Track - Targets not showing

[Danien]

Since patch I can stand next to a mob and not track it. There seems to be a limit of 20 mobs on track at any given time, not determined by distance or anything. I can stand at ledge in seb and track crypt guardians but not the mob next to me.

[Handull]

working as intended. mobs are listed on track the same way they were listed before patch, just limited to 20 now.

[lecompte]

K so I bought this up in another thread before and someone said it is determined by most recent spawns within the entirety of your track area. So ya. There ya go.

The twenty most recent spawns within the entirety of your track area show up.

[Handull]

track window has always been sorted by most recent pop, even before patch, so yes, that is the same

[lecompte]

... Ranger track... Mine has been sorted however I like. Now I can just sort the results of the most recent spawns.

[Danien]

This is truly amazing news

[kaev]

working as intended. mobs are listed on track the same way they were listed before patch, just limited to 20 now.

Then the intention is to break Ranger tracking in a way that is utterly :notclassic: Ranger tracking was far more valuable than Druid/Bard tracking for more than simply the range, it was because you could look at more than just the last 20 mobs that spawned in range.

The implementation of the :classictrackingwindowbug: is faulty. When you guys limited number of mobs to be displayed you did it very badly, taking the first 20 from normal sort only, rather than the first 20 from the selected sort category. Also, the track list does not appear to be updated as mobs spawn.

- With Track sort "normal" (incl. Druid & Bard) should show the 20 most recent spawns within track range (i.e. the first 20 mobs from the normal list)
- With Track sort "distance" should show the 20 mobs within track range closest to the Ranger (i.e. the first 20 mobs from the distance list)
- With Track sort "rdistance" shoudl show the 20 mobs within track range furthest from the Ranger (i.e. the first 20 mobs from the rdistance list)
- & etc.

* One new bug here is that the "normal" list is not the list that should be sorted, rather the full list of mobs in track range should be sorted as selected, with the limit on the number displayed, not the number available for display.


* nm, not sure why it appeared that track list not being refreshed, but it definitely is getting updated for new spawns now.


* An old bug with tracking on this server is that when a mob is tracked from outside of range it should give random direction clues. As it is, once a tracker has a mob in the track window or selected as tracking target they can always track it regardless of range, this is wrong and slightly overpowers Druid/Bard (and low level Ranger) tracking.

* Another old bug with tracking on this server is tracking players simply fails to work worth a damn It appears (from very limited testing) as if tracking a player always tracks the location where the player entered the zone, or where the player was when the tracker entered the zone if the target was already in-zone when the tracker entered.

[nilbog]

Which way did it function classically? I'm willing to look further into this, and have changes amended or redacted if necessary.

Opinions are good.. but evidence is much better.

[Handull]

the evidence posted to remove ranger track sort suggests rangers couldn't sort by range or level until Velious.

I'm sure there has to be a screen shot out there of a ranger with track window open from classic/kunark which would settle the issue

[danceparty]

in classic we could see the entire list of mobs within our range, but we did not have sorting ability. merbs were stacked based on "most recent" spawn. ranger tracking has been slightly OP with the sorting ability, which wasn't granted until later in the timeline....but i'd gladly give that up in order to have my full phone book back.

[Handull]

in classic we could see the entire list of mobs within our range, but we did not have sorting ability. merbs were stacked based on "most recent" spawn. ranger tracking has been slightly OP with the sorting ability, which wasn't granted until later in the timeline....but i'd gladly give that up in order to have my full phone book back.

everything posted here suggests otherwise, hence the change
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=96039&page=2
(page 1 is all about nerfing druids to a skill of 50)

[Steveyd]

everything posted here suggests otherwise, hence the change
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=96039&page=2
(page 1 is all about nerfing druids to a skill of 50)

I understand the point made in that thread concerning Filtering and Sorting coming in Velious. What I don't get from that thread is why the #mobs trackable is reduced to 20 for a ranger?

The quote linked by Ele in that thread is posted by a Druid, who sees only 20 mobs in their list and coincidentally has a skill capped at 20. (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.games.everquest/8OQbT7NgBho/xSMzTbTtg8gJ)

As Danceparty mentioned, it seems preferable have the longer list without filtering/sorting than have the current tracking situation.

