Game Mechanics: Summoning Timer

[Caiu]

Currently mobs above lvl 50 summon on a 10 second timer.

This is not accurate for this era apparently. It should be 18 seconds according to Brad McQuaid.

http://web.archive.org/web/200210262...ML/000210.html

-----Original Message-----
From: McQuaid, Brad
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2001 6:57 PM
To: 'Gtath'; McQuaid, Brad
Cc: "Itzlegend"; Butler, Jeff
Subject: RE: Response to your letter dated 06/06/2001

Hi guys,

Just to let you know, I've personally spent many hours today and yesterday investigating what apparently happened that night you were all suspended. It was complicated enough that I involved all sorts of people: the GMs who witnessed the event, Jeff Butler who also witnessed the event, Kendrick who designed the zone, the programmers who wrote the AI NPC code, and the GM who is in charge of investigating and recreating these events. I also read through both the logs you've provided and our logs of the event (which show the battle, the status and location of the mob, who he was mad at, where he was trying to go, how many HP he had, etc.).

First, I'll say that our original public statement was too vague and it also contained a mistake on our part: it turns out the data on the live servers WAS wrong such that the sleeper when awakened did NOT show the correct model (and instead displayed the default model, the male human). We apologize for this.

That said, our investigation and logs have lead us to creating the following account of what we believe took place and the methods by which the encounter was exploited. If you feel any of these are in error or are inaccurate, please feel free to respond accordingly.

The exploits were performed as follows:

1. Garner high amounts of hate on PCs who are positioned in a location the NPC cannot walk to (in this case, under the bridge).
2. Begin attack
3. NPC then takes enough damage to start summoning
4. Players who are summoned (once every 18 seconds) immediately jump off bridge, returning to the safe point (knowing NPC is unable to damage them, follow them there, or summon for another 18 seconds.
5. During this cycle, the other PCs who are not on the top of the hate list get multiple free rounds of attack without fear of retaliation
6. In the rare event that the topside PCs generate enough hate to get turned on, they are Call of Hero'd or Resurrected out of danger.
7. In summary, the key to this exploit is that during the majority of the 18 seconds the NPC is waiting for his summon to recycle, he is unable to follow and/or damage the PC he wants to kill, creating an opportunity for the other PCs to deal free damage.

This is safe zone exploitation, similar to standing on a wall and blowing up an NPC who cannot reach you because of a pathing bug, the only difference being that in this particular case every 18 seconds the NPC had a brief albeit ineffectual opportunity to deal damage.

In addition, the majority of PCs in the immediate area have spell effects (e.g. the res effect, snare, etc.) that render them immune to the NPC's area breath weapon, further enabling them to deal damage to the NPC with impunity as well as offer support to the other PCs in the area.

--

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Albeit not in the zone he is speaking of and the summon time varied by zone.

First, comments to your email as follows:

> Anyways, sorry it took so long to reply - I had people
> logging in to check
> the summoning time. 18 seconds seemed far too long.. It has
> been "common
> knowledge" at least in our guild, that a mob summons once per
> 10 seconds -
> and its true it seems. A friend logged in and got summoned 3
> times by a mob
> before zoning. This is the log:
>
> [Fri Jun 08 20:07:46 2001] Andad Filla says 'You will not
> evade me Valent!'
> [Fri Jun 08 20:07:56 2001] Andad Filla says 'You will not
> evade me Valent!'
> [Fri Jun 08 20:08:07 2001] Andad Filla says 'You will not
> evade me Valent!'
>
> Twice for 10 seconds once for 11 (not sure why the difference
> here, maybe
> there is sometimes a small period of time when summon is
> "ready" and the mob
> just has to choose to use it). All mobs summon at the same
> frequency - I'm
> pretty sure on that. Feel free to test this yourself...

You're correct -- we were wrong there. Summon recycle times vary by zone, and Sleepers has a 10 second recycle to make it more difficult.