Patch Notes, Wednesday May 5th, 2010

[Rogean]

This is a code patch only.

• Rogean: Spam Prevention: Players level 1-4 can only send 1 message into OOC and Auc 3 times per minute. Players over level 4 can send 10 messages per minute.
• Rogean/Haynar: Removed spell worn off messages (not classic).
  Haynar: Fix for TIGER_STRIKE spell effect, so manastones will no longer be so annoying. Monk tiger strikes, will maintain previous fix to show damage.
• Haynar: Fixed stacking of Bard MR debuffs. This should allow bard charm to work.
• Haynar: Fixed interrupt with spell casting bar for bards (tested with Titanium client).
• Haynar: Fixed bard song dropping, right when another song lands.
• Haynar: Fixed bard songs dropping early.
• Haynar: Fixed bard song fading, right after same song lands.
• Haynar: Fixed interrupt message being sent to other clients, when camping out. This was a side effect of some bard fixes.

[Bumamgar]

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

• Rogean/Haynar: Removed spell worn off messages (not classic).

Some worn off messages are classic. In particular, DoTs, roots, and snares always gave a worn off message. What isn't classic are buffs giving a worn off message. That was added in the patch on May 11, 2005.

[Haynar]

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

Some worn off messages are classic. In particular, DoTs, roots, and snares always gave a worn off message. What isn't classic are buffs giving a worn off message. That was added in the patch on May 11, 2005.

The part I had worked on, now correct me if I am wrong, were the worn off messages that occur on death of a client or mob.

I do not remember getting any worn off messages when a mob died. That would have been a nightmare for debuffs on multiple mobs when I was playing my shammy, trying to figure out which slow just wore off.

Haynar

[Bumamgar]

Correct, there were no worn off messages when your target died.

I'm sorry if I misunderstood the patch note, but it looked to me that all worn off messages had been removed from p99, which wouldn't be true to classic.

[Haynar]

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

Correct, there were no worn off messages when your target died.

I'm sorry if I misunderstood the patch note, but it looked to me that all worn off messages had been removed from p99, which wouldn't be true to classic.

As always, we sometimes do go overboard, with what we intended. If we knocked out too many messages, we can always add them back to be consistent with classic.

Due to the complexity in some of the code, there can be many different paths which fire off a message. Or cancel a bard song, for that matter. I hate to say it, but you guys are sometimes our beta testers for patches. With our limited resources, it is often difficult for us to do regression testing for every change.

Please continue to provide feedback, and we will strive to always make the server better.

Haynar

[Phallax]

Currently ALL worn off messages are OFF. I think this was vanilla classic. Cant remember when actual worn off msgs were added, but worn off upon death I never remember so that needs to stay that way eithe rway...whadda ya say

[Tudana]

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

As always, we sometimes do go overboard, with what we intended. If we knocked out too many messages, we can always add them back to be consistent with classic.

Due to the complexity in some of the code, there can be many different paths which fire off a message. Or cancel a bard song, for that matter. I hate to say it, but you guys are sometimes our beta testers for patches. With our limited resources, it is often difficult for us to do regression testing for every change.

Please continue to provide feedback, and we will strive to always make the server better.

Haynar

hehe, this is the most honest and up front I have ever seen from a dev over patch notes. I have never heard this from a Live dev team.

P1999 rocks ever harder now in my eyes!
/hug you guys!

[postmoderntease0]

On the one hand:

DoTs were very literally the *only* type of offensive damage that wasn't reported. It might seem absurd for Verant (and p1999) to not have DoT damage in the mix.

On the other hand:

There was a good reason for it. The DoT damage had a variable duration and total damage was based on whether the MoB was running or not, so it made sense not to list damage, as it was never going to even necessarily last the same number of ticks per casting, depending on how much (and what type of) running the enemy did, nor would it necessarily do the same damage per tick based on the same factor-- the type and amount of running the MoB was doing:

September 13, 1999...
...DoT Changes:
- If the monster is in melee with you, there is no change to how a DoT spell works.
- If the monster is running away from you (fear, wounded, etc.), there is no change to how a DoT spell works.
- If the monster is moving when the damage from the DoT is applied (happens every few seconds), it will take 66% of the damage that it would have taken.
- DoT spells have all had their duration slightly increased. If the monster moves for 18 seconds during a fight, it will take as much damage from the DoT as it would before the patch. If the monster moves for less then 18 seconds during a fight, your DoT will do more damage
than it would have done before the patch. If the monster moves more than 18 seconds during the fight, it will take less damage than it would have before the patch.

Yes, it makes it easier and more 'manageable' to have DoT damage listed per tick, but that's the whole freaking point. Those spells and their respective damage figures were supposed to be somewhat variable and unpredictable. It forced you to learn to play your class well, if you depended on debuffs and DoTs, because you had to really keep track of what you were doing. You didn't fzck around. You paid attention.