Just editing in from that same link:
What tracking is useful for is being the first to know about named
and/or rare spawns before anyone else. And that is *icnredibly*
useful considering a 50 ranger can cover a huge chunk of a zone
with a single click of his track key. Especially considering
tracking targets are ranked from most recent to least recent time
spawned.

This word "chunk" implies quantity, not just range.

[Handull]

Quote from patch notes: "and sports a nifty scroll bar that allows players to see everything on the list" suggests the scroll bar is brand new, therefore tracking was limited prior to this velious patch.

However the quote does start with: "Tracking now works in full view for all classes that can use it" which ambiguously might suggest that it used to work in full view for some classes, and now works in full view for all. however just from that I'm not convinced either way.



Reading the full quote from Ele that you re-linked to:
"Quite frankly, it pisses me off that druids and bards have tracking at all. It
was a huge mistake giving it to them.

At least with druids their current cap of 20 makes the skill nearly useless...
but bards have far *better* tracking than rangers in basically every way.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that anybody should be nerfed... but looking
to IMPROVE their tracking is really fucking annoying.

Paladins get a 1000+ point heal every 40 minutes, shadowknights get a 500+
point DD every 40 minutes, and rangers get... tracking worse than bards. Yeah,
that makes sense.

What they really need to do is to FIX tracking. Make it filterable, make it
customizable, make it hold more than 20 frigging entries, add a scrollbar, and
make it usable for more than seeing what's newly spawned in the entire zone.

Then... leave ALL skill caps as they are and implement the fixes for rangers
only. "

the author sounds like a ranger to me who wants the buffs to tracking that rangers later got. did bards ever have a higher tracking skill cap than rangers? if not, how could someone claim a lower skill (bard) was better than a higher skill (ranger) unless there was a limit. This was a high debated skill that took a while to change on live, so thats how it should be here.

[Handull]

another quote from that link dated 1999:
"yes high skill track is useless except for rare occasions when you get lucky, and for spotting new spawns. I think track is probly most useful around 75-125, gets less good the higher or lower you go from there."

[Steveyd]

Ok think I'm starting to get it, somehow I was reading the quote in a context that felt Druid - perhaps quoted elsewhere in the post.

Was the number then limited by the fact there's no scroll bar and you can't expand further to see the lower entries? Ie phone book was there but couldn't be viewed beyond the last twenty entries until you added the scroll bar with vel? (Hence is bad as it is right now)

[Handull]

thats how i understand it. classic tracking was limited by no scroll bar and window size. it was just easier to limit the number of entries here, rather than bother to remove the scroll bar.

[YendorLootmonkey]

Evidence that rangers could see more than just 20 items on the tracking window:

http://www.hyperhighway.com/bilgehunter/Bilgeachive.htm

Bilge News 11/30/99 : Gee Hate Mail
I get alot of mail, a few days ago I got another letter telling me to, "Give it up, you will never be EQvault." Blah Blah.
I look at it like this, In EQ, and in gaming in general, there are 3 types of web sites:
The Level 1 Site: This is a site that has all the cutting edge info about the game. Its a site almost everyone knows about and visits regularly. EQliser, EQvault etc.
The Level 2 Site: A site that has a following but isn't a major site. I consider the Bilge Hunter one of these sites. Also sites like: Graffe's Wizard Compilation for example. To me these are the best sites, they tend to be the most personal and have the best ideas.
The Level 3 Site: A small site usually for a guild or group, without a following. Many of these sites are really cool.

I'm not here to beat out the Vault for some grand prize. I am a small subset of EQ, and while I wish the larger sites would support the smaller sites more, ie getting a post on the vault can be a pain after the first one, and I'd love to see links to other sites on the BIG BOYS, I'm not going to lose any sleep 'cause I ain't the Vault. Also in the future if you have a site with a following, please send me the URL and info about updates, I'd be happy to post them. I'll support the Level 2 sites all day long. Rant OVER.

