Server accuracy

[Bristlebaner]

I was thinking the other day about the accuracy of P99. Obviously the staff has nailed the big stuff, no map, no compass, old spell effects and models etc.

My big curiousity is around combat and mechanics. How close is mob damage, chance to hit, AC, etc. to what it was back in classic. Most of this is just guesswork right?

Would love to hear thoughts.

[Geomance22]

melees are much stronger than they should be due to the complete removal of endurance/swing mechanics (weapon weight mattered btw)

[Baler]

P99 is pretty serious in terms of accuracy. It's a fan server but in terms of Era based yes accurate. A lot of community effort and dev hours went into recreating p99.

[Cylock]

When it doubt, just make it hit harder and drop less loot.

lol

that's great

[Bristlebaner]

P99 is pretty serious in terms of accuracy. It's a fan server but in terms of Era based yes accurate. A lot of community effort and dev hours went into recreating p99.

I agree that the overall feel is pretty darn realistic. My curiosity is more centered on things like:

1.) Resists on P99 vs. back in 1999

2.) How many HP a character would have at a given level vs. P99

3.) Do pets hit as hard, or as often as they would on P99 as they did in classic? HP values? Mitigation?

These are things that are much harder to quantify as they involve math and calculations behind the scenes.

Did the staff reverse engineer some of this data or did they do a best guess?

[fastboy21]

I agree that the overall feel is pretty darn realistic. My curiosity is more centered on things like:

1.) Resists on P99 vs. back in 1999

2.) How many HP a character would have at a given level vs. P99

3.) Do pets hit as hard, or as often as they would on P99 as they did in classic? HP values? Mitigation?

These are things that are much harder to quantify as they involve math and calculations behind the scenes.

Did the staff reverse engineer some of this data or did they do a best guess?

Some of these data points are from player data (like old log files). Some of it is anecdotal. Some things have been explained by devs, like certain formulae about AC.

The system is not perfect, nor is it ever likely to be so. It can't be reverse engineered from the client or from the current iteration of live. People's memory's aren't perfect. People's log files are incomplete. I'd be surprised if the devs who worked on it can even accurately describe its inner-workings at this point, much less at every single update made along the classic timeline.

I wouldn't reduce their efforts down to "the best guess"; they have put a lot of effort into trying to recreate the systems as authentically as possible.

[HippoNipple]

I agree that the overall feel is pretty darn realistic. My curiosity is more centered on things like:

1.) Resists on P99 vs. back in 1999

2.) How many HP a character would have at a given level vs. P99

3.) Do pets hit as hard, or as often as they would on P99 as they did in classic? HP values? Mitigation?

These are things that are much harder to quantify as they involve math and calculations behind the scenes.

Did the staff reverse engineer some of this data or did they do a best guess?

It's all correct, don't worry about it.

[Ravager]

A lot of it is quite accurate, but it still doesn't feel classic and won't unless the classic client is implemented. But so many folks would cry with only 6 hot buttons and a single chat window and true night blindness.

[Nybras]

It was said that wizards in sebilis began to cast ice commet watch out everyone.

[SamwiseRed]

resists and ac suck here. expect to get rooted by green con casters with over 120 mr all day.

[Toomuch]

By and large, it's an extremely impressive re-creation, and I'd say 99.98% true to time period, with most inaccuracies having to do with the Titanium Client.

Like others have said, I do recall resists being significantly more useful on live in this era. My guild spent a fair amount of time doing Velious content, (granted, a lot of that was during the Luclin timeframe, because Good team was so far behind Evil & Neutral on Sullon Zek) and I remember very clearly that having 200+ resist practically made you immune to fear and DD AE's from dragons, as long as you were 59 or 60. 250 resist and level 60, it was like a 2% chance that Fears & Normal AE's would land on you.

One other thing that a lot of people probably don't care about, but I'm 100% certain of, is being able to use duck to get into rocks/landscape for a LONG time, at LEAST through Velious, and I think even through all of Luclin. This was how I entered The Hole as a Good Team Ranger on Sullon Zek - I never got a Hole Key, I just rapid-ducked/strafed, and could get through. It was also really handy for staying safe as an under-geared melee when Wizards and Druids ruled the pvp servers (on newer servers, nobody has resist gear yet). It was also a dead give-away to show who was a cheater, when wizards run right up to you in the middle of freaking nowhere in Everfrost or Skyfire when you're invis inside a boulder. Anyway, most if not all "landscape" types of boulders and rocks could be entered that way, and as long as they were the type that had an overhang above your height, you could get in by ducking/strafing. There weren't restrictions on exiting either, you could walk right out, it was getting in that took just a little bit of practice.

