Islands In The Stream, That Is What We Are . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Wednesday, September 18, 2002 -- tork
With the formal announcements from the PoP team and the leaked screenshots†, I've been inundated with tells and email asking for help and, of course, what about Jangos (more on that later). I don't whine all the time - much of the time, yes - but I really do care about making a difference. I've learned by now that you need to keep things simple when you're suggesting fixes to a work in progress - and at this point in EQ's life span, it's about making the time we all spend playing better, so, to that end, I give you...
10 things, 1 day, 400k-ish happier players
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Fix Paladin Act of Valor Room
Message
AoVoro says it best,
Think about it, all the xp, and aa's it takes to get AoV - a skill that does nothing for the paladin, but yet is a tip of the hat to both roleplayers and hardcore raid guilds - this is a quality AA that's ruined by a lame room message. I could think of a hundred different things for AoV, but believe me, it's not asking too much to enter in a string something like,
room: Soandso has been spared by Voronwe's Act of Valor!
target: You have been spared by Voronwe's Act of Valor!
paladin: You heroically sacrifice yourself in an Act of Valor, sparing Soandso's life!Fix Sacrifice room message - same deal as AoV, you're giving up your xp so someone else can be rez'd later or to complete a VT key, yet for this personal sacrifice, you 10k?
Retarded. -
Fix /camp desktop
*Come on* - it simply cannot be that difficult to fix so simple a bug and I cannot think of a single reason why it should not be available. -
[something about tradeskills]
Well, this is how my placeholder looked, but I freely admit I'm not into that aspect of the game. I have no problem admitting my ignorance and so I contacted a few of the leads from that community. Unfortunately I never received a response. I put off posting this update to wait a bit longer, but got desperate with the update stalkers growing restless and tried to correlate some high post count/mods on the eqtraders ezboard to in-game xserver tells... no luck, but I checked on the webpage and found ah ha! a chat channel. I should have quit while I was ahead, as it was all downhill from there - the people in serverwide.eqtraders were flat out rude to me and further implied I was out looking for information to exploit and/or seek some claim to ill gotten credit. Not cool - I was trying to help.I'm sure something could be fixed easily that'd help a lot of traderskill types, but oh well.
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Impliment /trade off|everyone|party
In the astonishing array of console commands available, one of the most common changes I make each night is lacking - there's really no good argument against it. -
Impliment /drop
You want to see a high end raid through the eyes of a raid level mage? Stare straight up.It's ridiculous the amount of work rod teams have to do to feed a CH rotation, but to add insult to injury, it's asinine they spend all that time looking up at the ceiling, not even able to watch their surroundings, just to drop a rod. Inadvertently opening a trade window and losing someone's (usual a cleric) target is always a risk, but there are times when there is no daylight to click on that won't attempt to trade with a player/mob, making dropping an already frustrating task impossible. Again, there's really no good argument against it, just have normal trade rules regarding confirmation kick in after the console command has been issued.
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Fix Simple Grammar Agreement
We as players can use a client side variable to determine sex, but I have no idea how your spell/skill DB is set up. Regardless, with grep, perl and a few regexps, please go through and fix the simple shit. Hint: look for their.PS: it's = contraction (it is, it has), its = possessive; you're = contraction (you are, you were), your = possessive
You're right, it's raining today - your forecast was correct in its prediction.PPS: Oh yeah, THERE IS NO SPACE BETWEEN AN EXCLAMATION POINT AND ITS SENTENCE.
Question marks as well, aholes. Jesus Lord, this is probably my biggest annoyance, far beyond any pet peeve, this actually borders madding - I get all riled up RL when I read something shit like, "Hi ! How are you ?"Quests are even worse with mixed and matched gibber jabber even Mr. T and Lewis Carroll together couldn't sort out. WTF? The purpose of punctuation is to both clarify and demark phrases and thoughts into finite elements - *sentences* - while I realize grammar is fluid, how the fuck does that space serve any purpose other than to piss me the fuck off?
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Selo's Song of Travel Should Overwrite Selo's
Accelerating Chorus
I don't want to go all crazy and ask you to remove the knockback on Song of Twilight so I don't have to constantly run around repositioning mobs that I've mes'd (like twisting wasn't enough for carpal tunnels, but I shouldn't complain too much - moving mobs is occasionally useful), but Selo's 51 should overwrite Selo's 49 - it's a sincere pain in the ass to off click Selo's 49 each time. -
Character Select Should Remember Per
Account
With more and more players having second (and third) accounts, swapping between characters, mules, twinks and alts it becomes immediately noticeable the character selection screen only go so far as remember the slot the last character was selected from via the actual character. It should remember on a per account basis which character and/or slot was loaded, not its current per installation basis. -
Read About Legit ShadowKnight Issues
Spells/Taunts
It's almost to the point SK's sigh and laugh when something comes along that screws them - I feel for the guys and girls who've put up with being 'chudknights' this long - the latest series of patches really has been too much, though. Think about the consequences of your actions.PS: SA and spell crits still don't stack - this was supposed to be fixed, what's up?
