Change keying for 3 month servers

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by RainbowCane, Sep 29, 2018.

  1. RainbowCane Elder

    This is a bump of a previous thread that has gotten buried, and I am hoping to see a dev weigh in.

    Phinigel expansions unlock based on whether there is a level increase or not. 3 months if their is, 2 months if there isn't. I believe this is no longer a valid metric moving from SoF forward as every single expansion has AA's added even if there is no level increase. All expansions from here forward should be a minimum 3 months.

    This brings me to the next point which is that Underfoot (and House of Thule after that) progression / flagging cannot be completed in 2 months, or even 3 months without massive splitting. Each encounter drops 2 or 3 flags per tier, and there are multiple tiers before reaching the end-zone of Convorteum. There is currently one remaining guild (OGC) with the manpower to create enough splits to actually reach Convorteum in era.

    This completely goes against the spirit of the server, which from day one has been about making all raiding feasible on a shortened window of time. Let the difficulty of the content be the roadblock for progression, not some arbitrary flagging drop rate. These expansions were originally meant to have a year to play and beat, and we have 2 or 3 months. Please adjust the drop rate accordingly and consider making all expansion releases 3 months.

    Thanks,
    ~Fdiine, leader of Resolute.
  2. VandilIzer Augur

    I agree with this, however I would push it even a little further. Assess each xpack and the time it needs to complete for the majority of guilds / players without split raiding. Then base the xpack length on that if you don't want to increase the number of key drops.

    Every guild on Phinny right now is looking at how it is going to get through SoF in 3 months, some will do it easy like OGC 4+ splitting Tier 1 and others will take their time like us doing just 2 split of T1 and single raiding MMM+. With 4 tiers of raid content and a max of 12 flags a week from certain tiers it forces the either go slow or split raid issue. It is certainly doable but I would love to see them add 1 more month to SoF, the content is there for it, people would have plenty to do and it would reduce the splitting burden on guilds for tier 1/2 to get through ASAP so they can have time for MMM and Crys. While I don't see any of the actively raiding guilds on Phinny not able to finish in era by split raiding this shouldn't be the go to solution for the server every time a flagging blockade comes up.

    As Fdiine posted this only gets worse going forward. I don't know how or even if the devs with address the issue in UF and HoT or any other xpack coming but eventually guilds are going to fall behind because they are not willing or able to 3,4,5 split content meant for full raid forces and why are they being forced to?

    I run one of the slowest guilds, and if we fall behind it's no big deal, we are never in the race to begin with and aren't trying to be, however we have done all we can to keep our raid schedule the same but beat everything in era with minimum splitting. When the time comes and we are getting 3-6 flags a week from those xpacks I am sure the slow progression is going to hurt us as a guild as it will for many of the guilds and thus players on the server and we will see population drop hard when your middle tier guilds start losing players left and right because after 3 years of steady progression they hit a wall.

    Either extend the length of certain xpacks a month to 4 month xpacks or raise the number of flags that drop from these xpacks to the appropriate level based on shortened time in era.

    -Vandil
    Leader of LoTA
  3. Ythera Augur

    I agree with upping the flag drops on raid mobs due to the shortened duration of the expansion. Most expansions lasted about a year, right? So with an expansion lasting 1/4 of the time, it should logically drop 4x the keys to progress through it.

    -Ythera
    Leader of Cult of Chaos
    Ryak and Kragin like this.
  4. Kragin Augur

    Upping flag drops for all upcoming expansions would potentially be alot more work then just increasing unlock timers, either way one or the other needs to be done or phini will be near dead this time next year.
  5. Catashe Augur

    Ha trust me.. If you think getting only 12 flags a lockout going to be bad... Then none of you guys have actually gone on like Test and actually tried the encounters with Phinny level gear... SoF is so... F'ed up atm with bugs and .. I truly expect SoF will kill 80% of current active raid guilds before SoF is done
  6. Raltar Augur

    You guys wanted a fast unlock server. You got it. Reap what you sow.
  7. Dythan Ban Lev in Plane of Fire guy

    I think the 10's of thousands of accounts on phinny will cancel if we don't get 18 month xpac unlocks. Daybreak, you have been warned.
  8. malaki Augur

    Right, they should literally do nothing about expansions being unable to be completed in era, that will do wonders for their bottom line.
  9. Bobbybick Only Banned Twice

    I'd rather not beat an expansion in era than be stuck in one longer than 3 months, Velious/Luclin got real old when we were delayed waiting on them to finish adding AoCs for the next expansion. Though I seem to be in the minority.
    ForumBoss likes this.
  10. malaki Augur

    My preference is speeding up the keying/flagging process so expansions can be finished on schedule, but I'm with you on how bad those early expansions dragged on.
    ForumBoss likes this.
  11. Jaera Augur

    A slight difference is that SoF and onward has a lot more to do outside of raids. Unless people find some kind of an xp exploit, its unlikely that people will be done with both levels and AAs in the same week the expansion drops (I don't mean *effectively* done where you get all the useful stuff, I mean completely done and banked 160+ for the next expansion).

