Welcome to Project: Gorgon!


Project: Gorgon is a 3D fantasy MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game) that features an immersive experience that allows the player to forge their own path through exploration and discovery. We won't be guiding you through a world on rails, and as a result there are many hidden secrets awaiting discovery. Project: Gorgon also features an ambitious skill based leveling system that bucks the current trend of pre-determined classes, thus allowing the player to combine skills in order to create a truly unique playing experience.

The Project: Gorgon development team is led by industry veteran Eric Heimburg. Eric has over a decade of experience working as a Senior and Lead Engineer, Developer, Designer and Producer on successful games such as Asheron’s Call 1 and 2, Star Trek Online and other successful Massively Multiplayer Online Games.



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  1. #11
    Junior Member jacksin125's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Silvonis View Post
    We don't plan on committing development time on temporary changes like this for a multitude of reasons. Mainly, because we are in active development.

    That said, we have asked for in depth reports regarding issues specifically related to AH but said reports have been far and few in between. If you can capture video to include with your very detailed reports, even better.

    Also, as a rule of thumb, when someone says 'xyz shouldn't be time consuming or hard to code' it's a lot more difficult than they think.
    Of course, everything takes a decent amount of time. But when I say it shouldn't take too long it's because I've already programmed a similar feature, albeit on what was probably a simpler ai. As for the lack of bug reports, it's very difficult to post a bug report when most of the system is broken. Sure, you can post reports about the pets randomly stopping every 30 seconds, but fixing that isn't going to fix the fact that the follow ai generally dosn't work well. Honestly, I tried to post a ton of bug reports a while back about everything that was going wrong with pets. Everything from the bug I just said, to the modes (follow, assist, defend), not seeming to actually work differently, to the pets being too weak to compete with mobs of a similar level, to pets pulling the entire room, and having now way to keep them from doing that, etc... I got no response, and have seen few changes to AH & necro, and haven't even seen much about them in blog posts, even though they're one of the most complained about features I see.
    Also, as for the two buttons I keep suggesting, those are actually used in finished games, and they work quite well. The only reason I was suggesting them as a temporary fix was because I'm pretty sure you'd want to make it more of a pain to control them than that in the finished game, being as there are things like a loyalty meter.

  2. #12
    Senior Member Tagamogi's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jacksin125 View Post
    As for the lack of bug reports, it's very difficult to post a bug report when most of the system is broken. Sure, you can post reports about the pets randomly stopping every 30 seconds, but fixing that isn't going to fix the fact that the follow ai generally dosn't work well. [....] Everything from the bug I just said, to the modes (follow, assist, defend), not seeming to actually work differently, to the pets being too weak to compete with mobs of a similar level, to pets pulling the entire room, and having now way to keep them from doing that, etc...
    Yeah, basically all of this. I just decided to give animal handling another try and it was not pretty. I'd sum it up as a mix of unclear/awkward UI, plus bad AI, plus random bugs, plus lack of pet survivability that in combination just drive me crazy.

    The last time I played animal handling seriously was about a year and a half ago, prior to the pet armor/health nerfs. The AI at that time really wasn't better, it was just that the pet was so overpowered, it didn't matter much how awkwardly it behaved. Anyway, today I dug some old sword gear and one single ah ring out of my bank, and decided to try farming orcish spell pouches in Kur at 52 sword / 53 animal handling and with a level 50 Fangsworth pet:

    My biggest problem was lack of control. I started out with the pet in Assist mode, and as soon as an orc thaumaturge attacked me, my pet ran up to him, pulled 2 more adds and we both died. I ran back to Eltibule to rez the pet.

    Next try, my pet and I killed one orc together, then my pet ran after an add, and aggro'd 2 more mobs while I was still looting the first mob. Pet died before I even looked up from looting, and the extra two mobs wandered off, leaving me to finish the original add. I decided to rez the pet on the spot since I didn't want to go back to Eltibule already - it took me 5 tries using up a master first aid kit each time since I didn't have any good kits on me. Immediately after the rez, my pet took off running after the mobs that had killed it and who were not currently aggro'd on either of us. I frantically tried to get my pet window back and changed the mode from assist to follow which seemed to make it run back to me but unfortunately the damage had already been done and the extra mobs killed the pet and then me.

