Guild Wars 2

Not a single world has the temple uncontested, risen vets AOE kills the morale extremely fast making this impossible to complete.;

i can confirm this.
The NPCs got nearly instantly killed by the aoe circles leading to a moral drop from 100% to 0% in 3 seconds.

shibby.7219:

Not a single world has the temple uncontested, risen vets AOE kills the morale extremely fast making this impossible to complete.;

Yeah, last night the NSP temple zerg tried several times to escort the pact from Rally Waypoint to the temple. Right out of the gate 2 veterans put down almost a dozen red circle AOEs EVERYWHERE and instagibbed the pact. I wish I had taken a screen shot.

While we’re at it. The changes made to how “morale” works really sucks. The chan event in Cursed Shore is impossible with a big zerg now. Two champ jesters putting bombs on people = instantly dead NPCs and a failed event.

More often than not, we are able to escort the Pact without problem (though the morale does tend to get low) on TC. It helps that people are learning the location of the Noble spawns and distract them a bit. According to the patch notes, they actually made it easier:

- Risen nobles: Decreased the damage on the symbol created by their shadowstep skill.

Not that I’ve seen much of a difference in the Pact morale.

The bigger problem with Balh, in my opinion, is having enough people interested in doing the pre-events leading to the escort. But that in itself is not a bug.

Here is a video someone recorded of the event failing as soon as it is started. I really wish we can get a dev response on this. I finally gathered all I needed for the mystic clovers and now I need to get the Obsidian Shards.

derekgrant.6504:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJnbZrRNZB8

Here is a video someone recorded of the event failing as soon as it is started. I really wish we can get a dev response on this. I finally gathered all I needed for the mystic clovers and now I need to get the Obsidian Shards.

I was there on my guard last night. It might be hard for others to tell, but there were only TWO veterans alive (around :45 sec in) when you see all the red circle AOEs on the ground in the video.

Kilaelya.1420:

derekgrant.6504:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJnbZrRNZB8

Here is a video someone recorded of the event failing as soon as it is started. I really wish we can get a dev response on this. I finally gathered all I needed for the mystic clovers and now I need to get the Obsidian Shards.

I was there on my guard last night. It might be hard for others to tell, but there were only TWO veterans alive (around :45 sec in) when you see all the red circle AOEs on the ground in the video.

Meaning that you agree it is a bug? Or it’s intended and just insanely hard?

derekgrant.6504:

Meaning that you agree it is a bug? Or it’s intended and just insanely hard?

I would guess it’s a bug. The patch notes only mentioned changes made to the risen nobles, iirc. The two veterans are a rise plaguebringer (the first one that died in the video) and a risen subjugator (the last one to die, I would assume that has all the AOES). If I count correctly there are 6 very large AOE circles on the ground when the pact dies in 10 seconds.

Edit: Also, the bigger problem is that this patch had a stealth change to how “morale” works. It’s most noticeable on the Chan event in Cursed Shore. Previously, NPCs could die and their death would count towards a max number of deaths morale could have. Now, all NPCs health pools count towards “morale”, so if all the health pools are zero at once the event fails.

In a game where there are no single target heals to keep NPCs alive this isn’t a challenge, it’s ridiculous.

If it was intended to be insanely hard, it would have changed to what it’s doing on August 6th, not August 7th after a very small HotFix for some other unrelated issues.

In any case, this variation of “insanely hard” is not acceptable either way since the Pact NPC’s can not be steered around the Well spam. No Zerg group in the entire game has the ability to do that. I’m not even sure that interrupting the Vets does anything at all to stop it. And we know that all Vets are also suppose to have telegraphs/cooldowns on their biggest nastiest skills. There doesn’t appear to be any sort of balancing mechanism on these. That definitely is a bug.

Well let’s hope to get a response. Those legendaries don’t make themselves.

It seems Gandara EU have their temple captured… I’m now confused as to what is going on.

derekgrant.6504:

It seems Gandara EU have their temple captured… I’m now confused as to what is going on.

I’m just gonna guess this: medium sized zergs have the worst of both worlds. Big enough to spawn champs/extra mobs, too small to fully absorb all the damage for the NPCs. With a big enough zerg your could soak up the damage from those wells, because they probably only hit a max number of targets.

