Bard > STR, CON, DEX, INT?

Accipiter

Kiet said:

A lot of people were exceptionally bad at combat and/or mechanics in early Achaea.

I mean you could say that, but testing things was a lot harder back then so superstition was a way of life. Also you didn't need to be amazing to kill people when half the skills were grossly overpowered and the other half buggy as hell.

Kiet

Accipiter said:

Kiet said:

A lot of people were exceptionally bad at combat and/or mechanics in early Achaea.

I mean you could say that, but testing things was a lot harder back then so superstition was a way of life. Also you didn't need to be amazing to kill people when half the skills were grossly overpowered and the other half buggy as hell.

It doesn't make it any less true a statement

[Deleted User]

Kiet would know, he's basically the worst of the worst.

Sena

Accipiter said:

testing things was a lot harder back then

Unless you're talking about lucrescent nuts and multiclass, it really wasn't. It might have been harder to find people who were interested in testing things or helping you to test things, but other than the occasional herb shortages making it costly to test specific abilities, the game itself didn't have any additional barriers to testing your own class abilities (granted, information on less popular or more secretive classes could be harder to come by, but serpent wasn't one of those), it was all on the playerbase.

Accipiter

Well, there were policies against letting people kill you ect. The Arena wasn't entirely bug free and a few other non-mechanical things (RP related) that meant that actual testing was hard. In addition the method to connect to Achaea that most people used (zMud) didn't have the best scripting language or time stamping to get accurate balance times.

None of that really excuses people thinking that Dex affected bows for serpents, but remember that this was at the same time there was huge discussions in WoW over whether crit was a single or 2 roll system. Game devs back then wanted everything to be as hidden as possible.

Caled

Those certainly aren't my memories of the early days. For one - wow didn't exist yet, that was years later.

Policies against letting people kill you? What policies? From whom? We used to have intra-guild freeforalls outside the arena, to try and get better at combat (so we could keep failing to kill Dalamar). 

I never had any problems finding people to test/practice on. With no need to bash (level cap being 70, 75 and then 80 for a very long time), practicing pvp was basically the only thing to do. Aside from dying to Dalamar.

Zmud 5.55 was also quite capable of timing things in milliseconds. 

Sena

Testing the effect of dex on bows takes about 30 seconds. Shoot someone with an arrow, wear/remove dex boots, shoot someone with another arrow, see if the damage changed. No difference between now and 2001 in that case.

Most of the misinformation floating around was similarly easy to test. I wasn't around in 2001, but in 2003 it was entirely the fault of the playerbase and had nothing to do with mechanics or policies (unless admin were secretly spreading misinformation to muddy the waters). Even when people did test things and work out exact, useful details of how something worked, you would have contradictory details floating around as well so people wouldn't know which was accurate. For example, someone (I can't remember who, but I want to say it started with a T) worked out the exact weapon speed formula very early on, but there were at least 3 other weapon speed formulas that were way off but were more widespread. There was also a period where nobody in the entire druid guild had any idea what grove watch did.

Caled

Sure there was. The exact time may not have been 2001 - I'm talking pre-artefact shop here. 2000? 1999? There had been one auction ever and a second auction was on its way. It wasn't until after the second auction that arties were sold in shops (the auction was used to set prices for the shop).

That said, still not hard. Have one person shoot as mhun and another as a troll.

And maybe they did test it, and were right? Perhaps it was changed. Who'd know?

Accipiter

I was talking around 2002-3, and you have to remember that arties were a lot less prevalent than they were today. Many people didn't even have full class skills and were still decent combatants. Tranq was ripping it up cause he was one of the only people with l3 strength. The policies were against letting people kill you, RP was more enforced and it felt odd to allow people to hit you without healing ect. But whatever, maybe it was just that you didn't need to do it to win cause the competition was crap, and then it is the fault of the playerbase.

Dochitha

That was the time you have to press an alias to cure paralysis .

[Deleted User]

Pretty sure those 'policies' are still in place today. You're "allowed" to let people kill you... You're just not allowed to let them do it repeatedly for the purpose of giving them constant, large sums of exp.

Kiet

You could always just pk anyone you wanted if they consented (as long as you don't farm them like Pyori said), and cities like Ashtan never really had player policies stopping you from doing that, either.

also lol at the idea that RP was better in early 2000s where we had people using smilies and lol on CT regularly

Rispok

Kiet said:

You could always just pk anyone you wanted if they consented (as long as you don't farm them like Pyori said), and cities like Ashtan never really had player policies stopping you from doing that, either.

also lol at the idea that RP was better in early 2000s where we had people using smilies and lol on CT regularly

Caspian had solid RP.

Caled

Hoo boy, that went downhill fast.

Tahquil

We should really have our own standard. Instead of time to penis/hitler we should have time to Caspaney.

Accipiter

Gaia made edible panties for sale in Eleusis though, so things weren't all bad.

Zulah

To clarify the original topic. I tested with both 19 str and 19 int, l3 rapier, collar, sash, etc. I tested the numbers 3 times each to be sure no passive heal ticks or whatnot.

Strength is better until Accentato has 4 or more mentals to work off then Intelligence becomes stronger.

[19]str [13]int
[Martellato] 646 - 12.4%

[Accentato 0] 916  - 17.6%
[Accentato 1] 970  - 18.7%
[Accentato 2] 1025 - 19.7%
[Accentato 3] 1136 - 21.8%
[Accentato 4] 1357 - 26.1%
------------------------
[13]str [19]int
[Martellato] 506 - 9.7%

[Accentato 0] 842 - 16.2%
[Accentato 1] 912 - 17.5%
[Accentato 2] 980 - 18.8%
[Accentato 3] 1118 - 21.5%
[Accentato 4] 1396 - 26.8%
[Accentato 5] 1464 - 28.2%
[Accentato 6] 1602 - 30.8%

Also worth a random note. SoA catches the jab but not the accentato effect

1558h, 4846m, 24795e, 25904w cekb-
Zulah viciously jabs a Soulpiercer into you.
Your shield completely absorbs the damage.
The songblessing upon the rapier sings out with a piercing high note.
694h, 4846m, 24795e, 25904w cekb-(-864h, 16.6%)