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.

[Hakurou]

To illustrate my sneak analogy I dug up an old quest guide for the worker sledgemallet, which sadly is from 2003 and it states:

Well, if you're a class with Sneak such as Monk or Rogue, then you still have an advantage. With Sneak on and standing behind Captain Rotgrimes you can turn in your Sarnak Braids to him and receive the faction without him turning around and attacking you.



The twist here is that Rotgrimes walks back and forth in front of his 'troops', other skeletons, and faces them. Sneak is only indifferent from behind a NPC, Hide has no relevance to this as it cannot be used for turn-ins (because Hide turns off when you initiate a turn-in to an NPC). This means that if you're standing behind the other skeletons, Rotgrime will see and attack you. If you're standing behind Rotgrime, the skeletons will see and attack you.



There are 2 ways to get around this problem. First would be to have a Monk pull Rotgrime away from the pack a safe distance and then do the turn-ins behind him. The second way is much bolder and fun! Those with Sneak know that it works not only BEHIND a NPC but from the SIDE of a NPC as well.



To a certain extent you can walk up to the side an NPC and as long as you are not within his frontal view you will remain indifferent (assuming a successful Sneak, indifferent from the back). So, you can actually stand at the side of both Rotgrime and the skeleton that he faces and be indifferent to BOTH! This allows you to do the turn-in solo.

http://www.monkly-business.net/forum...ead.php?t=8953

[Rogean]

I took a quick look at the code and can confirm it is only doing a direct 180 degree check, which is incorrect as you stated, and should be fixed to be a cone. The question is how many degrees that cone should cover exactly.

[Hakurou]

The closest thing to the original cone shape is at best anecdotal like in those guides (140 degrees) or scientific https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_of_view (up to nearly 180 degrees), I'm not sure if there's any correct way to measure it in game. So in short: no idea.

[Nirgon]

It's like the source code presented intentionally has a billion little problemos :P. Cheers to your work Rog.

[Arillious]

Playing a monk on live I can verify that it was a cone, I could be on the side or maybe even slighty in front and still get away with it. I obviously dont know exatcly, but 140 may be a pretty good guess.

[kilmoll]

Been checking for fixes on this and can't find a thread on if this has been fixed. I know sneak pulling is not working anywhere near where it was on live. Sneak pulling only works if you are absolutely in a straight line to the rear of the mob...otherwise it will agro on the pull.

[Schortt]

Originally Posted by kilmoll [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Sneak pulling only works if you are absolutely in a straight line to the rear of the mob...otherwise it will agro on the pull.

Incorrect.

To get a clean sneak pull, two things need to happen.
- You must be successfully sneaking in the rear 180 degree arc (mob must con indiff to you while sneaking).
- You must aggro a mob without breaking sneak.

The first part isn't that difficult, even if the arc is not quite as large as it should be. The second part is more complicated.

On live, there were a few things that broke sneak. Here's what I can remember off the top of my head:
- Getting hit for damage: successfully defending an attack, a missed attack, or getting hit while runed did not break sneak (or invis/hide for that matter)
- Getting a spell landed on you: regardless of resists, getting successfully targeted by any spell or AE spell effect broke sneak (if I'm wrong about any of these it might be this one)
- Casting a spell/clicking a spell effect from an item
- Zoning

Nothing/not much else broke sneak. You could loot, vendor, trade, bank, and attack without breaking sneak. On P1999 it works correctly for the most part with one important exception. On live, both attacking AND dealing damage did not break sneak. On P1999, attacking does not break sneak but dealing damage DOES. This is not as it should be.

This makes sneak pulling on P1999 a gamble. Whenever you pull and end up dealing damage on the pull (i.e. not missing with your javelin, throwing dagger, or arrow), sneak breaks which normally results in a failed sneak pull. If you're a monk it's not the end of the world because you can FD and either split using sneak+FD memblur or just try again. If you're a rogue, you're pretty much screwed, which is why rogues do not end up pulling much/at all on this server (also why I ended up rolling a monk even though I played a rogue main on live).

There are a few things that end up offsetting this on P1999.

1. The mob is immune to the damage you're going to inflict. If you're using a non-magical throwing weapon/bow and the mob requires a magic weapon to be hit, you can't do damage and so are guaranteed that sneak will not break*.

2. The mob manages to path away from any possible adds before social aggro is checked. Because you were sneaking for the initial aggressive act, you won't get any immediate adds. However, nearby mobs will aggro if social aggro gets checked quickly enough. On P1999, social aggro seems to be checked at either a somewhat delayed rate compared to mob/PC position or it's only checked at some sort of tick intervals. This means you can occasionally get away with a bad pull as a single pull. (It's also why you can sometimes run past mobs without getting aggro, FD flop dance through zones without ever aggroing a single mob, etc.)

*The only thing that has changed with sneak pulling mechanics in the last 6 months or so is when they changed how rune type spells work. Before the change (which I believe was to make damage shields hit through runes) runed mobs functioned like immune mobs with regard to breaking sneak - sneak never broke against a runed mob even when you ended up damaging the rune. Since the change, sneak breaks if any damage is dealt to a rune even if the runed mob is immune to the type of damage that you're dealing.

This (sneak breaking on damage being dealt) was brought up in the thread about sneak and sneak pulling a long time ago that preceded the original fix to sneak and sneak pulling. I've been working on finding in-era evidence that sneak did not break on damage being dealt but still haven't found much aside from my memory of writing a sneak and sneak/hide pulling guide for my guild's private forums which are now defunct. It doesn't help that there was so much bad information floating around about sneak and sneak pulling due to it being regarded as some sort of magic trick that only really skilled monks and rogues could pull off. The various guides to sneak pulling on sites like The Safehouse are full of bad info and FUD.

Don't even get me started on sneak/hide pulling. That won't work with the current mechanics either but it also won't work because there's no delay between initiating a ranged attack and the projectile hitting a mob - on live ranged attacks worked like instant cast bolt-type spells with extremely fast projectiles. On P1999 there's no delay and they end up working like melee attacks, so there's no time to initiate hide between the hide-breaking attack and the non-hide breaking aggro event.

EDIT:

And more on topic, my memory of doing testing on live is that sneak worked in the same cone that backstab did - which was everything but the front 120-140* arc. This seems like something that would be easy to test on EQ Mac. I haven't messed around on there yet but maybe someone who has can chime in.