Locked encounters and camps.Follow

When I started EQ2 I liked the idea of locked encounters but now after a while that has changed.. Not cause you cant heal outside groups or something like that but for the fact that just because there are locked encounters (hardly) noone think you can killsteal. Why do they think they cant killsteal? Well, cause because there are no need for camps now.

IMO there are camps its just that noone respects them. I might not be 'KS' the way I could be in EQ1 but it happens so frequently when my group 'camps' a namespawn or a group of mobs that someone else grabs them first. This is very annoying. I think that without the locked encounters there would once again be recognized camps that more people would respect. Sure it sucked to be KS'ed in EQ1 but it was so rare that it happened I didnt loose hours of gameplay cause of it.

So what Im saying that imo I get KS'ed 10-20 times as often in EQ2 then in EQ1 just because of the locked encounters.
I never flame anyone who KSed me in EQ2 cause in peoples oppinions you cant do it. I just kindly ask if we could have that camp to ourselfs but most often we cant..
I know it wont happen but what I would want is not for the locked encounters to go away but to get people to respect camps once again.

Question:
Am I alone or do anyone agree with me?

I agree with you.

Although I don't think the answer is to do away with locked encounters.

What we have is a great new melting pot of players from lots of different backgrounds. Many may be entirely new to this sort of game. There has not been time for etiquette to develop.

It may be that it never will but I'm hopeful. A lot of the people seem to want to behave sensibly and socially but are still learning. I won't dredge up the locked node argument but I notice a lot more people who will give way when I am on a node than a week or two back. I think it is gradually becoming a general aspect of game etiquette to leave people with a node if they are there first. Some people - just like in EQ and other games - will of course never conform.

Game design is not helping us here. Many quests call for killing single named mobs or mobs within a tiny area. Often multiple quests call for killing the same mob or mobs. To make matters worse these are often well below the level of the people doing the quest.

Having another group move in and take your mobs is bad enough, having someone 7 or 8 levels higher come in and slaughter them is worse.

A friend and I were after Defiled Knights the other day. We were new to the zone and could only find a few near the door. These were being slaughtered by a level 32 so fast we could not even think of pulling one. We went away and did something else.

I also considered that it might be just because its so many new players and there is little etiquette yet and it might become better.
If we all ask kindly and explain about etiquette it will become better over time.
People will learn that others wont group with them if they behave bad and being rude, one might just get you 50 less people to group with (a whole guild) if they are very rude. It could easily be a fellow guildy's alt they are ******** over etc.

Well, well.. Mby even this thread can educated one or two people if they read it and make them realize that what they are doing might upset people.

This game (to me) is about having fun, making friends, share information and to help others. (And ofcourse to be the most uber wizard on the server *grin*)

I have to agree with xythex on this one. Having played EQ1 from it's release back in '99, my perspective on the subject is a little different. KSing was *rampant* in EQ1, at all levels. And given the fact that many mobs were on ungodly long spawn timers, the problem was a HELL of a lot worse.

I *never* liked the idea, for all those years, of "camps". As a long-time D&D player from years ago, the concept just boggled my mind. Sure, this is a computer-based RPG, but can you imagine how boring pencil-and-paper RPGs would be if all the DM had to offer for a given session was a single spawn that would re-pop every 25 minutes, and your group just sat there and killed the same thing over and over?

To me, the new system is a vast improvement over the old system in EQ1. The spawn rates in EQ2 are *far* more reasonable than they ever were in EQ1. I NEVER feel like I'm just sitting there waiting for something to do. And I actively avoid groups, now, that want to just sit in one location and do the same thing over and over. In EQ2 there's just no *reason* to do so. Players do that because they just simply don't know any better.

As far as I'm concerned, he who locks the encounter first has the mob fair and square. If I want the mob, then I have to be sure and lock it first.

That being said, I also agree that it's unfortunate that the current quest design makes it not only possible, but practically necessary, that a person is forced to mass slaughter grey-con mobs to simply complete a quest. I believe there are ways to fix this problem. The solutions might **** people off, but you're never going to please everyone. One suggestion is that as a player levels, the *moment* a quest goes grey to a person, that quest should be removed from their journal, unless it is an absolutely necessary Hallmark quest (which I'm not sure if it's even possible that they ever go grey). Taking this approach to quests will have a side-effect of also making people feel like they are not on a levelling treadmill (and, as an aside, they have gone a LONG way towards doing this in EQ2. I'm simply not in a hurry to level anymore, like I always was in EQ1.)

But, back to the original point: I believe that once a person has locked an encounter, that person has the mob fair and square. I believe the encounter-locking system has *finally* given us all the freedom to say that, to the great dismay of content-hogs who think they have a right to monopolize any content they happen to need at a given point in time. Nobody's quest is any more important than someone else's. Period. You need the quest mob? Then lock the quest mob. You are 100% protected from KSing as soon as you lock the encounter. Your quest mob is "taken" by someone else while you're in another encounter, and you couldn't disengage in time to take the mob you *really* need? I don't mean to sound harsh here, but that sounds like a personal problem to me. If you were as single-minded and clearly focused as you *claim* to be when you're ******** the so-called "KSer" out, then you would have had the quest mob when he popped.

To people who wish to enjoy the content of the game as it was intended to be enjoyed, rejoice! To those who believe they can sit in the middle of an area and plop a friggin property deed down staking claim to the area...sorry. Your ship sailed with EQ1.

If they did that they'd be inundated with petitions from people who'd dinged without meaning to. It would either need a self-delevelling ability so you could voluntarily lose some exp or it's a non-starter.

I never saw KSing as rife in EQ. At least half of what was called KSing was what we are still seeing in EQ2, people ready to engage and jumped to the punch. I'd only have to say Lodizal, Evolved Burrower, or a few other names to an old EQ player for them to recognise the phenomenon.

I think the locking has brought into the game a serious lack of respect for other players. Instead of wondering what they are doing and if what you are going to do cuts across it we have a simple black and white locked/not locked to judge all situations by.