|
Honestly been meaning to make this thread for awhile. It's purpose is to highlight weird MMO poo poo. It could be weird, forgotten mechanics or modes, strange quests, conspiracies players think up in their head (or were real, ect). Just for strange and crazy things MMOs had or tried. My pick to start: EverQuest had a card game in 2007 (that lasted for almost ten years(?!) called Legends of Norrath. It was interesting at the time, and seemed directly to complete with WOW:TCG except this was in client and you could play in the game which was a first I believe. It even had cards that would give in game loot. Here is where it got weird... the game, ahead of something like Hearthstone, actually had a full single player campaign inside of Everquest, so a game within a game. This included things like Raids and cards that could only be used inside the single player portion of the card game   I really miss when MMOs kept adding weird poo poo in them to see what sticks. Another example is Project M Original Project M patch notes for everquest posted:tonight we have patched something to the PvP servers that many players have been waiting for. The ability to play that gnoll, orc, or the cute and fuzzy rat. On your character select screen you will notice another button in the upper right part of your screen called "Monster". Clicking this button will randomly place you in a low-level NPC in a random zone. You will be given full control of the creature to do with it what you like. You may hunt and kill other creatures. You may even attack other players. Imagine how insane it was to play a level 3 moss snake, kill newbies, and level up your snake lmfao, imagine seeing a level 50 lowbie creature who is now super powerful... sadly this didn't last, even though the idea was brilliant. I wish more MMOs took risks like this and let you play as the creatures in a PVP setting.
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2023 20:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 4, 2024 18:42 |
|
|
Several MMOs did/do this thing where to show your mastery at a skill/level it up, you had to actively use the skill. I remember 9Dragons in particular though, because by the time you started getting to really high levels of buffs, there was no way you would have ever naturally used the skill enough to hit max level, because you started getting 0.005% xp a cast. So what you would end up doing is on the weekends when it was double xp, you'd go to your faction's headquarters, sit next to the guy who sold books that temporarily doubled xp (or if you were lucky, you could find books on the random drop table for up to x5 xp), and just button mash for hours upon hours. It was the stupidest thing in the world, but you would be very highly regarded/respected by anyone you partied with if you could show that you did your homework and got to max buffs. Also, eventually they started releasing additional levels of the skills that you had to find as books, so you could then unlock the ability to train for even longer for an additional buff level without any other special bonuses. I always found it weird that hidden in the corner was a burst meter that if you reached 100% would slowly drain over time and give you a damage boost, but you could click to increase the damage output/damage taken in exchange for the meter draining faster. Sort of thing you'd see more as a single player game function or a class specific function than a feature available to all classes in an MMO. Finally (and this is probably the truest thing in the spirit of the thread): there was a conspiracy based on the in-game lore that at some point the devs would release an endgame faction which could only be joined if you made it all the way up to the projected max level without joining any of the game's main factions, meaning that you had to play 99% of the game with skills from the tutorial section and raw damage output from weapons.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2023 23:34
|
|
|
Jossar posted:Several MMOs did/do this thing where to show your mastery at a skill/level it up, you had to actively use the skill. I remember 9Dragons in particular though, because by the time you started getting to really high levels of buffs, there was no way you would have ever naturally used the skill enough to hit max level, because you started getting 0.005% xp a cast. So what you would end up doing is on the weekends when it was double xp, you'd go to your faction's headquarters, sit next to the guy who sold books that temporarily doubled xp (or if you were lucky, you could find books on the random drop table for up to x5 xp), and just button mash for hours upon hours. It was the stupidest thing in the world, but you would be very highly regarded/respected by anyone you partied with if you could show that you did your homework and got to max buffs. Also, eventually they started releasing additional levels of the skills that you had to find as books, so you could then unlock the ability to train for even longer for an additional buff level without any other special bonuses. lol I love player conspiracies. awesome
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2023 23:44
|
|
|
