AC issues are starting to be really problematic.

[Splorf22]

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

This is where you're wrong. You can't have an accurate system without adjusting individual NPC's. Again, you guys seem to think that it's the system that's wrong and not that the NPC's have bad values. Both are best guessed systems. There is no way we would have been able to determine what mob AC and Attack values were on live.

You cannot have an accurate system without accurate values, and you cannot have accurate values without an accurate system.

Here is the problem, though. Let's take Derakor as our example since he comes up a lot in this thread. There are two issues:

• How much damage does he do to an evasive warrior with 289 AC.
• How much does that damage increase as the AC/level of the warrior goes down

The first part is what you are tuning by changing his ATK value. Which really is the most important part, because it is what makes the encounters too easy or too hard. But the second part is a reflection of the system and how much it penalizes having lesser armor class.

So you are certainly correct when you say that his damage depends on both his tuned value and the system. But the relative change should depend mostly on the system. So I think the first thing to do is make sure that the system works reasonably, i.e. that if a 289 AC L60 warrior is taking X damage per hit, then a 250AC L60 warrior should be taking . . . 1.06 X ? Or whatever you decide is reasonable based on Kahvok's post. And then how much that damage should change whether its an enchanter or shaman or a L55 warrior and so on, and making sure those numbers make sense. And then once you have a system that has the scaling you want, you go back and you tweak individual encounters to make them harder or easier.

TL;DR: From what I've seen its the scaling of P1999's AC system with class, level, and equipment that doesn't feel classic, not the net DPS of raid mob X.

[Sylexis]

Originally Posted by Splorf22 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Is simply not classic. FWIW, I think in a vacuum your system is probably better, as Warriors in particular will cap AC easily. Verant agreed with all of us and eventually changed their mechanics. But the point is to recreate classic, right?

I suppose you probably feel I have some sort of vendetta against you or something, Haynar, but really I just want a classic server. And it has bothered me for a long time that this project has an almost fanatical attention to detail in terms of replicating typos in NPC names and reconstructing little used quests, but we have gaping holes in really important mechanics. I mean Kunark has been out for 4 years, and we just figured out that warriors are taking *three quarters* of the damage they should be with evasive discipline on. That means all raid tanking just became 33% harder. That is going to have a huge, huge impact on everyone whether it's Sky or VP or whatever. It also means Paladins and SKs just got a lot better, relatively (only 50% worse, not 100% worse).

I would really love to see some test code where we select a bunch of different tanks with different AC and pit them against a bunch of different mobs and create a big spreadsheet and then try to tune it to match classic. I don't actually think it would be that hard: really its just a double for loop that then runs the 'get average hit' 10000x and reports the results. Hell, I'm not even saying your system is necessarily wrong. I just think we have to tweak the system first before adjusting individual NPCs.

Really, I appreciate this project a great deal. I have had big personal projects before, so I know how much work it is. So please don't take this as a personal criticism. All I am suggesting is that you guys apply the same rigor to game mechanics that you do to quests and NPC names and such.

As I always understood it a mob has a range of like 20 different amounts it hits for based on it's class level, atk etc and as long as my AC was higher than it's ATK he only landed mostly the lower half of his twenty different hit amounts and if my AC was lower than his ATK then he hit me on the higher end of his spectrum more often, and the ideal "AC" amount on a tank in an expansion was the point where your AC was above nearly ALL those mobs ATK in that expansion.

In theory, the hardcap for AC should still put our AC in the right place for the expansion to be above the mobs ATK right?

I feel like I need to go Reread Ruatha's epic melee post again.

