Something I thought might have been addressed since the beta was released.
Since I’ve been playing I’ve been frustrated time and time again when I’ve had to fight close quaters near a cliff or edge and the enemy uses a knock back blow and I have pushed over the edge and had start that run all over again.
Now I understand that Dev’s Can’t make the game a complete walk in the park for a player, but come on even the playing field a little, if I can be knocked off a cliff by a Npc, why should I not be able to knock a a npc off a cliff as well???
1) It’s too easy to exploit, since AI creatures aren’t aware enough to a avoid being backed up to a cliff
2) What happens if you knock an enemy into an bad spot and their corpse had an item you need? Or the fall isn’t enough to kill them, but now you can’t reach them, and they can’t reach you, so now you can’t kill them? This would potentially block a story step, or event.
Story steps where this should happen should be QC’ed extensively, as all of the story steps should have been. Alternatively add a semi defiant that only makes them immune to being knocked off cliffs.
You have gotten what you paid for, all that remains is biweekly gemshop pushing.
Something I thought might have been addressed since the beta was released.
Since I’ve been playing I’ve been frustrated time and time again when I’ve had to fight close quaters near a cliff or edge and the enemy uses a knock back blow and I have pushed over the edge and had start that run all over again.
Now I understand that Dev’s Can’t make the game a complete walk in the park for a player, but come on even the playing field a little, if I can be knocked off a cliff by a Npc, why should I not be able to knock a a npc off a cliff as well???
Yes I have the same experiences as the poster quoted here and a lot. A lot of GW2 geography is made up of high spots that take long and tricky treks to get to including fast re-spawing mobs. I don’t want to exploit the mobs but they sure have been given a lot of ability to exploit their surroundings and give a player a really bad day.
Story steps where this should happen should be QC’ed extensively, as all of the story steps should have been. Alternatively add a semi defiant that only makes them immune to being knocked off cliffs.
Jefferey said it all. Make better AI, how would you like to approach making an Ai that can forsee knockbacks and avoid them? What if multiple people with knockbacks were fighting the enemy? It is too easy to exploit and not reasonable to “make better”.
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Better AI isn’t even needed really. Just don’t put bosses near cliffs and have auto-loot. It really does solve the problem. Have them always spawn in the same locations, so even if they fall somewhere unreachable, you only would have to wait a few minutes for the respawn.
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Jefferey said it all. Make better AI, how would you like to approach making an Ai that can forsee knockbacks and avoid them? What if multiple people with knockbacks were fighting the enemy? It is too easy to exploit and not reasonable to “make better”.
Have you played a game where you can knock enemies off cliffs/edges for an instakill? Enemies react accordingly when in proximity of an edge, eg become more evasive/guard to prevent getting kb’ed off a cliff, though I’d think most living creatures would fight fiercer when their backed into a (metaphysical) corner.
This isn’t here or there as the AI in this game (and most MMO’s) is terrible with enemies only able to use the same patterns over and over again rather than use an interrupt when a player is charging a big attack or an evasive/block when about to be struck, really fighting anything in this game(and most MMO’s) is like fighting a 6 yo smashing the keyboard and blowing everything as soon as it’s off cool down.
tl;dr it’s completely reasonable to program better AI but also expensive (and I couldn’t justify this to shareholders) and seeing as this is an MMO it’s not required to have AI that does more than a few simple patterns.
You have gotten what you paid for, all that remains is biweekly gemshop pushing.
Have you played a game where you can knock enemies off cliffs/edges for an instakill?
sw:tor. yes, i have played that game, where i can kb enemies of cliffs/edges, blah blah. LOVED it. on the scale of balance of lose loot vs. the sheer satisfaction of being able to do to them what they did to me?
1) It’s too easy to exploit, since AI creatures aren’t aware enough to a avoid being backed up to a cliff
2) What happens if you knock an enemy into an bad spot and their corpse had an item you need? Or the fall isn’t enough to kill them, but now you can’t reach them, and they can’t reach you, so now you can’t kill them? This would potentially block a story step, or event.
You should have used knockbacks the way most new age MMOs do. If the player can be knocked back, the mobs can as well. If the player can be knocked off a cliff, so can the mobs. The results of the knocking off are entirely up to the player. If they glitch and have to re-runs omething due to knocking off a mob, that is on them. It is better to give us options and unique ways to kill mobs than to limit us while giving the mobs every tool.
