Pharone
 

Server: Pharone
Client: Underfoot

I just wanted to drop a note here to say that I have begun work on my server as of this year. This is going to be a very custom server.

Basically, I am creating a server where there is one playable class which is a hybrid of all classes.

The base class is Shadow Knight.

I plan to give Shadow Knights the following:
- Dual Wield
- Round Kick
- Monk's FD
- Cleric spells
- Enchanter spells
- Shaman spells

Weapons are going to be hybrids of the epic weapons, so which weapons you wield will affect your playstyle.

All epic weapons will be non-lore, slottable in primary and secondary, and marked as 1hs.

Going to try to add clickable affects to the weapons that give cast class spells. For instance, if you are wielding the enchanter epic, you can click it to cast AE mez possibly. Click the cleric epic to cast complete heal. etc...

This is going to be a lot of work, and who knows if I will ever accomplish it, but it's going to be fun messing around with it to see what I can do.

*Update*

Implemented the following:
- Dual Wielding skill for Shadow Knight
- SK epic 1.0 changed to 1hs, non-lore, primary/secondary, all classes, req level 0
- Palading epic 1.0 changed to 1hs, non-lore, primary/secondary, all classes, req level 0
- SK epic 2.0 changed to 1hs, non-lore, primary/secondary, all classes, req level 0
- Palading epic 2.0 changed to 1hs, non-lore, primary/secondary, all classes, req level 0
- Creating a new character starts you with a full set of equiped armor
- Creating a new character starts you with SK epic 1, SK epic 2, Pal epic 1, and Pal epic 2 in inventory.

I added Round Kick to the Shadow Knight skills, and it shows up in game, but it does not work yet. Looks like I have to modify the server code to make it work. That's going to be interesting.

Interesting concept. What is the planned end game / replayability goal?

Here is the Pie In The Sky version of what I want. How much and if any of this is obtainable is yet to be determined ;-)

My end game goal is to have a server where you can solo all the content in the game if you want (including the hardest targets in the game) with the difficulty relying more on your choices of how you developed and play your character.

In other words, if you want to be a plate wearing melee caster hybrid that has limited mez abilities, you can. It's all about how you approach the content in my eyes.

Along those lines, I want to base the game off of one base class (utilizing the Shadow Knight right now because it has mana, has decent mitigation, etc). This is important because you can't (to my knowledge) give a non-mana using class the ability to have a mana pool. So, I had to start with a base class that had a mana pool, and I wanted one that naturally wears plate and has defensive skills.

From there, I want to make the development of your character up to you.

I'm thinking of making it so that spells don't drop in game nor are sold by vendors. Instead, I am thinking of a quest system to award you some choice in spells as you level up.

For instance, do I choose the next level Snare, Direct Heal, Heal over time, DoT, Nuke, etc this level. Do I instead choose the next level mage fire pet or necro skeleton pet?

Also, as stated before in the thread, your weapons are given to you when you create the character. You will get 1 of each of the epic weapons (highly modified to represent your level) all set to 1HS, non-lore, usable in primary and secondary stlots. The idea here is that each different type of weapon offers different benefits to your character based on procs and clickies.

As an evolution-type system, every so many levels, you will be able to do a quest from that class' guild master to upgrade that class' specific epic weapon to the next level (evolution isn't implemented in EQemu yet as far as I know, so this will be handled via giving the user a different weapon that represents the next level of evolution).

Those are some of the basic concepts I would like to drive the server design towards.

As for content...

What I want is to wipe the slate clean, and create it from scratch. One starting city with all the necessary quest givers, guild masters, crafting stations, merchants, etc. Might use South Qeynos for this, but not sure yet.

From there, I want to create the content in an episodic way. In other words, You zone out of South Qeynos in to "zone not decided yet" as the newbie starting area, and that's it at first. This starter zone would allow you to level from 1 to 10 probably.

The team (me and who ever wants to work on it) would then create the next content patch for 1 more zone that allows you to progress up to the next level range like 11 to 15. You would get to this content from some zone line in the level 1 to 10 zone. When the content is play tested and ready for consumption, we turn the zone line active for all, and it "goes live".

Then the team goes to work on the next zone, and so forth.

...

It's a ton of work, and in all reality, I'm telling you right now that there is a high percentage chance it will never be completed, but.... it's something to work on and have fun with now that I am pretty much tired of playing on EQ Live and TLP.

I've been in their world long enough. It's time to create MY world.

...

I will explain the theme in the next post as this one is long as hell now lol.

