My gaming circle likes to make new toons on new TLPs as they come out and one of the zones we like to adventure in is Unrest. It's a good zone because it is good for single digit levels all the way to your 30s, you get the dungeon bonus yet it is an outdoor zone so all your spells work. I've also noticed that the zone Unrest has a bottleneck in regards to camps. It's like a highway going from many lanes to a few which can bring out the worst in people (road rage, etc.) I've spent more than one evening hopping from pick to pick looking for an open camp. one pick every five minutes. Not fun game play. Will do this until one of three things happen: 1) We find an open camp and have fun that evening.2) We find a camp, we start having fun, another group is so frustrated that they can't find a camp they train us to free up our camp. Now we have to decide if we return for tat or go back to pick hopping to try and find an open camp.3) the group gets bored hopping from pick to pick and choose to log off. They will go for about 45 min, that's about 10 zones they are willing to check before they give up. All this is caused because the threshold for opening a new pick in the Estate of Unrest is too high for the way the levels of the zone monsters are laid out. This is causing more GM tickets, player frustration and driving people to do things they would not normally do. This isn't good. Open more picks so people don't get driven to frustration and cruelty.
The pick threshold is already as low as it can go and still protect server performance. Too many picks = server crashes. It's naive to think that devs aren't already doing everything they can to provide resources to players. There are many other zones in the game in which you can level. You've already discovered your choice: fight the crowd for what you think is the min/max zone, or else enjoy one of the many more relaxing levelling paths. Oh, and congratulations for opening up the 500th thread on this topic.
A couple of things. First, it's early days. Early days are always like that. Second, as Timmyboi said, go somewhere else. There's no point in coming here complaining that you can't find a camp in the one zone you hunt in. Finally, Unrest is notorious for trains. They likely aren't training you out of a camp. Rather, it's just the usual trains from basement and the upper floors of the estate. If someone does train you, get video proof and report them. That is the one thing that DBG takes seriously. If you have an nVidia card, you already have the ability to record the last 5 minutes with Shadow Play.
Could be more complex, but this sounds more like a hardware resource issue to me. In which case, the devs would have very little to do with it and it's more of a budget decision.
Yes, server hardware limitations are certainly a factor. Devs have still done a lot of trial-and-error tuning to squeeze out the most picks possible for high-demand zones such as Unrest, at the expense of other parts of the game. Budget for bigger servers isn't an argument here, since Unrest won't even be a factor in another few months, and by GoD everything competitive is instanced in the code, with current server capacity providing for that. Those of us who have been around a long time have seen the repeated server crash scenarios when the devs tried to lower these pick thresholds too far. If there is any money to spend for server upgrades, it is far more likely to go toward helping with chronic raid lag on the live servers.
There is so many more options for places to xp then unrest and more enjoyable too when you don't have to deal with the constant crowdedness. Temple of Cazic Thule is a pretty chill underrated place, Mistmoore is great though can be busy or empty depending on the day, don't limit yourself to having to go to 'the place to be' and you'll probably run into less frustrations and have more fun in the end
I'll never really understand the in game freedom of choice for spots to xp at and everyone still picks the same zones, I guess because I've play other games and in those games your kind forced into linear leveling path. But as far as OP goes. Just go somewhere else. I did a super rough count but start from level 1 to 45. There are 33 zones another 13 starting around 5 to 50 and if you are grouping I would include 10 to 50 which is another 5. That's 51 places to grind in thats just classic. Granted there are extenuating factors as always. But I used http://www.zlizeq.com/Guides-Zone_Level_Chart and it seems more than reasonable.
Some people do it to themselves, which inevitably impacts people who are willing to move around. Whenever we fill out a group, I generally prefer any place other than Unrest because it is impossible to get a good spot there without happening upon a fresh pick and being in a full group willing to clear to it. We have 3 people in our group, which is too few to hold most of the big XP camps, but too many to effectively slot into most established groups. I've found that people are willing to stubbornly wait their entire play session for the hopes of getting into their preferred spot, rather than travel to a different location. We'll create Mistmoore groups, or Guk, or whatever. But it's nearly impossible to fill the group out because so many people will just refuse to travel from Unrest. We spent almost an hour last night filling out a group for Mistmoore due to the stubborness of LFGers not wanting to leave Unrest/Dagnor's Cauldron, even though it's a short walk. Then you look two hours later, and you see the exact same people waiting in LFG, while you've made a couple of levels. It's honestly kind of infuriating.
