"Loot Lockout" - What is it's purpose? A critique.

Contrary to information provided by those on Test/devs beforehand - <In Virtue> found out on Tuesday that the Loot Lockout DOES apply to the boss mob of the instance as well if the instance is requested during the "Loot Lockout". For those that are unaware, the Loot Lockout which is intended to be a 6.5 day term as the main mob is, can multiply many times over - I've experienced a 19.5 day one, I know there's a pic on the EQLive forums well over 20 days in length. So unlike the intended version that might add only an hour or two onto the timer to function properly, in this case it's multiplying it to two, three, fourfold - or perhaps even more as more people try these DZs and get the "Loot Lockout" bug.

Which obviously should be fixed - but the question I have, is would the more complicated route of fixing Loot Lockout and preventing such bugs in the future be the correct answer or would REMOVING the Loot Lockout be the correct answer.

My thoughts lead me to believe that the most proper answer is REMOVING the Loot Lockout. My reasoning falls to this: The explanation that was given for the "Loot Lockout" was to prevent popping freebie instances to farm trash loot. However due to the "request limit" lockout of 2.5 days that exists over a third of the "loot lockout" already exists by default when you request the instance - especially with the current method of zero respawns that exist in the zone to prevent continued farming.

Running some math on some of the places this would apply:
1) Plane of Hate/Fear - assuming one /pick of Hate/Fear there are FIFTEEN respawns of Hate to every 2.5 days - it doesn't seem unreasonable that one would be able to get one guaranteed unshared copy at 1:15 the rate of either when there isn't a /pick. (And there's often 2-3 /pick's in Hate -making it more like 1:30-45!) [Note: I'm presuming Hate minis will be treated like Fear minis when the Hate instance is unborked - if not, treat them the same as]

2) Permafrost/Nagafen's Lair/Kedge Keep/Ruins of Old Paineel - ~20 min respawn on all of the stuff in the normal versions, multiple /picks potentially. That's approximately 175 chances of getting the named in a regular instance at their chance versus ONE chance to get them every 2.5 days without farming them by popping an instance.

Again, I see no benefit and potential trouble with continuing the "Loot Lockout" - it seems to add no real benefit with loads of potential trouble/player distress that the 2.5 days "request limit" and lack of respawn doesn't already accomplish.

Additionally, as per what happened to a guildee - it seems like requesting the DZ from the Agent of Change should give a prompt asking you if you want to join or not instead of FORCING YOU into it unwillingly. A guildee was unable to attend our Nagafen raid because someone thought it would be cute to take their group into the Nagafen's Lair instance without discussing it with a group - seems like a large discouragement to people to join non-guild groups if such trolling isn't prevented by a Yes/No agreement window, should such trolling become prevalent.

Thanks for your time and consideration in adjusting this broken mechanic - that again, to me, seems only detrimental and easier to fix by removing it.

I agree. In my opinion, it seems pointless to have two different lockouts in one zone. Just simplify and make one universal lockout from a zone. "Loot lockout" seems to be the spur of all the problems at the moment, it's cool that I can zone into a place every 2 1/2 days but an unnecessary reason to not get loot off mobs for another 12-20 days afterwards. I know its just a problem in the "loot lockout" portion, so why not just get rid of it entirely.

In my history of playing MMORPGs, I never understood the reasoning behind lockouts at all. Historically small raids are 3 days and large ones are 7. Sometimes simplified to 2.5 and 6.5 days. This goes for EQ, EQ2, WoW, Rift, and everything.

I get that they want to keep people playing and stretch the gear out by doing so. But it causes some really twisted playstyles. For example, your average 'casual' gamer plays probably what? 3-4 hours a day, maybe a little less, with more on weekends. Whereas if a raider meets with their guild twice a week for 4 hours at a time... well the numbers add up comedically. With casuals playing 10-16 hours a week and 'hardcore' raiders playing 8...

