VP key the current cancer of Aradune

Robe of Adversity* just for the look, best looking robe in classic models (who uses luclin models anyway)

*Actually not sure I've seen that drop at all on a TLP though, so maybe not?

It's the dumbest thing I've ever seen
I can't imagine any competent game developer being OK with it. Especially if it's impacting a large customer base.
If nothing else pride alone should cause intervention

Our guild has pretty much made VP an optional raid on offnights for people who want to do the quest. It's such a toxic keying quest, that after doing it on Coirnav, we just aren't wasting our time.

Kinda sucks because I think VP is a fun zone, but they make it such a griefing nightmare to get into, only the most toxic top guilds will usually get in until near the end of kunark.

If there is an exodus of people that leave it's good for no one, regardless of which side of this debate you are on. it's not good for the people who think the quest is toxic, it's not good for the people who think the quest is already easier, and it's not good for Daybreak. A healthy server population is good for everyone.

At the end of the day it doesn't really matter whether the reasons those people left are good ones in your eyes. It only matters that they were good enough in theirs and that they left.

And they are already leaving... and that should give everyone pause.

Also the idea that VP is just optional is beyond stupid. It's the only raid zone in Kunark.

There is no plane of fear/sky/hate equivalent other than VP.

Everything else is single targets in open zones, or leveling dungeons.

It's "optional" in the sense it's not tied to any epics, it's not tied to any further progression, it has little to no long term items and has no items required for future progression. That is not the case for some raids (you're gonna want the cold slow proc from ntov for Ssra for example). The key quest is long and could stand to be improved if there was copious amounts of dev time, but there isn't and their time is better spent on other things unfortunately. It is what it is, either compete, wait until there is no competition or skip it.

Aradune has a very healthy population despite all the complaining. It will remain healthy well past PoP. If a few people decide they don't like the overall experience, and aren't having any fun, then they shouldn't play. The formula, such as it is, has been making money for several years now, and this despite the fact that the vast majority of DPG's playerbase and revenue stream is on Live servers. You have to come up with a much better argument than threatening to quit if you're going to get the development team's attention.

i know a lot of the older generation is playing this game, but can we please stop saying something "is cancer"? it's really insensitive and your experiences completing a quest pale in comparison to the experience of fighting cancer. please and thank you.

If current TLP's still had the Phinny systems, you wouldn't see VP key complaints. The entire server would already be working on keying alts at this point of the expansion.

There's like 4 good pieces from VP, and they get replaced soon anyway. Why bother?

Your opinion, but hundreds of other players on the server really do want to fight there during the era.

I understand people just skip the raid because it's too hard to get into because of the current outdated key quest. That's why it needs to be improved. People want to do it, they just skip it because of the cancer quest. This should have been changed a long time ago. I say we keep posting our opinions and make a lot of noise so we can get the key quest adjusted to be accessible for 1000's of people.

Only 9 keys per day max on Phinny. 3 Picks of LOIO max 3 Bloodgil spawns per pick per day. Also 90% of the server would still be like 55-59.

16 Bloodgils per day on Aradune if you guys only have 1 pick.

Key is more then twice as fast and you guys also got 3x the XP

Pretty sure it's not 3x the experience, even with a pot.

Don't forget, I played on phinny and loved that server. I know all about phinny. The reality of it is though, things were only hard on phinny because an extreme lack of knowledge. Which is understandable, phinny was new and the systems were new. It took time for them to be figured out. The fact remains, if current TLP's had the phinny systems, things would be TOO easy. Since I have the time and I'm bored, I'll explain a few things to you.

"Also 90% of the server would still be like 55-59" "3x the XP"
For one, it's not 3x the xp. Two, a 2 box rule limits the amount of oog characters you can have, which significantly slows down the exp. Three, major zem nerfs to kunark zones (like seb and HS) have made chardok really the only viable place to exp. Four, 20% nerfs to charm pets over a long level grind, significantly slows down your exp rate. I'm in no way saying that Aradune exp rate is slower than phinny, it's definitely faster, but lets not blow it out of proportion. I had between 10-20 max level characters on phinny every expansion, and Thal (who ran the server first grp for lvl 50 and 60 on aradune) and myself would do leveling speed runs on phinny all the time. It was not NEARLY as bad as you people like to make it to be.

