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Unread 12-01-2005, 08:33 AM
JBrown04 JBrown04 is offline
A Young Mystail Rat
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Server: Antonia Bayle
Posts: 4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Peglegrook
Looks like it could be fun and useful. Even though you are only requesting $5 after the start of the year, I find that I little disappointing. Looks at all of the work the people here have done, and are offering their services free of charge. The other nice parsers out there also haven't charged. Even though I'm sure your mind is set, you might consider just having a 'donation' link - this would allow you to at least get some compenstaion for your efforts, while helping the EQ2 comunity.
There are a few reasons we are charging for Adventure Assistant.

- Donations don't work. Although some people do donate, it's almost pointless.
- I have, and will continue to spend money supporting both the site and the development of the app.
- Asking people to pay for AA will help give people motivation to continue to support the project. Developing ideas, giveing feedback etc.
- Charging for AA, and maybe making us a bit of 'beer money', will keep me motivated to keep developing it, updating it to support new EQ versions, and adding in requested features. It will also motivate me to make sure that the app is written to a high standard, and the data given is accurate.

You will notice that a lot of the other 'nice parsers' have, over time, become unavailable and unsupported. Many contain inacuracies, which AA does not contain. The only things missing from AA are charmed pets (which I believe are impossible to parse, but I am yet to look at this in much detail) and something minor which I forget at the moment.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Peglegrook
Also, your site states that 5 seconds after the battle is over the stats are ready to be posted - how is this determined? If it's only after it does not pick up any more aggressive actions, you might run into trouble. As I've run into some occassions where it's a close battle and the mezzer will hold the target down, and tell us all to back away for a short time (for power to rebuild). Or if you get an add right afterwards. With other parsers I've often found that 10 seconds is optimal (maybe have an option to change the timer?).
Yeah, there are lots of situations where a timeout will be too short. This has been a problem for me on a few occasions.

The combat timeout values are determined from the last combat action detected.

There is an option to set the combat timeout values to you liking. I will be adding the ability to remove the timouts completely as well, so you can just use the AA command (via EQ macro) to end combat.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Peglegrook
Anyhow, good luck on your parser - I really love how you added options for healers (most parsers center purely around DMG). Also, the 'in game mode' is pretty nifty as well. I know that combatstats did this as well, and I think it is a swell benefit for those that don't run dual monitors.
Thanks. My main character is a Templar, and as such it is fun to know what benefit I am having in a group. Knowing that the tank took 10,000 damage, and I healed 9,980 of that makes a healer feel like he's doing a good job.

Combat stats did not do an in-game mode like Adventure Assistant, as far as I am aware at least. AA puts EQ in to full screen mode, and then puts the AA toobar on top of EQ. I believe CombatStats required you to run EQ in windowed mode, losing you screen real-estate.

There are also other benefits to AA over CombatStats and the like. There are voice and visual warnings of agro on group members. In a crowd of mobs this has proved extremly useful. You can see that someone is under attack even if they are not being damage yet. This allows a healer to get their reactive heal, ward etc on the right person before they are dead :-).