Plane of Storms Progression

Your math is quite flawed. First off, there are 6 giants, and the respawn can be as low as 4 hours(at least currently on Test anyway). Each giant drops 3 medallions. You need 2 unique medallions for a key. So for each round of giants, that is 9 BoT keys. Even using your conservative 6 hour respawn, that is 4 rounds of giants per day, yielding 36 BoT keys per pick, per day. Using your guess of 5 open picks, that is 180 keys per day, or 1260 keys per week. That is not counting any keys obtained from the instance if people decide to go that route (the 3 larger "raid" giants also drop key pieces and spawn within the instance). Realistically speaking, you should be able to key a significant portion of the population in 1 week. This is EQ we're talking about here. That is not that bad at all.

There is absolutely going to be some squabbles in the first week as highly competitive folks scramble for keys(which could be avoided by making them spawn in instances) - but ultimately its really not going to be the end of the world like so many are claiming. PoS will be dead in about 2 weeks or so.

That's correct. The pick mechanism scales up linearly with the population. You'll have no problem knocking this out due to the way the zone balances.

We had two separate 72+ person raid forces that were being keyed/flagged, and we were dealing with open world contested spawns up until Time. The whole process (and maybe someone from Vape or others from Mors should chime in) was fairly smooth. There were problems with certain encounters serving as choke points (Agnar was a primary choke point for elemental progress, simply because he could be to easily ganked and hence block the entire progression of the other guild for three days). But we were on a much faster clock than you might imagine.

I think from the reactions that people are having, is they don't understand that this code was already "tested" by the Quarm server, meaning Phinny isn't the guinea pig for this. In fact all the content through the end of OOW has been tested and works. The auto balancing of PoP through OOW zones works. The instanced raid encounters all have the right lock outs, etc...

I'm just taken a back a bit by the reaction that you seem to have to someone saying "Yeah it works from the technical side of how they setup the server." I'm sorry if I offended people by giving a simple report of what we encountered during July and August on a different server.

I think people were just saying that you were trying to compare 2 guilds competing on Quarm with 20 guilds competing on Phinny, it isn't even a close comparison. You said it took yall over a week to key your raid and that was only with one other guild competing. Now talk about 20+ other guilds competing and that 1 week could easily multiply by a significant amount - With 3 month unlocks Plane of Storms shouldn't take guilds 3, 4, or 5 weeks.

The thing is, ALL This could be avoided by just making the giants spawn in the instance thus eliminating the entire bottleneck (which Absor even said that is the WHOLE point of instances). The question is why is DBG sticking their heads in the sand on this and yet were willing to change quests like the Veeshan's Peak quest or the Arx Key?

So it's ok to change those quests because they were a bottleneck, but you can't make mobs spawn in an instance to get rid of another? It makes absolutely no sense at all.

How many individuals did it take to spawn a new pick of Plane of Storms by the way? I think part of the concern here is not having concrete numbers.

For 2 guilds competing like in your case, you regularly had 2-3 picks up. In a sense the pick instances increase along that same rate, but needs to be balanced based on how many people are in each pick. It's less linear, and more like a fluid dynamics. The more picks that are open, the harder it becomes to casually force another pick to spawn. You need to spread out forces, and since this is guilds competing against each other for the content, they're not going to want to get too thin, so they aren't KS'ed by other groups using some gimpy tactics like with the Praesertums on Phinny being mem-blurred and Lifeburned at low health.


Also, if the Giants are not spawning on formation of the new pick, it's not like the camps in SSra for keys... people won't actively jump into the new picks and spread out right away when they are formed. They would be giving up an active camp with sooner spawning Giants, wheres the new picks would be empty of the targets they are waiting on for 4-6 hours.

This is patently not true. For the first two weeks of Quarm, getting keyed for BoT was a nightmare. You can have a total of 18 people in the zone farming the giant spawns - one in each of the sectors of the zone. Picks require many many more than 18 people in the zone to open, so typically there was only one pickzone. Killstealing was not uncommon. Charm pets were often dispelled. And all of this was just from people that casually wanted to exp in BoT. The progression servers are going to be terrible trying to get their guild's members keyed.

