[Phinigel] Master PoP Instances Testing Thread

Maybe they intend it to be that way? Just posted above, Absor says "Anything that is a raid boss should be in the instance. Things that just give keys will be in the pick zones." Perhaps they do not consider these to be raid bosses and intend for the keys to be obtained via the normal zone/pick zones? Again, just because you want it changed, doesn't necessarily make it a bug. Same idea with the Praesertum's in the SS instance - people have been calling for those to spawn to no avail despite the fact that the logical thing would seem to have them spawn upon instance creation there as well.

I'll say it one last time - I do agree with you that it would be nice for them to spawn when the instance is created and I think that it is definitely the most logical approach, but it doesn't necessarily mean that this is a bug that needs to be fixed.

I won't post anymore on this since it isn't really healthy to the discussion, and I hope they do change the way it works.

On the tipic of Praesertums though... you only need 1 person in your guild/raid force to acquire all 4 in order to unlock the next step.

This stage, EVERY ONE is responsible for getting keyed up in order to progress.

No problem at all! Thanks for the testing and the reports.

For clarity on the mechanics of the Turkeybee isle ring, it's not necessary to kill any menacing stormriders to advance the event. On that phase of the event, there are multiple invisible trap men on the island that must be tripped. Tripping a trap men spawns a few sporadic stormriders. Tripping all the traps and killing all these sporadic stormriders spawns Pherlondien Clawpike and his mirror images, but only if the apparition of wind is currently up, otherwise a miniboss will spawn instead. Killing the correct Pherlondien Clawpike will then spawn the Avatar of Wind. The menacing stormriders will periodically become combatable and attack. (Note: the fix to this was to greatly reduce the time before the menacing stormriders become combatable.) Killing Pherlondien will not despawn the menacing stormriders, though, given enough time they should be despawned by their controller. Phew!

If you got stuck, it either means there was still at least one remaining trap man on the isle, or something broke. I've never seen it break, but anything's possible and the various events in PoAir are complex and have a lot of moving parts and there's a potential that it did not reset correctly from someone else's previous attempt.

I have not seen any comments from Devs on the named giants in PoStorms, is there a plan in place to alleviate this ? This seems like one of the largest points of contention that will happen early on, as not only are you asking raiding guilds, but groups to camp the same mobs that are on long timers.

lol, So explain Absor, why did you change the VP questline? Why did you change the Arx Key? Why those changes and not this? Please explain this logic, because I cannot see any logic here. You change keys in the past so they are not bottlenecks and yet you put your head in the sand on possibly the biggest bottleneck this server has seen.

I think you owe us a logic explanation for why you are not changing this and yet changed keys in the past - were not even asking the key be changed, we just want it to spawn in the instance.

While they do drop key pieces, those pieces are required for a flag. A flag that every character in your raid needs.

This is going to be an absolutely monstrous problem for guilds flagging in PoP. There are over 20 Phinigel raiding guilds currently active, and everyone in those guilds will need to acquire 2 Medallions in order to complete the PoP flagging process. Not to mention the many more players not interested in raiding who will want to do this quest to gain access to Bastion of Thunder as well.

Unless the threshold is set to spawn an additional pick for every 6-9 people in Plane of Storm, this is going to be a disaster. It should be reconsidered to place the 6 lesser giant named mobs in the picks with 7 day lockout timers just like the lords have. Hell remove their chance to drop loot if you want.

The entire purpose of instances was to reduce open world conflicts. PoStorm instance as it currently stands fails to do that. With only the giant lords dropping Medallions (raid targets which are designed for 4-6 groups compared to the lesser Giants 1-2 group design) a guild would take 16 weeks to flag a raid of 72 members by doing just the lord Giants in instance for their Medallions...

+1 - There needs to more outrage about this - I just cannot fathom how they thought the VP key was so hard it needed to be changed or the Arx key was too much of a bottleneck so they made it where ya only needed 1 per guild and yet this huge poop sock/bottleneck is just being completely ignored. It isn't even like we are asking them to change the quest or make more medallions drop, all we want is the giants to spawn in the instance.

