What's Up with Simple TMaps

Folks -- For the last couple of days, I've been introduced to the wonderful world of tmaps. My 59 warrior's participated in 3 so far, with a number of veterans in the group. They've all said the same thing: simple tmaps have NEVER taken this long to complete before. On the average, each one took an hour and a half before the chest would spawn, with around 15 waves of guardians. One map we could not get to spawn a chest at all.

The problem really is that, if the chest is taking this long to spawn, then the Packet Loss bug will kick in. When that happens (as it most discouragingly did today), if the digger gets hit and has to relog, the ENTIRE map resets and we start over. After an hour or more of killing wave after wave, resetting the map just sent everybody home.

This can't be. The PL bug is well known. The map really has to fit into the time before the bug hits for it to be doable at all. Now, I've heard all sorts of different theories on how to make the map go faster, mostly to do with how much time is spent medding/recovering between waves. Well, we didn't need much time at all between waves today, but we couldn't get the chest to spawn before the PL bug hit.

I don't know if this is new or what. It might be just bad luck, but that's 3 in a row now, no matter if I was the opener/digger or not. And vets swear these things take a half hour tops. So either something's changed (and needs to be reexamined if so) or something's messed up. To say nothing of the plat spent to buy the maps, and the prospect of losing all the rolls for the loot (as happened with the one chest that did have 2 melee items...only we had 3 melee people and I rolled an 8 out of random 1000 ... ok, that part is my bad luck), to spend nearly 3 hours bashing guardians and still have no chest spawn is outrageous and, more importantly, not fun. Yeah, the XP is fine, but with no money, no loot, and no chest, it's really not gonna bring people back for more.

Please look into this. And if anybody else has similar experiences, please let the Folks know.

Thanx.

Some go quick, some take hours to spawn a chest. I sat in southwastes once for 3 hours before the chest spawned. Welcome to dealing with the Random Number Generator (RNG)

If the digger goes LD, he logs back in and starts digging again.. Im not sure what is being "reset" that you refer to.

I'd had chests take a long time but I've gotten a chest pop on the second dig too.

The less time in between dig attempts the better the chance the chest appears.

At one point the dig attempt was reset if the digger went LD, died or otherwise left the zone but that was fixed a few months ago. Sometimes it just takes a while.

I generaly have to agree with the OP, Simple tmaps are/have been some of the longest Tmaps I have ever done.

However the toons level/gear is partly to blame for this. A level 50-59 group is not going to kill as fast on thier simple tmap as a 65 group doing VE and E tmaps. Thiers generaly a big difference in Gear and Abilites so the maps go much faster. Specialy on the low end of 50s were toons gear hasn't realyl started to take off and classes havn't gotten some of thier juicer abilites.

My best time was 2nd spawn for a chest on a VE map (mind you this was after the digging fix)

Worst Tmap, Simple Tmap in Storm Seas, at the bottum of that crater.... 5 1/2 hours later and many levels later we got the box to pop.

Get a few more people so you can kill faster, the more downtime between pulls the longer it takes.

Simple tmaps are too hard for 1-2 groups of regular lvl 50s. We had roughly 5-6 maps and eventually just all boxed lvl 65s to do it. Our lvl 50s toons were decently geared and a few of us were twinked. Also, every one of our maps had mobs that could not be attacked spawn, and we had to petition every map.

smadcatc said:

Simple tmaps are too hard for 1-2 groups of regular lvl 50s. We had roughly 5-6 maps and eventually just all boxed lvl 65s to do it. Our lvl 50s toons were decently geared and a few of us were twinked. Also, every one of our maps had mobs that could not be attacked spawn, and we had to petition every map.

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L65s should not be able to engage simple tmap mobs, that is an exploit.

Wiz said:

L65s should not be able to engage simple tmap mobs, that is an exploit.

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?!?!?! Really, is thier codeing to prevent this or is it just a rule we are suppose to be following?

Currently I know you can engage the simple tmap mobs with 65s, you just can't dig the map with anyone over 60.

On that note Some of the spawns of a simple tmap are more dangerous then VE or E maps. Hense why I didn't think it mattered if higher levels helped with simple tmaps.

Get 2 Forgotten Golem things, backed by 3 Raging Imps and 2 of the Trees and its Hurt Time for the simple Tmap group (specialy lower 50 simple Tmap groups.. its basicly auto wipe)

In these groups did you all have ANY crowd control , I remember when I first did them on my bard I realized they were pretty stupid hard at times if I did not sit and constantly mez.

It has been a while since I did do one of these maps, but I will agree that the difference from VE and these is always seemed odd, because the final tier of simples 50-59? was or always seemed alot more challenging if not outright unfair.

This is mainly do to to the golems and the trees imho. Those trees are pretty big jerks but the way you guys talk about these maps sounds like your group was pretty unbalanced or ill prepared for what was going to happen.

As for the amount of time : You got unlucky and or were sitting alot more then you probably should have.

robopirateninja said:

I'd had chests take a long time but I've gotten a chest pop on the second dig too.

The less time in between dig attempts the better the chance the chest appears.

At one point the dig attempt was reset if the digger went LD, died or otherwise left the zone but that was fixed a few months ago. Sometimes it just takes a while.

Click to expand...

This still happens every single time I go LD or die, while I am the digger. I don't know for others, but I can swear it always happens for me still. I get the "you start a new dig attempt..." thing, be it with VE or VD. It ight have gone broken at a point and no one ever noticed, or it's just me for some bizarre reason. syduck:

Oh and back in the time between 57 and 59, we had no problems finishing simple tmaps with people of the right level, in about 30-45 mins. No 65s to back up anyone or so. I don't know if anything has changed.

