Undocumented Complex Systems

Discussion in 'General Gameplay Discussion' started by Dockter, Jan 9, 2023.

  1. Dockter Well-Known Member

    When are the developers at DarkPaw going to stop implementing undocumented overly complex systems?
    And before anyone brings up the fact that their are FAQ's for this stuff, I would like to point out that DarkPaw doesn't own nor maintain anything on eq2.fandom.com. Also, don't say go look at this random forum post by a developer who answered a question with a vague response as an acceptable level of documentation. This game should have guides and documentation for every feature, every expansion if its in-game and a player is expected to us it. Players shouldn't have to go on a wild goose chase to find answers to these systems.

    Let me take a moment to list just a few that I can think of just off the top of my head:
    • Monolithic Adornment, receiving & leveling
      • First off; its not documented anywhere officially.
      • The system itself is broken, examine a piece of gear, click exit, find out...
      • Leveling doesn't work unless you zone ? What?
      • Leveling doesn't work unless you have it equipped, What?
      • Again, none of this is documented, anywhere besides 3rd party sites.
    • Adornments in General
      • Where is the official documentation on this system.
      • Why isn't it explained better where the good runes are (Panda quests)
      • Where is the better explanation about T1/T2 rules
      • Why doesn't a Panda rune work in a T1/2/3 zone, it says "RoR Zones" but apparently only works in Solo zone, why isn't this documented ANYWHERE officially?
    • AA System and how to get certain points in certain rows
      • Again, the whole AA system, completely and utterly undocumented. Where is the company official documentation on these features with an explanation?
    • Random meaningless mathematics:
      • Rare harvesting chance doesn't equal rare harvesting change, again not documented anywhere.
      • So many base stats, where is the official documentation explaining the stat, DP needs to stop relying on gamers to do their jobs for them
      • Melee Multiplier, again, undocumented, unverifiable results without using ACT.
    Every single system should be well thought out, implemented, TESTED, which clearly monolithic gear upgrades were not, and documented. We know you can create tool tips when you mouse over things, the problem is is its incomplete. This stupid Monolithic adornment system wasn't well thought out, wasn't well implemented, wasn't tested which I've proven and certainly isn't documented anywhere.
    I have a hard time trying to get new players to start playing EQ2 with me and my wife because of so many undocumented things in this game, I am sick of having to tell people, "well read the eq2.fandom.com website", then, "read between the lines" with a bunch of other stuff, "oh that stat doesn't mean what you think it means". This is garbage. Please start improving the documentation and quality of your work. I've paid $250.00 per expansion for 4 accounts per year for years plus I have 2 lifetime accounts. Don't tell me as a player I haven't contributed to help keep this boat afloat.
    If I am wrong on any of the above information please by all mean point it out but don't point me back to eq2.fandom.com, point me something official and not a vague respond in a 2 year old forum thread. I'm sick and tired of being pointed to sites with unofficial information.
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  2. Kenn Well-Known Member

    When EQ first came out, it had no documentation, no map, you had to drop a dagger on the ground to figure out which way was north. If you died in some spot, you better remember where it was or your gear and stuff was gone. No documentation was part of exploration and fun for the players. I agree though, if there is a hidden mechanic, then there should be some way to know how it works. Even if we have to quest to find out.

    Maybe a mob takes 12 dials (str, wis, level, zone, resistances, etc) to figure out your attack, and the mob has random dials for (defense, resistances, etc) even if you know all the dials and exact calculations to figure out that the mob will take 12 billion damage in 1 hit. Who will go through the calcs for that? Seems easier to just hit it, if you die, then gear up more.
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  3. Dockter Well-Known Member

    There is a big difference between exploration and exploitation which is what some of this undocumented stuff feels like.
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  4. Benj Well-Known Member

    As others have mentioned, most of the game is meant to be explored and discovered. The forums and the wiki are the places that we, the community, have chosen to self-document our adventures. If you tell a new player NOT to look at those sites, simply because they were not created by a Darkpaw employee, then you are contributing to the very problem you complain about by hiding that information when you know full well that the wiki has mostly-accurate information.

