An Idea to Fixing Abrupt Aggro Radius Pull

Machaera

"The aggro radius is the distance from a player at which a mob will stop its normal behavior and engage the player in combat" -wow wiki

In other words, mobs have a sectioned off radius. When they're pulled outside that radius, they stop and run back or even reset entirely. I don't know how difficult it would be to implement something like this. I believe that Dark Souls had something similar to this.

https://youtu.be/hBrnv249kJ0?t=1304

In this video when the player pulls the mob outside of it's aggro radius, it just stops and turns around and runs back. However I think it would be interesting for the mob to be programmed to cast a flame breath ability or anything within it's kit as last hit when it approaches it's aggro radius. I believe this would add more to the realism and change the way players think about encountering future mobs. Lastly, rather than having the mob running back, perhaps it might be possible for it to fly back?

Just a thought. I'm no programmer and I have no idea how difficult this would be to implement, however I think it would be an intricate detail to add, as I have seen any other game that does this.

Plateau

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maouw

That's a neat idea!
Maybe even add a second "aggro" radius, where the mob stays where he is on alert, until you move even further away.

tautau

In L2, a very fun part of the game was having a tank run through fields of mobs gathering a huge train of aggro, then running back to the group. The tank would stand back against a rock (to decrease the number of mobs hitting her) while the healer kept them alive and the other group members slaughtered the mobs. Generally the tank had a polearm weapon that could hit multiple mobs and was a spoiler dwarf who could get extra mats from them.

It was a very efficient way to level up the group, get lots of loot and live on the edge of your abilities.

So my point, please do not limit the aggro chase range.

Sathrago

I think aggro/leashing has been implemented lazily in the past, so here's what I think should be the focus. It should not abruptly run back to its spawn location after a certain distance no matter what is attacking it. It should not leash endlessly even though you are not attacking it.

What I would like to see is this: The creature has a zone of influence it wants to protect, be it a bandit camp or a bear cave. It will however leave this zone of influence if provoked continually for a duration. This means, if you aggro something at a bandit camp and continue to attack it when you leave its zone of influence it will start a timer of say 1 minute, after 1 minute of being kiting in this manner the npc will decide that you are not worth the chase and leash back to its zone of influence. However, as it was recently attacked, it will have an "alerted" state on it that increases the distance that it will aggro for a few minutes and be patrolling their zone of influence. If left alone they will return to a standard aggro range, and normal behavior patterns.