<P>I'm somewhat confused by some of the reasoning behind these changes.</P> <P>Much of the reasoning (as I understand it) is that by allowing people to help others that players will make friends by expanding the availability of groups. Also, they will have the opportunity to feel special/heroic by helping others out.</P> <DIV>But the removal of the lockout mechanism doesn't seem to support this. If people want to help others, they already have the option to do so by mentoring. If I, traveling through a zone, see someone who wants to finish x quest or needs to kill a certain monster, or just wants a group for something, I can already help them out and they actually gain more experience in the process through the bonus they get (presuming I'm higher level than them).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The encounters are still properly difficult for them (and me as well), and they still have to actually participate meaningfully and effectively. With this change to the locking mechanism, they just have to hit the thing once and then they can be protected by the most powerful spells out there, up to and including level 60 (with the expansion) spells while those around them then proceed to nuke the monster into orbit. Do they get less experience, yes. But since the possibility/probablility exists that the high level characters will be able to do so relatively easily, they turn-around time is almost non-existant and may often be limited only by the respawn rate of the mobs. At that point, the rate of kills could easily make up for any lessened experience per kill.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The change to xp debt I can see. It doesn't really do much now other than discourage some grouping by those who feel they are penalized by debt. But the locking mechanism doesn't prevent groups, making friends, or any such thing. It simply provides a mechanism to make certain that the players are facing encounters balanced for the levels they are set at. With the loss of the locking mechanic, we now have to wonder about future changes to mobs similar to other games. The mobs suddenly become easy for those who have their "aid group/groups", in fact, far too easy in some cases. The mobs are then retuned to balance that out and they are then more of a challenge for that method, but closer to impossible for the targets they were once aimed for.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>But, we shall see.</DIV>

<DIV>i think everyone has reasonable valid reasons for their opinions on this subject. i think there is a way to please everyone. just put in the option to choose to lock your own/group encounters. that way ppl can play how they want. easy as that. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>i fall into the group who would like this in order to help others with heals in passing. enabling a personal encounter lock would prevent me from healing a person who doesnt want to be healed as one poster talked about. he doesnt want to be healed unexpectedly, so he has his lock on, he doesnt get one. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>as far as powerlevelng goes, dont see it as much of a problem. i could be wrong, but it seems to me that if i go and fight a red creature and win, i dont get as much xp as fighting around my own level. so if there are concerns about a level 10 going to lavastorm with a level 40 buddy to powerlevel, it doesnt seem its really going to work, especially since the level 40 is gonna have to do most of the dmg further decreasing the level 10's xp amount. thats just what i kind of understood from other posters that the level 10 was gonna start it and the level 40 finish it. i could have a misunderstanding.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>plus, if youre one of those into camping, personally i am not, then you just choose to lock your encounters and nothing is changed from the way it is now. so no harm no foul.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>if they would reduce the amount of xp the person/group who jumps in to lower amount and let the initial person recieve full/next to full xp, then there would be no incentive to kill steal since the first person gets the loot anyway.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>so just put in he choice to lock and it seems most of the problems go away. people who want help can get it, those that dont want it wont get it inadvertently.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>please correct me if i am wrong in any of my assumptions.</DIV>

