Mob Leashing

[grant]

Hey Poru,

First of all, thank you thank you for fixing charm. My enchanter is much more enjoyable now

However, I wanted to raise my concerns about the mob leashing behavior patched in today. I feel that adding leashing behavior to mobs removes one of the most memorable qualities of Everquest, that is the ability to create massive trains. Whether it's for the sake of entertainment, profit, or the result of a misstep sending you over a ledge resulting in one mob pathing through the entire zone and bringing hell toward you at high speed. Trains add a unique flavor to the game that I find myself missing in most other games.

I also noticed that with this leashing change, a charmed pet disappears when charm breaks if you're too far from its spawn. This is very annoying because you lose the opportunity to re-charm it (or at least kill it to get your weapons back).

I believe that a large part of the community is not happy with this change, based on OOC chat when I logged in. I didn't see one opinion supporting the leashing. Right now all we can do is speculate about your reasons for implementing the change. I was hoping you could explain why you added leashing and possibly consider rolling back that change if it's not for the sake of server stability.

Thanks for all the work you put in on this server!

[poru]

a charmed pet disappears when charm breaks if you're too far from its spawn.

Fixed!

Also, roamers have been unleashed. They were snapping back to spawn when attacked by pets.

This isn't the Rambo server.

Pulling entire zones (100 - 300 mobs) for leveling was never a thing on live when I played.

You can still pull dozens in some dense zones.

Even Wiz/Clr/Enc AE groups were nerfed hard on live and they were nothing close to what has been going on here.

It has nothing to do with hardware or ruining your day, we are just Emulating EQ.

[Kattamaran]

How is this not the Rambo Server, when you can solo Pkane of Time? Its a solo Server, cant get much more Rambo than that.
Besides its all about fun and geting uber.

#giveusourtrainsback

pretty please

[dalien]

Pulling entire zones and AEing them is definitely not a live thing, but who cares here? You need hundreds of AA to make a lot of classes viable for PoTime+ content here, and mass pulling easy zones is how you get them. I'm still working on maxing out my main but I would love to work on some alts; the prospect of getting hundreds of AA on them is daunting.

The leash mechanic is really begging to be abused as well. For example I zoned into PoAir earlier and just trained the whole zone up to Xegony's island, they never showed up. Also that mini-boss that attacks you as soon as you port up to her and starts the event, well I just ran to the back of her island and he leashed too. In PoEarthA I trained from the zonein to where Arbitor of Earth is supposed to spawn and only one mob managed to follow me all the way to his spot. etc.

Anyways, I can think of quite a few ways this leash mechanic can be abused and I don't want to put ideas in anyones head (heh), but I really hope you reconsider this. Mobs leashing is certainly NOT emulating Everquest.

[poru]

Pulling entire zones and AEing them is definitely not a live thing, but who cares here?

I care.

Pulling entire zones and AEing them is definitely not coming back.

If leashing goes away something will replace it but I am really pleased with leashing so far.

Just go play the game the way it was meant to be played, but solo. Have fun.

Or don't. There are plenty of easy-mode servers to play on.

Casual Dreams can never be everything to everyone.

[Barstis]

As a potential SUGGESTION, I would say to increase exp rates to match accordingly. Or to considerably lower AE Proc rates. Or maybe add NPC summoning.

Pulling mass things and killing at once WAS a viable thing on Live. It was called Shaker pulling, and Warriors/Zerkers were the only class able to do it. It was most commonly done in PoNightmare, Nadox was another one it was done in, and PoValor if the warrior was super geared. It was also nerfed sometime mid 2007.

I think the Pickclaw NPCs are a good touch to AAing. The rogue NPCs were kinda easy. However, like has been said before, while it's not intended to be an EASY server, it is "Casual Dreams".

My thing is: Who wants to sit and kill 50 mobs for an AA back to back to back? I remember kiting PoFire tables on Live, and charm killing in BoThunder. I grinded out many AAs that way, and it was a decent amount of exp per kill, even on live it was a significant more amount than whats given here per kill. I think of those exp values were given rather than the set rate, than it would honestly alleviate all of the complaints. It'd still be decent to get AAs, it'd still be decent to get exp, and it'd cut down on training and rambo pulling.

[inwkxm]

I cannot say that I have really tested the new Leashing, but I did see the OOC last night discussing it.

I know that is how I leveled my Rogue and Bard were from swarming. I personally thought EXP was higher than it is on live, but maybe that was me because I rounded up so many critters to kill.

Some of you jump on and grind out levels, AAs and do some of the missions, I do look forward to doing those, but I just do not have a ton of time to jump on and grind like that everyday. If we have Leashing so be it, I will adjust to the play style and it may take a bit longer to get leveled up and full AA.

The joy I get from the server is actually being able to log on and do something without having to find a group to do it, that is what I see different from live. Once you found a good group you hated to leave because for a time the EXP was rolling in, that and it was just fun to do with others. But I hated the LFG part of the game and Camp Check.

While EXPing will present more of a challenge with leashing it is still a place to jump on, get some decent EXP and still have time to spend with your RL family and friends.


Just my 2cp

Jallain
Toban

[Kattamaran]

I wonder, if the hardware isent the problem, what was the problem? In my understanding the server runs since a long time. Several years? Why the sudden leashing? Did people complain? I never had an issue of someone blocking a zone, just went somewhere else and vice versa.

[grant]

Thanks for answering Poru. I can respect you wanting to keep the leveling experience less about zone pulls and more about dungeon crawling and the like. To some extent I agree with you, because zone pulling gets old fast and encourages you to stick to a couple of efficient zones, making other places more of a ghost town. However, I'm hoping a different solution might be considered, because adding leashing behavior just feels very unlike EQ to me. On live I used to just run around Kurns tower on my monk and pull all the mobs for fun, even though I wasn't getting exp or much profit. It's just fun seeing a wild train behind you.

Didn't live reduce the number of mobs that could be effected by spells and abilities? I'm pretty sure bard AOE was nerfed by reducing the max affected targets. That seems like a pretty good solution to me, although I don't know what that would take on the coding side of things.

Also, I think Barstis brings up a good point about looking into AA exp rates if zone pulling is out. Have you looked at what the xp rates were on live for some of the hot spots like PoFire tables and compared them to Casual Dreams (taking into the account the increase in killing speed)? From personal experience it seems a little slower.

Just brainstorming here, I hope you're not taking it personally. Cheers.

Edit: Oh and thanks for fixing the charm pet leashing bug

[poru]

I appreciate the constructive feedback, thank you.

I have reworked my solution so that mobs are no longer leashed to their spawn points and behave much more naturally.

Now, mobs will follow you anywhere as long as you don't get too far away. If you do get too far away they simply stop, heal, and then walk back to their spawn point or resume their pathing.

So you can round up a huge train again but it takes some work.

It should be easier in most cases to simply kill them one room at a time, preserving the dungeon crawl experience.