Could we please get rid of the monsters' "flea behavior" (and some other things regarding monsters)

Main topic:
It has been bugging me for a while, that all monsters are somehow capable of jumping twice as high as the player can (which is already insanely high to be honest), kinda like fleas. This may be slightly bearable on normal planets, but on the low gravity ones there's little difference between birds and ground monsters, it is horribly annoying that ALL monsters do this, and not just a few (I wouldn't mind it then, it would only add to the variety, it could be a special monster ability!). Sometimes, the monsters even jump higher than me while using pulse jump... It's ridiculous, you can't get away from them...

Monster precision:
Another thing is, the monsters move and jump PERFECTLY, they always land right ontop of your head no matter what you do to shake them off (they trace your movement perfectly), and you won't be able to do a single thing about it, except for (ab)using exploits (block cages). Coupled with the above issues, it makes monsters pain (instead of fun) to fight. This encourages the "put on good armor and bring 100 bandages along" playing style, instead of encouraging players to be inventive with movement (you can rarely jump over a monster, as it will always jump when you're right above it, hitting you fully and defeating the point of player movement entirely, you'd be better off sitting and tanking it).

Also, birds and projectile monsters are way too accurate... Make them spread a bit, guns should be accurate, not monsters...

Monsters also have perfect reflexes, say you hit a passive mob while standing close to it, it would hit you the instant moment you hit it. This should change as well.

Conclusion:
So basically, monsters could be made less precise and jump-heavy, which will of course make them easier. AI improvements/variety should compensate for this. Instead of having monsters always charging at you, it would be fun if some of them ran back and forth, or if some of them tried to get to a high location and then jump ontop you, or maybe if they dug into the ground... All kinds of ideas.


Other things:
-It's silly that monsters spawn in asteroid fields and on moons just as frequently as they do on other planets, in my opinion they should not spawn in asteroid fields at all.
-Monsters are especially dumb when it comes down to aggression, they forget you attacked them after 2 seconds or so, just place a wall between you and the monster lol. The usually passive ones are the worst with this.


That's all I had to say, what do others think?

 

I would not say that they jump that high. I`m not having trouble with jumping over them at all.
Then, they do not jump that precisely. It is possible to run away from the point they jump onto, not mentioning various techs used to make that even easier. So, it that really needed?

 

My main point was, instead of making them annoying like fleas to make them difficult, they could rather make them smarter to achieve the same sense of difficulty.

It could be that I got unlucky with the monsters I ran into, but they all were kinda hopeless to even try jumping at... Staying at the ground seems much more viable, which is boring for me.

But I'm pretty sure that their jumps are actually very precise, especially since they can change direction mid-air combined with they perfect reflexes to your behavior, just watch closely what they do while jumping. You can only outrun them if you run into the direction they jumped from (high and they'd need quite a bit of velocity too).

Also, all monsters are currently either just as fast or much faster than the player, I'd like to see some sluggish monsters that can do other cool stuff.

 

It's easy peasy to dodge them and stuff.
It'll be because of their repetitive use of body slam, as it's their only attack usually.
I don't think I've ever actually been hit by body slam during my entire game, unless they jumped up and caught my back leg or something when I was covering a hill.
If they added more variety to their attacks, which I'm assuming they will, it won't be as bad.

Some monsters are actually quite sluggish in terms of behaviour, because they fire off projectiles before they attack. Plenty of sluggishness.

 

Oh man, I totally misread this topic. I thought you didn't like their new "flee" behavior, to which I was going to say why would you hate on that? It's awesome!

But yes the monster AI is very much so in development, and they're testing new behaviors, like the "flee" behavior, almost every patch.

 

I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about movement. I yet have to encounter a monster (aside from birds) that actively moves slower than the player.

 

I counted on the fact that people would misread it

But indeed, the flee thing is awesome, and I'd love to see more stuff like that in the game in the future.

 

Yeah definitely, it made me smile that the mobs were kind of behaving in a pack mentality like that. It also gave me hope for potential mob behaviors later on.

 

It's jumpy monsters that made people clamor for being able to attack with melee weapons upwards.

