Guards are not responding to patrol paths or navigating the map depending on player distance from spawner.

General Issues and Bug Reporting
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Summary

The guards are not navigating the map or patrol paths like they did before update to 36.0 or possibly 36.10.

Please select what you are reporting on:

Unreal Editor for Fortnite

What Type of Bug are you experiencing?

Devices

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Set the game mode to teams, with at least 2 teams.
  2. Set up a guard spawner in one corner of a blank template, about five small squares from the edge.
  3. Set the option to spawn multiple guards.
  4. Set a patrol path to the center of the map.
  5. Add a player spawner in the opposite corner.
  6. Allow player to fly in the settings options.(just for easily checking the distances mentioned below)
  7. Place a marker at team 1 spawner.
  8. Start game, you should be about 320 meters from the marker.
  9. Move to the below mentioned distances to see the problems mentioned.

Expected Result

The guards should move to the patrol path, navigate to the end and return, and continue the pattern.

Observed Result

When you look at the map at the below mentioned distances, the guards are not navigating the map, and at times are completely randomly repositioning. Somewhere between 325 and 250 meters, guards start randomly spreading out, repositioning into random locations. If given enough time at this distance, they will sometimes wander right off the map.
Somewhere between 325 and 400, guards will not move from their position at all.
Somewhere between 250 and 200, the guards will regain their navigation sense and return to the patrol path.
When at the 325+ distances during initial spawn, the guards will spawn nearly on top of each other and be stuck at that location.
If the guards begin patrolling, but if you then move 250-325 meters from the guard spawner deviceā€™s location, the guards will stop navigating when they reach the next patrol point. Even if you are closer to the next patrol point, they will clump up on that point if the original spawn point is 250+ meters away.
These distances are slightly higher (by about 50 meters) when I tested on the tilted towers map.
If a second team of guards are spawned within visibility range of team one at the start, and the player is out of range, then the guards will shoot at each other, but still be stuck in their location, not moving around the map in any way.

Platform(s)

Windows 10

Additional Notes

Iā€™m almost positive that before update 36.0, the guards were much more active at much greater distances. Iā€™d be surprised if this was the intended functionality, and when going thru the forum, I noticed there are recent issues with world streaming functioning correctly after recent updates. It was said that this type of issue might be caused by this same world streaming bug. Thank you.

2

Forgot to say.. the patrol path should start in the corner where the spawner is placed, and lead to the center of the map.

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Update to this issue.. I opened a map I made in creative 1.0, and the guards are navigating at 500+ meters from the player with no issues. The problem only seems to be in my uefn maps. I even opened the stronghold example and the faulty navigation behavior was happening there as well. If itā€™s not a bug, then Iā€™m hoping someone can tell me if thereā€™s a setting I need to check in uefn?

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I found another bug report which seemed connected to the same issue. Figured Iā€™d add it here too..

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This issue can also be replicated with an npc spawner. I swapped out the guard for an npc spawner device in the original replication instructions, set it to guard behavior and assigned it to the same patrol path. The behavior was identical to that is the original guard spawner.

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FORT-932494 has been added to our ā€˜To Doā€™ list. Someoneā€™s been assigned this task.

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To the development team:
First off thank you! Since this is now in que, Iā€™d just like to say..
When trying to get votes for this issue to be looked at, I was told by some that it wasnā€™t that important. ā€œWho needs NPCs at 250+ meters doing anything?ā€..
It was looked at as logical optimization implemented by the developers.
But I see that as the wrong direction (and for me, game breaking)..
NPCs, AI, the new persona device, the verse coding which controls all types of interesting behaviors.. this is a big part of the future in my opinion.
I think epic knows that, but I just wanted to reinforce the thought, because with that in mind, I built an impressive simulation type of experience. And only because of the outstanding tool set youā€™ve made available.

What Iā€™m Asking: is that this player distance issue, as well as total NPC count and anything else related, be pushed to the max, as opposed to tampered down in the aim of optimization.
Please, make it a trade off option if you have to..
Because I would trade all types of other cool features to give that processing power to the NPCs, guards, wildlife ect.. and I truly believe this direction will become itā€™s own new genre, as well as give creators a wonderful new way to make maps which are a ton of uniquely replayable fun, even with only one active player present, as it offers a truly organic and unpredictable environment with each play.
Thanks for your time and efforts, I hope you donā€™t mind the rant, cheers to the future, and I hope this comment helps itā€™s direction come to life. Iā€™m looking forward to it! Thank you!!