    I then figured out that Follow mode seems to generally make the pet not attack when something attacks me, and that I can use Sic 'Em to make it attack the mob on command. Except when that doesn't work. The pet always seems to attack if a mob hits the pet itself instead of me, and sometimes even if the mob only seems to be hitting me. And, sometimes, the pet will just stand by and watch me fight even if I used Sic 'Em. I also ran into an awkward situation when Sic 'Em wasn't up yet and I couldn't remember how to make the pet attack - it probably would have worked if I'd toggled its mode, but since that was on the pet menu instead of on my hot bar, I didn't remember it in the heat of the moment.

    I used Get It Off Me a few times. It didn't usually seem to make the pet able to taunt off me, but that was ok. What wasn't ok is that it switched the pet mode to Guard Me which appeared to cause the pet to remain in place when I moved back to the campfire. A couple passing orcs noticed the pet and killed it. Again.

    Damage seemed ok'ish. Usually autopsy seemed to put me around 63% damage and the pet at 36%. Given that I only had a single ah ring, I'm willing to pretend that with better ah mods, my pet might have been doing more damage. (I was not using calligraphy to enhance my sword damage, but I had some sword gear mods from my previous sword/shield playing.)

    However, ah seems really lackluster compared to sword. There is no supporting skill like calligraphy. I don't really find the ah abilities themselves that exciting either - great, I got 2-3 pet attacks and 2-3 pet heal/damage reduction abilities, but they all have longish cooldowns, the attacks don't necessarily go off, and the defensive skills don't actually seem to do much to help my pet survive. When my pet dies, my whole ah bar becomes immediately useless, and I'm stuck in single combat skill mode until I get my pet rezzed which requires either a number of expensive first aid kits or a trip back to the "nearest" stable. That seems like a very excessive penalty for what is really a not-so-useful pet. ( The following may no longer be applicable, but a year or so ago, I played low level deer / animal handling with a rat, and the summoned deer did more damage, attacked more reliably and was sturdier than my rat. And, if it died, all I had to do was hit the Summon Deer button again. I think that was the final experience that soured me on animal handling last time around.)

    Edit: Thinking about this a bit more. I really like how EQ currently handles pets (or 2 years ago, rather, but I don't think it changed.) If I remember correctly, pets would only pull aggro if they attacked something, never just from proximity, which eliminates all kind of pathing awkwardness. I also found the EQ modes of assist/guard/passive quite intuitive (and non-bugged ).
    Also, pet control was essentially done through the pet menu, leaving the spell bar free for other things. My big complaint from tonight's ah playing is how useless the whole ah bar becomes once the pet dies. Yes, ah is meant to be pet-focused, but how about some abilities that buff both me and my pet and don't become totally useless once the pet is down? Or more abilities like shrill command? Maybe abilities that cause me to do damage to a mob or heal myself, and buff the pet as a side effect? Or a high cost, long cooldown rez? Or a long cooldown "play dead" ability that causes the pet to lose all aggro, hopefully saving its life once in a while?
    Last edited by Tagamogi; 10-12-2017 at 07:54 PM.

  3. #13
    Senior Member INXS's Avatar
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    Does anyone know how different the AH pet and the BC golem behave? I can't compare since never used AH but are they both running on a same mechanics?

  4. #14
    Senior Member ShieldBreaker's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by INXS View Post
    Does anyone know how different the AH pet and the BC golem behave? I can't compare since never used AH but are they both running on a same mechanics?
    The Golem you program and just have it follow you around waiting for condition of its program to kick in, you can trigger program manually with the trigger ability which is set as that rule's condition. AH pets can get into fights on their own and win, and depending on the mode will attack what you attack or attack what attacks you. Many AH abilities effect how the animal fights, it is more cast clever trick, cast Special Attack. If they are sharing underlying code, could be, but it not obvious that they are. Are they alike in feel of use, diffidently not.

  5. #15
    Senior Member Tagamogi's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by INXS View Post
    Does anyone know how different the AH pet and the BC golem behave? I can't compare since never used AH but are they both running on a same mechanics?
    Mm, I'd say there are some similarities. Both the ah pet and the golem have the tendency to stand a bit away from me, attracting mob proximity aggro I wouldn't get on my own. Occasionally, both the golem and the pet appear content to stay quite a long distance away from me, increasing the wandering mob aggro risk. So, I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be to bring the golem to a group in a difficult dungeon either... I haven't had too many problems with the golem pulling aggro by standing around, but it can happen and I'd hate to wipe a whole group by accident.

