Server wide anncounments for Avatars, please.

A guildie and I were debating last night about how they could possibly make more guilds actually want to contest avatars. A lot of ideas were thrown around, however most of them revolved around making them easier to camp. Anyone that's ever camped avatars knows how tedious it is, yet we do it 24/7 just because we feel it's worth it. Making them easier to camp would make it easier for other guilds to find them, but it would also in turn make it easier for us to find them, and if other guilds still aren't willing to log in outside of their raidtime, we'll still always have an advantage.

A couple of the ideas, just to throw them out there:

• Have an npc that spawns and tells you exactly when the next avatar will spawn, but doesn't tell you which avatar it will be. Then guilds can log in just before it spawns, and have a mad race to find it and kill it, wherever it might be. This still requires guilds to want to log in outside of their raidtime however.
• Make them spawn from a raid dropped item, but have it be random which one it spawns. Then if another guild sees us spawning one, or if we see them spawning one, it's a mad race to find it and kill it first, wherever it might be. This would let other guilds spawn them during their own raidtime, giving them an advantage if we have to log in for it.

Ultimately though, I came to the conclusion that other guilds still won't want to go through all that effort in the hopes of killing one, when they know that we can always show up and do it more efficiently. My solution to that is to make us not want to kill every single avatar.

Right now, we don't need 90% of the loot we get off of avatars, however that 10% is enough to make us want to log in in the middle of the night. For those that don't know, every kill we get 2 common drops from a fairly large loot table, a chance at a mount, and a chance at an ethereal. The ethereals are all on their own tables, however they are rare enough that we've only seen maybe 2 or 3 chests, in over 200 kills, with 2 ethereals. We get an ethereal maybe 1 in 4-5 kills, and then it has a 1 in 4 chance of being the weaker of two belts for each class. We could still use a few more mounts, but most all of us have those even. We do however need a lot of ears and hats (for most classes) still.

My solution would be to make 4 very easy avatars, as easy as Growth is now, and have them have a very, very small chance to drop ethereals. Maybe 1-2%. Low enough so that once we have all of the common drops we need, we won't want to keep wasting our time doing it hoping for ethereals that we know will not drop. Make 3 moderate difficulty ones, between Valor's difficulty and Vallon's. Have them drop ethereals at the same rate the current ones do. And finally, make 2 hard avatars, as hard as Amalgamon, Drinal 4SW, and even Pirate Kings. Make them have a guaranteed ethereal drop, or at the very least, a very high chance, maybe 75%.

This would give us a way to work for the super rare drops that we've only seen one of in over 200 kills. It would free up the easiest avatars for other guilds to play with. It might even motivate them to try and contest the moderate difficulty ones with us.

Ouch.... Rallos does that enough, I don't need Avatar's doing it too

I like that a lot. You'd have more guilds actually contesting the easy ones. Top guilds won't care enough to go after them. But top guilds can have a good challenge and better loots from the difficult ones.

Now that I have thought about this... that would work for making Contested Content accessible to all. Make the top-end not want the lower-contested bosses. Basically "contested easy mode" and "contested hard mode" perhaps the EM-Avatar is oh say for Tunare it would be "Liliva Growthbloom: Prophet of Tunare" for the EM encounter and the HM would be Avatar of Growth (obviously the Avatar is full-power and is harder).

This would require a full rehaul of the Avatar's as they stand though.

How about as the quoted post suggests seeing as the Avatar of Growth is so easy it took us 2 pulls to kill it from knowing nothing about the strat to killing it the one time we got a go at it. Keeping the easy and the hard totally separate in different zones would be important as otherwise the top guilds would come in and gank the hm then see if the em was up and if it was gank that too. If they were SF style then it would make no difference what so ever.

Last I heard, we were getting 3 more avatars, either with this update or some update down the line. That's what I based my numbers off of, and past experience proves that having em and hm of the same contested is a terrible idea. There doesn't need to be a full rehaul at all. Maybe keep the 3 good avatars same as they are now, ramp up the difficulty of the Zeks and have them be the moderate ones, since they're already overall harder than the goods, and with more interesting scripts. Then make 2 of the (I assume to balance it out) Neutrals very hard, 1 of them very easy.

It was just an example I used. Lag aside Klaaktus and Oxdaxius and even Cogglius were not bad Conteseteds they had EM that fit right in the middle of Raid-Progression while the HM were worth it, the problem was EM and HM were the same boss thus high-end guilds still had to keep em on lockdown to get the goodies.

