oh man threads about what bug on AK to implement and what to fix... ahh memories of alpha/beta you wont win vs torven lol... i mean just read my sig
yah lol agreed Surron, that is what I was saying to some folks last night. This has been an ongoing debate right from the start. I suspect we will continue to have it for as long as this server is here. Everyone has a slightly different idea of what the server should be.
I think we are all thankful we have a place to play and recreate the days of AK, but these changes have me worried. This is no longer a server where the vision is to be AK, but without some of the glaring bugs. It's now a server that is going to move in the direction the Devs want it to, like a true private emu server. Now you guys put the time in to create the server and it is your right to do this, but as a player I do feel a bit of bait and switch after investing all this time here. DA wiped aggro, we purposely had bards with wizards for rizlona and DA, we did this constantly in PoTime in the later stages. RW was absent at that time as the only Tem officer was Ader and Cabot who logged in those days. I know archery worked for some bosses I'm not sure it worked for all so I won't comment there where I have no knowledge. But DA worked and was a known mechanic. I agree that Perma pac was broken and needed to be fixed. Why nerf the rampage AA and shakerpaging? Because you don't want people to get easy exp? People shakerpaged on AK and live, thats the damn point of the rampage AA and you decided you didn't like it so you took it out of the game. This game is not going to be played like AK. You have the most hardcore group of AK and now they are min/maxing everything because that is all that is left to do in a 20 year old game. Just because they find a new way to use a legitimate mechanic or skill to benefit themselves in a way you did not intend does not me you hit it with the nerf bat. It seems like anything the players find useful in a method you don't deem "correct" will be nerfed, that is not how this server set out to be, but that is what it has become.
Shakerpaging.was definitely not the point of rampage aa from the devs point of view. Soe would never ever ever put in an ability that would literally crash zones knowingly. Like so many other things in EQ it existed because EQ devs werent very knowledgable about the edge cases of their game. The aa guy probably never occurred to him that a warrior could stand in range of an entire zone pull with a pbae weapon and live long enough to proc. Its not coming back and it shouldnt come back. Fight battles you can win.
Shakerpaging being gone is fine but dev's not fully understanding how abilities work isn't a reason to nerf them per se. Devs admitted that FD was never intended as a pulling tool - but as a saving tool. Sometimes its the unintended results of limitation that create the best situations.
That's why each case is evaluated on a case by case basis rather than as a blanket 'standard'. Fd is different than shakerpaging so it was handled differently. Tolon is different than regular ae pulling so it was handled differently. Because one thing was not changed does not mean nothing should be changed. Because something was changed does not mean everything should be changed. Each potential change should be evaluated on its own merits. We have history to help us decide them. History says monks were overnerfes and the nerf was reeled back, that gives merit to fixing them, just like many other potential and existing issues here. We do not have to hold to an imaginary "AK replica or bust" standard that the devs never claimed.
Which is what you are seeing here - the playerbase reacting to and evaluating - a change. You keep saying AK replica - some want that but not me. I bolded rob's quote a few times about fixing the bugs here. Cuz I don't want easy xegony, or slowstone ambers being super cheap, or quarm to be ridiculous and stun/slow/disease everyone with walls that dont block shit. Hell I really want time to be instanced but its not possible. I don't mind changes that are actually fixing issues - but because the changes for balance I see are all in negative harmony - I resist them. We don't change things the other way (ranger archery, monk ac) - so a 'case by case' basis is fine but also along with that comes the fact that each case sets precedent and builds upon itself to form its own expectation of result - the TAKP standard - and the DA change is one that to me (and obviously not you - which is fine we disagree) violates the set standard.
Agreed. Unless you have a direct quote, trying to interpret intentions of devs 15+ years ago is folly. Even if something was changed later in the history of EQ, it doesn't necessarily mean that the original dev didn't intend or desire the original mechanic. One dev may have worked on the initial mechanic, and another dev subsequently changed it once he took over responsibility. The Everquest dev team has not been a constant throughout the years. Even within the organization, the roles have rotated. Aristo, for example, has worn many hats throughout the years.
