How to make contested epics truly contested - Page 2

Antipalad · 10-11-2009, 05:04 AM

How to make contested epics truly contested: A good start would be not to reuse the same fights 3 expansions running.

Pervis · 10-11-2009, 05:26 AM

Serpicos@Unrest wrote:

Health and Justice - Its no secret these are two of the hardest avatars.

Serpicos@Unrest wrote:

You still have yet to address my original posts idea's.

Saying Health is one of the hardest avatars basically renders any thought you have on the subject as insignificant.

People have been trying to point this out to you in this thread. Your ideas are the equivlent of a level 20 player commenting on end game heroic instances or, as used in this thread, a non crafter making comments on crafting content.

At the very least, read up everything you can possibly find on avatar encounters before you try and talk about them. Pulling a few of them would be even better.

Noob1974 · 10-11-2009, 05:54 AM

Reading Serpicos Post the closest contestants in game to what he points out were the monolith mobs and Ghazi for the

following points :

1.) To make them attackable you had to have a certain item dropped in Heroic zones and open dungeons,which made made them to some extend open to more guild for pulls.

2.) They were so easy, even casuals could kill the x4 with two groups, it only required a tank who knows how to pull them and 1 MT healer.

Why are avatars still being discussed, it is very known thay they wont return in T9, that has been stated by Kiara on this forum. Probably the 3 contestants in next expansion maybe have the same diffculty as the new raidzone designs with easy,medium and hard. So there should be something for everyone.

As for instanced contestants how many casuals killed Cheldrak back in the days it meant something, in EOF or now?

Meirril · 10-11-2009, 08:37 AM

Honestly? Contested mobs are suppose to be contested. That means if you want to kill the mob, you get their first. You pull first, and if you wipe? Someone else gets a shot while you lick your wounds and wait for them to wipe.

That's the way it *should* be. That is the reason contested mobs *should* have better gear than any raid zone. Why? Because in a raid instance, you don't have to worry how many times you wipe because nobody is there to gank your target. You can take forever for the stars to align and for this one wonderful pull all those crazy ideas you have for a strat actually works and the mob goes down. For a contested mob, there is no such luxury. Your always worried that a better organized and equipped force will swoop in and take it if your the little guy new to this. Or your the older and better equipped raid force that shows up a bit slow and watches another guild pull your target and win.

Anyone that tries to change what a constested mobs is...misses the entire point behind why its tougher and has the better loot. It isn't there for bragging rights. If all you care about is the "challenge" the PvP servers are over there. If your after the contested mobs, your there for the loot. Plain and simple, don't lie to yourself or others.

Gaige · 10-11-2009, 02:21 PM

Anashti and Justice up on Unrest going on 3 days. Growth killed by Ardent Ascension less than 24 hours after transferring after numerous pulls.

What exactly have you and your guild been doing Serpicos? Oh I know, you've been working on instanced Anashti Sul. Gratz on finally killing her on the 9th. Next up some practice on Tyrannus the Dark in YIS! Perhaps after that you can try some pulls on Ozyk in MMB. After that you have plenty to work on in Miragul's still.

See, that is why I don't understand your OP. Its all about how contested aren't contested (they are) and then when Confirmed folds and leaves avatars for the motivated - your guild doesn't show up. You instead spend your Friday working on Anashti Sul.

So not only do you have plenty of instanced content ahead of you, you don't even show up when the easiest avatar spawns.

So why are you complaining? Just to complain? Its not like your guild is motivated for avatars anyway and its not like your guild is hurting for content, you have plenty of instanced content yet to defeat.

Bruener · 10-11-2009, 05:16 PM

Meirril wrote:

Honestly? Contested mobs are suppose to be contested. That means if you want to kill the mob, you get their first. You pull first, and if you wipe? Someone else gets a shot while you lick your wounds and wait for them to wipe.
That's the way it *should* be. That is the reason contested mobs *should* have better gear than any raid zone. Why? Because in a raid instance, you don't have to worry how many times you wipe because nobody is there to gank your target. You can take forever for the stars to align and for this one wonderful pull all those crazy ideas you have for a strat actually works and the mob goes down. For a contested mob, there is no such luxury. Your always worried that a better organized and equipped force will swoop in and take it if your the little guy new to this. Or your the older and better equipped raid force that shows up a bit slow and watches another guild pull your target and win.
Anyone that tries to change what a constested mobs is...misses the entire point behind why its tougher and has the better loot. It isn't there for bragging rights. If all you care about is the "challenge" the PvP servers are over there. If your after the contested mobs, your there for the loot. Plain and simple, don't lie to yourself or others.

That sounds all good and great until you actually try and "contest" a mob on a server like AB. You get more than 1 guild in a zone on AB and it is such bad lag that both guilds can spend hours getting nowhere.

If SOE can't fix the more important items plague'ing this game like server lag than they should not be sinking resources into a part of gameplay that a very tiny % of people actually take advantage of. Instead move the Avatars to instances and be done with it. That way it would give that same content to many more people.

Than in the future if they do implement some type of contested, DO NOT use the same encounters through 3 xpacs and make sure from the start that the gear earned matches the difficulty....and no, LAG is not difficulty. No shared loot tables for contested and much longer respawns would go a long way to actual make contested mobs contested. But first please get rid of the fricken server lag.

Gaige · 10-11-2009, 05:56 PM

Bruener wrote:

If SOE can't fix the more important items plague'ing this game like server lag than they should not be sinking resources into a part of gameplay that a very tiny % of people actually take advantage of.

That applies to much more than just contested raid mobs.

