Changes and Suggestions

[Control]

I'll keep a running log of changes and suggestions in this thread.

If you'd like to suggest a change (not a bug), just post here. If it seems reasonable, I'll add it to the list. Things will be prioritized based on impact versus the implementation time and risk.

When making a suggestion, please add some reasoning/evidence for why you think a change should be made. I'm pretty easy to convince, but some data helps. Saying "XP is too slow!" doesn't give me much to go on. Something like this is much more actionable: "My full group of level 60's only got 3aa while killing non-stop in Sebilis for 6 hours."

Also note that where possible, it's preferable to make changes in a way that is revertable/non-destructive. It's also preferable to find ways that have minimal impact on future content. Changing something now only to need to change something else because of it later isn't great (though admittedly unavoidable sometimes).

[Control]

Completed changes:

Locked server to vanilla
Changed starting zones to PoK
Reduced mob hp/mana/resists/minhit/maxhit by 50%
Added autoscribe
Added autoskill
Removed most spell reagents
Added sow/lev/eb buffs to Soulbinders
Added noob vendors
Added translocators
Turned on Kunark
Spawntimes for raid mobs set to 2h
Removed level requirements on pre-luclin zones
Reduced charm/fear duration for players
Added melee crits to all players
Increased xp gain
Increased xp gain from blue/lightblue mobs
Un-lored lootable bags in vanilla/kunark
Box of abu kar on giants/specs/seafuries in norrath/ooc
Made hadden and pyzjn more generous/frequent
Increased the rate of faction changes
Set up automated backups, multiple times per day
Set up offsite push for the backups
Removed or dramatically reduced placeholders for Vanilla/Kunark nameds
Added translocator to get you out of Crescent
Reduced 'go home' time
Removed defiant gear
Removed glowing loot molds
Removed Naggy/Vox's ability to punt high level players
Removed key requirements from HS/Seb/VP
Unlocked many doors
Removed level reqs for planes
Make it possible for pets to tank with players in melee range
Removed lots of other defiant-like gearsets
Added Guise of the Deceiver
Added Manastone
Added languages to autoskill
Lowered npc hit rate
Changed autoskill so that it works as soon as you log in for the first time instead of waiting until you ding
Removed:
- trakanon's touch
- VS's mez
- ct fear/snare
- deathtouches
- silverwing charm
- dain's teleport
Lowered priority on lots of spells that make life annoying when solo or in small groups so that they will get cast far less or not at all:
- fears
- mez's
- roots
- long duration debuffs that keep you from resting
Added potions to noob vendor
Added custom server charm clicky:
-50%/50k spell reduction
-accuracy buff
-damage shield
Added charm to vendor
Added charm to noob inventory
Opened Velious, Veskar, Droga
Added Velious translocator
Added Velious fabled
Did some solo aa speed testing
Adjusted (tripled) AA xp gain
Increased Hand of Maestro droprate
Increased Fingered Monk droprate
Adjusted spawntime on Veeshan's Peak, Temple of Veeshan, and Plane of Growth to 4 hours to allow enough time to clear
Tested VP trash clearing
Unnerfed Fungi Staff
Removed snare effect from Fungi Staff (now even better than pre-nerf!)
Changed noob vendor potions to be stackable and free
Added free arrows/shurikens to noob vendor
Added deluxe toolbox to noob vendor
Set up server site
Improved droprate on ghoulbane
Made Guano Harvester always drop either the cloak or the bag
I took the spell mitigation off the clicky and just cut mob's spell damage, that way it works on pets too.
I took the accuracy buff off the clicky so it wouldn't conflict with discs.
I added a bunch of stats to the charm to help pretty much everyone in some way (including a pet focus and ultravision)
I added a couple of weapons to new characters (and to the weapon vendor) which should give melee a viable weapon until 50, and then 2 more on the vendor that should be viable till 60. Certain classes will have an easier time finding better weapons than some others, but at least it's an easy option if you don't want to go weapon hunting.
Increased some drops in solb where the mob wasn't dropping something useful every time.
Another round of trying to get annoying spells off of normal mobs. also targeted annul spells this time.
