An honest discussion: zone latency.

You're doing it wrong then. The bad offenders are the ones that group up with a druid/ranger with a 15+ minute snare. Have them snare as much of the zone as they have the patience for and then group them up. Between the snare and the massive zone lag, you can get several directional ae beams off before having to move.

An honest discussion?

Otay. There is no zone so crucial to my enjoyment of the game that I must play there and no where else.

If Feerott, Kaesora Library, The Hole, Beta or anywhere else is "taken" it will cost me 5 minutes to go elsewhere that is not.

If an open zone raid boss mob is under attack by 50 players, it will take me 5 minutes to go somewhere with less lag.

If two groups are in an elaborate room with a lot of polygons, levitated, with pets, swarm pets, and auras all making it hard to move, ....

If someone is killing ALL the minos headshotting, there are other things to do.

Given that going somewhere else is so easy, I have to believe OP would be just as upset if there were no lag. His goal is nerfing classes that mass swarm or kite....or amusingly enough as was the case with one regular poster on this issue, to do it himself or stack feed a quick kill group himself. Because if that were not the case, he could go somewhere else.

-There's something OP can do that isn't a thinly veiled request to nerf some classes - petition.-

(I say this as a Warrior who doesn't do these things and has no agenda one way or another regarding them.)
Oh wait, I do have an agenda - nothing irritates me more than someone who comes in well after I set up and start killing and tries to tell me how to play. Bobb Alouy /tells you we need to kill those storm mites. I /tell Bobb Alouy no.

Battleaxe,

So you're telling me tha next time myself and my friends are camping the new tier3 named contently for a few hours we should just 'go somewhere else' when a few rude duos show up and start mass pulling the areas around Xi Dyn, the zone in bug area and the Akhevans up top near Volx? We were nowhere near any of them but spent more than half our time lagged out at The Dark Lady camp. More than once pulls from the second level would come back down with 5-6 adds in tote as our pulls were stuck somewhere seizing.

Going somewhere else isn't really an option when there are only 2 new tier 3 zones and you've done most all that the previous tiers had to offer. I could care less how fast anyone else can xp or how many mobs they can kill. If a group could manage to kill double or triple the number of mobs it wouldn be disruptive in the same regards. The problem is when 20+ snared mobs are all stacked on top of each other chasing a single target. It lags the zone.

This isn't one deviant person mind you, Bertox has had the pleasure with no less than a dozen squads over the past few months. We had a gm show up once to tell one of them to stop, but the guy was right back at it the next day.

If Sony wants this style of hunting to be viable they need to make the Servers capable of handling the load.

Petition

Go somewhere else, there's no need to perma camp The Dark Lady camp.

I've frankly been in that zone with 20 other peeps probably pulling 5 mobs each, I've been there with 30 players just passing through - I don't recall unplayable. I do recall another poster using the phrase "make the servers capable of handling the load" however - word for word. Hmm Bertox too..... If that form of hunting wasn't viable people wouldn't do it.

If servers can handle the EvilTree raid with 54 players, 10 ants, spell effects, an aura, etc. all going off in a small room. I'm think it can handle that.

Petition sir. If the GM agrees with you the disruption will stop,

What's the purpose of the threads - SOE isn't buying new hardware. Players won't suggest anything that isn't a nerf. Attention for the issue? See the previous two sentences.

Petition - safe and effective.

Based off your responses you dont seem to understand the problem. Why are you bothering to talk about auras and spell effects. In a previous post you also referenced elaborate rooms and polygons. Graphics are unrelated to this problem or conversation. The issue is a server one and I'd bet money it has to do with the number of simultaneous calculations the server is trying to make to have the npcs all trying to follow after one pc. It has nothing to do with graphics. If you get enough monsters chasing after a player, it will happen. If you don't believe me, head up to a zone like fortress mechanotus and round up 50-100+ robots and watch the phenomenon referred to as 'rubberbanding'. When you reach that threshold - know that every npc (to include pets and Mercs) in the entire zone is likewise affected.

We're not taking about the type of player side lag you get waltzing around in the guild lobby.