It's easy to make things easy. It takes a lot more effort to figure out and implement the factors that made it hard, but doable. If you look back at the changelog there were several other changes that are buffs not nerfs. For example that Affliction Efficiency/Haste stuff is obviously broken - it's only supposed to work on DoTs and it says that in the spell effects, but it was glitched on AK in a way that makes it easier for players, and we can see that in the logs that were posted. That's implemented AKurately so debuffs of all kinds are using less mana now. Each issue should be looked at independently IMO.
I just spent about 30 minutes writing and deleting and rewriting a post that basically was just a recapitulation of this. In my cursory perusal of this thread, all of the pro-DA arguments i've seen are on the basis of holding takp to some standard in which broken things are left broken. I haven't seen a single argument here that is in favor of keeping DA as a total hate wipe as a balanced mechanic. I don't think that argument exists, to me it's pretty clearly OP and unprecedented within EQs ruleset. As far as I can tell, EQ has 2 "intended" ways to completely hate wipe - take a rez (obvious huge downside, which can be mitigated by an AA, plus setup time to have a corpse available and a rez box up) or get CotHed (also requires a lot of setup in group composition and mage position + the long cast time). Throwing in a nearly instant cast version that has so little downside or forethought attached just seems a bit wild. I think it was the archery thread, but Torven quoted a bunch of live eq changelog notes where the devs were big on talk about "holding players accountable for the damage they deal." Another argument that I see get tossed around is that we are all a bunch of min-maxers that will always find a way to do something "unbalanced." There is some truth to that but we are also playing on a server that gives us an unprecedented peek under the hood at the game mechanics that make it incredibly easy to do that mix-maxing. Take, for example, resists. Thanks to Torven's published resist data I can go look up EXACTLY what resist number I need to reach to fully resist whatever AE i'm interested in avoiding, and mix and match gear to get exactly what I want with no additional sacrifices to hp / ac / mana / etc than are strictly necessary. Or, going the other way, I can go on the dev server and #showstats some mob and see exactly what its resists are to plan my strategy accordingly. We all have a giant strategic leg up already. I, for one, embrace these changes that make the game mechanics a bit more challenging and a bit more logically coherent. If you want to take out your frustration, just do what Sketchy and I did, and go to SSeru and wail on Torven's in-game avatar:
Why are we ok introducing legit, undisputed glitches and bugs for the sake of AKuracy on the one hand, but ret-conning true-to-era AKurate mechanics (i.e. things that are not "bugs") based on out-of-era changes (sometimes by several expansions downstream of PoP)? I don't want to speak for others but that seems to be at the heart of the matter that people are taking issue with. I'd be interested in our dev's perspectives on things like horse bug fix, fix for zoning on low hp and buff stripping, enhanced DoT and heal message reporting, pet persistence through FD, removal/fix for insta-clicky spell gem refresh. These are just a few mechanics/rebalances and bug fixes that were addressed after our era that I always figured we would never see but now I guess it is a possibility? Feel free to delete or move this if it's completely OT/derailing. Thanks.
That DA mechanic reflected the state of the game as it was all through Luclin and PoP. You can say it is or isn't overpowered but that's how it was. It was overpowered to give bards Fading Memories in PoP and they eventually gave monks Imitate Death to rebalance the game. Does that mean we should remove FM or implement ID? My answer is no, keep it how the game was in-era. But reasonable people can disagree. Just offering the arguement for keeping "imbalanced mechanics."
