Current Creature Threat Mechanics


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Goblin Squad Member

Urman wrote:
I dunno. I wonder if what you're seeing in "these half dozen to dozen groups" is that the soloers and 2 man teams are removing the 2- and 3-mob groups, and leaving the big groups. The big groups don't despawn and eventually the hex is nothing but big stuff, which encourages us to stop soloing and group up.

I dunno either, but I know I've been out far afield with no sign of anyone within several hexes while checking the resources and the place is filled with groups of eight to twelve and almost no duos or trios.

Some very sweet resource areas too. High stealth is definitely handy.

Goblin Squad Member

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Nihimon wrote:
Stephen Cheney wrote:
Also, if you're sure something got initial threat and gave up sooner than 10 seconds, that's also a bug.
I've seen this happen frequently. Most often, it seems to happen when there are significant z-axis differences between the mob and the player, or when there are significant deformations in the terrain between them. I'll find a spot and demonstrate it on twitch tonight if possible.

As promised, here's a video of me tagging an Ogre at the top of a rise. The Ogre seems to reset pretty quickly, but maybe I'm missing something.

Testing Threat Decay after Initial Aggro


Being wrote:
Some very sweet resource areas too. High stealth is definitely handy.

Sadly, stealth in PvE doesn't need to go beyond.. well.. anything. Maybe invest one point if it makes you feel better. The mobs don't seem to be perceiving very much right now. My guess is that tech just isn't in yet.


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@ Stephen:

So we are all very clear about one thing: We don't want you taking any of the programmer's time and energy away from all the other things yall've got going on right now. So let me propose this to you and the group at large:

Given: GW is on a 2 week build cycle (normally)
Given: Beta is for testing just as much as Alpha is

Do: Start EE with the current AI set-up; at week 3 (the next build cycle) try tweaking some of the numbers in the table and see how we like it; at week 5, reset and tweak a different set of numbers; at week 7, reset and tweak a different set of numbers.... and so on so we can get a feel for the various different ways tweaking numbers in the table can affect game play.

Do this for the first 2 or 3 months until either a) we find a setting that most of us can agree on and/or b) the programmers have time to develop some fancier AI tech.

Is that agreeable to everyone?

Scarab Sages Goblin Squad Member

sspitfire1 wrote:

@ Stephen:

So we are all very clear about one thing: We don't want you taking any of the programmer's time and energy away from all the other things yall've got going on right now. So let me propose this to you and the group at large:

Given: GW is on a 2 week build cycle (normally)
Given: Beta is for testing just as much as Alpha is

Do: Start EE with the current AI set-up; at week 3 (the next build cycle) try tweaking some of the numbers in the table and see how we like it; at week 5, reset and tweak a different set of numbers; at week 7, reset and tweak a different set of numbers.... and so on so we can get a feel for the various different ways tweaking numbers in the table can affect game play.

Do this for the first 2 or 3 months until either a) we find a setting that most of us can agree on and/or b) the programmers have time to develop some fancier AI tech.

Is that agreeable to everyone?

It's agreeable to me.


Nihimon wrote:
Nihimon wrote:
Stephen Cheney wrote:
Also, if you're sure something got initial threat and gave up sooner than 10 seconds, that's also a bug.
I've seen this happen frequently. Most often, it seems to happen when there are significant z-axis differences between the mob and the player, or when there are significant deformations in the terrain between them. I'll find a spot and demonstrate it on twitch tonight if possible.

As promised, here's a video of me tagging an Ogre at the top of a rise. The Ogre seems to reset pretty quickly, but maybe I'm missing something.

Testing Threat Decay after Initial Aggro

yeah, this is good.

I guess the one downside is that it doesn't show constant dps, but it does show there is a big flaw. I think if you had been dpsing it would have run to you, but if you were using a longbow and taking some steps back it probably wouldn't have made it.

I could see this being an unrealistic scenario because who would just pop something once. Even tho, as I said... it shows something is clearly wrong.

Goblin Squad Member

Hogar, Freevale wrote:
First thing: Monsters are just moving harvesting nodes in my book. Personally i see no reason changing anything.
sspitfire1 wrote:

@ Stephen:

So we are all very clear about one thing: We don't want you taking any of the programmer's time and energy away from all the other things yall've got going on right now. So let me propose this to you and the group at large:

Given: GW is on a 2 week build cycle (normally)
Given: Beta is for testing just as much as Alpha is

Do: Start EE with the current AI set-up; at week 3 (the next build cycle) try tweaking some of the numbers in the table and see how we like it; at week 5, reset and tweak a different set of numbers; at week 7, reset and tweak a different set of numbers.... and so on so we can get a feel for the various different ways tweaking numbers in the table can affect game play.

Do this for the first 2 or 3 months until either a) we find a setting that most of us can agree on and/or b) the programmers have time to develop some fancier AI tech.

Is that agreeable to everyone?

Sounds viable

Goblin Squad Member

Nihimon wrote:

First, I was specifically limiting my suggestions to the variables that Stephen explained he could easily change.

Second, I was hoping that Stephen or another dev would expound on the more nuanced aspects of their intentions with Threat Decay. I understand that some decay is necessary if they don't have a distance-based leash.

