Author Topic: pack ox exploit  (Read 7861 times)

modderpunk

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pack ox exploit
« on: October 11, 2015, 05:26:33 PM »
If you make an ox stand his ground he will stay your henchman even if yu move to the other side of the map or even to a next map. This seems easy to exploit.



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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #1 on: October 11, 2015, 11:01:18 PM »
It's the same for every henchman in this game, though you can't give the order if they're too far
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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #2 on: October 11, 2015, 11:50:41 PM »
Are you sure? it has always left party if you were too far away from it
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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #3 on: October 12, 2015, 12:09:02 AM »
Could someone clarify how this could be exploited? I don't understand, even if it is true, what advantage it would confer.
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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #4 on: October 12, 2015, 12:16:52 AM »
Instead of having to lead the pack ox across the entire zone to the transition, you can put it on Stand Ground, run yourself to the transition, and it'll follow you through to the next zone immediately, skipping that whole first zone.

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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #5 on: October 12, 2015, 12:20:48 AM »
Will it? And not be removed from party per the system in place?
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qwertyuioppp

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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #6 on: October 12, 2015, 12:22:19 AM »
Yep, and it won't be removed from the party. It seems whatever script removes the ox from the party doesn't trigger when it's on Stand Ground.

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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #7 on: October 12, 2015, 12:23:14 AM »
You can already run with your ox just fine. Every time I've gone too far away from an ox standing it's ground, it leaves party. Are you playing a monk, by chance?
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qwertyuioppp

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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #8 on: October 12, 2015, 12:28:02 AM »
When it happened to me, I wasn't playing a monk, nope. I haven't seen it happen in a while, though, I didn't even think it was still around and worth reporting, until I saw this thread pop up. I thought it got fixed months ago in one of those AI updates.

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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #9 on: October 12, 2015, 12:32:26 AM »
I noticed if you're hasted, or a monk, and get get to the AT before the party breaks, you will have it port to you. If you're just walking or running at normal pace, depending on how long it is between distances, though, your ox breaks party. That's why I suggested the monk thing. I know for a fact that it breaks party, because i had it standing it's ground once, went off to fight cats, it broke party, i had to go back to tether it, and i died to a stray cat. So... that's still pretty fresh in my mind.
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BahamutZ3RO

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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #10 on: October 12, 2015, 10:21:16 AM »
Could someone clarify how this could be exploited? I don't understand, even if it is true, what advantage it would confer.

Easily evading the crag cats on the way to Krofberg.
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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #11 on: October 13, 2015, 05:36:05 AM »
Could someone clarify how this could be exploited? I don't understand, even if it is true, what advantage it would confer.

Easily evading the crag cats on the way to Krofberg.

Actually there are two way more easier ways to do that.
One is animal empathy the other one is charm animal.
The first of course is for certain classes only, while the second option is more open to everyone. (Charmed creatures get teleported over maps:P)
So it makes it way easier not just for Kburg, but for all transportation routes, aka even to VoB:)

Also as currently often the animal AI scripts act VERY weird the two above mentioned though perhaps are not exploits.
(though i have not used an ox in ages:D)
Also with charm animal or aemp you can bring oxes and other animals to places they do NOT wish to visit. (Like mines.)
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modderpunk

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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #12 on: October 13, 2015, 06:58:25 AM »
You can already run with your ox just fine. Every time I've gone too far away from an ox standing it's ground, it leaves party. Are you playing a monk, by chance?

Well my point is it does not leave the party. At least it did not with me. And no I am not playing a monk. While walking the ox breaks the party if I get to far away from it but when i put it on stand ground I can walk away as far as I want and it stays in the party. When I go to a new map it teleports to that map aswell. I did not test this but I think theoreticaly it is posible to take an ox to Kroftberg (or where ever you want) without it taking a single step.

Quote
Actually there are two way more easier ways to do that.
One is animal empathy the other one is charm animal.
The first of course is for certain classes only, while the second option is more open to everyone. (Charmed creatures get teleported over maps:P)
So it makes it way easier not just for Kburg, but for all transportation routes, aka even to VoB:)

I do not see how they would be easier as stand ground is something every character can do for free without relying on a spell/skill.



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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #13 on: October 13, 2015, 12:30:46 PM »
This seems pretty insignificant. The ox must still enter every area the PC enters, at which point the PC must tell the ox to stand its ground. Clearly, a PC could use the pulling rope to tie the ox up from time to time, correct? This is how one could roleplay the "stand your ground" command.

