Ready to get good?

[realsubtle]

"I want less people to play a game that ive admitted im bored of, how can i use book-length pseudointellectual arguments to justify this?"

I mean youre right that this will change the high-end meta. Itll shut out existing possibilities for smaller guilds and groups while favoring the largest guilds that can field the most bodies. Itll favor people willing to shell out for powerlevelling.

I think you have a fantasy that smaller groups of high-level players will come up with ingenious solutions that let them navigate the absurd new meta. But in reality, there are no ingenious workaround solutions for some problems, "moar bodies" is the only workaround, and this will just lead to more cheesing and more consolidation. It will be the most antisocial thing imaginable as people quickly lose interest in a server with a much lower population than Classic. It might literally kill P99, and it will certainly make it less of a creative problem-solving experience by far.

Again, I genuinely think that, as you've stated, you're bored with the game and aren't really doing this for any good faith reasons. But if you somehow are, i hope you exercise some critical thinking--not just gaudy, context-free number crunching, but genuine critical thinking, and consider how the ecosystem balance that P99 exists in are fundamentally different than classic, due to lower population to name only one thing. When was the last time you tried, as a non-professional player, to help lead a mid-sized guild full of people of varying skill level and equipment to success in a raid? I did that last night. I can tell you right now that if we were arbitrarily nerfed with the nebulous promise that MAYBE content will SOMEDAY get easier, what we did would have been impossible, and that everyone's patience would have been long since depleted because the only guilds left that could do anything would be the ones already incumbent with power and game experience.

Honestly, i wish i was trolling. Its rather embarrassing to be the only one in this discussion who is being sincere and advocating for the actual people who play the game. But here i am, being sincere while talking to a big fat concern-trolling ret--a big fat concern trolling retiree, ahem.

Go join a small guild or go play another game.

[azxten]

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

"I want less people to play a game that ive admitted im bored of, how can i use book-length pseudointellectual arguments to justify this?"

No, I want more people to play, and I want to cater to different players. Your post itself is an example of the P99 community being hyper focused on raiding. Raiding isn't the goal for some players and I think the game should be more difficult to that everyone doesn't end up max level so fast in order to enjoy the other aspects of the game instead.

[cd288]

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

No, I want more people to play, and I want to cater to different players. Your post itself is an example of the P99 community being hyper focused on raiding. Raiding isn't the goal for some players and I think the game should be more difficult to that everyone doesn't end up max level so fast in order to enjoy the other aspects of the game instead.

Also, your line of thinking is so weird. You think channeling is going to mean that people won’t get to max level quickly and that’s why it’s so too heavy currently? Lol what???

There are so many max level characters because this is the o my classic server out there and therefore attracts all the hardcore neckbeard grinders. The amount of max level characters isn’t going to go away in the future just because there was a chan to channeling lol.

[realsubtle]

A followup, since I'd hate to leave the discussion off on the note where I called you a, uh, retiree.

"Classic, classic" Yes, Classic was a good template. It was also a marketed product intended to maximize arbitrarily the server populations--easy to do given the novelty of the game at the time and the complete lack of competitors--and maximize the amount of time people maintained their subscriptions. The XPing curves and raid population requirements weren't meant as a test of one's honor or skill or whatever, they were meant to maximize profit.

So half of Classic was a collection of brilliant game-development insights, and half of it was a Skinner-box monetization model that no longer applies now that other companies have developed even more ruthlessly streamlined models.

This is similar to how NES games or arcade games are loaded with artificial difficulty, because the player must feel like they "got their money's worth" out of the cartridge by the cartridge playtime being artificially inflated by non-skill-related factors, or because the player must keep putting quarters into the machine to win. And the strategies for beating games that are "Nintendo hard" are never creative enterprises, they are just exercises in the 'cheesing' that you proclaim so vehemently to oppose.

So the idea of exactly reproducing Classic remains as arbitrary, meaningless, impossible, and unrelated to skill as it was before, and so too are your criticisms or proposed changes meaningless. Everyone who has poured effort into P99 has been working on adapting classic. Adapting, that's the word: changing things so they work for a smaller audience and the resultant smaller group sizes. Considering some of the excellent groups I have had as Enchanter, this must have been accomplished with great efficiency, and you being bored with it is definitely a "you" problem.

