New Pick Thresholds Work

After all of the bashing about the new /pick mechanics I thought I'd share my (limited) experience. I have been in GE exclusively the last week but in that zone the new threshold is just right. There are 4-6 picks open most days with populations of 15-25. Yesterday I logged in to a brand new pick with just me in it. I believe DBG got it right. Hopefully GE is not the exception.

What have your experiences been in other zones?

I have heard several reports that corpses in /picks that are being closed go "Poof!" resulting in EXP-loss...

So, if that's the case, there are flaws to work out, but otherwise, I haven't heard many complaints since the change.

I'm happy to hear this. I'd like to hear some more positive reports.

Unfortunately, the kick exp group that took me from 55 to nearly 57 was chugging along all night and then suddenly, POOF. 15 minute warning to of the zone, ending our night. It was early enough that we'd have probably stayed another 30-60 minutes, but late enough that no one wanted to start over elsewhere.

Someone (or in this case, 11 people) possibly having a pick to themselves seems like such an innocuous reason to create such a stupid system.

Sure, the complaints have mostly stopped. What's the point? This company doesn't seem to value player input much.

Note that since pick changes (the first lock and now the second update to it), Phinigel as a server hasn't crashed at all. That's why it was changed.

Can you quote where you got that information? I think server stability was pretty quickly debunked as a theory, especially considering how few overall instances this really saves. They essentially responded that they did it to stop people from having their own copy of an instance to farm. And certainly there are myriad ways to achieve that goal that don't inclue the changes made.

If you use /uptime, it will show you how long the server and zone your in has been running. They might never admit it, but I find it dubious to not correlate the 2 events. Phinny did not crash 1 time between the picklock patch and this last one.

You may be correct, for sure. If that's the case, why the hell can't they just be honest? And was this a huge problem? I cannot recall a single time I was playing and the server came down.

Per RadarX on March 7th, in the update thread.

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...-to-load-balancing-zones-aka-pickzone.238876/


And it was GAME-wide stability. The picks were causing massive crashes on other servers as well

Yeah, he got torn up in that thread, mostly by math. He mentions these problems are specific to TLP, so the claim that it's for all servers doesn't hold water. It's whatever. If all of these changes were made to avoid an occasional server crash, it's not worth it at all, but it's not like they're going to change it at this point. Oh well for us, I suppose.

Where in that thread did he get torn up, or mention it was specific to TLP?

Also, you clearly weren't watching the Player support forums at the time. Bristlebane, Cazic Thule, Antonious Bayle, etc, multiple servers were crashing, some of them multiple times a day as the week went on after a patch. The complaints about that have essentially stopped completely. It was effective.

You must not play enough!

He mentioned that zones that were never intended to be instanced were causing trouble and I didn't know they were using /pick on live servers. My bad.

Well, now they have a game that doesn't crash, but at the cost of dumping the system they devised to make gameplay on TLP servers tolerable. I don't see how that's a win for people on TLP servers, but I suppose people on live are happy.

Essentially every night. I must have just been very lucky. Sounds like most of the problems were on live servers though. I do see why they need to cater to those folks as well, obviously. I just wish they'd at least tweek the numbers. The limit should be much lower to spawn a new pick and despawn an existing extra pick. That would mitigate most of the issue people are having. Something like 18 to spawn new and less than 5 to despawn.

The load balancing is definitely tolerable. Read the first post in this thread. As someone was pointing out, the system appears to be holding the right levels for many zones based on population to support it.

You yourself said you were going fine for 2 levels worth of experience grinding, and had to quit maybe 30min earlier than you expected in a night's exp session because you didn't want to move somewhere else.

Guessing you were in Grieg's based on your level, and the pick closed down on you? There was probably enough room in another pick for you guys to move to, but you're here complaining about the inconvenience of having to move to a different camp spot after a couple hours of exp-grinding?

sheesh... do you need the entire game handed to you on a silver platter?

5? You're asking for less than a full group to keep an entire pick zone open.

Zones like Grieg's can easily handle 4+ full groups without being too crowded. I've seen 5-6 in there of various levels, and there are 3 most popular spots in the middle.


This isn't about getting everyone the cream of the crop, best camp spots. It's about making sure the zones aren't overcrowded, and you clearly don't have a grasp on what those numbers are.

Like everyone else 50+, I've been living in GE for weeks. The main pick of GE can handle 5-6 groups of polite people, pulling completely from their own camps and nothing more. But back here in reality, that's not how it works. There are a lot of raid farmers there as well and a couple of these people can pull practically the entire zone. There are also more zones in the game than GE.

Quit putting words in my mouth as well. There's no reason to close a zone while there is a full group pulling. There's no reason to kick that same group for replacing a player and that's why it'd be less than 6. I'm sorry, is that too convenient for you? Not punishing enough? What this seems to be about for you is being a smug . Well, you're knocking it out of the park.

Makes me wonder how classic picks are going to work on the new server... cause there ain't a single zone in classic that supports 5-6 groups anymore

Most of the zones got a huge cut in # of ppl required to open a new one. I know some zones which previously took like 60 ppl, now take 25 for example. I think it's likely to be reasonable in most people's views.

I've been grouping in Plane of Fire pretty much exclusively, and the picks seem to spawn from between 18-25 people, which seems to be incredibly doable. Most zones can support at least 3-4 camps (unrest comes to mind as the worst offender zone wise) and even if it can only support 3, a 4th group can sit around for 5-10 minutes waiting for a pick to spawn. From my very limited experience the changes seem to be spot on.

The system will never be perfect for everyone, but this is a HUGE improvement and we are seeing picks spawn with the regular grouping/leveling population versus having to force raid forces to "open" picks.