Regarding the kiting of large numbers of NPCs

This activity (the people doing this know who you are) is now prohibited until further notice. Limitations will be implemented in the future. GMs catching users doing it for the time being may face punishment. We're avoiding hotfixing the server to preserve spawn timers.

 

So will there be any elaboration why this is unwanted?

 

Because you're pulling 300 mobs, not 80.

Because our server 'balls' the mobs instead of that obvious train you see in the video, making the tactic far more efficient.

Because our server doesn't have mob warping, making pulling 100% safe.

Because mobs in maiden are not healing while they're chasing players.

Because even with 80 mob pulls, it lagged the AK server considerably, causing rubberbanding of the kite, slowing down the process.

Because the trick I did on AK was undoable in many/most zones in the game due to pathing.

 

Is there a mob limit you want to see everyone adhere to? Is 80 okay? I'm just asking because there are other places to kite or AE mobs down. Just need some clarification because no one wants to cause problems, yet AE xp in general is very efficient.

 

This is true to some degree, whille the pulls were at a certain size two things happend often, one there would be two balls, or some of the mobs would pop underneath the world.

 

This is wise, in my opinion. At least assuming that what you're looking at is some means of putting a sensible limit on AE kiting - as early changes to FG and the Deep did to PBAE exp - rather than killing it altogether.

When a particular method of gaining exp - especially when it's limited to one place - becomes superior to all alternatives by a sufficient degree of difference, it really does have a negative impact on a server. We witnessed this on Al'Kabor with the faction war in Tactics and shakerpaging in PoV.

People monopolized the relevant zones, refused to level anywhere else, were cliquish about groups, behaved badly when others wanted to use the zones in question. We also saw some of the disposable, mass-produced toons powerleveled by these outlandishly fast methods employed in some dubious enterprises: Zamiel's automated CH chains, the single-purpose toons used to pac bug zones and train other guilds' raids. At least one person even sold PLing by these methods in RMT transactions.

People will moan about TorvenQuest, but Torven is right that TAKP pathing and server architecture are far, far more conducive to massive fountains of AE experience than Al'Kabor ever was. There was a reason PoV was the only zone people shakerpaged, and that was that pathing and the guarantee that the pager and toons around him would go instantly linkdead upon triggering the AA made it finicky to manage in PoV and all but impossible in other PoP zones where people attempted it. Attempts by bards to kite in zones like HoH invariably failed. PoFire saw some PBAE activity, but not shakerpaging and not, I think, AE kiting on the scale that we're likely to see here on TAKP without some kind of change to current mechanics.

As an aside, I appreciate the effort to preserve the AL and Burrower cycles by avoiding a hotfix.

 

So is bard pbae kiting dead or just mob capped? I haven't done much of it but that mechanic is basically dead anywhere but takp - so I was hoping to enjoy it a bit more - but I understand the reasoning about how some mechanics are being used.

 

i honestly dont get the reasoning, because of the fact, that there will be alot more places to do this, then just Plane of Valor. like pointed out in the comment and video, also there is no intend to monopolize or be cliquish about this.
The server rules says you can do these things, if the zone is empty. also if i have prevented any from using the zone, just because their were polite not to interupt with our pbaoe, then i apologize, and if you see me in any zone Pbaoeing let me know probt and i will move aside

 

Nukem thanks for the AAs in ME. The bank said they were not able to process the wire request you sent because they do not recognize Bank of Ak'Anon as a legit address.


on another note,

Folks finding out ways to exploit the game and then the devs changing the game to curb it... are quite funny.

So far in our TAKP history, I'm aware of folks burning the midnight oil in FG upon Luclin release... folks kiting all of ME for xp. What did I miss? what is next?

 

As always, I will favor AKuracy.

However I do understand that the strategy of kiting many mobs and AEing them while the kiter hold aggro is an AKurate strategy, it does make sense to not want to see this in excess of what was doable on AK for all the reasons described by Torven.

 

but what i dont get, from the videos i have seen posted by Torven is that, he does this in Plane of nightmare, and kites the pit in plane of tactics with mobs being in a ball

 

It's not going to be disabled entirely, just limits put in place to try to keep it within the realm of really good exp but not game-breakingly ridiculous exp.

All the other emus put target limits on PBAoE spells. Count your blessings.

 

Mob aggro limits in general or specifically when kiting across a zone? I'm just curious how this would affect pulling for the other types of AE methods that have been acceptable for a long time.

 

So is the deep and FG zone pulls off limits right now?

 

Search post with the phrase #ravenwinged and Bum and you'll see them all. Most of them have to do with a troll being more badass than min/maxers and they cry.

 

ROFL

This is the third time a method of farming a ton of AAs was disabled/banned on the day I was about to get in on the fun.

Quoted for truth.

Remember Starvald? I remember Starvald.

 

I just realized you got me defending Nukem.

ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?!?!

 

have your WDC in pok

 

Nukem doubled my AAs in one pull in ME.

I went from 1.5 to 3.

 

Nukem is so good his xp reaches into the bazaar.

