Elite Merc's - Rare or Virtually Non-Existant

Johnnyteatime · 05-14-2012, 09:33 PM

So I did some digging and from what I have learned I would say Rare Elite Mercs really are Non-Existant Mercs.How did I come to this conclusion?1. Using data.soe.com I see where 397 characters out of the 956,391 characters have the achievement "Lookie What I Found" That is a find rate of .04% so to call them rare would be an over statement lets call them almost extinct.

2. There are roughly 13 servers that averages out to about 30.5 mercs per server have been found since they were introduced.3. As an experiment our guild decided to pick an elite merc and hunt for him, we chose Kenny and we camped 15 toons across 15 locations across Nektolous. Each toon had tracking for max find effect. We have been at it now 24 hours x4 days and counting. We plan to do this for 2 weeks. In addition to our 15 tracking locations (2 locaions include where people have reported finding Kenny) we have random scouting patrols going every hour giving us coverage of every part of the zone not covered by tracking. Since Friday nothing has spawned. There is a slight chance he popped and we missed it but highly doubtful. So if 15 - 17 people camping an entire zone 24/7 can not find him the odds of an average player find him are slim to none and slim just left town.4. Gninja stated that he would put them in locations that were easier to find, I am sorry but I disagree with this comment. We found the Brigand in SBH, I can tell you for a fact without a flying mount there is no way anyone would have found her at the location she spawned. So you have a level 70 - 80 zone with a Merc in a location that requires a flying mount, which requires you to be level 85 or higher to use. Without a flying mount there is no way you could have found her nor any way you could have gotten to her from what I could see. We also had track running.. however she appeared for just a split second on track as we flew by if we would have blinked at that moment we would have missed it.

5. Gninja also stated they would be made more pronounced so you could see them better. Again I call him on this one, first she was only about the size of a dark elf when she spawns. She was also in a very hard to see location and not in a location anyone would be running past. The ONLY way you could have seen her would have been by pure accident and ONLY if you had a flying mount. She was NOT huge like you see in all the posted pictures, she only becomes big once you equip her and then summon her. So again if she was supposed to be more pronounced why shrink her down from her normal size at spawn? All this time we have been looking for a much larger NPC like folks have been posting.6. Our guild is doing a 2 week experiment of intense searching to see how many times these things spawn. But based on what we are seeing and the data received from our querry we are guessing maybe 1 to 2 spawns per month at best. The rare merc thing seems to be more a bait and switch to keep you paying and playing in hopes of finding one. For most players sadly this will be a false hope with a less then 1% chance of finding one.

We will keep you posted on our guilds progress camping and searching for these "Nearly Non-Existent Mercs" Those of you that are playing the game in hopes of ever finding one I would say your time would be better spent doing something else ATM. I really think SOE / Gninja need to look at upping the discover rate to at least 3 - 5% that is rare IMO. When only .04% of the player base has found and item after months of play that is virtualy non-existent not "Rare".

ReddyKY · 05-14-2012, 10:09 PM

Johnnyteatime wrote:

So I did some digging and from what I have learned I would say Rare Elite Mercs really are Non-Existant Mercs.How did I come to this conclusion?1. Using data.soe.com I see where 397 characters out of the 956,391 characters have the achievement "Lookie What I Found"   That is a find rate of .04% so to call them rare would be an over statement lets call them almost extinct.
2. There are roughly 13 servers that averages out to about 30.5 mercs per server have been found since they were introduced.3. As an experiment our guild decided to pick an elite merc and hunt for him, we chose Kenny and we camped 15 toons across 15 locations across Nektolous.   Each toon had tracking for max find effect. We have been at it now 24 hours x4 days and counting. We plan to do this for 2 weeks.    In addition to our 15 tracking locations (2 locaions include where people have reported finding Kenny) we have random scouting patrols going every hour giving us coverage of every part of the zone not covered by tracking. Since Friday nothing has spawned. There is a slight chance he popped and we missed it but highly doubtful. So if 15 - 17 people camping an entire zone 24/7 can not find him the odds of an average player find him are slim to none and slim just left town.4. Gninja stated that he would put them in locations that were easier to find, I am sorry but I disagree with this comment. We found the Brigand in SBH, I can tell you for a fact without a flying mount there is no way anyone would have found her at the location she spawned.   So you have a level 70 - 80 zone with a Merc in a location that requires a flying mount, which requires you to be level 85 or higher to use.   Without a flying mount there is no way you could have found her nor any way you could have gotten to her from what I could see. We also had track running.. however she appeared for just a split second on track as we flew by if we would have blinked at that moment we would have missed it.
5. Gninja also stated they would be made more pronounced so you could see them better. Again I call him on this one, first she was only about the size of a dark elf when she spawns. She was also in a very hard to see location and not in a location anyone would be running past. The ONLY way you could have seen her would have been by pure accident and ONLY if you had a flying mount.   She was NOT huge like you see in all the posted pictures, she only becomes big once you equip her and then summon her.   So again if she was supposed to be more pronounced why shrink her down from her normal size at spawn?   All this time we have been looking for a much larger NPC like folks have been posting.6. Our guild is doing a 2 week experiment of intense searching to see how many times these things spawn. But based on what we are seeing and the data received from our querry we are guessing maybe 1 to 2 spawns per month at best. The rare merc thing seems to be more a bait and switch to keep you paying and playing in hopes of finding one. For most players sadly this will be a false hope with a less then 1% chance of finding one.
We will keep you posted on our guilds progress camping and searching for these "Nearly Non-Existent Mercs" Those of you that are playing the game in hopes of ever finding one I would say your time would be better spent doing something else ATM. I really think SOE / Gninja need to look at upping the discover rate to at least 3 - 5% that is rare IMO. When only .04% of the player base has found and item after months of play that is virtualy non-existent not "Rare".