    Monolithic adornment, receiving & leveling
    I couldn't find any information on everquest2.com about this adornment, nor would I expect to. The adornment itself is visible on the Status Merchant in Raj'Dur Plateaus (assuming you have 100 or more Renewal Talents). This is perfectly discoverable to me, minus the needing enough currency part. I'm firmly against that idea; merchants should show all of their wares so we know what to look forward to and work towards.

    Leveling the adornment, as found on the in-game examine window, simply states "Grows in power based on how many Monolithic energy that has been extracted". The adornment doesn't state where that energy is extracted from, but it's not a far leap for a player to check the Monolithic gear they received last year. That gear confirms the player's suspicions, as it states (using the plate legs as an example), "Ancient armor rumored to have very strong trade value to specific desert tribes across oceans of time! Examining this item will allow you to extract the powerful energies trapped within". Odd that it mentions trade value when no merchant accepts the gear as currency, but the second half is quite clear. The fact that your gear transmuted into Monolithic energy when you clicked "exit" is clearly a bug, and not an undocumented feature. I'm aware that you have already submitted a bug report for it, so that should be the end of the discussion. Why would the devs need to document a bug, particularly one that they (hopefully) intend to fix?

    I cannot find any in-game information on why leveling only works if you have it equipped and if you zone, nor can I find any such information on everquest2.com. To me, this is a logical technical requirement, though I can see why others would find it confusing on this particular adornment. Indeed, this requirement has been in place since leveling adornments were first added in Chains of Eternity, though nobody questioned it until the Heart of Luclin adornment was added in Reign of Shadows. With those old green adornments, of course they only levelled when equipped; you had to use the item to strengthen it. Zoning also has the effect of force-updating a character's stats with the servers, so that would also refresh the strength and status of the Monolith adornment.

    Adornments in general
    I was actually surprised to find no mention of adornments in the in-game help window. I'm sure there was a tutorial popup the first time I found an adornment, but that would have been 15 years ago. I'm tempted to create a new character to test this out...

    Anyway, the text found on most adornments is straight-forward enough. If you examine an adornment of any color, it specifies which item types it works on, which adornment slots (color) it works in, and which zones it works in. It also states what level it is.

    Right-clicking and selecting "use" or double-clicking the adornment (when on default settings) pops open a new window that asks which piece of gear you want to add it to, showing only acceptable items. The UX that I and many others use, where no window appears and you select any valid equipment on your character, requires you to change your options in-game, and it's reasonable to assume that only experienced users would do so. Thus, the adornment feature is largely well discoverable.

    They already announce the Panda, Panda, Panda event a week or two before it turns on every year. There's plenty of news articles on everquest2.com on this subject, each directing players to visit Sundered Frontier. What documentation is required beyond that?

    On the stun/stifle/fear/mez immunity tiers, I agree this can be better documented. Because it is intentional that the Panda variants only work in solo zones, their effect text should include the line about Oppressive Sands that the Lockbox variants have. Further, the immunity tiers are currently bugged, and in-game text is contradictory. The Lockbox variants all say that they are "Disabled by Oppressive Sands of higher tiers than the source adornment". Since they are Tier 1 adornments, they must (by their own description) work in zones with Oppressive Sands I. However, experience and a dev note (in a bug report) show that they do not work in H1 zones, which apply Oppressive Sands I. The "bug", therefore, is not that these runes are ineffective in H1 zones, but that these runes claim effectiveness when they are intended not to be. In other words, the text is wrong, not the implementation.

    AA System and how to get certain points in certain rows
    The first time you earn an AA point or a Prestige point, there is a tutorial pop-up in-game that explains how to use it. This tutorial can be re-visited in the in-game help window, which also contains a diagram of the AA window.

