Lineage II/Combat/Mechanics of Hate

= Introduction =

In Lineage 2, combat is a way of life. In PvE combat, PCs fight mobs to gain various rewards. This article attempts to explain the AI behind mob target selection, and tries to illustrate how PCs can take advantage of it.

In particular, group play relies on a good understanding of how the AI work in order to come up with tactics that are more fun than just the 8-PC-on-1-mob idea. Knowing how the AI works allow each specialized class to be maximized, and this can be lead to greater enjoyment of the game.

Please note that this idea is not universal and in fact is theortical, but seems to be collaborated by observations in game. It's probably how it is programmed on the back end, but short of looking into the code, it's not possible to verify the ideas here.

(And in no way do we claim to be savants when it comes to the Hate idea. Other MMORPG probably have something similar, and someone else probably have covered it in details. It's just that I can't find it. :))

= The Mobs Hate You =

In case you hadn't noticed, the mobs don't exactly love you. In fact, they downright hate you. At best they leave you alone; at worst, they come at you with a big cleaver -- or worse. But how do they know who to hit?

If you are soloing, the answer is simple: the mob selects the only idiot PC standing near it swinging a weapon at it or slinging spells at it. That's rather straightfoward. But when there are 8 PCs in a party, the mob, being of only one brain, sort of have to figure out which one to hit. So how does it pick one?

In real life, a mob will probably just hit a random PC. In Lineage 2, the mobs are smarter than the average bear though, and would actually pick a PC based on a set of criteria. This set of criteria boils down into a single attribute we can call the Hate factor.

= The Hate Factor =

The mobs hate you. We've established that. But what we are really interested in is how they hate you, and what it means when they hate you really, really, much.

The idea behind the Hate Factor is that it is a set of statistics that mobs have. This set of statistics increases due to some situational factors. Mobs will then use this set of statistic to make targeting decisions just before each attack, picking the PC with the highest Hate Factor to attack.

This means, if 8 players gang up on one mob, the mob will maintain 8 Hate Factors, one for each PC. Whichever PC have the highest Hate Factors is attacked by the mob.

One important thing to remember: the mob's HP has very little to do with a mob's Hate Factor. The Hate Factor and HP are separate statistics. We will see why later.

So what adds to the Hate Factor? We can generalize into the following categories:


 * 1) Damage Done to Mob
 * 2) Healing done to PC
 * 3) Buffs to PC
 * 4) Debuffs to Mob
 * 5) Other Specialized Situations

We'll look into each in turn.

The Relationship
We start off with damaged dealt as this is the simplest category. The first and forthmost rule when dealing with Hate is as follows:

1 point of damage done is equivalent to 1 point of Hate

(The assumption here is that the Hate buildup is 1 to 1. It may not be so in practice, but for the purposes of this article it can stand)

That is pretty straight forward, right? Thereforth the mob's maximum Hate factor is equal to its maximum HP, right?

WRONG!

Consider the following situation. Player A starts beating on Mob X. Player B comes along to heal Mob X -- bad boy there. The damage dealt to Mob X by A is going to be greater than its starting HP, which is its maximum.

The thing is, the Hate Factor has to be an open-ended statistic; Hate must be allowed to build as long as the mob is alive, so that it can differentially attack a PC. Otherwise, should Player C come in to the menge-a-trois above and deal damage equivalent to Mob X's starting HP, Mob X could be possibly reduced to a race condition where it flip flops between the two PCs -- which is fairly stupid behaviour.

While this isn't so obvious in straight damage dealing, when we discuss how healing affects the Hate Factor, it would become more obvious.

(Aside: For those of you software programmers, you would of course realise there is a practical limit to the variable storage of the statistics. Practically though, most mobs' HP never reach that limit, and it takes a perverse bunch of jokers to actively try to breach that limit. So the limit of software storing of the statistic isn't really a big issue here.)

Implications
As long as a PC does damage to a mob, the PC's Hate Factor builds. Whoever deals most damage to the mob gets to take the mob's attacks. This has a lot of implications for groups with a lot of DDs and very few tanks.

Tanks, by definition, takes damage well but doesn't deal damage so well. So if this rule is the only rule, tanks would never be able to hold a mob's Hate in a group -- some DD schmuck will deal a few hundred/ thousand points of damage and instantly shift the Hate to the DD. The tank will be forced to play catchup, which in pure damage terms he would never be able to do so. Thankfully, tanks have a few tricks up his sleeves to do so.

