Contested Need to Go

you guys should kiss

Gaige wrote:

Ah, yes, Mr./Miss Gaige. I do understand that you wish everything about raiding to be only about you and your guild. Just in case it has escaped your attention, EQ2 is more than just one peep and one guild. In case it has escaped your attention, Mr./Miss Gaige, even just looking at the part that involves raiding, EQ2 is more than just one peep and one guild. And Mr./Miss Gaige, in case it has escaped your attention, even just looking at hard core raiding guilds, EQ2 is more than just one peep and one guild.
If you so desire to be this protective of yourself and your guild, I suggest you may have a much better impact by having suggestions that will work for more than just one peep and his/her guild. Your suggestion that a contested mob should NOT be contested in easy/hard mode or separated into two separated instances (Mobs), thus preventing all raiding teams a chance to kill it solely on the premise that it "takes away the ability for" your "guild to even pull the hard mode mob" speaks of great illogic and falsities.
IOW, Mr./Miss Gaige, your argument doesn't hold. What you wish is a contested mob to have a Mr./Miss Gaige and guild name tag on it - 100% of the time - and be damned to any other raiding team. So much for competition. Now, I understand why you don't like the easy/hard mode contested mobs. It's just too much competition!
Taking the premise of one MOB available to any and all raiding teams in the 2 presented modes, is a very interesting and very competitive model of a contested MOB. However, I can see where one mode could possibly shut down the MOB as effective as the hardcore raiding teams of Avatars did in TSO and RoK. I can also understand SoE's PoV in trying to add a bit more competition to the mix.
Where I see the problem, isn't with the easy vs hardcore mode, but with interesting attempts of SoE to equate the two, similar to the easy/hardcore modes of various MoBs in the TSO raid zones such as Miragul's Planar Shard of Haladan. Taking this premise, SoE applied it to a MOB in a public zone, making it a contested MOB such as the past Avatars instead of a private MOB.
Yet, the only peeps to complain about this are the hardcore raiders who want the "split personality" type MOBs to continue to be private rather than public contested. So much for challenges!
Even though you can never please all the peeps all the time, I suggest an interesting compromise would be to shorten the length of time for an easy mode kill respawn vs a hard mode kill respawn, so the hardcore raiders do not have to camp this public contested MOB as they did with Avatars in order to lock it down. But then, that would defeat the purpose of SoE's desire to avoid the lockdown situations of the past Avatars.
In either case, Mr./Miss Gaige, nothing suggests having a "split personalilty" contested public MOB would prevent you and your guild from engaging which ever personality so desired.

Alvane@Unrest wrote:

You seem to have not been really reading what he wrote. Splitting the mob into two separate entities would allow casual guilds to have shots at the easy mode without competing against much stronger guilds who want the challenge mode and have every advantage there is. What you don't seem to realize is that the only reason lower-end guilds can get the easy-mode is due to the supreme indifference of higher-end guilds. If they wanted to deny them their chance, they could do so very easily, since they can kill the easy-mode with far less people, far less effort, and generally at any time of day.
That indifference is due to several factors - lag, the miserable loot tables on the challenge-mode contesteds, and instanced content that is yet to be beaten. It's likely on most servers the lack of interest in the mobs will continue with the release of two new and very large raid zones, but that really doesn't mean that the underlying premise is sound - if the motivation to kill the mobs was there, casuals would never see them. Ever.

Kander's solution is a good one. The only potential issue is the high-end guilds killing easymode mobs just for kicks but frankly...why bother? We don't need the loot from them, the encounters aren't fun due to lag, and frankly, while we are more than capable of putting together a call list at any time of day or night, nobody likes to be up at 4am killing mobs that don't have anything we need.
I expect what we'll see is the high-end guilds leaving the easymodes up until they have a zone with little enough lag to kill the hardmodes, only call listing or showing up early if they see another hardmode capable guild coming for them (in which case the lag is too intense for either guild to kill it, leaving the hardmode mob to whichever guild is the more stubborn).
And...for the record, the assertion that contested guilds are always locked down by one group simply isn't true. In TSO we had several guilds successfully contest and kill avatars before one raid alliance managed to lock them down. Antonia Bayle saw four different guilds kill avatars, and had one startup try really hard to contest the dominant guild as well even if they were unable to succeed in the end.

Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:

so in essence, one guild lost 4 mobs over the course of one expansion.
great use of technical resources on soe's part for the one guild per server format of contested mobs.
edit..can't type

mkd1201 wrote:

It's not just one guild, you also have to factor all the players who are trying to better themselves in the hopes that they can one day join the good guild.

There has to be a top layer in order for there to be a bottom layer or else its all just meaningless

Alvane@Unrest wrote:

Not at all. I wouldn't care if every guild on Unrest was pulling Oxdaxius Reforming. That would be competition for the same mob, which I'm fine with and have been fine with since launch.
My only complaint is when someone kills Oxdaxius and I'm robbed of my opportunity to pull Oxdaxius Reforming.
Hard mode mobs are aimed at guilds like mine, but if others want to pull it, that's fine. However killing normal Oxdaxius should not deny me my opportunity to kill the hard mode mob.
Killing an easy mob and despawning a hard mob isn't competition. It'd be like if I could run over and kill one of those solo plants next to easy Oxdaxius and despawn him.

im sry to derail the nice conversation here
but back to the real question at hand
kander any word on when this change is going in
and any word n the HM loot changes

uncle

last call? update 24hours away.

Gaige wrote:

Maybe I just don't understand the way that the mechanics work here (because I haven't pulled one of the tiered-difficulty contested mobs) but if your guild gets there first, can you not just kill the mob in hard-mode? If it's all about competition, then why don't you just go and kill the mob before the 'regular' (for lack of a better term) guilds? If you aren't getting to the mob first and dropping it in hard-mode, then that's your issue, not someone else's. Correct?

Because the server performance is terrible and lag dictates when you can kill the hard mob.

That's understandable, but at the same time, guilds have been competing for contested mobs for years, server lag (and player-induced lag) and all. Granted, the lag up in Sundered Frontier and Stonebrunt Highlands is horrible most of the time, but that's no reason to do away with the tiered-difficulty encounters. I'm not trying to be snarky, but if X raiding guild is really that awesome, then they should be able to deal with the server lag and kill the hard mode. After all, Y non-raiding guild is killing it on easy mode, and if they can deal with server lag, then so can the hard-core people. If they're really that much better.
Honestly, it just sounds to me like a few people who are used to their exclusive circles are a bit upset that more people can try contested mobs now. That mentality is normal, and arguably reasonable. It's no fun when you suddenly have to compete with people with whom you may not feel that you should have to compete. However, the mobs are called 'contested' for a reason. If people want to kill it, then they should pull it first. Asking to do away with contested mobs just because X hard-core guild now has to compete with Y 'casual' guild is a bit selfish, and I dare say, in complete contrast to the nature of what fighting contested mobs is all about.

Quick edit, because it's early, and apparently, I can't spell this early in the morning.

from todays update notes.... I dont see any mention of hard mode contested anything....
no changes mentiond.

Illiam@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Easy mode = easy. 2 groupable encounter. Hard mode = 100 million hit points in 225 seconds.
You figure out why lag might have an impact.

slippery wrote:

I'm sure that lag does have an impact. I'm just saying that lag always has had an impact. Were you never around in the 'old days', for instance, when competing guilds would set off fireworks en masse to try to lag a guild that was pulling so badly that they'd wipe? Dealing with lag (whether server-side or player-induced) is nothing new. Furthermore, removing the easy mode encounters won't do anything to solve the lag, or make the hard mode encounters more manageable, so the argument to remove the easy mode fails when using lag as a reason.