    I never tried to set up my golem to attack, so I can't compare the similarities there. Of course, one very important difference between the ah pet and the bc golem is that the golem can be helpful in a fight without attacking mobs. I've been pretty happy with the bc golem really - I suspect it of sitting out the occasional fight for random reasons and it can net me the above-mentioned adds, but usually it's pretty well behaved and when it gets aggro, it's sturdier than the ah pet, so it doesn't die right away. If it does die, I can just resummon it. And if my summon is on cooldown, there are lots of other things I can do with bc in the meantime...

  6. #16
    Junior Member karunama's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Khaylara View Post
    They need proper reports with level, gear, gear mods, character stats and the actual pets used. I was surprised that someone who used necro and concluded it was bad used mainly the suicidal skeleton mods (they do more damage but they take way more damage)-in which case the gear was what was getting the pets killed not the skillset itself (necro pets are still decent till about level 60).
    I've tried what you're suggesting. In fact, my personal favorite playstyle while soloing is as a full summoner/support. I love the idea of being a general that can empower his troops. At lvl 50, as Necro/AH, I ran a set of gear that was exclusively modded for pets. Keep in mind that I typically solo, and used Kur Tower and the Werewolf Cave for most of my testing. While it was a drop set I farmed in Kur Tower for the most part, nearly all the mods were +to pet survival, aggro generation or damage. The problems I found were several fold. (Caveat: I mostly tested this before the recent changes to Clever Trick and only briefly afterwards as I had mostly given up on pets and moved onto other skill lines. As such, I won't go too in depth regarding AH pet damage aside from what little I've seen post patch.)

    First off, while the idea of 'Get it Off Me' changing your pet's behavior sounds cool, in reality it's terribly impractical. In particular, I've had my PBear simply drop target completely and refuse to fight until I either manually change his behavior back or am targeted myself. Using Sic 'em or Clever Trick to get it to fight my target is very hit or miss. Assuming he actually carries out the command (often he won't due to what is commonly thought to be a pathing issue) I have had him use it and then not actually fight anymore until, again, either i manually change his behavior or I'm being attacked.

    Secondly, Even with every +Skeleton Damage, +Skeleton Swordsman Damage or +dmg during provoke undead mod (including the ones that do flat damage to the skeletons after a duration, but excluding the ones that make them take extra damage or instantly die from certain damage types), the Skeletal Swordsman generally can't do any damage at all to level 50 or higher mobs due to armor mitigation. Since most of the +aggro mods are +%s, that means they're still causing 0 aggro generation. I refuse to use the +damage and damage received mods for two reasons; First I want them to tank for me, and fragile tanks are not tanks at all. Doubly so if nature damage one shots them >_>;.

    For the second reason; Skeleton archers and *especially* mages are already incredibly squishy. Archers aren't terribly useful for anything, but they do manage to do a small amount of damage to most enemies that are level appropriate with them and don't grab too much aggro if I keep Wave of Darkness on my bar and watch their hp like a hawk for when i need to hit it and grab things off them. If I fail to pull off of them using a modded up Wave of Darkness/Life Steal combo, which is rare but does happen (unless I'm fighting Undead and don't have them on my bar at all) they die after 8-12 seconds in a 1v1 with most mobs. Using both heals from necro, they may live long enough for me and the pets to kill their target. Mages do get aggro often and quickly, thanks to their reasonable damage and AoE capabilities. They die instantly though, since they have no armor, and there is (to my knowledge) only one mod that can give them a higher max armor. The amount the mod gives is tiny and irrelevant in the end, since they still die faster than they can be healed or have aggro pulled from them.

    In both Animal Handling and Necromancy, healing pets is extremely problematic. AH has one heal, Necro has two, and you can mod up a few abilities in AH to provide small amounts of armor or healing, but some of those heal *you*, not the pet, making them totally meaningless. The biggest issue with pet classes is that they wrap all of their combat capability into the pet. If my bear dies, I die. Even if you argue that that lets me run, there is no arguing that once my pets are gone, the fight is over. Even with Armor Patching and First Aid, keeping your pets alive after you're ready to start soloing parts of Goblin Dungeon is extremely difficult, and never gets easier. That said, healing is never easy in PG, so that may be a conscious design decision. That said, other than what I mentioned above, the only abilities that actually heal pets are; Healing Sigils, as from Sigil Scripting or Druid's Healing Sanctuary and single target heals. All of the party based/multi-target heal/buff/support abilities do *not* actually hit pets (caveat: Haven't tested BC, so it may be an exception). Coincidentally, while AH has one heal and several mods that add tiny heals or mitigation to pets, Necromancy is the opposite; the advantage of two heals is offset by the fact that many of the pet mods make those pets flimsier, not tougher.

