Feldon 
The recent Altar of Malice expansion includes several Named enemies in the overland Tranquil Sea and Phantom Sea zones. These names not only complete weekly Missions and Achievements, but also grant Ferrin (expansion currency), AoM armor gems, and personal status. These tantalizing rewards have led enterprising players to park their characters at the spawn locations with Mercenaries and/or Pets set to defend them. The mobs are therefore engaged within seconds of spawning, preventing others from even trying. There really is no contest.
EQ2 Lead Designer Kander has already applied one change to mitigate this AFK camping, and in a forum post he describes two more changes coming soon that will further address the issue.
After the jump, his comments from the EQ2 Forums:
So some changes for the overland AoM named mobs that are coming:
- They now can only be seen and killed every two hours, after a character has killed any named. Even if that mob is up, you will not be able to see it or attack it, nor will it attack you. They have the same spawn times and are available for those who have not killed them within the past 2 hours, meaning everyone else. This is on a per named mob basis. So yes, you will be able to kill other named mobs in the zone. [Currently as of today]
- We have added several random spawn points for the name mobs that are spread out, so you will have to actually look for the mob. [Next update]
- These bosses are no longer aggro. [Next update]
We are looking at better more interactive ways to deter this sort of behavior for future content. Abilities that may need to be reacted to or paid attention to or visual cues, etc. We are also discussing mercenaries becoming uninspired if you are not leading the way.
We will pay attention to the issue and see that we are making it better for those who are actually making the effort and playing the game, rather than changing or removing loot we feel is appropriate and fun.
Hopefully the changes don’t go too far. Completely eliminating bots is not possible without significantly impacting the gameplay of human players.
could you please also address the lackluster of weapons for scouts, why are players forced to have only 2 options atm either mc weapons or less powerful weapons like 2 and 4 seconds most scouts use 6 now a days and would like to see those 6 seconds more often
I started a thread about the lack of 4 second fabled pierce scout weapons on the official forums under items and equip. Post there also! There was a reply that it would be looked at but that was a while ago.
What’s worse is 2 out of the 3 existing 4 sec fabled scout weapons have poor stat options for scouts (reuse and recovery) no accuracy or dps mod, haste etc. Those 2 are raid acquired and I think the third is contested – not sure on that.
Now even solo overland mobs are gonna get ‘scripted encounters’. Yay, I guess. geez
According to what is listed above the encounter itself will be no different. Only how the encounter is initiated will change.
Fabled 6 sec scout weapons do drop out of Ossuary contested (rarely) and Sanguine Fountains (at least 2 of them there) and I think that they also drop in Inner Sanctum.
if they would just make those mobs non agro they would not have to do the rest of the stuff and as far as making afk, what about us crafters who have it up to save us in a pinch lol.
@Eric
That might be the case if it was only pets and mercs, but it’s not.
I’d love to see every named mob get an effect that randomly casts a stun/stifle/root that can only be removed by reading a captcha-like instruction from the screen (maybe an overlay image). It could be simple like to move a particular direction so you can keep your hands in play position. If the color, position and orientation are randomized it’d only be easy for a human player. Some people who have trained their cats to farm would hate it.
Do that then pets and mercs will be the biggest concern.
My two cents..I would deplore a game that makes the enemy army a combatant that you can’t get around; yet when you get to face the real adversary (aka BOSS) and they’re nothing more than a toggle-able best friend/worst enemy.
“Oh look I can /dance with you, /spit on you, /blink at you, /scoff at you,etc., etc.” — At least until I click “make mad”
And honestly capatcha for bosses is even worse. I think I’d rather dial a 1-800 number and just select 1 to engage rather then type a randomized code every time I want to engage a boss.
I respectfully disagree. I don’t want anything in a message on the screen unless it is red. I have a blue green color blindness, one that made it totally impossible to do the one instance where you had to determine if the post were green/red/blue. As far as making your merc go idle I am not for that either. Sometimes I am on a lower crafting alt, and need the extra help when I am wearing crafting gear and getting harvest or doing the weekly/daily mission that usually puts you having to fight a few mobs.
I hope they keep their hands from the mercenary AI (uninspired). I fear normal gameplay situations where the uninspired flag can cause sudden death and repairbills
I agree with you 100%
To be honest if they fixed the crud that is dropping in solo/advance solo missions folks might spend more time doing some of those. The entire sorry loot that comes out of the solo/advance solo zones vs risk, to the risk/vs/reward of the overland boss mobs yea, and that is why they are being slaughtered out right.
Solo and adv solo zones aren’t meant to give players great loot but to be used as a stepping stone to ready them for heroic content. Trying to balance quality of gear between solo, adv solo, contested, heroic and raid gear is no easy task I am betting. Oh and master crafted.
A few ways to fix the issue:
A. Have the named be non KoS.
B. Make the weekly quest be for zone mobs not named.
C. Make the Solo zones have the chance of dropping the same stuff the named do so that people don’t farm them as much.
One interesting note, the other night a friend and I were working on the weekly in tranquil and I finished before him, he was able to kill the same named before the 2 hours was up, but I could not and I assume it was because he was still on the weekly quest.
Part of everquest has always been farming and camping named, but now that the named have a quest attached, and also better rewards than some of the zones it is a problem
You forgot one:
D. Make all servers PvP
(not that I would want that)
It also seems to me that since 2 hour change the nameds are being camped even more.
I say just punish the players who have brought this all about. This isn’t new, the same players have always camped a named… whether AFK and a merc, or exact timing every hour so their toon pops at the same time the named pops. Those players make it far more difficult for the developers, and for other players…. those players take the fun out of the game. So why should others pay the price…. punish the greedy players that camp a named. Even guilds are greedy…. knowing when an elite merc will pop and camping every possible location so their guild members can grab the merc… other players never had a chance. Well, so much for my rant… at least SOE is trying to do something to stop the current campers. Good luck with that SOE 🙂
The developers created this system and the players adapt to it and a few learn to take full advantage of it. In addition to random locations, do random spawn times within an hour for example.
Since the change there are More campers. Almost parked long enough to warrant inserting the campers into EQ2Map.
Make the contested names x2 ala ToV/VD names, and instance them. Or make the weekly names a pillar mob in random instances.
awesome give an advantage to class/races that have track, now it will take much longer to finish the weekly on toons that dont have it.
all they had to do was make them all non agro, which they say they will do this would force people that want to afk camp it to use 3rd part software to push buttons for them and SOE is much more likely to ban for this behavior. remove all the other changes.