There were several crafting myths in FFXI that people believed for years. In FFXI crafting is simply using an elemental crystal and using the correct items to form a recipe, then the game plays out a small animation of you kneeling and using the crystal, then the craft either completes or fails. There is also a chance of getting a high-quality result, and there are tiers of high-quality that go up to 3. HQ crafts were a major source of gil so rumors started circulating that there were ways to increase your HQ chance. These ranged from crafting on a certain day of the week with a certain element of crystal, to facing a certain direction when initiating the craft, or only crafting on Darksday if you want HQ, etc. At some point SE revealed that the crafting myths were just that, myths, and that it's purely RNG based on your skill level in relation to the level of the recipe. I remember reading the Allakazam boards back in 2004 or whatever and a user claiming they found the "HQ recipe" so they could always get high-quality results. Then he quit the game and disappeared from the forum forever and people still were hunting for this 100% HQ method.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 02:49
|
|
|
Kongming posted:There were several crafting myths in FFXI that people believed for years. In FFXI crafting is simply using an elemental crystal and using the correct items to form a recipe, then the game plays out a small animation of you kneeling and using the crystal, then the craft either completes or fails. There is also a chance of getting a high-quality result, and there are tiers of high-quality that go up to 3. HQ crafts were a major source of gil so rumors started circulating that there were ways to increase your HQ chance. These ranged from crafting on a certain day of the week with a certain element of crystal, to facing a certain direction when initiating the craft, or only crafting on Darksday if you want HQ, etc. At some point SE revealed that the crafting myths were just that, myths, and that it's purely RNG based on your skill level in relation to the level of the recipe. Lmfao god. I love hearing about this poo poo!
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 02:50
|
|
|
I played a ton of EverQuest back in the day and the mysticism in that game that the players believed was wild. Things like getting the Ancient Cyclops to spawn (dropped a token that would get you boots that made you run faster, which was one of the most sought after items for classes that couldn’t cast Spirit of Wolf) included rumors like only kill X at night or doing weird circles around the zone. Later it was revealed by a dev that the process was in fact very weird and esoteric to get the thing to spawn lol.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 02:55
|
|
|
https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/The_History_of_Final_Fantasy_XI This is also worth a read, especially the launch/early years of the game. It reminds me of FFXIV 1.0 launch in a lot of ways (no real content besides leveling, broken systems, terrible battle design) but this was before WoW came out so people didn't know any better and they got away with it. Some highlights I like from the first year alone: quote:Turtle Curse quote:The patch from hell quote:User Event:Castle Zvahl Charge "The Black Mage Disaster Period" is a phrase that rattles around in my head a lot.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 03:01
|
|
|
Kongming posted:https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/The_History_of_Final_Fantasy_XI This is awesome. I wish something like this document was around for every loving MMO I find it such an interesting read
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 03:10
|
|
|
Isn't FFXI also the one that had multiple different bosses (Absolute Virtue, Pandemonium Warden) that required a double digit number of hours to beat? Which reminds me of everyone's favorite MMO test of endurance - kiting the superpowered town guard to death over 20 minutes as a test of skill, even knowing that there will be no tangible rewards for doing so.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 03:12
|
|
|
Jossar posted:Isn't FFXI also the one that had multiple different bosses (Absolute Virtue, Pandemonium Warden) that required a double digit number of hours to beat? Pandemonium Warden made the news after people reported fighting it for over 20 hours and people falling ill at their computers during the fight. SE's response was to add a 2 hour timer to AV and PW, so 2 hours after they spawned if they weren't killed they simply disappeared. As far as I know Absolute Virtue was never fought for that length of time, but he's a whole other can of worms.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 03:23
|
|
|
Kongming posted:Pandemonium Warden made the news after people reported fighting it for over 20 hours and people falling ill at their computers during the fight. SE's response was to add a 2 hour timer to AV and PW, so 2 hours after they spawned if they weren't killed they simply disappeared. As far as I know Absolute Virtue was never fought for that length of time, but he's a whole other can of worms. Was there some trick people never figured out or what?
