There are many different ideas for new servers. Personally, going back to the TLPs and raiding the old bosses provided a great deal of excitement. However, there were some serious downfalls. With so few bosses with long respawn timers, the methods of competition began to destroy any enjoyment. Sitting in the bosses lair for six hours before he popped and seeing it die in 15 seconds or less was not fun. Forced rotations helped to a degree, but then in many cases guilds had to wait extremely long periods of time before the target was available again. My idea for the Raid TLP is to simply decrease respawn times on all bosses (including mini bosses like Phinigal and the PoH minis) that existed prior to instanced content. Typically, expansions were released on a yearly cycle. Raid loot from a specific expansion flowed into the game over the course of that year. While increasing the spawn cycles of bosses will increase the rate raid loot flowing into the game, it would still be in line with the greatly increased expansion release cycle. This would allow gearing up of guilds prior to the release of the next expansion. Another suggestion, would be to increase the HP of all raid targets by a specific %. There have been many changes to the game since the original release that make defeating these targets much easier than they were originally intended. Would there still be races and competition for targets? Very much so. The idea is to simply provide more of what people want . . . boss fights and the shiny new lootz. Instanced content could also possibly have timers decreased. Reducing the long respawn times would be a fairly easy change, unlike ideas which would simply not happen . . . like instancing all content.
I'm not sure there is anyway to solve this problem. Even if it was an hour spawn, Naggy, Vox, and Phin would be permacamped, probably until PoP. It just means the big guilds would have every alt and box geared up too. Someone else suggested having an expansion that revamps the old zones - not as aimed for TLP, but for the high end game. I kind of like the idea, though it's got about a 1% chance of happening. Say you had something new for the majority of players on the other servers, a crack in the wall in SolB, Guk, maybe some caves in W Karana or something for some L95+ game, but importantly--add the ability to instance stuff in the old zones with appropriate level TLP stuff in the same areas. Add a new high level Naggy/Vox/phin instance (enraged Vox ;P) and redo the old encounters as a side product for TLP. Have something to turn in to spawn the encounter so there isn't a permacamp situation anymore. It can still be challenging or near to the same encounter for classic types, but maybe have some drop you need to give some NPC to open Naggy's lair or something and have it be instanced.
Isn't this exactly what they've already been doing the last few expansions? Seems quite a bit of the content the past 3-4 years is just really old content re-envisioned one way or another.
I was attempting to come up with an idea that would not require the entire came to be recoded. reducing respawn timers is realistic. Instancing all raid content, revamping hundreds of zones isn;t going to happen. The idea wasn't suggested to solve any kind of problem. It's was simply suggested to add more of what people want.
I don't disagree with you Machen, but they never did revisit the big ones. Why deal with the banish thing on Naggy and Vox anyway, why not just make it into a turn in, instanced event scaled in Level and reward like an LDON is? You can use the same zone and everything, just need to adjust the levels and loot tables on the mobs and maybe something a little special for the boss to pull on a new high level encounter. Then when TLP comes around again this would take some heat off the CS. Charge everyone 5 bucks to activate it, people will buy it. I guess changing the spawn time is the easy answer though, or wait..., doing nothing and just rebooting Fippy seems most likely of all.
I don't normally like solutions like this because classic (to me) was a function of how rare and competitive the end game mobs were. At this point, however, I think it makes the best sense. The only reason I can justify keeping the end game on the TLP as it was in classic would be if it were a "classic server", which it clearly isn't supposed to be. I'm not saying that a "classic server" is a horrible idea, but I'm pointing out that the TLP was never meant to be one. From the very beginning it was made clear by the devs on both rounds of progression servers that it was not intended to be a classic server. If this is the case then I don't see why changing the end-game mechanics to be more in-line with the modern game would be so horrible. Personally, I happen to like the classic game...I like going afk and getting batphone calls to log in...etc. I would play on a classic server if one existed...but I also realize I am one of the few people who really enjoys these things when they say that they liked the authentic classic game. Early TLP <> Classic, and shouldn't unless the devs really intend to try out a true classic server (which I doubt).
Well, if they rebooted a TLP, faster spawning bosses would at the very least make the raid game a little more bearable. They introduced a rotation on Fippy. Imagine a 4 guild rotation on a 3.5 day boss? If all the bosses respawned every 24 hours, by the time you got to Kunark/SOV, even with rotations, your guild would probably have the ability to raid every night. Guilds would probably be receptive to rotations, rather than having GMs enforce them, if they only have to wait or 4 days rather than 2 weeks. I'm not a big fan of rotations myself, but with increased respawns, it might not even be necessary.
I think reducing the spawn time on boss mobs would be a good move, just because the time frame for each expansion is much less than original released. It's one thing to wait so long between spawns when you have a year per expansion, but at 2-3 months, not so much.
They already pretty significantly reduced spawn times across the board compared to original. 3 day instead of 7 day spawns mostly, some 1 day instead of 3. Of course if they hadn't done this in many cases it would have slowed down progression. Needing to wait the full original timer on ST key mobs would have slowed down velious a bit, for example (and resulted in longer times farming ntov/aow before luclin launch.) And further reducing respawn timers will make expansions that require flagging like that fly by that much more quickly. Not saying they shouldn't reduce them further next round, but this idea isn't new.
If they did reduce the spawn time, a lockout timer after killing the mob might be another angle to manage this to avoid permacamping. Might be too hard to implement though.
