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Vinestalk posted:I'd love to hear about Blood mages, Chloromancers, and Rift/Vanguard bards as well. I'm planning on doing a big post about EQ bards that, spoiler alert, is going to go really into the loving weeds of a class that was impossible to balance. I loved playing a hard in EQ. A little late responding to this as I've been catching up on lurking this thread. Since no one's jumped on it and I've seen them brought up a few times in the thread, I'll talk a bit about Vanguard's blood mages. For context, I've done raids and endgame grouping as one and I do still remember an unhealthily large amount about the game. The short rundown is that they were a light armor wearing caster and had a few spells that "life tapped" an offensive target and returned the damage (and a bonus amount based on Blood Union) as a heal to the mage's defensive target. They didn't hit as hard as the sorcerer or druid classes (and arguably the psionicist and necromancer if you had a good one of those) but between damage and heals, they generated enough agro as it was. Where most healers relied on a high vitality stat to boost heals and mana regen, blood mages were built more like a caster with intelligence to boost damage and wisdom to boost crits and total mana,. Constitution was also a major stat (arguably more important than wisdom) as it was needed to boost hit points and mitigation since that light armor isn't going to help much when you're often in face punching range or using a pact (see below). There were a couple regular vitality based heals in the repertoire but if you were using those abilities, you either were fighting something where tap heals were not an option or didn't know how to play the class. Gear was pretty much like any other caster as far as stats/attributes/effects/etc., though with some limitations since some caster gear was ONLY for casters and didn't include the blood mage (Sparkles' ring, I'm looking at you). There is a minor tradeoff though in that some healer cloaks/jewellery could be equipped by blood mages, most of which were vit/healer oriented and not that useful but some were significant improvements (the mask from Mercaius is a prime example since it extended casting range and boosted damage rating, but was healer only). When talking about blood mages, the two spells people usually refer to are Entwining Vein, which healed a single target, and Blood Tribute, which was an instant cast crit finisher that group healed. Usually, the finisher was left to timeout unless it was needed to actually heal the group or heal a group member instantly since it was a big agro generator and a waste to just be used for damage. Entwining Vein was the real bread and butter ability for healing but did have a very minor cast time, so not really a quick react heal. Both of these abilities were arcane (lightning) damage types in Vanguard's system, which made them very dangerous when fighting something that absorbed arcane damage. If the opposite of damaging something is absorbing/healing, what do you think the opposite of stealing health from a mob and healing a player is? If you guessed stealing health from the player and healing the mob, you are right. Now when the player is designed to have LESS hit points than the mob and the ability is designed to do damage with that consideration, suddenly that tap heal just became an instant player killer. This was often used to either grief fellow raid/group members or to indicate that the blood mage is not paying any drat attention. This is where those vit heals would have to be used, but they sucked big time and were very mana inefficient. A couple years before shutdown, a third ability got added (obtained through a quickish collect quest) which was a slightly weaker Entwining Vein that did planar damage instead (a newer damage type added in the Pantheon of the Ancients revamp and very little resisted it), which was nice since it allowed the blood mage to still tap heal on arcane resistant/absorbent stuff and had the added bonus of being one of the only abilities that damaged through the stupid "furious" ability a lot of endgame stuff had. Some of the other combat related stuff included the three combat stances, Blood Union, and pacts while most of the remainder were typical DD and DoT's. The three stances were one that boosted spell damage but would do a little bit of damage over time to the blood mage (the primary combat stance), one that boosted mitigation/heal effectiveness/health regen (good when you're in the thick of things or being defensive), and one that was just a neutral/noncombat stance. Blood Union was a status counter that didn't penalize as a debuff but built up over time on an offensive target in combat as long as you stay targeted on them. Some abilities (like I mentioned above) would get damage/heal boosts the higher the union, plus the union points could be spent on certain damage abilities so it also functioned as another resource pool. Pacts were like a player to player bond that shared hit point pools between the blood mage and a single player or between the whole group a blood mage was in. This was important for some really hard hitting targets (e.g. Sparkles) so that the tank didn't