Please do something about Cazel

I would like to get an answer from the people who seem to be firmly against this change. Why? How does this change negatively impact you?

You are the one coming here trying to upset the status quo, the onus is on you to convince the powers that be that changes are warranted.

I can't say I've ever looked into any reasoning on the official servers, and I honestly don't remember when it became a thing or whether it was a thing from day 1, but on P99 it was implemented to keep 1 guild from monopolizing content. I suppose the idea was that if a mob for example had a 24 hour respawn time, with a variance of lets say +-8 hours, the time the mob would spawn would constantly change into other guilds' "main" playtimes, so that no one could truly monopolize the target.

Personally, I don't know how anyone could possibly see this as a good idea. Sure, it's a good idea if you believe that everyone that plays EQ only plays for a couple of hours a day, guild members only play around the same time of day and aren't zerg guilds, everyone has a life outside the game, and isn't willing to spend 16 hours (even way more than that) camping a single spawn. But basically none of that is true, which makes it a God awful idea. Yet there it is, unfortunately.

I know on P99 that top guilds were utilizing a lot of clickable items to burst mobs down when there was competition. I don't remember which items it was or if the tactics were available on TLP, but it probably doesn't matter since Pickzones and DZs have been on TLP from the start, so competition is non-existent here.

It's much more beneficial to just leave everything with flat respawn timers. Knowing when something died was such a vital piece of information back in the old days of MMOs. Getting that information was a big deal, and if you took the time to check on something, you would know that something was going to spawn soon if you saw people gathering there. When you have an actual TOD, you can plan for your group to be there on time and ready, you'll spend a small amount of time there, the mob will get deleted (an unfortunate side effect but maybe someone should've thought to make every epic mob spawn an actual raid target or something), and you'll have a new TOD for the next attempt while having spent a very minimal amount of time - so you can actually just go do something else, even if it isn't playing EQ.

Don't forget about the one who's always like "people already asked for this and people were against it" but it's always like you said, actually only a couple people against it.

A couple people with very anti-social behavior and attitudes, at that.

I'd be perfectly fine with a flat respawn timer.

You have issues getting your quest items when mobs have variable spawn timers .... and you think it will be EASIER for you to obtain them when EVERYONE knows exactly when the mob is about to spawn?

I wouldn't say I'm "firmly" against it however here is a reason to not be super in favor of it:
It takes dev time away from something else.

now wait! before you come back with "its literally changing 1 field in a database, it's less than 5 minutes!!"

Nothing takes 5 minutes. Nothing. No change is happening in this game, any other game (thats not indy and developed by a single person), any other company (software/computer related or otherwise).
Things need to be discussed. You need to schedule a meeting. Does this make sense? Will it effect anything else? How long will it take? Then once you get approvals and a plan, you execute the work. Then make sure it all went well / testing, etc. Maybe the actual change itself took 5 minutes but I bet it wasted at least 20 man hours of time getting there. And this is a fix that does nothing for any of the older/live servers.

Now this would be fine if it solved the problem and everyone was happy, but as I alluded to previously in this thread, unless they make him insta respawn or something, it will still never be good enough for some people. 4 hours will be seen as way too long and unreasonable come the next TLP cycle.

I'd like to think they have some metrics they can pull of how many of each epic has been completed, what % of each class has it etc and they have decided this is fine. Vessel/Verina at 5 days or whatever was not fine. A mob that has spawned multiple times in 6-8 hours isn't terribly unreasonable.

Why not keep the spawn timers the same and anyone who attacks and tags the mob gets loot?

Not sure what that would solve if the farmers are able to get the first hits in other than making the kill easier for them.

Being in the software dev world myself, I'd never say "it'll take less than 5 minutes". I'd be surprised if this change could be completed in 5 weeks. However, I also know that user feedback is vitally important and that's what we're doing here. The people who are pro-changes are those who the software is having a negative impact on so we're voicing our concerns trying to get a change in the pipeline.

I do because I'm much more likely to get a group to come out and help defend against gankers if I can say "Hey, I need you to be here at 6:30pm pst for 10 minutes" than to say "Hey, I need a few people to come sit with me for up to 24 hours."

I've seen this argument frequently. It's not without merit, however...

That's not up to you to decide. You don't know how long it may or may not take. You don't know the resources required. Their producers and developers do. Putting this in as a request to look at, and potentially schedule if they agree, is a part of their job.

I think this was a legitimate request. Throwing it in the bin because one person on the forums thinks it's not worth dev time is silly.

I know a few that did as well - except their jobs are either work at home where they can game at the same time (looking at a few systems ops guys there) or they had copious amounts of vacation time that they cashed in for the server.

Not aware of ANYONE that's done the challenging epics while working a 9-5 that isn't remote (or equivalent to 9-5) without taking time off work.

Do know alot of retirees, housewives/husbands, etc though.

Sure. So person A comes up with an idea, posts it to the forums. Persons B/C/D agree. Person E presents a reason not to, Persons F/G/H agree with E. The Devs can then read the forums, weigh the merits and go from there. That's what we're doing here. If something gets alot of traction they eventually look into it, if its just 1 or 2 people complaining until they actually manage to get their piece and then are never heard from again, well then nothing changes and next cycle 1 or 2 people will be annoyed and rinse/repeat.

DRASTICALLY harder stuff was fixed by SKlug (when he was still part of the EQ1 team) on lunch breaks. And you can see how quickly they've fixed obviously harder anomalies (like the shared loot tables) when they arose - where within an hour or less they swooped in and adjusted those items to be off the table and/or remove the problem mobs from the shared loot table.

100%; presenting opinions is fine, but using dev time as THE opinion really isn't. I've seen it used as the sole reason not to do things numerous times and I'm just a little tired of it.

So this is easier in every way and yet its not done across someone's lunch break. Why do you think that is?

That's probably more urban myth than fact. I'm sure you'll say, "No, I remember it."

Not replying to anyone in particular...In most development organizations the individual developer can't just decide to fix a bug, whether on their lunch break or during regular working hours. Going outside of process is detrimental to the rest of the organization (producers, QA, other devs, designers, etc.). Once you get beyond 2-3 dev staff you need process. Cowboys are anti-progress.

Sorry, got on a rant there.

Dev time is a perfectly fine reason to be against something, saves the thread being derailed by people giving examples of things THEY feel would be better use of the Dev time.

Until someone comes with a bigger group ... and whose group do you think will be bigger if everyone knows exactly when the mob is due to spawn?