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> WildEagle wrote:<BR> <DIV><!-- StartFragment --> Plz add an icon to indicate that encounter will not give me any exp and credit First . This will prevent me to help who steal the mob at first strick to kill the mob and i  do not know it .</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>I agree. There is, in the current game, a very absolute mechanism to indicate who got to the encounter first  and who gets the kill. There needs to be an indicator that although I have engaged the encounter, it is not mine. <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>A somewhat made up example: two groups approach an encounter from different directions. The first group pulls with an arrow and the second with a taunt. If the arrow engages first, but the taunt pulls the encounter to the second group, they may end up fighting and, perhaps, dying for nothing.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> <HR> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Oh, and I do like the notion of being able to help. Occasionally, when it looks like someone is about to wipe out, I will target the encounter and turn on auto-attack just in case they decide to yell; however, being able to help someone who is in need just turn the tide in an otherwise lost cause would be better.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I really miss that from EQ1, I was one of those who would stand outside the gates of qeynos and drop a buff or heal on the newbies. And when I play my druid in EQ2 it is always frustrating not to be able to help. I know the days of drive by buffing are gone, but to be able to save someone who got in over their head just feels good.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I do like the notion of someone being able to turn off the open engagement mechanism (both for solo and group). If that is done then perhaps there should be a fast way to open the encounter during combat (a /whimper command that could be macroed if desired; affected by the group option of who is allowed to yell).</DIV><p>Message Edited by Swordmage on <span class=date_text>08-22-2005</span> <span class=time_text>12:26 AM</span>

<span><blockquote><hr>STLBluesNut wrote:<div>i think everyone has reasonable valid reasons for their opinions on this subject. i think there is a way to please everyone. just put in the option to choose to lock your own/group encounters. that way ppl can play how they want. easy as that. </div> <div> </div> <div>i fall into the group who would like this in order to help others with heals in passing. enabling a personal encounter lock would prevent me from healing a person who doesnt want to be healed as one poster talked about. he doesnt want to be healed unexpectedly, so he has his lock on, he doesnt get one. <font color="#ff3333">True enough, this would be nice.</font> </div> <div> </div> <div>as far as powerlevelng goes, dont see it as much of a problem. i could be wrong, but it seems to me that if i go and fight a red creature and win, i dont get as much xp as fighting around my own level. so if there are concerns about a level 10 going to lavastorm with a level 40 buddy to powerlevel, it doesnt seem its really going to work, especially since the level 40 is gonna have to do most of the dmg further decreasing the level 10's xp amount. thats just what i kind of understood from other posters that the level 10 was gonna start it and the level 40 finish it. i could have a misunderstanding. <font color="#ff3300">Did you play EQ1? you find a nice out of the way place, and kill reds til they turn green. Over and over and over. Exp goes up much much faster than you think.  <font color="#ff0000">OR - you get nice nice buffs from the friendly druid and wail around on the oranges that would one slap ya without em. Either way you lvl much much much faster. And in some cases, you DO end up with high lvl toons with absolutely NO exp playing the class. </font></font> </div> <hr></blockquote>   Sounds like a very very nice way to make dough on a SE server though, heck see those PL teams out there now. Now dont get me wrong, I PL'd quite a few of my own toons in EQ1 and it sure was nice not to have to go thru the - whole - dang - low - end - again, over and over. But encounter locks here where working fine, the ability to toss out a heal or such would indeed be nice, but does the whole system have to change?   And the 50% rule sounds wonderful...but more EQ1 ish also. Kill steal WILL happen, if only from the lonely boy living in the basement with nothing else to do but go mess about with others play time. Raid mobs are instanced, so there is a difference from EQ1, but how would ya like to be on that rare bouncer in Feer and a competing team shows up to burn down the mob you are carefully agro controlling to get the update?    Now if they can explain how this will be taken care of that one thing, but the original OP is a bit flawed IMHO.</span><div></div>

I'm willing to keep an open mind with respect to the locking stuff.. I really don't like dead person only Debt. However, my main is a tank (bruiser), and in just about all groups, if anyone dies it will be me.  I die, everyone evacs. Now I'm gonne eat all the debt. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> ... Maybe  people will manage to evac before I drop.. but I won't bet on it. I'd way prefer a radius on group to keep traveling deaths off the group debt, but I really feel I'm about to be hosed on the debt deal. How about increasing the evac cast  timer to 30+ secs so I don't die alone eh? -T <div></div>

