I would have thought copying a zone and remaking it as an instance with a normal raid lockout would have been easier than changing individual lockout timers.
It sounds like overall, the issue is not at all with the game mechanics, but the people you share the server with. That's a hard argument to win when the game is working perfectly as intended, but it is the community you have issue with. The mob with the loot could spawn just as it does now. However, a mob identical in every way, could spawn in its place much more frequently, that drops absolutely nothing. That would satisfy me, as I would certainly enjoy trekking out through old content just to see certain events. That would definitely increase my enjoyment of the game, overall.
Nope, it sure won't. Guess you'll have to waste more time in it, poo pooing the idea or just stop bothering, but it won't go away.
I like this idea. I have tried to show my buddy who is level 95 certain Kunark dragons that I have fond memories raiding back when he was just a 30-something and never saw them.There is many that we've never caught up. Then two days ago we were traveling to Burning Woods Hotzone when low and behold, Gorenaire ran right by us, as we came out from the tunnel in the Dreadlands. He promptly went and killed it in about 15 seconds. (Level 95 SK). I was so happy he finally got to see the dragon (as oppose to just youtube/google) but then immediately felt guilty knowing that it was a 3, 4, or 7 day timer or something like that and someone else would miss out. This is not a big deal to me, but I definitely can see the good in -at the very least- making the mobs spawn more often, and just having non-loot carrying options for those who want to experience and see the god/dragon, and it not being a matter of the loot they drop.
Yeah, and that worked when EQ was a community and when Trakanon went down, the whole server congratulated the people who did it. Now it's a bunch of guilds hiding in instances and we may pass by them in PoK or the Lobby.... Nobody cares what loot you have, they just care that they have the opportunity to see this content as well. The world pre-instancing was also one guild monopolizing a raid mob until they geared up their entire guild... and then further monopolizing it so that the #2 guild would be blocked and at a large disadvantage for the new expansion. This would cascade down to the point where there were NO raid mobs up once the top 3 guilds figured out the events. Seriously... just instance the old raid content like Plane of Time. Do it, when you feel like it, and have a 4 day lockout once you have done it.
Ya, I like the lockout idea. I think it would be too difficult to code, but the idea of making the mobs pop but not dropping loot is good too. We want to see the content!
Yes they showed how little they understood the problem. That doesn't mean we can't educate them or change their minds like has happend hundreds of times before.
As far as implementation time goes, it would be infinitely more difficult to create a copy of a zone than to change respawn timers. And that's saying a lot, since evaluating and then addressing each long respawn timer in an open zone is already a research project of epic proportions. It would be less disruptive, certainly, to put these spawns in instances, and would also allow us to easily avoid interfering with the TLP servers.
Well since the idea moving forward is to release more fun stuff, more content, work on currently implemented content, why not work on instancing old raid content piece by piece? I am not foolish enough to assume I, or anyone who hasn't worked for EQ, know how time consuming this would be, but wouldn't it be doable if you start releasing instances of all old raid content a bit at a time starting with the original EQ?
Sinestra, I like that. You know when instancing first came out, I thought it was from Satan himself. But I do like the idea of turning old zones into instances (as an option) if it means people get to experience content that they may have never got to appreciate before. Especially since there was recent comments by the devs that making new zones is incredibly time consuming. It seems that although this would still use resources, that basically cut and pasting a zone (you know..just make the zone with a couple of mouse clicks! ) would be infinitely easier, and yet be a huge boost. Lol, how cool would it be....if you could even make the level range scale to the range of the group like an LDoN? So a group of 6 goes to NPC at Feerrott. NPC: Hi, strange things have been creating weird time dimensions that need investigating! Player: Ya, I wanna go investigate. NPC: Hi, please find out if it is the work of Cazic Thule himself! Player: CT will die! NPC: Great! Your journey awaits. <zone> Woot Plane of Fear, level 100-110 mobs. New Raid. Too easy.
We're very familiar with what you're talking about, many of us from personal experience. That doesn't change the fact that it's difficult to implement at all, and even more so in a way that won't muck with special ruleset servers.
Shadow Venril Sathir, spawns every 30min, 8h, whatever, non KoS. Despawns if Venril Sathir spawns. Drops Shadowed Gnarled Staff. Mob in Brell's Rest will exchange Shadowed Gnarled Staff for a Gnarled Staff.
The portion of it that seemed oblivious of the issue was that someone actually said something about how it would just make it worse. This isn't something that has been just recently brought up, this is something that has been requested since instance was put in and ignored. It is something that was requested before instancing was put in as well.
*nod* Agreed that the supply and demand for some of the epic pieces and such locked behind long respawn times would change dramatically if the NPCs spawned more frequently, making it much easier to get the items. I suspect it was requested shortly after the servers came up on launch day fifteen years ago and someone realized they wanted to kill a thing more frequently than it spawned. There are definitely merits to revamping some older content so that it's not so out-of-reach due to respawn mechanics and we knew when designing the epic 1.5+ quests that we didn't want to repeat that kind of gameplay. I see your argument, and understand it, and in many ways agree with it. That said, I'll re-re-iterate that a change of this scope and complexity is not something that we could tackle as a simple side-project and there are a lot of side-effects that we would need to consider. If you're not ignoring me, please at least acknowledge that you understand that this would be a complicated change.
How complicated is making an instance which is essentially a box that merely contains all old epic/quest/whatever mobs lined up in a line, with x-day lockout? Just wondering.
Prathun, for some classes it is nigh impossible to get epic 1.0 drops because the Plane of Fear is permafarmed. Maybe it is time to retire the amulet of necropotence to the lottery, so people who actually need a quest drop can get them in a reasonable timeframe. My long understanding of the rules were, while no camp is recognized by SOE, interference with quest mobs is a no go. However, by design, y'all have allowed this to happen for years. This at least for a few classes, would alleviae the bottleneck, without having to do sweeping changes by adding an instance or revamping a zone.
As an aside on this point - and supporting your argument about the difficulty of copying and updating zones - I was overjoyed to see Crystal Caverns, one of my old favorite leveling zones, reinvented for high level in Rain of Fear. But you put in the quest with these four ghost mobs that port around and appear in numerous spots around the zone. The problem is a fair number of the spots they appear at are at very small safe spots for camping areas that make it difficult to impossible to pull off. This small addition ruined the zone for me and after a day or two of trying to work around them I had to call it quits and leave it. I'd respectfully ask you to look at this and consider either removing those new ghost mobs or flagging them as non aggro.
You aren't looking for camping spots hard enough, or remembering where the ghosts spawns. Do that, and your problem goes away. It didn't take me long to remember "oh yeah, pulling from here might get me one of those ghosts." I camped every named mob in that zone when (at the time) I wasn't geared above average, and I had no trouble. Dungeons aren't supposed to be playgrounds and those ghosts are part of a quest anyways. Calling it quits after a couple days and asking a developer to remove the danger is showing a lack of effort on your part, not a flaw with the zone.
