EZ Server

With Veeshan's Peak now having been released for a little over a month, and following some adjustments seemed to find it's stride, everyone starts to look to what's next. I think that's where I come in...so in no particular order, developments in progress, and some other news:

♦ Food Quests
Following a significant outline by Skankie, there will be stat food quests added for every 2nd Tier. This will include using some until now unused zone trash loot, along with specific items for the quest. This isn't expected to be massive stats, but it will be substantial enough to be a benefit.

♦ All-In-One Mount quest
This is a project exclusively worked on by Ogru, that will require the player to have collected all of the Tier dropped mounts, as well as some additional quest tasks, and results in a clickie item from which you can choose any of the mounts, plus a new one. This looks to be an exciting addition, and the new mount should certainly be worth the time.

♦ Plane of Innovation (Champion's Symbol Upgrade)
This is going to be a fairly straightforward quest zone, resulting in an upgraded Champion's Symbol. It's a combination of kill and collect quest, and while it will take some time to complete, it certainly won't be worse than collecting Souls in Sunderock. It will require the turn-in of the original Champion's Symbol, so you won't have both.

♦ Tier 11 - Dragonscale Hills
This will be my first full progression Tier development, and assuming I can execute the plans I have for the zone, I think it will be an exciting addition to EZ.

♦ News: int64, hp_regen_per_second, DPS tooling
This is all related to new EQEmulator server code additions that Akkadius has made in the past couple weeks. While some of it has uses outside of EZ, much of it was done to help us.

• First up, is the updating of HP, Mana, Endurance, Damage and Hate to int64 from int32. What is int64 and int32 you may be asking? int64 and int32 are basically number limits, ranging from -2147483648 to +2147483647 for int32 increasing to -9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to +9, 223,372,036,854,775,807 for int64, that can be used by a program. In EZ's case, with our astronomical damage, and damage bonuses, we can quite easily exceed the int32 limit, at which point the calculation overflows and the resultant number is less than it should be, or quite possibly negative. While we don't do 2.14 billion damage directly, because of the way that damage bonuses (critical hits/blasts) are calculated, it is possible to overflow int32 during the calculation itself, which still results in lesser or negative damage. With this server code update, Akkadius, and the other EQEmu wizards, have made it possible to likely never have to worry about this issue again, 9 quintillion is a big number...

• Secondly is the addition of a new npc_type database entry, hp_regen_per_second.  By using this faster than normal (I believe standard regen is a pulse every 3 seconds) hitpoint regen, it is possible to tune NPC's to expected damage per second, and counteract some of it without resorting to Veeshan's Peak style self buffs. This closely ties into:

•Lastly, in game DPS information. This is a GM tuning tool, but will allow me to observe fights and easily retrieve benchmark DPS data from specific classes, which will be tied into future zone scaling.

All of these improvements are massive for us, and while Akkadius makes anything coding related look absurdly easy, it was no small endeavor, but will really allow me freedom moving forward. Big thanks to Akkadius and the EQEmu wizards for the work on this. Because the change to int64 required the modification of a lot of moving parts, I will be asking for everyone's help to test it for stability on the Test Server. While it has passed scrutiny from the EQEmu developers, we would be foolish not to verify it on Test before deployment to production. I'll make an additional announcement once Test is updated and testing is needed (we should be able to pull current character data over to test). You don't need any particular skills to help in this way, you just play the same way you normally do, see if anything doesn't work correctly and report it if not, so please don't be afraid to help.

I don't have specific timelines for new content releases, as these new server code changes require some changes to so made to plans, but testing must be done on Test first.

and...

I want to thank everyone who stuck with it in Veeshan's Peak while it went through some initial growing pains, and patience with me as I continue to learn. This work continues to be very rewarding, and a great privilege to get the freedom to work on content for this server.



For Akkadius & Rent,

-Draca

Looking forward to it Boss, now I gotta go back to t10 for that stupid Ant thing /shakes fist at cloud.

Holler when you need them test mules..

Tank

Thanks for continuing to breathe life into EZ Server, Draca. 

you had me at T11  ;D ;D ;D

I need to go collect all those mounts. They are a neat addition to the server that show some dedication and luck haha!!!

Thanks as always

http://ezserver.online/forums/index.php?topic=5876.0

brought up in the past...why was it shot down back then but embraced now?  ???

I don't see it being shot down. Not responded too, but no one shot it down.

Looks like your idea was picked up and is now being implemented, however delayed :)

A lot of things to look forward to on EZ in the coming future for sure. The int64 build will be super nice for EZ. We get a large margin on numbers to make sure we can continue to make armor and weapons more extreme in values than what the common EQemu server has. Also our damage can be shown correctly and there should be no need for mitigation buffs on mobs like in VP, because HP values can be stretched to match our DPS and toughness can be made by NPC spells and damage values on mobs.

I am totally excited about T11. It looks to be a great outdoor zone and once the int64 is implemented it should be way more smooth to start the work on balancing classes and creating content for the tier.

Again, awesome job to EQemu devs and Draca for moving our playground forward!