Oakwynd Feedback

Because this will be Darkpaw's first attempt at encounter locking, there are many new methods and changes we should expect, but there are many unknowns on how NPC's will react under this new system.

This is all the info that we know. according to the producers letter here
once an NPC is engaged, it will be locked to that character, group, or raid. Characters not part of the lock cannot contribute damage. Spells from outside characters will not land on the NPC. If an actively locked NPC loses aggro for a short time period, the NPC will go home, reset, then unlock.

After reading this over a number of times, we should expect to see the following changes.

• Zone Line trains will no longer exists. furthermore NPCs that are lead to zone lines should no longer cluster up together waiting to aggro onto any new player entering the zone.
• Training another player/group should in theory no longer be possible.
• Many methods previously used for large scale power leveling will no longer be possible.
• Feign death pulling could potentially become much harder or even impossible, depending on how FD mechanics affect the new engagement mechanic. (more on this below)

However there are many things that will not change, some methods may change but the over all goal of the task will not.

• DPS races will change to FTE races.
• Krono farmers will still camp spawns of valuable items, we will just see different methods on how its done.
• Power Leveling will still be possible.
• Out of group healers will still be possible because healing spells lands on the player not the NPC
• Mesmerize/charm type spells will cause the NPC to be engaged to the player/group that cast the spell. The largest problem I see with this is that Mesmerize like spells will also be used to bogart named/important NPC spawns for as long as the caster choose to keep the NPC on lockdown (I forget if EQ had diminishing returns or not)

The real questions we should be asking are.

What is considered FTE?

• Does this mean it has to be tagged using a negative spell/attack? Or can proxy aggro also cause an NPC to be engaged? (huge full pulling mechanics). What about non damaging/negative effect spells like lull or Harmony will they flag the NPC to be engaged?

What is a NPC's "Home"
This may sound simple but is actually ambiguous. Is the Home the location the NPC was at when engagement was initiated? Or is it the NPC's spawn location? Or is it where the NPC would have been had it not be engaged? Depending on the answer this could be used to exploit spawn mechanics and grief other players.

How will feign death affect an NPC that is not aggroed on to any other group members?
Will the NPC drop aggro and run back to its "home" and reset? Will the NPC's aggro be directed to a different group member upon the skill/spell success? Will the mob remain engaged to the caster, and if so for how long? Either way this can potentially be a huge dynamic change for monks in the first several expansions where they are used as primary pullers. another concern about this is the possibility for feign death to be used to bogart named/important NPCs by holding it on lock down.
There are likely many other questions other players may have as well that I did not come up with, If you have anything to add please do.

Horrible idea. Takes away from what little "open world" feel EQ still had. Feels very Care Bear. Seems like they are catering to a very small, but loud, group of people here.

Sucks to your dots.... get a macro and a fast connection and pray like us all.

Help her with buffs/heals, etc until she can group with you then go hog. Better yet just group together from day 1 and stay within groupable range. Eliminating the spamming PLers you mention is so huge it's worth some small sacrifices.

No is a complete sentence.

Do you think this is a good idea?

No.

See how that works?

Raid 2 has the Clerics, they can never get aggro.

I've played EQ for too long anyway, needed a reason to stop. I am thankful to the devs for that.

Kiters are ungrouped, they can never lose aggro.

This TLP sounds great! The wife and I and some friends will come give it a try.

Frankly if we don't like it....there are tons of other servers to try.

EQ seems to be becoming a sort of Dev stepping stone guild to WoW as a dev raidguild. It feels like they want to be WoW devs and are auditioning stealth-like.

Which opens other exploit issues. If the locked mob can't agro anybody not in the lock group/raid, can you heal without agro? Could you have a separate "healer raid" formed allowing you to never worry about the raid mob summoning your clerics? Even more so in velious if your healers are on the faction of your target (ie doing Tormax while clerics are non-kos, even if you wipe the clerics never drew agro).

This sounds like a terrible idea for healers. Healers don't always need to heal for every single mob that comes. Not to mention you're punishing the entire party because you'd be breaking the group exp bonus.

You’re right. I was thinking snaring/rooting mobs then was like oh well just buffing at all. But oog buffing is still a thing you are right

/pet attack

IKR?

Like just go get a job there already and quit WoWifying EQ.

Like WoW better? Go play it or go dev there.

/waves at Holly

~signed, Phil, the Casual (My WoW name)

Park a mage in some spot where no pathers go in tov, keep a lord or lady agroed with your pet. No ow vulak spawns for all of velious lol

First to Engage has in fact been something that has been called for in the past and I'm sure that a significant amount of /petitions in early TLP regard "kill stealing" so this will be the answer to players who want that.

I just don't want it on any server that I am currently playing on

I am sorry for this coming off rude, it is more so that I am very very confused about the Oakwynd ruleset.

Your customer base does NOT play your game like this. We all have multiple accounts with separate characters on each account. Who in their right mind in 2023 levels more than one character on the same account?

In the last 8 TLP servers I cannot recall someone ever saying "Hold on let me log off this character to get on my other character on this account." It is almost exclusively "Let me log on my 'X' account".

This concept would have been way more useful and important on older TLP's like Fippy and the like when their were lots of guilds competing for open world bosses. But currently most guilds only care about or raid their instances for the daily/weekly lockouts.

At this point there is usually one guild who does Open world bosses because most everyone else is sick of dealing with the drama of competing for them.

If you think this will reduce the amount of griefing and solve the amount of report tickets you get over mob/boss competition/conflicts you are going to be very wrong.

PLEASE I BEG OF YOU Talk to in voice chat with just ONE player who actually raids current era of your game on these TLPs.

Edit: For those saying "Oh I level multiple characters on one account because I don't like boxing" I am sorry but you are a very tiny majority, stop with this "GOTCHA" stuff please.

Training AOE casting mobs or open world bosses on top of other groups, they can't even kill the mob to stop the damage, just take damage from the AE without recourse.

i can not wait to control entire zones. aggro stuff on a bard. run around in circles. and make people pay to kill things. aggro all of crushbone. you want kills? sorry noob its 5 krono to play here. epic 1.0 mobs? they probably can be slowed and +hp regen to make them do 0 damage and just sorry .. hes 10 krono if you want me to zone so you can kill him. otherwise get in line . PoStorms flagging? don't even dream about it. time to round up all those mobs , and run circles for hours until my ransom is paid. best server ever. WTS KILL RIGHTS TO GHOUL LORD 3KRONO