When are they Implementing the Charm Nerf?

[loramin]

Originally Posted by Kich867 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You specifically said that you wouldn't find a lot of enchanters talking about doing it, or a forum of enchanters doing it, but there was a forum of enchanters talking about doing it and there were a lot of enchanters talking about doing it at the time.

First off, I'd point out that literally every post at your link is from at least ten days after Luclin was released.

Bigger picture though, I think we're talking past each other, so let me try a different tact. At that same forum you provided, I happened to find this interesting post about ... Chardok AoE. As that link clearly shows, people did AoE in Chardok in classic! There is zero doubt: Chardok AoEing happened in the classic era.

But that fact doesn't tell the whole story: it was also a very rare practice. And yet ... just a few years ago, you could not use that zone on Blue as a normal player: it was monopolized by AoE groups saying "hey, this was done in classic, we can do it here".

For years here, the AoE classes (including Enchanters) argued "this is 100% classic" ... while everyone else was saying "our Chardok looks nothing like the Chardok I remember when I played on live." It took awhile, but ultimately the staff did agree, and implemented the "unclassic" AoE limit. In retrospect, I think most here would agree that it made our server far more classic, not less.

Similarly here, yes we had Enchanters soloing in classic ... but anyone who played in classic remembers the holy trinity used to start every group: Enchanter, Cleric, and Tank. You couldn't always find all three, but you could find an Enchanter just as easily as you could find a Cleric, because both classes grouped primarily.

In fact, it's almost like Enchanters were such a primary part of grouping that other classes would go to the Enchanter forum and ask them for advice about grouping with them (again, from your link).

may i take the opportunity to ask you chanters, what you wish from your warriors? dont come with the very usual things like /assist. i know that one, else i wouldnt live to tell.

and my main is a cleric. so if you have any wishes to a cleric that i am not aware of yet, please feel so free to give me some hints here, too.

I promise, you won't find such posts on (say) the Necromancer or Mage forums, because those weren't primarily grouping classes in classic.

So, again, I'm not trying to get Charm removed from the game, and I'm not trying to make it impossible for an Enchanters to solo! I'm simply trying to make things on P99 look like the classic servers everyone played on from '99-'01, where charm was just a bit riskier, and so a lot more Enchanters grouped, because it was the fastest way for them to level in classic.

And ... we already have suggestions for how to do that, from people that know far more about classic evidence than either of us ... like Dolalin on the very first page of this thread:

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

I spent three years archiving over 50GB of classic EQ sites and my best hunches on charm in classic are:

1) mob resists over lvl35 may have been higher in classic than they are on p99. Level 35 was a magic number for resists according to devs.

2) lots of little charm bugs that existed in classic that don't exist on p99 and would be hard to replicate (I compiled a list somewhere)

3) channeling at low levels is broken on p99, it's waaaaaay too easy to channel, a level 5 shaman succeeds like 80% of channels on p99 but only succeeded about 10% in classic, that matters

Just off the top of my head.

[oldschoolguy]

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

I'm aruging charm was more risky in classic

It wasn't, it was easier to charm in classic IMO. Shit breaks too much on P99.

I was charming yellow con crocs to fight red con crocks on live, was fun. I can't pull that off here, since here it's all based off level difference so attempting to Charm a yellow = suicide here. On live it worked fine.

[Kich867]

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

Similarly here, yes we had Enchanters soloing in classic ... but anyone who played in classic remembers the holy trinity used to start every group: Enchanter, Cleric, and Tanks. You couldn't always find all three, but you could find an Enchanter just as easily as you could find a Cleric, because both classes grouped primarily.

--

For years here, the AoE classes (including Enchanters) argued "this is 100% classic" ... while everyone else was saying "our Chardok looks nothing like the Chardok I remember when I played on live." It took awhile, but ultimately the staff did agree, and implemented the "unclassic" AoE limit. In retrospect, I think most here would agree that it made our server far more classic, not less.

So, just so I understand, your proposal is to nerf charming not because it was actually mechanically different, but because you want to try to align the playstyles with how you think people played back then?