Thanx all for the quick, good convo on this one. To address some of the points above:

The groups for the 3 maps I've done so far had no toons below 55. We had plenty of CC for mezzing and rooting and they did their jobs well, until one took so long the enchanter fell asleep at her keyboard. The last one which never popped DID reset after the PL bug hit and I (the digger) had to relog. Got a "you start a new dig" message rather than the usual digging message, signaling a restart of the map. We didn't sit long between digs. Just long enough for the mage to conjour up a few mod rods. Then it was gogogo and I was digging again.

One encouraging note provided above is that, indeed, a 59 won't have really good gear yet. Seems a bit high level to still be working in silver and copper, but, OK, the gear doesn't start until the tmaps get tougher. I can deal with that since it's "as intended". And I'm a warrior, so with a couple of healers doing their jobs well (and we had those), I'm able to mostly hold aggro on the unmezzed/unrooted mob while the mage and backstabber do the dps. Needless to say my Obsidion Razor, or GM Sword/Mithril Short Spear combo isn't gonna be taking any of the imps/constructs/skeles/air eles/trees down quickly without help. We had pets too. I don't think there was anything particularly low or weak about the groups. Same groups were ripping thru harthuks (except that Lord) very very quickly.

If this is, indeed, just a case of "bad luck", then I surely hope the next map breaks the string. Because so far this has been WAY out of line for "simple" maps. And that's not just from this newbie, but from the vets who came along to help out.

Thinkmeats was going to put in a maximum number of waves a while back, I wonder if this ever went in and if it is still working.

As for the difficulty, are you kidding? The simple TMap mobs have very little DPS for their level already, making them any easier would be totally out of line.

Kirin Folken said:

?!?!?! Really, is thier codeing to prevent this or is it just a rule we are suppose to be following?

Currently I know you can engage the simple tmap mobs with 65s, you just can't dig the map with anyone over 60.

On that note Some of the spawns of a simple tmap are more dangerous then VE or E maps. Hense why I didn't think it mattered if higher levels helped with simple tmaps.

Get 2 Forgotten Golem things, backed by 3 Raging Imps and 2 of the Trees and its Hurt Time for the simple Tmap group (specialy lower 50 simple Tmap groups.. its basicly auto wipe)

Click to expand...

It's code that's bugged, I'm fixing it, until then don't do it.

It's been a few months since I've done simple maps with my alts (40s and 50s), but I had the same experience with simple maps taking way too long. My wife and my own toons were quite well twinked (taking 4 of the 6 slots of the group), and in the high range (47-49 for the 40s, 56-59 for the 50s). We had very good tankage, dps, and CC for a single group. We would get wave after wave after wave, the chest taking over an hour to pop.

We didn't try with more than a full group, as that drastically slashed the xp at that time, and I thought simples were designed for a single average group (like VEs and Easies).

As I said, haven't done any of these in a couple months since the twinks are now in their 60s.

Wiz said:

It's code that's bugged, I'm fixing it, until then don't do it.

Click to expand...

Ok

A long time ago I used to do simple tmaps frequently. I did a few in the 30s, a lot in the 40s, and a great many in the 50s. 30s were very easy. 40s were ok. 50s simple tmaps were extremely hard for us. We regularly had a chanter and reasonably geared characters from other tmaps and ok droppable gear. We were basically at the level you might expect a guild of non-50s to be. As soon as we hit 60, we started VE maps, often bringing along <60 characters. Compared to 50s simple maps, the VE maps were absolutely trivial. In fact, we had to go to easy maps to even approach the challenge of the simple maps. At this time moderate maps were still out of range for us, but the point is that 50s simple maps were wayyyyy too hard then.

I think thats the point some have missed in the thread.


Simple tmaps for 50-55 level groups can be very brutal, 57-59 groups are fine with them generaly.
So dispite it being 50-59 for the range, first time players (those most likly to even be bothering with simple tmaps) in the lower 50s are in for a rude awakening on the simple tmap. Its not to say they can't do it, but its going to be ruff and certain combos of spawns will could mean auto wipes. (heck certain spawns will wipe even 57-59 groups if thier not careful with or without CC).

guess that does at least make them intersting

I wouldn't say VE maps are easy, just compared to the to starting simple tmaps They are easyer. ( 50-55 simple tmap group vs 60-63 Very Easy Group). Both are in the break in range of the map, but the 60+ group has MUCH more tools to work with and better gear generaly.

*starting to sound like a broken record*

Honestly I see it in two ways. If you have a cc who knows anything about their character 50-59 tmaps are trivial I have done probably 50 50-59 tmaps and have never failed with a decent cc. They are simple and in general there is little to no medding between attempts. Without cc I find it really difficult to do 50-59 tmaps though. This is mainly do to the trees because all the melee end up rooted and one of the mobs ends up killing casters while the melee get to sit and watch not being able to do anything.

On the issue of them taking to long, I have not usually had a problem with it though I have to admit its been about 2-3 weeks since I have done a tmap. OF those times I have had one time that I got pl bug while digging. I have to agree though the average time on most maps seems to be about 1 hour for a decently equiped group. I usually work on tmaps with people who are in the 55+ range though unless it is a healer. I do not even start tmaps on my toons until 55 though.

Since you are going to look into this, Wiz, could you as well repair the fact that the Tmaps reset when the digger dies or goes LD? It was never fixed, and we still experience it every other day.

It should be repaired for monthes, but still resets every single time someone poofs or die, on all the levels of maps I have been able to do.

It should be repaired for monthes, but still resets every single time someone poofs or die, on all the levels of maps I have been able to do.

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Isnt the reset on digger's death an intended feature?