Proposed new server ruleset: PvE+ [long effortpost]

[Vexenu]

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

Seems the only one with any real panties all bunched up is you. Someone asked for opinions on an idea, he's getting them except for your post which is simply someone jumping around complaining about people who aren't complaining.

I assure you that my panties are not bunched up. I'd simply like to hear more intelligent criticism than "LOL NOT CLASSIC" or "MAKE UR OWN SERVER BRO".

There is no need for people to feel so rustled by hypothetical discussion of a server ruleset.

[Lakeland]

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

I assure you that my panties are not bunched up. I'd simply like to hear more intelligent criticism than "LOL NOT CLASSIC" or "MAKE UR OWN SERVER BRO".

There is no need for people to feel so rustled by hypothetical discussion of a server ruleset.

Well when someone says

"1) Remain as Classic as possible, with a focus on the spirit rather than the letter of Classic"

As the first point to the thread it's probably expected people will point out if the ideas are neither "classic" nor the "spirit of" isn't it? If you have ideas on how to make basketball more fun and in essence change it to football it's no longer what it was, it might be great or even better but it's not what it start off being. Not one thing about what he said is "Classic as possible".

Also, read the thread over and tell me who has the most "rustled" post in the thread...

[Izmael]

Obviously quite a bit of thinking went into OP's post - I'd undersign about 95% of it.

Not sure what to think of the traveling merchant (why?) and charm resistance (if we nerf charm, we have to nerf a bunch of other stuff as well - necros soloing, druids/wizards quadding, bards swarming (even 10 is a lot of mobs).

I totally agree with the general idea - make EQ hard as it was back when we all were clueless.

Maybe make ALL the mobs hit for the 2x or 3x the damage they are supposed to and make sure they outrun any kind of speed spell outdoors AND indoors should be enough to make it pretty damn hard to get loot and exp?

Maybe also make all mobs summon so root/rot, fear kite and such don't work.

Basically force people to group and even then it should be super hard to achieve anything.

[Vexenu]

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

Obviously quite a bit of thinking went into OP's post - I'd undersign about 95% of it.

Not sure what to think of the traveling merchant (why?) and charm resistance (if we nerf charm, we have to nerf a bunch of other stuff as well - necros soloing, druids/wizards quadding, bards swarming (even 10 is a lot of mobs).

I totally agree with the general idea - make EQ hard as it was back when we all were clueless.

Maybe make ALL the mobs hit for the 2x or 3x the damage they are supposed to and make sure they outrun any kind of speed spell outdoors AND indoors should be enough to make it pretty damn hard to get loot and exp?

Maybe also make all mobs summon so root/rot, fear kite and such don't work.

Basically force people to group and even then it should be super hard to achieve anything.

Regarding Traveling merchant...maybe it is a dumb idea. The thought was simply to address the whining from players who joined the server later not having access to Guises and Manastones and such. The idea would be that everyone would have hypothetical access to them...you'd just have to have enough plat and/or get really, really, really lucky. How lucky am I talking here? Like "AFK autorun through Sro on your way to and from Lower Guk and randomly run smack into the AC on the way there AND back" lucky. Or "randomly running around near the Windmill in LOIO and the Sarnak Courier spawns on top of you and drops a Gazughi ring" lucky. The idea would be that only a handful of players in a given real life calendar year would even SEE the guy, much less be able to buy from him. Basically, he should be almost mythical. It's just something to add spice to the server. By far the most disposable and least important suggestion I made, however, and the first one I'd jettison.

Nerfing charm: it's just overpowered in its current state. Charming in classic was more difficult, if only for hardware and client software limitations. But you didn't see pretty much every Enchanter soloing like crazy with Charm back in the day. Not even close. This is what I mean by focusing on the spirit rather than the letter of classic. The spirit of classic = Enchanters mostly grouping, CCing and buffing, charming only sporadically and at great risk to themselves.

You wouldn't need to change Necro soloing or Wizard quadding. Why? The loot code. So a Necro could solo and a Wizard could quad...but if they fuck up and die they will have one of their items looted by the mob, and have no one in their group able to kill it and get their item back. The Wiz would also be suffering the outdoor XP penalty if quadding, and if the Necro is soloing in a dungeon he's already taking a risk. It's all about risk versus reward.

