Dev. Suggestion: Eliminate the 20+hr respawn delay mechanic; at least for quest turn-in mobs

I know this topic comes up every TLP. (FWIW, that only validates the need for the change.) However, I petitioned about this and was encouraged to post to the forums instead, so I am heeding that Daybreak request.

Dev. Request Abstract:
Please make the same QoL changes to all 20+ hour quest turn-in mobs as you did to the VP key mobs (i.e., make them 50 minute respawns instead of several hours)

Detail:
This post is not about scarcity, in general. I understand that this is an important game mechanic. Rather, it is about artificial scarcity in situations where it is unwarranted or no longer serves a purpose, especially the following:
- 20+ hour quest turn-in mobs like the SK COM and WIZ Fear epic mobs or the Shady and Angry Goblins for the Regal Band of Bathezid.
- 20+ hour contested kill mobs like several of the enchanter epic mobs, including the Wraith of a Shissar


Arguments:

1. There is already precedent. You reduced the re-spawn time of most VP key part mobs from 8+ hours to 50 minutes. These were good QoL changes that no one resents. Something like this is warranted here too. After all, surely the argument about forced scarcity applies more to Veeshan's Peak than it does epics and a loot quest.

2. There is no compelling reason to force scarcity in these instances. All other class epics are easily completed on TLP servers today. Why should the SK, ENC, and WIZ epics be exceptions? Similarly, every player on the server is eligible to get a Regal Band and even to single group the subsequent Cord quest. The reward is not a key nor a flag to some high-end zone, but a piece of high-end gear. What is the justification of limiting access to this quest to ~1 to 2 players a week out of the entire playerbase?

3. There is no actual competitive skill involved in the scarcity you are forcing. The actual mechanic involves staring blankly at a screen in order to be the first one to click on a mob when it pops.

4. The time frame for completion of the relevant content is now <1/4 what it used to be. The expansions launch every 3 rather than 12+ months now. That means that only 1/4 the number of SKs will, for example, be able to complete their epics before Velious comes out versus how many could have when Kunark was new.

5. None of these bottlenecks were as pronounced when they were first introduced because information was not as readily available about them online. In the past, there was an information awareness gap that thinned out how many people were attempting these things at any given time. Raid guilds guarded these secrets and, at most, you only had to compete/wait out the other raid guilds on the server. In fact, you used to be able to bind at a location, come back every once in a while, and within a week or two you would get your mob. Today, there are multiple PCs camping every one of these mobs 24/7 because the entire playerbase is aware of exactly where to go and what to do.


There is a simple solution:

Just make the 20+ hour quest mob 50-minute re-spawns like you did for the Bloodgill Marauder, et. al. for VP keying. There will still be a competitive component and the quests will still be involved and multi-layered. The only thing you are removing is the hours of staring blankly at a screen waiting for a mob to pop in order to try and out-click 10 other people, including one's own guildmates.


Thank you for hearing out this request.

Burnberry Paincakes
Epic'ed Necromancer; Seb/HS and VP-keyed
Senior Officer in Heroes of Swords & Boards
Mangler Server

I would think that with AoC and picks - many quest and epics are completed many more times than they ever were originally. Obviously this isn't true of all, but many.
Every character has always been "eligible" to do any quest or epic or whatever. Some things required more effort/time invested. So, artificial roadblocks are created. This is true for many games, not just EQ.

A lot of people get a sense of accomplishment from finishing a quest and having a status symbol type reward. If you make everything easy mode, then you don't have the draw for some of the people.

I don't think it would hurt to "fix" some of the silly spawns like broken golem or wraith of shissar that don't even get a chance to spawn in a DZ. I would assume that the reason they don't monkey with more stuff like this is it just adds more code to an already cluttered and convoluted system and could cause issues on live? Maybe an easier thing would be to add some kind of TLP only multigroup event or mob that can be triggered somewhere that drops a random epic piece for the class that actually triggers. Would probably be easier than trying to "fix" old quests. Something like I suggest might be easier in that lockouts could be set based on the expansion unlock specific to the TLP rules.

Agreed.

Enchanter, Shadowknight and Wizard epics are disproportionately more difficult than other epics due to parts of those epics involving long respawns which either don't spawn in DZs/picks (Shissar and Broken Golem, for example)... or spawn in cities which can't spawn picks (Verina Tomb, I'm looking at you).

They've made the SK epic easier, except the final Lhranc turn in. I've been camping him every day except work/sleep hours for a week now, and have been unable to get him.

I agree 100%. Not only the points mentioned, but these also cause a lot of drama and training that ends up being a drain on support staff for Daybreak.

