Normal mobs doin uber damage

[nnigma]

Hiya,

Seems to be that most trash mobs in alot of zones are hitting twice as hard as they usually do. Guess this is a bug that came in with the patch,which seems almost normal with any new patch..
I was factioning in Old Sebilis,and my cleric was doin the tanking. Kept noticing her hps were droping fast,didnt think anything about it..Then I noticed that she was getting hit for anywhere from 125 to 234 pts of damage. Was like good lord, all I was fighting was froglok wizards/shamens and knights...usually do about 90+pts of damage,but 234 max damage eek...

[Sathras]

Reading patch notes is usually very helpful! ;)

Originally posted by eqlive

*** NPCs ***

- Many NPCs in zones released prior to Planes of Power have been modified. The most notable difference will be an increase in health and a decrease in the AC of the creatures.So no, it's not a bug. Though I wonder why HP increase would be the most notable difference. :P

[Whispers Quietly]

It's late; but I will reply to this one.

More HP translates to bringing old world mobs up to date: By that I mean, Luclin and beyond.

It boils down to; You can solo to 70? NERF that one. 70 Solo? Get on it right away, We need these fools to bring in there friends. Friends bring in more accounts.

What the hell are you thinking? Solo; Wheres the money in that? I told you guys accounts are down, What don't you understand? We're sinking the time on "progression servers". At this Moment we have over 500 Idiots doing the Tutorial; There not Leveling.. Thats what I want to see..
We're losing the race. 'shakes head" How does any of you expect to compete? Players that finish an Endless game quit paying folks, Yeah: quit Paying. Thats what we are about. And you allow this? I don't know how to say this any more clear; We need Accounts, We need them NOW!

Last time I checked, Theres just to much capital out there, How could any of you let that run amuck? Guilds that "help" each other? I logged on the other day and hit the Bazzaar. Radiant crystals and Ebon now are a Dime a dozen, Why should they buy our new expansions? For christ sake they can farm plats and buy the damn crystals. Who's Brilliant idea was this? I tell you team, WE have to improve.
A single player Without friends I might add, can theoretically buy his way to 70. Wheres the money there? We need to kill the Little bastard, Make him suffer, Like we are. No Friends, no money. And need I say no christmas bonus? Squash him, And Squash him now. .....

[Nigyl]

According to the main EQ site:

Some NPCs are likely hitting for more and others for less than before the patch. The change involved switching old world NPCs over to newer systems. Old NPCs all had hand-set values, which led to a lot of variance from NPC to NPC even within the same level range due to different designers making different NPCs (the dreaded "under con"). It also made it very difficult to tune since each individual NPC has to be tracked down and changed if you decide a certain range of NPCs needs to be adjusted.

Under the newer system, NPCs of the same level start with the same baseline values and modify from there based on the NPCs capabilities and class (warriors have more hps, giants hit slower and harder, werewolves are vulnerable to fire, golems have low intelligence, etc.) so depending on what the NPC was set at before, it may have gained or lost damage dealing capabilities in the conversion or it may be dealing similar damage, but in a different fashion (hitting harder, but slower for instance).

This only affected NPCs who weren't already on the new system, which is basically NPCs from Original EQ, Kunark, Velious, and Luclin. It was also limited mainly to NPCs below level 50 and excluded event NPCs, which have to be tuned case by case regardless.

If you come across any particular NPC that seems to be way out of line compared to other NPCs of the same level around it, feel free to call it out and I'll go have a look. I'll just need the zone and the full name of the NPC to find it.

Rashere

So apparently Lower Guk mobs hitting for PoP damage levels is 'working as intended'. You would almost think that would be a much more easily noticed change than a 20% increase in mob hit points.

[Rijak]

Originally posted by nnigma@Jun 28 2006, 11:46 PM
I was factioning in Old Sebilis,and my cleric was doin the tanking. Kept noticing her hps were droping fast,didnt think anything about it..Then I noticed that she was getting hit for anywhere from 125 to 234 pts of damage. Was like good lord, all I was fighting was froglok wizards/shamens and knights...usually do about 90+pts of damage,but 234 max damage eek...
Depending on what part of old seb you are talking about, they have always been able to hit for the occasional 200 and plenty in the 100 range. Plus, the new system equates mobs around the world, which wasn't always the case. All in all, it isn't that bad from what I've noticed so far.

[taecken]

boy, and i thought my monk was f&%@ked before.

