At this point, takp IS the real everquest that we've fallen in love with. We should not be changing fundamental server mechanics after nearly a decade, unless there is overwhelming agreement from the developers and the playerbase. This holds especially true when changes break a behavior that feels natural. It's not like corpse dragging was causing players a jarring experience and traumatizing them against the glory of old EQ. It worked. Why change it? There is such thing as approximating an experience. Sometimes copying data 1:1 does not replicate an experience 1:1. In this case there are nuances in the code that mean using in-era corpse range values* ARE causing a jarring, game-breaking difference in experience. If it's not the EQ any of us know, then we shouldn't stick with it. *let's be clear that the corpse range value is an unknown number that it seems Torven guessed should be 50. Common sense says revert this change.
It's more than that. As I mentioned before, I found mention of '50 feet' in numerous Usenet posts from 1999, which were quoting Sony. The original Sony post seems to be lost however. But the example I found in AK logs of my trying to /corpse up the ledge to the nightmare rider boss in Plane of Nightmare required inching close simply would not have been required if the range were anywhere near 100 units and agrees with 50 units fairly well.
my foggy memories of playing a rogue back on old ak include corpse dragging being slightly annoying, so a change in that direction doesn't seem beyond the pale to me. but then again i don't even know if i had a hotkey for it.. i might have been hitting shift+up for /corpse. as a random idea... what if there were a #corpse command that was just /corpse + a forced position update? are there downsides to giving players a way to force position updates "for free"?
We could add like graveyards. Then no need to drag. Or even coffin summon. I know. Crazy talk. But I think its doable.
Hmmm. Do you have information server-side to predict the position? Just a simple linear predictor along the lines of summon to LastPosReceived + MovementVector * (CurrentTime - TimeLastPosWasReceived)Just an idea. I think it might help with dragging, while not changing where you can safely grab a corpse from. Would that be feasible, and reasonably akkurate? I didn't sketch the "best" timestamps to use, there is network delay. Might have better. And I haven't fully thought out what might go wrong... predicted position might not be "safe", i.e. corpse might temporarily land in or under geometry.
is there anyway to at least just revert to the 100 range this server has had for its existence so far and then we can just test out ways to make it 50 that are feasible? Once it feels better then implement it? The way its working now in production is just undesirable and makes things significantly less enjoyable overall, especially in non-graveyard zones
Corpse dragging does not feel accurate at all to me, I can barely even drag one body at run 3 speed without having to stop multiple times..
I did not play on AK, so I can't say one way or another whether that server had its own corpse drag logic that was time locked to the server that maybe "real EQ" didn't have, or was just one slice of the EQ timeline as a result of a bad patch or broken mechanic. I can say with certainty on Live EQ I was able to corpse drag full speed on a bard with Selo's (modified by drum bonus) to drag corpses as long as I kept clicking the /corpse key consistently (and the zone allowed for Selos). I was never stopping, turning, running, stopping again, zig zagging, or otherwise strafing, standing on my tippy toes, or clicking my heals together. Nor was anyone else I played with or raided with before, during, or after the PoP era until my wife and I quit around 2004ish. Yes our memories can be hazy on certain things after being away from the game for awhile, but I corpse dragged all the time and it did not require running around like a lunatic without (drum modified) bard song playing.
The AK “akkurate” is a mixed bag because in the same patch notes the unlimited Z axis corpse drag was nerfed which was doable on AK. We all love this server and know theres plenty of non-akkurate things. So its only ever called up as an argument when it’s supporting a case, we could just simply get to the root of the problem which is probably BoT and Plane of air Z axis dragging (maybe saryrn too). Just call a spade a spade and say “hey we’re nerfing something that we feel is being abused”. That’s a completely respectable thing to say. Instead now we’re stuck with a very unenjoyable experience that may end up driving people away from the server we love. also just an idea but if theres big mechanics changes coming we could push them to test server and ask people to try them out for two weeks so we don’t have to go through this production ever time (looking at you ranger nerfs) Thats just me ranting, I do appreciate the work and time the devs put in but I think the communication could be better and in the end it would be less of a headache for everyone including development
I think you're mistake here, Tuen. Here's a post from Temerity's boards in 2010: I'm told the devs are still looking at the x-y drag issues which a lot of people - including me - are telling them feel very wrong. But all the evidence is against unlimited z-axis corpse dragging on AK or on Live in this period.
So if it didn’t exist outside of memory than why not just disable it across the board then instead of zone specific?
also rereading that quote it kinda insinuates that there is a present Z axis corpse drag bug somewhere but it does not work for Sol Ro. Do you happen to have any other supporting evidence? I’d be interested because I swear you could do it
I would also like to weigh in, that Sol Ro chamber, would boot toons out of the room if they did not have the minis, i never practised dragging corpses in there, but i remember when the pickie rule was there that you had maybe less then 10 sec before you were ported out of the chamber
This was not the case on AK. The only place I experienced booting was PoFire when I zoned into Fire after a Sol Ro kill before having Rallos kill. I was however able to bind my characters in PoFire and gate back in every 3~ minutes. I farmed a few FT3 belts from field 1 regating my chanter/cleric every 3minutes like this.
So that would indicate again that there would be reason for the corpse Z axis to be blocked specifically for that encounter. which again eludes that it should be possible in other places... furthermore the fact that they knew to even try it shows it was likely commonplace or at least common knowledge that it could be done.