Everyone who is assuming this will be a non-issue assumes there will be many picks of PoStorm.

Ssra had many picks because there were raid targets people went after (namely the biggest gatekeeper to the end zone, which all the hardcore guilds rushed to complete), Comm1/2 had multiple camps you could farm, Basement is good exp/Shards. Of course it had 9 picks when it was constantly full of 3-4 hardcore guilds and any number of more casual players doing the group camps.

PoStorm has raid mobs which no one did, even when current. No other quests bring a player to PoStorm, not the gate neck or the secret of the planes etc. Not many people EXP'd in the plane other than some solo druids/enchanters.

The medallion mobs have a 4-6 hour respawn, so people aren't likely to wait around for long periods of time congregating in the zone to spawn these picks. It will be 3-4 people hanging out at each camp waiting for a spawn and thats it. Maybe a few people scouting around to see if anyone left a specific camp.

The only way many picks will exist in this zone is if multiple guilds make a concerted effort to zone in simultaneously and hang out forcing many picks to spin up. I am skeptical this will occur.

Either put them in the instance or allow picks in PoStorms to be spawned with every 12-15 players in the zone rather than the more typical 40~ player threshold.

So I have seen lots of arguments, plenty saying why it's bad, some saying it won't be *that* bad. What I have not seen is any argument for why it should be left alone ?

If your defense is people trying to just simply mitigate concerns and say that it won't be as bad as they think, why not just alleviate all concerns and do one of these things:

1. Lower the timer to 2.25 hours (I believe this is what was done for VP right ? spawn time was cut in half?)
2. Allow them to spawn in instances when the instance pops

I do not see any point in purposefully leaving it as is just to create drama among guilds trying to get flagged?

I don't think it will be a complete nightmare, but with the sheer number of raiders and raid guilds on Phinigel, it wouldn't hurt anything to develop some measure to alleviate the bitter competition that is going to be going on for at least the first couple of weeks.

With that said,

You are not cool because you compete for spawns in a nearly 18 year old game.

You are not cool because you denigrate others' preferred methods of playing said game.

Get over yourself. Phinny is the server for people who like casual raiding without needing to batphone and compete. If you don't like that, don't play on Phinigel.


People just have such a hardon to try to feel superior to other people for the most brain-damaged reasons imaginable.

Don't worry I fixed the font for you. I think you messed it up.
1. I'm all for casual raiding and no batphoning. I'm a filthy 3 day a week raider myself. However, the competition existing around the first week of an expansion launch is what makes the expansion launches so much fun.

2. The strategic planning and combined effort among the people within your own guild is really pushed to the limit during the release. The level of difficulty is what makes the reward so much better.

3. Try not to say so many hypocritical things all in one post. Spread it out a little bit more amongst a few posts next time. You accuse me of denigrating others preferred method of playing, whilst denigrating my preferred method of playing. Complain about people trying to feel superior to other people, whilst trying yourself to feel superior to other people. Mind blown. Pro tip, generally if you want to try and call someone out for doing or saying something you don't like, don't follow it with doing exactly the same thing you are complaining about.

Nah, I think you're doing a bit of projecting there.

I never denigrated your method of playing. If you take "You're not cool because you compete for spawns" as a denigration of a method of playing, well, that's on you, bud. Reread it and ask yourself "Is this actually insulting another method of playing or am I just angry and reaching for something to hit back with because I'm feeling particularly thin skinned right now?"

If you got upset about it, which it seems you did, keep two things in mind: 1) you're the one who came in with the judgmental comments first. It's fairly ludicrous of you to insult someone, have someone inform you you're being kind of a , and then get indignant about getting insulted. If you can't take it, don't dish it out.

2) this is literally about the 800th time somebody has, apropos of nothing, taken a nonexistent cue to about the Phinigel ruleset and the Phinigel mindset. Look. Buddy. We get it. We're just sick of it.

However, this is all beside the point. All you're doing here is complaining that I'm being hypocritical, not denying that you're bashing others' methods of playing, since you know very well both that you're doing that, and that it's indefensible.

For you.

