Only four pets should be able to attack a mob at once, throughout Green/Blue timeline

[Dolalin]

Originally posted here:

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2968710#post2968710

But seeing as that thread lacks focus, and we are looking at massive Magician premades and possible pet swarming Naggy/Vox kills, I feel the 4 pet limit deserves its own dedicated post on the Green bug forum.


posted 05-02-2000 04:30 PM

hmm u dont seem to understand. look how quickly they were to nerf it. mages get one nice thing then some troll mag post and they nerfed it a few days later. and when we ask them to fix bugs like rouge pets and no more then 4 pets can attack one target do they fix that a few days later or a year later. grrr

http://web.archive.org/web/20000511163139/boards.station.sony.com/everquest/Forum4/HTML/037240.html



(comment on Kunark beta spells list):

How many times have i been in the planes and dragon raids and was asked to kill my pet. The reason, only 4 pets can attack a monster at one time. Needless to say a shaman pet can't do anything compared to the other two classes.

http://web.archive.org/web/20000621162351/http://eq.castersrealm.com/kunark/spells/shaman/spelldescriptions.asp?SpellID=125



posted June 12, 2001 05:12 AM

Verants code is such that a maximum of 4 pets can beat on the monster at one time anything beyond that doesnt work until one pet dies then the 5 th can go in.

http://web.archive.org/web/20010711121719/http://forums.castersrealm.com/cgi-bin/eq/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=next_topic&f=6&t=004338&go=newer




posted 05-29-2000 04:45 AM

The max 4 pets aint that big of a problem on Dragon raids.
Pets will get Feared so usually only 4 can attack anyways ... and atleast on Nagafen raids pets are a little help and cost nothing to have up.
There probaly is a chance on Vox raids that pets get feared down in the traps .. but on all Dragon raids I been to, that havn't happend.
I guess on the new dragons Feared and Blinded pets could cause dumb trains.
But I can't really see why not bring pets to dragon raids. They will add extra dmg, and the will try to bash Vox to interupt her heal (Well .. that worked before they upgraded her Channeling).
So like the other poster said, if your guild ain't liking your pet, find an other guild.

http://web.archive.org/web/20010123184000/http://forums.castersrealm.com/eq/Forum8/HTML/000530.html



There's a whole topic here on alt.games.everquest about it from 2002, after Absor admitted the 4 pet limit in a post on the old EQ forums:

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/alt.games.everquest/VPPCpTdAZAk/discussion

(NOTE: I would like to keep this thread's focus on the issue of the pet limit, not the more general NPC limit which is somewhat controversial and perhaps a much bigger change. A hard limit on 4 pets attacking one mob at a time is much easier to implement without breaking other things or introducing potential exploits, I would think.)

[Veeshan31]

oh wow, this is some pretty strong evidence. Looks like there wont be a 20 mage zerg killing naggy first on green

[Valion]

Nice catch

[uygi]

Jesus, that is insane. I definitely wasn’t aware at the time. I imagine this will not be a super easy fix code-wise.

[soronil]

Jesus, that is insane. I definitely wasn’t aware at the time. I imagine this will not be a super easy fix code-wise.
yeah at least 5 lines of code...
for(iterator hate_list.begin(); iterator != hate_list.end(); iterator++)
if(isPet(*iterator))
pets_attacking++;
if (pets_attacking > 4)
//you get the idea

[Lojik]

I vaguely remember when kiting mobs from live that 4 would attack and the rest would kind of hang back a bit, thinking this is similar (this is not an attempt at swaying the argument either way just stating a memory.)

[Dolalin]

I vaguely remember when kiting mobs from live that 4 would attack and the rest would kind of hang back a bit, thinking this is similar (this is not an attempt at swaying the argument either way just stating a memory.)

I am pretty sure NPCs obeyed this rule against PCs but that's a bit murky around the when's and the how's, whereas the pet limit is much more straightforward.

[Seungkyu]

I don't remember this at all, but this is HUGE. Great catch Dolalin!

[Bannen]

Betting this would be hard to code if they don't have it from the actual game code.

