Suggestions for changing the MPK systemFollow

I see many valid suggestions and ideas, however also see how many of these can be either taken advantage of, or how they could be detrimental to exp pt's...
most exp camps are somewhat close to zone.
when the source of a mob's hate "Zones" have the mob lose all hate and become deaf dumb and blind for a cool down period .. rather than until it reaches it's spawn point.. I could see deviant players training all the mobs of an area to a zone so no one could exp from them..

my suggestion on this note would be .. if the player zone's a mob.. instead of wandering back to it's spawn point..
have it despawn, and respawn in it's place during it's cool down stage..
say .. deaf and blind for 30 sec... despawn and 30 sec til it respawns..
this of course excludes NM's .. maybe a different set of rules should play in for that..

as for the GM's .. I don't think the manpower or resources should be required or are necessary to improve the situation..
use what we have...
Give the GM's more power.. give them the ability to respawn mobs, return lost exp, etc.. or even
.. how about a system if a player violates the terms of service.. instead of a "time-out" or "jail".. force the player to stand in spot for x amount of game time.. per violation.. freeze them in place and make them stand motionless unable to talk, act, or participate in any way.. alter their name visibly or maybe even turn them all gray like a statue..
for lack of a better explanation..
make them a monument stating they have violated the ToS.. somehow.. create a different icon to float over their head..
make them stand in place unable to do anything until their time out is expired.. if they log.. make that time continue when they log back on.. keep them from taking the easy way out..
I do this to my 6 yr old when she misbehaves..
By standing in place unable to respond to hecklers, or passer-bys or a possible NM spawn.. just stand there helpless for the world to see that they did a "no-no"...

make them into a visible statement.. so others can see the efforts of GM's..

GM's are viewed as a joke as of the moment.. they can unstick you and be a listener to your vent.. but the response is always the same.. "We'll investigate the issue". nothing is "made right" nothing is visible to the player reporting the issue.

when you zone into an area.. every now and then. a GM should post a /sh or system message to the inhabitants of that zone.. to remind them that they are being watched.. When people know that there will be repercussions to their actions, and that there are eyes on them. I think you'll find their actions will be far more civil.

Here's another idea.. Put a new NPC in key areas.. Make them the GM model.. as a default they could act as NPC's giving information like how many players are in that area, or update information.. etc.. or even a list of people that commited violations in the past say week or day..
At random times.. let a GM take control of that NPC to monitor the area.. no visible change.. but having the GM model there as a reminder to people that there are GM's available and that they are monitoring.. some people in this game lack the moral backbone or intestinal fortitude to act as mature and sincere people.. and need a reminder that there are consequences to their actions..
make violating players visible examples as their punishment..
give them time to think of what they did to deserve it.. heck, put a dunce cap on their head or something..

and my last suggestion.. not all "MPK attempts" are intentional.. The other day my party was exp'ing in an area close to another pt.. a mob spawned on the other pt.. and since we were much higher in lvl.. rather than let them die or be forced to call help on the mob one of our pt members claimed it.. when our puller brought the original target mob and his relatives to the party, our attention became diverted.. when the mob became unclaimed the other pt thought we had drug that one to them.. It was an heated argument until someone in the other party stated it popped, wasn't "brought" .. though no one died, the other pt felt it was a mpk attempt. we did manage to kill our mobs and that one.. but they felt they were in jeopardy because of our carelessness..when it was in truth our attempt to save them for a party wipe. After it was straightened out we ended up helping each other and cooperating .. they pulled the mobs they couldnt pull before, and didn't fear links so much.. we were there trying to get I think a coffer key.. so I ended up more or less curing their pt while our pt pulled the mobs that were interfering with their puller getting the exp mobs they were after.. Needless to say they loved us until we got our drop....

so my suggestion to that, I think a window of summoning sickness should be implemented on mobs to prevent spawn aggro.. so if a mob spawns. the pt there has time to get out of it's way before it becomes aware of it's surrounding.. that's my two cents..



sidenote: Thanks to SE for taking the time and listening to our suggestions.. hope we can all work together to make our virtual world more pleasant and enjoyable so we can all enjoy it as we want..
Can we create a zone where you can kill/attack anyone or anything kinda like a mob ridden PVP zone to satisfy and quench the thirst for those who want so desperately to draw <insert race here> blood... also might draw more players to the game knowing there is somewhere you can one on one with other players... make sure to put a message up to warn travelers .. bandits will keeeeeel you.. or something..

I would like to highlight a suggestion that was made by another person that I really liked:



Instead of having a generic deodorizer, have perfumes/scent oils that allow you to mask your characters smell to fool the mob. I thought this was one of the more original ideas I saw listed here, and just wanted to highlight it once more.

