Game Mechanics: Sneak pulling

[paulgiamatti]

Hypothesis: Tagging a mob that does not have you in its line of sight, while sneaking, should decrease the aggro radius of that mob. This means that other mobs that are not looking at the mob you tagged can still aggro if they're close enough - just like with Harmony or Lull. It is, for all intents and purposes, a minor Harmony/Lull effect. This also means that other mobs that are looking at the mob you tagged will not aggro if they're outside of the reduced aggro radius of the mob you sneak-tagged.

Evidence:

From Monkly Business, 10/3/2000

Its claimed that sneak can be used as a minor harmony effect on *SOCIAL* mobs to reduce their add radius, but personally I haven't had much success with this at all.

From The Safehouse, 6/11/01

In the end, it's all in the placement of the mobs, use angles and line of sight to minimize aggro with the others you don't want. It's not a simple case of "put sneak on, stand in front of two mobs, hit one and the other shouldn't come". There is no substitute for experience, pathing and aggro is different everywhere. Learn exactly how sneak affects/reduces that aggro in different places and then put it to use.

Yes, aggro radius pulling is useful with sneak too. I use this in Karmors basement where the halls are narrow an there is no room for range weapons.

Line of sight helps a lot in these cases. If you get in a position where one can see you but another can't, while having sneak and hide engaged, then you drop hide - but keep sneak on.

Soon as you see one start to aggro and move, back away quickly. As long as you are out of aggro radius of the other by the time it hits you and sneak drops, you only get the one.

From Monkly Business, 6/25/01:

You don't even have to do the FD pull if you have enough room to maneuver. Just turn on Sneak

and walk up to mobs from the side so that you will become closer to one than the others. As soon

as you come within aggro range of the mob he will come after you and the others will stay.



Walk backwards till you are clear of aggro range of the other mobs then un-sneak and run back to

your beatdown posse.

Evidence to the contrary:

From Monkly Business, 9/25/2000

4) Using Thrown Weapons and Sneak to split.

With the changes to Sneak (no longer dropping when you use a thrown weapon ) another use has come up! In order for this to work, you must be using a ranged weapon with a ranger greater then the static aggro of the mob ( ie method # 3 listed above): engage sneak, throw, insta split. Personally I'm using summoned suriken for this, and I haven't had to use FD on a split since I got back into EQ. This includes splitting spawns where the mobs are literally on top of each other, although some times I have hit the mob i didn't have targeted, I have never aggro'ed the other.

Discuss, and please prove this wrong.

[Ikon]

I believe this is correct. You could also sneak pull by using sit. Sneak reduces your aggro, sit increases it. So outside of range of standing sneak aggro, sit, aggro mob, stand immediately others don't aggro.

[paulgiamatti]

Also, kind of a given but obviously once sneak breaks then the aggro reduction effect stops.

[Brocode]

isnt the game like this atm? I mean i can solo pull an npc on top of each other as long they are not facing me or in range once my sneak break.

[paulgiamatti]

Nope, I don't think you've understood my post. Aggro radius reduction is massively different from the current all-or-nothing LoS check. The contrary evidence suggests that the latter is indeed classic, but it seems like there is more evidence to support my minor Harmony/Lull hypothesis. Hoping others will do some classicquesting to find more evidence on either side.

[Ikon]

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

Nope, I don't think you've understood my post. Aggro radius reduction is massively different from the current all-or-nothing LoS check. The contrary evidence suggests that the latter is indeed classic, but it seems like there is more evidence to support my minor Harmony/Lull hypothesis. Hoping others will do some classicquesting to find more evidence on either side.

Been going through these links - lot of info but not enough time to look it all up. Might find some useful stuff as well here - need to go to the [Site Map] link on the side to get the info, its organized by month through 1999 to 2001 I think

[nilbog]

Bump.

What all is wrong with sneak pulling? Is it too easy to pull npcs? How is it functioning differently than classic?

Be as specific as possible, and it will be looked into.

[pasi]

Going to tackle just the low hanging fruit here.