The PC still must traverse the entire area. Now it's true the PC can do so at a faster rate without the ox, but that would be true if the ox was tied up as well. In real life, if one spied a hostile creature or knew of a hostile creature, would you bring your ox toward it--or would you perhaps tie the ox up, go fight the creature and/or get it to chase you so that you could go back and retrieve the ox after you had led the creature on a goose chase?

The exploit, such that it is, is if the PC goes straight to the next area, the ox magically teleports to the PC, rather than the PC having to go back and untie the ox and traverse the area  a second time.

That's not realistic; I agree. Nevertheless, ingame mechanics make working with the ox a PITA in other ways that are also not realistic.

An attitude toward game limitations that I simply don't share is that every bug of inconvenience has to be suffered with and every bug that makes things (slightly) easier is an exploit. One can choose to roleplay either rather than saying something annoying and difficult to fix is just the way it is, whereas something (mildly) fortuitous is cheating.

Plenty of people know where the triggers for spawns like the crag cats are and how to avoid them. If your character consistently goes around those triggers, isn't that "exploiting" the game limits in a pretty similar manner?
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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #14 on: October 13, 2015, 12:52:20 PM »
Your point is valid, but I do know of one particular exploit that is troublesome - you can actually overload an ox/henchman inventory beyond their capacity, and not get slowed down at all simply by having them teleport from transition to transition.  I confess that I would do this on my old server for things like mining (but not on PoTM, honest!).


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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #15 on: October 13, 2015, 02:24:56 PM »
Quote
I do know of one particular exploit that is troublesome - you can actually overload an ox/henchman inventory beyond their capacity, and not get slowed down at all simply by having them teleport from transition to transition. I confess that I would do this on my old server for things like mining (but not on PoTM, honest!).

I think this is "wrong," and I kind of think teleporting the ox is wrong (I have zero problems with having an ox stand its ground, though, and then going back to get it). But they're wrong more in a "bad form" sort of way than a "cheating" sort of way.  It's simply corner cutting--often to minimize unproductive frustration with the many game mechanics that do *not* work to a player's advantage--and it's unlikely to affect overall game balance. Does insisting the PC go back and get the ox really keep the game in better balance and prevent that PC from achieving unearned power commensurate with the repetitive boredom of the action?

Take as an example being able to craft multiple items at once. People have many times asked that we could also buy certain crafting elements in stacks, rather than one at a time. If *by accident* we could do that, would anyone think it was cheating because developers didn't intentionally make it so? I don't think so. We'd say (RP) we're buying a package of whatever and dumping it in the crafting station.

Generally in terms of what I want police IRL to concentrate on and developers/admins to concentrate their time on, I'd prefer less "my neighbor has his radio up too loud" versus something that significantly breaks thing. I may not like my neighbor's choice in music and certainly not his enthusiasm to share it with me, but I'm not going to call the cops on him.
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modderpunk

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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #16 on: October 13, 2015, 03:39:18 PM »
I think nobody is arguing that this something that is very bad or cheating. I only posted this to point the attention of the dev team to something that seemed to be different then intended. Maybe I should just have called it a bug.  I choose to call it exploit only because it is working like it is in regular nwn and so is more of an oversight than a bug.

from some posts I get the idea that before the oxes did break party when on stand ground wich makes it a bug then.



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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #17 on: October 20, 2015, 09:07:10 AM »
There are a few limited circumstances where the example of overloading your oxen and teleporting it via transition could be considered cheating; for example supply runs up to Krofburg and using this exploit to avoid your oxen being chumped by the Crag Cats. My method of avoiding that is just creative use of invisibility, but I could imagine people using this exploit to achieve the same outcome. As to circumventing game mechanics that don't work in our favor, another example might be side-strafing when encumbered. Same deal; at best it's poor form, at worst it could be considered cheating.

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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #18 on: October 20, 2015, 09:30:10 AM »
I think nobody is arguing that this something that is very bad or cheating. I only posted this to point the attention of the dev team to something that seemed to be different then intended. Maybe I should just have called it a bug.  I choose to call it exploit only because it is working like it is in regular nwn and so is more of an oversight than a bug.

from some posts I get the idea that before the oxes did break party when on stand ground wich makes it a bug then.

