LD handling is just ridiculous

[scarbrowed]

OK, I'm getting sick of this. Everytime I go Link Dead with only 1 aggroed mob, which happens to be rooted. I take an XP death. As a druid, with egress memmed, the only way I die in that situation is if I fall asleep. (It does not help that the re-revamp of PoM takes away the best place to grind XP I've found so far. I'll be 53 for ever at this rate.)

[Akephalos]

You're a druid. You've probably got a nuke memmed, and we all know that root isn't horribly reliable through nukes.

It seems fairly logical to me that while you're under the server's control, it's probably casting nukes for you. And since at that stage, you're essentially an NPC, the server's not going to cast Egress for you (NPC's can't zone, so it's not in their AI.)

As a necro who root-dot's fairly often, I can pretty easily go LD and come back perfectly alive. Maybe 1 in 5 times I'll come back dead.

--Ake

[Grenoble]

I was always under the impression that during a link death, the game would only keep you meleeing if that's what you were doing, and not cast for you or use any other special abilities.

[Tinile]

Nope, it will use the spells you have memmed as well and try to kill the mob. Bonus is, that it won't use your mana up either. I once went LD during a duel and kicked major booty. Poor guy lost exp tho, since I was an npc

[Itek]

Um...

Don't go LinkDead. (Sort of the point.)

"The game handles LD poorly." (Also, sort of the point.)

There is a great REASON for the game to handle LD badly. To provide you with great incentive to NOT "pull the plug" on a fight about to go south. It's intentional. It's part of the game design. It's part of the general rules for designing an online game.

I thought from the title of the post this was about the "you have been disconnected" message.

Server: You have been disconnected.
Itek : Wow, that's odd. I haven't cast a spell, sent or received a message, attacked or been attacked, or seen anyone move for almost two minutes. My "latency meter" has had 0 ping time FROM the server and solid packet loss TO the server that whole time. You mean to tell me all this means -I-Have-Been-Disconnected- .... freaky. Must write this down in my journal.

Itek: Well the game said "I have been disconnected" so I'll just log back in....
Chat Server: 1017, can't connect to Chat Server.
Itek: Wait wait wait.... how can the chat server tell me I can't talk to the chat server.... I'm getting a headache....
Chat Server: 1017, you may need to run the patch...
Itek: I highly doubt there's been a patch in the last 30 seconds...
Chat Server: 1017, please camp to desktop and try again...
Itek: Ok....
Chat Server: 1017, maybe your Play Server died?
Itek: Ok, check chat server...
Chat Server: There are _8_ General Chat rooms. There are only GMs in General_Chat_0
Itek: Hmm... that seem Odd.
Chat Server: Sorry, you can't see General_Chat_0 as that room is FULL.
Itek: Ok, let's check the Server Chat Room.
Chat Server: There are currently 80,000 people in Your_Server_Chat.
Itek: Senseing a trend... or is that heading...
Chat Server: There are passworded channels for; Your Guild, Competing Guild 01 thru Competing Guild 05, Uber Guild - Time, Ubah Guild - Time-Lite, Ubah Guild - Elemental 01 thru 03, and 6 other guilds you know of on your server.
Itek: If I drank this would be a good drinking game....

Itek: Ok, server seems to be back up, or at least it's letting people back in.
Chat Server: 1018, you have an active character.
Itek: Um, but you told me I was disconnected. Don't you remember? It was like 30 minutes ago.
Chat Server: 1018, please wait a minute.
Itek: It's been like 30... hello, is this thing on...
Chat Server: 1018, would you like to start a character on another server.... a less crowded one perhaps.... Stormhammer isn't too crowded... ok, there's a minor fee...

Itek: Ok, turned the cable modem off. Turned the router off. Turned the modem back on, turned the router back on. Turned the computer back on, re-checked the patch...
Chat Server: 1017
Chat Server: 1018 (just for a change of pace)
Chat Server: 1017
*loading music*
*loading music*

Itek: /gu greets all, back from LD... on my way to SSra... again...
Various Guildies: Welcome back.
Itek: /tell Pally-Pal-Pete on my way bro.
Pete: Woot. WB.
Itek: Which camp we at....
*time passes*
*looks at latency bar*

"You have been disconnected"

Chat Server: Lalala, I'm not listening... 1017
Chat Server: 1018 (Yeah, I told you that you're disconnected but eh... I'm not SURE yet, gimme a bit... /gems)

[Dunthor Warsmith]

LDs in combat are a royal pain. I think I've come back alive once (mentioned below), maybe twice, out of all the times I've LDed while fighting - whether the fight was easy or not. Its made me really wonder how I died some of those times - if I'd just hit autoattack and gone AFK I would've won, but LD I lost :P

One time I did get a handy bonus - I was about 50% mana and 10% health when I LD'd, and when I came back, I was alive and full health, and still ~50m. Either I LD LoH'd myself or stood there and GHealed myself, but either way it was a nice savings on downtime (since LD ability/mana uses don't count)

[GraemeFaelban]

I've only died twice to LD, survived many LD combats somehow. One of the two deaths was running across OT, LD, log back in,

WAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
You have taken 10,000 points of non melee damage.