Anyway, back on topic. Why is the content so easy that a developer is afraid of a player gearing up in a few days? If you want a piece of loot to go out once a week, make the encounters hard enough that it takes a week to bring them down.

The idea of play for a day, wait a week and play again sucks. Should be able to play every day if we want to. We do it from 1-50 (60, 100, 105, ect). Why not when we reach the cap? Forget Pay to Win, Play to Win.. this is Play to Not Play.

Here's my suggestion.. and it can apply to any game with lockouts:

Remove the restriction. Let players raid and loot as much as they want.

Without needing massive changes or balances. Do this.. put a timer similar to the current lockout. Lets say.. Innooruuk is on a 6 day timer. If you beat Innoruuk in that time period. Congrats you get what he drops.

If you wait for the timer to get up before requesting another instance, nothing special happens. However everytime you request the instance after the first time. The instance becomes harder. Mobs have 25% more HP, and do 10% more damage. The timer starts after the first request and ends 6 days after, no matter how many times the instance is requested. You must clear the instance to request another.

This way raiders can raid every day. It gets harder and harder till they can't do it anymore. Can even throw in extra loot when they get past certain milestones and even titles and achievements.

To the first part of your post: you can play every day, you just have to be willing to compete for the spawns. Phinny has a perfect hybrid system here. You can compete for contested mobs every 1.5 days (or less for non-boss stuff), or you can attempt raid content every 6.5 days uncontested. We've been asking for this for a long time, now we have it.

To the second part of your post: While I think your ideas are creative and clever, consider the complexity of what you're asking for. Right now we just want a copy of an open-world zone every 6.5 days, and 3 out of 7 of them don't even work correctly, plus general bugs that apply to all of them. I will be happy to just have the raid expeditions work as intended (well, and simplify the lockouts as Vaclav has suggested); not add in increasingly complex code which is likely to bug out even more than the current code.

You're right, for the time being. Once we pass PoP, instances become the norm. This doesn't apply to just Phinny.. hell it doesn't even apply to just Everquest if you think about it.

I dunno, the raid lockouts work on the other servers. The loot lockouts are bugged on TLP. Its simple, just fix the bugs and make it work. I mean they are doing it now. But I'll ask this, even if they do. What I said still sort of stands. And will become more apparent in the future.

I dunno, I like the idea of finishing a raid, then going back and doing it again, and again. And again as long as time permits.

And contested raids are... boring. Less waiting, more time killing, wiping, whatever. We pay to play on the server, not pay to wait. I mean sure out waiting your competition is.. well EQ. But I'm sure that competition can be replaced with something more exciting, more fun, and of course Challenging. I'm not above flipping the raid spawns to a 2 hour respawn.. and they turn on PVP on the zone when they're up.

Course that's a stretch, but damn something is better than nothing. Even if they've got to raise the difficulty a bit more. My point has always been, its about the challenge, and the challenge is in the skill of playing the game. Not waiting. And I really don't care about loot. Loots a tool we use to go to the next challenge, that's the only reason we need it.

Don't get me wrong, Rauven - I'm in agreement with Erasmus for NOW at least while the stuff is buggy.

KISS Principle - Keep It Simple Stupid.

I do like the idea of something to "Hard Mode" or "NG+" the raids to give a bonus to those that are willing to endure a harder version - but not until they have a version that isn't buggy for everything.

Adding more widgets and variants would only allow more chances of things being broken - which is the last thing we need while they're still broken. A concept like that could be AMAZING however to explore if they've got extra time once the bugs are hammered out.

Yep. Wishlist? Sure. But right now, I am just thankful they bothered to work on instancing for TLP's period. This was a change from their previous stance, that it wasn't possible. All we asked for were copies of existing zones to be expeditions, and now we've finally got that (albeit with bugs right now), but they have live servers/expansion packs/etc. to think about too. I'm really comfortable asking for "just enough" to put TLP's in a viable state, which they've done, and I think asking for a ton of bells and whistles beyond that is not realistic.