Tehom · 10-11-2009, 06:05 PM

Bruener wrote:

That sounds all good and great until you actually try and "contest" a mob on a server like AB. You get more than 1 guild in a zone on AB and it is such bad lag that both guilds can spend hours getting nowhere.
If SOE can't fix the more important items plague'ing this game like server lag than they should not be sinking resources into a part of gameplay that a very tiny % of people actually take advantage of. Instead move the Avatars to instances and be done with it. That way it would give that same content to many more people.
Than in the future if they do implement some type of contested, DO NOT use the same encounters through 3 xpacs and make sure from the start that the gear earned matches the difficulty....and no, LAG is not difficulty. No shared loot tables for contested and much longer respawns would go a long way to actual make contested mobs contested. But first please get rid of the fricken server lag.

I actually agree with this, even though we're the ones killing the avatars at the moment. The game hardware/database just doesn't support the encounters well enough at the moment. On the rare occasions where we're in an instance and there's no real lag, it's like playing an entirely different game. I actually enjoy a lot of fights that are sheer misery otherwise.

Honestly, I think the problem of lag is actually understated even when people mention it. It's more than a matter of challenge, it just makes the game miserable to play even if you're winning, especially on encounters that are poorly designed for it - anything that has short-duration stuns/stifles, interrupt effects, cure-fests, etc.

Gisallo · 10-11-2009, 07:01 PM

Kigneer wrote:

Serpicos@Unrest wrote:
I have said before and will continue to say, and let me put it in bold for you
CONTESTED EPICS ARE A WASTE OF PROGRAMMING TIME AND RESOURCES
if it was up to me they would be elminated entirley. I wasn't QQing about I don't get any avatar pulls, the only people who really QQ about avatars are the ones that QQ so hard that they.... change servers, know anyone like that?
^^ Amen ^^
SoE doesn't even have the resources to fix the bugs in regular TSO content. How can one subset of the population take up so much resources, while the rest are put on hold for fixes? It's beyond unfair, especially how these players act and react to their very community.
When I see multiple scouts looking for avatars, and see multiple guilds killing these avatars, then maybe it'll be considered even contested. Now it's a monopoly. Monopolies don't need valuable resources, those resources should go for the largest base of players, as it's their subscriptions that are paying for most content.

Here we don't disagree TOO MUCH. I am not going to say if they are good or not, I just don't know about Avatars and their place in the game, whether its good or bad. Its pretty hard to tell with this. The arguments for and against them are both usually pretty logical. Then again most of the same arguments from either side can be applied to any type of content in the game, whether it be solo, persistent instance, contested instance, x2 raid, x4 raid etc, so who knows. Though from what I remember on the Test Forum regarding the now live avatar gear nerfs, there are no t-9 Avatars not the argument is largely useless to SOE I suspect. Why try to do anything with Avatars if come Febuary they will be irrelevant to the top tier of the game?

Why did SOE never do anything to address this issue in the past though I think is more complicated?

I know from my times on Test Server that the bulk of the people over there doing the testing and doing the bug reports are members of the higher end raid guilds, to include the Avatar Killing ones. Maybe SOE is afraid of losing their essentially free QA divison? I mean what good would a test server be to find bugs and the like if you didn't have a decent number of players that are capable of doing all of the content. I also know that most raiders in these guilds have at least 2 accounts and typically at least one of these accounts has full station access, so maybe on top of trying to keep their Quality Assurance division happy they are also looking at a minority of players that give them cash that is disproportionately high to their real numbers. All of this equates to being a minority that SOE has a vested interest in keeping happy I would suspect. The fact that EQ2 Developers are also members of Raid Guilds on Live servers can't be dismissed either when looking towards motives. The history of the EQ franchise being more raid centric than other MMO's also probably contributes to it.

I know that if I did not evolve from an solo and group player to a more raid oriented player I would not be playing EQ2 at this point, I would likely be in LOTRO because there is really NO raiding over there as we would define it in EQ2, its mostly all group stuff to the point that some of the best gear in the game is crafted by players.

Not saying that any of this is right or wrong mind you, it just seems to be why it is.

Dasein · 10-11-2009, 08:04 PM

If you want truely contested epics, make the fights on par with easier raid encounters, but have them drop uber loot. This way, lots of guilds will be able to kill them without too much effort, but there will also be lots of motivation to kill them. If every server had a dozen or more guilds capable of taking down these mobs, you'd see tons of competition for them.

Of course, this would also lead to lots of lag, lots of customer service issues and I think EQ2Flames would crash because of the increased load, but you'd have real contested mobs.

Gaige · 10-11-2009, 08:13 PM

Dasein wrote:

If you want truely contested epics, make the fights on par with easier raid encounters, but have them drop uber loot. This way, lots of guilds will be able to kill them without too much effort, but there will also be lots of motivation to kill them. If every server had a dozen or more guilds capable of taking down these mobs, you'd see tons of competition for them.
Of course, this would also lead to lots of lag, lots of customer service issues and I think EQ2Flames would crash because of the increased load, but you'd have real contested mobs.

Or it'd be like the Domini, and players like Daray would two box them.

