Contested Need to Go

Rahatmattata wrote:

Exactly, we already won EM, we had to KILL EM to even spawn HM. We already won the contest. No more contest. EM is dead, we won, its over.
That is why this mechanic is stupid. Its the only mechanic in the game where you can kill a mob, wipe to a DIFFERENT mob, then have another guild pull the mob you already killed and win.
It has no place in this game.

Gaige wrote:

I'd rather have SOE do new things than just spew out 10 more mobs that are 10 levels higher every couple years.

StaticLex wrote:

I'm all for new things, but new doesn't always mean better and this mechanic is one of the worst things they've ever implemented.

I'm amazed at how some people can repeatedly post on a topic they could not possibly begin to form opinions on let alone form posts/replies to either agree with or oppose them.
Reading statics posts on the subject of contested mobs are on par with me discussing lvl 90 tradekilling recipes as a level 9 artisan.

Shouldn't you be reminding everyone how awesome you are? It's been a day or two and we might be on the verge of forgetting.

Did you finally run out of second-hand information?
Please, stop teasing me

Morghus wrote:

Separate encounters are not dependent upon each other. If SoE should ever "separate" EZ and HM as you have so aptly requested, then it becomes two separate encounters. Until then, by gaming definition, the OX encounter is one encounter with two parts - an EZ OX which spawns part 2 - HM OX. It doesn't matter if each MOB has their own script - they are connected in a single encounter. If they were separate encounters - then the MOBs would not depend upon each other for their existance.
ACT will treat any MOB separately - even the adds of the same encounter will be treated separately.
You can believe what you wish - it is your opinion. You are not a dev. You did not develop this encounter. The only one who can say for sure whether or not EZ/HM OX is one encounter split into two different scripts but dependant on each other - is the developer and peeps who wrote and designed it. Until then, I stand by my logic.
"You proceed from a false assumption: I have no ego to bruise." Leonard Nimoy

Alvane@Unrest wrote:

Sigh, have you ever fought this encounter?

Gaige wrote:

So, oh brilliant one, which part of his statement was false? The only reason way a spawn can be truly contested these days is for something like this to occur. I couldn't possibly care less, but if you want some contestation on epics, it must be this EM/HM, since you and yours remain insistent that contested be at least among the hardest fights out there.
Think of it this way. A less capable guild can come to the spawn with a subpar force and contemplate killing EM before another guild does it, or your uber guild can come and contemplate killing HM with subpar server performance. Both have to take risks. And yes, I'm aware that frankly it's all but impossible to kill HM during periods where there are other people in the zone, that wasn't really my point, it was that both guilds have to now take a risk or possibly lose the spawn. You want to be able to kill HM more consistently, focus more on getting server lag fixed and less on getting angry that the spawn is contested.

Leovinus wrote:

No? I've always thought contested like T5 is the best. Multiple mobs (20 or more) ranging from x2, x3, x4 with multiple loot drops. The way to avoid having mobs locked down IS TO HAVE A LOT OF THEM. The less you have, the easier they are to lock down. That is why ever since T5 when we've had 3 or 4 an expansion they get locked down.
They could easily seperate the spawns into the two different mobs and plenty of contesting would still happen. The scrubs would fight over the easy for those omg awesome pants everyone is telling me are so key to progression and other guilds could contest with us over the HM mob. Plenty of competition. That said with 2 to 4 contested per expansion they're going to be monopolized. They're being monopolized now, just in reverse. The same 1 or 2 guilds kill easymode and prevent everyone else from even attempting hardmode.

Leovinus wrote:

Why would I focus on something SOE is bound to disappoint with in regards to delivery. They didn't even upgrade all the databases to 64 bit, only a few. They've only ordered hardware for two of the servers, not all of them. They didn't even promise that these upgrades would even fix the lag, nor that it would be done prior to the next expansion. SOE consistently under delivers on its promises in areas such as these and they just laid off a bunch of people.
Its way more realistic for me to ask SOE to do some tweaking to the mechanics so we can work with the reality of the servers abilities NOW. Not sit on my thumbs losing content I should have a shot at every spawn wishing for SOE to fix lag they haven't been able to fix for going on two years.
I'm angry that the mechanic is so stupid. A mob that my guild can kill with six players should have no bearing on a hardmode contested mob. If they want easymode/hardmode they at least need to make a challenging easymode, not something so pathetic it falls over and dies when confronted with a single group.

