How Devs Can Stop Kill Stealing with this Weird Trick

Crazy that this topic got brought up right when I finished a youtube script about it.

Eq2s mob locking system is nice but I doubt it could be implemented in Eq1 without a lot of dev work. Devs already have a lot on their plate to fix. Hiring GMs to enforce play nice rules won't work because it's either too expensive or not in the budget. First to engage or 10% damage lock won't work because krono farmers could still beat you to the punch illegitimately.

What is the actual root cause of DPS racing & kill stealing? It's simple: scarcity. If only 1 Phinny spawns every 24hrs & 300 players need it for epic quests, player conflict is all but guaranteed. I will argue in my video that Daybreak should experiment next TLP cycle. See if this works in reality... Try a server where named spawn timers are significantly reduced and/or elimination of placeholders entirely. I.e. Phinny, Ancient Cyclops, Cazel, Xygoz, etc respawn every 10-15 minutes.

It's not a perfect solution but it can be done by devs with current resources. We can't enforce play nice rules without hiring GMs. We can't stop farming bot crews because they'll find ways around. Devs can't spare the time to create completely new code to make an EQ2 locking system. But devs could alter respawn timers without too much trouble yeah? They do it for holiday bonuses occasionally.

It would also help with how quick TLPs progress. 1-2 months to get critical clickies, keys, & gear is one heck of a time crunch with the old, long spawn timers we got. Scarcity & time crunches excaberate dps racing.

I can see a criticism where someone will say that krono farmers will just kill Phinny every 15 minutes & be able to sell more loot rights than before. Yup it's good. There'll be so much Phinny loot, that the monetary value will plummet. It might not even be worth farming if it's so common. It's also 4-6 opportunities an hour to grab friends to DPS race those krono farmers if you desire.

There's no perfect solution but I think this one could work to lower player conflict. - - Ion Blaze

@Ion Blaze~ The last TLP I played to any extent was Ragefire where for a while there was an effort to enforce PNP and raid rotation. It was a horrible mess toward the end and when eventually DPS race was installed as the rule not just by natural game mechanics but policy as well things actually became less toxic

Agents of Change and Harbingers were a great solution for those epic 1.0 mobs. Eliminate the bottlenecks.

I do like the idea of faster respawns. Especially on a TLP.

But what EQ really needs is private instancing via /pick. So when that jerkwad shows up who griefs you or takes all the mobs, you can just pop over to your happy bubble and go on with your gaming.

I had a funny experience once when boxing my toons, I saw a group of casual pulling a named.
Their tank and healer died in a matter of 15 seconds.
I engaged the named and killed it.
Rez those noobs.
I was even nice and encouraging them take it easy and choose target they could manage until they become Uber.
Actually they ended up being really mad at me because in their narrow view i KS them.
May be should I have waited the group wipe?
KS is just a rule mechanism.
EQ is meant to be a competitive game at some point.
I tend to think most of the KS complains are coming from casuals.
Again

So basically prevent anyone doing tradeskills from being able to farm components ?

They actually had a system in the game like this for a while called trivial loot code. They quickly realized that it actually prevented some quests from being completed as it required players to kill low level mobs. An example of this was a level 1 NPC in the plane of fear for the shaman 1.0. They got around that by having people in a raid format be exempt from the trivial loot code. I think the last server that code was active on was FV but I think it has been removed at this time and is a pretty good example of why this idea is bad.

Not to mention it would be horrible at low levels when you would only have a single level or two difference allowed.

Yeah, the TLC sucks.
Isn't it still active ?
AFAIK you can't slaughter alarans to get the tablet clickies, they have to be exp mobs or you have to run the missions a million times.

I thought it was removed but there might be some special cases still in place. Could test it by slaughtering them with a raid.

Unless you are referring to something else to evolve the tear you need to kill at least LB cons and at 120 there are no Alarans that fall in to that category so the missions for tablets is the only way to go.

Edit: nevermind, realized you were referring to the tablet drops. Haven't tested this so cannot confirm.

Edit 2: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...y-do-not-drop-from-green-or-gray-cons.262911/

Perhaps they were doing it for the hunter acheivement? I say this because in this boring time of the year I go do stuff like that which I consider boring ( I know not all do). I wiped on Diabo Xi Xin Thall up in vex thall because of that craptastic pathing up there. I can single pull the 5 mobs easily enough and keep them down but one mistep and the mob turns around and gets 9 more friends to come wipe you. I rezzed and got help just for the pull and got my checkmark. gear and ores are not always what people are after.

Trivial loot code still exists on every server.

Just try and farm some Beryl Hero's forge - ain't happening

On live you get that kind of scum all the time. Ok, not so much lately since we've had the very welcome crackdown on automated play, but I went through a couple of years where that happened to pretty much every single named I ever camped.
It still happens
Encouraging the dps race for every named mob just encourages bullying and driving grp-geared players with sub-optimal groups out of the game. Named mobs shouldn't only be available to the automated crews and elite raider optimal groups
Scrapping the play nice policy is one of the worst things that ever happened to EQ IMHO

I have no idea how you managed to do various epics/achievements etc without ever camping a mob for 6 (or more) hours

The change means no more saving people about to die. Also, what will happen is that you will get vulture groups, that just sit and wait for people to die and take the weakened mob before it regens. It doesn't really solve anything. Kill stealing, even on the TLPs is no where near as prevalent as people like to claim. It is more that other groups pull mobs people consider their own. They could implement all of the OP's changes today and tomorrow they would be in here complaining that people are still KSing him.

I think that it is a toggle/Tag kind of thing. like No Trade and FV No Trade; such that they can turn the toggle on for a server like FV and only specific items are kept out, but it is still really sketchy and ruins replayability of quests.