Why not suspend the exploiting accounts for 4 days every time they do it while looking for a proper fix? This whole thing seems like a permanent change they have wanted to do for a while imo. Another way to 'extend the life' of content while not actually having to make more content. I don't remember them ever going after an exploit in this manner in the past. They are either severely underestimating the impact this will have on raiding for the entire game or know full well what it will do and they want it. Don't be surprised if EQNext has timers that work the same exact way.
slippery wrote: Slip, you're normally pretty spot on, but your way off base here. Actually, sounds like your almost as off base as the people at SoE who thought this was the right decision. I wonder did you suggest this as the sollution? But why is it off base. Try being in a casual guild that raids wed / sun and can't finish tallons HM in a single night. Pretty much means you never finish the zone. Its the wrong solution, hands down its a bad idea. Sure for the WW top 70ish guilds the only issue is the PoW timer, but for many, many other guilds this is a huge problem.
Patch note should say: "Due to an exploit, we are fundamentally changing how raiding times work. This will be directly opposed to current raid schedules guilds have established."
Ulrichvon wrote: Don't get me wrong, I think this is a ridiculously awful fix. All the problems people have posted are very real to them, and they are problems that the system that was in place was designed to fix. Within the bounds of what we are talking about when it comes to Skyshrine that really shouldn't be a problem. As far as Drunder, meh. Those zones aren't that long either, and they are massively out geared compared to when they originally got cleared.
slippery wrote: Sure, but that doesn't change the reality on the ground. My guild runs 2 raid forces, and the more hardcore one is virtually unafffected by this change, in fact I bet most of them are secretly happy not to do PoW trash as much. However, the casual force is severely nutered in what they can do with this change.
Due to an exploit, raid zones now have a hard 2.8 day [ 2 days 20 hours] lockout timer. Am I misunderstanding the term "lockout" or does this mean once you zone out of a raid instance now you cannot re enter til the timer expires? Seems as if the word persistent would have been used if it was meant.
Muusic@Venekor wrote: as i understand it, it means that the zone will expire when it expires there will be no early* reset of an extended "lock out".
existing timers that are persistent, are know 2d20h persistent timers. So i am assuming that they do mean persistent timers not Lockout timers. I have not had a chance to test new timers tho.
Both the max and min duration on PoW is 4 days and 20 hours, and the reset button says I can reset in the same exact amount of time that is left on the zone. Its just as bad as everyone thinks it is, we did not misunderstand.
The 4d 20h timer on PoW may as well be 6d 20h for most guilds. Outside of guilds that raid 7 days a week or are willing to change their raid schedule week to week to match a 5 day reset this cuts all loot coming out of PoW in half. Because you'd have to raid 7 days a week or change raid schedules week to week to run it more then once a week. The hard reset is a horrible fix and the PoW timer is even worse. Go eliminate 50% of the trash from PoW and give it the same 2d 20h all other zones get. At least this way people won't get screwed out of half their weekly loot. This is one of SOE's worst thought out fixes to an exploit. And from what people are saying here it might not even fix the exploit. Instead of screwing people out of the ability to complete zones and run them as they have for how many years now. Revert this back and change the minimum lock out times to 2d 20h. Sure some people will screw themselves over by zoning into a wrong instance get locked to it. But guess what that's on them for not paying attention. Guarantee you'd have signifacantly less ticked off people doing this then what you did. And while we're at it how about checking with your player base for options first for once before making knee-jerk gaming changing hot fixes.
Crychtonn wrote: This! If you have to effect the "normal" un-exploiting playerbase to fix this, than do it to the one noob that zones into the zone without a raid invite or isn't paying attention to which zone name he's clicking into..... Don't cripple a whole playerbase of limited raid time/day guilds. That's just assanine and if it kills my raid guild I'll just be done with eq2 period.
So instead of just fixing the exploit... soe screws over everyone else in the game that is actually playing it. For the few people using a exploit that probably 99% of the game didnt know about you completely change it because of that. This is completely rediculous that the games PROGRAMMERS and LEADERSHIP actually chose to intentionally screw over what remains of the games dedicated core following over what a TINY minority would have been exploiting. Instead of punishing the exploiters... punish the population as a whole. That makes sense how exactly?
So we probably should have explained this better. It was a quick band-aid to stop a major exploit. This is a temporary fix, that is giving code the time to fix it correctly. We will have this changed as soon as possible, as soon as we can get it tested properly. Shouldn't be too long. Thanks for being patient and understanding.
