First of all, I've talked to people from multiple areas of the world that have had these same issues, so its not my particular ISP. I believe this to be a two part issue. Server Lag and Monster AI. What is happening is Monster spells and fire breaths are hitting players when it appears that they should not be able to. My friends and I have observed that Monster Spells and Fire Breaths are hitting us from a point not even visible to us, while we are hidden, and after we have recalled out. At first, I had thought that this might be my connection, but after talking to people in Mexico, the United Kingdom, California, Canada, etc...I know that it is not my connection. Spells like Lightning and Poison are hitting players after they have recalled out of a dungeon. These are not delayed spells and it should not be happening. Fire breathing monsters are also hitting players in this same manner. The same spells and fire breath are hitting players AFTER they have invis'd or hidden themselves. These are not delayed spells and it should not be happening. The same spells and fire breath are hitting players when they cannot physically see the monsters. This is not accurate. I blew up my UO screen size to where I had large black corners and I observed the same mechanic. Monsters are hitting you from off screen where you cannot see them in certain cases. There does not seem to be a range check after the spell/fire breath has been "cast". I wish I could use that ability! I'd mana dump on Jupiter from the other side of the shard! -L/S
More than once have I ended up dead at a bank's roof. And I don't think any of them were from the explosion spell.
Yeah, I got smoked by the AW like this just yesterday. It started attacking and hit me as I was running off screen. I was about 1.5-2 screens away from the thing when I just up and died. No Explosion graphic/sound, so I can only assume it was delayed fire breath (double tapped because that was what it hit me with first, if I recall correctly. The inability to 'screen' a mob and avoid it's ranged attacks is definitely questionable here.
From when the monster starts making their breath sound, there is a 1.5 second delay until the firebreath is launched. And from when it is launched, there is a 1.5 second delay until it deals damage. (This is in contrast to the 1.0-second damage delay on all non-Harm spells). I mentioned these things in IRC in my first week here, and someone in this thread basically told me "get good noob, this shard is HARDCORE". So I followed up with Ezekiel to get the specifics and IIRC they were as I mention above. FWIW, I suggested at the very least moving the damage delay to 1.0 seconds like spells. I don't know why it's currently 1.5.
It was patched to give PKs a fighting chance 3v1tamer. If you're alluding to my commentary about the beefy AI from when you first got here Dalavar, I can only assume that's paraphrased. I do enjoy the pathing ability and teleport/gheal mechanics quite a bit as they certainly keep me on my toes. I don't think the range/delay is all that appropriate though.
Ok, last night I had the pleasure of experiencing this fenomena again. This time, I paid closer attention to what seemed to happen, and the impression I get is that fire breath seems to ignore a range once the animal is aggroed as long as it has "LoS". A shadow wyrm that was aggroed on me fire breathed on me from at least a screen away. Not only that, but they also seem to ignore invis/hide for a second. I just tested this with Balrons too. If you precast invis, and run into their lair, they will aggro on you and the pathfind towards you will continue for a sec or two AFTER you have targetted the invis on you. This, of course proves impractical when you invis near them, as you will auto defend and break invis. :/
I died standing outside of Destard after attempting to cast my second cure while poisoned from a firebreath.
Seems to me that there needs to be a range check after the spell delay, like players have to go through, to make this work in a more realistic sense. Unless they want Insta-Casting.... which is what is effectively happening. The spells/breath are being 'casted' instantly. We're just seeing the damage delayed. Also, the range that monsters are able to cast on players needs to be re-examined. Monsters that you cannot physically see on your client should not be able to cast/breath on you, but that is what appears to be happening in certain instances. The current ranges that we are using seem to not take into effect how our current client draws things. North-to-South, the range is somewhat explainable as you have a chance of seeing them on the corners of your screen. Apply that same range Northwest-to-Southwest and you have monsters attacking you that you cannot see, let alone target. If Insta-Cast is what is desired, then we should see the damage right away instead of letting it all queue up and "surprise" the player with a death screen out of nowhere.
Monster AI range problem x2 Some creatures (wandering healer comes to mind) can track you from several screens away and never lose aggro even when hidden (that parts ok, but being able to cast on you from off screen and following you even well after you are out of range is irritating) Other creatures (any tamable thing basically, wolves, cats, horses, and "dumb" monster) will basically forget you exist if you get like 6 tiles away from them, which is just as irritating. This is especially maddening when you are "walking" with a pack horse or something, and not only can it not keep up with your slow walk pace (it should be able to), it flat out stops moving entirely after a very short distance. Additionally I have this complaint. Once aggro has been broken on some of the dumber "less likely to insta-aggro you" monsters, they will not aggro you again for several seconds, and when they do, every other like-creature around does at the same time. It seems like monsters "deciding what to attack" happens every n seconds, and every monster uses the same timer, instead of it being a staggered schedule. For instance, there is a dragon 2 tiles from me, and another 12 tiles from me. The 12 tile dragon can't see me. I walk between the two, the first dragon has had a few seconds (the duration of my walk) to decide if it wants to eat me, and it should attack first. But instead, when the magical aggro clock chimes, they both aggro simultaneously. This leads for some tricky situations with can often end in insta-death for unexpecting players, and is just not how AI has ever worked.
