Today brings the first part of a two part story about how we got to the Itemization situation we are in now. Part history lesson, part recap.
Part 2 will try to sort out the Sentinel’s Fate Itemization picture as we have it so far. I assure you that Part 2 will be MUCH shorter. 
After the posting of Part 2, we will be posting a survey to get your feedback on these long-form articles.
Mages have been rather effective in Battlegrounds and PvP combat of late. Moreso than perhaps was intended.
Timetravelling has laid out the details of the cause of this issue, what he intends to do about it, and how it will be tested in this EQ2 Forums thread.
We’ve been digging through the code to track down the inconsistencies we’ve been seeing in spell resists and spell avoidance. We have some changes incoming that I’d like to describe briefly for y’all.
Based on the old formulas, extremely high resists (if capped) would give players a 75% chance to avoid a spell AND a 75% reduction in the damage when it landed.
At level 70+, spell avoidance chance was being multipled by 0.6 (reducing your overall chance to avoid by 40%) and spell resists were being multiplied by 0.65 (reducing the damage reduction applied to spell damage by 35%). This has been contributing to the … ah … very high combat effectiveness of spell-damage based classes. We have removed all of these mults internally.
Once internal testing has been completed, we plan on pushing these changes to Test-copy (and temporarily flagging it as PvP). Once that happens, we’ll update the thread here and ask for y’all to jump over there and help us test the crap out of the changes. We’ll leave it up there for at least a week or two to give time for balance tweaks and such before considering a push to Live.
Our intention is *not* to make any classes unbeatable or make others unable to kill opponents.
However, spell resistances and high STA should be contributing to survival as expected instead of at a greatly reduced effectiveness.
Your feedback is encouraged, and hopefully lots of people will test these changes. In case you missed it, for PvP and Battlegrounds purposes, Spell Resists are now calculated using Stamina (STA), a stat that all classes have some of, and can gain more of, rather than Wisdom (WIS), which due to Stat Consolidation, is now much harder for certain classes to get in any quantity.
Today’s Hotfix notes for March 16th, 2010. Yellow Adornments also made it in, but they’re not in the notes…
GENERALMost of the guards in Freeport, Qeynos and Kelethin have had their levels reduced to what they had previously. Exceptions to this include palace guards and patrolling knights.
ITEMS
All jewelry from the Vigilant: Final Destruction (x2) has had resists added.
Summoning the mount from the Ykeshan Warbear whistle will now work if you are level 80 in either adventuring or tradeskilling.
The valuable, Onayan staff of the waves, should now be on the Vasty Deep collection tables.
QUESTS
The Footsteps of Dartain: Observation – The projected erudite will no longer disappear during conversation.
In Search of Lucan – Fyr’remd Lorak should no longer disappear during conversation.
“Confronting the Godslayer” requires the raid lichform version of Perah’Celsis in order to update. The prose is now more specific about this.
Delinah now properly updates “The Footsteps of Dartain: Emergence.”
Players who delete or decline the various “Footsteps of Dartain” signature quests can now re-obtain them.
Stage 3 of “Whispers from the Past” now correctly mentions Silent City instead of Living Tombs.
PALACE OF ROEHN THEER
Kendis and Penda United now have lower maximum health.
The 3 sages in challenge mode now synchronize their use of prismatic sphere with their exchange of stones (tank switching).
SUNDERED FRONTIER
Neophyte Sairal in the Hall of Necromancy seeks adventurers 80 and higher for a special task.
VASTY DEEP: THE ABANDONED LABS
Adds on the Kadara’Mola fight in Vasty Deep: The Abandoned Labs should now de-spawn should she reset or the encounter breaks.
Most of the Sentinel’s Fate raid and heroic gear has had no Resists (vs. Arcane, vs. Elemental, vs. Noxious), presumably with the intention that players would have to wear 2-3 pieces of Mastercrafted jewelry. Also, all but the highest level raid gear in Sentinel’s Fate has lacked Red Adornment Slots. This made most of this gear a poor upgrade over TSO raid gear.
If you’ve been following the Equipment Adjustments thread on the EQ2 Forums, as well as yesterday’s Hotfix notes, you know that Resists and Red Slots have now started to appear on Fabled and Legendary gear. However there are some outstanding items, specifically the x2 raid (The Vigilant) items.
We are continuing to watch the changes in Gear Itemization, including Yellow Adornments which should appear in Tuesday’s Hotfix.
Brewday has arrived in Norrath! This celebration of Brell and brew will run from March 11 to the 22nd.
For a guide to the updated events, collections, tradeskill recipes, and quests for this year’s Brew Day event, check out these sites:
Although the event is now available on live servers, Brell’s Bar remains closed until 10:30am PST according to an announcement I read in-game. For further discussion on Brell’s Bar, check out the EQ2 Forums.
