Is P99 "finished"? [Archive]

Dolalin

12-06-2016, 12:24 PM

It seems like the momentum has really been lost in the past year as regards fixing non-classic mechanics issues.

Looking at this list by Daldaen, there are lots of well documented bug threads providing evidence for these fixes, yet it's a struggle to get them implemented. Why?

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2414878&postcount=29

Does it have something to do with the agreement signed with Daybreak?

If it's just resourcing, I'm sure lots of people here are willing to help and contribute patches to the EQEmu code. Just let us know and I'm sure the community can step up.

But if they're conscious decisions by staff not to fix some issues, I'm sure lots of people would appreciate communication on that as well, one way or the other. I know I would. :)

Baler

12-06-2016, 12:40 PM

burkemi5

12-06-2016, 01:27 PM

Monks when standing from FD with Sneak should not be guaranteed a memblur if the sneak is successful and the mobs have their backs to you.

God I wish this was implemented. The tears would be amazing.

Dolalin

12-06-2016, 01:35 PM

Far from finished...
Patch Notes: Sunday, January 31st, 2016 (http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=227019)
Patch Notes: Tuesday, April 26th, 2016 (http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=235725)
Patch Notes: Monday, September 5th, 2016 (http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=252292)
Patch Notes: Monday, October 31st, 2016 (http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=257002)

Keep providing evidence of classic mechanics.

On the subject of client/ui classic mechanics. There are a lot of players who would be severely unhappy without those quality of life features.

The problem is, many people have. Lots of evidence (some of the bug threads are four years old!), and many big issues where things are clearly wrong (dragon resist checks, FD sneak, even trivial stuff like /hidecorpse looted) just aren't fixed.

I think we all want to know why, and whether it's down to resourcing issues that the community could help with.

dslaybac

12-06-2016, 02:19 PM

Nostalgic for Luclin? Eq has lost the mystique? Less than 10 days played?

See ya!

skarlorn

12-06-2016, 02:21 PM

It's not finished. There's a couple more big patches they need to implement before the "classic" timeline is "complete."

Some things may not ever be fixed on this server. I like to believe that Nilbog will, after Velious patches are finished, fix the game-breaking flaws of Monk FD, Resists, /hidecorpse looted, and Item Linking (any I miss, Ele?) and implement it on the TRUE blue server that comes up.

Keep in mind, p99 Blue is a developmental Beta server and the plan has always been to release a fresh PvE server once the code is ship shape.

Until then, enjoy the gradual decline of population until the in-game players are toads bound to the chair by their necrosis-riddled flesh.

Nibblewitz

12-06-2016, 02:38 PM

You missed one: classic UI with single chat box.

maskedmelon

12-06-2016, 02:40 PM

I've not been able to play much of anything lately :c

That said, FQ seems to experience ebbs and flows though, on the whole it seems we've much less impassioned debates than in the past :c I think I might start blogging to OT to give us some variety ^^

skarlorn

12-06-2016, 02:40 PM

and lets not forget the spellbook open during periods of meditation to simulate closed-eyes meditation

pras be to classic

azeth

12-06-2016, 02:52 PM

Server needs revamped cazic Thule zone!

Dolalin

12-06-2016, 02:57 PM

A casual browse through the Dev Watcher shows dev interest is all focused on small faction and quest issues. Absolutely awesome that those are getting attention, but the big meatier issues need love too.

skarlorn

12-06-2016, 03:14 PM

I've been (casually) playing this same content for 5 years. Being able to take it for granted for so long kills the mystique.

First few times I played, little monkey weed or some LSD, it was a cosmic experience like time travelling. Now it's an antiquated overpopulated game with piss poor server rules that kill any motivation for me to hit 60 (just getting an epic sounds like hell).

The infinity of potential EQ uses to hypnotize with vanishes when you are aware the endgame is garbage. There is nobody worth talking to on the server (it's weird how silent and paranoid people are; other servers have fun social interaction). The server feels like east germany, drugged up riffraff and tight-lipped pixelcucks looking for an excuse to speak your name to the stasi. I couldn't even join my own "casual" guild's teamspeak with my nephew without being interrogated by an officer (there were literally 30 people scattered in rooms in the server at a time).

Without the endgame dream or quality people playing, emergent gameplay (politicking, friendship) disappears and all that's left is the leveling skinnerbox. It's not like live at all and it's real gay. Luckily there are other options that are playable nowadays.

Thanks for reading!

good post, though I have recently had a great time leveling a couple lowbies up. that said i quit again about a month or two later.

It's certainly a game which is worth playing for the rich casual adventure, and not a game that should be min/maxed or taken seriously.

paulgiamatti

12-06-2016, 03:33 PM

It seems like the momentum has really been lost in the past year as regards fixing non-classic mechanics issues.