You are comparing the wrong thing. You need to compare the rate of people who have actually looked versus the rate they have been found.

Plus, these were never meant to found as much as stumbled upon. Hence once of the reasons, I suppose, that Zam has deleted the locs.

We need more super rare things that make you go "wow" when you get it. Not less.

Johnnyteatime · 05-14-2012, 10:29 PM

That is why we are doing a two part experiment, one we look at the raw data as that is neutral..that shows us that only .04% of player base has an elite merc period there is nothing to argue about there.Step two: We check for ourselves with massive over kill what people are actually complaining about. I have read a lot of posts by players that are frustrated they can not find a "Rare Item" Well the number above tells me that part of the problem is they are non-existent.Next we take it a step further as a EM / HM Raid Equiped Guild we want to test just how hard is it for a casual player to actually find one is it reasonable? We are going hard core balls-to-the-wall to find out. We flooded the zone with players in every area of the zone and we have track enabled. Then we run patrols on top of that, after 4 - 24 hour days of this nothing has yet to appear. For players like you that think wow that is fun, something that is so rare very few if any will ever have a chance of finding this item that may be fun but in an economy where folks are scaling back and debating gee where can I have fun for 15 bucks. I can play a game where I have a .04% chance of getting an item i want or I can put my 15 bucks in another game like xyz because at least there I have a chance of completing something.Lets look at DoV as example 2, the content in EM / HM Drunder EoW and PoW is so hard very few if any guilds have completed it. To make it a challange is one thing, I agree it should be a challange but when you see how few guilds actually every compelted the "Challenge" because it is almost impossible or where the content is so hard that only 1 guild on all servers has achieved it makes the content unplayable and not-fun. What is the point of creating content so hard that either No Guild has unlocked / defeated it or putting items in game that are so ultra rare that there is no point even trying to find it because the odd's are against it.Then you release the 2nd half of the xpac and negate the gear in the entire first half of the xpac. We have lost half our guild members with GU63 and we have not even compelted all of the HM content in the first half. Partly because we were unable to as it was just to hard. There are also several encounters along that way in EM that were harder then HM encounters and the gear was not worth the effort so we skipped it.Sure, I expect trolls to attack anything anyone posts on here. But if you create content that is unatainable... IE raids, Quest items or rare finds that have a .04 percent chance of being found then you will lose subscriptions and everyone loses because the game does not have enough subcriptions to keep the people employed. People are just not going to pay 15 dollars a month to be frustrated by content that can not be found nor defeated. Sure the 1% of the ultra hard core, living with mom and dad, with no steady job MMOers will still be there when they turn out the lights but there are not enough of them to cover the cost of running one server much less keeping the game alive. I make very few posts because most are dismissed or trolled, but I am a business man and at the end of the day all MMO's are a business if there is no money the business closes. Sony is taking massive losses world wide right now. Europe is slipping back into recession, Asia is slowing and the USA may be back in recesion by the 3rd quarter. If people vote with their wallets and leave then the game ends. So me personally I dont think raising the bar from .04% to 3% - 5% is unreasonable nor is a 5% find rate making the item so that everyone in game has one heck we are talking 5% of the player base that is not unreasonable. Only a hard core nut that wants to see the game closed down would see it that way.People do not pay 15 dollars a month to look at other peoples ultra ultra rare loot and go Ooooooohhh they pay so that they too can have a chance of finding it.. did you hear me I said a chance.... Right now I have to agree with those that are complaining .04% is to low a find rate...... Just food for thought in our troubled economic times.

Haapy · 05-15-2012, 12:06 AM

I think you are wrong in your calculations and reasoning. Going by example of my guild, 99% of its characters have never looked for rare mercs. Between my 3 accounts, I have around 30 alts, not one looked for rare merc. Your raw data is not neutral. I mean, if we extrapolate MY experience, then about 10% of people that ever looked, got their elite merc.

Rarity of this specific event has absolutely no impact on whether or not someone is going to continue playing the game. I really do not see someone quitting over this. In WoW, for example, there are FAR rarer items (mounts and vanity pets) to be found and collected and they do not hurt their subs in the slightest.

At this time, eq2 is probably the biggest game for the buck out there. There is more content available for a freebie acount than ALL other games have in their entirety. Also, the game commonly gives specials through double and triple SC days where you can grab $7 and $5 monthly gold membership, or even an annual one for something like $30 of Wally cards. I do not believe there is another AAA title that can boast anything like that.

Brigh · 05-15-2012, 01:51 AM

Did we really need another elite merc thread discussing the same thing?