    I'd prefer some kind of a mechanism that would increase the number of flags or remove the flag requirements for Underfoot, House of Thule, and Veil of Alaris, but I've come around to Machen's thinking on both SoF and SoD having enough even without ridiculous splitting.

    If that's not possible, some kind of a slightly sliding scale would be nice. Like every week the First Creation, Morell Thule, or Triunity hasn't been beaten adds one week to the lockout timer but I'm pretty sure they're not going to modify the schedule for this either.

    A last resort "would be nice" would be some kind of acknowledgement from the devs that nothing is going to change, so guilds can make the appropriate adjustments they see fit.
    Ryak, a_librarian and Kragin like this.
  12. Ythera Augur

    I think the big draw of the server is that people can do all the raids, but that's kind of hampered by the slow rate of keying due to designing the expansion to keep people going for a year. There's nothing wrong with asking for quality of life changes.
  13. VandilIzer Augur

    I am cool with key increase as well, I just figure that will take more dev effort than giving us an extra 2-4 weeks, and given the option of nothing VS a few more weeks in era, I wouldn't mind a few extra weeks. 4 months is a bit long for this server for any xpack however people not having any chance to finish content purely because of key blocks will hurt the server as bad or worse.
  14. Aegir Augur

    I think that maybe only one out of ten average of people I know on phinigel, are even going to consider trying a new Server in a forseeable future.

    I'm pretty sure the majority of the population here enjoys completing these expansions in era. None of us expects flags to be handed out to us from a vending machine, but there should at least be a fair distribution for a 2 - 3 month timespan to a raiding guild.
    Ryak likes this.
  15. tuttles Augur

    A built-in artificial time-barrier for flags/keys to progress through content should have been removed/corrected when it was brought up 6+ months ago. Updates have come and gone with the issue ignored.

    How a 'guild/raidforce' progresses should be pretty cut and dry, can it beat the progression encounter. --yes? raid force is flagged by whichever mechanic 'task/flag/loot/quest' to progress to next event or zone. (if the event was tuned to be beaten by '12 or X characters' then I could see some reason for only X flags... but that doesnt appear to be the case, seems like a built in way to drag out progression)

    The hardest part of EQ on phinny right now is Attrition, there are some challenging encounters, but for the most part its getting people to show up consistently. The 'loot' carrot that people had for having the best loot they always wanted in "Velious/Luclin/PoP" is gone.

    The hardest part to an expansions progression should be can your group beat the content encounters, not can you keep your group of friends showing up week after week to do the same ole tier 1 encounters, to grab 12 flags at time.

    I'm not sure extending unlock period will help when player attrition is continues at this rate.
    I know i'm personally over anything TSS (and was pretty much over it after the original 3 months), likewise for TBS, its been 2 months and i'm already pretty much over it. It may help bring people back because they have time to 'catch-up'... But my personal opinion is the burn-out population will be higher than the 'returning' population if you extend unlocks.

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Unrelated note... if the mechanic of adding non-removable high damage shield buffs on trash is a trend that continued beyond TSS/TBS... I may just have to quit now
    Ryak likes this.
  16. RainbowCane Elder

    I am not for making unlocks longer then 3 months. I am just saying that the original metric for unlocks was level increase or not, which is no longer an accurate metric of "can I do everything in that expansion period". AA increase is a much better metric, and every single xpac from now until live has AA's. So make them all 3 months and move forward.

    The people who are saying "reap what you sow" just seem sad and bitter. There is 0 reason that this cannot be addressed and fixed with some compromise. I understand that Daybreak's bottom-line has to be their main focus, so pushing the new expansion to keep everyone on live happy is priority number one. But give us one developer who says "we are going to fix this by doing ______" and I'll be happy.
  17. Boze TLP complaint factory


    Somehow we've been gaining recruits at a faster rate than we've been losing people through TBS, most of them coming over from Agnarr/Coirnav. Attrition is generally a problem though, as we're now losing at least 1 guild per expac.

    SoF shouldn't be a huge deal because everyone can be in Crystallos within 2 months and have a month of farming (and it's on par with T2 or 3? SoD gear anyway). I'm all for making flagging/raiding more accessible, since that is the stated purpose of the server, but we've all been on Phinny long enough to see these doom-and-gloom threads every couple expacs and no actual doom and/or gloom has occurred with any kind of mass-exodus (Barring a certain two minute matter).
  18. Kutsuu Augur

    Even without the flagging issues Underfoot deserves 3 months IMO. It's a huge expansion with a LOT of AAs. It's going to feel so rushed with 2 months.
  19. Catashe Augur

    idk.. If you tried the SoF raids lately... I expect alot more doom-and-gloom threads then usual with the sheer amount of bugs in them raids...
  20. Dailor Augur

    I see a lot of false idols in this thread. Until the true leader of Phinigel speaks on this matter I don't think we should be making any decisions.




    WHERE is SNOMIE?!
    Warrior007 and Boze like this.