[azxten]

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

Considering some of the excellent groups I have had as Enchanter

Spotted your real concern. Maybe consider that I having played here for 10 years might know a bit more than you about the problems with P99 beyond "my" problem as a "retiree." In a real sense none of this matters because Nilbog and Rogean have always treated this as their project and server and it's become obvious they favor certain things beyond simply classic mechanics. I will continue to make the argument that P99 would be more enjoyable for the majority of players if raiding and max level stopped being the focus. Even if Enchanters like you who admittedly can't raid well even with the most unclassically overpowered class are upset by the idea that you don't belong there. Ultimately, I feel players would be happier if there was a sense of achievement in this MMO no matter how they might kick and scream about classic difficulty that brings that sense of achievement.

[azxten]

Also P99 has a lower population than live but I guarantee you it has a higher max level population than live ever did for any of the given expansions. I've been here since population online was about 100 and things have been just fine and in fact were more enjoyable then than todays max level power leveling clicky abuse rooted dragon guild UN cluster fuck where newbs like you are mad you can't raid easily when in reality if you want a classic EQ experience you shouldn't even be raiding in the first place. Wahh wahh, I want easy pixels, that's you. EQ isn't WoW but P99 is sure looking more like WoW than EQ and that includes the crybaby unskilled I deserve raid pixels after being carried to max level player base.

[unsunghero]

Ya, I figured it out

Keep color flux and color shift on your bar permanently anywhere you think you could have adds. The obvious sacrifice would be ToT unless you still wanted/needed the mana from caster mobs. If you wanted to keep ToT then swap your slow back and forth with either tash or root. Berserker line has a cd so you won’t want to be swapping that, mez you would probably want permanently but could be swapped if not…gate is something I’m assuming most chanters choose to mem (I know I do, not worth keeping gate on your bar, stabilize the situation then mem gate and jet if in a jam, ez). Nukes you never keep on your bar, at least I don’t

So bar setup would be something like:

1 slow/root swap slot
2 color flux
3 color shift
4 mez
5 tash
6 charm
7 ToT
8 bez tune


Solved

[azxten]

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

Ya, I figured it out

Keep color flux and color shift on your bar permanently anywhere you think you could have adds. The obvious sacrifice would be ToT unless you still wanted/needed the mana from caster mobs. If you wanted to keep ToT then swap your slow back and forth with either tash or root. Berserker line has a cd so you won’t want to be swapping that, mez you would probably want permanently but could be swapped if not…gate is something I’m assuming most chanters choose to mem (I know I do, not worth keeping gate on your bar, stabilize the situation then mem gate and jet if in a jam, ez). Nukes you never keep on your bar, at least I don’t

So bar setup would be something like:

1 slow/root swap slot
2 color flux
3 color shift
4 mez
5 tash
6 charm
7 ToT
8 bez tune


Solved

I'm seriously going to laugh if this goes live and all the Enchanters who proclaim themselves immune and maybe even gaining power from classic channeling get hit in the face by reality.

[unsunghero]

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

I'm seriously going to laugh if this goes live and all the Enchanters who proclaim themselves immune and maybe even gaining power from classic channeling get hit in the face by reality.

Cast time on color flux is 1 second. If that gets interrupted multiple times then you had enough mobs on you to where you should have died anyway

I could easily get a color flux off with 3 mobs hitting me, even with staggered swings

Any trains larger than that I really don’t mind dying to as a solo’er anyway

[Danth]

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

...I think the game should be more difficult to that everyone doesn't end up max level so fast in order to enjoy the other aspects of the game instead.

Er, there IS stuff to do at level cap besides raid. Yeah, I know half the community here forgets that in their pursuit of pixels, but there is, I promise. Not that this has anything to do with codebase improvements.

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

My own concern, if I have one, is that of accuracy: I remember the efforts towards implementing the yellow bar which were so overwrought that the entire system was scrapped and forgotten. I look at the 'classic night' fix, which is a roundabout shader hack and only pseudo-classic with some advantages and some disadvantages. As much as I like properly dark nights, I can't help but notice the faults, too. It took them 3 or 4 tries before they finally got AC working decently (or at all!), and even then it isn't 100% classic yet. Starting from a 2002 era macintosh client is useful, but I don't trust it as the sole basis because a) it's out of era, b) it might not be identical to the PC client, and c) there could be unknown modifiers on the host side. That was why I asked earlier about where your values were sourced from--was curious as to how you addressed those potential problems. I've been trying to research lull spell tuning for over a decade and my own efforts keep running into a brick wall because apparently the "great lull nerf" was host-side and with no access to the original host I can't prove host values. We're archaeologists in our own way, trying to rebuild the dinosaur from a femur and a couple of vertebrae.

Danth