Probably attributable to some developer burnout - Haynar and Kanras probably mustered most of what they had left in the tank for the Velious release and punched out after that, which is totally understandable. Even with a full staff it's been difficult to keep up with development, and now it's more or less just nilbog and Telin.

Looking at this list by Daldaen, there are lots of well documented bug threads providing evidence for these fixes, yet it's a struggle to get them implemented. Why?

Finding things that need to be fixed is good, but that's the easy part. What would be nice is if people like Daldaen, Ele, and myself actually stepped up to the plate and submitted code changes for the things we'd like to see fixed. Doable, but it's a lot of work without compensation - the kind of work people are paid handsomely for when on a development team with a payroll.

Does it have something to do with the agreement signed with Daybreak?

Nah, Daybreak's endorsement doesn't really affect anything - if anything it reinforces doing work since it ensures the project isn't going anywhere.

If it's just resourcing, I'm sure lots of people here are willing to help and contribute patches to the EQEmu code. Just let us know and I'm sure the community can step up.

Probably not lots of people, but there are some. As far as I know, Secrets and Zaela are the only ones not on the dev team to actually submit code to P99. There are people here who certainly know how to code and could probably get some things accomplished, but most of them are gainfully employed and can't realistically invest that kind of time into something that's purely a hobbyist venture.

But if they're conscious decisions by staff not to fix some issues, I'm sure lots of people would appreciate communication on that as well, one way or the other. I know I would. :)

Agreed - although, I don't fault them at all for not being communicative. As a developer, every minute you spend explaining why something can or cannot be fixed to people is a minute you could spend doing something a hundred times more important, and when the questions literally never end it's usually better to just ignore them altogether and let someone else be the talking head. Unfortunately, they don't really have a talking head other than Rogean, who isn't involved in game development anymore. It would be nice if they had a liaison on the development team to keep tabs on everything and let people know where they're at, but that's just a luxury. Us knowing how things are coming along isn't going to speed up the process. Just let them do their thing and be patient.

nilbog

12-06-2016, 03:35 PM

Not finished for sure.

dev interest is all focused on small faction and quest issues.

'Low hanging fruit' is the best way to describe this. Unless changes modify existing content, patch notes do not include changes we make.

i.e. Stonebrunt zone coming next patch; developmental changes aren't listed in notes because it hasn't existed as of yet.

Triiz

12-06-2016, 03:38 PM

Beating a dead horse, I know, but don't see how anyone can make the argument for nerfing multiple chat boxes or some of the other shit on that list while simultaneously championing the AOE nerf. Either you want everything classic (not the "spirit of classic") or you don't. (Not directed at anyone in particular)

RDawg816

12-06-2016, 03:39 PM

It's supposed to be a social game. Make friends. Roll alts together. Farm together. Get epics together. This is why EQ is so good. P99 is great for the same reasons. If you let something like /hidecorpse looted ruin that, I feel sorry for you. It's not perfect and it doesn't have to be. No one is forcing you to play.

Dolalin

12-06-2016, 04:05 PM

Thanks for the replies, paulgiamatti and Nilbog. Really good to get that perspective from the other side of the fence. :) I think we all appreciate the work the dev team puts in.

Dolalin

12-06-2016, 04:06 PM

By the way, 14 years ago I wrote a really shitty teenage rant about Everquest as I quit, so I know what burnout feels like. :D

https://games.slashdot.org/story/02/12/27/1748252/everquest-what-you-really-get-from-an-online-game

Triiz

12-06-2016, 04:26 PM

If you let something like /hidecorpse looted ruin that, I feel sorry for you.

Second this. Maybe I don't take "classic" as serious as some others, but something like /hidecorpse looted that doesn't impact anyone that decides not to use it making people rage is just mind boggling to me. The fact OP in the original thread didn't realize it was a feature until watching a stream shows how insignificant it is.

Btw, where does streaming fit into the classic purists narrative? I've ended up on youtube several times grouping with people I later found out were live streaming/archiving after receiving "I seen you in suchandsuch's stream" tells. Back in 2001 "due to technological reasons" you actually had to play the game to enjoy it, not watch some stranger play

Daldaen

12-06-2016, 04:58 PM

When farming PoSky, you classicly had to clean each corpse so that you could pick up the correct key pieces you need and still see. This requires you loot all the tradeables and handle any no drop pieces. It takes time to handle loots. Just another time sink.

It made farming some camps and AE areas more annoying. For example farming Orc Scalps you need to loot all the trash you don't want to pick clean the corpses rather than just hidecorpses looted and grabbing the quest pieces you want. More tedious, takes more time, maybe you don't want to deal with the camp. Same with farming Spider silks in EW or Velium in CC or later Acrylia in Grimling or Rockhopper hides in DSP. Etc.

Almost every UI feature expedites gameplay, in the classic era almost everything was intended to slow you down. Slow mana regen, everyone walks stupidly slow without buffs, travel takes for ever without ports, etc.

Being able to do thing quickly, even as mundane as looting, targeting, switching view points, memming spells and using hotkeys can change how the game plays. Example:

Solo enchanters are vastly less powerul when they don't have a pet window which they can hit one of the 5-6 pet commands available, instead having to devote a hotkey to the commands. Which is tedious considering you only had 10 hot buttons you could have on your main Hotpage during Velious. They get even weaker when you cannot scroll to 3rd person to look into a room to then Pacify mobs. Having instead to alternate through several F9 views and mouselook to accomplish the same thing. God forbid you get a critical resist while in an F9 view panned out to some awkward angle to acquire a target, and have to quickly cycle back to your first person view to begin targeting mobs to lock them down. Then imagine instead of being able to press a single Cycle NPC hotkey to quickly toggle between each individual mob to either slow or stun or root or mez them, you instead only can use your mouse or F8 to try to isolate various different targets to cast spells or attack them. If in all of this chaos you wanted to grab your bagged SoulFire and heal yourself, unfortunately your UI doesn't allow for multiple bags to be opened simultaneously, so you can't have your 30 root nets, wort Pots, WC caps, SoulFires and reapers at your finger tips. You need to open and close your way through the bags. Your UI also didn't support the ability to attach the inventory slots to your hot button page or show opened bags in your inventory window as well, so you had to open your inventory window and then open the bag and then move the item to an open slot to click it.

Just one example of how the Titanium client completely trivializes classic gameplay. Most people on this server would be playing as if they were blind, deaf, and dumb if the Trilogy client were forced upon them in a random update. It would be an absolutely fantastic day.

Maschenny

12-06-2016, 04:58 PM

I wouldn't ever use hidecorpse anyway, rich boi like me got tinks to fill with that fine steel you don't loot.

You don't get 200k net worth RMT-free by lvl 56 in 10 days played without playing right.

ughh can we censor this masturbation

Ikon

12-06-2016, 08:29 PM

You missed one: classic UI with single chat box.
Lazy aggro is a huge one, old world aggro mechanics in Kunark / Velious is game breaking - theres a reason it was implemented

Nagoya

12-07-2016, 12:55 AM

Do we have any kind of ETA on a future clean brand new P99 server?

Zaela

12-07-2016, 01:04 AM

As far as I know, Secrets and Zaela are the only ones not on the dev team to actually submit code to P99.

I haven't? It's hard to submit small changes to a black box. The p99 server code probably resembles the open EQEmu code in a lot of places, but there have also definitely been major changes, plus the EQEmu code itself has continued to change since p99 forked off of it, and who knows whether the p99 devs pull in any upstream changes. Hard to say what any particular bit of the server code might look like. Best that could be done to "submit" something is to say "if you were a stock EQEmu server, what you would need to change is ...", which is basically just giving hints for some other coder to hopefully care enough about to interpret and apply to the actual code. Not a whole lot better than just making a post describing the bug in the first place.

As a developer, every minute you spend explaining why something can or cannot be fixed to people is a minute you could spend doing something a hundred times more important

The act of explaining something is a great way to examine your own assumptions about it, and occasionally realize ways of solving a problem that you hadn't thought of before. Essential impulse for a developer to have! Although at the end of the day, just thinking about how to explain something is as good as actually doing it...

fadetree

12-07-2016, 09:47 AM

Forum enforcement is pretty much nonexistant too for the last 6-8 months. Very out of character for this place.

It's well past time for a changing of the guard, for the guards' own sanity I think. I'm at the point where EQ has no mystique left and I'm more nostalgic for Luclin personally, and I have probably 10 days played on p99 ever.

Hope they open the database up but there is probably still profit being derived from it, so enjoy the slow decline and look to that other project for the dream.

Profit? Wtf are you talking about...do you seriously think they are making a profit running this?

And I'm sorry that your overstimulated entitled little brain is now feeling many sads about EQ, but don't tell me what I'm supposed to do. Enjoy the slow decline...'that other project'....hmm.

eadric

12-07-2016, 10:19 AM

Profit? Wtf are you talking about...do you seriously think they are making a profit running this?

And I'm sorry that your overstimulated entitled little brain is now feeling many sads about EQ, but don't tell me what I'm supposed to do. Enjoy the slow decline...'that other project'....hmm.