Anyway, if I could fix just 1 thing to make it more "accurate", it would be tweaking the resists slightly. However, it's honestly probably good for the server that it's a little more "hard mode" with the resists the way they are...

[Ennewi]

One other thing that a lot of people probably don't care about, but I'm 100% certain of, is being able to use duck to get into rocks/landscape for a LONG time, at LEAST through Velious, and I think even through all of Luclin. This was how I entered The Hole as a Good Team Ranger on Sullon Zek - I never got a Hole Key, I just rapid-ducked/strafed, and could get through. It was also really handy for staying safe as an under-geared melee when Wizards and Druids ruled the pvp servers (on newer servers, nobody has resist gear yet). It was also a dead give-away to show who was a cheater, when wizards run right up to you in the middle of freaking nowhere in Everfrost or Skyfire when you're invis inside a boulder. Anyway, most if not all "landscape" types of boulders and rocks could be entered that way, and as long as they were the type that had an overhang above your height, you could get in by ducking/strafing. There weren't restrictions on exiting either, you could walk right out, it was getting in that took just a little bit of practice.

This can be achieved very easily with the boulder at the bottom of the elevator in Paineel. It's the only one I'm aware so far though.

[loramin]

This can be achieved very easily with the boulder at the bottom of the elevator in Paineel. It's the only one I'm aware so far though.

Also the jail in Droga [1] (http://wiki.project1999.com/Advanced_Techniques_Guide#.22Glitching.22_Through_ Locked_Doors.2FGates).

[Mblake1981]

A lot of it is quite accurate, but it still doesn't feel classic and won't unless the classic client is implemented. But so many folks would cry with only 6 hot buttons and a single chat window and true night blindness.

I like the EQ UI and the ones some RPG's had back in the day, computer monitors have advanced since and are no longer a standard size. 4k and ultrawide screens for example. The hotkey buttons we have now and the view sizes are good.

That said, you're right people would cry about night blindness the same way they did in classic. Humans are Barbarians have it bad but spells and items are in game to compensate for that. Its why those things are there and with no reason for them they are meaningless. I do think Dark Elves should have had reduced sight during the day to go along with their Ultravision, and to a lesser extent the same with Serpent Sight races.

[Danth]

A lot of it is quite accurate, but it still doesn't feel classic and won't unless the classic client is implemented. But so many folks would cry with only 6 hot buttons and a single chat window and true night blindness.

Keep in mind by this era we properly should have the Velious interface. We'd still be stuck with one chat window (yuck!) but many of the other elements were significantly modernized. I find a lot of folks have entirely forgotten the Velious-specific interface, given how short a period it was in use for (and some people never used it at all) before being replaced with the Luclin/PoP interface that's basically similar to the one Titanium uses but with a black skin instead.

Danth

[Alanus]

I agree that the overall feel is pretty darn realistic. My curiosity is more centered on things like:

1.) Resists on P99 vs. back in 1999

2.) How many HP a character would have at a given level vs. P99

3.) Do pets hit as hard, or as often as they would on P99 as they did in classic? HP values? Mitigation?

These are things that are much harder to quantify as they involve math and calculations behind the scenes.

Did the staff reverse engineer some of this data or did they do a best guess?

1. Resists are definitely not accurate. On live, a level 20 mob would never land spells on a 60. On here, my 100 MR 60 druid gets rooted by level 20 mobs.

2. This is very accurate.

3. This is also very accurate

[Rygar]

There is a thread about mage pets that used to spam spells in classic much more than they do here, so not sure how that effects their damage output.

As far as regular combat, i always felt npc channeling was always too low on p99 and that pushing an npc was entirely too easy. I made a big thread about that in the bug forums, just have to get around to measuring some values seen in classic videos vs p99 mobs.

I do agree that the UI elements ruin a lot of the immersion, seeing things like shroud progression tabs and such. My hope is that when timeline competes they work on some other key fixes then make a huge push for adjusting the UI. May require some crafty tricks, but hopefully they can do it.

