User talk:Joe Kimmes/Archive February 2009

Hi there

It's nice to finally see a programmer making a presence here. :-) You don't know what you've let yourself in for, LOL. Biscuits 09:40, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Tombs

Hi Joe. I know you guys are busy with the April update you've promised us, which I am excited about. However, if you guys get a free moment, I know a lot of people would really love it if you guys could help rejuvinate the Tombs elite area. The place used to be a lot of fun back when BP teams used to go in there, and the founding members of my guild all got together solely for this activity. However, since then the permasin have totally taken over the place and now no one puts together a team anymore. The permasins solo farm the first level only (usually), and they don't even really talk in the outpost, the place has become, well, a tomb. I think a simple skill tweak of the mobs in the first level would really do the trick and bring back the team effort to Tombs. So, I know you guys are busy, but I think that could be an easy and really appreciated change to make some time soon. Thanks for your time. (Satanael 14:54, 3 February 2009 (UTC))

Actually the Tomb Ruins mission has another big problem. The rewards are not worthy the time/risk etc.: In the end you get greens (which you can get from any boss in every other campaign). If you want to make it lively just add challenge and of course, rewards. Dungeons have at least Diamonds or other really rare items guaranteed. When doing DoA, Urgoz/deep, dungeons you are sure that you will get some really nice stuff. DoA has gemstones which can be exchanged for really nice rewards. Urgoz/deep has lots of jadeite/amber. Dungeons have rare materials and chest-exclusive items. And thoose have their Unique skins. Tormented, Zodiac, Frog scepter, emerald blade...

In the end I just want you (anet) to increase the challenge (e.g. by adding a ghostly hero we need to protect, or adding tasks like CTF/Defend the hill (like sebelkeh mission)) and to increase rewards (not just greens).

A good way to eliminate Shadow form overfarming is to make an environment effect in the first area: reduces enchantment duration by 20%. maybe changing Fingers of Chaos to remove enchantment form the assassin if fails to hit, dunno... Boro 19:42, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I completely agree that Tombs needs some work to rejuvenate it from being a farming-only area. I don't believe that removing or reducing the ability of permasins to farm here would necessarily bring back normal groups, though. Improving the rewards for actually completing the mission would be a good start, as Boro suggests. Revamping the mission itself (adding an escort aspect, capture points, etc) is a little trickier, since it takes design, coding and test time, but it's something worth looking at if most players feel that the mission is really just unfun, in my opinion.

I can't promise changes, of course, since I'm just a programmer, but I'll try to keep Tombs in mind when a chance comes up to suggest improvements.

(on another note, I'm excited about the April build too!) - Joe Kimmes 20:52, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick responses guys, I like the idea of increasing the reward (although I note that Tombs is also the only area outside UW that drops ectos, which is the primary reason people farm there). Of course more major changes like capture points, escorts and the such whould be great, I certainly realize that increases the complication of such a change. I was just remembering what you guys did with UW, i.e. rebalanced a few of the skills/builds employed by the mobs and nerfed Ursan, then suddenly UW and FOW are almost totally rejuvinated. That seemed like a relatively (emphasis on relatively) simple way of revamping an area, and I would think that something similar could be done with tombs. To be honest I wouldn't mind seeing the permasin get another nerf, it's still too powerful imho. (Satanael 03:25, 4 February 2009 (UTC))

P.S. Kudos to you Joe, I dropped this request on Linsey's, Mike's, and your pages at virtually the same time and you were the first to reply :-)

One last note on this for you, Joe, if you are interested to see what some in this wiki community thought of this idea you can find a discussion of it on Regina's page here[1]. Short and sweet is that there seemed to be a pretty big consensus that Tombs is no longer fun for players. A bit more discussion on what the best way to fix is, with little consensus (short of the "nerf shadow form, ffs" type arguments). Just in case you are curious (Satanael 04:01, 12 February 2009 (UTC))

MM's lag

i have notice that MM heroes scene the last AI update lag behind a lot more then they did before. its mostly to do with death nova i think though i could be wrong.....75.172.42.47 03:18, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it's definitely death nova, they seem to make sure it is up on all minions at all times, rather than just during battle. On a similar note, is there an easy way to make hero MMs use Flesh Golem more effectively? It is a little frustrating to watch your hero mm summon a fiend or something like that off the corpse of his/her golem when you are trying to travel from one fight to the next. Part of the point of the golem is that it can be kept up in purpituity if one knows how to use it. (Satanael 03:54, 12 February 2009 (UTC))

Agreed, the current usage of Death Nova is a huge hassle. On the other hand though, it is useful to use it out of combat as long as it isn't delaying movement, since it's a nice long effect that's worth precasting before a fight starts. I think there may be a happy medium that we can reach, like heroes only using Death Nova when the group isn't running around.