Actually AE/Haste worked on all detrimental spells until a 2003 patch. It was intended - and not broken. " Primal Dreams Reply #Dec 16 2002 at 7:26 AMRating: Decent Seedling Scholar 6,424 posts The Affliction Haste foci also effect Root, Instill and up ____________________________ No PUP, no glory! <Inferno Claws [4563/3520]> [ffxivsig]190940[/ffxivsig] "Puppetmaster was our last best hope for peace. It failed. Now it's our last best hope.. for victory!" Reply #Feb 05 2003 at 11:18 AMRating: Decent necrobard 11 posts Unfortunately they changed that in the 2/4 patch. It now only works on DoT spells" Check them dates out.
I guess we'll never know what the actual intent was without asking the designer, but I feel like Affliction focus working on everything was a mistake. In the spell data file, the limit effect for DoTs happens to be use value 0 which is also the value of things that are not used. It's common to write code like "if ( effect != 0) do something". Other limit effects in those focus spells work, except that one. To make it work like AK, I had to ignore that limit effect.
Thought this was an interesting anecdote w.r.t. longstanding "bugs" and dev intentions: 6/13/2006 patch notes: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20060613.html --> A long-standing bug associated with spell channeling is identified and fixed. 6/16/2006 patch notes: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20060616.html --> New" fixed" mechanic was apparently reviled since the longstanding broken behavior was interpreted as expected gameplay. 9/19/2006 patch notes: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20060919.html --> All channeling AA's were refunded (and eventually eliminated?) and the longstanding bug was embraced as the legit status quo. Off-topic but I wonder during which expansion the "channeling through damage" actually became bugged? I'll stop spamming this thread now, ty.
My opinion... and it may just be my own is that the line that is getting blurred is the line between legit *bugs and what was *not intended. My thoughts were always that BUGS would be fixed. Things that were code issues. However what seems to be happening is that now things that are deemed OP... are being nerfed because it’s “not how the devs intended.” If it was an actual game mechanic that was true to the era that was not a code error my understanding is that would remain as true to AK. That only the things that were code errors would be fixed (much like our changelogs). Monk AC is not a code error. It’s how it was intended in era only later to be realized that it was a mistake and was later fixed. That should NOT be altered according to how I understand the devs plans for the server. DA aggro is the same. It was not a bug or code error but an intended game mechanic that was later realized that maybe it wasn’t the best solution... again something I understood as in era correct and part of AK Fixing Affliction is a bug. Permapac was a bug. My understanding is bugs get fixed... unintended but legitimate in era mechanics do not...... Just my two thoughts on the split that is happening
"Our goal is to make this server as close to the original EQMac Al'Kabor Server as possible. With our community, we believe that goal can be achieved." - The Al'Kabor Project Team If the goal is to make TAKP as close to the EQMac AK server as possible, I'd assume the content bugged or not, would be preserved on TAKP as a historical representation of AK. The majority of players (and I'm assuming Devs) are seeking to experience what was quite possibly the best EQ server ever. Are we straying from that experience? Did someone get hit with Mem blur?
Overall, the term 'bug' is very subjective when it comes to game mechanics. It almost is never black or white, but rather a sliding scale and everyone falls somewhere on that scale and that's the problem. This isn't a discussion about an unwinnable Quarm or pathing, or even tic-running. This is about something that existed on the server. Whether people knew about it en-mass or not, shouldn't matter. I don't consider how DA worked a bug. Not balanced? sure, why not. But EQ has never been balanced, nor should an attempt be made to balance it when the whole purpose is to recreate the AK server.
I applaud everyone who is contributing to the project dev/player your time invested benefits us all. /cheers to you
This ^ to quote Jizmak form earlier, Fading memory is so powerful that later on similar tools got given to monks. There are hundreds of examples like this if you dig in where mechanics or abilities were re worked for balance, those have nothing to do with bugs.
This is correct IF you want balance in this game remove clerics, enchanters and bards. Completely. May be even shammies cause they trivialize everything with their 75 percrent slow. No one will be raiding shit, but the game will be in a much better state of balance than ever.
