Any profanity in a post to this thread and the sysop should delete it from the thread.

Any post that is off the topic Brad chooses to discuss should be deleted.

The challenge.

So often (including your recent post) you and Abashi come in, make a single post and then never come back to it again.

I would like you to post on the "hot topics" of your choice and then -respond- to peoples polite commentary on your positions.

Specific hot topics to consider are

Why can't melees bind in outdoor zones? How do you feel this will unbalance the game?

Why was feign death changed?

I mean- specifically. No "ongoing game issues" but something blunt like "a group of 3 monks were observed killing dragons without risk" or "6 necromancers were using pets to kill dragons without risk."

If buffs from level 50 characters are unbalancing the game by allowing powergaming, why are you not putting some kind of limit on the levels you can buff? For example, you can't buff someone more than 20 levels lower than you are.

Why do you object to Random spawning treasure? You have tried it in Paw (so maybe you are changing your position on this).

Why did it take so long for the Alchemy problem to be found when players were posting on the Shaman boards for 6 months that it was broken?

Why are you creating a group of 'second class' players who don't get the best items?

Why are you rewarding powergamers by setting up quests that require sitting for 12 hours to get a chance at the quest item when the same quest could be implemented as six 2 hour parts which any player could complete.

Why are some of these spawns EXACTLY 12 hours apart which allows kill stealing wizards/druids to teleport in 15 seconds before the creature spawns and kill it and steal it from the group that has been sitting there waiting for hours?

It doesn't have to be these. It can be ANY topic of your choosing.

Folks should ONLY respond to what ever topic you choose to speak on. And you should make it specific. You can always start another thread next week on a different issue. But for cripes sake, RESPOND to peoples counter posts even if it is to disagree with them.

Your habit of 'drive by shooting' style posts is NOT helping your relations with the players.

>>> Why was feign death changed?

Feign death was broken, and there were 2 bugs at work.

1. When you successfully feigned, you were never removed from the creatures hate list unless you feigned 7 times.
2. However, the creature would not remember that it hated you until it engaged something else.

Example: Bob the Monk attacks a guard. Bob runs away and feigns. The Guard says “Oh, he just fell over dead” and goes back to his spawn point. Bob gets up and starts chatting with the Guard. The Guard says, “One second Bob, I have to go kill this moss snake….*kills snake*… Er, Bob, didn’t you attack me a bit ago? Monks like you have ruined your own lands, you’ll not ruin mine!”

The first change to Feign Death fixed bug #2. The down side to this was that the first bug became apparent. Anything that was feigned on would instantly remember the monk when he stood back up. This caused a ton of problems so a set of changes was put in to effect the following:

1. Creatures level 31 or below will always forget you (100%) if you’ve successfully feigned and they miss their “see through feign” skill check (same check existed before).
2. Creatures 32 or above will always (100%) forget you if they’ve returned to their spawn point.
2a. If they haven’t yet returned to their spawn point, they have a good chance to forget you.
3. Roamers (creatures without spawnpoints) have a good chance to forget you.

So, the bottom line:

Before, if you feigned on something, and ran off to do something else, it would come running after you the moment it got done fighting something else, and was libel to bring the entire zone with it, at any point up until the time you zoned. The upside of this was that if you were in the only group fighting in an area, the chances of this happening was rather small. You could also feign multiple times until you got a single critter from a group.

After, if something is going to remember you, it is going to remember you right away. It’s still libel to bring the entire zone, but you might be able to get it off of you for good by feigning multiple times. The downside is that your chance of successfully getting rid of a critter is tied exponentially to the number of critters of which you are trying to lose. For instance, if you are feigning on 1 critter, you will get rid of it for good in an average of 2 feigns. With 2 critters on you, it’ll take an average of 5 feigns. With 3 it’s 13.

That’s the long answer. To answer the questions concisely, the bug with feign death was noticed and fixed because Monks were able to pull singles from places that they should, per game design, have needed an enchanter, druid, or the like.

>>> WHY do necro pets stay alive after a necro feigns?

Good question. I’ve heard of the cheesy tactic of the charm/dot/feign. We’re considering fixing this so that the pet behaves as if the owner had went invisible. That means that a skele pet would commit suicide, and a charmed pet would turn on the necro. What do you think? We’d like to get input before making the change.

>>>If it turned out melee types were dying more would you reconsider the penalty and make efforts to lower the melee runs to about 8 minutes?

Probably not. People are advancing at a rate in the game that is substantially in line with expectations. The level curve (number of characters at each level on at a given time) on the established worlds is near perfect. If melee types are dying that much more, and if the run is that bad, I highly suggest you GET MORE CLERICS. They can help with both problems.

>>>Why were they so broken that THE CENTRAL ability of the class had to be removed. For monks, it was as bad as removing "bind anywhere" from mages.

I disagree that feign death was the central ability of Monks. I believe that their central ability is to be a melee class that was 90% effective while naked.

>>>The effect of individual saving throws means you can no longer feign against groups.

Well, it depends on the size of the group, but yes, you are basically right. FD was supposed to be a spell that allowed a Monk to save their own life, not to be used as an offensive measure. As a life-saving maneuver, FD is still very effective.

>>>Let me put it this way- you have a choice between a wizard and a cleric and a wizard and a cleric with manastones. Not to be mean- but who would you prefer to have along on a dragon run?

A necro with his god-pet : ) But seriously, just because the evil eye ran out of his infinite supply of manastones doesn’t mean that they are gone permanently.

>>>I hope you break the quests up into multiple smaller chunks with no chunk being over 2 hours long.

