Weekly Dev Activities 09/10/07

[Ringlord]

I have a question. Does a Rangers camouflage spell work with Hide to help conceal a player or is it really just a useless spell atm and if the latter when will it be made to function as a spell of concealment as it should?

[Qzipoun]

I have a question. Does a Rangers camouflage spell work with Hide to help conceal a player or is it really just a useless spell atm and if the latter when will it be made to function as a spell of concealment as it should?

Camouflage is a bump to your hide skill. Just like Jump and Tumble.

[Borrigain]

In my original post I was being a little facetious. I wasn't referring to Stealthy Repro exactly, but how spot checks are handled for the mobs. That said, your's is one of the most clarifying posts I've ever read from a dev and it does clear a lot up.

And yes, last night I went back in on norm thru elite and was able to do it. However, there are a couple of points that got me from what you said and Talon touched on them as well. Though it wasn't a mission breaker, I was never able to open the witchdoctor door to get the switch in the manner you suggested. I sneak past sleepers and patrol, get in corner by boxes (dark there too) open door from most extreme angle I could find, immediately re-sneak, and those bozos inside came out and immediately found me. Not wander around looking for me and finding me, but beeline for me.

That and what Talon said about the cloudkill is the crux of our problem. It seems that if you take a certain action, they know exactly where you are. From many times I have experienced this occuring, it seems it SHOULD be that the mob has "merely noticed there's something unseen somewhere within 30 feet". They should wander around and try to search for me. As it is, it seems like that part is what's broken, for if I am sneaking in the dark, around a corner from them, they should not be able to pinpoint my location. That DC is actually 20 points higher.

Anyway, thanks for the clarification,
Borr.

[GreyRogue]

Camouflage is a bump to your hide skill. Just like Jump and Tumble.

Jump and Tumble modify your hide skill?

[Hvymetal]

Jump and Tumble modify your hide skill?

No I believe, I may be wrong, what he ment was just like jump adds to your jump skill and tumble adds to your tumble skill.

[moonprophet]

NEW - It has been a long standing issue that monsters that are hidden or invisible can be tab or ` targeted, thus trivializing a monster's innate hiding ability. This has been fixed! Now, if a monster is hiding from you, you may only tab target him if your spot skill is higher than his hide skill or if your listen skill is higher than his move silently skill. Invisible creatures are treated as having a +20 bonus to their Hide skill unless you have some means to see invisible creatures.

The above quote is from the weekly dev activities post at the start of this thread. Should this not mean that I am essentially invisible to the monsters unless thet have a spot skill high enough? This seems to be a completely different mechanic than the line of sight explanation given for how we as players avoid being spotted. Is this another case of the mobs play by different rules like the ability EVERY creature in the game has to levitate for no appearant reason, utilize unlimited spell points, ignore concentration checks, move and cast spells while held, stunned, or otherwise incapacitated? (Just a few examples there)

This is NOT a criticism. Let me make that clear. Just a question. I actually appreciate that players and mobs may have to follow different rules to compensate for the fact that we are thinking creatures, and they are stuck with a pre-programmed path based ai.

[Gratch]

This is NOT a criticism. Let me make that clear. Just a question.

The interrelation of monster's spot and players hide has already been covered in this thread with answers from Devs. Just an answer.

P.S: Check the dev tracker responses to this thread in case a mere 8 pages is daunting reading.

[moonprophet]

Actaually, 8 pages of this stuff can be fairly daunitng reading as you have to wade through alot of nonsence to find the meat of the discussion. If you had spent the time you used belittling my question, actually answering it, this thread/discussion would be a bit more productive and positive. I didn't ask the question to annoy you, but because I was actually looking for an answer to a question that I could not find by scanning through the previous posts in the thread. Could it had been answered and I just missed it? Sure. Could you have answered it again instead of being sarcastic? Not as sure.

[GlassCannon]

General

• The /death command, meant to be used only in the most dire of situations, has been changed to automatically release the character to his or her bindpoint after killing the character. This change is meant to address several /death related exploits.

Soloing quests (like the Vault of Night Series) being an example. Notably, Vault of Night 2 after incurring 13 negative leves and needing to resurrect at the shrine to be rid of them.

Getting rid of a Curse or Blindness as a lower level character(level 2-4) is also considered an expliot then?

A few parties and I tried to identify exploits using /death, and noted that most of the time we used it to FIX things that would normally be taken care of had this game been programmed to be crazy-player friendly.

I do not and will never support this change without serious revamping to the Shrines and Spell durations of negative effects(How about we have ALL spells and effects stripped from us when changing an instance, NOT JUST THE GOOD ONES).


As for the rest of it, nice job folks! Keep up the good work

[GlassCannon]

The above quote is from the weekly dev activities post at the start of this thread. Should this not mean that I am essentially invisible to the monsters unless they have a spot skill high enough? This seems to be a completely different mechanic than the line of sight explanation given for how we as players avoid being spotted. Is this another case of the mobs play by different rules like the ability EVERY creature in the game has to levitate for no appearant reason, utilize unlimited spell points, ignore concentration checks, move and cast spells while held, stunned, or otherwise incapacitated? (Just a few examples there)

Ok who are we talking about here? Them or you? Try getting better sleep before typing a huge paragraph to ask a question.

As for this change, all monsters previously just hiding will now be FULLY invisible, not just the ones that SHOULD have a negative value for Hide and Move Silently. You will need either an obscenely ridiculous Spot skill to even see them, or use spells like See Invisibility or True Seeing to bypass this.

As a low level character, doing Shan To Kor or Tangleroot will now be extremely deadly, as all those (now invisible!)hobgoblins will now swarm you and partywipe you with very little effort(As no level 3-4 character has a Spot over 20). Stick to Waterworks/Harbor until level 6, then run the Market quests.

At least, that's how I read it. Clerics, be at the ready!

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Soloing quests (like the Vault of Night Series) being an example. Notably, Vault of Night 2 after incurring 13 negative leves and needing to resurrect at the shrine to be rid of them.

Enjoy your way back in...oh, or don't solo what should be a group game.

Getting rid of a Curse or Blindness as a lower level character(level 2-4) is also considered an expliot then?

Definately. Cheap potions are available to solve these problems.