[tristantio]

Melee endurance / weapon weight is the #1 big one by far - non-stop pulls with melee heavy parties were never possible unless SHM/RNG were using zings.

[Rygar]

Melee endurance / weapon weight is the #1 big one by far - non-stop pulls with melee heavy parties were never possible unless SHM/RNG were using zings.

Possible this may have been an urban legend, afraid that no endurance had an affect on melee. According to Sorn's matter stamina bug report it would seem there were no negative effects if your stamina was over 100. Below 100 you lost some str /dex and maybe had a 10% slow.

If people realized this in classic it may have been used to mitigate mob AoE slows, since they used to fight with rez effects so the slow AoE wouldn't take hold.

[tristantio]

In 2003 it changed from "Stamina" (bar) to Endurance.

You're probably correct on the 100 cut off though.

http://www.eqcleric.com/archive/index.php/t-4498.html

Related patch notes to this and the rez thing you mention:

"./20001219.html:<li>The stamina reduction with "Resurrection Effects" has been replaced by a slight attack-speed debuff."

./20031218.html:<p>The yellow bar now represents endurance rather than stamina.</p>

./20031218.html:<p>All Disciplines now require an expenditure of endurance to use. They still have a re-use timer, and they can't be used more often than the timer allows.</p>

[tristantio]

Btw, this is in the current files:

./eqstr_us.txt:12090 RUNMODE IS NOW ** OFF ** DUE TO FATIGUE.

./eqstr_us.txt:12362 You are too fatigued to jump!

So it would make sense people couldn't run while fatigued (hence one reason to keep it up in groups, incase a wipe was happening and people need to escape, or the melee is the puller - go try being main puller even with SOW with Walk turned on instead of run).

https://www.project1999.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-23162.html

[Decad]

Zing was bread and butter to melee on live but not here

[Iandyan]

The one thing that still irks me is the languages on P99. On live it took awhile to learn other races languages to the point that there were often groups in WC that were solely dedicated to getting language skill ups.

[Kaino]

you couldnt swim or jump either, meaning when u were low on stamina u were gonna have a bad time

[Lulz~Sect]

dude how i wish stamina would work
stupid shit like that makes the game great
actual consequences for mismanaging of all resources

[Murri]

Bard charm also basically transfers some agro to the bard so swarm kiting isn't possible and it requires normal charm kiting to be swapped back and forth between mobs.

[jolanar]

In a lot of ways in not accurate at all. Some of those ways are due to very complicated things, like having to make educated guesses to client side formulas etc. Others are inaccurate out of no other reason than laziness when things are very easy to identify from the live client (faction values as one example, as those are horribly wrong on P99). But seriously I spent about 5 minutes playing P2002 and it very quickly made me realize the quality of work that's been done on P99 even if it isn't perfect.

[Rygar]

This is because there is no proxy aggro bonus on this server from my experience.

Mobs tended to be sticky. The closer you are to them, specifically in Melee range vs out of Melee range, the more Hate they should have.

This is easily testable on Live and explains why swarm kiting works and worked back in classic. When your pet was in Melee range of the pack and you were far away, the proxy aggro +Hate bonus your pet gets from being in Melee range will trump the body aggro you got.

Belly casters should also generate 0 aggro on spells cast outside of their belly range unless you are using unresistable spells that will land.

Not sure why I thought of this now, but have the hate list mechanics been tested on P99 to verify accuracy?

Dumping a mallet into a mob with 100% HP should almost generate no hate (I believe full spell agro only factored in when mob was in summoning mode).

Also, hate should decay. If you have established 20,000 points of hate on a hate list, you shouldn't be able to turn auto-attack off and wait for someone to get to 20,001 points. High level mobs should have hate decay more rapidly than lower level mobs. I don't know the exact formula for this, and not sure if anyone really does, but hate decay was a confirmed feature from Brad.

Finally, if you are on a mob's hate list, but add no additional hate, you should drop off the hate list completely after like 5 minutes.

I never went through and tested, figured someone of your background would know.

[trite]

Two big big things i remember differently on live.

The ability to out run mobs by strafing as you run on project 1999:

I remember on live there was no out running mobs without sow........