    When starting a new AA build, the window clearly shows which abilities are available and which are not. Hovering over an unavailable ability shows what is required to open it. For example, Avenging Invigoration (leftmost column and fifth row down on the Crusader tree) states "Requires 22 points in Strength". The three abilities directly above it all designate "Strength" in their descriptions. The ability Avenging Hatred (leftmost column and sixth row down on the Crusader tree) states "Requires 70 points spent in the Crusader tree" while Crusader's Faith (final row on the same tree) states "Requires 16 points in Sentinel's Fate Attributes". Even the Reign of Shadows Prestige endline abilities (Zealot's Challenge and Jurisdiction for paladins) state "Requires 68 points spent globally". I'm not sure when this text was added, because it certainly was a mystery back in RoS.

    Random meaningless mathematics
    My Rare Harvest Chance while I'm writing this is 7%, as shown in my character window. The tooltip for this stat reads "Increases your rare harvest chance by 7%". Admittedly a short message that is little more than the name of the stat, but it is accurate. One could argue that it is ambiguous between "Increases your rare harvest chance by 7 percentage points" and "Increases your rare harvest chance by 7 percent", but the latter interpretation is more common within the character window. To be fair, it seems that both interpretations are used by the game engine, selecting the former in low level zones and the latter in high level zones.

    If by base stats you are referring to the five primary attributes, those are documented by in-game tooltips. On my paladin, they read as follows (fighters, scouts, mages, and priests will each see different text):
    * Strength increases your damage by 271.45% and your maximum power by 10.0 per point of strength.
    * Agility does not provide a benefit for your class.
    * Stamina increases your maximum health by 63.0 per point of stamina and increases your chance to shrug off, or completely resist the effects of a spell.
    * Intelligence does not provide a benefit for your class.
    * Wisdom does not provide a benefit for your class.

    Quickly skimming the rest of my character window, I do not see any stats whose tooltips are wrong. It is confusing that Recovery Speed, Spell Reuse Speed, and Spell Doublecast are visible in this window, given that those three stats were removed from the game, but their tooltips are technically still accurate, given that their values are all zero.

    Melee Multiplier is one that I will grant you, given that its raw value is not visible in the character window. However, its effects can be seen without ACT. I have no "qualifying" source to backup my statements, so I ask only that you trust the community which shared this information with me. The character window does show the minimum and maximum damage range that your auto-attack weapons can deal in a single hit. When you increase your melee multiplier stat, that damage range dynamically updates as appropriate. When I cast the Geomancer spell Terrene Destruction (which increases Melee Multiplier and stifles the caster; no other effects), I can see the raw damage of my primary and ranged weapons increase.

    Conclusion
    Hopefully this satisfies your need for official Darkpaw-created documentation. The largest failing in the documentation that I've found is players' unwillingness to read the words in front of them. I'm well aware of the UX goal of creating tools which need no documentation, but that simply isn't practical for most applications. If you do not understand a specific feature, there is no shame in asking, and I hope you do not direct shame at those who ask you questions.

    The specific complaints you noted as being "undocumented" largely do exist in-game or on everquest2.com. The fact that this information also exists on unofficial sites should not decrease your enjoyment of the game. Nearly every video game has hidden mechanics, and nearly every video game has a wiki or forum where players have dissected those mechanics and shared their knowledge.

    I'm sure you appreciated these unofficial sites when you received the expert version of Natural Infusion...
  5. Cusashorn Well-Known Member

    There really are a lot of Quality of Life improvements that SHOULD be added to this game and it's dwindling population to make things easier. The whole "Explore and discover how things work" thing should not be a hinderance to veteran players who find themselves just plain unable to keep up with the overly complex mechanics that keep piling up on top of each other. It's just more work upon work upon work upon work in a game that is supposed to be an escape for a while.

    THINGS. NEED. TO. BE. EXPLAINED.
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  6. Cusashorn Well-Known Member

    They could start by popping up a tutorial for anyone who reaches level 100

    "You may be noticing that you're no longer many any significant advancement into level 100. This is because with the release of the Planes of Prophecy expansion, the level curve for level 100 onward shifted, and as such, is highly impractical to grind for experience anymore. You will be required to travel to the Plane of Magic and complete the questline in order to level up."