[Whirled]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hn9xAaKUbw
Some people hold pixels very sacred.^
Hope this helps.

[Turdler]

I like the effort put into your proposal; but FRAT!

[Izmael]

Fair enough with the traveling merchant.

Charm in current state is powerful, is it OVERpowered though? I'm not sure.

Back in the days people just didn't know how to use it well. People were also a lot more scared to die than today because CR wasn't as trivial as it is today and getting res was far from trivial as well (travel was harder so you really had to sweet talk those clerics). Taking an exp death 55+ wasn't something a lot of people were too keen about really.

So basically less people even attempted charm soloing, arguably the hardest and most rewarding soloing path, let alone get good at it. I think literally 90%+ of level 60 druids never ever casted a single charm spell in their career back in the days (I'm talking 2001 and earlier).

Maybe charm breaks less on p99, but it makes this way of approaching EQ enjoyable, that's a Good Thing. One of the qualities of EQ has always been the "There's more than one way to do it" factor.

[Vexenu]

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

Charm in current state is powerful, is it OVERpowered though? I'm not sure.

Back in the days people just didn't know how to use it well. People were also a lot more scared to die than today because CR wasn't as trivial as it is today and getting res was far from trivial as well (travel was harder so you really had to sweet talk those clerics). Taking an exp death 55+ wasn't something a lot of people were too keen about really.

So basically less people even attempted charm soloing, arguably the hardest and most rewarding soloing path, let alone get good at it. I think literally 90%+ of level 60 druids never ever casted a single charm spell in their career back in the days (I'm talking 2001 and earlier).

Maybe charm breaks less on p99, but it makes this way of approaching EQ enjoyable, that's a Good Thing. One of the qualities of EQ has always been the "There's more than one way to do it" factor.

Again, this is why I make the distinction between the spirit and the letter of classic. Let's suppose that the code for charm on P1999 is somehow exactly the same as it was back in the day on Live, and that most Enchanters, Druids and Necros back then just weren't skilled or knowledgeable enough to take advantage of it. Even if that was the case, the end result would be the same as if charming was simply hardcoded to be more difficult: there were less people charming! That's all we can say for sure: whether due to ignorance/lack of player skill or actual hard coded differences with the spell, charming was much less common back in the day.

Thus, if we want to reproduce the spirit of classic (which had much less charming going on) we are forced to do so through hardcoding the resists of the spell itself, since we cannot erase our superior knowledge of the game. Essentially, we must play with an artificially higher difficulty setting due to our advanced knowledge and experience after having had 17 years to get comfortable with the game.

Increasing the difficulty of the game is the entire idea behind the ruleset. You would roll on the PvE+ server intentionally knowing it would be harder than what you were used to on Blue and had gotten comfortable with, but would do so with the expectation that as a result of that difficulty your overall experience would be closer to your original experience with the game many years ago.

[Amyas]

What is in the spirit of classic is subjective to opinion.

[fadetree]

I think a fundamental problem with his idea is that there's a difference between 'mystery' and 'unreasonably hard'. If you are flailing around because you *don't* know the mechanics, yes it makes seem harder. That just feels ok, understandable, and it's also fun figuring out stuff. There's hope to be had and cool new techniques to be shared.

However, if you take known mechanics and just make them WAY harder, it doesn't feel the same. You know perfectly well why things are or are not working, and you know there's nothing you can do to make them any better other than just group up and play really hard and suffer through it. That's a valid play style for some, but you will lose people's interest at a huge clip, I predict. You will do nothing to 'recapture' the original feels of being alone in a harsh world without a clue, because everybody has a clue. Let's face it, even as well known and 'easy' as it is, EQ will still make you pay horribly for mistakes and they seem to happen in infuriatingly obscure and random ways. It's balanced some though, becuase lots of teh game is fairly well known and more or less 'easy'. Cranking up the 'hardness' knob will make those kinds of things even harder to take.

I personally would be fine with no MQ and lots more of the good stuff being non-droppable.

Now, if a NEW game was all super bad-ass hard, then yeah I can see that. I'm looking at you, Pantheon.