Pins · 10-13-2009, 01:36 PM

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Serpicos@Unrest wrote:
Finally we have been discussing the pro's and cons of pulling the avatars and the biggest question is. Is it worth our time to pull the mobs and learn the strats and MABYE get some kills before some other guild transfers over and locks them all down for the reasons I listed above or is it better to work on mobs that although they may be harder will always be available to us?
We have strats for alot of the avatars. I'll let you in on what seems to be a closely guarded secret or something... It's just two words.
"test copy"

I have an easier solution:

http://lithin.com/index.php?option=....y&catid=2:news

Yimway · 10-13-2009, 02:14 PM

Pinski wrote:

Atan@Unrest wrote:
We have strats for alot of the avatars. I'll let you in on what seems to be a closely guarded secret or something... It's just two words.
"test copy"
I have an easier solution:
http://lithin.com/index.php?option=....y&catid=2:news

Info certainly helps, but getting people not used to these scripts to be able to run them doing so on a less laggy, less prone to ridicule environment (test server) is a good place to get your feet wet.

Nice link though SMILEY

Valdaglerion · 10-13-2009, 08:16 PM

Serpicos@Unrest wrote:

For the most part 1 guild has Epic mobs on lockdown. These mobs arn't truly contested they are just "extra" mobs and loot for the resident uberguild. There are a number of reasons behind this generally speaking.
1) Practice, once dominince is gained its nearly impposible to get practice pulling the contested mobs. So even when you beat the resident uberguild to the punch your unlikely to get enouph pulls to beat it.
2) Random spawn timers: Many uberguilds have (or at least start with) call lists so they can get their members on to kill mobs when its not a normal raid time. Since most other guilds don't (and wont) do this thats extra/uncontested pulls/kills
3) Camping: This goes along with the random spawn timers, you generally have to camp alts, and cycle through the locations of Epic pops, then you try to keep it a secret as long as possible for your raid to assemble and kill the mob.
How to create a true race.
Here are my suggestions on how to create a true race for contested mobs.
1) The Avatar of Training (or whatever): A guild hall amenity that lets your guild zone into its own private instance, in this instance you can have a mob that acts is exactly the same way as any avatar you would like. Same AE's same debuff's ect. It doesn't drop any loot, its just for practice. So you can fight that as many times as you want till you feel your ready.
2) Serverwide announcements: When an avatar pops announce it server wide. Then every guild that thinks they can kill it (because they have practiced with the training avatar) can race to the avatar and try to pull/kill it first.
3) Rotating as opposed to random spawns: So as not to screw the people in different time zones, first avatar pops at 1pm, next one pops at 3pm next one at 5pm ect ect all the way around the clock.
I look forward to comments and critiques.

The solution is actually much easier. . .

Firstly - no to the contested trainer thing, its contested for a reason. Practicing 24x7 just without a loot table isnt really a good thing IMO. Dont really need a worldwide announcement. We get enough of those annoying little nuggets with mythicals.

However . . .

(1) Random spawn timers: get rid of the set timers with such small windows, make them truly random. From 1 minute to 1 week after kill.

(2) Random spawn locations: able to spawn ANYWHERE within XX zones(s). This gets rid of camping locations and cycling to see if X is up. It also adds a little more danger to the world as we know it.

Now you have truly contested mobs. They can pop anywhere, anytime... and may the spoils go to the best team to take them down at a moments notice. Enjoy~

Apos · 10-13-2009, 09:29 PM

Having done contested in other games with set spawn times you could predict down to the minute, and everyone knew it, kind of reminds me that randomization is a lot better.

Picture this- avatar dies and everyone knows it'll spawn in 3 days and 2 hours. Okay great. So 4 guilds show up in 3 days and 1 hour, with about 160 people in zone. Do you think they are going to be calm, rational adults and work out a mature, even way to decide who gets the first pull? I personally don't think so. I think that they will have virulent hatred for one another, with a tank from each force spamming a blue ae right ontop of the spawn point as the minute drags close to the spawn, each one hoping to get the first hit and encounter lock it, and willfully lagging one another out and trying to grief one another. Would be good times.

This doesn't even get into the huge advantage that asian and european time people have with set timers over american. Because really, most people's raid window isn't 12 hours long. It's a few hours. Anything -after- your raid window belongs to the people that raid before you, up to the start of your raid window, because everyone has a small window and whoever raids earliest will get the bulk of the kills unless there's a completely even distribution of austrialian time, asian time, euro time, eastern time, and late pacific time guilds. Otherwise, every overnight spawn will always be killed by whoever raids earliest in the day, which is the entire point of call lists right now for contested guilds.

Gisallo · 10-13-2009, 09:52 PM

I have been thinking about this. Timetravling has said there will be contested mobs, just not Avatars. Then here is my suggestion make the spawn times Prime Time.

I was thinking about Contested avatars and found what I think is an interesting comparison in Cycling. Most know Lance Armstrong an the TdF. There is a lesser known and arguably harder race in the US known as RAAM, race across america. It goes from the Pacific to the Atlantic (obviously). Now the TdF is ALL about cycling. race 5-8 hours (sometimes just 1-3 if its a time trial) shower, massage, eat, sleep, ake up do it again.

RAAM though is as much about sleep deprivation as it is about cycling. Some riders even wear rigid neck braces in order to keep their head up when fatigue really starts setting in. People will complete the trek in as little as 8 days 5 hours (last years winner) and its about 3000 miles (a riding buddy of mine who is over 50 did it in 10 days and change and he has a "day job"). The TdF covers less distance and they do it across almost a whole month. Would anyone say though that the winner of RAAM is better than Lance, even my buddy who did more distance in 10 days? No, because its not just about how good an athlete you are, its at least as much about sleep deprivation and dealing with suffering.

How does this relate? Well right now Contesteds are as much about sleep deprivation and suffering as it is about playing skill. You could have hands down the best raiders on the server in a guild but if they want to sleep until 9am chances are they won't get a lot of pulls on a lot of servers.

