VP key the current cancer of Aradune

My points are harsh, and i feel they need to be. I'm not posting here to blow smoke up Daybreaks rear. They are not updating or changing things frequent enough like they need to be doing, and I'm going to call them out for that.

People keep saying they already adjusted the spawns. Who cares that it was changed however long ago. It needs to be adjusted again to address current TLPs.

Staring at the ground *IS* the content. Don't go AFK, it's unintended for you to not enjoy it.

Old posts like this really show just how guess-and-check the game was, particularly with itemization.

I think the itemization was more about how this game was loosely based on ad&d and all stats matter in that game. Unfortunantly people figured out how little certain stats mattered for some classes.

Ex high dex reduces a casters chance of their spell being interupted. Problem is 5 dex probly doesnt give a parsable difference outside standard deviation even with tens of thousands of data points.

Because it's still stupid. Also that 5000x number is hilariously inflated. Factor in that we can't hold 10+ picks open with 1 person anymore, and there are more guilds with the numbers to do Trak than on phinny, increasing demand substantially.

I also feel like saying "skip VP" is super duper missing the point. Yeah, VP loot isn't THAT good, so why the worst key quest in the game? VP key is actually a part of the content in Kunark, and it sucks. They could change it to make it suck less, then nobody has to keep telling people they should just skip the zone with all the dragons to kill. Loot aside, it's a sizable number of targets, it's something to do.

It's also totally forgotten about almost immediately. ToV shows up and VP just sort of goes back to being a wanna-be Temple on a Peak. It's not VT, or Time... zones that you'll often raid for loot or fun eras later... It's a sub-par raid zone with a key quest that doesn't fit with the play style of DZ based raiding. It's not that people should be wanting to skip half of the raid targets, it's that the raid targets shouldn't be locked behind 12+ hour key camps that don't involve doing anything but waiting around or hoping to click faster than the people waiting around with you.

They've fixed other things that are just a toxic nightmare because of the increased (and top heavy) population that spends 80% of their time raiding on a schedule. They've fixed aspects of this one even, they could finish they job.

If you are in a guild that is telling others to skip VP because the loot is bad...

Why are you and your guild in such a rush on server launch to get bad loot in VP? If it is so bad, why did you not skip it?

I don't plan on doing Kunark keying ever again, so I will share our strategy for the swamp of no hope and keasora pieces.

Have everyone in the guild make two level 1 Iksars on their accounts and camp them in SoNH and Kaesora entrances.

Have 5-6 people who needs the pieces zone in and be ready to pick zone on their mains.

Have everyone in the guild other than those 5-6 people zone in their level 1s at the same time, you will have the power to pop not one but likely two new picks at a time, and if your have multiple mains going for the pieces at once the chances of another guild beating you to them int he picks are mitigated by only you knowing when you will be doing this, and several people going for them at once.

Rinse and repeat this for both zones every 30min-1 hour until your guild is keyed. This being done a few times a week even will be enough to get you into VP after a few weeks. Hardcore guilds can be in VP within days with their entire raid force or even start splitting if this was your bottle neck.

You have the tools to increase your key intake available to you right now. Change your strategy. Waiting for GMs to increase a spawn timer on something that is now 1 hour..when it used to be 8 hours long per respawn in a single pick is an unreasonable strategy.

They already nerfed this into the ground, but you still have to work for it as a team.

/micdrop

yea VT key really only had 1 or 2 tough shards to get, the rest of it was fairly easy and more just a test of patience than skill

Isn't that what the VP key is also? Patience over skill? Compete for it, go at odd hours, wait it out, skip it entirely. This is the 5th Gen AoC tlp, doubtful it's getting changed again to make it even easier, still easily accomplished in era, just not the first couple weeks unless you really want it.

Yeah I'm not getting the VP key this time around. I really wish since these servers move at such a rapid pace anyways that they'd make key drops zone wide or just instantly respawn if they're taken off of the ground. Key farming is just lame and boring and shouldn't be relevant anymore when a new expansion comes out every few months. I feel the same way with epic mobs and drops .. just up their spawn rates and make people happy.

