Massive Pathfinding Issues Since S3 Ep 6

[ZEUStiger.3590]

Ever since Living World Season 3 Episode 6 release (more precisely, I believe, after this hotfix: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-July-25-2017/6659115 (it even mentions "Fixed several pathing issues.")) many if not all creatures have been exhibiting horrible pathfinding issues. Two distinct problems can be identified:

- Creatures tend to run away from their tank, walk for a bit and then return to the tank. The problem is best reproducible on flat terrain. If I were to assume that GW2's pathfinding uses **navmeshes**, I would hazard a guess that pathfinding **now prefers polygon corners** almost exclusively over finding the shortest possible path across polygon edges.

- Creatures shift in place a lot when their tank attempt to circle around them when very close in melee range, as if they are trying to **predict his movements** and react beforehand, but immediately give up and stop, slightly away from where they were before. This sometimes results in them visible running away from you in the direction you want to circle them around, and sometimes causes them to straight up teleport in that direction 1 ft at a time. This problem was somewhat present even before the update, but with the update has become more common.

 

The problem is most noticeable in raids, but can occur fairly frequently in open world as well:

- W1 Vale Guardian, when kited around the middle of the platform (not too far from the middle), tends to return to the exact center of the platform each time when we want him to move to a different segment (i.e. red, green, blue thirds of the platform).

- W2 Slothasor can often take weird turns and scenic routes when following the fixated target.

- W4 Mursaat Overseer can decide to walk almost half the playing field away before returning back to tank. Pretty much every attempt we make the boss moves half a tile away from us (towards scouts' spawn positions) and then returns back. Over the course of the encounter he might walk one tile right (towards the entrance) and back, or 1-1.5 tiles backwards (away from the scouts' spawn positions) and return back to tank.

 

Needless to say these issues are infuriating. They were introduced along with a vague "Fixed several pathing issues" change, and that change ended up wrecking more than it managed to fix (what was it even attempting to fix? I don't recall any pathing issues in the new map at that time). This is NOT a toughness issue, there are **no** players around the spots bosses decide to visit every once in a while. They just pick that spot as a mid-point of their path while following the tank, instead of just taking one step towards the tank, which would've been enough to stay in melee range.

 

I haven't reported this earlier, thinking that it would be fixed with PoF release, seeing how this issue is very obvious and impactful on the gameplay, and it surprises me that nobody has reported it before. Please reexamine the changes that were part of that hotfix and take appropriate measures, full revert would even be better than the semi-broken pathing we currently have.

 

I can attempt to record a video depicting these issues, if you will be unable to reproduce them yourselves.

 

_Apologies for a, perhaps, convoluted and messy post, I'm very tired, but decided to finally report this before I forget._

[Yasi.9065]

God, yes, please fix this finally Anet.

[ZEUStiger.3590]

A video depicting an example of the issue. Open it on YouTube, there are timestamps in the description with (almost) every moment the weirdness occurs.

This happens during literally every attempt at the boss.

Also, I cannot stress this enough, this happens to ALMOST ALL the bosses, even regular creatures. This is not an isolated case.

[ZEUStiger.3590]

Two more examples. Sadly I couldn't capture the exact situation described in my first post, because the last phase of the encounter was very messy for us today.

The tank has a "Call Target" mark above her head. Instead of running directly to the tank, the boss decides to take a short walk in a tangental direction.

[ZEUStiger.3590]

With the Halloween patch, Mursaat Overseer started behaving much better, although still not perfect, but the issue can more-or-less be considered resolved for that particular boss.

 

But it's still happening to the full extent with Soldiers on that very encounter (Soldiers are Scouts that reached the end of their path) - unless the entire raid comes to meet them on the tile they're in, they will waltz all around the middle, lighting up all 4 central tiles, as they walk on them one by one. The raid might be stacked on them for a long time already, but they will still pick odd positions to go to, making a circle around the middle.

 

And the issue is still present at Vale Guardian, as depicted in my previous post.