[loramin]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm not a coding expert, but I assume most if not all of what is on P99 is based on some sort of source coding. So, if you think Charm is overpowered compared to what it was on live at launch, then it's probably based on EQ code from a time when Charm was that powerful. If that code is from later in the timeline, then presumably there would be some sort of patch note or evidence at some point saying that they had upgraded the effectiveness of Charm.

If evidence of the claims can't be presented, then it has to be presumed that the current coding is accurate for the classic era. For every person who says that they're 100% sure that something worked X way, there's another person who says they're 100% sure it worked Y way. Personal memories or anecdotes are insufficient to change something. That's just the way it is.

No one has access to the original code. Literally no one: not even Daybreak (the current rights holder) has the original EQ server source code, at least as far as anyone knows.

And that's the frustrating thing about all this, because there's this mix of "known exploits" and "unknown exploits", ie. stuff that was wrong on live but Nilbog's fixed it here, and stuff that was right on live but Nilbog has it wrong here.

Nilbog has taken a "fix exploits, leave broken negative stuff" approach to making Green/Teal (not) classic, which is a completely reasonable option, and makes total sense. BUT... as with anything, the devil is in the details, and the details work out to Nilbog nerfing the hell out of (say) Mages (in the one era they're kinda decent, before they become complete crap), because they had very obvious things that he can see and fix (or in the case of spells, leave unfixed).

Meanwhile, because there's no proof one way or the other, Nilbog just goes by whatever research he's got when it comes to Enchanter resists ... even if that makes the most powerful class in the game, now and through Velious (ie. forever here), even more powerful.

At some point I truly hope Nilbog will realize that, like it or not, he's become a game designer, and when viewed holistically (ie. not separately, in isolation) some of his design decisions are making the game worse, and less classic. When he blindly fixes only the obvious "exploits", which tend to fall more heavily on "weak" classes, simply because they're the ones that are clear and known, while ignoring the obvious (but virtually impossible to prove) imbalances in the most powerful class, he's making one of those choices ... implicitly, whether he means to or not.

It doesn't matter whether Enchanters had better or worse charm resist rates on live: one class being able to burn through the game's content vastly better than any other class is just as much an "implicit exploit", fully worthy of fixing, if not more than many of the other explicit exploits he's fixed.

Or maybe Nilbog is just a huge Enchanter lover at heart [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] But I really doubt that: I really think he's absolutely trying to do the right thing, and using good criteria on every individual decision he makes. So I just hope he can take a step back, look at the bigger picture, realize "something isn't right here", and thus realize that a fix is needed, like say making charm resists SIGNIFICANTLY higher.

And I say that even IF P99 resists are currently 100% accurate vs. live (which seems unlikely), and he only makes the change for a "classic environment" reason. He's made tons of "classic environment over classic mechanics" decisions on Blue and (especially) Green/Teal already.

Increasing charm resists would ABSOLUTELY make Green/Teal feel more classic, because NO ONE remembers Enchanters being like this. But again, this likely isn't just about "classic feelings": it seems likely that the class has benefited for far too long here from having more obscure mechanics, and even if that's corrected with higher resits, it likely still would be the most powerful class in every single era of classic EverQuest!