Kunark Instances & Phinigel

I understand and appreciate the sentiment about not having to sock to raid. That is the reason I came back to EQ for Phinigel (instanced raids) and didn't even blink at the previous progression servers. Socking requires sometimes getting up at 3am. Socking sometimes requires that you login every day and wait for boss checks to see if you're going to raid tonight. I get that. I do.

I don't necessarily know if your opinion extends further than that, but my problem is with the people who take the literal stance "I don't want competition with other players." with no conditions or qualifiers. These are the people posting the increased XP rate threads, the "I don't want to waste time leveling" threads, the "I don't want to have to interact with people" threads, the "I want my own personal private zones" threads, and other such similar threads. This is what a lot of us on the forums are attempting to fight against. A very vocal percentage are laser focused on trying to homogenize EQ into a game that exists with no competition even at the XP group level. They feel if they decide "Today, I'd like to camp an FBSS" they should be able to roll in with zero competition and auto-pilot their experience.

That's the line I draw. The expectation on Phinigel should be to not compete for raid targets, but to compete for quests and experience. If we remove all competition, then what's the point. You might as well fire up an eqemu server for your friends and just single-group or raid your way through your favorite content.

That said, I do feel that some of the pick level thresholds even in current classic content warrant some review. Some are about 6 people too high for the threshold and should trip with less. I also feel that DBG should monitor the rate at which VP key parts as well as VP keys themselves enter the world, and adjust things like spawn rates and pick thresholds for relevant zones to control the rate at which they enter the world. With a very dense server like Phinigel and a short 84 day unlock, the rate should be higher than what it was on live. If current /pick mechanics and such already resolve this, that's fine -- but I hope DBG keeps evaluating it and ensures at least a few guilds (3-5 guilds) can enter and farm VP for at least 4-6 weeks before Velious rolls out.

I basically agree with all of this.

For all but a handful of camps no competition is the scenario we are already in. I can count on one hand the number of times a camp I wanted was taken in all picks. Usually in those locations that don't have a ton of picks, north karana or sol b. It hasn't killed the server yet. VP is a raid zone. The gatekeep action for a raid zone shouldn't be who can click on a ground spawn fastest.

We saw how well the monitoring of XP rates went. It didn't work at all. Once you can work out roughly how many hours X takes, figure out your own play time, do the math and realise that you have 0 chance of achieving what you expected to achieve, it's pointless to keep playing.

We knew XP rates were too slow within 24 hours. Yet it took until over halfway through the expansion to even acknowledge they were wrong. It's still yet to be fixed and we don't know if it ever will be as they haven't given out the XP increase.

I don't trust them to even care about VP keys. Even if they decide that spawns are too slow and most people won't see VP, we'll be 75% of the way through the expansion already.

It needs to be fixed now. It's not difficult to do some math and realise it's a terrible mechanic for a 84 day unlock instanced raid server.

Competing for some ground spawns that gives you a key to an instanced raid zone isn't my idea of competition. To me that sounds like your game is broken and I shouldn't play it.

All the problems seem to point towards that famous quote of "Casuals shouldn't raid". Putting in stupid road blocks to prevent your server from succeeding. Casuals SHOULD raid, get off your high horse.

I hate to think how many people quit this server because of the XP rates. I'd guess over 300. That's like 10% of the server gone for no reason.

Why even risk losing another 300 for a stupid ground spawn quest?

The hard part of the game should be coordinating 50 people to kill a raid boss. Putting in ridiculous time sinks to prevent people from doing that doesn't make your game hard. It makes your game broken.

Keep all your eletists nonsense about "casuals shoudn't raid" to LJ and RF. Phinny isn't supposed to be like this.

That ground spawn quest you want removed, it's the lore the entire expansion of Kunark is built on.

It's becoming apparent to me that most people don't play this game to experience the lore that in my opinion makes this game great. But, instead to you play to win, to get the loots. And, if you want to play that way that's fine. But, you got to play against everyone else playing the game the same way.

