Test Update 4/13/2022 - Patch Notes and Discussions

I am guessing the removing of the need for magic also removed a check from combat to see if the weapon was magical or not and as a side effect removed the magic tag from the game.

Magic rusty weapons?

I'd prefer it if they would just revert back to the way it was and then flag all the mobs in newbie areas as non-magical so any weapon can hit them.

They didn't make nothing magic. Going by how live is working, they made everything magic and not magic at the same time. So when you disarm NPCs they no longer drop their non-magical items on the ground which they would do previously, but not do for magic items.

You are referring to multiple changes.

1. They removed the magic tag and need for magic weapons on some mobs
2. They changed disarm so that it puts the weapon in the targets inventory instead of dropping it on the ground
3. They changed pickpocket so that you can no longer pickpocket equipable items.
4. They also changed pickpocket so that you can no longer target rare or raid mobs.

They made the first one due to the body type changes and mobs that should not have been immune to non magic weapons became immune. As part of this change the magic item tag was removed from all items. Once this was done it was noticed that there were issues with disarm and pickpocket which is why they made the next 3 changes. The changes to those do not mean that they are magic but the skills themselves got changed.

Prior to all of these changes, the Magic tab kept items from being dropped on the ground without them having to be made No Drop. So no, I am referring to a single change, the fact that there were multiple steps to this change doesn't make it more than one change. Especially since the majority of the initial change was out of laziness, and the subsequent changes were due to them not having the foresight to realize how the original change would screw up base gameplay mechanics that have been in the game since it launched in 1999. I don't recall talking about pickpocket, but it could have been in passing relating to other things that the magic tag prevented.

Consolidating the body types to help improve consistency throughout the game and make development easier is lazy?

There is no "no drop". There is only no trade.

No Trade was originally called No Drop. It was changed with the May 11, 2005 game update.

I still refer to it as "no drop" all the time. Newer players are like "What the hell is that?"

How they did it was lazy. They made no effort to check to make sure that such massive changes would not cause issues. For example, the level 1 newbie zone skeletons becoming immune to the low-level attacks because as a rule undead are immune to non-magic, but the newbie zone mobs always had this not affect them. Similarly, the subsequent removal of the magic tag to fix the issue with low level mobs being immune to non-magic subsequently affect other skills, resulting in them having to make even more changes.

Except when everyone knows that no drop means no trade, and No Drop was in use long before No Trade was a thing. Plus, no drop is actually more accurate of a description.

With 28 expansions in a game and thousands of different mobs it can be very hard to catch every issue that could pop up. They did work on fixing as many of the issues that popped up as part of the testing on test. Sure that results in more changes but that doesn't mean the first change wasn't needed as it was likely done to help with future development and putting it off would just make the change worse later on.

No, it is not hard to catch this issue at all. It is blatantly obvious. They knew that the body type of undead required magical weapons to hit it. They also knew unless you are claiming that they are so inept and lacking in knowledge of the game to not know that the single most common mob type in newbie zones are skeletons. They should have known that this would have been a problem as well as all the subsequent issues would have been a problem before they made the change to test. Instead they implemented a number of lazy fixes that simply removed aspects of the game instead of addressing the actual problem. It wasn't a needed change, it was only a change that the Dev's wanted to make things easier on them. Changes to existing mobs across ALL existing expansions does not help with the future development of the game. At best this change will result in a wash for development. Now they will simply have to regularly go back and tune down changes to mobs in newbie and low level zones more often.

In related news, apparently the body type change has affected some monsters charm-ability. PoN hobgoblins allegedly cannot be charmed by druids anymore as they're no longer animals. Spiders however are apparently animals and can be druid charmed.

What a brilliant idea it was to change the body types....

Yes it is hard to catch all instances where a body change might not do something as expected when you have thousands if not over ten thousand different mobs in the game. When making a change it should not be unexpected that the developers will not think of ever case that can go wrong. In the case of magic weapons and low level mobs that was caught quickly on the test server and fixed well before the live patch.

You need to stop ignoring the fact that when you have a game that is as old as everquest is with as many expansion as it has the developers will not have full knowledge and will miss things that others who are in that content more frequently might not.

Even with all of the changes that had to happen it is likely that the change that they did is for the best as didn't just do it to create more work for themselves and potentially break things but with a goal for the future.

It's not hard when it is common knowledge to everyone who has ever played the game that the newbie zones are filled with undead and that the undead body type require magic weapons to damage. Those changes should have been made before it even went to test, because they are so blatantly obvious. Then maybe the litany of issues that effectively removing the magic tag caused would have had a chance to be caught as well. These issues were not found until the change was pushed to live. All of those changes are actually easily deduced by asking, "What will this change affect for the player directly?" That question was never asked with any seriousness.

You need to accept that the changes were not thought out at all. They were done solely because the Devs wanted to be able to make changes to all of one thing at once, and that they did not bother to consider that perhaps there were specific reasons some undead were not flagged as having undead body type. Similar to the newbie zones, you can look at zones such as Upper HoT, where the Dev's had previously removed the See Invis aspect so that people could actually transverse the zone, but this body type change also undid that change. Everquest's age is not an excuse for them not even considering that there are countless things that doing it will change. There was no point in making these changes to content older than a few years. If anyone is working on the game and does not have full knowledge of the game then, they need to be doubly asking what and how things will change when they make wide sweeping changes like this. Their predecessors were not idiots, if some mobs were not given the appropriate body type, there is likely a reason for that. But no ever was made to investigate why that might be. It was just assumed to be a mistake or error, but in most cases it wasn't.