Thanks

Actually, this may sound stupid, but I like the excitement of MPK situations. Sure it's annoying, and sometimes can cost players many hours of gameplay, I've experienced it plenty of times, but if many of these suggestions are actually applied then that would take away from the situational dangers of an area. Does no one else enjoy trying to avoid 20 gobs all within 50 feet? I like watching people train things to the valkrum entrance, even when it kills me and I forgot to set my check point, so I end up back at Windy. I remember a particular incident when I was about 55: I saw this 65+MNK come out of Quicksand Caves as I was about to enter, and she had about 10% health, but I didn't think anything of it. I walked in and died before my taru could take even a single step because of the 10-15 undead just sitting at the entrance. It took about an hour for them to all disperse far enough to get on with leveling, and the exp loss was a pain, but I still think it was funny. Well, I suppose I see MPKs a little like life. Sometimes people can try and ***** you over, and if you don't know what is going on, or your situation just doesn't permit you to do anything, you do get sodomized. But if you do have the skill and/or luck, then you get to go on with life, feeling just a little more accomplished. Some things you just can't do anything about, and without those kinds of things, the appreciation for fairness just seems to drop. Sorry to ramble, but the big point is: bad luck and cruelty are a big part of real life, so why not part of the game too? Again, this probably sounds stupid, because it even does a little to myself, but I like the excitement, and I don't want the game to get 'too' easy.

Oh, and don't think that I MPK. I have once or twice, but they were accidents. Lol, I remember once I got all of the orcs in ghelsba on me when I just reached a 50 blm, I had pretty much crap equiped, and I was taru....so....yeah. It didn't end up how I expected, not with 120+ orcs hitting for 1-4 damage each every couple seconds. Anyway, 7 secs after I stopped, they caught up to me and I obviously died. Then pretty much everyone below lvl 30 died (luckily there weren't very many there that day). I felt bad, but then I got a /tell from one of them actually complimenting me, saying how awesome it was to see so many orcs mob everything. Well again, sorry about rambling.

Oh, and I've never been big on camping NM or HNM, so I don't know much about those gilseller MPKs. It would probably agree it'd best to do something about that. I was refering to normal mobs earlier.

Only problem when an offical posts in this fashion is how there swamped with replies, a lot of which are not even in reply to what they asked. This causes the official to quickly lose intrest and the initial idea fades away, posts like these need either heavy moderation or a post within the topic which can offer a summary so the person can quickly drop in and garner the information they want. Even as a forum goer and not an employee of SE, trudging through 8++ pages is going to become tedious. Thats the main reason developer interaction rarely works or lasts.

Regardless,

Suggestion:

Give GM's more powers to punish players. They have banning and suspension atm but there really should be other in-game punishments, for instance boosting tax they have to pay on the AH and from Bazaars this could be tiered form of punishment that lasted a period of time. Maybe even a tag a GM could add to a player to set them as a trouble maker to others.

I'm sure you can think of other in-game GM punishments but I think this would be a very good thing to add, the current GM punishemnts are so hefty that you have to do something very bad to get them. Hence people get off with no punishment at all a lot of the time and the GM ends up looking like a toothless granny and the person in the wrong gets the idea there actions are more acceptable than they should be.

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Suggestion:

Mobs trained to a zone:

The level of the mob in relation to the person being chased should be directly linked to how long it will chase you, mobs should also have a a more territorial outlook where the further they get from there home-base the less they want to chase you and you have to have significant hate for them to carry on with it.

If mobs do get to a zone or far from there spawn spot they should not have there natural rest period between move phases or at least significantly reduced, this can be incredibly annoying for mobs like ghosts that rest for long periods between moving, it can make a zone a no go area for a long time. Possibly a 15-30 second grace period after hate is lost for them to get back to there home in a non aggro mode also.

Suggestion:

AOE MPK:

This is really easy, remove bombs from the basement of GC, same for other popular party leveling spots. Mobs(bombs) that have high degree of misuse should be removed from areas that have high concentration of normal parties. The basments of GC for instance is so well known for MPK that I am suprised a GM has yet to put this idea forward.

Suggestion:

Release MPK:

When a bst uses Release the mob should go into dazed state for 30 seconds-1minute while its walking home which means it becomes non aggro/non linking for that period of time. Mobs linked to the Bsts pet should react in the same was as mentioned in "Mobs trained to a zone:". This would stop a bst charming a high level pet attacking another mob then purposely linking it with 10 others dragging it to anywhere in the zone and releasing the entire posse on a party.

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Have to be very careful that actions taken to combat MPK dont end up ruining the game by removeing the challenge or leading to things that become misused, a lot of people enjoy the extra challenge in the game in the way monster acts atm.