I am encouraged by this news, and I look forward to this making its way to Live. I think the removal of shared debt will bring about friendlier groups and much less of the "blame game" when something does go wrong.  I've always thought that the group time and resources spent on recovering from death(s) was a compelling enough penalty by itself (i.e., time and power spent to rez/revive, re-buff, regroup, regenerate). I've also read a lot of doom-and-gloom threads about griefers taking advantage of "unlocked" encounters.  This may be true, but I happen to think that there are even more Good Samaritans out there who will do great things for other players.  I think the EQ community will see good things come from this, and our community will grow stronger. As far as power-leveling goes, only time will tell.  I would imagine if things began getting too far out of hand, experience awards could be adjusted quickly. I just keep in mind that the designers want to have as much fun with the game as I do, so I trust that they are working hard to provide the best experience they can.  I'm glad to see they are taking steps to create a more relaxed environment. <div></div>

<div></div><span><blockquote><hr>TerminalDogmaCS wrote:<div></div> <p>well, i hope the handful of players you have remaining after the revamp will enjoy this change as well :smileywink:</p> <div></div><hr></blockquote>Since you will be one of those handful of players you might want to start coming up with what your solution is...or if you're not, enjoy your time on the SOE boards! <span>:smileywink:</span> </span><div></div><p>Message Edited by KnightOfTheWord on <span class=date_text>08-21-2005</span> <span class=time_text>10:40 PM</span>

<DIV>I understand that this will be pushed to the Test server soon.  Perhaps before everyone gets their panties in a bind they should try it out.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>It's gonna happen.  Try it out.</DIV>

I still believe that the sharing of debt among group members is still the better system.  When someone in a group dies, more often than not it is becuase the group failed to work together in some way or another.  We all know that some classes are prone to die more than others, that was the reason this was put in place to start with. I do like how the sales pitches have changed though.  When Sony was selling shared debt they did a very good job at it, and in practice I have found it to be a very satisfactory system.  Now the pitch has changed, but I've been to the greener side of the fence, and I don't want to go back to the muddy side. Example: last night I was in a group of 3, we had no healer but we were killing greens for city tasks so no biggy. (43 conjurer, 47 Shadowknight and 48 Guard).  The shadowknight and I conversed and decided it would be best to move to the other side of the valley we were hunting in.  On moving across the conjurer was slow to move, got agro at some point and died.  Now you could say that this was not our vault so why should we get XP debt, but really it was our fault, we were the conjurers protectors as such and we failed in our job.  Later on after the shadowknight left, we were fighting a green ^^ mob and a roekilik was on me from  before, I was too late to realise that the assassin had moved to the conjuror and killed her.  Again not my death but I did play in the cause of that death, so justly I receive my dues in xp debt. That was 2 deaths that were not mine, yet I shared in them becuase they were in part my fault.  They did not faze me in the least, yet I know that if the conjuror had taken the full brunt of those 2 deaths, not only would they be made at me for not protecting them, but they would be frustrated with the game that punished them so harshly. The only time this can be abused I see is if your grouped with someone who randomly runs through zones getting killed, and that type of player wont be in your group for long. <div></div>

<P>First off the change dosn't seem bad, but there needs to be a way to make sure that PLing dosn't take place. I don't know if any of my ideas are feasible but here goes (also these ideas can work together but some work better by themselves):</P> <P>1. Group 2 can't have an average lvl more then x lvl's above group 1's average lvl.</P> <P>2. Group 2 can only damage group 1's oponent till the mob is brought below group 1's health. Group 2 can only heal group 1 untill there health is above group 1's mob. (yes I'm sure there are problems with the idea but it would help.)</P> <P>3. When group 2 first joins in on group 1's encounter group 2 would automaticly mentor down to the average lvl of group 1. (again this would have problems as well since either SOE would have to alow spells to scale down or the group would have to scamble to change spell.)</P> <P> </P> <P>These arn't perfect by any means but I think something along these lines would help from people PLing but still alow for you to assist others without it being to overpowered.</P>

