Is P99 "finished"?

[Dolalin]

A casual browse through the Dev Watcher shows dev interest is all focused on small faction and quest issues. Absolutely awesome that those are getting attention, but the big meatier issues need love too.

[skarlorn]

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

I've been (casually) playing this same content for 5 years. Being able to take it for granted for so long kills the mystique.

First few times I played, little monkey weed or some LSD, it was a cosmic experience like time travelling. Now it's an antiquated overpopulated game with piss poor server rules that kill any motivation for me to hit 60 (just getting an epic sounds like hell).

The infinity of potential EQ uses to hypnotize with vanishes when you are aware the endgame is garbage. There is nobody worth talking to on the server (it's weird how silent and paranoid people are; other servers have fun social interaction). The server feels like east germany, drugged up riffraff and tight-lipped pixelcucks looking for an excuse to speak your name to the stasi. I couldn't even join my own "casual" guild's teamspeak with my nephew without being interrogated by an officer (there were literally 30 people scattered in rooms in the server at a time).

Without the endgame dream or quality people playing, emergent gameplay (politicking, friendship) disappears and all that's left is the leveling skinnerbox. It's not like live at all and it's real gay. Luckily there are other options that are playable nowadays.

Thanks for reading!

good post, though I have recently had a great time leveling a couple lowbies up. that said i quit again about a month or two later.

It's certainly a game which is worth playing for the rich casual adventure, and not a game that should be min/maxed or taken seriously.

[paulgiamatti]

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

It seems like the momentum has really been lost in the past year as regards fixing non-classic mechanics issues.

Probably attributable to some developer burnout - Haynar and Kanras probably mustered most of what they had left in the tank for the Velious release and punched out after that, which is totally understandable. Even with a full staff it's been difficult to keep up with development, and now it's more or less just nilbog and Telin.

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

Looking at this list by Daldaen, there are lots of well documented bug threads providing evidence for these fixes, yet it's a struggle to get them implemented. Why?

Finding things that need to be fixed is good, but that's the easy part. What would be nice is if people like Daldaen, Ele, and myself actually stepped up to the plate and submitted code changes for the things we'd like to see fixed. Doable, but it's a lot of work without compensation - the kind of work people are paid handsomely for when on a development team with a payroll.

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

Does it have something to do with the agreement signed with Daybreak?

Nah, Daybreak's endorsement doesn't really affect anything - if anything it reinforces doing work since it ensures the project isn't going anywhere.

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

If it's just resourcing, I'm sure lots of people here are willing to help and contribute patches to the EQEmu code. Just let us know and I'm sure the community can step up.

Probably not lots of people, but there are some. As far as I know, Secrets and Zaela are the only ones not on the dev team to actually submit code to P99. There are people here who certainly know how to code and could probably get some things accomplished, but most of them are gainfully employed and can't realistically invest that kind of time into something that's purely a hobbyist venture.

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

But if they're conscious decisions by staff not to fix some issues, I'm sure lots of people would appreciate communication on that as well, one way or the other. I know I would. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Agreed - although, I don't fault them at all for not being communicative. As a developer, every minute you spend explaining why something can or cannot be fixed to people is a minute you could spend doing something a hundred times more important, and when the questions literally never end it's usually better to just ignore them altogether and let someone else be the talking head. Unfortunately, they don't really have a talking head other than Rogean, who isn't involved in game development anymore. It would be nice if they had a liaison on the development team to keep tabs on everything and let people know where they're at, but that's just a luxury. Us knowing how things are coming along isn't going to speed up the process. Just let them do their thing and be patient.

[nilbog]

Not finished for sure.

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

dev interest is all focused on small faction and quest issues.

'Low hanging fruit' is the best way to describe this. Unless changes modify existing content, patch notes do not include changes we make.

i.e. Stonebrunt zone coming next patch; developmental changes aren't listed in notes because it hasn't existed as of yet.