The thing here is this: if a DD is dealing too much damage to a mob, he is going to get the mob's undivided attention. If the group is hunting tough mobs, it could lead to a very very dead DD very very quick. Hence, DDs do have to watch to make sure that they aren't dealing too much damage and attracting the wrong attention, and tanks have to watch to keep the mob's Hate on themselves.



The Relationship
Damage dealing and Hate is straight forward; you do more damage to a mob, the mob hates you more. If that was the only rule in the world, then we would only have tanks and healers, and healers would have a rather boring if critical job.

Here's where the AI steps in to keep the healers (un)happily occupied:

1 point of damage healed to any player fighting the mob is equivalent to 1 point of Hate. This is cummulative.

(The assumption here is that the Hate buildup is 1 to 1. It may not be so in practice, but for the purposes of this article it can stand)

Ho ho ho. Now the healers have some fun. Note that the two PCs don't even need to be in the same party; see the callout for a practical example.

While this is straightfoward in a two-player party -- either the healer or the other PC would get the Hate, it gets more... interesting... in larger parties.

Consider a party of 6, 5 DDs and 1 healers. The 5 DDs hit a mob for 50 points each, creating 50 points of Hate per DD. The healer use a group heal and heal all PCs for 50 points. So, the mob hates everyone at 50 points each, right?

WRONG!

Healing Hate is cummulative. In this case, the healer healed 5 PCs fighting the mob for 50 points each. Hence, the healer picks up 250 points of Hate. The mob will now hoof it after the healer, and the DDs would be hard pressed to draw him off, especially if the healer strikes back or continue to heal himself (which is very likely).

Implications
In group play, this is one of two major issues healers and the group leader must be aware of. Healing PCs in the middle of combat may be essential, but can lead to a very very dead healer, especially if it's a high-level healer with low-level DDs -- a common occurance when trying to help a party member to level.

This is because the amount of healing the healer throws out in a single heal can outstrip the damage done by the DD by such a large extent that the mob cannot be drawn off by pure damage alone. In such a case -- especially against high-level group mobs -- the healer often takes too much damage.

Group Heals are also a tricky proposition. Group Heals are great in an emergency and for efficiency, but in the middle of combat throwing this out is tantamount to suicide -- the odds are good that the mobs WILL come after the healer immediately, such is the amount of Hate the healer accumulates. This is especially so when your party tackles a big group of mobs simultaneously -- every mob would head for you if you Group Heal!

The obvious solution is not to heal during combat, which is nonsense -- you have to top off your party members, otherwise it's either costly Resurrections or you (the healer) would also be dead. The trick here is to heal single party members while in combat, and save the Group Heals for non-combat situation, or to save the heals till late in the combat, when getting Hated by the mob is irrelevant as it's going to die soon.

Also, having a REAL tank (not a pseudo-tank) in the party who knows what he's doing will go a long way to saving the healer's neck. The tank knows how to keep the Hate off a healer, and he has the skills to do so, so having one in the party works wonders.

Relationship
So, now we've seen that direct damage (mundane and magical) and healing a party attacking the mob will increase the Hate the mob has against the party members. But Buffs and Debuffs doesn't directly harm the mob, so the buffers should be okay right?

WRONG!

Rule #3:

Buffs and Debuffs add a predetermined amount of Hate against the caster. This may be cummulative.

Now, isn't this great? Even buffers get to join in the fun! Buffs and Debuffs add a certain amount to the Hate Factor; exactly how much is unknown, and may differ from buff to buff. The only real way to figure it out is to get a party and test it exhaustively.

Implications
As most healers are also buffers, this is the second major issue for the class. Buffing is considered quite important in team play; the buffs, especially party buffs, can give each party member a huge bonus in fighting.

However, like healing, the Hate Factor accumulated through buffing in combat may be cummulative (this is not certain). If so, if a buff adds 100 points to the Hate Factor, party-buffing 8 party members will rack up 800 points of Hate, and that is very difficult to pass off to someone else.

Unlike healing though, buffing isn't a critical thing; you can (or should be able to) survive temporarily without a buff. As such, the simplest and most effective precaution a buffer can do is to insist all party members stop fighting mobs before buffing, and that nobody go and pick fights until after everyone's been buffed.

This rule can be used to your advantage though, as the comment on the right shows; Debuffs can be used as a cheap taunt to get mobs headed (and stayed) your way and at the same time decrease their abilities. Considering that casting Curse: Weakness only costs 3 MP and has a range of 600, it's rather effective!

Specialized Hating
(To be continued. :)