Phinigel: Long expansion unlock timer suggestion(s)

Here's my 2 cents. I don't think any changes NEED to be made for SoF or SoD. However, as Ryak stated, this is where the start of the problem is. It gets exponentially worse in UF and HoT, but if you are going to make a sweeping change why not at least acknowledge it now, so that you have plenty of time to work on a fix.

My thought is this: You originally had 12 months give or take to fully finish an expansion, on Phinny we have 3 months with a level increase or 2 months without. By simple math all that needs to happen is up the amount of flag pieces that drop by 4x (12 / 3) for 3 month expansions, or 6x (12 / 2) for 2 month expansions. This way we can accelerate the pace of the flagging process, but keep to the rigorous progression schedule that makes Phinny so grueling and rewarding.

Alternatively, if this is too complex to implement or maintain on a per fight basis, then pick just 1 rate of increase to use as a base, and scale everything to that rate. This would at least make Convorteum attainable in era without having to commit to crazy splits.

I think it also bears mentioning that every expansion from here to Live has massive amounts of AA's to hunt. Maybe the expansion timer should be switched to 3 months flat based on this, rather then whether there is a level increase or not. It takes 1 night to hit max level. It takes weeks or months to cap AA's. So why should level increase be the metric?

They did acknowledge it. They acknowledged it before the server even launched. They said they would address it at the appropriate time.

Your simple math doesn't work. On live, it took seven months for the top guild to beat SoF. On the previous TLP's it took less than a month for two different guilds. This time we think it could take less than a week. In other words, for expansions prior to Underfoot, the increase in player power has already taken care of the problem. We are doing things in a tiny fraction of time now compared to what players even three or four years ago could do.

I don't mind the idea of extending the non level increase expansions from here on out though. It is really only the level 70 and 75 stretch that needed shortening. I think moving underfoot etc to 3 months would be a good start. And even if they do that, Underfoot will need some adjustments to flagging (or even longer than 3 months) or almost no one will finish it in era.

Right, I'm not suggesting implementing the math for SoF or SoD. I'm talking about doing it for UF / HoT where you currently only get 3 pieces per raid kill (or 2 in some cases).

Following your own math from a previous post this means 5 months of flagging to reach Convorteum, which can't be solved without an increase in drop rate from the previous tier zones. I was using 4x or 6x as an example, but honestly any increase in a per boss drop rate would be beneficial for UF.

6x the drop rate on Tier 1 mobs would mean you can flag a full raid of 54 after a full round (Fippy / Beast / Grotto). That eliminates that flagging bottleneck.

Tier 2 similarly can have its bottleneck eliminated by multiplying the drop rate by 6x. You currently get 2 emblems from each of Masked Invaders, Wrath, and Arthicrex 1, and 3 from Arthricrex 2, for a total of 9 emblems. 9 x 6 = 54 and another bottleneck eliminated.

I personally don't see the point in artificial gating on a progression server with such a short completion window. If for some reason the dev's feel like they don't want people getting into tier 3 and above on the first raid day, then thats fine, use a lower multiplier, but to me it seems like players skill and execution should be the only gating requirement to progress, not needing to loot widgets x, y, and z of which only a few drop each kill.

We also shouldn't be forced into splitting an encounter 2 and 3 ways just to see the endgame of an xpac in era. That completely goes against the spirit of the server, but I think that point has been well illuminated in the previous posts.

Yeah, I completely agree with this. I don't agree with eliminating the flagging altogether though (the idea of beating the raids once = you are flagged for the next tier.) The flagging is an important part of these expansions' design. And I think it will be much easier for them to increase flag drops than change fundamentally how the flagging would work. (Should be just a quick database update!)

In an ideal world, I would like to see time in Underfoot increased to four months, and the flag drop rate also doubled. To me, this would be the perfect balance--guilds that beat the content would be able to flag through it in time to farm convorteum for a bit, even if they struggle a little bit to beat an encounter here and there, but it would still be somewhat difficult to get done in era (which I am fine with--the number of guilds that have beaten underfoot in era on any server can still be counted on two hands.) Four months might drag a bit for guilds that aren't able to beat the content though, so I could see doing three months and 3x drops. If they will not even do three months but are going to keep it at two months as a non level increase expansion, then I'd reluctantly say they should do 4x drops (but for all practical purposes this would just eliminate flagging altogether.)

For expansions after Underfoot that use dropped flags, doubling the drops should be sufficient (as long as we move back to all expansions having 3 months.) Likewise, with VoA they should double the xp gains on the progression book so you only have to do the raids half as many times to progress. These may be moot though, as who knows what population we will still have at that point.

Three months and 3x drops in UF and 3 months and 2x drops afterwards sounds generally reasonable to me. I'm glad the discussion has moved in a more productive direction.

I think it's obvious the devs will be working on the Live expansion until the end of the year. I wish they would just say we'll look at this in January/February, but they aren't, so maybe there's a reason they can't say that? Hopefully not...

Reminder: the deadline is March to address Underfoot :/