Seeds of Destruction flagging - 6 keys per week?

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Njustlight, Dec 2, 2022.

  1. Njustlight Journeyman

    Since a little less than 1-month out from expansion launch was too late for Aradune/Rizlona for the SoF topic, posting this one now. Can we please take a look at increasing the number of keys dropped per boss in Korafax, and possibly adding tower keys to the Hard Mode version?
    McJumps, Yaldiien, Ishbu and 13 others like this.
  2. Xhartor Augur

    Most guilds split Pallorax and Ksathrax, as they are easy fights. However even at 10 keys per week, the flagging is pretty slow.

    All 7 fights in the tower drop 1 back flag.
    Anyone in the DZ when you kill Brekt gets flagged too, and the tower is doable with mid 30's.

    The keying process is pretty bad. On Mangler we had higher tier guilds helping mid tier guilds with flagging.
    HoT could also use some work too.
    VoA start with 1 20 minute raid, and you need to wait for 5 day lockout to clear to repeat and be able to advance to T2. They process repeats itself.
  3. Njustlight Journeyman

    Oh, you aren't wrong at all. I mean, this stuff was mostly intended for at least 3x the amount of time we're trying to cram it all in on. Really not looking forward to some of this stuff.
  4. mightiest New Member

    Please do this! If SOF merited a change then SOD definitely does.
  5. Penelo Lorekeeper

    Our guild tries to never split content. For the most part we really enjoy raiding with each other, and besides a few content droughts (OoW/DoN stretch) and to speed keying up to a reasonable pace in DoDh we haven't really had to split up to do content.

    Maybe adding the keys to the hard-mode encounters would be a good solve for this in SoD.

    Hopefully on Aradune the high end guilds will be passing out flags as well, but even that feels kinda bad. Would much prefer to just increase the drops so we can earn them in our own raids.
    Siah and PathToEternity like this.
  6. PathToEternity pathtoeternity.pro

    Agreed. Limited flags are an unneeded time gate and workarounds (splitting) are indicative of substandard design.

    A lot of time and forum space could be saved by just getting this fixed across the board, every expansion: X number of flags (or equivalent) are awarded where X is the number of players in the DZ.
  7. Wyre Wintermute I'm just a butterly dreaming I'm a man

    I'm fine with it taking 2-3 clears of events to a full raid flagging. It is totally possible to beat an event through dumb luck, having it require at least 2 wins to cover most/all of a raid force is pretty good... the third for extras and those who missed one of the other wins.

    I mean.. I don't really feel any of the locks are meaningful these days.. since only Ragefire is required to actually beat every event.. but eh.. There's plenty of forumgoers who will crawl out of the woodwork to say it shouldn't be changed.. even if they don't touch the content on new TLP's.
  8. Penelo Lorekeeper


    The only problem with requiring even 3 wins on an event to proceed is with guild's having set raid days, if you have multiple tiers like SoF that means you are over halfway through the expansion before you can even step foot into the final zone. Assuming you are a guild that doesn't split, doesn't adjust raid days to kill stuff as soon as it unlocks. It could still be rough.

    I also understand the desire to time-gate stuff to an extent. It also feels pretty bad when the new expansion content unlocks and you raid it that first weekend (our usual days) and you clear it all. Then you know you have 7 or 11 more clears of the exact same content and the raid logging begins as soon as AA's are caught up / optional stuff is done.

    It's a balancing act for sure.
  9. Joules_Bianchi A certain gnome

    The drop rates were set up for a raid guild to be able to progress with a year's time to do it, The math should be: Whatever fraction of that time period an unlock is, the drop rates for keys, armor etc should be increased by it's reciprocal.

    1 year vs 2 month unlock? 2/12 (1/6) = +6
    1 month unlock 1/12 = +12


    to outfit the same guild in that reduced time frame

    Event Timer reduction could also achieve this.
    Wyre Wintermute likes this.
  10. Wyre Wintermute I'm just a butterly dreaming I'm a man

    With the current TLP formulas, everything should be increased based on 3/12 months vs 12/12 months.

    That's x4 raid drop availability, x4 flag availability, x4 currency availability.

    Many/Most TLP's limp through the later phases because of lack of interest and lack of gearing capability w/o constant raid splitting.

    Outside of RoF, I haven't seen a guild fully gear every character with top tier raid gear in a long long time.
    PoP did.

    GoD could, if you also took Goats/Cyno/Zoo into account. DoDH/PoR since it was basically the same loot level swapping just a handful of pieces

    OoW + DoN did.

    DoDH through TSS because of a disparity with available cultural gear making equal or better than drop items which made up the difference in TSS. DoDH/PoR was just a non-increase really, just a few BiS replacements in PoR..

    TBS was a mess.

    SoF we got server merged and lost about 3 weeks, so can't fully comment there.

    SoD was hit or miss, you had to split enough to get the tower flags + able to get past Tallon/Vallon to unlock access behind them. Couple that with hard mode vs normal mode and there was enough gear all around, but not everyone was in the top item slots.