Social agore:

I remember bards being able to charm kite by getting agroe on a bunch of stuff, then charming one of the mobs and sending it into the pack. They would all turn on the charmed mob. Here on project 1999 only the mob that is attacked will attack the charmed pet. Of course my memories of this are from the werewolves in plane of nightmare during PoP so maybe not classic.

[Rygar]

Has the Hate decay feature been tested on p99 then?

Also not sure i follow about the mallet, i understand what it should generate if the mob was in summoning mode, but if you are saying a mallet dump into a mob with 100% hp gives 2000 hate then that is wrong.

[Erati]

Dumping a mallet into a mob with 100% HP should almost generate no hate (I believe full spell agro only factored in when mob was in summoning mode).

Also, hate should decay. If you have established 20,000 points of hate on a hate list, you shouldn't be able to turn auto-attack off and wait for someone to get to 20,001 points. High level mobs should have hate decay more rapidly than lower level mobs. I don't know the exact formula for this, and not sure if anyone really does, but hate decay was a confirmed feature from Brad.

Finally, if you are on a mob's hate list, but add no additional hate, you should drop off the hate list completely after like 5 minutes.

I never went through and tested, figured someone of your background would know.

Looks like Rygar is on his Midnight Mallet nerf crusade again with basically zero evidence which is par for the course for this guys 'Classic Done My Way Crusade'

Never in my life heard about mobs 'needing to be in summon' mode to generate aggro, please stop pulling shit out of your ass.

[Rygar]

Looks like Rygar is on his Midnight Mallet nerf crusade again with basically zero evidence which is par for the course for this guys 'Classic Done My Way Crusade'

Never in my life heard about mobs 'needing to be in summon' mode to generate aggro, please stop pulling shit out of your ass.

I am paraphrasing from a conversation between Brad and the guild leader of Conquest. It was a comical conversation that Verant made public to 'gain support' for banning Conquest after some Sleeper's Tomb exploits, but it really showed that they made a bunch of bad assumptions that were impossible based on how the game was designed.

Essentially, they claimed the warrior stood under some bridge for 20 minutes in Sleeper's Tomb and built up 'huge amounts of hate' without being damaged and then sent his raid force in to engage the mob, keeping all the mob attention on him due to the high amount of hate he built up.

Conquest basically stated what I said and that it was impossible to build hate up due to those 3 hate list features and, guess what, Brad conceded on that front.

I find it interesting that he was unaware of Midnight Mallets at all, but instead referenced bio orbs or healing items (assuming prayers or something) would have been needed to try generate the agro Brad was referring to, but it would fail anyways.

Even said something along the lines of 'please tell me of an item that can instantly generate so much hate, us tanks would love to have one'.

But nonetheless, you just want to keep your status quo and really don't care for how things should be, just what you have been accustomed to doing. I have not made a bug report yet on these features because I wanted to test them on P99 and find other corroborating evidence, but am a bit too busy to focus on that at the moment due to RL circumstances. But if it makes you feel more comfortable I'm purely talking out of my ass, then go for it.

[skarlorn]

Looks like Rygar is on his Midnight Mallet nerf crusade again with basically zero evidence which is par for the course for this guys 'Classic Done My Way Crusade'

Never in my life heard about mobs 'needing to be in summon' mode to generate aggro, please stop pulling shit out of your ass.
Mad

[Erati]

I am paraphrasing from a conversation between Brad and the guild leader of Conquest. It was a comical conversation that Verant made public to 'gain support' for banning Conquest after some Sleeper's Tomb exploits, but it really showed that they made a bunch of bad assumptions that were impossible based on how the game was designed.

Essentially, they claimed the warrior stood under some bridge for 20 minutes in Sleeper's Tomb and built up 'huge amounts of hate' without being damaged and then sent his raid force in to engage the mob, keeping all the mob attention on him due to the high amount of hate he built up.

Conquest basically stated what I said and that it was impossible to build hate up due to those 3 hate list features and, guess what, Brad conceded on that front.

I find it interesting that he was unaware of Midnight Mallets at all, but instead referenced bio orbs or healing items (assuming prayers or something) would have been needed to try generate the agro Brad was referring to, but it would fail anyways.

Even said something along the lines of 'please tell me of an item that can instantly generate so much hate, us tanks would love to have one'.