Yeah this event is really difficult now… not sure if its a bug, but these vet risen plaguebringers just make the escort to the temple of Balthazar just ridiculously hard. I mentioned this in a post last night https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Temple-of-Balthazar-bug-2

I noticed you could revive the NPCs during the Chan escort event (for the Gates of Arah world event) and the morale meter went up, but during the Temple of Balthazar didn’t notice this… maybe I was just panicked by seeing the morale drop like a rock. Well, hopefully this will help, now that we know this.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Kilaelya.1420:

Previously, NPCs could die and their death would count towards a max number of deaths morale could have. Now, all NPCs health pools count towards “morale”, so if all the health pools are zero at once the event fails.

I’m not sure how it got missed in the patch notes, I know I wrote one. Sorry!

Previously, the event failed after X Pact NPC deaths. This meant that if you revived one of the NPCs, you could actually bring the event closer to failure if the NPC died again, so it was better to leave any dead NPCs behind and never revive them. It’s now based on the current total living Pact members, if they’re all dead at once, the event fails, but reviving the NPCs will cause the morale meter to rise. As long as one Pact NPC is alive, the event keeps running.

It’s OK, I’m glad to know the change was to fix another bug! However, this makes these escort events even harder now. It was previously more forgiving if the NPCs all wiped to an AOE in a few seconds. Now this is very challenging, especially to us on lower populated servers, because as you could see from the video above these NPCs are SUPER squishy.

I’m not sure what a fix to this would be. Other than changing the vets/champs with crazy AOEs or increasing the NPCs health (e.g. at least one of the NPCs being a champ/legendary). NSP tried many times last night and failed on the Balth escort event. We probably spent 1.5hrs on it. We couldn’t do the Chan event, either, as a zerg. We had about 4 people do the Chan event while everyone else was doing Grenth so the champ jesters wouldn’t spawn and kill the NPCs right outside Meddlers.

Kilaelya.1420:

It’s OK, I’m glad to know the change was to fix another bug! However, this makes these escort events even harder now. It was previously more forgiving if the NPCs all wiped to an AOE in a few seconds. Now this is very challenging, especially to us on lower populated servers, because as you could see from the video above these NPCs are SUPER squishy.

I’m not sure what a fix to this would be. Other than changing the vets/champs with crazy AOEs or increasing the NPCs health (e.g. at least one of the NPCs being a champ/legendary). NSP tried many times last night and failed on the Balth escort event. We probably spent 1.5hrs on it. We couldn’t do the Chan event, either, as a zerg. We had about 4 people do the Chan event while everyone else was doing Grenth so the champ jesters wouldn’t spawn and kill the NPCs right outside Meddlers.

I think this portrays the biggest issue with this change to the escort quests. The Chan escort quest to Arah cannot be done if it’s scaled high enough to include Champions. We want the events to be able to scale high enough to include champions, that was the whole point of the champion chest change.

The NPS zerg had to go to Grenth and have a small group do the escort without champs so that we could progress to the gate.

What I think needs to happen is if the event is scaling, so to should the friendly NPC’s scale. If champs are spawning, the friendly NPC’s should be veterans at the minimum if not champs themselves. We can’t control what the NPC’s do like we can our actions.

Yeah totally agree with you guys. The NPCs should scale along with the event… its really difficult, if not impossible to save the NPCs when they get wiped in one hit by a champ (for example, a champ jester’s bomb skill).

derekgrant.6504:

It seems Gandara EU have their temple captured… I’m now confused as to what is going on.

The temple on Gandara closed just the minute after i got a free guesting slot… yay :s
edit: Piken Square is now open. There are still heroes in this world!

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Kilaelya.1420:

Previously, NPCs could die and their death would count towards a max number of deaths morale could have. Now, all NPCs health pools count towards “morale”, so if all the health pools are zero at once the event fails.

I’m not sure how it got missed in the patch notes, I know I wrote one. Sorry!

Previously, the event failed after X Pact NPC deaths. This meant that if you revived one of the NPCs, you could actually bring the event closer to failure if the NPC died again, so it was better to leave any dead NPCs behind and never revive them. It’s now based on the current total living Pact members, if they’re all dead at once, the event fails, but reviving the NPCs will cause the morale meter to rise. As long as one Pact NPC is alive, the event keeps running.

