Miscellaneous: P99 should have a +Mana cap and revised Base Mana Formula

[Rygar]

The point is if they decided to fix something out of era (like this cap), you are saying they should fix it in our era because it is what the devs concluded upon discussing how it affected players.

To further look at that quote:

With all the attention focused on the cap in recent days, the dev team looked it over and we agree - there's no reason to place an artificial cap on mana enhancing items.

In 2002 they looked it over and reviewed it. Keep in mind this was decided when players could more easily reach the cap and AAs entered the scene and more powerful loot.

It was obvious they one day would NEED to move the cap anyways as they planned more and more expansions.

We are locked here with no expansions to look forward to.

Again, up to P99 team.

[Daldaen]

August 14th 2002 Patch Notes

Removed the cap for items that granted bonus mana.

Since this wasn't included before.

[Jaxon]

Some members of FOH did some testing and verified the existence of a mana cap.

https://web.archive.org/web/20021023...?threadid=2252

Originally Posted by Frozboz

For a while now some friends of mine and I have theorized that there is a mana softcap - that is, a limit or "cap" on mana given from items. We all are pretty sure there is a cap of some sort. For a while now, Rombus has been saying it's around 5000, while others claim it's much lower. With the advent of percentages in the new UI, we're able to narrow down this cap a bit more. In fact this is really when it started bugging me, because while raid buffed it took me 13% mana to try to cast GSS (540 mana) with a manapool of 4520, it also took Sorceresa 13% to try and cast GSS as well with a mana pool of 4210. It seems to me that it should have shown a greater percentage to try and cast GSS for someone with a smaller mana pool. So I started to run some "tests". The mana numbers used here are from Magelo.

Full mana, zero buffs, standing up I removed 300 mana worth of items, dropping me to 4220 or +1370 in items. I then put those items back on, and my mana bar stayed at 100%. My UI shows my mana bar percentage, so I can tell if it drops at all when +mana items are added. I removed 600 mana worth of items, dropping me to 3920, and my mana bar dropped to 92%.

Full mana, zero buffs, standing up Sorceresa removed 300 mana worth of items, dropping her to 3910. She then put those items back on, and her mana bar dropped to 92%. Even adding 5 mana she saw it drop from 100% to 99%.

Bottom line? There seems to be a cap on how much mana items can give you. Neuro tinkered with this a bit, and found it to be exactly +1400 or 4250 total mana. Is this accurate? If not, what are we seeing there? And of what significance is this?

http://www.showeq.net/forums/archive...hp/t-1738.html

Here Ratt, a ShowEQ developer, criticizes Frozboz's testing methodology, but the criticism lies in the the degree of precision available by using the client for testing and the difference between client side and server side data.

Just to be clear, Ratt agrees there is a mana cap. His issue is with the 4250 number they came up with.

Originally Posted by Ratt

Yes, this was and is known by the general public. Verant stated this a long time ago, publically. Both on their message boards and also on all the news sites. I don't know how much more public you can get than this. It's not my fault you or others forgot this... I've never forgotten it and a lot of others never have forgotten it. It's been something very near and dear to me for quite a while as I tried to balance my character in mana vs hp.

Another poster named Neuro MT uses another method to pin down the exact number:

Originally Posted by Neuro MT

The client will display any mana amount under 100% as 99% (Or less). The client does not round up, so even a 1 mana change will register. Test it yourself if you don't believe me. Up until 1388, even a 1 mana increase in mana pool will drop your mana to 99% for one tick. Above 1388, even a 125 mana item will not budge your mana meter.

This cap, I believe, is a direct ratio of your total int-based mana. Someone told me that SEQ showed a 4164 total mana pool unbuffed, even when the pool should be higher. Since 4164 divided evenly into 3, AND the resulting divisor was '1388' I concluded that not only was the 4164 figure accurate, but the 'cap' was actually a function of your total mana pool, basically, 50% of your mana pool is the cap on +mana items. You say this 'limit' was known for a long time, well, not by the general public. I knew there was a cap on +mana under level 20 or so, but I had never heard of any limitation above lvl 20.