I have spoken with members of 2 Avatar killing guilds and they have all said "yeah guilds A,B and C could kill them too, they just don't have a call out when they spawn." So just change this one thing. Look at the server loads and see when the most people are logged in on average. Thats when you make Avatars spawn. Don't change how they spawn or how difficult they are, just change the clock.

Gaige · 10-13-2009, 10:16 PM

Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote:

Well right now Contesteds are as much about sleep deprivation and suffering as it is about playing skill. You could have hands down the best raiders on the server in a guild but if they want to sleep until 9am chances are they won't get a lot of pulls on a lot of servers.

Maybe what, 3 servers? Most servers don't do that for avatars and haven't done that for contested since KoS, maybe earlier. There is no need. The only time any guild I've been in has used a call list was if some other guild was pulling and even then the window was small, maybe 10am to 4pm pst, with raids starting at 5pm pst. No guild I've been in since KoS has called at say 1 or 2am. The only reason we did so back then was because contested were so easy (Hurricanus) that anyone could kill it and OTHER guilds chose to show up at 2am so then we had to.

Gaige · 10-13-2009, 10:20 PM

Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote:

"yeah guilds A,B and C could kill them too, they just don't have a call out when they spawn." So just change this one thing. Look at the server loads and see when the most people are logged in on average. Thats when you make Avatars spawn. Don't change how they spawn or how difficult they are, just change the clock.

This wouldn't solve anything and it would actually cause more problems. PLENTY of avatars die during prime time. Mischief died on Unrest at 7:53pm EST yesterday. Only two guilds pulled, and most of the time everyone there stood around staring at the avatar. PLENTY of guilds didn't even come nor attempt any pulls.

Plus, as I've stated on these boards before, when my guild was killing the avatars on Unrest we routinely left them up until our 8pm EST raid time and if they spawned on Friday we'd leave them up until 8pm EST on Sunday.

Gisallo · 10-13-2009, 10:29 PM

Gage wrote:

Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote:
Well right now Contesteds are as much about sleep deprivation and suffering as it is about playing skill. You could have hands down the best raiders on the server in a guild but if they want to sleep until 9am chances are they won't get a lot of pulls on a lot of servers.
Maybe what, 3 servers? Most servers don't do that for avatars and haven't done that for contested since KoS, maybe earlier. There is no need. The only time any guild I've been in has used a call list was if some other guild was pulling and even then the window was small, maybe 10am to 4pm pst, with raids starting at 5pm pst. No guild I've been in since KoS has called at say 1 or 2am. The only reason we did so back then was because contested were so easy (Hurricanus) that anyone could kill it and OTHER guilds chose to show up at 2am so then we had to.

If I understand your argument correctly you are saying that the time the mobs spawn is irrelevant to whether they are contested at this point because they stay up well past their spawn times anymore. Lets say this is indeed the case.

Regardless, if your contention as I understand it is true, that the time is currently irrelevant, that mobs are routinely killed in Prime Time, then moving the spawn time itself to a more "prime time" slot would equally have no impact. Either the time is relevant to the contested argument or it is not. If it is relevant then an argument can be made to change it. If it is not relevant then there is no game play reason NOT to change it, other than maybe being concerned about having lots of other guilds show up and create lag issues. To me though that is the definition of contesting something, having other people show up to try and do the same thing.

As a matter of fact it could have a positive impact because it would remove an excuse for no killing avatars that some have. Right now people go QQ how many good guilds can be on line killing stuff at 5am. Now its 6pm...no excuses other than you and your guild.

Gaige · 10-13-2009, 10:35 PM

Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote:

Regardless, if your contention as I understand it is true, that the time is currently irrelevant, then moving the spawn time to a more "prime time" slot would equally have no impact. Either the time is relevant to the contested argument or it is not. If it is relevant then an argument can be made to change it. If it is not relevant then there is no game play reason NOT to change it.
As a matter of fact it could have a positive impact because it would remove an excuse for no killing avatars that some have.

Except for all of KoS The Mutagenic Outcast spawn was easily tracked up to about the minute because it was broken. Yet you hardly saw people contesting pulls then.

Or what about all the avatars that currently spawn during prime time and yet guilds do not contest them. My guild would be raiding Palace, Growth would pop, we'd leave Palace, go to Growth, kill her and then go back to Palace. Most non-avatar guilds wouldn't do that.

I don't care if they make the good avatar spawn every 3 days at 5pm EST, the evil avatar spawn every 4 days at 6pm EST and the nuetral avatar spawn every 5 days at 7pm EST. The truth is that will make it even easier for current guilds to lock them down and it will cause more problems than it creates.

The truth is the system currently works. The avatars are currently contested on most servers. What happens is the games dwindling population combined with a lot of raid guilds apathy towards the content leads to it being easier for the handful of guilds interesting in killing this content to transfer to a server where there isn't an avatar guild.

The only true way to make contested more contested is to have way more of them. In T5 it was almost impossible to lockdown contested because there were tons of them, and sometimes 5 or 6 would be up at a time and you'd have to decide which loot you wanted to go after.

SOE won't do that though, and the THREE contested in SF will be locked down almost immediately by current avatar guilds or their replacements, no matter what SOE does unless of course they instance them, defeating the purpose.

10-11-2009, 05:26 AM	#32
Pervis Loremaster Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 1,028	Serpicos@Unrest wrote: Health and Justice - Its no secret these are two of the hardest avatars. Serpicos@Unrest wrote: You still have yet to address my original posts idea's. Saying Health is one of the hardest avatars basically renders any thought you have on the subject as insignificant. People have been trying to point this out to you in this thread. Your ideas are the equivlent of a level 20 player commenting on end game heroic instances or, as used in this thread, a non crafter making comments on crafting content. At the very least, read up everything you can possibly find on avatar encounters before you try and talk about them. Pulling a few of them would be even better.