For you. Other people not particularly enjoying what you like doesn't make them wrong. You stay on Ragefire or Lockjaw or wherever it is and have fun there, I'll be over here having the best time I've had on EQ since 1999 over here. Deal?

Now let's allow everybody to get back to talking about Plane of Storms instead of continuing argument #150,000 over whether it's okay for Phinigel and "easymode raiding" to exist.

I actually only play on Phinigel =). My 3rd point in my last comment was just trying to get you to stop attempting to make a point, and then the very next words you type is completely hypocritical of your attempted point. I can tell you're probably a SJW as well. They also have the same problem. I'm on my 10 day suspension, what else am I supposed to do between League of Legends games other than to come here and troll people like you who get insanely riled up and fuming furiously at their keyboard? You're just too easy, next.

The hypocrisy in all your rhetoric in this thread is priceless. First off, the fact that the game is 18 years old is completely irrelevant. Every major sport in existence is older than 18 years and people still compete - has nothing to do with the age of the game. How exactly is unfairly criticizing someone else's preferred playstyle not denigration? That is precisely the definition. Sure that other guy was doing the same thing by calling out entitlements, but you are doing the exact same thing. I think it might be you that needs to get over yourself and try to realize that there are people who play this game for different reasons.

The fact the open world content exists on Phinigel in the first place means that the server is hybrid of both styles of play. If you don't like that, again, take your own advice and don't play on Phinigel. Your problem is you simply cannot grasp the concept that other people enjoy things that you don't or have different styles of play. I have no problem with casual instanced raiding, I think the server has been a great success and has provided everyone with unprecedented access to raid content. However, I also enjoy "competition" as it relates to Everquest. I like having a bit of unpredictability, danger, confrontation, and the need for quick thinking - survival of the fittest if you will. I like playing in an open, persistent world that feels more immersive of an actual fantasy world, as opposed to the isolated feeling of completing scripted, instanced content exclusively.

The difference between us is that I have no problem with people who enjoy either style of play, yet you are acting like a spoiled child with a condescending attitude to anyone who doesn't play the same way you do.

I must admit you do have a point. When my response letting you know what you were saying was pretty dickish is answered by your making a judgement about me personally, telling me to stop posting, and informing me you're currently suspended and have nothing better to do than troll, you're clearly the winner of this epic duel.

You don't often see the "I'm not worth responding to" card pulled by someone who then acts like they're the ones in the right, but you did it masterfully!

Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to go get some liquid nitrogen to apply to this ice burn here!

This is 100% accurate. There are 2 other servers if you prefer the super ego play style. Now that we got rid of most of the people/guilds that were responsible for zone disruptions via training the server is even looking better.

It would be cool if there were no bottlenecks so that multiple guilds on Phinigel could actually compete for server firsts on an equal footing that didn't require training, RNG, or terrain exploits. A good start would be having the giants spawn at the start of an AoC instance request.

See, now we can all be best buds !

^Lol. Cuz that's so relevant to this thread.

I agree with this assessment.

As I posted in the primary thread, it's the equivalent of not instancing the wing/tower nameds in BoT, or even the 6 hammers in PoJ instance. Pushing them off to picks only creates a bottleneck, and actually makes the bosses in the instances easier by not having them there to clear. We shouldn't have zones where it's fully instanced, and others where it's partially instanced (such as the proposed Storms model compared to Justice or Bastion of Thunder) - it should be uniform.

Think of it like this, even if you could hold open 10 instances of the PoS zone, you can only flag 60 people a day assuming people aren't on for 12+ hours and can get double chance a day seeing as the spawn timer on the giants is 6 hours.

I would be willing to bet that there would be a very small amount of people who can sit down daily for 12 hours a day in the hope to get the giants killed to progress in to BoT.

I like turtles, turtles are awesome...

...speaking of which, won't getting 2500 people flagged through PoJ be the real bottleneck, given how buggy PoJ usually gets? So the first few days you won't have 2500 people bursting through PoS, but maybe 500. Also, spawning picks like they did for farming VP keys is something guilds are quite proficient at atm, so if they want to farm they will do regardless (i assume you know you don't "hold open" picks, you let them expire then spawn a new one...)