Monday: New Week, Another Appeal to devs

Now that folks are back in the office I thought we could bring this up again.

Epic bottlenecks! Everyone's favorite topic.

I can only speak to the Shadow Knight epic, but if anyone can jump in here for the other couple bottlenecked epics and bring some maths to our table, feel free.

I'm sure devs have already heard of Marl Kastane. SKs must do two separate turn-ins to him. Each one despawns him. His respawn is often quoted at 36 hours, but I think it's something more like 30 hours plus/minus a few hours.

We have twelve weeks or 12 * 7 equals 84 days or 2016 hours of Kunark. Assuming Marl respawned exactly every 30 hours and that the turn-in is done in seconds (which is what actually happens about 9/10 times), we will see Marl 67 times. Since he is needed for two turn-ins, this means that the most possible epics which can be completed for shadow knights during Kunark is 33 epics. Marl does not respawn with server crashes/resets, and bringing the server down results in the timer starting over, so this number is actually a bit lower, but I'll let that slide since I would be at best making educated assumptions if I tried to factor that stuff in.

To be completely fair, I don't think that seems too bad -- until you look further into the issue.

① An issue that drives the number pretty far down. The second turn in gives you https://wiki.project1999.com/Will_of_Innoruuk , which is BiS chest for SKs. Especially for iksar which can not equip Blood Ember armor. This means several players who have already completed their epic will simply repeat the process of two turn ins for this BP, drastically driving the number of attainable epics down.

② On Phinny, guilds were able to port raid forces to Toxxulia forest, force a new pick open, and then a single player could keep that pick open to wait for Marl to spawn. Sometimes there was a main pick, and then two other pick zones. This helped players finish their epic, but on Agnarr we will be unable to utilize this method due to the changes in pick zones.

③ The competitive nature of the spawn practically forces players into using methods beyond normal game play to do the turn in. It's really not even fair to say "it's a choice" -- you will very likely "lose" to all the other Shadowknights if you try to manually click your items in. This would also then require the player to sit at the camp for tens of hours.

④ There were random druids and non-sks on Phinny who did the quest to sell the multi-quest for krono. The number of in era epics drops again. Also, these players were usually not using fair means to do the turn in.

⑤ The epic is only valuable in era. The Shadowknight epic loses it's value on Velious release as soon as you can get an equivalent two-hander from an instanced raid boss. This means there is a very limited lifespan of usefulness. In my opinion, you can even discount weeks 10-11-12 if you are in an active raiding guild and stand to replace it soon. You'd probably even be better off sticking with the breastplate!

TL : DR
Even more so than just the number of epics which can be completed, I think the biggest issue is that the camp encourages idle-gameplay, extreme p00psocking, and basically requires out of game measures to compete with other players. The epic also loses its value quickly, so arguments that the weapon should be rare and more difficult to obtain are invalid.

I understand devs are focused on the imminent release of Agnarr, but it would be nice for the players if you guys could simply discuss this and even pass a vague answer to whether or not "we will revisit epic 1.0 requirements" or "we won't consider it at all".

I second that emotion for Wizzys! We need the Broken Golem in Fear instances!!

Adding Broken Golem to the instance would be easy, and I see no reason why they shouldn't do it.

Marl is goofy as they can't really just add a Marl instance in the game. They should simply reduce his respawn time to like an hour or two. No need for him to be so long.

I gave up on the SK epic... Anytime I was waiting on him to spawn there were 2-4 other SKs sitting there with boxes doing the same. So not only you had to wait a very long time for him to spawn. You were also not guaranteed that you would get the turn ins due to others waiting as well.

in before "these are EPIC quests, if everyone had them they wouldnt be EPIC"

and completely ignoring how various other changes to other epics have made them less epically epic, cause waiting to do a turn in the fastest is so totally EPIC

Good luck convincing the devs about these issues. These bottle necks have been talked about several times with the devs and they told us there was no plans to change them.

Yeah, and like I said above, you will literally never use the epic after Velious. If it had a useful clicky or something I feel those arguments are a little more valid. Effort vs Reward.

it really should be changed so the guy doesnt despawn at all, or respawns much faster.

the fact that handing in items is the thing preventing people from finishing a quest is absolutely hilarious.

"i've slain gods, crossed continents, ventured the most dangerous planes of existence, but this guy must be in the bathroom or somethin"

The enchanter epic should be looked at too.

Is this in reference to their FAQ statement on pickzone timers?

I'm assuming this statement falls under the same category with the Neriak NPC (the name eludes me atm)?

Agree on all points.

There is nothing epic about sitting for 30 hours only to have a hacker steal the spawn.

There is nothing epic about farming HGs (or getting out your credit card) to buy a .

Make everquest epic again! Fix the spawn timers!

