World of Warcraft®

Is this bug finally fixed in the MoP beta? We've been dealing with mobs trying to move behind us for an expansion and a half by now.

How would we know
:D
we're all still waiting for our invites.

Is MoP the reason you haven't been enjoying the swarm of locks on here? lucky b@$t@rd

If I were in the beta, I wouldn't be asking.

Working as intended. Ghostcrawler (I think) wrote a fairly long post back at the tail end of LK explaining it. I don't really remember it or dunno if I can find it, but basically he explained it as a double edged sword.

03/28/2012 03:41 PMPosted by Vetalli

Working as intended. Ghostcrawler (I think) wrote a fairly long post back at the tail end of LK explaining it. I don't really remember it or dunno if I can find it, but basically he explained it as a double edged sword.

The reason why the bug arose in the first place, as explained by Ghostcrawler, was that there was apparently some way to move so that mobs would never be able to attack you (they'd constantly be repositioning rather than swinging), despite the fact that no one ever actually did it or had any clue it was possible.

I find it hard to believe there's no other possible solution, given that plenty of other MMOs don't have any issue with it.

Working as intended. Ghostcrawler (I think) wrote a fairly long post back at the tail end of LK explaining it. I don't really remember it or dunno if I can find it, but basically he explained it as a double edged sword.

The reason why the bug arose in the first place, as explained by Ghostcrawler, was that there was apparently some way to move so that mobs would never be able to attack you (they'd constantly be repositioning rather than swinging), despite the fact that no one ever actually did it or had any clue it was possible.

I find it hard to believe there's no other possible solution, given that plenty of other MMOs don't have any issue with it.

I also fail to see how that's possible. They don't need to stop to take a swing at their target anymore than we do. In fact, they are MORE than happy to swing at your backside while you run away too. They've done it since the beginning of WoW, and more over monsters ALL move faster than everyone else (almost as fast as Aspect of the Fail in fact). So I was more than slightly amused by that response.

What we have here is another example of GC throwing us a cop-out reply. Possibly to an issue that they have no idea about its origins (this is the doubt that I give them the benefit of). Afterall, it's hard to fix a problem if you can't find the root cause....and bandaids tend make things more messy elsewhere.

Didn't this start about the time they made pets smart enough to run behind mobs?

03/28/2012 04:20 PMPosted by Esteemed

Didn't this start about the time they made pets smart enough to run behind mobs?

Nah. It pre-dates that change. Actually, that particular change just made it even worse.

-edit-

And pets are STILL too stupid to be used as anything more than cannon fodder. Hell they don't even cooperate with THAT role when you need them to.

And pets are STILL too stupid to be used as anything more than cannon fodder. Hell they don't even cooperate with THAT role when you need them to.

Every time a Rogue dodges my Gnaw, the only defense I have against them, I die a little inside, and a lot in the game.

03/28/2012 04:02 PMPosted by Feandel

I also fail to see how that's possible. They don't need to stop to take a swing at their target anymore than we do. In fact, they are MORE than happy to swing at your backside while you run away too.

Hypothetically, if stepping outside of their melee range reset their swing timer, it would theoretically be possible to jitter-step in such a way that they never actually swing.

Zomg I have to move to position mobs so I can hit them properly.

It's been this way for years, if you haven't worked out how to deal with it by now maybe go back to your lolarcanemage.

For reference:

It was pretty bad in 3.3, but then we fixed some things in 3.3.3 to get it back to how it felt earlier. In general, if you don't move at all, then a mob targeting you shouldn't move either. The only exceptions would be if they were trying to coordinate with their own allies in some specialized cases. But if you move, even if you rotate or shift just a little, then the mob is going to try to get back into position as well.

There's some interesting speculation above for reasons I am perceived to have given for why the situation exists. :) The actual reason it exists is that if mobs did not quickly reposition, you could get them into a mode where they couldn't hit you because they would always moving back into position to hit you. They would be doing too much adjusting and not enough hitting. (I'm simplifying a lot, so suggestions like "Why can't they just move and swing at the same time?" aren't super helpful.) We don't want tanks to feel like what they're supposed to do is shift around constantly to minimize taking damage. It's a fine line between mob movement feeling correct and minimizing potential exploits.

Given that "where a mob is" is so aethereal that you can be getting hit in melee while unable to hit one yourself, I think the real reason is that they broke it, it's complex, and they don't know how to fix it again without a big time investment.

I also want to know how when you're lagging, other people see your pet move ahead of you (ie - it will start to walk before you do, turn before you do etc) instead of trailing behind. It suggests that at least part of movement lag is something specifically applied to players only. My guess is they're doing some sort of smoothing and it might explain the discrepancy between where a mob thinks you are vs where you actually are.

Oh, and charge effects need to end in base-to-base combat with the target, instead of relying on immobilise and stun effects to hope that the target doesn't move. Either that or bosses and players shouldn't ever be immune to those immobilise/stun effects (which would be worse).

03/28/2012 09:04 PMPosted by Jashiliter

I think the real reason is that they broke it, it's complex, and they don't know how to fix it again without a big time investment.

I wouldn't say they broke it. Complex, sure, but I wouldn't call it broken.

Let's say that melee mob positioning AI has two requirements.
1. It must, if at all possible, be in melee range of its target.
2. It must not, if at all possible, overlap unit models with other nearby units.

But players tend to move around while fighting, and you find that melee mobs start spending lots of time moving, and less time being in melee range. So you make the AI a bit more aggressive when it comes to fulfilling rule 1.

This is where it starts getting complex.

For example, when your character jumps, its position doesn't update while its in the air. (Good raiders make a point of running, not jumping, out of fire because of this.) You're in the spot you jumped from until you're in the spot you jumped to, as far as the game is concerned.

Also, connection lag and jitter make player position a bit sketchy. You might strafe five yards to the left, and the server doesn't get a position update after the fourth yard until half a second past when you stopped at the fifth.

Consequently, mob behavior comes across as a bit erratic. They're faster than you, but not precisely sure where you are, so they wander around a bit. You see them moving past you, or spin-strafing around you as you try to spin-strafe around them, and think they're bugging out and moving unnecessarily much. As far as the game can tell, though, that's the minimum amount of movement necessary to guarantee that they're fulfilling the first rule.

Then you get the second rule. Unit models can't overlap, or else players can't retarget properly. So you do a 5-pull, and they start to spread out into the familiar half-circle around you.

Then you strafe to the left a bit. The mob to your left doesn't move, because you've never left its melee range. The one to the right moves up... and then re-adjusts out of the unit model of the one that didn't move, and is suddenly behind you.

Again, it seems like it's moving way more than necessary, and being annoying, but that's probably the simplest path available to meet the second rule.

And then you get weird behavior like the Halls of Stone golems that like to wander all around you, even when there's just the one of them. Best guess, that's probably 'cause their hitbox is smaller than their model, and they're see-sawing between not overlapping with your unit model and being at the proper melee range. I'd call that broken.