Smuggler Woodsman in the Valley does a weird pass through kite maneuver that takes advantage of the no collision.

[Vaneheart]

The Smuggler Woodsman in the Valley does this weird trick with the lack of collision where he passes through you to negate your attack, then moves through and kites at range. This probably shouldn't be possible. He'll repeat the maneuver if you close. He shouldn't be able to just phase through a player and keep running to shoot at range, then do it again to negate attack maneuvers. It doesn't seem like something the player can do either.

 

[Vaneheart]

 

[Calkrow]

The Long Bow and Heavy Crossbow have minimum ranges. This applies to both players and NPCs. An NPC armed with either of these weapons will back away to try and get to minimum range to shoot you. Hopefully that explains why the mob is contantly backing away. An early tactic was to try and pin them; in a corner, building, cliff, etc. Perhaps there has been a change that's now allowing them to 'warp' away.

 

[Vaneheart]

It wasn't backing away. It was walking towards me, glitching into the same space I was (manipulating the lack of collision detection), which canceled my attacks as it kept following me via "not facing target/no target in view," while holding the bow the entire time. It was still able to attack with the bow without switching to melee, and I had to turn and walk away (as if I backed away, it kept moving into my space), which at that point, the moving away and shooting routine continued as normal. This repeated every time I would get close enough to attack. It was quite clever, but I figure if a player did the same thing and glitched a mob, this would be considered an exploit. This happened in a wide open forest environment not far from Therrin's camp in the northeast, so it wasn't cornered.
This brings up a separate problem. It seems like all the "Smuggler" types in the Central Veins don't abide by the "minimum range" being able to shoot a crossbow at point-blank melee range. These would switch weapons if they were hit in melee range though. The smuggler woodsman does not in this instance.
I'll see if I can try again and get better pics or a video, although I haven't used OBS or FRAPS in a long time.

 

[MarcusFromOz]

This would fix it for this enemy (and most others in the game):

 

[Undone]

This is a known "bug" that has to do with the navigation system not answering the NPC quick enough resulting in them over pathing in some form.

 

[Vaneheart]

Doesn't seem like the minimum range thing is true.

 

[Calkrow]

There are definately mobs armed with weapons that have a minimum range. There are ranged weapons, short bow and normal crossbow, that have a 0 minimum range.

 

[Undone]

NPCs are "allowed" to bypass their minimum weapon range to prevent exploitation.

 

[Calkrow]

NPCs are "allowed" to bypass their minimum weapon range to prevent exploitation.

Does that mean they no longer back away, or that if they can't back away they can still shoot?

 

[Undone]

Does that mean they no longer back away, or that if they can't back away they can still shoot?

It varies depending on a few things because attacking is separate from movement for NPC logic; they run at different rates because navigation is expensive whereas attacking is less so. They can bypass their minimum weapon distance but they prefer to be at their minimum weapon distance.

 

[Eryola]

It varies depending on a few things because attacking is separate from movement for NPC logic; they run at different rates because navigation is expensive whereas attacking is less so. They can bypass their minimum weapon distance but they prefer to be at their minimum weapon distance.

Which makes mobs with Longbows and Heavy Crossbows a huge annoyance to fight. If you have a 3 chev one of those, you practically have to have the entire group trying to follow them to burst them down, which most often doesn't really work well because of the small attack ranges of player weapons and server desyncs ("too far away"). Another way we tried to fight them was to have the person with the aggro stand back, so the others can kill the mob without much movement, which sucks too because either the aggro switches quickly and the mob now moves in a different direction and 2 players have to swap places or the group gets so spread out the healers have to keep running back and forth. The last thing we tried to do was hide behind an object, wait for mob to come closer, give it a short burst with the full group and hide behind the object again, so it has to come back.

This behaviour really should be changed, for example to "start attack at furthest possible spot, follow when needed to furthest possible spot, but stop moving when in melee range". The way it currently is is a HUGE annoyance since those mobs aren't really more dangerous than other mobs, but take a lot longer to kill because of all the catch-me-if-you-can behaviour. And if you need a "low fantasy" explanation for that: Someone who uses a bow should either switch to a regular melee weapon when at close range or at least use the bow to try protect himself (in combination with a dagger for example). Someone trying to reload and fire a (cross)bow in melee range, while being attacked, would be instantly regretting it in real life.

Btw: there is another bug those type of enemies (longbow/heavy crossbow) have... they -usually- do their thing to keep moving away from you, but sometimes their AI seems to mess up and they try to stand directly on top of you, like inside your hitbox on exactly the same spot. This makes it hard for their target to attack them ("not facing target"), but it still is a lot less annoying than the "I keep moving away" thing.

 

[Undone]

This behaviour really should be changed, for example to "start attack at furthest possible spot, follow when needed to furthest possible spot, but stop moving when in melee range". The way it currently is is a HUGE annoyance since those mobs aren't really more dangerous than other mobs, but take a lot longer to kill because of all the catch-me-if-you-can behaviour.

These mobs are designed to "throw a wrench in the gears". Your tactics have to change when these show up and annoying as they may be I don't see this behavior changing any time in the near future.

Btw: there is another bug those type of enemies (longbow/heavy crossbow) have... they -usually- do their thing to keep moving away from you, but sometimes their AI seems to mess up and they try to stand directly on top of you, like inside your hitbox on exactly the same spot. This makes it hard for their target to attack them ("not facing target"), but it still is a lot less annoying than the "I keep moving away" thing.

This is a bug with all NPCs and is an issue with NPC navigation not being quick enough to keep up with constant repositioning. It's basically a performance issue server side that we are working on but have to live with right now due to limitations in Unity's navigation system.

 

[Eryola]

These mobs are designed to "throw a wrench in the gears". Your tactics have to change when these show up and annoying as they may be I don't see this behavior changing any time in the near future.

Would it at least be possible to add some mechanic then to be able to corner them? Currently when you try to force them into a corner they simply slide through your groupmembers and go in a different direction. Having someone with a ranged weapon try to keep his distance is ok, but getting the "get out of jail free" card when we finally got him trapped somewhere is kinda frustrating.

 

[Undone]

Would it at least be possible to add some mechanic then to be able to corner them? Currently when you try to force them into a corner they simply slide through your groupmembers and go in a different direction. Having someone with a ranged weapon try to keep his distance is ok, but getting the "get out of jail free" card when we finally got him trapped somewhere is kinda frustrating.

There is no npc<-->player as that opens the door for all sorts of exploits.

 

[Calkrow]

Would it at least be possible to add some mechanic then to be able to corner them? Currently when you try to force them into a corner they simply slide through your groupmembers and go in a different direction. Having someone with a ranged weapon try to keep his distance is ok, but getting the "get out of jail free" card when we finally got him trapped somewhere is kinda frustrating.

The character with agro, shouldn't chase the mob but stay at range, I believe the range of the agro abilties of tanks are greater than the minimum range. If you lose agro as tank then you can close range to regain agro.

When I'm playing my Marshal this tactic works for me.