Sinnous · 05-15-2012, 10:11 AM

So not trying to say they aren't super rare. BUT I got Matri Dut on my warlock quite easily. Was killing greungech in SBH on that mountain thingy and she was at the top waiting for my 30P. Was a pretty epic moment that wouldv'e been cheapend by it being easy. She is unbelieveable but she is in fact so crazy good that I don't think I want everyone running around with her. Only the people who have the luck to find her. And lets face it. Anything that is rare is really supposed to be about luck. Having a 3-5% chance of finding her doesn't necessarily mean you will because that also assumes that you are in the right place at the right time and someone else doesn't grab her in that 3-5% chance.

MrWolfie · 05-15-2012, 12:26 PM

ReddyKY wrote:

You need to compare the rate of people who have actually looked versus the rate they have been found.

QFE.

I found the one in SF within 5 minutes of deciding to look for it. Experiences differ.

><> · 05-15-2012, 01:01 PM

I found Kenny twice within one week of each other.

Koleg · 05-15-2012, 02:01 PM

I got the chest piece & Weapon both on my first Ring War PQ ...

Ahlana · 05-15-2012, 02:43 PM

Koleg@Unrest_old wrote:

I got the chest piece & Weapon both on my first Ring War PQ ...

My coercer seriously did lol and I was not high enough to wear them yet SMILEY My assassin never got the weapon.

That said I have also found Kenny twice in a single week (seems easiest after a patch). And I have found Matri twice. One of my other guildmates also found matri after me.. So we are trending on Naggy with our rare mercs I guess! Then again everyone I know that has actually looked has found them eventually. Best time seems to be after a patch, not sure if they come up with the server or if it has just been dumb luck.

faydh · 05-15-2012, 04:18 PM

nice to know about other peoples luck. would love to see some loc on where they do spawn. i have been looking and payed with SC for track scrolls since they first came out and not seen one of them ever.

Johnnyteatime · 05-15-2012, 04:20 PM

I think this thread is a bit deeper then just merc's if you read my OP above. With GU63 we lost half our guild mates and based on the number of guilds shouting in general for new members I am guessing they did too. I was just looking at the number and seeing a very low number of mercs found for the time they have been out and the number of posts folks have been. I also know that since we can not raid right now our giuld is trying to find a merc for the hell of it. and we are picking on kenny as of Day 5 - 16 players have not been able to find him nor see him spawn even after the server reboot this morning. So just saying its great some folks find them fast but if you were a player that woke up one day like we did and just said hell I want to find a merc.. Given that 16 players activly camping on day 5 have not found him just not sure what the luck would be of a solo person... At any rate just doing this for the heck of it and will keep folks posted on what day we actually find him...

faydh · 05-15-2012, 04:24 PM

Thank you Johnny

Gninja · 05-15-2012, 05:12 PM

Looking through logs I can assure you that all 3 rare mercs are spawning and being hired. Some are being hired very quickly after they spawn and some are staying up for hours and in some cases a day or two (low populated servers typically)

The thing about these guys that makes them more rare is their respawn timers persist through server resets. This means just because you are in the zone and tracking when the servers come back up does not mean it's going to be there every time.

We are seeing in our logs players are hiring them every day across the servers so we know they are spawning. The number of spawn points most of them have makes it extremely difficult to cover the entire zone and find them. Especially more difficult for Kenny seeing as how it is Nektulos Forest.

Another thing to keep in mind is while you only see a certain number of achievements for having found these some players have their eq2player feeds turned off so you wouldn't see those updates.

Out of curiosity what server are you on looking for him?

gourdon · 05-15-2012, 05:16 PM

Sinnous wrote:

So not trying to say they aren't super rare. BUT I got Matri Dut on my warlock quite easily. Was killing greungech in SBH on that mountain thingy and she was at the top waiting for my 30P. Was a pretty epic moment that wouldv'e been cheapend by it being easy. She is unbelieveable but she is in fact so crazy good that I don't think I want everyone running around with her. Only the people who have the luck to find her. And lets face it. Anything that is rare is really supposed to be about luck. Having a 3-5% chance of finding her doesn't necessarily mean you will because that also assumes that you are in the right place at the right time and someone else doesn't grab her in that 3-5% chance.

You've gone and confused unlikely with difficult. Finding Matri Dut was easy, just not likely.

I agree with the original poster that essentially playing a lottery is not fun. There should be some way to do something in game to increase your chance of finding a particular elite mercenary by having done the right quests or having completed the right achievements. Waiting to be in the right place at the right time is the worst way to make it rare.

Johnnyteatime · 05-15-2012, 05:25 PM

We have been hunting him for the past 5 days. One of us happend to fly through SBH and found the Brig Elite but we were not really trying to find one at the time it was just dumb luck and based on her location my guess is she was up for a while before we found her.But as an experiment we are trying Kenny just to see how long it actually takes a ton of folks to find him...

Gninja · 05-15-2012, 06:07 PM

Well, I logged in to say hello and saw 19 people in the zone all afk SMILEY I did notice that Kenny was up too.

Johnnyteatime · 05-15-2012, 06:13 PM

Hey we saw you shouting.. we were talking on skype but we did not see kenny even though we were on patrol when you were shouting in zone.. however nothing is showing was on track so this goes to the point that he is in a location that is very very very very hard to find

Gninja · 05-15-2012, 06:14 PM

He was up when I was there roughly 10min ago from this post.

faydh · 05-15-2012, 06:15 PM

i know it is against your secret policy.

