Encounter locking - lets talk about it.

Even if they manage to fix all the bugs and get the feature to work perfectly, I hate what it does and how it'll affect the game. It'll allow anyone and everyone to KS. You no longer need to be able to outdamage the competition, you just have to get the first tag. That'll enable KSing for a much wider field of players (I mean, literally all players) which will mean that it happens much more often. Previously, a random dude couldn't just walk up to a camp and start stealing mobs from a group there. Now you can, and you don't even have to spend a full mana bar trying to outdamage them, so it's completely free to try. If you don't manage to get the first tag, it cost you nothing and you can just wander off to try the same at another camp, then come back in time for the respawn cycle.

Without FTE, the cost of attempting to KS made it not worth trying for most players. It was only really something the hardcore RMT sweatlords went out of their way to do, usually because they'd be running around with a full box crew set up for efficient automation. Once in a while, soloers would also try to KS each other, but not very often. Now, though? Now it'll be possible for literally anyone to KS anybody, and since it costs nothing to try, there's no real deterrent. The ones being KSed can do nothing whatsoever about it. They don't get the opportunity to try to win a damage race, they can just stand there and watch.

So while this feature may make it harder for 6-boxing Kronobarons to swoop in and KS stuff, that was something you almost never had to deal with unless you were trying to stake a claim to one of the select few camps that the RMTers try to monopolize. Meanwhile, this feature has made it infinitely easier for regular players to KS. It has made it something that everybody can do. If you win, you get the loot. If you lose, all it cost you was the time it took to try and out-tag whoever you were attempting to KS. With that one piece of third-party software we all know about, it's easy to just show up at a camp right before the PH/named is about to spawn, spam a tagging macro, and then leave if you didn't get it.

Hell, the people holding that camp won't even necessarily know you're doing that until you succeed, because it'll just look like a dude briefly running past the camp. They have no way of knowing that's what you were doing. Now imagine what that does to the server's community. Suddenly, anybody outside your group is potentially trying to KS you. Anyone standing within spellcasting range of a camp is potentially hammering a tagging hotkey. You have no way of knowing until he successfully steals the mob and you can do nothing about it. What do you think that'll do to the server's atmosphere?

My main issue with fte is EverQuest feeling less dangerous which means more boring. You will never be in that good group that can take on random trains cuz they already locked to someone running by. I also hope they aren't messing with sit aggro. They are making changes that makes the game safe. You will be able to go afk and not worry about a train. It's boring bro.

It's not first to tag, it's first on the hate list, so just walking near a kos npc will lock it.

This is the biggest lie that everyone keeps repeating about encounter locking. Imagine: there's a hamlord group, lord spawns, someone else locks it first, and the group camping it will still cry about kill stealing.
Also getting heal agro breaks an encounter lock (by design, not a bug, according to dev post on these forums), so even if that hamlord group did pull the lord first, an oog cleric can spam heal the tank, get aggro, break the lock, and then proceed to "kill steal" by normal means with DPS.

This is a "solution" that only pretends to solve an issue that was never really a problem in the first place.

no less griefing, but a lot more grief.

and still not fixing the current game. UP triggered spawns in Luclin, SoL and instances are broken for a year and a half, but they have time for this net nanny BS.

Is Mischief server

A) Successful

B) DOA over KSing?

On the heels of what may be the most successful iteration of a TLP, the system must have been utterly broken for 23 years, let's make sweeping changes in a knee-jerk response to a squeaky wheel issue.

and stuff that game those previous devs made, that's been up almost a quarter century. Terrible unsuccessfull mechanic, this FFA, we're better than them now!

Mobs can still be trained, pull them, drop lock and leave the wanderers to path into other players.

"banned"

no,

temporary suspension (counted in days, sinlge digit number of days.)


yeah right.

Entire raidguilds run on this.

The most eggregious ones get a few days off at most.

If they banned it all, EQ would sunset.

Every single thing you just said is false.

It does not stop trains. It does not stop AOE PL. You can help others in trouble. If they want help to kill a mob all they have to do is /yell it.

If anything then FTE actually HELPS AE PL'ers as they can now pull all the mobs that they want with almost zero risk that anyone is able to reclaim any of the mobs that they chainpull - even if they pull them from the camps of other groups (which they have been known to frequently do with zero consideration to those other groups).

lets discuss "camps"

EQ and other games are FFA free For All vs standing mobs.

myself, if someone else is killing soandso, I go do something else, EQ has a lot of something else and every character has lots to do, so no big.

To me a "camp" isn't an " I claim all these mobs and how DARE you kill any, I'll be plum anger-y."
To me, a camp >is< all the mobs I / my group are keeping despawned on respawn. If there are 30 mobs and you can only kill 10 before repops happen, sod off with the "but MY camp" whining. Kill the 10 you can and share, EQ does NOT belong to you and you may NOT gatekeep other players.

I utterly respect /ooc CC? and so forth, but unengaged mobs, by rule, are actually FFA. so you might always expect that as the starting point for negotiations.

Indeed, "Camps" as a concept is merely a social aspect of the game - a player to player understanding - the specifics of which may vary from player to player.
And for those who don't recognise or respect the concept at all and see all unengaged mobs as FFA then FTE will have no negative effect on their behaviour whatsoever. They are able to grab unengaged mobs without FTE in place and they will still be able to snatch whatever unengaged mob that they feel like with FTE, but on top of that then with FTE in place they will be able to do so with impunity. Anyone that might feel like that a mob was stolen from them will no longer be able to even attempt to reclaim such mobs(good luck trying to land a heal on that bard before they are OOR).

So even if ping differential is sorted out and doesn't set a bias, is having two people standing on top of an inert mob with auto attack on or spamming clickies and it being locked randomly any better gameplay than dps racing?

I believe in the latest testing video I watched, the mobs went indifferent until they returned to their spawn point if, for instance, a monk flopped mobs on people. Preventing a training. It might be nice if they provided a third nameplate color for this state to alert players and also code it so NPCs would not accept quest items or interact until reset to prevent that quest turn in thing demonstrated.

If someone pulled them while indifferent they would turn aggro and also social.

I don't have anything wrong with the spirit of what FTE is trying to accomplish. What concerns me is that there are too many complicated existing mechanics in EQ such as mez, mem blur, hate spells, aggro lists, Charm, Taunt, Feign Death, Fading Memories, Escape etc etc. that are going to be nearly impossible to juggle a coexisting solution for. I guess we are fixing to see how well they handle all this. It should provide a little entertainment at least.