    This in-game message would save all of us from having to keep repeating this information to everyone every other day... I wears you down. It really does.
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  7. Burningice Coldfire Member

    So where do I get monolithic gear? I stopped playing in January of last year and came back in early December for the new expac. I didn't even know this was a thing until I read this thread
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  8. Benj Well-Known Member


    That's a fair question to ask, though given the nature of the question, I doubt we'll ever see an in-game answer. And the intended audience of the adorn was people who played through Visions of Vetrovia, who likely found at least one piece by accident.

    To directly answer your question, there are six distinct pieces of Monolithic gear. Three of them (helm, gloves, belt) are purchased from a merchant in Forlorn Gist using no-trade currency that only comes from VoV weekly missions. The boots are a random drop from the final boss of Kurn's Tower H1 and Kurn's Tower H2. The pants are a random drop from the final boss of Kurn's Tower x2. The shoulders are a random drop off of Druushk, Xygoz, and Phara Dar (all Fabled Veeshan's Peak), and they are a guaranteed drop off of Trakanon (Fabled Trakanon's Lair).
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  9. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    It may be yet another "crate full of awesome free gear by the nutty old NPC standing right by the place you come in on" like at level 100, I think 110, possibly 120... X-P

    Uwk
    who used to despair of ever being relevant as an Outfitter again after level 100 (and who has despairing Hordelings who are Jewelers, as well...at least Scholars and Woodworkers can make expendables) :-/
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  10. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    So! We HAVE to group to do Heroic and Fabled level dungeons if we want to have a prayer of doing anything else in this expac (and we'd better already have the best gear imaginable to survive trying to get that Monolithic stuff), and even then it might not work ("Whoopsie! Thirty-fifth time's the charm, huh? Still no Boots or Pants for you! Hope you can run fast! Barefoot! At least pants-less will be a great motivation! :D"). >:-/

    Bleedin' gods-damned brilliant, devs. >:-/
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  11. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    I will not do the Planes of Prophecy garbage. I won't. I'll shower my high level toons with Tokens before ever setting foot in that damned "questline." >:-/

    I wonder if that was deliberate on their part? Those Tokens aren't cheap. >:-/

    Uwk
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  12. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    On top of it all, a lot is very unintuitive. I found that out while grouping with good buddies; without them, I'd be totally lost as a noob, and this was back in 2006. I'd gotten my feet sufficiently soggy, I'd hoped, by the time my group disbanded (siiggghhhh...), but I made the mistake of taking almost a year off in hiatus from burn-out, only to come back in to the AA tree stuff (brand new, or major changes, don't recall atm). It was a major PiTA to try to figure out on my own.

    For all their vaunted suggestions of "Play YOUR way! :D" I guess "my" way would have to be grouping with math majors who've been raiding every night for the last 10+ years, and have every single up-to-date piece of gear, for the express purpose of getting the next latest and greatest gear, in order to try to figure out some of this stuff.

    Remember back in the old days, when if "our way" was soloing? Or just crafting? Or mainly roleplaying? Or exploring? Okay, maybe some things can be mysterious. Other things, we should be able to do ourselves, if that's OUR way to play.

    But I guess that doesn't get more people in, just to spend a lot of their gaming time being unpaid teachers. X-P

    Uwk
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  13. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Yes and no. Many's the time I've gone there, especially recently, to find little to no information, accurate or otherwise. :-/

    I'm often told, "Well, anyone can edit Wiki, so do it yourself." If I already knew the information, I wouldn't be there looking for it.

