Possible Improvement for Landscape-Model Interaction?

[gagatronic0]

One of the biggest, yet overlooked, game flaws is that character models and their animations do not react with slopes. This is more noticeable only when a character goes up a steep slope, and extremely so with dragons. For bipeds, this is not as much of a problem (especially fairies, for they are off the ground,) but with dragons, one half of their bodies will be partially buried under the ground while the other half is in mid air! A graphical improvement here would greatly increase how realistic the game is and cut down on the "artificial" feeling that comes with it. Keep in mind, because of the increased CPU usage involved on the player's end that this should be optional, not just integrated into the game!

What, exactly, should the devs improve, you might ask? I have a few suggestions here, but anyone can add on to it. Just make sure it is on topic, nothing about the loot system, combat system, etc.!

Here is my list of improvements that relate to this problem:

1) Obviously, the prime problem the incorrect positioning of the dragon models. A dragon cannot physically be halfway into the cliff side just by walking into it! A simple way to fix this would be to keep the dragon's body parallel to the ground.

2) Another animation for going up steep slopes would be great for everyone. Instead of looking dead ahead, the character would be looking up or down, depending on which way they were facing. As part of the game, the option to turn this one would be separate from the first suggestion.

3) This is where things would get hard to do. By technicality, it is easier to go down than up. Therefore, characters should move faster going downhill and move slower uphill. This would add even more realism into the game. This may be too heavy to pull off for you guys, but after the looting update, tackling this would be awesome!

4) Another "artificial" feeling comes when a character "falls" and not "slides" down a super steep slope. Again, this is a tall order, and by no means do I expect this tier of improvement from the devs. Realistically, a character in would be able to "slide" down the slope and jump off (for hatchies, this would be crucial to gliding.) This would have to be a computer calculation, and therefore also an in-game option. Otherwise, it would have to be a server update and be implemented into the game.

5) Probably the most important thing to add to the game is to have the AI be affected by terrain, as well. There is a story attached to this, but I'll just sum it up for convenience. Once upon a time, a young dragon was picking off jungle crawlers, one by one, when he realized his HP was low. He then ran behind a tree for sanctuary. To his surprise (and dismay,) the spider walked right through the tree! He then ran for the slope. Unable to climb up the steep hill, he ran around up the path. He looked down the slope and saw... the spider going sideways up the cliff! That dragon was never heard from again (and died unhappily ever after.) THE END.
This could probably be avoided with a few major updates. (but still a tall order )

--Again, I would like to remind all of you who are replying to STAY ON TOPIC! Thank you.--

[stephan27]

Well reading this gives me the idea you don't really know much about how the game works. You must realize that Istaria only has a few devs, compared to almost every single other MMORPG. Where games like WoW have 1000 people working on the game, Istaria only got, like 20? You can imagine that things that can be done in a few days in other games, can very well take weeks for Istaria.

Although it would indeed look more realistic to change the characters angle when walking up a hill, it can be very hard to do and take lots of time. The devs of Istaria already have so much to do. If the devs will change this, then I would expect these changes to be done, when you turn ancient. So very likely months from now (depends how long you play).

Complaint 3 and 4, are what I would say, completly unnecessary. Let's start with 3.
In no other MMORPG, running up or down a hill affects your speed. That's because it's unnecessary. Actually, all it would do is frustrate players cause it will take them even longer to get somewhere.

Why complaint 4 is unnecessary, is because there is absolutly no need to. I think you are the first person in the history of MMORPGs who ever complained about it. And even if the devs would change it, it would also take a long time to create the animation.

Finally complaint 5 is the only one I agree with. It got me killed many times, and it just looks weird to see a spiders walking straight onto a mountain or through a tree. I think this problem would instantly have a high spot on the dev's to do list.

