Mob difficulty isnt scaling with character

[jsr]

Hmm.. actually I did look at the graphs and they are interesting as far as level 5 goes. Unfortunately all they do is demonstrate a problem with the current formula, at those levels, without any variables except defense skill and level. You have succeeded in pointing out an issue.

I'm not really sure what you mean by "AC determines how much you get hit for and not what the mob is going to hit you for" .. For what it's worth I have worked on the combat code and have a thorough understanding of it.

At the end of the day no-one really cares about level 1-5 if the existing formulae work at the high end. Whether you think people are listening or not, the bottom line remains that you either come up with a workable formula and prove that it is significantly more accurate than the current, or if you want someone else to come up with a formula I suggest parsing ~10,000 lines of combat for each level, and finding the common min hit AC and common max hit AC thresholds at each level. That sort of data would be useful in trying to reverse engineer the mitigation formula. The graphs you posted highlight an issue at level 5, but they don't offer much in the way of solutions. The only reason I continue to respond is for the off chance you would actually do this :P I'm happy to build models if there is sufficient data.

[Cowboy6534]

Heres the question I have. When you say high end or end game what do you mean? I am looking at this for server that will have a max level of 60. Do you mean 85 for UF or 90 for HoT? Do you mean 65 for GoD? I have lvl90 toons on FV so I could get the data for that. They have a mix of hot uf and VoA with max aas. Gear should not be a problem to attain the data from live, but if you are looking to balance lvl65 and I am looking for lvl60. From what you have said so far about my data only showing lvl1-5 and it wont work for balance high end then that means that I would want to collect data for max lvl60 and you would want me to collect data for whatever your high end is. I dont mind taking the time to collect the data because I can already see that at lvl30 its still a problem. I have lvl30ish toons on TGC and I can see that its a problem. Also I would like to note that my C++ experience is limited and I am still learning. I dont know all of the stuff I would need to make it work correctly but I know that there are people here that do. Also the fact that this isnt a problem on project1999 means that its already been solved and I am not sure that they took the time to get 10,000 lines of data per level to solve it. I dont mind power leveling toons to certain levels and getting them the same gear to do the testing but I want to know that if I do it at lvl60 will that be sufficient or are you wanting something higher than that to do anything? Which is why I asked Cavedude what he meant by higher levels.

[cavedude]

65 Raids parse very similar to Live on TGC. I agree the farther you go down the worse we scale but even at the lower levels it's honestly not that bad. It also needs to be stated that the era we are currently on cannot be parsed because it no longer exists on Live. So, we approximate. As it's been said above, you need hundreds of combat parses to form a true data set. A handful of battles will not do, because that same battle may play out much differently each time you try it. It's really a big picture type situation.

Combat sadly simply cannot just be fixed. Sony overcomplicated it, and so it's more a slow progression to dial in on the right formulas. KLS did a lot of that a while back, but really he got combat to a place that is really close, especially considering that we have probably a hundred or so rules that can be adjusted on the fly to tweak it further. I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement, there most certainly is. But, I wouldn't call combat broken, either.

You can't compare P1999 to EQEmu. They are emulating a much earlier time with a far less complicated combat system. Even if they provided their source/rules, I am sure much of it would be irrelevant to EQEmu.

But, as I mentioned above we do have tons of rules that govern a lot of areas in combat. If your C++ skills are limited you may be able to look into them to start tweaking. The rules can be changed and reloaded on the fly, without even restarting the server so it's pretty ideal. If you find values that you feel are closer, please share. Also, I am the first to admit NPC stats are off in the DB. We just don't have enough data to correct them all, since the important ones are hidden to the player.

[Cowboy6534]

How many fights would you need? I can get unlimited fight data using MQ2. I currently run my 90 sk mnk shm clr in brells rest without logging them out for weeks at a time. The longest I have left them in was three weeks without logging out. Every 4 or 5 days I run my shaman over and sell all the crappy and I usually get about 1mil plat every 5-7 days. My sk can solo pretty much anything so if you wanted me to I could deck out a tank in GoD gear and use my clr shm to keep it up indefinately. The only problem I see is that raid and group stuff in EQ has always been balanced differently. Remember the nerf to monks back in PoP era? The raid monks were effected least of all when they nerfed the mitigation and monks that were in group gear suffered greatly.

My goal is to get the parse charts to scale like live on my server and honestly I think a check like I talked about is needed. If it doesnt work then thats ok but if nobody tries it then we wont know. If I start writing this piece of code can you help me with the stuff I dont understand? Honestly most of my C++ experience is writing and modifying macros for mq2. I have started teaching myself C++ from my friends books he used it college but being that I am in college atm I dont get a lot of time to just sit down and learn it.

Edit: Just to note. I dont die ever. Ive even had people train my guys and they dont die =)

Edit2: Also it wouldnt be too difficult to recreate a similar era to what TGC is in. If you limit your gear and aas that were released during that era and stay in zones that were also during that era you will be really close. Another thought is that raid data will be harder to get since it has lockout timers and long respawn timers that you'll have to wait for on live.

[Caryatis]

You dont need to know any C++. Parse 3 different AC sets against a common mob 250 times every 5 levels(could probably do less at early levels). Then once you have all that data, create a mathematical formula that will produce those values given the inputs available. You will quickly find out that close is good enough.

[Cowboy6534]

I will get started then. Starting at lvl1 going to lvl65 every 5 levels 500 mobs. Because I wont be able to guarantee that they will always be even con.

Edit: I will be using a troll warrior to do this.

Do you want me to use any specific gear? or just the same gear for all levels?