Fixed Internally Mobs Dropping Agro

Had this problem all night at Miscreation camp in COV WW.. I know I'm a bard, so I don't use selos, and half of the time I run backwards just to watch the mobs incoming.. I'm still in Line of Sight. and they just give up.. unless I hit them with something damaging, and then I run the risk of getting summoned over and over to my death trying to get them back to camp

I really wish we could get some kind of update on this. Fixed internally is at least nice to know that “something” was addressed. Honestly I’m hopeful that they reverted whatever they did until they can implement something more concrete vs the far-taunt exploit. The fix for this seems to be more in line with adding restrictions on the taunt skill instead of how aggro is managed.

Several aggro related changes in the August 2021 patch are being conflated - two different aggro related exploit changes were made in the August 2021 patch. Neither of these had a public patch note (we don't usually have public notes for exploit changes). A separate change was related to Taunt and does have a public note (Threat Mechanics broken). Although being transparent about what changes are made and why is beneficial to regular players, it also makes it easier for cheaters to tell what we are doing to combat them, and figure out ways around it. That is why some threads and game changes are tight-lipped even though you may really want an explanation.

Our bug report process doesn't necessarily end with a post from a developer, it's at the discretion of any developer to respond or to mark the thread as fixed once it's been changed. Sometimes that doesn't happen until after the fix goes live and players are no longer seeing the bug. Sometimes we forget to mark bugs as fixed and have to come around later for it much after the fact. I am sure there are some bugs buried in this forum that are fixed, but not marked appropriately.

The most helpful thing now is for players to test these changes when they are patched to the Test server and let us know if you are still seeing issues (the changes related to this thread should have a public patch note).

How is taunt not using LOS an exploit? Are we really to believe no dev knew this for 20+ years? It's one thing to say we will no longer allow it for XYZ reasons but I just find it hard to fathom labeling this an exploit. It's labeling anybody who's ever played a tank a long time an exploiter.

The original development team didn't consider FD splitting to be an intended action. Should we be concerned it will be identified as an exploit?

Also, it's not like having a patch note for adding an LOS check would have revealed any information that wasn't immediately apparent to anyone who logged on and used taunt regularly. It was clearly talked about on test before it ever hit live so it's not like it could be used as a honeypot either. Instead you end up in a situation where people don't even know if the changes are a bug or intended and we got no feedback on that. When you change behavior that has been in the game since the beginning or almost the beginning, I think it should require a little more than nothing.

I just really don't understand this explanation in relation to adding the LOS check.

It allowed raid bosses to be tanked with the tank out of LoS so the boss wouldn't cast their AoEs. Useful on only a handful of mobs in the game but it's much better to handicap the entire game for a few classic dragons.

It also finally confirms that NPC in this game have no sense of hearing, smell, or taste; but even the eyeless blind ones can see.

Oh man, I would hope it's because of some misguided attempt at addressing far taunting rather than this. The LOS change alone doesn't prevent pre-built aggro from something like a harm touch and maintaining aggro with buffs (or simply generating a ton of aggro while on fearless and then going around a corner). There would have to be a number of better ways of addressing that very limited exploit. I can only hope that this is not why they changed a core behavior.

If this is what they were trying to fix, then they're not actually fixing the true exploit. You don't burn down the house because you see one roach. If you make a change to hurt a few cheaters but change the gameplay for thousands of others, I'd say such a fix was not in the best interest of the game.

Test was patched, people noticed the changes and asked was it intended. It still went live.
/riddle me this: Was it worth even logging onto test.

Nobody can test changes unless you tell us what the changes are.

Literally no one did this. There is not a single player report of mobs leashing/losing aggro mid-pull in the test thread, and this thread was made after the live patch.

All the test thread is filled with is complaining about Taunt now requiring LOS (as it should have from the beginning), and that Taunt will now cause nearby NPCs to assist rather than be a cheese way to single pull out of a group (which is no different than several other similar fixes in recent years) and how tanks not being able to cheese pull will somehow spell the end of EQ.

Niente just said the Taunt changes are NOT the cause of this issue.

By "fixing" taunt to make it require LOS, you've just pushed even more people into using exploits (w*rp + taunt + w*rp back) instead of using Taunt around a corner. Good job?

That would actually be an improvement.