Test Update 06/12/2018 - Patch Notes and Discussion

Discussion in 'Test Update Notes and Bug Roundup' started by EQ Dev, Jun 12, 2018.

  1. Darchon_Xegony Augur

    Another clearly uninformed poster.

    Druids and Shamans always had identical single Regen values. Druids had the only group Regen buffs from Classic-Velious. In Luclin Shamans got a group Regen buff. Going forward their single and group Regen values have always been identical.

    What this patch is doing is making all the single Regen spells shared by Shamans and Druids more powerful. While also increasing the associated group Regen values on shaman spells to match. Whereas the Druid spells were forgotten.

    It makes 0 sense for Chloroplast to Regen nearly double that of Pack Chloroplast. No other group buff is that much worse than its single buff counterpart. In fact in almost all cases they are identical in power. Which makes sense because anyone trying to min/max will opt to use the single version of it if it is superior, which makes the group version obsolete.

    Rangers and Beastlords share early Regen lines with Shamans and Druids, when those got increased the hybrid Regen spells became obsolete as their values are now less than the lower level shared spells they have. This makes no sense, and obviously is another oversight.

    • Pack Regeneration
    • Pack Chloroplast
    • Regrowth of the Grove
    • Oaken Vigor
    • Blessing of Oak
    • Hunter's Vigor
    • Feral Vigor

    These spells all need their Regen values updated.
  2. Jetslam Augur

    It does actually. Druids/shaman were absolutely crazy in terms of DPS ability. Easily topping parses both short and long duration. I think where we're at now is a decent spot compared to other classes. I don't know how broken enchanters were, but I haven't seen them topping my guild's parses. We've got a few good ones (though I wouldn't call them elite) and they were rarely cracking top 5. Most of the events they were 5-10.

    The underlying issue though is that like it or not, Ench are a utility class. And as such, shouldn't be on par damage wise with the pure dps classes. There just aren't enough events/cases where that utility is needed like with dru/shm healing.

    We'll see how this round of nerfs go, and they may do like they did to shm/dru and do a slight adjustment or two back up in power. There'd be less player outcry from an overnerf followed by a slight buff, than there would be from multiple small nerfs.

    Btw, boosting necro damage isn't the goal of their dot revamp. I think necro damage is pretty good right now. Most events, our elite necro tops the parse, followed up by zerks/mages. The goal is to make it less complicated and more feasable in the group game along with helping debuff slots.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  3. Angahran Augur

    I see a new 'classic_spell_icons' folder in the uifolder with the gemicons01 to 03 and spells01 to 07.
    So, it appears that there is some way to keep our old custom icons, but it looks like it will be for all characters/accounts.

    How is it determined which to use, the new or the 'classic' ?
    Will this be a setting in the options window ?

    And what happens with the EQUI_Spellicons.xml file ?
    If we are using 'classic' and that file is set for 23 gemicons and 63 spells is it going to explode ?
    And if we are using new and we have custom UI where it has 3 gemicons and 7 spells ?
  4. segap Augur

    I'm curious what direction they're going with the UI. The taskbar changes are still causing me havoc. Things like buttons on page 4 bleeding through to page 1 when they have a cooldown. I still have buttons that were functional before the hotbar revamp which are just red and I have no idea what they were so I can fix them (and remember why I used them on occasion with lesser played alts). Why I can have pages 1, 2, and 3 all have identical buttons except for one that's a macro which differs based on situation, but the button titles wrap on pages 1 and 2, but on page 3, they truncate. Plus the Sit button works on 1, 2, but on 3 it always says Sit and doesn't toggle to Stand despite the sit/stand stance actually changing. Yes, I've remade the Sit button to no functional change.

    They made all the template changes to the UI files, which while was legitimately cleaner code of not repeating the same styles over and over, makes doing diffs to patch custom UIs a pain in the butt. Nothing like seeing 60 differences between two versions of a file and stepping through to find only one change of concern. Or worse, 20 files with 60 changes and not one of them having one that matters.

    Now the icon changes which we have only a cryptic smile from Dzarn about which are causing problems for people that need to update custom UIs.

    If there's something cool in the works, I'd like to hear what it is. Something that makes the annoyance and inconvenience of us customers have an up side. If we know the goal, we (or at least I) would be much more understanding of the bumps along the way. If it's just people cleaning up code and making minor tweaks, please stop it. It's an old game with lots of semi abandoned stuff that people are having to update. It's getting annoying.

