(Ranged) Blight monsters attack foes which are not directly in their path.
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Will chime in and say that the ranged mobs attacking when I am nowhere close to being on a track feels like pure unadulterated horse manure.
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From What We're Working On:
" Back to this topic: The bug outlined in this topic referrers to a missing feature that was featured/promised on the official blight promo page. As the latest announcement states we're nearly halfway through the league. This feature of the core league mechanic is still not working as advertised and isn't on the list of known issues or "things we're working on". As far as I know no official word or even passing comment has been posted regarding this missing feature. Yet, now we're seeing posts stating that most developers have moved on to 'the next big thing'. Other bug report topics have recently received official GGG replies such as, "This is not a bug." "Thank you for your report. We'll look into this." etc. Would GGG please comment on the state of this missing core league feature? Next league announcement/advertisement page might read something like, "In this next league you can do all this cool stuff: " Player base might react something like, "Yeah, idk. I mean that stuff *sounds* really cool. It'd be sweet to be able to do it... but they've left out core league mechanics before. Guess we'll have to just wait until launch (or a month after) to see which of the advertised features are actually implemented. Meanwhile I'm going to go hype on something else." :| The silence here on legitimate bug reports has always been depressing. But the lack of official comment on this missing core league feature is downright defeating. | |
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Hey guys,
During the creation of any league, we do a fair amount of inhouse playtesting. Blight was no exception to this. One of the core things that we noticed was that there was a lack of danger for Ranged players in particular, as standing out of the Blight lane meant that no Blight monsters would come to attack you. This meant that you were essentially fighting monsters that would very rarely fight back. As such, one of the things that we did was adding skills to various monsters and adding ranged Blight monsters. These ranged monsters are intended to provide an element of danger during Blight encounters, both to Melee and Ranged characters alike. We recognise that the original preview of the Blight League mentioned that monsters would only attack foes directly in their path and realise that the current version of Blight differs from that preview. That said, we feel that the existence of ranged mechanics on Blight monsters is a better alternative to them not fighting back at all. Apologies for not having addressed this sooner. Hopefully this clears up any uncertainty about our intentions with regards to Blight encounters. |
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Thank you for commenting on this report. Understanding the rationale behind the decision does help. However, to elaborate on why this missing feature is actually a bug and a problem:
In the current implementation with monsters pausing to attack and monsters able to occupy the same space (or very nearly the same space, ie: an almost 0 minimum distance between monsters) monsters tend to 'stack up' resulting in *many* mobs activating their attack from the same location at once. This results in all the projectiles stacking on top of each other, which looks like a single projectile. This effect can be observed in many of the video clips posted in this topic. Also, fighting monsters that mindlessly follow a set path and don't necessarily fight back *is* tower defense. | |
"Unfortunately, the effect reminds me of the "Order of the Frozen Sky" mobs back when they were first introduced, before they were changed so that not every mob in the spawn would cast ice storm at the same second. I had this brought home to me when I had a very tanky chieftain killed instantaneously in SSF HC last night. He had a full life orb, 76% fire resist, a healthy amount of over-resist, and not much shy of 5000 hit points in a T3 map (Ashen Fields). That mattered not, though, and I literally didn't see more than some blurry motion of fire-looking particles headed toward my chieftain and he was dead due to off-screen mobs. I'm not sure if you recall or not, but to recount a bit of history multiple videos of order of the frozen sky mobs instantaneously annihilating hardcore characters were circulating on youtube when they were first introduced. So, to address the issue you made changes so that not all mobs would cast ice storm at the same time. I'm not sure if you can do something like that with blight. But, it would make playing the league more enjoyable if instantaneous deaths from off screen went away. FWIW, I'm not playing hardcore again in this league unless and until I hear that off-screen deaths from mega-volleys of projectiles have been addressed. Now that prestige classes will finally leave lab in 4.0, will GGG get it right this time or will they find new ways to repeat old mistakes?
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" No. Apologies doesn't apply here. We build entire characters around that mechanic alone because you stated plain and simple that "monsters only attack players in their lane". Do you realize how many deaths, aka wasted life time, had happened because you lied to your playerbase? You could do a lot of things, like making ranged monsters shoot without the need of an enemy in lane, but only in the direction of that lane. Great multiple projects monsters would still be a danger without punishing the players. BUT IN NO WAY THEY SHOOT AIMED AT THE PLAYER IF YOU ARE NOT IN THEIR LANE. You made a mistake. You must pay for it. Not we players. You either fix it or give us our lifetime back. "There's no thing like random one-shots in this game. You only die because you take 353,456,237 hits in 0.2 seconds."
"The best items in the game should not be crafted, they should be TRADED." - Cent, GGG |
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"Lets try not to be unrealistic... I've written the following example and accompanying illustration to re-elaborate why the (presumably) unintended monster behavior described in this topic is actually a bug. This example uses the following assumptions for ease-of-explaining:
 Again, the issue is that monsters stack up, thus their projectiles stack up, leading to a single visible projectile hiding several actual projectiles within it. Perhaps this could be fixed by adding a mandatory minimum distance between mobs. It's unfortunate that mobs are intended to attack us when we're not in-lane, but the real issue is that we're taking shaper-beam style nukes from normal mobs because of this stacking behavior. Last edited by SirGuySW on Oct 24, 2019, 8:45:55 PM
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" Sorry I don't aggree. they stated in the videos clearly: mobs only attack players in lanes. On the math side you made, I agree, they stack before shooting instead of shooting one at a time, that's another bug that won't be fixed 'cause GGGCent already declared dead league. "There's no thing like random one-shots in this game. You only die because you take 353,456,237 hits in 0.2 seconds."
"The best items in the game should not be crafted, they should be TRADED." - Cent, GGG |
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And it was later stated in this topic that that decision was reverted to allow mobs to attack the player when not in-lane. Thus, mobs are *now* intended to attack us when we're not in-lane. It's not ideal, it would have been really great if they notified the playerbase (and the dev team, I still think the 'portals too close to the pump' issue may have been caused by this late decision) as soon as they made the decision. But here we are trying to make the best of things as they currently are.
If the mobs attacked us individually with single projectiles like they do everywhere else in PoE we could handle that... because it would be no different at all from the rest of the game. It wouldn't be ideal, it wouldn't make for very good Tower Defense strategy... but we could handle it. The issue is that mobs stack up and attack all at the same time, **their projectiles stack and appear like a single projectile**, thus we're hit with 10+ projectiles all at once. This is not normal and isn't seen anywhere else in the game. The sprites basically glitch out and occupy the same space. Thus: bug. Last edited by SirGuySW on Oct 25, 2019, 8:34:27 PM
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I've taken screenshots of the 'mob stacking effect' from some of the videos posted in this topic. This first one shows a simple example of the projectile stacking effect:
 This second one shows the 'beam of death' effect from *many* mobs stacking up creating a single visible projectile that hits with the strength of many (because it is actually many projectiles):  |