Here's the basic theme of the server which will drive it's episodic story content.

This is an alternate universe of EverQuest where magic has been long since lost by the masses over many centuries. For the most part, people live ordinary lives, and there is no concept of "monsters" to these people.

Unknown to the inhabitants of this Norrath, there is a very powerful God in another EverQuest universe that is quickly coming to the realization that he is close to the end of his reign of terror upon that universe as the heros of his universe are finally about to defeat him.

In a last ditch effort to deny his own destruction at the hands of these heroes, he concocts a spell that destroys his universe because in his mind, if I can't have it, then no one can!

At the last second, one of the other Gods realizes what he is doing, and tries to cast a powerful spell to keep the universe from being destructed, but it was too late. The vast majority of the universe simply ceased to exist, and most of the Gods were lost completely forever.

Tiny pockets of the universe continues to exist in a semi-limbo state. Partially realized and partially not. Time doesn't pass. No one ages. Consumption is not necessary, and most of those still "alive" in this universe are in a comatose state just existing with out knowing it.

As the world around him is quickly vanishing around him, a glimmer of light shines through a tiny pin hole in space. He instinctively moves toward it, and ends up in the universe of this server.

The connection between his universe and this universe has for ever altered this universe. The rules of the universe have changed greatly so to speak. Non of this universe's magics exist anymore. The destroyed universe has some how overwritten the magics of this one, and none of the inhabitants of this universe are able to harness them.

The people of this universe are ripe for the picking for this evil God as they have no ability to fight back against his magics.

He begins creating his evil plans to enslave the inhabitants of his new found universe, but unbeknownst to him, another God has made it to this universe along with him; God2 (name to be determined).

God2 is hell bent on making sure that God1 pays for what he did. God2 bestows the gift of their universe's magic upon all new born of this universe, so that they will be able to fight back and some day destroy him. This takes every bit of God2's power, and the last thing he does before vanishing in to nothingness is bless the people of this universe with a gift of power.

A crate appears in the town center with a note on it that reads, "This gift I give to you to thwart the destroyer. Choose wisely..." Inside the crate are the relics of the lost universe; an assortment of the most powerful weapons ever created by the Gods.

I don't mean to derail the topic, and my apologies if there is much more to this than I understand, but what would happen if you just added mana to those 4 pure-melee classes in the 'Data' table? Assuming you changed spells to be usable by those classes as well, is there more that needs to happen behind the scene to allow pure melee classes to be able to have mana and cast spells?

I read on these forums somewhere that you can't actually give a mana pool to a class that doesn't have one like a warrior or monk because the client wont allow it. Now that being said, that could be completely wrong. I chose the path of least resistance and went with a SK as the base class.

Hard to remember, wasn't there a server in the past that had only one class ? I think was half pve, half pvp and ability for spells to be used by all ? You would have to do some history search on here for server posts. But as I am learning things in the database recently, it looks like most spell casts could be set to 0 mana requirements ? Most all/all clickies are a cast from the spell table as well.

I was able to set it up so that the only available class to choose when creating a dwarf was Shadow Knight. Next, I will do the same for the other races.

*** Update 1/14/2019 ***

I attempted to test the server with the RoF2 game client, and... it did not go well.

To be precise, adding Dual Wield skill to the Shadow Knight causes the RoF2 client to do really crazy stuff and then crash. It was a no go.

Here's the thing though. I really would prefer to use the RoF2 client because quite frankly, it's got features that I prefer over the older Underfoot client.

So...

I am considering changing the base class for my server design to the Ranger since it has dual wield by default.

I'm going to work on testing out using the Ranger some this week, and make a decision on if I am going to base my server on RoF or Underfoot.

This is why Ranger was used on Classless.

Perfect class for what you are trying to do.

Yeah. It seems like the best option.

*** Update 2/1/2019 ***
- Switched the playable class from Shadowknight to Ranger
- I tried to change the name of the class from Ranger to something else, and this had disastrous effects. I tried repeatedly, and came to the conclusion that it just isn't worth the trouble. I may revisit this at a later time. It was just an experiment anyway to see what the system can do as I have not decided on a class name yet anyway.