[soronil]

Betting this would be hard to code if they don't have it from the actual game code.
Why do you say that? seems trivial.


for(iterator hate_list.begin(); iterator != hate_list.end(); iterator++)
if(isPet(*iterator))
pets_attacking++;
if (pets_attacking > 4)
//you get the idea

[Wallicker]

Makes chaining fearing classic dragons much easier imho this way when 4 get feared 4 more rep them automatically without having to rely on player skill and patience

[soronil]

We must prioritize this change to restore trains to their former glory!!

[whitebandit]

am i misunderstanding? Trains to their former glory? If this would apply to PCs as well, are you saying that Mobs 5-8 are going to be attacking people NEAR the Trainer instead of just focusing on him?

[Sunderfury]

There's already a bug report on this in the main bug section, video was linked showing 5 or 6 pets attacking in at least Velious. So it's skeptical how it all worked.

[Dolalin]

You're right Sunderfury, there seems to have been a stealth change at some point in Kunark perhaps to alleviate or remove this limit?

From the thread:


Pre-kunark.. getting more as 3 pets on a mob was hard.. because verant had 'fix' a bug which would allow only 3 pets on a mob. (this was done for players, only 3 mobs would agro the player now, with pulling.. that was the idea behind it)

After kunark, it is no problem at all getting 4 or 5 pets on a mob.. just arder pet to attack and it's on it.

Myself i play VERY often with necrogroups (4+ necros in a group).
Being on raid.. well besides we are mana-bateries, we can throw in a dot once or twice, but our main damage is our pet.. he does very good damage.

http://web.archive.org/web/20010123190600/forums.castersrealm.com/eq/Forum8/HTML/000930.html


So I'll climb down from my soapbox on this one and admit I am probably wrong on the "whole timeline" bit.

Nevertheless I think there's a strong case for vanilla era. All the quotes I posted are from vanilla or very early Kunark, and this one corroborates them.

[DMN]

It's actually an interesting mystery. only 4 mobs attacking a player was certainly something everyone saw back in the day if you ever pulled. only 4 pets attacking the same enemy was probably not seen as often as that would have rarely been happening in groups and generally pets were not bothered with for a lot of raids back then since they just created lag and got feared. Lag/server instability were a major issues of raiding back then. often times, less was more.

[Izmael]

I do distinctly remember "extra" mobs standing around and attacking you only when you killed one of the currently attacking mobs.

I wanna say it was after Luclin launch though.

I'm not sure we want that for Green or even Blue. People are supposed to get shredded to bits by trains in BB.

[yraapt]

I don't know that I recall NPCs not attacking players if they had too many on them, but I definitely remember my pet not attacking if we had too many pets on the raid target. I thought that was fixed in kunark sometime.

[Rogean]

I also recall the 4 mob limit in classic, when they were attacking the same player. Mobs outside the 4 would kind of pace back and forth just outside melee range. In order to code this in, in an independant way where it affects the hate list of all NPC's (therefor it affects NPC's attacking players as well as other NPC's, like pets attacking a mob), there's tons of considerations and lots of ways it could go wrong and be exploited. It is definitely not as simple as whoever posted that other code in this thread, that is laughable. The mobs would have to be treated as if they have the entity on their hate list but don't engage because there's 4 other npc's in melee range already.

I'd like to see about putting this in but I definitely can't promise anything. This would not only take a bit to code, but it would take a lot of testing as well. There's still a lot of stuff to get done before a week from now.

[Sunderfury]

Papa Rogean, here is the original thread with this evidence:
https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113187

Page 4 is where more of the compelling evidence begins. Definitely can be exploitable.
https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113187&highlight=4+pets&page=4

[Solist]

Rogean, can you delay green, try and code this and a few other things and do a forced beta, with betabuff to 30 & 40.

Stuff like this, NPC casters having way too powerful spells (in classic caster npc’s were a gimme for rogues as they cast harmless crap all the time, chain tishans and low level Mali/dots, always drowsy, not togors etc).

Seems a waste to build up 10 years and not get it more right for the sake of a month or two.

[Solist]

Should add that this is why you could pull as groups in seb at 60 as a war with ease. Here you get shat on even with 1500 ac and 200+ MR.

[soronil]

Rogean, can you delay green

No.

You could keep working on this forever. They've been working on it 10 years.. It's not going to be magically finished in 2 months. It's at a great spot. Almost everyone, including the dev team wants this to be released next week. There are gonna be things that have to wait..