mobs running away not classic, they're too slow.

[dbouya]

Sometime in the past 2 years or so on p99 mobs running away was patched to be much much much less brutal. Runners/root/snare dynamic changed a lot. I agreed with the patch at the time because server hitbox detection on p99 was not as good as live at the time, and that made chasing fast runners harder than it needed to be.


A sad consequence is that runners who are unsnared and unrooted are not really much of a danger to create a huge train like they used to be back in the year 2000.


If server hitbox detection is ever improved this issue needs to be revisited and possibly rolled back.

Only evidence I have that they're too slow (in terms of speed and/or hitpoint % at that given speed) is that p99 used to agree they should be a lot more dangerous and changed it's mind (for a good reason, possibly the one I guessed above).


The monsters basically never run away at full speed at any hitpoints. They stop running entirely at too high a hitpoint amount... etc.

[dbouya]

Another side effect of this is that it makes instill doubt too good. Although I've always thought instill doubt was too good and non-classic on p99 because the enemies never ran fast enough. I swear I recall seeing them run so fast in 1999 that people were afraid of the ability a good bit... then again maybe we were just all n00bs back then.

[Telin]

The rhinos in the overthere are very fast. You can't charm kite without a nerve pill.

To make your bug report more useful, can you be specific to the mobs in question because Mobs are not all treated the same. Also, research some classic quotes to support what you're claiming.

[kaev]

The rhinos in the overthere are very fast. You can't charm kite without a nerve pill.

To make your bug report more useful, can you be specific to the mobs in question because Mobs are not all treated the same. Also, research some classic quotes to support what you're claiming.

You could search an archive of the newsgroup alt.games.everquest for threads discussing snaring in dungeons. IIRC, there was at least one argument going for a bit as to whether an SK was a good enough snarer for an LGuk group due to mobs not being stopped until ~ 10% health when snared with low level necro snares.

[dbouya]

I had thought the devs intentionally changed mob running to be non-classic because the server's hit box range detection was too slow for it. If they changed it because of new evidence instead that evidence is certainly more reliable than my memory. p99 mob's running just felt more classic when I played originally in 2013/2014 or so.

This is the patch that I think did it.

http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148681&highlight=runspeed

Things felt more classic to me before that. If haynar had any evidence though he probably got things right. Although this might not even be the patch I'm thinking of. I just noticed it now because I didn't play at all during the interim period. Just started playing again a week or two ago.


I absolutely was invited to seb groups and dragon necropolis groups in 2000-2001 (as a druid) partially to snare. I had a pretty good reputation for never forgetting a snare, which people actually cared about in 2000-2001. This was enough to get into some pretty nice sebilis groups.

The fact people cared about snare more in 2000 doesn't mean the mobs behaved differently though, people in 2000 didn't play as well as people in 2015. So sourcing quotes about people saying snarers were mandatory in groups in dungeons won't help a ton. I'm 100% sure lots of people could be quoted saying that, doesn't mean it was true. Sirken said on stream when I asked him, he remembered snare being super important in 2000 too, but that didn't prove it was true, just that people thought that way back then.






The mob's that I think are too slow are anything I've fought in recent memory so solb kobolds, fieldofbone riff raff, crushbone orcs, honestly I think it's just about everything in the game that I've fought since the big change... in 2014... their movement speed at 100% health seems fine, just their movement speed at 5-15% health or so seems wrong to me. Not sure how that effects kiting very much. I'm mostly thinking dungeons and trains. In 1999-2001 people would sometimes have runners escape and giant trains ensue. Was pretty common, but maybe we just sucked at the game when we were all kids. On p99 in early 2014 I'd have group members request rooting runners often. Now? in 2015? almost no one asks you to root runners, ever.

On a side note I can also recall that some/all beetles in the karana's were so slow you could kite them without sow (on a druid in 1999). So absolutely different enemies were different speeds.

In 2001 cazic thule in fear was faster than sow, postvelious, preluclin, postloottablechanges. Pulling him with cheetah was easier, or probably bardsong. I did once in 2001 pull him with druid pet+cheetah, although that doesn't strictly prove that was a required tactic by any means, I remember it because it was the only time I pulled cazic. Another example of enemies having variable speeds. I think all these regular movement speeds in the game might just all be correct though. Just the runspeed penalties for runners, and the points at which they run, and change to various slowdowns. Feels like they're now always pre-snared when they run now. Just about.

[kaev]

On a side note I can also recall that some/all beetles in the karana's were so slow you could kite them without sow (on a druid in 1999). So absolutely different enemies were different speeds.


Yeah, beetles/scarabs were slow, it might've been game-wide. I tried out a wizard for a while in 1999 or 2000 and the easiest solo XP at L7-10 was the scarabs in EC because you didn't have to root and you didn't need a movement buff, just nuke, run to range (I did not know about strafe running at the time, this was just unmodified PC run speed), nuke again, rinse/repeat until the mob was dead, zone if you run out of mana first. The scarabs never killed you, just the occasional cat/bear that would agro if you were inattentive. Scarabs in BBM were the same but there were more roamers that would eat you there so it was riskier.

[Saulot]

Another side effect is it makes classes that can snare less appealing. It used to be important to have someone handling snare or bad things happened.

[dbouya]

Ah yes saulot, that's my main point. I might've left that out.

Classes that can snare are undervalued in dungeon groups as of right now on p99.


Either because things aren't classic, which is bad.... or because that role was always useless and people in 1999 were just too dumb to know that... which would be fine.

I'm not really sure if there's anyway to tell which is which.