I really don't mind bug fixes and balance changes, as opposed to a lot of people here. I will prefer polish and balance to akuracy every time. I know that's not a popular opinion. What I don't like is how it appears bug fixes or balance changes that take place are only the ones that are nerfs. If monk AC does get fixed, I see that as a step in the right direction. However a blanket no to archery in corners just makes me cringe so hard. It makes the game feel so broken. SOE made arrows generate more aggro and fixed the geometry bugs not long after PoP. They also fixed monk AC, and DA. So why not fix archery here as well, if we are okay with fixing DA and monk AC? Double backstab was fixed by Hobart I think a month or 2 before AK sunset (correct me if I am wrong). Because of this I assume that's why it works here on TAKP? It makes me wonder if I would have bugged Hobart to fix archery geometry issues before AK sunset, if the fate of rangers here on TAKP would have been different. Can this dead horse I'm beating get any deader?
Charm exp was fast in PoP. But so was ae experience. Even grouping experience. ALL experience was fast in PoP. 61-65 is about the same as L59 alone. This is just what PoP was. It's hilarious watching groups on Live progression servers up to PoP era. It literally was what you just typed - have enchanter or gtfo.
Even though I play an enchanter in my 3-box, a charm exp nerf wouldn't bother me at all. Though I wouldn't go out of my way to advocate for it either. I know i'm likley in the extreme minority on that opinion, haha.
No way exp was as fast in a reg group over a charm group, it wasn't even close. Any pet you pulled and hasted was worth a few rogues. By luclin standard yes xp is fast in POP, but charm is clearly clearly ahead by miles. It was clearly out of balance and got an exp nerf later on as it just kept spiraling out of control. AOE wasn't proheminent in POP due to most things not being stunnable? except may be COD? could be wrong there, i know pretty much everyone on AK made groups around encs cause it was the CLEAR option for exp.
No, I just want to know what to expect. Personally I would not want charm nerfed. In principal I like having obvious bugs/glitches fixed (MC, permapac, etc) and leaving the "overpowered" mechanics true-to-era (charm, DA, AEing, shakerpaging, etc). I don't see those as bugs that were fixed but balance tweaks that are difficult to assess in a vacuum away from all the other changes made to EQ through the years.
Sure why not. For the sake of balance. It was nerfed later on live, without being a bug, so i guess it's relevant to this conversation. There's also the horse bug for mana regen on old graphics. The first slot spell refresh with instal clickie. I mean the list goes on where do we stop? In other news we've started uncornering mobs to let rangers show the amazing half wizard dps of theirs, it hasn't made us f
Whoops text got cut out. It hasn't made us feel any better at raiding, but at least they whine less so everyone wins?
This. I remember salivating at the thought of having a good charmer in my AK exp group. I remember not being able to pull mobs fast enough in plane of valor to keep up.
Yep, this was my experience as well. I don't recall any PBAE groups in PoP zones. You may be right about COD, I vaguely remember something happening there. There's a hard lvl cap of 55 on those stuns. I charm kited as a Druid all the time. By far the fastest.
Well charm itself is working fine but I think there are lots of edge cases that we haven't seen tested/abused and I would guess that if fixes need to be made they would be to NPC AI, hatelist stuff or exp gains. Enchanter and Cleric were very powerful in the AK era. Today on live EQ they're probably the least useful as all of their "must have" utility abilities have been given out to every other class and their empowering features like charm have been nerfed. My guess is that the charm nerf is similar to all the other utility nerfs.. they don't scale well so you can't keep building content around them. If you let NPCs get stunned, then stun actually gets more powerful as you use it against stronger NPCs. Melee characters have a harder time against stronger NPCs until they get better gear. This is the problem with melee slow too. Charm scales to be stronger the bigger the NPCs get so you end up having to either nerf it somehow or make everything immune like for fear and AoE stun. PoP seems to have been a time of letting players have it all - godly power? I guess some classes just have better gods though. I don't think it's really possible to 'balance' an asymmetric game like EQ.
I wasn't comparing different group styles and saying they were the same rate of experience. I just meant that all experience was faster in PoP, which it was. It's what PoP was. It's like arguing that LDoN dungeons need to be nerfed so that they aren't instanced because the dungeons before it weren't - that's just what LDoN was, sort of the point of it. PoP experience SHOULD be fast. It's not thought of as the raid expansion for nothing. But charming itself? I wouldn't be upset if they nerfed it, but we have an awful lot of time to worry about that before it becomes an issue.
The charm nerf I was referring to is from this April 2003 patch: http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20030408.html That was shortly after LOY was released and I don't think there was any real high end content in that expansion, so these changes were likely aimed at charm pet usage in PoP.
Wasn't Bst AC mitigation nerfed around the same time monk's were? Unerf Bst! Give us two pets! On a more serious note, my personal opinion is that a few small tweaks, like improving monk mitigation slightly is very reasonable. I'm a bit sad about the DA changes because I talked up the DA earring from RW quite a bit to some nag players. It can still be useful but its definitely a very different item now. I definitely wish there were room for quality of life changes that apparently came along later in EQ's life. Things like an expanded bank for example. I also wish that the raid interface were more manageable and less prone to bugging (phantom group members, being able to bug out other peoples groups with control-d etc). I know I'm an outlier on most of this stuff, I'm mostly just happy to be along for the ride.
