New Progression Server confirmed

Vaclav_sl said:

You don't honestly think the stuff they could "warp to kill quick" aren't going to die as soon as people level enough to land shit on them anyhow for the first 3 expansions?

And I doubt your editing map files theory would work - there's no reason for the pathing to go through the client - seems like that would only be helpful for your own movement.

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I am talking about short hops. Ie; about to get hit? Warp 50 units away. Repeat till dead. Hardly detectable if you don't send position updates all the time.

As for the map files theory - NPC pathing is serversided and therefore if an NPC was chasing you, it would infinitely path in some spots unless they finally fixed that on live.

I was referencing that any mobs people would care about would be dying quick anyhow even without cheating. I can see some XP convenience, otherwise you're just making something easy fractionally easier. (And really removing any fun from an already trivial and boring encounter)

And no map files, how would editing LOCAL mapfiles effect the serverside pathing? If you put up a wall in your client someplace random the server shouldn't care...

Zaide_sl said:

Man everyone is coming out of the MQ closet in this thread.

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I'd have been bored out of my mind without macro tinkering, I think. Standing behind a mob pushing one button just doesn't do it for me. Enjoying Everquest involved a lot of multitasking - other games, tv shows, blabbing in chat, etc. It was more about the social aspect than the gameplay, and always has been. Because the gameplay is shit.

Granted, it adds nothing to raiding when you are only playing one character anyway - I rarely brought my alts along and if I did I just parked them somewhere. I could keep both hands on my balls instead of just one, I guess.

After years of wow raiding EQ gameplay is about as exciting as driving to work in the morning.

Oh, and MQ was incredibly useful to see asshats warping from the zone in to the rare that you spawned. Not that you could do anything about it. I'm pretty sure that particular SK was banned as swiftly as the idiots that killed Venril.

You ever play a bard Kreugen?

Kreugen_sl said:

I'd have been bored out of my mind without macro tinkering, I think. Standing behind a mob pushing one button just doesn't do it for me. Enjoying Everquest involved a lot of multitasking - other games, tv shows, blabbing in chat, etc. It was more about the social aspect than the gameplay, and always has been. Because the gameplay is shit.

Granted, it adds nothing to raiding when you are only playing one character anyway - I rarely brought my alts along and if I did I just parked them somewhere. I could keep both hands on my balls instead of just one, I guess.

After years of wow raiding EQ gameplay is about as exciting as driving to work in the morning.

Oh, and MQ was incredibly useful to see asshats warping from the zone in to the rare that you spawned. Not that you could do anything about it. I'm pretty sure that particular SK was banned as swiftly as the idiots that killed Venril.

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WoW raiding is mind numbing and requires no skill.

Just towards the end when we were in PoR and I needed one to pull/mez to get anywhere. He was fucking awesome to have, but for the most part he could just stand there playing one melody.

The problem with having a rogue as a main is I had to box and gear one of EVERYTHING ELSE and struggling with a group-geared tank ended me. The other option was to have nearly no AA and just show up to raid two nights a week. The people who did XP seemed to do it at 5 in the morning.

Anyway, the group game is harder than raiding if you don't have a raid tank or a mage pet. The retarded "every trash mob is like an AOW raid" tuning started in GOD and never really stopped.

The difference is literally "tank pulls 1/3rd of entire instance at once" vs "tank dies if there's a single add"

Oh well yeah, the bard at that time like most of the game got pretty dumbed down.

On P99/Red99 bards require quite a bit of attention to detail (especially doing some of the more broken stuff in the game)

Swarming etc. Pre Melody/Mob runspeed normalization/AE cap

I'm not sure if having 50+ buttons (mostly 10-30 minute cooldowns) is "dumbed down." More like "full fucking retard"

Bard swarming was nerfed a hundred years ago. The damage is reduced if you are moving or some weird hack like that. It takes forever and ceases being useful when basically everything summons.

Dragoon_sl said:

WoW raiding is mind numbing and requires no skill.

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If you mean "in comparison to EQ" as your statement would imply, you have no idea how funny that is to someone who has done a great deal of both. But thanks for the laugh.

File under "couldn't remember why I had an obvious alt troll on ignore"

Vaclav_sl said:

And no map files, how would editing LOCAL mapfiles effect the serverside pathing? If you put up a wall in your client someplace random the server shouldn't care...

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The server only has knowledge of its own geometry; if you are outside of the geometry designated on the server, the NPC would not chase you through the walls. Your position is tracked on the server, so if you're outside of the geometry of the zoneon the server, it certainly will affect if the NPC has a path to you on the server or not.

Kreugen_sl said:

I'm not sure if having 50+ buttons (mostly 10-30 minute cooldowns) is "dumbed down." More like "full fucking retard"

Bard swarming was nerfed a hundred years ago. The damage is reduced if you are moving or some weird hack like that. It takes forever and ceases being useful when basically everything summons.

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That actually makes me wonder if they track if a character is moving by their animation state. I bet you could use MQ2 to set your animation speed to 0 and get full damage again.

Gotcha - the phrasing you had used before made it sound like you were effecting their pathing by placing something in the middle of their path - not just going "out of bounds".

MQ hackers, the true hackers, will always find a way to fuck with the memory/mechanics and pull crazy shit off. Spending countless hours trying to counter it is stupid. If there are some easy checks devs can add to prevent or flag it fine but it's generally a waste of time.