To my knowledge, it has never been possible to revive NPCs during the escort event to the altar. As the video above shows, there are new, non-noble AoE circles that decimate these NPCs.

edit: I’ve seen many Risen mobs with new abilities. Perhaps there is one of them that scales out of proportion?

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Previously, the event failed after X Pact NPC deaths. This meant that if you revived one of the NPCs, you could actually bring the event closer to failure if the NPC died again, so it was better to leave any dead NPCs behind and never revive them. It’s now based on the current total living Pact members, if they’re all dead at once, the event fails, but reviving the NPCs will cause the morale meter to rise. As long as one Pact NPC is alive, the event keeps running.

Okay, then what is your response then to the FACT that anything within a 1200 unit radius to where a Champ Jester throws its Bombs, will die instantly? Did you guys actually test this with more than 20 people in a 5000 unit radius to the event? I find it very hard to believe you ever succeeded that test since we in the Dungeon community are well aware of how your Alpha tests typically go (IE: only 5 people in QA can usually do MOST of the harder content regularly added to the game). …yet you’d expect 30-50 people who aren’t even in TS together, much less the same room together, to pull it off?

…And that still wouldn’t explain what’s happening with these Vet Plaguers in the Balthazar Escort… What gives? Is all of this stuff really intentional or was it WIP changes that made it into the patch earlier than anticipated? (and thus not fully tested)

Something changed to the veteran subjugators. It’s those mobs that throw down the giant AOEs circles. Failed again just now because of those mobs. You can’t revive the NPCs during the Balth event.

also the event fails easily because of the 3 enforcement to the balthazar temple, only one of them usually get started for the mission. all the participant should complete the 3 events before starting the assault on balthazar temple, that makes pact morale higher

Well, just like I said before… the pact NPCs, in the Temple of Balthazar escort, disappeared after they died and were not able to be revived. I think Jeffrey was talking about the Gates of Arah event because in that event the NPCs can be rezzed and morale restored, but this not true for the Temple of Balthazar at the moment.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Kilaelya.1420:

Previously, NPCs could die and their death would count towards a max number of deaths morale could have. Now, all NPCs health pools count towards “morale”, so if all the health pools are zero at once the event fails.

I’m not sure how it got missed in the patch notes, I know I wrote one. Sorry!

Previously, the event failed after X Pact NPC deaths. This meant that if you revived one of the NPCs, you could actually bring the event closer to failure if the NPC died again, so it was better to leave any dead NPCs behind and never revive them. It’s now based on the current total living Pact members, if they’re all dead at once, the event fails, but reviving the NPCs will cause the morale meter to rise. As long as one Pact NPC is alive, the event keeps running.

There is thin line between challenging and down right unfair, guess on which side You are with most of the game content.

Well, the few times I joined the balthazar events, the morale lowered even without any NPC death. It felt like it lowered by simply damaging NPCs. And preventing damage on NPCs is simply impossible in this game. You can only heal them, and this didn’t bring the event back up.

So, I’m curious about the latest changes, but they sounded great.

Please have a second look at this event. Something is wrong. We can’t finish it and we tried 5-6 times.

Morale drops to 50% in first minute, i am not sure how NPCs die. Then after minute or two only 1 character stands alive (Charr one) and morale meter is on 5% and that goes on for good 10 min until we get to temple. Then it just fails by sheer amount of risen. We have huge amount of DPS. Risen melt. We heal NPC. But it can not be done, he somehow dies and i can’t even see what hits him. With new changes it’s either bugged or waaaaay too hard to finish.

Well, the few times I joined the balthazar events, the morale lowered even without any NPC death. It felt like it lowered by simply damaging NPCs. And preventing damage on NPCs is simply impossible in this game. You can only heal them, and this didn’t bring the event back up.

I’m pretty sure that damaging the NPCs didn’t reduce morale before. The problem was that due to the mass of players and enemies usually present at this event most of the NPCs you need to defend would be invisible due to culling. So you’d fail the event due to invisible NPCs being killed by invisible mobs with invisible attacks.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Kilaelya.1420:

Previously, NPCs could die and their death would count towards a max number of deaths morale could have. Now, all NPCs health pools count towards “morale”, so if all the health pools are zero at once the event fails.

I’m not sure how it got missed in the patch notes, I know I wrote one. Sorry!

