11-2-2016

The baby drakes at Eashen were charmable. I recall some discussion using them to slow Vyemm because they proc a disease based slow, Slime Mist.

Made dealing with him far easier when a 25% slow procs hehe.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=8573

MVP of pre-Luclin Vyemm kills

 

I boxed a lot of toons pretty regularly on AK, but I actually would've voted for a two box limit instead of three had I been around back then. Nothing builds community like people actually needing each other to get stuff done.

 

I find my enchanter extremely useful in Velious. On raids, he is mostly a buff bot (also just a Shawl Crawl away from Shawl 8 with extended enhancement). Also, on my cleric's Shawl Crawl his mem blur on the General and slows on giants were very useful. In group situations, he is even more useful. He has a 3.4 sec slow with affliction haste 3 and the cleric spell haste buff. I usually pull with my enchanter (tash or slow) so his pet adds some DPS. My warrior is able to quickly pull agro from him with taunt; I have no need to use any clickie taunts. I never charm, too unreliable for my tastes. Also mez is nice, no mezz in KD, but I use it a lot in SG.

 

I do want to add if EoS/IkI come to zone in - its clear GoV doesn't receive assist from CoV - and we shouldn't be changed to what live is - when our era doesn't have that assist function.

 

This is an unsubstantiated claim. You do not have definitive proof on your non-assist claims. What live is like, you can pull them through at Indifferent or above on CoV faction as long as they don't hit you while you are close to other mobs.

This "I want easy mode" mentality needs to stop. It makes it very hard to dev, when we have to research stuff endlessly. When in doubt? Guess what? It is not going to be made easier.

Have you ever thought that all the assist mechanics in EQ, haven't totally been figured out?

H

 

I don't like changes for the sake of change. What I want is AK - not a tradeskill UI or something of that ilk but when I read - "So they sped up Iki's guards finally? Used to be you could just pull Ikatiar and Eashen to the zone in by putting the long duration bardspeed song on your puller before he zones in.. since he could bring the named to zone in with no adds if he got COTHed or /q'd after the mob gets tagged."

As well as another post discussion these 2 to the zone-in I can't help but wonder (since they are GoV and ANY cov would assist despite the runspeed change if that was the way it was) WHY you are so adamant about making it like live. If live is the goal than sure. But if as close to AK era is the goal then I will continue to fight for the first person claims and information we have. I will find every monkly business and steel warrior thread if that is the volume of evidence you need. I am fine with evidence. I am not find with changes because it feels wrong to you guys. Its not that "easy" to do what we do (for this pull and others) - and its frustrating that you think it is.

 

I think the goal, Faults, is to create mechanics that are substantiated by evidence. This case is fairly unique, in that the mechanics in question are subtle, the implications for raids are large, there's no solid AK evidence, and old EQPC posts are ambiguous or conflicting. In cases like this, our devs seem to default to data gathered on Live.

I support that. I much prefer mechanics based on some data, even if it's not exactly AK data, to mechanics that are just made up from devs' whims or internet groupthink archaeology or whatever.

 

It was cool playing the assist game with pulling GoV mobs thru CoV mobs. CoV did not care if u had good enough faction.

Odds are it was same way on AK. Much higher odds, than they didn't. There were no big revamps to how the faction systems work after the AK era.

Faults: You have already demonstrated a preference to self serving changes, such as Sebilis giving big Guk faction hits. Even when proven by logs, you still wanted it in. That is called wanting "easy mode". If there is any confusion.

 

I asked first actually and was told by some other old AK people that they also recalled the hits. Then I did the faction the old way anyway (demonstrating zero resistance to "hard mode") I also noted the scalp didnt work in the same quest, and bug reported a broken FD in the meantime. I can only report the changes I am currently "testing" or doing. Of course they are self serving I can't report bugs other people encounter Haynar - except for the rogue evade bug I noticed and reported. So one faction bug makes me "easy mode?" Come on dude the posts alone give evidence of flopping through and at CoV mobs w/ EoS for others to tag off. Takes about eos/iki at ZI w/o a counter train in a thread about tactics.

Currently CoV assists GoV even with prox pull at max ally. You have changed it so cov just assists GoV - which is neither the way it WAS or the way it is on live as you described. So why have we hit this "middle area" of perma assist?

Please tell me I play easy mode on a quest I did literally as described 1 faction hit at a time even with a broken scalp. Oh and tell me how that bug report has anything to do with the evidence presented in this thread. Or any of the other reports ive made from alpha on - since that one sebilis one seems to matter Oh So Much. I am sorry I was wrong - it happens and I dropped it immediately after the proof was posted.

Post YOUR proof that cov assists GOV even on prox pulls with max ally. You know AK didn't get the faction changes of 2003. The reason we tried the ZI pull was because that was how marv had done it on live with his guild.

Stop telling me I seek easy mode - you have no idea why I play or post bug reports - don't assume you do, you can ask privately; but don't attack my character. Please and thank you.

 

They still both run faster than their guards on Live.

Because, as I've explained previously, the factions do assist and the reasons why they don't are do to inter-faction assisting quirks that Sony's server had. Also we generally like to err on the side of more difficult rather than the opposite. At this point we're wrestling with how to implement inter-faction assisting because it's very difficult to figure out; we may end up breaking assists in another zone if we blindly put in things without checking the behavior elsewhere.

This is something that users could easily go on Live servers and experiment for themselves btw, not that anybody does it. This problem in particular is extremely time consuming for devs and takes away from other other tasks.