    As I mentioned above, dead pets end your current fight, but getting them back in time for the next fight is not reasonably possible. In necromancy's case, much of the hassle can be sidestepped with enough prep time... as long as you can get back to the dungeon entrance where you made your impromptu graveyard. They died in the overworld of kur? You're screwed. Make a new graveyard at the zone entrance or run to Eltibule's Crypts. The femurs add an extra bit of annoyance to the experience. Even so, AH is far worse. I've used 10 Master's First Aid kits in a row to try and revive my pet, which is a considerable expense, followed by having to leave the dungeon anyway and go all the way back to Hogan's Keep or Serbule to pay to have him revived. That experience goes far beyond frustrating. 'Rage-Inducing' is not strong enough either. I'll get back to you when I find a term that fully encompasses the absolute seething hatred I feel when I waste over 3000 councils and 20 minutes or more just to revive my pet only to immediately have him die again for some incredibly stupid reason as soon as I *finally* get back.

    Animal Handling pets still do very low damage from what little I saw post patch. I don't have a Hissy to test, so I can't speak to that, but even with a huge +% aggro generation mod and +direct damage, my PBear still has a tough time holding aggro since he doesn't hit very hard at all. In particular, the regular, non-tamed PBears still hit much harder than he does, something which has always bothered me, especially since they're lower level than him now. Normally, dedicated combat training should make an animal *more* deadly than its wild counterparts, not far less as is the case currently.

    Zombies are trash. I can't be nice about this. There is literally no other way to put it. The only way I could see using a zombie effectively is if you added a pet attack button you could then send him into a mob to get them all to group up real nice so you can AoE them down. Create Super Zombie actually makes the zombies worse, not better, which is quite frankly amazing. I honestly cannot grasp the purpose of a tank type pet that dies faster than it can be healed *out of combat*, so if the devs actually had a purpose in mind for this PoS, I would love to hear it. I was planning to finish this post with a list of the things that are *good* about these skill lines and their pets, but zombies won't be in that list. They are just terrible. Honestly, if they exploded and did a lot of damage when they died, that would make sense, but as-is, they just putter around between using the razors to cut their pain away every few seconds like the useless emo kids they may as well be.

    The pet behaviors... I can't decide if too much has been said about them already or if it's a case of 'not enough can ever be said', but I imagine the devs are at least aware of how bad they are so I'll leave it at that for now, since this post is already pretty long.

    Pet Tanks have no AoE. This is a huge issue. Tanks, pets or otherwise, *cannot* function effectively without AoE aggro grabs. For player tanks, tab targeting can mitigate this issue somewhat. Pet tanks on the other hand are more automated and lack the ability to discern when they need to switch targets in order to maintain a flagging aggro level.

    Necromancy is forced to fight many *MANY* undead in order to farm bones, but has zero means of effectively doing so, unless you count 'compete with lowbies in the Serbule Crypts and hope your mages don't get killed by mobs 40 levels lower than they are... again'.

    Good points about the two skill lines:
    First; PBears do look and feel very sturdy with the right mods on your gear and judicious use of AH abilities. Are they sturdy enough to do their job? That's a bit harder to say, and a lot of issues come from not having good healing for them, but they're still much sturdier than I am, which is how a pet tank is *supposed* to look.
    Second; The skeleton stun is surprisingly useful in a lot of situations, and a mod that lowers their max rage so they can use it more often makes it feel very good to use indeed. This could easily be the one situation in which pets are still OP.
    Third; While the pets in Necromancy are incredibly suspect, as long as you're fighting non-undead, it's surprisingly easy to build for +dmg to your personal abilities in necromancy in order to have rather decent, even possibly end-game viable dps. Wave of Darkness and Life Steal in particular are incredibly easy to make deal ridiculous amounts of damage. The addition of a fear and a movement restriction power make for a well rounded, even powerful toolset in any non-undead related situation.
    Last edited by karunama; 10-28-2017 at 03:20 AM.