Made the cleric pet non-temporary
removed reagent from zerker axe summons
Insidious decay was still being cast by mobs
increased dynamic zone reset time (no more losing corpses or boss spawns if you die/wipe)
made the Faerie of Dismay more likely to carry its copy of Immortals around
Added (prenerf) Mosscovered Twig and Mosscovered Branch
Origin recast is now 30sec instead of 18m
Origin is autotrained
Harm Touch is autotrained
Anamation Empathy is autotrained (chanters can always control their pets now)
Added a WW port to velious translocator
Added Norrath dungeon translocator
Increased the spawn rates of named in droga considerably
Increased the spawn rates of named in veskar considerably
Increased the spawn rates of named and drop rates across velious
Got rid of a number of annoying luclin npc spells
Made lucid shards much easier to get
Increased droprate on pieces for ssra door keys and emp keys.
xp increase zone xp mods in kunark/veliouss
Reduced Luclin boss spawntimes to 2h, except for VT which is 4h.
Significantly increased leadership/raid aa xp
Removed some Luclin mobs that weren't working.
Added a Luclin translocator
Added cure potions to the vendor
Raised cap to lv65
translocators/soulbinders whisper now so way less spam
Keeper of Souls in the Plane of Sky now pops faster
Made Dargon in Halas easier to buy from
Re-removed snare on Fungus Covered Great Staff - the snare still happens (probably until the spellfile is updated, but it no longer blocks SoW, which was the main issue)
Made Battle_Master_Ska`tu in chardok much more likely to actually carry his weapon.
Changed the raid xp modifier to be the same as the group xp mod (it was MUCH less by default)
Added warrens to Norrath dungeon teleporter
Increased the duration of the buffs on the soulbinder
LoH and HT now autotrain until level 46 for Pallys and SKs
Tunare no longer summons everything
Cazic no longer summons everything
Added Circlet of Shadow
removed TOFS keys
Reduced PoP spawntimes (2-4h, depending on the mob)
Removed level bypass of pop flagging
Tested progression flagging up to the elemental planes
Removed or reduced duration on a number of PoP npc spells
Enabled pre-EP PoP Zones
set elemental planes to 12 hour repop
set time to 24 hour repop
opened elemental planes and time
removed some additional annoying spells from normal mob spell tables that I missed
removed slows from normal mob class spell sets
removed some DT's that I missed from PoSky
toned down most VP boss spells (generally removed dispell/slow and significantly increased recast)
added a bind potion
changed the weight of the custom potions and shurikens to zero
brother zephyl's robe is 100% drop now
increased droprate on a_coerced_penkeeper
moved the pok potion vendors near the soulbinder
upped the spawn rates on the iksar betrayer and the pawbuster
enabled mystats
added minotaur lord and hero
gave Neh Ashiir a static spawn, and made the torch drop much more likely
fixed cursed repop
upped droprate on Dirt of Underfoot
upped droprate on Crown of Elemental Mastery
changed autotrain to include triple attack, 2hp, disarm traps, and lizardman/vah shir
Tallon Zek - removed dispell, snare, slow
Emp - removed bane wep requirement, removed slow and shortened stun
maybe fixed charm affecting mage epic
added a vendor with velious and pop armor components
You can now rename your pets by targeting them and typing #rename petname
added a kunark dungeon translocator
added a tribute master
prismatic dye added to peras
re-added holgresh elder beads as a rare from the Grand_Vizier
added rebreather to pok vendor
turned off crescent/blightfire
changed required level to recommended level fabled tranq staff
-fixed duration on charms
-fixed duration in invis/camo/undead/animals
-extended duration of all versions of levitation to match soulbinder's extended version
-removed another load of annoying npc spells
-strong disease duration reduced
-changed Jinalis_Andir to neutral faction
-upped phinny's epic quest item droprates
-slightly lowered how much Dizok's hate iksars (iksar can now do spirit wracked cord quest)
-made regal band turnin/recharge work at warmly
-toned down fennin ae ramp
-toned down avatar of mist ae ramp
-corniav - extended timer a bit
-removed ramp from magmaton
-reduced the number of adds when fighting rztwl
-removed bane requirement from emp/seru
-reduced the duration on seru's stun

