Mob difficulty isnt scaling with character

[Cowboy6534]

Say the max hit in the npcs table is 200. So if the rand int rolled 99 it would look at the table and see that the most it could hit for is 200. Then it would check the character being attacked AC defensive AAs and what not to determine how much dmg is actually done to the character. This of course is only on a successful hit towards the player character.

[Caryatis]

Dude you have 3 parses from a level 5 toon and all you are suggestions are hugely generalized. Go look at the code, find out where its inaccurate, parse way more data and then came back with update formulas. Nobody is going to do all that work just because you spent 5 minutes parsing a low level toon, so if its important to you... have at it.

[jsr]

Hmm.. actually I did look at the graphs and they are interesting as far as level 5 goes. Unfortunately all they do is demonstrate a problem with the current formula, at those levels, without any variables except defense skill and level. You have succeeded in pointing out an issue.

I'm not really sure what you mean by "AC determines how much you get hit for and not what the mob is going to hit you for" .. For what it's worth I have worked on the combat code and have a thorough understanding of it.

At the end of the day no-one really cares about level 1-5 if the existing formulae work at the high end. Whether you think people are listening or not, the bottom line remains that you either come up with a workable formula and prove that it is significantly more accurate than the current, or if you want someone else to come up with a formula I suggest parsing ~10,000 lines of combat for each level, and finding the common min hit AC and common max hit AC thresholds at each level. That sort of data would be useful in trying to reverse engineer the mitigation formula. The graphs you posted highlight an issue at level 5, but they don't offer much in the way of solutions. The only reason I continue to respond is for the off chance you would actually do this :P I'm happy to build models if there is sufficient data.

[Cowboy6534]

Heres the question I have. When you say high end or end game what do you mean? I am looking at this for server that will have a max level of 60. Do you mean 85 for UF or 90 for HoT? Do you mean 65 for GoD? I have lvl90 toons on FV so I could get the data for that. They have a mix of hot uf and VoA with max aas. Gear should not be a problem to attain the data from live, but if you are looking to balance lvl65 and I am looking for lvl60. From what you have said so far about my data only showing lvl1-5 and it wont work for balance high end then that means that I would want to collect data for max lvl60 and you would want me to collect data for whatever your high end is. I dont mind taking the time to collect the data because I can already see that at lvl30 its still a problem. I have lvl30ish toons on TGC and I can see that its a problem. Also I would like to note that my C++ experience is limited and I am still learning. I dont know all of the stuff I would need to make it work correctly but I know that there are people here that do. Also the fact that this isnt a problem on project1999 means that its already been solved and I am not sure that they took the time to get 10,000 lines of data per level to solve it. I dont mind power leveling toons to certain levels and getting them the same gear to do the testing but I want to know that if I do it at lvl60 will that be sufficient or are you wanting something higher than that to do anything? Which is why I asked Cavedude what he meant by higher levels.

[cavedude]

65 Raids parse very similar to Live on TGC. I agree the farther you go down the worse we scale but even at the lower levels it's honestly not that bad. It also needs to be stated that the era we are currently on cannot be parsed because it no longer exists on Live. So, we approximate. As it's been said above, you need hundreds of combat parses to form a true data set. A handful of battles will not do, because that same battle may play out much differently each time you try it. It's really a big picture type situation.

Combat sadly simply cannot just be fixed. Sony overcomplicated it, and so it's more a slow progression to dial in on the right formulas. KLS did a lot of that a while back, but really he got combat to a place that is really close, especially considering that we have probably a hundred or so rules that can be adjusted on the fly to tweak it further. I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement, there most certainly is. But, I wouldn't call combat broken, either.

You can't compare P1999 to EQEmu. They are emulating a much earlier time with a far less complicated combat system. Even if they provided their source/rules, I am sure much of it would be irrelevant to EQEmu.

But, as I mentioned above we do have tons of rules that govern a lot of areas in combat. If your C++ skills are limited you may be able to look into them to start tweaking. The rules can be changed and reloaded on the fly, without even restarting the server so it's pretty ideal. If you find values that you feel are closer, please share. Also, I am the first to admit NPC stats are off in the DB. We just don't have enough data to correct them all, since the important ones are hidden to the player.

