Broken Combat -- Immortal NPC's -- Faulty anti cheeze mechanic

[Philix]

Game mode: Online official
Type of issue:Bug / Performance
Server type: ALL
Region: EU
Mods?: NO
Edition: Steam

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Bug Description:

A clear and concise description of what the bug is.

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NPC’s who have no direct path to the player become immortal.

I believe this is some kind of “anti cheeze” mechanic like to stop me standing halfway up a cliff and attacking a boss to death with a bow however it to sensitive.

In areas with bad pathing, the hostile NPC becomes immortal until either the server works out a path or the player becomes close enough for the NPC to attack the player.

As an archer who is regularly at the back of combat this is game-breaking I use my thrall as a tank while i shoot and I’m regularly finding that neither myself nor my thrall can do any damage to the NPC until i get close enough (think auto-lock Q range) I don’t want to be this close to the fight that’s why I choose to play as an archer.

https://youtu.be/VQtpKN7rQkg

In this video, I changed the weapon to one that stacks poison because I wanted to show that the hits don’t land you can easily see the hits that do land as they stack the poison debuff.

I order my thrall to attack and while the hostile NPC has a path to me, the first hit lands successfully but as I run up the hill and the NPC struggles to path you can see two clear hits that apply no damage at all and do not stack the debuff the NPC here is immortal because it cant decide how to get to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK3VTYLWIvE

In this video, I order the thrall to attack a group from the range I would normally engage with using my bow the wolf takes several hits and receives no damage at all because I personally am out of agro range of the wolf so it makes no attempt to path to me and is such immortal.

Whatever mechanic this needs to be fixed i don’t want to have to be inside melee range and ensuring an NPC has a simple path to me to be able to clear basic NPCs without issue.

Expected Behavior:

A clear and concise description of what you expected to happen.

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NPC’s should always take damage if they are being attacked, if preventing people from “cheezing” mobs also prevents normal game play then its not a fix. I care more about being able to play in a fluid and immersive way than i do about people being able to kill hard mobs from a cliff with a bow.

Installed Mods:

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Steps to Reproduce:

Please provide a step-by-step process of how the bug can be reproduced. Please be as detailed as possible; the more details, the easier it will be for us to find and fix the bug:

1. Step 1
2. Step 2
3. Step 3
4. Etc.

Engage a mob and walk backwards until the mob and thrall are fighting but your outside of agro range

or

Engage a mob and run around until the NPC can no longer path to you

[Multigun]

Yes, it’s an anti-cheat/anti-cheese mechanic. Been there a long while now. As for the out of range and no damage, that’s a performance trick. Annoying and I feel its a bit aggressive (but I do NOT have the performance data Funcom has), but its still a performance trick.

[hal9000]

Yeah, out of range enemies take no damage when your thrall is fighting them for you.

Given this, at the very least, the player’s thrall should not fight, and take no damage, when it is following a player who is out of range of the immortal NPC…

[DanQuixote]

Gotta agree - something needs to be done here. As you say - at the very least, followers should not take damage if they cannot deal damage. I nearly lost a lvl20 thrall last night because we were in a cave, then the game decided that actually she should be above ground instead - I could hear her fighting things and, fortunately, I know what that means and just ran as far and as fast as possible so that she would be forced to teleport to me. By the time she showed up, she had lost three-quarters of her hp.

I can understand there may be performance reasons for limiting combat range (presumably something along the lines of a ‘placeholder’ rather than fully active NPC beyond a certain range?) - it would seem a bit better in a game with ranged weapons if NPCs could be damaged from any range that you can hit them, but like @Multigun says, without access to all the performance data Funcom has maybe there are good reasons for Funcom to limit the range where they have. But that limit really needs to apply equally - followers should not be damaged by NPCs that they cannot deal damage to.