Lady Mel and the "new" AI

[BeaIank]

So, tonight I decided to have me some peerless fun and got keys for Mel.
Gathered a party with a tamer and a bard and off we went.

I did the pretty usual jig to deal with Mel. Honoured myself to deal with the satyrs so we could then pester Mel properly.
But... as soon as I got within 13 or so tiles of distance from Mel, I saw a strange 1 damage ping over her head and she started to attack my archer, who was under honour. I have seen this behaviour happen a lot on champ spawns when the champ shows up, but it was unexpected here.
Needless to say, from there on, lots of seeing grey happened till we managed to clear the field of the satyrs to deal with Mel, who proved fairly prove to love to aggro the tamer whenever she got within 9 to 8 tiles distance from her.

I understand the devs made this change to make things more "interesting", but it feels not very thought out. Specially this "1 damage to make boss aggro the first character she sees" thing, which turned out to be a major honour nerf.
I believe some rethinking might be needed, like it not happening when a character is under honour.
@Kyronix, care to give us some input about this?

 

[Poo]

strange.
went and did this with the guild and did it the same way we always have and didnt notice any differences.

granted we drag all the satyr's down to us and kill them first then we go up to Lady Mel so she cant animate the dead satyr's and our tamers stand well back and heal their pets with spells.

we even got this last one down before the keys had expired, which is always a nice feather in the hat!

i guess because we have always hung back from her do to her wither we dont get the re-targeting issues that you had?

 

[BeaIank]

The issue I had is that she took one damage from my archer out of nowhere. I was wielding a crossbow with no bolts to make sure my archer wouldn't shoot her by herself, but the second I saw her, I saw the 1 damage ping over her head of off to get my archer head she went.

I am gathering keys right now to try again tomorrow to see if this will happen with my mage.

Edit: Maybe it is worthy noting that this was fel side.

 

[Jynxx]

The weird AI seemed to have leaked out from Eodon to the rest of the world, and we're not sure if this was intended or not.

The Dragon Turtle's wonky and chaotic targeting, and the weird single hit point self inflicted damage from monsters like the Ensorcelled Armor is being seen by various Peerless and other mobs in the game. Several threads complaining about it, no word from the devs.

Who knows.

 

[drcossack]

The issue I had is that she took one damage from my archer out of nowhere. I was wielding a crossbow with no bolts to make sure my archer wouldn't shoot her by herself, but the second I saw her, I saw the 1 damage ping over her head of off to get my archer head she went.

I am gathering keys right now to try again tomorrow to see if this will happen with my mage.

Edit: Maybe it is worthy noting that this was fel side.

This 1 damage thing happens in Tram too. The Ensorcelled Armor in Shadowguard Armory are notorious for it. Other Peerless, Champs, and I've even seen the Shadowguard boss quartet exhibit this. In the case of Shadowguard, I would assume that this 1 damage tick causes them to summon spawn, and also gets them to retarget. That said, they might have the ability to retarget naturally, but my results with that varied. I've been 1-2 tiles away from Anon and he never went after me. At other times, I'd be up close/at a distance and the bosses (particulary Ozymandias) would switch to me.

 

[Fridgster]

This new expansion seems um well... full of surprises.

 

[Merus]

It's a significant nerf to characters with bushido, who will have a much more difficult time honoring bosses now.

IMO it is just lame... Let put in this ability for characters to use... Oh wait, now people are using it... We must implement something to prevent them from using. Stupid logic, but par for our team.

 

[CovenantX]

The only mobs I know of that did the "1 damage tick" before the expansion were Shadowlord (exploring the deep - boss) and the Macer Captain during the event/in blackthorn dungeon. It's not new by any means, it's just now more common and seems to be added to everything that drops Mastery Primers.

Anyway, I swear one of the devs said this was an intentional tweak to AI causing mobs to randomly be flagged by a 1 damage tick that just happens to be caused by you for no apparent reason. It's also possible they didn't know exactly what people were talking about when it was brought up, who knows.

 

[Yadd of Legends]

I've heard so many complaints and irritations since the new expansion that I've spent the last week playing Skyrim again. Checking back in again, I see the problems are still there and multiplying. I can't put up with em. I'm going back to Skyrim til things are fixed again.

 

[Lug]

This change killed a play style. I know Few people use chiv tamers nowadays, but after this change they are dead.

This change killed my chiv tamer that I used on champs and peerless.

Before this change I could "all kill" and ease up to the boss with my tamer, arm a slayer mage weapon, EoO, con weapon, divine fury, and spam holylight for some extra damage and vet my pets to boot! Now if my tamer gets with in two tiles of the boss it breaks off my pets and targets my tamer. Once my tamer takes damage stam is gone, swing rate is so poor that i'm totally defensive having to break off. Tamers dont have the skill points to get toe to toe with a boss. I'm better off standing three tiles away and vetting my pet and holylighting/or mind blasting - and dying of bored em from the time it takes to kill a boss with just a pet.

Does the dev have some problem with people hitting a champ with mage weapons? I'm probably the only person left in this game that even played a chiv tamer, so no big loss. But with so few people playing UO nowadays why piss off your player base like this?

With the casting changes to sampires and this change its know wonder the shards are empty so soon after a free expanion.