10-11-2009, 02:21 PM	#35
Gaige Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Arizona Posts: 9,500	Anashti and Justice up on Unrest going on 3 days. Growth killed by Ardent Ascension less than 24 hours after transferring after numerous pulls. What exactly have you and your guild been doing Serpicos? Oh I know, you've been working on instanced Anashti Sul. Gratz on finally killing her on the 9th. Next up some practice on Tyrannus the Dark in YIS! Perhaps after that you can try some pulls on Ozyk in MMB. After that you have plenty to work on in Miragul's still. See, that is why I don't understand your OP. Its all about how contested aren't contested (they are) and then when Confirmed folds and leaves avatars for the motivated - your guild doesn't show up. You instead spend your Friday working on Anashti Sul. So not only do you have plenty of instanced content ahead of you, you don't even show up when the easiest avatar spawns. So why are you complaining? Just to complain? Its not like your guild is motivated for avatars anyway and its not like your guild is hurting for content, you have plenty of instanced content yet to defeat. __________________

10-11-2009, 05:16 PM	#36
Bruener Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 2,010	Meirril wrote: Honestly? Contested mobs are suppose to be contested. That means if you want to kill the mob, you get their first. You pull first, and if you wipe? Someone else gets a shot while you lick your wounds and wait for them to wipe. That's the way it should be. That is the reason contested mobs should have better gear than any raid zone. Why? Because in a raid instance, you don't have to worry how many times you wipe because nobody is there to gank your target. You can take forever for the stars to align and for this one wonderful pull all those crazy ideas you have for a strat actually works and the mob goes down. For a contested mob, there is no such luxury. Your always worried that a better organized and equipped force will swoop in and take it if your the little guy new to this. Or your the older and better equipped raid force that shows up a bit slow and watches another guild pull your target and win. Anyone that tries to change what a constested mobs is...misses the entire point behind why its tougher and has the better loot. It isn't there for bragging rights. If all you care about is the "challenge" the PvP servers are over there. If your after the contested mobs, your there for the loot. Plain and simple, don't lie to yourself or others. That sounds all good and great until you actually try and "contest" a mob on a server like AB. You get more than 1 guild in a zone on AB and it is such bad lag that both guilds can spend hours getting nowhere. If SOE can't fix the more important items plague'ing this game like server lag than they should not be sinking resources into a part of gameplay that a very tiny % of people actually take advantage of. Instead move the Avatars to instances and be done with it. That way it would give that same content to many more people. Than in the future if they do implement some type of contested, DO NOT use the same encounters through 3 xpacs and make sure from the start that the gear earned matches the difficulty....and no, LAG is not difficulty. No shared loot tables for contested and much longer respawns would go a long way to actual make contested mobs contested. But first please get rid of the fricken server lag. __________________

10-11-2009, 05:56 PM	#37
Gaige Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Arizona Posts: 9,500	Bruener wrote: If SOE can't fix the more important items plague'ing this game like server lag than they should not be sinking resources into a part of gameplay that a very tiny % of people actually take advantage of. That applies to much more than just contested raid mobs. __________________

10-11-2009, 06:05 PM	#38
Tehom Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 1,171	Bruener wrote: That sounds all good and great until you actually try and "contest" a mob on a server like AB. You get more than 1 guild in a zone on AB and it is such bad lag that both guilds can spend hours getting nowhere. If SOE can't fix the more important items plague'ing this game like server lag than they should not be sinking resources into a part of gameplay that a very tiny % of people actually take advantage of. Instead move the Avatars to instances and be done with it. That way it would give that same content to many more people. Than in the future if they do implement some type of contested, DO NOT use the same encounters through 3 xpacs and make sure from the start that the gear earned matches the difficulty....and no, LAG is not difficulty. No shared loot tables for contested and much longer respawns would go a long way to actual make contested mobs contested. But first please get rid of the fricken server lag. I actually agree with this, even though we're the ones killing the avatars at the moment. The game hardware/database just doesn't support the encounters well enough at the moment. On the rare occasions where we're in an instance and there's no real lag, it's like playing an entirely different game. I actually enjoy a lot of fights that are sheer misery otherwise. Honestly, I think the problem of lag is actually understated even when people mention it. It's more than a matter of challenge, it just makes the game miserable to play even if you're winning, especially on encounters that are poorly designed for it - anything that has short-duration stuns/stifles, interrupt effects, cure-fests, etc.

10-11-2009, 05:04 AM	#31
Antipalad General Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 333	How to make contested epics truly contested: A good start would be not to reuse the same fights 3 expansions running.

10-11-2009, 05:54 AM	#33
Noob1974 Loremaster Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 240	Reading Serpicos Post the closest contestants in game to what he points out were the monolith mobs and Ghazi for the following points : 1.) To make them attackable you had to have a certain item dropped in Heroic zones and open dungeons,which made made them to some extend open to more guild for pulls. 2.) They were so easy, even casuals could kill the x4 with two groups, it only required a tank who knows how to pull them and 1 MT healer. Why are avatars still being discussed, it is very known thay they wont return in T9, that has been stated by Kiara on this forum. Probably the 3 contestants in next expansion maybe have the same diffculty as the new raidzone designs with easy,medium and hard. So there should be something for everyone. As for instanced contestants how many casuals killed Cheldrak back in the days it meant something, in EOF or now?

