Patch questions

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Ravenwing, Nov 5, 2015.

  1. Zeklen

    Zeklen Member

    Messages:
    118
    I understand as well as anyone how issues like these can be frustrating to discuss, much less watch unfold, but I think everyone would do well to remember that these are volunteers that are donating a lot of their spare time to making things happen with this game. Regardless how things unfold in the coming years, they have my respect, well wishes, and gratitude. I have no doubt so far that each and every one of them is doing what they feel is right.

    I do firmly believe that the best policy is to follow the ruleset of the close of the AK server. Personally I'm not crazy about every rule in place at that time, but it's something that people know, can live with, and seems like a good guide to follow.

    Above all I think the community here is off to a great start. There are a few issues with the game rules that I won't mention that might be personal deal breakers for me, but I'm willing to hold my nose for a 1 or 2 of them and continue to play.

    I can see things getting out of hand real quick though.
     
    Elrontaur, Mithryn and Sketchy like this.
  2. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    2,742
    Currently it's written to only ignore charmed pets. The reason that would not work is that we currently also have heal aggro on charmed pets and pet taunt was nerfed.
     
  3. xate

    xate Active Member

    Messages:
    100
    Not too long ago, a handful of players were railing against pet walling tactics, those aren't the same players now railing against the counter to pet walling is it? Another note, how many people does this patch change even affect? SD used mage pets to tank fear golems briefly, has anyone else even used pets to tank mobs with 9+ entities engaged, or plan to in the near future?

    I guess for Trakanon it is a way to circumvent the design of the encounter, as trak touch does nothing to NPC's, so I could see that being a point of concern for the devs. You would still need a decent amount of pets to kill him fast enough before clerics healing charmed pets went OOM, and at that point youre basically bordering on having enough #s to do him legit with player tanks and such anyway. I haven't played SOL/PoP era in awhile so I can't remember what pet walling was like there with large sized forces.

    If you're against using pet walls to circumvent designs on encounters, such as Trak with Trakanon's touch, I would also argue that using Pacify/Lull for dangerous/high level/raid encounters circumvents original classic encounter designs as well (pacify was never used in classic era on live, it got majorly fixed/upgraded around the time WoW beta invites were ramping up....). Regardless of the outcome of this thread, I think it's good that the dev team is striving for a balance between original design difficulty, modern QoL changes, and adherence to AK standards.

    -Adaephon

    *edit: guess I missed the patch note about heals drawing aggro on charmed pets now, so my theorycrafting might be flawed
     
    Last edited: Nov 5, 2015
  4. Elroz

    Elroz I Feel Loved Staff Member

    Messages:
    2,268
    Oh this might be the best thing in the patch. Does this mean that 1 person forgetting to turn pet taunt off, on their green con pets won't cause 100% proximity agro anymore on raid bosses?
     
    xate likes this.
  5. surron

    surron People Like Me

    Messages:
    552
    This patch doesn't stop regular pets from holding agro, only charmed. How is strategy more cheap than zerging?

    All you need is the right # of mages to be able to out summon Trak's dps. Then you add charmed pets dps on top of that so the mages don't go oom.

    Or you could just have 3 charmed pets, 3 enchs and 3 clerics and beat trak. 32k HP gets eaten quick by some krup frogs. Who themselves have ~7k hp.


    Guess I am the only one who enjoys killing mobs with lower than intended player count.
     
  6. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    2,742
    Heal aggro on charmed pets was always in. I just left it in on purpose.

    OK everybody, here's the deal. There's a way to nerf pet zergs on Trakanon without implementing the entities limit.

    Many/most/(all?) caster NPCs (not sure how many) should be using warrior abilities; like bash, parry, and riposte. I have verified that Trakanon bashes and parries from my limited logs, so he almost certainly riposted as well. Yesterday's patch fixed NPC innate procs to trigger on ripostes, so if we can somehow make caster NPCs like Trakanon riposte, (not sure how difficult that will be) this will make pet zergs much less effective on him, perhaps even shut it down entirely.

