Game Mechanics: AC should be hardcapped and "shield AC" shouldn't exist in this era.

[CrazyPro]

I don't believe AC has been tinkered with on P99 in over a decade now, and for years now it's been in an incorrect state. The last dev post going into detail about how AC works on p99 is this post from Haynar in 2014 where he says this:

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

There is a component to your defense rating based on level.

And we use a softcap system, not a hardcap based system.

Warriors get a 45% return above softcap.

Adding a shield increases ur softcap.

Based on new formulas from soe, i am removing the level part from defense rating. And increasing the ac component by 4/3. This helps ac mean more, and you get hit harder naked.

Other changes that are on beta, is iksar ac bonus is moved to be equal to level, 10 min, 35 max. Previously it was level/2. Not 15 like wiki had i guess.

At low levels the softcap is more level based than defense based. I basically doubled transition so at low levels ac means more.

I added a low level raw ac cap of level * 6 + 25.

It looks better now and i can see ac scaling damage up to soft cap, and lesser reductions above softcap.

H

People on the forums have already parsed hits with different AC values with and without shields to come to the conclusion that P99 is still using a softcap system with shield AC raising the softcap. (I'm looking at you DeathsSilkyMist)

AC was hardcapped up until a patch sometime around late Luclin/early PoP that revamped the AC system, introducing softcaps with diminishing returns and making it so that shield AC raised your softcap.

There is a post from an EQ dev on the steel warriors forums from back in the day explaining this: https://web.archive.org/web/20110704...ead.php?t=7643

The cap on AC in the Velious era wasn't a soft cap; it was a hard cap that had been there from day 1. After a certain point, which differed for each class, the benefit of more AC didn't just diminish - it dropped to nothing.

The change I referred to, just before PoP, changed that from a hard cap to a soft cap. You get a percentage of the amount over that soft cap. Shields increase both your total and your soft cap, making them more effective than any other item with equal AC. Your mitigation AAs, level, and class also affect the cap and the percentage return for AC over it.

Separate from this, there are diminishing returns if your AC is much greater than the NPC's attack. This is due to the nature of the formulas that produce the probability distributions that have been well documented on this board.

Does that help?

- Kavhok, SOE

There is already a post on the P99 forums that goes into great detail on how AC actually worked in Velious with specifics, and it has quoted a post from Kavhok which you can no longer access with more juicy stuff: https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=48312

I won't quote any of it here or this will be the longest wall of text mankind has ever seen, but devs, please do give that post a thorough look. Do also check all of the comments on that post, there's some more very juicy stuff in those.

This issue has been under the rug for too long, people said AC was king for a reason back then, and on P99 people are literally equipping -AC earrings for HP because it makes so little of a difference. People seem to have forgotten all about this issue so here's the decadely reminder. Hope the devs find the time to take a look at this.

[Rygar]

I think there is a bit more to meets the eye on just focusing on AC. Mob Attack values seem very high. If AC is fixed and raid mobs hitting max hit very often you're going to need 14 clerics to keep them up.

I'm not saying you're wrong on AC, just longer to fix as you have to balance the entire world with hit scaling.

[CrazyPro]

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

I think there is a bit more to meets the eye on just focusing on AC. Mob Attack values seem very high. If AC is fixed and raid mobs hitting max hit very often you're going to need 14 clerics to keep them up.

I'm not saying you're wrong on AC, just longer to fix as you have to balance the entire world with hit scaling.

Fix AC and then just steal the ATK values that TAKP uses and boom.

[sammoHung]

This change would absolutely destroy monks as solo gods, and to be honest: I'm with it. I walk back my complaints about the channeling change, and things like this. This game was meant to be played in groups and all people at the top end of these servers do nowadays is gear up twinks to solo.

#EndSoloDominance

[CrazyPro]

Not all is lost

Total AC at this point was capped again, this time based on class. In the Kunark-era code, this was a hard cap, but sometime during Velious it was changed to a soft cap for melee classes only. The return was fairly small, though.

^ from a Kavhok post quoted in the other post I linked

[Vear99]

The problem with this system is that Verant added a bunch of ALL/ALL items with high AC in Velious, which allowed Monks to hit the 289 item AC cap, then get the Monk/Iksar bonus on top of it, and finally get the superior monk defensive skills on top of that.

https://wiki.project1999.com/Magelo_Blue:Raev

35+20+10+20+25+7+14+15+8+17+17+60+15+12+10+20 = 305 AC

Verant did fix this for Planes of Power:

https://www.takproject.net/magelo/ch...hp?char=Gorrok

https://www.takproject.net/magelo/ch...har=Thucydides

[Baugi]

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

Fix AC and then just steal the ATK values that TAKP uses and boom.

TAKP attack values are derived empirically from PoP era and later aren't they? Is the claim that attack values/formulas went relatively untouched and they just played with defense?

[CrazyPro]

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

TAKP attack values are derived empirically from PoP era and later aren't they? Is the claim that attack values/formulas went relatively untouched and they just played with defense?

Exactly. Based on this quote from Kavhok in this archived thread it looks like they only tinkered with defense: https://web.archive.org/web/20110704...ead.php?t=7643

AC functions the same way in all zones. Some old NPCs may have lower attack than new ones, but the formulas for combat do not change.

The AC formulas were changed a short while before PoP shipped. Perhaps that was confused as a content change in PoP. However, the Avatar of War does less damage to a warrior with 1800 AC than one with 1300 AC just the way that Bertox does. It doesn't matter that he's "old content" - his attack is still fairly high.

- Kavhok, SOE

TAKP's ATK values are derived from early PoP.

[Goregasmic]

IIRC they got the AC formula pretty close but they had to guesstimate attack values, especially from velious raid bosses.

And yeah monks are OP because the late itemization is bonkers. Haven't parsed it but at a glance the monk I'm leveling seem to take more max hits than my ranger did at ~200ac worn so that part is working as intended. Don't forget monk get to split, they have mend and 200+BW on top of cheap access to a nearly 1 ratio 2handers which damage cap gets lifted at level 20. There's a lot of reasons why they're crazy outside of AC.

[Baugi]

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

IIRC they got the AC formula pretty close but they had to guesstimate attack values, especially from velious raid bosses.

Just for reference, these are (I think?) the most relevant public discussion of the TAKP methodology -

Toven's writeup - https://www.eqemulator.org/forums/sh...ad.php?t=40543
demonstar55's decompile conclusions - https://github.com/mackal/EQMechanics/wiki