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21
on: October 28, 2024, 01:38:59 pm
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Started by Draca - Last post by Miriya
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Alot of great feedback. What Gnomin said is correct regarding balancing. I also agree with what Pubis is saying about a fixed raid size. We choose to overcome the challenge by zerging with more characters, hence the increase in more toons to box, and usage of server resources to support said characters.
Maybe a limit of characters for the new zone, say 30 max but scales down to amount in raid of up to one group of 6. Difficulty would scale up or down according to group size. I know that could inconvenience the players with more than 30+ but it would also be easier to balance imho.
I would love to see an increase in dps for other classes such as rangers, zerker, monks, pets of pet classes. Is it possible to add to mobs some kind of piercing immunity, not full immunity maybe partial? It would lower rogues dps somewhat and would need other dps classes to make a well rounded group. Would also prevent the all rogue group compositions lol.
I vote "No" to bane weapons.
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22
on: October 25, 2024, 06:57:09 am
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Started by Draca - Last post by Pubis
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• Assuming current Kael difficulty as a baseline, would you like to see new content:
Harder/Much harder. I'm not against an "easy component" but I think there should be some content in game that inspires players to consider their actions, to understand the abilities and pay attention to strategies. I think the structure and mechanics on the server are really nice and it's a shame to not flex it a little. I think some easier content should be as difficult as original kael and some should be considerably harder. Ideally this content would exist but not be required for progression, it could be totally orthogonal. Hard modes of bosses for small rewards would require relatively little investment and since they aren't required, precise tuning isn't as important. If an encounter is too hard, we can grow into it. • We have also been working on the idea/scripting to implement a 'hard mode*' in new content, so if you think the general zone should be slightly easier with hard mode, then that's good as well.
Gnonim hit the nail on the head with this. Hard mode that drops more of the same or offers faster progression towards the same goals only will be basically impossible to balance and will leave you in one of two extremes: (1) its not rewarding enough, farming easy content three times as fast with no risk is faster than farming difficult content for 1.5x the reward. Even if you, by some miracle, balanced these things you'll still pick the easy option because it's consistent. (2) The hard mode content is 3x harder (or whatever, for kael it probably needs to be in the 3x range to be interesting), and it legit pulls you through progression 3x faster, but now you have a ton of bitching that it's impossible to complete in easy because it takes too long or the hard mode content is too short. Furthermore "you now have less to do" is kind of a lame reward for putting the effort into learning new mechanics and doing more dangerous content. I think the issue is to make content that will be meaningfully challenging, it'll will need to be many times harder than current kael yet you can't scale common drops by that factor without making easy mode feel worthless. However, you CAN make things 4x harder and offer distinct rewards that are some tiny fraction better than what's available through easy modes. I talk about this above, but I really love the solution where encounters can be done on hard mode for small additional bonuses to stats or whatever... just enough to be a reason to do it. it's a challenge that exists and it doesn't even matter if it's "too hard", heck it may even be literally impossible at our current gear levels. All that really matters is that it gives the player a reason to care about playing well, learning the mechanics, making good choices and about gearing up. However, I think this is a nightmare without talking about raid size because it may just inspire larger and larger raids so...... Fixed raid size is a really good concept and I think it should happen. It will GREATLY ease balancing and tuning of content. I think it is overdue and removes one of the aspects of the server people tend to get hung up on and worry about too much. I really think that standardizing raid size will allow a much smoother, more precise content development process that will benefit the server a lot. I think this bit of normalization is essential to making interesting and challenging content. Otherwise you will always have to plan for people simply adding more as a way to meet challenges. I'm not worried at all about the characters I leave behind, they'll provide a useful bench for me to give my raid compositional flexibility and I'll probably just end up starting second teams with them; furthermore, I don't really feel any emotional attachment to any of them. Having to think about and justify the inclusion of specific classes is more fun than just "well add 6 more because why not". • Do you find the background lore, NPC emotes, quest background stories etc. engaging or entertaining, or don't really care much either way?
