Discussion on Damage Bonus, Rules, and the direction of the Emulator

[renoofturks1]

You make it sound as if, at least to me, that you don't want to use the code. Then don't. We are not forcing you to by any means. If it doesn't suit your needs, change it. That truely is the beautiful thing about OpenSource. You can do whatever you want with it.

I am very much used to discussions such as this from the guy's at the PEQ forums, some of those guys have put me through hell and back and they no longer bother me. Cantus offered to help with this, and you are making his first submission very painful. I asked for his help with this, and you have, un-intentionaly, turned it into a nightmare. Makes me regret ever asking him for the help. Not just Cantus, but multiple people within our group helped with this.

Whiel I admire Cavedude dedication, I cannot agree with his "vision" of copying down SOE "vision", and every single "custom" sugestions is treated like unholy blachemy (ok true, there are CRAP LOAD OF custom features allready that were coded by the devs which allow GREAT customization, and I am TRULY thankfull for it, but the iron grip attitude realy needs to be reviewed)

This is most certainly NO way to get where you want. I think we have been very accommodating of your suggestions. In no way did it get treated as "unholy blasphemy". It has just reached a point where you want more than we are willing to put into it. We set out with a goal, and accomplished it to our needs.

[Cantus]

Hey, guys!

First of all, thank you very much for your kind words, especially from So_1337 and Reno! I do not regret at all having Reno ask me to start contributing here. Personally, I'm thrilled with how this first submission has been received, and I look forward to offering more in the future! Thank you all for making me feel so welcomed.


Chaos, I understand your point, but I think we'll have to make a friendly decision to agree to disagree in this case. I have to admit that my own thoughts on the issue align far more with those of Trevius, So_1337, and Reno. That doesn't mean that I disrespect your point, but it does mean that I'm more likely to invest my own coding time into helping the server, in general, perform better and better track Live's functionality. I hope you understand.

I agree with you that SoE hasn't always made decisions regarding EQ that I agreed with. But for the most part, they've produced an excellent product (as illustrated by EQ's overwhelming popularity over the years). If the other programmers who think like me can help make the core EQEmu code more stable and Live-Like, then folks like yourself have a much better platform to start from when you decide to customize the way things work to meet your own vision of how things work! We're not working against folks who believe as you do, though we may not always be able to accomodate the degree of customizability that you would like.


The Damage Bonus function that's posted here was the end result of a lot of work and thought. Most likely, we invested far more time into this enhancement than we needed to. Please take my word for it (and if you don't take my word for it, I'll send you a ready-to-compile C++ solution that you can build to test it yourself) that it runs extremely quickly.

Yes, I have no doubt that if all of the brilliant programmers here looked at it, we could further improve its effiency. But really, in my humble opinion, it's more than "good enough" right now, and the focus of these brilliant programmers would probably be better invested in working on other aspects of the project that are more in need of attention.

[ChaosSlayer]

Hi everyone, and thank you for your coments.

First of all let me say that my last post was in no way an attack specificly on the DMGB code submited or Cantus or renoofturks1 - we just kind of got sidetracked on a topic of general Emu direction and it just happens to be inside this thread.

I have outmost respect for the people who find time to make contribution to the project specialy in a way of writign actual code (if we all just sit and agrue about ideas - we won't achive much ). Just like So_1337 stated, it pains me that I cannot contribute time to write an actual code, and only stick to "coming up with ideas", which may or may not be very suiteable for the main goal of the project.

In no way you guys should drop what you doing and start accomidating me, cuase god knows I have no power over you, and project great before I ever showed up, and most likely will do great if I am to go away. All I have is an opportunity to make a sugestion, and well, atempt to persuade you a little bit

I also would like to appologize to Cavedude (since his name was mentioned by me) for been harsh or perhaps even rude. If I would be in his shoes, and after years of working on MY project someone would come along and start saying "you doing it all wrong" -I would get prety mad. In no way my last post was telling Cavedude how to run his server and what direction PEQ should take. My coments were more of general view of future of Emulator server code at its core

We can consider this discussion prety much over, since everyone has made their point of view very clear (at least at this point), and there is no point for me to continue state the same things over and over again (at least at this time and in this manner )

I do however want to highlight just a few detail on Trev's post, to point out a few details.