Previously, the event failed after X Pact NPC deaths. This meant that if you revived one of the NPCs, you could actually bring the event closer to failure if the NPC died again, so it was better to leave any dead NPCs behind and never revive them. It’s now based on the current total living Pact members, if they’re all dead at once, the event fails, but reviving the NPCs will cause the morale meter to rise. As long as one Pact NPC is alive, the event keeps running.

This would be fine except for the fact that you can’t actually rez the NPC’s at balth so the event just fails instantly.

lol this seems so wrong… I wonder when they gonna learn how to make proper pve xD

Nothing to see here, just some deleted words. innocent whistle

Anyway, it’s not a bug. It’s a feature.

Remember a time when risen abominations didn’t ae-slam, shoulderthrust through the zerg, risen wraith had no well of darkness (cough grenth temple defense event after the priest), risen gorilla didn’t play donkey kong throwing things at you, groundpound everyone close to death, risen ravagers chaos storm was a thing never to be seen, risen spider champions had no “egg sac infusion”, risen champion broodmothers were a meatbag to beat upon, .. you get the hint.
In short, this is all part of the design. Sure you won’t see a single patch note on the mentioned effects but it is obviously intended.

The real problem, or BUG is that the events spawning those enemies are not accordingly rebalanced or at the very least that the objective does not scale.

Just wanted to provide an update for this. Tried the event chain just now. Event failed within 20 seconds. Morale just went from 100 to 0 in 5 seconds even though we had already killed 90% of the risen. There was literally nothing we could do to stop it.

Hey, I’m one of the guys who opened it up on Piken the other day and for the record, we encountered the exact bug these guys are talking about on our first attempt.

On the run from Rally Point to the Temple, some veterans had a red circle AoE attack which seems to persist for as long as the creature is alive. All mobs except the veterans were dead. The Pact NPCs then just stood in the AoE until they died (5 seconds or more) and the whole event failed pushing us back.

I’m not sure if it was just luck that it didn’t happen the second time but it definitely seemed buggy the first run.

Thyrm.8352:

Nothing to see here, just some deleted words. innocent whistle

Anyway, it’s not a bug. It’s a feature.

Remember a time when risen abominations didn’t ae-slam, shoulderthrust through the zerg, risen wraith had no well of darkness (cough grenth temple defense event after the priest), risen gorilla didn’t play donkey kong throwing things at you, groundpound everyone close to death, risen ravagers chaos storm was a thing never to be seen, risen spider champions had no “egg sac infusion”, risen champion broodmothers were a meatbag to beat upon, .. you get the hint.
In short, this is all part of the design. Sure you won’t see a single patch note on the mentioned effects but it is obviously intended.

The real problem, or BUG is that the events spawning those enemies are not accordingly rebalanced or at the very least that the objective does not scale.

That’s cute.
Now come back and sing the same some after beating it.
I’m not singing that song, that’s for sure… (and we did beat it).
I think Null nailed it… these Wells seem to be lasting a LOT longer than wells should ever last. Therefore this is definitely some kind of Bug.

This event is basically not fit for Human consumption … either that or the Rewards for it need to be improved by a Factor of 10 b/c it’s now several times harder than Karka.

Has any server got this open since the patch? I’m genuinely curious, i need my obi shards :x. Every time I check not a single server has it open. If there’s a server on NA that is attempting to complete it I’d be happy to pitch in, but at the moment it seems like the past 3 days its been continuously contested on all servers.

continually contested on euro servers aswell

rfdarko.4639:

Has any server got this open since the patch? I’m genuinely curious, i need my obi shards :x. Every time I check not a single server has it open. If there’s a server on NA that is attempting to complete it I’d be happy to pitch in, but at the moment it seems like the past 3 days its been continuously contested on all servers.

Only GuildWarsChamp.5302 could answer that one partially for us on NSP (as I said, we pulled it out last night around 7pm PST, but it was just by a Hair so if too many unskilled players show up early to “coat-tail”, it will probably FAIL). On NA, I think your only 3 options are going to be NSP, TC, and Maguuma. Those are frankly the only 3 servers in the entirety of NA with both the Experience and mastery of WvW, Event, & Dungeon Gimmickry to pull it off.

