EXP IS SO SLOW!

[Bumamgar]

Originally Posted by Combo [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The p99 dev team is split between the two goals, mostly because it's comprised of individuals doing their own thing and not quite working and communicating as one unit. This shitstorm started because one guy as an Ogre was outleveling his wife, a Dark Elf. The tables clearly needed to be fixed because they were wrong (off by one as it turned out) but while he was digging around, he found that Hybrids weren't gimping group XP. So he "fixed" it by chronological standards.

No changes were made without full discussion with the rest of the dev team including Nilbog. The p99 dev team work and communicate as one unit quite well, thank you.

[Oogmog]

Originally Posted by Bumamgar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No changes were made without full discussion with the rest of the dev team including Nilbog. The p99 dev team work and communicate as one unit quite well, thank you.

Could you explain why hell levels are penalizing the entire group? Sorry to nag, but I've brought this up 4 times now myself along with others. Racial penalties did penalize the group, however, hell levels did not.

[Oogmog]

And I meant racial and class penalties did penalize the group. I just woke so brain isn't firing on all cylinders yet[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Bumamgar]

So we chose to distribute experience in the group on the basis of the total experience of each member rather than the level, in order to keep groups together

Now you'll notice that we are dividing up experience based upon the LEVEL makeup of the group. For instance, if a level 20 and a level 21 group together, the level 21 will get more experience per kill. That is however only fair since the level 21 does actually contribute more value to the group.

From the producers letter in 2001 that explained how XP worked before and after the changes.

Specifically, the XP share in p1999 was changed to depend on the total experience of each member. This change made it so that higher level members take more XP than lower, characters with class/race penalties take more XP than those without, and people in hell levels (which require more XP) take a larger share than those not in a hell level. Per Gordon's Producers letter, this is how it was done on live before the XP changes in 2001. A group members split was determined based on total XP, which included class/race/level and of course hell levels. Now, keep in mind, back in 2001, the EQ devs hadn't even acknowledged the existence of hell levels yet. So while hell levels aren't specifically mentioned in the producer's letter, it is easy to infer, based on his description of how XP was split, that hell level XP was factored into the overall split.

Link to producer's letter... One of the main resources I used when coding the XP changes [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/edit...rs_letter.html

[Oogmog]

I get what you're saying, however, in classic hell levels did exist ... Now, they really do not. The only way you can tell you're in a hell level is if you are soloing. I'm not trying to be rude, but did you actually level in a hell level on classic? Someone that was 45 would level much slower than someone in the same group at 43. Also, the dev post only speaks if class/race penalties and level of worth.. nothing about a group penalty for hell levels.

[Combo]

Originally Posted by Bumamgar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No changes were made without full discussion with the rest of the dev team including Nilbog. The p99 dev team work and communicate as one unit quite well, thank you.

If this is truly the case, you should have been more clear about this in your testimony about the change. It really read like you said "My wife and I discovered I was outleveling her, so I told the dev team and they gave me carte blanche to do what I wanted to XP. I found the code mistake, fixed it, but found something else that I knew was classic and changed it too."

Further is the problem with the feeling that "I went in to fix something with the blessing of the staff, but I found something else I wasn't actually looking for, changed it, and then got the blessing of the dev team after the fact."

Maybe that's how it went down, maybe it's not. Maybe you had a conference call and discussed repercussions of this change, maybe you just did it and everyone else said "yeah that was in classic."

All I want to say is that the reason you specifically are getting so much flak from the community is due to the whole under-the-table, undocumented feel this change (I can't in good faith call it a fix anymore) has. We were all around when Verant pulled these tricks, we all got mad and complained because we all felt cheated. Sometimes it was an innocent mistake (Martin in customer service had strep and didn't write the patch notes), but the vast majority of the time it was either totally under the radar or expressed so vaguely in order to delay the firestorm that the developers knew the change would cause.

They weren't stupid. You're not stupid. It's Friday afternoon, you can either write patch notes that are going to result in you getting bombarded with hate mail or you can just do it and deal with it after your weekend. After crossing your fingers that no one notices, of course -- which is a complete joke as any software developer can tell you. Your users will *always* know your software better than you do.

Please don't take this as an insult as I'd rather not get banned, but it also doesn't help the situation that you've gotten so defensive, arguably smug, about what has become "your" change. I don't blame you for it -- stubbornly sticking to your guns is a common and effective thing to do. But it also leaves you stubborn and unwilling to reconsider the wisdom of your decision.

No matter how many times you say it, this isn't a binary choice. This isn't "This was classic, get frustrated and lash out and you're banned, end of story." You're implementing what the producers would come to admit as a design flaw.

