How Devs Can Stop Kill Stealing with this Weird Trick

I suspect that the players on TLP who all quit the game before PoP came along are the sorts of people who are more comfortable with constant supervision. Some people are like that. Recently I was camping something for my Bard and went to an older zone where there was an actual group of low levels. I told them I was there for whatever it was that dropped from a named and asked if they'd seen it. The group actually moved from where that named spawned and I linked and thanked them then left. Completely different atmosphere. The only time I recall in recent memory people getting testy was when RoS opened and things got crowded and a bit heated in The Overthere but that wasn't at all like some of the TLP drama I'd seen

The only real way to get rid of kill stealing is to give every group it's own private instance with respawning mobs. But that ain't happening.

If a player or a group spends an hour clearing spawns all the way to a rare creature like the Ghoul Lord in Lower Guk, only to have someone leap frog over them to either engage first or DPS race, then that behavior is wrong. It's not fair for a player to spend all that time clearing the way for another player to waltz in and take the spawn that he worked to get to.

Does the player own the right to kill something that he spent an hour trying to get to by clearing the mobs? That is the question.

I think it's reasonable to think that he does indeed own the right to kill and loot that rare creature's corpse just like the player that hand in a quest item owns the right to kill the quest mobs that spawns as a result of that. EverQuest is not a survival MMO where might makes right. It is supposed to be a cooperative experience.

Daybreak solved the rare spawns from quest kill stealing and put an asterisk behind the NPCs name and only the person or group that spawned the NPC can attack and loot them. The devs used a similiar mechanic for Lord Bergugle's crown hand in when only the person handing in the crown can loot the quest drop. So the technology does exist.

My concern and solution is based on a fairly common dungeon crawl scenario where a player or group has already engaged the mob and another player or group shows up and does more damage and gets the kill. This happens quite a lot with various key quests like the Veeshan's Peak access quest.

Your scenario which is also valid is the DPS race competitive scenario, where two guilds show up at approximately the same time and both wanting to take down a uber raid target.

In both scenarios and all things being equal, I still think that the fairest mechanic is the first to engage tags the mob. Once that happens, those outside the group or those not in the raid are not obligated to help the tagger.

I would like to see more cooperative challenges in EverQuest. For example, there is a named mob in WoW's Darkmoon Faire that rewards everyone who takes part of the kill with a special item. There are a variety of items that can drop when you kill this boss and everyone has a chance to get one.

If a uber dragon decides to destroy Freeport (not that I would object, I hate the new Freeport ). Doesn't it make sense (from a common sense and lore perspective) that all the citizens of Norrath would benefit by vanquishing this dragon that has held the lands in a state of terror?

I don't see why the EQ devs could not create special world bosses that encourage the entire server to band together and take them down. Everyone that participates would get a chance at loot. Those that contribute more woudl have a higher chance at getting better drops. Maybe these kinds of calculations were not feasable in 1999, but I believe it is feasible in 2022.

Someone else being quicker to engage or doing more dps still can result in someone else getting the kill after you spend a lot of time working in an area to get a rare spawn. There is little that can be done to prevent someone else from coming into an area and competing with you for a rare spawn. In fact the first to engage could make things worse as they wouldn't even need the DPS needed to kill the name just the speed to engage it first.

They did this in Dragonscale Hills but I don't remember when or why.

I don't think the game could handle that anymore.

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=5305

People do not lack empathy for the situation. They do not like the solution offered. First to engage, in EverQuest, would lead to far far more griefing than the current system. Offer a better solution to get more support. Additionally, this is mostly an issue on TLP rather than live. However, a HUGE, infamous, and relevant case from AB could be brought up so it is not limited completely to TLP.

If only the devs thought to include things like /tell in the game, so we could be adults and co-ordinate.

/tell lets people be children and malicious too. Sometimes, you're just gonna get your kill stolen.

Brontus, everyone understands what you are saying and the reasons, we just disagree. You would need to reduce respawn times in every zone to ToL levels or lower to deal with the absolute massive trolling potential.

I don't think any change is needed tbh. Life isnt perfect, and sometimes you come across people who arent all that civil, just makes the moments you come across nice folk all that more special. After 22 years of playing this game on and off, i can only remember one time where this was an issue.

First to engage getting credit would also let people more effectively block out other guilds by things like deliberately failing the RZtWL trigger in Tactics and locking anyone who needed it out for the duration of the respawn.

We have Agents of Change now. =)

Easy fix. If you damage a mob someone is killing you are flagged for pvp for an hour. Let the carnage begin.

no

I played a game long ago where you could be tag PvP temporarily and that was abused to allow nearly unlimited griefing

Warning: contains personal opinions.

Mischief is how EQ should have been from the beginning.
Many other games have objectively and subjectively better loot-rules:
Fallout76: Legendary mobs drop fully randomized loot for anyone who deals at least a percentage of damage
New World: grants a loot-chance to all participants who's group deals an amount of damage
Star Wars Galaxies: chance of loot off of any mob-type based on defined tables

There's no reason that specific loot has to be so rare that only a very few should ever obtain it; the Relics that were once offered in EQ were a different story, but I doubt they're even in-game any more.
The new stuff (for cloth/leather/mail/plate) is a step in the right direction (I don't remember what it's called, nor which expansion), but that's an entirely different game.

So outside of specific items, I’m not sure why someone would lock down a Named mob for hours on end. I understand needing that one evasive weapon/non-vis item you haven’t seen drop in multiple hours and numerous kills.

So going forward, change things to a token based reward system. Namers A, B, C, and D in t1 zones drop token t.1 tokens. And all those Nameds that share that token have a merchant with the pooled gear/rewards that you can cash the token in on.

Then there’s also Nameds E, F, and G that drop t.1.2 tokens that have a set of pooled rewards too. Spread the loot out between the tokens so you can’t completely gear up via the same 2-3 Nameds. But this means I could collect 3 tokens from a set camp in a grind session one night, and I’m able to cash out on the 3 pieces of gear (say from Chest, Wrists, Arms, 1 Lore Earring, 1hb melee weapon and 1 int dagger)

While this wouldn’t completely solve kill stealing, it may reduce the occurrences of it happening. It would also allow faster gearing (not that this is an issue), and would promote rotating camps and seeing different parts of the zones. And since gear pooled between multiple mobs, you’re not needing to lock down one specific mob. You can move onto another camp for a chance at the same gear you needed from the prior camp.

More options per kill, and more mobs for the same set of gear may allow people to move on sooner and not have to worry about having 30 people fighting over that 1 mob

On the flip side, this would just mean that the easiest named mob(s) in any given pool would be identified and people would fight over that instead, aside from the one run through for Hunter. It would really reduce the point of putting named in out of the way places, too, as no one would ever willingly camp, say, the named tentacle terror or spectre in the basement of ToV Velk's.

While I do see what you’re saying and I agree with you, this also does allow more options when camping Nameds for gear and not just because. Your easiest Nameds are always going to be everyone’s first go-to’s. It’s just the way it is. But it would still have a limited amount of loot. So it wouldn’t be a reason to lock down said mob for an entire expansion.

But on the flip note…tokens being able to receive a number of different items could bring back selling loot rights too /sigh