[awdz]

Actually, #1 affects many screen shots that I've taken. It'd be nice to change it so that all slope animations are corrected. It won't change my general gameplay, though, so I would not expect it before other things which do affect gameplay are implemented. #3 does not matter to me personally; as for #4 - I'd love to see an animation of my gnome riding her cargo disk downhill when equipped but again I do not think it would affect gameplay at all. With #5 - if the nasties can do it, why can't I?

[hallucin8]

As for #5, it would be the least likely to happen... If you were to position yourself high on a cliff and use ranged attacks on mobs below it would be a rather one sided battle

#1 would be nice
#2 certainly sounds intersting.
#3 sounds like a monumental task for little reward, but still makes sense
#4 I thought this was sort of already in (unless I'm misunderstanding). If you fall/jump off a very steep slope you do fall down. If the slope is not as steep you sorta of fall/slide down, otherwise you slide down it.

[fermi443]

1) Obviously, the prime problem the incorrect positioning of the dragon models. A dragon cannot physically be halfway into the cliff side just by walking into it! A simple way to fix this would be to keep the dragon's body parallel to the ground.

This idea I like very much, keeping animations parallel to the terrain would look a lot more natural, a lot of N64 games and so on did this, but I don't know if the limitations of the engine will keep this from being achieved or not, still it's worth a try.

2) Another animation for going up steep slopes would be great for everyone. Instead of looking dead ahead, the character would be looking up or down, depending on which way they were facing. As part of the game, the option to turn this one would be separate from the first suggestion.

This is a lot like the first suggestion, and I like this as well, limiting to parallel orientation, depending on the way the character is facing, or adjusting limb elevation to match the terrain.. again engine limitations may or may not permit this.. but it might be possible as animation adjustment to match terrain has been around since early N64 titles.

3) This is where things would get hard to do. By technicality, it is easier to go down than up. Therefore, characters should move faster going downhill and move slower uphill. This would add even more realism into the game. This may be too heavy to pull off for you guys, but after the looting update, tackling this would be awesome!

In my opinion this doesn't really matter as much as the other suggestions, however it would be interesting, but probably the subject to people's frustrations with problems like already being too slow and getting chased down by that mob running up hill after them.

4) Another "artificial" feeling comes when a character "falls" and not "slides" down a super steep slope. Again, this is a tall order, and by no means do I expect this tier of improvement from the devs. Realistically, a character in would be able to "slide" down the slope and jump off (for hatchies, this would be crucial to gliding.) This would have to be a computer calculation, and therefore also an in-game option. Otherwise, it would have to be a server update and be implemented into the game.

If only every game ran off the Euphoria engine, I would laugh every time my character accidently backpedals off a cliff, and tumbles limply down hill, tail, limbs, wings flailing, shaking it off as he comes to a stop at the bottom. A default, Falling animation would be nice, bipeds could go all spread eagle sky diving style, and dragons could flail and tumble. But a slide would also be nice, again a lot of N64 game engines could do this as well, the limitations of the animation engine in Istaria are hit or miss with this, I don't know if this would be possible or not.

5) Probably the most important thing to add to the game is to have the AI be affected by terrain, as well. There is a story attached to this, but I'll just sum it up for convenience. Once upon a time, a young dragon was picking off jungle crawlers, one by one, when he realized his HP was low. He then ran behind a tree for sanctuary. To his surprise (and dismay,) the spider walked right through the tree! He then ran for the slope. Unable to climb up the steep hill, he ran around up the path. He looked down the slope and saw... the spider going sideways up the cliff! That dragon was never heard from again (and died unhappily ever after.) THE END.

This is indeed the most important thing out of all of the suggestions. I would miss the up cliff safe pulls, but it would save me so much fleeing frustration when trying to get local mobs that I don't want, off of my trail, and get back to what I was hunting more quickly. A lot of bipeds would love this for escaping a chase, and getting to safety to stay alive, as well as crafting areas on plateaus that suffer from cliff aggro madness, where mobs rush up the sheer walls to surprise attack players that think they're safe.