As for Flesh Golem, I see how that would be a problem. I think if I tweaked the priority on Golem higher than the other minion skills it would help this, especially since the skill can only have one golem out at a time - I'll play around with it when I get some spare time and see what I can do. Similarly, I'm really displeased with the AI for the updated Aura of the Lich. - Joe Kimmes 02:13, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Sweet! Thanks Joe! Although, simply upping the priority of Golem may not work to everyone's preference, because when you cast it while a golem is already up, the golem you already had dies and does not leave an exploitable corpse, so it is a waste of a corpse if it is cast too early. You may have to make sure the hero is aware of when it has golem up and when it doesn't. I don't know if that would be complicated to do or not... (Satanael 06:16, 13 February 2009 (UTC))

I don't have death nova on my MM heroes' bars, and yet they still lag way behind. I have found that I generally have to run through mobs to the other side to even get the minions to engage. This is really frustrating, especially when playing traditionally backline professions. Even setting my MM hero to attack rather than defend does not seem to give him sufficient motivation to move forward enough for the minions to engage the foes. -- Wyn 11:56, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I usually flag the MM into the enemy group to give him motivation, and As soon as the minions engage the enemy, I cancel the order and olias (mm) returns. Boro 16:04, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Another way to reduce the time the MM-s spend to nova their minions is to change the minion skill to AoE enchantment (of course with 30 sec duration 30 sec recharge) and with 1 second casting time. just my opinion, but that's another topic --Boro 16:08, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Flesh Golem actually already has an AI check to make sure it isn't overwriting an existing golem (although heroes do consider the value of replacing a very wounded golem with a fresh one), so that's not an issue - I would only increase its priority in the case where it's already good to use.

Regarding Minion Masters lagging behind, I think we have two issues here. One is that heroes in general will lag behind the party if they are using a lot of skills outside of combat, which is especially a problem when enchanting minions, ie Death Nova. The other issue is that heroes don't do a good job of making sure that their minions engage at the start of a combat - since they tend to be in the back lines of the group, and their minions end up behind them, the minions don't always aggro at the start of a fight. This is a problem for human players, too, of course, just one that's easier to handle for them. It might be interesting (although it opens up a huge balance/design can of worms) to have a minion control panel similar to the Pet controls to let a player/hero 'sic' their minions on a target. - Joe Kimmes 06:28, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I have been playing the game for almost 3 years, and it's definitely changed in the past few months. Minions were always ready and willing to aggro just about anything... especially within the aggro bubble, and they just don't do that anymore. While flagging the MM to the front can solve this, (and subsequently unflagging once they do aggro) it also takes seconds away from doing other things. -- Wyn 06:34, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

i agree 1000% with wyn. and i think a minion control panel like you talked about was a suggestion a long time ago and is something very wanted i know there is a tread on guru about this some were... it would also help mm's have a little less boring job and would put them up to par with monks if they could see at least what minions have what enchantments. 75.172.42.47 07:45, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

It still confuses me why a MM was never given the option to have a drop down minion extention in the party window. Minions are a pain to select in battle, where I need to do it most as a MM so I generally just leave it to a Hero, which is annoying because I do enjoy that aspect of the game. Bring able to select your minions with spells/etc that specifically require individual selection should have been addressed along ago. Any help given to the MM community would be hot. Also flagging MM heroes into aggro or having to edge into your yourself is a bit of a pain, not sure what really can be done but the amount of times my necro meets the floor because I get hammering, more so in HM than NM is frustrating to say the least. Lagging behind has gotten worse, the other day Master of Whispers was almost 3/4 the way out of compass range on a number of occasions because he was spamming Death Nova on everything. Minions still aggro better and keep fighting longer than MOX however, but that's another story ^_^ 000.00.00.00 07:55, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I greatly agree with this. The decision to not have some sort of minion selection/control UI was before my time at ANet, so I can't comment on it, but I'm really hoping that I can get the designer go-ahead to add some sort of controls.

This is a tangent and the comments are already nested kind of deep here, but I'd like to note that heroes all have the same AI with no individual tweaks, so it's strange to hear that you're having trouble with MOX in particular. - Joe Kimmes 20:56, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Again, and as with my comment above in Hero Energy Management, it would be interesting to review the skill bar being used on this Dervish Hero. Quite often a complaint about Hero behaviour can be tracked to one skill on the bar and can be remedied with a simple skill change. Occasionally issues can arise from skill interaction also. -- WarBlade 07:19, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

AI cancel bug

I don't really want to bother you too much about the AI seeing how many of the things I reported over the past two years were already resolved, but it seems you're willing to discuss these topics :) At the moment the worst AI problem in Hero Battles is the one that causes them to get stuck between canceling/casting skills at times, which usually happens when you micro a skill or when they respawn after being killed (they sometimes go berserk then and start cancel/casting random skills). The hero seems to get stuck not knowing whether it should move or use the skill, causing them to drain all of their energy and usually letting someone die in the process. This bug has been partially resolved a couple of times already but it never disappeared completely. So basically my question is if it's impossible to completely resolve this problem? --Draikin 19:33, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

This bug is on my task list - it's a tricky case to resolve, but I don't think it's impossible. The primary difficulty is figuring out precisely why/how this happens, so that I can make a fix that doesn't break any other areas of the AI - previous fixes have, as you said, chipped away at the problem without fixing all cases of it. Unfortunately I can't promise a speedy resolution for this, since my time is currently taken up by work on the April build, but if I get a little ahead of schedule I'll work on these AI issues. - Joe Kimmes 19:53, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer, Joe. I understand that this isn't a priority, it's already good enough to hear it might be possible to resolve the problem entirely. --Draikin 00:41, 18 February 2009 (UTC)