Game Mechanics

[Harazzer]

I will pre-disclaim that this is a subjective post, I am sure others will find some of the things i say somewhat inaccurate but this is how I feel.

Two boxing: Dverytime this topic comes up, people scream what an awful idea it is. That it discourages grouping and makes people able to level too fast and farm things easily. However what you have instead is a few really excellent solo classes and a lot of people that cannot solo. I don't really see how this is far better. I am not strongly advocating 2 boxing, I personally do not care much either way since I'm a shaman and pretty universally capable. However many classes will be resigned solely to groups for leveling and farming with no viable solo abilities by level 30 or so. Two boxing doesn't perfectly solve this issue, however, you can log in and accomplish things without spending a half hour drumming up a group.

Beneficial spells and Aggro: Groups mean harder spots, harder spots tend to mean multiple mobs. Healing aggro, or failed attempts to root mobs is brutal. I'm sure pallys and SK's have tools to stick 2 mobs on them but warriors do not. Once you heal and draw aggro, if you have to heal yourself you become heavily aggro locked. Seems like heal and root, priest classes main group role and defense are a death sentence when a pull doesn't go perfectly.

Critical resists on the lull line: Since in group fights you tend to fight reds or at least yellow cons, the "critical resist" rate on lull (it is resisted and the monster aggro's) makes its relative danger to use counter productive. If it is resisted you get the entire pull + its on the cleric/enchanter that tried to do it. Crit resist should be lowered significantly.

Chain pulls/mob social range: As corollary to my previous point, mobs tend to chain aggro from greater distance and out of line of sight. Making the pulls harder than on live in most cases. Glitches in pathing add to this in places such as mistmoore where a pulled mob will sometimes run directly away from you and grab 4 friends.

Priests and casters cant tank worth a crap: I often group with a cleric, I'm a shaman. If a mob is on either of us we lose massive chunks of health every combat round. Seems like the physical mitigation based on armor is not consistent with what I remember from live. Granted I didn't tank everything to death on live but I didnt lose 30-40% of my health in a given round very often either.

Most of the above issues feed into one another and will probably make the ascent to 50 very difficult for most of the population as the average player moves past the Oasis level range. I would suggest some proactive fixes if you want to retain an active population.

[Dolalin]

Aggro on spells isn't quite true to 1999-era Live servers yet, and needs to be tuned a bit, or else we risk gimping the warrior class and ending up with a "mod" server instead of a classic one.

The other aspects? I think the point of this server is, in gameplay, to get as close to how things were in 1999 as possible. This portion of the ideology is sound, and shouldn't be compromised to make levelling or anything else "easier on the players". Classic EQ was hard and unforgiving, and that's why most of us are here.

[sever]

Something is definitely up with player ac and damage reduction. Every other hit is for max damage, even on mobs 10 levels below you. Dodge/Riposte/Parry seem to work rarely to add to that.

[Layne]

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

Aggro on spells isn't quite true to 1999-era Live servers yet, and needs to be tuned a bit, or else we risk gimping the warrior class and ending up with a "mod" server instead of a classic one.

The other aspects? I think the point of this server is, in gameplay, to get as close to how things were in 1999 as possible. This portion of the ideology is sound, and shouldn't be compromised to make levelling or anything else "easier on the players". Classic EQ was hard and unforgiving, and that's why most of us are here.

Sorry but I don't see why flawed game mechanics should stay in game just so its more "hard and unforgiving". The things he is talking about are issues that make this far from classic, AC was worth having, casting didnt draw half as much agro, mobs pulling w/o a line of sight(through walls).

A big portion of what made classic "hard and unforgiving" as you put it was the fact that not many players knew what was going on or how things worked. Ten years later now people do, and they know alot. If you want to keep these things in so you can feel like an idiot when you pull for your group or draw agro from a heal then sure don't fix them. Its just making content unplayable for people who do know whats going on and want to enjoy some of the old world the way its suppose to be(now that we know a little more =P)

[stormlord]

AC made a big difference. I played a ranger the first few months at eq launch. I later played another ranger in 2001. Increasing AC by 100-200 was noticeable - you started to survive. If you're not noticing a difference as a result of upgrading your armor, something is wrong!