Guilds are already doing this after raids. Big whoop, one person gets a medallion and then the pick collapses. It's a terrible solution to the current problem.

Furthermore these VP camps are rewarding cheaters and punishing people who don't want to use 3rd party programs. Your chances of obtaining the swamp ground spawn without cheating are close to 0. How is that good game design?

Seriously everyone, VP is Kunark’s endgame and the expansion only recently unlocked... Should people be using third party programs, no, but the solution isn’t to reduce the competitiveness of getting to VP, it’s to ban the cheaters.

VP should be viewed like the Epics in that it’s NOT SUPPOSED TO BE EASY, ITS COMPETITIVE END GAME CONTENT.

For all in the “I want to play the content” camp, you’re probably on the wrong server and need to just accept that reality. If it’s too competitive in era then move to Agnarr where you still have older caps and items and it’s still accessible with some challenge. If that’s still too hard, I got great news! The content is on Live too, and there’s Defiant gear to make the zone easier to progress through.

You can still experience all the content on aradune though. In era. You just won't be doing it week 1 u less you compete for it. If your entire goal is only to see it when it's mostly "challenging" raid content there will be no problem. At the very very very very worst, wait until velious opens and then go hit VP so you can experience it. No where was AoC tlp ever advertised as full bis in era every expac.

If this were true there should be no AoC.

No AoC = no TLP. This was established by trial and error. They've tried to strike a reasonable balance between difficulty and access, and so now we have unending complaints from both sides.

I think that you have misunderstood the point that I was making.

If the TLP servers were supposed to be "competitive" - which was KermittheFroglok's conjecture then the TLP would not have AoC.

The point of AoC was to enable more guilds to actually engage in the content by reducing the bottlenecks created by there being so many raid-oriented guilds on TLP servers, an issue which was rooted in the inter-guild dramas on the Ragefire server. AoC on Phinigel was how they addressed what they saw as a problem that was creating bad play experiences for the players on Ragefire. It ended up being a huge part of Phinigels success.

Veeshan's Peak has an AoC, the bottleneck is the keying quest, so I think "competitive" is a poor argument against reducing the bottleneck on the keying quest.

Always funny to see people talking about how it “should be hard” or “should take skill to get”.

Players on top guilds getting ground spawns are running cheat maps either themselves or with a guildie calling it out for them.

But its about in game skill guys!!!! Your soooo much better of a player!

The only logical part of VP key that is challenging for a player is Trak. Outside of that anyone can solo most of it and the challenge is dealing with a holes, cheaters, and crap game design. It’s not about skill, it’s about cheating more than the guy next you and being more of an .

The “that’s how it was” side is also amusing. Nothing about the VP now is how it was and almost nothing about TLPs are how it was. But let’s not change something, because it already doesn’t resemble how it was!

Skuz, you’re missing the entire point that some things are still and still should be harder to access or achieve. VP isn’t just a run of the mill raid event. It was meant to be the very end game of the expansion that players were supposed to reach near the end of their run on Ruins of Kunark. The expansion launched like 2 weeks ago

There’s supposed to be a bottleneck and competitiveness getting there.

My point is that things like Epic 1.0 & VP aren’t and weren’t ever supposed to be easily accessible in era. In another month or so the keying should be less contested and then less competitive guilds should be able to get in. As many other people already pointed out the Devs have already made a lot of TLP accommodations for VP keying. At some point people need to accept they won’t be able to get there early and will have to wait until later in the expansions run to get in.

Back in 2000, the masses WERE NOT in VP by the end of February. If it’s like this in very late September or early October, maybe you could argue something needs to be tuned but in reality the expansion just launched! People’s expectations on the accessibility are outright unrealistic and people are being overly ambitious this early.

Please tell me what people seriously plan to do for another two months after clearing VP in three weeks?

The Raid events being easier to beat than the bottleneck to get the key does not sound like the intended play experience to me at all so I will respectfully disagree.

The TLP are not designed to give an authentic replication of the live server experience they are a nostalgia-trip.

Would you book a holiday to spain if you had to fight 5000 other passengers to get a key to let you on the plane which only carries 72?