<div></div><p>For me, it simply goes this way …</p><p> One of the major reasons I love EverQuest 2 for is encounter locking. It minimizes powerlevling and adds to the level and leveling value.</p><p> Please, don’t fiddle with encounter locking!</p><p> Thank you!</p><div></div>

<P>I just wanted to add my 2 cents in saying that I think the unlocked encounters is an excellent change to the game. </P> <P>It certainly adds some negatives like kill stealing, but the pro's outweigh the cons imo.</P> <P>A more interactive environment between players is definately positive.</P>

I am also looking forward to the greater interaction between players.  One of the things I have missed from EQ1 is the ability to give a quick heal to someone when they are getting close to dying in an encounter.  EQ2 with its locked encounters seems to cause a feeling of isolation rather than community.

<P></P> <HR> Vydian said: <P><U>b) Powerleveling. In EQ1, we all know what powerleveling did, but it really had 3 different forms. 1 - Direct major heals from healers far above a character's level, 2 - Superior buffs for the character's level and 3 - Twinking. In EQ2, the latter two don't exist, most buffs may ONLY be cast in groups and every piece of equipment has level appropriate restrictions. If/when these changes go out, the only factor will really be outside heals from priests.</U></P> <P> </P> <P></P> <HR> <P> </P> <P>I think you forgot one bud that may be major in this game.  Just have a level 50 tank-bot, no attacks just taunt after taunt after taunt to get tha mobs hate.  Level 50 won't ever even get hit, and have the other person/group just attack from perfect safety. You'll even get full exp as the taunts won't do the over-50%-damage stuff (most taunts after the combat update don't do damage I believe).</P> <P> </P> <P>The Mad Ribbiter</P> <P>Cykophrog</P>

<P>I think the *potential* change has at least been well considered, and we ought to wait for testing and beta feedback before jumping to conclusions.  The Team at SoE really does have the best interests of the game at heart, and have reversed decisions that didn't seem to work (See zone re-tiering now in progress and the changes in the rolls of various stats in combat in beta).  Reading Scott's letter one can tell that at the very least this decision was not undertaken lightly.  Please note that several times it is refered to as an <EM>experiment</EM>.  </P> <P>I'm sure that everything that's been said in this thread has been said around a boardroom table at SoE at some point.  Give 'em a chance, folks.</P>

I'm against this change for a few reasons 1. It WILL trivialise encounters, particularly named mobs for Heritage Quests or other tough encounters. All you need to do is bring some high level friends along to help and viola..no challenge at all. 2. It WILL introduce powerleveling. One of the great things about EQ2 that put it above other MMORPGs was the inability to powerlevel and that was a good thing. The low end game is already pretty dead as it is and I believe that this will simply kill it off completely. 3. Taken in context with other changes being made, in particular the removal of group xp debt there seems to be a deliberate trend here of SOE continuing to dumb down the game mechanics, presumably to appeal to the crowd that play 'The Game With Orcs In It'. SOE should be trying to keep the unique features of EQ2 that keep it head and shoulders above the  competition and realise that trying to reproduce the Other Game will not garner them customers. Now I realise that there are positive aspects to this change - healers in particular will like it, but I think it's pretty clear that the negatives outweigh the positives. <div></div>

