NPCs respawning mid-battle, disappearing

[LDM]

All right, I know this belongs in the bug section, and I will indeed post it there as well, but bug reporting requires a fixed format, and I want to discuss this freely…

I can’t be the only one affected by this, and it surprises me that people are not talking about this grave issue.

Since (I believe) patch 2.3, it seems that NPCs (and by that I mean thrallables, monsters, any “mob” that isn’t the PC), when cornered or stuck, they will either “ghost” through the scenery or try to teleport to their original spawn point. Well, ghosting is not so bad. For example, when me and my thrall corner a Darfari against a hut, it will now just ghost through the hut and not get cornered against it. The problem is when they ghost through a cliff, boulder, etc, and get stuck in there, being unreachable and lost. Then my thrall will just stare the NPC he was targeting, unable to disengage, leaving me to fight the other NPCs alone. That is specially infuriating if said NPC was a t4 thrall I was trying to farm for weeks.

Another change that seems to have come in the same patch, is that NPCs that are mid-battle and somehow get stuck and can’t path properly anymore, they will disappear and reappear/teleport/respawn at their original spawn point. Problem is, they will respawn with a full health bar and clean of any effects. Basically, it is a newly respawned NPC, not the one you was fighting minutes ago.

Yet another change was that now, when cornered over the edge of a cliff, NPCs will either back away until they fall from the cliff, or they will also fall if you corner them against the cliff/ledge/whatever. Before, they would just stand their ground and resist being pushed over the edge. This is really annoying if your thrall was engaging said NPC, because the thrall will either jump along the falling NPC, or they will go all the way down there to pursue the NPC. Also, the NPC doesn’t seem to take fall damage (at least considerably).
This last issue would be also hilarious if it wasn’t so frustrating, when your archers perched on that ledge will back away when a purge approaches and they fall down from their positions…

I will give you three examples that just happened to me:

1. I was fighting the albino bat. Mind you, my server settings are configured to make fights harder (2x enemy health, less weapon damage, nerfed thralls, etc.) . After a long battle where I almost lost my thrall, bat’s health should be at 10% or less. Then he falls in one of those ledges on the sides of the tower and get stuck there. Well, then me and my thrall just proceeded to hit him with arrows and orbs, but clearly the bat wasn’t able to path anymore (nevermind that it is freaking flying bat and should be able to), then he just disappears and respawn at his spawn point with full health. I almost threw my monitor through the window.

2. I was wandering through Sepermeru, Southlake and suddenly came across a Iblis of Zingara. I have been looking for a t4 alchi for some time now, so of course me and my thrall proceeded to truncheon the beejesus out of her. We cornered her against a cliff and she ghosted throug it, then she just fell under the mesh. I know that because that’s where my thrall kept looking at. Also, combat music kept playing. I almost threw my keyboard through the window.

3. I was farming for Szeth’s truncheon, and in several occasions now, he also ghosts through the walls, but instead of going “under” the mesh, he goes over the dungeon ceiling and get trapped there. I can’t but wonder if that one Szeth would be the one that would have dropped his so coveted truncheon… I almost threw my dog through the window.

So, why am I posting this here first? Well NPCs disappearing and pathing issues have been around for a while now.

I understand that every great game has it’s shares of bug and issues, and I appreciate the effort Funcom obviously puts in any updates. I believe that all the changes regarding NPC pathing, ghosting, falling through cliffs, etc, may have been made in order to mitigate combat exploits and cheesing. But these changes in fact made combat very frustrating.

I am nearing 500 hours in this game, and despite it’s flaws and bugs, it has been my favorite past time in the last months, and I really love this game and want to see it grow. Nothing so far have made me want to put it away or rage quit. But when NPCs keep disappearing or getting stuck in the scenario, when a boss respawns with full health mid battle, when that t4 thrall you were looking for disappears, yes, it makes me want to quit. And I don’t want to quit.

Please, Funcom… You MUST fix this before anything else. Stop anything you are doing and fix the undermesh thing. You know it is maybe the major factor making people quit the game and quit the servers. The latest patches made this issue worse. This should be priority number one because otherwise it renders the game unplayable. No matter of DLCs and beautiful maps can be more important than that.

I will keep playing the game for now, it deserves another chance because it gave so many hours of fun and entertainment. But I don’t know If I can play much further if these issues aren’t fixed.

Thanks for your time and I appreciate any feedback on this.

[Darkzombie]

For the love of Crom man close your window, nail it shut and put your dog in another room when playing this game in all seriousness I concur. Since the update my thralls are frequently disobedient, seem to suffer absence seizures and just stop and stare into the distance, take forever to teleport to my location, get stuck on every leaf, pebble, dead body and sometimes just fresh air.
I like the leash mechanic as it prevents ppl kiting bosses and stuff to your base but the instant full heal upon returning to their place is it’s not a good idea, if funcom want their npc’s to heal they should use potions etc the same as a player. This is particularly important now with the healing changes. To get space to heal when fighting mobs or bosses I have to move away, I’ve been stuck in a loop many times where I whittle health down, grab a bit of distance to heal only to have the mob/boss return to their tether and fully heal instantly. Tether should stay, god mode instant heal should go. Npc’s falling through the map has been around as long as Crom himself and is an issue I don’t believe they will ever be able to fix 100%. Mesh, collision detection and latency issues all seem to contribute to this. Hang in there but. There’s been a couple of posts from the devs stating a patch is nearly ready for certification so hopefully some of these things are addressed.