Also, which posts are you referring to being in Luclin era? Everything I posted that I saw was before the release date of Luclin, which was December 4th 2001. (this is also kind of a weak argument even if its correct from your position as you've already cited that early Luclin is also "basically classic")

Regardless, the consensus from the posts is quite clear, enchanters were great at soloing and charming was the normal way to do it. It was commonplace for them to do it.

Of course there were people talking about grouping with them, it's EQ, people have always thought it was a group-centric game and primarily focused on how to optimize grouping.

People grouped way more in era than they do here, your proposal would be that we penalize soloing to make it more classic?

You just cited an objectively non-classic change to make the game more classic as reasoning to adjust charm, so which is it? Either charm mechanically is about the same as it was in-era and you want it changed to make the game feel more classic, or it actually was riskier back then and you want it changed to be mechanically correct. Given the evidence though I don't see the latter as being a strong argument with the amount of enchanters back then talking about charm soloing and using charms in groups and having charms last for minutes at a time with no issue.

And again, to be clear, there absolutely were enchanters "shouting form the rooftops" about how good charm soloing was. It's not their fault people either weren't listening to them or they didn't learn how to do it. And I'll reiterate that, I place a great deal more trust in the posts of people who were actually testing charm and its limits in-era and demonstrating how good it was over a bunch of people thinking grouping is "the one true way". I mean, ffs, people still think that here, right now. Talk to any casual observer of EQ who isn't an avid P99 player and they'll tell you that no one could solo, grouping was mandatory, and a bunch of other wrong things. But the reality is that it was true at the time. But I also don't think we should change the game to artificially create an environment that functions more like how people _experienced_ classic EQ because you can never, ever actually achieve that again. We know too much.

If in-era people didn't understand how a certain spawn cycle worked, and so the classic era experience was that you just sort of eventually got lucky with the spawn, and people figured it out in P99, would it be your perspective that the staff should somehow change and randomize that spawn cycle to maintain the mystery, because the in-era experience was that people did not know how it worked?

[loramin]

Originally Posted by Kich867 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Also, which posts are you referring to being in Luclin era? Everything I posted that I saw was before the release date of Luclin, which was December 4th 2001.

Sorry, my apologies. I went exploring from your link, wound up a few pages past onto the general forum on that same link, thought I'd clicked back enough to get to your link, but was on the wrong page.

Again apologies, and please disregard the first sentence of my post.

As for the rest, no I am not arguing:

Originally Posted by Kich867 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So, just so I understand, your proposal is to nerf charming not because it was actually mechanically different, but because you want to try to align the playstyles with how you think people played back then?

Honestly, did you even finish reading my post? At the end, I quoted classic researcher Dolalin listing mechanical differences.

Originally Posted by Kich867 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Of course there were people talking about grouping with them, it's EQ, people have always thought it was a group-centric game and primarily focused on how to optimize grouping.

People grouped way more in era than they do here, your proposal would be that we penalize soloing to make it more classic?

You're ignoring that most classes were not central parts of grouping. Yes, Magicians and Necromancers did group in classic! But they primarily soloed. Yes, Clerics and tanks 100% soloed in classic! But primarily they grouped. Different classes had different solo/group ratios, because of the mechanics of the game.

Sure things here are slightly different (eg. we have more player knowledge), but my argument is that Enchanter is the only class on P99 with a fundamentally different ratio from live. Pick any class, and say whether they mainly group or solo here (or have a roughly even split), and you'll find that on live it had roughly the same general solo/grouping ratio ... except with Enchanters.

Like I keep saying, if you make a Street Fighter 2 emulator and no one wants to Dragon Punch with Ryu, you don't have to know what's wrong with the mechanics specifically to know the mechanics are off. You know the emulator is a bad emulator, because people wanted to Dragon Punch with Ryu in the original game.

But in our case we do have some ideas about known unclassic mechanics ... again Dolalin outlined some, and I copied his quote in my last post.

[Malk]

http://web.archive.org/web/200203131...VIEW.ASP?ID=71

Implementing this 'feature' could actually be fun.

[commongood]

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

Sure things here are slightly different (eg. we have more player knowledge), but my argument is that Enchanter is the only class on P99 with a fundamentally different ratio from live. Pick any class, and say whether they mainly group or solo here (or have a roughly even split), and you'll find that on live it had roughly the same general solo/grouping ratio ...

