I am sure that for those of us who played EQ in it's prime we all remember seeing - on occasion - someone running around one zone or another spamming something like the following..
"Paying BIG plats for the location of "
where the < > indicates insert name here (Optobnerbevy, that mage for the mana stone, etc.).
Feel free to list your favorite here (mine was that damned paladin in Rathe mtns. that dropped the +10 CHA hat that I never got!).
More importantly, do you think there should be some sort of bounty system developed? If so, how would it be implemented?
My "Hit list" was normally comprised of players. I played on a pvp server, so I didn't see much in the way of announcments for paying for NPCs. Our location announcements were more like "--player name--, out of range to me at level --xx-- heading toward --location-- ". If someone announced something like "paying big plat" that put a target on their head because you could loot all the monies people were carrying! I remember a great tactic vs casters was to drain their strength (because it was a resist check of poison or disease compared to snare's magic resist check) and they would get encumbered and slowed until end game gear stats. That was likely one of several spells you didn't see used on the PvE servers past lvl 15 or so... along with see invis, or low level DoTs to put on yourself to break mez, or dispel/cure disease/poison etc. Magic resist and see invis items were very high priority. PvP vs PvE were completely different games.
Good question, Nephretiti.
One emphasis many people want to see in Pantheon is exploring - looking for new things - even on second or third or tenth characters having reasons to not just follow the same "golden path".
One hot topic has been content monopolization and guilds camping certain content continuously - in force or having scouts at spawn points.
One or more periodic bounties - maybe daily - where the target is randomly spawned in any of *hundreds* of locations around Terminus - would encourage exploration and could not readily be perma-camped.
Perhaps a nice variety of bounties with some at each level range - it would give us all something to do that wasn't quests and wasn't mindless camping the same spot hours and hours on end.
Oh man. I can't even remember my EQ hit list - but I remember that it was an entire Excel spreadsheet. I would go out on Allakazam's and work out my entire gear progression - figure out where to get the resist pieces, armor upgrades, and so on - and then that spreadsheet guided what I went and tried to camp for like 2+ years. It had multiple layers to it, so I had even worked out what to get first, then what to get next, then where to upgrade the first pieces.
It was fun, in a way, but to be honest I don't miss it so much these days. By the time I got to Vanguard, I didn't really care what dropped where anymore. I didn't want to care. I wanted to explore and simply find things organically, and leverage crafting to fill in the gaps.
That's still my mindset today.
philo said:Hehe I don't think dvinn is the kind of "bounty" the OP meant.
After camping quillmane for weeks or months I ended up paying a friend of mine 10k plat (a friend price) for the cloak. That was back when the placeholders were unknown.
I too spent months trying to get it on live before the PHs were known and eventually gave up. I spent about 6 hours farming pegasus cloak on p99 with my Bard though... was super easy with tracking and Selos + knowing the PHs around my mid 40s. I also had the Ancient Cyclops in SRo down to a science. I can't wait to find some of the goodies in store in PRotF. I'm really excited about those artifacts listed in this month's newslettre like that shield of mirrors... there will be so many items on my hit list :)
philo said:Hehe I don't think dvinn is the kind of "bounty" the OP meant.
After camping quillmane for weeks or months I ended up paying a friend of mine 10k plat (a friend price) for the cloak. That was back when the placeholders were unknown.
Oh that is exactly the type of names I meant. In-game NPCs that were required for quests or very rare items - most of which almost noone knew about. So many mobs whose names I don't even recall. Like that little imp in the Beholder's Maze. While Dvinn wasn't really all THAT hard to get too, some of these mobs were nigh impossible to find. Like that damned paladin in Rathe Mtns. Another mob that just seemed like pure magic to me was CrackTusk. I could run all over South Karana looking for him and he would never ever be there. But it never failed: the very moment I stop to stare at my book - BAM! Gored from behind by that Predatory Pachiaderm. I went back to SK many many times to verify that this was still the case. It never failed. He only spawned the very second I sat down. I was CERTAIN the DevTeam had some kind of "MessWith" flag on my account! Oh! Just thought of another one! Who was the Barbarian in the Qeynos area that dropped the necklace? He lived on the river on the opposite side of the zone that had Blackburrow entrence...
The one that drove me nuts back in the day was Lord Grimrot. OMG, I camped that for weeks trying to get one of the two versions for the quest.
As for revenge, my revenge target was that damned griffon that lived in EC and pathed near the tunnel. That thing killed me SO MANY times. When I was finally big enough to murder it back, let's just say that a reckoning occurred.
I played a shaman so didn't really give a rat's ass about Jboots but I remember while farming hill giants often seeing people looking for Hasten.
I don't think there should be any type of bounty system put into the game mechanics, rather let the community work it out. People will be gathering in the EC tunnel or Faymart equivilent, People can sell or seek tracking services like they would for a rez, port or buffs.
It was quite obvious that all of the rare spawns required for the Epic weapons would be on this list. Walking into a zone where one would spawn and /yelling "Anyone seen InsertNameHere" only warned the other 25 people hunting that mob that there was yet more competition. I liked the mobs that were rare - and in fact, so rare that most people never even heard of them. Sometimes they had a rare piece of gear they could drop very rarely. Like the +10 CHA hat in Rathe Mtns. SOmetimes they were needed for a quest that no one knew about yet (Optobnerbevvy - I swear, I will never learn how to spell her name correctly). Sometimes it made me hesitate before killing a mob I knew nothing about. Am I supposed to build faction with this NPC for a super-quest? Am I supposed to kill this NPC because they drop the Holy Hand Grenade? Being an Enchanter gave a LOT more options when you start thinking about the faction building spells. All that being said, I am certain there were mobs that I never learned of. I always felt like I missed an important part of the game because I didn't get to interact with an NPC.