Kunark Instances & Phinigel

No rules stop me from denying these spawned items from people. I will be one of the people blocking keys at any chance I get until this requirement is removed. So much for instances! GL on VP everyone.

I want to get mad at you on principle, but I can't argue against your protest with the super short 84 day timeline for expansions.

I'm fine with the short timelines when every encounter is skill-blocked (Just be good enough to beat Classic raids, and you can). I am not fine with the combination of short timeline AND "sock-locked" (I like that term, I'm gonna use it from now on) raids where the RNG and long duration 0 skill key part mobs are the blocker.

LOL so much crying

It was never stated instances would bypass keying for easy mode. All the non in era raid guilds will cry about the work but if they can show dev quotes about never needing keys/flags for instances id love to see them.

Classic needed lvl 46+ which was the classic requirement.

You are a true pillar inside the community. Don't forget to take your ball home with you each night too.

An Ancient Jarsath: This is from project 99, I'd assume it's the same here if the server is truly classic:
Description
Roams after spawn; 8-hour static respawn time once killed. This monster is easy to find with Sense the Dead since it is the only undead monster in the zone.

http://wiki.project1999.com/An_ancient_Jarsath

Debunked multiple times. I personally have witnessed AJ spawn within 20 minutes of a previous kill. Don't post garbage information from that hillbilly server.

There really isn't a trick to it besides AEing the entire east side of the zone down repeatedly in a group.

In my opinion everyone should experience the lore of this magical quest. To deprive your fellow guild mates of this opportunity is almost criminal.

Think of the adrenaline you felt when you encountered the great Ancient Jarsath. The joy in your heart when you downed your foe. How can you take that away from people.

I feel like Phinny should have a special extended version of the quest. It would be incredible to have the entire server come together to solve the mysteries of Everquest.

Lore, sure. Fighting other players? No. This quest was NOT designed with the idea that hundreds of people would be trying to get key pieces at the same time. You're actively competing with other people, and I could even say that's fine, except some of those people are not there to get their key piece and leave. They're there to stop YOU from getting yours.

This information is wrong and does not reflect how the spawn works on live or TLP servers. Similar to how Quillmane is also done wrong on p99, they likely made an approximation since it was too difficult for them to work it out.

Incorrect - Classic raids also required a Wizard and stones for a number of the raids - funny thing, I can do an Instanced Sky or Hate without having a Wizard nor any port stones.

"Keying" on Phinigel Classic absolutely was abbreviated.

Now that said - I did come onto a few teensy tweaks that could make the quest less trollable if at all possible.

1) Change the drops to flags - and once you have the flag for a part you can no longer engage the mob (or PHs) and/or pickup/see the ground spawn. [This likely would require giving the flag to the full killing group (I'd flag to make it so that a raid won't get credit for a kill however - since that would reduce the keying difficulty immensely) - but I think 6x rate is fine in light of the expansion being roughly 6-8x faster than Kunark was intended]
2) Make the groundspawn parts only display (or pick up) by a player of a reasonably appropriate level (40+ would be my say) to prevent trolling with new characters over and over.
3) Set the mobs AND THEIR PHs to uncharmable to prevent "LOL, parking AJ PH somewhere stupid" style trolling.

Or... there's of course the option of... adjusting the quest to have two variants.
1) Normal - using Trak's Teeth from Trakanon in the instance or normal.
2) Instanced only - using Trak's Teeth from either Trakanon but adding three new drops to some of the Kunark bosses in similar quantity to Trak's Teeth.
a) Instanced Gorenaire drops an "Ancient Medallion of the Jarsath"
b) Instanced Talendor drops an "Ancient Medallion of the Obulus"
c) Instanced Venril Sathir drops an "Ancient Medallion of the Kylong"
Such parts follow the rest of the quest normally and create a variant of the key used ONLY for the instanced version of the zone.

The latter seems like far less work to me, and more "comfortable" for the server. (and realistically guilds that focus on only that method will likely take at least 4-8 weeks before they're entering VP with that method - a pretty stiff penalty for being "less hardcore")

But ultimately the ball is in your court Daybreak. You've been making great strides so far on doing things nearly perfect this time around - I hope you don't botch it for many. Phinigel seems close to perfect for so many - and even some of the top-end players are rolling their eyes at this on this thread and elsewhere regarding this decision.

I personally like the idea of having a form of keying - but there's a middle ground that seems necessary if people troll - which is starting to look like it's not even an if with people in General and this thread stating bluntly that they will.

Would have to agree with this.

I really don't want to do this key quest unless there are 10+ instances (the number of guks we had early in classic on Phinigel) of all the zones that have quest pieces. THAT is how many instances we need to support a thousand people rushing to do the quest in the first few weeks, but their instancing system does not take into account that the content of some zones only support a very small number of players. We currently have a one size fits all approach to instancing and it only works for extremely popular zones that support many groups at once. There will be KSing and verbal harassment, which I dealt with on Ragefire which have not had to deal with so far on Phinigel.

I was looking forward to raiding on Phinigel without dealing with the toxic players I dealt with on Ragefire. This server was advertised as a place where I'd be able to do that; and I have been able to so far. Daybreak, please reverse your decision on this and keep to the spirit of the server. Require only 1 key to request the instance or better yet just the flags from killing previous raid bosses.

Feels like we're in an experiment .... I know they did not state before the server was live how these keys would work, but come on, anyone can see this is going to cause so many problems!!

True - forgot that in the Option #2 variants I had up there - could also "planar projection" it like PoP kills do their flags.

I dont consider this being abbreviated. A wizard w/ stones isnt a flag or a key. I believe vox/nag/yael all needed lvl 46+ too. You cant compare a VP key to having a wizard with stones.

I also never said this was how it was back then. They stated the requirement for the instances and in classic it was lvl 46+ Classic = pre kunark

Here is what was announced in the FAQ :



Q: How Does Raid Instancing Work on Phinigel?

The system will allow a full raid (72 players) into an instance. You will need at least 6 players in your raid to request a raid instance, and the players in your raid need to be level 46 or higher.

That is the classic requirement. If you or anyone else can show me where they say they would skip keys/flags I would love to read it. Other then that its people hoping a access to content server is easy mode and wishful thinking.

They never said this was an easy mode server. Its a instanced server that gives people access to content. The normal speed unlocks (84 days is by no means fast this early) and slow exp make it more of a hardcore server that gives anyone willing to put the time in access to content. This reminds me of all the classic server vs progression server arguments. It is what it is. All the people that rushed away from LJ/RF werent guaranteed their perfect server. Lots love it. Lots wont.

Some guilds will become second tier in kunark. We'll see if the guilds are willing to skip VT in luclin.

There are already in game tools to address unfavorable behavior. I don't see why we should burden our developers further.

Perhaps you could communicate with your fellow players to come to an amicable solution. One of most compelling aspects of the game is the social component.

i'll not do this stupid timesink key a 3rd time.
Better wait for velious...

I actually take this approach a lot and it generally works out. But I don't think it will work out with an extremely limited resource. We only have 12 weeks in Kunark, so every medallion piece will be in contention there will simply be too many players going for the quest pieces that are not reasonable and are unwilling to work with other players.

Daybreak needs to remove the bottleneck (Require just flagging from raid bosses), weaken the bottleneck (Require just 1 player to have the key to request the instance), or change the criteria for new picks being formed in zones that have the quest pieces. I think sticking their their current planned course is like putting a thousand rats in a cage designed for 10.