On hit points, levels, and reality-checks...

[hogger]

When looking at Drawde's spawn data and comparing HP's to level, one thing becomes obvious: the deck is stacked against the player(s). HP's per level grow at an alarming rate. At 1st level, the average HP/lvl is 16. By 5th, this has gone up to 20. By 10th its 24. By 20th, 30.5. At 30th, 38.333. And finally by 60th we've jumped to 305 points per level (on average). What, one might ask, about your typical Human Warrior player character? 33 points per level. Period. And this doesn't even touch on the disparity of abilities between your typical 'boss mob' and the characters trying to bring it down...

VI's eq was clearly meant to make you group up and keep playing through the night - even when you're getting married tomorrow. EverCrack, it's been called. I guess this begs the question for server ops: Do you want to recreate this?

Personally, I can't see it. I've never been so esteemed as to go on a raid with 100 people and kill something obscenely huge, so I won't miss it. On a more practical note, I don't ever see my server with 100 active accounts - let alone characters with enough grit to pull something like that off.

[Drawde]

I agree entirely, it seems like most of the balancing in EQ seems to be tailored to make you spend huge amounts of time to get anywhere or do anything once you've got past the newbie rat/decaying skeleton-slaying level. Apart from the high HPs of monsters there are things like rare and eternally camped spawns that only occasionally drop the quest item or whatever that you need, and things like the dragon banishing, trivial loot system etc. which make things annoying for high-level players.
I am trying to make my world data more balanced and less infuriating, I've eliminated rare spawns and rare drops but will be also looking into making monster HPs more reasonable for single players or small groups once I've got things a bit less buggy and more polished. I've already started with the Planes
This isn't true to the original EQLive servers but then none of my data is exactly, I was intending it as more as a "interpretation" balanced for single-player or small-scale multiplayer games.

[Baron Sprite]

All I everwanted and still want out of eq, is to kill stuff :D isn't that what every mmorpg leads too? I don't care if it's a rat or a dragon, dead is dead :D That's the problem with real eq tho, like you said, to see bigger stuff dead, need more people, then more time, ect ect. Time is life to me, don't have 14 hours a day to spend just to see something dead. Viva la emu ;)

[Ariak]

You forgot to post the 60+ trend.

When mobs can go up past the 1 million hp marker :)

[Megahertz]

"I don't care if it's a rat or a dragon, dead is dead"


So just kill rats all day, and leave the dragon slaying to the people who enjoy doing so. =)

"Time is life to me, don't have 14 hours a day to spend just to see something dead."

Then don't, nobody forces someone to play for 14 hrs (tho i think this is a bit unrealistic for *most* raids, a well organized Vox or naggy raid takes 2 hours, but a PoA raid can take up to 3 days to reach the final island).

It seems to me that EQ covers the spectrum as far as what people want and how much time they are willing to invest into getting it. Just cause an encounter would require a few days to enjoy and conquer does not mean somebody has a right to complain thats its too hard for them. Raids like PoA is made for the people who have 3 days to invest. It's alot of hard work (trust me I've done a couple), takes alot of teamwork and patience. Just like anything else thats worthwhile in life.

It's like complaining that Ferrari's are too expensive and they shouldnt cost that much because I don't have that kind of money to buy one. And that I shouldn't have to invest 14 hrs a day to build my own successful company to have the kinda income needed to afford one. Sure it would be nice to have one, but you have to weigh the benefit with the investment.

Ferrari's are there as rewards for the people who can and do invest their time to build up enough financial independence so that they can buy one. Yes, some people in their lifetimes will never drive, touch, or possibly see a Ferrari in real life. It's just something they have to accept and just be happy with what they're willing to settle with.

Well enough rambling from me. Regardless of the above, the source code to the emu is available and the database can be modified to suit whatever play style you so desire.

[Razzle]

It's like complaining that Ferrari's are too expensive and they shouldnt cost that much because I don't have that kind of money to buy one. And that I shouldn't have to invest 14 hrs a day to build my own successful company to have the kinda income needed to afford one. Sure it would be nice to have one, but you have to weigh the benefit with the investment.

Ferrari's are there as rewards for the people who can and do invest their time to build up enough financial independence so that they can buy one. Yes, some people in their lifetimes will never drive, touch, or possibly see a Ferrari in real life. It's just something they have to accept and just be happy with what they're willing to settle with.

Is it just me, or are those two paragraphs really just about his current monetary status? I will personally never buy a Ferrari- not because I can't afford one, but because I don't think I need to own a car that's expensive in order to justify that it's worth buying.

Edit: Sorry for the thread hijacking. To get back on topic: When we emulate EQ, it doesn't mean we have to emulate the parts that we think suck, it's completely open ended, and I, personally, don't want to have to spend 3 days on a raid.

[DeletedUser]

mobs have the ability to have up to 8 billion hp.

[theCoder]

(Maybe this should be in the dev forum, but oh, well)

mobs have the ability to have up to 8 billion hp.

8 billion requires 33 bits. Are you sure you don't mean 2 billion? In zone/mob.h, all the hp fields are declared as sint32, which is declared as a signed int in common/types.h. The maximum size for a signed int is 2^31-1 = 2,147,483,647 (the final bit is for the sign). But I haven't looked at all the code, so I could be wrong...

[DeletedUser]

I was told a while ago we had the ability to set hp up to 8 billion.. whoever changed it I don't remember..

[hogger]

Isn't there always the perrenial (sp?) EQ Defender? That point of view always shocks me with it's enthusiasm. I - as you may have guessed - am completely in the other camp. I'm thinking class-action lawsuit here. I'd bet that there's enough that's intentionally time-consuming and enough people that have been hurt by their own poor judgement... just like cigarettes.

Take Ferarri's for example: they're hand made, and extremely high performance. It's not like they took my Ford Tempo away (that I'd been enjoying already - note this is the metaphoric '30 days free') and make it a $200,000 car just because they could. I'm all for building up a character through dedicated play. I've had pen-and-paper games that went on for years. It's the concept that it is IMPOSSIBLE for just anybody to enjoy high-level, small scale play that's borderline criminal.

[Trumpcard]

Hogger, I would agree with you if it werent for the fact that you DONT HAVE TO PLAY...

Enough people hurt by their own poor judgement... That whole ideal is why all of us have to be constantly afraid of lawsuits in our culture. Thanks to those concepts, you dont have to ever be personally responsible for your own actions so long as you have a scape goat you can blame and/or sue.

Once you hit the age of 18, you are an adult, and as such, you are responsible for the decisions you make.. for good or foul..

Oh, but its not fair, they got me so horribly addicted to their game and I had to devote more time to it your honor, thats why I abandoned my family.. pppppppaaaaallllleeeeeaaaaaasssseee..

Hope you dont take offense, this is just my disparate view.

As far as Im concerned, if you smoked for 30 years when they had surgeon generals warnings emblazoned across the side, and die of lung cancer, whose fault is that? Once again, failure of an adult taking responsiblilty for their own life. Im from a state that has been hit hard by those stupid class action lawsuits, so that ones a sore spot with me.

Anyways, this is my rant for the week.. Maybe we should move this thread over to off-topic ! LOL

[Hmm]

trump i agree with you indeed...when person is a adult whatever decisions they make is his/her fault alone.

thats way it should be,not a race of children.