Repeating crossbows, version 8 (beta)

[Osma77]

While progress seems to be made, i am sad to report that repeating crossbows are still buggy as an ant farm. On the first quest i tried - the new seige one - my icy bursted metaline repeating crossbow of pure good worked just fine, blasting foes apart 3 shots at a time. Once i got inside the new mine quest, it went back to 1-2 shots. The third shot didn't disapear, it never fired. When 3 shots fire, i get click, click, click/clank. In this mine, in the harbor, and in the final quest, my main weapon consistantly either did click/clank, or click, click/clank. almost never all 3 shots. Suprisingly, when i switched to another weapon (wounding heavy repeater) it worked fine on that weapon, but switching back didnt help.

Lv 13 rogue mechanic II (drow).

[Scraap]

Were those light or heavy repeaters? I seem to recall a thread earlier in the week talking about lights still being busted.

[Osma77]

actually, it was the other way around. The xbow that started off working fine, then didnt seem to work at all (1-2 shots) was my heavy repeater, while the one that worked much more consistantly (at least for the last quest) was a light wounder of shatermantle.

[Jacoby]

I came up witht he same results, there is no patern to it. It seems to be a code error.

[Coldin]

Hmm....I'll have to do some testing myself on this. I'm still seeing some list shots ever now and then on Live, but it's much less frequent. This sounds like a completely different kind of bug.

[Thoon]

Hmm....I'll have to do some testing myself on this. I'm still seeing some list shots ever now and then on Live, but it's much less frequent. This sounds like a completely different kind of bug.

From what I can see the issue is with both light and heavy repeaters. For the most part, standing still and shooting at an unmoving target, the shots go off as expected. If I circle the target (jumping and circling just for fun), I'm not seeing any reliable missed shots. But once I start tumbling and then stop I can see the issue more reliably. The number of shots will go down to 2, then 1, then 2, and maybe back down to 1, another 2, then eventually gets back to 3.

For those of you seeing this issue, do you tend to tumble often?

[RandomKeypress]

For me the problems seem to occur most when things get busy. I'm fine working through trash, but when I'm kiting a few mobs, while someone else has a firewall and a disco ball going (i.e. during the times when DPS matters the most), I see a severe effect.

[pharky]

ahh yes, that is a very probable reason since I do tumble a lot, gonna try observing it with tumble now and see what happens

[Jacoby]

From what I can see the issue is with both light and heavy repeaters. For the most part, standing still and shooting at an unmoving target, the shots go off as expected. If I circle the target (jumping and circling just for fun), I'm not seeing any reliable missed shots. But once I start tumbling and then stop I can see the issue more reliably. The number of shots will go down to 2, then 1, then 2, and maybe back down to 1, another 2, then eventually gets back to 3.

For those of you seeing this issue, do you tend to tumble often?

Never thought about it but yes. I use tumble very often in defensive maneuvers. My mechanic/bard has a massive toughness problem.

[pharky]

don't know if there is any difference on lama and live. but i have been testing on live mainly and seems that tumbling does not affect my shots. this new bug seems to appear at random. however it does appear more frequently with my alt that has wiz levels that can self buff and have lesser BAB, perhaps this might be a clue.

[Tumarek]

If the problems remains why not try changing the machanics instead of the chasing the bug till it fixed. Maybe just shoot all 3 arrows at once (like manyshot) and encrease the reload time. This way you could take your time finding the bug and make repeaters actually usefull.

[pharky]

that is a good idea, however i foresee complaints because essentially repeaters are meant to be good disablers, currently if you shoot 3 shots and spam tab, you could paralyse 3 mobs at the same time. this cannot be achieved with a "manyshot" type change.

[googatron]

From what I can see the issue is with both light and heavy repeaters. For the most part, standing still and shooting at an unmoving target, the shots go off as expected. If I circle the target (jumping and circling just for fun), I'm not seeing any reliable missed shots. But once I start tumbling and then stop I can see the issue more reliably. The number of shots will go down to 2, then 1, then 2, and maybe back down to 1, another 2, then eventually gets back to 3.

For those of you seeing this issue, do you tend to tumble often?

It used to be a latency issue.. I only ever get missing shots and the early reloads when there is alot happening at the time. From what I can gather it seems like the shots land at the same time and therefor dont register witht he server.

However now its the same only with the shots simply not fireing in the first place.

I dont understand why you dont just change repeaters to shoot 3 arrows at a time with the same reload speed as a normal crossbow... I mean the code is already there from manyshot so it couldnt be too hard and this would solve every issue, and maybe even slightly address some of the many many ranged issues the game has as well as keep the flavor of repeaters.

[Deathdefy]

Again this is on live, but my experience with a repeating heavy crossbow was perfect 3 shots all the time until the third Depths quest where:
I was earthgrabbed
I was knocked unconscious
I recovered from being unconscious
I died and rezzed out

Then it was 1 shot, 2 shot, 1 shot, 3 shot for a while, then more 1-2-1-2 spazziness.

I have literally not tumbled on this toon at all.

Maybe if you interrupt the sequence at some point while shooting; be it via tumbling / getting earthgrabbed / being knocked unconscious / dying, it gets gimpy?

[Arvess]

i have only used light repeaters on live. i tumble a lot but made a concerted effort to stand still. i had latency issues at the time. also it comes and goes. i haven't had it too much for a few days.

[googatron]

BUMP

Sometimes it works, othertimes it is worse than ever, I would like a dev response on their progress if possible. Thanks

[pharky]

I have been playing a lot on my TR toon on live and have observed some key points that may help to crack this.

1. Lag issues do not affect my firing chances.

2. The missing shots happen more often at lower levels.

3. Certain bows always give missing shots or give missing shots more often than other bows.

4. Once again, this is not in anyway affected by tumble (experimented with and without tumble, made no difference)

An example of this would be my GS LitII vs my +3 paralysing repeater (ml 14)(both are heavy repeaters). My GS LitII almost never loads premature but my paralyser/disrupter does it often. Swapping between these 2 weapons provide the same reasons, hence proving point 1.

Hypothesis:
1. Rate of fire or BAB is causing this bug.
2. The physical nature of certain bows is causing this bug (appearance or any other similarly scripted code)
3. Highly complicated bug where a combination of certain bows together with another specific set of criteria that causes the bug.

I will try to play around with my different xbows to see which types give missing shots often, but as it is now, GS seems to be the safest.

I hope this helps!

[Scraap]

Hypothesis:
1. Rate of fire or BAB is causing this bug.

An additional observation on Hypothesis 1 - while I've had the issue since log-in on occasion, on the current live experiment, when struck with a Ray of Enfeeblement at low levels and placed in burdened status (which with a melee fighter puts you in slow-mo) I've had missed shots kick in a couple of times at least. The state doesn't go away just from having that wear off, however...

[LightBear]

From what I see you guys typing it really does sound like a loop bug where the starting variable is not set (or reset) properly.

A question for the repeater handling folks out there: Do you count your shots and your bolts as you fire them?

This bug will probably go away once we have 100% returning bolts.

[Marupal]

From what I can see the issue is with both light and heavy repeaters. For the most part, standing still and shooting at an unmoving target, the shots go off as expected. If I circle the target (jumping and circling just for fun), I'm not seeing any reliable missed shots. But once I start tumbling and then stop I can see the issue more reliably. The number of shots will go down to 2, then 1, then 2, and maybe back down to 1, another 2, then eventually gets back to 3.

For those of you seeing this issue, do you tend to tumble often?

Experiencing the same problem but don't use tumble at all. I don't notice a difference between being stationary or moving.