I can't care about this at all. I'm not against it but just please don't make me read it. If it's enjoyable to develop then by all means keep it going! • Is there any mechanic that we've used previously that you would, or would not like to see repeated?
My biggest suggestion is that it would be good if different mobs had different abilities and forced different considerations and approaches. In Kael every mob is the same roughly speaking. In VP there's basically 3 mob types (dogs, dragons, necros). The necros and dragons are already quite similar but I think that diversity in the mob population is really good for forcing the player to keep their brain going. As an example, in VP when doing huge pulls, I always had to think about when I was going to kill the dragons, the way; this only matters because they have unique abilities compared to the dogs that change the dynamics. It's just a way to keep the content more engaging and make pulls different from one another. I think the more unique "base type" mobs you have the better. I know this is time consuming, but even just 3 or 4 different types makes for very diverse pull combinations. • Feelings on bane weapons?
Neutral more or less, sounds kind of like just an annoyance but maybe if implemented right it would be fine. • Aside from the content, what would you like to see 'fixed' as part of this Tier? Example I've heard: Item effects are not very useful/being re-used. But it's open ended, whatever you'd like to see done better in some way, or fixed.
Item effects are always an issue but I don't think that's immediately fixable. There's so few available improvement avenues for old-school EQ, original upgrades. You can have one of each effect and there's only a few possible effects, the original framework just wasn't meant to enable the kind of slow, graded power increases that we expect in modern games. This also ends you up on the "addiction model" where since you need that effect you can only replace it with something else with that effect and so it ends up with very ridgid itemization (arms always have effect x, boots have y, etc). My too-much-work idea for fixing this would be to just steal one of the meaningless stats in the game... corruption resistance or something and set power (whatever that might mean, let's say the level of your UC effect) scale off of it. That way upgrading is straight forward and you aren't "hooked" on individual pieces because they don't contain unique effects. This is essentially the way WoW solved this problem in vanilla through "spell power". • Since this post will probably get people's attention, is there anything currently broken or janky that you feel needs to be addressed? (completely separate from the Tier).
Obviously donations are needed because so much QoL is locked behind them. I am generically in favor of the way they work at the moment because I think compensation for the nice content and experience on EZ is well justified. I know there's some issues with the ability to accept them right now but what if the donations went to compensate those who currently keep the server alive, bug free and experiencing current content. I would be very in favor of compensating our GMs with that money. I think it makes a lot of sense and is really the way the money should be distributed. I would also be in favor of just setting it up as a money that gets channeled to charities, some combo of children with cancer, vets, animals, I don't know. It doesn't matter much what you chose, there's a lot of obvious choices. |
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23
on: October 24, 2024, 04:56:04 pm
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Started by Draca - Last post by clbreastmilk
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Lower Tier Class Balance
This is honestly a short answer, and mostly because trying to explain how difficult it is to balance content is very difficult to do, to people who haven't tried to do it. Lower tier classes cannot be buffed, due to the amount of time to re-balance for their increase in power, and the lack of available testers to provide accurate data, makes it impossible to justify even trying. This is especially true, when the majority of players do not make any attempt to maximize the classes they have, instead relying on the typical Warrior tanking, Paladin healing, most of the rest in auto attack melee. To illustrate this point, I stealth buffed a mid-Tier magician spell about a year ago to nuke as hard as the Idol of the Jailed, and it wasn't discovered for the 6 months it was Live. People just don't try that hard to make the most of what they have, when the next level requires all that min/maxing to happen all over again. I understand why, I didn't either.
I know neither one of these answers is what some people are looking for, but sometimes neither is the content that EZ provides. People will come and go, that's not new, and not something we're actively trying to mitigate through concessionary changes to earlier Tiers.
