Server wide anncounments for Avatars, please.

It would be self defeating when they intentionally made them harder to find

You're completely missing the point. The guilds who are facing competition to farm these mobs aren't "monitoring" them in the normal sense of the word either (or maybe you think buying extra accounts and setting up bots entitles you to the kills I guess?). And I'm not saying a serverwide message would get rid of bot camping either since the people doing it now would just move their bot to their house and watch for the message from there. What it WOULD do is give guilds who won't do the bot nonsense a better shot at getting some pulls on the mobs. Why anyone would be opposed to this I don't really know because if you're doing the call lists, can assemble quickly, and can 1 pull the mobs you will continue to dominate the spawns anyway.

Who cares why there is no competition, that's not even relevant to the discussion. If there is no competition then there is no need to camp them, you can wander by and kill them whenever you want. The only one trolling here is you.

I sure hope you don't think simply leaving an account up at a possible avatar spawn constitutes a 'bot.' Right this second i'm looking at someone leaving their main at a spawn spot. Seriously, have you never heard of 'spawn camping?' You know, where you leave a guy at a spot where something might spawn in hopes of getting it? This has nothing to do with bots. Heck in EQ1 just about EVERYONE did it, zero bots. they still do it. People don't demand all kinds of services for equal shots for 'contested mob 156358.'

Again how is this any different? If those other guilds don't have someone ONLINE to actually see the message than the whole point is moot. And if they bother to have someone online hey, why not have them online where the avatar actually spawns? Message or no they need someone online watching for said message. Get it? And dump all fantasies of someone just playing normally and then seeing the message because this will be a severe minority given how avatars spawn.

Go ahead, put in the message but you still have ALL of your work ahead of you when it comes to contested. If they don't want to leave a single account on near a spawn spot they are gonna have REAL big problems with call lists and getting woken up at 3 AM lest they lose out on loot, attendance and DKP.

Knowing when and if they are up is the easiest part of all.

I'm not sure why a main couldn't be a bot so I'll just ignore this part and move on...

Except a bot lets you raid or sleep and still watch for the mob.

Everyone has the opportunity to experience the full content of the game... you just have to do more and try harder for some of the content. Heck if you want to experience an avatar encounter, gather the needed force - pull - wipe and say, "wooohooo we pulled avatarzzz!"

It's pretty simple.... If you do more, you get more.

I don't care about raiding. not one bit. I could care less what guilds can or cannot kill the Avatars. but I would like to SEE Tunare. But since guilds kill the avatars within minutes of the spawn, I don't even know what zone she might be in, much less where in that zone she may or may not spawn. that why I would like to see messages when the gods show up. so if I want to look at one, I can at the LEAST know what zone they spawn in.

So now you can see her, happy?

Tunare - Lesser Faydark
Mithaniel Marr - Common Lands
Rodcet Nife - Antonica
Sullon Zek - Great Divide
Tallon Zek - Eastern Waste
Vallon Zek - Withered Lands

This is all common knowledge that'd take little to no effort to learn. The fact you claim not to know it shows everyone just how little work your willing to do (which would be zero).

FYI... log monitoring is not botting. It is just reading the game log file.

Yeah, there is that I agree completely.

As far as other things brought up in this thread... people are trying to solve too many different things.

1. Make it more Lore-relevant - see my post earlier, none of this has anything to do with lore.

2. People wanting to "just see the Avatar" - this can be easily solved by having NPC / non-combat versions of Avatars that spawn elsewhere in the world and grant buffs to their followers or whatever. This has nothing to do with contested mobs. Not to mention that not all contensted mobs are or have been avatars.

3. "The haves and the have-nots". Being in a guild that only very rarely is able to pull avatars (if they happen to spawn when we have a full raid during our regular times), I guess we'd fall into the "have-not" category. Let me tell you, it would in absolutely no way make our life better if there was a server message. Server messages would first and foremost benefit those guilds that have active call lists and can assemble quickly at any time one of them sees the message. If anything, this would make life EASIER for the "have" guilds. Although really, they are usually camping the spawnpoints anyway, so it wouldn't be a huge difference to them.