In short, prevent US from falling over ledges or allow us to actually make use of this action styled game. If they can’t hit us but we can hit them, oh well, allow us to pick them off from superior positions. That is called playing smartly, not exploiting. Or, give every melee specific mob a very basic ranged attack to hit back if someone is using the terrain tactically. Mobs should not auto regen just because you are being tactically intelligent. We should be able to screw ourselves over by knocking an enemy off a ledge that had an item on it we needed. That is on US. It allows us to make the decision to kill them that way, and if not then they can path right back up assuming there is no jumping required, aggroing everything allong the way.
If loot is reallyt he issue, make all pve loot work like pvp loot, it drops at our feet not on the creatures body.
Jefferey said it all. Make better AI, how would you like to approach making an Ai that can forsee knockbacks and avoid them? What if multiple people with knockbacks were fighting the enemy? It is too easy to exploit and not reasonable to “make better”.
Have you played a game where you can knock enemies off cliffs/edges for an instakill? Enemies react accordingly when in proximity of an edge, eg become more evasive/guard to prevent getting kb’ed off a cliff, though I’d think most living creatures would fight fiercer when their backed into a (metaphysical) corner.
This isn’t here or there as the AI in this game (and most MMO’s) is terrible with enemies only able to use the same patterns over and over again rather than use an interrupt when a player is charging a big attack or an evasive/block when about to be struck, really fighting anything in this game(and most MMO’s) is like fighting a 6 yo smashing the keyboard and blowing everything as soon as it’s off cool down.
tl;dr it’s completely reasonable to program better AI but also expensive (and I couldn’t justify this to shareholders) and seeing as this is an MMO it’s not required to have AI that does more than a few simple patterns.
Still, if multiple players have a KB/launch skill what the enemy is supposed to infinitly dodge or cast stability out of thin air. I played MMO’s where you can be knocked off, but never one where they can. Why? it just isn’t challenging anymore if you can 1shot a boss because your party has all KB skills equipped. Sure maybe trash mobs should be able to be launched just for sheer satisfaction but bosses/veterans/champins/legendaries/etc should not be able to fall off cliffs.
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Bosses shouldn’t be faught where you CAN knock them off.
All others, it is open season. Sure you can knockt hem off, but you can’t loot them now either in those games that allow it. Meanign you got your easy kill at the loss of loot.
Still, if multiple players have a KB/launch skill what the enemy is supposed to infinitly dodge or cast stability out of thin air. I played MMO’s where you can be knocked off, but never one where they can. Why? it just isn’t challenging anymore if you can 1shot a boss because your party has all KB skills equipped. Sure maybe trash mobs should be able to be launched just for sheer satisfaction but bosses/veterans/champins/legendaries/etc should not be able to fall off cliffs.
Dude… That is why Bosses have their Defiant / Unshakable-whatever buff.
And I honestly don’t think Veterans should be included in the list.
Veterans are like rival-level mobs. The stuff you can solo, but offers a slight challenge, whereas champs, epics, and legendaries are the things you NEED help with. (usually)
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There’s a ton of cliffs in this game.. and bridges.. and holes to fall through. With that, a lot of bosses, and mini bosses. It’s a lot of ground to cover to fix what isn’t broken really. Plus I’m not sure of any encounter where you want to shoot a boss off a cliff rather than kill/loot their corpse.
Dungeons maybe, but then you are just skipping content and that hurts more than it helps.
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1) It’s too easy to exploit, since AI creatures aren’t aware enough to a avoid being backed up to a cliff
2) What happens if you knock an enemy into an bad spot and their corpse had an item you need? Or the fall isn’t enough to kill them, but now you can’t reach them, and they can’t reach you, so now you can’t kill them? This would potentially block a story step, or event.
Very good points. It might be cool to acknowledge the trick of knocking enemies off cliffs though by instead awarding bonus damage. Maybe if you would have knocked them over a cliff, they instead get knocked down (for longer if they were already going to be knocked down), and take a large dose of bonus damage.
I also think that if players can’t knock enemies over cliffs then those same protections should be extended to players, and they shouldn’t be able to be knocked/feared over cliffs by enemy actions.
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I’m actually okay with NPCs being able to knock me off cliffs lol. It makes fighting them more interesting and fun for me.
Now, if NPCs can be knocked off cliffs, there’s a lot of things you have to take account for. Like, what happens if you knock a doyak off a cliff and there was water underneath? Does the doyak swim or will it just drown and float there? Lol. AI coding is complex. Take a look at Far Cry 3 and see what happens when you try to get enemies to follow you into water (they don’t and stand there), or when you drive a car full of innocents into water by accident (they auto-die and float up). It’s CPU intensive, and doing that for a server based game like GW2 can be pretty taxing on the systems in addition to complicated programming.
