Galadriel on Archery

[Crush]

The aggro system of eAthena works completely different than the aggro system of WoW.

[Galadriel]

...As it is now, warriors don't want archers to pull monsters off their stack, and archers don't want to be tied down to a small area because they are sitting ducks.

your posts are well-written and very informative. thank you. you add so much to this thread, as have others.

it is to our mutual benefit to understand how other players work in order to better balance the game. it would be fun to have warriors look for archers to join them in certain raids. i have been asked to join teams that head down to the pit. but it was more based on friendship than on "we definitely need an archer with us to do X, Y and Z".

i know warriors want mages to join them for healing during battle. the mages benefit thru gained XPs, and the warriors stay alive.

but how many warriors seek for archers specifically when planning to do Jack O, or skulls, or the snake pit? What special talents do warriors believe archers have other than being a nuisance?

[Wombat]

Archers in Hatmaker's cave can more effectively pull a pit of snakes with them in circles, keeping the large number of snakes with them. This works out for warriors who can pick off snakes as the pit passes a warrior stack while not drawing the pit to them directly. This archer tactic can work for most any swarm.

For the skulls and jacko, archers don't seem to offer much of an advantage. I think they can cooperate, but not by playing a role with a group of warriors that just want to spawn camp with as little movement required. Their tactics must shift to accommodate archers and mages and be more willing to break with the stack and chase down the skulls or jacko, should an archer or mage draw aggro (if I'm using the term correctly). I guess an advantage to this is more for lower levels that might not have the high luck needed to properly defend themselves from these higher level monsters. A couple archers bouncing a skull back and forth with low level warriors getting licks off in between might show good cooperation. The jacko is too fast and the only place the jacko can be found currently is too confining for an archer to use an effective offense against it, but it could allow lower level warriors time for their heals to register while the jacko chases the archer.

[fate]

Hi,

it seems to me that the problem being described consists of two parts:
(a) some players interrupt other players' fighting by targetting `their' monsters, and
(b) collaboration between ranged and melee combatants is tricky because of the eAthena target selection heuristics.

I don't think that (a) is likely to be a real issue, since there are enough monsters out there and players who `interrupt' such fights have nothing to gain from that behaviour unless they also kill the monster, in which case the original fighters also profit.

The natural solution to (b) would seem to be to revise the boring and silly eAthena targetting heuristics. I'm not completely sure what they are (it's been a while since I touched that code), but they didn't seem particularly sophisticated, largely choosing the `enemy of choice' by looking at damage dealt to them. On top of that, the only four strategies available to monsters are `attack', `meander', `stand still', and `be dead'.

For eAthena, I'd suggest sticking with purely local heuristics (i.e., monsters don't communicate, except as per the master/slave heuristic used e.g. for the two winter slimes), but there is still a lot more that can be done to make monsters more fun to fight against. Monsters should consider enemy strength, enemy health, own health, strength of the own group, enemy distance, and behaviour of the own group (cf. `swarm intelligence') before deciding how to behave.

Note: there really aren't any monsters that use ranged attacks or the monster-scripting feature for `special attacks' at this point, except for poison. That's a shame.

-- fate

[Ceros]

The aggro system of eAthena works completely different than the aggro system of WoW.

Eh, obviously. But aggro is still aggro, whatever the mechanics behind it. "Anger of the monster."

Hi,

it seems to me that the problem being described consists of two parts:
(a) some players interrupt other players' fighting by targetting `their' monsters, and
(b) collaboration between ranged and melee combatants is tricky because of the eAthena target selection heuristics.

I don't think that (a) is likely to be a real issue, since there are enough monsters out there and players who `interrupt' such fights have nothing to gain from that behaviour unless they also kill the monster, in which case the original fighters also profit.

The natural solution to (b) would seem to be to revise the boring and silly eAthena targetting heuristics. I'm not completely sure what they are (it's been a while since I touched that code), but they didn't seem particularly sophisticated, largely choosing the `enemy of choice' by looking at damage dealt to them. On top of that, the only four strategies available to monsters are `attack', `meander', `stand still', and `be dead'.

For eAthena, I'd suggest sticking with purely local heuristics (i.e., monsters don't communicate, except as per the master/slave heuristic used e.g. for the two winter slimes), but there is still a lot more that can be done to make monsters more fun to fight against. Monsters should consider enemy strength, enemy health, own health, strength of the own group, enemy distance, and behaviour of the own group (cf. `swarm intelligence') before deciding how to behave.

Note: there really aren't any monsters that use ranged attacks or the monster-scripting feature for `special attacks' at this point, except for poison. That's a shame.

-- fate

As was pointedly told to me by Crush when I brought up the topic of multiboxing, you Devs are constantly tying to get us players to work together. As such, I am just trying to illustrait why the classes segregate themselves into archers and warriors and what can be done to alleviate that issue. It isn't so much that 'there aren't enough monsters to go around' or 'he stole my monster' it is that the two strategies for each class conflict with each other and encourage segregation rather then cooperation.

Note: there really aren't any monsters that use ranged attacks or the monster-scripting feature for `special attacks' at this point, except for poison. That's a shame.

According to Freeyorp, Poison Skulls have a range of two. Also, while there seems to be a master/slave dynamic, as with the santa slimes, there is also the assist mechanic, noted in the Wiki. Rudolph slimes never assist outside of their own Santa Slime, so that seems to be slightly different.

Snake Pit stuff

Maybe I am not a high enough level (mid 60s) but the snake pit is pretty much a death trap, even when warriors go in and grab aggro first. Close quarters and enemies spawning right on top of you make it pretty difficult to last in close quarters like that.

For the skulls and jacko, archers don't seem to offer much of an advantage. I think they can cooperate, but not by playing a role with a group of warriors that just want to spawn camp with as little movement required. Their tactics must shift to accommodate archers and mages and be more willing to break with the stack and chase down the skulls or jacko, should an archer or mage draw aggro (if I'm using the term correctly). I guess an advantage to this is more for lower levels that might not have the high luck needed to properly defend themselves from these higher level monsters. A couple archers bouncing a skull back and forth with low level warriors getting licks off in between might show good cooperation. The jacko is too fast and the only place the jacko can be found currently is too confining for an archer to use an effective offense against it, but it could allow lower level warriors time for their heals to register while the jacko chases the archer.

With skulls, the problems with a group of archers pulling aggro is that archers can't hit reliably enough in order to effectively hand off the monster from one archer to the other. For example, with max DEX I find that the best hit rate I can work on a skull is 1 in 4 shots. And that's good. Sometimes I can fire 8 or 9 times without getting a hit. Meahwhile, the person who currently has aggro is running backwards firing the whole time.

I've found that even working with skulls, it is more time efficent to go kill scorpions/red slimes/spiders on the planes then it is to waste my time trying to hit skulls. Part of the reason I reclassed from archer to mage was to grind skulls.