Avatars being farmed by one guild

Trap.

I could, but I think it would be a violation of these forums to do so. I could post a section of it on flames if you like.

See you there.

This is exactly what the issue is. It stems from the howls and screams that brought about the etheral weapons, made mythicals drop in solo zones, raid gear dropping in solo zones. The socialist mentality that everyone has a right to that gear, they had access to that gear just like everyone else. The raid zones have essentially been turned into loot piñatas, even some of the hard mode mobs and players like Zeus will not be happy until avatar loot starts dropping randomly from trash mobs just like etherals.

There is an abundance of great loot that you get for doing nothing but solo zones and killing trash mobs and if that isn't enough to whet your appetite then you dedicate some more time, or find a guild that is more suited to your desires as far as what gear you can obtain goes.

As for the bot camping of avatars, it may exist I have no reason to doubt Atan on that but I have not seen it used. We have a dedicated thread on our guild site and we have players that check spawn location regularly, we keep as accurate times of spawns and kills as we can. During raids players with multiple accounts AFK camp avatar locations this is in no way a violation of the TOS and if SOE should choose to ammend that then we will simply harvest a node here and there. Our main competition on Avatars has more people that can get on at 5-6 PM EST, we have a lot of west coast players that contrary to the idiotic views of a small minority do in fact have jobs and families and that costs us some kills on Avatars and we accept that.

It is beyond pathetic that there are people that are crying to mommy and daddy (SOE) that they can't get an Avatar kill because the bigger boys and girls are killing them first. It would help a lot if SOE would simply chime in here and say that the contested Avatars are working as intended.

I honestly can't add anything to what Lempo just said... he quite summarily addressed many of my own thoughts behind what has become of gear-balance and zone progression; a joke.

Mythicals should never had dropped outside a Raid Zone. I can yeild to the Ethereal wagon and say they can drop from ANY zone but making Ethereal solo only is stupid. Solo zones also should only ever drop loot on par with Fabled Heroic loot not EM Raid loot.

Heroic Fabled should be sneaking up on X4 EM and be very much on-par or past X2 Raids though to get full sets you must to do both X2 and Heroic. Sigh... I think I have made the above statement almost 9-10 times now across threads.

Which can easily be marginalized by someone getting 'lucky' and getting high end loot with much less effort. If it was more static like needing to farm 3000 obols/tokens(or other high amount) to get an ethereal it would be different. There are a lot of raiders who will never see the best weapons available because they didn't get lucky in this backwards system in the past.

The better loot is, the more effort it requires to get. This is not the case right now. I find it hard to believe a logical loot system that isn't based on luck is too much to ask for. Apparently it is if you are generally unwilling but still want awesome loots for minimal effort.

I agree mostly, but actually kind of like the idea that there is an infinitesimal chance for an ethereal to drop solo. I disagree with 'you get fabled loot for showing up', however.

I'm so copy / pasting you called the astonomer an astrologist on the Everfrost forums! Incoming guild drama for AD

so I'll throw this out there simply because I have nothing meaningful to say... IF you truely want a shot at avatars and you don't want other guilds to beat you to the pull, put together a guild on test server. Avatars are up all the time there.

Sure, someone can get lucky once, maybe even twice. But a raider is going to get his full set of gear much faster than a soloer 99% of the time. Running an instance many, many times is not 'minimal effort'. It just means not raiding (although raiders are running an instance over and over too...), for whatever reasons that may be. Oh, and raiders run solo instances too, so they have the raiders' chance plus the soloers' chance at the loot. Again, making it pretty clear who is going to get decked out first.

The way the system works now it seems like everyone who wants the loot has a chance at it. You just get to choose what part of the game you're going to put your effort into: you know "Play it Your Way".

Oh, and to quote the famous phrase: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results". Who cares if you got lucky or not in the past? What matters is your chances going forward.

I'm not against soloers and heroic runners getting the loot. I am against it being based on luck thus bypassing work/effort. I hate RNG's in general. Especially EQ2's notoriously bad ones.

DCUO had a solution i quite like. Imagine sets of loot are bought with tokens. From solo to raid gear. Now imagine the tokens needed are all the same and can be earned doing almost any of the content. From doing solo repeatables to raids. this allows people who may never raid a day in their life access to raid gear BUT, it requires are very set, determinable amount of effort.

So say a piece of raid gears takes 5k tokens(pulling amounts from no where btw). Well for running a raid you get a few hundred, running a group instance gets you a few dozen and running solo/duo stuff gives you 5-10. They can't 'stumble' upon raid level gear while running a solo instance. this type of system rewards work in a clear manner and removes 'luck.' Its very much play it your way and less 'play it your way and maybe you will get lucky or maybe you will get screwed.'

That depends on what you mean by full set...and please don't assume that raiders are running instances. I think I ran about 3 in the Skyshrine days. A few solo, not more than a dozen times or so.
They don't just hand out full sets of gear to raiders...

My error then, I was under the impression that most of the raid zones were instanced rather than contested.

I wouldn't be against that, but as it's pretty much the same method WoW uses for most (or at least a lot) of it's loot, I can hear the cries of 'welfare epics' already...

I believe they were talking about group/solo instances.

WoW is much more 'forgiving' on the price of those items for my taste. Running solo or easy heroic zones to get raid gear should be 'impractical' to say the least, just not impossible.

WoW actually moved back to the "best loot come from drops" model with the latest expac. Currency obtained loot is placeholder stuff until you get your drops.

I was. Sorry. Thought it would be clear from context, but I guess not clear enough.

SOE you really should add a message like: "Norrath is still for a moment while the God/Child of X steps foot upon the planes of <Zone> ". This would actually make contested content contested. I mean come on SOE just look at the AB server, one guild locking them down and you think this is ok? If one guild is going to lock these down then why did you even waste your time putting them in game, the MC is so greater than MB. Also, stop spoon feeding .05% of raiders, you don't have to bow into there every demands when they say something is too hard. Also, stop giving out free strategies to certain guilds, it's just wrong.


Thanks!

lolwut, this thread is classic

Pro tip, our avatar texts get sent out around 7pm and we rarely ever kill avatars outside of 7-8pm EST, super hard to contest. I think we left Vallon Pest up and forgot about it over the weekend and it actually re-spawned as conquest by the time we raided next.

We had a Vallon do that too. Even our competing guild who usually gets the Avatar due to starting 1 hour prior to us don't get Avatars outside their raid times. It really is funny that neither Antithesis or Kharma can field a raid outside of raid time for these but hey if both guilds happen to have raid-forces on you bet they both are at an Avatar.