There’s a ton of cliffs in this game.. and bridges.. and holes to fall through
That’s the other part of the problem. ANET just loves making cliffs, bridges and holes. Then putting enemies near them. All while knowing that they cause problems for the AI.
Replacing the majority of cliffside enemies with flying would solve a lot of our complaints, while not making anything actually easier. If we knock an enemy off, it will simply fly back up to us. Dropping the loot at our feet would deal with the loot issue.
Pity ANET hasn’t given us any enemies that can actually fly.
Uhhh Anet. I feel like it’s important to point out that whilst enemies cannot be pushed off cliffs they can most certainly be knocked back into water. Which subsequently breaks them if they aren’t equipped to handle that.
I KB’d a Grub today which then just sat in the water unable to do anything as I killed it. I also came across some odd Champion enemy (it was sort of humanoid with wings and a dragon-like head) which someone had pushed into the water and was just floating backwards and forwards above the water with no movement animations and the inability to attack. It was marvelous.
Or the fall isn’t enough to kill them, but now you can’t reach them, and they can’t reach you, so now you can’t kill them? This would potentially block a story step, or event.
Isn’t the converse also true? If knocking an NPC off a cliff makes them unreachable, then the NPC knocking you off the same cliff also makes them unreachable, also blocking the story step or event.
I can understand preventing NPCs from being knocked over cliffs from an AI standpoint (the path back up the hill may be so far you’re not willing to give the AI enough CPU time to figure out the route). But the story-blocking reason is logically self-defeating.
1) It’s too easy to exploit, since AI creatures aren’t aware enough to a avoid being backed up to a cliff
2) What happens if you knock an enemy into an bad spot and their corpse had an item you need? Or the fall isn’t enough to kill them, but now you can’t reach them, and they can’t reach you, so now you can’t kill them? This would potentially block a story step, or event.
I think everyone’s forgetting about another one of NCSoft’s creations that handled this fairly well: City of Heroes.
Terrain could be (and quite often was) used to help in fights against enemies. And yet despite the fact that the great majority of the players could fly, nearly every mob could still be somewhat useful if you were out of their reach, because all of them had a ranged attack they could use for just such an occasion, even if they’re a melee mob (mostly “pick something up and throw it”)
I think during developement the “easy way out” was taken way too often in face of a problem. Mobs being prevented from fallin off ledges is just one example of it. The entire can’t reach attacker → start regenerating buisness is a lazy way of getting away with cheap AI (calculation wise and decision wise).
Just observe how melee mobs move around. When you run past, they don’t actually follow you direcly, they first run to the spot you where at when they first noticed you. When they arrive, the AI starts looking for you again and sets the next waypoint to where you are then. The AI never checks if it can actually hit you while on the move, only when a waypoint is reached.
I can conclude from this that every mob only has a single waypoint to which it moves at any given time and no further AI calculations are done while on the move. This of course make for a really terrible pathfinding. Mobs that fall off cliffs are totally screwed and even if there is a way to get back up, they won’t make it unless it’s a direct path from the mob back to you.
Bottom line: the AI needs improvements BADLY. Since this doesnt only affect mobs, but also NPCs, pets, minions etc.
Giving Mobs a distinct advantage over players and making their pawns interact with the world in fundamentally different ways than players is imo not acceptable. The (physical) laws of the game world should apply to all entities equally, players and AI driven ones. The amount of corners that are being cut by the system as it is now is too large for my liking.
Bottom line for the matter at hand: Players AND mobs should either both be protected from falling off cliffs or both should be able to fall down.
At least if it was possible for certain mobs, like the pesky harpies in Uncategorized Fractal… I mean, if the buggers can explode my whole part off the platforms, why shouldn’t we have a chance to retaliate when we make up to them… hardly ever drop anything worthwhile either.
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Have you played a game where you can knock enemies off cliffs/edges for an instakill?
sw:tor. yes, i have played that game, where i can kb enemies of cliffs/edges, blah blah. LOVED it. on the scale of balance of lose loot vs. the sheer satisfaction of being able to do to them what they did to me?
loved it.
It was great fun. Jump in, AoE knock, and everything went flying.
And yes, occasionally you’d be stuck in combat because the fall hadn’t quite killed one and it couldn’t get back to you. And occasionally they’d drop loot that you couldn’t get to, and the loot glowy would taunt you.
And bosses were immune to knockback anyway, so it wasn’t a cheap win.