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 03:37
|
|
|
Oh yeah another weird FFXI thing is their attempts at implementing PvP content. FFXI was always billed as a game where you work together with players to accomplish things, so PvP was never planned. But eventually they relented and added a few PvP modes over the years. 1. Ballista: This was the first one they implemented. For starters, to even participate in Ballista, you needed to be Nation rank 3 and have the Adventurer's Certificate key item. Then you had to visit each of the 3 main nations to get approved for participation in Ballista. I only played Ballista one or two times and the rules are sketchy to me. Basically you had teams of people from different nations and you had to collect stones from defeating players, then throw these stones into a "Rook" that was placed somewhere on the map to score points. Whoever scored the most points by the end of the time limit won. I remember that they didn't even try to balance this and so some jobs were just good at killing players and others weren't. Black Mages could generally one shot players at range before they could do anything unless they were a mage themselves. Another quirk of Ballista is that there was no instanced content in FFXI until the third expansion so matches took place in certain zones at specific times. So you couldn't even play it whenever you wanted. 2. Brenner: I'm going to be honest and tell you I have absolutely no idea what Brenner is. It's like Ballista except it's actually an instanced zone and it has different rules, but no one ever played it so I got nothing. 3. Monstrosity: The most interesting of the PvP modes, this is similar to the Project M thing TLD posted. You could take the form of a monster and run around and kill things. The difference is you weren't allowed to attack players at will. Instead, players had to opt in to be "gladiators" that you could then engage and fight. Otherwise you could only kill other monsters. The interesting thing about Monstrosity is that it had a Pokemon type evolution system. You could only pick weak monster types at first but you could level up through the different forms so you would start as a mere Sheep but could eventually become a mighty Behemoth if you grinded enough. Problem is that there is no one who wanted to opt in to be a gladiator so it was just a way to live out your fantasy of being a dragon or to kill time. To this day there are people who try to get you to play Ballista or Brenner with them, do not trust these people (well, idk about now, the game is dying rapidly now that it's not receiving updates any more)!
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 03:43
|
|
|
That Little Demon posted:Was there some trick people never figured out or what? PW I'm not very knowledgeable about, the main issue with PW is that it's a marathon fight where it transforms through a bunch of different bosses you fight elsewhere, and then once you defeat all of its forms you fight the warden himself. Problems arise because when he's in his true form he uses the Summoner skill Astral Flow. Normally, Astral Flow lets the player or enemy using it use the avatar they have summoned most powerful attack one time. These attacks are generally extremely dangerous and will wipe a party. But Pandemonium Warden summons all eight of the elements avatars at the same time, and they use their skills simultaneously. This was generally considered the end of the fight for people because the entire alliance would die to this attack and it was unavoidable. I do not know if this mechanic was ever solved "for real" but people were able to beat PW eventually. I was not a part of the high end endgame world in FFXI in this period and it's kind of secretive about its strategies. I don't know where to begin with Absolute Virtue. The fight was solved legit up to probably the final mechanic. Once AV hits a certain percentage of health it will gain floating red rings around its wrists, and this powers up its magic attacks tremendously. It also has access to the strongest spell in the game at this point, Meteor. Meteor is always fatal to back line jobs and the area of effect is enormous. And it casts it at random so you can't predict when he'll use it. It was possible for tanks to survive multiple meteors but at that point you can't possibly kill AV because tanks can't do enough damage. As far as I know the Meteor problem was never solved, but once the level cap was raised and Summoners got access to Alexander and Perfect Defense, it became possible to kill without exploits. Funny thing about these "exploits" is that some were legit game breaking (one strat was called Wall of Justice where you got AV stuck on a piece of geometry and then just nuked it to death with Black Mages) and others were just clever use of game mechanics that SE dubbed exploits and patched out (Dark Knights using fast attacking weapons with the ability Soul Eater).
