SoE's lame attempt at trying to stop farming : EverQuest 2 General Discussions

We've seen a lot of threads recently about players exploiting aggro mechanics in groups in order to farm named creatures for their items. This has become a lot more prevalent as of late because of the enhancements we've been making to dungeon zones as far as loot is concerned. In response to this, we're making the following changes to Test over the next few days as a solution to your concerns:

- Any creature that would aggro a player when solo will aggro that player regardless of the level of group members.
- Creatures that would not aggro a player when solo will not aggro that player regardless of the level of group members.

That means you won't see high level characters running around through a zone with lower level players to grey out the mobs, because mobs will still aggro the lower level player as one might expect. One of the ways players are currently exploiting the mechanic is that they're doing just that (greying out mobs), then mentoring down to a lower level player in order to get loot from named mobs (thus bypassing all the encounters on the way to the named creature and being rewarded for doing so).

This change should make such behavior a lot more difficult, leaving named creatures and their treasures for players who actually work to get to them.


Ryan "Blackguard" Shwayder

An additional note: If you con grey to a mob, it will always see through stealth and invisibility (as they currently do). Also, being group-stealth or invisd by a high level player will not change that behavior, and mobs with see-stealth and see-invis will still see through it as normal. This should make it difficult to simply stealth over to a named creature (or certainly of the same difficulty that a group of the appropriate level will experience).

Regarding this being taken as a "sledgehammer" measure -- This isn't being done solely becase of the farming that's having a negative impact on others' experiences.

Yes, this will have a minor impact there, but it's a decision we've been weighing for a while. The idea of someone helping a friend who is a couple levels away, through a zone? No problem. It was, however, a little more beneficial than it was supposed to be, even at launch.

We evaluated it again with the release of DoF, and decided to keep it in due to some folks' dependence on it for shard retrieval. Now that shard retrieval is gone, there doesn't seem to be much of a valid gameplay reason to keep it in a world that needs to feel appropriately dangerous. Not "dangerous if my friend who is AFK on the other side of the zone LD's."

Spells and abilities such as Invisibility and Sneak are meant to fulfill this role that "AFK buddy" is currently able to fill. Protecting someone weaker than yourself on their way through the world? Excellent. There are plenty of ways within a consistent world to help someone get from point A to point B, but there needs to be active participation for it to make sense.



As far as farming goes, there are further changes coming to loot credit assignment and treasure chances that are intended to more directly address the farming problem.

As a bit of background: When we unlocked encounters and made loot credit work the way that it currently does on live, as many people pointed out (and as we were fully aware of), there were holes that we left there that people could take advantage of.

We wanted to see what would happen with a non-restrictive, open set of rules first. Game mechanics changes aimed at preventing negative behaviors are a last resort. The behaviors resulting now unfortunately warrant further action to protect legitimate players.

We'll have more details soon. Thanks for your patience.


Good hunting,

- Scott

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Scott Hartsman
Senior Producer, EverQuest II

- Item drop rates now obey the same rules as experience does when damage is contributed by people or creatures other than the group or person that engages an encounter. That is, you will be less likely to find treasure chests on creatures who players outside of your group help fight. The more damage they do, the less likely you will be to obtain the loot.

On test yesterday



Like it's going to impact the pro farmers in any, way, shape or farm.

*Idiots!*
*Gosh!*