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Read What Cazan Has To Say
Cazan and Adorean have long been active in the greater EQ community with frequent contributions of time, testing and information - together they really redefined how and even why one would play a wizard. Cazan took the time to put commit some musing to paper (see below) and I'd ask you at least read it over - you don't have to agree with every point, but give it some thought. He actually gave me this rant a bit ago, so I hope he'll forgive the OBE edits that took place - I apologize for not running it sooner.
Each item would take less than one hour to do, may of them far less, they could be knocked out over lunch in a few days - if you can't seem to find time to do at least one of the above, then let me be the first to propose you need to reprioritize your objectives. If you won't take the time, well hey...
You Can Call Me Caz
Yes Sage. My fancy class title. You know, the same one as necros get as their second title and the same one as other casters. What a crock. Makes the title so... special. Did Verant actually think this stuff out? How about a unique set for each class, ones that sound cool, and ones that are appropriate? What a concept. Since Verant either didn’t want to think it out or they have burnt out the last creative fiber in their collective bodies, they could have at least gone to each main class forum and given them the opportunity to pick their last 2 titles. I bet we could have come up with something palatable and might have even had a decent time coming up with them. Graffes seems to want Arcanist (which I don’t particularly like, I prefer Arch Wizard, Sorceror, Immolator, or Terminator). But even Arcanist is better than Sage. Anyway, I am taking this opportunity to ninja the front page from Tork because he heard the corner Circle K remodeled their bathroom and as such has fresh urinal cakes to be despoiled – that plus it’s about time for a caster rant. It’s been building up in me for a while and the frustration level with all this crap is just getting to be too much. So permit me some space to vent and rant and put this crap out there. Oh, and while we are on loot, let’s talk about designing good high end loot. First off, what the hell is up with it being so hard to come up with good legs and arm items. Leggings of Secrets is 50 hp/75 mana. There are a ton of better earrings, wristbands, belts and things out there and none of them cover nearly as much of the body. Legs should be the second best item you wear after your robe/BP. Arms should be up there, too. Yet those two slots are notoriously very hard to upgrade. WHY? And let’s look at those oh, so uber Leggings of Secrets. AC 20 HP 50 Mana 75 Int 10 All Saves 25. FT 3. Alteration +5%. First of all. There is absolutely no excuse for it not to have 125 HP/Mana. Second, with soft caps on things, AC and Resists for high end raiding people mean nothing (which is a separate rant altogether). Over 180 resist or so and it just doesn’t matter much at all. And since resists are so high now, you just put in lure effects (Grimling Charm anyone?) or irresistible effects on mobs. I already either resist everything or resist near nothing. Gee, that’s fun. It should have some stamina like the Priest legs. FT is nice and all but a lot of us are over the HARD cap on FT. FT is hard enough to get. There should BE no cap on it. Alteration +5%? Oh, so uber. A chanter might fizzle 2 less mezzes a week. It is WAY past due for you to remove the stupid limiting 255 cap on stats and skills, the 127 limit on stats on an item, etc. This game has been out for a long time. As long as the caps exist and as long as you keep soft caps on resist and AC, then the ONLY thing that matters on items is the effect and the hp/mana (and 2H items will always get screwed on the hp/mana). Oh, wait. Soon we will be in mostly 125 hp/mana gear and the only thing left will be what is the effect. And don’t give me some crap about it taking too much space to store larger numbers or that you can’t retro back and increase the size of the field in the database. I have done it many times with many databases. It is not that big a deal and space issues are ridiculous with the hardware available now. Certainly back up the data before you do it, but any competent Database Admin can convert the fields. It’s WAY overdue. While I am thinking about space issues, increase bank sizes. Just about everyone I know has their banks packed and are destroying items to make room. I would have liked to have been able to keep my Carmine gear forever. It took a lot of effort to get a full set and there were a lot of memories with it all. I hated to see it go but I had no room to keep it. Someone like me maxed in every tradeskill would love to not be forced to have a ton of mules to increase my bank space. This was discussed once a while ago and it was dismissed that creating that extra space is just not possible (forcing people to create mules and making more bank space anyway – good logic there). Hard drive space is cheap. Look into it. We need at least twice as many bags or even better have unlimited spots in the bank for bags. There is this new recommended level on items. Sometimes that means you can equip the item at a lower level and get scaled down stats. Sometimes that means you can’t equip it at all. How about you change it to read Recommended Level and Required Level depending on the type of item. Secondly, if an item has a proc that is limited by level, then list what that level is so that when you are buying items or looting items or whatever you can immediately see what level you have to be for your “will to be sufficient”. Why