Gates of Discord AoC Testing Thread

You make a fair point and i hope they take the chance to read it or Jaera's excellent post.

I think it's mostly a matter keeping diligently to a friendly and constructive tone which will help a lot.

If I'm reading the in-game calendar correctly (shameless calendar plug), we are over two months out from Gates of Discord opening on the Phinigel server. The handling of progression raids in Gates of Discord for Phinigel is a very important topic, but it is not an urgent topic. We have time for iteration and discussion and changes and it'll be best for everybody's sanity and quality of life if the discussion is candid yet courteous. Thanks.

Basically everything Jaera said.

If you don't want to instance only BiC quests and just allow us to do those in pick zones, sure that is a perfect solution as well if they spawn in pick zones.

Natimbi should have an AoC for Cragbeast Queen
KodTaz should have one for the Summoner Event
Qvic should have Cynosure and the 3 M'shas added to it. These were core farm raids like the Elemental Planes minis from PoP.
Txevu should have all of the raid mobs associated with it added. Specifically the 3 Jaera lists which give you keys to access the next one and the next one until finally you can access Tacvi after the final one.

Come on, Dima, I know you gotta do your propaganda thing, but let's try and keep the outright lies to a minimum. We both know Citizen went explicitly out of its way to block content and routinely celebrated their success doing so.

Prathun,

I think a lot of the concern stems from Absor's original post which stated it would be hard to convince him to add anything to the list, and he mostly just wanted feedback about what was working.

When you guys come out and post a list like this and then tell us you aren't going to change your minds, and it is missing critical parts of progression, you shouldn't be surprised when there is some serious pushback.

Pretty sure if you post stuff like that, while blatantly leaving out RAID PROGRESSION targets, people will jump all over you for it. Not sure what you expected, and I'm surprised you weren't expecting this type of reaction from us.

Prathun,

I might reference you back to the similar Planes of Power testing thread: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...l-master-pop-instances-testing-thread.237084/

Which started approximately 2 months out from GoD release and there were issues still being fixed up until the release, and even post PoP-launch. There were also bugs that were essentially game-breaking, like the one where having too many lockouts caused UI gibberish and client crashes upon getting new lockouts which took about 2 weeks to get addressed after they were brought to Dev attention while actually LIVE on Phinigel.


While PoP had a much larger scale that needed to be tested, much of the instancing was bugged, and issues that players were concerned about and asked to have addressed like the BoT flagging process were deemed inconsequential. Then many of us experienced exactly the problems we warned about, players exploiting mem-blur to actively try to kill-steal the Plane of Storms giants, just like they did the Praesertums in Luclin. Followed by a lack of GM response to address these issues expediently.


We are actively trying to make the launch smoother, with less hiccups and community-burnout from players who choose to grief and seem to get away with their actions continually. I understand you may feel this is not an urgent manner. But prior experience has shown that when the community sees an issue and raises its concerns it has validity and will become a problem down the road.

fair enough. I still don't think its unreasonable for some amount of frustration to come through. I would say most of the feedback provided has been over all fairly tame. its also hard to point out inconsistencies without sounding combative on a forum, so some amount of patience and understanding is needed from both sides.

like I mentioned, the playerbase has been trying to get information on this for quite some time now. all we have as of now is they have no intention of AoCing things that are just for BiC, and they determined what are "raids" by using the loot they drop. which has been pointed out is very inconsistent even in the same zones.

that doesn't even bring up progression issues, we have no inclination of if they intended for those to be in instances or not. just the vague reference to "raids". which I'm pretty sure all of the open world progression stuff in GoD is quite easily classified as "raids" by any definition of the word.

its great they opened up communication on this, and two months should be plenty of time to get right whatever they plan on AoCing. we just need clarification on what their actual intentions are.

You guys only patch once a month though. So after next Wednesdays patch that's only at most 2 more patches until GoD is released. I understand you can patch more if needed, but it doesn't always seem like you guys control that.

Also the post from Absor made it seem like the list he posted wasn't up for debate. I just don't understand what the stubbornness is for not instancing all content for progression, or all raid content in general. I still don't understand why the Praesertums weren't instanced in Luclin and the storm giant named in PoP and why the BiC stuff won't be instanced. Also still have no idea why Kelorek'Dar and Lodizal/8th shawl were never instanced in Velious. If we wanted competition we'd be playing on Ragefire/Lockjaw. Or open up a new server with true box and without instancing and see how popular that would be. My guess is not very.

If it's because you don't have time to instance them and you're only focusing on the progression stuff, then that's fine, but you should say that's why then. This inconsistency on what is and isn't instanced each expansion is frustrating.

I think most people watching this thread will agree on those points. Instancing zones and events that exclusively benefit BIC is not a priority. Instancing zones and event that drop raid quality items and/or are required for progression should be a priority.