So basically, the forethought complaints about the potential logjam...which you're trying to avoid are going unheard ?

How does spawning in picks, and not in instances help? The same thing was present for VP and that was terrible for well over a month. This could well be worse since its one camp that everyone needs 2 of, and not just raiders, but groups too.

Just shorten the timer to 2 hours or something. Problem solved.

Non-raiders will be after these pieces too.

Let's keep this forum focused on bugs please.

I created a forum where Plane of Storms can be discussed here:

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/plane-of-storms-progression.237262/

I'll say it again, I agree with you folks that want them to spawn in the instance, as it makes logical sense and would be more in line with the spirit of this server and I assume would make the most people happy. Not really sure why they don't just change it.

However, you are exaggerating the potential problem quite a bit. The named giants drop nothing but the keys [EDIT - maybe they can drop some crap loot or chance at a parchment? I killed a number on test and they ONLY had medallions, so I'm not sure], which means as soon as people kill them once, they never have to go back again(except for alts). Each named drops 3 medallions, and you only need 2 medallions to complete a key. There are a total of 6 named, on a roughly 4-5 hour respawn. This means for each round of named spawns, you get 9 BoT keys. So say for conservative sake it takes 6 hours for the giants to respawn(likely less). That is 36 keys per day, per pick. I can guarantee there will be at least 2 picks in addition to the base, so thats a minimum of 108 keys every day, likely more given that I'd expect more than 2 picks in the early weeks.

This is not even remotely close to the bottleneck magnitude of VP keys. Compare this to the Swamp of No Hope ground spawn piece, with an average of only 1 extra pick, was only about 7-8 keys per pick, per day. For simplicity sake, some of those VP bottlenecks were about 10 times worse. And this is only ONE bottleneck. Not to mention its not some random RNG "who can click fastest" type of content either.

I'd be willing to bet that within 3 weeks, PoStorms is a ghost town.

Seriously?

This is problematic for all the reasons stated. It's the new VP key situation all over again.

So are you saying you removed the named giants (that drop medallions for Planar Progression) from spawning at all in the instance? Or are they still on that 4.5 - 6ish hour spawn and we can still possibly kill them in instance if we wait for them to spawn?

Please do not throw 10+ raiding guilds into PoStorms to battle it out for keys.

If that's what players wanted they would be on Ragefire, not Phinny.

Honestly throwing 10 raid guilds into PoStorm would be the best case scenario, because that would ideally force the opening of 12~ Picks. If enough picks can get opened up early and kept open for a few weeks this won't be nearly as bad.

What's going to suck is when no guilds zone their entire guild into Storm forcing picks to open. Only logging in kill crews to snipe the Giants they need and logging out again.

Still, it makes way more sense to put these in the instances.

I am echoing the concerns of the others in this thread about Plane of Storms. With the lack of respect for "camps" between the upper guilds, this is going to a super fun bottle neck. I guess if your intention is to slow down the rate in which guilds enter the upper tiers, then this would be an effective way to do that. I just foresee a lot of conflict coming from guild squabbles over this piece for a month+.... Hurray for the guild's HR department ( which is me ) on being super busy during early PoP!
If not having them spawn in instances isn't on the table, can we get a little bit of hope with increase drops quantities, increased spawn rates, or lower thresholds to spin up picks for PoStorms? Throw us a bone! =)

Don't modify spawn or drop rates. That shouldn't really be on the table.

If they're adamant about them not being in instances (I can't famthom why... no one is going to use PoStorm instance if this is the case)... the threshold for pick spawning should be set extremely low. Like a pick for every 12-15 people in the zone, since that's about how much it takes to kill these when underleveled and undergeared.

There is precedent for "rares that drop keys" to be in the instance: Va Dyn Khar spawns in the VT instance (and has his own lockout in fact).

The truth is, you made the reasonable choice and put him in the instance (i think) because it doesn't make any sense to arbitrarily block people on what is otherwise a trivial step early in the process. Please do the same thing here...

And this is even worse because at least the whole raid doesn't need VDK keys.