Gaige wrote:

In T5 it was almost impossible to make a raid mob that was impossible to kill for a semi-serious guild either, without making it out of reach for the hardcores as well. There were so few differences in gear, (no) AAs, group makeups and whatnot that the playing field didn't have the potential to be slanted so heavily in favor of the true min-maxers. I was raiding back then as I am now, and it was easily possible for a semi-serious alliance to roll up on most contesteds and have a decent crack at them (if they found them up). Now, even with near perfect conditions, HM contested are completely out of reach of all but a tiny number of raid guilds on each server. With the lag in play, only call sheet guilds (most likely one per server) have any chance at all.

Leovinus wrote:

I haven't been called for a contested since they took avatars out, and barely even then. We routinely left them up until our raid time. I'm not even sure 7 day a week, 24 hour call sheet guilds even exist anymore.

Gaige wrote:

But you could. The call sheet guild thing wasn't about anything in particular, just saying the only really good time to kill one of these HMs, since typically they're mainly dps checks, is WAY off peak hours. If you can muster the dps during peak hours, then go kill it, risks and all. I'm not sure what the problem is. The spawn is contested. This is the only way to do so, really, since so very few guilds can muster the necessary dps during high play times with all the lag, and few even with perfect conditions.

We kill it during our normal raid time of 8pm to 12pm pst, tbh. No calling.

What's your point? You seem to be zeroing in on this call sheet thing, when that is so off my point it's not even funny. My point was that it's not really contested if one guild (maybe) on a server can muster the dps required at all times of the day. The current mechanic causes the spawn to be contested. You want to kill it, you go deal with the lag and don't get the chance to do it at your leisure. It may actually make the contested system worth investing in for SOE. For all your talk of them being two completely different and separate encounters, I suspect it would take a lot more work to create two separate encounters than do it this way. Since we havent heard anything since the dev post early in this thread, we can assume it's being worked on or it was decided that they like it as is.

Gaige wrote:

Um, there are thousands of encounters in EQ2 that work exactly like this. I can goto Blackburrow, pull an encounter of gnolls, kill one mob, wipe to a DIFFERENT mob, then the encounter resets and I have to start over. You seem to think these are completely different encounters. They are not. If anything, it's a ring event you keep failing at that omg resets after you fail. Do yourself a favor and leave contested mobs alone, or you're going to die young from angst.

Just because only one guild is good enough to kill it does not mean it's not contested, it just means only 1 guild can win the contest unless someone else improves. Leaving the HM up after EM is killed hurts nobody at all, the only thing it does is enable currently Cblocked content to be attempted and it might upset those that are obsessed with sticking it to the "uber" raiders. That's it, thats what this whole thing is about.
Hardcore raiders want the chance to attempt HM without anyone basically right clicking and despawning the mob out of spite, and then theres some on the other side that dislike hardcore raiders so much they are giddy at the thought of taking content away from them without actually having to be good enough to kill it. Anyone who says the argument is anything other than this is deluding themselves or flat out lying.

Rahatmattata wrote:

Sure those are called linked encounters, things that make use of green CAs. Ox isn't like that.

Rahatmattata wrote:

Ring events stay up until the final named dies, so I'm cool with SOE making this change to Ox to make it a true ring event.
Leovinus wrote:

Just because other guilds are terrible doesn't mean the encounter isn't contested.

Rahatmattata wrote:

did you have the option of despawning the rest of the encounter after killing the first gnoll and taking some form of lesser loot than if you had killed the entire encounter? if not, then it is not even remotely the same thing. try again. everyone has to kill the exact same number of gnolls to get loot and remove the encounter from the spawn table for awhile.

sony has decided to foster competition where there would otherwise be none. in RoK, the uberguilds competed over the avatars and tangrin and the more casual guilds competed over the domini and mobs like trakanasauras rex. for some reason, sony decided to stick dominus rile in the same area as the avatar of flame and make it so that when a guild kills either one, they both despawn. now the uberguilds compete with the more casual guilds for completely different encounters that happen to share a name and the ability to despawn the other one. stop trying to analogize it to anything else. it is not like haladan or any other instanced easy mode/hard mode because in an instance, everyone there has made the decision to forgo encounter A2 by killing encounter A. in a contested zone, it only take one raid killing encounter A to prevent the rest of the server from killing A2 or vice versa.
if sony ever fixes the lag, you will see a new thread on these forums with the more casual guilds complaining that they never get to kill easy mode ox anymore because their local uberguild has hard mode ox on lock down.