Line of Sight checks are now enforced to all enemies (EDIT: PRAISE VETEX IT'S FIXED see solution)

Game Discussion
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You guys ever be doing fort castrum and the enemies just don’t take damage because they’re hugging a random crater that makes them completely immortal while they get to shoot aimbot cannons for free?

or trying to fight rear admiral Amelia and she just sits inside the floor or gets stuck on a wall where you can’t deal any damage at all?

yeah that’s gonna be the norm for all PvE content on full release now

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idea: make the LOS mechanic ONLY apply to enemy tower enemies.

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Or make any major enemy not have an area of destructible terrain

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speaking of destructible terrain using a mode shouldnt destroy the terrain under you :skull:

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V-man really stapled terrain destruction onto everything

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“Terrain destruction is a part of the game learn spatial awareness next time rather than crying like a baby easy ban”

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i saw this in the full release update patch notes thread and ill repeat it here, if enemies had LoS checks as well then this would be totally fine but as is enemies just get stuck in the wall and throw giant balls of damage at you and make it impossible to approach

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I think some fixes can make this better:

  1. Improved AI pathfinding
    Since vetex wanted players to not cheese the tower, just make enemys beable to react and make a proper fight.
    Also preventing enemys getting stunk in hole or building.

  2. LoS for EVERYONE
    If EVERY enemy have LoS feature, then us players should have it too. Its the fair and makes fight more strat-based and smart. (Less AOE wins)

  3. Making LoS… LoE(Line of Explosion)!
    LoS ruins the whole point of spells like cannon and such. So what if LoS is based on where explosion happend?
    This would make cannon more useful, and with a proper AI improvement this can still have what vetex wanted for this.

I dont know if any of this is impossible or hard to implement because I dont know how to develop things and such. Sorry for that.

2 Likes
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idea: Have parts that get split up by terrain destruction get moved into a folder or something for broken terrain, then tweak the blacklist / whitelist on the raycast for the Line of Sight check to not include parts that have been split up by Terrain destruction so NPCs can’t use holes in destructible terrain as cover at all

or something like that idk the arcane odyssey backend works

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Well, this is the single worst change that I can remember in all of Full Release.

I already disliked LOS check enemies, mostly Fort Castrum and how often they get stuck in terrain. Now I’m going to have to deal with that with EVERY SINGLE ENEMY? If a level 260 bounty NPC gets stuck under the terrain (very common occurrence), instead of being able to use placed explosions and the like to find them and damage them, I’ll now have to risk taking 400 damage just to find the bastards.

Will enemies have this same check as well? If not, what’s stopping an enemy with high size from hitting ME through the wall while I cannot retaliate? That’d be sure to bring a whole deal of player frustration for no good reason.

If this change is being made to avoid size builds cheesing enemy towers, then wouldn’t it be possible to apply it only to enemy tower NPCs? Not quite literally every NPC? This also applies to bosses to. If Calvus gets stuck under the floor again, you’re now almost guaranteed to take the 500! 500! 500! if you can’t find him in time.

While this would be the best option, I can’t see it happening in time for Full Release (or the foreseeable future beyond certain boss AIs).

This would still lead to some frustration and I don’t think it’d work well. If an attack was about to hit you, all you’d need to do is find a way to break line of sight instead of dodging/parrying the attack. Example: Enemy supercharges an attempt in a small area, you’d be unable to avoid it normally. However, there is a thin wall you can place between you and the NPC - not at all enough to shield you in current patch, but it’d negate all damage if we have LoS for everyone. I don’t want to think about how it’d affect PvP.

1 Like
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All possible solutions I can think of this “cheese” issue either take too much time or are bandaids:

  1. Reduce damage taken from attacks if you are covered by a structure. Applies to players and NPCs alike. Damage reduction is higher the more “covered” you are, and certain materials protect more than others.
    Let’s say you are in Floor 1 of an Enemy Tower. You use Pillar Explosion to damage enemies in the upper floors. Floor 2 would take reduced damage as they are covered by your ceiling. Floor 3 would take less than 2 because your pillar has to go through 2 “ceilings”, etc.

Benefits: less player frustration, encourages strategy, “immersive”. Heavily drops efficiency of Tower grinding or whatever. Yeah sure, spam AoEs if you want, but you will take at least 2x longer to complete the ordeal.
Issues: Doesn’t really solve the core issue, players will take longer to “cheese” but can still do it if they want to.

  1. Update the damn NPC AI. We place our bets on Partcline since he is reworking shark/kraken AI. If an NPC is trying to pathfind to the player and is covered by something, try to high jump/leap/mobility skill over it. If it detects a ceiling or whatever, then move around randomly instead of being stuck in the wall like a headless chicken. If the wall in front is destroyable, then attack it and break through. If the player is above the NPC, then make them use mobility skills and aim upwards on god, Amelia and Kalliste are both farmed/cheesed this way. The latter at least tries to use Crash so that’s a point.

Benefits: Root cause solved, enhances fighting NPCs.
Issues: Blood and tears required to implement it. But, as they say, no pain, no gain!

  1. Update the destruction system so more destruction happens. The door at The Red Corner’s upper side is indestructible. Many walls/ceilings are simply immortal. Update those to be divided by parts, so if you attack the same spot repeatedly, an openings appears from which the NPC can advance. NPCs can also contribute to these to create themselves a path.

Benefits: Weakest one out of the three but would be #cool. Using the pillar explosion example of 1, NPCs would drop from the upper floors and ambush the player at the bottom. Badass. Use Seismic Rift/Cannon/Shockwave from outside the Tower? Now the NPCs aggro on you because you just created a path. Great job breaking it, player!
Issues: Like 1, doesn’t really solve the issue, but mitigates it. Like 2, requires too much effort. Architect Kalliste. Will not elaborate on him.

All in all, I noticed that these three approaches would complement each other if anything. But that would be an ExtraLarge task for our devs, so, for the time being, just make it apply to faction minibosses, raidable Forts and Tower enemies.

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i genuinely don’t get why vetex is even trying this, he already tried with atlanteans and it was miserable, u spent 443 days on this update and u decided to make it so playing the game actively frustrating

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oh so the enemy gets to snipe us but we cant snipe back
artificial difficulty much

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Los in a game with wall piercing attacks and destructible terrain feels off

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yeah its understandable on the important enemies they mentioned but its just stupid to apply it on every enemy Like What Dude Why Vetex

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Like if it was walls/areas that couldn’t be destroyed but was true for both parties sure that’s fine. That makes sense

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notice how most of this would be solved if terrain destruction wasnt a thing

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98% of devs implementing LoS mechanics quit just before they make it perfect

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Oh fuck.

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Ok I’m sorry but this is not a good change to make. The LoS system is already janked enough, so if they want this to work they need to fix it.

3 Likes