Fear spell mechanics - opinions needed

[Bob98112]

Hi there. I haven't played EqLive since Feb 2002 and I do not plan on going back. While it has been a thought of mine to purchase a game card or something to test this out, I thought it would be better answered here. Bear in mind - My main was a 55 necro.

I remember, when casting a fear spell - Resists were based on magic resistance of the mob being cast on. The random duration was based on the level of the spell. While feared, a mob
would stop attacking unless rooted. If a feared mob wandered off too far away, it would sometimes forget about you unless it "saw" you again. This much I remember...

What I would like opinion about is: Do you think all feared mobs simply reverse-traverse their "pathing" or did they all seem to go towards the same point in a zone and wander back and forth? Have you ever "feared" a mob and had it wander toward you while feared? Concerning fearing players in PvP, (something I never got a chance to do outside arena) did the feared player seem to wander off randomly or did they go toward the same place the feared mobs seem to go?

Any opinions you have on this would be greatly appreciated.

[Lurker_005]

I think there were sever things involved. I think it tries to run FROM you, but sometimes poor path design causes it to get stuck, or run towards you. They follow pathing rules, aka move between pathing points, so they will follow predictable paths usually. I think it is a lot like pulling, just the movement vector is opposite.

[daemonsleyr]

There was an interesting mechanic in fearing, and I am not sure whether it was caused by a relatively low number of paths in the zone or not. When you kept to a camp, all of the mobs tended to run along the same paths while feared. They also always went the same direction along those paths, even if it took them back straight at you. There were many times I would see a creature run straight away for a bit, then turn around 180 and head back.

In my experience, if you fear any mob in a general area, they will always run the same exact path, the same exact way. Doesn't matter what side of them you are on when the fear hits.

Also, it does appear that the paths all have a bias in them for fear, going roughly clockwise within the zone.

<shrug> Not sure if any of that helped at all.

- Daemonsleyr - Daemon's World -

[neotokyo]

In my experience, if you fear any mob in a general area, they will always run the same exact path, the same exact way. Doesn't matter what side of them you are on when the fear hits.

this is what we call fear pathing. there seem to be certain waypoints designated as "fearpoints". the nearest are used each time the NPC checks against fear, so they will always use the same route.

as soon as we get pathing going, fear will be easy to implement.

what was the question??

[Bob98112]

Thanks everyone for lending an opinion about this. :)

There really is not a question neotokyo. I was trying to refresh my memory about the fear spell to make sure I wasn't forgetting any details.

While I imagine how easy it will be to add having a mob reverse-traverse it's pathing while "feared", I am looking at a way of adding it now. I think, if all mobs wander to the same point anyway, there is a simple way to do this without relying on the idea that every mob must have pathing defined. I was going to use the safe point, since it is designated already in every zone. The mobs wouldn't necessarly move all the way to that point. They could be made to travel a given distance and turn around and come back.

I wanted to work out these details, see if the results would be acceptable (compared to how it might work on eqlive) before I spent any time coding it. It looks like it might be better to wait until every mob has a designated path.. so I will. :P I'll try to find something else to work on.

BoB