Ho ho Oh brother it has started already! lol

Day one of 2010's Winter Event and already the usual rude behavior has begun.. I was in Grandville opening up presents and frequently finding small spawns of 4,5 or 6 Winter Horde roaming around waiting to be defeated or to despawn.

I made the following post in broadcast;

Broadcast] Operative xxx (ME) ahhh and the traditional .. I don't have time to deal with my own mess So if its a naughty package i just run off and leave has begun here in Grandville Lovely to see the holiday tradition continues

[Broadcast] Operative xxx (ME): clean up your messes

And of course I got the typical replies:

[Broadcast] BACKTALKER ONE: i don't have a dog

[Broadcast] BACKTALKER TWO: I've never understood why people complain about that

Broadcast] BACKTALKER ONE: Can't watch their step?


I tried to explain knowing full well it was useless:

[Broadcast] Operative xxx (ME): how about because I am a 50 level i spawn a 49 level group and a 40 level stumbles on them HE DIES

[Broadcast] Operative xxx (ME): oh and guess what I have gotten candy canes from killing spawns MY spawns So your lossing out leaving them

Then I got this ....

[Broadcast] BACKTALKER TWO: So, lets say I want the Toy Collector badge on a support toon who can't solo a full group of spawns. It's not too hard to just watch where you're going, or to avoid mobs altogether if you're a low level

Now I didnt bother to reply because I have seen these arguments before and you can't convince anyone of ANYTHING in this game. But I couldn't help but wonder if your build is so bad that you can't handle a 3 minion spawn from a Holiday Gift Package solo then maybe instead of racing around from package to package as fast as possible you should be looking to get on a RESPEC team because you seriously need to work on your build. I have played Defenders, Controllers, Corrupters and Dominators not to mention MasterMinds (all of the typical "support" ATs) and I can't think of a single build I ever had that was so weak I couldn't deal with a 3 man mob of minions. The best part was I was running outside the city along the beach on the west side and MY spawns were coming up everything from level 40 to level 49. I never even saw a 50 level spawn from a package I opened so if the same was happening to others .. you are honestly telling me you can't tackle a spawn that's as much as 5 or 6 levels lower than you? NO what you are doing is seeing just how fast you can get from package to package and you couldn't care less if that means someone else ends up in debt because YOUR time is too important to be wasted actually defeating your own spawn.

Ahhh the holidays are here and the RUDE IDIOTS are back Merry Christmas to us one and all !!

Yep.

I've given up complaining about it. If I see a problem, I tend to switch to a higher character and clean up if I'm in a helpful mood.

What bugs me MORE than that, though, are the *delightful* little twirps who see a lower level runnign for a package, and make it a point to cut in front, grab it - and yeah, leave the spawn, nine times out of ten.

See my Guides and Tutorials

What did you expect? People suck most of the time, and only really are concerned with themselves.

Although everyone isn't this way but, it's the bad ones that stick out to us.

I don't do presents during peak hours I wait till it's morning or real late and pick a low pop zone.GL

My fave example of this from the olden days when the set-up was different was a 50 doing this late one night on Cap. He was spawning top level mobs from these things then running off to the next one, leaving every single present-spawning point on the map unusable for anyone else. I asked him to stop please and he got huffy about it of course.

I'm really glad we can make player notes now, I plan to one-star anyone I see doing this so I can avoid them in the future.

As a fan of irony:

Someone in Peregrine last year didn't clean up their spawns. I'm a scrapper, so they're no big threat to me. I defeat them.

One of them drops the Apocalypse: Chance for Fire Damage proc.

I wish I still had that screenshot. I did let the entire zone know, and to the individual who didn't clean up that spawn, I thank you still to this day.

I thought that when a new present spawns, the old mob drops dead?

At least, they were doing that for me today in AP.

Wait, huh?

I thought the spawns from this were zone-level, not player-level. Sure seems that way so far -- I did a couple in KR and got level 6 spawns that were grey to me.

FYI:

Just because you don't agree with their reasons for doing so doesn't mean they're wrong, and it doesn't give you the right to go off on them. You KNOW it's gonna happen, cause it does every year (and during the Halloween event as well, which is worse), so spending time kvetching about it just brings you down to their level.

Expecting everyone else to play the same way you play, and feel the same sense of moral obligation to other players you do is just gonna make you go crazy.

The present spawns are random within the range of the zone. That same 40 in PI has just as good of a chance of having +10s pop out from their own presents.

Put me in the "no reason to complain" camp. The spawns are zone-appropriate, if they con grey to the opener who runs away then they never move from the spot, and they are big and white and visible. In other words, functionally identical to existing spawns in that zone. If your lowbie characters runs right into the middle of them and dies, it's your own damn fault for not paying attention.

I opened presents in Brickstown with a level 30 character last night. Level 30 is appropriate for that zone, correct? But when I got frostlings, they spawned as high as level 37.

Now was I rude to not clean up the frostlings that spawned 7 levels higher than myself? Because I cannot defeat three +7 minions.

If I was rude, and I don't want to be rude, then I'm not allowed to open presents in a zone that I can play in for experience. Because I cannot clean up after myself in such a zone, unless I'm at the high end of the zone range, and I am not.

If I wasn't rude for opening presents in a level appropriate zone, when I cannot clean up for myself, then would I be rude if I were 7 levels higher and can?

Is rudeness simply a matter of level?

I'm sorry, but I cannot agree with the simple thesis that opening a present and not fighting the frostlings is rude. Is isn't even possible for many characters to do that unless they only open presents in places where they are guaranteed to win the fight.

There is no code of conduct written down stating that not fighting the frostlings is bad behavior. That is just the personal value system of some players, and not shared by every player.

Not defeating the frostlings doesn't prevent new presents from appearing, the frostlings automatically despawn as soon as a new present appears. And frostlings themselves are nothing more than another enemy group to avoid if you are just passing through.

What specifically is the problem here? That other players are littering?

The worst thing that I can see about this, is that like my experience last night, that the frostlings can spawn in a region within the zone that are many levels higher than the normal NPC enemies for that region. Such as level 37 frostlings near the Brickstown/IP zone boundary, where most such NPCs are levels 30-33 in that region. But that is a consequence of the developers' designs, not players' behavior.

And that is only a problem for incautious players who don't look where they are going.

So, in summary, chill out.

I saved like 1000 worlds the other day. Why do I still get naughty presents!

People not cleaning up their spawns used to really bother me. But now it seems they despawn so quick that it's not a big deal. And they're not really any different from ordinary street mobs, except easier to spot. Yeah, I've rounded a corner and run into them, but I've done the same thing with pretty much all the other mob types. How is smacking into a group of snow beasts because I wasn't being careful enough any different than smacking into a group of trolls or hellions?

And like others have pointed out, I've had purples leap out into my face. I'm not going to stand there and have one of my squishies pounded into the ground by snowies conning purple. He who fights and runs away and all that.

The main reason I stopped complaining, though, was the time one of my alts was flying all over a zone I'd never hunted in before getting more and more frustrated because I couldn't find any presents. Just as I was about to run off to consult the wiki and vidiots, someone started leaving their spawns. This let me see where the spawn sites were, and before long I was clicking away on glowies.

If what comes out is around my level or lower, I'll beat them up.

If what comes out is several levels higher than me, I won't. I can't :P


The only time I've actually had a problem with left spawns was several years ago in Founders Falls, someone got a Winter Lord to spawn right next to the Pocket D entrance. It wasn't their fault, though :P