Please let us vote on TLP Instancing

Leave it be oks... 50 pages doesn't need to get locked now!

It kinda does. There hasn't been anything new in like 20 pages. It's gotten hostile. Leave it as a reference, but nobody's adding anything new, and we've proven the point that the community is split, which was the original topic.

Someone started a new thread which was kind of a new topic but since it was instance related it got locked. What was that thread about? We can talk about that.

That one was about instancing events from previous expansions, or potentially instancing raid targets after x criteria is met.

The problem is that the majority (maybe it's not 90% or more majority, but it's the greater part of us) support instancing, and the logical arguments for seem to outweigh those against. All that's left is for Daybreak to run a poll to confirm that the forum majority isn't an anomaly. If they are hesitating because of manpower, they need to come clean and say so, otherwise proceed with the poll.

Imagine the more important things we could focus on if this wasn't sucking the soul of the excitement for the server?

i think that is kind of a given. honestly even lron has been pretty well behaved. the community has been suspiciously polite to one another this week, and i can't say i don't empathize with the anti instancing side a little bit.

everyone has an agenda.

if you had asked me to predict the level of hostility in these threads, i would've put my money on a lot more slinging than i've seen, and i've been forumquesting hard all week.

DB will put the whole thing to bed pretty soon. at this point, i just want a release date!

We could talk about that. It was about waiting until the next expansion to instance the old expansion's content.

Personally, I think that is a too-late band-aid at best, because the very presence of the new expansion will do a LOT to relieve the pressure on the previous expansion's content and instancing would be too late to have a meaningful effect. If it was modified such that the instancing occurred halfway through the expansion, so that the "uber" guilds could still get their glory for having done it first, that might be better.

Any ideas on how that could be made better? And more importantly, you're still going to get objections from the competitives (AKA indirect PvPers) who want a purposeful shortage of loot so that they can be ahead of everyone else.

If you mean by split:
85% in favor of instancing then yes it is split...

Earlier in this thread, I brought up a time lock on instancing. For example, the first 1/4 of the expansion is non-instanced, while the remaining 3/4 are. In the other thread, before it was locked, Vaclav (I think) mentioned a similar idea but using number of mob kills instead. Both methods preserve competition, but will level the playing field in some regards.

Sounds fair - if an expansion lasts 6 months, the ubers/competitives get 1.5 months of dominance based on their ability to to dedicate excessive playtime, and the remaining 4.5 months open it up to purely ability to kill the mobs.

As someone who's been tracking the numbers, I think you've got it exaggerated a bit - 65% or so "feels" more correct to me - quite a few of people that post like 1-6 times total with a "no instancing" snipe are around.

Especially since everyone knows the forums are a minority of overall players, I think calling it split is more than fair.

I'd want it to win, but honestly, I think it would be a nailbiter if they did put it to a poll. (Although some folks that multibox would skew things - and we do seem to have quite a few multiboxers on our side of the equation)

Technically I was talking about that in the other thread that got locked down - they must have merged them.

Yeah, we're trying to steer this conversation towards any new ideas and concerns brought up in the locked thread, because we're just going in circles right now in this one.

I don't see why Daybreak would be interested in this. By itself it does not solve the fundamental problem--the lack of GM staff. Unless they go completely wild west on the open world stuff. If they put this in as part of a larger solution, it wouldn't be terrible--although I'd rather see the instancing only appear during the last month or so of an expansion, just long enough to let the casual guilds get to see and experience the fights, which is what they purportedly want, but short enough that no one could use the instances to farm entire sets of gear for their whole guild before the next expansion launches (but of course guilds could continue to farm the old content after new expansion launch.)

But again, it seems like a ton of work on Daybreak's part to accomplish not much.

Now that you mention it, a poll would be flawed in one simple way - most of the people voting would not have the benefit of the information we have uncovered here in these debates. The last time I raided Classic through PoP content was back in the Classic through PoP era, and if I had randomly logged into EQ and saw a poll that just asked if I wanted instancing, and I'd never seen this forum, I might have failed to vote for instancing based on my 1999-2003 experiences. Experiences in which I remember, even in the middle of the content being current, that a guild could go around randomly checking for mobs to be up, and quite often find that mob up with no guild sitting there.

Actually I think I have a very fair solution to the "delayed instancing" suggestion:

Just make it so instances unlock one all progression achievements have been completed. Previously these achievements tied into unlocking the next expansion, but this time there aren't votes or anything.

Let's unlock instancing by completing the content instead. This gives is some time in each expansion without and with instancing. It also kinda helps the raiders be the "heroes" of the server that they didn't exactly get to be on previous TLP's.

This feels pretty win-win to me. What am I overlooking, besides difficulties with development/implementation?

unfortunately if that 15% includes the accounting dept. at Daybreak or CN they win....

I had the same thought. I didn't bring it up because I figured the hardcore guilds would think that was too early. I'm glad you did

That's one of the ideas that was floated in the other thread. The OP suggested doing instances once the expansion was completely beaten - my suggestion was to instead hinge it to X numbers of kills uninstanced first. (I'd suggest between 1-8 on 3.5 day spawns if they did that, shouldn't be more than a month of something getting slaughtered before it goes instanced IMO - 4 max on the couple 7 day spawns that still exist)

The only problem is that there aren't more Lron's defending EverQuest's honor. Lron has become a bigger legend than Fansy.