25 NPC AoE Limit

[jungels]

After having this installed for a year+, can we please remove it. I get the argument that most computers couldn't handle this back in 2000 but this isn't classic. Even if everyone's computer froze... it was still possible to AE all of fear. With all of the changes in place this is no longer a classic server. This is 100% a custom server with custom item and gameplay changes. I just don't really understand some of the decisions. Part of the fun of playing this game now is because we are able to do things we couldn't do before. I don't think it's right to just make a game change based on an opinion that it wasn't supposed to be possible.

I understand the TOV dragon changes.... that was literally in response to so much wasted time with raid petitions. I even understand the item insta-cast nerfs (although I'm adamantly against them)... but preventing people from AEing to level or farm faction is completely different and in completely different ball park. People don't have hours and hours, like they used to, to dedicate to leveling. We have lives. Give us our AE back, please.

IDK, is it just me? Curious to hear other people's thoughts now that this "experiment" has run it's course.

[funry]

At this point we're well into the end of velious and Luclin would be rolled out (Dec 2001 conservatively). The game received a graphic overhaul, as computers were getting better CPUs and GPUs. I think it's safe to say most people could handle more than 25 mobs, especially with spell effects turned off.

[Atmas]

It was pretty much the standard strategy for trash clearing in VT and encounters in PoP to do AoEing. In Velious is it may have been less common but people definitely AoEd in Seb.

The biggest disappointment for me is that it really nerfs the full potential of some classes like Wizard.

[starkind]

You can still AoE 5-8+ mobs at a time for ridiculous mana efficiency.

[Arvan]

Sorry you dont like leveling (aka playing everquest)

[Twochain]

this man waited 9 years for his first post

And I agree with him.

But I see why the GM's did it. Also green probably would have been a SH I I I I I I I I T show if no pbaoe limits.

Should be a courtesy thing though, not hard limited. No pbaoe limits. But if you're in a zone with a lot of other people leveling, stick to 25 mobs or less. Otherwise they are allowed to aoe fear your kite. It's a little overwhelming that bards can legit solo exp entire zones at once. Chardok pbaoe... was awesome but a headache to the staff. Still, I think that's something that the community should have been forced to come up with a solution.

Kinda like, remember back in the day, if someone fucked with you at your camp, you'd log your main and chain kill the entire camp for 2 hours? I remember that being a COMMON thing on my server (tarew marr). I feel like that's how many of these giga nerd situations should be handled. If the bard doesn't send out group invites or leave camps for other legit groups, let them train each other for 2 hours. Nobody wins there. There will be eventual forced compromise. Chardok/seb AOE group won't let you take a camp? Wooops here comes my factioned enchanter good luck pulling mobs that are constantly blanketed. I've been spending time recently swarming in Velks, and it seems pretty civil. Even if a bard is clearing the ENTIRE maze, every time an enchanter shows up to take frenzy there is never bitching even though the bard had the PH killed. At least that i've witnessed yet.

"Hey i'm gonna move to ABC"

"No we are pulling all that to zone and have been for hours"

"Well i can either bring my enchanter and mem blur your trains for the next hour that we were going to camp it, or you could just let the actual group have the camp"

"Fuckin fine"

tldr ya please let us police ourselves and only petition the truly egregious i.e ruining things unprompted and spouting racing /shouts or whatever.

[myrddraal]

Make bards and wizards more OP? Nah

[Tethler]

No

[Baler]

Nothing about making non-classic changes equals classic.

I do think bards were out of control pulling entire parts of zones.
Also the 25 ae limit changed some raiding strats, like AEing fear trash.

So it's hard to say No or Yes. I want classic everquest but bad eggs ruin it for everyone else.

[jungels]

It was pretty much the standard strategy for trash clearing in VT and encounters in PoP to do AoEing. In Velious is it may have been less common but people definitely AoEd in Seb.

The biggest disappointment for me is that it really nerfs the full potential of some classes like Wizard.

It's just wasting everyone's time. The limit is supposed to be how much your group/raid can handle.

[jungels]

Nothing about making non-classic changes equals classic.

