Patch 77 - December 24, 2008: Spells, Pathfinding, Stealing

[Derrick]

Effective on shard restart.
There will likely be a longer than expected downtime in the morning to apply this patch and do some server maintenance.

• All short damage delays are 1.0 seconds, applies to all delayed damage spells except Explosion
• Spell disruption formula changed and now accounts for the circle of the spell being interrupted. Based on (copy of) the OSI code for disruption.
• Severely dumbed down monster pathfinding.
• All NPC's/Monsters can now flee. (We know they didn't all flee, we're working on that part still)
• Stealing is an aggressive act for the purpose of determining murder.
• Getting caught and difficulty when Stealing now considers the difficulty of the steal (item weight) And the number of humans that are in your view.
• You will no longer gain stealing skill on success, only on full or partial failure.
• Players in the vicinity of an attack will now receive the message "You see X attacking Y"

[Ezp]

Had a chance finally to test the pvp changes on tc and its so much better. I hardly ever play and I can notice a huge difference from the last time I played compared to these changes. Curious to see the monster ai when I get off of work I'll test it out

[Ebywok]

[*]Stealing is an aggressive act for the purpose of determining murder.
[/list]

Can you elaborate? If a thief steals and the target dies, the thief gets a murder count?

[crabjuice]

[*]Getting caught and difficulty when Stealing now considers the difficulty of the steal (item weight) And the number of humans that are in your view.

Do you have a formula for this? What radius do the NPCs have to be in for this to be a factor?

A GM thief stealing a 1 stone item will have a X% of getting noticed?
How much does that percentage increase with every NPC?

[Loathed]

yay! Merappy Quanzmas-kalike-haka!

[Severity]

Can you explain the purpose of this?

"You will no longer gain stealing skill on success, only on full or partial failure"

Also I had a T2A era theif on OSI and while stealing would flag you as a crim, it wouldn't give you a murder if the player died. In addition to that, if they attacked you because you stole, you could defend yourself and not take a murder.

In regards to Patch 74 and the stamina loss tweak, this is MUCH more noticeable a problem then it ever was with Origin. In fact, I was unable to run a horse down or even run out of stamina running on foot completely on Origin servers. This is a real problem in my opinion for characters who do not have magery for recall. I appreciate the tweak to Monster pathfinding as two dire wolves followed me for ages the other day, but is there any chance the stamina loss here will be tweaked again. It's really not era accurate.

[Maleficia]

This so far has proven troublesome for my tamer. Following pets seem to get completely stuck in places they did not used to.

[Faust]

Severity,

Murder counts from stealing was implemented during the major stealing over haul in early '99 that was mentioned above. I remember this clear as day, because I was very pissed off about the patch in general. I rarely played my thief as much as I did previously before that patch. This feature is more on the lines of a pre-t2a mechanic.

The stamina is definitely an issue in my opinion. The formula that determined the stamina loss on movement was based on the character's weight on the OSI servers. I think right now it is currently an overall static decay rate not determining the weight. I could be mistaken on that though. I also don't recall the character's stamina decreasing when mounted. I always remember the horse only taking the stamina loss. The only time I remember a character taking the blunt of stamina loss was while being over weight on the mount. However, I have no confirmation or evidence on that matter to prove it one way or another.

Also, about the pathfinding. I hear there is still some problems involved with it. Once this is corrected people must remember that their pets will be stupid when it comes to following a target. This was the case during t2a, and one of the reasons nobody used a billion dragons at once. It was relatively hard to keep them from getting stuck and so forth. This will be a good fix once it's fully running correctly for this issue. This will severely limit tamers that choose to use a billion dragons. It will also open up several old farming spots that currently don't exist because of the smarter AI that creatures currently have.

[Derrick]

Can you explain the purpose of this?
"You will no longer gain stealing skill on success, only on full or partial failure"

It's been since discovered that this mechanism was more of factor at 70+ stealing skill, i.e., stealing in public helping gains. There are still some issues with stealing success rates also, especially from stacks. We will likely address this further. In regards to the victim attacking the thief, there are still the standard aggression timers as well as perma-gray in play here, so it's not to say a thief can never defend themselves if attacked. The behavior of the aggressor flag from stealing is pretty well documented. Check the link from Kavian's post below:

Details on some of the working of this change are explained in the February 11, 1999 HoC chat found here.

[quote=""http://uohoc.stratics.com/logs/1999-02-11-pub.shtml"]
Glamdring - *Naja_Haje* Hail...Sorry if this has been asked (late ) Anything on rogues being able to use lethal force to defend themselves?Seems odd that a half dead newbie could attack me outta town and i'll get kicked out of the thieves guild because i couldn't move away fast enough...
DesignerD - OK, I assume you mean a PvP thief type, not a generic "rogue" right? A thief that is in the Thieves' Guild.
DesignerD - In this scenario (outside of town) you have a Thieves Guild member attacked. The TG guy cannot report murder, nor can he murder.
DesignerD - But since he hasn't just stolen, the attacker is flagged aggressor, and therefore cannot report EITHER. So the TGmember does not take a murder count.
DesignerD - Note that if the thief had just stolen from someone, then they could attack him & NOT be flagged aggressor, thus leading to a murder count for the thief, if he killed them. In the case of fights right after stealing, the thief *HAS* to run away or else grovel & beg forgiveness and hope the fight breaks off.
[/quote]

is there any chance the stamina loss here will be tweaked again. It's really not era accurate.

We've really tried to era on the side of less stamina loss rather than more. This question is probably deserving of a new thread.

[Severity]

Hi Derrick,

Thanks for your responses. I was a bit fuzzy about the thieves so that does make sense. I do agree with Faust though about the stamina loss. I think it was almost entirely tied to weight. Should I create a new thread as you suggested?

[crabjuice]

Thanks for not giving any responses to my questions

[Ebywok]

So the players that thieves steal from don't flag when they attack you right? meaning they stay blue? So thieves (I) will know not to kill them because they'll still be blue and will count me?

[Faust]

That is how it's suppose to function eby. If anyone notices any differently please let us know.

[Severity]

Faust, do you remember the red attack message showing for monters/npcs/animals? I know this is a trivial one but just thought I'd mention it. With today's patch you now see the X is attacking Y! message which I only remember observing with PVP.

[Faust]

I'm pretty sure that was removed sometime during pre t2a in replace of the system message that was added with this patch. There is a screenshot from t2a that I base this system message off from. I'm glad it was finally put in.