10-11-2009, 08:37 AM	#34
Meirril Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 3,552	Honestly? Contested mobs are suppose to be contested. That means if you want to kill the mob, you get their first. You pull first, and if you wipe? Someone else gets a shot while you lick your wounds and wait for them to wipe. That's the way it should be. That is the reason contested mobs should have better gear than any raid zone. Why? Because in a raid instance, you don't have to worry how many times you wipe because nobody is there to gank your target. You can take forever for the stars to align and for this one wonderful pull all those crazy ideas you have for a strat actually works and the mob goes down. For a contested mob, there is no such luxury. Your always worried that a better organized and equipped force will swoop in and take it if your the little guy new to this. Or your the older and better equipped raid force that shows up a bit slow and watches another guild pull your target and win. Anyone that tries to change what a constested mobs is...misses the entire point behind why its tougher and has the better loot. It isn't there for bragging rights. If all you care about is the "challenge" the PvP servers are over there. If your after the contested mobs, your there for the loot. Plain and simple, don't lie to yourself or others.

10-11-2009, 07:01 PM	#39
Gisallo Server: Lucan DLere Loremaster Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts: 1,910	Kigneer wrote: Serpicos@Unrest wrote: I have said before and will continue to say, and let me put it in bold for you CONTESTED EPICS ARE A WASTE OF PROGRAMMING TIME AND RESOURCES if it was up to me they would be elminated entirley. I wasn't QQing about I don't get any avatar pulls, the only people who really QQ about avatars are the ones that QQ so hard that they.... change servers, know anyone like that? ^^ Amen ^^ SoE doesn't even have the resources to fix the bugs in regular TSO content. How can one subset of the population take up so much resources, while the rest are put on hold for fixes? It's beyond unfair, especially how these players act and react to their very community. When I see multiple scouts looking for avatars, and see multiple guilds killing these avatars, then maybe it'll be considered even contested. Now it's a monopoly. Monopolies don't need valuable resources, those resources should go for the largest base of players, as it's their subscriptions that are paying for most content. Here we don't disagree TOO MUCH. I am not going to say if they are good or not, I just don't know about Avatars and their place in the game, whether its good or bad. Its pretty hard to tell with this. The arguments for and against them are both usually pretty logical. Then again most of the same arguments from either side can be applied to any type of content in the game, whether it be solo, persistent instance, contested instance, x2 raid, x4 raid etc, so who knows. Though from what I remember on the Test Forum regarding the now live avatar gear nerfs, there are no t-9 Avatars not the argument is largely useless to SOE I suspect. Why try to do anything with Avatars if come Febuary they will be irrelevant to the top tier of the game? Why did SOE never do anything to address this issue in the past though I think is more complicated? I know from my times on Test Server that the bulk of the people over there doing the testing and doing the bug reports are members of the higher end raid guilds, to include the Avatar Killing ones. Maybe SOE is afraid of losing their essentially free QA divison? I mean what good would a test server be to find bugs and the like if you didn't have a decent number of players that are capable of doing all of the content. I also know that most raiders in these guilds have at least 2 accounts and typically at least one of these accounts has full station access, so maybe on top of trying to keep their Quality Assurance division happy they are also looking at a minority of players that give them cash that is disproportionately high to their real numbers. All of this equates to being a minority that SOE has a vested interest in keeping happy I would suspect. The fact that EQ2 Developers are also members of Raid Guilds on Live servers can't be dismissed either when looking towards motives. The history of the EQ franchise being more raid centric than other MMO's also probably contributes to it. I know that if I did not evolve from an solo and group player to a more raid oriented player I would not be playing EQ2 at this point, I would likely be in LOTRO because there is really NO raiding over there as we would define it in EQ2, its mostly all group stuff to the point that some of the best gear in the game is crafted by players. Not saying that any of this is right or wrong mind you, it just seems to be why it is. __________________

10-11-2009, 08:04 PM	#40
Dasein Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 2,847	If you want truely contested epics, make the fights on par with easier raid encounters, but have them drop uber loot. This way, lots of guilds will be able to kill them without too much effort, but there will also be lots of motivation to kill them. If every server had a dozen or more guilds capable of taking down these mobs, you'd see tons of competition for them. Of course, this would also lead to lots of lag, lots of customer service issues and I think EQ2Flames would crash because of the increased load, but you'd have real contested mobs. __________________ Troll Lord Casywdian

10-11-2009, 08:13 PM	#41
Gaige Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Arizona Posts: 9,500	Dasein wrote: If you want truely contested epics, make the fights on par with easier raid encounters, but have them drop uber loot. This way, lots of guilds will be able to kill them without too much effort, but there will also be lots of motivation to kill them. If every server had a dozen or more guilds capable of taking down these mobs, you'd see tons of competition for them. Of course, this would also lead to lots of lag, lots of customer service issues and I think EQ2Flames would crash because of the increased load, but you'd have real contested mobs. Or it'd be like the Domini, and players like Daray would two box them. __________________

10-13-2009, 01:36 PM	#42
Pins General Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 3,040	Atan@Unrest wrote: Serpicos@Unrest wrote: Finally we have been discussing the pro's and cons of pulling the avatars and the biggest question is. Is it worth our time to pull the mobs and learn the strats and MABYE get some kills before some other guild transfers over and locks them all down for the reasons I listed above or is it better to work on mobs that although they may be harder will always be available to us? We have strats for alot of the avatars. I'll let you in on what seems to be a closely guarded secret or something... It's just two words. "test copy" I have an easier solution: http://lithin.com/index.php?option=....y&catid=2:news __________________ Calaglin, Former Illusionist/Guild Leader of Dissolution on Nektulos Calaglin, Former Illusionist/Guild Leader of Confirmed on Unrest

