Overequipping and the IP reset: A follow-up

[______________Desbet]

Originally posted by Desbet
Try reading the EULA guys. Its that thing you hit "I accept" every EVERY time you load the game. Now stop complaining.

I mean it.

BTW, EULA means "End User Liscence Agreement" this ammounts to a contract. That you sign, -every- time you log in. You should really read it.

I'm too tired to sit here and babysit anylonger.

The patch is going in.
Learn to deal or get out. (I suggest learning to deal, it will not be so horrific as most seem to think)

[Chidoro]

Originally posted by *****


What tools?

The chat interface is lacking , there is no way to see who is in a zone, I would love to look and see if there are people my level in an area to do stuff together. How far does the OOC go, why am I hearing stuff from Tir when I am in Athen? Even the worst of EQ, the tells and begs for buffs and stuff doesn't happen here. I traverse entire zones and don't see one white dot that isn't a mob. I.E. Longest Road and Wailing Waste. Even West Athen is mostly empty. The other day I actually saw a group going somewhere to do something, not my kind of play but it did bring a smile to my face but that is very, very rare from what I've seen.

AO is too spread out for the amount of people and it is too easy to travel, many friends are made through accidental encounters, a guy comes along and heals you while you are almost dead to a mob, that kind of stuff. Here you can "warp" from place to place, not conducive to meetings.

Heck I can't even buff most of the newbs with my measly Enforcer essence buffs because they don't have the NCU and everybody has the generic buffs up. There is no feeling of making a newb "warrior" a god by SoWing, regenning and hasting him. That just doesn't exist in AO.

In EQ you made a lot of friends in the newbie zones, I was in and out of the backyard in Tir with my first and only character in 2 hours hardly time to make friends.

In EQ a zone took on a character as the same people were there leveling or what not for a period of time, you had running Gnome jokes that lasted for days and got to know the goofs and the players. In AO there is no zone character or characters.

Face it, AO just doesn't have the closeness and friendly feel that EQ did. I'm not talking about grouping either, forced grouping at higher levels is what killed EQ for me but I did enjoy the chats my Shammie had with his dR00d friends while we were soloing when we could.

So ok that's the nature of the game as I see it, and I'm here because I can solo and doing that takes priority over socializing in my gaming world. What I'm saying if the soloing goes I won't be staying for the socializing but I do like to be social while soloing. I did it for almost 3 years in EQ.

People hated zoning so the zones are larger. There is nothing quaint about being one a 85 people in Sebilis or 120 in lower Guk (3 year player as well). People went out of their way to know each other for a few reasons:

- they didn't know anyone else because this was their first mmorpg
- the game was the first of its kind to be widespread, people clung to each other
- they didn't understand the mechanics of the game at looked at the world through stunned wide eyes

Why would I want to hear chat across an entire zone being as large as they are in AO. It's spam.

There are more chat channels in AO than EQ could have possibly come up with. All customizable. How could you not run into someone while in town.

Nevermind, I'm not going to completely refute your extensive list of babble point by point. I'll just give you the sweeping one:

You came into this game already knowing players from other mmorpgs. Some of them left, some stayed. You got lazy in thinking that your buds from one world would cross over to all worlds even though people have different tastes. If you even bothered to TRY and meet people w/ the same level tenacity that you did in EQ, you would have a similar list of friends in this game.

I call it being lazy. Chat channels a problem compared to EQ?

BWWAAHAHAHAHHAHA

[___________Aggregate]

The biggest problem I have with this latest article, is this one inconsistency with the original vision.

In the original article, "Exploiters, overequipping and the rest", Gaute says:

At the time we implement any changes in the overequipping rules, include the following changes to the game:

Reduce the fighting capabilities of monsters somewhat at mid-high levels - to make soloing more viable.

Now, he's saying:

3. Will the HPs (health points) of the monsters be reduced

We are going to go through the monsters and evaluate a reduction of hit-points for the most extreme monsters. (That is, a Level 180 Offal Larva has 10 times the amount of HPs that a normal monster has on that level.) Basically, we are going to make the variation smaller; thus the average is somewhat reduced. What I will not do is to reduce the normal monster hit-points at this time. This is not the same as saying that we'll NEVER do it - just that I would like to watch the impact of the current changes first. I am afraid of doing too many changes at the same time, and what the synergy of them might be.

This really worries me. They're going to reduce our weapon's effectiveness, while at the same leaving the monsters unchanged? Why did they change their story? How is anyone going to be able to do anything? Especially weapon users. Pet users just have to make sure they go and get re-buffed before their buffs run out, but at mid-levels, the only way for a weapon-reliant profession to be anywhere near tough enough to defeat even a yellow-to-low-orange MOB, is to have a MASSIVELY over-equipped weapon.