Sure, that's all we're asking for; an opportunity to make a compelling case that things are/should be a certain way (which Jaera and others have done so far) and to receive timely feedback (which Absor and Prathun have kindly done so far). In this particular case, it should be simply to convince you since the results are either inconsistent or directly contradict your stated intentions.

No one likes having their decisions criticized and no one deserves to be yelled at over a poor decision. The vast majority of us are, in fact, trying to have a conversation.

You're absolutely right, this is not an urgent topic. Though it does have an approaching deadline, may require 2-3 rounds of iteration before it's working as intended, and there are a finite number of patch opportunities between now and then. Better to talk about it now and identify pitfalls sooner rather than later. Hopefully it does remain candid and courteous.

Considering key progression mobs are missing in instances its probably pretty urgent. We need these working before GoD launches because GoD is only 8 weeks and we cannot afford to lose weeks of progression to people poop socking Texvu.

Also on the urgency front, consider that the Zun fight has been broken since at least before Quarm launched, so we need to not only get it added to AoC but then we need time to actually test it in the instance.

I cant emphasize this enough.

Honestly, I dont care what you instance as long as all progression stuff is instanced. (And the final texvu mob works). <3

Its really troubling that you specified the "long respawn" when the txevu stuff is on i believe a 3 day respawn?, and brought up the m'shas as your example

This shouldn't take deliberation. You should've been able to give us a snap example of "oh these mobs block access to the end zone, drop raid quality loot, and require a raid force to beat, of course they'll be instanced."

Honestly, between throwing in the "long respawn" riders and not actually mentioning literally the only set of mobs that actually matter in this entire list, I'm even more worried than before this post.

awesome, thanks. this is exactly what we need. I would agree things like mshas aren't a priority. the only argument for them would be if you are instancing the zone already for iqithzas whateverhername is (usually referred to as the zoo event) and cynosure( cyno is definetly a raid mob and I believe required for progression) theres not a whole lot of harm in letting them be in the zone. that's a /shrug for me personally.

the loot from things already not instanced in god is a minor thing all considered, the community should really focus on making a convincing argument for all the raid progression content getting an aoc over anything else.

I am glad you are taking this approach. This criteria should provide that all Txevu raid mobs will be added which is a MAJOR relief because Txevu is the prime open-world potential progression block if not instanced.

I'd like to make the case that M'sha's should be included in the Qvic instance. They are not a Progression target so that is out.

They are however raid loot droppers. They are no more difficult, in era, than targets like General Druav in PoFire or Grioihin in PoWater (which were instanced). They can probably be done with 2~ groups in era. They are indeed a fast respawn but you need to consider the environment on this server. Back in the day, there was rarely more than 1-2 guilds in the top-tier content simultaneously. We have 22 guilds on Phinigel that have beaten Plane of Time. Of which ATLEAST 10 will be in Qvic within 1-2 weeks. This is certainly "hard to obtain" when the open world spawns will be fought over by 10+ guilds.

These guys are one of the only mobs that drop the Qvic Armor set pieces for Head / Wrist / Hands / Feet / Arms. (The other ones being two minis in Inkt'uta which has a 5.5 day lockout and they only drop 1 piece at a time, if any should they drop an aug instead). Gearing up in Qvic armor was usually a crucial step in progressing as a guild. You would spend a few weeks in Qvic getting your tanks new gear and your casters their crucial armor before pressing through Inkt'uta / Txevu / Tacvi.

Without these being instanced, basically an entire armor set becomes a non-option for most typical guilds that aren't interested in the open-world training + memblurring + kill stealing that occurs for these mobs.

Absor,

Thank you very much for your hard work and dedication. I very much want this off your plate as well as fast as possible which is why when we saw the last Test update we decided to check GOD.

Without rehashing the statements throughout this post too much. The most important thing is in relation to our server health is progression. This is a progression server, and as such all mobs related to progression should be instanced in order to alleviate any of the classic headaches that come with it. I trust you will do the right thing.

Thank you,

Kixel

I'd like to encourage you to consider competition among guilds as something that would put something in the hard to obtain column (for progression targets.) Something that is required for progression and would be fiercely contested or even deliberately blocked in open world should be instanced. Mostly here I am thinking several expansions ahead to Master Vule in DoDH--who is less than 24 hours respawn, but would be absolutely a mess if guilds needed to compete in open world for him. For Gates, I'd include not only Zun but also the two other Txevu progression pieces, High Priest and Gladiator Pit. These have faster respawn iirc, but the difficulty of competing with other guilds in open world for these events should qualify them.

The good news is that you all are almost done with everything that will matter for the rest of the server's lifetime, and any future progression servers! Once Gates is behind you, and Master Vule in DoDH, that should pretty much do it forever.