Call of the Veteran STILL not working 75% of the time!

The title says it all.
It's one of the coolest additions to EQ2... WHEN IT WORKS! It always says "cannot use in combat" or "cannot use this right now". And ofcoarse it's always broke when you need it the most. Can it be converted into a spell instead of an item we have to click on? Usable in combat to fix the problem? I'm not sure what the solution is, but anything is better than it's existing state. I don't understand how it's still broke after so many years. Veterans rewards are SOE's way of saying "Thank you for being our customer" right? Then prove that you value our retention and fix this thing once and for all please!

I wonder what causes all of the issues.

Usually it works fine for me (unless the timing is perfect where I really need it...), but I've seen it not work at all for many people.
I haven't run into the in-coombat bug yet, though people I play with have.
The only thing I've figured out so far about what makes the thing fail is how the person your callign to zoned there directly zaffects whether you can call to them.
Example: A good char takes a bell to qeynos, an evil char could not call to them while they are in that zone. Then, the good char uses a gate to go to the other zone of qeynos, since evils can use the gate, the call works fine, in my experience.
It is very odd how picky that thing is.

Twwig@The Bazaar wrote:

All of the unnecessary anti-exploit code.

It works 100% of the time if both parties have not died since they last zoned, and there are no timer or zone lock issues.

Ulrichvon wrote:

Zygar wrote:

LOL.
As a multiboxer, and a raid leader, I'm 100% certain what i said is true. Thats why you can always resolve the issue by /camp Yourname on both the target and the caller and providing the caller is not locked from the zone and has access to it, it will work everytime.
Annoying? Yes.

I've seen it most often in raid zones or instances when the target's died and the mob they were in combat with wiped the raid and reset. I think it has to do with dying while on the mob's hate list, and when you rez the mob hasn't despawned so the game still thinks you're on it's hate list (and thus in combat with it). That'd mesh with something else I've seen: I'm running as if I'm not in combat, but I've still got a melee or ranged autoattack bar showing (not cycling) and I can't get rid of it (the target-self, autoattack-on, autoattack-off trick fails to remove the bar). That glitch would make sense if the game thinks I'm still on a mob's hate list, and it always happens after I've died and been rezzed after the mob wiped the rest of the raid and reset without despawning.
I suspect it's something to do with scripting, because after we've wiped I've seen spawned adds (who should despawn when everyone's dead and the encounter resets) sit there camping people's corpses until they hit a scripted action. They should've despawned once the raid was all dead, but the scripting seems to block the despawn.

Zygar wrote:

Although very funny, this is not true. I'm a multiboxer as well and I've had issues going from guild hall to guild hall, zone to zone, guild hall to raid zone, etc. It's not specific and is completely random on conditions. One thing I find is a common reaccurance tho is when one doesnt work, neither will any toons CoV on that account for an unknown random period of time. When I do my PR runs for example... I log out one set of toons and log in the next duo, same problem. Gotta hoof it out to Seb because my alt guild doesn't yet have a druid ring.
Any money says that if this is turned into a spell instead of a clickable object, it will work.

feldon30 wrote:

You might be spot on with your comment! I've wondered about that as well.

Evaccing fixes the problem every time. Just carry around a stack of Totem of the Escape (single target evac) and you are golden. Other alternative is to camp to yourself, but yes, would prefer just a fix rather than work arounds.

Ulrichvon wrote:

I just love it when people give unrefutable, absolute assertions.

..but in this case, this Fact is untrue. Why? Because not too long ago I and someone else tried this (amongst other things) and it didn't work. Someone was trying to Call me to Neriak so I could grab a merc, and I was in Kelethin at that time. No lock-out issues. We both camped, stood on one leg, tossed salt over our shoulders.. nada.
But hey, I'm glad it works for you.
Considering the length of time this veteran bonus has been bugged, you'd think someone would have gotten around to fixing it. I'm not even going to guess what has taken priority.

tomsky wrote:

I will definitely try this. Thanks for the tip

Whatever it is that makes this buggy, they are definitely not going to fix this ever!
This was the (I think) 6 year reward and we now already have like what? 8 year reward!?
Just another stupid and annoying bug they are not going to care about (as they haven't in the past).

I have learned it kinda depends on the zone you're in (speaking raid zones), and how you died (just died or complete wipe?) and so on. Basically all luck if it works or not.
I'd rather they finaly removed this thing cause with the state it is in now it is just annoying
because every effin' time you really need it, it most certainly won't work.
Annoying!

Ulrichvon wrote:

Yeah... not so much.
Go try and use it in Demetric's Bastion (in The Hole, spelling may be wrong lol).
I bet it doesn't work 100% of the time in there, not even if you are both in the same zone standing 10ft away from each other lol.

Ulrichvon wrote:

I am 100% sure you are mistaken

Cloudrat wrote:

He/she is very much mistaken. The problem is that everyone has random circumstances that happen before it actually works and they now believe that they know the mechanic and it's function. To be honest I think it's conflicting with something that's timed on each server. Maybe it's some kind of enviromental effect that's conflicting with it's operation!? But because it APPEARS that way to me, does not make it so. The only thing I know for certain is that it's broke!

I bet Feldon has it on the money that there's prolly a ton of code to stop 'exploits' that occasionally makes CoV buggy. though in my experiene it only bugs out on me prolly 25% of the time.
code to stop people from using it in pve combat, code to stop people in pvp combat from instant summoning reinforcements/abandoning a losing fight, code to stop people from going to zones they don't have access to, etc that occasinally gets its wires crossed between prolly a much MUCH larger list of things that we can't do, in comparison to what we can do.

Rainmare@Oasis wrote:

This would be my guess. In terms of exploits I imagine it works by 'blocking' everything and exceptions have to be programmed in rather than allowing most and putting in exclusions. Kind of like a firewall that you have to give permission for every little thing you do.

Ahlana wrote:

I've used it there many times. Following the same methods to resolve, works.
Our raid does SLR regularly, and it is not uncommon to call 20 people in a single night, yet somehow we're able to get it done everytime, even with these bugs, by following these simple resolutions.

Neiloch@Butcherblock wrote:

There is, but having both parties /camp self resolves all of the anti-exploit cases.