The problem with the ideas to stop MPK is there pretty big things to implement, so if nothing else a GM should be given more powers to punish players within the game world other than suspend or banning. Nobody would like to have to pay significantly more tax to buy/sell anything, and it would help remove gil from the economy >.>

Suggestion: Increase the drop rate on over-camped NMs.


With the population rising, and a greater demand for rare items, there should be an equal turnout on drops. With 100 people needing an item, a 10% drop rate would be fine. But since there's 1000 people needing that item the 10% drop rate will make huge increases in AH prices which leads to the idea of buying gil more appealing.

LOL, I thot that was the O Hat...

Sorry, couldn't help myself. Nice post...

Dilligaf - Titan...

Such a good point... many people have quit this game over frustrating hours waiting to lose claim.

Sugestion: Sence a lot of people have said the worst mpk atempts are with HNM/NMs why not make alternatives to get some of the NM/HNM drops that are very mutch like the real thing. For example maybe have a lvl 75 ENM/BCNM/KSNM Alliance fight against a mob that similar to a NM/HNM for a similiar drop. Example maybe hae a 65 capped ENM where you can figth a NM for a serek ring that could be rare/ex or normal. However you need a alliance for that fight. This would allow a chance to go try to get these items the wya they were intended but not so often you could flood a market. It would prevent monopaliziation on these items by certain groups. Also it would be a alternative to have a garanteed way to atempt to get these items instead of going days or weeks with no claim on the said NM/HNM.

Suggestion: Have very short delay on mobs linking with argo mobs. This makes it so you still have to think while pulling for exp partys while stagering mobs so you don't have a huge train droped on you all at once for possible NM/HNM.

Suggestion: A way to know where you are in line when yo ucall a gm. Lets people know how soon to expect there call to get a responce. Also maybe have a way to prioritize calls to more important matters possibly for gms to respond faster. For example 10 calls are made 2 stuck in place 7 about something gm cant probly like return gil and last one a mpk atempt. Maybe have the MPK arive first then the stuck people then the others.

Another form of MPK we've seen during Shikigami Weapon fights:

A party is camping Shikigami Weapon. They have successfully brought it out of hiding via link, and are busy fighting it. Several other weapons have linked, and they are currently being slept by the claiming party's black mage.

Joe MPK decides he wants Shikigami Weapon for himself. A variety of MPK methods are available to him, and he chooses one. He casts diaga on the slept links, thereby waking the entire group and preventing further sleep. The slept links mob the sleeper, who has built up more hate on them than the waker.

This sort of thing can happen in a variety of ways. All it requires is an enemy be slept and yellow, then any bystander can wander up, hit it, and cause all sorts of fun for the party.

The sad thing is that we can't really think of a complete solution to this.

A partial solution for this would be to make waking a slept mob give you temporary hate on that mob greater than anyone else's. The slept mob should come tearing after whatever woke them up, rather than the person who put them to sleep. That way, people who wake slept mobs would take a good beating, rather than the person who had been sleeping them.

There are problems with this solution, though, and that's why it's a partial solution. There's nothing to keep a BLM/RDM from applying phalanx, stoneskin, blink, then popping manafont, casting diaga, and immediately escaping/warping. Their defenses would probably keep them alive long enough to get out. Then what? We've only reduced the problem to requiring a 2hr ability to successfully MPK... and most people doing MPK don't particularly care if they die as a result. Also, this sort of workaround could have other unforeseen consequences, such as making it too easy for a sleeper to pin hate on the party's tank.

Any ideas about how to handle this sort of situation?

Many wonderful suggestions so I will just offer my thoughts.

1) I too greatly dislike the bind thing, I was an innocent bystander that died when a NM was bound and I was the closest to it.

2) AOE - why is it that when my pet does AOE, nearby mobs will attack my pet, but when the mob I am fighting does an AOE, no nearby mobs will attack that one? AOE should be AOE for everyone.

3) Not sure there are enough GM to go around. And also, who is to say what is a deliberate MPK and an accidental one? I am a BST (wouldn't play the game if I had to be something else) and there are times when I head for the zone with several mobs screaming for my blood. If I make it out of the zone and if there is someone already at the zone then they could yell at me for MPK even though that is something I would never do regardless of how provoked I was.

4) Linking, if I were able to mass kill I would like for the linking to occur in farming situations. Maybe make it so the mobs quickly get back to the area they came from as has been mentioned.

5) REALLY like the idea of NM's not being able to be attacked by outside parties until fully healed.

Thanks SE for your efforts. You folks are doing a great job and I know you will work out something to improve the game

Do like what has been done on EQ 2 once a mob attacks someone weather they zone or die...the monster will return to its predetermined movement pattern will not link with anything will not attack anyone untill its reached that spot