[Kesqui]

As for #5, it would be the least likely to happen... If you were to position yourself high on a cliff and use ranged attacks on mobs below it would be a rather one sided battle

They can do it to us - try taking off from a fight and watch all the mobs blast you with THEIR ranged attacks while you're in flight while the best you can do is get out of their range as fast as you can....

There's no good reason that being able to be on an object that mobs can't climb but in range for your attacks shouldn't work - it shouldn't make, say, the Winter Mountain Wolves at Trandalar run the opposite direction as fast and as far as they can. Ranged attacks where you are able to KEEP your range and prevent a mob from attacking you = tactics!

[awdz]

They can do it to us - try taking off from a fight and watch all the mobs blast you with THEIR ranged attacks while you're in flight while the best you can do is get out of their range as fast as you can....

There's no good reason that being able to be on an object that mobs can't climb but in range for your attacks shouldn't work - it shouldn't make, say, the Winter Mountain Wolves at Trandalar run the opposite direction as fast and as far as they can. Ranged attacks where you are able to KEEP your range and prevent a mob from attacking you = tactics!

I think the "run away" tactic of the wolves makes perfect sense - you're probably not the first to hit them from there, they've learned over time to get out of the danger zone if they cannot reach their prey.

The "tactics" you mention were the source of some folks leveling up quickly and unscathed when mobs were essentially stuck in a pen. Getting lucky with one or two I could understand, but how much real experience at combat are you getting by just shooting fish in a barrel?

Not all mobs can prevent you from flying away, either. Part of combat experience is learning when to run.

All that said, I do think it very wierd that mobs (e.g., ogres) can go through stone walls and such that gifted cannot (e.g., keep us trapped against the cliff wall where we fell in between the wall & cliff).

[Vahrokh]

Most of these issues come out of some practical issues and game design decisions.


1-2)

The fact dragons don't go "inclined" is because in traditional MMOs the characters are essentially like a stick and tend to keep their body vertical.

Dragons in the beginning were just hatchie sized, they did not really need much more complication (the MMO had to run on 2000 era computers too and elders will recall how taxing Horizons was already as is).

Once adults started coming out (and much later, ancients) the game was out already, they were "meant" to fly a lot and expecially fly over obstacles, so the return of investment for implementing them right would have been vastly lower than implementing features more useful to the player base.

Past that time, the companies owning this MMO never had the resources to change the client again. This is due to a zillion factors you may learn by reading 8+ years of forum posts.


As of today with Vi in charge, there have been some client changes slowly creeping in, but the amount of business critical work to do on it overshadows "candy" by 10000:1.
Last but not least:

- Due to terrain being irregular, the code would easily trigger all sorts of bobbing and oscillations and this would require further tweaks to optionally disable them, since motion sick people would be greatly affected. Who played Total Annihilation will recall what happened to "car" like bots when they climbed up and down of hills. Those were penny sized, imagine the same applied on a large dragon.

- When climbing a slope the second half of the body and tail would dig in the terrain. Head would drill in the surface when going down.

- When landing on a small surface the dragon would land innaturally inclined and a tiny motion would make it randomly oscillate in a very disturbing way.


All of this can only be well fixed with super careful land creation (which is not, they didn't know they'd have to plan it) or a decent physics engine (impossible without rewriting both server and client code) AND organic, bones based animations that would manage the two halves of the dragon body as they approach the hill, would pull up the tail, would push the baricenter ahead and so on.
Nothing impossible... with some man years of time and some millions of dollars.


3-4-5)

Istaria engine is old generation. The server simulation is actually an enhanced version of 2D.

Being 2D, it cannot manage AI that "cares" of 3D environments. IE to contain mobs in a deep well they'd have to manually define a circular area encasing them, else they'd just walk out with no problem.
The client shows a 3D map where mobs (server managed) are just like rain drops rolling over the highest point of the surface. Therefore a mob following you will basically be immune to any slope. In order to manage hollow features a certain number of tricks has to be made. I don't know how it's implemented exactly, if it's like other games suppose these exceptions are managed by encasing mob paths inside 3D paths or something. It's something static for limited areas and cannot be given to every mob that will randomly attack you everywhere.