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 03:53
|
|
|
FFXI was full of esoteric poo poo because it was explicitly an everquest knockoff, so players discovering things on one hand and believing asinine nonsense on the other hand was very much the intended experience. this was heightened by the fact that all players played on the same servers, so there were japanese and english-speaking communities in close "proximity" that were like neighbors that rarely talked but kept hearing rumors about each other. (there was an auto-translate function where you could pick from a phrasebook, but it was often a hassle to use.) another wrinkle of this was that the game was not released outside of japan until after the first expansion, Rise of the Zilart, so there was a portion of the game's history that was largely unknown to english-speaking players. one of the most important spells in the game was red mages' Refresh, which restored 3MP/tick - given that the only way to regenerate MP on one's own was by sitting down and resting (again, everquest knockoff), this and/or a similar ability, a bard song called Mage's Ballad, were essentially indispensable for fast and efficient leveling. this was added before RotZ - english-speaking players never experienced the game without it. of course, when it was added, the developers didn't tell players where the scroll with which to learn it could actually be found. some enterprising genius found out it dropped from special basically-instanced battles ("burning circles"), and naturally chose to keep it secret to monopolize the source - but they cleverly sowed misinformation by claiming they had gotten it as a rare drop from a random hecteyes-type monster called a Taisai in a backwater zone called Ranguemont Pass. for some time afterward ranguemont pass was filled with suckers murdering every taisai they could find, fruitlessly. among japanese players, it became an in-joke to respond to "where can I get <new item>?" with "I found it on a Taisai," but this joke never spread to english players because at the time, there weren't any. about three years later, the developers added several new rare spawns ('notorious monsters' NMs) based off a new system. the vast majority of NMs had the usual systems of "spawns every X to Y hours" (up to several days for the ones that dropped the best stuff - again, everquest knockoff) or "forced to spawn by trading a particular item to a particular spot" or "a chance to appear whenever a placeholder mob respawns." but they added NMs that would only appear when a specific, unremarkable placeholder mob, indistinguishable from those around it, was left undisturbed for some period of time, often between 24-72 hours, at which point it would transform into the NM. one of these new NMs was Taisaijin, which spawned when a Taisai was left alone. it dropped two things: the spelunker's hat, a purposefully terrible gag item that was a reference to the optical hat, a pretty good item dropped by another hecteyes called Hakutaku... and, for no reason the english-speaking community could discern, a guaranteed scroll of refresh. only then did the english-speaking community learn of one of FFXI's oldest running jokes. of course, there were a couple gags that english-speaking players got as well. the aforementioned mmo fansite allakhazam's ffxi database listed an NM called "Fazasher Death Weapon" in the zone Ro'Maeve sometime around english release in 2003. it was fake, never actually existed, but before people realized they could comb the game's files to determine that no such mob existed, some people theorized it was a special monster that spawned with an Invisible effect (players had an Invisible spell so it wasn't out of the question). in the same update that added Taisaijin, the devs also added Shikigami Weapon - a monster in Ro'Maeve that spawned with an invisible effect and had to be tricked into appearing by luring it out with magic spells. which also leads me to one of FFXI's more esoteric systems: how monsters aggroed. a given monster type would (usually) only detect players by a particular method. many detected by sight, such that they would attack players walking in front of them but not see players walking behind them; many detected by sound, such that they would attack anyone running near them but ignore anyone walking, since it was quieter; undead would additionally detect by blood, where if a player had yellow or red HP they would attack; various magical constructs and elementals would detect magic being cast near them and attack the caster. the spells Invisible and Sneak, and the equivalent items prism powders and silent oils, prevented detection by sight and sound respectively - but of course some NMs and special monsters had "true sight" or "true hearing" that would ignore them. it was a minigame in itself to "MGS" around dangerous high-level zones, finding safe spots to reapply sneak and invis, running behind sight monsters or tiptoeing around sound monsters when your protection suddenly wore off. but there was a third detection preventer, the spell Deodorize. the description read "lessens chance of being detected by smell," but not a single monster in the game aggros by smell. so what was the point? if you ever played FFXI, you probably know that unlike WoW or other modern MMOs where monsters will give up chasing you pretty quickly if you hoof it, monsters in that game will frequently chase you to the ends of the earth (or whatever nearest zone-line). it was a common rite of passage for newbies to flee from an orc or whatever, think they had gotten away after being out of sight for even several minutes, and then get splattered by it some time later like it was a single-minded bloodhound. turns out, that was exactly the issue - many monsters tracked by smell. even if you got far enough that the monster could no longer see or hear you, it could still track your scent trail. if you couldn't reach a zone line, you had few options: either cast deodorize - but not while you were too close that the monster could still see or hear you - or run through a stream or hope it was raining or snowing, all of which would cause the monster to run to the spot where your scent trail ended and stop before returning to its spawn point. and let me emphasize: nowhere in the game was this explained, at all. as an aside, many FFXIV overworld mobs still run off the same sight and sound aggro rules. it is basically irrelevant unless you're underleveled in eureka or something, but the system still exists
