IDEAS FOR RYZOM

I agree to Arugula. One may rethink some of the KP properties when they come back, such as 3 KP at a time near Kami SC, or a delayed return of KP once slayed. Such proposals have been made before the fusion, and I still deem them valuable.

But the KP is sadly missing. Even more missing are the Kipesta and Kipucka patrols in Kitin Lair. KL is a boring place since the fusion.

To add that: Roleplay wise as well as under terms of reconstruction, it made sense that the KP was not in place. The Kitins were under extreme stress by the occupation of the New Lands and their defeat following the return of homins. So it seems sensible that they lacked trained soldiers to perform Kitin Patrol service. For the homins rebuilding their guilds and homes, missing KP gave easier access to valuable mats.

Nowadays, reconstruction is done, and easy PR digging only encourages abuse. Maybe we should deal the Kitins one more blow making them significantly retreat from our territories. At least then they should have enough staff from swarming veterans to reinstall their patrolsl.

Daomei, Arugula --

I've chatted with each of you before, so you know my thoughts, but I'm putting them out here in public.

I have not seen any q250 sup mats of significance since the fusion. The only source I know of for q250 sup zun (admittedly one of four, but the only one I have verified) is already under aggro most of the time.

I dig solo -- and I am not an adrenaline junkie. In fact, I like digging and crafting because I have time to think and don't have to twitch; there are mats on the surface that I don't dig for that very reason. I'd love to have some sup mats to play with and make good stuff from, but it probably is not in the cards unless I dump PT and join a guild that has a lot of people online in my time slot. I'm not quitting PT -- it fits me. In addition, I'm not at all sure there *is* a guild that matches the stated criterion.

The KP activity before the merge meant that effectively I was shut off from almost all sup materials (I found a few places). It's still the same due to campers and the jumpstart claim rush at season change. So I guess what I'm saying is that we don't need KP to keep sup mats rare for solo diggers. It certainly doesn't look as if the market is saturated even after a year and a quarter since the merge.

If the KP are reinstalled, I would hope that they would be fewer than before. Having to worry about one coming by every once in a while is way different from being pretty damned sure that they would be coming by within five minutes. Further, because of their near-instant respawn speed killing them doesn't give you any particular respite.

Still the devs will do what the devs will do, and the Dev Timetable says the KP are coming back.

As a solo digger, I found the KP were much easier to deal with than all the player competition on the q250 nodes. I rarely get q250 supreme without KP. I'd like to see the portal guards back too.

As a solo digger I don;t feel that I am at a disadvantage to those who dig in teams. If anything I think I have an advantage, as I am used to digging aggo spots on my own, and can do so without waiting for others to be ready or willing to help. I really dont try that hard atm, but I have no problems getting sups, and dp, at season change and after resets. I might not get what I want, or as much, as I want, but hey ho. The only issue that I have with teams is the dragging, whether accidental or otherwise, and I fail to see how kp could help with that.

I would like to see KP return, but not the as they were. Diggers should be paranoid and face down dead in the mud, but we should also have the slim chance of escaping. Personally I would like to see a new uber kitin that wanders throughout PR, in small packs, and that you could not tar, and also was not always present in a region. Make us paranoid as well as dead, a bit like when on follow with Binarabi:P

--

It isn't very easy to prove but it can be made easy by clear rules.

Simple questions to point it out: Is a PR dig master that is waiting for oath in undersprings camping the boss spot? Is it an infraction if he goes afk? Will he be banned if he isn't 250 yet? On the other hand, can a mastered alt camp bosses all he wants? Can a main toon?

We want to prevent camping but need to get a clear rule who is camping and who is not. This rule must not allow diggers and random afk'ers to be incriminated.

A rule could be like this:
(*) Q250 Boss Zone: All Q250 and important Q200 Zones with the exception of popular dig spots.
(*2) Kitin Lair because the effort to bring an alt back to any Q250 zone is high. A real player on the other hand doesn't have much trouble leaving KL.

This does not solve the problem of high-level alts or mains camping bosses. But it would be a pain for anyone who wants to camp bosses with alts. Maybe someone else has an idea that identifies camping mains that does not report regular gameplay.

Very nice to see that a lot of homins are just as annoyed about camping as me.

Couldn't agree more with you Casy about the need for clear rules that are then enforced, sorry if I'm a pessimist and don't think either the rules or enforcement will happen.

I appreciate that there is a finite amount of resources so not every idea can be implemented but with rules there will always be ambiguity and he said/she said. Simplest is to make it impossible by changing the spawn timings and locations. I'm no programmer so no idea if this would take less/more the same programming as monitoring every player in every location for movement then tping them and generating warnings but for me its the best way.

It would also feel like new content as we would not know where bosses are so would actually have to look

I am not sure how serious the issue of boss camping is. During the last 3 days I encountered a lvl 170 and a lvl 270 boss without any intention to go for or having searched it. As too few of my friends were on, I decided to leave them for the next to detect them. A couple of weeks earlier, I encountered another lvl 270 boss which I reported to friends (I was about to log out at that time and could not wait). In neither case I saw a suspicious charakter in the environs. In some cases, bosses up to lvl 270 have even been called out in uni during the last months, therefore I assume the issue is more and more to get an apt team rather than just spotting.

