AC issues are starting to be really problematic.

[Treats]

You may need to look at NPC in combat regen again also.

Out of combat I think is correct at 1/20 (5% tic) and doesn't change for anything in Velious.

Regular in combat NPC regen should be 1/100 (1% tic)

In combat I am not sure about with the significant increase of Velious NPC total HP's.

If you apply this to something with 400k it would be 4k hp regen per tic which cannot be right. That would translate to the NPC regaining 40,000 hit points per minute.

Differing combat regen calcs would start for NPC's over 32k hp? 50k hp? or 100k hp?

The regen calc would either have to be 1/500 or 1/1000 I think.

400k hp NPC with 1/500 in combat regen would be 800 hp tic

400k hp NPC with 1/1000 in combat regen would be 400 hp tic

[wycca]

Some simple math on kill times with Doz for example suggests that 1/500 is probably too high.

[Danth]

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

Excuse me for getting annoyed that you guys seem to think that these values are well known or something and that it's our code that's broken.

Your position is a difficult one, but it's only natural that people are going to wonder if your code is broken when you can go in-game, take off most of your armor, and not get hit for visibly more damage per minute than you do with full AC gear on. Which, incidentally, I did last night against a variety of monsters ranging from high 50's cliff golems to mid dark-blues to light blue trash. Regardless of the cause, something seems very wrong with respect to the end-result of armor function (or rather, lack therof) in game.

I know you can't perfectly replicate classic in this case due to the necessary information simply not existing. That's fine. Most of us players probably don't care overmuch about the workings behind the scenes. We just want to be able to put on armor and feel like it has some noticeable effect. You want your systems to be tuned as ideally as possible, too, so we all have the same goal here.

You said useful feedback would boil down to "Soandso mob should be hitting harder or softer, spiking more or less, etc." That feedback turns into the "fix your AC" comments because in effect the problem is with the great majority of the many hundreds of monsters in the game, from low levels through cap. Simply put, there are precious few areas where armor seems to have a beneficial effect for a level-appropriate tank. I mean, I could go to the bugs forum and start listing almost every last monster in the entire game as hitting for nearly the same damage regardless of target AC....but that wouldn't really be too useful, would it? It's more efficient simply to discuss it under the "AC is whack" subject since it's so widespread.

For the sake of testing, is there a zone or monster--particularly one already in-game (old world/kunark)--where you feel monsters are tuned correctly against high-level tanks, and where going from say 950 to 1100 displayed AC will have a noticeable and significant effect? Knowing such would be immensely useful as a "control" to compare against other zones in testing.

Danth

[Rogean]

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

Your position is a difficult one, but it's only natural that people are going to wonder if your code is broken when you can go in-game, take off most of your armor, and not get hit for visibly more damage per minute than you do with full AC gear on.

Again, you're missing the point of the entire argument. We're trying to get you guys to understand the difference between incorrect code and incorrect values. Both of which are needed in order to have a fully working system. The fact that you're not seeing AC working properly is not automatically a code problem. I'm saying that it's more likely the mob's are not tuned correctly (in the case of most kunark mobs, they aren't tuned at all).

The problems don't just all magically go away with correct code if the mobs don't have correct stats in the first place.

[Danth]

No lack of understanding Rogean; I know exactly where you're coming from. It's simply the difference of perspective between that of the developer versus that of the end-user. As a developer, you can look at the back end and see where the issues lie (in this case, tuning). As a user, all I can do is log on and see that the result of the system as a whole is not as expected. In so many words, when someone like me says "AC is broken," we don't necessarily assume your specific AC code doesn't work in the literal sense. We simply mean putting on more armor in-game has no appreciable effect--for whatever reason.

Frankly it'd be better if the code itself was the issue because it'd probably be easier to fix. Going back and changing the attack values of every last monster in the entire game--or at least the great majority of them--seems like an awful lot of work. Is there anything that can be done globally?

-----------------------------------------

Haynar: The tuning you mention seems like it's potentially on the right track in terms of the behavior I observed. The funny thing I noticed was that while I wasn't taking appreciably more damage with my gear off, the peculiar thing was the rate of max hits was about the same, and much less than every round. Tanking high level monsters near to my level with practically no armor on, the expected result was to get hit for max damage nearly every time. That did not happen; rather the removal of well over 100 worn AC worth of armor, upwards of 200+ at times, had no appreciable effect on the rate of max hits (or damage per minute in general).

Danth