This is also why neither us nor mobs have "fatigue" climbing up or similar. The server that moves them only see a 2D map even if we see a mob projected in 3D on our local client map.

I could be imprecise with some details of course. It's hard to write a paragraph summing up many years of info bits gathering but I am pretty sure I nailed the important concepts down.

All that said, I do think it very wierd that mobs (e.g., ogres) can go through stone walls and such that gifted cannot (e.g., keep us trapped against the cliff wall where we fell in between the wall & cliff).

I cannot tell a lot because it could lead to absurdly huge exploits. Suffice to say that we are checked in 3D while the mobs are not. If you want the real answer you'll have to PM me.

[Armameteus]

Having little to no idea how game engines work, I'm just going to throw this out there. My response to #5. Feel free to stomp all over it if I'm an idiot.

Reading Vah's explanation of the 2D-3D (or "fake" 3D system), it seems like making boundaries along landscape for mobs would be difficult. So, what if it was approached from an internal aspect as oppose to external? Would it be at all possible to enhance mob AI slightly to include terrain variances like player characters do? Ie, a code is written into their boundary limits like "unscalable slope here" in which the AI would tell the mob to stop moving forward essentially mimicking the appearance of "terrain-limited" mobs, the same way it seems to with players?

As for taking advantage of mobs that are "penned in" as it were in certain areas, if it is possible to enhance them to include terrain, would it also be possible to give them a limited ability to find a different route to get to the player's position? Ie, player hides behind tree, AI realizes there's an obstacle in the way and tells mob to walk around said tree to get to the player.

Again, sorry if this is all completely non-doable or a dumbed-down repeat of something someone else has already said that I didn't realize.

[Shian]

Having little to no idea how game engines work, I'm just going to throw this out there. My response to #5. Feel free to stomp all over it if I'm an idiot.

Reading Vah's explanation of the 2D-3D (or "fake" 3D system), it seems like making boundaries along landscape for mobs would be difficult. So, what if it was approached from an internal aspect as oppose to external? Would it be at all possible to enhance mob AI slightly to include terrain variances like player characters do? Ie, a code is written into their boundary limits like "unscalable slope here" in which the AI would tell the mob to stop moving forward essentially mimicking the appearance of "terrain-limited" mobs, the same way it seems to with players?

No. There's a good deal of character stuff that is client side. What you suggest would be also putting mob AI client side. You don't give mob AI to the client or players that understand such things can just alter it. Again, you're looking at massively huge exploits.

[fermi443]

The exploit being spoken of that would be thought to happen if enemies were trapped at a lower elevation unable to get to their target wouldn't happen actually. All of the AI enemies in the game retreat from an unreachable target by default, and stay far out of range.

The AI enemies run off a coordinates system if I recall correctly. This tells your viewer where to render them, thusly why not just tie in the coordinates system with an identifier that looks at the altitude value, and measures change, if the vertical movement is too great at one moment in the AI's path finding, then default to the retreat function where they flee the target until out of range? Unless of course the enemy has ranged moves to throw. This would make the calculations server side, avoid the fish in a barrel situation, and make this part of the suggestion possible overall.

I'd still miss the unrealistic cliff pulls to safe spots, but it would add some more strategy and interesting play to the game I believe for sure.

The extra calculations would pale in comparison to the server time currently taken up calculating land streaming, which will soon be taken out as we've heard, and replaced with a static install of the game's terrain.

[Vahrokh]

Reading Vah's explanation of the 2D-3D (or "fake" 3D system), it seems like making boundaries along landscape for mobs would be difficult. So, what if it was approached from an internal aspect as oppose to external? Would it be at all possible to enhance mob AI slightly to include terrain variances like player characters do?

No, because despite it might sound counter-intuitive, the simulation engine does not (need to) manage the map at all.

