We need our own unique Pick Zones already.

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by dlovin2, Jun 16, 2021.

  1. HoodenShuklak Augur

    As much as I would want private zones for personal reasons, I fully realize that if I got that it would be to my detriment. The interaction with others is what makes EQ what it is. I've played on some of the earliest EQ private servers... and they were vacant swaths of Norrath where you have the world to yourself... and you don't even care about any of it.
  2. nagash101 Augur

    It's seems to be worse, like the ZEM isn't applied to it but you get the whole zone to kill at your own pace.
  3. Reshu New Member

    A billion eh? I guess I am to take this as FACT?
  4. Demetri Augur


    Technically they haven't said that - they said they can't do it as a blanket thing, that there's a limit to how many picks can run before things "get bad".

    Doing something like raising the threshold for some zones a little and lowering it for others a little when they're "pain points" to keep the total number of picks below the point where server stress becomes a problem equally fits their past statements.

    In fact, you can already see an aspect of this already done manually with the absurdly high pick threshold they manually altered EC's pick code from early Phin to current TLPs - instead of spawning EC2/3/4/5 every 60 people like then, it now immediately pops EC2 and waits until there's 240 across both or so before spawning EC3. Versus early Phin that was typically spanning up to EC7 or so with everyone wedged into base EC with a handful of single groups/soloers in the rest.
  5. Machen New Member


    That's not really doable, for the following reason.

    Say they raise the pick threshold on permafrost, kedge keep, and ocean of tears, and lowered it in lguk. Now you can spawn picks in lguk with 18 people. Guess what would happen? People would flock to lguk and create far more pickzones there than were eliminated in the other zones.

    The bottom line is the server cannot handle a pickzone for every 18 or 24 characters logged in.
  6. Brontus EQ Player Activist

    Hogwash. It can be done. Nothing is impossible. Stop running interference for the devs. They have fingers, keyboards, and brains of their own. They can come here and post their own replies. They don't need you to white knight for them.

    Stop using the "20 year old technology" excuse.

    DGB should charge money for private instances. There's always going to be WHALES that will pay a lot of money for something.
    Demetri likes this.
  7. Brontus EQ Player Activist

    Please provide evidence that the server cannon handle this. This is an oft repeated excuse.

    Blizzard servers can create hundreds if not thousands of private instances for WoW players who are playing a 17 year old game. Don't tell me that DBG can't do the same because they most certainly can.
  8. Nyvlag Elder

    As much as I would love to have group-level DZs to exp in with my buds... I don't think it's a reasonable request.

    While I do believe they TECHNICALLY have the capability to do this... financially I don't think it would EVER make sense. The hardware resources required to pull it off would be unreal. Doing the same thing (individual picks/DZs for every dungeon/zone/whatever) on an emulated server (which may be more or less efficient, I have no idea) requires ENORMOUS amounts of RAM to handle even hundreds of players, forget about thousands.
  9. Trevalon Augur

    I get that they can't just have 100 picks of every zone, we all saw what happened to Phinny in PoP.

    That being said, Keep the current pick rules where they more easily close, but LOWER THE THRESHOLD of new picks!!

    Sure it would put a little more strain on the system during the peak times, but Phinny had 20-30 picks of zones and it didn't become a huge problem till we had 20-30 picks of tons of zones from 5 expansions prior (which is all fixed by the new close rules).

    So why does the Hole require 41 avg people to pop a new pick???? Why does Solb take what 35ish? Why??? That is too many for SolB which holds AT BEST 4 groups, but really just 3.

    Lower the pick threshold by most zones by 1/3rd or even half and then everyone could get somewhere to EXP and they would still close out eveyr night when people log off.
    Demetri likes this.
  10. Demetri Augur


    Well you're talking about slashing it by over half, yea - that probably wouldn't work - it has the be balanced.

    I was thinking about edging it by 1-2 groups per, so for LGuk with 200 people there you'd get 8 picks instead of 5 - so if 3 got eliminated somewhere else as well...
  11. Demetri Augur

    And as Trev stated above, the statements you were referring to was when picks took 2+ hrs of almost NO ONE being in them to die. (if not the stage in pick development before that, when a single person could hold a pick open indefinitely)

    Heck, recently, in case you're unaware, they've improved the server code to completely shut down unused zones ENTIRELY if they see no player activity for a while - no different than a guild hall spinning down and needing to reload when folks run back in. Happened to me ALL the time going back to farm some Rain of Fear collections during TBL on Phin.
  12. Machen New Member


    I'm not going to go find it again, but search dev posts around early 2017 when they made the changes to the pickzone system. They were explicit about the reasons.
  13. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    This isn't WoW and does not have anything close to the same resources or income.

    EQ zones which pick zones duplicate can have a lot of funky scripting in them, while most of the "invisible men doing shouts across the zone" type scripting has been ripped out & re-written or a few events such as the AC "Ring of Fire" event were just ripped out and never put back in - there are still plenty of oddball events in zones that if you tried to change them would just break completely, this can mean those zones run into complex issues with picks - it isn't just as simple as bolt in more RAM in such cases, they've tried it.
  14. Machen New Member


    You can start here https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...-to-load-balancing-zones-aka-pickzone.238876/

    It's not easy to find since Radarx is no longer tagged as a dev.

    Key quote:
  15. Accipiter Old Timer


    It's not an excuse. DBG said performance is why they changed the pick thresholds and the threshold to keep picks open. However, they have done some server and database work since then so maybe that problem has been partially alleviated.
  16. Accipiter Old Timer


    They have said that the threshold is determined by the number of mobs in the zone, at least in part. I'd like to see the number adjusted downward a bit myself.
  17. Machen New Member


    Only if they can do it without bringing back the crushing lag and server crashes we experienced on Phinny prior to the changes.
  18. Accipiter Old Timer


    Of course. :)
  19. Barraind Grumpy Old Bastage

    This is why I like to suggest LDoN gets added out of order every time they want to start TLP's in classic.
  20. Quik Augur

    I remember when LDoN released all those years ago and I specifically remember Brad saying this type of gameplay would ruin everything EQ was meant to be about when he was so involved.

    He said dungeons should only have 1 instance so everyone had to interact, for better or worse, or else you run the risk of this becoming basically a single player game with just a few friends joining ya.

    I personally enjoyed LDoN and the augment system, but man he hated it and was againt it vehemently.

    I am fine with a DZ and no respawning mobs so it can't be farmed stupidly, but I am not a fan of picks and I am very much against the idea of being able to create your own personal instance.

    This is not WoW and I like how it is currently set up. It basically stops me from going to the same place every single time.