Load-Balancing Tranquility without moving/fixing AoCs is a disaster

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Ryak, Feb 9, 2017.

  1. Ryak Augur

    This change is in the patch notes on Test. It seems to be slipping by because of the more controversial changes to pick zones, but in reality this will have much more dire immediate effects if it goes live.

    The problem is that Agents of Change do not function in pick zones and it leaves people unable to zone into raid instances if the main pick is full of idlers

    For example, the Grey was suceptible to this all of Luclin, but it was mitigated by the fact that there was only a single Agent of Change in the zone. Tranquility will not be the same and it will be a major crap-show.
    PathToEternity likes this.
  2. Astley Augur

    Not necessarily.

    It will only affect Tranquility if the zone has an upper level cap to it where it fills up. The Deep had an upper level cap, but Tranquility may not have a cap on it. It currently does not.

    Which, if they enable the cap on the zone, would seem very short sighted.

    However there was no previous cap in place to the number of people that could be in the zone. So, I suspect what will happen is that the zone will load-balance, and people will just need to /pick over to use the AoC if they're not in the base pick for Tranquility. At least this way, not everyone will be in the base pick at all times.
  3. Karhar Dream Crusher

    It will still be fine, as the people move on to other zones during prime time raids, you can pick over to get in your aoc, and not crash the zones.
  4. Trevalon Augur

    Or, they could just actually fix AoC's to work in picks...
  5. Jalerian Elder

    Why would anyone actually choose to go to a pick in PoT?
  6. Baldur Augur

    So commonlands still had a cap on it, they just kept having to raise it. They eventually raised it high enough that it was fine. So if they have the cap set high enough on tranquility it should be ok, but that cap is going to be much higher than it was for the commonlands tunnel.
  7. Astley Augur



    To AFK without your buffs counting down, less lag while waiting for raids, or moving from one plane to another in open world for exp.
  8. Ryak Augur

    None of these are reasons to go to anything other than the main pick.

    You guys are being optimistic to the point of being naive, IMO. You know full well nobody is going to voluntarily go to a pick just to AFK or run somewhere. So the only circumstance people will actually use the picks is if it hits the cap. And if it hits the cap, we have another The Grey situation on our hands multiplied by about 20 since there are 20 AOCs instead of one.
  9. Darchon_Xegony Augur

    Yea just move all of the AoCs to just inside their respective zones.

    It's the most logical thing to do to prevent Tranquility from being both a raid staging area and an AFK area. Plus it has the added bonus of letting the raid leader see if there will be gimping in issues before burning everyone's lockout timer. And it will allow people to spawn picks of zones to use later since the threshold is set so high and many of these zones sit st a population that is too saturated to find a camp but not high enough to force a pick to spawn. Having raids sit in a zone for 5 min when forming up spawning a few picks would be helpful for the entire server.
  10. Astley Augur


    If the picks start, and people are automatically sent to the picks upon zoning in, it's not an issue.

    Let the system automatically filter people to the picks, and then people can AFK wherever they want, because they've already been diverted. Then you don't need to actively /pick over until you want to pop into a raid instance.

    Just set the server to pop people zoning into PoTranq into the picks whenever there are say, 30-40 more people in the base pick than an alternate pick.

    The cap can be stupid high, say 200 or so, but if there are 50 people in Tranq-0 and 4 people in Tranq-1, you're automatically sent into Tranq-1 when zoning in and out.
  11. PathToEternity pathtoeternity.pro


    Last night in PoTranq a /who count showed over 600 people in zone.

    The last thing I need on a raid night is to zone into Plane of Tranquility 5 and spend the next 2 hours trying to get into the main pick so I can go on one raid with my guild and then repeat the process one more time for a second raid before going to bed after a wasted 4 hours getting denied entry to the main pick.

    Thanks but no thanks.

    AoC's don't work in pick zones. This is the problem.
  12. Ryak Augur


    This ISN'T the way pick zones work.

    People zone into the main pick automatically until it is FULL unless they voluntarily pick to another pick, which will never happen. At the point it is full, regardless of the cap, unless the cap is set to 600 people, which defeats the entire purpose, people WILL be blocked from zoning into their raid instances.
  13. Astley Augur

    Hence... CHANGE the coding to send people out to the picks on zone in.

    They already are instituting one change to pick-coding to lock people out and help shut them down so the picks don't stay open forever.

    Make the change so that people are automatically sent to the picks before it is full, and there isn't a problem.


