Kunark Instances & Phinigel

I'm really glad they decided to keep the key quest, as I was vocal about in the other thread on this topic. I really feel that raiding VP without having to go through the lore of the key process goes against the integrity of EQ.

However, I fully acknowledge that the situation is going to be a nightmare on this particular server. I feel that with a few very simple tweaks it could be resolved. I've seen lots of convoluted suggestions and ideas, but in my opinion, the simplest would be to lower the threshold for additional /pickzones in VP key zones:
FV (Ancient Jarsath)
LOIO (Bloodgill marauder)
SONH (Ground Spawn)
Kaesora (Ground Spawn)
Dreadlands (Rotting Skeleton)
Trakanon's Teeth (Pained Soul)

Make the threshold to spawn a new pick on these zones to be 10-15 players, which makes it very simple to get a bunch of picks available with only some minor coordination. There is nothing of major or notable value in these zones that would damage the economy or game experience if there were a bunch of extra picks. The only zone that might need to be looked at is Karnor's Castle, since it has some higher value items and exp camps. *Maybe* LOIO because of Chancellor, but even then, I feel the additional Chancellors from extra picks would be a good thing.

Of course this wouldn't completely alleviate every issue, but as much as people hate it - some of the drama and competition IS going to happen, and rightly so, especially at the start of the expansion. It will ease over time. Sure maybe not fast enough to satisfy everyone, but that is the nature of the beast.

Just make a few Kronos by blocking everyone and selling the pieces. Or extort them by going away for an hour or so depending on how many kronos they cough up.

Hell even I'm thinking of doing it. Maybe one of the top guilds will bribe me to leave some of that alone so they can have an easier time getting their core members into the content for the coveted server firsts.

Be a great way to pay up my PS2 membership for the next year.

Isn't that going to occur within the existing implementation?

Couldn't the population work together to create more opportunities? (As was suggested by someone else in the thread)

I'm not saying it's a bad suggestion but it seems like the tools are already there.

The counterarguments have been that people will be jerks on these spawns because it happened on ragefire, which is still possible but I don't see as reasonable on a server that has no-box code AND instanced raids removing the need to monopolize. The other counterargument was that when they spawned extra picks people went in and took it, which is just whining since you can just, you know, camp the respawn as usual just like in the normal zone where someone had taken it.

All accounts presented show ragefire and lockjaw were degenerative raiding environments and the lack of instances created a natural desire to block others. Phinny doesn't have to, and shouldn't be expected to, involve the same kind of grief towards other players. Nobody on this server has any reason to feel remotely threatened by someone in a guild like mine obtaining a key.

I have no problem with skipping VP, I don't see myself spending a large chunk of my limited playtime camping ground spawns and trivial mobs.

The thing that annoys me most about this situation is that Daybreak just doesn't seem to be learning from past mistakes. Making mistakes is okay, but for crying out loud learn something from them. I can't think of one time that the community said "Hey, the demand on this resources is going to be much greater than what is currently supplied and that is going to cause problems" and they weren't right.

There are people who take great pleasure in being jerks. They are, thankfully, rare, but it only takes one or two to disrupt the keying process for dozens of people. Technically no one on RF/LJ has any reason to be threatened by any of the other guilds, since only one guild per server is killing Trak. They still monopolized and destroy key items.

If anything guilds on this server are more of a threat to the dominant guild, since they can't be blocked from Trak. What is to stop a VP key'ed guild from deciding to try the non-instanced version rather than just doing their instance?

LOL

Yes but in order to spawn new picks of certain zones, it takes 50-60 people per EACH instance to spawn a new one. So in order to get 7 or 8 picks of Firona Vie, you would need to have 50 people in picks 1 thru 7 before you could add an 8th. All I'm suggesting is they lower those thresholds so a new instance of FV could pop after 15 or so. So instead of 350 people needed to spawn that 8th pick, you would only need about 100 spread across the instances.

And what is holding people to respect the instances? Say someone brings 3-4 guilds together and we get 5-6 Firiona Vies rolling; people can't even keep this discussion civil and we're supposed to expect them to not disrupt our AJ camps? If a player tries to organize this I will assist in any way I can and make sure my guild respects their attempts; but I don't have a lot of faith it would ever succeed.

Nothing. Nothing stop them. It just doesn't really matter because everyone involved can still do their instance. On Phinny competition taking open world spawns is an inconvenience, yes, but not a stop on your own access.

Meanwhile, if only one guild per server kills Trak, either the rf/lj server raid community is dead or there's a monopolistic attitude at play. Which was exactly my point - the kind of hogging that happened on rage, fippy, combine... isn't the same here, and doesn't have the same reason to be here. This kind of sentiment does exist but its very heavily diluted compared to other places.

This discussion seems reasonably civil to me.

We already have people in this thread and in #General on the server that are saying they're planning to.... sure they could just be blowing smoke - but I don't like the chance that they're not.

And mind you - this is a server where I've seen quite a few KSes of long spawns (Grimrot) as well as trolling of the Grimrot spawn by those that can't even use the result. (and realistically couldn't it even - don't think an Ogre is ever getting Priests of Life to ally)

I know what you're suggesting, like I said it's not a bad idea. My point was demand will drive more instances naturally and could be further augmented with some communication. Imagine if all of the people interested in that content got together and leveraged their resources to spawn more instances.

As someone who participated in the dread of daily Trakanon on RF, this is more or less the case. The complaining right now has to do with "I won't get in as quickly as those other people" and not "I won't get in at all". With pickzones, there were plenty of key pieces in aggregate.

I don't see anything to indicate this discussion isn't generally civil. But yes, nothing to say that just because you spawned an instance, means you get sole claim over it. As I mentioned, people are going to fight and scrap for the first few weeks and there may well be some drama, but it is what it is. If you want to avoid that, wait it out for when things calm down - simple as that.

While you're imagining unicorns and krakens and other imaginary things - I'll discuss reality.

X happened before, X has been threatened here and elsewhere to occur again and Y hasn't been adjusted at all to account for it.

Precedent, especially recent precedent is a valuable thing.

Or to quote someone much, much smarter than me: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

I see what you are trying to say, but either you are a bit naive or just ignorant about the reality of the situation. Sounds nice in some utopian EQ society, but when it comes down to it, there is still going to be issues of accessibility for both ends of the spectrum(both casual and hardcore alike) that could be improved by making some minor changes.

make key piece mobs spawn at accelerated rate (see Seb key: hunters and foragers everywhere)
lower threshold to spawn additional pick zones

solution = more pick zones. key piece mobs spawn faster / less rare.

To think there wont be mage bots in every pick, just like Runnyeye, spamming their pet attack macros across the zone is silly. Same goes for Chardok, the guy in Dreadlands, etc. It's incredibly exploitable, and Daybreak does jack squat to prevent or fix the situation as it currently stands. These things will be sold for krono after the first week.

People are mostly just threatening to get in the way of the keying process to get it removed so their guild doenst have to do it lol.

Definately a strategy however I really doubt it will change anything.