Question - Characters always getting hung up in the geometry - TBM

[B_I_G__D_A_D_D_Y]

I'm back in TBM trying to finish the expansion on all my alts. Of course character autofollow in Life and Decay is the absolute worst. I sometimes think that DBG designs zones just to drive boxers insane.

I still use ISBoxer and I've always had a defined key that would target someone and /follow them. I use that macro to also define my xtar1 as GAT so I hit it at least once per session even since implementing KissAssist.

I also use MQ2Nav and have created monster mesh files for each zone I spend time in. It really helps with pulling but doesn't seem to offer much of an improvement over basic game /follow command for the alts when I want the entire group to move around.

I tried MQ2AdvPath but I'm not sure I ever got it working for me. Of course during this time I was also trying to learn how /camphere and /chaseon or /chaseoff worked. In addition on several characters it seems that MQ2Melee was also controlling their movement even though I had that turned that off in the KA INI file.

It got very confusing which plugin/macro was controlling my character movement. They seemed to interfere with each other and in a zones like Life / Decay it results in mayhem. So temporarily I've disabled MQ2AdvPath from loading in MQ2. But it would appear that MQ2AdvPath is probably the better option to minimize characters getting hung up.

Could I get someone to explain how best to work out this confusion on my part and how to use MQ2AdvPath correctly in conjunction with the other movement options? For example it's not plain from the guide for MQ2AdvPath whether I issue the /afollow command on every toon or just the lead? And which character are they going to follow? Sometimes I want the group to follow the tank but sometimes I would have them follow the Bard if he was tracking something, how do I switch back and forth? And if MQ2AdvPath is controlling their movement what effect will MQ2Nav have if it's still running? And the effect of the in-game /follow command?

And then to complicate things further I sometimes like to "unhook" the Bard to run around and pick up ground-spawn collection items. And sometimes I'll "unhook" the Mage to run ahead and Group CoH. Sometimes you'd just /chaseoff but forget that you'd used /camphere and now it would fight you until you turned that off as well. Then you'd end up with some characters auto-following, some characters doing return-to-camp and others not. Very frustrating after a few hours of this.

Sometimes the things that seem the most obvious to long-time users are totally opaque to the newbie. Thanks for any insight here.

 

[microscope]

I use /afollow and issue the command to the group and also specify me as the target because sometimes it can target the wrong thing and try to follow it. So for me the command is:

/bca //afol spawn ${Me.ID} verifyname ${Me.Name}

And to stop I use:

/bca //afollow off

Afollow is pretty good because the characters follow your steps, so if you swerve around some rocks and trees, they will follow you and avoid the same things. But I still find it to be a bit of a let down because it doesn't seem to have very fine detection in buildings. Maybe that is something I need to configure, but for example if I go into a building and buy some spells or something, then I run outside, the characters will always get stuck. I also run in the middle of the doors and hallways to try to give them the best chance, but it still fails. There is also a command to tell them to "move to me" but I forgot the code (I'm not in game at the moment). I rarely use it because it doesn't work well for me, even though my zones are well meshed. But overall /afol is better than chase or stick.

 

[jackstraw01]

I struggle with navigating toons as well. It does get frustrating. You may want to try a different approach. Navigate your main toon to a spot then try a /bca //target ID ${Me.ID} /bca //nav target. That will use MQ2Nav and may be better. I'm lazy I guess and still use /stick from years of EMU. Same issues though, toons get hung up on geometry consistently. /nav target is more reliable I would think.

It is too bad EQ live doesnt have a summon group item or give the mage a summon group spell. There were CoH and raid summoning items in EZ Server that made this so much easier

 

[B_I_G__D_A_D_D_Y]

It is too bad EQ live doesnt have a summon group item or give the mage a summon group spell.

Mages DO get a group CoH. But it's tough to coh a group into a dangerous area or when there are See Invis mobs along the path you have to follow.

 

[jackstraw01]

Mages DO get a group CoH. But it's tough to coh a group into a dangerous area or when there are See Invis mobs along the path you have to follow.

Sweet, didn't realize that thanks. My EQ Live mage is only level 89 so do not have access to the Call of Heroes spell as of yet.

 

[microscope]

Yea I got it recently on my mage, it is level 97. It is so useful! But yeah, sometimes you have to get somewhere difficult with see invis mobs and stuff and really you need to move as a group in case you end up in a battle. By the way the "move to me" code is this:

/bca //nav id ${Me.ID}

That will tell the group to move to where you are right now, and it uses MQ2Nav with the meshes. It works quite well most of the time, but they can get stuck on buildings and stuff. Also I think it was designed for no run speed buffs, so if you give them a run speed buff they can over run your location by a good 20 feet or so. So you gotta be careful they don't run into mobs.

 

[Cluelessone]

This is why I choose a rogue as one of my toons, the rogue can drag the mage corpse just about anywhere then pop a healer merc to res the mage who then CoH the rest of the group.

 

[jackstraw01]

This is why I choose a rogue as one of my toons, the rogue can drag the mage corpse just about anywhere then pop a healer merc to res the mage who then CoH the rest of the group.

Can an SK not do that as well? What is the benefit of the rogue? Does their sneak ability avoid see invis mobs?

 

[dannuic]

Does their sneak ability avoid see invis mobs?

In short, yes. There are some exceptions, though.

 

[Cluelessone]

Can an SK not do that as well? What is the benefit of the rogue? Does their sneak ability avoid see invis mobs?

They get an AA that works against almost anything. *exceptions may apply

 

[kaen01]

if you turn of advpath, and mq2melee, using eqbcs and have a good mesh for the zone, and all your guys are using the latest kissassist, there are some built in commands for having your guys follow you around, and stop and wait and do whatever, all able to be called from the driving character.

/chaseme - will tell your team to chase the person that issued the command, using mqnav and moveutils in combo.
/makecamphere - tells your team to camphere when you ready to set up a fight camp.
/stayhere - tells your team to hold here, but not lock em into a campsetting.

/trackme - this one requires bit more explanation, which can be found in the release notes for kissassist

Added a new bind to help with an issue while in chase mode. When trying to get other characters to follow/chase you, there is an issue if the character is memming a spell when you use EQBC to send the command to other characters. Using this bind will set the character to NOT Moveable while they are memming the spell. The character will finish memming the spell before trying to chase after you. I created a new /aliase /trackme

The new /trackme aliase has 3 parameters and should be called using /trackme 0 0 0, to use the standard /chase logic.
Here is an explanation of the 3 parameters:

First: StickOff 0-Ignore. 1-Turn /stick off when you reach your destination.
Second: UseNavOnly 0-Ignore. Will still try and use Navigation, But does NO validation. 1-Check to make sure Navigation is loaded and there is a mesh loaded, and a path exists to your target.
Third: IgnoreDistance 0-use current CampRadiusExceed distance. 1-Change CampRadiusExceed = 100000. Use this carefully. This will allow you to send your character across the zone.

Along with this change /chase will now try and use /nav first and /moveto second, and once within /stick range will stop /nav, and switch over to /stick.

i personally use the stayhere and chaseme alot, when moving around.

i will often leave my team in stayhere mode then call them to me with /bcg /nav id ${Me.ID}

and on my driver i have a key that does /nav id ${Group.Member[1].ID}, that way if i get in trouble i hit that key, and he navs back to my team that way my healer can start healing as soon as he gets in range, also nice for pulling, pull things, hit it, and he brings it back to camp lol.

be sure to pause kissassist when you movingg around on your driver.