EQ2 servers will come down for a Hotfix on Thursday, March 11th, 2010. This hotfix takes place at 6am PST for U.S. servers and 5am GMT on March 12th for Runnyeye and Splitpaw.
After the Hotfix notes, you’ll find some good news about the Guard levels in Qeynos, Freeport, and Kelethin.
continue reading March 11 Hotfix Notes, Guard Level Adjustments…
If you’ve been thinking that the pieces of the Sentinel’s Fate itemization puzzle just have not fit well together, you are not alone.
While we have not spent a lot of time covering itemization in SF, it is because things have continued to be in such a state of flux during, and after the Beta.
The smooth progression of TSO gear was seemingly replaced by a scattershot approach, with some of the x2 raid items being the best in the game, the x4 Hard Mode gear being only 1-2% better than the x2 Easy Mode gear, and Battlegrounds gear the red herring, providing a confusing shortcut to skip instance gear altogether. In short, the “plan” has not been clear. Until now.
After the jump, check out what Frizznik has posted regarding the EQ2 Team’s itemization plans:
continue reading A Light at the End of the Itemization Tunnel?…
While not breaking news, some folks may not be aware that Sentinel’s Fate offers a Signature quest to level 85+ crafters who have completed the Quel’Ule portion of the Paineel crafting timeline.
Two weeks after you complete the final Quel’ule quest for Researcher Tahar, you will receive an item in the mail from him. He’s actually entrusting a relic to you, though it needs a bit of repair. This is the Shadows of the Betrayed signature quest.
The reward for this quest is a unique appearance weapon which matches your tradeskill class.
As always, Niami Denmother is on the case about all things crafting at EQ2Traders.
As we have reported, players have been abusing an exploit which allowed them to login to Battlegrounds and consume/transmute/craft items and then get those items back upon being returned to their home servers. SOE have stepped up and shown they take this sort of thing seriously with the following announcement from Brenlo:
This weekend an exploit was found on the Battlegrounds server which allowed players to transmute items, and have those items returned when leaving the Battlegrounds. This occured due to a change we made in the code to speed up the return process. While we understand that this was a bug of our creation, some players chose to take advantage of it, knowing it was not meant to work in that fashion.
Many players took advantage of the bug, to varying degrees. Some of our community however went to great lengths to abuse the bug. For those accounts that abused this obvious bug, we have taken action. Some have been removed from the game altogether, while others are losing all of the items on their characters. All will face at least some time removed from the game as we sort through the various logs and track down their ill-gained platinum and items.
While we hate to remove anyone from our community, our family, there are times that for the good of the servers, the in-game economy and the community we do find ourselves forced to take action. Unfortunately, this was one such occasion.
Thanks all for being a part of Norrath.
This action is not just limited to Transmuters:
We tracked spells, transmutations, abuse of Mender Bots, etc. We are taking action against all who reached a specific threshhold of abuse.
The most egregious offenders, who I have learned made thousands of plat off of this exploit, will find themselves suspended from the game for several days or possibly a longer ban.
Posted by Kiara:
We’ll be having our usual Tuesday hotfix starting at 6am for the US servers and at 9pm (5am GMT Wednesday March 10) for Runnyeye and Splitpaw.The downtime will be the usual hour or so.
and your March 9 Hotfix Notes after the jump…
From Rothgar on the EQ2 Forums:
Customer Service will be investigating reports of players making use of a duping exploit. If you’ve been found using this exploit, your character may be rolled back several days.
You should always be aware that using an exploit can result in suspension or bannings regardless of what the exploit is. If you’ve stumbled across something on your own or heard of an exploit from a friend, your best bet is to petition CS about it right away and cease that behavior.
We have gone ahead and pulled an article we had posted about the possibility of transferring from a PvP to PvE server by way of using a Server Transfer Token while logged into Battlegrounds.
We have not been able to substantiate reports that players had been able to perform such a transfer.
It seems that the Antonia Bayle EQ2 server is experiencing some kind of database corruption and is undergoing an emergency downtime at the moment. Details remain elusive at the time of this writing, but we’ll be watching this thread on the EQ2 Forums:
Brewday returns to Norrath from March 11th through the 22nd! Come on out and celebrate Brell Serilis! It may be a holiday started by dwarves, but everyone is welcome!
Battlegrounds are currently closed due to a Transmuting exploit which has allowed players to duplicate items. In short, items which you transmuted or scribed on Battlegrounds were returned to you upon exiting Battlegrounds.
In our March 5th End-of-Week News, we neglected to post a link to the thread discussing Raid Mob Damage Output and some fine-tuning that will be happening to mobs as a result. From Rothgar:
This sounds like it was maybe due to another bug fix. Sometimes when we find a bug with a profession spell and fix it, the fix also “fixes” bugs that were on NPC’s that we didn’t know existed. It may have been possible that those NPC’s were bugged too and during beta tuning they were made harder and harder because no one knew that a spell wasn’t critting properly or something wasn’t procing correctly.