Would it be possible to add DPS balance to High tier content? Things like an epic aug on the lower dps classes (bard, ranger etc.) effect that adds some damage to bring them closer (but not above) rogue damage. I believe this was done somewhat recently with Monk and Zerk? You could start it at 10/11/12 whatever works for easier development. |
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24
on: October 24, 2024, 09:36:01 am
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Started by Draca - Last post by orkiho
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For myself the inflation of box numbers was not due to requirements/macros/need. It was a function of wanting something else do to when I tired of the same thing over and over again. If I had stuck with my original groups, I would probably already be done with T11 and then what...back to waiting for a group on live? 5 toons up to T5 because my computer only supported that many boxes at that time. 7 more added after I got a new computer till T10 12 added while progressing through T10 because I got bored farming gss before Veeshan was released. 12 added when I got bored with just killing Tunare every 3 days (but didn't get them leveled to T11 until I wanted a break from giants and Halloween was on) For current total of 36 If I finish T11 before T12 I may add more or replace some, depending on how bored I get waiting and if my CPU will handle it  I don't remember who, but someone has soloed to T10 (they had support/wings) but, it's possible without the numbers. Past T10 probably not though. When new users ask for box numbers, we need to rememeber our own progression/evolution as a caveat to the totals the end users provide. The recommendations that some of the new users have to start with large boxing groups is wrong imo and I feel adds unnecessary barriers to the server. I feel that by the nature of the progression and length that its natural to bring more along, eventually, if you stick with the server for as long as a lot of us. Limiting the number of toons that can be use in T12 that we have spent a lot of time to gear/progress would be annoying. Having to gear more toons is itself a large penalty for having that many, but we have had years to do it at this point. |
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25
on: October 24, 2024, 02:08:36 am
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Started by Draca - Last post by Rangewind
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I have played in spurts over almost 10 years now. I have been working my way through progression the same order it was released in. Currently in ST and VP. I have not done anything in T11 as of yet.
On the topic of Bane Weapons, I was in T7 when UW was introduced into the server. I was 18 boxing at the time and by the time I had all the armor, spells and accessories. I had bane weapons for my crew to kill Floating Skull and complete the tier. I did not find any problems with needing them to kill a targeted boss.
Expeditions is something a lot of people do not look at. Sure, the end goal of hive shards for UW things is not worth it till you can do the T10 Old Blackburrow but they do offer other things for toons within that tier.
I could see adding HoH token drops to Catacombs of Dranik being an option that might bring people to have more interest in them. The Charm Prism Upgrades that drop and can be purchased count for both v1 or v2 charms. I used to do them daily as it was a easier source for essences then attempting to farm bosses. They can also be turned in for 1 hive shard each so I do not foresee their drop rate being increased.
I do not know if its possible to bring back the T5 expedition (the random boss spawns was a nice alternative from trying to get them to spawn in zone). I know it was disabled due to an exploit but that is about it.
On the toon count, currently I have a 30 box. Tracking who needs how much of what has been interesting but that has also caused me to dig into the macro side of EZ. Creating the macros I have has helped a lot with item tracking and other random things that have come up.
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26
on: October 23, 2024, 10:34:07 pm
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Started by Draca - Last post by Draca
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Lower Tier Content
Lower tier content isn't necessarily ignored by Sarthin and I, and if there glaring issues that have just gone unfixed, we will certainly take a look at what we can do now to fix it. Content itself though, and the time required or difficulty/grindiness of it just isn't something that will change. While some people take this as just being stubborn, it really isn't. EZ Server's history, the legacy of it's creator and those who followed are in those zones. They existed as they are, and were deemed by the developer to be in the state that they wished it to be. Abyss, for example, was designed to be the end of EZ Server's progression, hence the amount of time required to complete. Reducing the time required would diminish the feeling of accomplishment, and the collective understanding that every one who has finished it feels when someone '/ooc About to start Abyss, wish me luck'. EZ Server, while one of the more populated EQEmulator servers, has not been, and will not become a server where the attrition of players who just don't prefer the style of gameplay it provides (and the occasional desire to bash your head on your desk), will dictate changes to content. I realize that sounds harsh, but it is what it is.