It would be in Daybreak's best interest to fix these which would reduce support load and also decrease player burnout.

All I had to do was have 12 people sit in cabilis for 30+ hours.

Maybe try harder guys??? Jeeeeez

/sarcasm

Agreed - The long spawns and scarcity of mobs like Verina Tomb, Shissar and Vessel Drozlin nearly make the Enchanter Epic unattainable. All the while there are multitudes of Clerics, Warriors, Rangers, Shammies, Monks and others who were able to complete their disproportionately easier epic quests weeks ago (On Mangler at least). SK's, Wizards and Chanters deserve the same opportunity.

I completely agree this was an old form of gating purely used to keep a certain guild from blowing through this content through overgearing when it was current. Its out of place in todays day and age and is just more annoying than making your quest experience gratifying.

The main reason i quit playing my SK .... with only 3 months to MAYBE find lhranc up and not see 4-10 other sks standing around his spawn every 48+hours was not fun..... i played and SK since 2001 and got my epic in velious era and i remember him being up 99% of the time... but expansions came 1yr at a time so was plenty of time for people to finish epics and still be within the *usable* category. Sk epic is one of those things like all melee weapon epics.... its only going to be good during the expansion it came out in. Once velious hits it will be another slot in your bag when you get into NTOV.... weapons galore there. so if you scaled down the spawn timers on marl and duriek.... why not lhranc??? hes the biggest bottleneck now...make it spawn in picks at least so guilds can help complete this.. make OW spawn the same but being able to force a pick would work fine

Omg again? Epic = hard, go play another game if you want easy.

Its this mentality thats pointless. The quests as is are fine gating something to a 1 to 3 day timer is crazy. As was stated before when expansions were a year a part there was time to wait it out and get it done now not so much. This game isnt hard at all either so stop using that as an arguement. They arent asking for epics to be like legion artifact weapons just that it might be a bit more forgiving given the time constraints from rl and future expac releases.

Epic isnt "hard" its annoyingly pointless to make you stand there to race someone for turn in....killing a raid mob or getting groups together to help kill the mob/raid target thats the challenge,,, not staring into space for 10-12hrs *because its a window spawn time*. if all epics were like this i could see it being intentional. Here make it so cleric zordak in skyfire wont spawn in a pick and is 3 day spawn... watch how much outrage that would cause.

Wow, touchy.

no, enjoy classsic or play selo

I completely agree with this. Some classes have pointless bottlenecks for epics that simply are no longer warranted. Also other pointless long turn in spawns on quests

I dont play those classes but I can still see how wrong this is. Last Sunday I took my lvl 57 shaman and started his epic while boxing a well geared mage. Before dinner I had completed the shamans epic, only bringing in 4 other people at most for 2 fights.

That's absurd when you realize the wait an enchanter will have that is simply unavoidable.

Then for things like the shady/angry goblin. It's literally the situation Ragefire used to be so it was changed. Makes no sense to not update these spawns as well

You quit playing an SK, one of the best classes in the game, because you couldn't get a weapon that will be obsolete in 3 months? /boggle

each quest or epic quest has been designed to incorporate gating mechanics to make them difficult, time consuming, and an overall achievement to accomplish compared to the reward. I do not think a design aspect of the epic quest (or angry gob etc.) was to add difficultly by virtue of having 15 other characters competing for npc's with tremendous re spawn times, especially in view of the shortened expansion life cycle of TLP servers. This doesn't even account for the 3rd party programs which are used to get the competitive edge when these arbitrary road blocks are left in place. Chances of beating an auto-clicker, i would say slim to none.

At some point the difficulty will outweigh the reward, rendering them useless outside of vanity items (thinking of the enc. epic here). Epics are meant to be hard to complete and represent a reward for your effort, but were they really designed to incorporate massive competition as one of those road blocks? No one wants the epics turned to easy-mode, but shortening re spawn timers does not mean the mob gets any easier to kill, but rather just makes the mob more accessible to everyone who shows interest in getting it.

The idea that epics = hard is so wrong. Many people were able to complete their epics within hours of kunark launching. By now, every class other than enchanters, sks and Wizards have their epic.

Also, most epics are not useful on Selo. The go play Selo comments don't make any sense. If you just wanted to experience the quest itself but not need the item, you could just go play live for free.

The reality is that Daybreak likely sees this as a temporary problem for tlps. These complaints go away after velious launches, so usually only have to listen to 6 weeks of complaints. Mangler just made it a little longer is all. Unfortunate.

The current endings to the cleric epic was changed to this. Original sequence was very competitive, if I remember correctly.