I definitely think they'd make a lot of people happy working on this. Just reducing the leeway it puts by default between the characters would probably help a ton. At this point I usually just have the lead toon be a lot slower than everyone else (ie: I take off bard speed on the lead toon) and it works okish, but that's obviously not ideal.
A lot of the time the reason I have issues with my boxes following has nothing to do with autofollow, and everything to do with my outrunning them, but I also have both background and foreground fps set to Unlimited. As long as we are all relatively the same speed, e.g. we all have Spirit of Tala'Tak, they follow far better than any of the mercs do.
Bards selo's is very far range. Also, the zones the OP is most likely having these issues in are replesent temple, underquarry, crystal caverns, etc. He probably already has 60fps cap on each of those accounts too. The only recent change is 64bit, and 64 bit is bad news for boxers, especially 6+ boxers. When you have box following and they run in front of you and do a U-turn to face you, autofollow is pretty bad. I've seen this when moving 1cm and the rest of the box rushes past you and turns around. As in I'm trying to get the box close enough to autoattack the mob, but they instead rush past me instead of moving 1cm. I agree the autofollow is in bad state right now.
It's not just characters being boxed on the same machine. It's just as bad when boxing on separate machines.
AF is, indeed, worse than it was before 64-bit. I have been asking for improved AF for over a decade. I actually got a Dev response once when I mentioned AF works better when the Leader strafes. They stated, and I am paraphrasing - 'You're imagining it.' Moving forward or backward seems to use some kind of predictive movement on the followers. When JUST run-strafing (right-click mouse, turn sideways 90 degrees to desired direction, use appropriate right/left arrow) the followers stick like glue. Try it. AF is awful and, given the number of boxers in game now, deserves some resources for a fix.
Strafing sideways I decelerate from 55 down to 30 (with Tala'Tak on). I think it is more likely that the faster you run, the further behind your character will be during lag spikes. This is why groups with bard selo's have more problems with auto-follow breaking.
I do this all the time and it is not imagined... watching from the box screen strafe movement without any forward or back causes the toon to visibly warp incrementally from A to B. This is clearly visible to even non-boxers if you have ever watched your puller inch theirselves up to a blind corner trying to get the camera to look around it while staying out of sight. The "prediction" the client makes seems to not happen with strafe. Also, any change in Z-axis really fouls the prediction. At times characters appear to run in circles. Years ago I learned to ONLY run in perfect straight lines if there was ANY grade up or down... frontier mountains during kunark was quite difficult to navigate if you had friends on autofollow.
I only ever 2 box and it seems the same to me as ever it was. I only have problems when I forget to selos my wizard, or forget to dismount, or go around corners. Whenever I go around a corner I need to stop to let him catch up or he gets stuck.
It's not the framerate, I have my box's on separate computers, and if the difference in Z-axis gets to large the box's run off in random directions. Also if I move a little bit after standing still, they all tend to move and stand on top of me, super annoying.....
I mean, sure, Bard speed contributes to the issue. But that's not the problem. The problem is the janky autofollow.
Bard + Clr following War. Both background toons set to max background framerate. Used to work great. Now it's horrible even when I'm very careful. (I have bardspeed blocked on all because it makes me run into walls - big moves at one speed) Used to be I could reliably have them auto follow if I was careful in castle degmar. Now I can't dodge a tree in maidens eye without causing one to go on what crocodile dundee would call a walkabout. But I mean the 2nd movie. So he's crossed to a new continent.
Me too. I've been in the habit forever now of running and stopping while staring at the map for vagrant Xs, and on corners..tight hallways, gotta go to each keyboard and inch forward to not get stuck(try tacvi for example) Back when I was still only playing 3 I was so used to watching for straying toons I'd look in my rearview while driving to check for alts...but I wasn't towing anything lol. Over the years it's gotten worse as zone graphics have gotten..."better".. and heroes forge and mercs new water etc.