Why is it that they are bringing about the OE change in such a lop-sided manner? Why do the players get the nerf-spankin' when the monsters get to continue as-is, when everyone who's been here a while remembers that the monsters already got a huge bit of lovin' to compensate for over-equipping. Now they finally do something about the over-equipping, but leave the MOBs as-is? Sorry, but it just doesn't make much sense. Don't they want to keep players? This just seems like a good way to run them out the door...

[________senatorjesse]

In regards to the minor nerfs to crats that will be happening in this patch I can only hope that there is something done to make up for it. Playing a crat is by no means easy and this change will only make it harder and more tedious. Now in addition to Fumbles, Resists, Interruptions and other ways for nanos to fail we will have to worry about our charmed monsters breaking free AND becoming useless or hostile if we are debuffed, not to mention our faithful protectors who often get stuck behind tables chairs and anything else that's not a flat wall will no longer be faithful and will stand by idly watching us be shredded by a charmed mob because we have to hold out 3 minutes for a trader debuff to disappear. All the while being shot by a trader's shotgun.

The crat profession was finally growing and I had finally found a working profession that I could play and now you're going to nerf them. And most likely once again you will see a decline in crats to the point where they are once again rare and unwanted because no one knows what they can do.

Please reconsider the behavior of charmed mobs under a debuff or change the crat in some other way, one debuff would effectively strip us naked with this patch, especially since it would harm all of our methods of attack in a single blow... nanos, weapons, pet, and charmed mob.

I would also like to bring up that the Bureaucrat top ten is full of many issues that crats would really like to have looked at such as: where are the rest of our fixes, why are our speeches so worthless, and what are we supposed to do when our main ability becomes useless during the skill caps?

Thank you very much for your attention, and one more time I would like to ask, how is one supposed to weild the Edge of the Tarasque after this patch (ql 200)?

[________________Crin]

Some people seem to think that the IPR points will create God PvP characters because players will move points out of non-Combat or PvP related skills into the ones that most help PvP.

First, after the temporary period where you get the free 90 IPR points, you will not have that many points to play with. A player couldn't go adventuring one day, then switch up IP distribution to PvP another, then switch back to go adventuring again.

Second, If a player wants to totally customize their character to PvP then so be it. They will gimp their character in other areas. Which is fair and in the end, good for the game. Diversity is good after all.

Third, Some people seem to complain that the players that have more time to play the game will be more powerful because they can have multiple characters and super specialize each of them. To that I once again say "So what"

I am all for the OE changes, but the reason for the changes is not to penalize players that know the game better or have more time to play. The reason for the OE changes is to aid in balancing the professions and the game, and to also give professions their identities back.

If a player player wants to level one character purely for trade skills, another for doing missions and a third for PvP, then that is just about the best possible way to handle the fact that players don't all have the same amount of time that they can devote to the game but all must play in the same world.

[______________Newmen]

I do think this patch will hit rider adventurers rather hard or any other profession that uses a weapon where they only try to meet the minimum requirment.

As a pistol adventurer I will more than likely be better off than say a rider user.

What this is going to do I think is going to make people have to think a bit harder where they spend points.

If you want to OE riders I am guessing you have to be within 20% of each of the skills. This has the potential to really hurt if you do not max all the attack skills like heavy weapons and 1 handed edge.

[__________Merkaba715]

I think that the people that supported this patch the most are going to be the most nerfed by it.

Example: NT's will no longer be able to even shoot traders after getting debuffed.

I support this patch, but not because I am a trader. I don't PvP much since at this point it has no value other than a title. But, in the future, when we can hold territories, I might start. The bad thing about this patch is that its going to make Traders the new PvP gods. What you have to remember, is that untill every profession is balanced, there will be an FC love child, purposely or accidently made, into a PvP god based on the current new rules of the patch. IE: NT's and any other profession that had a Stun nano a few patches ago. What is giving us traders such a bad rep, are the few twinkers that power level up a trader to 74 and twink him and then own everyone in PvP. This is going to be even worse after this next patch and bring even more undesirable PK'ers into our profession. Take a look at the trader board, we have the least posts out of any other profession. Point being, the PK'ers dont go into those boards, they arent part of the community. Please dont hate traders as a whole or yell nerf. I dont want to be the next agents.

