An Idea to Prevent Magician Pet Automation

It's no secret that all over Norrath there are magicians and magician armies sitting their mostly or entirely AFK with their computer auto-clicking a macro that has their pet's attack a specific target or targets so when that target spawn's it is immediately attacked by all of the pets those magicians control. With the introduction of advanced looting the mage armies don't even have to manually go loot the corpses since all of the loot is automatically added to their inventory.

Besides disabling the advanced loot feature, a feature that is otherwise a good and enjoyable feature, what I think could be done about pets auto-killing mobs is to make it so that a mob has to take at least 1 point of damage from a source other than a pet. If pets do 100% of the damage to a mob then that mob should drop no loot and reward no experience; I know they used to/still do have a mechanic in this game where if a pet kills a mob all on it's own the experience points rewarded by that mob are reduced. Whether it be a burst of flame landing on the mob for 5 damage or a successful pierce with a rusty dagger for 2 damage; a single hit from something other than a pet should be enough to ensure that the magicians are actually playing the game instead of automating the game.

Implementing this fix would be appreciated by the vast majority of players on the progression servers and would solve one of the more contentious issues.

Problem with this is simple. If you're a low level pet class(Necro/Mag), that isn't a box. Now they get no experience if they run out of mana. They're being hampered in their ability to gain experience the same way that pet classes have gotten experience throughout the last 16 years.

Bone Chips farming is not enough of a problem to completely change the way the mechanics of EQ work. And anyone "Automating" mages or necros at the high end game that isn't nuking, is asking to be KS'd anyway, considering you can easily out dps even 3 pets as a single mage/wizard/necro.

Pets matter for mobs that can't be nuked down ( i.e. lots of sky ) but other than that they are meh. Outnumbered pet wise on naggy FFA tonight and our nuking classes got us the kill. Bone chip farming is simple to stop. Don't buy them. Go farm your own.

Yeah this will work because it's impossible to add in a macro to /cast #, # being the lowest mana costing spell a mage has and can cast forever at level 50.

If they don't have line of sight as is ofter the case it wont work. Also is it really so hard to hit a mob once with something other than a pet?

Thay was a hell of a fast kill eh? We had alot of wizards too, just didnt fall our way this time. For others info ffa naggy died in less than 1 minute.

So they just move to where they can see the mob, this fix isn't a fix for anything.

Honestly I was waiting for the zone to crash.

According the the GM that posted here in this thread,
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/guess-what-lj-down-again.225652/

They have supposedly fixed the crashing problem.

I hope so. FFA mobs are being contested by 2 and 3 guilds with full raids + more at a single time.

Yeah pretty sure we crashed it the other day too when three guilds were contesting Inny.

i dont really consider contesting, but it is what it is. some people like sitting at a raid mobs spawn point for hours on end. theres no skill or fun involved in zerging a mob with 300 people. if another guild had decided to join in the sock, we could have easily had 400 people sitting at naggy. am i the only one who sees the absurdity in that?

i cant for the life of me understand that. thats my only nitpick on lockjaw, otherwise its been good times since i transfered over. things have been civil for the most part, even during the insanely massive socks.

I loathe socking and the only reason I stay at a sock is because it counts for attendance points which helps determine if/when you get loot based on your attendance percentage, if it wasn't for that i'm sure quite a few people wouldn't sock.

I feel the exact same way man. I can't stand it. Not going to give up a mob though ya know. The actual competition comes when the mob spawns but the lead up to that point is absolutely horrible when you have folks like has been going on. I don't know anybody that really enjoys it.

thats sort of my point. i dont understand the whole concept of forcing people into doing something they admit to not enjoying, instead of just rotating a mob. its not "Giving a mob up."

if its not socking, things like training and ogre walls pop up during the "Race" to the mob, or you get stupid things like "its not socking if we have a raid force camped at the mob or standing the next zone over!"

socking is the lesser of two evils i suppose, but i dont think we even need the situation where you have to choose between the two to begin with.

I agree in general with you. The FFA nature is there for the competition that some folks enjoy. It has devolved into the socking that is happening unfortunately. It sucks but it is what it is. A full blown rotation with no FFA would make a lot of people not want to play.

i suppose. its that whole "competition" mindset i just dont understand.

if you know an action will lead to having to choose between two undesirable choices, choosing that action seems unwise to me.

like we've both said, it is what it is~ a minor nitpick in the scheme of things, ill join in the occasional sock and laugh at the absurdity of it all. luckily i play a warrior so im essentially useless in a 300 person sock, lol.

haha yea man. We think along the same lines but gotta play with the cards we are dealt.

Part of the problem with the long socks is because DBG changed the variance on raid spawns, so while you know when the window opens, you may not get the mob for the next 10 hours. They should go back to smaller variances now that rotations are in place.

true, but whether they are ankle socks, or thigh highs, they are still full of poop.