14.2 - General Changes

[Cosmik]

General Changes:

*Invisibility is now implemented for player-to-player interaction. This means you can hide from another player, and he will have to hit "?" (Search) button to see you. When you hide, your Concealment skill is used against Perception. (With 75% chance of being hidden if the skill level is equal). When someone is hidden and you search for him or her, you use perception as the attacking skill. (Thus having 75% chance of finding the opponent.) Also, we have found a bug in the Concealment code that we have fixed, increasing the chance of you being hidden from green mobs. The search code is changed when looking for hidden characters. You have a base radius of 5-meters which increases to a 40-meter radius (or all visible characters with 100% char view distance) when you get 1000 in perception.

*Increased the XP you get from picking locks.

*F9 is now stripped for some debug info. Now only information that is useful to the player will be displayed. You can use "shift+F9" to get all the "old" information.

*We now show a progress bar when AO is closing down. We have added this because on some computers the de-allocation of memory can take a very long time and if the player restarts AO while this is happening, the new game might not have enough resources to run properly.

*Made some changes to post mission cleanup. Reason for this change is to decrease load on servers. Side effects: - You will no longer be able to delete the mission by deleting all mission keys. You can still delete the mission by using the right mouse button on mission icons and then select the delete mission option.

*Implemented improved feedback in character creation when you try to choose a name that has been taken, or is illegal.

*Fixed a bug that sometimes caused players to face the wrong way after zoning.

*Boss monsters in team missions will now be more visually distinct. They will be larger and have a glow. There are a number of different boss types, each with a different glow.

*Boss monsters in team missions will now give more experience.

*Tweaked the power curve of the team mission boss monsters. They aren't so difficult at lower levels anymore.

[Letah]

We now show a progress bar when AO is closing down. We have added this because on some computers the de-allocation of memory can take a very long time and if the player restarts AO while this is happening, the new game might not have enough resources to run properly.

Hmm when one quits AO the clientr.exe does not get termed, thus giving a 300mb running program still. Windows does deallocate that yes but that takes a lot time, forcing it do close suing ctrl-alt-del is way faster, but.. shouldnt the game do this? Can't be that hard I think. Without it relogging will always timeout.

Cosmik won't show nekkid in a thong anymore

Good!

[_______FeloniousPunk]

In my impatience I've tried before to terminate the process using Task Manager so I could have my resources back, and if I don't wait at least a minute to do that, it locks up my system forcing me to do a hard reboot (Win2K Professional, latest SP).

[__________starknaked]

The search radius, in my mind, sounds like it could be a really bad idea.

This means that only high level players will be able to effectively search for anyone. What's the point in even bothering to search if you're level 50 and your search radius is 10 or 15 meters? Anyone who is sneaking up to attack you in PVP will be 30 meters away anyway.

And by the way, 40 meters is not the maximum character view distance, is it? I thought it was higher than that. When standing in certain spots you can see people much farther away than that.

[_______________Crung]

Originally posted by Cosmik
General Changes:

*Invisibility is now implemented for player-to-player interaction. This means you can hide from another player, and he will have to hit "?" (Search) button to see you. When you hide, your Concealment skill is used against Perception. (With 75% chance of being hidden if the skill level is equal). When someone is hidden and you search for him or her, you use perception as the attacking skill. (Thus having 75% chance of finding the opponent.) Also, we have found a bug in the Concealment code that we have fixed, increasing the chance of you being hidden from green mobs. The search code is changed when looking for hidden characters. You have a base radius of 5-meters which increases to a 40-meter radius (or all visible characters with 100% char view distance) when you get 1000 in perception.

Anyone else played DAoC? Anyone else have a bad feeling about this? DAoC's PVP is ruled by stealthers because stealth is too powerful. After reading the balance between hiding and detection I'm thinking that AO is heading down the same road. I seriously hope Funcom reconsiders the balance and errs on the side of caution. After all, being able to hide at all is an improvement.

[Bothead]

This all sounds good to me =)

[______Venture/Plixie]

Originally posted by Cosmik
General Changes:

*F9 is now stripped for some debug info. Now only information that is useful to the player will be displayed. You can use "shift+F9" to get all the "old" information.

Goodie!! This is something I've been waiting for since the start!!!

Originally posted by Cosmik
General Changes:

*We now show a progress bar when AO is closing down. We have added this because on some computers the de-allocation of memory can take a very long time and if the player restarts AO while this is happening, the new game might not have enough resources to run properly.

Some computers?! I'd like to see the monster machine running this game for 3 hours, and then shutting down quickly! =)
Anyway, Good.. Been waiting for this too!!

Originally posted by Cosmik
General Changes:

*Fixed a bug that sometimes caused players to face the wrong way after zoning.

Wohooo, no more going back and forth!

[____________Jennelle]

I am very excited about this patch and have been waiting for it for some time now... so the only question I have is, when?

-- Jen

[Letah]

Originally posted by FeloniousPunk
In my impatience I've tried before to terminate the process using Task Manager so I could have my resources back, and if I don't wait at least a minute to do that, it locks up my system forcing me to do a hard reboot (Win2K Professional, latest SP).

hm weird, same OS here and I also term clientr via taskmanager. It's a long wait though and it LOOKS like it hanged, try waiting somewhat longer. Sometimes I need to wait a half minute even.

