Live Tweaks

[LethalEncounter]

Do you find a feature on live boring or stupid? Do you wish it could be changed? Now is your chance. While the emu is still young, let me know what features you think should be changed for the emu. If enough people want a feature changed, it will be changed. I am not a live purist and think that we have the opportunity to fix some of lives problems. One example would be the tradeskill system that in my opinion is boring and cumbersome with all of it's repetitive glory. That is one example that I don't plan on replicating from live.

[alfa]

You talk about old or new craft system ?

[John Adams]

Doh? I love the crafting system on Live - at least from 2 years ago when I last played heavily.
Has it changed again to something awful? Talk about an awful tradeskill system - EQ1... and now, Vanguard. hah. Hate them.

[alfa]

Doh? I love the crafting system on Live - at least from 2 years ago when I last played heavily.
Has it changed again to something awful? Talk about an awful tradeskill system - EQ1... and now, Vanguard. hah. Hate them.

As far I know (I have a craft to made for an RoK Quest) and now you only have 6 spell appear on back on craft windows, very simple.

[CrabClaw]

Yes, to lower their standards when chasing WoW they hit it with the [idiot stick].

[Polygon]

I would like to see an Emulator which is based before the release of any expansion. I really liked the old (complicated) crafting system, the class quests for definitive class choice. Some kind of classic EQ2.
The AA points are a good thing, you can now solo effective as a priest (if skilled on dps) which was almost impossible at launch and a bit later.
Yeah thats all. Just my point: EQ2 was better in 2004/2005 than now.

[torgum]

So this is nothing i'd like to see I don't want to miss my expansion features and the current crafting system (which is complicated enough )

[ZexisStryfe]

If we are talking about the differences between the old tradeskill system and the new, the differences are really non-exisitant. The old system simply relied on WARTS and intermediates which would be easy to set up. It would just involve changes to the database and a UI mod to get rid of those 6 icons in the tradeskill window. In my opinion, that system would not be ideal for a emu server however, largely because of the interdependancy involved in it.
As far as changes to the setup of certain systems... I would be careful. I would try to keep things as close to live as possible and maybe offer modules of some sort that can offer custom systems. I, for instance, like the current tradeskill system, even if it is a little boring. Its better than anything else out there. If you come up with something different, I may love it, you may love it, but someone else who is a purist may get annoyed by the change.
I also strongly advise against basing the emulator on old systems in the history of EQ2. Its easy enough to not use newer systems (like AAs for example) if you don't want to, but you can't do things the other way around if the system hasn't been programmed in. Nothing has changed so drastically that by making the emulator up to live compatability, you couldn't set up an old style EQ2 pre-DoF server with any more than a little database work.

[oghog]

I agree with Zexis.
While the old tradeskill system was tougher, and made more sense in a way, it was player driven because you had to rely on other players to create items you could use for your own tradeskill (after level 10 anyhow). If you had a server with 1000 people it may not be too tough but for an EMU server that probably isnt going to happen. And really, I know alot of folks love crafting, but if you dont have anyone to sell stuff to, whats the point?
Its been about a year since I played EQ2, but if memory serves correctly there was some decent stuff that could be made with tradeskilling, but nothing earth shattering. I know alot of quests, including heratige quests were related to making something from tradeskills.
As with EQ1 there is PEQ which tried to keep up with the most recent live quests and functionality and there was Angelox's DB which was more "old school".
It'd be great to have a choice, but I would recommend caution on making things to different from the "norm".

[alfa]

Probably right but for me, Craft is "a game in a game" on offi some personn are lvl 20 adventure and 60+ craft so I think craft should be present on emu

[CrabClaw]

Actually all I want from this project is a nice clean slate, functional tradeskilling, combat, spell lists and such and such. Gimme a nice scripting engine for the quests and I am done.
Call me an Angelox, but the original game's charm was what made me fall in love it. It was tough monster wise, you needed to make friends to get the better stuff, and it took dedication and even dealing with other people to be a tradeskiller to make very nice items. Personally, I would love to continue some of the storylines where they left off and explore them more. Also, keeping on with the antagonism between the two cities. The incidental 'killz 5 slimes-lol and I gav U bread!' quests are important, but secondary to getting core systems functional (one thing I do like about the newer EQ2 is he AA's though).
I would also love to do/see an Roleplaying-PvP (yes, I am a snooty' RP-er from AB) style server with new content if possible. This is the problem of being too constrained around obsessing over Live-Like, if ya' want this why not just re-up go play on it? It's already there and personally, the best EQEmu servers had tons of custom content. This EMU is both a dream creativity-wise and a long term project for me.
Even LE wants to use the EMU as a platform to make the game more malleable. If he wants to enact a shorthand tradeskilling system, sure! You could make an .ini file with the setting so we can tailor the game either way. I am sure the more casual players would very much enjoy it for their more PvE-Action style servers as well.