10-13-2009, 02:14 PM	#43
Yimway Loremaster Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 9,707	Pinski wrote: Atan@Unrest wrote: We have strats for alot of the avatars. I'll let you in on what seems to be a closely guarded secret or something... It's just two words. "test copy" I have an easier solution: http://lithin.com/index.php?option=....y&catid=2:news Info certainly helps, but getting people not used to these scripts to be able to run them doing so on a less laggy, less prone to ridicule environment (test server) is a good place to get your feet wet. Nice link though __________________

10-13-2009, 08:16 PM	#44
Valdaglerion Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 3,870	Serpicos@Unrest wrote: For the most part 1 guild has Epic mobs on lockdown. These mobs arn't truly contested they are just "extra" mobs and loot for the resident uberguild. There are a number of reasons behind this generally speaking. 1) Practice, once dominince is gained its nearly impposible to get practice pulling the contested mobs. So even when you beat the resident uberguild to the punch your unlikely to get enouph pulls to beat it. 2) Random spawn timers: Many uberguilds have (or at least start with) call lists so they can get their members on to kill mobs when its not a normal raid time. Since most other guilds don't (and wont) do this thats extra/uncontested pulls/kills 3) Camping: This goes along with the random spawn timers, you generally have to camp alts, and cycle through the locations of Epic pops, then you try to keep it a secret as long as possible for your raid to assemble and kill the mob. How to create a true race. Here are my suggestions on how to create a true race for contested mobs. 1) The Avatar of Training (or whatever): A guild hall amenity that lets your guild zone into its own private instance, in this instance you can have a mob that acts is exactly the same way as any avatar you would like. Same AE's same debuff's ect. It doesn't drop any loot, its just for practice. So you can fight that as many times as you want till you feel your ready. 2) Serverwide announcements: When an avatar pops announce it server wide. Then every guild that thinks they can kill it (because they have practiced with the training avatar) can race to the avatar and try to pull/kill it first. 3) Rotating as opposed to random spawns: So as not to screw the people in different time zones, first avatar pops at 1pm, next one pops at 3pm next one at 5pm ect ect all the way around the clock. I look forward to comments and critiques. The solution is actually much easier. . . Firstly - no to the contested trainer thing, its contested for a reason. Practicing 24x7 just without a loot table isnt really a good thing IMO. Dont really need a worldwide announcement. We get enough of those annoying little nuggets with mythicals. However . . . (1) Random spawn timers: get rid of the set timers with such small windows, make them truly random. From 1 minute to 1 week after kill. (2) Random spawn locations: able to spawn ANYWHERE within XX zones(s). This gets rid of camping locations and cycling to see if X is up. It also adds a little more danger to the world as we know it. Now you have truly contested mobs. They can pop anywhere, anytime... and may the spoils go to the best team to take them down at a moments notice. Enjoy~

10-13-2009, 09:29 PM	#45
Apos Loremaster Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 63	Having done contested in other games with set spawn times you could predict down to the minute, and everyone knew it, kind of reminds me that randomization is a lot better. Picture this- avatar dies and everyone knows it'll spawn in 3 days and 2 hours. Okay great. So 4 guilds show up in 3 days and 1 hour, with about 160 people in zone. Do you think they are going to be calm, rational adults and work out a mature, even way to decide who gets the first pull? I personally don't think so. I think that they will have virulent hatred for one another, with a tank from each force spamming a blue ae right ontop of the spawn point as the minute drags close to the spawn, each one hoping to get the first hit and encounter lock it, and willfully lagging one another out and trying to grief one another. Would be good times. This doesn't even get into the huge advantage that asian and european time people have with set timers over american. Because really, most people's raid window isn't 12 hours long. It's a few hours. Anything -after- your raid window belongs to the people that raid before you, up to the start of your raid window, because everyone has a small window and whoever raids earliest will get the bulk of the kills unless there's a completely even distribution of austrialian time, asian time, euro time, eastern time, and late pacific time guilds. Otherwise, every overnight spawn will always be killed by whoever raids earliest in the day, which is the entire point of call lists right now for contested guilds.

10-13-2009, 09:52 PM	#46
Gisallo Server: Lucan DLere Loremaster Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts: 1,910	I have been thinking about this. Timetravling has said there will be contested mobs, just not Avatars. Then here is my suggestion make the spawn times Prime Time. I was thinking about Contested avatars and found what I think is an interesting comparison in Cycling. Most know Lance Armstrong an the TdF. There is a lesser known and arguably harder race in the US known as RAAM, race across america. It goes from the Pacific to the Atlantic (obviously). Now the TdF is ALL about cycling. race 5-8 hours (sometimes just 1-3 if its a time trial) shower, massage, eat, sleep, ake up do it again. RAAM though is as much about sleep deprivation as it is about cycling. Some riders even wear rigid neck braces in order to keep their head up when fatigue really starts setting in. People will complete the trek in as little as 8 days 5 hours (last years winner) and its about 3000 miles (a riding buddy of mine who is over 50 did it in 10 days and change and he has a "day job"). The TdF covers less distance and they do it across almost a whole month. Would anyone say though that the winner of RAAM is better than Lance, even my buddy who did more distance in 10 days? No, because its not just about how good an athlete you are, its at least as much about sleep deprivation and dealing with suffering. How does this relate? Well right now Contesteds are as much about sleep deprivation and suffering as it is about playing skill. You could have hands down the best raiders on the server in a guild but if they want to sleep until 9am chances are they won't get a lot of pulls on a lot of servers. I have spoken with members of 2 Avatar killing guilds and they have all said "yeah guilds A,B and C could kill them too, they just don't have a call out when they spawn." So just change this one thing. Look at the server loads and see when the most people are logged in on average. Thats when you make Avatars spawn. Don't change how they spawn or how difficult they are, just change the clock. __________________