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 03:55
|
|
|
World War Mammories posted:FFXI was full of esoteric poo poo because it was explicitly an everquest knockoff, so players discovering things on one hand and believing asinine nonsense on the other hand was very much the intended experience. this was heightened by the fact that all players played on the same servers, so there were japanese and english-speaking communities in close "proximity" that were like neighbors that rarely talked but kept hearing rumors about each other. (there was an auto-translate function where you could pick from a phrasebook, but it was often a hassle to use.) another wrinkle of this was that the game was not released outside of japan until after the first expansion, Rise of the Zilart, so there was a portion of the game's history that was largely unknown to english-speaking players. Thank you for this and this kind of poo poo is exactly why I made the thread. Incredible
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 05:08
|
|
|
Kongming posted:Pandemonium Warden made the news after people reported fighting it for over 20 hours and people falling ill at their computers during the fight. SE's response was to add a 2 hour timer to AV and PW, so 2 hours after they spawned if they weren't killed they simply disappeared. As far as I know Absolute Virtue was never fought for that length of time, but he's a whole other can of worms. i know before th cap was put in some high end ls on odin fought absolute virtue for 23 hours and then he bene'd twice and wiped the raid and they just all gave up and went to bed, idk other than that
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 15:49
|
|
|
World War Mammories posted:FFXI was full of esoteric poo poo because it was explicitly an everquest knockoff, so players discovering things on one hand and believing asinine nonsense on the other hand was very much the intended experience. this was heightened by the fact that all players played on the same servers, so there were japanese and english-speaking communities in close "proximity" that were like neighbors that rarely talked but kept hearing rumors about each other. (there was an auto-translate function where you could pick from a phrasebook, but it was often a hassle to use.) another wrinkle of this was that the game was not released outside of japan until after the first expansion, Rise of the Zilart, so there was a portion of the game's history that was largely unknown to english-speaking players. insanely badass
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 16:05
|
|
|
i remember playing EQ and being told to be careful what i cast because some spells had a spherical AoE, so if I wasn't careful i would accidentally tag a boss like two floors down who would then chain pull the entire dungeon on her way to kick my rear end
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 16:56
|
|
|
EverQuest had this sword in Kunark expansion that killed you with its AOE and your party, since it hit everyone and not just the enemy lol I miss weird loving items...
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 17:27
|
|
|
lmao
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 17:31
|
|
|
Man, Legends of Norrath was neat. I was legit kind of bummed out when it was shut down. I never got far enough in Vanguard to see it, but I kind love it used a card game for Diplomacy: https://massivelyop.com/2023/08/18/the-soapbox-how-vanguards-diplomacy-system-could-be-revived-and-improved/
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 18:02
|
|
|
PrinnySquadron posted:Man, Legends of Norrath was neat. I was legit kind of bummed out when it was shut down. Vanguard was a wild, wild game lol
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 18:21
|
|
|
World War Mammories posted:as an aside, many FFXIV overworld mobs still run off the same sight and sound aggro rules. it is basically irrelevant unless you're underleveled in eureka or something, but the system still exists Yeah, most people don't even know it exists unless they go to Pagos and encounter the sleeping dragons.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 19:29
|
|
|
Vanguard owned and it's a goddamn shame it got ol' yellered.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2023 20:49
|
|
|
That Little Demon posted:I played a ton of EverQuest back in the day and the mysticism in that game that the players believed was wild. Things like getting the Ancient Cyclops to spawn (dropped a token that would get you boots that made you run faster, which was one of the most sought after items for classes that couldn’t cast Spirit of Wolf) included rumors like only kill X at night or doing weird circles around the zone. Later it was revealed by a dev that the process was in fact very weird and esoteric to get the thing to spawn lol. yes, i remember camping a spawn for the bard epic outside of old sebilis and there were like 10 different theories on things you could do to make him spawn. took two weeks of 2-3 hours every night before he popped. fun times!
