Increase difficulty of mobs - reduce pressure points

I don't know who I'm responding to anymore sir. The amount of people that think making things harder, or adding pvp, or spelling tests before you can engage has me literally confused. I'm fighting the hard solo fight of trying to get them to realize any change like that doesn't hurt the hardcore, just themselves. As it gives the hardcores other means to lock down content.

I don't really know how I feel about making mobs beefier.

The Devs did this with Luclin before they got more creative with encounters in PoP. It didn't really make the game "harder", just more annoying. I'm inclined to agree with what other posters have said though, that this doesn't help in the long run and can actually restrict access to content. This might reduce the number of guilds at the top for the first week or so of new level-cap expansions, but soon it will be just as crowded at the top as it was on Fippy.

I'm not sure this would provide any meaningful reduction in raid scene toxicity.

I wasn't on TLP 2.0 and I admit that every time I hear of these issues, my mind automatically assumes between 100 and 125 people sitting on a spawn. If there's 200 people on a spawn, wow; Daybreak's gotta understand that's hardly Classic gameplay. What would it take for them to realize there needs to be more content between everyone? Do there need to be 500 people in a zone?

Was the worst of the issues focused on Naggy/Vox/Trakanon and a few similar? If so, what if they changed the looting on those mobs to basically randomly give out the loot as cursor loot to 3 players who are not currently dead when the mob dies, and who were both in a raid that did at least 25% damage to the mob as a whole, and that player did at least a certain amount of damage (or healed or whatever)? (obviously, some additional checks such as only going to classes that can use and don't already have the item)

Then DPS racing doesn't matter -everyone has the same chance at loot as long as they show up and blast away. In other words, if they won't do instancing or some other solution that increases the available content, then make the rewards automatically subject to this sort of division.

That kind of sounds like Rift or Defiance.

This could have unintended consequences. At one point it was thought that increasing classic mobs' hp past 32k would cause the universe to explode.

I don't know why you would wish sudden painful death on everyone.

Making bosses harder:
1. Max cap to the hate list; first 50-70 on hate list live. Everyone else gets an instant DT.
1a. First guild to get on hate list lives, anyone not in the guild but on the hatelist earns a DT.
2. Allow Enrage.
3. Rampage
4. AE Ramp(zonewide? plz)
5. Spawn adds.
6. Whenever a raid boss spawns, the entire zone repops as well(will this make it harder? PoFear maybe)
7. Bigger assist calls (e.g. All giants come to naggies aid (assuming they are up))
8. Create a template for each boss and allow the bosses to randomly spawn with different attributes so each new spawn is a new fight.

I'm not suggesting we use all of these ideas(or any for that matter). Just throwing things out there to be discussed as interesting/maybe useful/whatever.

Edit: My personal favorite is #8. Having naggy/vox/phinny/etc spawn and not knowing what his abilities are yet recreates the fun and risk that raids actually were during "classic".

Note: This doesn't necessarily help the issue with bosses dropping faster than a SuperVeyron doing 0-60. Unless you add in some of the DT rules as well(maybe).

I would just like to add that this is a game after all. I wouldn't mind if they find a way to settle this issue in a fun/engaging/interesting/different way.

It doesn't have to go the way of "We decided to be fair and give everyone a dragon pinata." or "We have hired a babysitter for the server that will decide who is first-in-force for a given raid, or toss a coin to decide who gets the rights, etc."

Maybe we should vote on it? /hide

I especially like 1 and 7. 7 would mean that if a guild zips past a guild that was already killing FGs, the FGs will come in and attack.

1, on the other hand, could possibly randomly deprive one guild or another of their DPS...

Naggy is just one encounter of many though in classic.
CT already does this.
I guess with Phinny all 4 guardians can engage as well(eek!).
Inny.. I'm not too sure which version of Inny will be up. (On 1.0 he was the push over level 75 version with like no AoEs)
Vox: has giants and things that can assist.
Sky: (not too familiar with Eye in Sky difficulty or if it needs any kind of adjustments)

*Edit*
And these changes do make the content more challenging but doesn't help the main issue of socking/ksing. This does address the issues but without any kind of testing there would be know way to know if it works in practice(this may be true for any method we suggest though).
The DT rules make it somewhat random, every guild present will have chance of ending up on the mobs hatelist first and "winning" the right to combat. However changing the encounter via #8 would also make it so they actually have to adapt and learn the encounter in order to earn the kill or risk wiping and another guild comes in to try next while they are recovering.

Also in regards to #8 and the "it requires werk crowd" adding a template and replacing a function call, or simply adding an extra parameter to an existing function call should be trivial for experienced any developer.
*/Edit*

All of that takes to much coding, they could just do instancing if they did that.

Nothing will be alive to assist the Dragon anyway.

We sat on lord Nagafen, Lady Vox, and Cazic Thule with empty zones (minus the low level mobs that we'd laugh at in Permafrost.) The poop-socking guilds PULL anything that spawns for something to do.

Fear already respawns and adds when Cazic spawns and is engaged, he dies in seconds. 32k is not a lot for 30 players to kill, it's roughly 1500 damage per actual class dpsing.

Can you people just get on board with the idea that nothing is getting rewritten? You need to think of solutions outside of massive changes to the code. The only change that makes sense is to add NPCs and create a token that spawns the raid target. Like Ragefire.

Even that takes coding and likely more than they want to write. We're not getting death Touching Dragons (that would be cool though) We're not getting overhauls to their damage, abilities, or HP. We're clearly not getting instances or GMs, let alone forced rotations. I've come to terms. I'm ready for the Wild Wild West. You should get ready as well.