10-13-2009, 10:16 PM	#47
Gaige Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Arizona Posts: 9,500	Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote: Well right now Contesteds are as much about sleep deprivation and suffering as it is about playing skill. You could have hands down the best raiders on the server in a guild but if they want to sleep until 9am chances are they won't get a lot of pulls on a lot of servers. Maybe what, 3 servers? Most servers don't do that for avatars and haven't done that for contested since KoS, maybe earlier. There is no need. The only time any guild I've been in has used a call list was if some other guild was pulling and even then the window was small, maybe 10am to 4pm pst, with raids starting at 5pm pst. No guild I've been in since KoS has called at say 1 or 2am. The only reason we did so back then was because contested were so easy (Hurricanus) that anyone could kill it and OTHER guilds chose to show up at 2am so then we had to. __________________

10-13-2009, 10:20 PM	#48
Gaige Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Arizona Posts: 9,500	Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote: "yeah guilds A,B and C could kill them too, they just don't have a call out when they spawn." So just change this one thing. Look at the server loads and see when the most people are logged in on average. Thats when you make Avatars spawn. Don't change how they spawn or how difficult they are, just change the clock. This wouldn't solve anything and it would actually cause more problems. PLENTY of avatars die during prime time. Mischief died on Unrest at 7:53pm EST yesterday. Only two guilds pulled, and most of the time everyone there stood around staring at the avatar. PLENTY of guilds didn't even come nor attempt any pulls. Plus, as I've stated on these boards before, when my guild was killing the avatars on Unrest we routinely left them up until our 8pm EST raid time and if they spawned on Friday we'd leave them up until 8pm EST on Sunday. __________________

10-13-2009, 10:29 PM	#49
Gisallo Server: Lucan DLere Loremaster Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts: 1,910	Gage wrote: Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote: Well right now Contesteds are as much about sleep deprivation and suffering as it is about playing skill. You could have hands down the best raiders on the server in a guild but if they want to sleep until 9am chances are they won't get a lot of pulls on a lot of servers. Maybe what, 3 servers? Most servers don't do that for avatars and haven't done that for contested since KoS, maybe earlier. There is no need. The only time any guild I've been in has used a call list was if some other guild was pulling and even then the window was small, maybe 10am to 4pm pst, with raids starting at 5pm pst. No guild I've been in since KoS has called at say 1 or 2am. The only reason we did so back then was because contested were so easy (Hurricanus) that anyone could kill it and OTHER guilds chose to show up at 2am so then we had to. If I understand your argument correctly you are saying that the time the mobs spawn is irrelevant to whether they are contested at this point because they stay up well past their spawn times anymore. Lets say this is indeed the case. Regardless, if your contention as I understand it is true, that the time is currently irrelevant, that mobs are routinely killed in Prime Time, then moving the spawn time itself to a more "prime time" slot would equally have no impact. Either the time is relevant to the contested argument or it is not. If it is relevant then an argument can be made to change it. If it is not relevant then there is no game play reason NOT to change it, other than maybe being concerned about having lots of other guilds show up and create lag issues. To me though that is the definition of contesting something, having other people show up to try and do the same thing. As a matter of fact it could have a positive impact because it would remove an excuse for no killing avatars that some have. Right now people go QQ how many good guilds can be on line killing stuff at 5am. Now its 6pm...no excuses other than you and your guild. __________________

10-13-2009, 10:35 PM	#50
Gaige Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Arizona Posts: 9,500	Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote: Regardless, if your contention as I understand it is true, that the time is currently irrelevant, then moving the spawn time to a more "prime time" slot would equally have no impact. Either the time is relevant to the contested argument or it is not. If it is relevant then an argument can be made to change it. If it is not relevant then there is no game play reason NOT to change it. As a matter of fact it could have a positive impact because it would remove an excuse for no killing avatars that some have. Except for all of KoS The Mutagenic Outcast spawn was easily tracked up to about the minute because it was broken. Yet you hardly saw people contesting pulls then. Or what about all the avatars that currently spawn during prime time and yet guilds do not contest them. My guild would be raiding Palace, Growth would pop, we'd leave Palace, go to Growth, kill her and then go back to Palace. Most non-avatar guilds wouldn't do that. I don't care if they make the good avatar spawn every 3 days at 5pm EST, the evil avatar spawn every 4 days at 6pm EST and the nuetral avatar spawn every 5 days at 7pm EST. The truth is that will make it even easier for current guilds to lock them down and it will cause more problems than it creates. The truth is the system currently works. The avatars are currently contested on most servers. What happens is the games dwindling population combined with a lot of raid guilds apathy towards the content leads to it being easier for the handful of guilds interesting in killing this content to transfer to a server where there isn't an avatar guild. The only true way to make contested more contested is to have way more of them. In T5 it was almost impossible to lockdown contested because there were tons of them, and sometimes 5 or 6 would be up at a time and you'd have to decide which loot you wanted to go after. SOE won't do that though, and the THREE contested in SF will be locked down almost immediately by current avatar guilds or their replacements, no matter what SOE does unless of course they instance them, defeating the purpose. __________________