But i realy wish you guys would post some loc. I do not know of anyone on Splitpaw who got Kenny so no indsider info here. I'm starting to get so annoyed by looking in wain for this guy it starts to affect my gaming exp in negativ direktion.

Johnnyteatime · 05-15-2012, 06:18 PM

Ya we found him its interesting, how close he was to one of our toons and was just out of track range we sent all 19 folks in all directions looking its so dam interesting how close like 20 meters to the right for one guy and it showed up

Dethdlr · 05-15-2012, 06:45 PM

I have to agree with a few of the others here that it's good to have some rare things in the game. Makes it that much more special when you actually manage to get one of those rare things.It sounds as though even if Kenny is up, he's not an easy little bugger to find. You may be looking for him 24x7 but apparently, not in the right places. Try doing Speak as a Dragon or Knights in the Round from the Swords of Destiny questline without a write up or any /loc information. Those things will take you ages to find. Eventually though, the locations required in those quests became known and shared and they became considerably easier to find. I'm sure that eventually the same will happen with the rare mercs. But for now, since a lot of people are still keeping the info to themselves on where they found them, they're going to remain really hard to find.

P.S.: The rare mercs have now been discovered by 415 people in the data feeds. Which means that in the last 25 hours, including the scheduled downtime, at least 18 more characters have hired a rare merc.

faydh · 05-15-2012, 06:57 PM

Well i for my part is done looking. No more wasted nights for me, this night has been the last straw for me. I got way more exciting things to do in RL than looking for something i can't find in a more and more stupid game.

Kinvore · 05-15-2012, 07:00 PM

Can I have your plat?

Johnnyteatime · 05-15-2012, 07:03 PM

I plan on starting a forum posting in the next week or so on locations I am learning about. With 20 locations per zone roughly according to the dev's yes a couple wont be much help. The other thing is yes they are tough to see you want to make sure you have your grapics turned up a bit you dont need to be as high as Balanced but the higher you are able to turn them up the better.

Kenazeer · 05-15-2012, 09:47 PM

faydh wrote:

Well i for my part is done looking. No more wasted nights for me, this night has been the last straw for me. I got way more exciting things to do in RL than looking for something i can't find in a more and more stupid game.

So you are quitting because you couldn't do it...yet? Do you do that with all the obstacles you encounter, or do you only tackle ones that you are sure you can best pretty quickly?

Johnnyteatime · 05-15-2012, 11:10 PM

I would not be discouraged you will find them, and I plan on doing a really nice write up for the community on everything I have learned about them... Even if you know their loc's there are 20 per zone or so. That will help you not to miss a location but even then they are very hard to spot. So it is really easy to miss them..But the two we have found are pretty neat. You kind of think of them as your little buddy. I want to spend another week hunting them so that I write up something helpful and not something that is not useful for folks.

convict · 05-15-2012, 11:33 PM

Brigh wrote:

Did we really need another elite merc thread discussing the same thing?

This

Kronlin · 05-15-2012, 11:48 PM

I find this very suspicious that the elite merc Kenny spawned right after Gninja wanted to know what server johnnyteatime was on especially after his group had been looking 24 hours for a few days.

Johnnyteatime · 05-16-2012, 12:02 AM

I did not get the feeling he was being sneaky he gave me a lot of tips for finding them that I will post. It is possible we missed him so we will be using his suggestions to see if we have better luck over the next 72 hours. If we do then we will post all the locs we and others have reported along with a bunch of tips learned on our own and from the GM's. (We had 15 to 19 toons in zone and running normal patrols I mean it may have been possble we missed him but the next 72 hours should tell us if we have a better method for finding them)But that was the point of my original thread the Devs are always in a tough spot of finding a balance between making something a challange, making it to hard or making it to simple. In the case of DoV some encounters were way over challanged an very few if anyone could complete them and then the reward didnt even match the challange. Many raid encounters never were even completed by anyone or very few guilds. Also the gear progression didnt stack correctly.. So if you want from Rygorr to X2, to EM to HM with X2 gear many EM encounters were not do able without some HM gear.. as an example. Then many HM encounters could not even be done by anyone. I know on our server no one prior to 63 compelted HM Idol etc.

Then GU63 came out and the quest gear is better then raid gear negating the first half of the xpac.. So again I am not trying to flame anyone but just offer opinions and thoughts on things to keep a good balance in game so that folks do not leave and we have good populated servers to play on. Things like limiting mercs to one spawn zone was a huge recent good step and should help folks a lot because they are hard enough to find in one zone much less 2 or 3 Also you want to always keep in mind you can not build the game for the 1% of hard cores that only raid. IMO you should not have content that either no one or only 1 maybe 2 raids at best can complete if they are lucky. The idea is the game needs to be doable and much of the first half of DoV just plain was not.