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 00:10
|
|
|
Anarchy Online was a cyberpunk/sci fi MMO which had a fast travel method called ‘the grid’. With enough computer literacy skill you could click a grid terminal (all around the world) and float around as a digital object to exit at another grid terminal. There was a quest line for the hacker class which let them get access to a special better grid. To this day easily the best flavorwise integration of fast travel in a MMO
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 03:39
|
|
|
in ff14 1.0 there was a bizarre attempt to make the main story completable by crafters. this was done via an inexplicable puzzle game that represented negotiation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSWDRXL_oxM goblins, kobolds, ancient evil wizards, all were subject to negotiation via puzzle game. this feature was depreciated as early as the first couple patches and abandoned entirely for a realm reborn. you can still play the minigame in the toybox in any inn room tho. its very funny to imagine if theyd kept it, how they would have possibly written around it
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 05:07
|
|
|
Endorph posted:in ff14 1.0 there was a bizarre attempt to make the main story completable by crafters. this was done via an inexplicable puzzle game that represented negotiation. honestly I love that it was attempted lmfao
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 05:34
|
|
|
That Little Demon posted:I played a ton of EverQuest back in the day and the mysticism in that game that the players believed was wild. Things like getting the Ancient Cyclops to spawn (dropped a token that would get you boots that made you run faster, which was one of the most sought after items for classes that couldn’t cast Spirit of Wolf) included rumors like only kill X at night or doing weird circles around the zone. Later it was revealed by a dev that the process was in fact very weird and esoteric to get the thing to spawn lol. IIRC, the AC worked by there being two or three groups of spawns which were all very similar except they had a different rare spawn in their tables. Oh, and there were different tables for day or night. A more modern one was in WoW there was a zone added in the last patch of the Mists of Pandaria (Timeless Isle) which was full of exactly that sort of thing - kill the common mobs and hope for a rare to spawn. There was also a cave with an underground entrance that had a seat in it which apparently did nothing. …until the next expansion launched, where sitting in that chair loaded you into the first zone of the expansion and let you skip the initial instanced scenario everyone else had to play through.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 09:52
|
|
|
Kongming posted:I don't know where to begin with Absolute Virtue. The fight was solved legit up to probably the final mechanic. Once AV hits a certain percentage of health it will gain floating red rings around its wrists, and this powers up its magic attacks tremendously. It also has access to the strongest spell in the game at this point, Meteor. Meteor is always fatal to back line jobs and the area of effect is enormous. And it casts it at random so you can't predict when he'll use it. I thought the thing with Meteor was that Absolute Virtue only casted it under Manafont or Chainspell, and people never "figured out" how to prevent AV from using those abilities because you had to react to them within 20ms and the servers were all in loving Japan e: Oh yeah it bears mentioning that to even fight Absolute Virtue you had to complete an entire tier of raid bosses (seven in total), each involving a ton of farming to make an offering to spawn it with and requiring a large number of players. When you beat the last one, there was a 50/50 chance AV would spawn instantly upon its death. So not only did you have to be ready to kill that raid boss, you had to be completely prepared to immediately fight the hardest boss in the game afterward, or maybe not. This pairs nicely with the fact that you had to intentionally hold the last boss before AV without killing it and farm its adds. If AV decided to spawn and you didn't do that, he would have a stack of massive health regeneration for each add you didn't kill. Chillgamesh fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Sep 22, 2023 |
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 11:45
|
|
|
That Little Demon posted:I played a ton of EverQuest back in the day and the mysticism in that game that the players believed was wild. Things like getting the Ancient Cyclops to spawn (dropped a token that would get you boots that made you run faster, which was one of the most sought after items for classes that couldn’t cast Spirit of Wolf) included rumors like only kill X at night or doing weird circles around the zone. Later it was revealed by a dev that the process was in fact very weird and esoteric to get the thing to spawn lol. Glad you made this thread - it's similar to the MMO history thread which was the best in this subforum but petered out some time ago. If I remember right EQ had an anti-camping mechanic programmed in where being near a mob's spawn point would make it not spawn but was only ever used for one heavily sought after mob (who I believe was a female drow NPC). I've always found it interesting how the EQ devs decided to spawn certain named mobs via "placeholder" mob deaths maybe it was easier than making it a totally random spawn. I played in the early days of the game it was all weird rumors like you said nobody actually knew how it worked - in my experience people