Mob Escape Artists

[Theolaerynn]

I am soooo tired of fighting Tier 6 critters only to have them just vanish right before they die. I just got through fighting over a dozen encounters and only came away with 3 kills. One of those kills had some really nice items I would have liked to have gotten my claws on, but the loot window crashed so all I got for my trouble was a quick glance.

Is this an intended 'feature', or is it on the to-do list? It is severely reducing my enjoyment of the game, given I am primarily a hunter.

[gopher65]

This isn't just tier 6 creatures, nor is it just undead. It's all creatures across all tiers. It does seem worse in some areas than others though, doesn't it? I notice this far more in the tier V Dire Wolves than I do anywhere else. I remember one time I DCed 13 wolves and only managed to loot 6 of them before they vanished. And they aren't disappearing because they are lootless. I've opened up loot windows before and had them disappear before I could click the loot button.

Very old bug. I first noticed it a few months before the Tulga sale to EII, but it was probably around before then.

[Justa Mirage]

The only thing I can think of (and I may be way off track as I don't know anything about the way their game engine works) is:

The corpses disappear perhaps because the spawn engine (the way the "linked" fields are designed) are recovering corpses in order to spawn more mobs that are living somwhere else (may not be in your visual range, but somewhere, some computer variable says 'too many objects in one area, must delete a few' and makes a snap decision to remove the corpses you kill.)

I probably am wrong, but I believe it is the game trying to recover resources in order to place other resources.

Corpse: decay value (does it have things in the corpse, etc.), poof.

Maybe there is a bug that says "Corpse has nothing in it so poof even though it has stuff)

Have you ever noticed a resource field (and sometimes a mob field) where the whole field of objects has a 'ripple' effect that the resources all do a shuffle? it may be the same principle with the mobs.

[Garfonso]

This bug was on unity, too, so it must be a bit older...

[Pharcellus]

They should instantiate a "corpse" object that contains the loot instead of tying up the mob object.

Of course, the whole system could use a massive efficiency overhaul, but that's not likely to happen any time soon. :-/

[Image]

Icey Dire wolves are almost famous (infamous in this case) for disappearing just as you double click on them to loot or before. Almost cruel when you see a nice or 2 hoard pieces go poof. That is why I always wish that Take All button would disappear and you'd automatically get the loot in your inv as soon as you click on the corpse. They also disappear when alive, often I'm half way into casting a long range spell to see the target vanish before my eyes.

[Summbuddy]

well i do know this this instance is verry common amongst tier 2,3,4,5,6 blights. i also know that this problem started sometime after they changed the loot system. long ago when a creature was lootless it simply dissappeared unless it had a harvestable resource IE: goloms. also as you looted the bodies would dissapear. i still like the old system i guess. but i believe this is where the bug origonated after that change.

[Thangorodrim Atanatari]

Icey Dire wolves are almost famous (infamous in this case) for disappearing just as you double click on them to loot or before. Almost cruel when you see a nice or 2 hoard pieces go poof. That is why I always wish that Take All button would disappear and you'd automatically get the loot in your inv as soon as you click on the corpse. They also disappear when alive, often I'm half way into casting a long range spell to see the target vanish before my eyes.

i noticed at some point after patches (this is very long ago and maby not valid anymore) that a corpse if you loot it gains aditional time to ''live''
i.o.w. if you loot it ... then 10 seconds not, and then loot it again etc etc it could remain forever ingame.. (never noticed this ripple effect some are mentioning)

back in the old days they did serveral changes to the loot system... this was very obvious in the easy T6 fyakky area

[Image]

Yes, its a very old bug and it did star when the loot system was redone. Which also left the empty loot window opened in the middle of your screen in effect blocking your view completely till you click on Close button. When you are battling several mob and know those corpse go poof quickly you need to see what you are doing. Was glad to learn how to move to a corner and reduce the size of that annoying empty loot window.