What ratio is that? How did you measure that? Surveyed P99 players? Ensuring representation? Or are you simply relying on anecdotes? “Everyone knows”, “we all remember” etc etc. You have stuck to your narrative and no matter who brings what evidence (old forum posts which, earlier you used to propel your own arguments) to debunk this narrative you keep on refusing to consider you might be wrong

[Kich867]

To be clear, I asked that because you cited non-classic changes as a means to make the game feel more classic...presumably as a reason to nerf charm. To me this is a binary perspective--you would either support nerfing charm to make it feel more classic even though its mechanically "the same" here, or you would support nerfing charm because it actually isn't mechanically "the same" and there's an issue with it. I didn't see any other reason you would bring up an objectively un-classic AOE nerf to make the game feel more "classic" other than to use it as a reference to say: "Even if Charm actually did work this way back then, I don't care, it wasn't in the spirit of Classic and it should be changed, just like this unclassic AOE change that we all agree made the game more classic."

Look I totally get that your point is:
"If Charm was this good, then why did no one do this regularly? The answer must be that charm is different here."

And my point is:
"I actually looked through all this stuff and the consensus was clearly that enchanters just didn't know. It's a complicated class and given that a large portion of the playerbase clearly didn't understand how important Charisma was, it's not surprising that the status quo was that Charm was too dangerous and unreliable.

But there actually was a rather common perspective that charm soloing was incredibly fast to level, and really just the existence of a few people saying that invalidates any amount of people who had already made up their mind that enchanters were a grouping centric class."

Also, because I know this was important to you earlier, I also have absolutely no dog in this race. I've never leveled an enchanter past I think.. 8? And that was on live in Kunark era. I've basically never played one and I don't have one here.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by Kich867 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

To be clear, I asked that because you cited non-classic changes as a means to make the game feel more classic

I cited an example of the staff making a classic change. Again, almost everyone would agree that the 25 mob AoE limit makes things more classic, not less. Chardok looks more like it did in '99-'01 with that change.

But I also made it very clear (if you actually read my post) that we don't need any new mechanics here, we just need the unclassic ones (eg. the ones Dolalin outlined, though his post is likely not conclusive either) fixed to be classic.

Originally Posted by Kich867 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Look I totally get that your point is:
"If Charm was this good, then why did no one do this regularly? The answer must be that charm is different here."

No, that's not my point. I've repeated my point over and over in this thread, so by now it's clear you're choosing to replace the argument I'm making with a simplified version that you can more easily argue with ... which is to say you're using the straw man fallacy.

[Kich867]

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

I cited an example of the staff making a classic change. Again, almost everyone would agree that the 25 mob AoE limit makes things more classic, not less. Chardok looks more like it did in '99-'01 with that change.

But I also made it very clear (if you actually read my post) that we don't need any new mechanics here, we just need the unclassic ones (eg. the ones Dolalin outlined, though his post is likely not conclusive either) fixed to be classic.

Then I don't understand why you'd even bring it up to begin with, it seemed to hurt what I thought was your perspective that Charm is mechanically not classic by citing an example of a change to artificially create a more classic environment even though that's not how it actually worked.

No, that's not my point. I've repeated my point over and over in this thread, so by now it's clear you're choosing to replace the argument I'm making with a simplified version that you can more easily argue with ... which is to say you're using the straw man fallacy.

Then I'm sorry, I genuinely don't get your point then. I've read all your posts and that was literally my best attempt at summarizing what I thought you were trying to say.

[Danth]

Originally Posted by Kich867 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Almost every single mention of Charm in what I've posted is people citing how strong it is as a solo option.

Most of those examples which provide level ranges also describe charm as not holding very well when used against level appropriate content. Most of the charm solo'ing described is of the "charm and let the mobs beat each other down" variety with frequent need to re-charm, not so much the "charm one mob and hold it for three hours while it barely ever breaks early" type that is probably the larger issue for this specific thread.

The sort of hard evidence required to enact change (average durations at different level ranges and different CHA values) probably does not exist. I wouldn't want to see the pendulum swing too far in the other direction so for the meantime I maintain a wait and see attitude.

Danth