Yes, some people do play the emulator for the customized servers. But some do play because it is free instead of the high prices that SoE charges. Sure, 15$ a month isn't bad, but for some people, that is a lot. Also, some prefer to box multiple characters at once and multiplying that 15$ a month can add up VERY quickly. Some people also play because they are sick of the direction EQLive is going, but they still like EQ itself. Some just want certain PVP types, some want only classic, or maybe kunark, and some want other special rulesets that just aren't available on EQLive. So, there are many reasons to play the emulator other than just for custom servers. If you look at some of the general post from new members, many of them ask for recommendations for non-custom servers that are classic, or up to a certain expansion. So, there is definitely a need that PEQ is filling and I fully respect them for that and think that you should do the same.

The question we should ask ourselves, what is CLASSIC CANNON EVERQUEST?
EQ in first 3 month of release? EQ before Kunark? EQ before Luclin? EQ before PoP? The list just goes on.
Whats important to note that during its history EQ changed so many times SPECIFICLY in core of game mechnics, and thats at any given point of time (specialy when any new expansion came out) it was not the same as it was before.

Trev you said "some people left eq cuase they did not like where SOE was going". This statement is the core contradiction in itself, cuase as I said above- what is TRUE CANNON EVERQUEST? Where do you draw a line- what is CANNON, when is keeps continusly changing?

Even among strongest hard core EQ suporters we have people who do not recognize everquest beyond certain expansion as "pure cannon eq".

And important question to ask here - where does Emu/PEQ team draws a line?

Even going back on DMGB original topic - the damage bonus only appeared when? Somewhere after velious? thats can hardly be qualified as "classic".
While I am no fan of original vanila eq (and I truly belive that with years EQ core mechnics were geting BETTER and BETTER, cuase it become less and less ridiculusly hard core raid oriented, it just after 9 years MOST people eventualy got bored playing the same game and left anyway), I want to point out that there are NO TRUE DEFENITION of what is CANNON EQ is.

The DMGB did not existed before PoP era- isn't its implementation a violation of "eq spirit" ? What about quest journal recently implemented? There was no such thing in game during Kunark. Why zerker and beastlord classes are even playable? And list of "what was then" and "what is now" can go on and on.

And when PEQ team (and all who support them) say they want to stay true to original EQ - they only realy staying to true to Titanium expansion in specific.

The MAIN point I was trying to make is not "lets drop everything and do what Chaos tell you to" BUT: You CANNOT posibly have a TRUE LEGIT CANNON Everquest Emulator cuase the word CANNON when applied to EQ is a contradiction in itself.

And what TODAy you see as "LIVE-like" tomorrow will be taken by SOE and turned 180 degrees around and what you goign to do then? Follow SOE lead or "stay true" ? Either way you go you will be going either: against classic or againts "official CURRENT cannon". And you will be in either case

Some time from now ( I hope so) Emulator will move on to next retail bundle package and sudenly discover that a good chunk of "cannon" things no longer apply. Ranger going to get feign death and Wizard will get pickpoket- what you guys going to do? Code it in? In violation of all that "true classic everquest" stands for?

So once again - where do you draw a line "what is true cannon everquest"?
My answer is that: there is no such line. Everquets is like horizont- the more you move towards it- the more it moves away from you. The more PEQ team tries to "chase LIVE" the more it moves away from "original EQ". There is no way around that

The final thing i like to poitn out, that when I make a sugetsion that something should be implemented diffirently, it does not mean I am saying - "rewrite entire combat mechnics, so CHA can proc fear" - I am saying implement code in such way so its FLEXIABLE enough to be fine tuned at later time wihout having to rewite it at its core.

the Emu (IMHO) should not encompass only what "is classic" or "whats is current", but on ALL WHAT CAN POSIBLY BE

Thanks everyone

[Cantus]

Hey, again, Chaos!

