AC should be hardcapped and "shield AC" shouldn't exist in this era.

[CrazyPro]

I don't believe AC has been tinkered with on P99 in over a decade now, and for years now it's been in an incorrect state. The last dev post going into detail about how AC works on p99 is this post from Haynar in 2014 (https://www.project1999.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1424908&postcount=13) where he says this:

There is a component to your defense rating based on level.

And we use a softcap system, not a hardcap based system.

Warriors get a 45% return above softcap.

Adding a shield increases ur softcap.

Based on new formulas from soe, i am removing the level part from defense rating. And increasing the ac component by 4/3. This helps ac mean more, and you get hit harder naked.

Other changes that are on beta, is iksar ac bonus is moved to be equal to level, 10 min, 35 max. Previously it was level/2. Not 15 like wiki had i guess.

At low levels the softcap is more level based than defense based. I basically doubled transition so at low levels ac means more.

I added a low level raw ac cap of level * 6 + 25.

It looks better now and i can see ac scaling damage up to soft cap, and lesser reductions above softcap.

H

People on the forums have already parsed hits with different AC values with and without shields to come to the conclusion that P99 is still using a softcap system with shield AC raising the softcap. (I'm looking at you DeathsSilkyMist)

AC was hardcapped up until a patch sometime around late Luclin/early PoP that revamped the AC system, introducing softcaps with diminishing returns and making it so that shield AC raised your softcap.

There is a post from an EQ dev on the steel warriors forums from back in the day explaining this: https://web.archive.org/web/20110704200058/https://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum/showthread.php?t=7643

The cap on AC in the Velious era wasn't a soft cap; it was a hard cap that had been there from day 1. After a certain point, which differed for each class, the benefit of more AC didn't just diminish - it dropped to nothing.

The change I referred to, just before PoP, changed that from a hard cap to a soft cap. You get a percentage of the amount over that soft cap. Shields increase both your total and your soft cap, making them more effective than any other item with equal AC. Your mitigation AAs, level, and class also affect the cap and the percentage return for AC over it.

Separate from this, there are diminishing returns if your AC is much greater than the NPC's attack. This is due to the nature of the formulas that produce the probability distributions that have been well documented on this board.

Does that help?

- Kavhok, SOE

There is already a post on the P99 forums that goes into great detail on how AC actually worked in Velious with specifics, and it has quoted a post from Kavhok which you can no longer access with more juicy stuff: https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48312

I won't quote any of it here or this will be the longest wall of text mankind has ever seen, but devs, please do give that post a thorough look. Do also check all of the comments on that post, there's some more very juicy stuff in those.

This issue has been under the rug for too long, people said AC was king for a reason back then, and on P99 people are literally equipping -AC earrings for HP because it makes so little of a difference. People seem to have forgotten all about this issue so here's the decadely reminder. Hope the devs find the time to take a look at this.

[Rygar]

I think there is a bit more to meets the eye on just focusing on AC. Mob Attack values seem very high. If AC is fixed and raid mobs hitting max hit very often you're going to need 14 clerics to keep them up.

I'm not saying you're wrong on AC, just longer to fix as you have to balance the entire world with hit scaling.

[CrazyPro]

I think there is a bit more to meets the eye on just focusing on AC. Mob Attack values seem very high. If AC is fixed and raid mobs hitting max hit very often you're going to need 14 clerics to keep them up.

I'm not saying you're wrong on AC, just longer to fix as you have to balance the entire world with hit scaling.

Fix AC and then just steal the ATK values that TAKP uses and boom.

[sammoHung]

This change would absolutely destroy monks as solo gods, and to be honest: I'm with it. I walk back my complaints about the channeling change, and things like this. This game was meant to be played in groups and all people at the top end of these servers do nowadays is gear up twinks to solo.

#EndSoloDominance

[CrazyPro]

Not all is lost
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.
^ from a Kavhok post quoted in the other post I linked

[Vear99]

The problem with this system is that Verant added a bunch of ALL/ALL items with high AC in Velious, which allowed Monks to hit the 289 item AC cap, then get the Monk/Iksar bonus on top of it, and finally get the superior monk defensive skills on top of that.

https://wiki.project1999.com/Magelo_Blue:Raev

35+20+10+20+25+7+14+15+8+17+17+60+15+12+10+20 = 305 AC

Verant did fix this for Planes of Power:

https://www.takproject.net/magelo/character.php?char=Gorrok

https://www.takproject.net/magelo/character.php?char=Thucydides

[Baugi]

Fix AC and then just steal the ATK values that TAKP uses and boom.

TAKP attack values are derived empirically from PoP era and later aren't they? Is the claim that attack values/formulas went relatively untouched and they just played with defense?

[CrazyPro]

TAKP attack values are derived empirically from PoP era and later aren't they? Is the claim that attack values/formulas went relatively untouched and they just played with defense?

