Now hang on, Z.
A, I give you guys mad props for the development of SoD at every opertunity. I count myself a very happy player of SoD.
B, I give you guys greater credit than I gave the SOE boys. In this, I have not felt the need to break out parsing programs to verify what affects what to exactly what degree and at what break points. I also do not feel that I am required to parse just to verify that the spell does, in fact, have an effect at all and is not a 300 mana placeblo. I feel that I can decently trust what you say to not be completely fraudulent, and that I can play to just have fun.
Now, on my post.
On any comparison between SoD and Live, it is very useful for any two people who wish to discuss an subject to have a common point of reference. Naturally, this common point of reference will be Live. Now, this system is not perfect, as Live varied a great deal over it's history, and we all quit at various points along the way, but it is close enough.
Now, the original poster has come to the conclusion that the pets might miss more than in Live. Obviously, they have verified the easily checkable stats of swing speed and damage for level. Yet, if the pet is not doign the same DPS as remembered, then there are two possible reasons... A, he remembers wrongly, or B, the pets miss more. This is the question he hopes to find answered.
Now, we, the players, are not given all of the facts and figures that go into converting this immersive experience of a game into its far more boring mathematical workings. In this case, I have naively chosen to fully trust the information you have supplied me on that website. We, the players, also do not have a comprehensive list of every change from Live. Does this list exist somehwere that I have not yet located? A player who has been here from the beginning may know them all, or may have forgotten some. Those of us whom have started far more recently have no way of determining this without resorting to the boards. Some things are the same, some things are different. The mobs are completely different, and the way the classes are balanced is completely different. That last is an important point.
At no point did anyone question if this was out of balance with the game, only that it was different from other experiences. I refer you to A above. I think the game is excellently balanced up to at least the portions that I have experienced. Any possible issues or questions I might have in that regard can be found in my questionairre reply, which I intent to keep updated as I experience more of the game.
Now, it does not take a rocket scientist to look at the game spam in combat and see a higher percentage of misses from pets than one might recall. It was freely acknowledged by yourself (I believe, I have not gone back to verify) during some of the necro conversations on the suggestions board that the necro pets miss more, and that this was intended. Granted, this discussion is about mage pets, but to my understanding, the major differences in mage pets over other pets is tanking ability, not DPS.
Given our knowledge that DEX affects hit rate, and that it is the only thing listed as affecting hit rate, we can surmise that DEX is the most important factor in the player controllable arsenal in affecting hit rate. Some things, like mob level, are not controllable by the player, per say, and pets still miss a great deal even against very green opponents.
In my post, I listed three things that might be why the original poster sees more missed than he recalls.
In the first, the pet buff line affected hit rate in Live, but is less likely to do so in SoD, as for reasons explained above.
In the second, one cannot gain additional attacks by giving pets weapons by enabling dual wield ahead of time. In SoD, pet attack number by round is pre set. While we are discussing it, is the number of attacks pre set, or merely a limit that relies on skill checks to achieve? My 39th pet double every attack that I have noticed. I do not recall when it began to double, at what level. Given a 2h weapon, it will always double attack, given two different damage type weapons, it will always dual weild them. Is this because it is set to 2 attacks, or is it because it is always passing its DW or DA skill check each round that I notice. It is rarely quadding or trippling when I do not notice?
The reason the second point could be considered more misses is that a player with pet misses turned off can assume that it is getting the attacks and missing, thus the reason they do not report. I attempt to be throughal.
The final reason I listed was that a face that most mages repress, that the level 20 pet until the level 34 pet suck very badly on Live. The pet's abilities lag severely behind the growing rate of mob ability before getting a massive boost with the 34th pet. This was endemic only to mage pets, beastlords and necros did not go through this phase, or at least not as badly. I quantified this with the comment that I could not speak for SoD, but in Live, this occured. It occurs again with the mage's low 50s pets for unknown reasons. The only reasoning for bringing this up is, once again, I do not have current access to all the changes from Live to SoD. I do not know if this issue carried over because i have no idea what coding was changed, or what coding caused the phenomenon. If the testing person picked up the 16th, 39th, and 63rd pets to check, then they likely would have missed the issue entirely if it had ported.
Now, you are absolutely correct. I do not know the exact hit rate of mage pets on exact level targets ranging from the mid 20s to the late 50s as all those logs were erased from my mind and HDD many years ago. I do not know the exact hit rate of anything in SoD, because I have not felt that it was required yet.
Now, on a slightly different topic, I am increasingly noticing a demand from the developers to players to support all comments with mathematical proof of developer level data... that class A does X damage over Y seconds with Z mana expendature. This is understandable, as it allows you to quickly judge the merit of the proposal and helps control the number of frivolous proposals. However, it is the trap that now plagues the mainstream developers as well as many of the indepenants. Once the playerbase has spent the months of research to reverse engineer all of the mathematical data down to the exact formulas and discovered all of the discrepencies, they feel quite justified in demanding changes... not requesting, demanding. They feel quite justified in demanding exactly what changes are to be made, demanding that these changes happen immeadiately, and become very angry if these demands are not met. No matter what you do, they are no longer just having fun.
This is also understandable. Once the players have the developer level data, they view themselves as quasi developers. You might disagree, but you're viewpoint no longer matters. Statements like, "We do what is best for the game." no longer have meaning. The players have the hard data in their hands... they now have the mathematical proof on exactly what is best for the game. The statement is just the same feelings and anecdotes that you have tried so hard to repress from the players. It is, in short, how Live became today's Live.
Now, you guys are not paid developers, you are unpaid volunteers with a love of the game who just happened to create the single best MMO availible out of the ashes of what had become a pile of crap. It is still amazing, and I still give you mad props for it. I just do not want to see the gradual downfall in that same, predictable manner again.