just camped where the zone they knew a mob like Ancient Cyclops spawned in for tens of hours at a time until they got lucky killing the right placeholder at the right time. World War Mammories posted:"forced to spawn by trading a particular item to a particular spot" or "a chance to appear whenever a placeholder mob respawns." but they added NMs that would only appear when a specific, unremarkable placeholder mob, indistinguishable from those around it, was left undisturbed for some period of time, often between 24-72 hours, at which point it would transform into the NM. That's a great twist on the formula. Itzena posted:IIRC, the AC worked by there being two or three groups of spawns which were all very similar except they had a different rare spawn in their tables. Oh, and there were different tables for day or night. Yeah Southern Ro had different spawn tables for day and night which was rare in the game. The only one I know off the top of my head was the Kithicor Forest which during the day had low level mobs as it was right outside the halfling starting area but at night had higher level undead. Added nice flavor to the world and a lot of danger because it was a transit zone for other good spots for players lower than the undead. Ancient Cyclops shared a nighttime spawn with a sand giant, dervish cutthroat, desert madman, and mummy on a 30.6 (????) minute timer with a 10 percent chance of it being the cyclops in a random spot in the desert.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 14:04
|
|
|
Don't know if this fully fits the idea of a thread but I used to play EVE Online back in 2008/2009 and was part of an alliance that liked to find every trick in the book in order to gain an advantage, since we were relatively small but resourceful. Back in those days, the way that player-owned structures in space worked was what they called a POS (for "Player Owned Structure"). They were basically big shield bubbles in space, to which you could anchor stuff to them, stuff like hangars, guns, etc, and limit who could enter the shield bubble through a variety of ways. One of the ways to do this was to set a passcode that you had to enter. Other structures that you could get would allow you to set up jump-bridges from one system to another, allowing easy travel. Our corp thus dedicated themselves to what we called "Cap-Fishing". What we would do is find out what the password was to a POS that had a jump-bridge attached to it, and have a cloaked scout hang out near the POS, waiting for a capital ship (the biggest ships at the time) to arrive through the jump-bridge. When we got the warning, we would enter the system, warp to the POS, and burn down the capital ship as quickly as possible. Now, POSes tended to be defended by lots of guns and even disruptors that prevented you from warping out, which would mean that usually, if you attempt the above, you would lose ships quite easily. But, since we had the password to the POS, we could the POS shield bubble once we destroyed the capital ship: this would prevent anything from targeting us with any weapons or disruptors, which would mean that we could dip inside the shield and warp out, safe and sound. We destroyed many, many capital ships in this way (mostly carriers, because they were the easiest to destroy). And if they changed the password, our spies inside could get them for us again.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 14:34
|
|
|
Chillgamesh posted:I thought the thing with Meteor was that Absolute Virtue only casted it under Manafont or Chainspell, and people never "figured out" how to prevent AV from using those abilities because you had to react to them within 20ms and the servers were all in loving Japan This is only true at the start of the fight, he has different phases as he loses HP. At the second phase he gets access to Meteor and Comet without using Manafont but they are weaker. Once he gets the bracelets on at under 50% or so he can use it whenever and it's the same strength as a manafont'd Meteor. You are right about the locking ability thing, it was not possible to do it without third party tools because you couldn't react fast enough. Also AV always spawns after Jailer of Love is defeated, it is not a 50/50 chance.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 16:20
|
|
|
if the spawn is currently guaranteed it was changed. on release it was absolutely a chance e: also, the dev team released this "hint" video in 2008, almost three years after AV's release, to try and demonstrate what players were missing. it's not very helpful. turns out the answer was basically what people figured out in the first few months: kill adds on the previous boss to partially slow his ridiculous auto-regen, nuke him with elemental spells of the current day of the week (FFXI's calendar week was eight days, Firesday, Watersday, Lightningsday, etc) to handle the rest of that regen, and after he uses a 2-hour ability, immediately use the same one to lock it for the rest of the fight. the rest of his poo poo is just something you deal with. but what worked for the devs on their test servers was basically impossible because "immediately after he uses it" didn't account for lag e: hell, while I'm at it. the wall of justice and the souleater method have been mentioned. the souleater method specifically: dark knights had an ability called souleater that for a brief period drained your HP by 10% every time you struck in melee and added that amount of damage to the hit. in addition, each job had a unique level 1 ability with a 2-hour cooldown (since reduced to 1 hour) that made them ridiculously busted for like 30 seconds; dark