NPC Spawn Issue: Project 1999 Would Be More Classic If It Removed the Plane of Hate Safe Spot

[mycoolrausch]

Also a great deal of the cheesing comes from the mobs not seeing invis, which can only be blamed on whatever drugs the classic devs were on. I'd love to see that nerfed but it's very unlikely since it's very not classic.

[Jimjam]

We can see from really notable mobs in well explored zones like Quilmane and Cracktusk that spawning and pathing for any and all zones is a best guess attempt based on incomplete data that is rarely an exact fit to classic. We can be assured that any individual inconsequential mob, like a hate trash, is unlikely to be an exact fit to classic spawns and paths.

The consequence is that safe spots in p1999 are an emergent thing that don’t necessarily reflect the ones from live. I don’t think this is a terrible thing - finding undiscovered safespots was classic - except perhaps when it fundamentally changes the game play of a zone (perhaps in the case of PoH? There was apparently the west wall spot in classic (maybe commenters are confusing hate and fear) and maybe others, but these were used to congregate not park toons).

[Fammaden]

As long as the minis are solo/duo killable, the farmers will always innovate faster and operate with greater efficiency than you and your big target raid guild. If you nerf this, they will find a new spot, and a new way, while you've only compounded your own issues for tracking the mob for yourself and your guild.

You are essentially arguing from a "you can't prove a negative" fallacy. Just because no one mentioned the pillar being safe to camp out/log in doesn't prove a mob should aggro the spot. The burden of proof is on you to find evidence that its an unsafe spot, not just lack of evidence.

Its a slippery slope path, much as I do appreciate your frustration with this aspect of the magician epic this is not a good faith proposal.

If you want to advocate for non-classic mechanics changes to the minis similar to how they have implemented rooted dragons and other non-classic adjustments to address non-classic behavior, then fine. But don't frame it as a bug report, its dishonest.

[Jimjam]

I think you are projecting motive - Loramin was pretty clear in acknowledging nerfing the safe spot would hurt guilds more than farmers as well as introducing less mini loot to the servers overall.

I wonder if a change would make more classic behaviour for guilds? Currently a guild member pops on to a tracker to decide whether it is worth going to hate. I don't find that entirely classic - I suggest a more classically aligned behaviour would be for guilds to prearrange a hate night, port up and try their luck / rotate spawns ready for their next visit.

Obscuring/rearranging safe spots would encourage guilds towards that model of visiting Hate (until a new safe spot is discovered) ... or maybe just completely dissuade them from visiting at all? Either of these situations seem more classic than the current.

[Dolalin]

I'd suggest the best way forward is to look at mob placement and roamer pathing and make sure it's as correct as it can be based on the info we have, augmented with how things are on Live, which can often confirm classic sources to such a degree that you can more or less just copy the pathing directly.

[loramin]

Originally Posted by Jimjam [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I wonder if a change would make more classic behaviour for guilds? Currently a guild member pops on to a tracker to decide whether it is worth going to hate. I don't find that entirely classic - I suggest a more classically aligned behaviour would be for guilds to prearrange a hate night, port up and try their luck / rotate spawns ready for their next visit.

There's no need to wonder: just read any classic sources and it immediately becomes apparent that tracking Hate and porting up to kill one mini didn't happen. No guild was tracking Hate on live 1999-2001, and I challenge anyone who believes otherwise to provide proof.

Enchanters soloing the pivotal mob for the Mage epic, or the Necro epic 0.5, is even less classic. If anyone can provide proof otherwise, I will record myself eating a sock and post it here.

So we have a choice between ending two things that never happened in classic EQ, both revolving around pivotal class items ... or maintaining a safe spot no one can even prove ever existed.

If our goal here is classic EQ, it seems the choice that makes guilds classically have to raid Hate (and then repeat every three days) is the superior choice.

[Vsai]

My classic experience doesn't align with this at all. The reason guilds rarely got involved was because hate was a farm fest. At 46 new alts would get ported up and sit on the safewall which was easy to get to because 10 people would be up there soloing. When a mini popped on the first floor these unaffiliated soloers would kill it and see who needed what. Druids, mages, shamans, enchanters - leveling toons, would be there soloing about 300-500 range away from safe wall. Trash was down, people would be waiting for repops. I never saw anyone approach the second floor without a guild there, but first floor was safe and minis that spawned there were killed very quickly without the need for a tracker. No one even ported up with a wc cap or portion, porters were always there. As for people soloing on P99, it's a forever box with nth degree a-type personalities investing years of their spare time to do things like solo things that would be unthinkable classically. Nature of the beast.

[Croco]

re: Loramin

Just because something did or didn't happen in a live environment that was never stuck with content even a fraction as long as p99 has been doesn't mean it wasn't possible to do so. And since you can't prove the possibility or impossibility of it there seems to be flimsy reasoning at best to change it just because you have a hardon for making things harder for people for a perceived difficulty in your faulty memory of something that happened 20+ years ago.

Classic is a sandbox, a snapshot of how the game functioned at a certain time. Once you start trying to force an experience on people based on your specific point of view or perception then the server is no longer classic. Your point of view of how things might or might not have operated when you have circumstantial evidence at best is a very poor way to run the project(no one realized how important documentation of how the game worked would be back in era or everyone would've documented EVERYTHING).

[loramin]

If the goal of P99 isn't to recreate the EQ of 1999-2001 (it's just to create a sandbox of the rules, as you say) ... why are the dragons rooted here? They weren't rooted in 1999-2001.

I would argue that not rooting them trivialized what should have been a pivotal classic EQ experience: it went against the goals of the project. Thus, the staff did the most classic thing possible by doing something that was literally unclassic (rooting them).

I would similarly argue that making guilds have to raid Hate ... as countless classic sources show, that's what people did back in '99-'01 ... is worth eliminating a safe spot (that no one has shown to be classic either).

[loramin]

P.S. I should also note there's a compromise option, though I personally don't like it as much.

If Hate had a safe spot ... but if was far away from the minis ... that would at least eliminate solo mini farming, while still allowing Hate tracking.

But again, I really think our Hate, which is about tracking 24/7 and then bringing up a force to kill one NPC, is as unclassic as training the TOV dragons. Eliminating safe spots entirely would have zero effect except to force classic EQ to be played on our classic server.