[DMN]

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

Ahh, I see! I guess I'd only found the bard quote on page 1 of the thread, who was the one I was quoting as wrong. The guy on page 2 makes a lot more sense.

That said.

"
That's correct, all bard AoE (and most AoE spells in general) have a maximum
of four targets now.
"

NOW.

That leads me to believe sometime between march1999 and april1999 bard AoE effected more than 4 targets. Since a dev wrote the word NOW in may 1999.
I started playing in december 1998 (I was in closed beta). So I'm 100% willing to admit it is possible that bard AoE was nerfed on the day the game was released. I could've seen a bard hitting more than 4 targets in beta. Release was actually a lot more buggy than beta, which made it a lot harder to play and form memories about it.

To my reading, that's 4 months without pbaoe, not 6. Of course I'm not in charge. Also you're entirely right about the whole not being able to tell how many targets were effected when I wasn't actually the one playing the bard. Although the bard had done it "on purpose". Of course they were singing an attack speed debuff song (presumably, it could've been some sort of mez or calm I suppose too based on the colors). This wasn't at all a pbaoe kiting swarm tactic. Bard's were a lot less informed about their abilities in 1999. Basically what the bard was doing was something no one on p99 would do, because it wasn't correct, they were debuffing and melee'ing a group of lower level enemies, heck, since I wasn't them, and they actually just caused me to leave, they may have just been trying to gain skillups in defense or dodge or some such.

Come to think of it release was actually so buggy I couldn't even login for a week or two. Despite playing in beta beforehand just fine even when gfay regularly had 250+ people in it. So, it's possible the devs nerfed all aoe's in march 1999 in order to help address server strain. Server strain definitely almost killed the game. Day 1 of release is a time between day 1 and may1999. The dev would've had a prospective even more pronounced than mine (of not really seeing everquest 1 as having started in march1999, for me it started in december 1998, and for him it started in 1997 or some such).

It's probably impossible to find out when pbaoe was nerfed between march1999 and may1999. Which means I totally understand going with the limit of 4. Although, one thing the dev does mention in his example post.... is something about aggro'ing 7 enemies despite only effecting 4. This could explain what the bard I saw was doing. They may have even thought their song was working on more than 4 targets, even if it in fact was not. Since the discussion seems to be about the fact that in may 1999 pbaoe spells would aggro ALL enemies in their range, despite only effecting 4. It would be really cool though if someone did find proof of when pbaoe was nerfed. Personally I still believe that at very least before release of the game the nerf down to 4 had not been implemented yet. It would be pretty silly though for p99 to leave in the game something the devs deemed to be a horrible problem and patched out as soon as possible. So even if someone did find proof that it worked for the first 2-6 weeks or some such, it might make sense to not act on it.

On p99 I think enemies are only aggro'd by pbaoe if they're effected by it. Right? However it probably makes sense to leave it that way, since it was likely unintended that the songs would aggro more targets than they would effect?

When the AoE spells/songs were introduced in beta they all had infinite numbers of targets. As an interesting side note, believe it or not, from my recollections they were actually more concerned with server instability than anything related to balance.