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

How bad was Unity nerfed?

I was about to write a post that would have been word-for-word the same. I can no longer exit the client cleanly. i have to go into the task manager and force-close the client window after I've logged out, EVERY SINGLE TIME. Whatever code change they made was clearly never tested internally. I've been playing this game on and off for more than 20 years, I think I know what I'm doing. There is no way this change should go live.

I am friends of a friend of a major PL business person, and they've always said that pulls that don't near 100 aren't worth it for the rates that they commit to with their business.

Remember AE PL methods all plan around dumping ALL the mana from the damage classes, so reducing the pull size by a third to a half literally cuts their XP rate by half to a third - they're not making pulls that consume half their mana, they're consuming all of it. Which sure, rounding stuff back up takes SOME med time, but even in the KEI era, that's still quite the delay - and of course during such, others can grab those same mobs instead.

If the idea to cap AE is to limit PLing wouldn't it be better to just add diminishing returns on the 1-65 level stuns?

Now, if they fix the anti-pet-tanking mega-bug in group missions then melee and hybrid classes will become useful and desirable again!

On Test:
Reaver's Bargain VI

Shadow Knight (AA)

Slot 2:Absorb Damage using Mana: 5%, 0.4 Mana per Hit Point
Slot 3:Increase Max Negative Hit Points by 90000
Slot 4:Absorb Melee Damage: 75%, on Hits over 32000, Total: 500000

Doesn't look right tbh. The old one is 1.5mil. Missing some zeroes?

I am totally in favor of limiting the PBAE spells to 30 mobs.

Anyone who is pulling 60, 90, 120+ mobs at once to PL is putting a lot of strain on the servers.

In most zones when you get past 30-40 mobs chasing you the zone starts rubber banding.

Sure. But what about the dozens of raids and other scripted encounters through 25 years of expansions that spawn more than 30 mobs and rely on AOE crowd control or damage to progress? There are decades old strategies that depend on the ability to manage more than 30 mobs at once. There are game design elements that ASSUME players can do this because they always have been able to. This is going to be very, very messy if it goes live. As a previous poster said, there's no way our devs have the time to vet this change across 25 years of content. And I'm not sure there are guilds raiding in every era on test where this might cause issues to point them out for them.

Something else to consider is that for-profit PLing, love it or hate it, is a necessary catch-up mechanic on many, many servers, especially TLPs. Take a few months off on TLP and you've missed 2 or 3 expansions. That quickly adds up to thousands of AA you need to make-up. On live, new AA comes once a year. On TLP, new AA comes every 2 or 3 months. Auto-grant alone does not close the gap, especially on AA heavy hybrid classes.

I am exclusively a TLP player but I imagine even on live, creating a new character or persona and catching it up to current content is a gargantuan, grind-heavy task that very few modern players have the hours to commit to. I'm of the opinion that ANY change that makes it harder for returning players to catch-up in a 25 year old game is a bad business decision and makes the game worse for all comers.

I can't say for sure why our devs think this change is necessary. If it's about reducing server strain caused by mass pulling, I hope our devs can find a more precise solution that won't cause far-reaching, unintended consequences. If it's not about pull size but rather 'cheating', e.g. using third party tools that break the rules of gameplay to enable such large pulls, again, a more precise solution is needed.

I hope this change doesn't make it past test.

What version of Windows are you running?

Are there thou? Or did it just feel like/look like more than 30 at once. There probably are some that Ill say oh yeah I remember that now. But most in my head at least just felt/looked like more than 30 in a raid but were well under 30.

Im not saying your wrong, I may be and probably am.

I just looked at this. Yes, this is a massive nerf.

We're trading over a million damage mitigation for a 4% damage absorption that will disappear in 3 hits.

This is NOT the update to Bargain that was requested.

I can not recall a single event which absolutely required to AE mezz or kill more than 30 mobs at once. There was always a way to win without AE. Sure, it may be a matter of convenience here or there, but not an absolute necessity as I recall.

