 25, 2016 6:22 PM PDT

    Many times I pulled a train to zone to find a few low level players trying to break into the zone, so what did I do what any normal non selserving person would do I ran back the other way and died knowing I didn't wipe out a totally innocent bystander. I have also called train to zone to be told bring it on and run there to find a bunch of high level players chiling and derail my train for me. So there are all types, had a monk mad at us because our group was full and couldn't invite him so he kept pulling big pulls on our group which basically just helped us kill faster he ended up getting killed by his own train and left us alone after that so like I said all different types and every game has them. 

    • 37 posts
    March 25, 2016 9:08 PM PDT

    I would hope that this game doesn't chain stuff to its spawn point. EQ nailed it on that concept.

    Even though at some point everyone will be railroaded by a train that isn't called out, that isn't a big enough deal to remove trains. I recall times that someone would train a gigantic group of crap in Velks Lab and there would be a named in it and somehow you end up benefitting from their mistake. Trains also make you aware of your surroundings. You pay more attention to where you are and what may or may not be coming by you. AFK at Lake of Ill Omen and Frontier Mountain zone? Bad. And I bet you'll never do it again. (assuming there is a penalty for dying and no instancing). If we don't have training, penalty for death, and non-instance zones, you won't care whats around you.


    This post was edited by Dreake at March 25, 2016 9:09 PM PDT