A problem with the yellow , red, etc. cons

[Angelox]

Here's something I noticed while playing EqEmu; It's possible and usually very easy to kill a white, yellow, or red con, even if you go toe to toe on him with a mellee.
On live, Reds were not possible unless you had a group and a plan, yellows extremely hard (almost impossible to solo; needed a group), whites were hard, at least harder than blues. Seems not to matter much on eqemu.
This creates other problems, remember how I always said mobs were too easy, or leveling was too fast? Most of the problem lay here with the yellows and reds, because although you do get much better exp for killing a red or yellow, because hes an easy kill, why even bother leveling with blues?
If you raise the exp bonus so you can get better exp on blues, you raise it all round, thus making a red or yellow kill become outrageous exp, which is all right, if the mob was a hard kill.
So, I wonder if it might be possible to implement some sort of code, that might compare levels between the npc and pc; example, if pc is 5 levels less than npc, then npc will do more damage, or maybe for every level above what the pc is, the npc will increase it damage.
So as not to screw things up, maybe make an adjustable rule on how much damage an NPC can do with this code - an additional rule like this should keep everyone happy.

[ChaosSlayer]

given that mobs stats are actualy correct for any given mob, Angelox mayby right (given he himself indeed finds kiling of reds too easy - i havent actualy tried of kiling a red on emu)

back on Live few of my alts were rather well twinked - with Centi LS/Lammy and Iksar Bp at lev 20 - there was no freaken way i could solo a 23 with my ranger.

And caster - regardless hwo much mana/ft you had- your nukes simply won't land (note thought a raid mob sometimes would be as much as 5-10 levels above you, you did not had insane resists on them- otherwise there would simply no way to kill it. For exmaple NTOV- very first boss is Aerionar - lev 66, max lev at the time is 60 - 6 lev above you, and Vulak was even higher than that. During PoP, highest lev is 65, yeat mobs gods were 70+ Quarm was 75+)

[trevius]

I think at lower levels, it seems like the red cons are considerably harder than blue white or yellow cons. But, as you level up, it gets easier and easier to take on red cons.

I think this could probably be adjusted by messing with your NPC's accuracy and attack stats in the NPC_Types table. Since accuracy and attack should decide how often and for how hard on average that a player with X amount of defense (and defense skill) should be hit, you should be able to adjust them so that it scales up better than you are seeing.

The only problem I am having with that is finding the appropriate settings for those stats to make them scale the way I would like.

I made a tool request in the post below to help find all of this information and KLS provided a nice little spreadsheet that actually seems useful for this. But, I imagine a tool could be written to make it more accurate and easy to create NPC stats to be balanced the way you want.

http://www.eqemulator.net/forums/showthread.php?t=24671

[GeorgeS]

Along those lines, in my npc creation code (for npc & loot editor), I refer to the database and pull out medians of all the stats when creating an npc, that way you don't have a high level, but weak NPC.

Also, I am not sure if the C++ code should be tweaked to change difficulty by level, but my opinion is if reds are easy then the code should be re-examined.

If you want, I can look at this and make some adjustements..

GeorgeS

[trevius]

It would be nice if there was code to directly give bonuses or penalties depending on what the con is on the NPC you are fighting. Of course, this would probably require a considerable amount of content retuning. It would be nice if this could be added and also have a rule associated with it to enable or disable the code.

There may be something in there already that handles effectiveness vs con levels, but I don't think it is balanced correctly if it is indeed in there. I always love new features, and I do think this would be something nice to have to bring back a little more challenge to the emu. I think the most important part are the level 1 - 70 mobs that people would be exping on. I think the end-game is already setup fine, since you can make mobs much higher level than the players and it will definitely effect how well the characters do against them. It might be nice if there was another field added to NPC_Types that would be on by default, but could be turned off for high level content where the mobs might be 10+ levels higher than the players. If there was an optional field for this, then there wouldn't need to be a rule for it.

[Angelox]

I may have spoke too soon, the problem can be narrowed down some; I noticed when I played a higher level, then things seemed to generally work right - the higher cons were harder.
What's happening to me is, when the character is new, his hp is low and so are the mobs, I'm thinking levels around 1-10 (higher the level, more HP , and the problem lessens.
The lower levels hp regen is so fast, it knocks things out of whack. Character:HPRegenMultiplier has a big effect on this (low level stuff). I lowered Character:HPRegenMultiplier to 50 and it works a little better.
at high levels Character:HPRegenMultiplier works as intended, but low levels, its like having a real good regen item on. Character: HPRegenMultiplier must regen same rate/amount at any level. This really is of no interest to anyone whos driving for big number levels. but if you are trying to make a game with the old zones and the first levels, it becomes a big problem. Maybe theres a way to have Character:HPRegenMultiplier's regen rate raise with the character level?
Anyway, if you regening HP at a fast rate and are at a low level, then the yellow/red mobs are very easy to kill.
I dreamed this up (combined with the lowered HpRegenMultiplier);
## Global Npc PL
## Angelox

sub EVENT_ATTACK{ ## This is an attempt to balance starting level fights
my $aa=$ulevel; ## The higher the level(up to 6), bigger dd spell hits you
my $a=$ulevel+1;
my $b=$a+1;
my $c=$b+1;
my $d=$c+1;
my $e=$d+1;
my $f=$e+1;
if ($mlevel == $aa){$npc->CastSpell(376,$userid);}
elsif ($mlevel == $a){$npc->CastSpell(123,$userid);}
elsif ($mlevel == $b){$npc->CastSpell(123,$userid);}
elsif ($mlevel == $c){$npc->CastSpell(477,$userid);}
elsif ($mlevel == $d){$npc->CastSpell(445,$userid);}
elsif ($mlevel == $e){$npc->CastSpell(445,$userid);}
elsif ($mlevel >= $f){$npc->CastSpell(445,$userid);}}

Basically insures your gonna have a hard time with a yellow or a red - two yellows will probably kill you.
what it does is check your level and hit you with DD accordingly. If you are high level, you won't even notice, this because they are low HP DDs.
I'm testing, but thing is, in order to truly test something like this, you have to start a new character and play with what he has (un-twinked). Most players don't do this, so you have to test for your self.
the 445 spell is probably too harsh for a low level (100+hp) , the script just and idea i have and it seems to work alright.
Keep in mind, I'm working with the low level characters ATM, things might be different with higher ones