And in modern era raids when there is a dozen or so adds on ETW usually a raid leader commands to slow down on the main mob and cull the adds. Trash on raids these days hits so hard and barely CC'able that 30+ adds usually means a loss. Sure, some uber teams may even enjoy swarms on raids, but it is not a reuirement these days.

Thats all I was getting at, I cant recall any scripts with 30 + mobs attacking at once that relied on AE dmg. Now if your overpowering something that pops adds and your popping over 30, that sounds like a problem with how "your event is ran" not that raids require the ability to AE more than 30 mobs. Like I mentioned thou, I could be wrong.

The high cost of champion's oath and reaver's bargain don't make any sense at the moment. oath will absorb a max of 1.2 million damage, my worst disc absorbs over 2 million. Even if you factor in the heals on both of those it's still "mitigating less damage than the worst disc i have. I don't really have a huge issue with this until one of them consumes 60% of my mana.

The nerf to reaver's bargain is pretty dang harsh. the increase to 5% for the mana absorb is not really compensation as the buff will last 1/3 as long as it use to. So you get that 5% for 1/3 as long, just a massive nerf.

Both are currently high cost low reward abilities and it just doesn't make sense, make them low cost low reward if high cost high reward just wasn't working out the way you hoped.

A big problem with them is SPA 451, it really needs to be adjusted to work better on raid mobs vs group mobs. I have 3 ideas, one i mentioned earlier, the threshold for when it starts working could be made different for group mobs vs raid mobs.

another possibility is you make it so that it works off of the damage roll, so it only absorbs damage if the attacker rolls x number, so for champion's oath maybe a 15 or higher and it absorbs damage.

Third idea, would be best but is probably the hardest to implement. It would actually take the max damage the attacker is capable of doing and use it to determine what the damage threshold will be. Ideally after at least some other forms of mitigation have been applied.

As it stands that SPA is just impossible to balance for group vs raid mobs. Set it to high, and it's useless in groups, set it too low and it gets knocked off by a single round of a raid mob.

This sounds like you didn't launch the game in full screen mode, but did ALT+ENTER while at the login screen. Is that right?

I think you are overthinking the number of raids that have that much trash. If there are raids with that much trash then simply bring more players to AE.

Fix the root problem then. If XP rates are too low, they need to address that.

I don't think this is going to drastically change the the for profit PL'ing. They will simply add more characters.

I might effect the folks who AE PL using a small team.

There is the rub. The majority of the people who are doing the PL'ing are using some form of automation. If you go after them, then you also make it harder for people to catch up.

What I would hope for is a way to address the server performance issues, by discouraging mass pulls, while also implementing better catch up mechanics.

#1 - Increase the XP rates on TLP's to meet or exceed the rate the expansions roll out.
#2 - Reduce or remove the level restrictions for groups. Make it easier for new people to get caught up.
#3 - Profit ?

Win11, latest patch level.

I press the Play button on the launcher, and I am in fullscreen at server select. I click the Test button and am immediately shrunk to a window. The only way to get back to fullscreen is to type alt-ENTER, not once but twice, as has been reported by others. I then play as normal in fullscreen. When I camp to character select, I'm still in fullscreen. When I quit from there, I do >NOT< get back to the server select screen; instead I am in a totally blank window that can't be moved, resized or closed. I must go to the task manager to remove it.

How is the perspective fix for the unhittable mobs?

I can repro this bug, thanks.

As a workaround, please check "Disable fullscreen optimizations" in eqgame.exe > Properties > Compatibility. My testing shows that this setting as something to do with the bug.

I didn't see it mentioned in the notes. But can anyone confirm if certain illusions like Aspect of the Brood, Mask of Scaled Cunning, Ice Giant Facade etc. are still placing people under the world whenever to zone/log?
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...placing-me-under-the-map.296458/#post-4287617