Game Mechanics: Feign Death: Combat Damage Breaks and/or secondary Intelligence Check

[Rygar]

Wall of text coming at you! Major changes require major evidence, so here are the findings...

Summary:

I came across some interesting guides and comments on how FD worked on live, and actually having a 60 monk on P99 I can say I've never seen these factors in play. I think the mechanic needs some tweaking. It seems the major tests on live that were carried out on 'FD fails' involved hitting macros over and over and logging how many 'Fallen to the Ground' messages you received. These other chances for FD to fail would not have been accounted for.

In short, if you FD too close to a combat damage round, the damage should still hit you when you are down and at least have a chance to break your FD. Also, there is evidence to support that mobs were subject to a secondary 'Intelligence Check' based on a successful FD, which would essentially 'see through' your FD.

I never played a monk on Live in era, so maybe others can verify / dispute these findings, please chime in.

On Combat Damage breaking FD:

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=366

BUT Feign Death always has a chance to fail, whether we're talking about this spell or the Monk skill.

Some very good information about Feign Death is found at this link: Casters Realm -- Feign Death Explained.

This is a 2003 quote, but other evidence will show it was accurate for in era FD fails despite no failure message. Others also suggest that mobs can hit you for a short period before leaving you alone and 'believing you are dead':

Sometimes even a monks feign death takes a few precious seconds to convince the mob of your demise, so casting this with only a sliver of health left will probably not save your life as the mob will continue to pummel you for a bit before it becomes tired of beating a dead horse, so to speak, and sets off in search of more lively prey.

I happen to have a monk and yes it will take some time to let em know your dead, its funny the way that works, heh =P

I found the guide mentioned (which was also referenced by other sites as a good FD guide). I'm not exactly sure when it was posted, but the wayback link at least shows 8/25/2002:
https://web.archive.org/web/20020825...eign_death.asp

The most typical way is when you receive the message '<player1> has fallen to the ground'. This signifies that you have not feigned successfully, and the mob(s) will treat you as an alive enemy and carry on attacking.

The other cause of feign death failing was originally thought of as a bug but turned out to be Verant's way of showing 'nothing is certain'. What happens is just before you go to feign death the mob launches an attack, whether through casting or melee, and as you feign the mob registers that you are dead, but it does not pull back on its swing or stop casting. The result of which is that it still hits you on the floor. Upon learning that even though are "dead" you do in fact take damage, they are smart enough to realize you are still alive and they will restart their attack. The only way around this is timing, you have to try time your feign just after the mobs finishes its attack. There is no you can skill raise which can affect this.

Some in era evidence from 2/24/2000:

There are mobs in the game the DONT fall for FD. I dont mean that it didnt work, I mean you are laying on the ground "playing dead", and you are still being attacked

Not thru coding, or intentionally, but I believe it has to do with lag. You feign, and the mob thinks you are dead, then the last hit it made finally makes it through all the packetloss and high ping, and it hits you after it thinks you are dead...and suddenly it realizes you are not dead anymore.

I died to the froglok king the other day in a group that had run out of mana. My monk could NOT feign this bugger, failed on 2 tries, despite not seeing a "You have fallen to the ground" message. However, I feigned him out easily when feign pulling the king room...

Some later evidence from 2003, but shows this 'combat damage bug' was still a thing even then:

FD will fail if the mob is in the process of casting a spell or attack, you must FD during the delay between swings.

Other evidence from around the same time here:

For the casting FDers (necro, SK) it takes more practice because of the casting delay. If the mob is in mid swing and the FD goes off, the blow will still land on you and the mob wont be fooled, even if the spell was successful.

So this seems pretty compelling that straight up melee attacks could break your FD. I'm talking a successful FD (no auto attack on, no casters casting, etc). My guess is P99 has some fail safe to ensure melee damage sent from the server is either ignored or won't break a FD if a client side successful FD is registered beforehand? It seems that should not be the case (or maybe we have such high ping its not happening, dunno).