[Cowboy6534]

How many fights would you need? I can get unlimited fight data using MQ2. I currently run my 90 sk mnk shm clr in brells rest without logging them out for weeks at a time. The longest I have left them in was three weeks without logging out. Every 4 or 5 days I run my shaman over and sell all the crappy and I usually get about 1mil plat every 5-7 days. My sk can solo pretty much anything so if you wanted me to I could deck out a tank in GoD gear and use my clr shm to keep it up indefinately. The only problem I see is that raid and group stuff in EQ has always been balanced differently. Remember the nerf to monks back in PoP era? The raid monks were effected least of all when they nerfed the mitigation and monks that were in group gear suffered greatly.

My goal is to get the parse charts to scale like live on my server and honestly I think a check like I talked about is needed. If it doesnt work then thats ok but if nobody tries it then we wont know. If I start writing this piece of code can you help me with the stuff I dont understand? Honestly most of my C++ experience is writing and modifying macros for mq2. I have started teaching myself C++ from my friends books he used it college but being that I am in college atm I dont get a lot of time to just sit down and learn it.

Edit: Just to note. I dont die ever. Ive even had people train my guys and they dont die =)

Edit2: Also it wouldnt be too difficult to recreate a similar era to what TGC is in. If you limit your gear and aas that were released during that era and stay in zones that were also during that era you will be really close. Another thought is that raid data will be harder to get since it has lockout timers and long respawn timers that you'll have to wait for on live.

[Caryatis]

You dont need to know any C++. Parse 3 different AC sets against a common mob 250 times every 5 levels(could probably do less at early levels). Then once you have all that data, create a mathematical formula that will produce those values given the inputs available. You will quickly find out that close is good enough.

[Cowboy6534]

I will get started then. Starting at lvl1 going to lvl65 every 5 levels 500 mobs. Because I wont be able to guarantee that they will always be even con.

Edit: I will be using a troll warrior to do this.

Do you want me to use any specific gear? or just the same gear for all levels?

[Cowboy6534]

or do you want like 100ac 200ac 300ac? Not character sheet but gear total ac.

[Caryatis]

Would have to be appropriate for the level(ie like 100,150,200 for level 10 ... 1000,1250, 1500 for level 50, etc).

Also if you are serious about doing it(good on you), then wait alittle bit and see what kind of consensus you get as to the best way to parse it. I just threw out that scenario because its going to yield more useful data than straight up parsing but I sure some of the devs who actually dealt with the combat code may have better ways.

[Cowboy6534]

sounds good. I'll start with levels 1 5 and 10 for now and do 100 200 300 ac. Checking the baz to see whats up and how much ill need to farm. shouldnt be too much.

[jsr]

I wouldn't mind putting some criteria together, but I need a few days to mull it over. Caryatis is spot on when he says get some consensus as to the best way to parse, consensus now would make accepting potential changes a lot easier. I wouldn't mind taking a look at live first to get some idea of baselines.

10,000 lines of combat sounds like a lot, but it is a reasonable figure to get a solid dataset. Getting 10,000 lines takes significantly less time than leveling up a char.

Any parses on live should be matched with identical parses on 0.8.0.

As far as what AC brackets to use, there should be a bell curve distribution of hits across 20 different damage values. As AC and PC level increases the bulk of hits will shift to the lower end of that 20, and as mob level increases the hits will shift to the upper end. To replicate the live formula's closely you need to identify the lower and upper end of that AC bracket at each level interval (5 level intervals seems reasonable), and parse 10-20 AC intervals (i.e 10-20 discrete AC values, not Starting AC + 20, Starting AC + 40 etc) in between. It's also necessary to understand the impact of PC level vs NPC level as a ratio rather than simply 5 levels +/-.

FWIW this is a pretty big task, once some criteria are established I imagine it would be more sensible to break the task up between more than one person if there are other volunteers Plus if people have chars at various levels on live it saves a lot of leveling up time.

[Cowboy6534]

I currently have 623 mobs parsed at lvl1 with 113ac. Im now doing 600 at lvl1 with 55ac. Then I was going to do 600 at lvl1 with no gear. Using the same wep the entire time.

Edit: I have my 90 cleric grouped with my war in the field of bone newbie area. I have my 90 sk killing trooper taer so he doesnt come down and kill my war =).

[jsr]

are all the mobs the same level? :P

[Cowboy6534]

No they are all even con and yellow. To get 600 even con mobs at lvl1 would take far too long. Thats why I did 600 so that it would even out some. Unless they have to be even con then Ill do it again. I dont see too much of a problem with level 1 data including yellow mobs.