Eureka NEEDS some changes to dissuade people from simply afking next to fatetrains

[Rufalus]

It's really quite sad and telling of how people have grown into apathetic leeches. This mentality is kind of the same mentality as people who bot in PVP because they want the reward with zero work. Personally, it disgusts me, but I know SE will never do anything about it, much like they have let bots run freely rampant for 9 months in PVP.

It is making have contempt for the community. I tried again to get some people to split from the afk train to help me farm enemies in a different part of the map but I only convinced one person, a ninja, which isn't enough. We could be working on 3+ enemy types simultaneously but this datacenter only wants farm 1 thing at a time with utilisation of just 20% of the players while the other 80% afk there.

I joined the main group 'fate train' farming and tanked the mobs but died doing it. I looked over at somebody in my party who could have been heal/res me, but they were sitting in a chair mount not helping. They didn't leave afk to help me (somebody in a different party had to resurrect me) but they immediately stop afk the moment the NM spawned to get credit/loot. We could have more NM spawns if they helped fight enemies, especially if we do more than 1 monster type at a time.

I will have to look for a video on certain NMs just out of curiosity to see what they look like because the choo choo afk train people never do the lv18 and lv19 NMs. They could go many days without a single spawning because I can't convince people to help me farm lv23 enemies instead of afk at the low/mid level stuff waiting for other people to spawn those.

Can you imagine how unacceptable it would be for this much afk in any other content. Like you go into Lost Canals of Uznair and 6/8 people just sit on the floor in each room watching 2 people working hard to clear the enemies, then the other 6 people still roll on the loot.

Part of me feels like the afk timer which removes people from an instance due to inactivity should activate here if the player does not engage enemies. Just movement wouldn't be enough, they have to be on enmity list for a enemy at least every 10 minutes. Doesn't count within sanctuary (port surgate), only starts counting inactivity when out in the field to discourage people waiting at an NM location but not helping to attack enemies there. Not an ideal solution, I'm sure somebody could think of a better one.

[Avenger]

Eureka is currently kind of like ARR s-ranks - if you leave the fate train then you won’t be able to get to the boss before it drops dead, but if you are popping your own NM then the train will come and kill it.

[Avenger]

Given the slow pop rate of monsters it is probably fine for 80 people to be afk and using /cheerjump.

[Rufalus]

Eureka is currently kind of like ARR s-ranks - if you leave the fate train then you won’t be able to get to the boss before it drops dead, but if you are popping your own NM then the train will come and kill it.

I feel it creates its own problem. They drop dead so fast because everyone is there. If people split up, in addition to spawn more NMs at once, you can also have time to travel to them before they die because only 20-40% of players are at each instead of 100%. It took a group effort to reduce the efficiency and the fun. In the first few days we did have multiple NMs being progressed toward pop at once and people playing in different parts of map instead of afk huddle.

This probably varies by datacenter and region. I would be surprised if they were all as shamelessly leechy as we have it on Chaos. I think people proved that they cannot be trusted with large group content, like if tomestones were offered in open-world content it would be abused. Even at a group size of 24 like alliance raids you get a portion of participants not trying and waiting for the other players to win the battle.

[DrWho2010]

there's just not enough incentive to split off from the lowest common denomiator type activity.

[Acidblood]

I feel it creates its own problem. They drop dead so fast because everyone is there. If people split up, in addition to spawn more NMs at once, you can also have time to travel to them before they die because only 20-40% of players are at each instead of 100%. It took a group effort to reduce the efficiency and the fun. In the first few days we did have multiple NMs being progressed toward pop at once and people playing in different parts of map instead of afk huddle.

This probably varies by datacenter and region. I would be surprised if they were all as shamelessly leechy as we have it on Chaos. I think people proved that they cannot be trusted with large group content, like if tomestones were offered in open-world content it would be abused. Even at a group size of 24 like alliance raids you get a portion of participants not trying and waiting for the other players to win the battle.

People, by nature, are always going to take the path of least resistance, and this NEEDS to be considered in the design... I don't know what sort of alternative reality the designers at SE live in, but with the current design this was always going to be the result and nothing is going to change until they start balancing the effort:reward ratio between NMs, standard mobs, and any other activities they add. i.e. With the current design NMs are both by far the most rewarding per kill time and per hour and take the least effort to get a reward from; this is absolutely terrible design.

The balance needs to shifted so that NMs are still good per kill time (i.e. reduce their spawn rate dramatically, and put most on a random timer so that 'NM mobs' aren't seen as more valuable than others), but significantly worse per hour than chaining normal mobs (i.e. dramatically increase the XP and drops from normal mobs, and allow the chain bonus to continue indefinitely (but with bonus capped at the 30x level)). With this balance NMs are still worth killing when they are up, but if you want XP and items per hour, you will make orders of magnitude better progress by activity chaining mobs (in any size party) than someone who only participates in NMs.

[Rufalus]

I would actually like to suggest that the way NMs spawn is changed, not just the rewards. Rather than NMs spawning immediately when the conditions are met, it could just trigger a random timer that is not visible to players, so people don't know for sure when it will spawn or which NM will pop next and can't just wait around in one place for it to happen. The NMs that are popping now will be because players farmed enemies in that area some random time ago. Now when there is not an NM currently active and you don't know the location of the next, you're encouraged to spread out and farm all the different kinds of enemies to put as many NMs as possible on ready status for spawning later. It's ok to do this in small groups since the NM spawn order is not known, you aren't going to miss one from people camping it.

[Besame]

Given the slow pop rate of monsters it is probably fine for 80 people to be afk and using /cheerjump.

I am always hoping the /cheerjump on rock/branch people die. Even while I was leveling I always helped hit mobs to spawn the boss. They irritate me and if they die when I am on a rezzer, they stay dead .

[KageTokage]

They could make killing enemies more appealing if chain bonuses lasted longer, applied to FATEs at a reduced rate, and also didn't automatically end once you hit 30.

Though they should make everyone have their own individual chain value that won't increase unless they generate a certain amount of enmity towards a monster even while partied to discourage slacking.

[Besame]

They could make killing enemies more appealing if chain bonuses lasted longer, applied to FATEs at a reduced rate, and also didn't automatically end once you hit 30.

Though they should make everyone have their own individual chain value that won't increase unless they generate a certain amount of enmity towards a monster even while partied to discourage slacking.

Even when I was not getting xp for hitting because I was either too low or another group in the train hit first, I still participated.