New Pick Lock feature is terrible.

Server was crashing plenty before PoP launched too...

sure would be nice to hear something. it seems like the only benefit of this is giving boxers their own private instances once the picks lock. which seems kind of silly.

It will be Farmagedon. Seriously how do i get my own /pick?

Vardune you need to have your guild zone into the target zone after a raid. Boom pop a few picks. Then move your box crew in. Then the guild leaves, locking your pick. Farm away! Feel free to, ahem, "track" named spawns and invis around to pop them. Please do this and then sell me thit stuff you get. You can be my personal farmer.

Sir i think you have a deal.

Dude just comes in and says "No." and leaves. Wasn't even a question. This place is whacko. You guys made a really, really poor decision here. Please act like adults.

This is one of the best ways to take advantage of this. I did it this morning in tactics. There was an empty pick so i popped into it, some people zoned out of the main pick (i guess) and my pick locked. Free zone to farm in.

I'm a litt confused what problem this is supposed to resolve. Maybe its buried in this thread somewhere.

The only thing i can see that this fixes is the /pick hopping that was happening early on. 6 picks up in a Zone a group could hit two different camps and keep those camps clear, maybe even tow or three. Doubled the loot and spawn they got exp from. Also those fine fellas that farm all the wonderful gear i buy in the Bazaar. A well oiled necro team could hold down a large amount of camps in multiple picks back in the day. This actually might be a patch for the NEW TLP server that is getting ready to launch. This would stop the /pick hopping and camping stealing. Basically we are all testing beta /pick changes for the next TLP server i think.

So Hudwolf... A pick is locked and closes when there are 2 picks that fall below the threshold.

- Load balanced (/pick) zones will now 'lock' if any two versions of a load balanced zone have a player count less than or equal to 1/3 of the zone's threshold. A locked zone will:
- - Block entry to the zone and will be removed the from the /pick options.

In this hypothetical situation, we start with 3 picks of a zone.

Base Zone - Pick 1 - Pick 2

If "Pick 1" and "Pick 2" fall below the threshold, and they lock themselves, they are then 'removed' from pick options. But players are not removed if they are still in there, you just cannot enter the zone as an option.

Then you are left with just the "Base Zone" for players to enter.

When "Base Zone" hits its population limit to spawn a new Pick, let's call this "Pick 3"

We now have "Base Zone" - "Locked Pick 1" - "Locked Pick 2" - "Open Pick 3" that all exist if behind the scenes, the locked picks haven't been emptied by the players involved.


Are you telling us, that "Open Pick 3" will not lock until there is a FOURTH Pick created in this situation?

Because in practice, it seems like that is not how this is working. It seems like the newly opened picks, after there are locked picks in existence, are locking rapidly before being given the chance to reach that Pick 4.

His post already doesn't make sense if there were 2 bot instances. Why did 1 lock overnight and the 2nd pick stayed open to public? Shouldn't the 1 pick only lock if both picks are low. Which would mean both picks should lock, right?

My theory: The same people that convinced a nameless manager to allow them to rez hundreds of "banked" corpses to instantly hit level cap within minutes of the latest expansion release; they used the same tactic to obtain invisible, locked, personal instances to cheat in where no other players could record it.

Less reports, less angry customers demanding DBG ban the cheaters lining their pockets.

Guys, let me refer you to my earlier post regarding DBG developers versus management, but let me blur out useless info so your eyes can focus on a key snippet.



Hludwolf is probably not to blame! I'd assume he and other developers brought our very concerns to the one (or two) sprint meetings and was overruled. The same thing probably happened with corpse banking.

Hludwolf's very presence here means they are listening and someone in this thread is close to the truth.

With the above snippet Hludwolf and what's being said in this thread... How close are we to the truth? Just note, your silence hereafter would be more than enough justification for me.

Read my previous post. I bet blatant 3rd party software users demanded personal, locked instances to cheat in without fear of being recorded and reported.