[Arinia]

Agreed, I used to think that it was locked, but in reality it was just deallocating memory.

[Bothead]

If you listen to your drive churning away or watch the little orange light flashing on your PC, you can tell when the job or de-allocating virtual memory is done anyway... nice touch though.

[Kuro]

Does invisibility also cover the minimap?

[-Zagadka-]

Originally posted by Plixus
Some computers?! I'd like to see the monster machine running this game for 3 hours, and then shutting down quickly! =)

I do that, sometimes. I just have an assload of RAM. I've run 2 AO clients on 2 accounts, /quit from one, and relogged. I need to do it for events sometimes. I had to run through Omni-1 Ent on 2 clients, under fire on both, with 20 other people attacking. Neither one crashed or LDed.

AO isn't really horrible on resources anymore. It just takes a LOT in general to run.

[Graxxus]

Well it seems that the way this is set up everyone can benefit by puting points into concealment. Agents will be able to have monsterously high concealment through our buffs compared to everyones perception rating...even if they max their perception...an advantage for once. But when we attack with our aimed shot while concealed our concealment breaks. Making us very visible to everyone in the area. However any engineers or crats using the sympathetic or motivational/demotivational speech nano spam will break our conceal if they or we move into range of them. I can understand the reasoning for casting nanos to break your conceal but not the reasoning for nanos being casted on you. Does this also mean that concealment checks will be made in PvP for aimed shot or sneak attack? And will the perception of mobs be based on a similar scheme? Does increasing perception have any effect on increasing the scan range other than when you achieve 1000 in perception?

What is the range for detection of players by mobs? Perception of mobs shouldn't be any higher than what is normally possible by that class and breed at their level. As it is now mobs seem to have a limitless perception check field that isn't based on proximity or line of sight. Walls and doors should have somewhat of a dampening effect on perception checks vs concealment.

Please give us a visual indicator on the mobs or players that can detect us. Getting spammed by messages, though helpful to letting us know how screwed up concealment really is right now, doesn't help us that much when there are several mobs with that name roaming the mission area.

Also if someone is concealed in a PvP area how can that person be detected. Is it always done via search button? If it is then everyone could use sneak too effectively especially ranged attack users. But of course PvP areas would be empty because everyone would be in sneak. No one would be able to detect anyone beyond 5 meters until when you get 1000 in perception? or will it scale up to 40 meters as you increase perception? Many questions we need to get answered and fixed if necessary...testing might take a while on this patch.

[______________tiitii]

heard that 14.0 broke the quest so u could no longer combine the 8 items into a brain to return to Alvin or Dodga, hoping that a fix for this is coming in 14.2?

despite spending several hours camping the Trash King to kill robots for parts, i kind of had fun with this quest. took forever to get the last item, but i will be happy if i can get those cool shoulder pads, which every twinkie needs.

Tiitii the Robot Killer

[_______________runey]

*Invisibility is now implemented for player-to-player interaction.

Dude, I get that now. Just run three rooms away from your teammates in a mission. Guaranteed invisibility. :P Mobs are very good at it...

[___________Stercoral]

yahaaaaaa INVISIBILITY !
Hopefully it's the beginning of more freedom on RK !

Keep on that way Funcom, that enhance RP !

[____________Travesty]

This power is used over and over again in rpg's and seems to cause nothing but trouble. I remember back in beta that the designers of AO stated that they had learned from the mistakes of the second generation of online rpgs and that they wouldnt allow true invisibility this time around. The problems in the other games were that it became too easy to ambush those classes that didnt have similiar abilities. Also, the designers stated that everyone began using invisibility and the means to counter it. Thus, it became a power that you had to have, yet in practical terms(because of the counter spell), didnt greatly enhance game play, instead it added just an element that actually got in the way to how people played the game.

So, AO designers said that they would allow concealment(with cloaks) to let people become transparant, but not invisible to kind of cut out the middle man. A clever ambusher could hide in the tall grass or in front of a heavily textured surface and still have a chance of not being seen. But, they made cloaking devices difficult to use at best. So, instead of fixing cloaks, we will have invisibility? The very ability that they didnt want to make pvp a chore in AO?

[____________Travesty]

I fear that invisibility will turn pvp into submarine warfare. Not in an entertaining way either, but into a click fiesta! Running through dangerous territory, one will have to constantly push 'search' in order to have a decent chance of spotting someone. Doing otherwise is asking for an ambush. So, get ready to run, click, run click, click, run...sounds like fun already.

Also, team mates in missions tend to blink out existance enough as it is...do we want them to do this More?!? I can see it now, "where is agent x?", "im right here. crap, you mean Im still invisible? Im not sneaking anymore" ugggh.

Team pvp will be totally destroyed! How can you coordinate an attack with a team when you cant see any of your team mates! Who will want that kind of hassle? It amazes me. From the start AO pvp was designed to be team vs team, but considering how titles work and now considering this change, I think that idea has somehow been derailed.

Who wont be using invisibility? Even people that dont train in it will have a chance for it to work. If you are on the defense, you would be crazy not to. I believe it will dominate how pvp is done and not for the better.

[____________Travesty]

As a compromise, I suggest people become transparent instead of invisible when they try to conceal themselves. Simply, make it possible without a cloak. The more concealment, the more transparent. This would allow someone to hide, not get targetted with 'tab' without the negative effects in my previous posts.