I've been though all this before, during my stay in UO, I ran a site called The Ultima Online Guild Review . This site was dedicated to doing reviews of web sites of guilds. Check it out, it was a great site, and I have been thinking about bringing the whole idea over to EQ. Be this the case, I'd be looking for people who would want to run the site, do reviews, and basically switch it over to EQ. I'm not looking to run the site myself, just mainly be an editor. The Bilge Hunter is enough of a project for me right now.

In other news:
Please try to support the cleric sit in if you feel its a good cause. I'd really like to see Verant wake the hell up about these issues.

Kedge Keep: if yer in the low 40's and high 30's man this place is just great exp. My guild has been hunting there alot in the last few nights, and have yet to see anyone else in the zone. Lguk and SolB well have been ummm CROWDED...the other night our ranger did a track in SolB and saw 80+ people and ZERO mobs...heh. KKeep, Check it out its a cool place...Just not on Xegony, cause we own the deed to it...

[Thulack]

Evidence that rangers could see more than just 20 items on the tracking window:

http://www.hyperhighway.com/bilgehunter/Bilgeachive.htm

Bilge News 11/30/99 : Gee Hate Mail
I get alot of mail, a few days ago I got another letter telling me to, "Give it up, you will never be EQvault." Blah Blah.
I look at it like this, In EQ, and in gaming in general, there are 3 types of web sites:
The Level 1 Site: This is a site that has all the cutting edge info about the game. Its a site almost everyone knows about and visits regularly. EQliser, EQvault etc.
The Level 2 Site: A site that has a following but isn't a major site. I consider the Bilge Hunter one of these sites. Also sites like: Graffe's Wizard Compilation for example. To me these are the best sites, they tend to be the most personal and have the best ideas.
The Level 3 Site: A small site usually for a guild or group, without a following. Many of these sites are really cool.

I'm not here to beat out the Vault for some grand prize. I am a small subset of EQ, and while I wish the larger sites would support the smaller sites more, ie getting a post on the vault can be a pain after the first one, and I'd love to see links to other sites on the BIG BOYS, I'm not going to lose any sleep 'cause I ain't the Vault. Also in the future if you have a site with a following, please send me the URL and info about updates, I'd be happy to post them. I'll support the Level 2 sites all day long. Rant OVER.

I've been though all this before, during my stay in UO, I ran a site called The Ultima Online Guild Review . This site was dedicated to doing reviews of web sites of guilds. Check it out, it was a great site, and I have been thinking about bringing the whole idea over to EQ. Be this the case, I'd be looking for people who would want to run the site, do reviews, and basically switch it over to EQ. I'm not looking to run the site myself, just mainly be an editor. The Bilge Hunter is enough of a project for me right now.

In other news:
Please try to support the cleric sit in if you feel its a good cause. I'd really like to see Verant wake the hell up about these issues.

Kedge Keep: if yer in the low 40's and high 30's man this place is just great exp. My guild has been hunting there alot in the last few nights, and have yet to see anyone else in the zone. Lguk and SolB well have been ummm CROWDED...the other night our ranger did a track in SolB and saw 80+ people and ZERO mobs...heh. KKeep, Check it out its a cool place...Just not on Xegony, cause we own the deed to it...

as much as i would love this to be proof i'm 99% sure that PC toons dont count against tracking targets. Atleast they dont count ingame right now that way.

[Handull]

i don't know how tracking PCs should effect the cap, and if the on/off for player track should be possible, but what do you think is more likely? the ranger hit track, saw zero mobs alive, and counted 80 players in the list, or the ranger hit track, saw zero mobs alive, then typed /who and saw "There are 84 players in SolB"?

[Thulack]

Honestly i think the most likely thing to happen was that he hit track and guesstimated 80+ toons on it and saw no mobs up because those 80+ toons had killed everything in his track range.

[Alanus]

From what I remember on live, it was area-based. You would see all mobs within range (based on your skill level).

[Barnes]

Which way did it function classically? I'm willing to look further into this, and have changes amended or redacted if necessary.

Opinions are good.. but evidence is much better.

It just seems very strange that changes get made to the server when it's not 100% that it was classic. Hmm, i would make sure it's classic before making any changes.