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Gallenite wrote: <DIV> <P>*** Encounter Locking ***<BR><BR>Encounter locking restrictions have been relaxed for <B>non-raid </B>encounters. Non-raid encounters have been changed as follows:</P> <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr> <P>* There are no longer lock icons on you or your enemies.<BR>* The first group or person to attack a creature will receive any reward it grants upon death, including loot and experience.<BR>* Other players can assist in your fight by damaging your enemies or healing you.<BR>* You will receive a reduced XP reward if your group contributes less than 50% of the damage needed to kill something.<BR>* You can change group options and add/remove people from groups while fighting (note that fighting raid encounters still prevents this).<BR>* Damage credit is correctly tracked if you add people helping you to the group before something dies.<BR>* Any faction increase or decrease the creature grants will be applied to everyone the creature hates when it dies.<BR>* In an upcoming update: If a group prefers to play by the old rules, they may make their targetted encounter exclusively locked (thus preventing help unless asked for).</P></BLOCKQUOTE><FONT size=2> <P>I have numerous scenarios running through my mind here, and one thing that pops in all the time..Quest Credit. Where is the quest credit going to fall when 'help' is given???? I can only compare to EQ1 with a relativley short experience of the game, but if I remember correctly, all quests were based on 'bring back an item' (loot), while here in EQ2 its kill quantity for many quests.</P> <P>Just as example (only for solo play, group can get so much more complex): I often play a  healer class, renowned for the low dmg output. Writ farming in EF or LS. If a 'nuke meister' attacks my target doing more than 50% dmg, will I get credit?...if a DoT expert adds one to my target and others targets too, will they get updates? </P> <P>If I spent a long time clearing PH's and the target pops, will I need to lock the encounter to ensure I get credit, just in case someone decides to 'help' me by doing masses of damage?</P> <P>Just what will the Quest Credit rules be? Keep a thought for those that don't understand how it works too, and that 'help' or 'KS' out of ignorance. </P></FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>

<DIV>On Debt:</DIV> <DIV>A Group is a group, as is shares in experience it should share in debt.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>On Encounter Locking:</DIV> <DIV>I have played many MMOG's, encounter locking prevents griefing, kill stealing and powel leveling. This <U>far outweighs</U> the lack of ability to "help" .... if you want help, you can call for it .... Perhaps, if you call for help, those that help should get xp and you should not.  Please keep encounter locking.</DIV>

Thank you for listening to these boards and bringing back one of the fun and social aspects of EQ in, from what it seems, a balanced mode. This will have a huge impact on the community when it comes to  camradery and helping fellow adventurers. Yay! <span>:smileyvery-happy:</span> <div></div>

On encounter locking i'm a bit on the fence. I can see the use for it in keeping some fights from being trivialized to the point of being stupid. But it would be fun to allow outside help for people that, frankly put, need help.I'm hopeing that you can do what you did for the Lotto and Autosplit Coin options that the party leader can set at the start of making a party. Basically put a Help: Locked / Un-Locked option for the leader to toggle on and off for those that dont want to deal with the griefers and want a challenge or those that want to simply go crazy and see if they can take 100 level 9's and try and take down terrathud in the commonlands. Give us the option to do that instead of just rolling random and picking all locked/unlocked. Options are nice. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />For experience debt i'm kind of leaning towards the 'get rid of it party'. I've got a member of the guild who is funny as heck and a riot to listen to on teamspeak while we go off to kill things. Except for the fact that he is a bit crazy and manages to aoe things and be slaughtered before we know what happens since he lags a bit in leveling due to his schedule. Basically he is a Debt-o-matic machine and makes me cry at the random % of debt i can get in party. Maybe make it a leader option if you have to or else toss the xp debt sharing away as an idea that sort of crashed and burned.TLC aka Trivial Loot code. I can see both sides of this one since i've gone through the tedious process of rolling another character to go farming clothes in commonlands that i simply can't get that often due to the fact that the neat stuff doens't drop much before everyone levels past it. Penalizing me for wanting fluff clothes/armor (at 50 and nearly 900 quests this actually is a hobby along with my house) to wander around with is simply put...mean. Yes you can mentor and it has helped greately with that process of putting some color back onto a mob but not everyone can sit around for hours trying to find someone to mentor to pull to where the colored mob you need to kill is.On the other hand you can't have chests dropping for a level 50 char who's greyed out zones and simply mashing down mobs farming all day and night to sell the chest loot on the broker and/or to the vendor for cash. That is severely going to play havok with markets and basically drive people nuts.Idea for a *change* of the TLC? Make the TLC drop chests for even grey kills but have it auto tag the items inside the grey killed chests with No-Trade & No-Value. Prevents people from farming greys for chest loot to sell on the broker for money and also prevents people from cashing in on it by killing greys for rare harvestables to sell. Although maybe a No-Trade on everything from a greyed out chest would work also.You already had to go back and pull some chest loot only items and put them on corpses ( hi2u burnt out stone ) because the tlc was messing up quest starters. At least now people can actually DO the neat little obscure quests that were designed but no ones really found yet.EDIT: Clarified the No-Trade on greyed out ONLY chests. Not colored kills.<p>Message Edited by Silversnow on <span class=date_text>08-22-2005</span> <span class=time_text>02:42 AM</span>

