Stats Revamp

Discussion in 'Items and Equipment' started by Mesander, Aug 3, 2015.

  1. Mesander Member

    So I've returned recently after being gone since DoV and realised how insane the stat inflation has gotten; and I thought it was bad then....sheesh. Is there a hope of scaling all of this back, consolidating, etc...I would love to play this game again...but if I am going to need a calculus degree I'm not sure I will stay long. I realize MMOs are about numbers when it comes to combat mechanics but my goodness. There has to be point where you say; ok let's simplify this so it doesn't get out of hand. Well, I think the "panic" alarm button is broken because this IS way out of hand. I'm floored by some of the items that my guild mates are wearing. It's insane.

    This was a big reason why this game had a drop off of players over the last few years. I have spoken to MANY veteran players far and wide who left for the same reasons among others.

    I'm not asking for things to be "dumbed-down" at all. In fact that is one of EQ2s better traits versus the rest of the MMO community. EQ2 has always won the award for overall complexity...but there is a fine line between complexity and convolution. Hats off to those who have stuck with it no matter what..I commend you for your loyalty to the game and development team.


    Is scaling the stats back possible? Can the emphasis on the basics be restored? I know some of you are going to say, "go play on TLEs." I've been doing that but ultimately the TLEs will be in the same boat in the future. I fear that the rumors of a skeleton crew development team are true and that my inquiry will never be possible. Here's to hoping! Cheers!
    HaphazardAllure likes this.
  2. Koko Well-Known Member

    I'd support this, as I feel one of the largest difficulties for casual, and even "hardcore", players is identifying trends and consequences related to itemization. The tl;dr version for why it is this way now is player feedback suggests "I want my items to make a difference" or "I want every item to significantly influence my performance" or more casually "I want to be excited when I get a new item"

    Casual players tend to be excessively punished by itemization "traps" or gear that does little or relatively nothing, but costs the same as other equipment. They have no method of knowing which gear is useful, and the forums tend to be rather full of misinformation. It feels very bad to fall into an trap, as not only does the player have a reduced performance but they invested time and effort to do so. The amount of itemization traps has diminished since the onset of AoM, but it still exists to a significant degree. Many players enjoy the presence of these traps as they view it as a place to display their knowledge over the casual player, ... I won't argue that this is the case but I think the magnitude of the effect is somewhat extreme and is detrimental in a game where teamwork is important (i.e. in a PUG group, it'd be great if everyone could perform their roles to a minimum degree, and it sucks when that is gear-gated).

    Hardcore players are also limited by the gear-gated-ness of itemization, as it becomes difficult to design encounters around fluctuating stats - especially defensive ones. I won't go too far into this, but a Katanallama did a great post that detailed the "progression" of certain classes in a raid environment, which strongly suggests that not all classes scale equivalently with increased stats. For example, shaman/channelers/templars tend to perform well throughout all encounters whereas inquisitors/druids drop off as arcane AEs does more damage than player health. I could write a book about this, and I have written a few threads, so I'll stop here.

    tl:dr version, the EQII community likes items that have a really big impact on gameplay. It is neat to see someone who wishes they had a smaller impact, but you're fighting against the grain and it is unlikely to change for the time being.
    Kryvak and Feldon like this.
  3. Mesander Member

    I am just trying to wrap my brain around the amount of crit chance needed in the current xpac in addition to a progression of it, crit bonuses, etc...it's just too much. It's insane. How did it come to this? Once the crit chance cap exceeded 100% (TSO/SF xpacs) I was thinking, so what now? I really thought they would scale it all back at some point. Instead these stats as a whole are in the stratosphere...primary greens, blues, yellows...the whole bit. EQ2 is where my MMO roots are..however I did play WoW for a time with a friend (never liked it more than EQ2) and Blizzard did a stat revamp where the numbers are VERY manageable now. The more I think about it...the more I realize that it will probably never happen without a combat mechanics overhaul.
  4. Feldon Well-Known Member

    There is a big difference between stat inflation and stat consolidation.