[Malrubius]

Then the intention is to break Ranger tracking in a way that is utterly :notclassic: Ranger tracking was far more valuable than Druid/Bard tracking for more than simply the range, it was because you could look at more than just the last 20 mobs that spawned in range.

The implementation of the :classictrackingwindowbug: is faulty. When you guys limited number of mobs to be displayed you did it very badly, taking the first 20 from normal sort only, rather than the first 20 from the selected sort category. Also, the track list does not appear to be updated as mobs spawn.

- With Track sort "normal" (incl. Druid & Bard) should show the 20 most recent spawns within track range (i.e. the first 20 mobs from the normal list)
- With Track sort "distance" should show the 20 mobs within track range closest to the Ranger (i.e. the first 20 mobs from the distance list)
- With Track sort "rdistance" shoudl show the 20 mobs within track range furthest from the Ranger (i.e. the first 20 mobs from the rdistance list)
- & etc.

* One new bug here is that the "normal" list is not the list that should be sorted, rather the full list of mobs in track range should be sorted as selected, with the limit on the number displayed, not the number available for display.


* nm, not sure why it appeared that track list not being refreshed, but it definitely is getting updated for new spawns now.


* An old bug with tracking on this server is that when a mob is tracked from outside of range it should give random direction clues. As it is, once a tracker has a mob in the track window or selected as tracking target they can always track it regardless of range, this is wrong and slightly overpowers Druid/Bard (and low level Ranger) tracking.

* Another old bug with tracking on this server is tracking players simply fails to work worth a damn It appears (from very limited testing) as if tracking a player always tracks the location where the player entered the zone, or where the player was when the tracker entered the zone if the target was already in-zone when the tracker entered.

Bumping this - kaev is correct. Limiting to 20 is a classic limitation (due to the lack of a scroll bar) - which arguably should not be a limitation now.

But the important thing is that *WHICH* 20 you saw depended on your sort setting. As a Ranger, you could always see the 20 closest mobs, or the 20 farthest mobs, or the 20 highest level mobs, or the 20 lowest level mobs, or the 20 most recent spawns.

[Ele]

This relates to more of the how far should track reach, rather than what the window displays. It is post-Luclin though 9-19-2002.

http://web.archive.org/web/20031015231301/http://forums.interealms.com/ranger/showthread.php?threadid=9999

Aiya my friends!

I have been on these boards for a long time, but very rarely post. I was really curious one night (several months ago) about how far a Ranger could really track. A lot of people thought we could track the whole zone (which may be true in a small zone), but I decided to do some math and figure it all out.

Tracking Units (TUs): I'll simply call them this because we have no other way of knowing what the exact measurement of the distance is. This is based off of your location (/loc) vs. the tracked person/NPC's location.

When you look at any map, you will always see the /loc information provided there. Pretty much a grid.

Now the formula is simple. At 0 (zero) skill points in Tracking you have a base distance of 500 TUs. Each skill point up to 100 is worth 10 TUs. From 101 to 200 is worth 20 TUs. This distance is a radius from the center point (you at your current /loc)

So, pretty much when you look at the numbers you can easily add them up.

Ranger (200 Tracking) - 3500 TUs
Druid (125 Tracking) - 2000 TUs
Bard (100 Tracking) - 1500 TUs

If you ever want to know just grab a map from EQ Atlas, check your skill, add the numbers and draw a circle from your /loc to the amount of TUs you have. There you go thats the distance you can track. So technically yes, we can track the whole zone; depending on the zone, but most (especially with Velious zones) we are far short from it.

As some of the other posts have asked, you can always track your group members. However, you cannot ever track anyone invisible unless you have see invisible up.

Hope this helps anyone out there that may have needed it.

Namarie,

Aelfric An'Aldar
Povar

*I edited this to correct the small mistakes I had*

[Handull]

It is possible that the UI let Rangers sort tracking before Feb 21, 2001, should be easy for someone to dig up a SS showing this. The patch explicitly says the chat commands to sort track were added in 2001, but it is ambiguous if they existed before hand as buttons or not. Patch notes below...

------------------------------
February 21, 2001 3:00 am
------------------------------

*Patch Day*

*Tracking*

Tracking now works in full view for all classes that can use it, and
sports a nifty scroll bar that allows players to see everything on the
list. In addition, the /trackplayer setting is now saved to the
eqclient.ini file.