Don't remove it, increase the spawn rate to match an 84 day unlock with instanced raids that 100% of the server has access to.

If you get off by blocking other people's content, this isn't the server for you. No one is impressed with a random guild killing X raid mob. On Phinny everyone is doing it, from the hardcore to the extreme casual.

Just because you can't block peoples access to content any more, doesn't mean they get 'free loot'.

" But, you got to play against everyone else playing the game the same way. "

You couldn't be more wrong. There's no playing against people when it comes to raid targets. Everquest isn't balanced around Player vs Player in a PVE environment, it favours those who sit at home all day with nothing else to do. That's not balance.

We can see by how quickly RF / LJ died that no one wants to play with people like that.

You're confusing "blocking" with other people just doing the quest.

Blocking ground spawns didn't happen on Lockjaw.

The issue is that lots of people want to complete the quest. So since you can't complete yours exactly when you want, you jump to the most absurd conclusion. "The people getting the spawn I can't, are doing it just to block me." When in truth, they like you are just doing the quest.

The ground spawn isn't even the worst part of that quest, and certainly not the part people would "block" if they were inclined to do so.

The pure randomness of AJ in FV will be the part that stops most people, not the ground spawns.

See, I disagree. XP rate is fantastic on Phinny. Any guild who genuinely wanted to raid as a significant part of their experience has been raiding for 4+ weeks at this point in time. Even those who aren't in guilds that have cleared this entire era are hitting or already have an alt at 50.

You are in the extreme minority if you have been playing consistently (not even an hour-per-day minimum) and do not have at least one L46+ character. At this point it's basically evident any consistent play time would net a L46+ by now. The only folks who don't consciously decided to not play for weeks at a time, had some event (vacation, computer broke, etc) that impeded their play for weeks at a time, or some other extenuating circumstance. To suggest anyone has consistently been playing since December 9th and been unable to achieve L46+ despite trying their darndest is awkward and I would be crazy interested to hear what their weeks are like in-game and how they've managed to avoid leveling to L46 in that time.

I'm being facetious here, but my mind can't comprehend anything for such a person other than like "Day 14: I pet a cat in south karana, it didn't give experience. Screwed by DBG again. Darn those hardcores! Logging out in anger. Will try petting elephants tomorrow." I would genuinely watch some twitch stream of someone who has been struggling to hit L46+ by this point just in awe and curious what they're doing/not doing.

You're misunderstanding my meaning of "Blocking". I never said it was blocking purely to prevent others from doing the quest. I don't mind not doing it exactly when I want, but if the calculations work out that it will take 160 days (random number) for the entire raiding population to complete their key quest on an 84 day unlock, that's broken.

I thought it would be good for an average player to reach max level and start raiding about 50% of the way through the expansion.

So I also think that 100% of raiding people should get their VP key 50% of the way through the expansion, not sometime during velious.

We've had a huge amount of Double XP time. But people can't allow for that in their calculations, so they stopped playing. No one is going to invest a huge amount of time into a game just in the off chance that every weekend is going to be double xp.

I have a L50 and a L37 paladin as my highest (which is on the average/low side, many people have several L50s at this point), and my paladin hasn't even seen an ounce of double xp weekend. Surely if I will have two L50s by Kunark release, one with 0 double xp time, a single person can get a L46+ by then?

This is true starting in the gates of discord expansion. Everything before that is a max of 72 benefiting only those that come up with those numbers. The game does not need to be constantly changed at a whim to benefit every possible complaint you could come up with, only to benefit yourself in anyway possible, to make content any less of a time sink. Artificially inflated time for content that the only hardest part being, requires you to show up and out dps someone else is not difficulty. The game at its earliest stages and first few exps is nothing more then who has more time to commit. The ones advocating for the most change here will most likely give up come gates of discord and simply refuse to play it or anything beyond. They will use the not enough time to play argument as the main excuse to not play instead of not being able to come up with enough geared people to progress.