The flaw to your "goal for the future" argument, is that these changes are not needed for the future. The game has been balanced and played with the pre-change conditions for several years in the majority of cases, upwards of 2 decades in some cases, and they were not causing issues. If anything there will be more issues created by this over time as they decide to tie more to the body type, which will retroactively give these to all existing of that type down to the newbie zone versions.

What does it matter if those changes got caught before going to test or after going to test? They got caught and got fixed in a timely manner well before the patch went live. You need to stop looking at it from a players perspective that is actively playing in any specific content area instead of a developer who is looking at the game as a whole and what these changes mean for the upcoming expansion. The changes you are complaining about for newbie zones, magic weapons and pickpocket/disarm were made well before the patch went live. In fact I think it was fixed the very next day after the patch first hit the test server.

You need to stop making false claims about the changes being well thought out or not because you (as we all don't) fully understand the reasoning behind the changes. For all we know this was a two fold change to both make past and future content more consistent with body types and to reduce the number of body types the game has to deal with to help with other things.

You talk about everquest's age not being an excuse for unexpected changes but on the flip side it isn't an excuse for not making changes. Just because something has worked one way for a long time doesn't mean it can't/shouldn't be changed in an attempt to bring improvements to the game. As you find issues with NPC's that are not behaving as you would expect such as seeing invis you should report those. Continuing to complain about this change will do nothing as they are not going to revert it because of those complaints.

The problem is that the changes impacts were all blatantly obvious, as were the impacts of the subsequent changes for the knee jerk fixes that were made. They were not caught in a timely manner. Many went to live when there was no need for the change to be pushed to live. The only perspective that matters is the players perspective. The Devs do not pay for the game. They get paid by the game. They get some leeway on getting things to make it easier for them to do their jobs, but that is not at the expense of making sections of the game unplayable or to destroy existing intended gameplay in the process. The Devs are blatantly NOT looking at the game at all. This very change made that blatantly clear. Even the most cursory look at the effect that the change would cause lets one see the multitude of issues that it created. That is not looking at the whole game, that is the Devs only looking at the benefit for themselves and not caring about anything further. There is zero benefit to the game from this change, the only benefit is for the Devs. Also, the changes were not all made before the patch went live. The newbie zone mob fix was, but other issues were not because it was the newbie zone fix that caused the other issues. Most of the other issues have been ignored actually.

There are no false claims being made. The changes were not thought through, it is as plain and simple as that. Body Types were made uniform without any thought to why large swaths of them were not that body type. The different body types give the mobs specific abilities and qualities, such as the undead body type giving see invis and immunity to non-magic attacks. Most common mob in newbie zones, skeletons. But new toons do not have magic weapons or attacks, unless they are casters or hybrids. So the fix is to just completely remove the magic tag and everything it involves. No consideration for what it is involved in mechanic wise in the whole game.

Actually, when the game mechanics have been working as intended for decades there is no excuse for unexpected changes. This is not a case of there being a bug in the game for a long time that the Dev's acknowledged but chose not to fix and worked around for a long time, these changes were things that were done intentionally, some of them have been intentional mechanics in the game since the launch that worked fine and did not cause any problems. The problems were due to the Devs wanting to do less. The newbie zone mobs (levels 10 and lower) not having the proper body type assigned wasn't an oversight, it was intentional to prevent them from having the abilities of the body type. There were exactly ZERO benefits that could not be added to the game without this change. Older zone mobs not all having their body type match their appearance is not going to have any impact on improvements to the game. There is no improvement to the game by making the body type match, in fact as demonstrated it made the game worse in many cases. There have been entire zones worth of mobs which have actually been reported as having changed because of this and the Devs have out right refused to change them back to their previous behavior. Continuing to complain about these changes will however make it clear that changes like these need to be actually thought out and their effects examined beyond will it make it easier for the Devs to do something, like look into how old mobs are intended to behave.

You need to get over yourself, all the problems were not blatantly obvious and they worked to fix many of the things you complained about before they went live. Just because you don't like or fully understand the reasoning for the changes doesn't mean that they didn't need to happen. Keeping coming here to complain to me about how the changes are bad will solve nothing. Instead of keeping complaining and ranting to me why don't you start posting bug reports about all the things that you claim this broke.

Again, just because you don't understand the reasoning why the changes were made doesn't mean that they didn't think them through and have good reasons for them. Remember just because things are working now doesn't mean that changes are not needed to improve things in the long term.

At the end of the day, the devs could, if they wanted to, explain in better detail why changes are made, what problems to possibly expect, and what problems they're OK with vs ones they would agree are bugs. But they don't so they get more complaint threads than are needed.

Even worse it triggers some players to defend the devs even though they have zero valid reason for disagreeing with the complaints. Both contribute to these forums being a nightmare to gain any useful insight from.

Have zero reason for disagreeing with the complaints? I think you are assuming to much I see no reason to complain about the changes and how it resulted in removal of the need for magic weapons and changes to disarm/pickpocket.

Instead of complaining about the changes why not take the time to make bug reports so the issues can actually be solved. Repeated complaints about the changes and insulting the devs as part of your complaints won't solve anything and will make the devs less likey to communicate with players. As it isn't their job to communicate with us in the first place we shouldn't be making reasons for them to have fewer communication with us.