User:Foo/Research

AFK performance parameters

An attempt to identify which parameters affect performance of a party of heroes with an afk player (at a single general pve spot).

Parameters that certainly affect performance

• Heroes skill bars / attributes / runes / insignias / weapons / modes
• Player health, energy, armor, damage reductions, weapon types, vamp/zeal
• Title effects (on relevant locations): lb/asura/norn/dwarven/vanguard
• Morale, cons, summons, maintained enchantments, or any other long-lasting effects that can be applied before afking

Parameters that probably affect performance, but not in a significant way

• Heroes order in the party (minor effect on positioning as it mainly set by professions and weapons)
• The direction you're facing (affects how hero positioning is rotated, but they reposition themselves on combat anyway?)
• Player bar should have an affect for things like arcane thievery/larceny but this is almost negligible.
• Profession and secondary affect enemy skills like those in ToPK.

Parameters that are up for debate / testing

• Hero skill order in bars - if true, should be easy to prove with spirits, enchantments, or other User:Foo/Idle_Skills, but might require enemies to demonstrate. Would be harder to disprove.
• Player's profession itself, might affects enemy AI. Migraine said to never be case on warriors, at least in NM prophecies.
  • Other candidates are empathy/backfire/shame/soul leech/Maelstrom/Pacifism/Faintheartedness.
  • should verify that this is profession specific, not weapon-based.
  • Might also be relevant for hero skills like weapon of shadow, weapon of warding, splinter weapon...).

Placements: Anton in 1, player in 2 because wielding a sword, Jora in 3, Koss in 4, Goren in 5, Razah in 6, Gwen in 7, and Norgu in 8. Spot 9 is empty.

Hero Formation

When a player leaves town with a team of heroes, they arrange around or next to it, but how? What affect their formation? Who's at the front and who's at the back? (And how could we use that to our advantage?)

This is an attempt to find what affects the formation, and how exactly it is determined. Some initial observations:

Given this map:

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

Heroes will form so that the player be placed in spot 2 if wielding a melee weapon, or 5 otherwise. Shields seem to not matter. Then Heroes will fill the remaining spots from low to high (This means that the 9 spot is never used) by these parameters, by order:

• Weapons wielded: melee > bows/spears/nothing > staves/wands. Within those groups:
• Professions: W > D > P > R > N/Me/E/Rt > Mo. A are somewhere around D and P, but might be related to other factors, should check. (Assumed to work as described under Henchman). Within those groups:
• Some other unknown criteria that seems to involve skills, attributes, and party list order.

It seems that "identical" heroes will order by party list order, and it seems interesting to figure how skills and attributes change ordering, but consider this test:

• Create a pvp necro toon, and go to the isle of the nameless with these default heroes:
• Adding (Tahlkora, Dunkoro) gets formation order (Tahlkora, Dunkoro).
• Adding (Tahlkora, Dunkoro, Ogden) gets formation order (Dunkoro, Tahlkora, Ogden).

Adding Ogden changed the ordering of the first two heroes. This means that the unknown criteria does not only depend on differences between pairs of heroes, but also on overall party composition, or some randomness, or other more complicated logic. This is why I conclude this here. We've learned that we can set the formation of heroes with weapons and professions, but within those groups, ordering is more complex and might not be decipherable reasonably.