 

Okay - but the posts from the era we're aiming for, indicate that the factions probably don't assist; the anecdotes of getting those 2 mobs to ZI as well as them discussing the flop "hand off" to tag mobs makes its a plausible inference - that the more difficult thing that was implement is inaccurate. Erring on the side of hard is okay but it doesn't mean its always right. There are 13 years between the posts I've linked that certainly lean toward a lack of assist (and i know on AK not only did factions often NOT assist each other - but they fought each other; for a fact you could get field 2 in fire to attack charm birds) rather than how you have it now. Ikitar doesn't seem any faster than his guards (eos is crazy fast) - and its more than that Torven, simply running past 4 way with ikitar aggro causes every single mob there to come to ZI; the solo puller monk on monkly business would've been laughed down if that was how it was when he suggest iki eos go to zone in.

Furthermore - what exactly do you need tested on live? I don't test much (except what I encounter as I play - sorry Haynar) because I don't know how. You say "test this" but thats a vague answer. Test exactly what. I'll test it - I'll get it back to you. But how it is currently is wrong. And I am sorry if it rubs anyone the wrong way but my goal is to make it right. Not hard. Not easy. Right.

 

I'd like to point out that even if we do find evidence it is often neglected by the devs because its not from ravenwing's memory or specifically in an AK log.

Zeatos or whoever that guy is with the gnome avatar talked about how he could invis pull through chardok by body pulling a see invis dog. I posted an article on how king could be solo pulled to entrance by charming a guard if you are indifferent or higher faction. In both cases the un-assisting mobs are indifferent or higher and both mobs that were agro'd were both agro'd without direct threat. Yet it is pushed away because we play on TorvenAKP.

 

I'm sorry but when a person comes after my character I get angry. Staff members should be held to the same standard as I would be. This is a game I - and others - are passionate about. To have a staff member insinuate I only make bug reports that help me (as opposed to I only make ones i come across while playing the classes I play) as well as that I play everquest 1 for "easymode" is a personal attack to me.

Lock the thread. I probably can't stop myself at this point if you bring up me specifically instead of talking about ntov factions.

 

You guys vastly underestimate the amount of work put into this project by staff. I put in as much time into this project as a full-time job at great expense while having financial difficulties. I'm sorry if I can't address your NPC in chardok when you want me to. I'm trying to collect PoP data before Daybreak slaps Mitigation of the Mighty on them and prevents further collection, on top of other issues. Parsing a single NPC takes three times as much time for me than it does to do your weekly ToV raid.

Furthermore implementing a server-wide assist change based on one anecdote in one zone without fully understanding the logic behind it and verifying the functionality in multiple zones would be simply dumb as it would almost certainly break content in other zones.

You are selectively searching for any statements that vaguely support your claim while ignoring any that refute your claim. Several of your pasted comments were easily proven inaccurate or otherwise explained by other mechanics.

 

Faults don't like an easy life he mained a ranger for years on AK for god sake

 

I started leveling a ranger once. Got to 37. Takes a real man to be able to play a class that dresses in tights and dances around.

 

Wait I thought that was bards. Should I be dancing?!

 

Nobody said it was 'right'. It's not right and I explained why it's not right. But fighting GoV in front of CoV is also not right and frankly silly. You're complaining so much because we had it ez-mode before we made it hard-mode.

There is a very long list of things that need to be done and developers have to prioritize. Frankly spending 20+ hours on this just so you can kill a handful of fewer trash mobs before killing your loot pinata isn't the highest priority right now. It doesn't mean that it's not on the list or at the bottom of the list.

I'm in ToV right now on Live. I can say that I was in fact wrong to say that Ik's run speed is faster than his guards. It's the same. This matches our NPC collects as we get our run speeds from packets.

The reason why Ikatiar was running ahead of his guards and making me think that he did run faster was because of pathing issues-- they were running back and forth in certain spots briefly while Ikatiar did not. Pathing errors are not something we can implement.

It's simple. Find inter-faction assisting mobs and find out the conditions in which they assist and don't assist. Zones like Seru are good for this. Try to replicate the claims made in posts that are pasted.

 

OMG the pathing in ToV on live is bad bad bad. I have seen no other zone as bad. Even my pet couldnt path. There is something horribly wrong.

Done right, I could warp a GoV mob past 4-way to the entrance. And no adds in process.

So there is more going on than just assist mechanics in how ppl pulled to zone in.

 

And between several devs, in last few weeks, we have easily spent 40+ man hours parsing and testing aggro/faction mechanics on eqlive. I did about 8 hours myself.

How does that compare to 3 google searches, - copy and paste. And a few RnF posts to bash staff efforts?

I am guessing these are really just stall tactics. To push Luclin back to 2018. Because we aren't gonna make 2017 at this pace.

 

Reading everything in here. I am sorry you feel the job of developing this server is a burden. I respect that burden. I still think ToV is wrong and I will fight until its right or I am proven wrong. As for testing, I will need to cooldown before I do anything to help this team again,

 

Live: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9w2lZ-BZM3lTmd5dk1Bd3RqaDQ

TAKP: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9w2lZ-BZM3lbGlpMFBpMjFUMWM

 

I think most of the devs agree it still need work. That's why countless hours have been spent on it, trying to get it right.

You can disagree with us all you want. It is how you disagree that is important. Some methods of disagreeing with Staff/Devs here have better results. Some don't.

If we pick a final state, and you still disagree ... well, sorry.

 

My puller is max ally. I believe you've noted that makes a difference already.