    The other developers and I have been discussing the entities limit today after the feedback. I wouldn't expect it to remain as-is, but what we will do exactly is not yet decided.
     
  7. Zeklen

    Zeklen Member

    Messages:
    118
    If we're going to be subjected to nerfing based on post 2002 game content, it begs the question, can we suggest or look forward to any class improvements post 2002 as well? Also, if it bothers folks that another group or raid can kill the same mob with less people, why not just implement a minimum raid force number for raid encounters? We could also increase the dps of certain weaker classes that aren't as powerful in raids to make it more fair, take your pick.
     
  8. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    2,742
    Not sure what you're asking. Pets will simply not taunt on NPCs level 50+, so they won't jump ahead on the hate list.
     
  9. Elroz

    Elroz I Feel Loved Staff Member

    Messages:
    2,268
    I was being genuine, 1 person leaving pet taunt turned on was causing proximity agro (tanks wouldnt be able to move the mob til that pet died) even on red cons, sounds like this won't be happening anymore so I was happy to see that.
     
  10. xate

    xate Active Member

    Messages:
    100
    Yeah, summoned pet taunt ability change is nice & long overdue, it was definitely inaccurate in the stock PEQ code.

    -Adaephon
     
  11. robregen

    robregen Administrator Staff Member

    Messages:
    8,371
    Remember guys, your feedback is very important to us and we do make changes or/and adjustments based on that as well as evidence in logs and posts. Just because you see this nerf in our changelog doesn't mean that it will stay that way.
     
    sourdiesel and Seduce like this.
  12. Seduce

    Seduce Member

    Messages:
    49
    Torven,

    I am happy you and the developers of TAKP are listening to the concerns of the players, that means a great deal to the dedicated folks that support TAKP. That said, I do need to address points made on this thread that I feel very strongly about that is a concern and urge you to take consideration. Some of you know, I'm a industry senior sound designer / audio director working for various AAA game companies now for about 27 years. Nerfing re-designs are a very common discussion I know all to well as a developer from both a single player and multi player perspective.

    if we are sold on the idea that this server is a re-creation of Al'Kabor, the dedicated players will believe and stand by the intent of your development. We also will encourage our friends to relive that "golden era" of the game we all love so much.

    Question, why are we all not playing on 'live' everquest currently if all decision made were best for the games longevity? Short simple answer for my personal experience its an un-reconizable game butchered from my 18 years (I was a beta tester) of playing Everquest. Oasis changed, neriak changed, EC tunnel, gone, character play styles nerfed & dumbed down for the sake of "balance". But, what about the fun factor and the time commitments your player base make? If we strip people of their in game moments, the nostalgia and very identity of class experiences, what exactly are we providing long term? Are we creating that very monster people are here to avoid by those re-tweets and designs nerfs by Sony Online Entertainment? Empower us to spread the glorious word on how perfect of a recreation 'time locked' experience of the early days of everquest which made EQ mac unique in its own right. This is why your fans are here! You sold us on "Al'Kabor", that carries weight enough to trust your judgement on design. The community can provide a healthy surplus of players and friends to enjoy your excellent development.

    My point simply, Im very concerned we are opening a very dangerous can of worms that has been proven detrimental to many games success by constantly redesigning a 18 year old game. When will this end? Where in 18 years folks. Once something becomes forum fodder the nerf debates become personal and fit a narrative and agenda. What made this server attractive for me is knowing how end game will be and play those very classes I enjoy.

    I believe Torven development and the teams time is much better spent on content rather then re-inventing the wheel. Parse the data, get it to the accurate state we all were sold on, you have a winner. We have a guide to follow without making judgement calls of a decade old server. Later, Im totally open for a discussion for example auto fire for Rangers or Veshar, when we get to the final era of POP because those were still within that expansion. But you see, these are additions to the game, not striping out functionally due to a personal belief. I want the server to grow and become even more healthy with new players, I hope I can contribute to the cause how I can. But, enable us to sell your vision.