did casters get Combat Stability instead of Combat Agility? Agility would have made much more sense. And Stability only affects damage mitigated and not overall damage. If it was overall damage that would be a little better, but when you only increase the amount you mitigate by 10% then it is nearly worthless for casters who are pin cushions no matter if we have 700 or 1100 AC. Go go go soft caps. Actually I don’t have a problem with being hit hard compared to tanks, but if I have the same AC as a tank I should get hit the same which isn’t the case. I should be a fragile wizard but if you have given me 1100 AC, I should be able to take a hit like a tank with 1100AC. Don’t even start to think that the 60 AC you put on my Vulak robe makes it SO much better. Oh, you may just want to look at that random spawn code of yours. You may have noticed a pattern that has been in the game ever since, oh, Naggy and Vox. Patch day comes around and there is a flurry of farming. Then crickets. Then we wait. Then a week rolls around and flurry of farming again. There just aren’t enough targets and they aren’t spread out enough over the week. You may want to adjust that little random timer so that logging in each day isn’t a feast or famine type deal. Or even better. How about more content. Oh wait. This is Shit Outta Luck. So much untapped potential in this damn expansion. Each boss in Seru should be an HP type encounter with same type loot. Katta needs a couple really good raid mobs. The Vampyres are a speck on the Luclin map when they could have been a major force and subsequent raid targets. You could have had Tmax/Dain/Yelinak type rewards for turning in various heads with those 3 vying factions….but no. You could have had a lot of story/content/quests revolving around the 3 warring factions but it’s barely a bleep. Inner Acrylia is a damn joke. High end raiding is 95% Ssrae and VT. If all of those places had raiding type mobs you might actually have a busy week every week and lots of content to soak up. Hi, rooting mobs is dumb. It doesn’t make ANY sense. The only ones I could possibly ever ever ever see having it is a big evil tree or something. A rooted snake/dragon/etc. is just pathetic and stupid and gives you free debuff period, free setting up of the raid, and everything else. It’s a dumb concept. Get rid of it. I know it is a jerry rigged fix to pulling mobs where you don’t want them, but rooting them is stupid. I have rambled on enough for now and I have created enough of a tome, but my last thing is FINISH the damn shawl quests. Don’t give me crap that you never promised to go past 8 when you put in 8. You never said that was the end either. You let everyone think that you were going to finish it up to 10 like the Ring quest which is what it was originally designed to do and we know this. Not only that but if you were going to have 8 as the last step, then announce when you put it in that this is it and make the stats equitable to the Ring 10 stats (as it is now, an ODS!?!?! is better than shawl 8 and that is PATHETIC). People’s time is valuable and don’t lead them down a path thinking one thing only to pull the rug out from under them. As it is, the stats point to more improvement in the works and that there are 1 or 2 more steps needed to get the stats on par with the Ring 10. Look at Ring 9. They are remarkably similar to Shawl 8. The shawl quest is NOT finished. Shawl quest was in mothball at 7 stages. 8 went in and people got VERY excited that it was continuing. There was a flurry of discussion on EQ traders and elsewhere about what the next steps would be and what the final stats on Shawl 10 would be. You aren’t blind and can read (wait…am I assuming too much?) and you let us all think it would get to the 10th level. People worked their tradeskill butts off to be ready for it. And you left us all hanging. And only recently you decide to say no there isn’t any more and why would you think there would be since this step spawned an avatar?? GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK. Open your damn eyes. That’s about as clueless as Sseru, Vex Thal, and Inner Acrylia design. |
�Jangos! FAQ v1.0
Jangos wrote a little FAQ to answer some common questions:
|
I recieve alot of requently asked questions. So to
save you all some time, I have compiled them all into one spot. From
this point on you can just refer to this list if you have a question
for me.
Regarding Trade:
Q: Did you just kick me?
Q: Why did you kick me?
Q: Can I have the password to trade?
Q: Are you that immature that you enjoy this bullshit?
Q: Will you please stop kicking me??
General day to day antics:
Q: Did you just train those 30 mobs to the zone on us?
Q: WHY?
Q: How did you get into LoS if your such an asshole?
Q: Do you have XXXXXX for sale?
Q: Where is that?
Q: Why did that mob gate at 75% health?
Q: Henric/Tigole/Galiaan/Abru/Bzul is interested in making you a
member of Legacy of Steel, do you want this?(I get this lots)
|
Tig quickly followed up with...
|
The Jangos FAQ -- Tigole Version
I too get many tells about Jangos so here is my version:
Q: Are you the Guildleader of LoS?
Q: Is Jangos in your guild
Q: Jangos is ruining the trade channel -- don't you care?
Q: Your entire guild's reputation is being ruined by Jangos -- are
you telling me you're not going to do anything about it?
Q: Jangos just trained me, do you want your whole guild banned?
Q: I bet you think this is funny
Note: Jangos FAQ v1.0 reads very similar to Manalope FAQ v1.0. For any questions regarding Manalope, see Jangos FAQ. |
Stalkers, Wanna-be's and Unoriginal Bastards
Quotes of the Day
†Anyone else notice Plane of Nightmare looks like SoL? Very ccc and wuwu.