2-hour quest components are a good target that should address most peoples concerns. We’ve already tasked our quest group with working on this, but it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes one guy about a day to come up and implement a “campfest” style quest. It takes about a week for that same guy to come up with and implement a quest such as the Lanseaux of the Wolves quest.

>>>And what about the Qeynos Hills bounce bug?
>>>Is it impossible to fix?

My understanding is that this can’t be fixed for the “narrow corridor” style zones. I’ll let you know if I find out anything else.

>>>I've suggested via /feedback (do those get read, BTW?) that areas of EQ use dynamically changing spawn rates to adjust to local player population and NPC / MOB death rates. For example, if East Commons is heavily hunted in the early evening MOBs with the highest death rates could be bumped up to spawn somewhat faster to accommodate player load.

Though it’s a nice idea, it would be very difficult to implement. The ability to dynamically increase spawn rates is not in our current design to my knowledge. Also, keep in mind that a zone will only support so many people. There has to be some incentive for people to go elsewhere. Usually, the lack of things to fight encourages people to move on. The dungeons are probably the exception to this, so we’ll have to jump in and come up with something a bit more suggestive .

>>>Meleers die less often than Casters?
>>>This is ONLY true at lower levels, now with a mid-30's group in SolB Who gets out alive most? Why >>>the Caster that can cast Evacs or even simple Gate!

Hmmm, back before the “summon corpse” spell, I never even had “Gate” memorized when in a dungeon with melee types in my group. I considered it rude to gate out.

>>>EBAY provides an easy way to stop the auctions.
>>>Has this even been looked in to?

Yes, it’s being looked into, and it’s not exactly easy. You have to report each infringing auction individually. That means your own hunting and a LOT of typing. On top of that, there are several fan sites that are now offering free auctions. I’m sure that they’d pick up the slack almost immediately.

>>>Brad and Abashi both said they were going to be unavailable for the next four days. They did not "give up" on you.

Thanks for the vote of confidence We are really committed to improving the level of our communications.

>>>It's sad that we still don't have *answers* as to what Dex Agil ect Do. It's been 9 months want to give one answer for us? If Agilty doesn't help you evade being hit , dodge parry ripo. WTF does it do? Make you look pretty? Of course not we all know what it does it can be blatently seen through parasin data same with Dex. Abashi has made several wrong statements on these which I find to be poor.

If you have any specific questions I’d be happy to answer them. Let me stress that I don’t just make this stuff up. Yes, Agility helps you avoid being hit, it also helps mitigate damage you receive when you are hit. However, it does not increase your chance of a successful dodge, parry, or riposte roll. It does increase your chance of a successful “skill increase” roll for dodge, whereas dex helps your chance of a successful “skill increase” roll for parry and riposte.

It was all fairly simple (after having the guy who knows this stuff explain it to me 3 or 4 times . Skill success rolls are skill-based and level-based, they are not stat-based. Skill increase rolls are stat-based. For instance, chances to hit something with your short sword is based off your level, your offense skill, and your 1HS skill. The chance to increase your 1HS skill is based off the greater of your wisdom or intelligence, plus your dexterity.

>>>Do you think that fighter types are
underpowered? Or do you think that the
game is well ballanced?

I think the game is substantially well-balanced. Sure, some minor tweaks are possible (and forthcoming), but the classes in general are doing fine. Most of the changes you see will be related to spells and items, with little done with core class abilities.

>>>How can the fact that spell damage had
to be decreased for PvP be anything other
than a strange admission that the classes
are not ballanced?

Let me try to make this as clear as possible: “Balanced” does not mean that a character of X level will go 50/50 in a PvP battle with any other character of X level regardless of class. It means that there is a compelling reason to play each class, and that they fit into the environment. Yes, some changes were made in PvP in order to balance the classes FOR PvP, but that doesn’t mean that there is some big problem with PvE.

Perhaps a bit of proof that the classes are balanced would be the fact that I get email from every class every week complaining about how weak they are, and how powerful class X is. After all, who would ever send an email saying “My class is powerful enough, we don’t need further enhancements”. Well, I did get one of these once, from a rogue.

>>>I simply will not play a fighter type while:
>>>- They have fewer bind points.
>>>- Casters have devistating strategies.(kiteing for example)
>>>- Pets are as powerefull as they are.

And other people won’t play a caster because they have low hitpoints and can’t wear good armor. Play whatever your preference is. I do wonder why people who don’t play in PvP are so worried about what another class can do. Why should the power of a pet keep you from playing a melee class? I’ve NEVER seen ANYONE say “Nevermind Bob, we don’t need your warriorliness. We’ve got Joe Necro coming over with his god-pet.”

>>>Druids sometimes do a /tell rarespawn01 or something like that to find out if a rare spawn has spawned, then gate to the area, track down the rare spawn and get the kill. This is of course an exploit. IMO fixing that still won't do much justice because other players would still be expected to have to camp something. I'd hate to see a lot of developer time go into nerfing something else for no reason though.

This exploit was fixed MONTHS ago.

>>>why is it that Clerics get 3 DDs in their first 14 levels but only 2 direct damage spells from 14-50

Because, they aren’t a direct damage type class. They needed a bit of a kick in the lower levels, which is why they got several down there, but they are fine a bit higher.

-Gordon

There's nothing that a melee type can be twinked with that makes them that much more effective than their properly equipped brethren. Sure, they might have that nifty looking armor, but they aren't very good at using it.

As for proc effects and such, I hear that there may be some nice monk-only weapons coming in game in the near future. (hint: work on 1HB)