But it was so… so… satisfying. And felt more fair than trying to climb up that Dredge scaffolding. I have a hammer, I should be able to send them flying if they can do it to me.
Oh, another game where it works? Champions Online. Knocking bad guys off the roof is a perfectly valid tactic. And again, it’s only the standard mobs.
Frankly, being knocked of ledges is goes against ArenaNet’s stated goal of creating fun.
When faced with the question (which apparently was the big question they were continually asking themselves during development):
“Is being knocked off a Dredge platform and having to make your painstaking way back up past a dozen other Dredge, each of whom could do the same thing to you and thus make you start again, while knowing that he mobs are smugly confident in the knowledge that you cannot knock them off, no matter how you try – fun?”
The answer should have been a resounding “NO” from every person in the office.
Cuz frankly, if anyone says yes to that, then you could probably get yourself checked for masochistic tendencies……
Standard monsters/enemies definitely should be “knockoffable” on ledges and cliffs, with the requisite fall damage. Loot is not important, its fun knocking things off cliffs!
If the creature gets stuck, give it a time-out and teleport it back up to its spawning point if the fall & any condition damage didn’t finish them off.
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I always found it disturbing that mobs where immune to being knocked off cliffs. Same thing with the invulnerability they get, when the mobs are on terrain one foot lower than you.
GW2 has nice physics, yet the mobs immunity butchers it. Improve AI instead of giving them immunity, please.
I’ve mentally gone through those first two posts before and think the current implementation is a good solution.
If you’re annoyed about being knocked off a cliff, then don’t back yourself up to one against enemies that have “Knocks back” in their description. And if you’re looking for that great feeling of pushing someone off a cliff, try bringing some knockback skills to WvW. Not only does it work on other players, but it’s even more satisfying than knocking an NPC off a cliff ever could be.
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Story steps where this should happen should be QC’ed extensively, as all of the story steps should have been. Alternatively add a semi defiant that only makes them immune to being knocked off cliffs.
Jefferey said it all. Make better AI, how would you like to approach making an Ai that can forsee knockbacks and avoid them? What if multiple people with knockbacks were fighting the enemy? It is too easy to exploit and not reasonable to “make better”.
Some mobs should learn how to jump or climb back up should they get knocked off. Harpies for example should fly right back up to the cliff if they get blown away by a knockback skill. I’m actually kind of surprised that some of the humanoid enemies don’t even try jump up areas in an attempt to reach you. If anything, I bet teaching the mobs how to jump or fly up areas would minimize the amount of terrain-based exploits used by certain players to complete dungeons.
As far as looting hard-to-reach corpses go, just use the same looting system that’s used in WvW. Pretty simple solution if you ask me.
Much as I wish it weren’t so, it pretty much is the case that knockbacks that can send enemies off cliffs/ledges/bridges would cause gameplay problems that are hard to work around.
I’ve mentally gone through those first two posts before and think the current implementation is a good solution.
If you’re annoyed about being knocked off a cliff, then don’t back yourself up to one against enemies that have “Knocks back” in their description. And if you’re looking for that great feeling of pushing someone off a cliff, try bringing some knockback skills to WvW. Not only does it work on other players, but it’s even more satisfying than knocking an NPC off a cliff ever could be.
Have you ever fought dregde inside their tunnels. They have lots of knockback. Their tunnels often have places high up on thin catwalks that are swarming with dredge.
Sure, the KD is dodgable when you’re on the ground. But if you dodge it up on the catwalk, you just dodged yourself off the edge. And they are immune to blind.
Guardrails would be sufficient to fix my complaints with the dredge. Why does an underground race have massive underground caverns* with high catwalks and no guardrails ?
Much as I wish it weren’t so, it pretty much is the case that knockbacks that can send enemies off cliffs/ledges/bridges would cause gameplay problems that are hard to work around.
This is, unfortunately, not Sparta.
Then stop putting enemies near cliffs. The problems don’t happen, and people won’t complain about the enemies being so unfair.
Are you kidding me? There’s text under the enemies’ health bar that tells you if it is capable of knockbacks. Just pay attention to your surroundings and plan accordingly. I’ve been knocked off by an enemy ONCE, and that was enough for me to learn to pay more attention to what I’m doing. I like a good challenge. I say put more enemies with knockbacks on cliff sides.
I do think we should be able to knock them off as well though. Simple solution for loot; if a mob dies from fall dmg make the loot spawn next to the player in a bag of loot. WvW already does this with playerkills, seems easy enough to implement.