    Thank you,
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2015
    Sturmm likes this.
  13. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    2,742
    Everything is relative. P99 users would thumb their noses at us for the overpowered lulls here, among other things.

    Sony ez-moded the game over time, however the handful of deviations we are making to the server are intended to increase the difficulty, not decrease it. AK in fact had several things that trivialized content. Permapac for example was in for the vast majority of the server's life, and I'll be damned if I let that be recreated. Lulls were nerfed several times during PoP in 2003 after Sony realized the mistakes (bugs and design) they made with how silly overpowered they made it. AK inherited the code right before they fixed any issues with them. 'Reverse pacing' for example was fixed on Dec 4 2002, which is (I think) days before AK forked. Thankfully Hobart tuned lulls right before shutdown so it gives me a good excuse to do the same, although even after the nerfs it's still so good that it hurts the game IMO; it's a good example as to why modern EQ is garbage, but something we have to live with.

    We already opened this can when we removed pet pulling. Pet pulling is so terrible that I don't even want to waste my time on any ez-mode server that allows it, deving or playing.

    Any new players that come here will almost certainly come to play a PoP era server and not because of AK's quirks. The small AK community already knows about us and those players have already made their decisions to play here or not.
     
    Khorpus and Ransom like this.
  14. xate

    xate Active Member

    Messages:
    100
    Pacify series of spells is the last thorn in my side on this server. The dev team here has done a remarkable job of improving on the messy PEQ code while maintaining an attention to detail level on encounter difficulty, in some areas they are surpassing the closest comparision (p99), and every patch there is more and more under-the-hood changes that look tiny on the outside, but have large effects in-game, but Pacify seems like an immovable object for them.

    Vanilla & ROK were not designed with modern pacify lines in mind, dungeons especially. Pacify got upgraded to be useable because Sony didn't want to lose subscribers to Blizzard, and this probably happened before AK even existed. Sometimes an encounters difficulty is in the crowd of NPCs close to the boss NPC, a prime example of this is Phinigel Autropos. That encounter was unaffected by the modern Pacify line on this server (at least pre-RoK) because the swirlspines are all around lvl 50, and the resist rate was too great to risk relying on lull. However many other encounters are totally gimped because it is very easy to land pacify/lull on their surrounding companion mobs. The best example for the current expansion is the Chardok royals, in classic this area was one of the premier encounters of the expansion, and was a true test for any party. Here with pacify, the encounter is a snooze fest and its just something everyone has to haul themselves down for to get epics.

    As an aside, I think its great that over the years different encounters become harder and others become easier due to out-of-game factors (outdoor dragons with unavoidable AOE fear seems like it will be tough on folks here because of triple boxing for example), but this modern Pacify line is just garbage and doesn't belong in classic-era emu's. I'm not trying to rip on anyone who uses lull here, as I have casted it thousands of times here myself, due to it just being available and by far the quickest and easiest way of doing 98% of the content in game, but it completely takes a large part of the risk and danger that is supposed to be in almost every dungeon in game.

    -Adaephon
     
  15. Seduce

    Seduce Member

    Messages:
    49
    From your wiki "More specifically, it aims to replicate EverQuest's Al'Kabor server, which was the server for the Macintosh version of the game. The Al'Kabor server was perpetually stuck in the Planes of Power expansion, receiving no content updates for the decade of its life."

    Correct me, If you are looking to redefine the core gameplay mechanics to suit your personal beliefs, should you not make the claim that this is a replicate of the Al'Kabor server?

    This statement does not apply to me, but I will certainly not make that same claim to speak for others. What I would like to openly discuss is how far the server will deviate off course from the replicate server promised. I believe thats a pretty fair request for the player base and long term in game goals.