And this is a Bug thead, not a Strategy thread. Plz see the Dynamic Events thread if you’d like to discuss strategies to beat it (this goes double to all the rest of you who might be tempted to tell others “LEARN TO PLAY” on an issue that is obviously way outside the Norm of where most Game Mechanics fall in line)

How to fix all escort events and still allow mobs to use aoe:

Give all escorted NPCs full damage immunity as long as there are non-downed players inside the event circle. Then go crazy buffing the mobs to make it challenging.

As long as:
1) NPCs are too stupid to move out of aoe, dodge, or heal themselves effectively
2) There are no effective targeted burst heals, and healing/cleansing aoe is capped at 5 targets prioritizing players (these are good things, for the love of whatever, please don’t change this)
3) CC (mostly) doesn’t interrupt aoe or condition damage
These escort events will continue to be plagued by these issues.

To fix them all, make them hard as hell if you want, but require a full wipe OF PLAYERS as the failure condition. Tying the success/failure of the event so heavily to the interaction between hostile and friendly NPCs leads to players feeling helpless and frustrated.

Bug is still present… can’t get my oby shards due to this bug. Please revert the change.

We tried again tonight having beaten it last week and this exact bug struck us again.

On roughly the third pack after the invasion force sets out from Rally Point (we had all three invasions so max morale), Veterans spawn red AoE circles that persist as long as the creature is alive.

The NPCs make zero attempt to move out of the AoE, knocking the veterans back or stunning them doesn’t seem to despawn the AoE. The Pact just stand there and all die at once and everybody gets annoyed and stops trying.

Yeah our attempt failed also.

It’s not just right outside the gate that this seems to happen. It seems like ANY place along the route where either a Plauger or Subjugator vet can spawn, so too do these ridiculous Wells now.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I’m not sure how it got missed in the patch notes, I know I wrote one. Sorry!

Previously, the event failed after X Pact NPC deaths. This meant that if you revived one of the NPCs, you could actually bring the event closer to failure if the NPC died again, so it was better to leave any dead NPCs behind and never revive them. It’s now based on the current total living Pact members, if they’re all dead at once, the event fails, but reviving the NPCs will cause the morale meter to rise. As long as one Pact NPC is alive, the event keeps running.

This is sound logic, but did you test how this actually played after making the change? The NPCs have paper thin tanks and this is a game where support healing is not that strong.

We are not playing with GW1 mechanics. Not that players loved protecting NPCS in that game either. >.>

Lucky.9421:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I’m not sure how it got missed in the patch notes, I know I wrote one. Sorry!

Previously, the event failed after X Pact NPC deaths. This meant that if you revived one of the NPCs, you could actually bring the event closer to failure if the NPC died again, so it was better to leave any dead NPCs behind and never revive them. It’s now based on the current total living Pact members, if they’re all dead at once, the event fails, but reviving the NPCs will cause the morale meter to rise. As long as one Pact NPC is alive, the event keeps running.

This is sound logic, but did you test how this actually played after making the change? The NPCs have paper thin tanks and this is a game where support healing is not that strong.

We are not playing with GW1 mechanics. Not that players loved protecting NPCS in that game either. >.>

I’m not sure Jeffrey actually understood which part of the chain we were talking about. This is happening on the last push where you cannot revive pact members, where there is no way to increase morale.

No^ Actually the thread somehow got split up in talking about the Chan escort too which is just as bad as this Pact escort when you get Champion Jesters spawning on it. …no idea why no one from Anet has bothered to respond to this though and actually tell us if the Plaguers spawning multiple massive wells almost instantly is actually intentional or not. …would really be nice to find that out guys! * hint hint *

Lucky.9421:

Not that players loved protecting NPCS in that game either. >.>

Oh god… here comes the TOGO flashbacks again…. aaaAaAHHHH

MAKE THEM STOP!!!!

Well, these changes affect both Chan escort and Balth escort so it’s probably OK we talk about them both in this thread.

I cannot express how frustrating the last week has been since these changes have been made. NSP does a temple zerg everyday at server reset. We can’t do the Chan event together because we spawn at least two champ jesters right outside meddlers. The jesters put bombs on players and NPCs. Players may be smart enough to move away from the NPCs with bombs, but the NPCs sure aren’t. Nothing has been worse than watching an NPC with a bomb run over to a dead NPC to rez in the middle of the other NPCs… only to watch that NPC kill everyone else and fail the event.

