This may not be important to most, and may have already been discussed. I don't know.
In City of Heroes, I remember never having seen mobs just spawn out of thin air (unless it was a mission thing). The server waited till no one was near, and then would respawn the mobs.
It made for not breaking immersion by having those mobs just pop out of thin air. *shrugs* I thought it was an awesome touch. And would be nice if City of Titans carried on that idea.
^.^
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Shazam!
Ideally this would be the case - but even in CoH I noticed the occasional mob group spawning right on top of me - even in instances. I'd imagine there are several ways to reduce it (or even hide it), but due to tech not being flawless, it may be impossible to guarantee "no popping in out of thin air".
There has been [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/spawning-spawns]talk about spawning[/url], as a matter of fact.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
They could spawn on top of you, I think they just had real long timers.
Wull.. I know it's prolly impossible to totally prevent anyone from seeing mobs spawn, but would be nice if it was very difficult to actually catch mobs spawning >.> I'm sure it can be done.. All I'm saying is City of Heroes did a very good job. Sure.. it happened I guess.. I never saw it.. but I see some have. Still.. it was rare, right?
Shazam!
I saw it happen in the old Hollows, when the server or my cheap connection lagged a bit. It also happened sometimes with ambushes in indoor missions. I'm pretty sure every case of mobs spawning in plain sight was an error, an oversight, or teleport technology in the case of Malta and Carnies in Peregrine.
I think that Tabula Rasa had the correct idea with "mob spawning" in that they didn't just "fade in from nothing", some mobs dug up from the ground, other mobs got dropped in via drop ships, others teleported in.
Sure, if you removed that graphical effect, it would have been "fading in", but adding in this *above* touch, it made it seem more realistic for the setting.
I'm with you, Becky. In 7 years I never saw mobs spawn without actually teleporting in (e.g. Rikti) and I thought CoX was brilliantly unique for that. Well, until they revamped Atlas and Hellions would appear on top of you for no reason. I'm still annoyed about that.
If mobs absolutely must spawn in sight, though, I could live with the method that Gangrel mentions. Sounds kinda like what CoX did with mastermind pets.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I remember in the early days of the game though (EU side) spending time *hunting* around for mobs in some area's though. I had to go *way* out of the way because the number of players in the area actually prevented them from spawning. Sure it was fine finding them, but then discovering that my way back was a death row back was not so pleasant....
I did learn about aggro radius at that point in time, but it was a long and painful trip, and made me want to quit the game quite a few times...
When spawning a replacement mob, the game should locate a nearby door, manhole-cover, dark alley, or even a passing vehicle, and spawn the mob(s) from there.
Be Well!
Fireheart
While there is extra work involved for a mainly cosmetic effect, I would also go with the idea of having mobs spawn in a manner realistic to the mobs. Zombies claw their way out of the ground. Gangs appear through doors, or out of parked cars/vans. Picking an appropriate spawning animation does not stop you being accidentally mobbed, but at least you won't be annoyed by teleporting gangers.
Port Oakes did that, at least for the Marcone mobs; if an area was cleared by a player, after a while more mobs would pop out of a door and take up positions. The runners would also take off and head for a door and disappear inside to escape.
One thing that I would like to see added to the way respawns work is to have some position randomization; I haven't seen it in other MMOs for mob spawns, but in SWTOR, some gatherable resource nodes have an area that their position is randomized inside when they respawn, so they aren't always found in exactly the same spot; it would be nice if there was a similar capability for mob spawns that could be adjusted by spawn. So, for example, the group of 5th Column on a corner exhorting the passersby might respawn in the same place, because a corner is a high-visibility location, the group that spawns in the alley behind the row of buildings might spawn anywhere along the alley in that block, or on the roof of a building facing the alley. It makes the 'defeat thirty 5th Column' missions a little more complicated, because you wouldn't be able to cruise the same spawn points for your count and would have to [i]look[/i] for them a little harder, but it would decrease the 'static' feel of having all the mobs respawn at the same spot over and over again.
That should be able to do easily enough, instead of giving them a set place, just set it up as a spawn "region". Of course, over time you will start to think "Same place again" if you play enough... but that is another matter (ie you will start thinking of the region being the specific spawn point instead of a specific grid reference)
Glad someone else shares similar views on TR.
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It was one of the things that really stuck with me. The thing is as well is that it *really* added something to the game, but more because it could work in the *setting* of the game.
CoH did that for an extremely limited number of cases; if you wandered around Peregrine Island, particularly around the warehouse up the road from Ghost Falcon, or the area on the other side of the block of buildings adjoining the Portal Corps compound, you could see the occasional mob spawning in on the sidewalk with a 'transporter' effect. I remember seeing Nemesis, Carnies, and Malta spawning this way; generally, there would be three to five mobs spawning in scattered around the length of a block. Not really [i]dangerous[/i] most of the time, but a surprise when you're just standing there in the street.