[Favoran]

i noticed at some point after patches (this is very long ago and maby not valid anymore) that a corpse if you loot it gains aditional time to ''live''
i.o.w. if you loot it ... then 10 seconds not, and then loot it again etc etc it could remain forever ingame.. (never noticed this ripple effect some are mentioning)

I've noticed that somewhat, whenever you interact with a corpse it stays around for a bit longer. I always take advantage of that when I have tons of golems to mine. But I didn't know that the time would be extended if you just sat there and kept re-looting them (even if it doesn't anymore). I wonder if trying to mine from them would do the same thing?

[Theolaerynn]

The loot disappearing thing has been around forever, true, but in this instance it was just icing on the cake. What frustrated me the most was the critters that weren't even dead yet disappearing. I would spend the time and effort to defeat a tough encounter, and just prior to having the satisfaction of seeing my opponent fall they would vanish with maybe 10% health or less.

Loot is quite nice, don't get me wrong, I always like to get mine. But it is the satisfaction of a successful hunt that is really what I am after.

[Velea]

Theolaerynn (and any others who want to chime in), a couple questions that will help us figure this out.

1) When the not-quite dead mob disappears, do you get experience for killing it? Or does it disappear and you get nothing from it?

2) Any specific mobs you can list would be very helpful and save us time in researching what is happening. I've seen a couple listed, but the more specifics we have, the faster we can track down what's happening.

And be really specific such as "I was hunting the icy dire wolves that spawn around XXX, YYY on Monday evening EST. I killed 10, 5 of them disappeared before I could loot them."

It might seem ridiculous to you that we need such specifics, but trust me, it helps us test theories, draw conclusions, and make corrections if we can really narrow this down.

Thanks

[gopher65]

Here's a good way for a dev to test this: Take a character in godmode out into the Dire Wolf field west of Forest Guard. Gather up 30 or so wolves. Kill them. Then count the number of wolves you loot as you loot them. Then go into your chat log and count the number of times it says "You got XXXX experience". It shouldn't take more than a few minutes to reproduce doing it that way.

Oh and while you're at it my crossbow still doesn't have arrow/crossbowbolt animations. Comeon, bows get them!

[Zexoin]

1) When the not-quite dead mob disappears, do you get experience for killing it? Or does it disappear and you get nothing from it?

We get nothing from it.

2) Any specific mobs you can list would be very helpful and save us time in researching what is happening. I've seen a couple listed, but the more specifics we have, the faster we can track down what's happening.

I've only experienced this bug with Blights, no matter the level and location.

[Velea]

Could I get a bit more of a specific location? They aren't marked on my map, and I have been flying around for a while now looking and haven't found any. Perhaps I need to go further "west", or something, but as I said, the more specific the location, the faster I can collect information.

Thanks

[Velea]

I've only experienced this bug with Blights, no matter the level and location.

When you say "Blights" do you mean mobs that have Blight in their name? Or mobs associated with the Blight?

I'm really having trouble duplicating this and have never experienced it on live servers, if you're wondering why I keep asking for more and more specific information. And I've hunted a lot of "blighted" type mobs in my slow treck to level.

[Zexoin]

When you say "Blights" do you mean mobs that have Blight in their name? Or mobs associated with the Blight?

I'm really having trouble duplicating this and have never experienced it on live servers, if you're wondering why I keep asking for more and more specific information. And I've hunted a lot of "blighted" type mobs in my slow treck to level.

I mean the blights...
Lesser Meat blights, Greater Ice/Frost blights, Mighty Lava/ash/Fire blights, Veteran Tempest/storm Blights, Elite Blighted blights.
And it happens everytime I hunt them.

[Velea]

I just spent some time out on Isle of Ice killing Icy Dire wolves there. Of the 50 I killed, none disappeared before I could loot them. I left half of them (25) unlooted to see how long they would take to disappear, and each did after the standard timer expired. The other half I looted, and they disappeared after the right amount of time expired.

If someone who is experiencing this problem on live would be willing to turn their "Debug Logs" on and repeat this as a test, and send in the logs as a support ticket, it would help our tech team be able to see what's happening.

Off to try Blights now....

Thanks

[Justa Mirage]

I will do you one better... I will FRAPS one disappearing to show you!

It happens more often than you think.

[AmonGwareth]

FRAPS doesn't help the programmers track this down, Justa. The Debug logs are far better for determining what is going on.