When you get map graphics, in fact, it's just your client asking another game server service (ever wondered what this "contacting local daemons" you get at game startup means?) to send the missing map bits.
That service, though, is not connected with the simulation at all, it is just a sort of file server.

The simulation instead spawns and despawns mobs, takes your button commands and applies them onto the mobs (checking if they are in range, else you are a flying dragon and mobs are told to flee or switch to anti-air skills).
The simulation does not know about the map though, so it has no way to consider terrain, so mobs are not easily managed.

To do so, the content developers should have an advanced game editor like Dragon Age Origins, that would apply their game editor (which would support a local map like a regular client) designed 2D boundaries onto the server simulation.
For the little we know, Istaria development was so late that this advanced game editor could not be made.

The exploit being spoken of that would be thought to happen if enemies were trapped at a lower elevation unable to get to their target wouldn't happen actually

No, it's not, it's much worse and BTW it's forbidden to talk about exploits.

The extra calculations would pale in comparison to the server time currently taken up calculating land streaming, which will soon be taken out as we've heard, and replaced with a static install of the game's terrain

There's zero calculations made for land streaming, just bandwidth consumption to transfer files you (not the server) ask.

[Dhalin]

5) Probably the most important thing to add to the game is to have the AI be affected by terrain, as well. There is a story attached to this, but I'll just sum it up for convenience. Once upon a time, a young dragon was picking off jungle crawlers, one by one, when he realized his HP was low. He then ran behind a tree for sanctuary. To his surprise (and dismay,) the spider walked right through the tree! He then ran for the slope. Unable to climb up the steep hill, he ran around up the path. He looked down the slope and saw... the spider going sideways up the cliff! That dragon was never heard from again (and died unhappily ever after.) THE END.

It'd be nice if mobs didn't path through solid objects like trees and such, but meh. As far as going up steep cliffsides, you'd get the whole "unfair advantage" thing, where a ranged character can kill mob after mob with ranged attacks and the mob would just sit there and take it. That would be unbalanced, and make ranged characters far too easy to level, all you'd have to do, is find some sort out out-of-the-way ledge/cliff/building, get ontop of it and range something to death.

The only two ways around it: Let the mobs climb sheer cliff faces, OR, do what WoW does which is even MORE aggravating: the "Evade" thing.

If you've never played WoW, let me explain it:

If you attack a mob that can't figure out how to get to your position, you see "Evade" come up, and all of your attacks automatically miss, and the mob sits there and does nothing. You can't kill it. That's all good and nice, UNTIL...

...a mob gets glitched. That is, stuck inside of a small rock, clipped into a piece of a crate/building/signpost/etc. Sometimes these mobs can still attack you, but the moment the game realizes "I can't reach the player!" the mob is placed out of combat (healing its health immediately) and you see "Evade" instead of damage numbers. But, you're still in aggro radius! The mob starts attacking you again. It still can't move because it is clipped inside of the object, but it keeps aggroing you. This isn't much of a problem for melee mobs, but try experiencing that with a ranged mob and it is aggravating as hell, as you gotta figure out just how to stand so that the mob can legally attack you and you attack it and keep it that way until the mob dies.

I much rather like the mobs that can scale sheer walls. I'd gladly take this method over WoW's. One of the very few things I don't like about WoW, and anyone who knows me, I love that game up and down.

[Armameteus]

It'd be nice if mobs didn't path through solid objects like trees and such, but meh. As far as going up steep cliffsides, you'd get the whole "unfair advantage" thing, where a ranged character can kill mob after mob with ranged attacks and the mob would just sit there and take it. That would be unbalanced, and make ranged characters far too easy to level, all you'd have to do, is find some sort out out-of-the-way ledge/cliff/building, get ontop of it and range something to death.