    Thanks,
     
    Last edited: Nov 5, 2015
  16. Lenas

    Lenas I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    2,968
    The wiki is not owned or maintained by the TAKP staff or devs. It is a contribution of mine. I suppose you can go ahead and edit that entry to be more accurate ;)

    One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of these changes aren't permanent. By the time we get to the point of AK content, the mechanics will all probably be implemented just as they were on AK at the time of sunset.
     
    Last edited: Nov 5, 2015
  17. Seduce

    Seduce Member

    Messages:
    49
    Can Torven confirm this? We could really put this discussion to rest with an official statement.

    Thanks,
     
  18. Tariabak

    Tariabak New Member

    Messages:
    19
    I did not play on AK for its duration as some here have but when I did start, I felt that the server was different than any other server I had previously played on. Was it only the community or was it the quirks of the server that separated it from others? I believe it was some of both and do hope that we recreate the quirks that made the server what it was. The rest is up to the players to recreate the community.
     
  19. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    2,742
    Seduce, you're welcome to take over my job here. I've been wanting to retire to other projects for a long time anyway. I'm so burned out on this that it's killed my desire to even play EQ anymore.

    The simple answer is that the developers get the final say as to what goes into their server. And I stress that these decisions are made by the team, not by just me. I've always hated that we launched with PoK enabled for example-- I don't always get my way.

    As I said previously, we are currently discussing how to change the rule. Nothing is in stone.

    As for future deviations, the big ones are shakerpaging and pit warring. I wouldn't hold your breath on being able to kill every NPC in PoValor and leveling characters from 46-65 in a couple hours. Beyond that I couldn't say what else, as some of these things tend to show up as a problem without being obvious.
     
    Last edited: Nov 5, 2015
  20. Zeklen

    Zeklen Member

    Messages:
    118
    No one here is debating against fixing bugs, and I think you know better than that. If you want to fix the bugs in the game, great, but this is turning in to moving the finish line around because a few hardcore players are beating content too quickly. Why am I being punished for crap other people are doing? I'm not, and I never have zerged raid mobs with pets. I don't know how to level a character to 50 in 3 hours. I guess I can see how as a developer you don't want your game beaten so quickly, but this is the EQ paradox-they (SOE) implemented changes without always considering the ramifications. They were always tweaking things to try and balance things out, but it's frustrating as a player of your game to see things taken away and nothing given back in return in comparison to how this game was played around 2002.

    Ok, so I guess now I'm a criminal for pet pulling. That's a new one. At this point nothing will surprise me now. On a positive note, this is getting to be entertaining. I wonder what other techniques I've learned over the years are now considered taboo.

    and there it is…the small AK community is already here and committed to you.

    As for me, I appreciate all you've done, but I don't like being taken for granted and I don't like being made to feel like crap because I enjoy certain aspects of the game. I don't like being marginalized with a group of people portrayed as enthusiasts of EQ in EZ mode. My understanding of the complexities of this game are the very reason I want to keep it simple without everyone losing their minds over it.

    We just started Kunark, this is just the beginning.

    This constant tweaking of the game is not my idea of fun, maybe some of the rest of you like it, good for you, but I'm done here.

    Zek
     
    Last edited: Nov 5, 2015
  21. xate

    xate Active Member

    Messages:
    100
    http://i.imgur.com/RjZcCmX.jpg

    We get it, you don't want your precious charm touched, where were you when I was making a stand against the un-AKness of GM forced rotations & bilderberg-style smokey backroom meeting places way back in Feb anyway? Could have used you there.

    -Adaephon
     
  22. Haynar

    Haynar Administrator

    Messages:
    3,637
    Man. You all write discertations.

    Its not like charm was nerfed to being unuseable.

    In fact, the charm changes probably would have gone unnoticed if they werent in the patch notes?

    Afterall, its been months since I did a similar nerf that affects pets in a raid situation on p99, and noone has noticed much. And they got way more whiners there.