Because of these changes to escorts myself a few others have had to do the Chan event PRIOR to our zerg showing up. We have to do this event with no more than 4 people to keep the mobs from scaling up. If people are sitting away from keyboard in Meddlers, it actually scales up the event because the first wave of mobs spawn right outside of Meddlers. To make this even more frustrating, I had one day this week where we successfully got Chan to Anchorage ~40 min before the zerg started, only to have a small group of people grief our efforts and kill the Champ/Eye/Wizard in front of Arah without our 5PM zerg.

Until NPCs can upscale with upscaled events (or some other change is made), please consider reverting the changes made to these events.

NSP just cleared Temple of Balthazar with the pact morale at 100%, it took some skill but it required a temple zerg. Not sure if this can happen with smaller groups that are not as prepared as the group we had tonight. Although this is a good sign for zerg type groups with coordination, I can see how this can still be impossible for smaller groups and may still need to be fixed overall for the gw2 community. I’m hoping ilr.9675 will post the video of it later for those who may want to see what we had to do for pact morale to stay at 100%.

I’m diagnosing the reason the Video didn’t save…. I’m pretty sure though it’s b/c the File went over 2 GB’s and when GW2 is running, I don’t have 2gb’s of Physical to Spare

Sorry guys…. I’ll try to get it next time b/c it basically had the exact spawning locations of EVERY vet that casts these Wells on it. Which needless to say, would be a lot more useful than me just talking about how we did it :p

I’m not sure what to make of this….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57ObZKFbaDI
This is from last night’s 2nd attempt. (obviously I made some mistakes in it).
I thought everything spawned in a specific order in the same places usually.

GWC told everyone to stay NEAR the pact… I don’t know if that means in a proximity to them instead of literally on top of them all the time? I’m not sure. But it worked so long as the Pact itself didn’t get split up and cause stuff to spawn too early?

.

Whole thing feels a bit too random tho’ for how quickly these Wells can be Multi-casted or whatever is happening… hope it helped a little bit anyway. I think it shows just how much CC was needed, everyone was pouring it on like there was no tomorrow.

Thank you for posting this video. It shows with some skill this event is possible… but still very difficult. Of course, having a zerg of ppl helps a lot.

First tip I would recommend is that you have more than one invasion. We normally only have one invasion with us, but really the more invasion forces you can get, the better your chances are of completing the temple escort. Also I recommend that ppl learn what CC is. Crowd control is a requirement now for the Temple of Balthazar escort. CC includes fear, stuns, knockbacks, knockdowns, launch, and etc. CC must be used on the vets, so they cant dish out their massive aoe damage. Heals on the pact and warrior banners help too. From the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57ObZKFbaDI, you can see how much these techniques can improve your chances. If you watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgvz1u_-P-w, you can see that if you even relax for a second and forget to CC the vets, they will unleash their aoe. In this instance, we got too confident near the end of the escort and we almost fail it after having a 100% morale before that spawn.

On the night of this video I added a few other things to remember. After completing the temple escort with 100% pact morale the night before, we failed on our first attempt. It happened because the pact strayed a little from the zerg, spawning another mob with vets that aoe’d them. In the second attempt we made sure to not rush the pact along and just let them stick with us while we CCed the vets. If the pact does stray a little, you need at least the majority of your group to follow them so when the pact does spawn another mob, you have enough ppl to CC the vets so they don’t aoe the pact to death. I’m pretty sure it’s common knowledge that rushing the pact along was a common technique that was used before this last update, so that the pact didn’t take damage from certain mobs, but now that could be too dangerous to do when vets deal more damage now. The only times I recommend rushing the pact along is MAYBE at the risen noble spawn and to skip the last spawn if morale is too low.

Overall, I’m speaking in terms from experience of leading a huge temple zerg. This may or may not apply to situations of smaller groups, so just test it out and let me know of your experiences with these techniques.

Ah yeah, now that you mention it, that appears to be where the big break-down occurred with the first attempt when I rewatched video of that one several times (Didn’t upload that b/c I didn’t get a very good view of where all the Vets actually were ….but yeah we were all split up all over the place then) … so basically you really have to manipulate and control the AI in this. Don’t just push every Vet too far along or too far away with physics, keep them in 1 spot so the Pact also stays “leashed” to that same spot, is what I’m reading this as.