Can we take a moment and discuss AE Groups? Why is this behavior allowed? When one group monopolizes a whole zone, and also doesn't have enough characters to spin up another pick, it's a detriment to the player base. Those players now have less possibilities to exp. When is zones that aren't ideal grouping zones, like the deep, it seems like less of an issue. But when it's the out of era zone that gives some of the best exp, and all the mobs can be AE stunned by 4ish characters, it just doesn't add up. I would think this falls under the code of conduct, but Doex doesn't seem to care and I don't understand why. The joke at this point is they are GM's or on the payroll, but I would hope that's not true. "3. You may not disrupt the normal playability of a zone or area. Zone/Area Disruption is defined as any activity designed to harm or inconvenience a number of groups rather than a specific player or group of players. "
A simple fix for this if it is allowed behavior is to have pick thresholds based off of % mobs dead in a respawn cycle, not player count.
It's simple. These power levelers are making Darkpaw up to like $250/hour pulling in 15+krono a hour if not more. This is the reason why they are allowed to hack and not get touched by GMs, all about that $$. Also if you go spectate its a lot more than just one group of players. More like one full group of enchanters + a bunch of other stuff.
If people stop buying PL's, perhaps they would go away. And if they're selling loot rights, don't buy.
1st rule of Fight Club. We don't talk about Fight Club. 2nd rule of Fight Club. Nobody cheats in Fight Club. I give this post 7 hours tops before it's nuked
I agree. It is one thing when it is zones that are not current content. But, having every pick of fort mech being pulled by these groups IS disruptive. It is really unfortunate that nothing is being done about this. But, I will go ahead and give everyone one tip to combat these people: It is VERY easy to kill steal them. They can only have one person in their group DPSing since they need 5 spots for piggies. A single good mage or wizard can killsteal them and not only thwart their disgusting little "business" but get xp in the process. As far as I know this is within the rules of DPS racing.
After experiencing Yelinak, I can sadly confirm that the modern day EQ player on average just wants to AE boost their characters.. The boosters are not going anywhere any time soon as the revenue stream is only growing. It's a shame, since EQ is predominantly focused on levelling your character & the journey you had. the 'End Game' is usually just raiding 2-3 times a week for a few hours, yet the mass boxers will not hesitate to get there in the quickest fashion possible.
Alright, if they are not going anywhere.......... How can we combat it? I think changing pick thresholds based off of alive mobs within some timeframe, instead of raw headcount could facilitate this while letting RTM crew supplement Darkpaw or whatever weird under the table agreement is being had
As stated earlier, you can always just play 2 dps classes and outnuke their mobs..It may get yourself in trouble for disrupting the gameplay of other people, but you certainly could hold a valid argument that it is mutual. ..Most people will just exp or camp other picks/zones. An example in Oakwynd is that SolA is heavily utilized by PLers. Most people will either find a new pick or exp in unrest/guk.
The reason there are pick thresholds is because each server has limited resources, and can only support so many picks at once, across all zones, before it crashes. Private picks, which get asked for over and over on here, are not an option unless you think a server crash every five minutes is good for the game. A lot of trial-and-error testing has gone into the choices of the thresholds we have now. A kill rate threshold translates to one pick per group, which is essentially the same as a private pick, so it would never work due to server performance. IMHO, the way to combat the issue is to ignore it. Contrary to the tone of this forum, the vast majority of the player base is playing the game normally, and the % of players acting like whales and paying hard cash for their levels and their booties is quite small. By the time a server gets past PoP, virtually all those people are gone. The guilds you see standing at GoD will be comprised of players who hope to progress as far as they possibly can in the game, which is the true purpose of all TLP servers except Agnarr. If you're not interested in playing past PoP, then Agnarr is a good alternative worth considering.
Or you know.. they could just reinforce what zone disruption is... Doesn't matter if 2 apples are bad in 1k, if those 2 apples are causing others to have a worse time, why are they left grouped in. Not saying ban em... just saying update the rules, notify those breaking them, give them a warning. If the users continue doing it, well that is on them... but blatently ignoring how a minority makes life worse for the majority is not the answer. You can argue 'they are only taking xyz, go to another pick/zone' But it doesn't change the fact that 1 guy supplementing his income through automation and multiple accts, is providing a 'service' to other players to not play the game but afk and get exp (which afk gameplay is against the rules, gaining exp should fall in it), and other people who want to level in the intended way (see grouping, socializing, playing with others in a mmo) are forced to move elsewhere.
There were hardware improvements not too long ago that clearly made this a lesser issue (as well as the other tuning they've done to improve client issues from things like swarm pets being so spammy). The same was said about it being impossible to make AoC DZ timers being character specific rather than account specific because it would overwhelm the system too much. Odds are those improvements that allowed the Character independent timers to function for Oakwynd also would allow the same for a more aggressive set of pick thresholds.
I've reported disruption for such precisely (after trying to play nice with them and them wantonly deciding to take my alternate set of stuff that I went to) - and from the nasty tells they sent me 2 hrs later, the GM that responded turned off their ability to use /yell for a while to put them in time-out. (And before I get another "I doubt they would" know it was you response - I'd been in dialogue with the offender beforehand trying to negotiate something to save us having to move and even said after the third time they refused to negotiate, even after we moved camps to opposite side of the zone to appease, I told them bluntly I was petitioning) Definitely wasn't a quick response - I just moved on and did an entirely different zone for immediately impacting my day, but gave that dude a beatdown - and frankly, never seen him PLing again since, while going through the same batches of zones. TL;DR: Always worth petitioning to hopefully help the next group or two they impact, but likely won't respond in time to fix things for you unless you're quite stubborn and/or do long EQ sessions.
I think you know why and just don't want to accept the truth because you don't like the truth, but that isn't going to change the truth from being... the truth.
"What is truth? -Pontius Pilate "You won't find any truth here. We lie like hell." -Howard Beale, 1976 The Network "You want to know the truth? You can't handle the truth! We live in a world with bots. Those bots have 5 kids to feed. Who's going to feed them? You? You, random poster?" There is your truth, and there is my truth, and there is THE truth. If you don't know the truth by now, you probably never will. Sorry pals
Kinda funny when they changed enchanter stuns it just hurt legitimate groups trying to AE but the power level factories just brought more enchanter boxes and didn’t really phase them…
They are likely working on logic to stop AoE power leveling with FTE or another gameplay mechanism. The problem isn't so simple to fix though. You can't just ban them, as consuming krono can bring them back By now they've probably amassed a sizable PL army with no paper trail between accounts. You can't police them, (see above + vague pnp rules) More importantly, whatever they implement has to solve a few problems while saving the real player utilizing AE spells. What I would suggest is either turn off AE stun and damage spells in open-world zones or limit them to just 3-6 NPCs per group.Leave the spells unchanged for group and raid instances.
That might be true if darkpaw were the ones getting paid for every krono consumed by people paying for power leveling. But, the reality is this entire "business" cycle exists outside of darkpaw. Obviously the people who provide these services do it for real money. So they are the primary suppliers of krono to third party sellers and the people who buy powerlevels are the probably the primary demand for third party sellers. So, in the end, by and large, people are simply paying real money for power leveling and using third parties as a middle man. Darkpaw may profit some from it but it isn't one to one by a longshot.
