NPCs' and animals' aggressiveness

Katinas

The area at which NPCs and animals become aggressive and attack you should be increased.
To begin with, most animals should be docile unless provoked or there should be a better adjustment in which animals will attack you and which will not. Big, fearsome animals that see humans as prey (think of bears, packs of wolves, trolls) are fair enough. But why do small rodents like skeevers or various kwama creatures attack on sight? I liked Morrowind's way of turning some creatures into diseased animals who will always attack you but those that are not infected with the various diseased spread by Red Mountain will not attack you unless you strike first.
Also with the current horse system it is very easy to be knocked down from the saddle and the animation where your character stands up is very clumsy indeed. It takes several seconds and during this time creatures gnaw you while you have to suffer till the animations is over and you can attack or heal yourself. Could the time during which a nearby aggressive animal decides whether to attack you or not be increased? It also has lore reasons and would be more realistic. A lone wolf would look at you for a moment or two, assess its chances so to speak, before deciding to attack you and we would have more freedom to flee after incidentally bumping into an animal.
What do you guys think? Do you share my pain of accidentally jumping off a rock and finding yourself accidentally aggroing two skeevers just to see your character falling down, standing up, standing still for a moment before you regain control of your character and can act?

Nestor

I like how the bugs go docile after a certain level. I can still attack them, but otherwise we can leave each other alone. I think other animals should do the same thing, based on level differences. Although some animals should remain aggressive such as large predators.

smeeprocketnub19_ESO

if wild animals acted anything like real life, you probably wouldn't even see them that often, and they would be absent entirely in heavily populated areas.

But this is an mmo, and we have to have something to kill.

SpAEkus

I think they need to copy the Skyrim mod for real Wildlife that had all predators in natural feeding cycles.

Not just camping Skyshards!

Venereous44

Its easy to keep from being pulled from a horse... as you see you're approaching a mob.. let off your sprint enough ahead of time to get a bit of stamina to survive a hit.

Regarding agro zones... I think its just about right.. good enough to be able to move around yet will still accidentally agro occasionally.. especially when fighting other mobs.

Divinius

Nestor wrote: »

I like how the bugs go docile after a certain level. I can still attack them, but otherwise we can leave each other alone. I think other animals should do the same thing, based on level differences. Although some animals should remain aggressive such as large predators.

This, entirely. Mobs of any kind that are so far below your level that they no longer give you xp should cease aggroing at all (as in many other MMOs). It's not like they are dangerous, even in groups, when they are that low. They are nothing but an annoyance when travelling through a low-level area. I'm not stupid enough to pick a fight with a mob 20 levels above me, so why do NPC mobs 20 levels below me insist on swatting at me hopelessly? You'd think they'd know better.

jambam817_ESO

Ok, i wasn't remembering correctly, nothing to see here.

smeeprocketnub19_ESO

jambam817_ESO wrote: »

its annoying, but it happens. Everquest had "con levels" based on Mob level VS your own, like as follows:
Grey=nothing from it(XP), much lower, easy
Green=pretty much nothing from it(XP), much lower, easy
Light Blue=a little XP, maybe a few levels lower, but still pretty easy
Dark Blue=Decent XP,1 or 2 levels lower, may present a challenge
White=Good XP, same level as you, challenging
Yellow=Good XP, Higher level and challenging
Red=Great XP, who knows how much higher, very challenging if not impossible.

And they all continued to agro you no matter what level Greys Kill! was a popular phrase...

I say keep it the way it is I don't wanna play god mode and run around everywhere free of risk.

This is completely untrue and wrong.

Try walking past a decaying skeleton in one of the newbie zones at level 100 if you want to test it.

Actually, I think skeletons are like the only mob this is true for, they dgaf what level you are.

I have a level 100 troll shaman, if I go into guk nothing will attack me, unless I sit down. Sitting down makes mobs angry, as you know if you've played.

Have to be honest, sometimes it would get annoying when I was trying to farm kills for the achievements with titles. But training low level mobs through low level zones and inevitably on top of low level players would suck.

jambam817_ESO

smeeprocketnub19_ESO wrote: »

This is completely untrue and wrong.

Try walking past a decaying skeleton in one of the newbie zones at level 100 if you want to test it.

Actually, I think skeletons are like the only mob this is true for, they dgaf what level you are.

I have a level 100 troll shaman, if I go into guk nothing will attack me, unless I sit down. Sitting down makes mobs angry, as you know if you've played.

Have to be honest, sometimes it would get annoying when I was trying to farm kills for the achievements with titles. But training low level mobs through low level zones and inevitably on top of low level players would suck.

ok well maybe i am not completely remembering every mobs behavior, but i do remember that it was not weird or uncommon to be agro'd by grey/green monsters, especially Skellies like you mentioned. They sure DGAF

my bad.

