I had to say that PK fights do last too short compared to olden days. Olden days rocked.. and WERE a test of mana and skill strategy. Please think about this.. and change the game issues to make PK last longer and RELY more on strat.. not just mana/weapons/brute strength.

I know i'm going "back in time" here, but this issue really needs to be

stressed.

-Peace

Weight is 10, value is 120000, level is 120.

Fragility is Normal, condition is 100%. It has been repaired 0/5 times.

It is made out of unknown.

Weapon type is sword with attack type slash.

Damage is 15d49 (average 375).

Weapons flags: two-handed

life drain? where?

About 469 per hit.

Im all for removing bard spells, but to be frank thats a serious change and will require some serious creativity to come up with songs that are interesting, and hopefully some better song names :P

I know all about the now. It is the the future I want to see fixed.

Uncalled for? I do not think so. Worded strongly, perhaps. You singled out one race to be "exploited." What about dwarves with their useless vulnerability and many decent resistances? Dracons and their underutilized vulnerablity? Or, to even lesser extents, the uncommon vulnerabilities of slayers, which is found on two weapons and one spell, or titans, which is found on one weapon, that no longer is available to players, and two spells. Evil players and the lich race are well represented in the game. All of this has been addressed in the misbalance thread at some point or another.</quote>

Actually theres 3 negative weapons, one 117 , two 120s. And the 120 weapons do over 400 damage. If you can find something that does higher to any other race feel free to let me know. And I believe you have curse of the abyss.

And while I am bitching, something beyond ironic is the fact that almost every undead mob in the game does negative damage.

The slayer is the ultimate of holy warriors; it is

a special sect that wishes to seek out the undead and

put an end to their measly existence. Years of training

under the parish and with clerical assistance the Slayer

develops a technique of damaging the undead beyond repair.

Slayers have for centuries despised vampires as the most

lowly undead creatures.

If you guys want to be useful how about coming up with a vulnerability that makes sense for slayers.

Before you want to go Elf hunting because you are ticked at someone let's find out how things will work in the future update and then balance that against humans before even bothering suggesting things that don't need to be.</quote>

That was seriously uncalled for. I'm just stating I don't believe their one vuln is very exploitable.

Lich has first.

The have second lowest hp, to counter this. Mana doesn't do much if you can't get the hp to survive. You should know this as a Lich and those horrendous vulns, which I have suggested be changed for the better rather than worse.

Magic resistance only works against weapons, which is almost all weapon, at the moment, due to a "feature" of the game as it stands. That will be fixed in the update. And since we have no idea how useful this will be, how can anyone say that it needs to be exploited? Their only other advantage is natural haste, which we do not get the extra dex bonus.

Before you want to go Elf hunting because you are ticked at someone let's find out how things will work in the future update and then balance that against humans before even bothering suggesting things that don't need to be.

Iron is their only vuln, and how many weapons are actually made of iron on the game? From the opinions I've gathered it doesn't do a lot anyway. They need a real vuln... After all they get highest stats in the game... and they barely have less mana than lich, yet have both more mv AND hp. I'll grant you they get no immunities, but still. Resisting magic is pretty big-- if that works, Even if not there should be something decently exploitable to counter the giant stats. As far as a vuln goes... No idea really. Something involving darkness or anti-tree or something like that...

Spectres should gain an ability that would allow them to brush an opponent that they had just swerved past with their tainted wings, affecting that opponent with various (perhaps random) status ailments.

Sith need something done about their vulns, but I don't have a solution to that problem yet. They should, however, gain a bonus chance to hit an opponent with their bite if they are sneaking and/or hiding. Nagas should gain the ability to constrict an opponent, which would lessen their defenses, but they would be able to use their bite much more effectively. I suggest that it take 2(small races) to 3(large races) rounds to gain a full constrict against an opponent, with chances to break the hold each round. Note that a 20 foot anaconda can squeese with about 28 psi, enough to kill a human in minutes. This attack should do frightining damage, like circle. Hmm, to balance it out after the 1st round of the constrict, they cannot attack and their defenses wouldn't activate. They could only release the hold as an action, since they are using so much of their strength.

Pravus attempts to constrict Alatarr.

His serpentine coils surround Alatarr's legs.

Alatarr attempts to free himself!

Pravus entwines his body around Alatarr and begins to squeese!

Squeese…

Squeese...

Alatar gets an arm free!

Squeese...

Alatar falls unconcious.

Squeese...

Pravus uncoils himself and proceeds to consume Alatarr's mangled body...

How about a new bard song that would affect Sith! Perhaps it would function like a geas affect, and require the affected sith to follow the caster around and fight for them for the durration. Skill and level could determine how powerful a sith you could charm with your song. I think it would be cool if the snake-charmed sith could be enhanced with further castings, due to the meditative trance the song would compel...

Highest stats - by 120 remort (or mort) everyone has 25's in all stats or close to it

High mana but low hp - in PK right now you never run out of mana, it is all about damage

Resist magic - currently only lowers damage on attack spells, nobody uses attack spells cause damage is so low to begin with

Racial haste - enough good eq with haste on it to make this useless

Also, when you remort and become a seraph you gain absolutely nothing new.

