Opinion on MoP Tracking Pet Timers?

[Astratia]

With the current update of MoP, it seems our stealthed beasts have been taking longer to show their tracks. I'm not sure of the current time it has taken for any of the 'rares', but I recall previously some beasts were showing up in thirty minuets.

I have to ask, what do you think about the timers?
Are you hoping for them to be a real diamond in the rough, only showing up every 6-12 hours then having to hunt down their moonwalking tracks?
Or would you prefer a timer similar to Skarr and Karkan's timer - a much shorter wait at about 2-8 hours.

I personally would love to have them really low, say Skarr's timer if not less, but make them spawn randomly along their path, so it's a nice hunt rather then sitting at their starting point.

In a way, it's still giving us a fun hunt, without the jitters of a time lost/aeonaxx hunt ^_^;

[Kalliope]

Agreed, 2-8 seems reasonable, considering that finding them is going to be challenging under any circumstances (at least for some of them - PATRANNACHE). I also agree about having multiple spawn points. For all that I'm sitting on spawn points on beta, that's just for testing purposes. The real thing should be harder-won.

[Maizou]

I concur with the lower spawn rates.

I already know my first thing when I hit 86 will be going to Pat's zone and shouting "10,000g for help finding pattranache" >_>

Pretty sure a few hunters would give up their personal desires to tame him for a quick 10k. xD

[Danielfboone]

I would like to see a timer of no more than 4 hours and I agree that a random spawn along the known path would be the best way to do it. Currently in Beta, they now seem to be longer than 8 hours. I haven't seen a single track since the update.

[Kurasu]

2-8 hours, ish, sounds reasonable to me. I could even go lower, since they aren't going to be easy to find. But I definitely don't see a need for them to be the usual 8-24 hours of the Northrend and Cata tameables. However, having them have multiple spawn points would be a good idea. Yeah, it would make them hella hard to hunt, but it's a trade-off: up tons, but hard to find, as opposed to having to camp one spot for 12 hours.

[Sasrei]

Im hoping for a smaller timer as well, even when you find the tracks it can take up to 2 hours to actually find the darn thing, especially when it twists and turns like they like to do. Im kinda hoping for 2-4 hours cause its not like rares now where you see spawn point, camp spawn point wait for npcscanner to yell at yah. Now its more like spend an hour and half looking throughout the entire zone for tracks, spend an anouther hour to two hours tracking said tracks, then spend 15 mins playing game with the bird who you know is suppossed to be around here somewhere but like to go on ahead of you..

[Undra]

I'm all for a short timer, because it's always been my experience that another mob somewhere else has more to do with a rare being up than the clock. I've no reason to expect MoP to be any different in that regard, so the shorter the rare timer the sooner a specific rare will queue up.

[Ziarre]

Most of the Northrend tamable rares were 6-8 hours, I thought? Except for Arcturus. Cata...it varied depending on the mob. Jadefang is all kinds of weird, Madexx has that super-loose 12-ish timer, Ghostcrawler I think is around 8, and the Molten Front spiders around 12-24 (kinda Arcturus-ish).

...I think what I'm trying to say is they couldn't all be easily slapped in a 6-24 hour category, it really depended on who you were hunting.

[Kalliope]

Most of the Northrend tamable rares were 6-8 hours, I thought? Except for Arcturus. Cata...it varied depending on the mob. Jadefang is all kinds of weird, Madexx has that super-loose 12-ish timer, Ghostcrawler I think is around 8, and the Molten Front spiders around 12-24 (kinda Arcturus-ish).

...I think what I'm trying to say is they couldn't all be easily slapped in a 6-24 hour category, it really depended on who you were hunting.

Skoll was 12h too. Madexx is 6h. Molten Front rares were 2-5h on Skarr/Karkin and 8-18ish on the others.

[Maizou]

I once camped Aotona for 25 hours straight. She never appeared. Used NPC Scan and a target macro, so there was no possible way for her to be missed.

I pretty much stopped trying after that. xD Then found her by chance one day. And yes, after 25 hours, I REALLY had to sleep and go to the bathroom, Lol.