That's an anonymous troll that you're responding to. The moment you hit reply, you lost. He does have a point, though. If there was any reasonable amount of forum policing, accounts like his would never make it to thousands of posts without getting banned for trolling. ;)

Meep

12-07-2016, 10:45 AM

Do we have any kind of ETA on a future clean brand new P99 server?

"soon"

skarlorn

12-07-2016, 12:57 PM

*marks down two yellow texts under the name "Big Dawg Nippon"*

rollin5k

12-07-2016, 02:01 PM

Daldaeni agree with a lot of your opinions about views and corpses.
Is it even possible to not use the titanium client for an emu server?

Daldaen

12-07-2016, 03:03 PM

Daldaeni agree with a lot of your opinions about views and corpses.
Is it even possible to not use the titanium client for an emu server?

A few servers do it. The main example would be the TAK server. I suggest you look into the downloading it and playing around just for a half hour or something, to see just how different the game plays when you don't have all the "quality of life" features that you have on P99.

You will very quickly discover those features aren't just quality of life, they impact gameplay immensely, making certain aspects and tasks far easier/faster. The game is much easier as a result.

That being said, I don't know if it's even remotely feasible for P99 to swap client with all of the modifications they've done to the stock EMU code to get P99 to the point it is today.

paulgiamatti

12-07-2016, 05:06 PM

Best that could be done to "submit" something is to say "if you were a stock EQEmu server, what you would need to change is ...", which is basically just giving hints for some other coder to hopefully care enough about to interpret and apply to the actual code. Not a whole lot better than just making a post describing the bug in the first place.

That falls under what I meant by submit, and I totally disagree here. Totally absurd to say that making a post like this (http://www.project1999.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1542874&postcount=78) isn't a whole lot better than just making a post describing a bug. One scratches the surface, the other is for all intents and purposes a code submission. And from what it looks like, every monk on P99 with an epic owes you their gratitude.

The act of explaining something is a great way to examine your own assumptions about it, and occasionally realize ways of solving a problem that you hadn't thought of before. Essential impulse for a developer to have! Although at the end of the day, just thinking about how to explain something is as good as actually doing it...

Agreed, but that's assuming you're explaining something that needs to be explained, or is worth explaining. And there's a point of diminishing returns for the developer - answering a question about a specific mechanic might be hugely beneficial for both the developer and the layman asking the question, and anyone else reading the response, but answering that same question for the fifth or sixth time is only satisfying one person who didn't bother to do a little bit of research while completely wasting the developer's time.

Aalderon Crystafire

12-07-2016, 05:56 PM

if the Trilogy client were forced upon them in a random update. It would be an absolutely fantastic day.

<3

paulgiamatti

12-07-2016, 06:10 PM

I appreciate Daldaen and Ele's totally indiscriminate approach to this stuff. I tend to think it's less about them actually wanting all of the inhibiting classic features of EQ and more about providing the concrete truth about how the game was in 1999-2001.

Okay, I take it back - Daldaen is evil incarnate.

CheeseRoll

12-07-2016, 06:19 PM

Do we have any kind of ETA on a future clean brand new P99 server?

Heard like 2021

Not sure where, but ya 2021 only 4.2 years away

fugazi

12-07-2016, 06:44 PM

Okay, I take it back - Daldaen is evil incarnate.

Some people just want to see the elf sim burn.

Daldaen

12-07-2016, 06:59 PM

Member when raid orders were typed out in guild chat, and you missed them if your melee spam scrolled the chat box too quickly past those green messages?

I member.

Member when monks would have to /quit out many times in a raid when pulling because they had no way of determining if they successfully blurred every mob they had aggro on?

I member.

Member when mobs would forget you if you ran too far away from them in Kunark or Velious zones and you'd have to run back to reaggro them?

I member.

Member when you couldn't bind in Kunark and Velious indoor dungeons?

I member.

Member when there was a 25% level threshold rule to have any chance to stick spells on a target?

I member.

Member when enchanters actually took some skill in keep track of and targetting several different mobs to lock them down with mez or Pacify or root?

I member.

Member when you had to be selective about what 10 hotkeys went on your only hotbutton page? And you had to remember which hotkeys were in which slots on the other pages when you had to cycle between pages to reach those more rarely utilized hotkeys, being careful to not cycle too many pages and hit the wrong hotkeys.

I member.

paulgiamatti

12-07-2016, 07:25 PM

http://imgur.com/qG9harH.gif

maskedmelon

12-07-2016, 08:11 PM

lonmoer

12-07-2016, 08:42 PM

They're volunteers. I slack on work even if i'm getting paid to do it. Give em a break.