I don't get my way every time, trust me. I bring up issues that would have never been brought up otherwise, though. And each dev has their pet issues. I really did not like DA hate wipes; other devs were not nearly as passionate but still voted my way. You guys don't see our debates, so you all don't realize how conflicted we are. Some devs lean toward 'akuracy', some lean the other way. 'Glaring bugs' is subjective. DA hate dumps is certainly 'glaring' to me. Even WoW has threat mechanics. I told a friend of mine who played EQ from 1999-2004 and doesn't play here about it, response: lol so broken So perma pac is super obviously busted and ruins the game but rampage was working as intended and harmless. This is what I mean about subjectivity. To be honest I'm getting a little tired of repeating myself, but I'll state this again: Shakerpaging was disabled because it cannot be replicated without making it MUCH worse than it was. In HoH (as one example) on AK, it was impossible to pull more than 30 or so mobs at once because they all started running backwards and going home-- the pathing was horrendous. Here the pathing allows you to easily pull that entire zone. Esildor leveled his bot army by paging Valor on AK, which had pathing that worked. Now imagine every zone in the game being able to be pulled like that. Even if we could allow it without making it worse than AK, allowing somebody to level a new character from 1 to 65 with 100 AAs in a day is problematic. On top of this, people here abuse these kinds of things much more often than they did on AK; plus zones become unusuable to others while it's being done. I played a warrior who used to do it (not a whole lot though), so I don't like it being completely gone and would prefer a nerfed-but-still-worthwhile state of it, however this is very tricky to implement and I'm not sure how it should be done. (and of course other devs have to agree to anything I conjured up) Meanwhile I have a long list of things to implement and need to make choices. You guys can post here all day and criticize us for our decisions without seeing any consequences for what you proclaim things should be. Devs have to make calls that have serious consequences for the game that affect hundreds of players. Imagine the shitstorm if we allowed shakerpaging which resulted in zones becoming unusuable and people getting all their AAs in a couple of days, resulting in an outcry, resulting in our disabling it after people had benefited. Would you exp by killing one mob at a time while your guildmates were getting exp 20x faster with rampage? No, and neither would anybody else.
I don't want to nerf Affliction focus effects, I don't think anyone does, I was just bringing up an example of implementing an AK behavior that is questionable because it was later changed in a nerf way. My perspective is that this is not an egregious bug/behavior/whatever. If it was so powerful that it beat out focus effects on potime gear then I'd say it probably needs to be looked at. Jiz, Faults and others.. this is my perspective as a player and I'm not speaking for the dev team. The devs here put considerable time and effort into researching and tweaking the content and subtle combat mechanics that made everquest the memorable game that it is. When there is some ability/spell/item that is OP in a way that cheapens other things, then it brings into question what the point of those other things is, and why we should worry about implementing them. Do we need to worry about tweaking NPC hate if players have a way to just wipe it anyway? There are lots of aggro management items, spells and abilities and some are better than others but DA wiping hate is so strong that it makes many of the others less interesting. We have things like Furious Bash shields, BoW, Escape, Fading Memories, wizard elemental pants, ranger Jolt procs that all become a lot less interesting with the DA hate wiping strategy. I want to see those things have a purpose and be part of the player progression and not be made irrelevant by another (possibly unintended) behavior. I agree that Fading Memories is very strong, but even that is scalable, you don't just get god mode when you buy the ability. You can continue to progress by getting more mana and more flowing thought. The DA behavior was a full hate wipe on every invulnerability effect, even the level 1 version. It doesn't start off weak and get stronger with AA, items or spell upgrades. Ancient: Greater Concussion is a pretty nice spell to have, unless you already have a bard to DA you. I think that's a pretty negative outcome and diminishes the fun of progressing in the game. I'd be ok with something that wipes a fixed amount in line with other aggro reduction spells, but in my opinion this is one of those egregious bugs that I'm glad to see changed. So AKurate might be true, but it takes the fun out of a bunch of other things for me as a player.