You are correct. Most of the old world bosses were 7 days. They were cut in half quite a long time ago. I believe it was even before the first progression servers even came out. The idea for the Raid TLP is simply to have more of a good thing. With just original and Kunark you would have: Phinigel, Nagafen, Vox, CT and Fear minis, Innoruuk, Maestro (also about 10 PHs for minis in hate, which are also on a 3.5 day respawn), Gorenaire, Talendor, Severilous, Ventril Sathir, Trakanon, Veeshan's Peak. Timers are generally 3.5 days +/- a few hours. Phinigel is something like 12-16 hours If they reduced the respawns to about 1/3 or even 1/4 these times, there would be enough targets for multiple guilds to raid quite often. Of course there would be competition and races still, but they would be greatly diminished. In the case of highly contested targets like Trakanon, rotations wouldn't force guilds to wait weeks before their turn came up again, but rather a few days. This would likely result in guild negotiated rotations over GM enforced rotations. Waiting two weeks for a shot at a raid mob was simply too long, especially when the expansion cycle was so short. Increased respawns on the minis in both Fear and Hate and also Phinigel would allow more people to start working on their epics during the Kunark era. Anyway, it's just an idea.
With so many raid targets on a short respawn, only a few like Trakanon and later key mobs would be camped. These would probably end up having a guild rotation like the recent Fippy server. One thing I forgot to also bring up again. It would probably be important to increase the overall HP of raid targets by a specific percent to make up for the overall increase in player power at this level, compared to what it was at the time. This would also prevent guilds from dividing up their raid force to take out multiple targets at the same time. Lockout timers wouldn't really be needed and would be difficult to implement for open world targets. Also, I have no clue how difficult it would be to implement any of these changes, but altering a respawn time would hopefully be somewhat of an easy fix.
Can't do lockout timers without instancing. There would be no practical way to possibly implement this with open world mobs.
I think one nice thing they could do to improve everyone's experience would be to significantly reduce the variability of respawn timers. We've proven that yes, if you give a three day window when a mob will respawn, there will be multiple guilds that will sit on the respawn point for three days straight, ready for the two seconds of competition that will ensue when the mob finally appears. Everyone would be much happier if everything had a +/- 1 hour repop. Make it odd hours so it'll be a different time of day each time, like 16h +2. This is a win for everyone -- hardcore raiders don't have to waste 12 hours a day doing nothing just to compete, casual raiders can have a shot at mobs from time to time when the repop timers fall within their raid windows, and no one ever needs to get bent out of shape for losing on a mob they just camped for 72 straight hours without sleeping. If they did this, and upped classic mobs' hp so they are actually a challenge instead of a two second HT battle, they could drop respawn timers significantly and have a viable competitive environment. On top of that, they should decide up front what the role of GM's will be in contested spawns, how those things will be resolved, and what the GM's can and cannot do as a viable solution to pve conflicts. No more randoming one week, dps racing the next week, dueling champions the week after, or spawning extra replacement mobs when things go south because they weren't prepared to deal with the situation.
You could do it. It would require real work on the part of the devs. I'm not sure how hard/easy/possible/impossible this is with the current EQ coding. It is certainly doable though, and happens regularly in lots of other MMOs.
Theoretically you could do it, but it would require huge changes that may well be impossible at this point in EQ's life. Possibly something similar to the naggy/vox code would work where you would be banished from the zone if you get on the hate list. I know other games do this, but in the Everquest environment, what would you base the lockout timer on? If you do it based on who gets the experience message, guilds would just not form a raid for the kill, one group gets the lockout and everyone else gets to come back and do it again next time. (And it would be hard to argue this is an exploit since that's how we actually did it back in the day before the raid tool. We're just reliving the classic experience!) On the other hand, if you do it based on hate list, then anyone who is dead or gated doesn't get the lockout, but on the other hand, the competing guild that is waiting in line for a shot if the first guild fails probably does get the lockout as well (thinking of mobs like Naggy/Vox with the huge ae's.)
I like that random repop idea, I'd say make it a wide variability. First reduce the mean time a bit based off the spawn time now, but then widen the range around that so it will be very unpredictable.
I would think you would code in some kind of flag based on the raid tool. anyone in the raid would get a lockout timer based on the kill, etc...until timer runs out you can't target the mob again, etc. (I was thinking of the overland lock outs in vanguard if you are familiar with that). like we both said, it would be very real work to implement something like this for the dev team. my opinion is that if these special rule set servers are ever going to be a bigger success than they already have been the dev team would need to work on real mechanics to implement stuff like this. I'm not sure sony is ready to make that kind of commitment to what has been seen as a niche server for the minority of the community.
As was stated above, there are too many ways to work around the lockout . . . not forming a raid, gating out at 1% etc. I understand your reasoning and intended effect. If you could pull it off, without any possibility to circumvent the lockout, you could have the boss instant respawn. The original idea was simply a way to make the current form of TLP a little more exciting and reduce the intense competition for raid targets. In fact, if the respawns were simply 8 hours +/- 7 hours, you would have a 1 to 15 hour window on all raid encounters. A raid could camp a boss spawn, however, they could only realistically camp a single spawn. Which means, all other raid targets would be viable. Even if mutiple encounters were camped, guilds would be more likely to accept rotations with such a fast respawn.
