A shady goblin / An angry goblin

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Boze, Sep 17, 2020.

  1. Boze TLP complaint factory

    Please up their spawn time. Something like two hours would be amazing. Or just don't have them despawn. It's always a pile of people waiting on the timer to see who can click the fastest. Time-investment in the quest should be the active grinds and kills (faction, sinew, urn) and not staring at a spawn point with a dozen other people during a painfully long spawn window. Would be much appreciated.

    A shady goblin : https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=7083
    An angry goblin : https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=8812
    Lisard, MindFlaw, Molan and 5 others like this.
  2. Tweakfour17 Augur

    It is a pain , luckily they spawn in picks so alot of guilds will bid out the Goblins and then pop a pick as they moved from Skyfire to Dreadlands (or vice versa).
  3. Klaim240 New Member

    Dev's, CSR's, whoever....

    Many TLP have gone by and these spawns have been a toxic environment since the start. Please seriously consider increasing the spawn rate to just a few hours. The current situation does nothing, but foster hate in the community.

    My experience so far is... Day in and Day out. And I cannot win. There are 9 players in this picture, and several that are sitting back watching. The autoclickers will always win. The goblin spawns and despawns so fast he barely even shows on screen.

    [IMG]

    And the messed up part..... This is only the 24 hour shady goblin in War woods. I can't wait for the 3 day camp!
    Boze likes this.
  4. Klaim240 New Member

  5. Krezzy Augur

    You guys have my sympathy. This quest really destroyed a big part of my nostalgia for EQ.

    EQ and its administration have changed considerably since this quest was originally released.
    • Server populations were dominated by casual players, many of whom had never heard of online sites such as ZAM.
    • The quest was originally released during Velious.
    • Server outages used to happen 1-2 times a week - either scheduled for patches, or simply server crashes. While these are happily far more rare now, players would use server reboots to get quest mobs such as these.
    Due to these facts, the demand for these spawns far outstrips anything like the quest at its inception.

    Play Nice Policy is no longer viable. GM facilitation of lists for spawns is now DPS race, along with the resulting rampant toxicity between players.

    The notion that the Cords and Ring are strictly for raiding guilds is contradicted by the developers who implemented the quest. Originally, everything but the Undead Dragon Sinew (a Trak drop) was group content. The Sinew was actually added as a rare drop for Juggernauts to make this quest accessible to groups.

    As it stands, the quest currently rewards "twitchy" pvp-style play that simply isn't present in EQ's TLPs. More realistically, the quest rewards automation, since scripted hand-ins will always outperform players manually performing actions. Worse yet, this mechanism absolutely places players with fine motor disabilities at a large disadvantage.

    I've given this quest a lot of (probably too much) thought. It occurs to me that the fix most in the spirit of the game as originally conceived would be to keep the waiting, but allow for cooperative quest resolution. Have Shady start a despawn timer as soon as the first hand-in occurs. Have Angry immediately respawn when the mob he triggers dies. When he respawns, have him despawn if a hand-in does not occur within a minute or so, then have him respawn on his long timer as normal. In either case, many players would be able to complete the quest after waiting together. Players could socialize during this time, much like we did back in the day, without the dread that someone else would probably get the spawn.
    Senadin, EchoFreya and rogueling like this.
  6. Runes Augur

    Could not agree more, it's another example of an out dated quest that needs to be tweaked to better fit a TLP fast unlock schedule.

    Easiest solution is to add a despawn timer of one minute, the same way that that Giz X' Tyn npc in Kith acts for the Ranger and Druid epics. There were ten of us waiting for him to pop and when he did, he stays up for almost a minute and people get a chance at turn in., so the mechanic is a simple fix to add to Shady/Angry.
    Crabman and Boze like this.
  7. Azurefrost Elder

    If you love the Regal Band of Bathezid & SWC quest wait til Velious and the Coldain Ring quest. Just as much waiting and toxicity to that questline.
  8. Boze TLP complaint factory

    That'd be a mess for Angry because you'd end up with a dozen Skargus and wouldn't know which belongs to which person. I'm guessing (i.e., I am ignorant of the implementation) the easiest change for devs would be to just shorten shady/angry's spawn times from 20ish / 72ish down to 2 or just remove despawning.

    Most of those were fixed to where you can't steal them anymore at least. Haven't done those since 4 years ago (yikes) on Phinny though so I'm probably forgetting something.

