What exactly is Raiding lock outs ?

My friend Ammeren in Triton told me this.

Raiding lock outs is raiding lock outs the minute they are up.

Raiding lock outs is not .. Raiding the day the lock ups are down.

What is the communities consensus of what EXACTLY is lock out raiding ?

I myself consider lock out raiding as raiding the day of lock outs going down. What I do not consider lock out raiding. Lock outs go down Monday, an not raiding again until Tuesday (or which ever is next raid day after lock outs are up)

Raiding lockouts imo is raiding them when they are first down.

Example:

Monday 4am EST lockouts down - RAID at 4am = Raiding lockouts

Raiding Monday at 730PM EST is not raiding lockouts because your next lockout just shifted 15.5hr by not raising at 4am.

There is only one guild that I know of that raids lockouts.

As Sindaiann said, raiding lockouts means raiding the moment they are down. For the typical 4.5 day lockout it means raiding at 7pm on Sunday, ~7am on Friday, 7pm on Tuesday, 7am on Sunday. You gain approximately half a day every cycle by doing this (actually more like 11-11.5 hours since it takes time to get dz and complete it to start the next lockout cycle).

In an expansion race where progression is throttled by keys for each tier, raiding lockouts can put a guild about a week ahead of any guild that "only" raids every evening.

Not sure who else anymore, but Realm of Insanity has raided lockouts since Veil of Alaris when Triality(?) started doing it to jump ahead in progression. With the exception of the last two slightly difficult expansions, raiding lockouts could easily mean the difference between finishing first or... not. It sucks and is one of the reasons why a lot of people WANT harder expansions so they can let the "race" not come down to who can get a full raid at 7am.

In a game nearly 20 years old, just laffo at people who think "finishing" an expansion first means squat anymore.

Diminishing someone's beliefs simply because they don't match your own is the foundation of most of humanity's greatest failures.

Congrats.

It’s not defined by Daybreak as to what raiding lockouts means so it is up to the individual or the larger group to decide what this loose term means. One guild may define it as 30 mins before the time is up another may say once a week qualifies as raiding lock outs.

you know, i hate to say this .. and i mean i really really hate to say this ...

But Ammeren is right .. /sigh i just died a little inside

I'm pretty sure it means that you finished an expansion first. So before everyone else does.

had to be hard to take time out of your day to come up with that pearl huh? Although I do like to thank the important people of the world to take time out of their important lives to tell others how little their opinion of thing matter. Well done.

They should just stagger the release of the raids or lock them. Expansion starts with Tier 1 and 2 months later release tier 2 etc.

You would still have the same race and the same people raiding lockouts and would just have more people able to compete for being first.

They could just get rid of tiers entirely and just have one tier of an expansion for raids with 10 raids in it.

That way it's doesn't matter who raids lockouts, you just have to complete the actual raids.

I always felt the key-per tier thing was dumb. I know it's done to slow down progression of raid guilds, but these guilds don't quit raiding because they beat the expansion quickly. They're raid the same content for a year to gear up mains and boxes and Alts for the next expansion.

They already did that in RoF and CotF. It was terrible: some guilds raided at 3 am ET (midnight PT) to beat the raids the moment they went live.

3am ET has nothing to do with Tiered content, it was a Dev choice because they felt that time was the most desirable.

Tiered content can unlock at noon ET on a Saturday, 9am PT, 5 or 6pm for most of Europe, noon-ish Sunday for the Aussies and South East Asia and apologies to the Middle Eastern guilds because it's always around midnight somewhere in the world.

I'll be the first to admit I kind of don't care about placement in that if it causes tension in your guild it's not worth working on as a goal. Luckily, this does not happen in RA. Any guild that experienced prenerf Drusilia's Vault and had no one rage quit is a guild that will just keep on keeping on. If you all could hear the conversations that went on following wipes in Discord you would know there's no stopping RA. I'm betting anyone in the Top 10 can say the same. Just start talking about dicks and all will be fine with the world!