05-14-2012, 10:09 PM	#2
ReddyKY Loremaster Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 79	Johnnyteatime wrote: So I did some digging and from what I have learned I would say Rare Elite Mercs really are Non-Existant Mercs.How did I come to this conclusion?1. Using data.soe.com I see where 397 characters out of the 956,391 characters have the achievement "Lookie What I Found" That is a find rate of .04% so to call them rare would be an over statement lets call them almost extinct. 2. There are roughly 13 servers that averages out to about 30.5 mercs per server have been found since they were introduced.3. As an experiment our guild decided to pick an elite merc and hunt for him, we chose Kenny and we camped 15 toons across 15 locations across Nektolous. Each toon had tracking for max find effect. We have been at it now 24 hours x4 days and counting. We plan to do this for 2 weeks. In addition to our 15 tracking locations (2 locaions include where people have reported finding Kenny) we have random scouting patrols going every hour giving us coverage of every part of the zone not covered by tracking. Since Friday nothing has spawned. There is a slight chance he popped and we missed it but highly doubtful. So if 15 - 17 people camping an entire zone 24/7 can not find him the odds of an average player find him are slim to none and slim just left town.4. Gninja stated that he would put them in locations that were easier to find, I am sorry but I disagree with this comment. We found the Brigand in SBH, I can tell you for a fact without a flying mount there is no way anyone would have found her at the location she spawned. So you have a level 70 - 80 zone with a Merc in a location that requires a flying mount, which requires you to be level 85 or higher to use. Without a flying mount there is no way you could have found her nor any way you could have gotten to her from what I could see. We also had track running.. however she appeared for just a split second on track as we flew by if we would have blinked at that moment we would have missed it. 5. Gninja also stated they would be made more pronounced so you could see them better. Again I call him on this one, first she was only about the size of a dark elf when she spawns. She was also in a very hard to see location and not in a location anyone would be running past. The ONLY way you could have seen her would have been by pure accident and ONLY if you had a flying mount. She was NOT huge like you see in all the posted pictures, she only becomes big once you equip her and then summon her. So again if she was supposed to be more pronounced why shrink her down from her normal size at spawn? All this time we have been looking for a much larger NPC like folks have been posting.6. Our guild is doing a 2 week experiment of intense searching to see how many times these things spawn. But based on what we are seeing and the data received from our querry we are guessing maybe 1 to 2 spawns per month at best. The rare merc thing seems to be more a bait and switch to keep you paying and playing in hopes of finding one. For most players sadly this will be a false hope with a less then 1% chance of finding one. We will keep you posted on our guilds progress camping and searching for these "Nearly Non-Existent Mercs" Those of you that are playing the game in hopes of ever finding one I would say your time would be better spent doing something else ATM. I really think SOE / Gninja need to look at upping the discover rate to at least 3 - 5% that is rare IMO. When only .04% of the player base has found and item after months of play that is virtualy non-existent not "Rare". You are comparing the wrong thing. You need to compare the rate of people who have actually looked versus the rate they have been found. Plus, these were never meant to found as much as stumbled upon. Hence once of the reasons, I suppose, that Zam has deleted the locs. We need more super rare things that make you go "wow" when you get it. Not less.

05-15-2012, 01:51 AM	#5
Brigh Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 3,159	Did we really need another elite merc thread discussing the same thing? __________________ Anything you can achieve through hard work, you can also just buy. -Stephen Colbert CoD3 double XP Rank Up promotion lesson for kids

05-15-2012, 12:26 PM	#7
MrWolfie Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Agent of Chaos Guildhall, North Qeynos, Splitpaw. Posts: 1,239	ReddyKY wrote: You need to compare the rate of people who have actually looked versus the rate they have been found. QFE. I found the one in SF within 5 minutes of deciding to look for it. Experiences differ. __________________

05-15-2012, 02:43 PM	#10
Ahlana Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 2,238	Koleg@Unrest_old wrote: I got the chest piece & Weapon both on my first Ring War PQ ... My coercer seriously did lol and I was not high enough to wear them yet My assassin never got the weapon. That said I have also found Kenny twice in a single week (seems easiest after a patch). And I have found Matri twice. One of my other guildmates also found matri after me.. So we are trending on Naggy with our rare mercs I guess! Then again everyone I know that has actually looked has found them eventually. Best time seems to be after a patch, not sure if they come up with the server or if it has just been dumb luck. __________________

05-15-2012, 05:16 PM	#15
gourdon Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 632	Sinnous wrote: So not trying to say they aren't super rare. BUT I got Matri Dut on my warlock quite easily. Was killing greungech in SBH on that mountain thingy and she was at the top waiting for my 30P. Was a pretty epic moment that wouldv'e been cheapend by it being easy. She is unbelieveable but she is in fact so crazy good that I don't think I want everyone running around with her. Only the people who have the luck to find her. And lets face it. Anything that is rare is really supposed to be about luck. Having a 3-5% chance of finding her doesn't necessarily mean you will because that also assumes that you are in the right place at the right time and someone else doesn't grab her in that 3-5% chance. You've gone and confused unlikely with difficult. Finding Matri Dut was easy, just not likely. I agree with the original poster that essentially playing a lottery is not fun. There should be some way to do something in game to increase your chance of finding a particular elite mercenary by having done the right quests or having completed the right achievements. Waiting to be in the right place at the right time is the worst way to make it rare. __________________