If you think for a second that random raid-forces that are actually capable of insta-learning a strat and then 1st-pulling an avatar would get more pulls if they got a server message, you're dead wrong. If a guild CAN kill avatars, they have someone looking for them during their raid times. If a guild can't, then the aformentioned call-list guild will form up within 30 minutes of the message and kill it.

If you want to make more guilds capable of killing avatars, give them a way to practice pulling avatars in a non-competitive setting (i know this was once being considered by the DEVs). No guild is suddently going to start having call lists and killing more avatars if an announcement system is introduced.

What kind of rewards would this grant?
Would there be a lockout equal to the minimum respawn of the Avatar?

I don't think this is a good idea, it defeats the purpose of having contested mobs, the guilds that kill them initially learn the strats on the fly, then as they kill them and others kill them observation and 'leaked' strats get out and others have the chance. These are not like instanced mobs, when they die they are gone until they respawn. It is the way contested mobs were designed, there is plenty of other content out there, and if one is not experiencing this content for whatever reason they have plenty of other things available to do.
Every guild has the exact same chances at pulling these mobs as any other, it could not possibly be more balanced.
They have made adjustments to them that require ALL (or at least 21 maybe) members of the raid be within a very short radius before the script can be started.

Nothing else will change what is happening, period it isn't even debatable, the contested content will be dominated by those that can go/are willing to go the extra mile to kill it.

Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but at least in the case of the Zeks, isn't a majority of the script just identical to the HM Drunder versions of all 3 mobs, with just a couple of more tricks thrown in on top? Because, there is your "practice" ground for those guilds that feel motivated. Work out the base script in HM Drunder then you have a majority of the contested script down already.

There's nothing to see with these mobs imo, they're just bigger than normal NPC models.

Of course its botting, just like using ACT is cheating, auto follow makes you Chinese...

*/end sarcasm.

Contested content does not need to be changed. If the scripts are modified to allow everyone equal opportunity then they may as well be dropped into instances instead of punishing those willing to make the extra effort to kill them. The side of the coin that the casual does not get to see it is no different than that of the raider who wakes up at 5 AM to compete for a contested. It's a perspective from two extremes.

The very people not killing avatars are the ones unable to see the Pirate Kings fight in the new Dreadcutter x4. One would think complaints regarding avatars would only arise once a guild has proven themselves complete with all other content. If you are not doing all the raids, then what does missing out on avatars matter?

I don't bot to spot avatars for my guild. I think it'd be pretty cool to have a server-wide announcement. Then we would have one spotter to rule them all and would not even have to try. Competing forces have more opportunity to kill avatars by slipping through the cracks of lazy spotters than they ever would if there were an announcement for it. We've lost some that way and the guild deserved it for the extra effort they put forth. Give us a spawn message and it'll never happen again.

I watched a PUR try to kill Vallon too. Was lolz

This was mentioned by a developer at Fan Faire as a "possible" thing to be developed . It wasn't a set design by any means, but the DEV talked about a guild being able to spawn an avatar of their choice in an instance once every 3 days and fight them for inferior rewards to the ones dropped by the contested version. The purpose would be to provide a learning opportunity to guilds on their own time and thereby increase the competition for the true contested once they do spawn. (I suppose another purpose - which wasn't mentioned - would be to just provide an additional instanced raid encounter using an existing script).

The problem with that is what 'inferior' rewards would mean, soloers say that the red slot raid gear that drops from advanced solo is inferior and tha it should drop because everyone deserves good loot (lol)
So if the loot that dropped from these was heroic then it might be ok, but it should not come any close because the heroic gear and raid gear have almost zero separation as it stands.

I would like to have...like...you know....that thing that makes them do like...you know, that thing that just does..you know, that so it will eventually pop into...you know...out of the way so we can like...you know.... eventually get down to where we can try....you know....

By the way, you'll shoot your eye out, kid....

Why would loot from any X4 encounter be heroic loot? Certainly avatars in terms of script difficulty aren't the hardest mobs in the game, but they are still harder than say.. i dunno.. any EM X4 mob...

Anyhow, we're getting arguing about theoretical loot from an encounter created for a mechanic that may never exist.. so maybe let's not go too far down that path.