[Control]

On Deck:
Server improvements
Dev server


Everything else: (NOT in order of importance)
Lots of new zones need to get reverted
Revert to original Vulak spawn
Find a way to add player's resists to pets
Find a way to scale pets with player's gear
Thin out VP trash
Bind ability
Set up independent login server
Client customization
Setup development server
Custom progression bonuses
Possibly add original cazic zone
Possibly add original paw zone
Soulbinder should buff pet too
test server change deployment
daily randomized hotzones
add server info/greeter?
custom hub
custom progression quest
add more removed items
add a list of working fabled to site
add a way to check faction

[GaryRivers]

Tried the shaman spell spirit if the Puma again ( early oct 3) still costs 2500 mana.

[Control]

Ah, so found the problem. Spirit of Puma only costs 212 mana, BUT if you were playing on a different server where the cost was changed, your spellfile might list the altered mana cost. If so, either grab my spellfile from the front page or open yours, search for puma, find the number that matches the mana value listed on your spell, and change that to 212.

[Hosix]

SK harmtouch...

It was moved to AA's but they were freebies. I clicked it in AA and it took 4aa's to upgrade.
Can it please be set so it's free again?

[Control]

Changed the cost but didn't seem to help, aa's seem odd that way. I need to dig into it a bit more.

[Control]

HT should be buyable now at no cost, though the other aa's still seem stubborn heh.

[Hosix]

Cool thanks. I will check it out after work!

[Pogi.G]

I'm not sure if it would be overpowering, but I would love to see the original mosscovered twig in... =)

[Control]

And now it is! :D and the branch too

[Hosix]

http://wiki.project1999.com/Removed_Items

Able to add some others from this list? No rush.

[Control]

ah nice, that's a great list of stuff to add back in! :D

[Hosix]

Excellent update!

I have not been able to get any of the SK lifetap proc's 61-65 to work (the shrouds). I thought maybe something was blocking them but I could not figure it out.

Everything else is amazing!

[Control]

Ok, so it seemed like there was a problem with the spells referencing the wrong effect, and that should be fixed.
There also seemed to be a problem where the buffs just didn't want to stick sometimes, and I 'may' have fixed that.
Just let me know if you run into any more issues.

[Hosix]

Got called into work for OT. I will check later!

Thanks Control!

[Heck]

Love the server, tuning gets better every day it seems. Thanks, Control, for all the hard work. It's simply amazing to casual players like us.

Two balance issues today; one item dropchance change request, one server setting change request:



Crested Mistmoore Shield is a bit too rare for what it is; usually not a problem on populated non-solo servers- there've always been several for sale -cheap- in the Bazaar. They're one of the few Magic low level shields for Bash classes and one of the nice looking alternative Druid shields, but at a 25% drop rate AND the nerf to dynamic zone resetting, obtaining one comes down to luck rather than strategy. Base drop chance is 25% and there is nothing else on that first table; suggest bumping it up to 50% drop chance. Any more would be your discretion, but I will say that I liked how SOE implemented the upgraded player-made higher level versions of this shield with the Cultural Recipes; it's bizarre to me that they're LORE in the first place:

http://mqemulator.net/item.php?id=9310



Still would like to be able to reset dynamic zones, that will actually be a deciding factor whether to even try epic quests here or not. Things like spawning Raster and/or Quillmane are too stupid for words, and the reason that lots of people left EQ in the first place, you know. Even on Solo oriented servers spawning rares is still difficult when Population grows because players will always crowd into important zones, and usually around the same times every day, and it gets compounded by those who want to level up and then gear up their alts.

Right now, reset times of 30 minutes are excessive, and I simply ask to make them something, you know "solo friendly"- many times there have been Fabled NPCs up that I've needed to despawn and its cost me a whole day, others times low level Fabled have been almost impossible to spawn, such as three hours spent trying to get The Fabled King Thex`Ka IV to spawn in Permafrost for that game-breaking AC 9, 40 HP cloak, that my Paladin "main" will be wearing until he can get either a Midnight Drolvarg cloak or Cloak of Flames.

Players understand full well all the little reasons to have to deal with clearing placeholders and persistent zones, but the main one has always been resurrectable corpses, and a distant second is the "I killed the boss/npc but my toon died before i could loot it"- here there are no corpse runs, and many times, getting back to that indispensable boss or epic NPC means hailing a soulbinder and then a translocator. Ta Da.

So, just a suggestion, but unloading dynamic zones seemed to work just fine before, though if there was an "ideal time" for Solo server dynamic zone unloading, it'd be 60, 90, or 120 seconds or so, just as long as players know and can plan accordingly, whether to camp-reset or just kill ph after ph after ph.

If they can kill it, in the case of Fableds...


Thanks for reading

[GaryRivers]

I can speak to the Quillmane situation in particular....you can spawn him pretty easy if you know where 1 of the placeholders is, but to be honest you need a tracker or you need to use Macroquest to find him. I got the lev cloak on both of my tunes in like half an hour.

[Control]

Love the server, tuning gets better every day it seems. Thanks, Control, for all the hard work. It's simply amazing to casual players like us.

Thanks!

shield stuff

Sounds reasonable! It's 100% now.

dynamic zone stuff

Zones that quickly reset cause people to lose corpses of raid mobs and cause mobs they want to kill to despawn (both fableds and poppable raid mobs like AoW). All of those things happening is what prodded me into taking out the zone resetting.