die in one hit but instead the damage would get shared to those in the pact (this is where the extra con and hp for the blood mage help, otherwise you die, the tank dies, everybody dies). Outside of regular class buffs, the blood mage also had unique symbiote buffs that could be cast on individual players. This is one of the big complaints many blood mages had with the class because of how tedious it got farming components and doling out each symbiote one at a time in groups/raids. The components had to be farmed in combat using a specific harvesting ability and the component you got was based on the blood mage DoT/debuff active on the target. And you couldn't cast a bunch of them and get a bunch of components in one go. You only got ONE component at a time and the harvesting ability had a cool down too, which meant recasting both the DoT/debuff and the harvesting spell a LOT. Trying to farm during group/raid was a bit distracting, and solo harvesting meant you had to find the right target to farm from since a strong mob could beat your rear end or a weak mob could die before you got much. Alternatively, a psionicist could chain mez a mob that could then be harvested, but it wasn't very fun for the psionicist just standing around spamming mez. Once the components were collected, there were many different kinds of symbiotes that could be assembled. I don't remember them all, but some were one that gave bonus armor class, one that gave a temporary heal ability (meaning a bard could actually cast a little heal, for example). and one that granted levitation. However, there were only two that were really worth anything: frenzied and quickening. Quickening gave a temporary ability called Quickening Jolt which was an instant cast 5 or 10 second long big damage buff (HUGE for the burst DPSers) with a 5 minute cool down. Frenzied was a flat damage bonus for all abilities (not a percentage boost like most bonuses) so it boosted the damage of weapons/abilities in the calculation itself, making a sword that was 98-110 now be 108=120 in the damage formula (I don't remember the exact number bonuses frenzied gave, but that's basically what it did). The problem with the symbiotes was they had to be given out one at a time: target a player, cast the symbiote, target the next player, cast a symbiote, etc. And everyone wanted something based on their class/play style and the fight, so the blood mage would sit for like 10-15 minutes handing them out, getting messages/requests, and making sure they had enough symbiotes/components (and there was always that one jackass that was AFK and came back asking for a symbiote after last call). This was a major burnout factor for a lot of blood mages. On a personal note, these didn't bother me much since I had an NPC I could easily farm/stockpile components and since I didn't have to worry about running out, I just gave everyone the symbiote I thought they'd want unless they told me otherwise. The last cool thing about the blood mage to mention are the benefits from the epics obtained in Pantheon of the Ancients. The primary epic (which was placed in gloves armor, unlike other epics) had a clickable ability that summoned a little ooze pet. It was pretty basic as far as abilities/stats but the real benefit was that it would have a special ability that was determined by the type of mob targeted when the epic was clicked. The best mob to target was the extraplanar ones (e.g. flarehounds, eyelords), because the ooze's special ability was a 10 minute 5% damage group buff and it would cast the buff on the blood mage's group every few minutes (I used to summon this pet and WALK to some raids just to have it). The off-hand epic had a passive ability that would proc and create a blood pellet in your inventory. There were four different kinds of pellets that could be randomly created: red, blue, green, and gold. Like symbiotes, these pellets were inventory items (more stockpiling!) that when clicked on a defensive target would cast single target buffs with a 10 minute duration (except gold). You could only have one active on someone at a time, plus since they were clicked from inventory there was a few second cool down which meant it took some time to hand these out and added to that pre-raid tedium if you were trying to give these all out before engagement. Red was garbage and only gave some bonus hit points. Blue granted a ridiculously high mana regen, which was real handy if you were fighting something that drained mana or if someone just got rezzed and needed to regen quick. Green gave a flat damage bonus and was VERY good (I pretty much gave this out to everyone, regardless of class). Gold was rare and you could only have one of these in inventory, but it gave a 10 second massive damage/haste buff that once it ran out, the player would be stripped of all buffs and be stunned, so it was used for big DPS burns toward the end of certain fights (like Shendu and Sparkles). That might've been a bit more detailed than you were looking for, but that's the synopsis of what I remember about the Vanguard blood mage. I can talk about Vanguard's bards a little too if interested, I just won't have quite as much to say since most of their cool and unique factor is in the song related stuff.
