Actually Akkirus was probably responsible for Ring of Vulak, Ring of Fire, all the traps in Luclin zones, etc. God knows what PoP would have been like had he stayed. PoP will be so much less of a PITA to dev. You guys can't wait to play Luclin? I can't wait to stop deving it.
Hopefully you'll get to enjoy the fruits of your labor Torven for a good length of time before jumping into PoP. I am always astounded at the detail you put into mechanics here. I cannot speak more highly of your and the other devs' efforts here.
Well, there are other ways to 'enjoy the fruit' other than playing the game. I get satisfaction out of seeing my work enjoyed by others. I don't play mostly because it's a 3 box server and there is simply too much work to be done. Eventually the work will slow down once PoP is out, and it's certainly possible that TAKP based 1 or 2 box servers may pop up-- and perhaps custom servers... Luclin content would be much easier to dev if it were still available on Live, so it's not just that it's scripted, but also because it's just not available anymore. VT will be much easier than Acrylia to dev.
They just leashed VT raid mobs and Emperor to their rooms in the last patch. They're changing everything!
How did that work, exactly? Would Emp actually warp down into some other part of the zone without his guards, or did they kill him in the rug room?
Im sure Torven is familiar with the pulls, I think he played a Progression server at some point? Anywho, I hope none of those pulls are doable on TAKP. Would be nice to know if our pathing/code prevents it as they trivialize the events and the keying process.
It seems possible to me that it wouldn't have worked on AK in the first place. If a mob stuck in Emp's room would warp onto its target, wouldn't the geometry exploit that a couple of people actually did use to try to isolate Emp from his guards (which I believe the GMs actually took action against on AK) have failed? Either way, I agree on your last point! It'd be disappointing if that were possible.
I did not play a progression server. My EQ experience was from launch 1999 to mid 2004 with a 6 month break during Luclin. Then Project 1999 for a bit in 2011, then EQMac from late 2012 until shut down with a long break in that year. I'm pretty hardcore when I do play, though. I didn't do a lot of raiding on AK due to joining a guild in like September. You guys will have to provide details on any pulling quirks. Last time I did emp was in 2002 and I probably did it like twice ever.
You could taunt a mob thru the floor on live - one of the Rhag rooms are directly below the Emp room. He'd warp immediately through the wall when taunted. Taunt ignores the Z axis, and /assist ignores distance checks. So he'd just be pullable to the zonein, that's what Faceless did on Emp. For VT, you can kite the mob's adds that summons adds - Thall Va Xakra - in a circle, and pull TVX to the zoneline and kill him single without having to clear. Also, in VT, you can skip a lot of trash due to zone geometry being buggy as hell. There's a spot on live where you can jump (without lev) on the side of the castle, and skip to Mini Aten's room, Aten Ha Ra's room, and other locations. Speaking of TVX, he can drop any 4 items off of his loot table at random. Always 4, no more no less, I've seen the same item 3 times from him on the same kill, so I assume he can drop it up to 4. Same with most VT bosses, they drop any item on their table and can drop multiples of the same item. I read something stating that they might have added an extra item at one point, though.
I remember getting blood of ssra out of emp's room, but I specifically remember not being able to get emp or his snake adds out. I was fairly crafty and persistent... I'm not saying it couldn't have been done, but I didn't figure out a way to do it. edit: I'm pretty sure I used heal agro to transfer agro to my cleric, that was how I did most of those kinds of things.
TVX's adds on AK were not circle kiteable - they were linked to him and would always add unless they had a large amount of aggro on something else; you can get to a lot of inaccessible places in that zone via camping into walls and so-on. The warders functioned. Thats why the rotation for vt was reset based afaik.
As far as Emperor Ssra goes, the encounter is pretty clearly designed to force you to offtank/mez the eight adds. I hope that'll be the case here.
Since GMs on AK would consider it a punishable offense to exploit, I doubt the other devs would outvote me on it. (but I don't want to speak for them) I certainly don't want it exploitable.
Defeats the purpose of the encounter if you can just pull him to zone. I'm sure the devs would have fixed immediately that if they saw it happen. When I did this during PoP/Luclin era, I've never even heard of anyone being able to do this.
No shit, even if a guild had been this outside-the-box about taunt and geometry in 2002 - they would not have advertised how to trivialize content. This is also just terrible reasoning, not hearing of it during the pop era is more likely due to ignorance. Just last year some dude completed a pop era quest for the first time! The first time! I mean - this tactic is total bullshit and I hated it on the prog servers and I have full faith our devs won't allow a cheesefestivus like this as they have demonstrated in the past. So the emp/zone in pull is a non issue if you have paid any attention in the past/want to give our team the benefit of the doubt they've earned a thousand times over and back. Anywho - enjoy your tedious debate about what-have-you.
Taunt was recoded several times over the years anyway. It's entirely possible AK's taunt had a Z check. Actually since I played a warrior many years ago, I do seem to vaguely recall that AoE taunt was needed to taunt large NPCs because regular taunt wouldn't work, but I'm not sure.
I never verified it myself, but warriors complained that AoE taunt could fail on certain tall NPCs on AK - off the top of my head, the giant bosses in PoEB.
AE taunt had Z axis limitations for sure. AoW for instance, you had to be levi'd up by his ballbag for AE taunt to work. Regular taunt had no Z axis limitations and worked through walls/ceilings/floors. Failed regular taunt still worked for pulling, as it still generated hate. I'm not arguing for taunt to be changed to work through walls etc, it was super exploitable.. but it was like that for 10+ years.
From what I recall... taunt always worked thru walls/ceilings/floors. I would prefer to just have Emp-to-zonein be punishable but leave it in and able to be exploited, but logged on the server side of things. It's a great way to weed out idiots.
I support permaban for all people in encounter, if they manage to pull emp to zone in. No questions asked. XOXOXO H
I was just commenting on my surprise and making conversation. I remember racing time after time to the emp and we tried many things. Everyone knows absence of proof doesn't prove the opposite. No need to go all ape-shit on me Mr Monk AC.
Honestly, any encounter that is exploited in a similar way should be the same. Almost all of us have done these encounters before. We should know what is acceptable or not by now.
Well, ban them if they attempt to kill it anyway. If they abort and report the exploit, then that's actually helpful. Sometimes it's not on purpose.