[_______________Saint]

Ah, this patch will be a good thing! Levelling speed will be unchanged, I don`t OE. So, MOB HP`s will not go down. I will keep fighting deep yellow/very light oranges. AND people will still be able to OE to some extent. How can people not be happy about this?

I guess I am a "casual gamer". My girlfriend wants to do other things than to wach me play, so I must restrict myself there. My boss at work wants me to show up on time, so I must restrict myself there. My friends wants to have a party, or hang out just being friends, and I want to keep my social life. Thus lotsa times I just cannot play. But still, if I really want to do a few missions for cash/xp I level pretty fast imo. I do not expect to level after killing 3 MOB`s. So I am pretty happy about my speed of levelling. This patch will maybe "slow levelling down to an unbareably slow rate" for some. Well, how fast these people level I dont know. But it must be pretty damned fast if doing it at my speed (when I choose to level) is reson to quit he he. I think anyway levelling in this rpg is ALOT faster than in any p&p rpg I`ve EVER played. So it might be they have never played any real rpg before, and expect to lvl just like you get to the next stage in Mario Bros or something. Well, it aint so. A level is something you work for. It`s not given away just to give you a sense of "progress". If that is the only way you evolve your character (by putting points in skills), then you by all and every definition play the game WRONG. My character evolve even when I DONT level. In fact I evolve the MOST when I do not hunt or do missions.

If this patch will help the hopelessly inept at roleplaying, that is very good. The only way to grow is to spend TIME playing your character. Not by getting points as fast as you can. That is counterproductive. And if those that JUST DO NOT WANT TO roleplay get their backpack and head out to the next game, all the better. Try something other than an RPG next time, eh?

In support of the OE patch

[_____________Asmodan]

Originally posted by Desbet


I mean it.

BTW, EULA means "End User Liscence Agreement" this ammounts to a contract. That you sign, -every- time you log in. You should really read it.

I'm too tired to sit here and babysit anylonger.

The patch is going in.
Learn to deal or get out. (I suggest learning to deal, it will not be so horrific as most seem to think)

What the hell does the EULA have to do with providing feedback on a proposed patch?

I don't think many people have as big a problem with something being done about OE'ing as they have a problem with potential holes in the proposed method.

That's why people are 'complaining', because we'd rather talk it out and find a good solution now than have it end up on the servers in a mess and have to wait for it to be fix retroactively.

[Zenister]

Originally posted by Cheetra
Very good point was made on MA special attacks.

I Lose the following specials if debuffed by a trader, period, because these are ALL unique items, i can't carry a lower ql one to use. Because i don't me the req i can't use the attack period, while this will not effect all MA specials, it will affect the following:

1) attack of snake ( based on ma skill )

2) Shen ( ma and dimach based )

3) Bright, Blue, Cloudless Sky ( Ma and Dimach based )

4) Flower of Life ( MA, Parry and first aid )

However, MA's currenlty are forcered to live with 100% special attack shutdown from debuffs, how about some scaled damage on Shen It's only really for PvP any how... scale the damage on it so 3 of use and hit one trader and live post 14.2 >)



Oh.. point: Zenister, you're under 93 with that MA aren't you I know because I KNOW where the wall is for that profession, I've tried on two sperate charaters to get over it wihtout over equiping my MA, and in the end, you have to to solo.

The notion of forcing others to make the same decisions we choose to make for ourselves reeks of petty thought, and jealiousy. Let others excel, what they do is not important to me. What *I* do should be my ( and i'm opinion others ) primary focus. Not telling others how to behave.

Next point, untill you have walked a mile in someone else shoes, dont' presume to tell them they must suck at building thier character. ( para phrasing you ). You just don't know.

May you reep what you sow.

Snicker. Understood. However, I am a doc. A nanomage MA doc and My main point is: You think I don't suffer from the huge crying that everyone is doing about the possibility of trader debuffs? NT and Docs get hit HARD with those, and frnkly ALWAYS HAVE. Now the playfield will be evened out. Those debuffs will actually have an even effect on the whole player base, as they should. IMHO OEin has allowed people to bypass many important parts of the game, including these specific debuffs. I have xtra shortcut menus set up specificially for trader hits, since I cast at so many levels lower at that point. The MA wall at 93? No clue, I'm a 110 doc that is still teaming and soloing happily.

You're statement scares me: "The notion of forcing others to make the same decisions we choose to make for ourselves reeks of petty thought, and jealiousy. Let others excel, what they do is not important to me. What *I* do should be my ( and i'm opinion others ) primary focus. Not telling others how to behave."

