The Challenger's Perk is still an issue on TLP servers

The scene: Western Wastes after server up on patch day.

What could possibly explain this volume of un-resurrected corpses from a single player?

Why, the Challenger's Perk of course!



A year ago, I made a post detailing abuses of this perk during Classic on the Oakwynd server, including a single player bind rushing Phinigel to death on day 2 of the server, a player monopolizing King Tranix by binding in Naggy's lair and bind rushing it as it spawned, and players binding in Fear to solo open world golems.

To their credit, the development team eventually implemented restrictions that disallowed binding in those classic zones, which stopped the abuses of that era. Unfortunately, this problem cropped back up in Kunark and Velious, allowing players to solo raid targets such as Faydedar in Timorous Deep or Myga, a Western Wastes dragon, in order to get a drops to sell for Krono. As established by the change to classic binding, this is not intended gameplay.

Would the team consider some type of additional restriction on the Challenger's Perk on TLP servers to prevent these types of abuses?

A few ideas:

• Put a cooldown (5 or 10 minutes) on the perk's prevention of XP loss
• Reduce mana at respawn on death to 5% instead of 25%
• Put in further restrictions on binding in zones with raid targets

Never understood why the implemented such an exploitable perk. That perk needs to go the way of the Dodo bird.

The perk needs to be restricted, NOT restrict where players can bind!

Since the game started clerics have been able to bind where they are grouping for easy rezing after a wipe.

The restriction on where casters can bind in all zones needs to be lifted also.

could always add a delay for how fast you can respawn and not loose exp like 30 seconds or a min

Make it so people who have the perk can only bind in city or non-combat zones.

Of course, they could just remove this idiotic perk as well. That would definitely solve the problem.

Agree, the exp protection should only trigger once every minute or two. Would still maintain its designed functionality (normal gameplay) but would prevent most bind rushing capability.

Do I think they will change it further? Probably not.

The perk brings them money, the binding does not. Guess what they're gonna change first.

That and the perk is only an issue in the early game before these targets grow in hp and are all in instances instead of open world.

Eh, even before that - regen in Luclin+ for anything of substance tends to be substantial when not engaged even if only for a few seconds.

I applaud this players creativity. A perk is a perk. I don't think we should be penalizing emergent gameplay.

If you don't want to see player corpses the best thing to do is to use /hidecorpse all.

Yea, honestly, I dont even see the issue. But i also dont use the perk, because I try my best not to die lol.

The perk isn't the problem, the people are the problem. None of this stuff really matters in the grand scheme of things, if you let someone bind rushing something to death and you couldn't kill that mob while they were doing that? I don't understand how it's effecting your game play. Having the perk has been beneficial on occasion but I know I don't see it being abused by a ton of people. Not enough anyways that it needs nerfing.

Beneficial on occasion? That's quite the understatement. There are players that use this perk to routinely solo group and raid mobs in order to profit on a daily basis in a manner which was never allowed in the past and shouldn't be allowed now. They use the perk to subvert death touch mechanics by just endlessly piling up corpses with 0% rezzes. They use it to pull, scout, and train in hostile environments with no risk since they cannot de-level from max.

As far as it's effect on gameplay, a single person can monopolize a raid mob by perma-camping it and bind rushing it unless you have an appropriately sized team of characters camping the mob alongside you, which is not fair or practical as compared to a single player with a P2W perk.

No they can not.

First off, there are very very very few, as in less than 1% of the raid mobs in this game that arent available in a DZ or instance, available for everyone, so nobody can monopolize them at all.

Secondly, a single person dying would lose all their damage towards the dps race on a mob and therefore any competent group could take it from them. The only exception to this would be a FTE ruleset which was a gimmick one of server and nothing that any game wide decisions should be based on.

You really need to read the story of chicken little. This is the ultimate in not a big deal and why the hell would anyone actually care?

No theres not. Ive played on Teek since day 1 and have never once witnessed someone bind rushing. I think that you saw it happen once, and get your panties in a bunch and now youre making it out to be bigger than it is. If it was as big as you claim, we would see it everywhere. We dont.

This is a non issue.

"Emergent gameplay", more like an obvious strategy that everyone thought of a few seconds after perks were introduced.

I never thought about this. What I thought of was that it's a good idea not to lose a level when you die. Lots of players agree with me. In fact the most successful MMORPG in the world doesn't have experience loss or losing levels as a result of dying. I'm sure you can figure out which one.

Are you against emergent gameplay?

Are you against players having agency?

Are you against players devising their own strategies to defeat content?

If you think that one player continually dying to kill a 2nd rate named dragon in West Wastes is game breaking your going to have to present concrete evidence that this is trashing the economy and have a deleterious effect on the game. You're also going to have to justify the devs stopping what they are doing and spending their precious time nerfing this perk. Good luck with that.

I believe you.

That is a false equivalency. That "most successful MMORPG in the world" does not allow bind affinity, therefore doesn't allow abuse of game mechanics to enable solo bind rushing raid targets in era as is happening in this game. Losing a level was the key consequence keeping that "emergent gameplay" in check. Your arguments are paper thin and always in favor of obscene player power and ability to exploit the maximum benefit for the minimum effort.

Zerg rushing has been part of the game for a long time and it seems like the fix is to limit the ability to bind next to the few raid mobs that allow it instead of nerfing the perk.