knight's was blood weapon, which drained HP from the enemy and healed you equal to the damage you did. the synergy between souleater and blood weapon is obvious enough. in addition, though dark knights usually used scythes or greatswords, they could use clubs. and there was a particular club called the "kraken club" that did piddly damage but almost always hit 2 to 8 times per swing. you can see where this is going. unfortunately, the kraken club was one of the rarest items in the game. a rare squid-like NM in the Labyrinth of Onzozo called the Lord of Onzozo dropped it at a ridiculously low rate - like, if you killed it every single time it popped 24/7 you might get one after two or three weeks - and in an era when purchasable endgame-quality gear was like 5 million gil, kraken clubs were 40-50 million. so a couple enterprising linkshells bought out almost every kraken club on their servers, gave them to their dark knights, and they all used blood weapon and souleater simultaneously and turned into blood blenders, killing AV before it could kill them. in response, SE gave AV and a few other monsters resistance to souleater damage specifically World War Mammories fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Sep 22, 2023 |
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 16:24
|
|
|
Tekopo posted:Don't know if this fully fits the idea of a thread but I used to play EVE Online back in 2008/2009 and was part of an alliance that liked to find every trick in the book in order to gain an advantage, since we were relatively small but resourceful. the entire spying part of EVE is the craziest thing. I could never get into that game though
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 17:10
|
|
|
lol coward rear end devs afraid of their own creation
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 17:13
|
|
|
That Little Demon posted:the entire spying part of EVE is the craziest thing. I could never get into that game though
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 19:36
|
|
|
The major deal with Absolute Virtue is that it has the same access to 2 hour skills that players have, two of which are extremely awful and basically mean you've lost if it goes off. Manafont which was mentioned earlier allows AV to cast Meteor and this will basically wipe everyone besides the tanks out, and Benediction which is a full heal which means you will likely hit enrage even if you don't die to meteor and did the bullshit prevent the super regen mentioned earlier.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 20:11
|
|
|
https://ffxiclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Talk:Absolute_Virtue#AV_post_from_BG This and the thread that is linked in the post has all the stuff you need to know about how AV worked before the level cap was raised past 75. Once level cap was raised and new more powerful gear was introduced killing AV became trivial and you can even solo it easily nowadays if you're insane enough to make a Jailer of Love pop set (it was me, I made a Jailer of Love pop set when the level cap was 99 and killed it with my friends).
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 21:00
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 4, 2024 18:42 |
|
|
Oh right, I put over 3k hours in Lost Ark, I better have at least one stupid story from it. There are islands with collectibles on them as part of the horizontal content grind, many of them are fun to acquire, some of them are incredibly dumb. Shangra Island pops in and out of the ocean only at certain hours of the day at which point you run around the island and gather peaches/peach nectar, but you would literally need to take a week-long vacation and arrive at every possible time if you wanted to get the main collectible within a short timeframe. There is an "optional" extra collectible that even with poopsocking takes weeks to months of constant dedication to grab (a mount that looks like a cloud)... which at one point was outclassed in coolness factor by a slightly fancier looking cloud mount that you could buy as part of a limited time cosmetic package. This is the least stupid of this set. Vairgrys's Nest has a set of unbeatable bosses on it. A bunch of endgame level players on the Korean server gathered their entire guild to beat the bosses and managed to win... only to be told by the mods that they weren't supposed to be able to do that, and the one guy who got the collectible had to hand it over. The bosses were then made super-extra undefeatable and the island's collectible now has nothing to do with beating them, but is instead a reward for very late-game story progression. Several PvP islands were fine back when the game was more popular/people still did Island Soul content but they have a minimum number of people required to start the PvP event, so unless you get lucky or bring a bunch of friends, you're now basically locked out of ever getting the collectible. Finally, the Isle of Yearning has a pirate ghost boss who spawns in two locations on the island every couple of minutes. Beating him has an incredibly low drop rate chance (definitely below 1%, possible below 0.1%, nobody knows the exact numbers) to drop a bag, which itself has a similarly terrible drop rate chance to get the actual collectible. It's said that if you get the collectible in 100 hours of grinding, you're a lucky son of a gun and the projected number is somewhere in the hundreds of hours. None of the others stand out to me right now, but I'm sure there's more. Jossar fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Sep 22, 2023 |
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2023 22:49
|
|