  7. #17
    Senior Member Tagamogi's Avatar
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    This is rather late, but I played bat/necro during UI preview release #1 , and just wanted to make a quick and hopefully not too out-of-date post about the pet UI/AI:

    1. I really liked the new pet UI, its buttons and its new hover tooltips that explained to me precisely how my pet would act if I selected a particular mode. This definitely takes care of the "unclear UI" I complained about before.

    2. None of the pet modes allowed me to pick how I want my pet to act. In particular, I want the pet to not retaliate if it is attacked. I think having a pet that fights to defend itself when it is attacked is realistic but it's generally also the worst strategic fighting choice possible since the pet is unaware of concepts like "keep running until we lose aggro", "don't attack that mob in the back because it will call its 20 friends" or "don't attack because then I can't pull aggro off you and you'll die".

    3. The pet doesn't always follow the selected mode. One specific example I remember is fighing in the entrance of the boarded-up basement with 2 skeleton mage pets out and in Follow Mode. My party member and I were fighting a couple melee goblins, then a goblin caster wandered up and joined the fight. I believe the goblin cast a fireball at my party member - I'm not very good at picking up on floaty numbers, so without a combat log it's hard to tell. I'm positive neither of my pets lost any health though, which seems it should mean they did not get attacked. However, at least one of my mage pets then began attacking the goblin caster which of course meant the caster called for help and we wiped. In general, my skeleton mages seemed happy to attack anything that moved in the Boarded-Up Basement, no matter if I had them on Follow or Assist.

    I'm not planning on doing much more with pet classes in the near future (too much other stuff keeping me busy for now), so I just wanted to post this before I forget about it.

  8. #18
    Junior Member Vyanie's Avatar
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    I agree with you completely, it feels as if they intend pets to be throw away because of how bad they are but they put an extreme punishment in place if you try to use the mechanic as such. If they do not want pets to be throw away then considering you are sacrificing your bar (and sanity because of aggro and such) then these things need to be just as strong or nearly as strong as a full player as now you become a support tool for the main focus (the pet). This is especially true as you have almost zero control over the things once the fight starts. or even before that as they tend to aggro anything by taking ... lets just say "strange" pathing.

  9. #19
    Senior Member kazeandi's Avatar
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    Roughly one year has passed since I started this thread. AH pets now have Bond, which makes them more survivable (damage is still on the low side, but not extremely bad anymore).

    However, 2 things are still in effect that cause problems:

    • Pets don't always seem to follow their mode: Follow seems to act more like Assist; Assist has my pet run off to retaliate; Guard has my pet run off to retaliate
    • When I set my pet to Stay, I rely on SicEm / Get it Off Me, which doesn't always work (seems like the pet can't find a path to the target), then it stands still.


    What I think the pet modes should do:

    - Follow should mean a pet stays close to you and does not fight at all unless ordered to do so.
    - Guard Me should work as is now, it's pretty much what you'd expect it to be.
    - Assist should mean your pet only attacks what you attack - nothing else. No retaliation, no running in when a ranged mob fires at you or the pet.

    Also, pets should have a leash you can set as a player. If you set it to, say, 10, your pet never runs further away than 10 steps.
    Last edited by kazeandi; 06-19-2018 at 08:00 AM.

  10. #20
    Junior Member Vyanie's Avatar
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    Pets might look more tanky but they are really not, this is exaggerated by the fact that damage is extremely low and you don't have much control over it. Click sic em, pet attacks one of the things it is in combat with randomly.... I compare this damage with other combat skills I have and it is beyond low, my unarmed kills immensely faster for mobs in wolf cave, knife is even faster, all the while hissy is fighting one mob ive killed 4-6 other ones in the same time, this should not happen, in addition ive now had to waste power to heal my pet because its doing piddly damage to the mob and taking a lot of damage from it., ohh and this is in all armor that benefits my pet only, not my other skills. Balance should be looked at based on how it compares to other combat skills, not to what a person might think "feels" appropriate just because its a pet. if you have taken the time to get what is supposed to be a high dps pet then you should be able to output the same dps as other high damage combat abilities, not do the same dps or lower than psychology and feel proud.



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