[nnigma]

heh, I was at I guess they call it A and B camp?? Ive factioned before and they never came close to hitting for over 150 let alone 230ish plus. I know it was to bring it up to par,but think thats a tad much especially from a caster mob...

anywho, O well, another day and the life in EQ..

[Nigyl]

All in all, it isn't that bad from what I've noticed so far.

I just compared some parses of my Ranger alt fighting Zelniaks in DSP between Monday and today, and their DPS has increased by 50% since the patch. It's possible that I got a run of bad luck with the random number genearator, but it does seem suspicious after they announced such changes to the mobs.

Given that I also seem to take longer to kill them, that's a sizable change in damage taken per hour. If it wasn't for the 'free' steadfast servant AA I think I'd be in trouble there now when I have decent gear (950-ish AC), have Temp most of the time, and I'm fighting the lowest dark blue mobs relative to my level.

Ok, I could fear-kite them so I don't have to worry about damage, but they now also seem to resist a lot more and I still need to raise my defence skill another 8 points to max it out... which takes a lot of tanking given how slowly it goes up near 200.

Either way, if they really are dishing out 50% more damage that's a huge change to make this late in the game. At the least they should be giving 50% more XP to compensate.

[Aryse Andenter]

Some more Rashere on the subject:

Different NPCs are still very much their own creatures. The core change here is that there's consistency across races now, but each race of creatures has its own behavior characteristics. You can learn and anticipate behaviors now that you couldn't before because there's a consistency that didn't exist previously in low level creatures. This is the system that we've been using since PoP to make, say, gargoyles act like gargoyles regardless of where they are in the world.

This means that when you've been fighting goblins for a while and learn how they react, you can expect that same behavior to hold true when you run across a goblin in another zone. But that goblin doesn't act like an orc, a skeleton, a giant, a griffin, or any other creature. It acts like a goblin.

Here's a concrete example of what I'm talking about:

Take two level 30 creatures. One is a sand giant. The other is a skeleton. They both are set up with baseline values for a level 30 creature so should be an appropriate fight for that level range, but they act completely different from each other. The sand giant has considerably more hps than the skeleton, for instance. The skeleton attacks a lot faster than the giant, but when the giant hits you...you'll know it. They hit hard. The giant's thick skin gives it an advantage against melee attacks (slight AC advantage), but magic lands relatively easily. By contrast, the skeleton is pretty fragile, but it's undead nature makes landing poison and disease based spells difficult. The skeleton is also mindless and less likely to go after a healer or buffer than the giant is.

Overall, even though they are the same baseline values, the giant acts different than the skeleton does and is a tougher fight because of it.

Rashere


There's two parts to it. This is something we've been wanting to do for a while now. We've been making a big effort to get the low end game into better shape in anticipation of a big push for new players in the near future. We don't often get a chance to work on low end content or revisit those areas and a lot of the changes we're making are aimed directly at that. Setting up the NPCs in this fashion is just part of a bigger picture. There are other changes that we've mentioned in the pipeline as well, such as downtime reduction, and some we haven't discussed much yet, such as modifying zone exp modifiers to make these low end zones more in line with newer zones.

The progression server increased the timeline for the NPC changes since it made sense to get these changes in place before those servers came out instead of after.

To the previous posts: while digging into the Zelniaks, I did see one thing that would cause a sizeable DPS increase in rare cases. About 1 in 100 Zelniaks would be able to dual wield, something which wasn't the case before, and that would significantly increase the DPS on that creature when it occurs. That will be fixed soon.

Rashere


http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/...ssage.id=250218 (http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=Veterans&message.id=250218)


Also:

As I said before, if people have any examples of NPCs that are over the top now, just post them an I'll look into them. At this point, all I have is people repeating numbers other people have said and nothing more. 50% is nowhere near true for anything I've looked at. Give me actual examples and I'll happily check them and see what's going on.

Rashere


So, anything that seems extraordinary is worth bringing to his attention.

[Nigyl]

Actually, they admitted they'd ubered-up the mob DPS by mistake and are supposed to have a fix on test shortly.

[Zandramadass]

Ulthork Man o Wars and some walrus in EW are actually mitigating my druids AE now and seem to resist snare more often as well.

Plus the shadow npc's in GE are hitting alot harder too. It was rare to see a 200dmg hit with the avg being closer to 111-121 range on my mnk there but they are now hitting for over 350dmg in some cases and my mnk is 67. Weird thing tho is the named seem to be dropping faster... so they boost the dmg of trash and lower the hp of named?