Summoning... the long and the short of it...Follow

Gbaji, first, this thread's original purpose was to get some people's opinions and remembrances about summoning in EQ. Not about getting old zones back into use. That was a derailment which I happily responded to.

Second, all your quibbles are controllable by tinkering with things like drop and spawn rates. You make your arguments by arguing to extremes, the "slippery slope" approach. Raiders won't abandon their mains and spend all their time pharming lowbie zones with their lowbie alts unless it was made easier to acquire drops that way than to raid and I venture to say Sony would never do that, even if they implemented my idea, because they've never favored groupers over raiders. This isn't sour grapes on my part. I spent years as a raider, sometimes in the top guild on a server, and I've spent years in a social guild, primarily grouping, and I've done a lot of solo play as well. I don't think I have an axe to grind here.

I think if a good balance was struck, the old zones could become used again and players could enjoy playing their main as well as lower level alts, and obtain reasonable rewards for the effort. THAT would be good for the game IMO. It cannot be good for the game to have 75% of the zones totally empty most of the time. On that surely we all agree. And I also agree that your tongue-in-cheek suggestions about cutting XP rates by 80% to keep people at lower levels and XPing in lower zones would be colossal failure today because it has to be conceded that the vast majority of players don't want the game to be challenging and difficult. The small minority that DO play on the progression servers, or on the emu servers "whose names shall not be mentioned here." They're willing to pay the price in time and effort to do things the old-fashioned way and as a result they do "enjoy" the old zones because they have to spend so much time in them!

Now... anyone got any interesting anecdotes about being summoned? I can recall fondly on Vex Thal raids when as a druid I'd get summoned to a boss mob when I got to the top of the hate list. While I used to joke that meant as a druid I was a better damage-dealer than the wizards, mages, rogues and monks on the raid. I think the reality was that some of at least our wizzies and mages were so afraid of being summoned that they kept their damage output under TOO much control. When a druid gets summoned in a raid encounter with multiple wizards and mages, something's wrong somewhere...

Edited, Jun 13th 2014 9:29pm by Sippin

The problem with raising the zones to level 70-75 is that there aren't enough players that would make use of those zones even at that level! For a level 100, a green mob is 80 and even a dark blue is at least 95. If you can't provide an incentive in the majority of zones for a level 95-100 to want to go there, you're going to find most zones empty or close to it. That's just a reality.

I guess one approach would be to preserve the current "hot zone" leveling path for new players (but maybe remove the 85-90 hot zones, to encourage those levels to "see the new world") and convert every other zone to a mix of HIGH levels that gives XP to players that are 85-100. As the level cap increases you raise those. I'd suggest create another set of zones for leveling from 1-75 or so to avoid having players do the same zones over n over every time they create a new toon.

This might have some positive impact. As a traditionalist it bothers me because inevitably it would strip out a lot of the "character" of the older zones. Their original raison d'etre would vanish and every zone, not matter how classic and memorable, would become just another grind zone.

Edited, Jun 14th 2014 6:32am by Sippin

Summoning is without a doubt the worst mechanic in the game.

I'm fine with raid bosses and some group names using it, but summoning trash mobs are the rule nowadays with non summoning being the rare exception. It severely limits hunting areas for certain soloing classes...I've gotten to the point of logging in burning lesson in the one decent zone for my class/level that doesn't summon and logging out.

The biggest change I have noticed since I've returned in the last year since I stopped playing during velious is lack of freedom: to play the way the way you want, gear the way you want...

This game is on rails now. Do it the way the dev wants you to, while wearing your spreadsheet generated class specific equipment, or not at all.

Too many memories of playing my bard and getting summoned during a raid wipe. Mash the Deftdance hotkey and immediately get the "YOU have died!"

Then, to rub salt in the wound, respawn in Plane of Knowledge or wherever and immediately see "Jophiel begins to dance about nimbly!" and my discipline burned for the next hour

We used the summoning mobs in the Hole to do my enchanters epic kill there with just an underpowered necro and said enchanter.

They'd summoning my brother's necro up and he would feign. I was intentionally dead so he revived me to him. This was after numerous failed attempts to break the zone and skip past the mix of see undead/see invis mobs.

So summoning mobs saved the day, that one time.

Funniest part was how silly easy the actual chanter kill mob was.

Pretty sure you're thinking of Chardok there, not the Hole

I went down to that room with my 2 65's and 2 mercs, just to say I did that room, and the totally lost track of the grey Sarnaks...so right at how big the train got!!!!!!!!!.....