Calling it an exploit or a bug is just splitting hairs, it's arguably the same thing and whichever way you describe it, it shouldn't be done. Thank you for pointing it out. Hopefully this can be resolved soon.

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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #19 on: October 20, 2015, 10:55:25 AM »
There are a few limited circumstances where the example of overloading your oxen and teleporting it via transition could be considered cheating; for example supply runs up to Krofburg and using this exploit to avoid your oxen being chumped by the Crag Cats. My method of avoiding that is just creative use of invisibility, but I could imagine people using this exploit to achieve the same outcome. As to circumventing game mechanics that don't work in our favor, another example might be side-strafing when encumbered. Same deal; at best it's poor form, at worst it could be considered cheating.

Doing the crab-walk IS considered an exploit here, and is a no-no if the DMs catch you.


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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #20 on: October 20, 2015, 11:13:00 AM »
There are a few limited circumstances where the example of overloading your oxen and teleporting it via transition could be considered cheating; for example supply runs up to Krofburg and using this exploit to avoid your oxen being chumped by the Crag Cats. My method of avoiding that is just creative use of invisibility, but I could imagine people using this exploit to achieve the same outcome. As to circumventing game mechanics that don't work in our favor, another example might be side-strafing when encumbered. Same deal; at best it's poor form, at worst it could be considered cheating.

Doing the crab-walk IS considered an exploit here, and is a no-no if the DMs catch you.

Crab walking while encumbered is the No no... ( raises hand) I've gotten in trouble for it once... Dong it while your able to run and walk isn't really a no no.. you just look really weird... lol

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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #21 on: October 20, 2015, 12:42:26 PM »
Actually, teleporting an *overloaded* ox or henchman is definitely an exploit comparable to crabwalking, now that I think about it. Why? Because encumbrance is a deliberately imposed penalty that the player is circumventing through programming limitations. Escaping it is not a lucky convenience.

In thinking about this discussion as something that could be applied more universally to look at whether a behavior is simply corner-cutting for convenience or a punishment-worthy exploit, these are some criteria I'd use:

1) Does it allow the player to avoid *intentional* inconveniences (and perhaps encounters) that developers have invested time in programming? On this scale, I think teleporting an ox is not significantly different than walking around known triggers, for example. But avoiding encumbrance through crab-walking or teleporting an *overloaded* henchman/ox is egregious because encumbrance is a significant feature of the game. A "yes" to this question means the behavior is almost certainly an exploit.

2) Does the behavior affect game balance vis a vis other players? One way to answer this is "how much is it available to every character on the server"? If every character can do it, then it's unlikely to affect this part of game balance.

3) Does the behavior affect game balance versus the game itself? That is, if some players engage in it, do other players then have to do the same to "keep up"? As a comparison, allowing steroids in a sport makes them available for everyone, but it also means you probably can't compete unless you're on steroids. (I don't find the teleporting ox means other players have to teleport theirs or be put at a big disadvantage.)

4) Does the behavior affect the enjoyment of other players? Further, can the player engaging in it mitigate this effect? In other words, if my character does not see it happening, does it still have an impact on me in some way? This is more a "bad form" question and hopefully could be worked out in game. As an example, "tells" are an (intentional) bypassing of the in-game, IC mechanical limitations. I really don't like them, but they're a necessary evil. Even though tells are allowed, there are many cases in which a "tell" is "bad form." (In contrast to a critical tell, that some character somewhere is teleporting an ox around can be quite anodyne.)

5) Can the behavior be role-played as reasonable?
« Last Edit: October 20, 2015, 12:47:39 PM by Nicholas Kronos »
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Bad_Bud

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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #22 on: October 20, 2015, 02:59:21 PM »
This pack ox behavior is obviously not intentional. Whether it's classified as a bug or an exploit makes no difference in the report.

DrXavierTColtrane

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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #23 on: October 20, 2015, 03:29:06 PM »
This pack ox behavior is obviously not intentional. Whether it's classified as a bug or an exploit makes no difference in the report.

Perhaps the thread needs to be moved then, as its title is "pack ox exploit."

As to whether it should be reported as a bug, henchmen have always behaved this way. It's not unique to pack oxen.
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Time_Stomped

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Re: pack ox exploit
« Reply #24 on: October 20, 2015, 11:29:10 PM »
Well, it's your fault if your oxen are taken from under your nose by doing this.  Considering the amount of bandit PCs for NCE, let's see what happens to people who actually get caught doing this. >=D
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