AlnilamE

I think it's ok the way it is. Yes, every once in a while you jump over a rock and land on a saber cat, but otherwise, it's fairly easy to avoid mobs if you watch where you are going.

smeeprocketnub19_ESO

jambam817_ESO wrote: »

show previous quotes

smeeprocketnub19_ESO wrote: »

This is completely untrue and wrong.

Try walking past a decaying skeleton in one of the newbie zones at level 100 if you want to test it.

Actually, I think skeletons are like the only mob this is true for, they dgaf what level you are.

I have a level 100 troll shaman, if I go into guk nothing will attack me, unless I sit down. Sitting down makes mobs angry, as you know if you've played.

Have to be honest, sometimes it would get annoying when I was trying to farm kills for the achievements with titles. But training low level mobs through low level zones and inevitably on top of low level players would suck.

ok well maybe i am not completely remembering every mobs behavior, but i do remember that it was not weird or uncommon to be agro'd by grey/green monsters, especially Skellies like you mentioned. They sure DGAF

my bad.

Green monsters will still aggro you I believe. Grey... maybe higher level grey, but I -think- once they turn grey they just stop aggroing. It's been like a year since I last played.

There's a few other mobs that will always attack, but even in classic, when there weren't even grey mobs, a low enough level mob would not aggro you.

I was farming wolf fur slippers in Permafrost during classic, and my damn pet would aggro the entire room when I was trying to set up camp. The mobs didn't care about me, but my pet, which I needed to be able to kill them effectively, still made them very mad.

Now pets don't aggro anything, zone with you, etc.

Venereous44

I don't miss pet agro at all... the worst was when path finding would send them on a perimeter run because you dropped 2 feet off of a ledge and then here it comes around the corner with a literal horde on its tail... that was never fun.

smeeprocketnub19_ESO

Venereous44 wrote: »

I don't miss pet agro at all... the worst was when path finding would send them on a perimeter run because you dropped 2 feet off of a ledge and then here it comes around the corner with a literal horde on its tail... that was never fun.

lol one time, in lower guk, I lost my pet.

So I start seeing his health bar go down, and I'm thinking where the hell is this stupid dog.

I'm in a group at the time, deep in.

Now it would have been smart to log out and back in but for some reason I was like, nah screw it, it will work itself out.

Pet dies, there is about 5 minutes where I think the mobs have forgotten the whole thing.

This massive train of undead frogs charges into the hall we are camped in and just wreaks havoc on everyone and wipes half the group. I managed to survive tho. (Fortunately so did the healer.) I felt so awful for that, so I just didn't say anything when people started trying to figure out where the train came from. There were so many of them, they must have pathed through almost the entirety of the undead half of lower guk, picking up everything on the way.

Not as nice as some of the trains from Split Paw I had, especially when I was grouping with this cleric who would lean on gate any time anything even remotely dangerous happened. The pathing in Split Paw was awful, eventually I just refused to go past the big wooden doors at all.

jambam817_ESO

Venereous44 wrote: »

I don't miss pet agro at all... the worst was when path finding would send them on a perimeter run because you dropped 2 feet off of a ledge and then here it comes around the corner with a literal horde on its tail... that was never fun.

Now-a-days people would scream BUG so fast...... The agro/pathing in that game is still pretty terrible haha. But no pet agro helps.

I played this past holiday weekend, its been YEARS since I've seriously played Everquest and my original account is no longer in my control. Double XP with XP potions on top i got from 25 to 40 with a friend duoing, in a few hours of play.
we spent 30 minutes in every zone we went to (thats the potion duration) and made sure to visit plenty of classic zones that I hadn't seen in a while, and he had never seen.

smeeprocketnub19_ESO

jambam817_ESO wrote: »

show previous quotes

Venereous44 wrote: »

I don't miss pet agro at all... the worst was when path finding would send them on a perimeter run because you dropped 2 feet off of a ledge and then here it comes around the corner with a literal horde on its tail... that was never fun.

Now-a-days people would scream BUG so fast...... The agro/pathing in that game is still pretty terrible haha. But no pet agro helps.

I played this past holiday weekend, its been YEARS since I've seriously played Everquest and my original account is no longer in my control. Double XP with XP potions on top i got from 25 to 40 with a friend duoing, in a few hours of play.
we spent 30 minutes in every zone we went to (thats the potion duration) and made sure to visit plenty of classic zones that I hadn't seen in a while, and he had never seen.

grinding up to about 70 is ridiculously fast and easy. You slowed yourself down depending on which classic zones you visited. Also, I hope you were using mercs, or you slowed yourself down even more.