I was level 26 or so at the time. It was an interesting CR.

[Sanna]

heh.

I've had 2 significant LDs ....

1st in Jaggedpine, I was badly low on health, and an older guildie was trying to teach me how to charm (Iroke is a druid). Connection was crappity-crap-crap because of the extreme inadiquacy that dares to call itself Computing Services at my uni. I LDed and when I came back, not only was I alive but I had won; guildie reported that I healed myself and beatzored the thing to death (tankin' druid yo!) I don't think I got any xp tho, but can't quite remember.


2nd was in Western Wastes. Still on the druid.... same guildie... still teaching me how to charm.... wow, maybe my connection is telling me i just don't get to charm.... even though these incidents were almost exactly 3 months apart. WW is full of CoV-faction dragons, to whom I am max ally (but normal PCs generally start out KoS to CoV, so yes I've done uber faction work). I LDed with my pet still charmed.... when I came back, yep I was at my bind point. Guildie reported that not only did my pet rhino kill the wolf it was fighting, but that when I LDed and became KOS to the CoV dragons, one of which ended up slayzoring me really rather quickly, my trusty pet rhino even attempted to take the dragon down.

"Heh," he said, "with pets like that, who even needs friends?"

^_^
-- Sanna

PS: Itek is teh funny ^_^

[Cubwynn]

heheh I remember when you could go LD in the middle of a fight, re-init EQ, and come back into the fight.

I've dinged during LD's. I've died during LD's. I've had the pets of LD people go postal on me.

LD's can be fun occasionally ;-)

[scarbrowed]

I'm not really sure what Char's do during LD. I know one other time I went LD, and my corpse was far from where I went LD. And this was in Velks Lab, so I'm not even sure how I could have walked from where I went LD to there without pulling 100 spiders behind me.

I also know that when group members go LD, I've protected them (pulling the mob off them and healing them) so they did not die. But they ended up dead when they logged in anyway.

But you should probably just ignore my rantings. I just finished all the collections for shawl #5, and failed the combine after getting tailoring all the way to 199. So I'm not a very happy EQer right now.

[Verdandi]

Yep, LDs are definitely handled differently than they used to be. I once came back from LD and still had my pet! I believe that was changed when, well, I won't go into details, but people found ways to use LDs to get past stuff that they should have had to fight. Sometime after I heard about that, LD was changed to keep you out until your character had poofed. The problem as I understand it is that you don't actually poof until you are no longer on anything's agro list, so that it can't be used to avoid death and exp loss if a fight goes badly. The game takes you over and plays you like an npc using the spells you have up and the tactics it would normally use for an npc of your race and class. When you die or the mobs with you on their agro lists are dead, your character then poofs.

So, yes, it's all to prevent exploiting. It didn't used to be that inconvenient, so you can blame the people who exploited. And yes, some of the ways they exploited it really were bad enough to justify the changes. People were sneaking solo very deep into high level dungeons that have lots of see invis mobs so that they should have required groups fighting through. That made it too easy to get to some valuable mobs with choice loot and...well it was bad.

[Auricula]

"When you die or the mobs with you on their agro lists are dead, your character then poofs."

Just took me over 15 minutes to not have an 'active character' after a LD while being a seller in Bazaar.

[Saleani]

Something went phooey in this patch, and its possible to crash to the desktop if you get a pop up window, like TL boxes, rez boxes, guild invites, etc. If the window can close by itself, its possible to crash when the window despawns. I am sure some evil person will figure a way to make folks go LD to kill them deliberately on non-pvp servers.

[Verdandi]

Originally posted by Auricula
"When you die or the mobs with you on their agro lists are dead, your character then poofs."

Just took me over 15 minutes to not have an 'active character' after a LD while being a seller in Bazaar.

I didn't say you can log on again right away after you've poofed. When your character has poofed they are out of danger. But yea getting back in can be a pain

[Carmaris]

Actually, you don't have to be off the aggro list of all mob's...you just can't be engaged with a mob. There have been times that I've been on a mob's aggro list, gone LD, and safely gotten out without the mob being dead. But as I wasn't engaged with the mob at the time of LD, nor did the mob do anything to aggro the NPC version of me, I was able to LD in relative safety.

As far as casting spells when LD, it used to be that you would cast whatever spell is in gem #8. I remember going LD once at level 51, pulling in Lguk. My group mates came looking for me, only to find me going toe to toe with three mobs--three mobs that I couldn't have handled normally. I cast my undead nuke repeatedly (spell gem #8) and meleed...killed all three then faded away.

I don't know if it still works the same way now, what with the new AI for casting mobs. I do know that I have been charmed by mobs and healed them.