The following options have been put in for Rangers only:

--- /tracksort
--- /trackfilter

*/tracksort options beginning with R are reverse order

[Malrubius]

So it looks like the limit of 20 (due to no scroll bar) was removed about a month after Velious released. Hopefully we'll get rid of the (now, artificial) limit when Velious goes live here.

Yeah, I think there were always buttons for the sorting/filtering. Haven't found a screen shot of it yet though.

[kaev]

So it looks like the limit of 20 (due to no scroll bar) was removed about a month after Velious released. Hopefully we'll get rid of the (now, artificial) limit when Velious goes live here.

Yeah, I think there were always buttons for the sorting/filtering. Haven't found a screen shot of it yet though.

Correct. The commands allowed track sorting to be switched with hotkeys, rather than requiring you to mouse over and use the dropdown menu. The commands were added only for rangers because only rangers had the sort options to begin with.

[Handull]

Was just on my ranger today and realized how it is working for rangers, to reiterate what Kaev said...

The way ranger track works now on p99: Track window shows 20 most recent spawns within the tracking range + unlimited player characters. Filtering by con, distance, reverse distance, etc will *only* filter the 20 most recent spawns. Even if you sort by distance and then re-track, you still only see the 20 most recent mobs sorted by distance.

Should rangers be able to sort by '20 most recent mobs in range', '20 closest mobs', '20 furthest mobs in range', etc?

[Malrubius]

Was just on my ranger today and realized how it is working for rangers, to reiterate what Kaev said...

The way ranger track works now on p99: Track window shows 20 most recent spawns within the tracking range + unlimited player characters. Filtering by con, distance, reverse distance, etc will *only* filter the 20 most recent spawns. Even if you sort by distance and then re-track, you still only see the 20 most recent mobs sorted by distance.

Should rangers be able to sort by '20 most recent mobs in range', '20 closest mobs', '20 furthest mobs in range', etc?

Well it shouldn't be limited to 20 at all - that is a scroll bar limitation, and we have scroll bars.

But even if the limit is artificially held to 20 until Velious (when the scroll bar came into being and there was no limit), YES, the 20 you see should depend on your sort. It should NOT always be the 20 most recent spawns. I expect this last will be patched soon.

The 20 limit should go away with Velious at the latest, which will make it a moot point.

[kaev]

This shit has gotten real old. Given the incredibly slow patch cycle here it's just horrible to have so thoroughly boned Ranger tracking by implementing this grotesque misreading of that patchnote Ele dug up. Ranger tracking on p99 is nigh useless in zones like LoIO, which was simply not the case on live. Frustrating as hell.


Sorry for tone of the post, deleted the ugliest line, just a tad frustrated, lol.

[Handull]

and we have scroll bars.

We shouldn't have scroll bars. The 20 limit is an attempt to emulate no scroll bar without having to fully recode that part of the client.

[Jimjam]

Rangers should have access to the different track sorts. Other classes should only have access to normal.

Ranger's track window should show different mobs depending on which track sort is activated.

This is how I remember it from playing a ranger on TZ and test.

[Nirgon]

Wish I could tell you more about track bros, never mained a druid / ranger... or played in any great capacity outside of PLing

[azxten]

Which way did it function classically? I'm willing to look further into this, and have changes amended or redacted if necessary.

Opinions are good.. but evidence is much better.

Nilbog, I think these images serve as pretty good evidence that track is still completely messed up now. Regardless of how it SHOULD be working, its obviously broken at the moment.

Xicotl not on track even though he is spawned right around the corner and I have sort by consider turned on. Note I have it targetted, dark blue mob.

http://i.imgur.com/FxWLz0d.jpg

Only 3 mobs on track in the Hole after moving in for awhile. Fighting a named mob that doesn't show on track.

http://i.imgur.com/koPjVE6.jpg

I hope this gets fast tracked to being fixed because its pretty shitty that a class defining ability was utterly destroyed in an attempt to moderately nerf it.

Just by looking at the behave I'm guessing this is the bug...

