Why the implementation of the "burnt key" is terrible

You're right. Until very recently, the best items in the game required you to quest, run zones, raid, etc. With time and effort, no item was out of reach. The portal mechanic, introduced just last expansion, changes that. It's a shift in design philosophy that is bad for the game. As to the comment that "...you feel you want it and you deserve it..." No. It's more accurate to say that I believe in the traditional model that EQ2 was built on, where top-end items don't come from a mechanic that is "purely random and luck oriented." Leave the mechanic in place for the people that like it, if you must, but add some method whereby the key can be earned. Win / win. All sides are happy.

If they were to put the burnt key in as an obtainable goal. I would put it on the hardest raid mob in the game- in that case.

You know, I was thinking about this on my way to work today. It's not like the burnt key is going to give you the type of boost the epic weapon provides. It will give you a best in slot (most likely) armor piece, but really how much difference does that actually make?

I decided to stop caring about the burnt key because I know that with or without it, my character is good. If I happen to get one, then great! If not, well pretty sure it's not going to hurt my effectiveness.

Biggest thing that changes how awesome the zone is, is that now it doesn't give 1mil plat. THAT was huge and something to dream about. An item that will slightly increase what I do? Not something to worry about.

That being said, I really hope it gets smoothed out so that you have to be doing or have done a key quest within like 10 minutes of the timer expiring and unloading the key on someone to be on the list of eligibility. I still feel this makes the most sense. Can only do the quests every 6 or so hours. HAVE to be active to complete the quest. It would be a great way to keep it fair and at least feel like people can work towards the goal.

That is not exactly the case though.. The bracers can come with an orange adornment already equipped that would be a HUGE upgrade for many classes. +100 % WDB Overcap is huge. with the cap being so low at 300%, that 100% increase could skyrocket an individual who's class benefits from that. As a dirge Geomancer, I can not fathom having that much more additional WDB.. That being said, the burnt key should be more available to all because of the implications of that orange rune.

My biggest issue with this vs the duck portal...
Duck Portal kill things until the portal appears, done until next time.
Burnt Key, do key quest, PQ and random kills, hoping to get on the list, then go afk in the zone until the message triggers.
After you do the key quest there is literally nothing woth doing in OF...but since the key isn't rewarded for 'actually' doing something, but rather for being in the zone some time after doing something.. there's a bunch of standing around doing nothing.

well my only peeve with this is fact that zone rewarding WHOLE SET of armor not single BiS item (like duck portal)

I just posted a guide detailing how I received my key today in General. I hope that clears some stuff up.

people dont really group unless guild call, because they want to stay in OF to farm this key.
If you want to give it out randomly why not EVERY TOON THAT IS MOVING get a chance of it no matter where he is at as long as he is lv100?

why are you devs implanting something that kills the game,

you guys are doing so well in ethereal coin and yet going backward....

As others have mentioned the mechanic to do things and wait to see in zone just outright sucks. This game crashes all the darn time and if we crash and come right back do we lose eligibility? No one knows.

There is reasonably only so much we can do in OF to keep ourselves busy waiting on this thing. So we go afk and do other things just to come back several hours later to a game that closed for no reason. Devs unwillingness to share some kind of details on how it works just makes us assume the worst in this kind of scenario. Basically the devs made a mechanic that requires you to sit around idol for hours on end, and a game that's so poorly coded that for many players it just flat out wont allow that.

Since people have been known to get keys more than once, your guide should have gotten you a second key by now. Has it?

Little to no difference. Granted, all of the armor pieces look super spectacular on paper, but in reality - the net gain from them is marginal in relation to infused 11 resolve gear. I haven't done all of the maths yet - but in terms of "seat of the pants parse" feel - little to no difference at all. This won't make you feel powerful at all, not like the effects / spells from epic 2.0 / ascension 10.

Granted - if you're coming from 5 or 7 resolve (solo) gear, the boost in stats will be substantial, and the gear will most likely propel you into T1 or even T2 heroics.... in most cases though, it won't mean your character will be /uber/ in those zones - it just means you can get in the door and start working on gearing up officially.

For those people chasing the parse: finish your epic 2.0 and ascension 10. THAT is the only thing making a huge mark on the parse - not some 200+ stat bracer / armor. If ya'll haven't noticed - all - class defining abilities have had their effectiveness lowered in order to make room for the effect that completing E2.0 has on your characters' power.

For reference: I frequently topped the parse fighting the PQ mobs. Slowly but surely, each ability that was doing decent damage was "fixed" so the damage curve was more linear. To be clear - 2-3m parse vs. 50k parse after the fixes. Today - one player who was lucky enough to pick the correct overpowered Ascension class - and had finished Epic 2.0 tops the parse by casting ONE spell that does 2 billion in damage. Yes. 2 billion.

So, whether or not the implementation of the key is bad - it truly is immaterial when looking at the big end game picture. Besides, its kinda fun taking a completely new person into heroics that has all the "freebie / loot pinata" gear and watch them get their @sses handed to them...

If person was doing only 2B damage with EA very likely person have very low Pot - I can (and do) hit for that much with Septic Strike - I seen EA within raid consistently hit for 7-13B per hit

Haven't even tried, I have better things to do with my time in game than worrying about getting a second key.

@ Zed I agree with you, but I was still happy to move 4 pieces of gear around and the only stat that went down was my health for a small amount BEFORE infusing, all the pieces of gear I replaced were fully infused, so that's quite a nice boost off the bat and will only get better once I have time to get some infusers made and throw some plat at the new items as well.

Friend in Guild has now had three keys, the only thing he said was he plays alot at night i.e sits in OB.

What class is he out of curiosity? And again this is another example of why the mechanic is horrible.

Think they were talking PQ damage, where skills hit WAY lower than in heroics or raids.

Zerker. And yes very broken he killed some slugs did a key quest one pq and went afk without afk tag on, i believe he pressed scroll lock and wedged himself into a rock!!

The more I think about it, the more I like this solution. One, it's easy for the devs to implement, would take about 2 seconds to add the item to the vendor. Two, it would actually encourage people to actively play the game. More people would run dailys and weeklys to reach this goal.

*Oh, and regarding the above post, yeah, people winning this key two and three times because of lucky RNG is silly and broken.

Anything that takes randomness out of the equation I'm all in favour of. I've seen more people quit during this expansion due to the nasty rng than I've seen in like the past five. The above purchase suggestion is an ideal solution.