fixing the raid scene without instancing

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by kraggnar, Jul 16, 2015.

  1. Elkay Augur


    I have, as have many, many others.

    The same time was spent getting to level cap and capable gear of taking down the encounter. I feel bad for you that you think sitting and waiting for 8+ hours on a spawn spot is a great way to spend time in game, even if the game is just sitting in the background waiting while you do something else. Some of us think it's common sense to allow access to the end-game content on-demand, and let the encounter sort out whether we're actually deserving of the gear drops.

    Until then, like you said, there's plenty of other games out there. Let the game continue to lose subscribers that refuse to play the game the way you call "fun".
    Silentchaos and Rhiyannon like this.
  2. Vaclav Augur

    PMed - don't want to possibly jeopardize the work of a friend that's IN PROGRESS by blabbing early.
  3. Vaclav Augur


    I'm 99.9% sure it has nothing to do with them losing a spawn. (In fact did they? Surprised no one mentioned it to me yet...)
  4. Vaclav Augur


    Customer retention is usually item #1 and who you prioritize most when it comes to making changes to your product.

    It's harder to get new customers than it is to retain your existing ones. Thus you prioritize changes to keep the easy money you already have, rather than making effort to have a constant churn of people that come and go at the drop of a hat.

    Do you now understand the world when it comes to subscription based businesses?

    Even for standard retail businesses, you cater to your regulars over the fly-by-night. If a customer made a request to add a product to my shelves as a regular thing, if they were a regular I'd try to right off the bat. But if it was just someone that shopped with us sporadically there would have to be an overwhelming tide of similar requests to encourage me to add the item to our regular stock.

    This is business 101 territory. Not anything deep conceptually.
    Elkay likes this.
  5. sihpa Augur

    Ya last evening they got one upped by Apok then proceeded to follow them around dispelling their pets for hours on end. Not surprisingly I cant find the 1st thread about it titled something like "grats apok on your naggy kill"
  6. Vaclav Augur


    Oh yea, I saw that last night - was Vox though IIRC.
  7. Hexaholic Augur


    What changed? We lost a dragon to CONTENTION from another guild. Which is more than I can say that most of the complainers / forum trolls are doing. At least Apok stepped up, and contended, and after wiping on a couple dragons, killed it. Good for them. They, and another guild (Rosen) have gotten raid kills, because rather than come on the forums and complain / beat the dead horse, those guilds stepped up to the challenge, and were rewarded as such.

    Just as Aekold said above. Paying to play the game in no way, shape, or form, entitles you to see the raid content. This is a multiplayer MMO, and a 16 year old one at that. This was before the market to everyone under the sun like Blizzard created with WoW. This game was built as a reward system. You get rewarded for the amount of work (in the case of EQ, time) you put in. This isn't your average "oh, I got an hour to play tonight, let me hit up a raid," that most have become accustomed to. Sorry.

    I know that you all want to see the raids, but honestly, for that, you must be in a contending raiding guild, or it's just not going to happen.
  8. sihpa Augur

    Reading so very very hard
  9. Absor Developer

    The problem is that the idea of a "lockout" ONLY applies to instances. We'd have to jerry-rig something to make that happen, probably on a case-by-case basis. So even if we found a way that worked, we'd have to add it, manually, to every raid target. It gets many factors harder with raids starting at PoP, when other scripting is involved.

    Also there are several things you may not have considered.

    "Whoever get's on the raid mobs hate list..." This can, in many cases, be anyone in the zone. Pass through a zone while a raid is going on? You're locked out. Without a controlled DZ environment, you can't fairly make a list of people that should be locked out.

    Also, what does "locked out" even mean for an NPC that just spawns ever so often? Do we have to keep a list of people locked out and... what? Boot them from the zone if the NPC is up? Even if they are not trying to do the raid? Remember, you can get on a hate list very easily for some of these open-world raid bosses.

    And processing and maintaining such a list without any codified tools to do so is messy, slow, and process intensive. I hear that people don't much like lag. :)

    Don't for a moment think that we haven't put thought into this. The problem is, any solution would be very, very time consuming and the result is bound to be much less than perfect.

    A
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  10. Absor Developer

    DONE! See above.

    A
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  11. Absor Developer

    That is NOT simple. Turning each of those things into an instanced zone would be a LOT of work. Each is, in many ways, a special snowflake and would take many days to instance. And that doesn't answer any of the questions like, how do you get the instance? Some NPC offers it? There's more work.

    Nobody is saying it can't be done. Ignoring the "it's old school" argument (and you all knew when you signed up how raids would work, right?), we only have so many days in a week and we have obligations beyond TLP. But folks that say it's simple just don't know what they are talking about. Not blaming you, it's not your job to know those things. It is mine. It's NOT simple. In fact, in most cases those that suggest the "simple" solution are often suggesting the hardest of the possible solutions.

    A
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  12. Elkay Augur

    Good to know that things are at least being investigated.

    Expeditions would solve this, even if only on a new server that this is known from the get-go. Food for though, though I'm sure you've seen all the suggestion ad nauseam.

    A lot of people are just looking for a way to do end-game content with their friends, on their own timeline. It worked out really well in EQ2 and was the main drawing point for a lot of people. I loved to be a part of a "Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu, 8-12" raid guild. It allowed real life to go on, but leave raid progression viable for those that put the required time in each week to be raid-ready.

    EQ2 doesn't have the nostalgia of this game for many, though. I think that's why people are asking for this as an available option instead of just going to EQ2 or, unfortunately for DBG, a competitor's game.
    Vaclav likes this.
  13. sihpa Augur

    Actually you didnt address instancing. In fact you made a list of problems associated with a noninstanced resolution.
    That was the only thing you said that had anything at all to do with instances. In fact you just added credence to the rest of what you quoted that poster had stated.
    Thank you for joining the discussion though!
  14. Gregolo Augur

  15. Elkay Augur

    Finally, an official and honest answer about the work involved and it being a real factor in why it hasn't been done. Thank you.

    As a dev myself, I suggested quite a few options that didn't seem like a ton of work. None of the suggestions seemed to involve custom coding, but rather use existing game mechanics. Obviously I don't know the server infrastructure or the code-base you're using now, but adding some expeditions didn't seem like it was "too" involved, mostly DB and script work I would imagine. Yes, it's days of work like you said, but you'd be appeasing a lot of subscribers, and I think the invested time would probably be worth it to keep those subs happy (and even bring some back).

    Again, saying this without knowing the true dev hours involved and only working off speculation.
    Simone likes this.
  16. Elkay Augur


    Agreed. I saw red and figured another thread got locked. :p
    Simone likes this.
  17. taliefer Augur

    as much as id like it to happen, this pretty much puts the nail in the instanced raids debate. accept it or move on imo
    Elkay and sihpa like this.
  18. sihpa Augur

    Cool you finally said a reason why instancing wont ever work for you guys. It would be time consuming and you dont feel like you have the resources to pull it off. Understandable.

    It still sucks considering how great the zone instancing worked out. I'd gotten my hopes up that us unwashed would get a chance to participate without having to sell our souls.

    Ahh well. Gratz on your successful server.
  19. sihpa Augur

    QFT
  20. Banuvan Augur



    The solution is simple. I never mentioned the implementation at all because I don't know. I have no clue the amount of work that would go into that which is why I didn't bring that up at all.