Why was pick changed?

Why does DBG continue to make dumb decisions? You introduce picks, one of the best decisions in years, and then you basically make them worthless. Why would I put together a group in a pick late at night if at some arbitrary point in time, other people leaving and going to bed will disrupt my and my groups ability to continue to exp.. especially if that camp is taken in the base zone? This will do nothing but disrupt people's play experience. For what? Slightly improved server stability? The servers have been for years, across all servers.

Quit making decisions that hurt the majority of your customers, for no significant reason. It's getting harder and harder to justify giving anymore of my money to continue to support your paychecks.

These pick changes are horrible. Got invited to a great group of nice folks last night, and we notice that a pick opened up so we pick over. We're all having a nice time gaining exp when we see that the pick locked. We continue having fun until one of our group has to leave. Uh oh, I got piggy backed into the zone, so I'm about to get kicked too, leaving our group without a healer. Base pick is fully camped, so adding another to our group and continuing in the base pick wasn't an option, so the group broke up. The recent pick changes spoiled what was going to be a fun evening of gameplay.

The promise of instanced exp zones is why I resubscribed (on three accounts) to this game. I feel that these recent changes are a tantamount to bait-and-switch.

Your design vision for zone instancing is all wrong. You have made the game worse. It is hard enough to find a decent pick-up group - why have you changed the game to purposely destroy those groups? Makes no sense.

This is worth repeating. This is the major problem that I have with /pick locking.

Sometimes I wonder if DBG even plays this game / on Phini. The previous implementation of the /pick zones is a HUGE reason why Phini is so successful compared to previous TLP servers.

This is a big step in the wrong direction, and the server will suffer substantially because of it. Since you *actively* choose to not enforce a "Play nice policy", the previous pick implementation was necessary to avoid conflicts with other groups / players. You have literally just unleashed hell on your users.

2.25 months till LDoN, we'll be ok, really.

Edit--not that this isn't an absolutely awful change. It is. But the sky will not fall.

Good god these changes RadarX posted sound even worse than what they've done currently. Thanks again Phini for ruining things for everyone, again.

I think you mean Daybreak, not Phini. As far as I know, no one on Phini made these changes or asked for them or did anything to warrant them.

I hope they rethink this and spend a little more time on it before rushing through. This will be huge on the next progression server. I think they should counter pick switch mass farming where people pick over and camp several instances at the same time. After 1.5 years of picks they really should know the problems that came from it.

As usual, another horrible knee-jerk change that strips enjoyment from the game. PRAS DayBreak!

I think this is a bad decision for EQ. Previously, you had your own private zones available via instancing, so picks are not something new or unexpected or revolutionary (they've been working great on Phin for over a year).

What is new, and which I disagree with, is that other players, whom aren't even in your group or zone, can suddenly have an impact on your ability to continue enjoying a zone, camp, or group that you are in.

The kicker is, you can be in a zone, doing your own thing, and suddenly no mobs spawn, you can't get back in, you can't replace a lost groupmate, and you can't get exp. Why? How do you explain that to a player, that a bunch of people getting tired in California and logging off, might suddenly cause him this disruption?

Worth quoting.

Also, Machen's point about LDoN being on the horizon... You're right... but I'm just gonna say it now -- if you guys allow this to stand without complaint/fight... the next TLP will have this in their ruleset. Imagine doing classic to LDoN *AGAIN* but without the convenience of reliable picks. Idk about you -- but I will definitely not be involved in that in 2017 and beyond.

Expect LDoN request timers to be considerably lengthened as a method of cutting server costs down. Heaven forbid we be able to have any fun.

#nofunallowed

These pick changes will make less people play on the new TLP. Good job DB

Why have they not changed back to the old pick system yet?!?! This new system is trash.

Unpopular opinion, but I agree with (what I think) is the spirit behind these changes. I'm also speaking toward the upcoming changes where mobs will stop giving experience and begin despawning when the picks lock.

Pickzones were never intended to allow everyone to have their own private zones or so that everyone can have the camp they want. We got them initially because Daybreak understood that with the amount of people that were going to be playing on Ragefire that leveling 1-10 in the few newbie zones would take ages as everyone scrambled to fight for each mob in the newbie yards. Eventually, with enough forum warrioring, pickzones got extended up to affect higher tier zones because zones like Guk/SolB/OoT couldn't handle 100+ people in them fighting over the few mobs that were available to actually level to 50 off of.

A lot of the time in Luclin and Velious what I noticed from pickzones is there were usually 2-3 picks up with 12 people in them, with everyone sitting at the same couple "PRIMO" camps and the rest of the zone went ignored. I don't believe this was ever the intention behind Picks which came about as a necessity of a massive amount of people funneled into a very small amount of zones.

I believe some changes to the system were in order, maybe this isn't the best way to go about it but it also isn't going to suddenly make the game unplayable. Early EQ is largely about people interacting with each other in open world zones and making concessions when things aren't available, not everyone sitting inside of pickzones cherrypicking camps.

I would be 100% okay with the changes if they actually took the time to adjust the threshold for pick creation to something reasonable. The fact that some zones require 45+ people while only supporting something like 18-24 people is ridiculous. I am happy with the theory of the changes, I'm not happy with how their implementation affects the population as a whole.

This. The threshold was always bad; the over-generous pick system made the threshold tolerable once prime time came and went once or twice.

DBG should be picking one of these two things, either the pick system itself, or the threshold, and adjusting it to be... wait for it... fun. This is doubly important because... in a few months (theoretically), we're going to have a new TLP that is going to suffer through classic with this hilarious version of /pick (actually, probably the even worse version, where they shut off exp and kick you out) that really will do nothing but cause significantly more grief(ing) and frustration than no pick at all.

Edit: Also, important to remember... because even I sometimes forget this... the "this many people can fit in a zone," argument... it's changed. A lot. An example: LGuk used to support 4-6 groups on EACH SIDE... it doesn't anymore. Groups are able to break, hold, and decimate significantly larger portions of the dungeon because of mechanics being changed over the years... damage is higher, mitigation is better, etc, etc...

Yeah I agree here. People forget that just a chanter and cleric could keep a camp down. Add 4 more people, and that group is easily clearing 2 full camps. And that's without any out of group high levels.

I'm a big fan of the changes. I got a private pick to myself and all of the named that spawned in it for over 5 hours yesterday. this is fantastic!

Though it won't be when they enact the second half of the changes...it just means when the pick I am in locks I am going ot have to steam roll whoever is in my camp in the main pick so I can continue playing. I have no issue with that though since that's what were being forced into by Daybreak.

Remember Daybreak...you did this...