 

No, that's not forbidden

 

So my understanding is that Devs were looking to cap xp gain levels in Luclin to 2-3 AAs an hour. Is that really the goal? I think ME is the only place I've seen lately that you come close to breaking that wall. I mean you could theoretically do an ME pull with one wizard, mage, and bard and drop the wiz before final nuke and get something like 6 AAs on him in about an hour of really good boxing. But no one was doing that. You'd get two pulls completed in around 90 minutes and get 2-3 AAs in a full group per pull. That's 4-6 AAs in 90 minutes. So yeah, a bit more than the Dev goal I heard about through the grape vine.

 

Crashing a zone or lagging everyone in it would be possible to implement here but I think people would prefer a bit more elegant solution.

Pulls of this size will become a huge problem come POP and exp increases due to mob level. Even at his exploity-est, Torven was only able to pull 120 mobs on AK and that was laggy/inefficient. It's not really about an amount of AA the devs want to be possible per hour. It's about how many AA were possible on AK, per hour, due to its infrastructure. The amount of exp people get here simply was not possible.

I believe the consensus is leaning toward a pull limit on a per-zone basis and not a one-size-fits-all.

 

From eqlive. Mobs start to peel off large kites in 100 range, based on my experience. 300 kites were not possible.

I am for recreating this mechanic.

I am not for any decision based on some arbitrary “AA rate”.

 

Totally fare. I am saying that the ME pull isn't terribly far off the mark to the number I heard was the xp goal stated to me. Limit ME in whatever way is clever to get ya there. I'm sure we could even have players assist if you'd like the extra man power. Limit pulls to certain areas and test how much xp you get per pull. I'm sure in logs we could tell how many mobs that equates to.

But you all might have more accurate methods. In any case, the type of pulling is quite fun but I can understand why on a per zone basis the kite numbers needs considered. Thanks for the clarification.

 

I remember when 1 AA/hour was considered good. Kids these days

 

The fact of the matter is that mobs on AK could never be pulled in these quantities due to multiple limiting factors. Some of those factors no longer exist due to improvements in technology. But that doesn't mean everything gets to be easier.

You're here to play old EQ. The oldest, most era-accurate version of the game in existence. Embrace the grind.

 

Embrace the grind he says to a server that loved shakerpaging to skip grinds. I suppose end of luclin it won't matter much anyway. AK never had an enforced luclin period in which aaing is always slower than its pop counterparts.

 

How many players are on TAKP that paged on AK? Do you think it's more than a single digit percentage? Know your audience.

 

So I did many AE pulls of this type in PoFire. I actually did this on AK using a bard puller and on Phinigel using a low HP druid puller.

To echo what Torven said, there was a cap on the number of mobs you could pull for it to be worthwhile on both servers.

On AK you could pull everything in field 1 no problem. This however was the cap of this area. The pathing near the lava pools was horrible, you could single pull named mobs from that area to the entrance if you finessed it, but if you tried to do an AE pull down there everything gets lost in pathing and forgets you if you ran away too quickly, or it would all randomly warp onto your head and one round you. We did manage to pull out the lava pool area a few times using DA but it wasn’t extremely reliable.

Without the lava pools, the entire field 1 was worth about 1.5 AAs in a full group. This ended up around 2 AAs per hour.

The other, much better, area to do this was field 2. Field 2 had a few caveats. First of all, you needed all four of the mini raid mobs dead. On AK this was actually rarely the case so we didn’t get to do this often. Second you had to either ignore or split out and individually kill any of the casters in the gazebos as they could nuke you and I think rarely root/charm you if they were diviners. Which slowed down the pull process.

Like Field 1 you also had to single out the named mobs if any spawned and kill them because they summoned.

At the end you could gather all the magma men on the bridge up to the charm birds and all of field 2. You couldn’t go into castle 2 because too many casters and awful pathing.

A full pull in Field 2 was about 6 AAs for an entire group. Quite simply the best EXP on the server. Pulls here took a bit longer and with the long fire Respawn this was about 6 AAs per hour.

These pulls did lag the zone a bit and they definitely didn’t stack nicely, but it never crashed the zone.

The field 1 EXP rate could likely be matched in a BoT, Tactics or HoH group with a charmed pet or two. 2 AAs per hour in a solid group isn’t exactly unheard of. Quadding wizards at tables or charming druids in PoStorm could near these rates solo also.

The field 2 EXP rate blew away any other EXP on the server. However, IMO it wasn’t really extremely unbalanced on AK due to the spot being rarely available (Fire minis would frequently be sitting up) and on a server with no 85/15 gimping the only toons who are getting this EXP are people who completed planar progression. You wouldn’t see people leveling 46 Alts to 65 in a day here, it was mostly just getting your bottom tier resist AAs on mains or 6th Alts getting some core AAs.

I also did this on Phinigel while the server was in PoP. The way I had to do it was using a low HP druid. I’d do the same field 2 pull on there and drop my HP to 10%, then let wizards and clerics AE my train. I’d cast magic DoTs on myself to keep under 20%. However live had a very interesting mechanic that AK didn’t have (at least not with bard pullers generating hate). Once a mob dropped below 20% as well, it basically would ignore me kiting at low HP and instead immediately aggro on the wizards in their near proximity. It’s as though once both me and the mob were under 20% they stopped caring about low HP aggro. Very odd stuff. We still downed trains we just happened to sacrifice a wizard every cast and Rez them from a Cleric.