I think the run of consistency in this 20 year old game at the tipity top of the completed list is truly worthy of recognition. To be able to field a raid force to keep raids down (during the holiday season) on any day is just a guild at a whole other level. It's cool - I dig it and will continue to congratulate it.

I think you missed the point that people will still raid at anytime when new content opens up. Staggering content will not stop people from raiding content as soon as it up but will just artificially slow the game down.

I didn't miss a point. Raids will become available at a specific time, it doesn't matter if that's expansion launch, ~45 days (10 raid cycles) after expansion launch or the 3rd Saturday in February.

One option which I don't expect will be seen again is fully flagging some members of the raid which took place for some content from Kunark to House of Thule, the race becomes how few can you beat the next tier with or can you split raid the lower tier. It's a whole bunch of drama about seniority vs attendance vs class, I don't think it would be well received if old school keying returned.

Other than that there is a set a date that is the earliest possible to complete any given raid content. Raid cycles have been the most common recent choice which results in the option to have 4.5, 5 or 7 day raid cycles. If you don't raid on the same 2 consecutive days each week (for instance never raid Fri or Sat) you have a 7 day raid cycle. You can tweak the first raid day or two but as soon as you raid the day after the two day break you're on a 7 day cycle.

So when The Burning Sea comes out on Wed Nov 21, 2018 ~6pm ET and it requires three T1 victories to attempt a T2 raid you have a staggered launch that T2 comes out Fri Nov 30, 2018 ~9pm ET, or later if you make the flagging to request the first raid more complex/tedious.

If you go with that approach you're encouraging specific behavior from a specific segment of your customers because spoiler alert, there are some who prioritize finishing the raid content as early as possible.

Alternatively you don't spawn the mob that gives out the T1 raid until Sat, Nov 24, 2018, Noon ET to avoid screwing over the Europeans for who first day T1 raid is much more difficult to pull off. You instead have a race at a time that most guilds can choose to raid and based on Beta testing, DPS and overall quality of play the raid will be beat in some order that afternoon.

Many guilds would not raid until Saturday evening which for North American guilds would mean having no chance to be among the first guilds to beat it, some guilds wouldn't raid until Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.... but other than those Middle Eastern guilds every guild has the option to race and order of finish will be primarily based on how well the guild performed in the raid instance.

Then instead of releasing the T2 raid(s) only to the guild(s) that raided at ~7pm on the 21st, ~8am on the 26th and ~8:30pm on the 30th you open the T2 raid(s) on Sat, Dec 8, 2018, Noon ET and still require three T1 victories to have access to T2 raid(s). Once again on Saturday you have a race based on Beta testing, DPS and overall quality of play and once again many guilds will not be raiding until hours or even days after T2 opens even if they have three T1 wins but you've created the opportunity for most guilds if they choose to participate in the race.

Then you have T3 raid(s) opening after the holidays to remove much of the motivation to have people making the decision between a racing with a raiding guild or not leaving for an hour in the middle of Christmas supper. You open them at Noon ET on a Saturday and once again you have a race to beat the content based on Beta testing, DPS and overall quality of play.

I realize this all sounds confusing but it's how almost all businesses in the world operate, they cater to their customers. Daybreak does not do this, they go people have been racing for raid targets for almost 20 years, lets restrict the race to people willing to raid at 6am to optimize lockout cycles just to make sure there is very little competition and most discussion about firsts revolves around "if you're not first you're last" and "you live in your Mom's basement".

Do you really think Daybreak cares at all who is #1? Or that they design the lockouts for their perverse pleasure watching this race?

You're already doing what would happen if they did this.

Excuses for not being first.

The best bet might be to increase the lockout timers by 11 hours, to 4 days and 23 hours. Figure an event takes 30 minutes to successfully zone in, set up, and beat. At best, lockouts would then move 30 minutes earlier every cycle. After 6 cycles, you're looking at a few hour difference between raiding lockout or not, instead of a few day difference.

Who would really complain about that 11 hour extension? Casual guilds that raid every 5 days but wipe repeatedly and can't keep a raid down consistently? I suppose it would cause problems where multiple raids are in the same instance and on lockout.