Code: Select all

# General Server Settings Section
# Easy Tradeskilling: Just get your base mats and combine!
# Success is 20% plus 1/10 INT
# multiplied by your skill divided by maxskill and item level/character level.
# Crits pristine on 5% plus 1/100 WIS.
# Amount created is rolled randomly based on recipe entry.
# Bonus quantity crit possible 10 to 30% on quantity items only.
# Fail creates inferior or junked versions 50% of the time.
easytradeskilling 1
basesuccess 0.20
successcap 0.75
pristineoncrit 0.05
bonusitemsoncrit 0.05
numbonusitemsmin 0.10
numbonusitemsmax 0.30
junkonfail 0.50

I think in the long run, functionality comes first, content second.
Long live the ^^^ Crow camps.

[John Adams]

I definitely agree with his philosophies on building the perfect emulator - that it should match the "Live" it is emulating.

However... if SOE f'd up Tradeskilling in any way since the beginning of the game, then yeah - I can see that being a feature worth restoring. I hate dumbed-down games. There's a reason WoW has so many players... doesn't take a genius to put on a paper hat and flip a burger.

[John Adams]

This is the problem of being too constrained around obsessing over Live-Like, if ya' want this why not just re-up go play on it? It's already there

One more point (I love quoting this guy heh), my take on "emulators" is not a platform to run free gaming or tweak content or game mechanics because I hate the way the corporation did it.
My entire reason for emulating games is because eventually, they all fade. Without emulators, they die forever.

[CrabClaw]

Call me an Angelox

I would never call you that, Crabby. I like you too much. ...

No problem! I have respect for a fellow alumni of the EQEmu forums as well. So all in good fun!
The Angel' reference is more about what he stood for along the lines of a 'taking back the game' theme. The emulator is ours to play with and hopefully make better.
I lived through one the painful, stormy times in EQ2, kind of a NGE'esqe when they were into nerfing, simplifying and tearing out things. I hated to see when SoE was so disparate to draw in customers they tore into their game in a hurry to make it a lot more WoW-like. So they swung the nerf hammer pretty wildly durin the ~LU13-ish to ~LU26-ish era, they kept re-doing the class skills, armor math, power regen, monster balance, nerfed the heck out of the CC mechanic and durations till what they got today with DPS-tastic WoW-ish gameplay.
They even got rid of "unnecessary" town quests dulling what was part of the original's charm. So yes, I concur that tier 1 thru 5 was a golden era.
(Although base jumping off griffins in DoF was uber-awsome...ahhhhhh! splat!)
Ask people on live if they should bring a CC class to a normal group and the attitude is 'DPS is king' cause the monsters are a lot weaker. Not so back in the day, when the Gnoll ^x5, or an ^^ with ^x3 adds heroic monster groups could whack the MT without someone to take the heat off with a charm or a good ol'mez...and a healer Really mostly only ^^^'s dropped the best chests too, not anymore.
(Yes I also played a Coercer and a Bard. Then I rolled 'zerker.)
So yes, farm live for the basic stats, but for my purposes anyways, I want to use what I have learned over the years of working EQEmu content to get a shot at getting EQ2 back to what the game was.
I love EQ2's feel from day one, nothing like seeing majestic North Qeynos for the first time, being treated like dirt by the NPCs on my first day moving into Temple Street, or you and a friend (after wiping four times, and blinded by greed) having to rally a bunch of strangers to take out a ^^^ Blue-con Named who just popped, because ya' need at least four, fully-sober people to take him for a shot at some nice loot for your level.

[ZexisStryfe]

See now Crab, I think this is where you and I differ. I have been playing EQ since beta all those years ago. You seem to be a group player where as I have always been a solo player. This made my life very difficult in EQ1 and pigeon holed me into one of the few classes that could solo effectively (druid). With the release of EQ2 I hoped it to be more solo friendly. Boy was I wrong. Once again I was pigeon-holed into one of the two solo classes (warlock).
Post LU-13 the game became much more solo friendly, and has only gotten better, in my opinion. I do play a solo class primarily now (necro), but i have many other alts of all different classes that I can effectively play. Soloing is now an effective way (albiet slower) of playing through the game just as grouping and raiding always was.
Now, I am definately not saying that EQ2 hasn't made its share of mistakes. I agree LU13-24ish was a bad time where everything was changing. I hated when they removed all the old city quests. I agree that DPS is king now and that it should be changed. Things aren't perfect, but I will definately not say the game was better in the "golden days". It wasn't. It was disjointed, full of timesinks, and limiting. Do you remember how bad the Legend and Lore quests were broken? Do you remember every zone needing an access quest? Mobs for regular quests that had respawn times in the hours. Or the fact that at level 20 you were expected to start raiding to get anything decent, but none of the raid loot tables were finished? Let's not forget the master chests that just... never... dropped...
But hey, if you liked that, then all the power to ya. It is fully possible to set up a server that emulates that, however we cannot collect data on a system that no longer exists. For that reason alone, we should be basing the database and the Emu structure on the live system and not an old one.
Personally, my server will be 100% custom content. I am going to use the emulator to create my own world. My world will be alot closer to live than the old days, though. Because of that, I would like live data simply as a starting point. Call me selfish...