They took the effectiveness out of the rank 5 mercs during one of the more recent expansion and then added in points you could earn and put towards your mercenary to get it back to the previous level. They literally removed content and pretended it was new content so you had to grind to get it.

That expac was the last for me. Everything about it was awful and finished the game for me. It's just sad, they are pretty much in maintenance mode at this point.

Venereous44

Aw man, that sounds like Gnomergan.. except it was the mobs themselves that would do that. if you got too close to an edge and agro'd something on a lower edge.. that stupid mob itself would do a perimeter run pulling everything along the way. This was about a 5 min delay too... grabbing that much agro. This was the hardest thing about the instance.. not accidentally pulling agro from another level.

jambam817_ESO

smeeprocketnub19_ESO wrote: »

grinding up to about 70 is ridiculously fast and easy. You slowed yourself down depending on which classic zones you visited. Also, I hope you were using mercs, or you slowed yourself down even more.

They took the effectiveness out of the rank 5 mercs during one of the more recent expansion and then added in points you could earn and put towards your mercenary to get it back to the previous level. They literally removed content and pretended it was new content so you had to grind to get it.

That expac was the last for me. Everything about it was awful and finished the game for me. It's just sad, they are pretty much in maintenance mode at this point.

Yup, mercs. My shammy had a Wizard merc, his SK had a Cleric merc, and we debuffed, nuked and tanked the hell outta stuff, it was fun and ya im sure if we were focused on grinding to 70 we could have done it quicker and more efficiently. But we were more there to revisit places we hadn't seen in forever and a bit of nostalgia.

We were (in no particular order) camping Giant Village in Warsilik's Woods, camping the Dark Elf and Orc bosses in Crushbone, Giant Fort in Frontier Mountains, made a quick run through Runnyeye, stopped by Sol A (that was the funnest zone we visited, i think), camped mobs in Jaggedpine, Visited Dawnshroud and Scarlet Desert (Scarlet was awesome, Luclin zone but i hadn't visited in ages), and we started out in Kurn's Tower.

Good stuff

UrQuan

Katinas wrote: »

Also with the current horse system it is very easy to be knocked down from the saddle and the animation where your character stands up is very clumsy indeed. It takes several seconds and during this time creatures gnaw you while you have to suffer till the animations is over and you can attack or heal yourself.

That is intended, and should not be changed. This is why horse stamina is important - if you're sprinting on your horse and it has run out of stamina you are very vulnerable to attack, because a single hit will dismount you, and once dismounted you will be disoriented and can be savaged for a while before you can do anything about it. If the mechanic didn't work this way horse stamina would be entirely meaningless.

Nocturnalis

I just wish there were more patrolling enemies, most seem camped out in one spot just waiting for something.

GnatB

jambam817_ESO wrote: »

its annoying, but it happens. Everquest had "con levels" based on Mob level VS your own, like as follows:
Grey=nothing from it(XP), much lower, easy
Green=pretty much nothing from it(XP), much lower, easy
Light Blue=a little XP, maybe a few levels lower, but still pretty easy
Dark Blue=Decent XP,1 or 2 levels lower, may present a challenge
White=Good XP, same level as you, challenging
Yellow=Good XP, Higher level and challenging
Red=Great XP, who knows how much higher, very challenging if not impossible.

And they all continued to agro you no matter what level Greys Kill! was a popular phrase...

I say keep it the way it is I don't wanna play god mode and run around everywhere free of risk.

Yeah, that's wrong. At least at the time I stopped playing, (shortly after the planes were introduced) grey mobs typically didn't aggro unless they were "brainless". i.e. pretty much all undead. (skeletons, zombies, etc.) Possibly elementals? Not sure.

And I don't remember any "Greys kill!" phrase.

That said, /con didn't just tell you the relative difficulty of the creature, but also whether or not it would attack. (IIRC, mob names were all the same color, (thinking light blue? Don't really remember), and the health indicator when you target it it gave absolutely no indication of it's level. You had to /con it, which gave a color coded message reiterating it's difficulty, as well as saying how likely it was to attack you. Contrary to current schemes the color indicated level difference, the text indicated hostility.)

Varicite

Katinas wrote: »

But why do small rodents like skeevers or various kwama creatures attack on sight?

Skeevers attacked me on sight in Skyrim too (can't remember about the previous TES games, tbh lol).

Although, I wouldn't mind a more "natural" feeling of wildlife, I'd say that would be a terrible allocation of resources at this point in time.

Not opposed to it, just would rather see this done in the future. : )