I do think bards were out of control pulling entire parts of zones.
Also the 25 ae limit changed some raiding strats, like AEing fear trash.

So it's hard to say No or Yes. I want classic everquest but bad eggs ruin it for everyone else.

Someone else made a snide remark about leveling... my wizard and mage are actually 60 so it's not even about that anymore. If we're just making changes because you don't like it, it's not classic and defeats the purpose. If we can just make this change then why not bring back buff timers? The LFG interface? Add in the raid window?..... install the bazaar?? I mean I don't understand. The game is the game and people come here to play it how they remember. I know 100% I was doing AE pulls in Seb, on live, during velious. Maybe it wasn't 100 mobs but it was damn sure more than 25.

[JustinWK]

The limitation certainly isn't classic. There's no argument there.

And the counterargument that "BUT BARDS" is a shit one. Enforce the PNP.

[Gustoo]

Just disable bards problem solved.

[loramin]

Y'all are missing the biggest reason why they made the change. Look, Nilbog hates doing anything for the classic experience; 99 out of 100 (999 out of 1000?) times he'll pick classic mechanics over classic experience. Just look at Enchanters here: their experience is nothing like the live one, but Nilbog is convinced he has the mechanics for them right, so their unclassic experience remains.

So why then did he make an "classic experience" exception in this one specific case, when it's antithetical to everything else he does? Hint: it's not because he specifically hates bards ... it's because prior to the AoE limit, Bards were dominating zones like OT, taking everyone's mobs. People would then try and screw with the bards, creating a mess of petitions from both sides.

That is why Nilbog instituted the AoE limits: because our all volunteer GM squad had better things to do than babysit Overthere (and other swarm kite zones) 24/7. If you want to change the limit, convince the staff that it won't result in a million new petitions for them to have to deal with ... or else give up.

[JustinWK]

Y'all are missing the biggest reason why they made the change. Look, Nilbog hates doing anything for the classic experience; 99 out of 100 (999 out of 1000?) times he'll pick classic mechanics over classic experience. Just look at Enchanters here: their experience is nothing like the live one, but Nilbog is convinced he has the mechanics for them right, so their unclassic experience remains.

So why then did he make an exception in this one specific case, when it's antithetical to everything else he does? Hint: it's not because he specifically hates bards ... it's because prior to the AoE limit, Bards were dominating zones like OT, taking everyone's mobs. People would then try and screw with the bards, creating a mess of petitions from both sides.

That is why Nilbog instituted the AoE limits: because our all volunteer GM squad had better things to do than babysit Overthere (and other swarm kite zones) 24/7. If you want to change the limit, convince the staff that it won't result in a million new petitions ... or else give up.


Interesting. So, you think the issue is that WE are missing the point, versus not agreeing with the reason or seeing alternative solutions as more practical? That's a bizarre assumption.

If the problem is BARDS, then make it a BARD problem, not an entire server problem. Again, that's just a really bad argument.

PNP enforcement, bard AoE spell limitations, ban the douche who decides an entire zone belongs to them?

[Jorgam]

Not commenting on if it should or should not be a thing here, but I specifically recall AE Seb groups where you had a war (earthshaker / riposte disc), cleric, enc, enc, mages or wizards pulling all of disco and disco 2 and obliterating it. It was boss. Being able to do things like that here would make for a lot of fun in some areas that don't see much travel now with the xp mod changes.

[loramin]

Interesting. So, you think the issue is that WE are missing the point, versus not agreeing with the reason or seeing alternative solutions as more practical? That's a bizarre assumption.

If the problem is BARDS, then make it a BARD problem, not an entire server problem. Again, that's just a really bad argument.

PNP enforcement, bard AoE spell limitations, ban the douche who decides an entire zone belongs to them?

I'm saying that if you show up in 2021 and start complaining how things are here and trying to change them ... maybe it would behoove you to understand how they got to be that way first. Otherwise you risk wasting a bunch of energy on "solutions" that don't in any way address the actual problem that the 25 AoE limit was created to solve.

