Server accuracy

[Ezrick]

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

I agree that the overall feel is pretty darn realistic. My curiosity is more centered on things like:

1.) Resists on P99 vs. back in 1999

2.) How many HP a character would have at a given level vs. P99

3.) Do pets hit as hard, or as often as they would on P99 as they did in classic? HP values? Mitigation?

These are things that are much harder to quantify as they involve math and calculations behind the scenes.

Did the staff reverse engineer some of this data or did they do a best guess?

You have to understand first of all where we are at. The server population is years older than it should be for this stage of development. My first melee character's weapon, even 5 years ago was a Green Jaded Broadsword bought for roughly 25plat. That is light-years removed from the rusty/tarnished weapons I used when Everquest was released. Weapons are just one part of it, all of the gear is like that. A character today certainly has a huge advantage over the environment compared to true, classic Everquest. Even such things as online resources make a huge difference. We didn't have maps, quest guides, detailed wiki's containing every mob in a zone etc. That djinn can never be put back in the bottle. Everquest was hard. I'll try to answer your specific questions though.

1. Resists are almost right. Basically, like classic, resists mean pretty much squat until they pass the 200 mark. The difference, and this is anecdotal based on my experience, is that they don't really rocket up from that point to near immunity like they did on live. A level 50 character with 255 MR would never get feared by Naggy or Vox, for instance. Here it just seems like a suggestion to those esteemed dragons that perhaps, maybe, they should consider not landing fear on you. This scales on up to 60 as well. 255 poison resist and level 60 meant you simply didn't get poisoned by Trak, here it seems to mean you have a 25% or so chance of resisting it (which you will fail the second time). I find myself (as a warrior) almost exclusively ignoring whatever poison/fire/cold/disease attack a boss may have. You can't resist it no matter what your numbers say. Magic vs. fear seems to work pretty well, but again not as good as on live. I don't recall a our guild tank ever getting feared by Gorenaire, for instance, here during a fight a max MR tank will take 2-3 fears though the duration will be short.

As with all things Everquest level is much more important than resists as well. 200 CR won't resist an ice comet from a white mob, but 0 will resist the same spell from a green. Perhaps an over reliance on level weighting is responsible for what I feel is non-classic resist behavior in the end game.

2. HPs seem pretty accurate. Again you will have superior gear earlier here, but as you reach the end of Velious content you will be pretty much where you were on live.

3. Same thing, sure the mobs base damage is pretty accurate, but your level 40 is going to have more HPs and more AC due to the glut of gear on the server so you will feel it less as a percentage of the whole and mitigate it better.

Bigginns - 60 War
Krythen - 57 Enc
Ezrick - 52 CLR