The Vulak Standoff

Anyone who has been in a guild that does OW content in Velious knows what I'm talking about. Lady Nev and Thylex are the only dragons up in ntov. 2 competing guilds just sit around doing nothing for hours.

No one wants to trigger Vulak to spawn, because that means leaving his spawn area and fighting another dragon. If you do it, your raid will be weaker (on hp/mana/endurance), and out of position and give the other guild a head start on the Vulak DPS race, and you're likely going to lose if its anywhere close to even numbers.

So instead you just sit there. And you wait. And you wait until eventually one side gives up, or one side loses so many people or one side gains so many people.

What if instead of instantly triggering Vulak, Thylex moves to Vulak's spot and he goes active and he hits as hards a vulak and casts the same spells as vulak but has like 1/4 the HP of Vulak, and drops no loot. And to make up for that, Vulak has 3/4 his current HP. In the end it comes out to doing the same fight for just as long, but the difference is that the DPS race doesn't start until after the first 1/4 of the HP pool is done.

So in your own private AOC DZs you don't really even notice a change, it's basically the same fight for the same duration. In OW it would make killing the last dragon not that big of a risk because it gives you time to make your way back to Vulak and some time to recover and get ready for the DPS race.

I don't think it would turn into a poop sock waiting for one guild/raid to kill thylex because you just wouldn't burn on thylex. any guild competing in OW content should be able to tank thylex and get him down without wasting too many resources and since the real Vulak would spawn right where you are you can just immediately transition to Vulak and then dump all your mana and endurance into him.

OW stuff is for suckers

Its contested content for a reason!

AOC is for casuals who don't deserve to fight Lord Nagafen. - at least according to Holly

This is a ridiculously overcomplex solution.

Just add a timer to Thylex spawning Vulak, like 15-20 minutes. done.

OR

Get rid of open world altogether. Tryhards can still get their "dps race" on by competing on time/first sw, instead of "in your face toxicity", and it loot balances across guilds. inb4 "thats not classic!", extremely little is actually like classic, dont even want to hear it.

Yeah, I'd just prefer the contest be, you know, playing the game, instead of a contest of who can twidle their thumbs the longest.

Adding a no-loot mob in between the last dragon and vulak is not "ridiculously overcomplex" it's a pretty simple solution, and in fact EQ already does this within the same expansion with Idol of Rallos Zek, and I've never seen 2 guilds sitting around in kael just looking at statue/idol and not wanting to kill them.

A fixed timer of 15-20 minutes means you're adding that much total time to the vulak raid. Why would you force people to sit around and wait, when the idea is to remove the reason for people to sit around and wait? This is an idea to add no additional time to the raid, while also encouraging actual gameplay.

It's not ridiculously overcomplex in comparison to other events, it's ridiculously overcomplex in comparison to other solutions that provide the same end/race - as presented, vs a delayed spawn allowing preparation time.

Adjusting a timer is very simple, in comparison to adding a new npc, assigning values/aoes/mitigation of the mighty/etc, binding this mob to the event and testing to ensure it spawns vulak too, on ~23 year old code.

Also, your example is crap. You're proposing apples to oranges. People dont wait on idol because theres no threat and you're mana positive, they arent even remotely close to the same fight. Idol is fully slowable, and doesnt hit like AoW. Completely different fight.

Isn't the entire point of open world content to compete with others?

How long has it been since she left? Once the game progresses far enough there is no open world content anyway.

So work on getting the kill before the other guild so you can move into place for the final fight faster and if not just get your weekly AoC kill and move on. It isn't Daybreaks job to make changes because you want to sit around doing nothing out of fear you might miss out an open world kill.

While it's possible, I can't speak to the intent of the game design in 1998, or if it was even a thought. For all I know, it could be the idea was to "band together". The game (hell the world), has changed drastically in 25 years. There's a reason everything moved over to instance though, and basically stayed that way.

So many live in a world of illusion. They think, what they reach for and what they take, is real. This is the veil of illusion. To transcend illusion is to realize all desire is suffering, all acquisition is worry.

In the Vedas, a "Vulak Standoff" is when Vishnu and Shiva stand in an infinite gaze at the human soul. So don't be too sure of yourself. You've witnessed an entire group of people escape the cycle of life and death, and thus suffering itself.

Glory to those who have ascended.

It seems like a waste of time to make a change to this script just because two guilds can't work together to solve the issue on their own and they can still get the kill in an AoC instance.

None of that changes the fact that open world mobs in that era are designed to spur competition between raid forces. The fact that the guilds are choosing to sit around doing nothing in an attempt to not lose on on one of the kills is a problem of their own creation, not Daybreaks.

Exactly. But you can tell the generational differences here.

Some people were raised on the idea that a competition means a winner happens.

They've never played jarts. No one wins. That's the point of jarts.

Guilds managed this back in original velious, I'm sure everyone can today on tlp.
TLP is already a disney land ride version of the old expacs, do we need to make it even more easy still?

Show me source info on their design intentions. FYI, I'll retort with GM's moderating kills and "Kill Stealing" punishments, along with an example of raid mobs being GM Killed because guilds would "compete and fight".

Infact, the more I think on it, the more I'm confident you're wrong.

Why exactly do you need sources for this? What is the purpose of long respawn times on open world raid mobs besides encouraging competition? You just have to look at a quote in this thread from Holly about AoC's being for people who don't deserve the content.

There is a difference between having something to encourage competition and guilds/raids breaking the rules of the game to get an advantage. Competition doesn't mean you can steal a raid from another raid force by whatever means you think are needed. It is just a matter of first come first served.

Original Velious Vulak was a ring event and did not have the Thylex standoff. Waves of mobs - I believe it was 8 or 12. Was fun.

This solves the problem but the event was removed. They should bring it back. Very few of us OG's actually did it. Everyone should experience it.