I've recently started playing again (way too much) and it's nice to see so many familiar players in game! As an original Al`Kabor player I'm starting to notice some deviations from what EQMac was like and I'm wondering what is the intent of the takproject? On the wiki page there's a statement that the aim is "to replicate EverQuest's Al'Kabor server" and then below there's a statement about striving for accurate emulation and project 1999 is given as an example. Those statements seem a bit contradictory to me. I think uniqueness is important and I guess I'm worried the takproject is slowly "fixing" Al`Kabor to be a replica of eqpc servers of that era, taking away all the quirks that existed in eqmac, which may include what might be regarded as "bugs" because they are different than the game mechanics of eqpc. I loved EQMac and my playing time there definitely showed that. It was buggy and different from eqPC in a lot of ways, but in my opinion that made it unique and fun to play. Some bugs made things harder, some bugs made things easier and some just made things wacky! Overall they created a unique, challenging experience which kept me playing.
All from just the General section... really, just read some threads http://www.takproject.net/forums/index.php?threads/i-have-a-favor-to-ask.4315/ http://www.takproject.net/forums/index.php?threads/horse-discussion.4335/ http://www.takproject.net/forums/index.php?threads/patch-questions.4291/ http://www.takproject.net/forums/index.php?threads/misc-feedback-requests.3651/
Hey Stamm! Great to see you here. I have nothing to do with the development process here, but having observed it from the outside, I have opinions! I'd say it makes sense to discuss the replication of Al'Kabor in two areas: mechanics that weren't bugs or unambiguous exploits on Al'Kabor, and mechanics that were. In terms of non-bugs, the devs have been mostly consistent in their desire to replicate Al'Kabor precisely. I can think of only two counter-examples, which are a recent change to prevent charm tanking in non-single-group situations, and a dev's recent statement that shakerpaging will probably be curtailed. The charm change was reverted in response to player feedback. The question of shakerpaging won't really be addressed until Luclin, I imagine, but it caused huge problems - both in terms of antisocial behavior and stability issues with frequent crashes of PoValor - on Al'Kabor, so there are clearly legitimate reasons to consider a change here. I would also speculate that other zone-monopolizing, network-crippling behaviors that weren't possible on Al'Kabor but may be due to improved pathing TAKP (i.e. bards AE kiting entire zones) may wind up disabled as well (as they were on PC). In terms of bugs and exploits, I would say that there has been some negotiation in this regard, but that the tendency has been not to replicate them. Pacify and OOR exp are working as intended, and not as they did on Al'Kabor. Pet-pulling is disabled, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that tick-splitting is as well. On the other hand, I believe the bugged double exp bonus for groups of 4 or larger is still in. The horse bug will be in. I am not holding my breath on WotW, insta-rune, bellow, mental corruption, and so forth, but I suppose time will tell! TL;DR you're right that the devs here are ironing out many of Al'Kabor's eccentricities, and see this as a feature and not a bug of their work. On the whole, I agree with them more often than I disagree (there were many bugs on AK I wanted Hobart to fix, some of which he eventually did), but there are many who don't, and anyone looking for an AK replica complete with AK-specific bugs and exploits will not find that replica in TAKP.
Thanks for those links, Lenas. It seems there are/have been some real strong opinions about this subject! I haven't experienced enough know which side I'm on, if any. Certainly the "silent" quest NPCs in lots of my newbie areas was a bit annoying but those things take time to develop. Overall I'm having fun and that's the main thing. I noticed a few comments telling people who expressed their opinions that they should leave the server. I don't know if that's a good idea. Server population is always important. XP bonus: I remember when that was put in. It wasn't originally in AK, but IIRC it was added on an early update to promote grouping. Shakerpaging: Never liked it much for XPing, though I used it for farming, usually on moderate numbers of mobs. If it is completely disabled, I'll miss it for that. In my ideal world, it would be allowed for green cons only. Pacify: I won't miss that. It was always a bit irritating to find mobs that ignored me. What's the duration like now? I remember on AK, the duration was totally destroyed for clerics with the extended enhancement AA in that it wouldn't last more than a couple ticks. I didn't use any of the other player bugs. Mostly what I would miss are the mobs being changed from what they were in eqmac. I was a bit disappointed when Bert was gimped to the PC standards and when Rathe council received the same treatment. Xegony should have been fixed instead. That event actually was "broken" and meeting her for the first time was a total let down. I'm hoping the paci bug that caused zone-wide aggro on "unpacable mobs" is gone too. It was more annoying than useful for me. In any case, the statement on the wiki about what takproject is trying to achieve wasn't clear to me. Like my original post says, there are conflicting statements in the "about" section and someone new to the sever, like me, will be confused. I might be a good idea to comment on this subject (accurate vs bugless recreation) right up front in the wiki so people know what to expect. Anyway that's all I have to say for now. Looking forward to playing more this weekend.