But nonetheless, you just want to keep your status quo and really don't care for how things should be, just what you have been accustomed to doing. I have not made a bug report yet on these features because I wanted to test them on P99 and find other corroborating evidence, but am a bit too busy to focus on that at the moment due to RL circumstances. But if it makes you feel more comfortable I'm purely talking out of my ass, then go for it.

Exactly what I mean when I say "talking out of your ass"- no links, no patch notes, no recordings, no video - nothing. Par for the Ry-course.

Its laughable you are telling a person with a forum handle that is dated 2009 that I 'dont care' about how things should be. I came here for classic Everquest, do you even play here?

[skarlorn]

Its laughable you are telling a person with a forum handle that is dated 2009 that I 'dont care' about how things should be. I came here for classic Everquest, do you even play here?

:yikes:

[Argh]

:yikes:

[Erati]

<3

[Rygar]

Exactly what I mean when I say "talking out of your ass"- no links, no patch notes, no recordings, no video - nothing. Par for the Ry-course.

Its laughable you are telling a person with a forum handle that is dated 2009 that I 'dont care' about how things should be. I came here for classic Everquest, do you even play here?

Saying I'm talking out of my ass implies I made up something and know nothing about it. To say I never link any evidence from patch notes or other links is laughable. I suppose the recent thread I made about how Druid / Cleric / Shaman / Paladin bind wound skill should be 210 and allow them to bandage up to 70% was just 'par for the Ry-course'? Oh... what was that, I linked patch notes, in era player statements, in era dev comments, and corroborating evidence that other pages such as casters realm had the skill cap listed for those skills incorrectly? Hmmm...

I did a bit of googling and found the Conquest conversation since you were too lazy, I'm sure you still think I'm talking out of my ass:
http://web.archive.org/web/20021026210948/http://boards.station.sony.com:80/ubb/everquest/Forum1/HTML/000210.html

Relative blurbs:

Verant:
Here are the events in order as we are able to determine:

1. Tank aggros dragon
2. Tank retreats under bridge (safe zone).
3. THIS IS EXPLOIT #1. Tank probably uses items to gain hate during the approx. 15 minutes the dragon is stuck on the bridge (our logs indicate the dragon was attempting to move towards several players but it's coordinates were NOT changing - thus, those to whom it wanted to move were in the safe zone).
4. HP of the dragon is kept relatively full such that it doesn't summon. Once tank has sufficient hate built up, he signals to begin all out attack

Conquest:
Before going on let me clarify a few things about hate... based on your
statement: gaining hate for 15 minutes.

Hate fact 1: All hate decays - and it decays rapidly on high level mobs. These mobs care about "who has made me angry recently" not "who has given me the most aggro total"

How to test this: Find that one mob that has 32k hp and regens 32k hp per tick. Do 50,000 damage to it over the course of 15 minutes or so. Then have someone else start doing damage to it. That person will not have to do anywhere near 50,001 damage before it switches off. This is even more true on end encounters.

Hate fact 2: Any and all hate over ~5 minutes old(I don't know the exact time, but it is around 5 minutes) is removed from the mob completely.

How to test this: When you found the safe spot in your tests, you probably noticed the mob would just get up and walk off after 5 minutes(forgetting you 100% completely)... if you bothered standing there long enough. In fact, you cant even keep the mob on the bridge for more then 5 minutes without 2 people aggro'd, and doing something to hold their individual aggro (i.e. healing each other - or in the case of a bard, the bard just sings).

Hate fact 3: End encounter ubermobs will only add very VERY low amounts of hate from spells unless they are hurt (and in summoning mode).

How to test this with offensive spells: Have an invulnerable GM cast
tashanian (a huge taunt spell) 50 times on the warder. Have a melee walk up and hit one time. Watch the warder attack the melee...

How to test with healing spells: Have one person aggro warder and jump off the bridge. Have a cleric ch them 10 times (have them use their entire mana pool). Have a melee fight the warder. Watch the warder turn on the melee after 15 seconds tops. Ok, so doing this can get you 15 seconds of free hits as a melee... What you need to look at, however, is how that mana can be (and was in our case) put to much better use. One cleric can keep me alive 120 seconds strait, with 0 chance of me dieing - with coh to clear their own aggro. This seems to be, by your admission, a non-issue though since having clerics at top of hate list serves no function other then to get yourselves killed.

Now allow me to respond to your email with this in mind...