That's what I was kind of getting at with the other suggestion I made, about mobs finding their own paths to get to the player. For most players (save flying dragons) they'd have to find some means of getting atop that particular cliff to attack the mob from a distance. Ie, there had to be some sort of path that the player climbed to get up there. What I was wondering is if there were a way of making the mobs "smart" enough to "think" about a way of getting to the player, that is, finding that path and climbing it to get to them.

I used to frequent another MMO in which this was how combat worked most of the time. The mob would find a path to the player and attack them. If they were ranged, they'd get within attacking distance that still conformed to the landscape and then started shooting. The only problem with this was that, yes, this could be exploited by hiding in a particularly unreachable area to said mob you're attacking (a small crevice that it couldn't fit into or something) and you'd be completely safe while you destroyed it. Now, if there was a feature in which the mob would flee if it couldn't get to the player by any means, then this system would be virtually fool-proof.

Would this kind of system be impossible to implement in Istaria?

[Dhalin]

That's what I was kind of getting at with the other suggestion I made, about mobs finding their own paths to get to the player. For most players (save flying dragons) they'd have to find some means of getting atop that particular cliff to attack the mob from a distance. Ie, there had to be some sort of path that the player climbed to get up there. What I was wondering is if there were a way of making the mobs "smart" enough to "think" about a way of getting to the player, that is, finding that path and climbing it to get to them.

It is called "Pathing", and this already exists, to some extent.

The problem is, though, is that this takes calculations, and a complex AI to do to the extent you're talking about.

Do you remember a game called "Baldur's Gate" by any chance? It is an old D&D roleplay game, that features a 3/4ths overhead view, and is very similar to Dragon Age: Origins (made by the same guys actually IIRC).

Well, in its config files, there was a variable you could set: "Mob Path Nodes" or something like that. Higher Number = more intelligent the mobs were, and the further around they were willing to go to get to you.

Problem is, if you had an older computer at the time, the game would run incredibly slow if you had that number set too high. Why? Because anytime a mob would move, it'd have to do hundreds of calculations as to where a mob can and can't go and what available paths it could take to get there.

Back in Istaria, we got a huge open world, all on one single server, with thousands of mobs, a few hundred of which can be awake at any given time. Start increasing the pathing AI on each individual mob, and you greatly increase the amount of resources required to process such advanced pathing AI.

That's why most games just say "heck with it" and allow mobs to climb sheer cliff faces. It is MUCH easier, and uses a lot less resources.

[Armameteus]

It is called "Pathing", and this already exists, to some extent.

The problem is, though, is that this takes calculations, and a complex AI to do to the extent you're talking about.

Do you remember a game called "Baldur's Gate" by any chance? It is an old D&D roleplay game, that features a 3/4ths overhead view, and is very similar to Dragon Age: Origins (made by the same guys actually IIRC).

Well, in its config files, there was a variable you could set: "Mob Path Nodes" or something like that. Higher Number = more intelligent the mobs were, and the further around they were willing to go to get to you.

Problem is, if you had an older computer at the time, the game would run incredibly slow if you had that number set too high. Why? Because anytime a mob would move, it'd have to do hundreds of calculations as to where a mob can and can't go and what available paths it could take to get there.

Back in Istaria, we got a huge open world, all on one single server, with thousands of mobs, a few hundred of which can be awake at any given time. Start increasing the pathing AI on each individual mob, and you greatly increase the amount of resources required to process such advanced pathing AI.

That's why most games just say "heck with it" and allow mobs to climb sheer cliff faces. It is MUCH easier, and uses a lot less resources.

Well, if having that variable set too high would cause the game to lag on those with not-so-good computers, would it be possible to just have that function set to a limited value? That being, a mob would simply flee if its calculation "range" of the surrounding area wasn't substantial enough to find a close enough viable path to the player? That would still sort of solve the fish in a barrel exploit, even if not in the best way possible.