05-14-2012, 09:33 PM	#1
Johnnyteatime Lord Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 43	So I did some digging and from what I have learned I would say Rare Elite Mercs really are Non-Existant Mercs.How did I come to this conclusion?1. Using data.soe.com I see where 397 characters out of the 956,391 characters have the achievement "Lookie What I Found" That is a find rate of .04% so to call them rare would be an over statement lets call them almost extinct. 2. There are roughly 13 servers that averages out to about 30.5 mercs per server have been found since they were introduced.3. As an experiment our guild decided to pick an elite merc and hunt for him, we chose Kenny and we camped 15 toons across 15 locations across Nektolous. Each toon had tracking for max find effect. We have been at it now 24 hours x4 days and counting. We plan to do this for 2 weeks. In addition to our 15 tracking locations (2 locaions include where people have reported finding Kenny) we have random scouting patrols going every hour giving us coverage of every part of the zone not covered by tracking. Since Friday nothing has spawned. There is a slight chance he popped and we missed it but highly doubtful. So if 15 - 17 people camping an entire zone 24/7 can not find him the odds of an average player find him are slim to none and slim just left town.4. Gninja stated that he would put them in locations that were easier to find, I am sorry but I disagree with this comment. We found the Brigand in SBH, I can tell you for a fact without a flying mount there is no way anyone would have found her at the location she spawned. So you have a level 70 - 80 zone with a Merc in a location that requires a flying mount, which requires you to be level 85 or higher to use. Without a flying mount there is no way you could have found her nor any way you could have gotten to her from what I could see. We also had track running.. however she appeared for just a split second on track as we flew by if we would have blinked at that moment we would have missed it. 5. Gninja also stated they would be made more pronounced so you could see them better. Again I call him on this one, first she was only about the size of a dark elf when she spawns. She was also in a very hard to see location and not in a location anyone would be running past. The ONLY way you could have seen her would have been by pure accident and ONLY if you had a flying mount. She was NOT huge like you see in all the posted pictures, she only becomes big once you equip her and then summon her. So again if she was supposed to be more pronounced why shrink her down from her normal size at spawn? All this time we have been looking for a much larger NPC like folks have been posting.6. Our guild is doing a 2 week experiment of intense searching to see how many times these things spawn. But based on what we are seeing and the data received from our querry we are guessing maybe 1 to 2 spawns per month at best. The rare merc thing seems to be more a bait and switch to keep you paying and playing in hopes of finding one. For most players sadly this will be a false hope with a less then 1% chance of finding one. We will keep you posted on our guilds progress camping and searching for these "Nearly Non-Existent Mercs" Those of you that are playing the game in hopes of ever finding one I would say your time would be better spent doing something else ATM. I really think SOE / Gninja need to look at upping the discover rate to at least 3 - 5% that is rare IMO. When only .04% of the player base has found and item after months of play that is virtualy non-existent not "Rare".

05-14-2012, 10:29 PM	#3
Johnnyteatime Lord Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 43	That is why we are doing a two part experiment, one we look at the raw data as that is neutral..that shows us that only .04% of player base has an elite merc period there is nothing to argue about there.Step two: We check for ourselves with massive over kill what people are actually complaining about. I have read a lot of posts by players that are frustrated they can not find a "Rare Item" Well the number above tells me that part of the problem is they are non-existent.Next we take it a step further as a EM / HM Raid Equiped Guild we want to test just how hard is it for a casual player to actually find one is it reasonable? We are going hard core balls-to-the-wall to find out. We flooded the zone with players in every area of the zone and we have track enabled. Then we run patrols on top of that, after 4 - 24 hour days of this nothing has yet to appear. For players like you that think wow that is fun, something that is so rare very few if any will ever have a chance of finding this item that may be fun but in an economy where folks are scaling back and debating gee where can I have fun for 15 bucks. I can play a game where I have a .04% chance of getting an item i want or I can put my 15 bucks in another game like xyz because at least there I have a chance of completing something.Lets look at DoV as example 2, the content in EM / HM Drunder EoW and PoW is so hard very few if any guilds have completed it. To make it a challange is one thing, I agree it should be a challange but when you see how few guilds actually every compelted the "Challenge" because it is almost impossible or where the content is so hard that only 1 guild on all servers has achieved it makes the content unplayable and not-fun. What is the point of creating content so hard that either No Guild has unlocked / defeated it or putting items in game that are so ultra rare that there is no point even trying to find it because the odd's are against it.Then you release the 2nd half of the xpac and negate the gear in the entire first half of the xpac. We have lost half our guild members with GU63 and we have not even compelted all of the HM content in the first half. Partly because we were unable to as it was just to hard. There are also several encounters along that way in EM that were harder then HM encounters and the gear was not worth the effort so we skipped it.Sure, I expect trolls to attack anything anyone posts on here. But if you create content that is unatainable... IE raids, Quest items or rare finds that have a .04 percent chance of being found then you will lose subscriptions and everyone loses because the game does not have enough subcriptions to keep the people employed. People are just not going to pay 15 dollars a month to be frustrated by content that can not be found nor defeated. Sure the 1% of the ultra hard core, living with mom and dad, with no steady job MMOers will still be there when they turn out the lights but there are not enough of them to cover the cost of running one server much less keeping the game alive. I make very few posts because most are dismissed or trolled, but I am a business man and at the end of the day all MMO's are a business if there is no money the business closes. Sony is taking massive losses world wide right now. Europe is slipping back into recession, Asia is slowing and the USA may be back in recesion by the 3rd quarter. If people vote with their wallets and leave then the game ends. So me personally I dont think raising the bar from .04% to 3% - 5% is unreasonable nor is a 5% find rate making the item so that everyone in game has one heck we are talking 5% of the player base that is not unreasonable. Only a hard core nut that wants to see the game closed down would see it that way.People do not pay 15 dollars a month to look at other peoples ultra ultra rare loot and go Ooooooohhh they pay so that they too can have a chance of finding it.. did you hear me I said a chance.... Right now I have to agree with those that are complaining .04% is to low a find rate...... Just food for thought in our troubled economic times.

