So, why did they consolidate body types?

I haven't seen an explanation of why they chose to consolidate body types. It didn't take a genius to predict that this was going to cause massive problems in the 20 years of EQ content.

I was going to hunt in TOL BOA zone tonight with my bst, but didn't make it past KV. So instead I chose to log off.

They already fixed KV back to an easy run, so you’re a week too late to blame mean devs for you not feeling like playing tonight.

I can't comment for EQ devs but in general, simplifying stuff and reducing tech debt is hugely popular among dev teams.

Instead of like 35 body types they can shrink it down a lot and makes it easier on new designers and makes for more consistent rules for each body type

or easier to nerf headshot?

As long as they make halflings do half damage I'm ok with the change.

Aside from the fact that it isn't uncommon in a new expansion to see complaints that mob X is clearly a certain type of mob and the expected bane type doesn't work? These changes should make it much easier to keep the mobs taking damage of type that players expect.

No, KV is not fixed. Mobs may not see through SOS any more, but there is now a mix of ivu and iv mobs on the run to SV. While I accept that some zones are harder to navigate than others (Howling Stones comes to mind), a connecting zone like KV should not be one of them. Basically, all shades in TOL zones should not see through reg invis, as that is how the expansion was designed.

To increase popcorn sales.

Because so many of them were wrong.

Are Shiknar really undead reanimations dead of people?

There is also a change to pickpocket and the classification of "magic" items and that system forced a review of "humanoid" and "Pickable" and "does it have pockets?"which is somewhat correlated to the body type correction sweep systemwide.

Lag is a main issue. Cleaning up coding and correcting bad coding sets the stage for a smoother, less laggy future.

I think you got it backwards, the changes to body type caused them to review and remove the need for magic weapons and the magic tag which caused changes to pickpocket and disarm.

They changed the bodytype so everyone will make bards. Norrath (and Luclin!) needs more bards!

Yep, math is easy, decisions are hard.

Every time a CPU hits a branch where the code could go two ways, it tries to predict which way it'll go. if it's wrong there is a major setback as it has to throw away the prediction and start again. Also while a computer can have gigs of memory, the CPU can only work on what's in the cache. A small table of body types that fits within the cache stops the CPU from stalling to fetch a big table of body types from main memory.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65691407/cache-miss-latency-in-clock-cycles

they say SKX L3 latency is typically 50-70 cycles.

often the CPU can work on another thread, or a possible prediction path that doesn't depend on the data from main memory, but getting peak performance from a modern CPU takes more than just depending on the compiler (although modern optimizing compilers are amazing)

Fitting your data into cache line aligned chunks (64 bytes) or common page alignments (4096 bytes) can improve performance significantly, particularly when multithreading. (even if you aren't 'paging' hardware memory security features are sometimes applied per-'page')

Small changes in very frequently run code can make a big difference.

I just want them to release the meeting minutes concerning the body type changes. For some reason, this scene comes to mind.

To add to what everyone else is saying.

This isn't the first time they've done this in the past few years. This was just the biggest sweeping change. (I can remember a change occurring around 2018)

I don't recall the post date, but years and years ago, there was an announcement made about development tools produced specifically for the EQ dev team to be able to create vast amounts of content (population) much quicker. I have a sneaking suspicion, that a lot of interior details were left out of those tools. As such, when the staff "rotated" (ok, got laid off and new people were hired), a bunch of tribal knowledge was lost.

So new dev A starts populating a zone. Creates the template, selects the attributes, and hmm well.. the model is large, so maybe it's a Giant type? It casts spells and is a fantastical creature, so maybe Magical? It resides in a planar realm, so maybe Extraplanar? Unknowingly, by selecting a specific body type is assigning a host of additional attributes to said NPC that may or may not show in the dev tool.

Selecting something like Giant automatically adding inherent stun immunity. Adding Undead automatically granting inherent SI. Etc..

By consolidating body types, they can redefine how all of this impacts NPC creation and game play.

The issues that were created here aren't even close to how awful it was when they scaled difficulty across all expansions to provide a more consistent user experience and aid in NPC creation (you all remember those herculean frogloks in Old Seb right?)

They had some unintended consequences, but it's just the first step in streamlining the game for both players and developers.


For those screaming X/Y/Z getting nerfed, this is one step towards making it easier to "un-nerf" more things than what the change has done unintentionally. This isn't a game with 100's of Devs sitting around churning out patches/updates/expansions. I'd bet my account that there is a significant lack of information in regards to the older code.

What happened <expletive> but in the end, it will be for the best. Just keep sending in reports and feedback about what you see in game. they can, have been, and will continue to address issues as they are made known. Provide the feedback, so it can get enough support to warrant enough dev time to make the changes.

It is my own speculation, that body type is (mostly) going to revolve around spell/ability use and be separated from other conditions and be more apparent for both development and players. Hopefully it will disassociate many things from the current use of body type and have those set individually. Abilities like Headshot, Decap, Assasinate, pickpocket, etc.. should not be tied to an NPC's body type, while spells like Banish, Porlos's Fury, and Hsagra's Wrath are well within that scope to be covered by body types.

"somewhat correlated" doesn't post an argument for causality.

I didn't say "caused it" I said they were somewhat related issues.

Because devs did.

Yes, but did this fix those damn kicking snakes ?

That wasn't the way I read your post and those changes are a direct cause of issues discovered after the change to body type was put on test and issues were discovered. If it wasn't for the body type changes those changes would have not been needed and not been made.

Political correctness. All the Trolls and Ogres were complaining about being body shamed.

100% agree. Even when I read abut the consolidation I thought it was poorly conceived and a lot of Dev time was wasted.

Does EQ not have a Dev Reference Manual? Code Guide Book? Protocol (Check list, do A but don't do B if...)?

What they should have done was modify MOB types, so that certain MOB types were consistent to one another, unless manually modified for specific MOB's.

What's more scary? Mercs are next! What is the issue with 5 Tiers? It is SOOOOOO Easy to get a TV Merc, why mess with Mercs? How are they broken right now exactly to merit a Dev time and effort to overhaul them?