If the population is big enough spawn a dozen instances of both ground spawns, and keep them open. 6 per day across 12 instances is 72 a day. With 10 raiding guilds none of which are running 72 man instances the entire server should have the ground spawns in less than 2 weeks. I can math too.

And, since Ragefire and even Lockjaw have been able to spawn a dozen of some zones, I don't think you should have an issue getting at least 7 or 8 and hold them open.

I am totally baffled by the amount of people who come here wanting to change EQ because they all want the game handed to them. You guys knew the server was 84 days for each expansions, you knew it was instanced for raid content. You are not new to EQ in most cases (there are a few folks who actually are brand new to the game playing on Phini) so why all the fuss because you can not have everything handed to you without any type of road block?

You constantly keep bringing up RF/LJ which everyone new before the server started the environment that was going to happen due to the lack of Play Nice Policy or enforcement to some degree?

There is going to be some things that not everyone is going to get to do without waiting to the others do it first even with instancing. Should we ask for Stormfeather to be a 10 min spawn so all 12k players(guess) can have their quest item from him? Shall Lodi be a 1 min spawn so we all get items from him? Hey, I know lets have the dragons who give Sleepers tomb keys give out 9 keys at a time so we can all go in there? Cause imo they are not gonna instance that zone and should not.

Your expectations are WAY to high for a game that is over 15 years, worked on by an understaffed team, and frankly a team who are not visionaries of EQ but rather just holding the lights on imo.

Either way, buck up, do the quest as it is or don't bother at all.

To clarify, yes. I do play on Phini, so I have an opinion on the matter.

That may be (last time I had another DHSer playing on Phin poke me and point out your bard's level it was around L6-7 I believe - was a bit ago, though) - but lets not pretend that "play an expansion behind" which is your primary philosophy is something that the majority of TLP players are keen with. (although you did eventually tweak that some, thankfully)

It was a GREAT theorem when XP rates were basically Live rates and the server was progressing every other month or so where no one was ever that far behind dealing with "old content" since it was realistically only "one month old". Once we started hit expansions that were lasting 3.5 to 6.5 MONTHS where someone would spend one month leveling/group gearing then 2.5-5.5 months of being idle trying to justify paying a sub for it, the ball of wax is a little different and the philosophy falls apart a bit.

Now, don't get me wrong - there should be SOME SORT of accomplishment to keying - that makes sense - but when literally a few disgruntled/bored LJ/RF players could come over and destroy the majority of the ground spawns in a few spots with L1 characters there's a trolling issue - not to mention our own problem players on the server.

Assuming we get zero trolls and people don't "camp the key" well past they're complete I'm cool with it being as-is though, personally - I do like having effort involved in the accomplishment. But I hope response will be swift if they keep it unadjusted and trollling does start to occur. [Tying it to accomplishment is why I'd personally like to see the other major raid mobs drop completed Medals if they do - harder in many ways than the normal way (with the buffed mobs) but at the same time immune to trolling]

This ^

I find it interesting the types of changes players request. They think these changes are good, when in reality, they really don't know what they want. They think they know .... but they don't. All they are focused on is their personal short term benefit.

The last thing developers should do is consider any of these requests. These players have no real understanding of game design. These players have no concept of why this game has lasted as long as it has.

i love you zuth and i love gremin but lets not pretend anything and lets not start calling past server stuff into anything if you still want to look good gremin's post had a lot of good points in it.

i am rooting for iv and dhs, do it for those of us who cant play!

Now do the math for 2 FV picks. Don't you have a dead server to raid on anyway.

You knew the XP was gonna be nerfed for some random reason ... you knew they weren't gonna instance Epic raids because i mean they named the server phinny for no reason...

five st key dragons as well as tormax and vindi .. on this tlp server(s) i dont think tormax and vindi will drop the keys though.
still leaves five dragons that drop keys