05-15-2012, 12:06 AM	#4
Haapy Loremaster Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 230	I think you are wrong in your calculations and reasoning. Going by example of my guild, 99% of its characters have never looked for rare mercs. Between my 3 accounts, I have around 30 alts, not one looked for rare merc. Your raw data is not neutral. I mean, if we extrapolate MY experience, then about 10% of people that ever looked, got their elite merc. Rarity of this specific event has absolutely no impact on whether or not someone is going to continue playing the game. I really do not see someone quitting over this. In WoW, for example, there are FAR rarer items (mounts and vanity pets) to be found and collected and they do not hurt their subs in the slightest. At this time, eq2 is probably the biggest game for the buck out there. There is more content available for a freebie acount than ALL other games have in their entirety. Also, the game commonly gives specials through double and triple SC days where you can grab $7 and $5 monthly gold membership, or even an annual one for something like $30 of Wally cards. I do not believe there is another AAA title that can boast anything like that.

05-15-2012, 10:11 AM	#6
Sinnous Lord Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 72	So not trying to say they aren't super rare. BUT I got Matri Dut on my warlock quite easily. Was killing greungech in SBH on that mountain thingy and she was at the top waiting for my 30P. Was a pretty epic moment that wouldv'e been cheapend by it being easy. She is unbelieveable but she is in fact so crazy good that I don't think I want everyone running around with her. Only the people who have the luck to find her. And lets face it. Anything that is rare is really supposed to be about luck. Having a 3-5% chance of finding her doesn't necessarily mean you will because that also assumes that you are in the right place at the right time and someone else doesn't grab her in that 3-5% chance.

05-15-2012, 01:01 PM	#8
><> Loremaster Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 8	I found Kenny twice within one week of each other.

05-15-2012, 02:01 PM	#9
Koleg Server: Unrest_old Lord Join Date: Oct 2011 Posts: 713	I got the chest piece & Weapon both on my first Ring War PQ ...

05-15-2012, 04:18 PM	#11
faydh Loremaster Join Date: Sep 2010 Posts: 83	nice to know about other peoples luck. would love to see some loc on where they do spawn. i have been looking and payed with SC for track scrolls since they first came out and not seen one of them ever.

05-15-2012, 04:20 PM	#12
Johnnyteatime Lord Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 43	I think this thread is a bit deeper then just merc's if you read my OP above. With GU63 we lost half our guild mates and based on the number of guilds shouting in general for new members I am guessing they did too. I was just looking at the number and seeing a very low number of mercs found for the time they have been out and the number of posts folks have been. I also know that since we can not raid right now our giuld is trying to find a merc for the hell of it. and we are picking on kenny as of Day 5 - 16 players have not been able to find him nor see him spawn even after the server reboot this morning. So just saying its great some folks find them fast but if you were a player that woke up one day like we did and just said hell I want to find a merc.. Given that 16 players activly camping on day 5 have not found him just not sure what the luck would be of a solo person... At any rate just doing this for the heck of it and will keep folks posted on what day we actually find him...

05-15-2012, 04:24 PM	#13
faydh Loremaster Join Date: Sep 2010 Posts: 83	Thank you Johnny

05-15-2012, 05:12 PM	#14
Gninja The Dev Gnome Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 1,664	Looking through logs I can assure you that all 3 rare mercs are spawning and being hired. Some are being hired very quickly after they spawn and some are staying up for hours and in some cases a day or two (low populated servers typically) The thing about these guys that makes them more rare is their respawn timers persist through server resets. This means just because you are in the zone and tracking when the servers come back up does not mean it's going to be there every time. We are seeing in our logs players are hiring them every day across the servers so we know they are spawning. The number of spawn points most of them have makes it extremely difficult to cover the entire zone and find them. Especially more difficult for Kenny seeing as how it is Nektulos Forest. Another thing to keep in mind is while you only see a certain number of achievements for having found these some players have their eq2player feeds turned off so you wouldn't see those updates. Out of curiosity what server are you on looking for him?

05-15-2012, 05:25 PM	#16
Johnnyteatime Lord Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 43	We have been hunting him for the past 5 days. One of us happend to fly through SBH and found the Brig Elite but we were not really trying to find one at the time it was just dumb luck and based on her location my guess is she was up for a while before we found her.But as an experiment we are trying Kenny just to see how long it actually takes a ton of folks to find him...

05-15-2012, 06:07 PM	#17
Gninja The Dev Gnome Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 1,664	Well, I logged in to say hello and saw 19 people in the zone all afk I did notice that Kenny was up too.

05-15-2012, 06:13 PM	#18
Johnnyteatime Lord Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 43	Hey we saw you shouting.. we were talking on skype but we did not see kenny even though we were on patrol when you were shouting in zone.. however nothing is showing was on track so this goes to the point that he is in a location that is very very very very hard to find

05-15-2012, 06:14 PM	#19
Gninja The Dev Gnome Join Date: May 2008 Posts: 1,664	He was up when I was there roughly 10min ago from this post.