Having it be more dangerous to run through mob infested areas does not strike me as a downside. The world is supposed to be dangerous, and groups acting cohesively are, I believe, intended to be more successful than solo gatherers.

That danger was always expected to come from other players, primarily.


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Bluddwolf wrote:
Nihimon wrote:

First, I was specifically limiting my suggestions to the variables that Stephen explained he could easily change.

Second, I was hoping that Stephen or another dev would expound on the more nuanced aspects of their intentions with Threat Decay. I understand that some decay is necessary if they don't have a distance-based leash.

Having it be more dangerous to run through mob infested areas does not strike me as a downside. The world is supposed to be dangerous, and groups acting cohesively are, I believe, intended to be more successful than solo gatherers.

That danger was always expected to come from other players, primarily.

It is, but hear me out on this...

the players can't do everything. This game will never be hardcore enough (in my opinion) in terms of PKing where it's an adrenaline rush just to go out and farm some lifeless mobs.

At the top it might be player ---><--- player, but underneath it, there has to be a heart of a game. It all has to come up into that. If there aren't levels of pve, tough areas, easy areas... then it will be basically a very simple pvp game.

I believe everything from crafting to roleplay to challenging environments, they all make the game more serious when it comes to pvp because then it means more.

Imagine a game where there are mobs of goats. Or the whole map is just mobs of goats standing around. And you know, dudes can go up to the goats and milk them, some dudes can farm them if they want to... and then every once in awhile they get ganked. I dunno if that's gonna be enough to keep my attention, but that's about what non-pvp feels like atm.

Goblin Squad Member

All of economics is PVP. I can't wait until we have the "real" game to start running that engine up to speed.

As I've said many times, I have little-to-no hand/eye co-ordination, thus the "standard" PVP is likely to remain...shall we say "unfulfilling"?...but the analytical opportunities of economics...yum.

Goblin Squad Member

Hardin Steele wrote:

I can solo groups up to 4-5 as long as there is no yellow leader in the group if I am wearing heavy armor and have a decent weapon. In my sweat suit with broom handle I started with I was lucky to kill one mob before having to run away and sometimes didn't get away, and my sweat suit got dirty and my broom handle was degraded. What made me very sad.

But that does lead me to believe we were able to wipe the small groups while we were all running solo, leaving the large groups intact. Running in a party will make the large groups less of a problem.

Bearing in mind my Alpha 8 character is 50% crafter so not optimised for melee.

My technique on soloing groups with one single boss monster is target him with ranged and stand and shoot until he closes by which stage he has taken enough damage to go down in melee with a hit or so and then switch to AoE melee like cleave or whirlwind to finish off the minions.

One comment on earlier discussion about 40m threat range. This is totally ignoring the fact that players using shortbows, wands, cleric spells and charge feats like shield charge all need to stealth within 20 m before attacking.

Goblin Squad Member

I did a bit of testing on the aggro reset time (on Ogre Warrior, Shaman, Brute, Behemoth). Of the various things I did, the aggro seemed shortest when I stayed at longer ranges (some of the mobs never left their flattened circle) and tagging one from 35m to start combat. This leads me to wonder if they are not getting the 10 second minimum counter if they never come within their 20m detection range of the character.

Goblin Squad Member

I would also add that damaging them as a restart for aggro could be exploited.

Stop shooting and retreat till they drop aggro, let them get almost out of range and shoot again drawing them back, stop shooting and retreat till they drop aggro, rinse and repeat.


Would it not be easier to adjust the threat generator to the player on initial threat notice than on the creatures. That way, if a player was running by 6 creatures, 3 on 2 separate groups that he was running between he would only gather notice from 2-6 of them if the radius was still set to 15m as you said.

If you increased the threat generated on the initial hit/attack from 50 to 100 and then dropped off slowly from there it could increase their interest level longer.

Set notice of anything within 5m initial hit creature to gain 50 aggro of threat and then drop off without hits exponentially they would lose interest if only their buddy was getting hit but if you stayed and fought they would join in too.

Increase threat generated by each additional attack to +50 on initial creature to maintain interest (unless another player engages it then increae their threat to 100) that makes it viable for group encounters to draw multiple threat so if one guy pulls then drops his aggro running back to the pc group and another pc fires on it that threat jumps to them instead 50<100 drop off point could be 10 threat per 10ms so 1 round of inactivity by the puller would allow them to lose interest but any additional hits would bring aggro back up to 100 again for that player.

Set return drop off if no attacks to 10 per 10ms with no additional attack activity for creature reset.

Add roving spawns or at the least, regionalize the spawn table from center point of camp so that they roam within a pathing of X meters from the center point of spawn.This could make for some interesting game play as the spawns move around you may have 5 bunched up on one side but the 6th is off to the left by himself and single players could use tactics since the other 5 would lose interest quickly at 5km fm targeted npc.

Just some thoughts...


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celestialiar wrote:
Imagine a game where there are mobs of goats. Or the whole map is just mobs of goats standing around. And you know, dudes can go up to the goats and milk them, some dudes can farm them if they want to... and then every once in awhile they get ganked. I dunno if that's gonna be enough to keep my attention, but that's about what non-pvp feels like atm.

I'm a goat. If you try to milk me, farm me or gank me, I will eat your shirt. You've been warned.

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