Have Witch not run away if she loses pathing

[MattNF]

Perhaps have her stand there like common do instead of running away

[jacob404]

have the witch sit down if she loses pathing

[Attano]

I'm not sure if it's a good idea in terms of gameplay, but technically I suppose that it would be doable without any advanced shit. Probably just setting her rage and target netprops to invalid values or 0 would suffice.

To elaborate more on why I think it's a shitty idea: if she loses pathing, then it's for a reason, e.g. no valid nav areas around. If she sits down in an unmapped area, upon being startled again she'll just instantly lose pathing again. If you want to understand what this means, try spawning a witch anywhere on the road near c2m1 saferoom and shooting her.

[MattNF]

I think in that specific example it's due to Witches not being "allowed" to go into saferooms, which is different from a location with no nav mesh at all. It's a slightly different issue.

[jbzdarkid]

So in theory, you put a timer on any witch who gets drawn, and if she loses pathing (or gets stuck?), tp her to the last valid placement and set her target as whoever she was aggro'd on. Basically you make a backup of the witch.

[rpdelaney]

@jbzdarkid If she is teleported still aggro'd, this would potentially lead to some very bad exploits / unintended consequences e.g. in situations where the tank kills the angry witch, teleporting her toward survivors who don't have shotguns or otherwise are unprepared for an angry witch to appear right on top of them. Like @Attano I'm pessimistic about this in general, but I really doubt there is a workable solution that doesn't have her sit down in place when she loses nav.

[jbzdarkid]

@rpdelaney Not sure what you mean by this example. I'm picturing: Survivor A draws witch. (time passes) Backup 1 made of witch (time passes) Witch gets stuck and loses nav. Hooking on a Pre_ event, we instead load Backup 1. Witch on backup 1 can path more smoothly to Survivor A, who has moved since drawing. (time passes) Survivor A crowns witch.

This should never tp the witch toward the survivors, since they rarely run at the witch. If jumps are a serious problem, then outs as I see it are to either take backups more quickly (.1 sec rather than 1 sec) or to pause witch for .1-.5 sec after loading backup.

[rpdelaney]

@jbzdarkid I probably misread your suggestion. Still, it would be jarring to have a witch teleport from one location to the other under any circumstances.

[jacob404]

i think a combination of both ideas would be ideal. make "backups" but just sit the witch down at that location (and maybe have her already be at half aggro?)

[jacob404]

i assume this is being pushed back?