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I'm going to sticky this because I see a chance for some excellent discussion and for players to voice their concerns on races.
I havnt read through Ini's post yet (no time – I am on a lab comp and have to finish a programming project) but I would love to hear players' opinions on this issue, especially those who feel their race has been gipped. It's not really my post so I'm not in a place to make rules but I hope you will all remain civil in this manner like you all have done a very good job of on the PK post 8)
~~@Ithilidin:~~
> I'd like to point out, playing an Elf, that resistance to magic really isn't that great. The only thing that saves me is having spell deflection and music. I have yet to resist a spell thrown at me by anyone who is around my level. Hell, rezian tourists still dispel me around 75-80% of the time. I think the only saving grace is taking less damage from ataraxias than anyone else in the game due to it being considered magical damage.
Hmm Ith - I think you misunderstand the resistance to magic. Resistance to an attack type means you take roughly 20% less damage from damaging attacks of that type… it has nothing to do with blocking actual spells like poison, dispel magic, etc.
Does it suck? Yes. Should it be implemented that resist magic lessens your chance of being dispelled, poisoned, silenced, etc? Completely (when I have time). But for now I just thought I'd clarify.
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The only spells used in combat are the ones you named, so at the moment, it does not do much. I already pointed out that the damage taken from ataraxias was less, which I did understand. I found that out after hitting a creature immune to just magic and it taking no damage. ;) If I didn't make that clear, then I am sorry for the confusion.
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The next logical step in this comparison is to determine which races are strong in pk, and which are weak. No one else seems to have an opinion so I'll once again give you mine. In descending order, strongest to weakest:
1\. Vampire
2\. Titan
3\. Drow
4\. Elf
5\. Lich
6\. Dwarf
7\. Sith
8\. Draconian
9\. Slayer
10\. Human
11\. Minotaur
It's a close call to choose one between vampire and titan, both have potent strengths, but in the end vamp comes out on top. No race can compete with their maxes, no race can be as stealthy, and in the wake of recent tweaks vamps have only gotten stronger. Titans rate a very close second despite their low mana because of their ability to flat out hit harder than any other race, by far. Spread the added damage of titanic attack/two handers in one hand out over the course of a fight, it's just a matter of ratios to see the potential.
Survival in pk is closely linked to mana, and that premise defines the next three slots. Drow are better off than the others thanks to their added defense and adequate hp, but they're all fairly comparable. The biggest single threat to this trio is a titan, less so for the drow, because of the aforementioned damage capability.
Dwarf comes in ahead of sith in spite of the lower mana thanks to it's huge list of resistances. Sith, slayer, human, and draconian are all basically equal, you could pretty much call them a tie. Sith's slightly higher mana is countermanded by their vulns, slayer's vuln to negative is balanced out by it's damge bonus vs evil, draconians and humans are your "average" races, draconian slightly ahead thanks to their remort ability to use 2 handers in one.
Minotaurs, with next to zero redeeming pk value, finish a very strong last. They lack the big damage of a titan, the mana of a lich, or the resistances of a dwarf. I can quite honestly say there is no good reason to choose mino if you want to pk.
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While I agree with most everything you say Inimical, PK RIGHT NOW is Titan all the way. Right now you can kill a person in two rounds of normal attacks, not even thinking about circle, smite, or spells. It used to be a mana battle, but now it's much too fast for that. Unless it's changed, pretty much all of what you have said here needs to be changed because mana simply does not matter in the current PK.
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I agree with Belexus on this. Mana while important is not near the deciding factor in pk it once was. Now it is about dealing damage faster or having the hp to survive the damage. Titans have the most hp in the game and with titanic attack and single handed 2handed weapons have the best potential in both these respects.
Also the weapons available that deal high damage dont exploit either of their weakness'. And for these reasons atm, Titan is about pk at the moment.
And just an aside yes stealth is very useful in getting to or avoiding pk. But once the battle is joined. Shape has no useful effect what so ever. So as a pk strength I would not say it ranks as high as people seem to think.
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As an Elf, I absolutely hate racial haste. I know before you used to gain +dex and AC, but not sure if this is true anymore. Elves don't get this addition. By level 10-15 everyone has it through candy necklaces, so it is no actual boon to have it, unless you are in the newbie area. One of the best neck items you can get is the sentience amulet, which has haste on it. Haste is everywhere in the game, unlike things like titanic attack or shape. Not a great advantage to have.
High racial stats, great, at first, but like haste, everyone eventually has the same, or close.
Average stat is 18.
+2 for class, +3 for going over is 23, +2 for remort is 25\.
Lowest stat in the game is a 16
+2 for class, +3 for goinv over is 21, +2 for remort is 23\. Still not bad.
Humans gain +4 for going over, I believe I heard Xavis say once, so:
+3 for class, +4 for going over is 25, +2 for remort to make it easier on finding equipment.