I'm not real sure how you can apply such a statement directly to me. Where did I indicate a desire to force others to make the same decisions I made? Where did I act jealous? Why do you accuse me of petty thought? Did I tell you how to behave? Why so rude?

What I HAVE done, and will continue to do, is indicate that I see relief in the fact the the field will be narrowed, and your dmg output/etc will be based on YOUR skills rather than a trader's past buff on you to put the ql200 uber-gun in yer hand. MAs of ALL people should be happy about this.

[______Chief Engineer]

Lets see....wep users get a 20% reduction in their main form of dmg and I as an engineer that cant hit crap with my gun looses my only real form of protection, damage and worth because my pet wont respond at all?..this is crap. This is simply nano/eng hating!! We already have lil chance in PVP now your cutting our guts out and laughing at us with this idiots patch? Give up the weed morons you have had enough. Looks like its time to delete this game from my computer again and this time throw away the CD!



The only fair way to do this is to make the pet have the same penalties as if it was a gun or wep... Total loss of control?? Plain stupidity! I am far out damaged (me and pet combined) by all but one class now and your telling me I am to be nothing more than a freaking target? Nerf the freaking traders debuffs and solve this problem instead of screwing up another class. I already cant play my agent because of stupidity and nerfs such as this.

[________________Crin]

Originally posted by Paynie


The XP you get for those two is about 0.05% of your xp neede to ding, this make levelling SO MINDNUMBINGLY BORING!

have you ever levelled from 104 to 105 ... doing yellows only? ... gawd .. if the levelling tends to be more of the same thing a higher levels, I'll be 5 years older by now to reach lvl 200 ... in that time I'd like to have played some more chars to a high level as well ... but this way it's no fun... takes too long to get some improvement on your char that way ... wow 3 weeks till I get too use the next pet in line, which will add +30 to his dmg or something ... looks AO is gonna end up like DoaC ...

boring as hell with merely any difference in player base.

First, welcome to the real world with the rest of us.

Second, If your only enjoyment in the game is leveling then you are never going to be satisfied.

Third, I take back part of my previous statement. If all you want to do is level, then stop playing your character once you hit 100, then start another one in a different profession. If Funcom would accept your proposal and make the time to level a constant, then you would hit 200 by the time you hit 100 now anyway, so you would still be playing the character just as much.

[_____________Asmodan]

Originally posted by Freedmen
I do think this patch will hit rider adventurers rather hard or any other profession that uses a weapon where they only try to meet the minimum requirment.

As a pistol adventurer I will more than likely be better off than say a rider user.

What this is going to do I think is going to make people have to think a bit harder where they spend points.

If you want to OE riders I am guessing you have to be within 20% of each of the skills. This has the potential to really hurt if you do not max all the attack skills like heavy weapons and 1 handed edge.

It's not just Riders, it's any weapon which uses two 'main' weapon skills and one of them is low.

Since the OE break points are percentage based, weapons with lower requirements are strongly effected by debuffs. A weapon that has a 200 skill requirement can still be OK to use with 160 skill, while a weapon with 100 skill requirement is only ok with 80.

This means if one weapon needs two skills, one at 200 and one at 100, a 20 point debuff will still force it into -25%, since the lower requirement is now not within 80%.

[________________Ecce]

Originally posted by Sarelron


No, Brawl would be reduced to Brawl - Number of Points Given to Brawl by Raising Strength.

The "illegal" skill levels lie in skill caps based on base ability. You can raise a base ability, max a skill based on that ability higher than you would be able to without raising said ability, then reset the base ability. This *will* remove any points put into the skill directly by raising the ability, but you will still be left with a skill that is higher than it would be able to raise without raising the base ability.

Make sense? =)

Sarelron

P.S. Someone had to explain that one to me too =)

I think I understand now. So, you would only get this "benefit" temporarily, because as soon as you tried to raise that skill later on, you'd get the message that the base ability was too low. This makes it pretty common right after the patch and a lot less common as people level and have fewer Reclaim points to spend. Correct?

[LeetRoolzor]

As it was pointed out with the pistol example, what are the over equipping rules for DUAL WEILDING? I hope that when the adv patch love shows up we WILL get a multi weild buff in our small nano-lines so we will be able to dual weild with no OE drawback.

Oh I forgot to say, not only adv's dual weild, so a buff might not do the trick. Could we EXCLUDE the oe rule on dual weilding? What will happen of the multi weilding I'll ask

[__________WGMelchior]

I'm going to clarify some things. Most of them are written down in the articles, and some has been explained by various helpful funcom people.