[Splorf22]

Also, just to be clear, all I am asking you to do is write the following code and share the results on google docs:

for(NPCLevel = 5; NPCLevel <= 75; NPCLevel += 5) {
  for(PCLevel = 5; PCLevel <= 60; PCLevel += 5) {
     for(ratio = 1.0; ratio >= 0.5; ratio -= 0.1) {
        ATK = getDefaultAttack(NPCLevel);
        AC = getACCap(PCLevel) * ratio;
        Hit = getAverageHit(ATK, AC);
        printf("L%d NPC vs L%d PC (%d AC) average hit: %d\n", NPCLevel, PCLevel, AC, Hit);
   }
}

[Rogean]

And may I point out that we've been right about this, case in point: Kael mobs DID have high attack.. but it wasn't because of direct field like "Attack", it was because their strength was set too high (which contributes to attack values.. shocker?!). However, after adjusting those values to be similar to temple of veeshan mobs, we started noticing differences between AC vs HP warriors in tanking.

[Rogean]

You're basing your entire post off of one small sample size of Vindi hitting two warriors for a VERY slight difference, when they have different AC. Again, it is IRRELEVANT. Derakor's strength was too high, resulting in Atk that was negating AC Calculations.

Look.. You're feedback for things like "He's hitting too hard.. not hitting hard.. not hitting any different between these two players who have different AC" are valuable feedback. But when we look into that issue and determine what the problem is, you don't have the right to dictate to US what the problem is from your perspective.

What you need to know is that changes are being made based on the valuable feedback you HAVE contributed, and you should continue to test the new data.

[Splorf22]

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

you don't have the right to dictate to US what the problem is from your perspective

I wish you guys wouldn't see it this way.

Originally Posted by Rogean

What you need to know is that changes are being made based on the valuable feedback you HAVE contributed, and you should continue to test the new data.

Of course; beta is fun.

[Haynar]

You want us to revamp the system, change to a hard cap based system, and switch it back to soft cap sometime in velious, as he said it changed?

I think you should be banned, and its time for you to go make your own server and code your own hard cap system. Putting u on ignore now.

Buh bye.

This thread is dead, not reading it anymore.

H

[Splorf22]

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

You want us to revamp the system, change to a hard cap based system, and switch it back to soft cap sometime in velious, as he said it changed?

Originally Posted by Kahvok

Let me give a more full explanation of what happened, though. Here's how the AC formula used to work before the patch immediately preceding PoP

Also dude if you want to ban me on the forums or even in-game, I'm honestly OK with it. Really I spend too much time here [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[pasi]

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

You want us to revamp the system, change to a hard cap based system, and switch it back to soft cap sometime in velious, as he said it changed?

I think you should be banned, and its time for you to go make your own server and code your own hard cap system. Putting u on ignore now.

Buh bye.

This thread is dead, not reading it anymore.

H

I think he was referring to what the developer post indicates:

A Hardcap system until late Velious then a switch to a softcap system with very weak melee-only (likely <10%) returns on AC. Hypothetically, the hardcap system is what should be in place now. Obviously, the issue is that we don't have the code - even if we have the code, we don't have the values.

I understand that it would be a waste of time to work on the Classic to Late Velious AC code just so that it can be thrown out for a different set of code in a couple months. The best bet is to just have everything working for the late Velious picture right out of release. This is what you seem to be doing, and I appreciate it.

[Splorf22]

Originally Posted by Kahvok

Let me give a more full explanation of what happened, though. Here's how the AC formula used to work before the patch immediately preceding PoP:

The AC from your items was added up, but the value used for it was hard capped based on your level. This was the same for all classes. Once you had 289 raw AC from items (or 385 as a cloth class, since they get less effect from item AC), that was it. More AC from items wouldn't do anything.

After this, it added your class bonuses (including the monk bonus, which is equivalent to your level + 5 in raw item AC), defense skill bonus, agility bonus, and the AC from spell buffs.

Total AC at this point was capped again, this time based on class. In the Kunark-era code, this was a hard cap, but sometime during Velious it was changed to a soft cap for melee classes only. The return was fairly small, though.

I don't know how it can be any more clear. Regardless, this is my last head butt against this particular wall. I think you guys have done a great job building a free server to play, and if you aren't interested in fine tuning the mechanics to be classic as possible then so be it.

This thread just has me kinda depressed so I'm going to take a bit of time off; judging by my past history that will last about 24 hours [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]