I don't like this change.Locked encounters are a big reason I play EQ2 and not WoW. If you remove them, I might as well go play WoW...Please ensure SOLO players as well as groups can have locked encounters on by default.Thanks.

<DIV>Of course we saw that change coming ! </DIV> <DIV>Everquest need to keep player active ... what to do when u hit 50 ? reroll ... oh but wait : quest already done, friends not alway want reroll and we need to raise quick a chanter to fill the slot of the one that left ...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> Plz soe give us PLING ! And tadaaaaaaaaaaaa ! here you go !</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> I cant believe it tooks a such looong post for devs to hide their true motivation behind this change.</DIV> <DIV>All this stuff about imersion and roleplay is pure smoke for the eye.</DIV> <DIV>The true is : </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> <STRONG>We are doing combat change</STRONG></DIV> <DIV><STRONG> Class are changing</STRONG></DIV> <DIV><STRONG> People might not like their toon anymore and wont spend a month to level a new one</STRONG></DIV> <DIV><STRONG> We dont want them to leave so we offer them Pling .... plz stay and reroll</STRONG></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> And thats the whole and only truth.</DIV> <DIV> I feel highly disapointed, not by the change itself ( i dont like it but am not game designer so nothing i can do here) but by the pathetic post to try to justify this choice. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> Obside</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> Ps : while you at it i feel very frustrating for my immersion to not be able to full buff my dear friend lvl 17 with my buffs 50 and my damage shield spells or some pow regen ... you see my point ? I think it could be really better for the roleplay to allow people to cast all their buff outside of groups. Being a lvl 50 paladin, i dont see why i cant save a young lvl 12 lady from an evil orc and then cast on her the whole protection she deserves for her hard hunting in the service of Qeynos ! </DIV> <DIV> Pps : ok am not a paladin but still :p</DIV><p>Message Edited by Obside on <span class=date_text>08-22-2005</span> <span class=time_text>03:08 AM</span>

Well I am a first time MMO player and I am forever hearing from my online friends who played EQ1 that this is what they miss the most from EQ1.I know a LOT of people who would be very happy to hear about these changes.Personally I kinda like how it sounds, yes it may help grievers but there are a lot of good people on the server I play on (Neriak), so hopefully it will balance out.Another exciting move forward for EQ2 i'd say.

Sure the arguements for changes are good, but at least please don't allow buffs to non-groupmembers else you're ruining the current game by opening up for buffbots. Just the thought of this makes me depressed as it's severly broken the balance in games I've loved in the past.If the choice is relaxing the lock rules and getting outside buffs or not changing them at all the latter would appear to me as being much more healthy for the gameplay.

<P>Its unbelievable, it seems SoE wants to let eq2 become eq1 with better graphics. Combat changes which will [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] up the current game big time (DoF+combat changes make this game eq3, the eq2 game we had at the start is already completly removed). Best loot on mobs a few people on each server will see, group debt gone (apprently because people left the game because they couldnt stand it that they had to fight 20 minutes after they died to see debt gone...bunch of loosers) removing a very big chuck of solo mobs which makes soloing almost impossible just like at the start of the game (yeah its fun you can solo splitpaw but since all mobs around that place are being changed in groupmobs the solo player needs a team to get into that solo dungeon...pure SoE logic) and now removing locked encounters to [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot]up this game even more? Imo the only strong point left in this game are the locked encounters. I dont give a [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] about the community of unknown people. If they are too stupid to fight the wrong mob they deserve to die. And know what. Most of those people will understand that fighting that mob is too dangerous and will avoid that mob the next time they face it.</P>

