Alter End-Game Mechanics

[mwatt]

I'm very pleased that Nilbog is interested in listening to input on this. He certainly doesn't have to, so first of all, thanks to Nilbog.

As to the actual matter of suggestions, only three make sense to me, when one takes into account the preservation of classic play mechanics and conservation of development time.

Winning idea number 1: Increase spawn frequency by a large amount. This is at heart, a supply and demand problem. People will say that TMO will just get more Dragons this way, which is true. But eventually they will be equipped faster and less interested in camping what they don't really need, if targets respawn frequently. When you factor in idea number 2 below (elimination of windows) we may find that other guilds will score more frequently anyway.

Winning idea number 2: Do away with known spawn times plus variance, i.e. get rid of the idea of a "window". Nothing is less fun than sitting in a zone waiting hours for a mob to pop, or alternatively having to constrain play so that your character can be almost instantly to the spawn point. Simply spawn these Dragons at random times, but there should be a minimum respawn time of say an hour and the randomized frequency should be high enough so that the delay is never longer than say, a week or so (but this limit should not be publicly known and perhaps should vary too).

Winning idea number 3: Get Velious out ASAP.

I don't expect that any of these ideas will FIX the problem. They will just lessen it. It might be the best we can do if we want to respect classic mechanics (i.e., not tokens, no instancing, no max dragons killed per guild in one week, etc.) and also not require any significant development effort other than what it takes to get Velious out.