I’ll pass this info along so they can take a look at it. The proper fix may be to go back through the mobs that were affected and tune them down.
And a report from Sinat:
The AE’s themselves seem to be doing more damage, even on noncrits. If I compare it on something with virtually no mit, like my spiritual circle, the noncrit of AE’s were higher on it Thursday than it was on Tuesday. Even examining the AE spell information it’s much higher Thursday than what it was on Tuesday. It’s possible the crit bonus is higher as well, but the AE’s, at least on Maalus, appear to be doing more damage regardless.
I guess using /bug does pay off, even if you are a dragon. 
The elusive SOE Marketing Dept. took a moment today to pat itself on the back for its “successful launch” of EverQuest II: Sentinel’s Fate. They also made a point of thanking “our great fans have responded with overwhelming support“. It is unclear what aspect of the Sentinel’s Fate launch players give “overwhelming support” to, but no doubt this will be a key point on a Powerpoint presentation somewhere soon.
EQ2Wire does not think it is too soon to start our campaign for NO retail launch of the next EverQuest II expansion. It costs too much money, diverts too many resources, and ultimately confuses and frustrates players to have retailer exclusives, head starts, and regional lockouts on who can buy the Digital Download when and where.
Did the Retail Push Work?
Marketing will point to retail figures saying “It worked!” but the reality is, these are customers who felt forced to buy the product in a certain way, at additional cost and hassle, just to get the same customer experience they have had in past years with a Digital Download.
There is such a thing as a false economy here regarding players who would have ordinarily purchased the Digital Download over a span of the next 2-3 months, as they had completed all the content they desired to in the previous expansion converted to the new product. No doubt some of these players felt pressured into buying Sentinel’s Fate retail version on launch day, so as not to be left behind, or to get the best possible game.
It just seems to us, although we have no sales figures to back up our theories, that making loyal customers jump through hoops just to add a few boxes on retail shelves is not worth it in the long run, and we feel that a true cost-benefit analysis of how the Sentinel’s Fate retail launch played out (provided it is not merely a self-serving exercise) would bear this out.
And there is no tangible way to measure the ill will created in the European community by the Sentinel’s Fate launch lead up chaos, missteps at DLGamer and Steam, and now almost daily Hotfixes during primetime Europe hours. These players have a right to be doubtful.
I have had some very harsh words for the SOE Marketing Dept, yet I feel like I am on pretty solid ground with my opinions. So far, this department has demonstrated that it does not understand its customers, does not value their feedback, and further, has gone out of its way to insulate itself from criticism.
EQ2Wire is extending an open invitation to any member of the SOE Marketing Dept who wishes to grant an interview on these and other subjects.
EQ2Players has checked in with another great Artist Highlight, this time for Stephanie Young. One of my favorite parts of Sentinel’s Fate has been the zone artwork. It has taken everything to another level.
Here are some excerpts from the article:
How did you get started in the industry?
I started out as a graphic artist for a subcontractor to the Office of Naval Intelligence. Gradually the company started incorporating more 3D simulations into the products we developed and I became the primary developer for the 3D assets used by the engineers. Eventually though I found it difficult to “love” what I was creating in 3D.
So I decided to get more formal training at the Vancouver Film School in British Columbia so that I could pursue a career in 3D that created, shall I say, art depicting the happier side of life. After school I landed a job in Lake Tahoe working under contract for a gaming company based in the UK. It was there that I fell in love with environments both in game and out on the Tahoe Rim trail. When that company folded I was offered a job here at SOE and I’ve been happily making environments ever since.
What are some of the other areas you’ve done the art for in EQII?
I created Sebilis, Charasis, and Befallen.
Here are some end-of-week news items which I’ve noticed on the EQ2 forums that readers may find useful…
Scale of Flame
Players have been having trouble advancing/completing the quest Scale of Flame. In response, Gninja has responded:
I found the issue causing the spirit to not spawn and have corrected it. You should see it come to live server early next week with our next build.
Breaking Combat on PvP/Battlegrounds
Rothgar has made some further adjustments in how combat is broken on PvP/Battlegrounds. It has been tweaked so that you must be at least 1000m from the other player as well as a timer based on activity.
Raid Mob Damage Calculations
There has been some wonkiness, to say the least, in how raid mobs have been putting out damage. Players have noticed these issues and been reporting in this thread on the subject. Rothgar has provided an update:
Yesterday’s patch fixed a bug that was causing many of a mob’s special abilities to not be applied correctly. So technically the code is working as it should be now and all buffs are being applied to the mob. However, this bug has only been in since the first hotfix after the 24th of February. So the mobs should be the same as they were on release, but unfortunately no one was probably raiding them that much during the first week or the people that did expected them to hit this hard.
