Luring enemies agaist the rules?
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Shooting a goblin across a chasm? Fine.
Continuing to shoot a goblin that tries to run to you but stops on the edge of the chasm, ignoring the ramp beside it that would let it reach you? No.
Seriously, Common sense here.
If you were the goblin would you stand there and get shot? No? then don't abuse the fact the AI does.
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This is an arbitrary interpretation of a rule that's not even written anywhere. And every player and DM will have his own opinion on this matter.
No offence, Hinty, but this is monkey business. -
Polaris's bark is worse then his actual bite. I don't think that the dms are running around banning people without a chance for people to explain themselves, nor do I think that a one time offender would ever get banned for any of this. Sometimes people get frustrated when they think something is common sense and others don't seem to get it. DM's are people. In my 7 years of experience with CoA, I've found the ones that are aggressive in these types of post tend to be the most fair when it actually comes down to it, so I seriously wouldn't worry about this thread and anything said it it beyond the reminder that exploiting the AI is considered cheating.
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Like when a mage gets attacked, usual tactics is to run around your fighters to generate AoOs. Does it make sense for a monster to follow a mage in circles and soak damage until he's croaked? Is it an abuse? Is it an abuse only if the monster is smart? I can go on for a while with such examples.
I've been playing on this server for half a year but the fact that you can only shoot a stranded monster if he also has a ranged attack was news to me. Moreover, I've yet to see a party that ignores an orc on the ridge or a goblin across the chasm and I've never seen a DM reacting in a negative way.
So I can't agree with Polaris, because arbitrarily banning people for things others do daily (and DMs close their eyes on it) doesn't sound like a good idea.1). No. It doesn't make sense for a mage to purposefully abuse the NWN engines to force a foe into AoO. Yes, DMs consider this an exploit.
2). Shooting a monster with a ranged attack isn't an exploit. Shooting a monster that stands there doing nothing while you kill it is. Would anything in the real world do that? No. Common sense.
3). Polaris doesn't arbitrarily ban people. If you feel he has, there is a full team of DMs who review every case and situation. There are reasons some of our DMs are no longer with us.
4). Chill out dude. You seem really tense on these forums. Be more groovy and have fun and try to remember, DMs are here to keep things fair. 95% of our players "get" these common sense situations. If they didn't, we DMs would actually spend a lot more time dealing with this stuff than we do. If we were the kind of arbitrary Nazis that you seem to imply we are, we wouldn't be around 11 years later.
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When i am a squishy and get targeted, i indeed DO run in big circles around my melee, not to generate AoO, that's just the bonus, it is because of 2 reasons, very critical. 1: Running away from your rescuers generally makes you end up dead since they cannot help you if they cannot reach you. 2 (directly connected to 1): This makes the monster eventually turn its attention to your more armored buddies that are hitting it. I admit to doing this often, i would never have considered it an exploit of any kind, but simply the smart thing to do.
I would shoot the monster with my bow if it stood there across the chasm without a way across. I really would. You'd be surprised how many -players- just stand there if you do stuff like this because they get confused and don't really know how to react. If the monster is frozen on some bump due to the ai pathing system, it becomes a different matter.
I regularly run into a room to make sure i get everyone's attention, then run back to a bottleneck to negate their numbers, i consider this smart.
I think that -most- of the time, if you have to ask if something is an exploit, it usually is.
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Well I have seen and heard about really really stupid war time common sense. Like example but I can't remember all the details of it..
WW1
The war where trenches was formed and the no-mans land was used. Everyday people would get out of a defended position. Charge get shot up then flee…so then the other side would do the same... Back and forth this went on for days or weeks.
Common sense.....NONE
WW1
Same thing trench warfare. Now I forget the name but this guy that came from this backwoods town in the woods was good at Turkey Shoots…...He was smart he went around to the side of the German's trench and just sat there.
He would make a turkey call.....One German would raise his head out of the trench and get shot. He would make another turkey call.....and another German would raise his head and get shot. this guy did this for I think a full week....all to the same extent.
