Game Mechanics: Unlimited melee range aggro != classic

[Arkaan]

P99 has no limit to melee range aggro. Meaning you can have 100+ mobs swinging at you. Perhaps I will get some hate from this, but this isn't classic.

When I played on live, I played a wiz from Kunark to Luclin. During this time I would many, many times aggro nearly the whole freakin zone with my t-staff, and PBAoE them. I did this in EK with crag spiders for spider silk. I did it in blackburrow for gnoll fangs. I did it in the warrens for faction. In any case, there was a threshold where once you had a certain number of mobs aggroed (and in melee range) any additional aggroed mobs would run around as if they were feared. I can't say exactly what this threshold was, but I can say it was approximately 75% of the entire population of blackburrow spawns. This threshold does not exist on P99.

To clarify: You could have 1000 mobs chasing you, and they could be all bunched up. But as soon as you have a certain number within melee range, the rest (beyond the threshold) would flee, running in every direction as if they were feared. So if you did have 1000 mobs chasing you all bunched up and you stopped, you would see most of these mobs would scatter once the bunch reached you.

I have read the live patch notes archive between launch and Luclin and I don't see this as ever having been patched in.

[Haynar]

You are correct that there was a limit to mobs hitting on you at the same time. It was changes a few times in how many would attack each round of melee too.

Too many non-specifics on what it actually was.

Not a priority to investigate.

H

[Arkaan]

That's too bad. I beleive this mechanic existed on live for a reason. I can understand why many players would have interest in this remaining unfixed. Many bards for example.

[Haynar]

What are the specific mechanics to implement?

You need to know more.

I know on eqlive at around 80-100 mobs that they should stop at a distance and wait further away. Not sure exactly how many though. Sometimes they would move around. Sometimes just stand and wait.

[Haynar]

The only people that would scream to fix this are ones that think it would hurt ae groups or bard swarm kiting.

I know for awhile there was an 8 mob limit of ones that would attack. And others would run off. It was hillarious to see. I think that was around luclin or pop.

H

[Arkaan]

It's hard to be certain. But the threshold was approximately 75 mobs. Once ~75 mobs were aggroed and within melee range the rest would desist and begin to scatter at running speed randomly. Some would stop, some would immediately begin scattering. They seemed to mimic the behaviour of being feared. for each of the 75 that were killed or in some way moved out of melee range, one of the "stragglers" would resume attacking.

I used to limit my solo AEing pulls because of this, things would just get too messy and bystanders could get trained. It was annoying then and I too would rather not be limited myself, but given the goal of the project to be as close as possible to classic, I felt like it had to be pointed out.

I think getting somewhere near what it was on live would be better than leaving it wide open and unlimited.

BTW I never saw a limit anywhere near 8 mobs. Although I quit playing shortly after Luclin, started again breifly during PoP and quit again. I could have missed that.

At any rate. I don't think a single player should be able to easily AE an entire zone. I'm pretty sure that's what the limit meant to prevent.