Lower Tier Class Balance
This is honestly a short answer, and mostly because trying to explain how difficult it is to balance content is very difficult to do, to people who haven't tried to do it. Lower tier classes cannot be buffed, due to the amount of time to re-balance for their increase in power, and the lack of available testers to provide accurate data, makes it impossible to justify even trying. This is especially true, when the majority of players do not make any attempt to maximize the classes they have, instead relying on the typical Warrior tanking, Paladin healing, most of the rest in auto attack melee. To illustrate this point, I stealth buffed a mid-Tier magician spell about a year ago to nuke as hard as the Idol of the Jailed, and it wasn't discovered for the 6 months it was Live. People just don't try that hard to make the most of what they have, when the next level requires all that min/maxing to happen all over again. I understand why, I didn't either.
I know neither one of these answers is what some people are looking for, but sometimes neither is the content that EZ provides. People will come and go, that's not new, and not something we're actively trying to mitigate through concessionary changes to earlier Tiers.
Hard Mode/Difficulty
Got some notes on where people want to see difficulty.
Hard mode is planned to add several things, at least in T12.
First, and the most obvious is that mobs will hit considerably harder and have more hitpoints.
Secondly, they will cast spells where other regular NPC's would not, or cast more and/or more powerful spells than regular NPC's do.
Third, they will have Hard Mode level loot. This will be a combination of more general loot drops such as essences, spells/spell components etc., but will also drop items that are hard mode versions of the regular armor, but with improved stats.
Beyond that, there are some other ideas that we can play around with, but we'll see how much development time it adds doing some stuff twice.
Other Things
Spells/Effects:
There will be a concerted effort to add some additional useful item effects and class spells, though working with spells which drive everything from item effects to AA's to spells themselves is second to balancing in terms of difficulty. Spells sometimes just refuse to work, or they do not stack as they should, or they work too well and become difficult to balance. That's no one's problem but ours, but it's certainly a topic of thought for us.
Bane Weapons:
Nothing that was planned for T12 specifically, but it seems an interesting possibility for specific fights, though not through a painful, required camp.
Emotes/Interactions:
These are enjoyable from a development standpoint as well, so those will continue.
Box numbers:
There has definitely been an inflation in the amount of boxed characters that people are playing. Some of it is the desire to kill faster, some is more recent efforts by certain players to develop rules abiding macros that make maximizing those groups much simpler. There is no need for massive groups in any zone, and while breaking into Kael is easier with 42 characters, that's also 30 more mouths to feed than a group of 12. Yes, it's more of a struggle with less characters, but it's impossible to finish content, it's just a question of whether you like the challenge of less characters who don't require nearly as many overall kills/bosses, or would rather have the security of numbers.
Along these lines, it is increasingly likely that T12 will limit the number of characters allowed in the zone at once. No final decision on what the number would be.
