Ogres / Barriers / NM

Solo running NM2 all night with no major issues for most of the night. Finally bored of running the squire (to tank ogres) since 6 full runs without a  single upgrade i swap to my huntress. 7/7 waves in I get 2 ogres in the middle lane and without even as much as a stall or slow down I stand back and watch the first ogre, with the second in close tow, literally highstep my barricade in full stride and continue on taking out my towers and the core in a single swipe and jump.

I've posted on this before and I've seen others post on it recently @vSyNd ... but I'll be elsewhere until this is addressed. 

Look forward to resolution.

The leaks the introduced in Alpha are the biggest issue right now. The new difficulty is hard, for sure but I'm making progress slowly. However, when you spend ages working hard on a map and then you lose to a bug like this it's infuriating. 

It happens SO much now. 

Not just over barricades either. On Greystone Plaza the right hand 'Greystone Terrace' lane leaks all the time. Most often goblins but when an Orc Lady leaked on wave 7 NM3 and killed the core I rage quit.

Didn't happen before, I don't understand why this was changed?

FIX IT!

Yeah I get random 'wait how What??' all the time now with leaks, I'm really starting to feel we were in alpha and have moved to pre-alpha in terms of just about everything :b

Thanks for restoring xpadder tho!

It feels like pre-pre-alpha now.

Thanks for posting about this. We have a bug in our database about this issue happening in specific, rare circumstances, mostly around towers/barricades placed at the bottom of ramps. We've attempted to fix it in the past, but it's proven tricky.

That said, I've been hearing reports that this has become much worse lately. It is pretty devastating when you put together a good defense to have it circumvented by such a nasty bug. Will be reviewing with QA later today to see how this may have gotten worse, and see if we can figure out a solution for an upcoming HF. 

If anyone has any clues on how/when it started getting worse (i.e. which patch), that would be very helpful information indeed.

Thanks Brad. I know for a fact that it was an issue before the alpha and beyond patch but I wasn't doing as much nm3 farming so I just took my lumps when it happened.  I've noted it happening on multiple build locations centered in creep travel paths with no ramps or slopes in the vicinity.

I think you can reproduce this fairly often if you build LIferoot with dual walls in mid lane (at the level of the clay pot). In wave 7/7 when dual ogres come to mid they often push one another right over top of the barricade.  But basically any location where multiple mobs congregate at your barricade they will boost one another up and over.

I think the other reason this happens is the mobs just seem to stop attacking and just start walking forward even tho the blockade is there.

@TrendyBrad quote:

Thanks for posting about this. We have a bug in our database about this issue happening in specific, rare circumstances, mostly around towers/barricades placed at the bottom of ramps. We've attempted to fix it in the past, but it's proven tricky.

That said, I've been hearing reports that this has become much worse lately. It is pretty devastating when you put together a good defense to have it circumvented by such a nasty bug. Will be reviewing with QA later today to see how this may have gotten worse, and see if we can figure out a solution for an upcoming HF. 

If anyone has any clues on how/when it started getting worse (i.e. which patch), that would be very helpful information indeed.

Yeah, these two last patches are much worse. I even gave up logging in for dailies and the monthly as well for now.

Before I could cope with the difficulty being stupidly high and the balance issues etc, but now I can't even have fun anymore playing the game, because every single match and at almost every single wave there are goblins leaking through defenses and I have to deal with them manually, thus making me HAVE to play a DPS hero, and not able to get itens for my builders. And since playing solo at the moment is the only way to go...

@TrendyBrad quote:

If anyone has any clues on how/when it started getting worse (i.e. which patch), that would be very helpful information indeed.

This is why there should be a post patch bug thread posted after each hotfix or patch. It makes it easier for you guys (Trendy) to pinpoint where something was fixed or went wrong ^^ I did mention this to iamisom and he said he would bring it up to the team for feedback.

In regards to the issue in the thread not pertaining to NM specifically though, I have noticed an increase in large skeletons wall walking and again, when several mobs are stacked up, it is easy for them to be pushed over. Perhaps increasing the collision detection size (not sure of the correct terminology) of walls to prevent this. I do not mean to insult any devs by oversimplifying this issue, just giving a possible suggestion that perhaps no one has thought of :D

@TrendyBrad quote:

Thanks for posting about this. We have a bug in our database about this issue happening in specific, rare circumstances, mostly around towers/barricades placed at the bottom of ramps. We've attempted to fix it in the past, but it's proven tricky.

That said, I've been hearing reports that this has become much worse lately. It is pretty devastating when you put together a good defense to have it circumvented by such a nasty bug. Will be reviewing with QA later today to see how this may have gotten worse, and see if we can figure out a solution for an upcoming HF. 

If anyone has any clues on how/when it started getting worse (i.e. which patch), that would be very helpful information indeed.

The reason for why it has been reported more on is probably that more people have come to that part of the game. Where ogres/bosses/tanky normal mobs stack up at your blockades. The issue has been here for as  long as I can remember. If you cannot kill the boss before the next one arrives, chances are quadrupled that they will start climbing barricades. Then if a player agros the boss the chance of it happening is even higher. 

Same thing will happen with normal mobs, it just does not happen that often. Just start a game with 1 billion HP blockades on a test game/server and you will be able to reproduce the bug quite easy. 

http://imgur.com/a/Zh1ma#0

Happened just now. 