    +1 agree there. I've often found a lot in the game to be unintuitive. :-/

    Seriously? That's the official line? "Grows in power based on how MUCH Monolithic energy HAS been extracted." Ooh. Those people need editors. X-P

    Then again, they do spend at least some time fixing typos, etc.... :-/

    Always reminds me of my favorite business advice line: "If you don't have time to do it right the first time, when will you find time to do it over?" ;->

    But what if folks haven't? If this expansion is their first time here, or a return after at least 2-3 expansions of gap? :-/

    For the same reason documentation exists for anything. To indicate to us (their bosses, sort of) what's going on; if there's a problem, that they are aware of the problem and that they're taking these steps to fix it; and here's when we might see it fixed.

    And I can't be the only player out there who has never, ever used those HoL things, nor understood what they were about at all (probably due to my lack of using them from lack of interest in them).

    The few adornments I use (largely when I'm forced to, like with Hex Dolls) do, indeed, say what level they are, what gear they modify, which slot on the item they'll go into, and what they do. I've never run across zones where they don't work, nor any info that specific on them as a warning.

    In the beginning. At low levels. Again, yeah, you're absolutely right, for the most part; it's pretty simple and straightforward. :)

    But when my adornments started getting sophisticated enough to spontaneously cure several illnesses, demand voting rights, and eventually started pondering FTL-drives to explore nearby galaxies, that's when I gave up on them. X-P

    True..... I must've missed something. Why would this be needed? :confused:

    Mainly, I guess, to explain the high-level gear you can get from the Pandas? /still_puzzled

    Oh, the curse of being just a casual player these days... :D

    Perhaps. I just noticed after the change was made that my chances of getting rares went from not too terrible to purely awful. Thank the gods for the harvesting thee-headed dog Familiar we can get now (which I rarely keep the default name of; I often wind up just calling him "Spot" :D).

    Well do I recall the old days when they did...sigh. On the other hand, that's back when Strength meant something to everyone as well, and you had to worry about your spindly Wizard, for example, carrying more than a dry Kleenex, or enough cash to be able to afford one with nose-kind lotion on it. :-/

    Some change is good. ;->

    Sigh. Clean-up on Aisle Two...see my above favorite business quote. Whoever killed those stats should've also removed the tooltips, or at least documented it well enough in-house that the Tooltip Removal Service people could jump on it.

    Take pity on us casual folks...ACT? And UX, for that matter? :-/

    Many games are far more intuitive than the EQniverse has historically been (and currently, apparently). I'd always gotten the general impression that, while they originally created a game they'd want to play themselves (well done; nothing wrong with that; laudable), they might or might not have wanted just "anyone" to be able to play it as well. consciously or unconsciously. Especially when EQ2 and WoW came out very close to each other, I'd always gotten the underlying feeling, rightly or wrongly, that "Oh, we're Mac. We're Apple. Those WoW guys, they're just Microsoft. And you'd better recruit your friends to play our games, or ask your friends for help if you're the noob, because the community is the ONLY way you're ever going to figure out some->a lot of this stuff, including at least some of the important things.

    "And if you've missed out on some really cool stuff that everyone else has been raving about since 19-ought-whenever? Sucks to be you, doesn't it? You should've been here earlier, because you're never going to get the chance at it." (That last bit, at least, they've been working on recently to fix [and doesn't actually have much to do with documentation, agreed]. Bravo! :D)

    Uwk
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  14. Jovie Well-Known Member

    The game could stand for a complete reboot. Too many systems have been implemented and broken and forgotten, while others are totally out of hand and unmanageable.
  15. Benj Well-Known Member

    Many players won't have Monolithic gear, including some who played through Visions of Vetrovia. It was not intended that everyone should get this adornment; it was specifically intended to be a reward for those who did. I certainly don't consider the Monolith adornment required. It's not even useful until level 10, and I don't even have mine yet. The devs have also hinted that the adornment will be replaced by the end of the expansion; we won't want to keep it. Only time will tell on that one.

    As for the documentation side of the adornment, you raise a good point that the non-intended players won't have a clue what this is talking about. Is it then wisdom to hide information about an item they'll never reach? Is it then cruel to show an item they'll never obtain?