Tactics Luring........Common sense for the Germans NONE
Vietnam
The very first battle….Americans flew hundreds of troops into an open field using the new helicopters. They fought and pushed the Vietnams back into the jungle the battle stopped.......The army was asked to pull out in the choppers and go to a different field in the air......One Sargent _decided "Na we will just walk there from here" and so he took is team marching through the jungles. So the Vietnams saw this watched them thinking it was some sort of trap to lure them out…..Nothing so they set up an ambush spot. Americans walked right into the center and was surrounded. Only survivors was ones presumed dead cause non had since to flee.
Common Sense Well lets just say they did not survive it.
Now I know that Game AI has a limit…but situations like these really do and did happen.. You will be very surprise at what happens to common sense when adrenaline gets pumping in the body. During major accidents....Best never to panic People dies stupidly by this. Rotating doors was stopped being use due to such..
Western Hotel
A popular hotel that used a rotating door caught on fire one day Fire spreed slow enough for everyone to go single file through the doors and no one would have been harmed…..Many died because they panicked and tried to go through both sides at once causing the rotating doors to not rotate killing way to many that day
Panic = No common sense
Now I try my best not to exploit this. I will not stand and lure one by one a group of 50 goblins…....Now when I was down in the bonus area for the fey there was 2-3 Heavily armed and armored big guys down there. I used traps and tried to lure all of them at once.....I used many entangle traps to try and catch all of them but only one gave chase.....I try a second time to lure the last ones but if the second attempt did not work then I stopped luring with that group.
Also a good example...Carpenters quest on the goblin track....Go to the water fall and I always see people shooting the bunch across the hole there. I consider this as we surprised them and they panicked and did not know which way to go.
Also here is a question...Zombies are very very slow....Is it alright to keep running back a ways turn around fill it with arrows till it gets close then turn around run some more and repeat till it gets killed?
Also I have seen were an enemy literally would run passed every fighter killing it to try and get to the poor rock thrower. Dose the melee fighters have to stop attacking it because it is an exploit and let it get to the Squishy?
Also I know and do thank the DM team for being fair and give players a chance to give their reasons before any serious ban implements are used. But sometimes it must be weighed....Game mechanic limitation? Or situations that Do happen in real life? How is the best way to juggle this?
Also I have started noticing that the AI is starting to use similar tactics.....or just flukes.. Hanse tree quest a Mage disappeared on us and fled. could not find it till we came back out after getting the water. I have also seen the King in the Chess game go around all of my traps. So It is starting to I hope get balanced out between AI and PC tactics._
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If running in circles is considered abusive then the best thing you can do is fight the damn monster, since running away is 100% likely to get you severely injured (Fighters can't catch up).
Hope you buffed your AC! :lol:
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If running in circles is considered abusive then the best thing you can do is fight the damn monster, since running away is 100% likely to get you severely injured (Fighters can't catch up).
True you will die but running away from the fighters will also get you killed,this is a GAME we play this game to have fun and if the AI wants to run after my 13ac 18 hp mage because they were stood at the back with a crossbow im going to run to and around the warriors to live not stand there and die because the AI wants to ignore the people killing it.
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If I'm support, and a monster is chasing me, I will go AWAY from it. As it will usually NEVER change it's mind, I will try and get to somewhere near my fighters, to avoid the silly sitiation of a mafge being chased by a THING and the fighter chasing the THING.
If I can get to my fighters by going AWAY in a straight line, great.Often, as the THING has ignored the fighters and rushed past them, it is between me and my fighter. That means a path , with a wide enough radious that the THING will hopeully not hit me. A circle. with the HOPE that once at the fighter, they can engage it or it will engage them.
I can't imagine that ANY socalled "Squishy" actually drags monsters past fighters in the hopes of getting a AI.