Then finding the equipment to gain these plusses, really isn't hard, so eventually the only bonuses that an Elf has over others is mana, a slight archery accuracy bonus and magic resistance that only works with dealing with damage done by magic or magical items.
In the short run, Elves are great. In the long run the other classes catch up stat wise, leaving only the added mana the only boon to Elves until resistance to magic comes into play to help defend against resisting spells cast that aren't damage (which are hardly to ever used in PK. People can't afford to waste the mana)
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To make pk more fun the __potential__ to do more damage than your opponent can heal must be there, otherwise healing is all there will be. It cannot become a contest of simply spamming high damage skills/spells either though, there has to be a delicate balance between healing and defense vs offense.
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Spells need a boost in damage. Not like when I was taking 800 damage from Syron from just a magic missile, but something extra added so that people will use them in combat and not feel it has gone wasted for that extra 42 damage.
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The first step towards that was taken by making it so you can only heal once between rounds now. Damage may need to be tweaked lower to compensate for this so that fights last a little bit longer than they currently do and mana begins to play more of a part. Also I like the ideas about tweaking dispel which I believe Syn will be working with so that dispel and heal aren't the only spells useful as well as the reduction for sanctuary's strength and I'm guessing the increase in the value of ac to counteract it's weakened state.
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You brought up two points I was getting around to articulating, I just hadn't developed a solution yet :wink: Notice in my comparisons I didn't even mention stats like str, dex, etc because they're almost totally meaningless. If you can't get all 24+ stats after eq as a mort, you will after remort. Do these stats even really **do** anything? Aside from level up bonuses, I personally don't know what they affect.
Second, the equipment in the game doesn't make sense. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it, no sense of flow or continuity as you level up. Stats and affects seem to be thrown wily nily onto items without much regard for what that means. The "which class needs more eq" thread on another board made me cringe. There needs to be a serious evaluation of, well basically everything in the game, but the eq is no small piece of that.
As an afterthought, a damage tweak may be necessary but I don't think that this tweak alone will do enough to bring the proverbial balance to the force.
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I think it would be more exciting to an extent if healing was the after thought instead of attack spells. The thought process of "Do I really wanna waste time with a heal spell if I can cause him/her more damage with another glorious bolt?" Is a hellah better than "I hope my mana lasts while I spam heal twice a round".
Maybe the casting time for heal is too short and needs to be lengthened during combat. If so, then the damage deal with weapons should be lessened.
As said before, It's a delicate balance issue :/
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If you tried **playing the game** you'd have noticed that the change to heal has already happend. :wink:
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~~@Inimical:~~
> You brought up two points I was getting around to articulating, I just hadn't developed a solution yet :wink: Notice in my comparisons I didn't even mention stats like str, dex, etc because they're almost totally meaningless. If you can't get all 24+ stats after eq as a mort, you will after remort. Do these stats even really **do** anything? Aside from level up bonuses, I personally don't know what they affect.
I beg to differ… even though with our lack of documentation I can't blame you at all for thinking that way. The stats are very highly used as such, just to quote a few cases:
strength- used in computing how much damage you do, what you can carry, what kind of cart you can pull, whether or not you can knock someone down with a bash, etc
intelligence- how fast you advance in skills, whether when practicin or on the field, also calculated into auto-hunting for PC, also gives higher mana regen
wisdom- this one doesnt do tooo much, except give mana regen( but is also calculated in PC autohunt)
dex- very important - used in almost all combat calculations, whether or not your attacks or defences will suceed
con- helps resist toxins and poisons
Most of these apply quite highly in the game as they are used in percent calculations... which is why they are in the 3-25 range numerically 8)
Perhaps they arn't doing enough influence, in which case i'll need to analyze them a little bit. But 2 diff in an attribute gives a significant boost (although a subtle and hard one to see without looking at the specific calculations. If you wish I'll give you an example). a 5-10 attribute difference is even more important.
> Second, the equipment in the game doesn't make sense. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it, no sense of flow or continuity as you level up. Stats and affects seem to be thrown wily nily onto items without much regard for what that means. The "which class needs more eq" thread on another board made me cringe. There needs to be a serious evaluation of, well basically everything in the game, but the eq is no small piece of that.
>
> As an afterthought, a damage tweak may be necessary but I don't think that this tweak alone will do enough to bring the proverbial balance to the force.
this is why I'm hiring new imms to remedy this problem, people who can help because they understand a player's point of view.. however it's pretty important to understand that well over a hundred people have worked on this game, building, many of them had no clue what they were doing (unfortunately), and for me to keep them all in line and investigate every single piece of EQ is pretty tough. Not an excuse for the way things are, just an explanation, but pretty soon we will start sorting it all out.
Sorry to get off topic but I just thought I'd address these issues a little bit because people might be interested in hearing about them.