Minotaur:

Gore: This would allow a minotaur to effectively impale their victim in a weakened state. Moderate damage. 10% lethal hit starting when they are at 15% or lower in hp.

Drow:

Lose holy vulnerability and resistance to charm

Sith:

I'd like to see a cold vulnerability replace the piercing. Note, this should be in place after there are more cold based damage in the game.

Vampire:

Make level based temperence go along with skill. A level 120 with mastered temperence should at best be inconvienced by a 25-50 hp reduction a tick by sunlight. Still hurts a bit, but not devastating. Also add in a no shift while outside/sunlight.

Lich:

Honestly, with all the immunities and resistances, they seem to be pretty well balanced with low hp and vulnerability. A challenge to start with, but a player can get past that if they remain persistant.

Human:

10% longer duration to spells. Due to their ability to adapt and immerse themself, they are able to hold and keep magic around them better.

Dwarf:

Due to being hardy, I can see the fire and cold resistance. Lightning and acid should be dropped from their resistances. Remove vulnerability to drowning as it is pretty well useless to have. Perhaps lower their dexterity a point or two.

Titan:

Drop their dexterity as well.

Elves:

No real comment until resistance to magic becomes more useful and can be seen how effective it is.

Dracons:

Add more cold damage.

I was going to say something else about another race, but I can't remember it at the moment.. I'll put it up sometime later when I remember it.

this is why I'm hiring new imms to remedy this problem, people who can help because they understand a player's point of view.. however it's pretty important to understand that well over a hundred people have worked on this game, building, many of them had no clue what they were doing (unfortunately), and for me to keep them all in line and investigate every single piece of EQ is pretty tough. Not an excuse for the way things are, just an explanation, but pretty soon we will start sorting it all out.</quote>

To not do a diservice to those who have immed in the past. Many did have a layout for the areas they were working on but due to problems they were forced to leave and not finish. Often new imms would get the job and know nothing of what had been planned.

There was an effort to try and get the eq and other items in to some order but again things happened. Much of it was not the fault of past imms. At one point there was an attempt by several imms to get all things in the game area by area documented and a text print out made. Then assign imms to work on each area. At that time there was a very good staff system started but things happened and well….communication broke down leaving the left over imms again in the dark.

Some of the past imms were damn good people and knew the ins and outs of scripting and some of the best areas we all love they created.

Syn I hope you can get this group of imms to work together well and they stay a long time with you and Whisp. We do support you all just some of us are trying to rack our brains and see if we migh have some past information hiding on some old CDburn that could help you folks out. No I'm not trying to bash you with this post just was frustrated because a "bug" in the back of my head was giving me a nagging answer to this GQ's problems but it would not come out.

I did find some old data though that might help in the future. I'll see what I can gather from the old collection of notes I kept. Please don't think anyone is mad at the imps or imms we're just sharing your frustration over all the happenings this year.

You brought up two points I was getting around to articulating, I just hadn't developed a solution yet :wink: Notice in my comparisons I didn't even mention stats like str, dex, etc because they're almost totally meaningless. If you can't get all 24+ stats after eq as a mort, you will after remort. Do these stats even really do anything? Aside from level up bonuses, I personally don't know what they affect.</quote>
I beg to differ… even though with our lack of documentation I can't blame you at all for thinking that way. The stats are very highly used as such, just to quote a few cases:

strength- used in computing how much damage you do, what you can carry, what kind of cart you can pull, whether or not you can knock someone down with a bash, etc

intelligence- how fast you advance in skills, whether when practicin or on the field, also calculated into auto-hunting for PC, also gives higher mana regen

wisdom- this one doesnt do tooo much, except give mana regen( but is also calculated in PC autohunt)

dex- very important - used in almost all combat calculations, whether or not your attacks or defences will suceed

con- helps resist toxins and poisons

Most of these apply quite highly in the game as they are used in percent calculations... which is why they are in the 3-25 range numerically 8)

Perhaps they arn't doing enough influence, in which case i'll need to analyze them a little bit. But 2 diff in an attribute gives a significant boost (although a subtle and hard one to see without looking at the specific calculations. If you wish I'll give you an example). a 5-10 attribute difference is even more important.

<quote>> Second, the equipment in the game doesn't make sense. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it, no sense of flow or continuity as you level up. Stats and affects seem to be thrown wily nily onto items without much regard for what that means. The "which class needs more eq" thread on another board made me cringe. There needs to be a serious evaluation of, well basically everything in the game, but the eq is no small piece of that.

As an afterthought, a damage tweak may be necessary but I don't think that this tweak alone will do enough to bring the proverbial balance to the force.</quote>
this is why I'm hiring new imms to remedy this problem, people who can help because they understand a player's point of view.. however it's pretty important to understand that well over a hundred people have worked on this game, building, many of them had no clue what they were doing (unfortunately), and for me to keep them all in line and investigate every single piece of EQ is pretty tough. Not an excuse for the way things are, just an explanation, but pretty soon we will start sorting it all out.

Sorry to get off topic but I just thought I'd address these issues a little bit because people might be interested in hearing about them.

Maybe the casting time for heal is too short and needs to be lengthened during combat. If so, then the damage deal with weapons should be lessened.

As said before, It's a delicate balance issue :/