    UF had the massive loot drops, but a couple events were just overly painful. The creation trial (having to run and fail it multiple times just to get the recipes lined up/saved so you could beat the timer... that's dumb) LC raid was definitely out of sorts and I don't recall many/any guild "farming" that at all (luckily the flagging for Convortium didn't require everything from earlier tiers).

    HoT had 2-3 progression steps that were more difficult than the end zone events. Almost no one came out fully top tiered, decent mix of the top 2 tiers.

    VoA had a wasted week, just to gain access to more than one raid. After that, VoA had one big choke point, being Pillars and a smaller one being Resplendent Temple. The main drawback of VoA was purely how long the scripts were for all of the T4 events.

    RoF was massively loot crazy. It had a delayed unlock for the upper tiers built in. Once T3/T3 opened, (assuming you got through T1-T2 quickly enough), there was plenty of items and currency to be fully T4 geared if planned properly or mostly T4 geared with a sprinkle of T3. This was mostly due to the costs of items on the T3/T4 vendors being within reach.

    CoTF just didn't provide enough T2. Three raids didn't cover enough to outfit a full guild roster in T2 gear, most were a mix of T1/T2.

    TDS, another raid series with a wasted week of only 1 raid, on yet another level increase expansion. The currency costs are high, albeit only 1 tier of raid drops and 7 raids + 750 bonus currency. Still seeing how this pans out.

    There's only two methods to address this. Reduced lockouts is one variable, while loot/flag/currency increases is another. No one really enjoys reduced lockouts as a solution. They're fun now and then, but going from 2-3 raid nights per week to 4-6 is just a bit much for the lifetime of a server.

    Enter the forum warriors who "did it on their progression server so you should too" and/or the "just split raid everything" crew.

    That shouldn't be something that is needed to be done. It should be fun. I knew plenty of people who start out progression servers as something to do during their downtime on live.. mostly for the community aspect of early progression servers. As things become more involved, it stops being "fun" and "relaxing" for them and they go do something else.

    I don't know that everything "needs" to be increased 4 fold, but there is a good argument for increasing the availability of these things. In addition to all of that is the locked base zones in several expansions. There's no real reason for it. It "funnels" everyone into the first few zones for the first week.. causing drama, multiple picks, fights over mobs/camps, etc... and there's no way to scale unlocking zones in a 3-month time frame to the original 12-month time frame. Progression requirements for requesting raids or even some lower req's for participation is fine.. but the zones themselves don't need to be locked out. It splits the community up more than anything else (This is really only relevant in expansions like SoF, UF, HoT, TDS,TBL that I know of for sure. Might be missing one or two in there)

    Progression Servers have changed over the years. With the new TLP formula being the norm, they can more easily balance out how much access to gear there is and alleviate the "need" that older progression servers had to run multiple splits and additional raid nights just to be geared up properly. They can cull the zone locks that never truly served their intended purpose.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    It's a huge concept. I'm not sure I've brought it up on the EQ forums before, but I have in other SOE forums.. but I've thought that a "guild flag" would be a HUGE QoL aspect for MMO's. That being, the guild would be its own entity of sorts. If a guild obtained said flags, anyone within the guild would be covered by said flag. The would be completely independent of personal flags. (EG You have personal accomplishment flags and a guild would have its own flags. They're mutually exclusive. If you leave the guild, you carry your personal accomplishments with you.)

    That would allow for not having to backflag constantly (maybe nor such an issue with the recent trend of expansions).

    How would it work with joint-raids or players from other guilds? Simple. Set the Guild flag to require a set number. Let's say 108. So Flagging for Zone A starts at 0/108. You get 1 credit for every character in the DZ from your guild. If you field 54, you end up with 54/108. If you field 36 and another guild brings 18, you get 36/108 and they get 18/108.

    Guild flags would be permanent to the guild. No transfers. No taking it to a new, renamed/reformed guild, etc.. That's where the personal flags come into play. They would act just the same as they do now and new players etc would have to obtain flags for anything they want which is not covered under the guild flag blanket.
    Rogean, Joules_Bianchi and Mithra like this.
  11. Ishbu Augur


    I think I agree with your post, thought not completely sure. At first it sounds like you are advocating for more loot to drop because not all players were top geared, but it concludes talking about just providing more access to reduce tedious flagging issues.

    Flagging is something that if done, should be credited and over with imo. The game already limits raid size be it 72, 54, 24, 12, etc. If the raid allows 54 people in it, then it should provide 54 flags, period. There are mechanics in place to lock adding people to raid to flag people who otherwise couldnt do the raid, but also, who cares? If progression is real and you cant complete raid A, then you should have no chance at completing raid B anyways. If thats not the case, then there is a bigger issue than letting players get flagged for the next raid.