You should look up the developers post about mob pathing. It somewhat explains how complicated it is and why it could be a problem. It probably is partially due to the complexity of the terrain graphics though as that determines the box sizes they have to use. Guild lobby lag is less of graphics than number of players, pets, and mercs info that needs updated (Look (face, hair, hair color, eye color, etc.), armor type and tint, position, facing, movement rate and direction, and many other things). It can be graphics issues also. But as you said, both types of GL issues are client side, not server side, like the pathing calculations. It's probably too much work, but using they could probably implement a rating system on individual NPCs for recalculating position, making ones that can't find a valid path to get pushed way down on the list, and the number of recalcs cut way down. That way if a NPC gets stuck, but the server is having to do alot pathing calculations, then it just lets those stuck NPCs stay stuck until the need to recalc NPC pathing is lessened.

The /petition advice is good however, despite, the use of graphics lag as an example.

Yther Ore.

make some of the mobs summon

Its just the latest wave of fast exp that will eventually get nerfed when the amount of mages/sks or whatever explodes as more people learn about it and everyone rushes off to make that class...anyone remember bard swarming.

Simple solution is to make some of the mobs summon. Make it random, say one in four summons, so it'll be a surprise!

That is not the simple solution. There are shaman, necromancers and wizards who are honestly and legitimately soloing Evantil who would be rather unhappy to see random mobs summon.

As I recall stating in the thread that got locked a month or two ago, this is not a magician beam problem. This is an indivial player or two problem that is causing these issues. Ban those accounts, those characters.... not change the spell.

One way is to make mage beam not allowed in Evantil. We all know EQ developers can code it so that certain spells cannot work in certain zones, such as Bind Affinity and Call of Hero. If a magician cannot use beam in Evantil, then that eliminates the chances of less than a handful of those that are doing it.

Another way is for Guides or GM's to look at logs. A magician got 1000 AA today? How did s/he do that? Wow look at the logs, they killed 60 Evantil mobs within the span of 4 minutes. Seems fishy! This one killed mobs every 65 seconds, got quest and collection AA and used several XP potions. Not so fishy!

Changing beam limit is not the solution. Others are better.

This is exactly what happened to SKs and that whole AFK Frostcrypt debacle. There were a few SKs doing this and it got the whole class nerfed in the process. So they wont deal with the players in question, they'll just nerf the class and ruin everyones fun because a few decided to take advantage of a game mechanic.

It probably takes less overall effort to deal with the mechanic. Personally I prefer it that way, too, because if they give us tools to use I can't see being upset with the few who use them in rude places. I'm pretty forgiving of people being "naughty", though.

So this isn't the solution, but changing Bard abilities, nerfing Earthshakers, and "fixing" Wizard spells is alright? I really don't think it's fair that some classes were changed due to their abilities while others are allowed to continue doing it. I'm talking about Rangers, Shadowknights (I have one), Zerkers, AND Mages. For some reason, SoE feels it's alright to let select classes do it with no punishment, while it's a NO NO for others and are "fixed" tm.

Again. mage beams are not comparable to wizard beams. Wizard ones were/ are insta cast - nice try though.

I vote for creating more higher lvl Instanced zones that respawn. Let people have the choice if they wish to deal with each other in an open zone or go undisturbed in their own instance.

Rangers don't kite entire zones. I wish we could though. It would be fun.

Cast time is irrelevant when all 20-30, 40, or even 50-100 mobs are snared with 15 minute+ snares - which is precisely how it's done. The only factor limiting pull size is the time it takes to round them all up; which increases exponentially the larger your pull. If it takes a snared mob 10 seconds to go 100 feet it will take 20 mobs 15 seconds, 30 mobs longer and 50 plus mobs they practically don't move. Pull size is only limited by this lag, which is why these groups rarely pull more than 30-40; otherwise 1 ranger + Mage could beam the entire 360 degrees of Evantil vs "just" the 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock "camp" I've seen them try to claim. Half the field takes 10 mins to pull and 2 minutes to kill. For most of that 10 minute pull, the same lag limiting their pull size is felt by every group in the zone. Pulls take 4 times longer - pets can't fond moving targets and Mercs squirrel out.

Wizard spells weren't changed because they were instant. It's because their instant nature led to abuse that they were changed. The problem wasn't the spell but in the problems caused by its abuse. A solution just needs to be found that stops the lag. If servers or coding were to bolstered to fix it; problem solved.

10AA/pull in a group of 3 (2 mages and a druid) without lesson on a 3000aa mage. Maybe about 1/3 of the overall field area. (Only do this in the wee hours in an otherwise empty zone)

And wizard beams blind you for 6+ seconds. You're right, they aren't comparable, mage beams have always been superior.

Have you personally done it?