View post on imgur.com

Can we get a working edit button any time soon?

If you want steps to reproduce in your dev build:

1. Start a match in NM4 on any map. Put 2 plaguing hulks and 2 ogres in every lane.
2. Summon barricades that have unlimited health.
3. Summon a bunch of ballistas behind your walls that deal pitiful damage.
4. Start the wave and observe as enemies pile up behind your walls and inevitably trickle over them.

I've noticed that the primary cause of this happening is that a lot of enemies seem to make a beeline for defenses that first catch their aggro, i.e. the first tower that damages them. They try to walk to the tower behind the wall, and in doing so they're pushed by enemies behind them up and over the wall to reach the tower they're aggro'd to.

Just had it happen to me but the boss was solo and said fk this im walking right thru

In my experience there seems to be a dominant side to each lane. So instead of placing the barricade in the middle of the lane try to stick it more to the right or left. Sure it may look easier to walk around but in my experience the mobs/bosses did not walk around. A overall fix would be nice though, since some maps lanes don't have a dominant side to each lane.

Also, wouldn't making the barricades thicker solve the walking-over-the-wall issue? When I stack one barricade directly behind the other this walking-over-the-wall issue doesn't occur.

@Omegaknight quote:

In my experience there seems to be a dominant side to each lane. So instead of placing the barricade in the middle of the lane try to stick it more to the right or left. Sure it may look easier to walk around but in my experience the mobs/bosses did not walk around. 

Not sure how to respond to this without sounding brash, but while I agree with your statement that's basic builder knowledge if you're building with single walls. To clarify for you, the bosses are not walking AROUND barricades... they are walking OVER top of them. Play a couple hundred hours of end game and see what we're talking about.

Post is about barricade leaks in NM by ogres. Leaks - through the wall or around it, it is still a leak

It is not quite common knowledge to choose to build the one barricade all the way to the right/left of a lane and leave a huge portion on the other side open. Haven't seen it on dev streams or any other stream. 

"Play a couple hundred hours of end game and see what we're talking about."

^ seriously dude? I offered two replys to share some helpful information and you reply with that? shame shame

Completed numerous NM runs by taking into account which side the mobs/boss leans on. No leaks at all (:

Hope the devs fix the issue fast though, would help you a lot it seems.

@Blixer quote:

Solo running NM2 all night with no major issues for most of the night. Finally bored of running the squire (to tank ogres) since 6 full runs without a  single upgrade i swap to my huntress. 7/7 waves in I get 2 ogres in the middle lane and without even as much as a stall or slow down I stand back and watch the first ogre, with the second in close tow, literally highstep my barricade in full stride and continue on taking out my towers and the core in a single swipe and jump.

I've posted on this before and I've seen others post on it recently @vSyNd ... but I'll be elsewhere until this is addressed. 

Look forward to resolution.

I've noticed Warboars and the grenade goblins do this a lot too

Why don't walls just have 50% more height added to them..... It does suck though how if you don't cover the entire width of the lane some enemies chose to just walk around/past the wall.

@draemn quote:

Why don't walls just have 50% more height added to them..... It does suck though how if you don't cover the entire width of the lane some enemies chose to just walk around/past the wall.

Because then you wouldn't have the aesthetic of towers shooting over them.

...at least that's the best excuse I can come up with.

I don't think the issue "became worse lately". I just think that the game became more difficult which leads peopl;e to killing monsters more slowly which makes the bugs happening much more often (since it happens when monsters are gathering on barricades).

I've noted two facts :

- 1 : it happens very often if you don't put enough barricades to make a full "real wall", like if you put one barricade in a lane which could contain 2, that makes monsters try to attack it from the side and the the others push the sides monsters to the front of the barricades and it leads to disaster;

- 2 : as noted when there is a ramp this bug happens more, whether it's going up or down, when it's going up (such as the very left lane on Little horn valley, the very small ramp) the monster still try to go around but fall so they waste more time (and often get even stuck which is still annoying). But when the ramp goes down if they go around they can jump over the barricades easily and just rampage your defences.

That being said this very problem is not to me a complete issue, I don't find it shocking that monsters try to sneak around in such circumstance. The real problem is more when the barricade is perfectly put in a very straight line and the monsters still manage to surf above it because of too many monsters gathering behind it. The main issues are big size monsters (such as warboars) and the small goblins ranged monsters which have a VERY weird behavior they want to attack the barricade from melee with ranged attacks sometimes and can push anything to do it even their own allies (making them surf over the barricades by consequences). Ogres too tend to surf when they don't want to hit the barricade but the twoers/ the heroes instead.

In conclusion I think the problem comes from the fact that barricades have a too low threat generation compared to what it's supposed to be, monsters don't try to hit them that much when they are ranged (or ogres) while melee monsters try so hard to hit them that they circle around it and then change target for towers.

Also some monsters have VEEEEEEEEEEEEEERY weird aoe pattern of attacks, the big skeleton being a good example. Sometimes it rampages all towers behind barricades when they are super far while others very close to barricades take 0 damage, this should be fixed and at least clarify the hitbox of ennemies when they attack because it's very odd.

Funny thing happened for me yesterday (nm3 liferoot). Mid was blocked by 2 barricades, one of them went down due to a mighty butt stomp. And the ogre? The ogre decided to ignore the open path and went over the second barricade.

I guess he had something to prove.