The situation with nameds seems to have relaxed even more. I seldom see homins near known spawns of frequently searched nameds. I do not know about sup mats situation too much, but sometimes saw characters hanging around for no obvious purpose. Maybe they were just idle, or indeed spamming tracking spells. But here, I think that the return of the KP will be the solution.

About a year ago I heard and read a lot of accusations of camping against players I knew well. And from knowing them well I also knew that they had no need of camping as they were able to traverse every region of interest in short time, the rest done by /tar macros, and I saw them patrolling.

Using alts for tracking may be felt as abusive, and I do not like or defend it. But I think we should be more patient and not jump to too easy conclusions. Read especially the first part of Casy's post attentively and imagine you had to be the CSR deciding whether a certain behavior was unruly or not. The CSR are volonteers, and their efforts deserve better than being wasted that way.


Edit (comment to Casy not to waste space for another post): the 2 lvl 270 bosses mentioned were "important" ones (for PvP jewelry to be exact). Camping is to some extent self defeating: even if having an alt logged all time one has also to be close to the spot and able to gather a team (ok 3-4 players suffice even for lvl 270), otherwise the effort is wasted. And even that may not work without botting. So I would rather suggest botting detectors (which could be implemented on server side).

Not all the bosses are camped 100%. But some are (the important ones actually). It isn't possible for a single player (read: ip address) to camp more than a few spots at a time so he'll go for the best ones.

Not all bosses are camped, not all bosses are timed, coz is almost impossible track all. But important bosses are camped and timed. Also with camped alts around sometime u can take a boss if u are fast and very lucky etc etc... is not this the really problem. But now camped alts are only 3 or 4 guilds, and they take 3-4 maps. But if people start to see that only way for take bosses is to be camped, then more guilds going to use this strategy and we will go at point that to be camped is the only way for take a boss. Also now i rarely see a boss. And generally when u see and take a boss is only when it spawn on u :) coz u have 4 or 5 mins max before an alt/main camped find it. This kill the spirit of hunting :)

boss spawn locations are those big empty spaces, right?

I think some aggro should be moved there and maybe despawned when boss spawns.

.. or better yet, put normal mob spawn there that, when killed after downtime, spawns the boss. this could even be implemented for every* single spawn in region, so that if boss is due, any one of them can spawn it.

* to be really evil, random X spawns ;-)

now if anyone wants to code it, sources can be found here

I like your "better yet" idea and even more your "to be really evil" addon!

Great ideas.

Personally I'd make bosses roaming and all their minions aggro. After all, what's the point for all those useless "guards" (which you just ignore and taunt the boss from them) ? Timkya is certainly more interesting because of it.

The problem is that these "empty spaces" are often important for diggers or explorers, especially those of lower level, not seldom the resting point after tough agro regions (e.g. in HH, GoC, or SC). Making Atys more impassable for younger explorers and single players because of a few campers is not a good idea.

Same goes, btw., for Mjollren's proposal of bosses and their minions roaming as a large pack of agro. Would also harm lower level players venturing in higher level regions as well as diggers and homins being afk for a minute.

Sounds all pretty much overkill to me, and waste of time for a problem of lower significance.

Again: The number of lvl 270 bosses is 25, that of lvl 220 bosses 27. The number of spawns per boss is 3, as I recall (or 4?), a few like Shooketh, Stinkan, Cratchakin, Slavekya may have only 1 or 2. Assuming that out of these 52 bosses only 20 or so are "important", still more than 60 (80?) spots remain to be monitored (sup plots not considered).

So it needs a lot of administrative work to monitor bosses, several players interacting, and for effectiveness, botting will be inevitably involved.

Such behavior may be detected from server side without much effort. The position of the boss spawns is in the code so that resting at the same place in a 250m diameter for a longer time may easily be found out. Idling but sending messages constantly is an abnormal behavioral pattern which is easy to identify, and botting detection is a standard procedure which can be implemented with fairly less effort than changing boss behavior - mind that the server is "big brother" and may monitor regularities in /tar calls, command and macro execution in general. The CSR and devs are aware of the accounts using an IP, or can identify them. So it should be possible to make botting by campers risky. And camping without botting is toothless.

easy fix, change the spawn times on bosses and ALL supream mat's, that's what it all boils down to, the sup mat's. if bosses spawned every 4 hours like clockwork, there would be no point in camping, and at some point it would be more or less pointless, after all, gear made with supream mat's doesn't brake over night.

i know everyone will cry that's too easy, well that's what the campers want, easy, and if it's too easy, they'll not have a need, what are they going to do with the excess mat's, horard them? how many guild halls will they need, or even better still, let the merchants in each city sell exel and sup mat's from named and bosses, at higher then typical prices, based on the Q of the mat, so a Q60 exel sells for 10k, a Q70 sup sells for 12k, a Q110 exel for 15k, a Q120 sup sells for 17k. then the only reason to hunt the bosses in the wild is to have the fun of killing it, and campers can go back to doing what they do best, mostly nothing, they'll be able to buy what the camping provided, and for those of us that have lost the will to trek to hunt, we can buy the mats we want, also would fix the forced pvp zones of the game for players that want the nice mat's, but don't want to be attacked because they want to try to get them.

bottom line, i agree with someone else here, nothing will be done, and nothing will be easy to enforce.

it comes down to the honor of the players, and what kind of people they really are, respectable and honorable, or un-respectable and dishonorable.

sad to say these things, but they're the facts as i see them, yvmv (your view may vary).