    If it is leading up to something great, I'd much prefer a more traditional deployment rather than this agile mess of pushing out bits and pieces of incomplete changes. Use the Test server to get incremental feedback.
    Metanis and Yinla like this.
  5. Jumbur Improved Familiar


    This is just a wild guess, but since they are increasing the resolution of icons this time around, I would think the end-goal is a more HiRes friendly UI. :)
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  6. Whipper Journeyman

    Can you get rid of Echo of Chardok if you are getting rid of Echo of Sebilis? Would make sense to do so, that thing is used to grief entire groups and is vastly out of era.
  7. Dzarn Developer

    Since there seems to be a bit of confusion with the updates to spell images.

    The long term goal of adding more spell images is to improve the ability to identify abilities/buffs/debuffs at a glance by reducing the number of ability/spell lines that use the same icon.

    The classic_spell_icons directory is intended to offer players the ability to use the older spell/buff icons for spells that have classic equivalents (which at this point is everything currently in use). Players can either copy the images from this directory to their custom UI directory or just use this new directory if the only UI customization they desire is to use the classic icons.

    No spells have been made that use icons outside of the original range yet. Eventually spells will be changed/created that use images that don't have classic equivalents, at which point the image sheets that aren't overwritten by the files in classic_spell_icons will be used.


    Some technical info:
    The transparency layer in window_pieces02.tga for the spell gem holder was modified, custom UIs may need to adjust for this change.

    This goes along with a change to the layer order for spell-gems where previously the colored gem-holder was rendered behind the spell image. Now the gem holder with its center set to transparent is rendered on top of the buff image to ensure a consistent outline.

    Before this patch, assigning a custom spell icon to a hot-bar pulled the image data from gemicons##.tga rather than Spells##.tga which is what caused them to look especially pixelated. This was updated with the patch so that hot-button spell images will pull from the higher resolution Spells##.tga files to reduce this pixelation for hotbuttons.
  8. Feznik Elder


    Honestly, while these are good for future improvements, what really needs to be addressed is why it takes 1-3 minutes to do /loadskin custom, when you switch from 1 UI skin to another UI skin.

    I notice if you reload the same UI skin over again, it only takes about 30 secs (still a very long time). And this is with files on a SSD drive and pretty decent computer specs in general.


    I know this is an old game, but with computer hardware improving so rapidly and having modern computers it shouldn't take this long to load a UI skin. I can't think of any other game where it takes that long to load a UI skin.
    Fanra and Gyurika Godofwar like this.
  9. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    I was totally hyped for a HD-release of /GEMS !!! :p
    Gyurika Godofwar and Ronove like this.
  10. Rubie New Member

    Please fix the Forage bug, If you forage and then zone before forage has repopped then the forage button is "broke" until you zone out again. I would have put this is the "bug roundup" but I can't post there for some reason
    Ronove likes this.
  11. svann Augur

    I think if you are going to change tga files they should be listed with the other ui changefiles. They need to be copied into custom ui folders, right? Same with dds files.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  12. Mortium Elder


    /cry
    #saltymuch
  13. Ngreth Thergn Developer

    I plan to do that for the July patch. It was too late to get into today's.
  14. Ronove Lorekeeper

    if youre out and about and see someone afk'ing, for slayer or farming, ethically, what should you do about it?
  15. MischeviousNomad New Member

    So we enchanters can't melee well, can't nuke well, and now can't DOT worth a spit. What do you suggest we do? Throw Chrono's at the mobs? As a returning player who brought my family back to EQ (3 paying accounts) this just seems silly. We are working through progression and it is difficult as is. There are only 3 lines of DOT's for enchanters, and you reduced the damage and increased the mana cost of ALL of them?
    Use common sense. EQ's fan base is getting smaller as it is. Were the current levels hurting anything? No? So maybe just maybe you don't do things that will piss off your paying customers. Stop doing nerfs on ALL classes! LOL. "Balancing" has NEVER been popular. Back in the day if there was a class that was did more damage and that bugged a player sooo much, guess what?... They just made a character that was that class! How much payroll are you spending to do patches for this kind of thing? How many wasted hours that could be spent fixing actual issues, or adding new content (people like new content, FYI). Do things that make players happy. That is just good business sense.
    Metanis likes this.
  16. Ronove Lorekeeper

    is there a way to stop the launcher long enough to switch it to test server? Would be nice if I could play somewhere...
  17. Winnowyl Suffering is optional.

    I'm getting the same message for test, too. The launcher itself is down.
  18. Sad Panda Elder

    You seem to have some extra time, the patch has encountered a rain delay....
  19. Ronove Lorekeeper

    Bleck :(
  20. Ronove Lorekeeper

    How are you guys so consistently terrible at estimating time? Are you biting off more than you can chew? Why even give us an estimate? Just say "We have no idea when it'll be up". You have us all sitting here waiting during peak play time for half of the US