Originally:

Gather mobs in tracking ranger, apply filters.

Now:

Gather mobs in tracking range, limit to 20, apply filters.

Should be:

Gather mobs in tracking range, apply filters, limit to 20.

However, that still doesn't explain why sometimes mobs just stop showing up. Level 50 ranger in the Hole with max tracking sees 2 mobs?

[Facecramp]

This is one of the biggest problems atm with tracking, the way its currently set up having 200 skill is worse than saying have 100. If ranger can see basically the whole zone with his track, everything will be static and the same 20 mobs will be there the whole time . Vs that of a druid who when he moves new mobs become visible and in range.

[Sektor]

This is one of the biggest problems atm with tracking, the way its currently set up having 200 skill is worse than saying have 100. If ranger can see basically the whole zone with his track, everything will be static and the same 20 mobs will be there the whole time . Vs that of a druid who when he moves new mobs become visible and in range.

fungi hoarder

[kaev]

Still broken

[kaev]

ranger track remains broken

[kaev]

ranger track is still :notclassic:

[Yinikren]

Bump for my ranger buddies, just revert this crap, it's not worth arbitrarily trying to fix.

[Handull]

another issue i noticed with tracking: the track window will show an unlimited number of player names but *only* if those names are above the 20th mob in the track window.

track window should look like this (for some arbitrary situation)
-player1
-mobs1-5
-players2-30
-mobs6-20
-players 31-35

however players31-35 won't show up because they come after mob20 and thus are filtered out.

its a bit of a mess, but i'm sure when nilbog gets to it he'll iron out a fix

[kaev]

Played my Ranger today, Ranger tracking still :notclassic:

Seriously people, it sucks ginormous donkey balls to have your class-defining skill fucked up to a fare-thee-well by the misreading of that patch message. It's even more sad that neither the devs nor Ele have the cojones to admit to the fuck-up :(

[Acrux Bcrux]

Fix teh rangers! This makes me sad ;(

[Razzi]

Fix please!

[kaev]

Ranger tracking still useless unless you're an poopsockguildtrackingalt, still :notclassic:, please fix!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ele]

Played my Ranger today, Ranger tracking still :notclassic:

Seriously people, it sucks ginormous donkey balls to have your class-defining skill fucked up to a fare-thee-well by the misreading of that patch message. It's even more sad that neither the devs nor Ele have the cojones to admit to the fuck-up :(

It's busted currently. I don't disagree with that. I cannot do anything on my end to fix the code though.

[kaev]

Yeah, I hear you. It's just frustrating. I mean, my ranger alt is substantially twinked, so plenty he can do anyway without decent track skill to take advantage of, but without track he's basically just a fancy warrior who can pull decently outdoors but can't tank very well.

Back in the old days, track made even an untwinked Ranger fun to play. Amongst other uses, distance sort let you use first-person view to hunt without SoW in places with random roaming red-/yellow-cons, places where other classes needed SoW and third-person view to keep safe. Outdoors it really let you play the character as if he belonged there rather than being just another interloper. Was tremendously fun without being OP the way some other class specials get to be when used cleverly.

[azxten]

Bump. Can we get confirmation from a dev that this is understood to be broken at least?

[Elmarnieh]

I don't understand why it was attempted to be nerfed to hw it was flawed in classic.

They didn't mean to limit tracking for rangers - it was a flaw in the UI that prevented it. The entire intention was to have what rangers on P99 had pre-patch.

Since anyone can display server data on their client anyway they wish it means we can bypass the limitations of the original UI and display the incomming server data as rangers were always intended to do on live. Artificially restricting us based on the limitation of PC's of the day (which is why they had the smaller windowed view) makes no sense, and its not even implimented to correctly mimic that bug from original EQ.

[melkezidek]

From what I can tell what is wrong with tracking on P99 is that it shows the newest 20 mobs within tracking distance of the ranger only. Now before you get your panties in a bundle YES it should always show the newest mobs at the top of the window. I believe however classically Verant had it mixed. So say the top 5 tracking slots were newest mobs in range to you and the bottom 15 were sorted by range to how close they were to you. On top of that It seamed like there was a "timer" for how stuff was considered new... For example say after 5 hours a mob wasn't new anymore it was just a mob like any other mob.

