I already avoid them. Look. I get it. People want to lvl alts expediently and what have you. Still asking people to respect others camps and share in these zones is like herding cats. Especially during double exp. Feerott is the classic case in point. Still there are instances that go on in Feerrott but the hot zone benefits do not extend to those instances. Plenty of other examples where that is also the case. If Feerott instances had the same exp mod than vast amounts of stupidity in that zone alone would have never been an issue.Headshot would not have mattered. All the things that are linked to EZMode lvling would not matter (as much). If you want to bring up raids, lots of stupidity goes on when raiding, but most raids are instanced. Before the days of instancing, many raid guilds decided that respect of their fellow player came last. Dead last. Be it other guilds or whomever just happened to be in the zone. Now a days, if you are not a part of the raid force, than you have no business being there unless you chose to be. It saved vast amounts of grief. Not so if you are in a hot zone trying to lvl your alt up with like minded friends and some jackknob decided to swarm the whole joint. These so called hot zones might benefit from having instances so those who want to be stupid can be stupid. Asking the players to police themselves and be polite is just a pipe dream as people can get away with murder in EQ. Sometimes you need engineered solutions to save people from themselves. If that can't happen with these hot zones, then don't have them. Don't blame me for it. Blame all the idiots that have worked the system to the breaking point and that is why we can't have nice things.
The game is basically unplayable at any level without 3rd party assist. Always has been. Ten years it ago, it was eqmaps and Alla. Now it's you guys, mapfiend, etc. etc. That's not a failure. That's a community. A handful of camps being indisputably the best xp in the game... also not a failure, but not a win either. Hero's Journey was just an add on to hotzones? That's some add on...
I think the point that is being made in this thread is that many people only care about the ZEM and would be content with that being all that went into making a hotzone, which was why I suggested a poll to see if this is a vocal minority or if it really is representative of the player base's wishes. It's not that the players don't know what currently goes into making a hotzone, it's that they don't care about the quests/augs/Teek/etc. Honestly though, it's all a bit moot to me. I'm level 100/near max AA. I don't do alts, ever. I mostly would just be happy to see the hotzone (in the form of a ZEM bonus and nothing else) change more frequently to stop the random whining..
what if we kept "Hot Zones" and just added new "exp gathering zones" same concept as hot zones without the work...all some new meet up places at different levels. Best part of Hotzones is it funnels people of the same lvl into 1-2 zones which encourages grouping. Can regularly find a group in the hotzones generally.
The advantage of this system is that it gets a large majority of the players funneled into a handful of zones (because of the bonus exp). Most people would be equally content going to those zones without the quests or augs, they just like the fact that the bonus exp there means that they'll most likely be able to throw up an /ooc LFG and get a group reasonably quickly. We have hundreds of zones now-having something that focuses the player population is a good thing for people who rely in pick up groups.
in response to being able to make a hotzone rotation script, Elidroth said: I find it easy to believe that the amount of time and effort required to make this possible is not worth the effort. What I find unbelievable is that you consider EQ code to be immutable. Are you guys writing code by etching the commands into granite or something? Even if it required a complete re-write of EVERY line of code in the entire EQ library, it still wouldn't be IMPOSSIBLE. Unfeasible? Probably. Impossible? Not a chance. This is something anyone with the faintest idea of programming should easily understand.
I think making LDON a hot zone expansion would be nice. That way players can do actual missions that are not competing with other groups. It would cap out at level 65 hard. And if players get tired of looking at LDON dungeons, they can hit up the normal hot zones.