1: You won't actually get the permanent points until the time period with the 90ish temorary points runs out. Thus, you will always be 100% sure that you are using up the temporal ones first.

2: Gaute assumes that you have all skills that your weapon of choise depends on either maxed, or at least on the same level. This means that the skill with the highest requirement (like 2HE) will be the most vurnerable to debuffs. If you let any other skill trail behind, and become lower than the rest, of course that one will be vurnerable too, but I don't see the fault in that.

3: Only the most overequipped skill will affect the output. If I lack 40% of 2HE, then it does not matter if I lack 20% in heavy weapons. It does NOT add up to 60%. It adds up to 40%.

4: If you have a theoretical 0 in a skill (possible with debuffs) then you will be 100% overequipped. I assume this means that you will deal -0- damage with your weapons. No weapons will ever heal enemies (If you remember some of the weapons with a min damage of around -3, you would have noticed that they never actually delt negative damage.).

5: Yes, it is possible, and rather easy, to make a routine that checks if you have too little, or too much, IP at any given level. I frankly could care less about the IP rings. They were too unbalancing, and they were duped and whatnot. I got my own. I have already given them up.

Skills has a certain cost. This can be emulated, and has already been done with a couple of skill planning programs done by players. If the total cost and the unspent IP adds up to a faulty number, it can easily be corrected. I suggest doing a forced check during patch downtimes. For everyone.

6: Skill bonuses on an item will NOT be affected. Only the damage. Your pillows and similar items will thus be just as good as before, since you don't actually use them for damage.

7: I am not 100% sure on this, but I think multiwield reqs works exactly the same as any other requirements on your off-hand weapon.

8: Assuming you never use your IPRs, you will get and have the following amounts at certain title levels...

Level 1: Get 1 point, which makes it 1 in total.
Level 15: Get 2 points, which makes it 3 in total.
Level 50: Get 2 points, which makes it 5 in total.
Level 100: Get 3 points, which makes it 8 in total.
Level 150: Get 3 points, which makes it 11 in total.
Level 190: Get 4 points, which makes it 15 in total.


If you can point out any direct flaw in these points, by all means do so. If you have any questions, or want to discuss any of them, then you are very welcome. Just do it calmly.

[________Lord Nemesis]

I am even more excited to see 14.2 go live after reading this article!! Keep up the great work!

[_________haniblecter]

I just had a funny notion about the:

Theoretically, at least, you can then end up with a totally malfunctioning set of implants that won't get back online when the intelligence de-buff nano goes away! (Like a vicious circle, de-buffing skill A means that Implant 1 drops away, which leads to skill B being de-buffed, leading to a de-buff in skill A - which means Implant 1 is offline even without de-buff.!). This is the reason why. The programmers also assure me that what is difficult conceptually, is hard to implement in practice.

Just imagine one debuff causing this massive spam in the chat box as 30 items on your person are debuffed and lose first 20% effectiveness and then 40% while your armor becomes heavier and heavier to the piont where you cant pick up your gun or move about.

We would have all these players running around 80% debuffed and shouting "paying 1 mill to help me get out of this mess!!"

[___________stifelife]

Please give me a date so i know when to cancle.

[Xaielao]

***** this game has a far greater aspect of socialization then EQ ever did. The only reason you don't seem to think so is because
1) EVERYONE's characters start in Tir/clan, newland/neut, omni-e/ot. Nobody bothers to hunt in the zones you named because most of them have never even heard of it! I get asked by lvl30 characters "wheres west athens?"

I mean come on. I remember day (in beta and early release) when people used to hunt those zones quite frequently. When the start area's were more random you could start in West Athen or Athen. Hell I can remember leveling my first character to almost 30 in the Athen Shire and Aegean.
2) EQ is a far smaller game with a lot more players. It's land mass's are far more cramped, ergo your going to meet a lot more players.
3) You spend 95% of your time in EQ setting on your but camping.. and hense chatting with group members and guildies.

But this game is more social because of one thing. It is more designed for the roleplayer. We have several types of bars, nightclubs, resturaunts, a hotel, even an olympic sized in-ground swimming pool. The roleplaying community is much more prolific in AO because of this. Ever visit the Baboons Nightclub website? You'd see there are many people who regularly schedule events, games and parties there and many of the other social places scattered around the world of Rubi-Ka.

Events are tailored for the roleplayer, as is the story. You just have to get involved. It seams most people on this game are only here to be the best of the best and ingore all the other great things this game has to offer. I for one enjoy the hunting and leveling the least. That's why I don't have 6 lvl100+ characters lol, (considering I've been playing since beta4).