Caster Mechanics

[Pixelated]

I am not one to ask many questions but the caster game mechanics have been REALLY bugging me as of lately and I hope to have some support from the developers on this one so I can ease up a bit. I am focusing the Enchanter charm duration/hold percentage but hope to have this thread be a more technical discussion on the caster mechanics in the game. Per my focus, I want to know the mechanics that determine the duration of the enchanter charm hold so I might better perfect the art. Any RE-ers or developers input would be immensely appreciated. From me whining online I have determined it is a 3 parameter function including: caster's charisma (though seemingly minimal by comparison), Target's magic resistance(I would also request the the formal logic behind resistance on all spells as well since that would clearly illuminate many areas in this discussion.), and spell potency. There also seems to be some debate over whether or not faction plays a big role in hold duration. This is clearly a very entropic system that is at hand but it is not how I remember it being at launch and what is detailed in the wiki which states that the duration of charm is a baseline that is increased as skills increase. For example instead of it being at least a 5 min hold and having only a percent chance of resistance it is some mixture of the variable discussed above that affect the maximum duration of charm i.e. instead of having 5 minutes minimum, you have a random value between 0 to 5. The actual equation for determining this range would be incredibly beneficial to the community in terms of CC but also allow a much higher level of insight into such game mechanisms to make the game more fun. As I am writing this though I would also like a much more in depth discussion of the caster mechanics as a whole because they all seem to need a little illumination so efficient use can proceed. I hope some veteran/dev can answer my plea and inform on this because it is becoming increasingly frustrating as a software dev for the documentation to be flat out false. I hope this thread can eventually evolve into caster mechanics as a whole but the enchanters charm mechanic is what has been giving me the most trouble and I feel as a good starting point. If the devs are not willing to post the source, I am more than willing to start REing the game and going from there. I will post my findings in this thread.

Thanks in advance and I hope this thread can get off to a great start.

Pixealted - newbie to p99, but old school EQer

[Rasah]

I believe charm duration for enchanters is based on the following (in order):

Mob level differential
Magic resistance
Charisma

[Splorf22]

First of all you will not be able to reverse engineer the charm formula from the binary as all that happens serverside.

Second, Charisma used to have a huge impact on charm durations but that was changed when Kanras reworked the charm code about a year ago. Now its level/MR/cha as stated earlier and the charisma effect is relatively small. I know Save runs around charming with 150cha or something and claims not to notice a difference; personally I think it hurts him a bit but the fact that he can be effective with it means its obviously not so high.

Third, I'm guessing at the code here, but I'm guessing that the code looks something like:

int midpoint = f(level,MR,charisma)

if(coin flip > 80%)
charm duration = uniform(midpoint, 15 minutes)
else
charm duration = uniform(0, midpoint)

I write this because I measured the charm durations I had with a script once and it was a piecewise linear function, with a slowly increasing charm duration and then massively increasing at about the 3 minute mark. You can test this yourself; a charm that lasts 3 minutes is likely to last quite a while.

Hope all of that was comprehensible.