    H
     
  23. Sketchy

    Sketchy People Like Me

    Messages:
    991
    Not the first time this debate has happened it probably wont be the last one either. It's a issue that P99 is dealing with as well, though it seems on a smaller scale. TAKP has some challenges with the amount of expansions being released. Do we attempt to keep current content relevant and challenging? Or just full on, if it was on AK, it should be on TAKP? There appears to be no easy answer for this, so discussion and expectation adjustment will be required from all parties. The fact that this discussion is occurring, is mostly high quality, and the dev team is responding and listening is a very positive sign of the maturity of this community. Hopefully people can realize this and take a step back when needed so the discussion can remain constructive.
     
    Oiwon and xate like this.
  24. Elroz

    Elroz I Feel Loved Staff Member

    Messages:
    2,268
    When the charm change on live went in, it barely affected anything raid-wise. Is this such a big deal because of multiple years of planes of power on AK people got bored and just found the charm thing was really fun or something? I've gotta be missing something major here, I didn't play on AK.
     
  25. Zeklen

    Zeklen Member

    Messages:
    118
    /groan

    You really want to come at me with that child logic?

    For the record, I found out about this server in June. I'm in the market for a time machine to go back and help you in your time of need, though. I do try to help people out usually, sorry I wasn't there for you.

    Actually, rotations were in place on AK also. I have no opinion on the matter because I am not high enough to raid. Besides, your attitude isn't going to win me over to your point of view. If anything it kinda makes me think you got what you deserved.
     
    Last edited: Nov 6, 2015
  26. Haynar

    Haynar Administrator

    Messages:
    3,637
    The fundamental issue i see with pets, was until dire charm, they were a big liability on raids. They often led to wipes. So often they werent allowed. There were exceptions. But pets were situational, not the default easy mode.
     
    Seduce likes this.
  27. Zeklen

    Zeklen Member

    Messages:
    118
    Am I included in this? Am I a whiner too?
     
  28. surron

    surron People Like Me

    Messages:
    552
    Torven we all appreciate the attention of detail you put into all your work, seriously we do.

    It just sucks that most of AKs uniqueness is being stripped away. I'm going to cry irl on the day you tell me I can't shakerpage FG, so just let me have it now if so.
     
  29. Torven

    Torven I Feel Loved

    Messages:
    2,742
    I was a warrior back in the day, and I liked shakerpaging too. But there are some things people need to understand about how it would be different here than on AK.

    For one thing, pathing here is just better than it was on AK, which makes rounding up lots of NPCs much, much easier. HoH pathing on AK was so terrible that you couldn't get much more than say 30 mobs no matter how hard you tried. (believe me I tried many times) In skyfire it was also very difficult to make large trains. On the emus, it's trivial to round up entire zones. This is one reason why I didn't want to extend the ignore distance larger than I knew it should be.

    The exp gain in PoValor was also just so absurd. I doubt the server could handle it currently anyway, although I bet Haynar could make it work.

    I wold be in favor of somehow just limiting the effectiveness of it without removing it entirely, but that may be difficult to do.
     
    Oiwon likes this.
  30. Hyacinth

    Hyacinth Active Member

    Messages:
    53
    Thanks for the update. I get the charm changes, makes sense and it sounds like we can still bard-mezz-lock enchy pets, so as soon as Destiny gets 7 bards and 7 enchie's to a raid we'll start replicating our PoFire/PoWater kills =D

    How is lull/pacify working presently? 5 minutes like Hobart finally changed it to, or shorter durations? I know perma-pac was a bug and Hobart fixed it to 5 minute duration as a compromise.

    As far as needing "line of sight" to pacify, as a bard lull song did not require line of sight, I just needed a target and for it to be in range. Sometimes it meant a rogue pre-targeting for me, and using /assist to lull a mob just around the corner, and other times it meant getting an out-of-sight target using eye of zomm from the SS helm (or bouncing around sight angles with bind sight and finishing with pac song).

    As far as keeping game mechanics AK-like, as an SK I'd love to see mental corruption reverted back to full mana bar happiness =D (yeah yeah i know Hobart fixed it at the end, a girl can dream though)