Game mode: [Enter game mode here: Online official Type of issue: [Enter one of the following: Performance Server type: [Enter one of the following: PvE Region: North America
Over the weekend, those of us who persevered thru the movement changes were grinding long hours trying to level our new followers so that we can be prepared for the new and stronger purges. Unfortunately, most of the time when we would enter combat, our follower would simply stand idly by while the player does all the attacking, sometimes for up to 1 minute. Sometimes, the player taking damage will spur the follower into action, but it is not consistent.
Sadly, this complete lack of responsiveness, makes the followers almost useless. Even with all the extra power afforded them by the new update, that power is meaningless if they don’t act.
Please provide a step-by-step process of how the bug can be reproduced. The more details you provide us with the easier it will be for us to find and fix the bug:
Take a thrall deployed after the leveling patch along as a follower.
Get into combat and observe that the thrall does not also enter combat.
Take damage and hope that causes the thrall to act.
Finish 90% of all fights yourself while your thrall is seemingly leveling up by taking notes instead of fighting.
The same issue in single player…one time I did hit my thrall with a sword to make him to draw his weapon, and it is a real problem if your thrall is an archer and you expect some “fire” support…you know…
Indeed, and on top of that, it seems like some bosses have had their AI altered to almost always prioritize attacking the player if they land any hits even if a thrall was actually doing tons of damage — Red Mother and the Scorpion Queen being prime examples.
Naturally, enemies still moving at full speed while the player is stuck in mud makes this an even more interesting experience.
In PvE hitting my thrall has no effect, but yes archers seems to have their own problems. If I go into a place where there are obstructions, archers will simply fire into trees or buildings wasting Serpentman Arrows. Their shots are on-target with what they are aiming at, but it’s like they can’t tell there’s a building in the way.
I did notice it too, AI improve but our Thralls are dumber and dumber…and now we are slower to enjoy the full experience
Yes, archers have more problems, yesterday my archer didn’t move, my archer just wanted to stand still and shoot down the evil rock…the only rock in the map in front of the enemy. And maybe it (my thrall waking up) was just a coincidence but normaly they don’t enter in battle with aggroed enemies they wait until you hit them or when they want to attack your enemies.
By no means is this argumentative. I have had a vastly different experience, with the following two datapoints that I think you might consider relevant:
I have been leveling Val Resnick, a newly-deployed Bandit Leader, and Starling, a newly-caught/converted RHTS Fighter.
Starling is exceptionally quick, and reacts rapidly. She will attack with fervor but will become confused by a mob. It’s best to draw one or two at a time to her, then strike the leading enemy.
The Bandit Leader has become so good at Level 9 that I can hit a Nord Archer with a Set Arrow from 100 meters away and Val will run to attack him.
In both cases, if the distance between Val or Starling and me becomes too great, they’ll simply freeze until I either run to the tether limit (causing them to teleport away from the engagement), or I close in on their pack of enemies and attack one of them with likely a healing arrow. Then my duder will engage.
Relic Hunter Treasure Seekers (both archers and fighters)
Beast-Tamer Frida
Markos, Bane of Beasts
Cimmerian Berserker (new purge version)
Another data-point that may be relevant is how taxed each of our servers was. On PC, for some reason PvE players in North America all seem to flock to whichever server is the most-populated. Not sure why someone’s thought process would go, “I want to build big beautiful castles, why don’t I pick the server with the least space,” but that’s how it shakes out.
At any rate with everyone and their brother wanting to check out mounts or other changes, #1502 was at or near 40/40 most of the weekend. Also keep in mind that PvE servers such as ours are still full of orphaned thralls — a problem that I’m guessing PvP servers don’t really have since you can kill them directly.
With that in mind, would you say that the load on your server was comparable? Because with the results you’re seeing, I’m wondering if server load is what’s rendering followers inert.
EDIT: Re-read your post and the bit about tethering/teleporting reminded me… Virtually everyone on the server was complaining about their followers disappearing on them when traveling around. I myself often noticed mine running far enough behind that they ought to have teleported, but even then they would just as often disappear until I got injured again.
I’m starting to wonder if maybe the player count on Official PvE servers needs to be lowered to ~30 or so to compensate.
That all checks out. Our server has had at most 5 on at any given time since the patch. On TestLive when we were close to 25 with followers/horses, there were several reports of “jumping” thralls. I’m not certain of it, but it could be as the load increases, server polling might be reduced thus creating long skips in the tether contact.
I experienced it just like that when I spent around 20 hours or more to level up my 1 fighter it’s already bad enough that they require 20 million xp each but to add to that they don’t attack most of the time it’s such a put down