*** Next Up ***
Weapons:
- As stated before, I am planning to go with a single weapon that you get at character creation as part of the story line which will be pivotal to the lore.
- Going to test having 4 basic augment slots for the weapon that you replace as the story progresses
- Augment slot 1: Base stat augment. This is the main augment that you get at the beginning of the game. You upgrade it via quests (replace with new augment rewarded to you) as the story progresses
- Augment slot 2: Proc augment. This is an augment that will proc some affect based on which class augment you choose from quests. example: Shaman quest line results in an augment that procs slow
- Augment slot 3: Clicky augment. This augment is where you will put your augments that have a clicky affect. The clickies will be based off of which class the augment is based on. Example: Cleric quest line results in augment with clicky heal.
- Augment slot 4: Bane damage augment. This augment gives your weapon bane damage. You would get these augments from completing hunter-style quests. Example: completing a quest to kill 1000 undead might result in an augment with Undead bane damage.

So, basically, an EQ version of Elder Scrolls Skyrim? I'm sold. Can't wait to check this out

I am running some very basic testing on the server today. Feel free to drop by and test out the weapon and augs system.

1. Create a character
2. Hail Pharone the Gnome
3. Talk to him to get your weapon, shield, and augments for your weapon.

Mix and match the augs in your weapon to try things out.

MAZE! We miss you and we miss Classless!

But yeah in case you weren't aware pharone, the Classless server did a lot of what you were doing, we had backstabbing, FD'ing, Dual Wielding, Flying Kicking toons and it was super fun, though spells were random drops off all NPCs in the world based on level, there. A questing system for your spells or having to pick one or the other also sounds interesting.

The system tests went good yesterday. Had a lot of fun messing with different weapon augment combinations.

AoE Stun proc aug was interesting to say the least. I wouldn't say it made the character invincible as much as it simply gave him a fighting chance against multiple targets at once. He still was able to be killed if enough mobs attacked him at once or got some hard hits in.

I think I have decided to lower the base damage on the weapon by a lot, and instead have the weapon damage more based on the augments you slot in it.

Was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot about the emulator yesterday.

Awesome. do you know if the backstab, FD, and flying kick was implemented via giving the skills to the ranger class or through custom created AAs?

Messing with the skills wasn't hard to do when I was testing it before on the SK, but I found that giving dual wield to SK caused the RoF2 client to do really bad things and crash.

I've gone full ahead with using the RoF2 client (because it has a lot better features than the previous clients in my opinion), and I have not tested giving non-ranger skills to the ranger class with the RoF2 client yet. I'm hoping that it wont make it go crazy like giving dual wield to SK did.

Yeah I'm trying to go with a system that makes spell use very special and situational. Spells will be very few and far between, cost a lot of mana, and potentially have long recast times. I want the gamer to have to make careful decisions about when they use spells. They will be very powerful when they are used, but they will not be able to be used oftenly.

As for the rest of the time, I want the weapons you are using to be a strategic decision as well by the player. I want the player to have multiple weapons they have collected (and tweaked with augments) that they switch between (bandolier usage) based on the situation at hand. For instance, when fighting in a goblin lair like Runnyeye, the user will likely be using weapons that have heavy snares, roots, and goblin bane damage.

Along the lines of having to be aware of the mobs you are fighting and using the right equipment, I want the player to have to put effort in to obtaining the pieces necessary to make said weaponry. Therefore, certain weapons and weapon augments will only be obtainable in certain locations from certain mobs. Others will only be available by completing certain quests.

Going back to the Runnyeye example from before, obtaining goblin bane augments might be best handled by completing quests for factions that hate goblins or killing other mobs that are natural enemies of goblins.

But, why would the player care so much about creating a set of weapons/gear to go to Runnyeye in the first place? Why does the player care enough about goblins? Does this mean that the end game is going to have a lot of heavy goblin influence that the player needs to be prepared for? No. Not necessarily. There may or may not be any goblins in the "end game".

The reason someone would want to be able to be an efficient goblin killer is because the most powerful goblins in the deepest reaches of goblin strongholds might possess weapons, gear, and/or augments that help them prepare for other types of mobs like magical-based, giants, etc.

So, you see, going to dungeons to fight is much, much more than just to get levels and gear. It's more about getting the various pieces necessary to create gear for killing specific types of mobs.

A level 70 might find that they need some specific items from Runnyeye, and they go there thinking they are sufficiently higher level to not have to worry about it only to find out that their weaponry is less than useful against goblins, and get their ass kicked by low to mid level goblins. Hence, they would need to go gear up on goblin killing gear and then come back to kill goblins to get what they need for that other end game content they was trying to prepare for.

The other classes’ combat skills were normal skills, not AA’s. Maze was the dev behind that server though so he would know more.

Most definitely source code related changes and skill table changes.