Epics are epics because they have a lot of steps and required you to kill raid bosses. Bottlenecks don't add value, they just add a line. It's everquest not everqueue!

Edit: To be fair, the time commitment is an important part of everquest. Camping Raster/Targin and other named spawns is supposed to have an element of RNG in it, which often results in taking a long time to finish. But for every person who spent 15 hours in guk looking for Raster there's a person who walked in and got him on the second pop. The same is not the case for mobs with really long spawn timers. Mobs with long (and predictable) spawn timers and fixed spawn points bad for all of the reasons explained above.

Love.

I think the enchanter bottlenecks are Vessel Drozlin (Cabilis) and Verina Tomb (Neriak). And I'm not even a chanter.

I'm not a class affected by these mobs, but would wholeheartedly support changes to the quests, such as reduced respawn times, to enable my shadowknight, wizard and enchanter comrades to complete their epics in the sort of time frame that other classes can do theirs in now.

I do find it strange that they've changed and balanced the game for the better over the years, but they seem to leave certain things alone when they try to recreate these specific servers (*TLP) for the better. DB's goal with these servers is to drive subscriptions to returning or new players. And I can't speak for everyone, but being able to get my epic in a timely, casual fashion definitely helps drive my desire to keep paying and playing. And I am specifically talking about those spawn mobs on ridiculous timers that are obvious bottlenecks. I'm old now... and paid my dues to this game in the past... Come on now...
That said, being 'time' locked for only 12 weeks is fast. Very, very fast (we're talking 12-13 possible raids before the next expansion??). And like previous posters have mentioned, some epics lose their value (outside of nostalgia) very quickly. I believe each TLP iteration has been better than the last, as there were a lot of mistakes made (and learned from) on previous servers. This is an issue that I'm surprised hasn't been learned from yet. /shrug
my 2cp

The biggest difference is that while camping/DPS racing spawns will 100% encourage competitive and sometimes toxic gameplay, not as many people will resort to using outside illegal methods to win the camp. And in the case of a fight, you could always potentially bring friends to outdo others.

In the case of Marl, it's whoever clicks faster -- which usually means people getting the epic are using third party programs. If someone is using such program the only way to possibly beat them is to use it yourself.

So yeah, another bump!

Add to this that for every Warrior or Paladin, there will be 50 SK's. Almost everyone I know coming to Agnarr is either Maining, Boxing, or planning on Twinking an SK.

It's actually a little strange to me how much the devs have dug their heels in over the years to make sure the enchanter, wizard, and SK epics all remain bottle-necked to the point where people playing these classes have to make a conscious decision that they will *NOT* be working on their epics because of these silly bottlenecks that the other 11 classes don't have.

Why do these 3 specific classes have to suffer significantly more than any other class when you have spent the last ~5 or so years actually making the epics on TLPs significantly easier to achieve?

How many names on a forum would it take for them to respond/address this? =P

All the names

they have addressed it is the thing. they have said they have no intentions of changing these sort of things.

right or wrong, thats where it stands.

a report of mine from 2015ish regarding SK epics on Lockjaw (no instances by the way):

Marl is decoupled from the Soul Leech entirely - which is also part of the problem (in my eyes) with the SK epic. Soul Leech is tied to Duriek Bloodpool (48 hour respawn) and Teydar in Qeynos Catacombs and is not related to the Marl part of the quest. Because the "in between" items of the SK epic are so good, and that you dont need Soul Leech to interact with Marl, many non-SL holding SKs will also compete for Marl who CANNOT complete the epic.

If Marl was the turn in for Soul Leech it would alleviate some of the issue with Marl because Soul Leech can only be obtained realistically once every other day (not including Phinny instances here because i dont play there - simply talking RF/LJ) then his spawn wouldnt be so heavy contested. But, alas, thats not the way the epic is set up.

It took me 3 weeks of poop socking him when I knew the timer to finally get past him for my epic, 90% of the spawns i "saw" Marl didnt even render. A script obviously turned in the item and all us poor mortals saw was his quest text in say - then see y'all again in 26 hours.

This wasn't changed back then - and i don't see it changed now. The irony is too people made several comparisons that the likelihood of Epic bottlenecks being addressed was about as likely as them changing the Veeshan's Peak key... well ... crap they did change that. No such luck with SK, Wizard, Enchanter bottlenecks.

Realistically - SKs should not consider their Epic as a usable item to shoot for in Kunark - complete Greenmist instead (make sure you are Iksar or worship Inny or Cazic NOT RALLOS - havent had confirmation on Bertox - RALLOS worshipers cannot get enough faction in Cabalis). Argent Protector 42/49 plus 10 to str/sta/int/wis is very nearly the SK epic without the proc. Once Velios drops - there are far superior weapons. Sadly, the SK epic is a wall mount soon as Velious is available