There are plenty more of those you could implement. If you'd like, I'd be happy to dig through patch notes and break things that the patch ahead of where we are in the timeline fixed. I'm good with C++ and Java and dabble in several other languages. I would be happy to implement bugs and exploits, because bugs and exploits are classic and can be fun. They added the broken zaniness that caused many of us to have a sick love/hate relationship with the game, that, 10 years later, those famous rose goggles have changed into just love, kind of like the old girlfriend we've all had that was on that lovely border of gorgeous and plain, flawed and perfect, and was prone to outbursts of batshit insanity. We miss her more than the one or two barbies we got lucky (or so we thought at the time) with, the intellectuals, the emotionally dependents, or even are (hopefully) well-balanced, loving wives.

I don't know. Do what you want. Just try not to delude yourself or the rest of the staff into thinking this change is anything but actively harmful to this server and its community. Even the great stubborn Verant knew that was true when it was discovered -- that is, when Verant was reminded they'd implemented it.

[Combo]

Wow, I typed "are" instead of "our."

[JayFiveAlive]

Great post Combo, I couldn't agree more.

Sadly, I find myself not logging in as often, though I do have a lot of RL stuff going on. I definitely don't like shady changes and I don't like when devs aren't upfront and open with the community that really makes their game what it is. Bad community = bad game. I am not saying p99 has reached this, but I do see it's possible downfall coming/starting. It was a lot of fun for awhile though... maybe it's time to move on.

[rioisk]

Originally Posted by Combo [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If this is truly the case, you should have been more clear about this in your testimony about the change. It really read like you said "My wife and I discovered I was outleveling her, so I told the dev team and they gave me carte blanche to do what I wanted to XP. I found the code mistake, fixed it, but found something else that I knew was classic and changed it too."

Further is the problem with the feeling that "I went in to fix something with the blessing of the staff, but I found something else I wasn't actually looking for, changed it, and then got the blessing of the dev team after the fact."

Maybe that's how it went down, maybe it's not. Maybe you had a conference call and discussed repercussions of this change, maybe you just did it and everyone else said "yeah that was in classic."

All I want to say is that the reason you specifically are getting so much flak from the community is due to the whole under-the-table, undocumented feel this change (I can't in good faith call it a fix anymore) has. We were all around when Verant pulled these tricks, we all got mad and complained because we all felt cheated. Sometimes it was an innocent mistake (Martin in customer service had strep and didn't write the patch notes), but the vast majority of the time it was either totally under the radar or expressed so vaguely in order to delay the firestorm that the developers knew the change would cause.

They weren't stupid. You're not stupid. It's Friday afternoon, you can either write patch notes that are going to result in you getting bombarded with hate mail or you can just do it and deal with it after your weekend. After crossing your fingers that no one notices, of course -- which is a complete joke as any software developer can tell you. Your users will *always* know your software better than you do.

Please don't take this as an insult as I'd rather not get banned, but it also doesn't help the situation that you've gotten so defensive, arguably smug, about what has become "your" change. I don't blame you for it -- stubbornly sticking to your guns is a common and effective thing to do. But it also leaves you stubborn and unwilling to reconsider the wisdom of your decision.

No matter how many times you say it, this isn't a binary choice. This isn't "This was classic, get frustrated and lash out and you're banned, end of story." You're implementing what the producers would come to admit as a design flaw.

There are plenty more of those you could implement. If you'd like, I'd be happy to dig through patch notes and break things that the patch ahead of where we are in the timeline fixed. I'm good with C++ and Java and dabble in several other languages. I would be happy to implement bugs and exploits, because bugs and exploits are classic and can be fun. They added the broken zaniness that caused many of us to have a sick love/hate relationship with the game, that, 10 years later, those famous rose goggles have changed into just love, kind of like the old girlfriend we've all had that was on that lovely border of gorgeous and plain, flawed and perfect, and was prone to outbursts of batshit insanity. We miss her more than the one or two barbies we got lucky (or so we thought at the time) with, the intellectuals, the emotionally dependents, or even are (hopefully) well-balanced, loving wives.

I don't know. Do what you want. Just try not to delude yourself or the rest of the staff into thinking this change is anything but actively harmful to this server and its community. Even the great stubborn Verant knew that was true when it was discovered -- that is, when Verant was reminded they'd implemented it.

Just want to add to this that mimicking classic mechanics and classic mindset are two different equations to creating the classic experience. The EQ community as a whole was pretty ignorant about all this XP penalties/group sharing etc etc (as they were with a lot of issues) back in 1999 but here we are same game same mechanics but now we suddenly have a problem with it.

We know devs here work very hard to provide for this server at no pay and we know what the "vision" of the server is. However, I think a majority of players don't like how "fixes" to make the game more classic are done months after the launch of the server. Trying to make a game more classic everyday only to see some of these changes reversed in an expansion (kunark/velious) not long after they're changed (or issues being totally ignored because they're patched out in kunark/velious) is highly aggravating.

[Haynar]

I am 99% sure I have found why EXP is off. The early on model for exp, differs slightly from what it is now. The formulas that Bum used are reasonable, and seem to work perfectly fine. We just might need some changes to the overall exp modifier. As soon as I finish my writeup, I will submit it for review by management and see if I can get it adjusted.

Haynar