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

As others have stated it has been bugged since day one and it is now over 2 years later. Don't expect this to be fixed anytime soon, if ever.

We cant just drop it. This is an important item and many of us use it (or try to) on a daily basis.

I've seen many a CoV bug. One thing I've noticed is that it can be cause by an ineligibity flag that doesn't reset properly such as:
1) If you are swimming when you invite someone to group, you are ineligible for CoV. That ineligibity doesn't clear properly when you get out of the water until one or both of you zone.
2) Flying on your own mount...read #1.
3) Flying/riding on an NPC mount...read #1.
(i.e. griffon ride in CL, pony ride in LFay, etc.)
4) Standing on a bridge...read #1.
5) Combat bug (script bug?)...read #1.
6) Standing on a griffon (landing zone) platform...read#1.
To prevent the above bugs from occuring, I wait until I've finished all my riding, flying, swimming, etc. before inviting someone to group for CoV. Still happens occassionally but nowhere near as much as it did before.
One final thought...
Of all the CoV bugs I've seen, I've never seen one weirder or more persistant than the Nektulos Forest bug. If you want to leave Nek Forest with CoV, fine, it works. But under no circumstances what so ever have I ever been able to CoV into Nektulos Forest. I have tried on multiple accounts and between multiple toons. I've tried brand new launches with no switching between alts and no swimming/flying/combat/etc. Drives me crazy some days, dunno why it happens, but whatever bug it is, it appears to be zonewide.

AinaFV wrote:

Interesting. I'll try it and see if it works. Thats if I can ever log in my second account today...!

You're right! I tried it on three accounts (two gold and one bronze account) then had a guildy try it. Was not able to CoV any character into Nek (random locations). The CoV worked just fine when I chose to CoV back to the guild hall.

End of the day, something that should work consistently, does not.

It is seems that several things can break + fix CoV functionality. Different people have good/bad luck with different methods. This has been a long running issue, and alarmingly, SOE has not shown any interest in fixing it.

That last bit is the part that concerns me. I can not recall SOE even acknowleding there is problems with CoV (though they may have somewhere?). What kind of message does that send? "Hi, thanks for being a long standing customer! Here, have a utility item that frequently bugs out. No, we are not interested in fixing it...". Hardly inspires warm and fuzzy feelings.

Either they fixed it or the ability to CoV to nek forest is situational. Worked for me yesterday.

I've never had it fail.

AinaFV wrote:

I promise I really want to fix every one of these bugs (as I stated at SOE Live).
That said, I tested a few of your listed failures (this take a long time without specific reproduction steps unfortunately):
1) Char A is in Nekforest in the River , Char B is in Commonlands in the River, Char A invites B
1a) Char A COV Char B while in River - Works
1b) Char A COV Char B after existing River - Works
1c) Char B COV_TO Char A while Char A in River - Works
1d) Char B COV_TO Char A after Char A exists River - Works

2) Char A is in Nekforest flying on his personal flying mount, Char B is in Commonlands Char A invite Char B
2a) Works
2b) Works
2c) Works
2d) Works

I am happy to look at more of these, but the more detailed the info on the failure the faster I can run the tests and fix any bugs!

It is combat 90% of the time. The game thinks we havent left combat. Fix that and cov will work .. better anyway.
Run cm st.. kill the zone .. and try to call someone to you.
IT will never work, and do it on a live server( not your test bed)
WE either evac. a person, or have a person zone or camp to themselves. Or if i fd myself.. they can call to me but i cant call them.

