New Lodizal Agreement Proposal
 

Background:
As it stands, Lodizal is a simple FTE mob, whoever gets first engage wins. So most people park pets on his spawn point, and try to hit their '/pet attack' macro ASAP on pop.

The problem:
This FTE method rewards two things which do not require any skill.
1) Ping -- players who live near the P99 server have a significant advantage over those who do not. This requires no skill and is purely based on luck, and cannot be easily compensated for.

2) Autofire -- the current FTE status of the camp strongly encourages players to use autofire programs to beat others to FTE. There's basically no reason not to use it. Obviously I have no way of proving that anyone is, but I strongly suspect that most people who camp Lodizal are using autofire.

Proposal:
Let's change Lodizal to a roll, like scout. The winner gets dibs on the kill for 30 minutes, and players who rolled stay to help kill, or the winner can ask their guild for help if not enough people are around.

Additional details: The roll window would be 20 seconds, meaning that the cutoff for the final roll would be 20 seconds after the first roll. From discussions with GMs, the server does not log rolls, so players would be encouraged to record video in case of a dispute.

If the winning roll player has not killed Lodizal within the allocated 30 minute period, Lodizal then becomes the sole opportunity of 2nd place roll, and so on. If 2nd place roll has left the zone by that time, s/he is skipped and it goes to 3rd place, and so on.

Loot:
It doesn't matter who gets XP, who got FTE, or who got the final blow. Only the roll matters with regard to who wins loot. If someone who did not win the roll takes the loot without permission from the winner, they are in violation of the agreement and GMs could punish appropriately. An abandoned Lodizal corpse is not FFA loot (consider the winning player may be swapping to an alt to loot).

I like this, very much. I think clickfests are dumb, and player agreements (whatever their faults) are superior.

However, I do have to warn you (and I say this as someone who helped make the Shady Goblin agreement happen) ... agreements are very hard to get started. You have to get everyone "on the ground" involved to agree to them. Forum posts a good first step, but they're only the beginning.

Maybe the staff would accept it if everyone except one jackass who refuses ... but with Shady we had to put up with Siryado breaking the agreement multiple times, even after everyone else agreed to it. It was only after he finally gave up that we finally got the agreement "cemented", and it was only then that the staff began "policing" it and punishing people who turned-in instead of rolling.

Personally I kinda of hope the staff rolls out "/list 2.0" and applies it to mobs like Lodizal, making such an agreement necessary. But since they operate on their own timetable it could be years until that happens ... if it even does. So it's very possible this agreement is the only chance to end the clickfest anytime soon.

I wish you luck!

Why not just do /picks and AoCs at this point... Smh...

I like this agreement. As Loramin said though its tough to get everyone on board.

Just join Dawn Believers and own the turtle :)

Pras be Ragu, turtle king.

It's not a bad idea, I would be in favor of something like this. Lodizal engage is long overdue for a revamp.

My idea has always been give Lodizal a bunch of different spawn points like Guardian Kozzalym, so the autofire overlords can't AFK on his spawn point for hours and automatically win.

Either method would be an improvement.

I don’t agree.

However, I would be keen on foot racing from some predetermined line, if you’d really prefer to avoid the clickfest.

Just autofire it like robthe, foroar, etc. who regularly died after fte without even moving.

I'm in DB and have a lot of experience doing lodi. We ensure none of our guys cheat/autofire but we've had constant issues and suspicions with other players using autofire. Some of them we've seen get FTE and then just stand there and die AFK. Some of them have been caught and some haven't. We're a casual guild and don't usually have guys recording everything.

We've also had GMs investigate before but they have a hard time determining if people are autofiring or not. And latency plays a part as well. People near the server (maryland?) have much lower latency and get FTE much more often than people with higher latencies. I imagine someone with >100 ping would have no chance.

I've thought about the issue before and I think something similar to m00r5tuD's solution is best. Have 4-6 possible static spawn points for him so that your chances at snagging lodi has more to do with numbers and luck than ping/cheating. Not sure if the GM's are into that though.