Ranger Archive
Thread: Single v. Social Changes post-patch
Ok, went to kill so hambabas to fill a bone order. Large, semi-slow and fairly easy to solo. Shoot one, he dies, move onto next. I even took a helper with me, as she needs xp on rifle. Get to the lair, pdart #1, open fire, and here comes #2 all over my butt. No problem, dropped both. Figured oops, helper shot at wrong one, she is semi-new to hunting.
Next set - She fires at #1, I fire at #1, #2 and #3 come arunning. Hey, what is this? Hambaba are not social, or were not social, well, they haven't been social. Crap, dirt nap time, least no DB.
Has anyone else noticed that some "single" creatures are now "social" and will swarm you? I have noticed some mild changes, noxious vrelt scavengers look like vrelt now, stead of beetles... some creatures got "badder", my cowardly gurreck shrunk (and I used to use him for shade, thx Devs...:smileytongue
Anyhew... we may need to readjust our list of beasts... Hambabas on Corellia in lairs are now social.
JB
Wearing band-aids and a bruised ego
Not only social but violently social, too? I posted this on the main board, but it's already being buried, so here we go again.
I was on Talus and playing with critters to see what would happen. I expected to die, but this is ridiculous.
1) Went after Vicious Huf Duns. Two around the nest. Sent in my pet to see what would happen. Both of them engaged the pet, but when I started shooting at one of them, it broke from the pet and came after me. Dirt nap, and free trip to the cloning center. This has never happened before.
2) To see what would happen without a pet, I went after Vynocks. Usually, these are one shot critters for me, so it was an interesting experiment. Shot one, and suddenly all his siblings are after me? This has never happened before.
3) Out of curiousity, still without a pet, I tried my hand at rasps. Again, usually, I can one and two shot them, at this point, so it was a good experiment. As I was being attacked by about five of them, a TorTur from a nest that was off to the side came up behind me. Normally, I'm used to critters coming over to investigate and then leaving, so I ignored it. It stomped me flat and I took a dirt nap.
4) After the nap I got up and rested to heal up a bit. Once I was able to stand again, the songbirds started stalking me. Huh? I decided to flee, and as I was running away from a bloody songbird, the TorTurs started chasing me. Huh? Since when do TorTurs even care about anything not actively shooting them?
5) Outran the TorTurs (High Burstrun efficiency is a wonderful thing) by running away, and running the critter through a nearby nest of Sludge Panthers. Thank the misguided gods that the critters still recognize their natural enemies and engage. They went to work on the TorTur for me, so it pulled a Captain Kirk at 1/2 Health and suddenly warped to another planet. Huh? Since when is teleporting a survival tactic?
6) Decided to finish my mission for the Vynocks (yes, mission. Missions give me a waypoint to go to when I'm on a general hunt). Found it without any more dirtnaps, and took out the Vynocks around the nest. Harvested like crazy on the critters, and tapped the nest to bring out the rest. While I was harvesting, a group of Dralls materialized next to the nest, but since they always have been neutral to me, and showed yellow on my radar, I ignored them. No reason to slaughter someone that's not a threat, you know. Especially when they are probably way tougher than you. Anyway. More vynocks come out, so I start taking them out. I am very careful to make sure to target a vynock, when suddenly, I have 6 Dralls shooting at me for no reason that I can discern, unless it's to save the bloody vynock? Dirt nap. Free ride to cloning center.
At that point, I decided that it was going to be a lot more fun to find a pretty girl to chat up, since (in theory) she wouldn't kill me for no apparent reason. At least when she killed me, it would be for something I said.
Bantha are social now as well, especially Feral Bantha... this is getting very annoying.
It is getting harder and harder to play solo... or without pets.
Pets will no longer work as tanks for your guns if your damage is greater. They changed the AI to go after the d00d with the most l337 (Higher damage giver gets targeted). I'm not even sure what posessed them to think this was a good idea other then to make CH's never have another combat class. For me, I have a gun and a sword and it takes a bit of pressure off my low-level pet and actually works very nice, but I still can't be Master Rifleman (means losing any brawler I have left).
I do know many graphical tweaks have been done in this patch, including the size of some critters. All my weapon repair tools look different. Some of the critters changed their look. The Cowerdly Gureck size change is even in the patch notes. (I was kind of tired having my head up ones *ss every time someone would pull one out on group hunts... now they will just be biting my crotch...)
There are 3 critters that were not social that are still that way, although this is on Corellia and not a starter planet (so I did not observe any of those changes). I do know that Dralls will assist anything that gets hit by a positive CorSec faction, I think this is intentional (I try not to shoot near them... don't need to make them more militant then they already are 
). That actually makes sense given the history about them.
I like how the /conceal command works now 
however it has a tendancy to go down a bit too often. I think they need to tweak that up a tad (lessen the chance of breaking) but at least it's usable and no longer more fatal then not using it.
