A few bugs/oddities with AoC-based instances

Since Agnarr is going to use these as well as Phinigel (I think? The news post doesn't mention them) there are a few bugs that would be nice to get worked out using the new Agent of Change based instances.

1. Double or more length on "replay timer" lockout
You can trigger this one by the following sequence of events:
1: Be in a raid that opens an instance that uses an AoC (which immediately gives you a Replay Timer lockout for that zone)
2: Complete an event in that zone so you get another lockout timer (example: Kill Grioihin the Wise in the Plane of Water instance)
3: Drop your character from the Dynamic Zone.
4: Get re-added to the Dynamic Zone.
5: The Replay Timer lockout will now have doubled in length (usually to 13 days).

2. Halls of Testing Drakes has/causes numerous problems with the Temple of Veeshan instance.
First bug: You can get an absurdly high event timer by simply killing all of the 'Halls of Testing' event drakes. Essentially, every drake that is associated with the Halls of Testing event grants an additional 6 day, 12 hour timer on top of the current timer when they are killed. This results in the Halls of Testing Drakes event timer at roughly 52 Days if you kill all of the drakes that drop quest parts.

Second bug: If you have the aforementioned Halls of Testing Drakes lockout, the guard drakes for Lord Feshlak, Lord Kriezenn, Aaryonar, Lord Koi'doken, and Lady Miranilla do not spawn in the Temple of Veeshan instance, reducing the chances for loot. Oddly, Lord Vyemm's guard drakes DO spawn, but even stranger...

Third bug: If you have the Halls of Testing Drakes lockout, Lord Vyemm does not spawn in the Temple of Veeshan instance.

Note: I'm not suggesting the next is a bug, but more of a design decision that I'd like to see modified:

3. AoC based instances give 6.5 day lockouts when all non-AoC based instances give 5.5 day lockouts
As stated, I'm assuming this was intentionally done, but I wonder if there's any chance that this could get looked at. With the pick changes fixing the crashing issue on Phinigel, its less of a concern, but sometimes guilds would like to move a particular raid around in their weekly schedule. With the 6.5 day lockout, this is not possible without skipping that raid for a week, and given the limited time we have per each expansion, its sometimes frustrating to be locked into running a raid on that day. Would like to see the lockouts granted from an AoC instance dropped to 5.5 to meet more in line with the later expansions. 5.5 day lockout means that, if run on lockout, an additional one instance can be run per month, hardly the end of the world with splitting and open world accelerated timers.

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Would greatly appreciate these issues being looked at, particularly the drop-and-rejoin double timer bug.

I would love to see a Dev comment on this.

I know that when you have a bugged replay timer, and the raid lead attempts to request a DZ, it will block it. But if you remove that person, grab the DZ and then add them back to the DZ, it will allow the raid lead to get the DZ, but ONLY if the replay timer is the result of a bug (display bug maybe) Legit lockout timers will not allow this. As long as the person with the bugged timer is added before any other lockout besides the replay timer are added, they can participate in the DZ.

Not sure if the double lockout timer is just a display bug or what, but I know that this work-around checks out.

By this statement, do you mean that if you are in a dynamic zone, have to drop for whatever reason (emergency comes up, need to free up room for someone else to get back in) and then get re-added to the same instance is not intentional?

The sequence I'm doing is
1. Join a raid
2. We get a raid instance of Plane of Water, which immediately grants Replay Timer lockout for Plane of Water
3. We kill Grioihin the Wise, which adds the Griohin the Wise lockout to my DZ window.
4. I drop the raid and DZ because room is needed to let someone else get an item.
5. I rejoin the same raid and DZ to continue raiding, but now my Replay Timer lockout has doubled in length.

What verifiably does not work is:
1. Join a raid
2. Get an instance
3. Kill a lockout-granting NPC in that instance
4. Drop the raid and DZ
5. Join another raid that also happens to have the same NPC and Replay Timer lockouts.

The sequence I do feels very flexible to allow people in and out of the raid until we're done with the instance, except for the Replay Timer double length. If this is not intentional, I'd like to appeal to keep that mechanism in, and just fix the additional time being added.

When I ran my rogue around to check, I had the following lockouts:
* Loot Lockout (5ish days)
* Dozekar the Cursed (5ish days)
* Halls of Testing Drakes (41ish days)

I believe my Dozekar lockout is up later today, I can recheck to see if those drakes spawn or not when its just Halls of Testing Drakes on lockout.

Once you drop a DZ that you are locked out of you shouldn't be able to be re-added at all. You should probably stop doing that.

Except that you've been able to do this since at least very early Velious. As previously stated, we get a bit of flexibility in that if someone has to drop for whatever reason, they can rejoin if they clear up whatever issue is going on. If anyone that DOESN'T have the lockout joins, they have to trade the loss of previous event loot chances to join in whatever is going on.

There's no chance for cross-raid looting or moving characters between raids in this case, it just means that we can drop people without penalty if we need to for some reason. If this is removed, we suddenly get a lot more restrictive on player behavior to try and fix a (non-existent) problem.

Actually, you could do this in classic and in fact we did a few times on Phinny, I forgot why. It only works if the lockouts are still the same when the person is added back to the DZ. If there is a new lockout I don't think it works.

All I'm saying is this is not supposed to be possible with AoC instances. The fact that you are able to do it is I guess interesting, but also not surprising to hear it is bugging out. If someone has to leave for some reason just tell them not to drop the dz. If they come back great. There is no harm in staying in the dz.

Part of the problem comes when you're running close to 72 players in the DZ, and someone has to leave. More of an issue for smaller guilds that might need more numbers to get things done.

If someone needs to leave for an hour, and the guild has people waiting to come in, you need to remove that person from the DZ for the extra space.

Then if they come back later and want to join back in, well, they'd get added replay timer lockouts, even though it's the same DZ they were in earlier.

Or, if someone swaps to a Cleric alt to help heal because someone dropped, and gets added, but then they want to swap back to their main later on to get some gear or something. They get readded and extended lockouts.

Excellent, much appreciated on the work on investigating Absor. A little disappointed about the 6.5 -> 5.5. suggestion, but again I fully understand this is a design decision.

I'll be trying my Temple of Veeshan again here shortly for the remaining bugs.

With only two Temple of Veeshan related lockouts (Replay Timer @ 0D5H58M and Halls of Testing Drakes @ 38D4H59M), I ran my rogue up to Lord Feshlak, Lord Kriezenn, Lord Vyemm, and Lord Koi'doken (I forgot Lady Miranella) in the Temple of Veeshan instance, and once again, Lord Vyemm was not there and his guards were, while at every other dragon I checked the guards were not there.

We used to do it during classic/kunark when the dz was full and someone wanted to bring an alt in to loot something (which happened fairly often.) The only other alternatives are either to let the loot rot, or insist that the main member sit out the rest of the raid... In fact the guild I'm in on Phinny now still swaps people in and out for alt loot like this, and someone gets a double lockout pretty frequently as a result.

Thanks for looking Absor, its very strange.

I'm not sure if you have any insight on this, but if I petition about the Halls of Testing Drakes lockout being absurd, is it possible to get that lockout removed?

To my knowledge, the GMs have never cleared lockouts even when bugged up like this.

I believe they can, as evidenced by the lockout resetting NPC "Bob" for testing PoP lockouts that was on the Test server. However, they have established a policy against clearing anyone's lockouts for quite some time on Phinigel.

They have, just not very often. You have to catch the right GM I think. I can recall situations where multiple players were bugged from the same events, one caught a benevolent GM who fixed his lockout and the rest were told no.