I think Torven and Rob are pretty firmly on the side of getting mob data right for Al'Kabor wherever possible, but getting accurate information on AK's PoP mobs will be difficult when the time comes. I know you did a lot of parsing on AK, and MT'd a lot of highend PoP content, so if you've still got any of your logs, sending them to Torven (who has made a standing offer to help people strip dialogue and personal information from logs they're willing to share) could be a great help in that regard. (Even if the logs are long-gone, passing information on DI and DB for raid mobs might be helpful; I was reluctant to copy the table from the Tem forums, as I'm not sure which of those values were empirically tested on AK, which are from old PC data, and which pre-date and post-date Hobart's updates to various planar zones from their Oct '02 to July '03 states.)
Unfortunately, everything I had got wiped when I got rid of my old computer. I entered most of the DI and DB data into the table on the Tem forums, but like you said, without the logs it's tough to make certain that those numbers are correct! Also, I forgot to say in my last post: It's great to see you here Raven! Spotting your avatar in the forums was one thing that drew me into creating an account.
Geez, edit the wiki then if a handful of harmful bugs not being implemented disqualifies us as 'not Al'Kabor enough'. What was kept far outweighs what wasn't. Project 1999 also has several not-classic features for the good of the server.
Welcome Stamm! I also agree with you my friend, some of the EQ mac "quirks" made the server unique and fun in its own right. Thats why most of us are here and glad the dev listen to constructive feedback on the matter! I hope we don't classify some unique aspects of Eqmac features as "bugs" with class mechanics, as this is part of the charm and attractiveness of EQ mac. An accurate recreation of the server I believe is what most are looking for with a great community of how Al'Kabor was. Best Regards,
Hi Ravenwing, I have a question about this behavior. If I'm understanding this term correctly, does this mean the caster cannot sit during a pet attack (the recent pet taunting change might be what Im referring too) and will retain a possible threat to the caster until the pet lands enough damage to retain focus from a sit agro? I'm not familiar with this term "pet pulling", so forgive me if this is not the same mechanic. To a enchanter, this means less sit time to reclaim mana for a re-charm before my friend becomes a foe. This behavior differs from what I recall from Al'Kabor, so I though Id see if someone had some insight. Thank you,
Pet pulling is when you can use a low level pet to pull a mob that is green to the higher level mobs in the area which in turn won't aggro them.
Pet pulling allowed a group of 6 toons to kill VZ. It worked by "/pet attack vallon_zek_00" The best use of it was I would clear chardok named with a lvl 44 earth pet and 39 bst pet with my cleric and dr00d healing. With my pets having Mage ds of course. I didn't have an ench/Druid combo to do the 700pt ds. That would have been cool. It's not a feature but a bug/hack
Pets ignored z axis so it let you pull a lot of things you couldn't see, i remember pulling chardok royals to zone-in this way.
While I do agree it is not a hack, and it being a bug is subjective, depending on how you look at it. I myself see it as a bug that was exploiting mechanics of general gameplay. However, I was one of the people against the fix when they fixed it in DoDH based firmly on the idea that the bugged mechanic became the norm and in the eyes of many if not most of the players it was no longer considered a bug in their eyes, subjectively.
Well, I've now had a chance to read over some of the changes that are being made and I have to say that I'm really impressed. As a warrior main, I always found it a bit difficult to find tanking groups on AK. I don't know if that's the norm for EQ, because I've only played EQMac, but often groups either do not want to tank, or they want a pet tank, which leaves me either trying to NOT get hated, chasing around kited mobs, or playing an alt. I can however see how it could be frustrating for pet classes who are used to the AK system, but in the end I hope we'll achieve a better balance here than what was on Al`Kabor, especially in the last 2 years of my time there. Currently I'm working on getting a hate proc weapons that Stamm will need for tanking until he's able to get his lightsabers. The obsidian shatter proc in SolA is high on my list and I'll be parked there for awhile if anyone wants to join in. Right now I'm low 20's and I have a pocket cleric and sometimes a ranger with me.
I was always a little unclear on the pulling bug even as I had a beast. It was never part of my game play to pull unless i intended to finish the fight i started (or run away like a punk). I would often solo Rattican on my my druid via the help of a pet. But that only worked because the mob would agro me even from a significant distance once he smashed my green boo boo bear to bits (it often lived les than a second). There was definitely no exploit, just a way to get the mob out of the cave more easily so he could be kited. Was that particular to druid pets?
No it wasn't particular to druid pets. It worked for all pets that were GREEN con to the mob you were pulling which would result in no other mobs aggroing unless the pet died before clearing their aggro-radius.
