Please consider reverting instanced dungeons back to normal XP levels.

There are a lot of us that like to dungeon crawl and running an instance was really a fun way to experience the dungeon with a group and get some XP, without the drama and toxicity.

The dungeon DZ is still the same difficulty as the normal dungeon, but no respawn and you can only run them once a week.

There is enough conflict and toxic behavior on the TLPs, please give us back the full XP DZs so we can have some peace and fun away from the madhouse, once a week.

Thanks for listening

100% support this thread

I think this is the best way to solve the epic bottle-neck issues on TLPs as well. Camps like Gimblox are just so ridiculous. I know it is a social game, and we are supposed to suffer inconveniences and hardships to make our small victories feel like we have achieved great things. But really, with 8 weeks to complete content, there needs to be some features like a dungeon DZ to give people a reasonable chance to get through it.

However, I think in the interests of fairness, it would be best if this type of dungeon DZ was very strict on levels, both minimum and maximum. For example only open to a level range consistent with the era.

Nah, dz's are for raids and loot. Not exp grinding.

The only thing I fear about giving DZ's full reign, is that farmers will also have free reign.

Not like it's being monitored now anyways, but I'd imagine if DZ's became worthwhile to exp, they would warp their armies in every DZ for items and exp at a much higher rate than currently..

But with the rose-tinted glasses on, I would 100% agree that this would benefit the majority of the player base. I would love to be able to crack a DZ for exp grinds, knowing my group has complete freedom

Wouldn't that be a good thing, if the farmers were just occupying their own DZ and staying out of the lives of everyone else. PL crews could set up away from the general public. Those annoying farmers who spend their lives trying to sell looting rights, could sit in their own DZ and if they wanted to sell an item they could do so without fear of ninjas. And for everyone else, who wants nothing to do with that crowd, you would never seem them again. You could just /ignore 5 or 6 people and it would be like they didn't exist at all.

Bot farmers and PL crews will rush to exp in a DZ once a week, where mobs don't respawn? Really?

What brilliant insight am I missing here?

Yeah, I think I mis-read the initial post here, I was thinking this was a theoretical about a DZ with regular respawn. If there was no respawn, it would never work. Standard dungeon is only fun and exciting with the fear of a respawn. Otherwise you could just take a few hours and it would all be super easy.

They could make it without lockout timer so once you cleared the DZ you start a fresh one. Just like WoW instances or LDONs.

Or softer version could be to just allow more /picks on demand.

It's been requested many times. As far as I know, the response has been complete silence.

It's also been requested many times for them to monetize DZs, if the "server load" is the actual problem; allow people to spin up group instances with respawns and normal exp rates (but no boss) by using a cash shop item - theoretically this could offset the cost of improved infrastructure. Also silence.

I don't think that's a grand idea. I do not want to pay extra for a pocket universe. They should just adapt to 2023 and start utilizing their instancing tech better to the benefit of the players imo.

Even if they solve all the technical issues that prevents them from running as many private instances as players wants doesn't mean that they want to let that happen from a design perspective.

Ironically or maybe just amusingly, in the past (and even some now) one of the common reasons given for why later EQ game is inferior to pre-LDoN and EQ2 is inferior is because of the instancing. And yet it's the thing demanded by current players. Even the concept of /pickzone that was present in EQ2 from launch was considered a horrible thing by the die-hard EQ players at that time. Adding raid targets that weren't contested overworld was also declared a major detriment, but now we have AoC in EQ that started from the TLPs. Mindboggling.

When a TLP server starts for the first few days at least on a popular server of queues to log in. Mischief's queue went on for weeks at peek times. How bad would the server respond to firing up instances all the time with those kind of numbers?

AB went through a time years ago when CotF was introduced where no instances were firing up due to the number of instances being requested. The server lag was also aweful, so much so it got to the stage where people stopped logging in for double exp, due to the server becoming unplayable with so many people wanting to play in instances.

When people suggest to have more /pickzones or DZ they don't think "let's all aks for stuff that will kill server performance." They just make a suggestion that improves the game (in their opinion) and expect there is a way to implement it in a way the servers can handle properly.

I don't know much about EQ servers specifically (never managed to get EQemu running on a linux box) but even old code can be improved to work better with hardware upscaling.

They keep adding zones every year with new expansions, new mob types, new textures, new fluff items in the marketplace. Lots of stuff to have databases and datasets grow and sometimes cause higher data packet transfer volume. So adding more (pick)zone (or DZ) capacity most likely is something that could be done if they really wanted.

Using DZ to grind XP was nice prior to the nerf. Even though the XP wasn't quite as good as open zones, avoiding the drama and uncertainty of finding a camp was worth it for shorter play sessions.

Same

The funny thing is, you can still do this. Its only in AoC instances where exp was cratered. So the lag and resources thing is a red herring. Its about limiting how fast people can level by limiting available content to exp in.

Can still pop anguish instances to grind in all day long, for example.

This was true a few TLPs ago and it was only really because of pickzones basically remaining up indefinitely. The changes to pickzone closures and the upgrade to 64 bit has basically made this argument moot at this point. Also starting in SoF you can start getting instances just for EXP purposes (Mech Guardian). There is no reason why they couldnt do this for earlier expansions other than "purest" reasons, but as we all know, nothing is pure about TLP servers.

There is a subtle difference there. An AoC is talking a static zone and creating an instance version of that zone that didn't exist before AoC's got added to the game. CoA is an instanced only raid zone and doesn't exist in a static form.