    What I dont agree with is that everyone should be top geared by expansion end on a TLP. When that happened in the earlier eras as cited in your post, that was boring and raiding for no reason because everyone was top geared or just to replace other people who quit after being top geared is about as un fun as it gets. Having the carrot to chase to always get better is what drives MMOs.

    I think though you were saying the not enough gear is more a byproduct of taking a large portion of the expansion to flag through because of flagging issues, and that I agree fully with. This isnt classic where OW batphoning gets to claim the loot, everything is instanced, so if a guild is able to clear a raid, its absurd to block them from the next one until they do it for another 2-3 weeks.
    Joules_Bianchi likes this.
  12. Rogean Lorekeeper


    Although a long read this guy makes a lot of good points.

    We have a quarter of the time in expansions that people normally had on live. But most of us would be happy with just double the loot (as opposed to 4x the loot to match the reduction in time).

    However, we need to actually get to that loot. This is where it would be appropriate to match the reduction in time for keying. If the expansion is one fourth the time then we need to multiply key drops by 4. That means we should get 24 keys when it used to drop 6.

    I will also echo what's been said about splitting - It should not be a solution to this issue. Many guilds do not want to have to be doing this, or simply can't. The lack of keys also puts us in a position where we have to decide who's sitting out for the first clears through certain content, which is not fun for anyone.
    Siah likes this.
  13. MischiefTLP Augur

    Comparing things to Live is pretty pointless, take Veil of Alaris which cannot be split raided to speed up progression. 84 days into the expansion only 6 guilds have beaten the first T4 event, if you're "only" Triton or Township Rebellion then Rain of Fear is out before you're in the last tier and only one guild completed the expansion within 84 days.

    Basically every TLP except possibly Mischief in 2024 is a ghost town by VoA, just let the people do the raids and if they can beat Pillars they get that loot, if they can beat Triune God they get that loot. Worrying about whether or not they have 3/9/13 lower tier raids beaten in 2022+ is clinging to timesinks that were barely relevant in 2011 out of habit.
  14. Siah Elder

    Ngreth please fix before Aradune/Rizlona get to SoD so we aren't late like we were for SoF flagging being fixed/increased.
  15. Njustlight Journeyman


    You're talking about two totally different things though. Most of what you're talking about there isn't an issue of flagging, but lack of gearing due to inability to clear content - which was the case for your guild unfortunately. I'm not talking about gear for a reason.... if the roadblock is "tanks can't survive" then that's a problem of gear distribution and tank play, something that's completely within the control of the players. What I'm asking about is an artificial time sink that needlessly prohibits ability to play during the time limits of a TLP.
  16. Angeliana Senior Community Manager

    We will point this thread out to the developers during our first meeting of the New Year and post a response when we have one. Any further shade thrown at the developers or Daybreak will result in removal of the thread. Thank you for your patience.
    PathToEternity, Njustlight and Stymie like this.
  17. Xeris Augur

    Why is there an expectation that players need to be bis geared in an era, or that everyone needs to complete all the content of an expansion in era on a TLP? That's not how it worked on live, so why is it an expectation for tlp.

    During POP, very few guilds per server were raiding potime. Guilds were still raiding Velious/Luclin and other earlier planes... I don't think a TLP design should change. Either do what you need to do to finish the content in 3 months, or just go at your own pace if you can't. Don't wanna split raid? Then don't. Just accept that maybe you can't flag or gear your whole raid force.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  18. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    Because the game has changed since then, how many of the guilds raiding old content did it because they got blocked from newer content because open world mobs were not up?
    Appren likes this.
  19. Ishbu Augur


    There is a very large difference in wanting flagging to be reasonable for the raid size involved and wanting everyone to have BiS gear.

    For example, there are raids for flagging that are set up to be 54 person raids that only allow for 12 of those characters to be flagged. A guild can split that using less than half of the allotted character spaces, say 24 total, and still half the raid doesnt get flagged.

    Thats not asking for BIS loot, and you cannot sit here and tell me that the guild should accept that half their guild just doesnt deserve to be flagged. Its bad design, period, and with the numerous improvements and QoL changes done to TLPs, especially in earlier super easy mode eras, adjusting these flagging situations is quite frankly, a no brainer.
  20. Xeris Augur

    Ok so 54 person raid, 12 get flagged per week, your whole raid force is flagged in 5 weeks. In a 12 week xpac cycle, you then have 7 weeks to farm whatever flagged content. I don't see how this is a problem?

    And I actually didn't care for the changes they made to stuff like VP key and VT key. Personally, I just play and don't sit around whining.

    On Agnarr, our guild prioritized getting VP key first, so we did what needed to be done to get our raid force keyd. Was it a pita? Sure. Did our whole raid force get to experience VP on the first run? No... We were limited by Trak teeth so only about 20-25 got in (we bought some teeth from Faceless who was already splitting him), and the rest got in over the following few weeks.

    I literally do not see this as a problem, nor do I see this as poor design. It also reflects earlier EQ. Not everyone gets keyd and flagged for everything all the time.