That said, I don't feel that jumpy monsters are hard to dodge, even without techs. The jumps do get a little ridiculous at low gravity, though.

 

Once they get onto you, it does seem hard to get away from them, however most of the time I have little trouble dealing with a monster. I can sidestep a jump at the last second and slice the monster knocking it back. Knockback allows for easy handling of most monsters. Legendary monsters are quite difficult without knockback as you are almost certain to get hit when you try to attack them. I recently was in full Pond gear on a Beta planet and had no chance against a legendary charging monster... it ran faster than me, jumped higher than me, and was unaffected by knockback. It could kill me in 3 hits and it would take me about 15 to kill it.

 

I think I made a little mistake in my wording above:

I'm having trouble dodging monsters on planets with normal/usual gravity because I tend to jump away, but they jump as well then, usually higher and faster, which makes it hard to dodge them because of the relatively strong gravity (things happen quickly). And the monsters keep adjusting course to what you are doing, with instant reflex.

On low-grav planets the whole jumping precision seems completely gone, they just jump like 2 times as high as my char though, literally rocketing into the sky.

I feel that the whole leap-attack thing would look more correct if they didn't change direction during the attack, instead of following you mid-air. This will also give a feeling of momentum to their attacks because they don't slow down while being airborne.

 

Well, they are minibosses, so it makes sense that they're pretty tough. I wouldn't call them unfairly difficult, though.

The game gives you many options to deal with them, some examples in ascending order of cowardliness:

• a fistful of bombs to the face
  
• using a tech, or Green/Blue Stims for the mobility required to fight them toe-to-toe
  
• attacking, taking 2 hits at most, and running away to heal (if necessary blocking their path or using doors for a successful getaway) then repeat until they are dead
• standing on top of a small cliff and repeatedly knocking them off with a hammer when they try to jump up it
  
• sniping them from a sufficient height using Steel Bow (or a gun, if you are so fortunate)
  
• boxing them in with dirt

My main complaint with minibosses is that they have crap loot tables, and that they're too easy on Level 10 planets, where they're going up against players with 6000 dmg Bone Hammers and Bubble Boost.

 

The only thing I would agree with is the asteroid field bit and maybe throw in moons into the mix, other than that kiting and juking monsters is pretty damn easy imho, you don't have to always jump above them you know but I get where you're coming from.
Hopefully their AI will be better in the future.

 

Yeah I worded it wrongly. I'm not having difficulty killing the monsters, but I feel that it could be a little bit more fun instead of waiting for them to land somewhere.

I'll wait for AI changes

This, I think the mini-bosses are a good challenge atm (aside from dumb AI ofc), but the loot is horrid. Even the rarer drops have bad stats.

 

I don't have trouble killing the mobs, but I do find the behavior you mention annoying and aggravating, I would prefer to see it go away. Nt a difficulty issue for me, but one of enjoyment and having the monster constantly jumping up and landing on top of you as you try to target with a bow is very aggravating.

 

If there were monsters with reduced movement speed they wouldn't get anywhere because you'd just be able to walk away. At least with the pause for firing projectiles, they're not incapable of catching up.

 

50-100 ft is pretty high for a grounded animal.

The bird spawn rates need to be nerfed as well. This was after a few seconds:

 

I just landed on a low gravity planet and I totally agree that it's a pain to fight the monsters, especially when all the species are aggressive.

I'd also suggest few other things about the monsters. It would be great if:

- they differed in size much more than now (their size would be random between very small to very big);
- they should behave more naturally, like animals: eat (grass, fruits), sleep (with "zzz" like our characters), play (jump or run for no reason) or hunt for each other;
- sometimes run away when attacked (especially those non aggressive)
- have different sex
- not appear on every single planet - I mean, most of the planets we know are lifeless after all

 

They could be granted an ability that would make them dangerous anyhow, some sort of mine-laying creatures maybe?

It wouldn't be like "they're slow and that's it", they could become dangerous in other ways.

OR... Maybe not. Not all species are supposed to be just as strong, this could be a weak species?



EDIT: I might add some video material of what I mean in a moment, I'll show why I don't like the way current AI behaves (talking about the jump thing).