Stupid combat moves with 1.65 ?

Godron · Post by **Godron** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 9:50 pm

I have seen some strange behavior in Deglos after the upgrade and I thought I'd mention it in case other gets the same.

Let's see if I can describe this in an understandable way.

A bunch of opponents attack you, say 6-7.
I click the front-most to attack it.
Just as it is within reach, it sort of slides back behind the other. (Actually through them)
This then leads my char to try and walk through the others, or try to go around, resulting in them getting loads of attacks of opportunity.

I also noticed this happening in the middle of combat with multiple enemies, where they suddenly start moving around.

A few times it actually caused my char to stop attacking while completely surrounded.

Could be a model thing as my main is liz.

I could also imagine someone at Bioware thinking: "Hey it looks better if creatures fighting have an arms lenght between them". And then made some change that messes it up.

Anyone else seeing this ?

bluebellknell · Post by **bluebellknell** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 10:03 pm

This was already happening but it's been reported to get worse under 1.65. I suppose it will be addressed in the next patch.

szabot · Post by **szabot** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 10:04 pm

I've exprerienced this before, so it doesn't seem like something new to me. Can't offer any sort of explanation though.

Psyco · Post by **Psyco** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 10:07 pm

Thats not as bad as when the cheating bastards decide to stack themselves up. when you take the fight to a narrow area just so only 1-2 can get you at once, then they decide that they all occupy the same spot it can get messy.

Dirk Cutlass · Post by **Dirk Cutlass** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 10:27 pm

Psyco wrote:Thats not as bad as when the cheating bastards decide to stack themselves up. when you take the fight to a narrow area just so only 1-2 can get you at once, then they decide that they all occupy the same spot it can get messy.

Yeah, had that with 3 huge and 1 elder earth elemental - cheating b'stards. That was with 1.64, not noticed anything particularly odd about 1.65 yet though, but I'll keep a look out for that. It could be particularly nasty for me as I rely on Expertise and Improved Expertise so much, and going flat-footed in combat is really going to hurt if I'm surrounded.

Wokman · Post by **Wokman** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 12:18 am

It happens so often to me I just anticipate it to happen and am able to pick which one will get to you first. My advice is don't worry, you will get used to it but yes it happened before that update. Mostly I thought it was to do with lag effect but also seems similar to if you walk past another PC you sometimes get pushed behind somehow but their are ways to avoid that.

Wok.

Albion · Post by **Albion** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 12:32 am

One wierd thing i have notice lately probably started with 1.64. Is sometimes when i click on a group of NPC to attack them my character will kill one then stop attacking and just stand there.

szabot · Post by **szabot** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 12:42 am

Albion wrote:One wierd thing i have notice lately probably started with 1.64. Is sometimes when i click on a group of NPC to attack them my character will kill one then stop attacking and just stand there.

That happens to me a lot, too. If I'm not careful, I may stand there doing nothing for several rounds, just getting beat on.

Serineth Swiftpaw · Post by **Serineth Swiftpaw** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 11:05 am

Yeah, when I try to attack the frontmost enemy, it seems the entire group get AOO's against me, really becoming a problem

Godron · Post by **Godron** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 12:57 pm

Psyco wrote:Thats not as bad as when the cheating bastards decide to stack themselves up. when you take the fight to a narrow area just so only 1-2 can get you at once, then they decide that they all occupy the same spot it can get messy.

Have not seen the stacking yet on 1.65, so perhaps they traded that for this

Problem is that this actually has somewhat the same result. Imagine you have 8 elementals in a narrow area, attack the first, it goes to the back, you get pulled into the middle of them, and you're surrounded. That's 8 elementals beating on you from every side, and you can't even run away

(not that Sha would ever do that of cause

)

On the good side it appears that autoattack does not consistently do the same, so standing still and waiting for them to come to you works somewhat. That may also give you a few AOO.
This does however sometimes lead to your char doing the "dum-de-dum - I think I'll just stand still here and do nothing while the slice me up"

Themicles · Post by **Themicles** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 1:06 pm

Godron wrote:Have not seen the stacking yet on 1.65, so perhaps they traded that for this

Nope. They made no attempt to fix it in 1.65. They're still trying to figure out why it's even happening.

Fuzz · Post by **Fuzz** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 7:15 pm

It's actually part of the Circle Kick fix, so I've heard.