The "z-axis bug" - which isn't really a bug - Glimi is talking about is the ability to cast beneficial spells (such as rez) over huge Z-axis differences. It was infamous at the time because another AK guild was using rez through the floor elsewhere in a way that was controversial on the server. Another group on AK used a rather convoluted exploit to avoid the Emp key quest that wouldn't have been necessary if you could just /corpse characters from floor one into the Emperor's room, which I can guarantee you they tried. That said, it would sure be convenient to have the ability to /corpse up to Xegony and other PoP mobs back! Tuen, where do you remember it working on AK?
Is there anything besides turning that updates a character location? If I type /loc in a drag hotkey will it update my position for every pull?
Dont want to beat a dead horse but in your post Gimli specifically says “Z-axis bug using /corpse fails.” My biggest memory was pulling corpses up in The Deep from the chasm, Its obviously been like a decade though so I wouldn’t rely on my memory to be any good. I really think you post is indicative proof that the /corpse bug existed though and not the other way around to be honest.
With that being said though there’s a debate if akkurate or not and it was 7 years here with the functionality existing so its just kind of weird to change it now. Backtracking a bit tough I’m Just interested in why it was changed.. I actually don’t have any strong feelings on keeping or ditching z axis drag. Was that post the reason it was changed?
When I first heard about the change, I also suggested The Deep, as well as Vulak's bridge and a couple of other places where I thought z-axis dragging was probably possible on AK. But like you, I don't know that I trust my memories all that well after all these years. What I can tell you for certain is that Glimi isn't talking about a well-known trick that worked elsewhere because I was leading Temerity's raids at the time and we weren't doing it other places. Which I think we would have - at Xegony, in particular - if we'd had the option. It didn't take us long to come up with the idea here on TAKP, and Glimi's post is evidence that the possibility was at least floated on AK. No. I understand that the impetus to investigate came from evidence of tinkering with a z-axis limit to /corpse in 2001; apparently there definitely a limit in place by GoD. I only stumbled across that post when I went looking for evidence that the z-axis limit had to be wrong.
Of interesting note i did find this in the patch notes for April 4,2001. Obviously not enough information but probably would be where a Z axis /corpse bug would have been introduced if it was indeed in AK. I didnt see any corpse related fixes in the subsequent months though mid-2002. I also don’t know when AK was forked originally: April 4,2001 Fixed a problem with /corpse that kept it from working on corpses that were too far above or below
I believe all this does not matter, if the devs want it to be one way, i guess that is the way it will go. I seem to recall people finding posts etc proving or disproving changes that have been implemented, nothing changed from that. And i also dont expect to get any response of why this change was made, if it is "nerf" or "akkurate"
I gave you the reason why changes were made to /corpse: because it looked fishy to me, which made me look for evidence of it being wrong, and I found some then other people found more when I spoke to them about it. This is how a lot of stuff gets fixed. Regarding the Z axis check in particular, finding posts made not long after PoP that mention a Z axis limit isn't difficult. For example: https://web.archive.org/web/2005050...ealms.com:80/shaman/archive/index.php/t-16064 https://thesafehouse.org/forums/forum/everquest-wing/training-studios/7195-corpse-dragging So I looked for older posts. The 2001 patch note was easily found, and indicates that Sony had some logic that checked the Z coordinate at that point at least temporarily. The corpse summon routine is very simple and the only reason to change it after 2 years or even check the Z coordinate at all would be to limit Z height distance. I found some more posts around that time that made it more clear: https://web.archive.org/web/2002061...ndium.com/News/Week_Ending_8th_April_2001.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20020624031132/http://eqbeastiary.allakhazam.com/search.shtml?id=627 This suggests that Sony put in a Z check a few months after Velious's launch then relaxed it after complaints, hence the patch note. It makes sense for them to have put in a Z check at the time because several of the then new expansion zones have stacked geometry. As for why I only put in a Z check for certain zones, it's because we can't know that Sony did not do something similar and I erred on the side of being less restrictive. People assume that Sony would not have made special cases for some zones and not others, but they hardcoded all kinds of stuff. That may be what the patch note was referring to. Also our corpses don't fall to the ground on the server; they stay mid-air even though on the client they fall, and it would make corpses appear to be undraggable if the limit were enforced everywhere.
First, I appreciate all the work the devs put into this server, it is the most fun I've had playing EQ in ages. That said, as a rogue main, limited corpse distance does not make me feel more valuable. It does make my job way more annoying though. I think it may be helpful to split the discussion instead of grouping the change as a single whole since opinions on distance vs Z axis are different It seems pretty clear that a lot of people find the distance change to be pretty awful, I understand that there is a desire to preserve AK as it was, but is this really the kind of thing that helps capture that feeling? Can we look at reversing that aspect or making it a bit bigger? It feels extremely short right now. The Z Axis, I can see going either way and it is much more understandable to dig your heels into keeping that one, though personally I didn't see the big deal.
Lets simplify it: z changes - plausible x/y changes - serve no purpose. Not akurate. Punish trying to drag corpses. Make it impossible to drag a single corpse at sow+ speeds. No real justification in the first place. People do not like z change. But will admit, its possible there was maybe a z limit. For sure in some places. All? No way to be sure. Its the x/y changes that need put back. The z changes, people can live with. Dont like it. But they will deal with it. H