HasturCTS wrote:
3) Out of curiousity, still without a pet, I tried my hand at rasps. Again, usually, I can one and two shot them, at this point, so it was a good experiment. As I was being attacked by about five of them, a TorTur from a nest that was off to the side came up behind me. Normally, I'm used to critters coming over to investigate and then leaving, so I ignored it. It stomped me flat and I took a dirt nap.
4) After the nap I got up and rested to heal up a bit. Once I was able to stand again, the songbirds started stalking me. Huh? I decided to flee, and as I was running away from a bloody songbird, the TorTurs started chasing me. Huh? Since when do TorTurs even care about anything not actively shooting them?
Why would the Torturs run after you? Did they "remember" you were fighting one of their peers? Was there a dot on any of them? I'm assuming they still were yellow on the radar? What did they "con" to you?
I've been fighting npcs solely since the patch, so I haven't seen any of this: this is really disturbing! I try to not use a pet (group harvest hit, pets get hung up on things, they move slow, etc). There weren't enough non-social mobs to begin with.
Is soloing even going to be possible? I have very light Pistoleer skills and I've felt weak to begin with.
FYI : Delta posted about this in another thread.
Guys,
It appears that there is a bug now that is making ALL creatures social. I've heard a number of complaints about this. I'm going to post it on the Correspondent's forum now.
All I have fought are pikets (non-aggro) on Dant. It seems the same rules applied to them. We started by shootinga male first, and the female aggroed (forgot that the females assist). Once we woke back up, we only attacked the female, and she was the only one to come after us. Maybe the Devs decided to make some creatures social, and didn't mention it in the notes (I did not read all of them, so they may have mentioned this).
"Maybe the Devs decided to make some creatures social, and didn't mention it in the notes"
That is the impression I get from comments made by the Powers That Be.
- They did indeed make some more of the existing creatures assistive, and this might be the effect we are seeing.
I am however not saying there might be some other problem as well. 
Pikets are non-aggro but have always been social.
Calculus_Entropy wrote:
All I have fought are pikets (non-aggro) on Dant. It seems the same rules applied to them. We started by shootinga male first, and the female aggroed (forgot that the females assist). Once we woke back up, we only attacked the female, and she was the only one to come after us. Maybe the Devs decided to make some creatures social, and didn't mention it in the notes (I did not read all of them, so they may have mentioned this).
Perhaps a list might be interesting to have, of what critters have become more assistive and why? I keep thinking about Shallow Tortons, which I used to love taking down single handedly by using several different tactics (trapping, running through other mobs that would assist me because of natural enemies, running around like a crazy person, screaming like a little girl while shooting *grin*). About 1/2 of the time I was taking a dirt nap, even by being cautious, but it was all good fun. And the bragging rights when I was talking to my friends made every dirt nap worth it.
Unfortunately, if all the big critters are now herd aggro, not to mention bunches of the smaller ones, then people who enjoy soloing (Rangers and Scouts, among others) are really going to be hit in the teeth. Especially when our livelihood (or at least a large part) does depend on being able to come up with good tactics for nailing the critters that drop what our customers are asking for.
A second, follow up: What's with the other critters assisting different herds? Right now, the TorTur helping out the songbirds is still in my mind very strongly (it really was weird). Perhaps it was a part of the targeting issue that I've seen floating around?
And, since apparently the factions other than Reb or Imp are starting to matter a lot more, how do you get rid of the points that have been accumulated by accident? I've got a list as long as my arm, mostly from beings deciding that I had a big red circle on my back, that appears to be affecting how the two legged critters interact, if I am following this right (probably not, but I'm trying). Until last night, though, unless it was a generally aggressive two-legs, I could walk through everyone, and shoot what I was chasing without worrying about it. Perhaps, though, it's related to the targeting issue, too.
Solusandra: A dot? What's that? They were yellow on the radar, if that helps. They may have remembered me, which wouldn't surprise me. However, I'm still trying to figure out why they were hitting me for killing songbirds in the first place - I swear that I did NOT take a shot at one. Maybe they were really avid bird watchers. *grin* As for what they conned, it was white and yellow (apparently, I'm getting better with my pistol, according to something). Normally, I would have tried to take them out one at a time, using the tactics above, and had about a 50/50 shot of surviving them, if I could find other critters to run the one chasing me through. Normally, too, they might even investigate what I was doing and try to scare me off, without actually touching me (there is something terrifying about standing your ground while three or more critters try to warn you off and fake you out - it's one of the things about the AI that I used to love), when I was too close to their territory. This time, though, the TorTur squished me flat, while I was paying attention to the birds.
Hrmmmm.....I wonder if I could sell people - pancakes.
What type of weapons and special shot were you using? I was hunting Gurnasets on Lok yesterday, and a pack of Langitechs (sp) decided to join in the fun. I was using a scout blaster and Fan shot. After watching the combat spam, I discovered that fanshot is hitting everything in a cone. That is what caused 2 nests to start spawing aggros. There was no notice of the change in the patch notes so I think it may be a bug.
Take a look at the special you are using. It may be effecting more than just FanShot.
Egrim