Game Mechanics: Sneak Aggro Cone inverted

[Hakurou]

Like the title says the radius in which sneak works on P99 seems inverted to what it should be. Currently when using sneak the mobs jump me when I walk up to their side. Sneak should not only work behind the enemy but also right next to it's side and one step beyond to it's front. I did many heart racing turn ins in the Overthere with my monk as I sneaked into the outpost and up to Captain Rottgrime and his undead marines to stand right next to them and turn in war braids with my monk.

Little diagram of how that looked:

U = undead marine
R = Captain Rottgrime
M = me

U
U
U
U
U R
 M

A post from 2000 (edited in 2002 and wayback machine doesn't seem to have an early backup) about sneak having a 140 degree aggro cone to the front: http://www.monkly-business.net/forum...ead.php?t=8889

In order for Sneak to work you must understand that is not an invisibility skill. Effectively what you are doing is reducing the mob that you are sneaking past to only being able to use a line of sight to be able to detect your presence. In practical terms that means that the mod is limited to approx a 140 degree arc to it's facing ( which way the head is looking ) to detect you and react in it's normal fashion to your presence.

Some of my private pics from March 2001 (Vox, pulling out corpses from a botched raid) and July 2001 (Velketor sentinels) of me fooling around with sneak in different situations (BIG! unedited BMP files 2.3MB each), especially in the Velketor pic you can see that sneak isn't broken by the dispell trap (and the golems being angry at the dispell trap for casting on them) as well as me standing slightly in front of the golems.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6472298/EQ-Pics/EQ000117.bmp
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6472298/EQ-Pics/EQ000119.bmp
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6472298/EQ-Pics/EQ000120.bmp
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6472298/EQ-Pics/EQ000197.bmp

Also, sneak currently is lifted when using throwing weapons, but only if your throw hits an opponent, not when you miss. The link above talks about later changes to range attacks not breaking sneak, I do not remember when that change was made but posts up to 2001 indicate that it wasn't the case until then so either way it should break sneak.. instill doubt however shouldn't (don't have it yet, can't test).

One more, I remember when trying a rogue on P99 that sneak wouldn't always work even when my skill was beyond 100, maybe this is fixed now but I'll bring it up anyway as my monk doesn't have 100 sneak yet, maybe someone else can comment on it.. quote from a reply in the above thread:

Sneak does cap at 113 (throwing was raised to 200), but once sneak hit master, I do not recall it failing on me. My primary monk has a sneak of 106 or 107 and it always works, just like mend...woohoo.