The Intelligence Check:

I came across this dev post from Gordon responding to a user, the link to the poster is gone but comments remain. It appears he is complaining that he had a successful FD on 2 mobs, but a different mob saw him despite not hitting him before hand. Post is from mid-2000:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010822...ve/arc76.shtml

Feign Death
[Quote from original post: Today i used one of my spells that is supposed to save my life at least once in a while. I was in Karnor's catle and 4 drolvgar were pulled when i was not in a group yet. 2 died and i went oom and very low health so i feigned and checked to see if it worked. It worked both were indifferent to me.]

Every experience I've had with feign death indicates that it either works, or it doesn't. This is the first I've heard of it working, the person having the item to /con each creature that was on them, then it breaking for no reason.

Possible reasons it might have happened:

1. Another mob came into range and wasn't fooled.
2. Perhaps hit by an AE spell? (haven't never been hit by one while feighed before, I'm not sure if this would do it.)
3. It's possible that the critters might get several chances to see through it if they are just standing around. I'll check into this tomorrow.
4. Some bug?
1-3 would not be bugs if it is one of those that was happening.

Please remember that creatures do not get a direct save versus feign. If you get a "fallen to the ground" message, none of them are fooled. If you do not get that message, you have then fooled them subject to a low percentage chance of the creature making it's intelligence check.

You do, however, get an indication if a creature isn't fooled, it keeps beating on you.

I didn't want to take this as gospel and wanted things to back it up (after all, he wasn't completely sure if an AoE broke FD, which it does). Here are some links/posts I think corroborate at least some of this (it is possible this 'intelligence check' is the same thing as the 'combat damage bug', but I don't believe that to be the case):

Dev board post from early 2001:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010822...ve/arc25.shtml

[Quote from original post: In addition, since kunark came out, people have noticed that feign is seen through more and more when the monk is down below 2 bubbles of health. This is a situation where the monk has successfully met the skill check (no "fallen" message), no spell was cast on the monk since they fd'ed, but the mob keeps pounding away. In the monk community this is refered often to as the "frenzy code". When a mob decides that they are going to kill you, they will kill you regardless. I personally have had times where I fd 8 or 9 times successfully in a row, but still have the mob continue to beat on me. Feign at above 2 bubbles of health, and this HARDLY happens.
So, at higher levels fd is useless as an escape tactic.]

Thanks, that's a useful explanation of the situation. I'll use it. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This could be reference to the combat bug, but seems a bit suspicious if it is more frequent at low health (perhaps an intelligence check has a higher chance at that point). I didn't look more into this 'frenzy code' for now, but it corroborates at the very least that you can get your FD broken without spell casting on a successful flop.

An in era quote from an experienced Necro here:

You can tell if FD has worked or not by looking at your screen when you cast it, if it says "Soandso has fallen to the ground" it means that FD has failed and the mob will return to munch on you. If there's no message at all it generally means it's succeeded, however, just to be sure, keep the mob targetted and /con it to make sure you're Indifferent to it. If you're still Scowling or Threateningly to it then FD has failed and you should IMMEDIATELY stand up

I'm considering this evidence of an intelligence check as it clearly mentions no fail message, and conning the mob to verify a successful flop 'else he'll return to you' (i.e. maybe was in combat with a pet or feared, mentions fear later in thread). Should not be a combat damage bug as there is no reason to con the mob if he is already meleeing you to death.

Late 2001 Monkly Business guide seems to infer higher level mobs are tougher to fool:
http://www.monkly-business.net/forum...de-Feign-Death

I learned an important lesson with that death. Different creatures have different chances to "believe" your trickery. Those many levels higher than you will rarely "fall for it" and those many levels below you will almost always be fooled.

I began to look to see if higher level has a chance to work less on a FD:
http://www.monkly-business.net/forum...ie-to-Disciple

Don't get discouraged, because you will get lots of 'fallen to the ground' messages which means you failed the Feign Death, and sometimes you can still fail it when you don't get that message.