>1. Tank aggros dragon
>2. Tank retreats under bridge (safe zone).
>3. THIS IS EXPLOIT #1. Tank probably uses items to gain hate during
>the approx. 15 minutes the dragon is stuck on the bridge (our logs indicate

Step 3 is 100% critical to this entire thing... The problem here, is it is impossible for me to have built hate while under there. First of all, no matter where u stand, you cant shoot arrows at the mob, so you can toss that idea out.. Using offensive spells, such as blind orb from the CS fish, or bracer of Fenin Ro generate practically no aggro at all (see above).

You could build up some aggro with complete heal items tho. For example if a warrior bothered to do the soul fire quest they could complete heal them self to keep aggro - and it would probably last to maybe (if you're lucky) the dragon has had 15% of its life taken off. The problem with this? Just go through my saved logs... Not only did I not have a complete heal sword from befallen or a soulfire that night, but I HAVE NEVER owned either of those items, ever... It was just an idea I threw up in guildchat, so our clerics wouldn't keep getting summoned and killed, and to keep the mob on me. It is 100% impossible for me to have built aggro while the mob was standing there for 15 minutes (not to mention the logs should clearly show that I didn't....)

Also, if you check the logs, you should see the warder shout his aggro
message every 5 minutes or so. This happens when the warders aggro list has been cleared 100% and it re-aggros on the bard.

From Verant (Brad):
** a seemingly accurate description of hate decay (I'm at home now, so I don't have all my people here to check this out), etc., deleted **

We assume(d) you had items that healed, etc., allowing you to build up hate there. In fact, one of the GMs has been instructed to look at your character in the backups and examine your inventory. In the meantime, I'll take your word for it, however, that you did not.

There seems to be the implication that healing spells would cause hate but offensive would not if the mob wasn't in summoning mode. His example on complete heal to test is a bit poorly thought out as well, since the spell has such a long cast time and hate should 'decay rapidly' on end game mobs.

Brad also left him some wiggle room saying he did not 'have his people check it out'.

This is why I need to find some backup evidence and dig into it more completely. I like to think the uber guild tank of the day and creator of EQ having a conversation about Hate Mechanics holds some water. I just don't want to, you know, "Pull a Rygar" and not make a bug report 100% air tight so you drop shit all over it on the forums and flood it with tears.

EDIT: Shit, forgot... 2009 forum handle. That is serious street cred. I retract all the above statements, I bow to your supreme glory and infinite wisdom.

[skarlorn]

Hell knows no fury like an elf scorned

[Erati]

There seems to be the implication that healing spells would cause hate but offensive would not if the mob wasn't in summoning mode. His example on complete heal to test is a bit poorly thought out as well, since the spell has such a long cast time and hate should 'decay rapidly' on end game mobs.



This is exactly what my issue is with you. Your interpretation of that exchange ( interesting find btw ) is pretty off and why its simply not good evidence in terms of bug reports and fixes here on P99.

The reason they are talking about healing spells giving him aggro is due to LOS...the guild chat that they pulled up later in the article even mentions LOS as part of their tactic.

[Mon Jun 04 20:28:27 2001] Guildmember #3 told the guild, 'this is our LAST CHANCE'
[Mon Jun 04 20:28:29 2001] Guildmember #2 told the guild, 'gah fuggin BS'
[Mon Jun 04 20:28:35 2001] Guildmember #3 told the guild, 'so lets make sure we do it tonight'
[Mon Jun 04 20:28:36 2001] Guildmember #2 told the guild, 'so no snare sploit?'
[Mon Jun 04 20:28:39 2001] Guildmember #3 told the guild, 'nope'
[Mon Jun 04 20:28:40 2001] Guildmember #4 told the guild, 'what are they doing to 3?'
[Mon Jun 04 20:28:44 2001] Guildmember #4 told the guild, 'Killing snare sploit?'
[Mon Jun 04 20:28:48 2001] Guildmember #3 told the guild, 'changing it so we cant snare sploit'
[Mon Jun 04 20:28:49 2001] Guildmember #5 told the guild, 'LoS! Rez! Pathing! Agro! With our powers combine, we summon forth ITZLEGEND!'

So from what I gather, the dude basically tanked the hardest warder in game with less than 30 people bc he was under a bridge exploiting the pathing as the dragon could not reach him. Their guild was suspended and they are trying to rule lawyer out of it.