[Triiz]

Beating a dead horse, I know, but don't see how anyone can make the argument for nerfing multiple chat boxes or some of the other shit on that list while simultaneously championing the AOE nerf. Either you want everything classic (not the "spirit of classic") or you don't. (Not directed at anyone in particular)

[RDawg816]

It's supposed to be a social game. Make friends. Roll alts together. Farm together. Get epics together. This is why EQ is so good. P99 is great for the same reasons. If you let something like /hidecorpse looted ruin that, I feel sorry for you. It's not perfect and it doesn't have to be. No one is forcing you to play.

[Dolalin]

Thanks for the replies, paulgiamatti and Nilbog. Really good to get that perspective from the other side of the fence. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] I think we all appreciate the work the dev team puts in.

[Dolalin]

By the way, 14 years ago I wrote a really shitty teenage rant about Everquest as I quit, so I know what burnout feels like. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

https://games.slashdot.org/story/02/...an-online-game

[Triiz]

Originally Posted by RDawg816 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If you let something like /hidecorpse looted ruin that, I feel sorry for you.

Second this. Maybe I don't take "classic" as serious as some others, but something like /hidecorpse looted that doesn't impact anyone that decides not to use it making people rage is just mind boggling to me. The fact OP in the original thread didn't realize it was a feature until watching a stream shows how insignificant it is.

Btw, where does streaming fit into the classic purists narrative? I've ended up on youtube several times grouping with people I later found out were live streaming/archiving after receiving "I seen you in suchandsuch's stream" tells. Back in 2001 "due to technological reasons" you actually had to play the game to enjoy it, not watch some stranger play

[Daldaen]

When farming PoSky, you classicly had to clean each corpse so that you could pick up the correct key pieces you need and still see. This requires you loot all the tradeables and handle any no drop pieces. It takes time to handle loots. Just another time sink.

It made farming some camps and AE areas more annoying. For example farming Orc Scalps you need to loot all the trash you don't want to pick clean the corpses rather than just hidecorpses looted and grabbing the quest pieces you want. More tedious, takes more time, maybe you don't want to deal with the camp. Same with farming Spider silks in EW or Velium in CC or later Acrylia in Grimling or Rockhopper hides in DSP. Etc.

Almost every UI feature expedites gameplay, in the classic era almost everything was intended to slow you down. Slow mana regen, everyone walks stupidly slow without buffs, travel takes for ever without ports, etc.

Being able to do thing quickly, even as mundane as looting, targeting, switching view points, memming spells and using hotkeys can change how the game plays. Example:

Solo enchanters are vastly less powerul when they don't have a pet window which they can hit one of the 5-6 pet commands available, instead having to devote a hotkey to the commands. Which is tedious considering you only had 10 hot buttons you could have on your main Hotpage during Velious. They get even weaker when you cannot scroll to 3rd person to look into a room to then Pacify mobs. Having instead to alternate through several F9 views and mouselook to accomplish the same thing. God forbid you get a critical resist while in an F9 view panned out to some awkward angle to acquire a target, and have to quickly cycle back to your first person view to begin targeting mobs to lock them down. Then imagine instead of being able to press a single Cycle NPC hotkey to quickly toggle between each individual mob to either slow or stun or root or mez them, you instead only can use your mouse or F8 to try to isolate various different targets to cast spells or attack them. If in all of this chaos you wanted to grab your bagged SoulFire and heal yourself, unfortunately your UI doesn't allow for multiple bags to be opened simultaneously, so you can't have your 30 root nets, wort Pots, WC caps, SoulFires and reapers at your finger tips. You need to open and close your way through the bags. Your UI also didn't support the ability to attach the inventory slots to your hot button page or show opened bags in your inventory window as well, so you had to open your inventory window and then open the bag and then move the item to an open slot to click it.

Just one example of how the Titanium client completely trivializes classic gameplay. Most people on this server would be playing as if they were blind, deaf, and dumb if the Trilogy client were forced upon them in a random update. It would be an absolutely fantastic day.