Added a replay timer of 2.5 days to all AoC instances?

Hotfix Notes: September 1, 2023

Is this for AoC (Agent of Change) instances that were somehow missing replay timers or are all AoC instances now having a replay timer of 2.5 days instead of the 6.5 day lockouts that they have had since AoCs were added to the game?

If this is a reduction of AoC lockouts for all AoCs going forward, this is rather a big change to the game just put in a hot fix. I mean it seems straightforward, but it is very unusual for a big gameplay change to be a hotfix.

Hotfixes are almost always (or really always) for bugs, not gameplay changes.

This is an immediate Replay Timer upon request. Previously the Replay Timer for AoC's was 30 minutes, but this was being abused on Oakwynd by DZ cascaders.

If you kill raid bosses within the zone, you'll still get a 6.5 day lockout for that boss, and if you kill the "main" boss in many DZ's you'll still receive a 6.5 day Replay Timer.

This is an annoying nerf for things like fishing DZ's for certain spawns (pawbuster, PoP hunter mobs, etc.) but those are unfortunate consequences to prevent the mass DZ cascading that was happening.

Replay timers are how long you have to wait before (re)requesting an instance, regardless of your lockouts inside said instance.

So, say for example you only clear some of NToV in era on a TLP server during your first raid night. You get 6.5 day lockouts for the dragons you killed and (now) a 2.5 day replay timer so you now must wait multiple days before being able to go back in to finish the zone. After your replay timer expires, you can request a new instance of the zone again. Inside that instance, the dragons which you still have lockouts on will be down and you can proceed to clear the rest + Vulak. I think the replay timer for that zone was only 30 minutes before? So you could go in the next day prior to this hotfix.

No idea if it's still the case but Aten in Vex Thal in OG Luclin was giving a 6.5 day REPLAY timer when killing her so if you spread that clear over two nights (again, in era on a TLP) you can't do VT weekly because your replay timer is pushed out further than your first night boss lockouts.

Does this mean that guilds can't clear Time or VT over two seperate evenings now, unless they are separated by 2.5 days (So what is that, 60 hours?)

If so this is TREMENDOUSLY bad for smaller guilds.

Time doesn't use an AoC so it wouldn't effect that but would be a factor for VT.

So if a DZ somehow gets messed up (we've had it happen where something messed up and nothing dropped any loot in a DZ) you have to wait 2 and a half DAYS now to replay it to try and fix it?

Are you for real?

Stating what I thought was bloody obvious here:

The Replay Timer is not The Lockout Timer.

This change may be in response to unwanted behaviour but I can see it causing some problems of its own.

So, just to verify because I am still waking up:
The replay timer is if I request a task then drop it, regardless of whether I actually go into the instanced zone and kill anything.

Yet another example of edge case problem players ruining it for everyone. These kind of things need to be addressed via CS, not the eternally-overworked dev team.

This is a horrible change.

This is really going to hurt small guilds on TLP's, and yet somehow seems like exactly the response we should be completely used to getting by now. How can we fix this issue without actually doing anything to police or fix the game, and avoid tickets.

Wait when did they remove the replay timer in the first place.. Last time I did a TLP AoC there used to be a 4.5 or 6.5 day timer regardless of when you entered the instance or not (i distinctly remember an instance where the server crashed after an AoC instance was pulled and only some people got the replay lockout and couldn't raid on those chars because of the replay lockout timer)

If something is allowed by the game what exactly is CS supposed to do about it? It wouldn't exactly be fair to punish people for something the game allows.

lockout timer is different that replay timer. You don't get a lockout timer (shown in the DZ window) until you actually kill the mob that triggers it. And you can have separate lockout timers for all the different mobs in the instance.

Don't blame the players for poorly designed and thought out content releases...

How about just unlinking the TLP servers with the legacy ones. All the TLP servers do is cause grief for vets and have since from the start.

This comment makes me laugh out loud because in a Discord discussion concerning the issue this change addresses, a suggested tongue-in-cheek name for the behavior was "edging the boss".

Funny. Tell me the definition of "exploit" by the Everquest team.

The system allowed for the quick recycling of an AoC so they fixed it to prevent that.

So everybody else in the game is camping PH's in order to spawn rares but these people are flipping instances in order to get the rare of their choice to spawn?