LOS is key here because if hes under a bridge and a dragon cannot path to him its fairly easy to then see why the GM/Devs were checking him for healing items as healing wouldnt require LOS on the dragon. Literally has nothing to do with 'offensive spells not causing hate until a mob is at summoning health' as you try to spin it towards your #nerfmallet crusade but its a good effort I will give you that.

Conversations like this while very interesting reads and make you think about EQ mechanics are unfortunately terrible for trying to perform fixes here bc well frankly players back then are largely assuming things much like we do today. If a developer spells things out sure that is a different wayback conversation to read but Brad literally spells no details for the guys depiction of 'how hate works' and simply notes that his details were 'seemingly accurate'. Didnt say which of the many things mentioned were accurate or which were not, very typical EQ dev talk not revealing their code functionality but again nothing confirming or eluding to your 'offensive spells do no aggro until mobs summon' hypothesis.

We have hate decay on P99 right now, its called leashing and the ten min de-aggro of all mobs.

[Lhancelot]

I am glad there are nerds that can think this deep on topics like this. I can't.

Respect to you passionate angry dudes arguing over semantics from 18 year old dev convos!

I am serious, I don't know how you guys do it. If you didn't and others did not, we'd never have the works we do on this game.

Respect.

[khanable]

I like to think the uber guild tank of the day and creator of EQ having a conversation about Hate Mechanics holds some water.

ya'll give brad way too much credit

brad didn't write threat mechanics, he had some nerd do that shit and summarize it on a 1 page powerpoint

[loramin]

ya'll give brad way too much credit

brad didn't write threat mechanics, he had some nerd do that shit and summarize it on a 1 page powerpoint

Which he may or may not have read while under the influence of hard drugs ...

[Ravager]

Which he may or may not have read while under the influence of hard drugs ...
If only they were soft drugs, EQ might still be in Velious and owned by Verant.

[Lulz~Sect]

Hell knows no fury like an elf scorned

^9000 that if she’s a female elf IRL 🤣

[Rygar]

Jesus Erati, it is like you aren't even reading the article. It is a very long read, so maybe you just rage skimmed and found something you thought was contradicting and rushed back to post about it.

The entire allegation about heal items building agro was Brad / Verants incorrect assumption that the tank was using items to build agro under the bridge BEFORE the engage. The Conquest leader proceeded to lay out how that was not possible due to hate mechanics.

He, in no circumstance, could have pre-built up enough hate to maintain agro while under the bridge while melee were engaged and actively building hate (he said he technically could have done this during the fight if he had a soulfire, but he did not). I'm not sure which healing items he acquired later (maybe prayers) but says this was done to help maintain agro during the fight since he was fighting with rez effects on to mitigate the slow (exploit according to Verant).

The 'LoS' tactic they referenced, as best I can tell, was to keep the dragon stationary to maximize DPS and prevent it from ping ponging (since there was no pathing nodes down there or whatever). If a caster or anyone got agro they were summoned to the mob, if they somehow could survive a round of melee then could drop off bridge to avoid melee damage until summon timer refreshed (hopefully tank had regained agro at that point). The bridge doubled as a dodge from the AoE for the casters, so it was a win-win.

You act like I pulled this 'offensive spells don't cause nearly any agro if mob is not in summoning mode' out of thin air. He laid that entire argument out himself to help show Brad how he couldn't build up hate on the mob before engage (even if he had tashed it somehow 50 times), I even bolded it for you.

Oh and your cute little dodge about how we have hate decay due to leash mechanics and 10 minute agro drop... just grow up already.

And to my sweet Caiu... why have I earned so much disdain from you? Contrary to what Erati would have everyone think, I do try and learn from my mistakes and try and strengthen my bug reports with better evidence before making them in hopes they are more readily accepted (see the Bind Wound skill cap and Quivering Veil of Xarn bug reports I made recently). That is why I haven't made an official report on these mechanics yet, I want to see if other evidence supports it.

I'm just trying to contribute to the project, sometimes you need to give credit where credit is due.