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Dec 8, 2021 05:30
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 23:10 |
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LuckyCat posted:A buddy logged in a couple of months ago and there were 4 people playing. Awesome! They’re back to pre-shutdown pop.
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Jul 26, 2022 00:19
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LuckyCat posted:The intro of newbie island took so much from the game. Racial starting areas own. I spent so much time in the half giant starting area doing diplomacy and learning the lore. The halfling start area oozed with charm. The dwarf and elf areas were great also. Such wasted potential. When those starter zones are basically empty though I suppose there’s no choice but to implement a tutorial area. EQ did it too. I loved the vulmane and orc/gobbie starting areas for the lore and ambience they had. The starter island was a necessity both for population and itemization reasons. Not just low population but just being so far spread out from each other hurt grouping in racial starting areas. I remember at launch trying to run from one side of Thestra to the other to group with a friend and just couldn’t do it. Even once the riftways were added, the racial starting areas were still a jaunt away which was hard for a lowbie toon with no mount. You pretty much had to roll a race in that starting area to group up. And itemization was crummy and never got updated in those starter areas. Even if you didn’t do the whole story on the newbie island, you’d end up with every equipment slot filled, but the racial areas were a major mixed bag. My first toon at launch had empty mask and jewelry slots until he was about level 17. At least some of the level 10+ areas also got a re-itemization after Isle of Dawn was released to help smooth over the transition to old content. Node posted:Did Vanguard even offer the chance to start in the original towns, or did the addition of newbie island remove the choice completely? That's pretty sad if so. At character creation you could pick the starter island or the racial starting area. And if you picked the starter island, you could visit the racial starting area later (though you’d be over leveled). However, the starter island was only accessible if you started there and could never be revisited once you left. ZixTheYeti fucked around with this message at 10:28 on Jul 26, 2022 |
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Jul 26, 2022 08:32
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And Vanguard’s code was a poo poo show before shutdown. There was a handful of devs working and they’d still occasionally break stuff when messing with old code. Like the time they were trying to streamline some character speed stuff and accidentally caused all player characters to baby step while all the mobs sprinted regardless of their intended behavior. Or the time they broke damage rune absorption in abilities and inadvertently caused a specific piece of equipment to make a player character unkillable when worn. So even if they put it live again, I highly doubt it would’ve ever see any work on it.
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Jul 9, 2023 04:11
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Node posted:So do we have any idea if the people working on the emulator have a custom vanguard code, or did they pick a release that didn't have any glaring issues like that you described? From what I’ve seen from personally puttering around on the emulator, they have their own code with some stuff probably carried over. I know a few things were datamined but not implemented yet, like abilities not working or mobs doing next to nothing. Additionally, it wouldn’t surprise me if half of the code was missing because a lot was datamined but the game was HUGE with some of the content and mechanics tucked away, so I’m pretty sure there’s stuff having to be recreated whole cloth. Edit: I also haven’t been on the emulated server in a couple years so I might not have an accurate assessment on their current status. As far as the code goes, they won’t have near the convoluted mess that the original game had but they will be having to rebuild a lot of it with their own tools. ZixTheYeti fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Jul 9, 2023 |
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Jul 9, 2023 06:04
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Haven't logged in to the server, but I peaked over at their forums and it looks like they've gotten quite a bit done. I'll have to pop on some time soon and get a dose of nostalgia.
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Jul 9, 2023 16:05
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Kevin Bacon posted:post your shrunk ogres please They closed DPPH.
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Dec 23, 2023 16:01
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 23:10 |
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I got the Vanguard soundtrack sitting in a folder somewhere on my laptop but I almost never play it because it reminds me of all the times I would wander around and explore while listening to the music and it depresses me. 
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Feb 3, 2024 18:21
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