The problem with Tracking is we are not going to find anything hard written how the sort worked. We do know that newest mobs always showed up on top. We also know classically the list was 20. After that nothing is going to show up. I can tell you on live that running around as a ranger every step or second that passed in an area with pathing mobs resulted in changes to the track window and that is not the case here on p99.

[nilbog]

Bump. Can we get confirmation from a dev that this is understood to be broken at least?

As mentioned before, I need to know exactly what is broken about it. I didn't make the change, and to look into correcting or modifying it, I need to know what is wrong with it currently. I have never played a class with tracking so I don't know how it should work.

There have been a few memories here about how it should work. I did some brief research on it and found some old pages and guides. I will post them here to help with review.

I did want to quote a few things which seem to be debated:

PART 5: Track Filters
-A: updates

The biggest Track updates (EVER) where “filters” and “cons”; some of which are only available to rangers and not bards/druids. Tracking window scrolling (Ranger only) was also a huge update, but not needed to be discussed.This further confirms a scroll bar added.

PART 1: Common myths about track

First off when you hit the track window, the list WILL NOT update. What you see on the list is what is up at that moment. If a mob dies then it is removed from the list and replaced with a blank spot. If a mob spawns it will not show up on the list till you “re-click” the track button.For the people saying their list should auto update, it doesn't seem that like is the case.

Tracking is 100% reliable, totally not true. Sometimes tracking gets bugged, though I can’t always explain why. I think Invis/Hide effects it. A few times I have tried to track people and it will bring me to a spot that they are not at if they are invisible. What I believe happens is that track brings you to the exact spot where the person was last visible. So if someone invises them self and moves across the zone, you will track to the spot where they invised themselves (last “visible” spot). This doesn’t always happen, but it has been know to. This can also occur when a person gates to a different part of the zone.How does this work currently? Can you track invisible npcs?

A tracker can ALWAYS find your corpse like a locate corpse spell isn’t accurate. There are limits to this. I can only track corpses if you’re in my group, if you haven’t zoned back into the zone where you died, or I haven’t zoned out.
Example: My group is running through “The Overthere” and Warrior-X runs into a goon. He tries to out run the goon but fails and forgets to hit the loc button. He has no idea where his corpse is. Well I never zoned out of Overthere so in my party list he shows up as a person with zero hp. I select him and hit track, it brings me right to his corpse. However while doing that I get a goon on me and zone out. When I zone back in, Warrior-X shows up like a person who is in my group but in a different zone, since you can’t track a person not in your zone I can’t find the corpse. A similar thing happens if Warrior-X zones back in, track switches to the live player and not the corpse.How does this work currently, if at all?

Unfortunately I could not find a screenshot of the tracking window. If someone has some, please post.

Here are several links I came across while looking around. On these pages are also links to other ranger-specific sites.

http://web.archive.org/web/20020112064946/http://eq.castersrealm.com/playguides/VIEW.ASP?ID=5034
http://web.archive.org/web/20020319110016/http://eq.castersrealm.com/playguides/default.asp?Class=Ranger&Category=6
http://web.archive.org/web/20010818130420/http://eq.castersrealm.com/playguides/VIEW.ASP?ID=4494
http://web.archive.org/web/20010818124818/http://eq.castersrealm.com/playguides/VIEW.ASP?ID=3480
http://web.archive.org/web/20010619162055/http://pub59.ezboard.com/feqrangers65329frm3
http://web.archive.org/web/20010416232750/http://www.geocities.com/eqrangers/
http://web.archive.org/web/20010417185229/http://www.geocities.com/eqrangers/links.htm#rangers
http://web.archive.org/web/20010610231924/http://interealms.com/ranger/guides/
http://web.archive.org/web/20011204195020/http://www.angelflame.com/ranger.html

The biggest help would be to explain, in detail, what is wrong with how tracking is currently implemented versus how it should work.