Exactly. Based on this quote from Kavhok in this archived thread it looks like they only tinkered with defense: https://web.archive.org/web/20110704200058/https://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum/showthread.php?t=7643

AC functions the same way in all zones. Some old NPCs may have lower attack than new ones, but the formulas for combat do not change.

The AC formulas were changed a short while before PoP shipped. Perhaps that was confused as a content change in PoP. However, the Avatar of War does less damage to a warrior with 1800 AC than one with 1300 AC just the way that Bertox does. It doesn't matter that he's "old content" - his attack is still fairly high.

- Kavhok, SOE

TAKP's ATK values are derived from early PoP.

[Goregasmic]

IIRC they got the AC formula pretty close but they had to guesstimate attack values, especially from velious raid bosses.

And yeah monks are OP because the late itemization is bonkers. Haven't parsed it but at a glance the monk I'm leveling seem to take more max hits than my ranger did at ~200ac worn so that part is working as intended. Don't forget monk get to split, they have mend and 200+BW on top of cheap access to a nearly 1 ratio 2handers which damage cap gets lifted at level 20. There's a lot of reasons why they're crazy outside of AC.

[Baugi]

IIRC they got the AC formula pretty close but they had to guesstimate attack values, especially from velious raid bosses.

Just for reference, these are (I think?) the most relevant public discussion of the TAKP methodology -

Toven's writeup - https://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=40543
demonstar55's decompile conclusions - https://github.com/mackal/EQMechanics/wiki

[Jimjam]

Toven's writeup - https://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=40543

01-21-2024, 08:11 AM Torven said:

This is the AC cap timeline that we're aware of as of this post:

* Classic (pre-Kunark) had a hard mitigation AC cap of 350 for all classes.

* At Kunark launch, level 51+ warriors had their hard cap increased to 405. All other classes (and sub 51 wars) remained at 350. (verified from the April 28 2000 client)

* AC caps changed again some time after (or at) Velious' launch. The earliest known client having the higher AC caps is April 4 2001. The new caps are: 430, 403, 375 for level 51+ melee classes only.

* The hard caps turn into soft caps for melee classes only in the late Velious time frame. (or maybe Luclin launch, not sure; would be nice to narrow this down) The overcap returns at this time are divided by 12 for all melee classes.

* PoP launch made shield AC ignore the cap. Also class and level based overcap returns. Casters get softcaps at this time, so no more hardcaps for any class.

[JayDee]

If they fix AC and the raid mobs dont auto max so often, warrior will become gods. It will be the opposite of what you are thinking.

[Rygar]

If they fix AC and the raid mobs dont auto max so often, warrior will become gods. It will be the opposite of what you are thinking.

There's plenty of video of folks dropping mobs like Sont and Zland and other raid mobs back in the day much easier than on P99 I suppose. Probably just because raid mobs are overtuned in general.

But just deflating AC and leaving high mob Attack is going to make it far more ultra hard mode in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I like hard mode (ultimately what drew me into P99 was missing how punishing EQ was back in the day), just think it may get a bit ridiculous on the raid scene.

[Goregasmic]

They're going for a certain "feel" of key mobs and I guess they're ok with where it's at. The attack of raid mobs is mostly custom values from what I understand so if you fuck with AC you have to tune atk all over again. They're not going to do that unless someone brings irrefutable proof they're off.

[Baugi]

There's plenty of video of folks dropping mobs like Sont and Zland and other raid mobs back in the day much easier than on P99 I suppose. Probably just because raid mobs are overtuned in general.

But just deflating AC and leaving high mob Attack is going to make it far more ultra hard mode in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I like hard mode (ultimately what drew me into P99 was missing how punishing EQ was back in the day), just think it may get a bit ridiculous on the raid scene.

Definitely overtuned, yeah. I'd guesstimate people were using maybe 1/2 to 2/3rds the clerics and 6k tanks to clear NToV in-era on live based on screenshots, videos, memory. The logistics of trying to run a 1 second heal chain on 2001 internet confuse and frighten me.

Maybe someone who's raided on TAKP/Quarm can weigh in on how those values felt relative to P99?

That being said, a softcap factor of 1/12 is really punishing, if the formula is -

MitigationAC = INT(DefenseSkill / 3) + INT(WornAC * 4 / 3) + INT(if Agility > 70 then Agility / 20 else 0)

the difference from converting the soft-cap into a hard-cap on a BiS Velious warrior (more or less the worst case) is only ~30 AC

I'm not sure how AC is actually implemented on P99 since it was developed independently by Haynar? Also, this bit from the de-compile confuses me. It seems to further cap item AC before the hard/soft cap? e.g. https://github.com/mackal/EQMechanics/wiki/Mid-Velious -


item_ac = 0
for slot in range(0, 21): # slots 0 - 20
item = GetItemPossession(slot)
if item.IsValid and item.GetItemClass() == ItemClassCommon:
if item.RecommendedLevel() or item.RecommendedSkill():
item_ac = item_ac + AntiTwinkAdj(item)
else:
item_ac = item_ac + item.GetItemAC()

if not IsMage(): # silkies
bonus = 4 * item_ac / 3

if IsClient() and bonus > 6 * GetLevel() + 25:
bonus = 6 * GetLevel() + 25


seems to correspond to the low-level cap mentioned elsewhere (e.g. by Haynar), but it's applied directly to the item_ac derived value in the de-compile.