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27
on: October 21, 2024, 01:11:33 pm
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Started by Draca - Last post by orkiho
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• Assuming current Kael difficulty as a baseline, would you like to see new content: Harder (should be a struggle to break in) With Hard Mode to make it interesting later in the tier when its just grinding. • Do you find the background lore, NPC emotes, quest background stories etc. engaging or entertaining, or don't really care much either way? I enjoy the lore/emotes/etc at the beginning. But seeing the same stuff over and over as we grind gets...ehh. • Is there any mechanic that we've used previously that you would, or would not like to see repeated? Having all the same mob types that do the same spells/ae at the same % is a bit boring. • Feelings on bane weapons? Wouldn't want chars to be entirely useless until they get the bane. At this point most have ultimate weapons...if they are not ultimate and we have to use banes doesn't make sense to me. Bane Augs maybe? But, if we have to switch weapons/augs around on all our chars for QoL it needs to be mq accessible. • Aside from the content, what would you like to see 'fixed' as part of this Tier? Example I've heard: Item effects are not very useful/being re-used. But it's open ended, whatever you'd like to see done better in some way, or fixed. Pets/Pet Weapons have been a complaint for awhile. If strike augs are going to keep getting updates, have weapons for all the classes that could use them. Kael doesn't have any firestrike or icestrike class options. 2h classes ultimate proc aug options suck. At some point in the tier is becomes no longer about survivability or tactics it turns into how to do more dps, Hard mode may help with this but if there was something else to shake things up, randomness, changes to the zone over time? As its mostly about just mass killing, a quest that rewards you for a very large amount of mobs killed...i would be interested to know how many mobs each tier I've killed progressing through, maybe after X mobs you get...something. Trophy that ranks up each time you complete the quest?...i would be fine with it having no use for the tier or no utility just flavor like the mago t-shirt. Or i'm not sure if is possible in the code to check for the existing of the trophy to change the scripting...after X kills they just emote "sigh...you again?" then and xx kills its "just leave me alone already" and so on to have fun with it. • Since this post will probably get people's attention, is there anything currently broken or janky that you feel needs to be addressed? (completely separate from the Tier). Still waiting on my reward  |
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28
on: October 21, 2024, 08:03:01 am
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Started by Raygan - Last post by Raygan
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Thank the Lord! I have a church function up in the North Georgia Mountains this weekend coming up and was worried I was going to miss the event!
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29
on: October 20, 2024, 04:55:10 pm
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Started by Hunter - Last post by zefirus
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Edit: Oh yeah, asking retarded questions will get you #revoked from ooc and tells.
Enjoy!
Hunter
Ahh the good old days |
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30
on: October 20, 2024, 07:07:47 am
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Started by Draca - Last post by blackthantos
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Being relatively new to the server and its particular mechanics and content, I am not really in a position to comment about the higher level tiers as I have not reached them yet, I will however comment on some of the lower tier activities I have done.
1) I will agree with some of the comments listed previously that casters do seem to be in need of a "buff" to bring them somewhat in line with the melee classes, as a person who primarily plays casters in MMO's in general, I would love to be able to "main" one of my casters, which I sadly cannot do as things are currently. I have heard that they do improve in later tiers, but I would ask why is there that delay?
2) FG/CG: I can see the need to do these on one character if you so wish to do so the "old fashioned" way but when you are looking to do them for a party its a pain to put it mildly, sadly, Misty Thicket appears to be extremely buggy to put it mildly, in regard to this I am unclear if that is something that is awry with the zone itself, or if it is something that is occurring on client side (aka if i have a corrupted file somewhere). I am going to throw out a suggestion, since FG/CG appear to be nostalgia runs for the most part, why not add a vendor that sells the items needed to proceed with the quest, which would be another option, this would allow those who maybe are seeking another way to complete these two quest lines for an entire party another way to do so. This would eliminate some time that is spent running through multiple chars working to get these two requirements completed, I have seen this done on well an AC server, and it doesnt detract from the experience but rather adds another option for players to progress. A further thing to consider this is no different really then those who have the option to purchase a completion flag from the ez credit vendor, except it would be open to all which would also help especially as donations are no longer accepted at this time.
3)Going to add to the LDON statement here, I would like to see that as well (in regard to what Acaelis mentioned), I would go so far as to suggest that the bosses also drop more then one page at a time, this would also cut down in the length of time players spend doing these tasks.
I guess really in the end a decision needs to be made if the server wants to be welcoming to newer players, and by this I mean in regard to shortening the time it takes (and effort and frustration) to get through the the earlier tiers I personally can say there have been a few times that I have been frustrated with either the drop rates (qvic etc) or some of the more "tedious" elements of progression to the point where I needed to step away from playing for a bit, and I am typically more patient then most gamers. In closing I would agree with the opinion that the acceleration for tiers 1-7 could do with some tweaking as that would be one most players would get frustrated and be more prone to lose interest and quit.
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