Counter-point to sneaking behind an NPC being a radius reduction as opposed to an all-or-nothing check: Whistling Fists

[Raev]

So there was a long thread on the TAKP forums recently about sneak. In short Lazie wanted P99 sneak and the devs pushed back pretty hard. http://www.takproject.net/forums/ind...-any-type.7066 After reading everything, including the Safehouse threads and Autumn's guide I had two ideas:

Theory #1: NPCs in classic EQ had three attack modes:

• initial engage: Every server tick the NPC would check for KOS PCs in it's aggro range and attack them. Sneak eliminates this check while behind the NPC and reduces it in front.
• call for help: When an NPC is first engaged/engages a PC, it immediately calls for help to nearby NPCs who respond if it is inside their assist radius. Sneak eliminates this check while behind the NPC and reduces it in front.
• assist: Every server tick the NPC checks for engaged NPCs in it's assist radius and assists them. Sneak does NOT affect this check.

So if you tag a NPC with sneak, you'll get a single pull if it gets out of the unmodified assist range of its comrades before the server tick, but otherwise not. This explanation has a number of advantages: it explains why sneak pulling was so inconsistent, why it seemed to depend on level and situation, why some people would swear by it and others would put up 10K rewards and refuse to pay out, why it seems to work better when NPCs are pathing back, etc.

Theory #2: we had long threads on invis pulling here and I believe the conclusion was that mobs should not reaggro indifferent players on the FD list. I'm guessing Verant simply didn't have a IsFeigned() function and used IsIndifferent() instead. However, it should not actually clear the FD memory list. If you look at classic screenshots monks don't even have Sneak on their hotbar

However, almost certainly sneak should not clear the FD memory list, and Sneak should drop on ranged attack. Monking on Project 1999 is 100% trivial. You send in a holgresh eye while FD, draw the mobs out, stand with sneak, and tag the last one on the way back. I can pull HOT on Raev solo with 0.0 risk to myself, which is nowhere near classic. Instead Monks should get added to the FD memory list when the eye is engaged, sneak should drop on ranged attack, and sneak shouldn't provide this guaranteed single pull.

Anyway these are just theories; I'd trust whatever Daldaen and Maurice come up with.

[pasi]

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

Theory #1: NPCs in classic EQ had three attack modes:

• initial engage: Every server tick the NPC would check for KOS PCs in it's aggro range and attack them. Sneak eliminates this check while behind the NPC and reduces it in front.
• call for help: When an NPC is first engaged/engages a PC, it immediately calls for help to nearby NPCs who respond if it is inside their assist radius. Sneak eliminates this check while behind the NPC and reduces it in front.
• assist: Every server tick the NPC checks for engaged NPCs in it's assist radius and assists them. Sneak does NOT affect this check.

And here comes my pal Lor to tackle the higher fruit.

This mostly matches my experiences. I've bolded the parts that I'm not sure of (or disagree with).

A couple minor bits though. More looking to address the mechanics of NPC aggro versus discuss specifically sneak here. Sneak is obviously more complicated than invis, but invis's simplicity gives us a cleaner look to start with.

I think part 1 of this theory is spot on. I'm not sure if the aggro tick is on the same sever tick interval (ie when HP/mana regen) or if it is 6 seconds. But a common scenario of running past see-invis mobs and often times either the mob wouldnt aggro or someone other than the first person to run through would pull aggro. The best evidence for aggro being on some sort of a server side tick is the existence of circlet of shadow shenanigans.

In terms of #2, I agree that when a mob is aggroed, it immediately calls for help.
When doing this with invis on live, anything in the initial assist radius would aggro if it were social. Didn't matter if you were invis or not. Range to target was a factor. I.E you could have nearby mobs not assist on initial aggro if you were firing at max range with a Doomshade Bow. But that's another thread entirely.

Part #3 is where I have the most issue. I obviously agree with mobs periodically calling for assistance outside the initial aggro. However, this is where I believe con-changes like invis or sneak function. On live, you could pull a mob, be invis, and parade it through social mobs who would not assist unless they saw through invis.
I look at sneak functioning the same as a positional invisibility for these mechanics. Could be definitely be wrong on sneak functioning like this though.

Going to try to re-install EQlive this week and fuck-around as this shit is a lot easier to demonstrate with a video than words.