What, do that 5-10 times before it might get brought down by AoOs? You're not gonna live that long because it DOES get occassional swings at you while chasing.The "Squishy" runs past the fighter in the hope that the THING might decide to stop and fight the fighter
Its not abuse. Its common sense. It's a attempt at survival in the only way possible.
Change the AI, so that after its chasing someone for awhile and it receives a AoO, it might stop and fight. -
Chill out dude. You seem really tense on these forums.
I was trying to be eloquent. I guess i failed, but i still hope i managed to make a point.
Because i think this is an important discussion.
Because i'm not a cheater, but would hate to suddenly get banned for my day to day activities.Yes, I do this stuff every day and had no idea it's bad. And everyone around me does the same.
After new AI started pwning mages, even some DMs adviced mages to run toward their fighters when chased by monsters. And if fighters don't manage to pick those monsters off the mage as he runs past, he just has to turn back and run past them again. And voila, you're running in circles now. See? Exploiting the engine for AoO's like a dirty cheater.I agree that exploiting engine's weaknesses on purpose is bad.
But i also think that whenever the engine brainfarts on you accidentally and does a dumb thing, you should not just cancel whatever you were doing and also do something dumb and possibly die just to rectify this.
And all these talks of bans and vault wipes naturally make me nervous. Because i know i can be caught running around my fighters or continuing shooting at my target when its pathfinding suddenly borks. It's no fun playing with a sword of Damocles overhanging you. -
There is no sword of Damocles Direfish. That's an understandable fear but here is the deal.
DMs don't just randomly ban and vault wipe or punish players. When we see things wrong, we talk to you first and make it clear what you were doing wrong and why.
The exception is when it is 100% clear that what you were doing was purposeful, and cheating. Even then, if you disagree with what one DM does or says, there are 10 others who will and can weigh in on the situation. The DMs are a team, we not only back each other up, we occasionally provide balance and correction for each other too.
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I guess I'll look at the AI again, and check that the numbers aren't relentlessly chasing mages until they are dead.
But I already did, like 10 times. Nerfed the chances of them even targetting lower AC massively, to the point of almost none existence, a check was added to make sure they switch targets (no matter what) after an amount of time (with a maximum put into that random amount of time) and the AI never checked for classes anyway. Theres also that check for large amounts of damage that makes them switch target too.
Even though I tried playing a few mages, to test it from the player perspective, and saw the AI acting exactly how it looks like it should from the code.
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I guess I'll look at the AI again, and check that the numbers aren't relentlessly chasing mages until they are dead.
They're not mindlessley relentless. They DO switch. But it seems like you have to get them to switch, like… getting into range of your melee people.
Which is why "squishies" will run to them. and running in a survivable way means making passes as you run around.
The commentary is a reaction to someone stating the reaosn for doing so is AoOs -
I actually said it would be only a matter of time before the player base figured out that characters with high tumble would be able to abuse the AI even more then the old and a smart group would have even a less of a chance of dying then they did before back when it was first implemented, but no one ever listens to me. Its not like you can even police it, because whats a player supposed to do just stand there and be hit?
That being said, I haven't noticed the relentless attacks of old in quite some time, so whatever you are doing Zool -is- working.
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so far my wanderings in the wilds have not had random monsters* charging across a screen to my invisible and stealthed character (that had perplexed me in the past..seeing a goblin or a orc charging across a screen to zero in on me, when i was simply traveling near by), this has not happened in quite some time, so it is a strong indication things are fixed
*creatures that can see invisible are of course still acting the way they should any time i have encountered them (ankegs in particular..those things make my heart skip a beat..even when i suspect there is one near, they still scare me when they pop on to the screen)
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From what I have seen since my return, the AI is acting fine. To be fair I do not play a mage, but I dont see the mages targeted in my party unless they do something like shoot a crossbow at the NPC before it is engaged by anyone else. Even then, when my armored character got in front of the NPC and started bashing away the NPC switched to attacking my armored character. Seems like it is working well (logical / fair) to me.