99% of the people who use MQ use it for tracking, displaying stats that were not always visible, botting extra group members, etc. Funny part is that is almost all but eliminated, save tracking. Now-a-days you can see mana/health/regen, mobs casting, and more. You can get a merc(botted group member), and they made tradeskills easier. Which I remember was one of my first uses of MQ ever, to click 500000 times to level baking or whatever the fuck it was for the prayer shawl.

And even more to the point, if you instance raid/progression mobs no matter how bad the MQ douches are you still eliminate nearly all of the problem. I like that groups zones are open xp/non-instanced. The only time it's a problem is maybe vanilla/kunark when people are too condensed and the progression servers draw in an insane crowd on day 1 so everyone's starting time is the same. If you could somehow stagger people in a way that's fair(you can't) that problem would be nearly gone too.

Long story short: fucking instance everything pre-pop already. That's the way the entire rest of the game works, why they won't do it is confusing to me. Shit even stuff like track they could make a new little zone or something with just him in it that you enter once you reach his existing layer. It's not like this is the old days where people getting banished were confused and ownt by frogs. The dude will die to 12 in about 5-7 seconds if not less....

If you're in favor of instancing, post your thoughts on the EQlive forums (if you haven't) so they can see there is a real demand for it and get it added to a poll. I laid out my thoughts pretty well in my self titled post. I'd like to see instance spawning for large groups 36+ possibly 24+. Allow them to spawn the instance at twice the boss regular spawn timer. The details are in my post on eqlive.

Frenzic_sl said:

If you're in favor of instancing, post your thoughts on the EQlive forums (if you haven't) so they can see there is a real demand for it and get it added to a poll. I laid out my thoughts pretty well in my self titled post. I'd like to see instance spawning for large groups 36+ possibly 24+. Allow them to spawn the instance at twice the boss regular spawn timer. The details are in my post on eqlive.

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Instancing ruins the game. End of discussion.

You destroy EQ with instancing. Interacting with people and the camps throughout the game is what makes it EQ. I'm just one person but if I knew that any level of instancing was placed into the Progression Server, I wouldn't even bother.

Sure, I can see the benefits of taking a group to Guk and starting at the top and clearing to the bottom. You'll get all the drops and maximize the experience gained but to me that's not EQ. There's several variations of the game out there thanks to EMU that would allow me to walk through the game and experience EQ again.

I hope they vote to lock it with PoP. To me, that was the last good expansion. I don't like the Knowledge Stones but I can live with it. I'm not a big fan of Luclin (especially Vex Thal) but I can deal. As long as I can go through classic, hit Sebillis, get my epic, NTOV, ST, and finish PoP i'm going to get more than my moneys worth.

Just so you are all clear, we are talking about instancing ONLY the raid mobs required for progression. Not XP zones.

Let everyone have a chance at their little "relive the past" moment by going from start to as far as little timmy can before guild implodes(pop/god?). Why do you need to have a monopoly on 15 year old content with 3+ day spawn timers?

Rangoth_sl said:

Just so you are all clear, we are talking about instancing ONLY the raid mobs required for progression. Not XP zones.

Let everyone have a chance at their little "relive the past" moment by going from start to as far as little timmy can before guild implodes(pop/god?). Why do you need to have a monopoly on 15 year old content with 3+ day spawn timers?

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While I would happily compromise with that suggestion I still think it is part of the experience but I do see that point much more than instancing dungeons such as LGuk or Sebillis. That I would be completely against but yeah, I can live with that.

Kreugen_sl said:

Bard swarming was nerfed a hundred years ago. The damage is reduced if you are moving or some weird hack like that. It takes forever and ceases being useful when basically everything summons.

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Charm swarming works from 39 to 63 or 66 though, and it's actually faster than the AE swarming I think, especially with updated OOC mana regen rate.

Muligan_sl said:

While I would happily compromise with that suggestion I still think it is part of the experience but I do see that point much more than instancing dungeons such as LGuk or Sebillis. That I would be completely against but yeah, I can live with that.

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Correct, no one said anything about instancing group content. Also the raid content would still spawn in its contested form. The instancing would be an alternative that large groups of players can use once in a while.

For example I put forth that nagafen instance would be a 36 man instance that locks everyone out for 1 week upon summoning the instance. 1 week being twice his normal spawn time. No mobs within the instances would Respawn

The goal would be to allow guilds to still fight over the open world version, which spawns twice as often, while allowing more casual guilds the chance to complete content in the current era.

Frenzic_sl said:

Correct, no one said anything about instancing group content. Also the raid content would still spawn in its contested form. The instancing would be an alternative that large groups of players can use once in a while.

For example I put forth that nagafen instance would be a 36 man instance that locks everyone out for 1 week upon summoning the instance. 1 week being twice his normal spawn time. No mobs within the instances would Respawn

The goal would be to allow guilds to still fight over the open world version, which spawns twice as often, while allowing more casual guilds the chance to complete content in the current era.

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I'm all for anything that maximizes the opportunity for a classic experience. I think that would be a good idea. At least speaking for myself, I don't really have time to plan, guard, defend, whatever a raid spawn just to potentially lose it. RL is pretty busy so I think things like that would help convert the experience to our lifestyles today.