Aside from that, I don't really care too much about the zone resetting either way, but I do sort of like the idea that fableds stay rare/interesting. If you can just pop them, then it's just another chore to overcome. If you just happen to run across them in your leveling, it's a nice bonus. Of course, it's true that if one is in your way and you can't kill it, then you're sort of hosed for 30 minutes, but people are often pretty willing to come kill them for the bonus loot.

I agree with you though on the hard-to-spawn rares, which is why I increase their spawn rate when I run across them. Raster and Quillmane are at 100% poprates. Rares sort of made sense when you needed to kill stuff for weeks in a small set of zones to xp anyway, but not so much here. I mean, if people would just shuffle zones anyway, why not have them always up? I'm not sure about Luclin/PoP yet, but at least through Velious, I don't really have a problem with getting rid of placeholders altogether where reasonable, and I've already done that where they were obvious.

[Heck]

Roger that, Control. Thanks ever so much for the consideration and lengthy reply, I will try to be brief in the future.

For now, just a couple Translocation thoughts, feel free to pick apart or ignore, balance and working stuff is more important than fluff and convenience.



Suggestion for Translocator Dea

Add destination(s)

* The Warrens (trying to run there from the Stonebrunt Port (or through Toxx) at low level is usually death and a waste of Temperance, etc)
* Befallen is already there, thanks- makes up for client mismatch and missing commons zone files to be able to port into it
* Unrest is also there, thanks again, this one is a nuisance to get to at the entry levels for most players; buffs wear off, players die just getting there by running


Any Kunark Dungeon destination Translocators planned?

* Getting to Veksar is a tremendous asspain, so much so that I've seen players set up a CotH Mage alt in Loio just for that
* Running to City of Mist is also a retardedly long run, even with SoW, it eats a good five minutes or more off buffs to run the safest route
* The run to Dalnir is also one of the cruelest jokes Verant ever played on players, heh
* The Run to Kurn's and to Kaesora are both fine, players have the Field of Bone Stone (Cabilis)
* The run to Nurga or Droga isn't so bad thanks to Frontier Mountain teleport
* Charasis and Old Sebilis should probably stay locked, but the keys should maybe be both questable and buyable for something reasonable
* Any teleports to Howling Stones or Sebilis should either either check inventory or keyring OR simply port toons near the zone-ins Outside (The Overthere or Trak's Teeth)
* Personally, I like the idea of a Karnor's Castle TP since SO much goes on there; it SUCKS to run all the way there from Dreadlands or FV to find everything dead and the whole zone camped
* On a Solo server, it might be a good idea to put in a TP for players (players typing "/who all karnor" doesn't always tell the full picture)... it'll be perma-farmed either way

Velious Dungeons have always been a timesink and a nuisance just to get to; Cloudy potions ad nauseum, Flight of Eagles buff stripper, Succor mules, etc.

* Unless your plan is to implement PoP ASAP, this is the top end game; I wouldn't cheapen it too much
* Maybe just some better zone teleports, instead of actual Dungeon teleports? Add WW, maybe PoM and call it a day? I dunno; we're all still just 20's-40's



Still enjoying the server immensely, hoping to contribute something more than epic posts.

Thank You!

[GaryRivers]

A few things about Heck's post...

The Warrens...use the Paineel PoK stone to get here easy. I went to warrens at like level 10 with no Temp and no problem.
Veksar...use FV port then the zone to LoIO is pretty close and veksar is pretty much in the middle of the zone.
City of Mist...again the teleporter puts you in Emerald jungle. really cant get much closer without a porter that just takes you to the zone you want.
Karnors and Droga/Nurga...seems odd that you find the run to Droga/Nurga fine but the run to Karnor's "sucks"

Key quests...here's another thing I dont get. If you want to do key quests you can, I'm sure the hunter and forager drop the things you need for the Seb key. why subject the rest of the server to key quests? If you like to do key quests...have fun and do them.

Also there is lots to camp and do here and not much player base, I wouldnt worry too much about things being perma farmed.

[Control]

I'll take a look over the port situation and give it some thought, I did add a WW port though! And thanks for adding some travel tips Gary!

[Hosix]

The travel thing...it's so minimal here I don't see it as an issue. It's not like the first EQ and you had to run from WFP to NK without SoW.

Plus the travel allows time to check for Fable mobs in those zones.

[Methus]

So I got myself a fungi staff and was pretty stoked. But it seems like it still snares? Clicks from inventory with any class but seems to slow me down a lot. No big deal, but itd be kinda cool to use :P

[Control]

Ya, thought I'd removed the snare, but I changed the wrong fungi effect. Should be re-improved now.