Pick pop threshold.

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Zinkeh, Jun 6, 2021.

  1. Nickatropolis Augur

    I leveled my toons primarily on live side and almost all camps were taken at all times. People who like exp will hunt on the live side.
    Machen likes this.
  2. Machen New Member


    That's not true. Not remotely true.

    Pick thresholds used to be much lower, with a much higher bar for picks to shut down. That was all adjusted because the servers ran like sh*t under the old system.

    The devs were explicit about their reasons for the change, and the players saw an immediate impact. Servers immediately went from crashing twice a week and lagging out constantly to almost always stable.

    Picks do not work the same way as later instancing because the zone designs changed with instancing. The original zones in early expansions run a lot of very intensive server side scripts. 50 lguks in an old man mckenzie instance where they used modern techniques, no problem. 50 classic lguk picks, on the other hand, will drag a server to its knees and cause a crash imminently.
    Niskin and Captain Video like this.
  3. Atomos Augur

    It never works out like this. BR and /Sup compete for mobs, sometimes even pulling minos. /Sup and Exe/etc compete with each other, Hamlord and Frenzy compete as well as with Exe/etc., and I've seen competition in the Live area (although I do agree that people should check it more often. It seems to be the place the bots/boxers like to go cause it's less popular).

    Mobs die too fast to fully support so many players in many Classic camps, and LGuk is one of the worst offenders. The ridiculously imbalanced respawn timers in Classic/LGuk don't help the situation any.
  4. SoandsoForumUser Augur

    On the plus side, I did 44-47 in solb tonight, it was amazing. There's only one named so it's not constant kill stealing and competition like lguk, the enemies were all appropriately leveled and I never ran out of stuff to kill before the reasonably fast 20 minute respawns came back up. Also I only had to answer a CC like 3 times in 6 hours.
  5. FinalTidus23 Lorekeeper

    I felt the same way you did until someone introduced me to The Hole. There are like 4-6 camps per pick, maybe more. Play the game you are playing in that zone and I think you will have better luck there.
  6. Atomos Augur

    Mobs in The Hole also don't die before I can get a 2nd nuke off. But I don't know how I feel about the solution being to increase the health of everything. I guess at least in The Hole my DoTs are actually useful. I think reducing spawn times or reducing the amount of players required to spawn a pick are much more viable and won't have as big of an impact on regular gameplay.

    Besides, the more players that get into the 40+ range, the worse off The Hole is going to be. I'm sure it's already begun to get that way.
  7. Machen New Member


    Reducing player dps to what it was in 1999 would be a better option. Then you wouldn't have two groups clearing all of guk, etc.
  8. Atomos Augur


    I'm not entirely opposed to that, but I'd have to question why it's like that in the first place. Have TLP in Classic always had Banestrike, Augments, updated damage values, etc.?

    Edit: Also, I don't think Charm is any different from during era besides the nerf, so even removing all of the above might not make enough of a difference in kill speed (and unfortunately gives further reason to favor Charm classes over everyone else).
  9. FinalTidus23 Lorekeeper

    Ya buddy. They added some weird procs and extra damage for some classes, like bane strikes, or maybe all classes but it had an aim to increase melee dps. They could maybe play with these.

    Buncha patchwork imo.
  10. Atomos Augur

    I think Banestrike is for everyone. It definitely works on my Necro's initial DoT damage, nukes, and lifetaps. Not sure about my melee attacks. That said, surely it benefits melee more often? Or maybe it's made to be balanced between melee and casters.
  11. Machen New Member


    They have progressively added most of those things over time. The earliest TLP's had a few crazy broken things, some of which they fixed by Fippy/Vulak (live monk fist ratios for instance.) Augments were added on Fippy because they were actually needed to balance caster dps vs melee then. But all the banestrike, damage aa's, and general combat changes since then have given a HUGE boost to dps that didn't exist on the earlier tlp's.

    Things like charm are better now because mobs mitigate less than they did. The charm nerf may make up for some of that, not sure. The charm nerf and removing caster focii are the only recent examples of dps going down. Neither really affected melee dps which is where most of the problem resides. Aside from those two nerfs, dps has increased, increased, and increased some more.
  12. Questioneer New Member

    12 people = new pick. Idc what zone.

    Standing around or picking around for 1-2 hours trying to find a camp is absurd.
  13. Kodachi Augur


    I'd normally say that too, but I've been seeing live side camped/overcamped as well. Granted you usually have a few level 50's taking an entire set of camps themselves but they also kill all the mobs. This is the crux of why I hate classic so much, you don't have very many options of where to go. You either go lguk, solb... or kill open world stuff like spectres or guards? This is the crux of why I really wish the rando servers started in a later expansion.
  14. Atomos Augur

    Well that's what I don't understand. If they wanted to increase everyone's DPS even all the way back to Classic... I mean how would no one foresee that translating into causing people to clear camps faster and the need to pull from further away (pretty much always dipping into someone else's camp), content being easier, etc.

    The reason I'm asking about those things is because if they've been adding all that stuff over time for whatever their reason is, they probably won't want to revert it. It seems to me that reducing the required amount of players to spawn a pick would be the easiest change, even easier than lowering Classic respawn times. I still think adjusting Classic timers is the best choice because it makes things more consistent with future timers, particularly from the following expansions. There's also that weird timer increase based on higher population which seems to only be making things worse.
  15. Machen New Member


    Of course they foresaw it. But the fact is, players enjoy being overpowered. So, it's unfortunately probably working as intended.

    Edit to add -- as I already explained earlier in the thread, reducing the pick requirements is not an option. They literally cannot do that without wrecking server stability. Not without some major overhauls to the entire system.
  16. Hashire New Member


    Uhhh, no. It takes 45 minutes without SoW or bard speed to cross.the entirety of Norrath.

    Most of you virgins play 16 hours a day. So it doesn't take a long time compared to your playtimes.
  17. Niskin Clockwork Arguer


    In my experience, it takes about 45 minutes to run from Greater Faydark to the Qeynos Hills zoneline without SoW, if you take the Southern route. But you have to include getting killed by a werewolf within inches of the zoneline, buying a SoW pot and trying again, so like 75 minutes total.

    This story is based on true events that really happened, last Saturday, it actually still hurts me a little, emotionally.
  18. Montag Augur

    Yeah, you know what, I think I remember that now, I stand corrected. It OUGHT NOT work that way, but legacy code works in buggy ways.
    Machen likes this.