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I wasn't sure what they did or didn't affect, thanks for the insight. The reason I say they don't mean much (on a race by race basis) is because it's very easy to have all of them at 25 by 120 remort, and most races can get pretty close to all 25's by 120 mort. I'm not even quite sure how the + stats work, is it +2 per class for the primary stat for all mortal and remort levels? Is there a blanket +2 to all stats for remort, looking at my own character there seems to be. They'd be more meaningful if everyone's weren't maxxed out, that was what I was really trying to say.
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~~@Syn:~~
> this is why I'm hiring new imms to remedy this problem, people who can help because they understand a player's point of view.. however it's pretty important to understand that well over a hundred people have worked on this game, building, many of them had no clue what they were doing (unfortunately), and for me to keep them all in line and investigate every single piece of EQ is pretty tough. Not an excuse for the way things are, just an explanation, but pretty soon we will start sorting it all out.
To not do a diservice to those who have immed in the past. Many did have a layout for the areas they were working on but due to problems they were forced to leave and not finish. Often new imms would get the job and know nothing of what had been planned.
There was an effort to try and get the eq and other items in to some order but again things happened. Much of it was not the fault of past imms. At one point there was an attempt by several imms to get all things in the game area by area documented and a text print out made. Then assign imms to work on each area. At that time there was a very good staff system started but things happened and well….communication broke down leaving the left over imms again in the dark.
Some of the past imms were damn good people and knew the ins and outs of scripting and some of the best areas we all love they created.
Syn I hope you can get this group of imms to work together well and they stay a long time with you and Whisp. We do support you all just some of us are trying to rack our brains and see if we migh have some past information hiding on some old CDburn that could help you folks out. No I'm not trying to bash you with this post just was frustrated because a "bug" in the back of my head was giving me a nagging answer to this GQ's problems but it would not come out.
I did find some old data though that might help in the future. I'll see what I can gather from the old collection of notes I kept. Please don't think anyone is mad at the imps or imms we're just sharing your frustration over all the happenings this year.
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Being the resident Dragon (assuming no one has remorted since I last played), I guess I'll say what little I can. While you do say "upon remort" the first time you mention being able to hold two-handed weapons in one hand, you don't the second time, and at the moment no one but me is affected by this, and it'll probably stay that way for a good while unless a new Draconian is quickly gaining. I'm surprised you don't list the breath weapons under the "rocks" heading, but you do so understandably since they're really not that powerful.. only occasionally good for attacking mobs en masse, or exploiting a vulnerability (but I'd still like to see just how well this does by breathing lightning at a titan PC). And yeah, I completely agree that vuln to cold is essentially pointless at the moment.. do something about that! Exploit my vulnerability!
I was going to say something else about another race, but I can't remember it at the moment.. I'll put it up sometime later when I remember it.
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Racial changes that I would possibly like to see with stats doing more:
Minotaur:
Gore: This would allow a minotaur to effectively impale their victim in a weakened state. Moderate damage. 10% lethal hit starting when they are at 15% or lower in hp.
Drow:
Lose holy vulnerability and resistance to charm
Sith:
I'd like to see a cold vulnerability replace the piercing. Note, this should be in place after there are more cold based damage in the game.
Vampire:
Make level based temperence go along with skill. A level 120 with mastered temperence should at best be inconvienced by a 25-50 hp reduction a tick by sunlight. Still hurts a bit, but not devastating. Also add in a no shift while outside/sunlight.
Lich:
Honestly, with all the immunities and resistances, they seem to be pretty well balanced with low hp and vulnerability. A challenge to start with, but a player can get past that if they remain persistant.
Human:
10% longer duration to spells. Due to their ability to adapt and immerse themself, they are able to hold and keep magic around them better.
Dwarf:
Due to being hardy, I can see the fire and cold resistance. Lightning and acid should be dropped from their resistances. Remove vulnerability to drowning as it is pretty well useless to have. Perhaps lower their dexterity a point or two.
Titan:
Drop their dexterity as well.
Elves:
No real comment until resistance to magic becomes more useful and can be seen how effective it is.
Dracons:
Add more cold damage.
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I don't think minotaur's racial skill should be an enhanced version of behead, too strong. Dropping the vuln to holy from drow or lessening further the damage from sunlight to vamps would massively strengthen two races who are already among the best. Altering racial stats like dex is a null factor unless you do it __severely__, with eq able to boost your stats well over their racial max, achieving near 25s across the board is childs play.
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Well dropping dex significantly for Titans makes sense. They're huge… Therefore they probably aren't that accurate in what they hit, and perhaps clumsy in their size. So making their dex super low sounds reasonable to me, considering the possiblilities of hits they have.
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I'd say drop the max over to +2, +3 for humans, to start. And since you critique rather than suggest, modify or change anything yourself, add them to remort counterpart.