I'm pretty sure that you are not understanding the point that is being made on the easy / hard mode contested mobs Illiam. While the point you continue to make is a valid one, it does not apply to the current conversation.
In the "old days" as you pointed out, a contested mob would spawn, and either 1 or more guilds would move to "contest" it. Guild A pulls the mob, and let's say for instance Guild B has an ego complex and they will simply DIE if another guild kills this contested in their faces, then they may or may not do what you said which is to cause unnecessary lag to Guild A mid pull in the hopes it will wipe their raid so Guild B can then pull the mob. If anyone were to complain about this form of contested mob being up simply because they will go emo if they lose it, then they have problems. This, however does not affect the tiered contested that we currently have.
In this expansion, we have 2 contested mobs. Let's say for instance that Oxdaxius pops and 2 guilds notice this who have an interest in killing him. Guild A needs nothing from this mob, but they are ready to work on the hard mode version which requires the easy version to die to spawn it. Guild B can actually use the items off the easy mode as upgrades to improve their raid. Both guilds because of this show up to the mob, and Guild A pulls first. They kill the easy mode quickly and spawn the hard. Now you have 225 seconds to burn down a mob with multiple mem wiping adds, who has roughly around 100 million hit points. The zone needs to have little to no lag at all, or even the best guilds will not be able to do this encounter in enough time. Guild A for reasons of zone lag fails to put out enough dps to kill the mob in 3 minutes 45 seconds, so the fail effect triggers and they wipe. Now Guild B has their chance to pull, and they are after the easy mode which is super easy as anyone who raids can tell you I'm sure. Guild B gets their kill and their loot, and now Guild A has to wait until the easy mode respawns in over 3 days to have a shot at the hard mode again.
That is the issue people are bringing up, the fact that the easy mode is a completely different fight than the hard mode, and 1 should not affect the other. The best route they could go with this model of contested would be to spawn the easy mode, and when that is killed the hard mode spawns and stays up for all to try until the 3 day window is up, and then the easy mode will spawn again starting all over. This way the guilds who want to try the hard mode, and the guilds who still can use the easy mode gear are both happy. Having 1 mob die and affect a completely different mobs spawn cycle was never a good idea.

Orienne wrote:

Yeap, thats exactly how it works, and the system is working exactly as it was intended.
Guild A in your example now has the same issues to deal with if Guild B was also after the hardmode. Fact is on most servers there is/was only Guild A after the mob and thus it was never a 'contested spawn'.
The change was to make it exactly as you described so that the spawn itself is contested and Guild A has to be as good as they would have to be to get the kill if there was multiple guilds on the server capable of killing it.
I can certainly see how many think this is unfair as they are being denied a spawn by a guild not as good as them, but you've got your chance to pull it first and kill it, so I hope you can get it done.
SoE intentionally designed the new contesteds so they would be just that, contested spawns. I don't see them changing it since it is working exactly as they designed it to work.
Surely you can agree it makes the takedown more significant now than previously where only 1 guild / server (on most) was even pulling the 'contested' mob.

Orienne wrote:

Except that in that instance... the guild after hard mode would simply kill the easy mode, sell the loot to the other guild waiting to get a turn at easy mode, then pull hard mode. Otherwise would they stand around and wait for a guild to come kill easy mode if they wanted hard or wait for them to actually get it down? No.
So either way 1 guild does not get what they want unless both/either guild in the situation is being extra nice. And if they are... then it wouldnt matter because you can work it out with the other guild that is interested to trade mobs. One time its up, guild A kills easy, next time guild B gets to try hard and potentially kill it.
But if they are trying to be jerks... well the "scrub" guild has just as much opportunity to block the hardcore guild. And that seems to be the issue.
And I like the way Atan put it. Its a contested SPAWN. Not a contested MOB. Better that way imho...

Xill wrote:

And what exactly is preventing this scenerio from the current way things are? If a guild really cares about denying an easy spawn just for the sake of denying another guild at his horrible loot table, or even to sell to loot, they can do that now. It doesn't have to be split spawns for them to do this, so how exactly does splitting them up suddenly cause this to happen? Holding off from killing it just to hope nobody kills it so that it's still up at odd hours of the morning doesn't happen. The easy mode mob is too easy to kill and doesn't stay up when other guilds see that is up. While the hard mode is unplayable at anything but off hours when nobody is in the zone.

Illiam@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Probably because server performance doesn't allow us to do the required DPS for the HM encounter until after 10pm pst. So our only choice earlier would be just to kill EM, which we don't need anything from, which would cause us to lose out on HM.