The bug with Circle Kick was that it would target targets that were out of reach, and thus you would become flat-footed. The logical fix would be to change Circle-Kick, but that's not technically easy to code in Aurora. Thus, you alter AI behavior and clipping so more enemies will stay in range, thus "covering up" the fact that Circle Kick's code hasn't really changed.

Ah well.

Themicles · Post by **Themicles** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 12:26 am

Fuzz wrote:It's actually part of the Circle Kick fix, so I've heard.

The bug with Circle Kick was that it would target targets that were out of reach, and thus you would become flat-footed. The logical fix would be to change Circle-Kick, but that's not technically easy to code in Aurora. Thus, you alter AI behavior and clipping so more enemies will stay in range, thus "covering up" the fact that Circle Kick's code hasn't really changed.

Ah well.

Like I said. The overall problem existed before 1.65, and was not fixed in 1.65. Do a search for it on the Bio-boards. If if that's too hard, read through the NWVault's recent archive of BioWare employee posts.

Simply put, it isn't some underhanded evil ploy to make people think they fixed circle kick.

-Themicles

Themicles · Post by **Themicles** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 7:56 am

For the record, an update on this from BioWare:

http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost ... highlight=

Excerpt from the whole thread:

Derek French - Live Team Producer - NWN wrote:We have found and fixed the problem that was causing the "stacking" issue. As it turns out, the problem exists in 1.64 and was not introduced in 1.65. Big thanks goes out to the community for helping us out on this one. With that custom module it allowed us to test and determine that the bug existed before 1.65 which then allowed us to find it. I should be able to give you all more details next week (if you want), but this issue will be resolved in the upcoming 1.66 update to NWN, due some time in February.

Note that the post linked is taken out of context from the rest of the thread of which it was a part. Please click the link above the post with a warning similar to this one, to see the entire thread.

-Themicles

Aerill · Post by **Aerill** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 8:29 am

Thank GOD they are going to fix it.. as a recent trip to the Deep had shown it became absolutely awful with 1.65. Monsters kept passing through the frontline as if it was incorporeal to attack mages and archers behind and our frontline often turned into four fighters stacked at exactly one place. This bug has thrown out all party combat tactics out of the window.

Themicles · Post by **Themicles** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 8:34 am

Aerill wrote:Thank GOD they are going to fix it.. as a recent trip to the Deep had shown it became absolutely awful with 1.65. Monsters kept passing through the frontline as if it was incorporeal to attack mages and archers behind and our frontline often turned into four fighters stacked at exactly one place. This bug has thrown out all party combat tactics out of the window.

I actually think that's an OnBlocked event fix that Mistcaller was trying. Though, I didn't know he imported it into Avlis, only that he imported it into Tairis. I'll point him at this thread.

-Themicles

Ben DeVeny · Post by **Ben DeVeny** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 1:16 pm

Albion wrote:One wierd thing i have notice lately probably started with 1.64. Is sometimes when i click on a group of NPC to attack them my character will kill one then stop attacking and just stand there.

It always was a risk, but since the upgrade to 1.65 I am stalling in every single spawn. Not just once a dungeon, but every spawn without exception. On a bad spawn, it can happen as often as 3 times. The worst thing is, when a monk is flatfooted he is shark bait. Basicly you are standing there in your underwear, AC 15 or so and taking damage so fast that the red health barometer cant fall as fast the loss of hit points. The animation of the red line going down is just not fast enough to depict how dead you really are. I hope there is a patch on the way really soon. This is just damned deadly.
-shen

Serineth Swiftpaw · Post by **Serineth Swiftpaw** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 1:32 pm

It makes the warzone Oh so fun!

There really is a Wemic under there somewhere:

Do the conga:

Seems like the conga line is breaking:

In the first picture there are roughly 20 assorted M'Chek army personel stacked on top of each other. As soon as I moved they all took AOOs and such.

For Quicksilvers benefit and such; yes, I did kill them all

Aerill · Post by **Aerill** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 3:11 pm

Albion wrote:One wierd thing i have notice lately probably started with 1.64. Is sometimes when i click on a group of NPC to attack them my character will kill one then stop attacking and just stand there.

Yes, that's actually something I have noticed as well now that you mention. As with Shen, it's quite deadly for a character with a lot of the AC coming from dexterity and dodge bonuses, not to mention if you are figthing something with sneaks.. It got worse with 1.65 too, though happened in 1.64 as well.

Midknight · Post by **Midknight** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 6:00 am

Heh, and you think you T'Nanshi fighters have it bad... think about us poor Mikona soldiers... T'Nanshi soldiers, with sneak attacks, stacking on top of each other...