As Gorion said, the problem with those was HM and EM were the same boss, I would rather like 4 Hard Avatars (the new ones and Vallon) and the rest keep a more Middle-road template based on their difficulty.

If you create "very hard" it's no longer a contested because I won't have to call. Even with the current Avatars we've had 2 different guilds pull Avatars during their raid time and fail. That isn't to say they couldn't have killed them given enough time, it's just to say that they can be contested by others and killed. It's all about willpower and effort. You can't force people to do something. I'm sure there are people in those types of guilds who'd like to be competitive and call but without the others around them having that desire it doesn't matter.

Very good idea.

Exactly, these avatars CAN be contested by other guilds, but as long as they know or even think that we can show up and one pull them before they have a chance to learn it, they aren't going to want to even bother. There's only been a handful of truly contested avatars on Unrest and it's because most other guilds don't even think they have a chance anymore. Giving them 4 out of 9 with the common loot we already have would let them get their feet wet in contested raiding. They can get some big upgrades and hopefully a confidence boost. They'll be more likely to pull against another guild that has to learn it as well and maybe find some fun in it. Then maybe, just maybe, they'll try pulling against the top guild on some of the moderate difficulty ones. You can't make people want to contest these mobs, but you can make us not want to kill every single one of them. We kill them for the ethereals only at this point, since most of them are ridiculously rare. Take that away on some avatars and give us a better chance on others, and we'll shift our focus to the ones that benefit us the most.

They tried this with Domini during RoK before and it didnt work, they were just farmed by the dominating guild as well - no dominating guild will let slip an opportunity to gather ethereals through a 2-3mins kill even if its only a 2% dropchance.
And btw: you can provide 99% of content killable by everyone, fingerpointers will always cry they cant get the last 1% as well and they feel excluded etc - it just doesnt work when you got a contested concept.

As far as "Play Nice" policies are concerned, on my server (AB) I can't imagine the top guild NOT playing nice. I easily imagine them sitting there waiting while PuR/Group/Whatever tries a pull on an avatar...patiently even...because they are not going to wait long.

The only time interference is even an issue is on Nagafen. That's what makes a pvp server interesting..puts 'contest' into 'Contested'. If you are going to cry about not being left alone while pulling an Avatar there, I don't know what to tell you.

On Guk the two high guilds are in agreement and we extend this courtesy to other guilds as well.

"The guild that forms at the Avatar first get's the first pull"

Fact is there are a great many players that are competitive. I'd argue atleast 80% of those that raid are competitive about it. They monitor their progress and gauge themselves against their piers. They set goals, celebrate achieving them and pat themselves on the back for bettering their piers.

Spawn racing, which is what avatars basically are, isn't viewed as a competitive thing by most of us, cause they have very little to do with being skilled, and far more about being there first and already knowing the fight. I'm sure there is a minority segment of the population that views that as 'winning' and 'competition'. But I don't really. Or at least, many like me don't view spawn racing to be an overly rewarding or particularly skillful or distinguishing thing to engage in.

I personally spent enough years spawn racing in eq1, that I can go the rest of my life without doing so again.

I prefer a game where the best stuff always comes from the content that takes the most skill to defeat, less so from that which is 'contested'. Certainly if you asked me the same opinion 10 years ago when I was in eq1, I would have given the exact opposite answer. I think times have changed, what people value from gaming has changed, and those really interested in this spawn racing is a very small minority. It wont surprise me if SoE takes further steps to adjust to the times.

I have also changed my views on things alot since those early EQ1 days =P That said, there are still players/guilds that like the competition of 'spawn racing' as you call it. IMO that is what stuff like the Avatars are for. I just do not subscribe to the notion that all content should be available to all players anytime they want regardless of skill, time or effort which is basically what asking for server wide Avatar spawn announcements is asking for. Current Avatars are just a different 'type' of challenge that is just as much about speed and mobilizing than it is about 'skill' and I see nothing wrong about how it currently works. I am fine with there being content out there that while I know I am very much capable of killing with a raid force I will most likely never get to. IMO SoE has gone overboard with 'adjusting to the times' and has taken away alot of what makes these games interesting. Its getting harder and harder to distinguish the good from the bad players because so much as been dumbed down and 'socialized'.