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New Changes on Live

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 8:12 am
by ZexisStryfe
Wasn't sure if I should post this in Development or Content, but here we go.

This month on live there are going to be some pretty major updates as far as both content and functionality are concerned.

As of this update on the development side, The UI will now track an individual's hate with a target. This is done with two windows, both of which show the same info if I am not mistaken. One is the threat window which shows your hate relative to the enemies primary target. The second window is the target window, in which they have how added another bar between hp and power to measure hate. I doubt this will have that much impact on us, since we likely won't implement this feature right away anyway (if it even needs additional implementation, sinc eit is just tracking something that already exists). It did bring up some interesting info tho- how hate is calculated. In EQ2, the formulas are-

1 point damage = 1 point hate
1 point healing = 1/2 point hate

The second half of this update that will concern us more at the moment is a massive consolidation and rebalance of spells (again mostly hate related stuff). Here is the list from the test update notes:
Kiara@EQ2Players.com wrote:Fighter

Kick has been moved to level 3 to fill in a gap caused by spell consolidation

Guardian

The Hold The Line spell line has been merged with the defensive stance lines.
The Iron Will Spell line has been merged with both the offensive and defensive stances.
The Battle Tactics line has been merged into the Call to Arms line of spells.
The offensive stance line will now increase damage done to the guardian and also has a damage based proc while also reducing the hate gain of the guardian.
The defensive stance will now also increase the amount of taunts and increase the hate gain of the guardian.
The hate reduction of the allay line has been reduced.
The Assault line now grants additional threat gains.
Reduced the recast of the Shout line.
The Kick line now generates additional threat.

Berserker

Berserk has been incorporated into the defensive and offensive stances.
The Battle Chant line has been merged into the Bloodlust line.
The Bullying Defense line has been merged into the defensive stance line.
Uproar has been moved to level 2 to fill in a gap created by the ability mergers.
The Growl line is now 10 second reuse and more powerful.
The Offend line has increased threat.
The Whirl line now has a threat component.
Reactive taunt strength of the Insolent Gibe line has been increased slightly.

Paladin

The Redemption line now greatly increases your threat with the target instead of siphoning hate.
The Incite line now increases threat initially instead of overtime.
The Charge line now has a hate component.
The Divine Circle line now has a hate component.
The Blessing of the Penitent and Blessed Weapon lines have been merged into the offensive and defensive stances.
The Blinding Rays line has had its reuse time reduced.

Shadowknight

The Dark Caress and Unholy Weapon lines have merged into the offensive and defensive stances.
Defensive stance line will lower damage but increase threat output.
Offensive stance boosts damage slightly but reduces hate gain.
Sickening Circle will also increase threat now.
The Kick line now has a threat component.

Bruiser

The Roughhouse and Dodge and Strike lines have been merged into the bruiser’s stances.
The Brag line is now more potent.
The Kick line now has a threat component.
The Blazing Strikes line now has a threat component.
The Impose line has faster reuse speed now.

Monk

The Martial Focus and Dragon stance lines have been merged into the monk’s stances.
The Stare line increase threat by more.
The Kick line now has a threat component.
The Cobra Circle line now increases threat to any targets it hits.
Beckon has had its reuse time lowered.

Swashbuckler

The Swarthy Distraction line of spells has changed to be a short duration buff which greatly increases or decreases their target’s hate.

Assassin

The Shadows line has changed to trigger a hate reduction effect.

Ranger

The Reconnoiter line has had its hate reduction effect removed and has a chance on any hit to reduce the rangers hate.

Predator

The Stalk line is now faster casting and lower recovery time.

Scout

The Evade line no longer has any recovery time.

Sorceror

Concussive is now faster casting and quicker reuse time.

Dirge

Hyran’s line has reduced hate gain modifiers but also increases the threat amount.
I figure this should be enough to drive John and his spell infatuation batty for a while :twisted:

Re: New Changes on Live

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 8:20 am
by JCL
Yeah it's not on there, but paladin's Amends spell is turning into a large taunt instead of a hate transfer.

And ctrl+t brings up the hate window.

Re: New Changes on Live

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 9:13 am
by ZexisStryfe
Amends is part of the Redemption line.

Re: New Changes on Live

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 10:46 am
by John Adams
Well I am certainly happy now that Items and Newbie area spawns have eaten up 4 weeks of my life, so I stopped working on SPELLS :(

This is where we get into that grey area of what the Emu is truly going to "emulate" tho... we say Box RoK, Box TSO, yet when either of these expansions were released, there was no spell consolidation. The other thing to consider is that SOE tends to evolve their games mostly to suit the top level folks, which we (as an emu) are nowhere near supporting yet. However, logs we gather after this goes live will conflict with the "box" release support notion.