[Lulz~Sect]

https://i.imgur.com/VJaMLRh_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

[fadetree]

You guys have a lot of disdain for Brad. Yet here you are, flogging away 18 years later. Written any world-changing games lately, have you? Been in the weeds on some huge dev project, I assume? Anything? Anything that would give you even the slightest cred besides winning nerd complaining contests in here?
Brads not perfect, I'm sure. He might have had drug problems, I don't know. I wasn't there. Neither were you. But the casual way you trash him when you very likely have exactly zero large scale development cred yourself while on a form devoted to what he did EIGHTEEN YEARS ago is just pathetic.

[maskedmelon]

You guys have a lot of disdain for Brad. Yet here you are, flogging away 18 years later. Written any world-changing games lately, have you? Been in the weeds on some huge dev project, I assume? Anything? Anything that would give you even the slightest cred besides winning nerd complaining contests in here?
Brads not perfect, I'm sure. He might have had drug problems, I don't know. I wasn't there. Neither were you. But the casual way you trash him when you very likely have exactly zero large scale development cred yourself while on a form devoted to what he did EIGHTEEN YEARS ago is just pathetic.

totally agree with this. never understood all the Brad hate.

[skarlorn]

i don't understand the brad hate but i still like to hate on him b/c it's fun

[zodium]

totally agree with this. never understood all the Brad hate.

Brad hate is extremely classic.

[Llandris]

Brad, is that you?

[Agni]

enjoy your close enough classic experience...for free.

[Rygar]

I should indeed weave in a tale to the Norrathian Homo-Erotica Collection in which all Norrathian citizens must annually mock and show disdain for a goat branded with the mark of 'Brad' sent forth from Veeshan... only secretly they milk this male goat in high society and use it's seed to create a master race, hoping it's beard and elongated neck will pass on to future generations (known as the neckbeards).

Twist: Veeshan has nothing to do with it, Bristlebane just goat illusions and loves to get a little rub and tug from the commons.

[Ezrick]

I agree that the overall feel is pretty darn realistic. My curiosity is more centered on things like:

1.) Resists on P99 vs. back in 1999

2.) How many HP a character would have at a given level vs. P99

3.) Do pets hit as hard, or as often as they would on P99 as they did in classic? HP values? Mitigation?

These are things that are much harder to quantify as they involve math and calculations behind the scenes.

Did the staff reverse engineer some of this data or did they do a best guess?

You have to understand first of all where we are at. The server population is years older than it should be for this stage of development. My first melee character's weapon, even 5 years ago was a Green Jaded Broadsword bought for roughly 25plat. That is light-years removed from the rusty/tarnished weapons I used when Everquest was released. Weapons are just one part of it, all of the gear is like that. A character today certainly has a huge advantage over the environment compared to true, classic Everquest. Even such things as online resources make a huge difference. We didn't have maps, quest guides, detailed wiki's containing every mob in a zone etc. That djinn can never be put back in the bottle. Everquest was hard. I'll try to answer your specific questions though.

1. Resists are almost right. Basically, like classic, resists mean pretty much squat until they pass the 200 mark. The difference, and this is anecdotal based on my experience, is that they don't really rocket up from that point to near immunity like they did on live. A level 50 character with 255 MR would never get feared by Naggy or Vox, for instance. Here it just seems like a suggestion to those esteemed dragons that perhaps, maybe, they should consider not landing fear on you. This scales on up to 60 as well. 255 poison resist and level 60 meant you simply didn't get poisoned by Trak, here it seems to mean you have a 25% or so chance of resisting it (which you will fail the second time). I find myself (as a warrior) almost exclusively ignoring whatever poison/fire/cold/disease attack a boss may have. You can't resist it no matter what your numbers say. Magic vs. fear seems to work pretty well, but again not as good as on live. I don't recall a our guild tank ever getting feared by Gorenaire, for instance, here during a fight a max MR tank will take 2-3 fears though the duration will be short.

As with all things Everquest level is much more important than resists as well. 200 CR won't resist an ice comet from a white mob, but 0 will resist the same spell from a green. Perhaps an over reliance on level weighting is responsible for what I feel is non-classic resist behavior in the end game.

2. HPs seem pretty accurate. Again you will have superior gear earlier here, but as you reach the end of Velious content you will be pretty much where you were on live.

3. Same thing, sure the mobs base damage is pretty accurate, but your level 40 is going to have more HPs and more AC due to the glut of gear on the server so you will feel it less as a percentage of the whole and mitigate it better.

Bigginns - 60 War
Krythen - 57 Enc
Ezrick - 52 CLR