[Splorf22]

I believe it boils down to sort(first(x, 20)) != first(sort(x), 20)

Example:

Suppose our window has only 2 tracking entries and our tracking list by distance is:

aviak/1 centaur/40 quillmane/5 lion/8

Prior to the nerf, the entire tracking list returned and sorted by the client, thus giving:

aviak/1 quillmane/5 [not displayed: lion/8 centaur/40]

However, if the *server* only sends the first two entries, the client will display

aviak/1 centuar/40

Which is wrong.

[kaev]

Ranger had sort options from very early on, can't recall if in at release, but certainly well before Kunark. This allowed Ranger (only!) to choose between the most recently spawned, closest, furthest, highest con, & lowest con, mobs within track range to be shown. The bug was that the window did not scroll, so only the top of these lists was available. Non-Ranger trackers got only the most recently spawned sort.

The bug here is that only the 20 most recently spawned are being sorted, thus rendering the Ranger's class-specific tracking functionality useless.

[kaev]

I never made much use of the corpse tracking trick, so I can't recall exactly how it worked nor do I have any idea where to look for a better description than has been posted earlier in the thread.

Also, as somebody else mentioned, you should not be able to track anything invis unless you have see invis.

[azxten]

As mentioned before, I need to know exactly what is broken about it.

In the screen shot I posted you can see me tracking in the Hole, and the ability is greyed out showing I had clicked it right before taking the screen shot, and there is only 2 mobs on the list. Yet right in front of me is a named mob we are fighting. This is one problem in that tracking sometimes glitches out.

http://i.imgur.com/koPjVE6.jpg

As for how the filters are supposed to work I'm not sure. However, at the moment I consider tracking worthless because, as in the other screen shot I posted, even newly spawned mobs (Xicotl) don't show up on track when they are 10 feet away. It doesn't matter if you try to sort by consider or what, that mob will never show up on your list in my experience.

I have a very hard time believing that track in classic EQ didn't allow you to track mobs that were standing directly in front of you based on their spawn times or consider or whatever else. Note that in this screen shot I was camping Lasna, saw Xicotl spawn, nothing on track even sorting by consider, so I went back around the corner so I wouldn't get aggro and took that screen shot.

http://i.imgur.com/FxWLz0d.jpg

Track should just work. If it only shows 20 targets thats fine, if theres no sorting thats fine, but it needs to show the closest 20 targets somehow. I played Ranger and Druid many times in live during classic and never experienced this kind of frustration. Sure, its only anecdotal.. but my original point about track just being completely broken sometimes as in my screen shot should probably be looked at.

I think that if filters don't exist then the list needs to be filtered on distance automatically, not whatever its filtering on now which seems to be nothing.

[nilbog]

Track should just work. If it only shows 20 targets thats fine, if theres no sorting thats fine, but it needs to show the closest 20 targets somehow.

This has been my conclusion. Looking into fixes.

[epicgar]

This is how I can best describe how tracking should work with and without the "20" mob limit.

For rangers, it's all about finding the mobs within track range and then applying filters.

For non-rangers, it's all about what's in range.

Finally, I remember max tracking distance being Gar>Druid>Bard. Can someone back me up?

[YendorLootmonkey]

Tracking window never auto updated in 1998-2003 except when mobs on the currently open tracking window despawned/died. There was never a point where mobs were added to the currently open window. You had to refresh the contents of the tracking window by hitting Track. This is the way it currently works.

Having the filter buttons on the UI interface and having the ability to sort the list are two different things. Before we had the filter options on the window itself, we had text-based commands to do the sorting. Not sure when those were implemented without researching though.

I do remember making comments back during classic that having a lower tracking skill was actually more useful because the mobs on your list would be closer to you. This comment would have only made sense if we didn't start out being able to sort by distance.

I looked thru my old screenshots and unfortunately I had no examples of the original tracking window and way too many of wood elf and barb female tits.

[nilbog]

Ok so here's the deal.

The changes made to Tracking for the last patch worked, but the client didn't like them. Even though proper sorting is done server side, once it reaches the client, it's wrong.

Pending update, changes are reversed until we have a better fix.

[YendorLootmonkey]

Thank you so much for looking into this!!

[Samoht Farstrider]

epicgar's post is what I remember from live way back when. Can't wait for this to be fixed!

[azxten]

Sweet, thanks for taking the time to fix.