<blockquote><hr>Sauryah wrote:<P>I've read all the post and yet I still don't see the point...</P> <P>What is the statement here? That people want xp so badly they can't hold pulls 5 seconds to invite someone to group up? Or that they are too stupid to yell when they need help?</P> <P>If you really wanna encourage people to create links with other people, then why remove the interdependance in crafting, have you any idea of how much it was creating links between all crafters ?</P> <P>Nothing makes sense to me here, seriously... </P><hr></blockquote>Despite my earlier post praising the idea of removing locked encounters, i'd just like to say I agree with the poster above about crafting.I have been crafting since the game came out and I made a HUGE number of friends due to the system imposed on us. Yes it may have been annoying sometimes but the people I made friends with are still my closest friends on the server.It would be nice to have some interdependancy brought back for crafting, it really helped form the crafting community. I remember the good days when the craft channel was full of people, now it's just a few die hards left <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

<P>SOE is just trying anything they can to have the success of EQ1, including dismantling any fundamental game mechanics evolved from EQ1.  </P> <P>It won't happen.  Some success is just a matter of timing and this isnt 7+ years ago when there was no real competition in online gaming.  Making EQ2 a prettier version of 7+ year-old EQ1 won't change that.  Making EQ2 into a prettier version of WoW won't change that.  </P> <P>EQ2 will not beat WoW in an even battle.  SOE needs to find a niche with members of the online-gaming players that are not looking for WoW and design EQ2 to that population, figure out how to increase those customers.</P> <DIV> </DIV>

So does this mean "trains" are coming to EQ2? Currently, if a locked encounter is broken via /y, the mobs will return to their spawn points without aggroing anyone else when they give up the chase. Will this change? If mobs are not locked, will they aggro on random people?

You know if i'd heard about this a few months back i woulda raised hell about it because I really do like the locking mechanic and how it forsters a respect for the enviroment and helps make challanging fights. But after playing a few days with it on beta i actually dont mind so much, it does help make the world feel alot more "natural" rather than too forced and restricted which was always a complaint of mine. A good game should have rules but they should be relativly transparent to the player imho. Powerleveling could be a bit of a problem, I could see low level pulling a bunch of oranges then a lvl 50 tank doing a aoe taunt to let the lowbie bash away regardless of the danger. But I dont see this is as big a problem as it makes out to be since in EQ1 alot of the main "game" was the endgame raiding, both teh dev's and the players focused heavily on that area. EQ2 is a little different in that there is alot of focus on quests and midrange content, the endgame raiding is not such a driver for players to skip through the rest of the content. In addition to raid mobs I feel nameds should also the autolock. Fair enough that people should get to PL if they really want but they should be able to get all that phat lewtz jsut because they have a lvl 50-60 friend. This would stop any agro where a group of appropriate level gets beaten to an important quest named by a powerleveling duo. <div></div>

<BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2> <P>*** Death and Experience Debt ***</P></FONT> <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr> <P>* There is now a 50% cap for both adventure and tradeskill experience debt. You can no longer accrue more than 50% of your level in experience debt.<BR>* If you have more than 50% experience debt when you log on after this change, any experience debt greater than 50% will be removed.<BR>* You will no longer share experience debt for the deaths of other members of your group. Only the person who dies will gain experience debt.<BR></P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>A bad idea in my opinion because the actual system forces players to fight, if one of the group dies the group failed, everybody have to share the debt.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I know the new system from other games, where some people prefer to run if the fight could be dangerous and some clases (mostly tanks and healers) were the people who died more times than others. So the clases and players who fight for the group get a penalty and the guys who prefer to run whould not get any debt.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>