    Also it's worth pointing out that stats WERE consolidated down in 2010:
    http://eq2wire.com/2010/02/04/consolidated-stats-persona-window/
    http://eq2wire.com/2010/02/04/primary-character-stat-changes/

    It was highly controversial and took a lot of fun and variation out of the itemization for several years. It became just plain boring for most of us.
    Removing stats and simplifying things would, by definition, "dumb down" the game.

    Your overall post is vague, non-specific and even self-contradictory. If you had laid out specific issues like requesting specific stats to be consolidated or renamed or documented or some other actionable change, then a dev response would be reasonable. Your request is far too vague to elicit a response.

    For the record, my biggest issue with EQ2 is not stat inflation (it's just numbers -- multiplying them by 100 doesn't change anything) or stat consolidation (i don't mind having 10 stats if I know what they actually mean and do).

    My biggest issue with EQ2 is internal inconsistency and lack of documentation. Let's start with the extremely vague spell descriptions. Look at this item: http://eq2.me/i/Bow of the Kromzek Kings You have to instinctively know that "Caster has a 2.0% chance of having one of their weapons' auto-attack strike the target multiple times." means +2% Flurry. And that's a simple one. Delve into any of the defensive stats and you need graph paper and a physics degree to keep it all straight.

    There are so many things that require testing in ACT just to prove or disprove. There's a lot of rumors, speculation, and useful information floating around out there in various threads that's not organized or viewable in any consistent space. For instance, we know that Ability Mod cannot benefit any Combat Art or Spell more than 50% of its max value. Except, that there are CAs and Spells that ignore this cap. Which ones? It will take you hours of research to find them.

    So many of our AAs in the Kingdom of Sky tree reduce the Casting Speed or Reuse Speed of popular Spells or CAs. Did you know that they are all useless if you already have 100% Casting Speed and 100% Reuse Speed?

    I wouldn't have a problem with the current stats if every rule didn't have multiple exceptions, all of them undocumented. Call me crazy but I think it would help the EQ2 team too to have things reasonably documented somewhere so that people know what this stuff is actually supposed to do.
  5. Feldon Well-Known Member

    You should never spec crit chance at the expense of more important stats like Crit Bonus, Potency, autoattack stats (Flurry, Accuracy, and the often overlooked Weapon Skills), etc. depending on your class. The Crit Chance curve was opened up to at least 1700%, but most people have too many other important things to spend on before they get anywhere near that amount.
    Again you just seem annoyed at numbers going over 100. If one day you got in your car and the speedometer went to 5,000 and all the speed limit signs were adjusted for the new scale, you'd eventually adapt. Why is it such a big deal that an 11 year old MMO has large combat numbers? It doesn't actually affect your ability to play.

    You asked a specific question (before going completely off the rails and complaining about developer resources and bringing Blizzard into this) -- how much crit chance do you need this expansion? The answer is that the curve goes all the way to 1,700%. The more crit chance you have, the more likely you will do Legendary, Fabled, and Mythical crits. But most classes are focusing on other things. Going pure crit chance will set you way back.
    Neiloch likes this.
  6. Mankar Active Member

    I asked them to re-sticky the current system formulas thread but I guess it was dubbed not needed anymore. If I hadn't played this game since pre-DoF, I have no clue how I'd find out the stuff I know now.

    I don't think stats or numbers need simplifying, but I do think itemization needs to be clear and stat caps and conversions need to be made easily available to new players. Sure you can ask on forums, but what % of people actually use them?
    Feldon likes this.
  7. Hammdaddy Active Member

    I'd say a good 90% of the population doesn't understand how to gear there characters, most people see max health and think hey that looks good right. The ability to live! But really unless you're raiding content you aren't geared for you don't need max health, even then you stack the guardian charms (which is bad development might i add) to live anyway. People need to be taught what reforges the best and what stats to go for to reforge into stats they want. So many people i know come back and say there are 13-20 blue stats now? People are clueless.
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  8. Mesander Member

    I think I will come back to the game for a while and give it a go. I appreciate your replies/feedback.