Zoltaroth wrote:

A couple quick ones for you:
#1 - In heroic Sleeper's Tomb, you always get the "You are in combat" message if you try to call someone in after killing the final named. This has happened 100% of the times I've tried it, regardless of if/when I died.
#2 - In Plane of War, it nearly always (>90%) tells me I am still in combat if I revive following a wipe and try to call back to rez the raid.
If you're really serious about testing these, please try to recreate them as close as you can to realistic events. Do it on a live server, and try to avoid using dev laser goggles and other tools that we can't use.
Also, how hard would it be to make the "check" for whether or not a person is in combat something simpler? For example, keep whatever you have now, but add in another thing that if the person hasn't dealt damage, received damage, avoided an attack, and isn't grouped with anyone who has done those things in the last X seconds, then they get their combat flag removed. Just make X whatever you consider reasonable (10-15 I think would be fine), and have it overwrite all other "in combat" indications within the game.

Zoltaroth wrote:

As the title of this thread suggests, it will work 75% of the time. I'm an alt-a-holic and I'm retired (at 38 yay!). I play this game from sun up to sun down most of the time. My two primary accounts have CoV and have had them for a very long time now. The events are random. I can't come up with any logical or specific reason why it decides not to work. Recent combat is a factor, of that I'm sure. But there are times when I log in after a weekend away from home and try to CoV an alt to a dungeon and it fails. No cambat, no nothing. Sorry but personally I have no advice to give you that would help you recreate CoV not working. I wish I could!

It is *extremely* consistently broken in Sleepers Tomb. Certainly after killing either of the CM mobs. Cannot summon anyone, and noone can call to any of us. Evacing always resets it.
Just bury us in debug output, then we can tell you what the game is smoking when it tells us we're in combat...

Just let us use it in combat until you figure it out. What's the big deal? If we are about to pull a target we only do so because we're confident we can kill it. What does it mater if someone joins us midfight? Last I checked you cant invite while in combat anyways. The only possible exploit I can think of is raids calling in needed classes at various stages of a long script. Find a way around it. Edit - Just rememberd pvp. Dammm you pvp!
On the other hand, 3 nights ago I logged in for a 2 box exp grind. Ran toon A out to destination, popped CoV and it failed to call toon B to my location. Just to test my theory I logged both toons off and logged a new set on. Same thing happened. Neither set was engaged in combat, nor had they been, for at least 24 hours.
It was nightime in Norrath. The zone was my guild hall to Vastly Deep. All four were different classes.
BTW as it's previously been stated, sometimes an evac will clear whatever is doing this. You can run back to where the CoV was cast and it works. But there are times when I wont test it because an evac means a long distance to travel.

ZUES wrote:

Next time it is not working on live don't log out. Email me with your server and name and I will log in and try to figure out what state you are in.

Ynnek@Kithicor wrote:

Are you "at rest" or are you stuck in combat with the combat animations?

Frezzyisfuzzy wrote:

I ran through ST and wasn't able to get it to happen - doesn't mean that you are wrong it's just that the problem is something other than simply fighting the last boss - perhaps a spell he puts on you or something.
Debugging on live while possible is just not really a good idea - I can get a much better idea of what is going on with my development server. That said if you get in this state on live toss me an email and I will try to come look (if I am not in a meeting, etc).

Someone reproed this for me on live (thanks for all the PMs!) and I think I know what the issue is - it may not be the only issue but it is definately one of the big ones. I will try to get a fix in for it with next weeks update.

Zoltaroth wrote:

Woot you're awesome Zoltaroth! Thank you kind sir! Beer for everybody... my treat! BARTENDER!

ZUES wrote:

Here is the case that I fixed this morning (it is entirely possible there are more cases but this was pretty common).
Char A and Char B are in ST Char C is outside.
Char A and Char B fight Ingolfa
Char B Dies
Adds Spawn and Force lock to the group (this locked even dead characters <- this was the bug)
Char A and Char B now have hate from the Adds
Char A kills Ingolfa
Char A has a clean hate list
Char B has "phantom" hate from the adds because his hatelist didn't think it needed cleaned up since he was dead.
Char B COV Char C => Failure.
As you can see these failures are sometimes pretty tricky to nail down. It would also never happen soloing the zone. Which is why it was so hard for me to reproduce on my development server. The good news is that this was a bug that could have effected other things not just CoV and it is now fixed for everything.