1. Pick 1 or 2 would re-open if needed
2. Pick 1 and 2 would not close at the same time, only the one with less players
3. There is nothing rapid about this. The only way a pick zone would lock quickly is if many people went in a zone temporarily then left to go somewhere else.
4. The base zone is included in the checks, but will never lock itself even if it has fewer players.

I knew it!

So... I haven't been on since the changes, but after an instance locks there is the scenario that folks might be 'locked' in an instance all by themselves if another instance is not needed? And, this was intended?

I posted this sentiment on another thread. Their metrics were getting out of whack hence the determination that they needed to restrict how easily instances were kept open. Logically, this makes sense. The mechanics behind it certainly are creating an uproar.

Doesn't make much sense, when you consider that on live servers, ever since ldon, there have been unlimited instances available in every single expansion for 3-6 people. Most of the recent live expansions have even specifically been targetted at this with heroic adventures. Maybe the chase loots factor in now, but the fact that people can have their own instances on live is not anything remotely new.

If this was the case, you'd see more threads crying about the change on Veteran's Lounge than you see in our forum. Again, live has had the ability for 100 instances of a single zone with 6 players each going all the way back to ldon. And, live STILL has this ability, for a huge array of zones, and even zones that were specifically designed to run this way. Virtually every open world zone has completely instanced versions that are part of progression. If this is aimed at too many instances on live servers, this change has done nothing to stop the problem there.

If I were his boss I'd ban him from the forums for a while... wait, he'd probably like that. I'd make him do RadarX's job for six months!

But seriously, Hudwolf, you probably should have just stayed away.

Five whys:
1. Why did they make this change?
Too many instances are being kept open.
2. Why are too many instances being kept open?
There is a concentrated population on the server. (Let's dismiss the mechanics of how they are kept open for now).
3. Why is there a concentration of players on a single TLP server?
It's the only server that instances almost all raid content.
4. Why is there only one server that instances raid content?
DBG elected to create a new server with instancing instead of converting the two healthy TLP into instanced raid content?
5. Why did they choose a new server instead of converting the existing ones?
Lack of vision that concentrating two populations on one server would potentially drain available resources of that single instanced server.

So, my post was lamenting the critical error made by DBG that has turned an otherwise healthy concentration of two populations into a heavily concentrated single population that has now seriously impacted the availability of non-raid instanced content for all three servers.

Revisiting the dismissed item in #2:
1. Why are too many instances being kept open?
The mechanics of the instancing project allow for a single account to keep an instance open.
2. Why is the threshold so low?
DBG lacked the vision to set a minimum when considering the maximum.

Don't need to go further unless you want to get into effective problem solving techniques, including the exercise of the Five Why's illustrated here.

Based on all of the why's so far:
1. Why are there instances at all?
Players demanded access to content.
2. Why don't players have access to content?
Individuals can play multiple accounts at once, enabling them to "lock" the majority out of content. Effectively, there is not enough content for everyone.
3. Why Is there not enough content?
Respawn of content is measured in days and not against players wanting to consume it.
4. Why is the content measured in days?
Content was not designed for high concentrations of players, allowing days to jntiially be a sufficient measure.
5. Why are there high concentrations?
Only one server offers instanced raid content.

As you can see, it's a circular issue - one server is offering instanced raid content. Players demanded instanced content because of high player concentrations coupled with the ease to consume it by a few people necessitated re-measuring the availability of content. Players concentrated on the server offering it.

So all said and done, my assessment is that the tears of people wanting content more easily accessed via the instanced argument created the problem of instancing. Once obtained, you fools all concentrated there and now the mechanism they had in place for non-raid instancing of zones has been sufficiently restricted to the point it has ruined the experience for everyone.

Hopefully the lessen those restrictions, but based on the lack of vision DBG has displayed in solving problems through this set of TLP, I wouldn't hold my breath for swift improvements, if any.