Gnome and assling hybrids, deluxe sewing kits back in halas, and allow the newbie armor quests, and I will be a happy camper. All of that would literally be flipping a switch.

It applied to our Lady Vox raid that I believe was something like Dec 27th for everything in the instance, including Lady Vox herself.

And while I do run two accounts here - my account attached to this forum account was there, if there's logs you can pull from that encounter. [Vaclav per the characters in my mangelos below - if you'd just be doing a character search to pull a log of the DZ]

And note, last night, we had problems getting people INTO a Lord Nagafen raid and called it off - the people that couldn't be added were getting a "Cannot be added for 10d8h12m" or whatever message that coincided with their only lockout that applied to the Lord Nagafen instance - which was... you guessed right... Nagafen's Lair - Loot Lockout.

My Current Loot Lockouts are:



Permafrost: 5D:10H:53M
Nagafen's Lair 6D:10H:23M
The Plane of Fear: 10D:10H:8M
Kedge Keep: 12D:21H:23M


Permafrost started at 19 days and Plane of Fear started at 17 days. Nagafen's Lair seems to be fine and always gives us a 7 Day lockout. Certain mobs add to the lockout timer (not sure which, we were just watching as killing certain trash increased the timer in Kedge by 7 days). The lockout timer generally comes from boss monsters like Lady Vox, Nagafen, Phinigel etc. Fix please.

In this case he was responding to me mentioning the Lady Vox didn't drop loot when the only lockout we had was "Permafrost Caverns - Loot Lockout" (with 10d or so left at the time) and "Permafrost Caverns" (for 2.5 days from entering the zone - didn't exist before we entered)

We did not get loot off Lady Vox this week when we should have. My in game character on the raid's name was Finley, dz leader at the time Jackmerius.

I'd plus 100 this thread if I could. It's nice to see a conversation covering these things conducted in a mature manner.

As others mentioned in reply, The instanced zone (Perma Frost) with Lady Vox seems to be the culprit for myself as well. I received over a 19d loot lockout for that zone and I put in a bug report at the time, as did many others who had the same issue. Please note this was my very first instanced raid experience, so there is no reason I should have incurred anything more than the 6.5 day lockout as described in the Phinigel Faq. I feel Lady Vox counts as a Boss and I am a little surprised it's not showing up for the developers. Could just be a communication glitch or terminology differences between those who receive reports when passing the information on?

Anyways, thank you for looking into this, Absor. I really do love the server and would like to see the issue of the loot lockouts resolved as they are interfering with the game play of many players who pay to play on Phinigel.

Is it the same for the Fear bosses? cause my guilds been afraid to do the Fear instance because we had a 21 day loot lockout after our first fear instance on the 22nd =\

Thats probably the same bug for everything? Cuz that happens with everything all my timers are like that

yeah might wanna check all instances, had a fear give 0 loot not even coin

Not sure if you had Loot Lockout there, but some of us did for that one.

I have no idea if this will be helpful to you but I took a snip of my lockouts tonight just to show how bugged and convoluted this looks to a player:



There are only 7 expeditions in Classic, but here I am with 11 lockouts. 4 of them are longer than 6.5 days (the advertised lockout length). Hate isn't on here, of course, and neither is Kedge.

I feel like I kind of sort of get what the idea is with Sky, something like Phase 1 from PoTime? But with as bugged out as these lockouts are I dare not test this and mess things up even worse for my guild.

This looks like the work of a well-intentioned dev, but the end result isn't actually helpful to players. From the perspectives of both practice and intuition, this setup isn't good. I know Test gets patched tomorrow, and some of us will be taking a look, but I would really rather just have 7 expeditions with 7 lockouts. Maybe if someone from the dev team took the time to explain what is going on here that would work, but I can't make heads or tails of what is happening here (or guess what is supposed to be happening here), and a large part of that is because I can't take the high risk of additionally bugging out lockouts for my guild.

Thanks.