    Thanks for putting up a picture. I've had the same experience the few times I've been able to spend some time waiting for him.
  9. Tweakfour17 Augur


    The quest is a huge PITA, but your arguments for changing it are kinda arguments for why its better now;

    It was originally a Velious quest, you get it in Kunark, so get to have a full 3 more months to get it "in era".

    Server outages are more rare, but also the goblins spawn in picks now.

    The guts used to be a raid only drop but are now off group mobs.

    It wouldn't break anything to have them respawn faster, maybe not insta respawn but a couple hours would be way better than a couple of days, however it is entirely possible to get this done w/o automation, note the time stamps everytime you miss the goblin and you'll quickly be able to predict when he will spawn within a fairly tight window.
  10. Krezzy Augur

    There's a lot better about EQ in general these days, don't get me wrong.

    The extra time to do the quest is months of severe logjam and misery for the players trying to do it. Triggering a pick really only works for coordinated raids zoning in at odd times. It alleviates the problem some, but absolutely in favor of raiders and cheats. Casual players - the little guys that this quest was originally suitable for - are out of luck.

    Noting that DPG probably doesn't have a lot of time to throw at rewriting old content, faster respawns are probably the best players can hope for. I think future TLPs should probably have this quest unavailable until Velious, as well. I don't want the quest pushed back on any existing TLP - players are already working to do the quest.

    As to my own experience with this quest - I completed it on Agnarr toward the end of SoL, after gaining access to VT and obtaining the regen tunic. At the time, there were still 3+ people staking out both goblins.
  11. Tayvial Journeyman

    That should show you that they don't give two s**** about this or a lot of other things.. you'd figured with this many post every year, something would change but hasn't.. Their the ones running this game into the ground. People complain about scripting on content.. then why make a new server if you can't adjust to current era.
  12. Ebine Augur

    We had no issue doing 2 to 3 during raid night. I can see your argument if your not in a guild.
    If your in a guild you should have no problems getting this item.
  13. Krezzy Augur

    It all depends on how hard-core the guild in question is. When I did this on Agnarr, I was guilded with some great people - who mostly didn't box, and who had little time for raids aside from hitting the night's targets.

    In Velious, the same guild was able to get several 8th rings due to the picks opening in EW during Kael raids. Forcing picks in FM and Warsliks just wasn't in the cards - and really should not even be thought of as a justification to keep the quest as-is in any case. It was clearly intended to be accessible to a single group of players.
  14. Paxton New Member

    +1. Please please please reduce the respawn timers. Nothing about the current situation is any fun or challenging. Staring at a wall for hours and hours with a dozen other people cannot possibly be what you want for the community.
    Boze likes this.
  15. Boze TLP complaint factory

    Opening a pick just causes more chaos. Zoned into WW, noticed there were 70 in zone and pick hadn't popped yet. Started smashing a /pick hotkey until it showed up and clicked over. I get in and start running, see two people on the ramp as I get into the building, then one guy already at the spawn point, and half a dozen other people running up right after. Someone had managed to train a few goblins and giants up there before I even got there too! There aren't even any spawns between the succor point and the building! Got blamed for screwing it up somehow and the guild that popped it didn't even get it. Whole thing just promotes toxicity, and this is the easier of the two spawns.
  16. Klaim240 New Member

    Didn't blame you or was even upset Boze... just disappointed. My guild is one of the few that actually work together in this manner. It's sad to have them take time off from killing dragons to stop and help me, just to get there and see 4 or 5 other people already there. :(
  17. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    Why shorten these spawn timers when there are many more npc's on longer spawn timers that are used for bigger quests?
  18. sumnayin Augur

    It fosters competition, hate comes from the people competing. Start with the man in the mirror.
  19. Krezzy Augur

    Why not both? I'm all for doing the same to help out wizards and enchanters.

    The beating heart of EQ has always been PvE, with competitive aspects being reserved for open world raids on a handful of servers. Most servers had rotation of raid targets set up and enforced by GMs. AoCs play a big role in the success of TLPs, and also exemplify PvE ideology.

    Without Play Nice Policy, the best path forward is to reduce causes of conflict between players. Expecting the player base to somehow change won't solve anything.
    Aneuren likes this.
  20. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    I think you are missing the point, you shorten respawn timers for those quests and someone will find another quest with respawn timers that need to be shortened because they are to long making the quest to hard. It will become a never ending cycle where people are asking for shorter respawn timers because they think it is to long.
    Tweakfour17 likes this.