Honestly, I'd take anything over mobs deciding to clip through scenery or scale sheer cliffs to get to me. It's not just when you're deliberately attacking a mob either, but perhaps when one sees you through a mountainside, scales it effortlessly and drops down right on top of you. That's when the "ignore terrain" problem starts to irk me just a little. I'd like to feel less like there really is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide when I'm running for my dear life through winding terrain, whilst the mob just walks through it all as if it were nothing, thus making it neigh on impossible to escape.

[Vahrokh]

What I was wondering is if there were a way of making the mobs "smart" enough to "think" about a way of getting to the player, that is, finding that path and climbing it to get to them.

There is.
Modern MMOs like Darkfall Online sport mobs who have such an AI that you'll be literally devastated even just in 2:1 vs them.
They get your same skills, they know how to get free off obstacles and walls, go up trees or hills and hit farter, they know how to call reinforcements (something Istaria also does - it's very rare in MMOs) and how to place themselves to protect their squishy guys vs you.

This requires many a substantial change in the very MMO engine that Istaria won't have.

I guesstimate about $5M or more and 20-30 man years would be needed to make Istaria competitive again and this excludes any (substantial) marketing cost.

Do you remember a game called "Baldur's Gate" by any chance? It is an old D&D roleplay game, that features a 3/4ths overhead view, and is very similar to Dragon Age: Origins (made by the same guys actually IIRC).

Well, in its config files, there was a variable you could set: "Mob Path Nodes" or something like that. Higher Number = more intelligent the mobs were, and the further around they were willing to go to get to you.

Problem is, if you had an older computer at the time, the game would run incredibly slow if you had that number set too high. Why? Because anytime a mob would move, it'd have to do hundreds of calculations as to where a mob can and can't go and what available paths it could take to get there.

Back in Istaria, we got a huge open world, all on one single server, with thousands of mobs, a few hundred of which can be awake at any given time. Start increasing the pathing AI on each individual mob, and you greatly increase the amount of resources required to process such advanced pathing AI.

With some quite complex algorythms it's possible to pre-compile mobs possible moves without a node based realtime calculation.

This requires a developer skillset and human resources comparatible to this kind of complexity and related helper tools to be created.

I have no idea about Istaria's developers skillset but I am fairly sure they don't have the human resources for this.

Well, if having that variable set too high would cause the game to lag on those with not-so-good computers

As in the other thread: this is a MMO not a single player game, the mechanics are completely different (ARGH sorry I sound like a jerk, while I just want to let you understand).
You cannot leave this kind of elaborations to a client, forgery and exploiting are way too easy this way.
Everyone vaguely dishonest would set the mob difficulty to 0 if they had the possibility, mods and programs would be made just for that (just notice how many mods were made for Istaria for less game impacting aspects than having "free lunch").

I'd like to feel less like there really is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide when I'm running for my dear life through winding terrain, whilst the mob just walks through it all as if it were nothing, thus making it neigh on impossible to escape.

Mobs don't walk "thru" mountains, they are only moved in 2D space and projected over terrain off the above like using a laser projector.
Only in case the mob is already inside a 3D feature, then it will pass thru it till it's "projectable off the sky" again.

[Armameteus]

Mobs don't walk "thru" mountains, they are only moved in 2D space and projected over terrain off the above like using a laser projector.
Only in case the mob is already inside a 3D feature, then it will pass thru it till it's "projectable off the sky" again.

What I meant by "through" was how mobs are unaffected by terrain and can walk over/under/clean through any hazard or obstacle to get to the player with no hindrance at all. After reading nearly every post in this thread, I've come to realize how the mob movement and restriction processes work.

Also, was that "thru" an attempt at correcting my spelling or a joke? Just curious.

[gagatronic0]

Thanks for all the feedback! If there is anything to get out of this, it would be that most players agree that it would be a huge benefit to eventually get the resources to allow a little more processing power for the AI. I hope this is something that Istaria can eventually get to, after the current to-do list is out of the way.

[AmonGwareth]

Sadly we've been down this road/discussion before on these forums and features like you describe would require far more than you can imagine and isn't something we can do given the current state of the game.