More people need to realize that getting some xp in a zone that isn't the absolute best leveling spot is better than not getting xp in that zone because it's overcrowded.
It sounds like you done the Unrest rest grind a few times. Why not hit Upper Guk, Mistmoore, Sol A, or Splitpaw to change up the experience.
Hi guys, me and my friends like playing on the highway but we are tired of all the cars. Can we get rid of the cars please?
Today was a particularly frustrating day. Took us almost two hours, three locations including LGuk and The Hole before we found a place where we could adventure in. It was not quite level appropriate for us so had frustrations of its own but at least we got some battle time in. It was not a "Fun and Engaging" day.
Suggestions that could mitigate the issue: Reduce the cooldown on /pick, the 5 min wait is the majority of the downtime spent trying to scout the battlespace in order to find a location to adventure at. You could do this only if out of combat, so that if someone picks over to grab a rare, they are now in combat and have to wait the five min. Create a 'server' wide chat channel. Its benefit would rely on players communicating with one another and I am dubious of its value, but it would at least give players an opportunity to try to determine camp status in other picks and avoid the extra 5 min cooldown per pick limitation that currently exists. Another idea is to design zones to accommodate the player base more efficiently. Avoid having three good lower level x.p. spots with only one higher level location. That's just setting up the player base for failure, but the game is past redesigning old content to address that. Or is it? What if monster levels were narrowed and a progression of levels from lower to higher was mapped out from beginning to end of the zone? Map reward could be avoided but I'm not sure how difficult modifying the spawn data would be.
Leave the pick timer alone. Go experience elsewhere. Complaining you can't find a group in the busiest zones will get you nowhere when there are plenty of other options. There's already a server wide chat channel. It's called General. They also have ones for the specific continents you're on.
Absolute YES to these two points. I don't think there is a day goes by I don't wish these were in. I mean I get put in General 3. When I look the population of General 1 and 2 is 400 player but the one I am has 40. That is 800 people I can't advertise the fact I am LFG to and I am not nearly going to be as successful advertising to 40. Please just condense the chat channels to one. The we have picks. Since /ooc is limited to the pick I am currently in rather than the entirety of 6-8 picks or more than are up an running, I find myself having to pick over to another pick to advertise /ooc LFG in each pick to better my chances of getting called in for a replacement. Having to wait 5 minutes to pick over when no one is interested is painful. Preferably, I just want my /ooc to broadcast to all picks in a zone, zone-wide but is the old crappy code that EQ runs on can't deal with that, just eliminate or at least reduce the cooldown to pick over. Also before someone says use the LFG tool, how many times have you seen a group actually advertise they are looking for more? That is right you almost never see it because generally speaking it is left up to the person leaving the party to find their own replacement. Also when I am group leader I don't want to be bombarded with tells when I am in the middle of an encounter, so I am not going to advertise I am looking for more. Then if I am the one looking for a replacement, I am usually still fighting until I find a replacement or have to leave. That being the case I am much more likely to respond to a call out in chat, then to pull up this big widow in the middle of my screen that is going to obstruct even more of my view than the UI already does. Lastly, similar to the last situation described, if I am not looking for my personal replacement but know my party is looking, I won't have my LFG screen up but I will often point out to the person looking for a rep or the leader that XYZ Class just shouted /occ or in general or whatever, is LFG and they should send them a tell. Anyway, the point is using the LFG tool probably only results in connecting up maybe 30-40% of people LFG or parties LFM. The rest come from chat channel call outs of availability.
I don't think this is true. Anyone who spams /ooc LFG in my general chat is immediately put on my ignore list. If I'm hunting and my group has an open spot, I will look to see if any solos are in my current zone with their LFG tool up. I may also check for LFG up when I'm in my bind zone to bank. In general (pun not intended), the chat tends to get corrupted by the least-experienced players, who are the opposite of what my group is looking for. The /pick timer exists to curtail abusive behavior. I wish as much as anyone that wasn't necessary, but I don't see it changing. The best way to reliably find groups is to join a guild, even if it's a small one.
I did upper guk and then sola for the same levels that you might go to unrest for. I did not encounter a single train and maybe a couple other groups in spots that had any effect on my play. At some point it really is up to the player to decide if the “best” exp zone is worth the frustration of being there. The solution is not to reduce pick thresholds even further. The solution is to explore the world of Norrath and not confine yourself to one crappy zone.