05-15-2012, 06:15 PM	#20
faydh Loremaster Join Date: Sep 2010 Posts: 83	i know it is against your secret policy. But i realy wish you guys would post some loc. I do not know of anyone on Splitpaw who got Kenny so no indsider info here. I'm starting to get so annoyed by looking in wain for this guy it starts to affect my gaming exp in negativ direktion.

05-15-2012, 06:18 PM	#21
Johnnyteatime Lord Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 43	Ya we found him its interesting, how close he was to one of our toons and was just out of track range we sent all 19 folks in all directions looking its so dam interesting how close like 20 meters to the right for one guy and it showed up

05-15-2012, 06:45 PM	#22
Dethdlr Server: Butcherblock Guild: Advent of Valor Rank: Council Leader Fansite Staff Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 673	I have to agree with a few of the others here that it's good to have some rare things in the game. Makes it that much more special when you actually manage to get one of those rare things.It sounds as though even if Kenny is up, he's not an easy little bugger to find. You may be looking for him 24x7 but apparently, not in the right places. Try doing Speak as a Dragon or Knights in the Round from the Swords of Destiny questline without a write up or any /loc information. Those things will take you ages to find. Eventually though, the locations required in those quests became known and shared and they became considerably easier to find. I'm sure that eventually the same will happen with the rare mercs. But for now, since a lot of people are still keeping the info to themselves on where they found them, they're going to remain really hard to find. P.S.: The rare mercs have now been discovered by 415 people in the data feeds. Which means that in the last 25 hours, including the scheduled downtime, at least 18 more characters have hired a rare merc. __________________ EQ2U Lead Programmer \|Dethdlr's Adornment Calculator \| EQ2Wire.com Columnist

05-15-2012, 06:57 PM	#23
faydh Loremaster Join Date: Sep 2010 Posts: 83	Well i for my part is done looking. No more wasted nights for me, this night has been the last straw for me. I got way more exciting things to do in RL than looking for something i can't find in a more and more stupid game.

05-15-2012, 07:00 PM	#24
Kinvore Loremaster Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 257	Can I have your plat?

05-15-2012, 07:03 PM	#25
Johnnyteatime Lord Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 43	I plan on starting a forum posting in the next week or so on locations I am learning about. With 20 locations per zone roughly according to the dev's yes a couple wont be much help. The other thing is yes they are tough to see you want to make sure you have your grapics turned up a bit you dont need to be as high as Balanced but the higher you are able to turn them up the better.

05-15-2012, 09:47 PM	#26
Kenazeer Loremaster Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 1,178	faydh wrote: Well i for my part is done looking. No more wasted nights for me, this night has been the last straw for me. I got way more exciting things to do in RL than looking for something i can't find in a more and more stupid game. So you are quitting because you couldn't do it...yet? Do you do that with all the obstacles you encounter, or do you only tackle ones that you are sure you can best pretty quickly? __________________ Come play EQ2...we have SOEmote, Dungeon Finder, and Dungeon Maker.

05-15-2012, 11:10 PM	#27
Johnnyteatime Lord Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 43	I would not be discouraged you will find them, and I plan on doing a really nice write up for the community on everything I have learned about them... Even if you know their loc's there are 20 per zone or so. That will help you not to miss a location but even then they are very hard to spot. So it is really easy to miss them..But the two we have found are pretty neat. You kind of think of them as your little buddy. I want to spend another week hunting them so that I write up something helpful and not something that is not useful for folks.

05-15-2012, 11:33 PM	#28
convict Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 375	Brigh wrote: Did we really need another elite merc thread discussing the same thing? This __________________

05-15-2012, 11:48 PM	#29
Kronlin Loremaster Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 2	I find this very suspicious that the elite merc Kenny spawned right after Gninja wanted to know what server johnnyteatime was on especially after his group had been looking 24 hours for a few days.

05-16-2012, 12:02 AM	#30
Johnnyteatime Lord Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 43	I did not get the feeling he was being sneaky he gave me a lot of tips for finding them that I will post. It is possible we missed him so we will be using his suggestions to see if we have better luck over the next 72 hours. If we do then we will post all the locs we and others have reported along with a bunch of tips learned on our own and from the GM's. (We had 15 to 19 toons in zone and running normal patrols I mean it may have been possble we missed him but the next 72 hours should tell us if we have a better method for finding them)But that was the point of my original thread the Devs are always in a tough spot of finding a balance between making something a challange, making it to hard or making it to simple. In the case of DoV some encounters were way over challanged an very few if anyone could complete them and then the reward didnt even match the challange. Many raid encounters never were even completed by anyone or very few guilds. Also the gear progression didnt stack correctly.. So if you want from Rygorr to X2, to EM to HM with X2 gear many EM encounters were not do able without some HM gear.. as an example. Then many HM encounters could not even be done by anyone. I know on our server no one prior to 63 compelted HM Idol etc. Then GU63 came out and the quest gear is better then raid gear negating the first half of the xpac.. So again I am not trying to flame anyone but just offer opinions and thoughts on things to keep a good balance in game so that folks do not leave and we have good populated servers to play on. Things like limiting mercs to one spawn zone was a huge recent good step and should help folks a lot because they are hard enough to find in one zone much less 2 or 3 Also you want to always keep in mind you can not build the game for the 1% of hard cores that only raid. IMO you should not have content that either no one or only 1 maybe 2 raids at best can complete if they are lucky. The idea is the game needs to be doable and much of the first half of DoV just plain was not.