    @PathToEternity I just threw out 200 as a random number. Make the number higher, make zone max 1000 if needed, but when the zone pop reaches 100, a new pick spawns, and people are sent to that pick when they zone in balancing it out. You could have 4-5 picks of Tranquility open from people just zoning in, each with close to 100 players and you can all pick over to whatever zone suits you.

    There are lag problems with spawning the AoCs in Tranq when there are that many people. It would be advantageous of guild to send all of their members to an alternate pick to wait, then have 1 person pop the instance. Then everyone can /pick back to base right by the AoC and say the keyword to get in.

    Less lag popping instances, people don't need to be IN the base pick to get the expedition. Have your members chill in the picks of Tranq, or PoK, or literally ANY other zone than Tranquility base pick. 1 extra pick-hop before starting your instance isn't that much.
  14. Ryak Augur

    If they were going to make any additional change (which I would like to point out is unlikely, since getting them to spend any time at all doing anything is very difficult) they should do one of these easier things:

    (1) Move agents of change into the corresponding zone at the zone in.
    (2) Allow zoning into an instance from an AOC in a pick zone
    (3) Just leave PoTranquility alone. It's working ok as-is
  15. Machen New Member

    I'd think if they set it so there is no limit on players in main pick, but have people zone into a random pickzone instead of base, it would work fine without moving the aoc's. Raids can pick to base to zone in, or even to buff.
  16. PathToEternity pathtoeternity.pro


    Are we talking about the same Plane of Tranquility? With the exception of a few NPC's to hail for flags, there is zero reason to ever want to be in a non-base pick of Tranquility. That's like suggesting we make pick zones for the Bazaar, but don't let people become traders outside of the base pick. It literally makes zero sense. You go to the Bazaar to buy from players in trader mode. You go to Tranquility to raid. It's not like PoK where there's a bunch of quest NPC's, tradeskill merchants/stations, etc. Tranquility is nothing more than a 3D lobby where guilds meet up to zone into raid instances. Maybe when the guild lobby unlocks we can load balance it with picks that don't have the magus, don't have the corpse summoner's, don't have working portals to the guild halls, etc.?

    I've spent plenty of time raid leader. Do you think I would ever tell my raid force "leave the zone/pick so we can wait for another guild/raid to get all their people in and through so we can zone in and begin our raid?" Absolutely not. You'll just sit their indefinitely with your thumbs up your while the aggressive players/guilds fight to player slots in the zone until they have enough people to get their raid going.

    This might work for the EU, Oceanic, or PST guilds - maybe - but on any given week night there's 5+ EST guilds all trying to raid during prime time.

    Unless we are severely misunderstanding the implementation of this change, or their is an accompanying change which resolves this resulting issue, this is going to be a disaster.
    Ryak likes this.
  17. Astley Augur

    You're not understanding what I was saying, and I think you're confusing because of the issues with the Deep AoC.

    Tranquility, when overloaded with players increases the lag in getting pre-flags and requesting instances due to the number of players and their mounts. If your raid force is sitting and waiting in Tranquility along with everyone else's raid forces, it slows down getting them for everyone, as was evidenced a lot the first couple of days of PoP. If there are less people in the base pick, this isn't an issue, and things move more smoothly. I wasn't saying wait in line to get into the instance. I was saying if the majority of people sit in a pick of Tranquility by where their intended AoC is at... then the DZ leader is in the base pick, they can request the instance with less lag. Then everyone of your raid can /pick back to the base pick right next to the AoC, and should be able to trigger the AoC pretty much immediately once they pick-swap over to base pick and get in. That's not waiting on some other guild to go in. that's saying, if the Base pick has room for 1000, but there are only 100 people in base pick, and the rest are filtered across other picks, you just need to /pick swap into base pick briefly to say 'ready' to your AoC in order to get into your instance.

    The Deep was a different story, because base-pick had a zone cap. If Tranquility-Base does NOT have that type of zone cap, but still load balances and sends people to picks to lighten the lag on the single zone, then it counters the lag issues quite a bit.
  18. PathToEternity pathtoeternity.pro


    This I'm fine with. I'd just like a Dev to step in and confirm.

    Commonlands, SolB, Seb, etc. all had a similar setup so we know it's doable. We also know DB initially forgot to remove the cap before implementation for most of these zones. It was only implemented after the trainwreck, though predicted by the community, actually occurred.

    I remember opening night of Kunark on Ragefire was an absolute nightmare in Seb.
  19. Machen New Member


    Should be able to test it since it's on test? Would just need one guild to commit to it and announce a time for others to show up and help.
  20. Gidono https://everquest.allakhazam.com

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