    Visions of Vetrovia started a trend that adornments will only work in the expansion they were introduced in, the expansion previous to that, and the expansion subsequent to that. For example, adorns introduced in VoV will work in Reign of Shadows (the previous), VoV (the introduction), and Renewal of Ro (the subsequent), but they will not work in Blood of Luclin or any earlier content. This "feature" has been retroactively applied to all adornments introduced in Sentinel's Fate or newer, and it is well documented on those adornments.

    Do you feel that the devs should write their own "here's where to get the best stuff" guide? Anyone playing when the news article announcing the event was published would know that there is stuff to do with the panda. The devs officially said "there's a panda here, go talk to him for new quests and gear". Is that not enough for you?

    ACT = Advanced Combat Tracker, a popular third-party tool that players use to measure their damage output (among other features). I find it very useful for raiding, but not required. There's at least one player in my guild who refuses to use it, and he's one of our best.
    UX = User Experience, a general software industry term (not EQ2-specific) to refer not just to the look and feel of an application, but also to how easy it is to use, how powerful it is, does the user enjoy it, etc. I specifically chose this term in regards to equipping adornments (rather than UI=User Interface) because the two alternatives I described are applicable in every UI (Default, Darq, Profit, etc.).
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  16. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Could be, that might have been what EQ3/EQNext/EQWhatever was going to be for, I suppose? Given that the map they were going to use for something they'd called "EQ3" initially, then insisted on "EQNext," was the original map of Norrath, as if EQ2, which I far prefer over EQ1, was just an awful mistake that no one should've ever implemented and should be consigned to history's back alley rubbish tip. X-P

    But then again, I only ever saw bits of the Beta for it and Landscape, which was very cool. :)

    I just wish we could've incorporated some of those tools from Landscape into the regular EQniverse... :-/

    Uwk
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  17. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Gah, good question...sometimes, a bit of information might be worse than none at all. :-/

    Is the rest of the gear in RoR good enough to do just generic adventuring and crafting in, then (/crossing_fingers)? :)

    Still not sure why they felt the need to do that planned obsolescence... /shrug

    And probably/possibly everyone knows what UI means, at least the folks here, so there might be some confusion between that and UX. Got it, though I'm used to reading articles where when an abbreviation is mentioned, they spell it out first, then abbreviate it, then they can just refer to the abbreviation forever afterwards. Saves confusion. :)

    Thanks for the clarification. :)

    Uwk
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  18. gambitak Well-Known Member

    Dear gods, I remember desperately trying to find a necro, SK or bard to find my corpse because I forgot to type /loc before dying.

    The nice thing about no map system was that I had to remember each zone I traveled through; after years being away, I was able to successfully navigate many zones from memory.

    Also, I had to learn crafting recipes from other people, especially the later ones. Some of the recipes were found on books that were dropped or sold, but, more often than not we had craft nights, at first in EC and then in the PoK, where my guild would host crafting/language/alcohol tolerance nights. It was a blast and encouraged active community involvement.

    The undocumented complexity is the reason we all were playing an MMOrpg and sites like Allakazam and others started. In fact, I ran an EQ site for several years where a bunch of us were parsing hit points, resists, etc.

    The EQ franchise has always been about player documentation; I personally don't mind this, at all and consider it a brilliant move to foster community involvement.
  19. Raeven Well-Known Member


    I have 156 Renewal Talents in my currency window, and I do not see any adornment being sold in Charifa's wares in Raj'Dur Plateaus.

    I see a whistle, a cloak, a mount upgrade, and 3 charms. No adornment.
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  20. Benj Well-Known Member

    It's possible there are other hidden requirements I'm not aware of. I can see the adornment on my main, which has plenty of platinum, Renewal Talents, and status to afford it, but I have not extracted any Monolithic items yet. I've heard of others mentioning that they couldn't see various Status Merchant items until they had enough status points, so that's my first guess. Another common requirement is completion of the RoR sig line.
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