Also, why are you all so worried about raid targets anyway? You do realize NOTHING ELSE in the game will be up either right? You want that LGuK camp for that weapon/armor/bag? Camped, permanently. You want Bronze Armor? Camped permanently. You want Runneye War Beads? Camped! Everything will be camped, and killed within seconds of spawning. E V E R Y T H I N G ! That's how it was on Vulak, and we had like a quater of the population tat Fippy had.

Classic is NOT big enough for 2000 players actively looking for content. Kunark is almost not big enough. If you want to help alleviate the stress you MUST fast track Kunark release, hell Velious as well. We need support for Classic + Kunark and Velious in 3 months. After that you can slow it down, hard. 12 Months for Shadows of Luclin, 6 Months for Planes of Power, 12 Months for Gates of Discord, 4 Months for Omens of War, 3 Months tops for everything else.

The only way to combat the hardcore endgame is to give those players something else to do. And, Velious and Luclin are the keys here.

Sounds like what we really need is to fast track Kunark AND have two servers?

Where does your "too much coding" argument come from why would your method require less than another method?
As I said a template/interface for classic raid encounters and then replacing/editing the function calls would take less than 20 lines of actual code if a novice designed the system, that's the hard part. Then mob abilities(I'm sure these are already interfaced through a mob spawner) can be fed into a function call Spawn_Naggy(pos, [x]) where x is a random binary set that has a 0 where the ability is turned off and a 1 where the ability is turned on.
*Obviously the method for implementation would be dependent on how they actually spawn a raid encounter but it doesn't detract from my point that it doesn't take much effort at all.*

If they add a new npc and a new item for new npc. They have to edit the database, the code, and test for possible exploits/abuses.

If they simply edit a monster's abilities they don't have to change anything except the code. The testing can be done in real time(during the servers normal operation) with a high probability that it won't be exploitable because then other encounters in other era's would be exploitable as well(since you aren't making anything NEW, its just reused code).

This is actually a fundamental pillar of Object Oriented Programming(I am assuming here that EQ is OOPd). It allows you to make changes to how a class, a class being a template-code-block for creating objects where an object is an instance of that class, works with minimal to zero recoding of any other part of the "system".

*Edits: Spellings, grammars, concepts. /Edit*

But, this change doesn't change anything. This change doesn't let more people experience the in era raid content. And, you are comparing 20 year old code to modern code writing. If this type of coding was that easy, DBG would just make tons of locked servers and release them. These type of changes would affect live servers and not just TLP.

Sure adding a new NPC to every raid zone would take time. Adding a new SC Store token to spawn raid targets would take time. But this change gives more people the chance to do content. A guild can raid a target during their peak hours, get a kill and loot and move on with their lives.

I don't really want to give the game more spawns, as more spawns equal more time people getting bored having done the content and therefore population suffers, and then we never needed the spawn tokens later on anyway.

Changing code is the very last thing we want them doing. I'd rather GMs be available honestly, and for hackers to get banned, but that's not gonna happen either.

They wouldn't add tons of locked servers(this is hyperbole), that would be bad in more than one very obvious way.

This change gives them a CHANCE to experience it. If guild A wipes because they couldn't adapt to the random abilities, guild B can try with impunity while guild A recovers (assuming you add the DT rule 1a), rinse repeat.

Yeah it may affect live servers. Is there some clause that says it can't?

Are we trying to come up with a way for everyone to have a loot pinata or a way to make the content feel more classic-like? During the first kill of Naggy I'm sure the guilds had to wipe a few times to come up with a strategy. I'd prefer wiping a few times rather than a show up and get loot encounter.

I may be wrong, but most people don't want to show up to a raid 2 days early just to have the actual encounter last for 2sec before loot gets distributed. It isn't even a game at that point...

Changing code is the ONLY thing they can do outside of having a babysitter. That's why this thread exists.

Guild A) is only going to wipe if it's not a hardcore guild.

There is no random ability they can add that a hardcore guild won't be able to laugh at 20 seconds later when the mob is dead.

Kunark doesn't solve the problem. You still have exactly the same issues on Trakanon.

You make it sound like a hardcore guild is something that is invincible to everything and DTs all content.

Here's an entire expansions' worth of examples:
GoD -> All "hardcore" guilds wiped, and wiped, and wiped on these mobs. What was new that was added?
Summoning? Already existed.
Rampage? Already existed.
Enrage? Already existed.
Spawned adds? Already existed.

The mobs were simply overtuned for a higher level of characters. The bosses still died, the guilds just had to find a strategy that worked.

Before that, PoP with elemental gods simply by changing a few things. Instead of instantly spawning adds(PoFear zone repop) they made waves of adds(Xegony) with different attributes that a lot of guilds found hard to adapt to. These encounters weren't 1-shot.

Saying hardcore guilds never wipe is wrong. Saying hardcore guilds won't die when introduced to new things is also wrong.
Saying hardcore guilds won't wipe to CURRENT implementations is right. That's why they should be changed.

Bull****. There have been numerous times in EQ's history that Sony has added mechanics that have proven to be more than the hardest of hardcore guilds could handle. Tune naggy to original GoD standards, or original Underfoot standards, and no one will beat it, at least any time soon. I could in 30 seconds develop a half dozen random abilities that no one could defeat. There is always a point beyond which the content becomes impossible to defeat.

Another point to add: Classic raids weren't killed by casuals, they were killed by organized raid forces.

Why make copies of current encounters for everyone to experience a non-classic classic? Tune up the encounters then let everybody experience the real "magic of classic".

Want to know what was new about those bosses?

THE ACTUAL BOSS!

This era is 16 years old. What you want is a brand new game.