It is around now that Feign death will be working, but still be a bit unsure. Like, you could fail it if attacked by a red-conning mob

Some mentions of high level mobs not being able to be feigned off here. A lot of disputes and back and forth, some claim mobs were unfeignable, but others say they have seen those mobs be feigned off by other monks. Seems to indicate Vindi / AoW were hard to fool:

I have also heard some mobs can't be fooled

The list is pretty small. I've feigned off most things, including Vulak (before his untimely 'removal' from the game), with no problems. The main exception I can think of is Avatar of War. Once he turns on me I've never once been able to feign him off.

I've managed and seen other monks FD him off.

I have successfully feigned level 60+ mobs (level 65 about the average ntov dragon level?)

FD does have some bugs.. and one mob who is the bain of my FD is vindi.

Vindi is the bastard who I can never FD off, once he turns on me im dead..
guaranteed.

Conclusion:

I think this makes a good case for Combat Damage breaks and a somewhat good case for an intelligence check. It is very difficult to find completely buttoned up evidence where people say "I had attack off, there were no spell casters, I was not being hit by combat damage so it wasn't that bug, I wasn't lagging out, and I had a successful FD with no 'Fallen to the Ground' message".

Also, the original game designers were pretty good on balance, is rare that something should ALWAYS work. It seems like they like putting in failure chances to keep people on their toes (see hide, gates collapsing, spell fizzles, etc).

If 'Intelligence Checks' are implemented, I've no idea on a formula, that may need to be a P99 recreation. I had heard through flop testing on monks that the failure rate on FD (i.e. Fallen messages) had no difference from skill of 100 to skill of 200. Would be interesting if your Level + FD skill factored into the equation, as well as the mobs level and some kind of weighted factor. Not sure how caster spells would scale to a possible Intelligence Check.

If you want any further information I will be happy to help seek that out, I tapped a lot of resources to find this info, but I'm sure I can find more if I dig harder.

Thank you Devs for this wonderful recreation of an amazing game!

[Danth]

On my Shadow Knight I've seen combat damage-related feign fails here on P1999. The dead giveaway is when you feign normally with no fail message and the monster(s) continue attacking anyway. It doesn't happen a lot (quite possibly due to lower net latency nowdays relative to years past) but it does happen. On the other hand, I have never once seen the other behavior described, where a monster continues attacking for several rounds then ceases later on. That sure sounds latency-related though.

I don't have a Monk, so I can't speak for the skill-based rather than spell-based feign ability.

As an additional point, increasing blur probability from repeated feigns are pretty flagrantly either unimplemented or not functioning properly here, as most any active Monk/SK/Necro can attest.

Danth

[Rygar]

Thanks for the feedback! Perhaps that combat damage bug does in fact have a chance to work on P99, I personally have never had it on my monk.

Looking over the notes, it seemed to be a common practice to try and avoid, so I gather it was a higher probability of happening in era on Live. Not sure if devs would want to simulate this 'mid-swing' effect or just let the ping decide.

[Rygar]

One day I'll do some tests them to see how hard / easy it is to fail with combat damage, but seeing as how it never happened to me in 60 levels and feigning to a large number of mobs beating on me, seems like some measures were taken to prevent it, just my opinion.

[Rygar]

Good to know that feature is working then. I do find it odd such a critical thing mentioned in old posts i happened to avoid by chance for 60 levels, but alas it would be hard to quantify a "classic fail rate" anyways without some logs of how soon you could feign before an attack. In your logs what was the time stamp of when you flopped (just look for "auto attack is off" maybe) vs when the melee hit you?

Ever have any run ins with a P99 intelligence check? Meaning, no melee or caster damage and the mob just "sees through" your FD?

[Brocode]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68jNoKRiRoo some like this one

[Caiu]

When a mob pathed directly over you while fd it would have a chance to "trip" over you and break the fd during the classic era. Otherwise nothing saw through fd.

Source: classic monk experience