    Question..do any of you know of a webpage/thread I can go to catch up on the current stat configurations and what the order of priority is for them? Initially it would be for heals and dps. I don't have a fighter class any where near max level yet. Thanks in advance.
    HaphazardAllure likes this.
  9. Feldon Well-Known Member

    Which stats have priority depends entirely on your class. Most people start a thread "Help me improve my <classX>" and link to their character on EQ2U. Then people look at it, make suggestions on stats, AA points, etc.
  10. HaphazardAllure Well-Known Member

    This is my biggest issue with the game as well. I feel like if I didn't have access to advice from veteran players or EQ2U, I would never have figured out which stats to use when gearing up my characters. I feel like the blue stats need to somehow be explained to players while playing the game itself, instead of having to search through tons of outdated forum threads about it. I don't mind doing some out of game research, that is fine, but I feel like character stats (besides your main stat + stamina) are never explained in game and I find that to be a problem.
  11. flameweaver Well-Known Member

    There'd be a lot less bugs and fewer inadvertent game breakers, if the current devs has some detailed reference points so that they can check out how things hang together, so that they understand that if they do A to fix B, they're going to break X,Y and Z.

    Too much of this game is only understood on a word of mouth basis, too much hearsay and a recent demonstration : Isle of Refuge. No need to say more.
    HaphazardAllure likes this.
  12. Regolas Well-Known Member

    Meh I don't find the stats an issue. They're obvious to me. But I'm an engineer who likes playing around with numbers and spreadsheets.

    At least I'm not as bad as Koko ;)
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  13. Rainmare Well-Known Member

    really? how much easier can you explain something called critical chance? or critical bonus? or dps modifier. Attack speed. multi attack chance.

    they are pretty self explainitory. ability modifier. ae auto attack.

    about the only thing in any of the blue stats that might need 'explained' is soft/hard capping, and converstion of some stats to others, which if you mouse over the stat, it not only tell you what it converts too, but how much your gaining due to that conversion.

    people acting like you need a calculus degree to do the stats in this game I think need to re-examine how difficult calculus is. I suck at math, loathed the subject. but I got no problems figuring out the stats. not one. my attack speed converts to flurry. my casting speed converts to double cast chance. and I even know the amounts I gain, in game, by mousing over the stat. You shouldn't need an in game school full of NPC teachers to sit you down and go through paragraphs of text to explain it beyond what they teach in the Isle or the 'newbie' zone quests.

    mouse over the stats. read the tool tips.
  14. HaphazardAllure Well-Known Member


    Obviously I know what crit chance is and yes some of the blue stats can be easily figured out. I know not everything is difficult to understand. I have moused over the stats and read the tooltips. All of the blue stats are honestly better explained by mousing over them on EQ2U than in the actual game and I think that's pretty strange. Some of us weren't here from day one and don't have 10 years experience playing the game. I don't know why you have to be so rude and condescending about it, honestly.
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  15. Koko Well-Known Member

    ...x3, I find them an issue, mostly because they are... undocumented as Feldon suggested or in worse cases what we "know" is flat out wrong. A great example of this is avoidance or hit rate mechanics.

    Most players agree that defense/parry/deflection seem to increase a character's avoidance, which then directly relates to how frequently they are hit by an attack. The wiki, which quotes a developer from GU61, states that overcapping these stats will grant extra parry/riposte/dodge chance. The wiki is wrong, overcapping these skills increased uncontested avoidance... but not extra parry/riposte/dodge.

    Which lead to an interesting debate, if uncontested avoidance is determined by extra parry, riposte, dodge + some unknown function of normal avoidance, is that unknown function influenced by encounter level or weapon skills? We have no idea. How do these stats relate to how often a character avoids an attack? Not a clue. For example, I know that a brawler with 25k avoidance is hit roughly 65% of the time in Fabled Valdoon, but I don't know which sections of the avoidance score play a factor (e.g. is it a combination of uncontested and normal avoidance or does uncontested dominate? My sample size is small enough that either option is statistically possible with 95% confidence by t-test).