[Jimjam]

Definitely overtuned, yeah. I'd guesstimate people were using maybe 1/2 to 2/3rds the clerics and 6k tanks to clear NToV in-era on live based on screenshots, videos, memory. The logistics of trying to run a 1 second heal chain on 2001 internet confuse and frighten me.

Maybe someone who's raided on TAKP/Quarm can weigh in on how those values felt relative to P99?

That being said, a softcap factor of 1/12 is really punishing, if the formula is -

MitigationAC = INT(DefenseSkill / 3) + INT(WornAC * 4 / 3) + INT(if Agility > 70 then Agility / 20 else 0)

the difference from converting the soft-cap into a hard-cap on a BiS Velious warrior (more or less the worst case) is only ~30 AC

I'm not sure how AC is actually implemented on P99 since it was developed independently by Haynar? Also, this bit from the de-compile confuses me. It seems to further cap item AC before the hard/soft cap? e.g. https://github.com/mackal/EQMechanics/wiki/Mid-Velious -


item_ac = 0
for slot in range(0, 21): # slots 0 - 20
item = GetItemPossession(slot)
if item.IsValid and item.GetItemClass() == ItemClassCommon:
if item.RecommendedLevel() or item.RecommendedSkill():
item_ac = item_ac + AntiTwinkAdj(item)
else:
item_ac = item_ac + item.GetItemAC()

if not IsMage(): # silkies
bonus = 4 * item_ac / 3

if IsClient() and bonus > 6 * GetLevel() + 25:
bonus = 6 * GetLevel() + 25


seems to correspond to the low-level cap mentioned elsewhere (e.g. by Haynar), but it's applied directly to the item_ac derived value in the de-compile.

The softcap returns being tiny feels more like it was intended as a hardcap with some breadcrumbs, rather than a proper return after softcap system. Personally I vibe with it (especially combined with a ground up respec of mob attack and accuracy values, but that would be a huge project which I can understand the staff not wanting to touch with a barge pole).

I stopped playing Quarm when the Naggy/Vox raids started, so take my anecdote with a shaker of salt, but in the content up to that point it felt much more reminiscent of how tanking / gear was interacting with NPCs in classic than p99 ever did.

I'd too love to hear how things were looking late Velious on the server from anyone who hit 60 and tanked big bosses.

[CrazyPro]

There's plenty of video of folks dropping mobs like Sont and Zland and other raid mobs back in the day much easier than on P99 I suppose. Probably just because raid mobs are overtuned in general.

But just deflating AC and leaving high mob Attack is going to make it far more ultra hard mode in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I like hard mode (ultimately what drew me into P99 was missing how punishing EQ was back in the day), just think it may get a bit ridiculous on the raid scene.

The reason Sontalak is so awful here is because they made his AE a proc, where in classic it was on a timer.

[sammoHung]

I don't think this game is hard enough. It's so easy that 7 people with no life can carry 70 warmbodies who are mostly AFK watching Netflix or half paying attention soaking DKP.

[JayDee]

There's plenty of video of folks dropping mobs like Sont and Zland and other raid mobs back in the day much easier than on P99 I suppose. Probably just because raid mobs are overtuned in general.

But just deflating AC and leaving high mob Attack is going to make it far more ultra hard mode in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I like hard mode (ultimately what drew me into P99 was missing how punishing EQ was back in the day), just think it may get a bit ridiculous on the raid scene.

Yeah just saying if this guy wants it classic, then warriors will take even less damage and people will be resisting a lot more AOEs as well.

[CrazyPro]

IIRC they got the AC formula pretty close but they had to guesstimate attack values, especially from velious raid bosses.

Just now coming back to this.
Based on this post from secrets, the TAKP mob ATK values are pretty much spot on: https://project1999.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3472324&postcount=130

Total ATK on NPCs was actually send in the spell packet on TAKP and live, which allowed us to get the tohit for each NPC which is the value after all calculations for damage. That allowed us, along with dev quotes, to restore combat with 98% accuracy.

So yeah, if the devs were to just take the ATK values TAKP has for their mobs and slap 'em onto their P99 counterparts, and then fix AC using the plethora of information that's been linked here, and fix player resists, one can dream, we'll be golden.