[Ziarre]

It's always possible to miss them, unless there's only one spawn point. Take, for example, when I was camping Sambas. Ran from one end of his line of spawns to the other every few minutes--and only JUST caught sight of him being tamed by someone else. A few seconds later, and I would never have known he was there at all. The only time I assume I haven't missed spawns is if I'm seeing many multiple spawns on a more-or-less consistent timer.

I've only run into that situation once.

Note: I know Aotona is pretty elusive. That spawn has the bad fortune to have most of the points in the Mangal, which is heavily quested, and one spawn point is RIGHT next to the Oracle daily area. Another is near the Frenzyhearts. It's frighteningly easy for someone to stumble across that damn bird. It took me years before I ever saw it in the wild, and that's only because I had the luck to spot someone with a fresh tame in Stormwind who was willing to tell me about it.

[Undra]

I thought the rules for Northrend Rares were old news.

There are only three rares up in Northrend at a time.
There are 27 rares.
Only one rare per zone.
There are 8 zones with are spawns.
Each rare has its own 6hr respawn timer.

[Shade]

I would like them to have pretty low respawn rates-mainly considering how difficult it will be to find them in the first place. You can't see them till they are flared, and you have to chase down some pretty hard to see tracks too? I'd want their respawn rate to be much lower then normal.

[Astratia]

All reality set aside, I'd love for them to have the respawn rates of a quest mob, spawing at a random location on their path.

In a way, they are always up but since their paths are so long, it would still be rare to come across it unless you were specifically hunting for them.

[Kalliope]

I thought the rules for Northrend Rares were old news.

There are only three rares up in Northrend at a time.
There are 27 rares.
Only one rare per zone.
There are 8 zones with are spawns.
Each rare has its own 6hr respawn timer.

This information has been proven inaccurate, with the exception of the 27 rares. That is old news.

At any rate, entirely different continent. *rerails*

[Shade]

All reality set aside, I'd love for them to have the respawn rates of a quest mob, spawing at a random location on their path.

In a way, they are always up but since their paths are so long, it would still be rare to come across it unless you were specifically hunting for them.

Here here. They are already going to be a pain to find, having them at really long respawn rates is just going to make it a nightmare.

[Novikova]

I'd prefer a lower spawn timer on spotting the tracks. Maybe I'm old. Maybe I'm grumpy. No, you can't have any pudding till you eat your meat. But with the changes, I can't park, set NPCscan and go do homework/housework/cook/bother my cats or shrimp/RL stuff. So it's probably for quality of life that it isn't 8-24 hours. I'd prefer a maximum of 6 hours spawn timer, because hey, from the looks of it, you not only have to:

1) Find tracks - hope your graphics card is decent. I feel for any shmoe with a low end computer. Not everyone can just run out and upgrade.
2) Follow the tracks/appropriate path.
3) Hope another hunter doesn't beat you to it. Mind, I'm hardly a fan of merging/phased zones across servers because ... competition, lag and hellooooooo bugs. I love my class, but hunters ARE pretty popular.
4) Flare it out and tame it. Since it'll be visible once flared, you need to hope there's no people wearing hats on their butts (even if they are very dapper hats) and people play fair. For the most part, people are. But there's always that one guy with a butt on his head. And it'll only take him 10 seconds to ruin your day.

A lower spawn time means you won't spork yourself to death (imagine your obituary. Please don't spork yourself to death) if you lose the critter, have to log off before the timer is up or the planets align and something goes awry. A chance at something is not the same as a handout or an easy to get thing. Mind you, MoP drops during midterms (BARF), so I'll be taking it slow and helping folks.

And ask me sometime about camping for like, 6 weeks straight for Aotona. I'm pretty sure I lost at least 3d4 worth of Sanity rating in that infernal basin. @_@

[Kalliope]

The greatest thing about this setup for the rare beasts is that for good or for ill, unless you get lucky and see a hunter flare one out, you're going to have to be putting in the effort to look. So there should (in theory) be less competition for the rares in that there will be fewer casual driveby tames.

[Ziarre]

Yeah, I'd like between 3-6 hours. 8 hours maximum. If they're being evil, no more than 12 hours for the love of god pretty please.

[Novikova]

I'm pretty sure after 12 hours, most of us start fusing with the chairs and that's just plain not healthy. I love pets, but yeah, there's no sense in it going over 8 hours.

And it is nice it's a bit more griefer proof.