Ugh this makes me sad, I spent the vast majority of my EQ life as an ENC main, with next to no alts. On live before and after XP nerf (which was really the result of GoD content not PoP), and on AK. I never cheesed like this, hell most of the time I didn't even run with snare, it was pure timing and finesse to manage your pet + whatever you were killing. Just because you CAN cheese it like this doesn't mean there isn't a viable balance with risk / reward in charming as it was during PoP.
@J1zmak That but that nerf doesn't sound too bad to me. Tanking bosses with charm pets sounds kind of lame.. it's like the one thing warriors can do well. But I guess that's the problem with charm, it's fun because it's so over the top when you get a buffed up quadding pet. Later on I think they changed it so that charmed NPCs didn't do as much damage.
If you can't attack the argument, attack the person. Classic stuff there. Single boxing was still a lot more common then than it is now. Launch a PoP era server with p99 boxing rules and that risk vs reward returns a long way towards what you remember. Nobody is going to play a bard single box to sit rolling Lullaby of Morell for hours (unless they were okay with being afk for it I guess). That's not going to be the case here.
Is it tho? this community didn't spawn out of thin air because the server was brought up. It came in big part from old AK and from the word to mouth. A lot of people looked at AK back then and never got a mac or made a hackintosh to play on it, and then it was gone shortly after pc access was 'allowed'. I know i came here because of the people and because i wanted AK back. Read he mission statement, read the rules, and off i went. The devs absolutely hold all the power here, but even gaming companies with triple A titles listen to their community. What i'm trying to say is: EQ in PoP was an unbalanced mess. EQ on AK ws a buggy unbalanced mess. My understanding was we were headed towards a game with less bugs (archery, Permpac etc) but the same fun PoP unbalanced mess. Let the encs have their fun. Let the wars shakerpage if they abide to not disturbing other groups. Let the clerics not get their shit pushed in every time there is a bit of an overpull.
LOY was well before GOD i beleive? It was prior to LDON which was also before GOD but i could be fuzzy here. Either way it a response to charm in PoP, not GoD.
They absolutely should and do listen to their players. I think the devs here ARE listening to the players. They got rid of the Tolon exploit and from the sounds of it are about to partially revert the Monk mistake. Good changes that deviate from AKuracy. Listening doesn't always mean taking the players' advice either though. Ever seen the changes demanded by players in WoW? Or LoL? The players are not always right. Not even the loudest ones! Those AAA game devs know that. They listen to their players, but they hold to THEIR vision. It's not always right either - see D3's marketplace for the ultimate example. The devs here will make mistakes too. Even Haynar. Threads like this are good for blowing wind into their sails in certain directions but in the end its better if they still make the calls as they see fit, on a case by case basis. If they screw up too much, we'll leave. As long as they stay relatively close to what most people here want, we won't. Would they even care? One of the p99 devs is on record saying he wouldn't give a crap if the player population went straight to zero, he made the server to recreate Velious era and couldn't give a damn what anyone else wants. The only standard they have to hold to is the one they set for themselves.
Hell no... but when we start talking about “balance” and changes being made to legit-non bug game mechanics for sake of balance, it’s something I’m fearful of. Just because of the snowball effect. It seems changes like this are hapenneing more and more frequently.
I know they do. This is why we have thise threads. I. The hope they will listen, think, talk amongst themselves and reconsider some of the changes or adopt lighter more sensitive options. Lost in this mess was a suggestion to keep cleric sk nec da the same and nerf bard da, i think its a fantastic idea. Every time you oppose player ideas you always circle back to the same thing: it is the devs server and they do what they want. We know! You can stop repeating it.
I do find the blanket no on archery extremely saddening. People on PEQ may have boxed 35 rangers or some such, but that is hardly relevant in our situation at all. It was likely just easier for their programs to deal with endless streams of trash mobs using rangers than wizards, when wizards would win out otherwise. All parses point to wizzys dominating in every situation, even with trueshot going. There will never come a time when people choose to surround themselves with 3 computers to autofire with rangers, when 1 computer and basic hotkeys with wizards can outparse in all practical situations. I don't (and pretty sure no other rangers or others in general) want wizards nerfed or altered in any way. It's just keeping this intentional bug in does not add to the game at all. It's not like a DA fix that forces people to think and play more carefully; all it does is take away, adding no joy to anyone's experience. Wizards and rogues will win in damage, and we'll tie most others (even SKs, apparently.) Ahh, I meant to leave archery out of this thread. I have failed! =P
I know you know. It's not directed at people suggesting differences because they disagree with the balance effects. There are a lot of subjective things that can be argued from balance POVs or even just plain "is it better for the server" thoughts. Archery is one of these things. It's directed at people who think the devs have to hold to a 'standard' that they, the player, have arbitrarily set. When someone says "slippery slope" or "snowball effect", that's an example. Slippery slope from what to what? From AKurate to not AKurate? We've already covered that. It's not going to be 100% AKurate and anyone who will quit if it isn't might as well quit now. I say "it's the devs server" because some people think that the devs are wrong to deviate from the standard that player thinks is set. I say it because they're WRONG to think that. The devs have said it, their actions have backed what they said up. That standard is not where they are coming from with these changes. Those people need to deal with it and stop using it to back up arguments in threads like this. Argue whether or not the DA change is good. If the argument is that the DA change isn't consistent with what is thought to be some "standard" set, then the argument is no good.