[loramin]

Not commenting on if it should or should not be a thing here, but I specifically recall AE Seb groups where you had a war (earthshaker / riposte disc), cleric, enc, enc, mages or wizards pulling all of disco and disco 2 and obliterating it. It was boss. Being able to do things like that here would make for a lot of fun in some areas that don't see much travel now with the xp mod changes.

Yes: it wasn't just a Bard issue either! Another clear problem was Chardok, which was exclusively an AoE group zone for years here on P99.

[Allishia]

Yes bring back chardok aoe please, that was my $ maker! :p

[Danth]

Area effect spell limit works okay for most cases. Former problems like Chardok AE are an increasingly distant memory. For bards it isn't enough and they should be limited down to 4. It's still difficult to use Dragon Necropolis without being trained by some nitwit bard who thinks he owns the place. Petitioning doesn't do any good when there's almost never any staff online to read it and they can't do anything when they finally get to it after the fact to it a few days later. I've seen a guide online exactly once in the past month.

AE limit can safely be removed from P99 when the following conditions are met:

--P99 achieves fulltime staffing with 24/7 coverage and immediate /petition response.
--AE-pull-related deliberate trains are met with mandatory permanent bans for first-time offense.
--Bard class is deleted entirely.

Without those conditions in place, large-scale AE is more trouble than it's worth. I won't listen to "Not classic." You know what's classic? Having fulltime staff support with 24/7 coverage.

Danth

[Jibartik]

I think chardok was the main reason, iirc the nerf and the revamp came in at the same time.

Are people AOEing fear/hate on TLP? It's raining tradable planar armor over there in mischife so I figure, but also theres a ton of players and they all may be smashing up there idk.

[Vivitron]

I think it could make sense to put in a higher ae limit for spells than for songs.

How many mobs were in each pull in those chardok groups, anyway? A 50 mob limit might return some general usefulness without making ae* power-levels the meta way to xp.

*edited chardok to ae here.

[JustinWK]

I'm saying that if you show up in 2021 and start complaining how things are here and trying to change them ... maybe it would behoove you to understand how they got to be that way first. Otherwise you risk wasting a bunch of energy on "solutions" that don't in any way address the actual problem that the 25 AoE limit was created to solve.

Aren't you just full of fun assumptions :rolleyes:

I'm agreeing with the OP - No energy wasted here.

[jungels]

Area effect spell limit works okay for most cases. Former problems like Chardok AE are an increasingly distant memory. For bards it isn't enough and they should be limited down to 4. It's still difficult to use Dragon Necropolis without being trained by some nitwit bard who thinks he owns the place. Petitioning doesn't do any good when there's almost never any staff online to read it and they can't do anything when they finally get to it after the fact to it a few days later. I've seen a guide online exactly once in the past month.

AE limit can safely be removed from P99 when the following conditions are met:

--P99 achieves fulltime staffing with 24/7 coverage and immediate /petition response.
--AE-pull-related deliberate trains are met with mandatory permanent bans for first-time offense.
--Bard class is deleted entirely.

Without those conditions in place, large-scale AE is more trouble than it's worth. I won't listen to "Not classic." You know what's classic? Having fulltime staff support with 24/7 coverage.

Danth

I guess I'm just confused more now then because what you and others are saying is that it's just a lazy approach of screw everyone because bards. Why can't they specifically target the problem instead of applying a negatively impacting blanket on everyone?

This same philosophy is how they approached clickies with raid targets. Instead of just increasing recharge cost and making raid targets immune to the clickies/effects... they increase cast times and modify usability for everyone. Example, nerf root net insta cast and screw over mages (or anyone else) that might actually use those for intended life saving purposes.... because they're being used for aggro and it "wasn't intended". No one, except the original devs know the intentions and I don't get the hubris and contempt for playing a game how it was originally designed. I think if you have a problem with that, perhaps you are the people that should not be playing this game.

Now I do appreciate the issue of not having 24/7 support.... so I do fully support severe disciplinary action. This game is 20 years old and you should be adults. Act like it and, as Justin pointed out follow the PNP. Geez.