"Key is more than twice as fast"
When I talk about phinny systems, the biggest one that would make it so insanely easy if phinny players at that time had the knowledge of players today, was how picks worked on phinny. Phinny picks had lower thresholds in these kunark zones, and they permanently stayed up as long as 1 person stayed in it until servers were brought down.
So lets use some data that we know for sure. On kunark launch of Aradune, over 800 people tried to zone in to TD to get to FV according to / count, which caused the TD zone to crash. You would have had 800 people zoning in to FV, which would have created 15+ FV picks. On aradune, that doesn't matter, because as soon as those people zone out, the picks collapse. On phinny, those picks would have stayed open as long as the server stayed up. Guilds could have just ran around to all the key zones popping picks that would have permanently stayed open. Instead, on Aradune, you have base pick of every key zone outside of karnors for 80% of the day for the first week, and only got maybe 1 pick of FV during prime time. For the entire first 6 days of kunark on Aradune, there was only ever base pick in LOIO for BGM. On phinny, you could have easily got up to 10 picks of LOIO that would have perma stayed up, netting you far more BGM's even on an 8 hour timer. The race on aradune was done almost entirely in base zone key farming alone simply because there was not enough people to pop picks or keep picks open for any significant amount of time.
The changes to groundspawns didn't make them easier in the initial weeks of a kunark launch. On phinny, you could sit and forget an afk box on the 1 spawn (when there was tons of picks of swamp perma open) with an auto clicker and just get it whenever you happened to win. Now, you have a 1 in 8 chance of it spawning at your spot, while there is 5-10 people sitting on every spawn, and only base pick. Farrrr fewer groundspawns spawning per day than there was on phinny.
Lastly, lets look at the nerfs to charm gate. Not allowing charm gate actually makes it harder for guilds trying to race to VP. Prior servers, you could stock up puppet strings and insta gate pots on only 1-3 people that knew what they were doing per key camp. Now without charm gating, its just a DPS race, forcing you to send far more resources and raids to every key camp to be able to hold them down.
The main thing they really did to make VP keying easier long term, was taking away the ability to . That now makes it to where once people get their key, they wont loot more for . This is more of something that helps long term though, and not so much in early weeks.

TLDR, if phinny players had the knowledge and foresight to abuse the way that their pick system worked, you could have keyed entire raid forces in days.

First group to 5 on Phinny was like 4 1/2 days played.
First to 50 on Aradune was 1 1/2 days.
Both of these groups used almost identical strats. Aradune really is 2.5-3x the XP that was on Phinny. Phinny didn't get the Kunark XP bump till after the race was over.

This is literally the opposite of the truth. We knew how picks work and how to abuse them. The Pick thresholds were HIGHER not lower. Picks used to have HIGHER thresholds, but once they were popped one person could hold them open. The only reason we had 2 picks of LOIO on Phinny is because we zoned in as a guild and popped them then held them open with our boxes. Same goes for SONH my box Cleric sat in Swamp for like 7 days straight holding one of the picks open.

Angry/Shady goblin spawn on pick up, Enchanter ground spawns spawn on pick up, Marl doesn't spawn on pick up.

Thats the problem, no one at DPG is a competent game designer

I don't know why you're still arguing that Aradune has 3x or even 2.5x. It doesn't. It's not even 2x.
I don't think you understand how percentages work

You would see 10x more server crashes and lots of over lost dz's though.

No, no they didn't.

The change to pick zone thresholds you are referring to happened in 2017. It was changed to reflect the combatable population of the zone, and with other changes they made later the size of the zone, which in a lot of cases did reduce the pick threshold of a zone. However, in many zones, especially large zones with a lot of mobs (ones such as outside kunark zones, or even a zone such as the deep in luclin) it caused an increase in the amount of players required to pop a pick. It wasn't a blanket change that just lowered the threshold of EVERY zone in the game. It requires nearly twice as many people to pop a pick in the deep now than it did on phinny.

Any other provably false things you want to bring up before i head out of here?