Nektulous Mob - Low Spawn Rate After Patch

Reread this whole thread... 3 Devs have chimed in, Absor has given Monday as date for some further communication about this. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Issue has arisen since "script fix" of recent patch.

Zones impacted have been cited as "GoD era berserker modified" with Nektulos (Troll at the time). Halas(Barb) and Kelethin (no zerkers there, but always a popular leveling spot on live servers well into tutorial age so I am willing to buy into it being modified at the time... and it is common for dwarves to be there despite having a good newbie yard). Players are making lots of comments about those zones, what about the other zones? What about other Zerker starting areas vs. not? [Keeping in mind that Rathe is a newer-era starting zone for frogloks (and later in progression), and other later revamps Innothule Swamp, Freeport...]

Issue is only on progression servers? Hint has been given that it is possible that a progression-server only script is impacting the zones. I interpret that as the fix that was made wasn't compatible with the reverted script in these zones rather than a new script made for progression. This could be the wrong interpretation.

Why was the reversion done --could be a simple as "Hey, we are fixing this and look. We're running GoD era scripts on a bunch of newbie zones" and someone decides "Oh, that must have been missed. More classic = more better" [not always in my opinion]. It's very easy to get into "unintended consequence land" with good intentions rather than evil conspiracies.

It is entirely possible that Nektulos will need a "restored" script to approximate a correct vintage level 1-3 experience. For Halas the question becomes "should it be as good as other newbie zones" (since I am one person that believes some of these things weren't super-balanced back in the day you have to make a choice: improve progression to be balanced/better or as-it-was. I generally support improve it by the way).

Devs, could you please consider changing this back again, regardless?

Even if it was designed to help berserkers level, the situation in a TLP at launch is different to any other situation beforehand, there will be so many people in the newbie areas. What harm can it possibly do to the game integrity to help more people get newbie mobs? Classic feel is long gone for many other reasons!

Good summation Snailish.

And agree with Kiani on this one. Even if it was intentional, it's really just super pointless.

I, for one, will find this to be an extra startup issue and don't think it will be that important. I'll just group up and go where the mobs are.

Has anyone check out other classic zone to see if zoning is an issue there? I didn't see a comment. If just newbie area, that can be easily overcome..upper guk however..

The newbie areas were crawling with mobs in the beginning so I have no idea what they would have done to help berserkers out with a script that affects spawns. If Absor is seeing x number of y level mobs while the screenshots clearly show they are not where they are suppose to be, they may be spawning under the world geometry or have their pathing fubar'd.

Played many hours yesterday on ragefire with 3 chars each from lvl 1-3 in Paineel and North Qeynos. Both Zones were definitely not affected, there were more low level mobs than I could count.

FP is also ok. Looks like its mainly Nek and Everfrost.

So can we get a quick list of newbie zones that are and aren't messed up? From the sounds of things its any zone that has to do with the zerkers? Never played during that era so i dont know what zones those are.

A solid list would be great

Kelethin, Nektulous, and Everfrost are messed up. Everfrost is a dumpster fire. If you want to make a Barbarian move to Qeynos at level 1. Greater Faydark is also going to super suck. Nektulous is still mostly a zone if you get into the woods. It probably makes more sense to leg it to Freeport and kill in their newbie yard 1-3.

Qeynos hills is baron , Qeynos proper might be ok but theres nothing outside of Surefall Glade to kill

Hmm, did not think to check QH but it can seem pretty empty in places.
Any particular well known xp spawns missing? Like entrance to Bb for example?

If this is all that came of the changes not even remotely close to what was pulled on PH.
But it just seems so utterly nonsensical.

What happened on phinny release? I missed the start of it.

My understanding is that the exp penalty on Phinny was a surprise to the vast majority of the playerbase and turned off a lot of people.

As far as mob density goes, I don't remember much about the launch of Combine/Sleeper 11 years ago, but I do remember my group sitting on a spawn point of an orc in EC. The whole group sat on the spawn point except for our bard, who ran around and tried to catch any walking mobs that hadn't been grabbed by other groups, that were also gathered around spawn points.

Granted this was before /pick and maybe /pick will make this less of a problem.

Or it might have something to do with Prathun, who earlier in this thread posted that he had deliberately made a change to eliminate many of the low level mobs until Gates launched. Maybe you should go talk to him and ask about what he meant?

Lol I must be the odd man out that actually finds the change appropriate. I played originally from release until Omens of War and then started up on P99 this year for a few months before rolling on Phinny while I wait for Agnarr. I created a DE and walked out into the revamped Nek Forest for the first time. I gotta say, I thought it was pretty rediculous how many mobs where around the zone in to Neriak based on what was in P1999 and my memories of classic EQ all those years ago.

There are definitely more then a few people nerd raging out over something so little, that really after a couple levels will never be an issue for you again. While yes, we are all paying customers on the TLP servers, get a grip, it's only fricken 15 bucks lol, we aren't talking a mortgage payment here. Exactly how much sway do you think that 15 bucks has? Be glad you have devs responding and looking into it, old Sony days you would of got a "Working as intended", and that's it.

The ones I checked personally, Kelethin, Nek and everfrost were borked. Both freeport newbie areas, dwarf, troll, ogre, gnome, and even the high elf area gfay seemed to be perfectly fine, with most of them crawling with tons of newbie mobs in a concentrated area(usually no more then 50-100 yards directly from town zone line). The high elf gfay area felt a little more spread out and sparse then the others, but I think it's always been that way.

If it was a "Zerker" only thing like has been claimed, it would effect dwarf and ogre directly and if they wanted to get nearby/popular places like some have claimed, then all of gfay would be effected, so would gnome and both free port newbie areas.

The fact that it seems to just be 3 specific areas, sounds like a bug or something broke(Either not spawning or if absors numbers are right they are in the wrong spot). 40 level 1 mobs would be fine, if they were all in relative distance to the town entrances like the other places, because these mobs re-spawn almost instantly.

Also lol@ person saying "If I did that at my job I would be fire". Liar. Perfectly normal for him to be done when his hours are done and be off for the weekend. If DBG has only 1 person to look at this stuff, its their fault, not the programmers.

Just wait until launch day of Agnarr. These progression servers have WAY more people starting on them then ever before. You'll see why people are complaining then.

The pick zones definitely make it more bearable though.

If this is a classic change, lets be happy about it. Lets encourage more classic changes. Game is way too easy as is.

I've been spending the last couple weeks doing 1-5 on RF trying different classes and races getting ready for Agnarr. It sure seems like noob spawns are reduced in all starting areas after the patch. Qeynos and Freeport seems less populated now. There are still a bunch mobs but, there less than there was before.