Jefferey said it all. Make better AI, how would you like to approach making an Ai that can forsee knockbacks and avoid them? What if multiple people with knockbacks were fighting the enemy? It is too easy to exploit and not reasonable to “make better”.
Have you played a game where you can knock enemies off cliffs/edges for an instakill?
SWTOR, u can knock enemies of cliffs, its awesome! and auto loot makes sure u get the items u need. also if an enemie dies by falling his corpse is placed where the fall began not where he landed. it works fine no bugs that i saw with it.
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Frankly, being knocked of ledges is goes against ArenaNet’s stated goal of creating fun.
When faced with the question (which apparently was the big question they were continually asking themselves during development):
“Is being knocked off a Dredge platform and having to make your painstaking way back up past a dozen other Dredge, each of whom could do the same thing to you and thus make you start again, while knowing that he mobs are smugly confident in the knowledge that you cannot knock them off, no matter how you try – fun?”
The answer should have been a resounding “NO” from every person in the office.
Cuz frankly, if anyone says yes to that, then you could probably get yourself checked for masochistic tendencies……
I just don’t think anything above trash mobs would be suitable for “knockoff to death”. It takes away the intended challenge of fighting that enemy, and makes content that much easier. Think of how easy it would be if everyone could just lead a hard boss towards a ledge and just shoot them off. No challenge, no acheivment, no loot, just an open door. That takes away, and leads to nothing fun or inviting. As many ways people can point out shooting a boss off a cliff would be fun, it would never happen. Trash mobs maybe, since they serve no purpose but to be killed in seconds anyways.
“I’m waiting for the staff to get off their lunch
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
I just don’t think anything above trash mobs would be suitable for “knockoff to death”. It takes away the intended challenge of fighting that enemy, and makes content that much easier. Think of how easy it would be if everyone could just lead a hard boss towards a ledge and just shoot them off. No challenge, no acheivment, no loot, just an open door. That takes away, and leads to nothing fun or inviting. As many ways people can point out shooting a boss off a cliff would be fun, it would never happen. Trash mobs maybe, since they serve no purpose but to be killed in seconds anyways.
True. But there is one very obvious solution to that: Don’t put bosses near cliffs.
I’d love to see players rewarded for being smart as opposed to being limited by the game.
Pushing mobs off cliffs is one idea, but I’d also like to see “Invulnerable” sorted out. It’s a cheap way to limit players. Why mobs can’t try to use ranged attacks when they can’t reach us in melee, or try to pull us closer to them? Would make combat so much more interesting..
One solution any story driven npc has no trigger system kb that instigates being knocked off cliffs all other npc’s not needed in a driven story line or just in world is fair game, although if this was to be placed in game all classes should be given a kb skill to make this fair for all players to use this ability.
Personally I’m a fan of more realistic physics. If I’m getting knocked back off cliffs, then I want to do it to other PCs/NPCs too. What? Is there a specific, major NPC that causes problems? Reset the mob if it goes flying off a cliff, or give that NPC immunity to knockbacks.
Something I thought might have been addressed since the beta was released.
Since I’ve been playing I’ve been frustrated time and time again when I’ve had to fight close quaters near a cliff or edge and the enemy uses a knock back blow and I have pushed over the edge and had start that run all over again.
Now I understand that Dev’s Can’t make the game a complete walk in the park for a player, but come on even the playing field a little, if I can be knocked off a cliff by a Npc, why should I not be able to knock a a npc off a cliff as well???
So true so many games have been able to do this without destroying balance. The devs got so much right but this they got wrong IMO. I was just doing Sepidon Deeps and got knocked off so many times fighting to the Vista is was frankly NOT FUN. Regardless of challenge levels that is one thing a game never should be: not fun. It is total BS that PC’s can be knocked off edges but not NPC’s.
Much as I wish it weren’t so, it pretty much is the case that knockbacks that can send enemies off cliffs/ledges/bridges would cause gameplay problems that are hard to work around.
This is, unfortunately, not Sparta.
SW: TOR, Champions, Star Trek, and Warhammer all did it without affecting balance or game play so i don’t see what issues you are referring to. The latter even allowed it in PvP and if you could set it up right to send a who group flying off a cliff into some lava it was a blast.
That said if there are issues then PC’s should have the same immunity as NPC’s.
You have to do a majority of damage to the mob before knocking them off. Say around 66% damage. After that, knock them off the cliff for coolness factor or finish it with the last blow. If they die of fall damage, it drops a bag of loot on your feet.
As for bosses and veterans, keep their cliff falling immunity.