If we continually change our Emu data to match live as it evolves, we may never get our data done. We need to draw a line in the sand as to what our target data is to support and stand behind it. In the case of spell consolidation, I'm game for supporting this change because we haven't really touched 1% of our spells yet.

Any thoughts on this?

Re: New Changes on Live

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 12:21 pm
by ZexisStryfe
Personally, I think this is where the line between functionality and content should be drawn.

With functionality, obviously we want the emu to be fully functional. However we do have to prioritize. For things like this (lower priority), I believe they should be added to the end of the list unless they are relatively easy to implement or are a part of a larger upgrade, like if we had a combat revamp on our plates, then this would be added to that.

As far as content goes, since we are still in data collection mode, we kind of have to keep up with the Joneses until we have all the base data we need. For instance, with the spell revamp we have tier 1 done, but any subsequent collections would be off the new data. In order to prevent inconsistencies we kind of have to "keep up" unless we can find someway to collect all the data now and just use it as we need it. I know it results in a bit of running in circles, however I just don't see any other way. As far as the spell are concerned, I agree we don't have enough data done to sit back and ignore this change, however if something like this were to happen to items, with 90,000 items already in our database, I believe that would be a different story where we would just have to deal with what we have. I think it's really going to be situational and dependant on how much data we already have.

Re: New Changes on Live

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 2:22 pm
by John Adams
I am not getting a flood of data from the community, so it really is anytime a content team member collects, or if I log in myself and play a while in an area that I get new data. We have focused our collects on various things like Items, Spells, merchants and quests/convos... but our current "quality" data repository stops at Antonica (what is that, Tier 2?). I have tons of spawn data for many other zones, but haven't considered using it since it really is only spawns... and while that's nice, we need _everything_ to be effective.

The thing I am worried about (and by worried, I mean how it effects our goals, not me losing sleep ;)) is that SOE seems to "revamp" shit on a yearly basis... so by the time this emulator core is nearing completion and we have all of the Shattered Lands release game done, everything will change yet again. But, that is the way of emu's with 3 guys working on it regularly.

For Spells, we have upwards of 3700 spells in our live db, with a bunch more in raw data I haven't had time to massage over. With the 3700 we have now, all we have is the parent record data for it (id, name, icon, etc) and NONE of the effects, classes or display data... so honestly, if SOE changes Spells 180 degrees right now, I am ok with it. As long as the SOE changes do not mean LE has to revisit a subsystem we hoped was completed, I am also ok with it.

Any ETA on this change? We can at least prepare for it... and the best offense is to go out and collect as much new data as possible immediately, for analysis. Otherwise, it'll be 6 mos while data trickles in in forum post observations before we (read: I) get things in order.

Re: New Changes on Live

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 4:43 pm
by Zcoretri
John Adams wrote: Any ETA on this change? We can at least prepare for it... and the best offense is to go out and collect as much new data as possible immediately, for analysis. Otherwise, it'll be 6 mos while data trickles in in forum post observations before we (read: I) get things in order.
Well get out and log quick, because it went on to the test sever on the 7th so it will hit live most likely in 2 or 3 weeks.

Re: New Changes on Live

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 5:42 pm
by alfa
Actually Devs are revamp all aggro system on live. That why they still have a lot of fix to do on fighters, Devs have mentionned it plane on 6 month on TSO beta forum :P

Re: New Changes on Live

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 11:28 pm
by Zcoretri
alfa wrote:Actually Devs are revamp all aggro system on live. That why they still have a lot of fix to do on fighters, Devs have mentionned it plane on 6 month on TSO beta forum :P
Yeah that's what this next game update is gonna be. You don't SOE very well do you? They tend to shove stuff out the door with very little testing.

The aggro revamp is on test, so it WILL be going live next update, which is like I said in 2-3 weeks time.

Re: New Changes on Live

Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 9:16 am
by JCL
Well, they want all the fighters to head over to test and try the stuff out before crying about the changes. But we all know not everyone will want to test.

Re: New Changes on Live

Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:47 pm
by alfa
I have /testcopy my Guardian and look very well. Really a pleasure to play a Guardian :P I know generaly SOE do shit with revamp but really amazing this time, new aggro system look really nice, I try to got all my guild /testcopy for raiding a bit ;P But I have hear update come on live 15/01