I agree with you that the game of EQ evolved over time. Each expansion, and even tweaks between the expansions, changed how things worked and added new content (zones, races, classes, features like in-game maps, instanced zones, etc.)

In general, those changes were made with the goal of balancing out the game, and making it even more fair and fun to play. Whether or not SoE achieved these goals with all of their changes is a huge debate that this thread is probably not the right place for.

I don't think these changes were quite as earthshattering as you seem to make them out to be, Chaos. For example, I don't think that the release of EQ's next expansion will be a complete 180 degree change in the way things work. But that's just my opinion, and I respect yours.

You do have a good point in asking "Which version of EQ are we striving to emulate here?". I'm guessing that the answer is "the state of Live EQ when Titanium Edition was released", but it would be helpful to me (especially if I'm going to help contribute a bit) to have that point clarified by the senior folks involved with the project.

I understand that there are some folks who are interested in setting up and playing on highly-customized servers. Rather than thinking of it as a "them vs. us" situation, the folks who favor customization should support the efforts of the core team to build a highly stable, efficient, and feature-rich emulation of Live EQ, and then build their customizations on top of that foundataion!


P.S. I'm certainly not insulting or acting as the "grammar police", but I think the word you're looking for, Chaos, is "Canon" with one "n". That means "the standard; the officially recognized general rule".

"Cannon" with two "n"s is "a mounted gun for firing large projectiles" .

[janusd]

As I understand the situation, PEQ's purpose is to emulate the Live servers as closely as possible as they currently exist, but in order to maintain a modicum of balance and enjoyment, we move expansion by expansion in the order they were released so the people playing and testing can experience that content as if they were actual expansions just being relased. This allows us to encourage players to test the content as it comes instead of ignoring 'old' content in favor of 'new content' (IE releasing Velious and OoW at the same time would likely result in poor testing and play for Velious as people focused on getting the gear from OoW which would mean that Velious couldn't be tweaked properly). Each expansion is slowly being tuned up to its Live version circa its original tuning phase, and, in some cases its final tuning phase. This means then that we have to move slowly to ensure the project as closely resembles Live as possible. This means that we'll eventually be 100% Live, but at the moment we're sometimes forced to be 100% Live for the current expansion era. In some cases, as far as the database is concerned, we choose to make alterations to retain portions of EQ that no longer exist in their current condition (IE the database contains the code for Sleeper's v.1 and v.2 but the server runs v.2. Same with VP and I WISH PoM). The project attempts to 100% emulate Live, but it's a VERY slow process. The ultimate goal is to be 100% in-line with Live's final expansion, but at the moment we're hindered by the Titanium client (the current goal is to be 100% Titanium until someone can update our client and we can get a new sniffer). Until Sony ceases releasing expansions, we will not have a SET goal, but we will have an ideal goal. Were someone to take the upcoming expansion (4 weeks!) which contains all previous expansions and systems and update the EMU system to support it AND create a new sniffer that works with the new expansion AND can convert the information into a format that could easily be imported into the EMU and various databases, then things would go a lot faster... until then, though, we move as we can towards that good and final goal. I just hope we can complete the project before Sony makes the final move and pulls the last Live server some time in the future. We are, after all, on a time limit goverened by subscribing players. So... ya know... bribe your coder friends to update the client, the sniffer, and a packet converter.

