Test Update 04/09/2024 - Patch Notes and Discussions

The pbae spell nerf I'm assuming is due to early tlp PL gameplay such as the deep etc ... Based off of that I really think later pbae spells past like level 70-75 should be left alone ... From farming TS mats in bulk in old zones on live to certain raid events such as idk windsong where I think like 35 muses spawn for example to pbae threat from sk while ae mezzing / killing big bulks of mobs from 75-105 era there's a bunch of uses for pbae needing to have greater than 30 targets in the mid-later expacs. If the pbae stuff is targeted at TLPs then limit the spells to sub lvl 65 spells or something .. that's actually a very significant nerf across the board even into live. Not to mention the targetted ae mez cap to only 30 mobs is a pretty significant nerf to enchanters as well not just in the group setting but in the raid setting as well in later expacs on events for example like Akkapan or some of the Arx raids or Lceanium.

Gift of the Nest
Potential of the Nest
Embrace of the Nest
Power of the Nest
Might of the Nest

Windsong and Lceanium are good examples of events with huge waves of mobs that are intended to be mezzed and/or stunned.

Others could be Claiming Felbane the Dragon Slayer and Queen Malarian in SoD. AE mezzing huge pulls is also a common pull strategy in places like Meldrath's Mansion raid.

I would agree that the intent of this change (if it goes live) should be made clear, and if it's to nerf AE leveling in old school TLP zones like The Deep and Plane of Innovation then so be it.

But don't nerf important raid strategies in later expansions as an unintended side effect.

You missed a few pbaes in changing from unlimited to 30 targets.

Just in case you wanted to get them all...

Someone made changes to thousands of spells and didn't mention it even once in the patch notes. Are we sure it wasn't a mistake? I think someone should first verify that this change was intentional and if it was the patch notes should be updated accordingly.

The AoE limit being set to 30 across the board has the potential to affect many raids and group content where more than 30 mobs could spawn (there are several across 30 expansions). With the mechanics of target selection not being "randomized" per cast within an AoE (it usually picks the same mobs every cast), it also makes it difficult to "stack up" by having multiple people cast within the same area.

For enchanters, the pbaoe mezzes were already limited by reducing the duration of the unlimited version and adding a "perilous" version that increases in mana cost per mob hit. Poly runes that stun on fade will be particularly affected by this change (get trained and more likely to die, pull agro on raid more likely to die, etc.). There are also many raid events where some guilds choose to have enchanters rotate pbaoe stuns which could be affected.

For target aoe mez, this makes it impossible to do the large "pull" and quickly kill 1 mob at a time style of leveling. Target ae mez used to have a limit of 4 or 5 in the past, but it's been a nice convenience for me to level this way over the past couple of years across several expansions. Not to mention the countless other classes and abilities affected by this which could have untold consequences.

I think the magnitude of this change will be far larger than anybody has time to test for within the release cycle. We'll be finding out new "can't do that anymore" situations for dozens of past raid encounters for years to come. I know we can probably live with this change, but it doesn't feel nice to have such a large change to my class after playing it a certain way for multiple decades.

There are several raids in young TLPs that this also effects. Pulling Fear. Growth, VT and mass AoEing down saves hours for raiders on those servers. This isnt even going into the multiple fights in later expansions where they are also used. While I like the intent behind this change of targetting the 24/7 AoE PL selling groups this also just changes how Everquest was and has been played.

This feels like another stab at this group since FTE failed to counteract them. Just like FTE this will change how the game was for a lot of standard things that they didnt take into consideration. I hope just like FTE this will get aborted. If you do not want to have RMT PL just simply walk into the known zones a few times a day and get rid of them. It is extremely easy to see they are not using normal methods to control the large amounts of toons.

These notes seem pretty lacking, at least 4 or 5 things changed not mentioned in the notes. Did you fix Final Fugue speed limit achievement and not mention it too?

I'm thinking its for server processing. With a limit in place, the server can stop processing sooner to reduce lag.

Patch notes are automatically generated from their ticketing system. Two things have to happen, someone has to write patch notes into the ticket, and also mark it for public. Its happened before that one of those two things got missed in closing out the ticket. "Internal" type changes are not marked for public (can include exploit fixes), though there can be exceptions, if they decided that the target limit was an internal change.

They made enchanter Nights Perpetual Terror a group buff(can't mgb/tb though) now with a 2 minute cooldown. Makes me wonder if there were other changes not listed.

Looks like they changed Arcane Arietta/Anthem bard spell ranks to cast the proper rank as they were all casting rank 1. Not sure if there are any more unnoticed changes.

It's not a performance optimization. You optimize the common cases that make up 99.99999% of the zone load, not the rare case that make up 0.00001% of it. If you've ever mass pulled a zone, you'll notice that all the lag is related to mob pathfinding, it stops once the mobs are standing still and there's no delay on a pbaoe going off even if you pulled the entire zone into range of it.

Plus given the timing it's clearly aimed at powerleveling, or at least at the vocal anti-powerleveling crowd that floods the forum every time a TLP launches. Not sure what they're really hoping this will accomplish, as long as there are people willing to buy PLing there will be people willing to sell it. The PLers do not care if you're getting 4 AAs an hour or 5 AAs an hour, they still get paid.

Yay!

Would be helpful if is stayed that way when you select the server.

Currently after selecting server the screen switches to window mode and reduces the size to 3/4 of the screen.

At char select it takes 1 alt tab to set the screen back to full sized window mode and another to set it back to non window mode.

In game you still cannot use the window key to get to desktop, it just switches to window mode, if you use the botton on the right side of the screen to get to desktop there is no way to get back to EQ. And manually closing the window by right clicking on the icon and hitting close does not work. You need to open the task manager to close it.

Currently worse on test than it is on live.

for the ae change, I am more surprised it toke this long then I am that they did it. Not the 1st time they have put limits on ae spells.

A ton of people gonna be frustrated if they tributed their old raid weapons.

Big oof if so. Those are perfectly good house decorations.
Besides there's no excuse to not be max tribute right now, with how easy it is to buy Tower mission gear and how much it tributes for...
(I typed that really small so the devs can't read it)

I suspect the "internal" changes have now become "let's not tell them and hope they never find out" changes. They now have a history of making important changes that players should have known about but were never told at the time...the changes to xp from achievements they did in December is a prime example.

I don't like the path this is heading down where they just "forget" to tell players about big, important changes.

Explain how limiting Dread Gaze, Wave of Fear, Wave of Enfeeblement, Bonds of Force, Hungry Vines, Vindictive Spirit, Cyclone Blade, Mesmerization all to 30 targets effects deep PL on tlp?

Almost all of the spells nerfed have no effect on aoe PLers, and recent history shows they've only made changes to help the dedicated PL groups. The change to make the Color line share timer only helped the dedicated PLers by locking out some casual aoe groups from participating. The change to make /yell unlock all encounters on FTE server is there to allow oog enchanters to stun with only 1 command instead of having to target every mob in an aoe pull to unlock every encounter individually.

I don't see any reason to think this is to stop aoe pl when they've shown in the last few years that they want to help aoe PLers keep going and just want to stop casual groups from doing it so you have to spend krono with the aoe PLers.

It got not fixed as I just tested it on the test server. The game does still automatically switch into the windowed mode after the server selection. You only added more delay so that it is less likely that the fullscreen window does get out of focus, but it still happens a lot, just less often than before. Alt-tabbing between two clients does mostly work but is slow. Alt-tabbing with a programmable mouse key script is much less likely to work. Boxing is still not enjoyable.

No mention in patch notes of 25th anniversary raid items lack of augment slots ?!?