    Similarly I know that a monk with 100% strikethrough has near 100% hit rate in that zone, however a bruiser with 57% strikethrough is around 90%. I suspect that a successful strikethrough "rerolls" the hit check, rather than bypasses it, for this reason... but I don't know, and have no real way of verifying it. Do NPCs have uncontested avoidance or simply super high defense scores that requires the use of strikethrough over weapon skills on fighters? Again, no idea and no way easy way of finding out. Even if we did, it'd change with the NPC buff package so the incentive for doing so is negligible.

    I think simplification of mechanics could avoid dumbing down the game if we went from an unknown system to a well defined one. Making informed decisions is much more interesting than effectively guessing.
    Mankar likes this.
  16. Mankar Active Member


    Stats aren't that hard granted, but can you tell me what damage counts towards an RO charge? What about the types of damage a damage shield blocks? How about which AEs are blockable? What about what skills overcap ability mod?

    That information can be found with some digging, but it is not easily available. Is it such a bad thing to want new people to be able to find that info?

    Edit: Also, critical chance is not actually all that easy. With some free time you can work out the curve for chances at each crit type, but again, not freely available.
    HaphazardAllure likes this.
  17. Rainmare Well-Known Member

    and I contend that you SHOULDN'T have everything well explained and defined and set on a spreadsheet. there are things they HAVE to keep 'hidden'. there has to be some trial and error, there have to be moments of how does this work...or damn, I thought that would work, but it didn't! lets see if THIS works..

    if I know exactly how every single potential stat works, down to the decimal, then you are going to completely make certain classes obsolete. if I know for a hard, cold fact, that a guardian is naturally 5% better tank then any other tank thanks to knowing exactly how all the defensive stats work and exactly how guard buffs work in conjunction, then you just killed the other 5 tanks.

    no one in there right mind is going to give you a verbatim word for word 'this is exactly how it works' setup. hell even in old table top D&D, the DM's monster sheets and certain rolls were hidden behind a screen that came in the box. So you couldn't know exactly how things were going, how things were working 100% of the time.

    can you figure out the curve for Legendary/Fabled/Mythical critting? sure. do players really need to know that information? no.
    you don't need to know what AEs are blockable from the outset. that's part of learning the fights. what can or can't be blocked.
    RO charging means that the person that takes that time, can have bigger ROs them someone that doesn't. should that be a requirement? no. it should be a bonus, not a needed thing.

    but if you spell it out, then it instantly becomes 'you know exactly how this works, why isn't your X/Y/Z as good as that other guys X/Y/Z? you must suck. /kick' or 'We know what all your numbers should be at, and one of them isn't high enough. /kick'

    if I mouse over my mit, anything it seems about 17k on the tooltip says 'I absorb 75% of a level 100s attack' no matter if I have 17k or 30k. so I sacrificed some of my mit, to gain dps. I'm still at the same message, I dunno exactly how much more damage I might be taking, but it's not effecting my ability to tank. it lets me with a little trial and error, find the threshold that I can balance by dps stuff with my mit/block stuff.

    but if they made it so I know the exact difference between 17k and 30k. and they know that for sure at 30k I'm taking 5% less damage, then me being at 17k, even if I can do the zone, I will not be allowed to because I'm making it 'worse' on the healer to 'keep me alive'. cause they might have to cast 3 heal spells rather then 2 during a pull.
  18. Mankar Active Member


    I think you are taking this to a wild extreme. I agree some things shouldn't be spelled out for the sake of preserving a mystery about some mechanics, but I also strongly disagree with you about other things. There are some things in this game which are harder to discover by trial and error. I would love to see you figure out what counts towards VC damage when you charge an RO without either being told it, or without at the bare minimum being told the formula. Neither of those things are publicly posted. Without the formula, you would have a very rough time figuring it out.The only way to do it would be to effectively test one thing at a time, and then derive the formula and from there the things that count.