This is one of the reasons I love this server so much, and its players-- they want to do things the old way, because stuff wasn't handed to you then. They tend *not* to prefer WoWers, because before WoW, in EQ, the would-be-WoWers were the ones you added to your shitlist for *not* knowing their class and screwing the group over. Or else they were the ones who were such horrible powergamers that all they cared about was end-game raiding, rather than the experience that led to the end-game; those ones were almost worse, because they gave not two shits about other players *coughFOHcough*, they cared about parsing and maxing dps instead.

Contrastingly, the unknown element *forces* people to play the game more carefully, and that necessarily benefits the community and the entire game. This is especially important with matters like spells and combat, because these were facets of the game that affected everyone, not just one guy playing. If, for example, they made the 'combine' buttons destroy everything in the tradeskill bags, that's just annoying one person. No one in the group is going to die because Joey Leet wasn't careful about not hitting that combine button-- the combine button has nothing to do with Joey Leet failing to learn his goddamn class, casting fear in the middle of a dungeon, and train-wiping half the zone because he wasn't keeping track of snare.

I, at least, would request that you please remove damage over time messages until such time when they were implemented in Live. I still use the clock to keep track of DoTs and debuffs, especially when stacking them, because damage-per-tick spam gets completely lost in the 49 other things I'm trying to do in the middle of combat. I don't have time to sit there and count the number of damage ticks that get displayed, and if you do, then you're obviously not paying enough attention to everything else you should. Whereas, because I learned to play the game before the DoT info was added, all I have to do at any given point during a battle, is glance at the time to see if I need to recast anything, because I was keeping up with shit rather than letting the game do it for me. Because, when the game was new, if you didn't do that, you substantially decreased your odds of survival.

But, that's just my opinion. Parsing has other purposes than maxing dps on this server.

/rantsauce

[BuzWeaver]

Originally Posted by postmoderntease0 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

On the one hand:

DoTs were very literally the *only* type of offensive damage that wasn't reported. It might seem absurd for Verant (and p1999) to not have DoT damage in the mix.

On the other hand:

There was a good reason for it. The DoT damage had a variable duration and total damage was based on whether the MoB was running or not, so it made sense not to list damage, as it was never going to even necessarily last the same number of ticks per casting, depending on how much (and what type of) running the enemy did, nor would it necessarily do the same damage per tick based on the same factor-- the type and amount of running the MoB was doing:




Yes, it makes it easier and more 'manageable' to have DoT damage listed per tick, but that's the whole freaking point. Those spells and their respective damage figures were supposed to be somewhat variable and unpredictable. It forced you to learn to play your class well, if you depended on debuffs and DoTs, because you had to really keep track of what you were doing. You didn't fzck around. You paid attention.

This is one of the reasons I love this server so much, and its players-- they want to do things the old way, because stuff wasn't handed to you then. They tend *not* to prefer WoWers, because before WoW, in EQ, the would-be-WoWers were the ones you added to your shitlist for *not* knowing their class and screwing the group over. Or else they were the ones who were such horrible powergamers that all they cared about was end-game raiding, rather than the experience that led to the end-game; those ones were almost worse, because they gave not two shits about other players *coughFOHcough*, they cared about parsing and maxing dps instead.

Contrastingly, the unknown element *forces* people to play the game more carefully, and that necessarily benefits the community and the entire game. This is especially important with matters like spells and combat, because these were facets of the game that affected everyone, not just one guy playing. If, for example, they made the 'combine' buttons destroy everything in the tradeskill bags, that's just annoying one person. No one in the group is going to die because Joey Leet wasn't careful about not hitting that combine button-- the combine button has nothing to do with Joey Leet failing to learn his goddamn class, casting fear in the middle of a dungeon, and train-wiping half the zone because he wasn't keeping track of snare.

I, at least, would request that you please remove damage over time messages until such time when they were implemented in Live. I still use the clock to keep track of DoTs and debuffs, especially when stacking them, because damage-per-tick spam gets completely lost in the 49 other things I'm trying to do in the middle of combat. I don't have time to sit there and count the number of damage ticks that get displayed, and if you do, then you're obviously not paying enough attention to everything else you should. Whereas, because I learned to play the game before the DoT info was added, all I have to do at any given point during a battle, is glance at the time to see if I need to recast anything, because I was keeping up with shit rather than letting the game do it for me. Because, when the game was new, if you didn't do that, you substantially decreased your odds of survival.

But, that's just my opinion. Parsing has other purposes than maxing dps on this server.

/rantsauce

I respect and understand your point, although I don't necessarily agree with the analogy. How someone plays wouldn't necessarily be determined on whether or not they can see DoT damage or Spell duration. I'd go out on a limb here and say that a majority of the people playing on the Project are experienced players.

The common mantra is "this is the old school way" and in turn people are trying to subscribe to the idea that anything out-side of that framework diminishes the game. Whether I can or can't see DoT Damage, Spell duration or even have miss-combines just doesn't detract from my experience. The bottom line is, is the game fun.

[Phallax]

Are we going to get a worn off msg for "detrimal" spells this next patch? I know they existed at least in kunark because I use to Tigirs Insect(AOE slow) packs of mobs then 1 by 1 slow them watching when tigirs wore off to know they were all slowed at a higher %