[dev1089] What's the deal with enemy respawn timers?

An old problem is becoming noticeable again in 1.18, for obvious reasons. Mob repop timers show little consistency and less logic. Wondering if a dev can perhaps shed some light on this.

You'll think you find a good camp where there's 20+ mobs clustered up fairly close together.. then end up waiting for respawns once they're all dead. Then on the flip side you'll come across a room with only 2-3 mobs in it, and be fighting for your life nonstop because the enemies are respawning before the room can even be cleared.

Some respawns seem near instantaneous. Others take forever. Others seem staggered, where even if you kill 20+ low level mobs at the same time... they still only respawn 1 at a time every 5 minutes or so.

Is there a rhyme or a reason? It was simple in early days of XI, outdoor areas had ~5ish minute respawns and 'dungeon zones' were longer. And everything respawned based exactly on queue timed from the moment it died. Easy planning, easy camping. XIV, not so much.

I kinda like the randomness. I also like how aggro mobs will do so almost instantly after they spawn. It keeps things spicy.

The randomness makes for long lulls of boredom and inefficient exping. Though I wager it might be done like this so people don't stay in a single spot to rank up and are forced to roam around.

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Originally Posted by Kikosho

The randomness makes for long lulls of boredom and inefficient exping. Though I wager it might be done like this so people don't stay in a single spot to rank up and are forced to roam around.

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If that were the case, they would have just made them consistently longer rather than randomly confusing.

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Originally Posted by Celeras

If that were the case, they would have just made them consistently longer rather than randomly confusing.

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They originally wanted us to roam around.

I've noticed this with enemies like the beastmen. Beastmen in particular have a ridiculously slow respawn timer, kind of like the eyeballs in nanawa.

I guess we just need to travel around more to find mobs to kill. I know duoing with my friend at rank 30 we had a hard time finding does in Coerthas even though we were literally roaming through about 12 squares around glory. Some of the respawns are so slow or random that making one full run around several squares, you'll come back and they'll still be gone.

It really does make for poor exp/hr

Yes, the respawns are extremely random... even at the same locations you can kill a MOB and it respawns in X amount of time. Kill the exact same MOB again and the respawn time will be different. Perhaps even a long respawn time the longer you camp a spot?

With so few spots to get comparable or worthwhile exp/hr to XI or pre-patch, it'd be hard to not camp one spot, no matter how large it is.
Like the area above Glory with the few Does and Yarzons, we spent more time running around trying to find spawns than we did fighting. With Leves taking the back burner for parties of 4-8 for exp, it's only natural to want to find a spot to camp for an hour or more for xp. Particularly with no more fatigue. :/

Though weren't they going to investigate the respawns/locations in 1.19 or 20 or something?

I always use to joke, you know the mob gives good sp when it takes a long time to respawn.

I'm also a little disappointed with this randomness. It seems like the mobs start not spawning for 5-8+ minutes each once you sit in a spot for 30+ minutes. Even when you're over-camping. This is a little ridiculous.

Raptor camp seems to function like theres a pool of spawns, say 20 raptors total. When one dies, a clock starts ticking to a single respawn. Kill one, get one respawn in 5(arbitrary time) minutes. Kill all 20, 1 spawns at the 5 minute mark, another at the 10, 15, 20, etc.

Doesnt explain why crap insta spawns in other rooms, just an observation from the Young Raptor camp.

Another day of frustration requires a bump.