[ChaosSlayer]

Originally Posted by Cantus

In general, those changes were made with the goal of balancing out the game, and making it even more fair and fun to play.

some die hard vanila pre-kunark fans will say that this changes RUINED eq, starting from the point when iksar were allowed to be monks

I don't think these changes were quite as earthshattering as you seem to make them out to be, Chaos. For example, I don't think that the release of EQ's next expansion will be a complete 180 degree change in the way things work. But that's just my opinion, and I respect yours.

the were gradual and they did happen over course of 9 years, so if you kept playing all this time they did not come as surprise to you, but if you compare eq in 99 and eq today- there is a significant diffirence. I don't have a comprehensive list of things atm, but there were number of things which Brad/Soe keept saying "will never happen" back in a day and then one day the "vision" changed and those things were implemented.

You do have a good point in asking "Which version of EQ are we striving to emulate here?". I'm guessing that the answer is "the state of Live EQ when Titanium Edition was released", but it would be helpful to me (especially if I'm going to help contribute a bit) to have that point clarified by the senior folks involved with the project.

This is gona sound evil, but in no way an attack on you, but... the numbers for DMGB were "carefuly recorded from LIVE" when? Recently right? But EQ Titatium is what 2 years old? This means that they infact invalid
I do know that you guys trying to be as close as posible, but the thing is whatever changes SOE makes - they make it with current content in mind.
As dificulty of eq endgame grew - so grew the bonuses to the players.
And this is one of those little tiny things which "gradualy change" and pile up until you arive at "180 degres turn around" I mentioned.
And it simply will never stops.

And thats prety much when i decided that I am done listening to SOE "vision". Cuase SOE have all the power to change things, for better or worse, and all you can do is keep paying your $15 a month hopping the things will turn this way than another.

And this where I realise what TREMENDOUS potential project like Emu has, when you take the SPIRIT of IDEA behind Everquest but fine tune it in such way that it precisly matches your own vision, wihout having to live in terror that tomorrow your class going to get nerfed or something, and all you worked for (as a player) is complitly pointless now

And thats the idea I am trying to spread

I understand that there are some folks who are interested in setting up and playing on highly-customized servers. Rather than thinking of it as a "them vs. us" situation, the folks who favor customization should support the efforts of the core team to build a highly stable, efficient, and feature-rich emulation of Live EQ, and then build their customizations on top of that foundataion!

Well, let us hope that we all can contribute something to each other final goals

P.S. I'm certainly not insulting or acting as the "grammar police", but I think the word you're looking for, Chaos, is "Canon" with one "n". That means "the standard; the officially recognized general rule".

"Cannon" with two "n"s is "a mounted gun for firing large projectiles" .

I like to spell things with 2 "n"s cause it makes then sound more impressive (j/K) thanks for correctin me =)

[Cantus]

Originally Posted by ChaosSlayer

This is gona sound evil, but in no way an attack on you, but... the numbers for DMGB were "carefuly recorded from LIVE" when? Recently right? But EQ Titatium is what 2 years old? This means that they infact invalid

No, that's not the case. The damage bonuses in this function are consistent with both Live as it currently exists today, as well as Live when EQ Titanium was released. Furthermore, the actual damage bonus added by this function is consistent with the amount of damage bonus displayed on weapons in-game when you right-click on them.

What changed was the way Damage Bonuses were calculated for new levels when those new levels were unlocked, and that's what makes the formula such a mess. For example, when Kunark was released, the damage bonus formula used for levels 28-50 was not changed, but a new formula for 50-60 was implemented. When PoP was released, a new formula for 60-65 came out. That kinda thing. That's why we use many lookup tables in this function -- because there is no one single, simple, fast formula.

But those formulae have never changed retroactively, to the best of my knowledge. That is, if I logged in my level 30 Monk today on Live, his 2H weapon would have exactly the same Damage Bonus as it did five years ago.

[ChaosSlayer]

that part I was not aware of, thanks for bringing it up =)
Back to DMGB - I juts want to make sure that as level goes beyond 80, the 2hs bonus will not start falling behidn 1hs, as I belive you previusly pointed out