    Do you think that is a trivial task to the average player with real life and not a lot of time? No. Do you need to know that information to best effectively play the class? Yes.

    I would also like to add that you would in no way make classes obsolete. It does take some skill to actually execute perfectly every time with that knowledge. The inherent ability of a guardian does not make it a good tank. A good player makes a good tank. Also to suggest it is the very best tank is very shortsighted. I think you forget some fights favor some fighters due to the way their temps work.
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  19. Rainmare Well-Known Member

    no, you don't need to have massive VC/RO to 'best effectively play the class'. you might 'need' it to get a bigger parse number, but that's about it. and personally, I'd prefer the bard that doesn't worry about his VC/ROs/parse but can keep the buffs on the people that need them and not get himself killed then the one that it spending all his time trying to parse/giving himself all the buffs so he can get those superpowered VC/RO numbers. I put up with that crap as a dirge, because people gave more a damn about my parse number then all the rezzing/rez sick clearing, cob timing, gravitasing and other short/temp things I was doing for the tank. but my 'parse' wasn't high enough. because I was doing my actual job as utility rather then trying to get parse numbers.

    Bards and Chanters are NOT DPS. they are Utility. parsing is secondary. Just like all these tanks screaming for more dps. you're job is NOT to parse big. your job it to take the beating so the actual dps can do thier jobs.

    yes, some fights favor monks, and most favor plates. but what I mean is that if I know, for a fact, that if you were a, say, SK. and it is inherently, by design, 5% less effective at tanking then a Guard, then yeah, sorry, I'm taking the guard. we've seen these shifts before, where some classes had to be practically hercules to even compete with the weakest of thier counterparts.

    at least before it could be chalked up to mere player perception. you think that guard is better, but I can prove myself as a paladin/zerker/sk/monk/brusier.

    give a hard number that says yes, the guard is just flat better then you, and there's nothing you can do to overcome that, because equal gear/skill means he's STILL better then you, mathmatical fact. then yeah, the other tanks just got the boot.

    and I'm just using the guard as an example because he's 'supposed' to be the most defensive of all the tanks, and then add it if we knew exactly how all the defense and avoidance works...and found oh yeah, look at that, he is. and by a certain percentage. and that percentage stays there, no matter what. equal gear, he's still 5% better. equal skill, he's 5% better or more, because now we'll have solid hard numbers on how all those defensive temps work with his mit/avoidance.

    lets not forget it would also make it so if you have less then X mit or X avoid your not worth messing with. even if the tooltip never changed from 75% against a 100...but now we know that over that cap is X amount against say, a 105. well if you don't have that, then we don't want you.
  20. Mankar Active Member


    Is there some reason you can't manage your temps, rezzing, and RO/VC at the same time? First off, if you die during RO/VC cycles, learn to use Veil of Notes. Secondly, it's not just about a bigger parse number...VC is a group buff that helps entire raids burn named faster. It can make the difference of your raid passing the DPS check. How that isn't important, I'm not really sure. People who don't wanna do their entire job as bards are bad. Period.

    I see what you are saying about tanks, but it is wrong. Even in top guilds, they didn't always have flavor of the month tanks as MT. Sure, if they could swing it they would, but mostly they take the tank that can do their job. Because ultimately, it isn't always about choosing the best class, it is about being able to do your job. Your supposed theory of a tank being 5% better or worse than another tank doesn't exist because different situations make different tanks more desirable. It is not like devs revealing some behind-the-scenes formulas will suddenly make a certain tank better. People learn which tanks are best each xpac by trial and error and seeing what mob strats are. Having the math to prove a certain tank is better in a certain situation changes nothing because they already knew that tank is best for that fight.

    But you are missing the point and getting off topic. Some mechanics should be more explicitly laid out - arguing against that is absolutely mind boggling. Obviously their are mechanics that should be kept under wraps, but there are plenty that ought to be documented somewhere.

    Anyways, I'm done with this back and forth. It is distracting from the main point and getting nowhere.
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