Well, everyone agrees that it's easy to lock down all targets in an area, especially with Castels. Perhaps the original idea isn't the solution, but at least the suggestion was made.

For everyone that said to "do something else" as a solution, here's what you do. Next time you spend 10 minutes travelling to your mission location, or that one mining spot...turn around and go back to the nearest terminal. Then head out to a different location, but once there, I'm afraid you'll have to back to the terminal again. Maybe if you head out to a NEW location...nope, once you get there, turn around again and head back to start over. Repeat this a few more times, then come back to tell me if this is a viable solution.

TL;DR: "Do something else" is not a long term solution to a problem everyone recognizes.

Have you read what people are saying?
I know of at least three people that have already left due to this very issue, and there have been days where i got sick of it and went back to DDO and/or EvE, it is sadly making me spend less and less time here, since it is affecting my and mu friends enjoyment of the game.

To simply state go somewhere else is NOT a viable issue when most or all of the first tier areas are being camped in this way, you even acmit to seeing it and doing it.....alone. I have seen one-two pilots lock out an area while three smaller mechs sat watching on the edge of the field, were these smaller mechs fans watching the game? little groupies wanting scraps?
Where else should they go? Go try to fight 1st stars?
As i have said before; If it was about higher level areas or anything in the outer islands i would agree and say tough, that is what the game is about, fighting over resources, go somewhere else, put up with it, or put your ammo behind what you think is right.
What ends up happening though is newb A goes out on first mission after tutorial wanting to try out their brand spanking new Prometheus, finds the quest area..........full of larger mechs and containers all over.......
"oh, there is a bot i need to kill! hmmmm, what do i do now, ok, lock....oh, it's dead already, there another, wow, these guys lock fast......
30 mins later said newb logs off not even getting one kill, they may or may not have dropped the mission to try another area which is also farmed.

People that cannot see the problem here either are mentally deficient, or hate this game and want it to fail. If you piss off enough newbs, they will leave, they will tell their friends which are other possible newbs, this also inhibits people coming to look because their friends are here. I refuse to recommend this game to others right now because i know that they would not like this, i tell them it is a good game, good potential, but they aren't there yet, wait a while.

As i have said before it will end up with a group of old-timers sitting in their empty outer islands blaming everything but themselves that the game is dying before the plug is finally pulled.

Does this mean dumbing down the game, or catering to the newbs?
Perhaps, but it is not something that has to change the whole game, or affect anything beyond the first week of play for many. There are many easy ways to fix this, one of the easiest being to move the the things that are being farmed to other mechs in other areas. If there is nothing the old timers want there, then they will not farm there. This is just one suggestion, there are probably many others that would work, many would likely be better than mine.

The only stupid thing to do here is to ignore the problem.....

Here is an easier fix.  Have the noob "Assignment" bots drop nothing of value, no kernals, which would be a deterent to people farming them.

It might be better to just adjust the lowbie assignment bots loot table and mark them as assignment targets so the farmers move on to the non newbie spawns. From my travels around the world it seems most of the spawns aren't being touched.

I never had a problem getting the kills on any of the 5 chars I've run through the tutorial chain but I've seen a LOT of people complaining about it.

What's fair about not being able to kill the person tagging all the mobs?

We're talking about Alpha island here.

I have had issues with this as well. People farming the mission spawns and tagging everything that spawns.

Spawns need increasing, there should be more camps and missions should cycle through the camps.

Perhaps an alternative solution would be to no longer associate tags with quest completion.

The multi-taggers are there for the loot, not the missions.

The newbies are there for the missions, not the loot.

So I'd suggest the following changes:

- Tags still give loot Rights.
- Adding damage to a kill gives Quest Rights.
- Destroy & Recover quest items are automatically added when a Quest Right is given.
- NIC rewards for Military missions get adjusted downwards to the level of Transportation missions.
- NPCs receive a small chance ( 10% ) to drop an additional kernel to compensate for reduced quest rewards.

This would lead to the following:
- Going to a farmed quest area would give no loot but fast quest completion for some easy NIC. Basically the same as doing a transportation quest but instead of delivering consoles to a terminal you deliver some ammo to an NPC ( the unfriendly way. )
- Going to an abandoned quest area would give more valuable loot but slower quest completion. Basically the same as it is now but you receive more of your reward in kernels and less in NIC.

Seeing as NPCs pay for kernels I think the economical impact would be minimal, prices may drop slightly due to increased supply but because of the artificial minimum they wouldn't be able to drop very far.

This would imho also lead to a better community on the Alpha isles as this would promote working together in quest areas for faster quest completion. Serious players would still compete with each other over the more valuable loot and kernels but casual players would be able to work together to get fast kills with minimal ammo spend even without formally grouping up.

In the end the situation would remain exactly the same for the more hardcore players. They would still compete against each other for finding the best spawn spots and obtaining asn many kernels as possible. But newbies would have a much easier time. When it comes down to the numbers they would earn about the same as they do now ( instead of 1 30k NIC quest in 30 mins they do 1 10k NIC quest in 10 mins. ) But they would be constantly busy doing something instead of hopelessly trying to get that tag that will just never come.

Heh you're right , my solution isn't exactly easy. But it's a solution that solves this problem without restricting tags to 1 per player. Which is what some other people in this thread were complaining about.

Edited my post so it's now an alternative solution .

You can't fire on more than one mob at a time anyways....so if you're 'tagging' other mobs...your just kill-stealing from other players that are around the spawn.

If it's non-lasting, then why do you care if it's changed?

Again, recall that this wasn't like this for the entirety of beta.

It was a quick fix for complaints about loot going to deathblows.

And this is worse than that, in instances where people wish to tag everything.

Then there were the complaints about restrictions... when this is a restriction.

I can't help but feel that you are abusing this particular feature for your own profit and/or doing so to the detriment of others.

Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach.