[Suggestion] Make the "monster is having trouble getting you" a bit more lenient

I understand the idea to stop mass farming monsters but being punished for fighting them normally seems to happen way too much.

If I hide behind a wall and peak out just to fire an arrow they resist an attack even though this is a skillful strategy. If a monster is chasing me and drops into a pit and has to climb out I get punished for something I couldn't control.

Even last night when fighting a momentus through a desert it said it had trouble getting me three times and it's rewards have been reduced even though it was chasing me in a strait line the whole time.

This happens way to much and it's extremely discouraging to fight them when the rewards get reduced almost every time due to the game false detecting.

I agree and have complained myself. What would be called tactics elsewhere is considered an abuse here. The only thing that seems to work consistently is either using a bow from outside of aggro range, a toe-to-toe beat down, or avoidance, none of which result in glorious tales of bravery and valor on my part.

Being able to maneuver using natural barriers to get one or more mobs to come within melee range, using other mobs or obstacles to avoid damage, and kiting are all valid tactics I figured out on the first day I punched a Tree or were adapted from other games and shouldn't be punished.

I agree with this. It is quite an unnecessary pain when you have netherhounds spawning in your fortress. Like, get out of here. Pls.

+1, 100% agree.

However, there are ways to prevent this from happening. Also see the Custom Mob Risk Gauge wiki page (it's even an open source routine ). For example: fighting at higher difficulties will change some of the mobs behavior.

However, there appears to be an issue with that wiki page. It says that custom mobs will only apply other methods on difficulties higher than 6, but that's not the case:

Code:

[02:38:13] [Client thread/INFO]: [CHAT]  « Leaving protected Wastelands Outpost.
[02:39:12] [Client thread/INFO]: [CHAT] Momentus draws you in!
[02:39:12] [Client thread/INFO]: [CHAT] Momentus summons assistance!

This is while fighting Momentus on difficulty 6.

Anyway, I do think there's definitely progress being made on this front. Last year I got this message a lot when fighting nether hounds (which really plain out annoyed me; they did all kinds of damage and then the system would go reduce my drops "because") but these days that happens a lot less often.

Last time I fought a Momentus (last week or so) I also got this message a few times but... Despite the acclaimed "loot decrease" I still got a very decent drop (vault voucher, 4 dragon stone fragments and a few heads and rotten flesh (this was from mind, the real drop is shown below)) while I was fighting on diff. 6. Say that has been reduced to 5 (sometimes that happens) and you're looking at a decent drop despite all the warnings.

Hey wait a second... That doesn't add up with the Momentus loot table, see the Momentus wiki page. Guess I got more to report here. Anyway, I looked it all up:

Code:

[02:41:02] [Client thread/INFO]: [CHAT] Momentus summons assistance!
[02:41:04] [Client thread/INFO]: [CHAT] Momentus draws you in!
[02:41:11] [Client thread/INFO]: [CHAT] Momentus summons assistance!
[02:41:14] [Client thread/INFO]: [CHAT] Momentus dropped: Shiny Flesh x7, Zombie Head x4, Dragon Stone Fragment x3, Vault Voucher
[02:41:14] [Client thread/INFO]: [CHAT] Momentus has fallen!
[02:41:14] [Client thread/INFO]: [CHAT] Momentus's effective difficulty was: 6
[02:41:14] [Client thread/INFO]: [CHAT] You earned 2,082 Tokens for defeating Momentus

Maybe they replaced the zombie virus with the dragon stone fragments, that would be a very good change because those virusses are kind of useless.

So... I do agree with the suggestion, but I also urge you to take a close look at the drops as well. Sometimes looks can be deceiving; the system may whine about reducing your loot while still giving you a good drop nonetheless.

+9001 this gets annoying if you are fighting an enraged skelli with a bow in a forest.

Here's a good one. A monster that doesn't need to come closer to attack me is complaining that it cannot. If I were stuck in a Web with him attacking me, that would be fair. Water is treated similarly.

The "right" way to fight would be to jump down this hole and take on all 20 hounds by flailing around with a sword.

I also routinely play on difficulty level 6 and am constantly seeing messages about mobs dying that I never even saw with the effective difficulty level being 1 or 5. Having the system reduce the rewards for killing a monster I never saw or fought doesn't give me much confidence that its interpretation of my tactics is fair or accurate. I also sometimes get away with using tactics in a fight and wonder if maybe the server's attention was elsewhere.

Shel's suggestion that perhaps the random rewards are better than the documented random rewards don't help me feel much better either as they compound the crap-shoot aspect of whatever code is trying to analyze what we are doing when we fight by suggesting that we are getting more than we should.

I think the biggest complaint I have boils down to being chastised for what I am doing in a message. If the system wants to arbitrarily reward or punish me with the way it hands out random drops so be it. If I want to stand like a coward on the other side of a pool of Lava and shoot a Netherhound with arrows, feel free to not reward me, but don't criticize my style, man.. By the way, the drops went in the Lava.

Not trying to start a Farms V Hunting & Gathering debate here but farms take a lot of effort to make them work right, so this shouldn't even happen for farms. I do agree with you suggestion btw, +9001

It's not the effort which is being judged, it's the risk factor. And I think we can agree that the risk of using a farm is virtually nil.

Yes, but a large part of the reason this system exists is to try stop farming, ignoring the effort that's put into a generic mob grinder for instance.

You shouldn't have literally done that then lol

I had to make a point. I was stating my opinion on the matter, not attacking the beliefs of others. I'm done now.

Bless up.

I dont think momo's diff does down when he cant get you, he seems to just pull u in, i found a momo near a like and killed it on diff 6. I ran in the lake when i was low and it couldent kill me when it came in, and i still got a toothpick.

+1 for the suggestion tho, its really annoying attempting to kill an enraged creeper just like you kill a normal creeper, from a range, or going in, hitting, and getting out. But you get nothing unless you run in there, take all its explosions and kill it to get a dragon frag, but hey if you kill it from a range you get a peice of tnt or something xD