I’ve spoken with our raid designer and he’s going to take a look at the mobs on a case-by-case basis and determine what needs to be changed. We don’t have any ETA’s on changes yet, but please continue to post your feedback on the ones that you think are way too hard.
Keep in mind we’re only a few weeks into the expansion and that mobs SHOULD be pretty tough until people get caught up on gear, levels and AA’s.
Battlegrounds Cloaks for Testers
For those folks who tested out Battlegrounds, there was an announcement that these players would be getting an appearance cloak. Kiara weighs in on the status of this item:
It hasn’t been entitled yet. Yes it will be very soon. The department that handles this particular sort of situation has been swamped under with another project.
Itemization Issues
We are continuing to follow a story about Itemization issues with the new EQ2 expansion. Players are reporting that Battlegrounds armor is far better than shard gear (Marks of Manaar), quest items are far better than Mastercrafted gear, and most notable, jewelry and charms from the Vigilant x2 raid zone have so far been far superior to the 24-person raid zones and contested x4 raid mobs introduced with Sentinel’s Fate.
We will be tracking this story to see how this all shakes out.
With the server stability and Battlegrounds issues going on over the past 2 weeks, it was not surprising to read that the EQ2 Developer Chat has been postponed a couple of weeks. Fyreflye had already sent word that he would not be able to make it. We will look forward to the EQ2 Developer Chat on March 18th.
In the meantime, continue to submit your questions to calthine{at}allakhazam{dot}com.
From the EQ2 Forums:
Join Sony Online Entertainment at Bally’s Las Vegas, from August 5th through 8th, for three days of fun and games at Fan Faire 2010. If you’ve never been to an SOE Fan Faire before, this is the time to make the trek to Sin City! Fan Faire is a great place for gamers to mix, mingle and meet with some of the faces behind their favorite SOE titles.
- Special announcements and sneak peaks of upcoming SOE titles
- In-game tournaments and live, game-themed competitions and quests
- Developer forums and roundtables
- Cool giveaways and other fun items!
And that’s just the beginning! Visit the Fan Faire website at www.soefanfaire.com for up-to-date information on registration, pricing and schedules. Tickets are expected to go on sale early this spring.
Hotel costs are looking fairly reasonable:
The special SOE rate at Bally’s Las Vegas is currently $65 plus tax on Thursday night, and $85 plus tax on Friday and Saturday night, while supplies last.
We noticed that a new Platinum package has been added at the $139 level:
- Second Fan Faire in-game item for your primary game! Yes, this means you get two with a Platinum Pass!
- Unlimited green screen photos with the backgrounds of your choice!
- VIP Check-In Lounge for Platinum Pass Holders only!
- Premium Gift Bag with special giveaways (to be announced)
- Private VIP events for Platinum Pass Holders only! You don’t want to miss out on this! Details to follow!
Schedule
Although an official schedule has not yet been posted, and probably won’t be for another month or two, for those needing to make hotel and flight arrangements as early as possible, here is an outline of the schedule we’ve seen for the last few years:
NOTE: There is no guarantee they won’t change the schedule for this year.
For more information, and for the promotional code to book your hotel, check out the official SOE Fan Faire 2010 Website.
Brewday is coming to Norrath, with all new rewards, quests, and recipes. As always, the best previews of these live events can be found at Niami’s EQTraders site. Here’s her Brewday 2010 Preview. Brewday shall run from March 11 – 22nd this year. Check out that awesome backpack!!
Players have been reporting an issue with being able to escape combat *very* quickly on both PvP servers and Battlegrounds, and then being able to join a Battlegrounds match while seemingly still in PvP combat (on Nagafen). After some discussion and diagnosis in this thread, Rothgar posted the backstory on the issue and presented a change that will be made to address the issue:
Prior to battlegrounds the only way you got out of combat was for your hate to degrade over time. So the more hate you built with someone, the longer you’d stay in combat.
When battleground development began, a new method was added to remove you from combat if you got far enough away from your attacker and hadn’t had any aggressive action with them in a period of time. (4 seconds) The aggressive action goes both ways, you attacking them or them attacking you.
This new check was enabled for all PvP, not just battlegrounds. We’re going to increase this timer from 4 to 10 seconds and see how that goes.
The old rule is still in effect. If your hate degrades to almost nothing, you’ll be removed from combat. But in addition, if you run 20 meters away and neither of you have attacked each other in 10 seconds, you’ll also be removed.
Xelgad has posted that bugs with the AA abilities Luck of the Dirge, Cleansing of the Soul (Templar), Poison Mastery (Assassin), Killing Fury (Assassin), Shadow Step (Assassin), have been fixed internally and should be hotfixed on March 4th.