Originally Posted by throx

What Neuro is saying is that he has verified the client has a hard coded mana cap at +1388 in mana items. From there you have to assume one of two things:

i) The client code has good reason to arbitrarily limit +mana at 1388 (at Lv60) because that's what the coded limit on the servers is.

ii) For some reason best known to themselves the coders at Verant put a mana cap into the client but a different one on the server. It's well known that the client's mana numbers are inaccurate when presented with mana recharge or drain effects but this is not one of those cases. For it to work this way the code must deliberately cap mana differently on the client and the server.

I find the notion that the static mana caculation formula being identical on client and server to be the most reasonable hypothesis.

Originally Posted by Neuro MT

The client still resyncs with the server when you perform an action such as clicking jboots or on the tick. If the cap were only client-side, then putting on a large +mana item over the cap would drop to 97% after the tick or after you click jboots. Sadly, this does not happen. Thus, the cap is not only client side, it is server-side as well.

I think from this we can definitively conclude that there is +mana cap on items(and items alone, not +mana effects like GOB or KEI) of 1388.

[loramin]

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

This is a complete load of crap and I can point you to several bug threads that have pages of evidence for classic changes some of which have been ignored for years or worse down right shut down by managment after being proven a classic mechanic.The staff here use the "resembles classic" speech all the time to justify unclassic things like modified loot tables, dragon hp, dragon fear, DA agro mechanic, and the list goes on and on.

Wow, it's like I was able to predict exactly what you would say, and then counter it before you had even said it:

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

Now I can already hear you saying, "that's a ton of B.S. because ____ isn't classic". And you'd be right: Project 1999 is not complete yet. Until it is, the devs are going to keep working on it to make it as classic as possible, and they're not just going to ignore not-classic-thing A because they haven't yet fixed non-classic thing B.

[Daldaen]

Solid Classicquest going on in this thread.

[Rygar]

Thank you so much Jaxon, I had looked for that FoH post but was unsuccessful. Very technical testing going on there. Hope that can be a case closed on the mana cap.

We have basically 2 numbers that were thrown out: 4,126 and 4,164 for the cap (not including buffs). I admit 4,164 seems a bit more technical, yet 4,126 was busted out in the dev thread.

So at least we have a range narrowed down... anyone have better figures than those?

[Bellringer]

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

Thank you so much Jaxon, I had looked for that FoH post but was unsuccessful. Very technical testing going on there. Hope that can be a case closed on the mana cap.

We have basically 2 numbers that were thrown out: 4,126 and 4,164 for the cap (not including buffs). I admit 4,164 seems a bit more technical, yet 4,126 was busted out in the dev thread.

So at least we have a range narrowed down... anyone have better figures than those?

This is where you lose me. You somehow still want your 4126 number in the convo just because it was posted by a complete rando in a "dev thread" as opposed to much more reasonable evidence pointing towards 4164.

It's these sorts of things that will cause people to oppose you initially instead of looking at your information with an open mind.

PS. Some people will always oppose you due to the salt levels coursing through their veins.

[Daldaen]

I'd trust the ShowEQ forum since it pulls data from the client directly.

+1388 Mana cap is a fairly reasonable cap. That means for a character you're looking at 70 Mana per slot for all 20 of your worn slots (some of which do not have +70 options in this era). No HoT geared character is going to hit this cap. You need at least 14-15 NToV, Vulak, Dozekar, Tunare, AoW, City Leader, Veeshans Peak, etc. raid drops to hit it after the WIS/INT calculation fix.

This has me intrigued as to whether HP had a similar limitation... probably not seeing as HP calculations off stamina and level vary by class whereas Mana is the same. But still interesting something that was seemingly limitless was capped.

[Raev]

Nice stuff Jaxon.

I believe you get 12 mana per int/wis at 60. So it seems that a completely classic max would be: 200 * 12 + 55 + 1388 = 3843 mana. Ouch.

[Rygar]

I

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

This is where you lose me. You somehow still want your 4126 number in the convo just because it was posted by a complete rando in a "dev thread" as opposed to much more reasonable evidence pointing towards 4164.

It's these sorts of things that will cause people to oppose you initially instead of looking at your information with an open mind.

PS. Some people will always oppose you due to the salt levels coursing through their veins.

My rationale is 4164 was player tested, the original dev page no longer works and we have a copied original post with player comments. I am assuming the 4126 could have been confirmed on the original page and reposted on the copy page.

I am adhmitting the 4164 sounds better, but i can't imagine someone just made up 4126 which is why i am still talking about it.

Hopefully that calms you down?