Patch Notes: Monday, September 5th, 2016

[Ravager]

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

A silly idea but Why cant the server emulate a 256k/128k connection? lol People would LOVE that.

Not a silly idea, though the power gamers here will reminisce about playing on cable and 8 boxing and that throttling so much isn't classic, but throttling to 512 would be near the high water mark in 2001 (a couple report higher, but even they admit that it's in special test cases), which would come to 64KB/s: http://www.overclockers.com/forums/s...-or-cable-dsl)

They'd cry about all of the link deaths from zoning and having trouble logging in and what-not, but that's classic too.

[Nikkanu]

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

Not a silly idea, though the power gamers here will reminisce about playing on cable and 8 boxing and that throttling so much isn't classic, but throttling to 512 would be near the high water mark in 2001 (a couple report higher, but even they admit that it's in special test cases), which would come to 64KB/s: http://www.overclockers.com/forums/s...-or-cable-dsl)

They'd cry about all of the link deaths from zoning and having trouble logging in and what-not, but that's classic too.

You simply don't know what you're talking about. Everquest works exceptionally well on low bandwidth connections and even while AOEing the entire Plane of Fear never comes close to maxing out the bandwidth of even a 128K ISDN connection. 128k ISDN was affordable and readily available in most decently sized cities by 2001. I think I paid $60 a month for mine and lived in a small city of only 150,000 people at the time.

What matters to EQ isn't bandwidth, but rather latency aka ping times. EQ doesn't send a tremendous amount of information back and forth while you are playing, only that the little bit of information that it sends back and forth doesn't get too delayed as to cause lag or desynches.

I average maybe 100-200mb a month at most of data usage from Everquest. Which includes at least a couple hours a day of actively playing and I often leave characters online 24/7 sitting at rare spawns or in EC.

In 2016 I live in a rural area we are limited to only 4G from Verizon Wireless, and having no unlimited data plans means I quickly often use up my monthly allotment of my high speed 4G data (30-50+mbps) get my internet connection throttled down to 2G (128kbps) speed and have no problems and see no difference playing EQ or doing AoEs at this throttled speed because the latency is low (under 50ms). Ironically this throttled speed of Verizon Wireless 4G is identical to that of 128kbps ISDN that I was using in 2001. Even zoning times are totally unaffected by my bandwidth being throttled.

See 28.8 and 36.6 modems were the norm in 1999 when EQ was first released, and as long as you didn't do ANYTHING else online while EQ was running you could play with little to no lag even on a 28.8 modem. The network stack in EQ was designed with these bandwidth limitations in mind.

The disconnects came if you had something else was maxing out your bandwidth, you had excessive amounts of noise on your phone line from poor quality copper lines from the telco, someone else in your house picked up a phone and tried to make a phone call, or you didn't disable call waiting with a special dial code and incoming phone calls would disconnect you. All of these things would negatively effect latency and/or cause packetloss which are the real problem causers for EQ, and all other real time network applications for that matter.

But if everything was simply setup properly, call waiting was disabled, you didn't share a phone line with other people, your telephone lines were not damaged, you had a reasonably solid ISP, and you were careful that nothing else on your computer was using any bandwidth of any kind it was perfectly reasonable to play EQ and even do AoE groups on even a 33.6k connection 100% lag free. Many dial-up connections can stay at a steady 100-150ms ping times which is just fine for playing EQ.

[Nibblewitz]

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

You simply don't know what you're talking about. Everquest works exceptionally well on low bandwidth connections and even while AOEing the entire Plane of Fear never comes close to maxing out the bandwidth of even a 128K ISDN connection. 128k ISDN was affordable and readily available in most decently sized cities by 2001. I think I paid $60 a month for mine and lived in a small city of only 150,000 people at the time.

What matters to EQ isn't bandwidth, but rather latency aka ping times. EQ doesn't send a tremendous amount of information back and forth while you are playing, only that the little bit of information that it sends back and forth doesn't get too delayed as to cause lag or desynches.

I average maybe 100-200mb a month at most of data usage from Everquest. Which includes at least a couple hours a day of actively playing and I often leave characters online 24/7 sitting at rare spawns or in EC.