I think there's a couple of things at work here (mostly inre to everyone but snapdragon's comments). What you may have expected from EA shards was that if you were in destard and a spell was being cast on you and you stepped out of destard no damage would hit you whatsoever. Once you crossed that server boundary or whatever is the correct term, you would not take any incoming damage (if you were poisoned beforehand, you would still be poisoned and subject to ticks of damage from it, however). I don't know if this is because of runUO or what, but as far as I can tell there is no mechanic like this on the server (not even between old worlds and t2a entrances, as I might have expected.) Whether this is good or bad, I can't exactly say. I know what I'm used to and it's not that. I suppose it might make more sense that you would still take damage regardless of recalling/crossing some boundary. Dragon breath is a real bastard here. They do too much damage, in my opinion (~40), and cast from too far away and too quickly. I think it has something to do with the unique shard AI, it's more aggressive, and unavoidable, has a high range, and unexpectedly delayed. There have been some minor tweaks to prevent people from being instantly killed while running through destard, but they are pretty minor tweaks. I have felt and still think that reduced damage (25% perhaps?) and reduced range (down to 4-6 from 10) would really make dragon breath mechanics feel more appropriate. I think dragon breath mechanics do something like ~10% of mob health as unresistable/unavoidable/unreflectable damage. To me this has some pretty annoying potential consequences in pvp as well: 2 dragons and a nightmare stand a good chance of outright killing a player that gets on screen with them, and instant kill mechanics are pretty undesirable I think, especially in pvp.
The breath is 5% of the pet's current HP. It is almost impossible to be insta-killed by two dragons and a nightmare's breath... because they're either out of combat (if they're just sitting around) in which case there is a delay... or they are in combat, with something else, in which case they're at a random point in their breath cycle, and really only two of them will attack you since the third will re-aggro on the monster hitting it before it ever strikes something the tamer tells it to kill. At the moment, dragon breath damage in magnitude is accurate to the Renaissance era, and is essentially the only way a tamer can damage the high-end special monsters here. I've not yet been able to "insta-kill" someone with it, though people new to leetpvp do tend to panic when they are attacked by pets, so it may seem like they get "insta-killed", when really it's likely only one pet's breath, a spell from the others, maybe a claw hit, and a spell from the tamer, over the course of 3 to 5 seconds. The more experienced leetpvpers ensure the pets are somewhat busy before attacking a tamer. The breath does seem to trigger from far away, if the dragon is on the top or bottom of the screen. However this is more because of how the game window is set up (a wide rectangle) and how the tiles are laid out. In a typical screen setup (for me at least), the top edge of the screen is 8 tiles, diagonal, from my position. If firebreath works at 10 tiles, this is why a dragon can fire it from offscreen. But, this is no different than spells, right? On the other hand, if the monster is directly east or west of you (that is, the top left or bottom right of the play screen) you can see 16 tiles on the screen at once, so they'll always be on-screen when they fire the breath. I think given that people complain about firebreath, and never seem to complain about spells... assuming both have a 10-tile range... I assume the issue is that the long delay means players are well out of range by the time they receive the damage from the firebreath. I think reducing the firing delay and the damage delay to 1.0 second would help alleviate this. The other issue is the insane spawn in Destard, which is similar to the density it was in production UO, where there were 50x as many players as there are here.
I don't really want to argue with you, man. Just want to say that 2dragons+ a mare firebreathing at the same time does kill people and this does happen. I know you will come back and say, this doesn't happen 100% of the time! Okay. It does happen, I've seen it many times. It is simply my opinion that this is unbalanced against players. It was different on OSI because followers were capped at 5. When they were not capped at 5 dragons were devastating against players (and entire factions.) It's also my opinion that those same dragon breath mechanics from untamed dragons is too strong as well. I don't want to type at you any more than that, you contrarian!
If I seem a contrarian, it's only because I try to limit the number of "me too!" posts I make. In fact, I agree with you that the range should be reduced to 10 (if it is more than that) and that the delay should be shorter to better allow players to time their healing as they normally would when facing damage. But arguing that people occasionally die to something is not a great reason for a nerf IMO. Mandevu, I think, had a bunch of videos he posted in which he walked up to people, stun punched them, and killed them before they could run away. It would seem that under your criteria, that should be nerfed as well, which I don't think many people, or yourself, would agree with.
I've noticed a few quirks with mob-AI here, there's a few posts around that summarize quite a few of them. Ideally the things I'd love to see fixed are: Mob agro timers never resetting (Once aggroed it will always insta-target) Invis/Hiding while spells like FF/PF are active can cause monsters to firebreath you Mob Range AI - it just seems to high right now, some lower-hp chars I have die before even seeing my foe
