Can we adjust the population needed for an outdoor zone to spawn a pick, expecially the popular ones? IE Rathe mountains needs 60, there is often 40+ in there, mostly afk/automated farmers. every once in a while a new pick opens and its nice enough for everyone to enjoy themselves/. without the exra pick its a nightmare
100% agree with this. on aradune, there is no point going to plane of hate or plane of fear because nothing will be up and there won't be a pick. we should reduce the amount of people needed to spawn a pick across the board, OR allow picks to remain open as they used to with 1 person in them. picks closing is pure garbage, not only am i not getting a 15 min warning anymore, but instead of the succor when you /pick, you get dumped where you stand which can be a death sentence.
I've gotten all of my Hate armor drops except one from a couple of pugs I joined in OW Hate. Also when I've been in Hate there has been two picks going.
great lucky you, obviously someone gets the kills. and sometimes there are two picks you get my point tho if i go up there i pay the 200p and there's no pick no mobs to kill and nothing i can do about it but leave. why go back right? waste of 200p
Seeing as how it is an 8 hour respawn for the trash, I'd go back up in 4 hours. I've also sent tells to people in Hate at various times asking what was up or when stuff was cleared so I could put a timer on it. Or I pop a DZ. At the worst, you can have Hate, Fear, Naggy, Vox, etc all to yourselves once per week each. Also it is free to get to Hate in a DZ.
Having people holding picks open for low numbers/one person is not going to happen. The reason they stopped it in the first place was because it was having detrimental effects on the game and stability. I agree that the pick density should spawn new picks at lower numbers. You look at UR and there's always loads of picks all with roughly 20-30 people per pick. Having lower pick thresholds will make it so more people can do what they want in a zone where he who has the most boxes wins. However I don't think we'll really see any changes to picks at all before they work out their many current issues with server stability. People have been begging for this for ages especially as PoP rolls around and everyone needs their medallions to get into BoT. I dunno if DPG will ever actually change it even when(if?) their stuff is running well.
the past has taught us, more picks means more lag. The pick threshold has actually been raised, and it requires more people to keep a pick open then when phinny started. all to reduce lag and crashes.
The pick threshold is determined by the number of mobs in a zone. At least that's one of the criteria. I'm not going to go look up the post, but it was said here in the forums by DBG. I agree that a lower threshold would be better but that might result in enough extra picks to destabilize servers again. Now that I've said that about the mob numbers, it can't be the only factor. The Hole opens new picks at 44 or so, if I recall. That zone has a lot of mobs so dunno.
Rathe Mountains is considered a city zone because Frogloks live there at some point. It doesn't make any sense, but that's why Rathe Mountains requires like 100 (or more?) people to spawn a pick. Also "newb zones" that are adjacent to cities tend to be in their own category and require a lot of people to spawn new picks as well (50-60?). Swamp of No Hope is a good example of this, since people will bring entire raids there to pop picks for VP key farming. Never had any problem spawning picks of Fear/Hate on Agnarr.
Players would pretty much universally want lower pick zone thresholds, the problem is that too many pickzones causes server latency and stability issues. There's a good reason for why they limit how many are available.
I think the OP you responded to may have just missed the message or it was a fluke at that moment. I was playing this morning and got a warning that the zone was shutting down in 15 minutes.
Nektulos is another great example, 48 people in zone, no mobs to be found in the newbie yard and the only pick open.
Hate/fear having an 8 hour respawn doesn't sound right. I remember it being long on Mangler, but MUCH shorter then 8 hours.
For informational purposes these are the pick thresholds I'm aware of. Rathe Mountains = 60 The Hole = 40 Lguk = 30 Sola = 30 Unrest = 30 I think these are right, but we should probably get a list going if anyone else has done tests like I have?
They drastically reduced trash spawn timers a few servers back, I tried to find the patch notes a week ago but couldn't find it. It's not 30 minutes but it's way shorter than 8.