In 2016 I live in a rural area we are limited to only 4G from Verizon Wireless, and having no unlimited data plans means I quickly often use up my monthly allotment of my high speed 4G data (30-50+mbps) get my internet connection throttled down to 2G (128kbps) speed and have no problems and see no difference playing EQ or doing AoEs at this throttled speed because the latency is low (under 50ms). Ironically this throttled speed of Verizon Wireless 4G is identical to that of 128kbps ISDN that I was using in 2001. Even zoning times are totally unaffected by my bandwidth being throttled.

See 28.8 and 36.6 modems were the norm in 1999 when EQ was first released, and as long as you didn't do ANYTHING else online while EQ was running you could play with little to no lag even on a 28.8 modem. The network stack in EQ was designed with these bandwidth limitations in mind.

The disconnects came if you had something else was maxing out your bandwidth, you had excessive amounts of noise on your phone line from poor quality copper lines from the telco, someone else in your house picked up a phone and tried to make a phone call, or you didn't disable call waiting with a special dial code and incoming phone calls would disconnect you. All of these things would negatively effect latency and/or cause packetloss which are the real problem causers for EQ, and all other real time network applications for that matter.

But if everything was simply setup properly, call waiting was disabled, you didn't share a phone line with other people, your telephone lines were not damaged, you had a reasonably solid ISP, and you were careful that nothing else on your computer was using any bandwidth of any kind it was perfectly reasonable to play EQ and even do AoE groups on even a 33.6k connection 100% lag free. Many dial-up connections can stay at a steady 100-150ms ping times which is just fine for playing EQ.

Thankfully, the staff disagree and your opinion doesn't matter.

[Nikkanu]

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

Thankfully, the staff disagree and your opinion doesn't matter.

Provably true and testable facts are opinion in your book? Interesting perspective, but not one I think I can respect.

The staff disagreeing with something has nothing to do with it being true or not. They came up with a false justification for something that they either A) simply either didn't bother to verify or B) intentionally fabricated knowing it was false and which broke several classes and encounters.

There are legitimate reasons for wanting to eliminate Chardok AoE and bard swarm kiting, and I agree with those reasons. What's not necessary or legitimate is to fabricate false claims to justify implementing poorly thought out changes that break several classes and encounters while at the same time demonstrating a lack of understanding about game mechanics that you are changing.

Make a change simply because you want to, because it will help free up server resources, or because it will reduce the amount of CSR the staff has to do? Go for it! Just don't resort to dishonesty for your justification.

[Beldan4]

So the big question here is, IF luclin ever comes out, will they change it back? because Eshaker pulls were BIG part of classic luclin and PoP

[Wrench]

seems like this patch should add spell interruption to red


just think of the tears for lost sit casting

[Fountree]

Thx much for these great changes Rog, Nilbog + co. u guys are on point as usual. Long live p99.

[getoffmylawn]

So I don't have to say it after every sentence, I want to applaud the people working on these changes for taking the time to do so. Instead of paying the monthly fee on the pay servers, this place makes for a great alternative. I also want to say This post is not intended to flame anyone, but to add my worthless two cents and hopefully give some constructive criticism that I'm surprised hasn't gotten brought up yet.

This affects all player vs npc detrimental Target AE and PBAE spells including Nukes, Stuns, Songs, and etc. We will continue to evalulate this to determine if any further changes are needed.

Nerfing Wizards, Enchanters, Bards, is HUGE and not at all like it was circa 1999. I don't think it's fair to pay such attention to detail on everything else to keep it like it was in 1999, then completely nerf certain classes and say it was ok due to server lag back in the day.

that's all.

[Boonsly]

Keep up the great work!

[countytime]

On live, AE groups were nerfed by reducing how many could have aggro on you at a time (to ~25, I think). That was a better solution, because those extra mobs would wander away, then come back and kill you when you were OOM. It wasn't just that you couldn't _kill_ 25+ mobs; it was that you couldn't _control_ 25+ mobs, something that's much more important.

In the current scenario on P99, a bard gathers every mob in a zone, then kills 25 of them, but the rest of the mobs are still under his control. So he kills the next 25. Etc, etc. The only thing that changes is the speed of the killing.

So the live solution was better, and I think they should revert the change and do that instead.