Why no out of combat regen?

You used to stop regenning if you ran out of food and water but they removed that at some point.
Food now is just to avoid the annoying messages about hunger until you can afford stat food. Then it is about the stats.
It also used to eat tld first but now it goes in order of slots even if within a bag.

I'll respectfully disagree with you, MBear. I can chat with people in or out of Everquest whenever I choose to, but I guess that the only time I'd consider it playing my character would be if I were actively roleplaying. A fault on my part that I don't spend every moment of those ten minutes of doing nothing actively roleplaying, perhaps, but I'll typically do other things. You have a point, though, that sitting and watching my mana bar slowly fill from 2% to 3% is actively playing. Otherwise, how would I know exactly when I have enough mana to actually play with (ghost ticks aside [and why are ghost ticks still a bug counting over sixteen years?]).

I disagree. One of the balancing factors in spells is mana use. They can give us more powerful spells but limit how often we can use it by making the mana cost prohibitive for chain casting. In old EQ as a caster you had to learn to pace your mana use for the group. You didn't max DPS until out of mana and then med for 7 minutes. You might do that on a named or bad pull, but for the grind you had to learn to pace yourself. This got lost in EQ over the years. Mana management, Agro management, Pulling and crowd control are all areas that got dumbed down to nearly nothing over the years in group content. DBG appears to be trying to bring some of it back and I think it will be a good thing. Lets not go backwards and bring the dumbed downess back to TLP.

They would then have to decrease the exp per kill or you would get exp WAY too fast.

Look, the game was built a certain way and it encouraged an efficient play style. It was an amazing concept, because it allowed you to try and find the best way to play each class and not just figure out how to burn down mobs the fastest. It forces you to think a little bit and not just button mash.

Thinking is not playing!

BUTTONS SMASH

Changes like this come in around the time they were available on live servers. There's no reason to change it now. These servers are far too easy as it is and most people need to learn how to manage their mana properly before they get extra boosts.

You are right OP its a broken unwise mechanic. The entire purpose was to handicap casters (remember the med screen where you couldn't see anything while medding) and slow down the game as content was fairly sparse in the beginning. Also notice health regen is even worse than manna, this was to keep melees from soloing as at first, as you can likely tell, the devs were afriad of melees not needing a healer.
Now like no extended target window its just a broken idea hung onto for no good reason.

That is why its gone from live and few if any later games copied the process. OOC actually makes sense from every standpoint all that is debatable is how much OOC adds per tick. Too much gives one all the problems noted above by others, too little or none and its back to using boredom as a feature.

TLPs are full of this stuff, and nothing said here will change it.

Its should be noted that one of the "dungeon crawl" aspects of early EQ was that need to balance mana over a long period of time. To little mana regen and your healers/nukers ran out of juice and you fell behind and were overwhelmed. Certain dungeons didn't have true safe spots, so respawns were an actual issue.

The other part of this is the "burst" dps mechanics that casters have. The difference between the different spell lines come down to mana to damage conversion ratios and effective dps rates. Mana as a limited resource makes this meaningful. Sure you can use your inefficient (yet high burst dps) nuke to quickly down a mob or win a fight, but the price you pay is that you're idle while you regain your mana. Out of Combat regen completely negates this. Suddenly there is no "cost" to the wizard hitting mana burn on every single mob.

Mana is an outdated mechanic.
We should just remove it from the game and make spells not require it.
I think I have it right now?

I guess the real difference is that if you like to actively play a character, you should roll a melee. If sitting and waiting is more true to your calling, consider a caster.

I can't believe nobody else "liked" this.

Yeah, it was - you didnt regen mana / sta without it before stats.

If anything, kiting is the real broken and outdated mechanic, it was not intended to be possible and most other games do not allow it.

In D&D casters only got a certain number of spells they could cast before having to camp or rest somehow. Mana that regens slowly is just EQ's way to accomplish the same result. It's already tuned for regen rate. When there is an accelerated OOC rate people exploit it in xp groups by staying off aggro for as long as possible at times even though mobs are being killed by others in group. So it turns into a buff in the amount of casting they can do.

I agree, it doesn't matter to me what goes on during breaks. I don't care if someone is watching a vid.

Reading your reply and some of these other posts, I do wonder how many people expect conversation these days? I've been in very few groups where people talked during downtime and tried to get to know each other. The times I've tried to get conversations going during breaks, it's been like having a conversation with myself.

That is because 4 of the other 5 are the same guy boxing!
I get conversations going all the time but once in a while there is a group where it just isn't going to happen. Makes the XP slow way down subjectively.

Hmm, i'm honestly surprised that this turned out to be as unpopular as it has. I mean, I get it, I read most of the replies...and honestly, you all have far more exp on TLPs than I do, so i'll have to see if my opinion changes when I try this one.

But atm, I still stand by my point that 1-2 minutes of downtime is plenty, and 6+ minutes is just silly at this point, but I respect your opinions, and will see for myself tomorrow.

Being very judicious with magic was always the appeal of a lot of the older games. Having access to spells was always overpowering in the abilities that magic gave, but there should always be a cost. To be a spellcaster required that tacticians sense, even the original EQ cover art depicted that Erudite standing back from the fray, waiting for that right moment to cast, instead of being a steady stream.

Having started in pen and paper RPG's where one had to memorize spells and only could cast so many before resting for 8 hours was a great balancing tool. I know this is not such a game, but it is a bit disheartening to think of how much has changed.

At what price, power?