Bottlenecking Progress.

working alone or collectively to get things done by whatever means within the confines of the rules is up to the individual.
you have a very defined "if this, then that" world here.
IF the mob is down, then someone beat you to it.. IF you can't beat em to it, THEN you should try joining them while they do it.. or arrange them to box you in if its being killed while you are busy with RL etc.
The conspiracy theory is duly noted and correctly named.. theory.. the dev's and gm's play the game and are just as likely to group/raid with people they enjoy for whatever reason just like other mortals playing a MMO. collectively is stronger than singularly that's why raid mobs die.

Why not try and ask for help from some one who has killed the mob you seek like was suggested, and stop creating theories on why success=cheating.
I have learned the ambitious and driven Dalayan native will relentlessly pursue his idea of "ubar" , via thorough and extensive questing, trade skilling or just a race to end game hp, mana, ac, top 5 list, retire, repeat.

Basically, if you need help, ask. Some one is bound to help you or give you a heads up sooner or later.

An accusatory segway to perceived circumstance doesn't warrant revamping anything, nor will it incline anyone to help you more so than just plain admitting you need help and asking for it. /ooc is very useful and someone is bound to answer sooner or later..
I even have an example....
I have a 65 warrior. doing the ytraliarch sword quest . been working on it quite a while now. I have needed to kill Ishklaa for like 3 months..the dam thing is never up. someone keeps killing it. im certain that everyone killing it isn't doing the same quest I need to kill it for. dam big kids guilds and bottlenecks.
i have asked in ooc a few times about it and got no response why? mob wasnt up, or nobody knew the answer to my question. whatever the reason, ill keep asking in ooc when i think about it if some one can box my toon in or let me tag along. it will happen.. sooner or later.. what i will not do is get on here and start pointing out that people left he server because i haven't been able to finish my quest. the sword is nice. anything nice is worth working for..period. I will invest time and sooner or later, be rewarded.

bottom line is the game has content/items that everyone wants, this makes it have value, this breeds competition, competition creates a winner and a loser.. if we all won the lottery, which one of us is rich?
if bastids keep beating me, I identify how bastid beat me, I employ bastid procedures, I become bastid....I win too.

blah-blah-blah ..
 
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Tinfoiling aside, the heart of the argument here I think is valid. Everything that happens in this game now happens because the people who dedicate the most time to the game - and so have the highest tier players with the best gear etc... - have dictated it. That is fine, I understand catering to the most dedicated portion of the player base. However, the OP is correct in that new players are in fact being lost because of it, and even some not so new players who just get sick of all the trolling, hassling, and bottlenecking that goes on. Case in point - I made a simple suggestion about moving some buggy tmap spots. That got almost no response. Instead, the S&R forum has had multiple discussions about runic spells and tomes. What portion of the player base has a reason to worry about tomes/runics and what portion participate in tmaps? The players who dedicate more time are unsurprisingly the more vocal forum members - so they squawk the loudest and their problems are addressed.

The problem is not even that people on tier don't try hard enough or whatever. If your guild requires 12 chars to take down a target, but someone who needs a quest piece off it can solo/box it or even get a friend to come along to take it, it will always go to the person who is over-geared for the target. The answer should never be "just ask to tag along" - the content was not designed to be dragged through it, it was made for people to achieve it without ringers and work toward it on their own. Some players do not want to have to depend on someone who has already trivialized something in order to get the piece of gear or the quest item they want.

When I had too much going on IRL to play SoD for 18 months/2 years I was not surprised to see the population to be about half of what it was when I left because of these attitudes. I also do not think any of it will change, but the good ole boys club atmosphere here is not going to make new people want to play, and is going to scare others away after playing for a little while. When the people who play for 30+ hours a week get bored and leave who will be left?
 
pkin5 said:
Tinfoiling aside, the heart of the argument here I think is valid. Everything that happens in this game now happens because the people who dedicate the most time to the game - and so have the highest tier players with the best gear etc... - have dictated it. That is fine, I understand catering to the most dedicated portion of the player base. However, the OP is correct in that new players are in fact being lost because of it, and even some not so new players who just get sick of all the trolling, hassling, and bottlenecking that goes on. Case in point - I made a simple suggestion about moving some buggy tmap spots. That got almost no response. Instead, the S&R forum has had multiple discussions about runic spells and tomes. What portion of the player base has a reason to worry about tomes/runics and what portion participate in tmaps? The players who dedicate more time are unsurprisingly the more vocal forum members - so they squawk the loudest and their problems are addressed.

The problem is not even that people on tier don't try hard enough or whatever. If your guild requires 12 chars to take down a target, but someone who needs a quest piece off it can solo/box it or even get a friend to come along to take it, it will always go to the person who is over-geared for the target. The answer should never be "just ask to tag along" - the content was not designed to be dragged through it, it was made for people to achieve it without ringers and work toward it on their own. Some players do not want to have to depend on someone who has already trivialized something in order to get the piece of gear or the quest item they want.

When I had too much going on IRL to play SoD for 18 months/2 years I was not surprised to see the population to be about half of what it was when I left because of these attitudes. I also do not think any of it will change, but the good ole boys club atmosphere here is not going to make new people want to play, and is going to scare others away after playing for a little while. When the people who play for 30+ hours a week get bored and leave who will be left?
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Over time as content is added the barrier to entry for the raid game changes. Several years ago, entry level raids started at tier 1/2 with Crusher, Gnok, AWT, ART, The Rotlord, Parcelan, Plaguefang etc. (this was when Inner Prison was THE end game). Nowadays, in the same amount of time it would take a fresh 65 back then to be ready to raid (back then it was expected you have 300-400 AAs to raid nDHK) you can easily be tier 4/5 due to there being more accessible content, as well as significantly better buyable items. The end game now is still in Prison but is about 5 tiers higher than Inner Prison (objectively of course).

If you haven't caught on by now, my entire point is over time as more content is added it becomes easier to progress to a certain point of the raid tiers (potentially bypassing entire raid zones) as the barrier to entry has changed. Another byproduct of this is that over time the population of players that can Solo/Duo/3man what used to be considered "entry level" increases. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Staff favoritism it is a fact of how this game is designed. Edit: And I do not think that this is an issue, considering how the raid tiers have evolved, and the addition of better droppable equipment and quests, there are more options for progressing your toon than there ever have been in the past.

I would agree with your points on issues that impact lower tier players (such as tmap dig locations) not being addressed as often/timely as issues that impact the more vocal higher tier players but I think that is more of an issue of there not being enough Staff volunteer time to go around.
 
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I went from lvl 0 to tier 9 in about 8 months because I grinded, quested, pugged and raided my ass off. I knew 1 single person who was also a noob when I joined the game. But, I was constantly grouping and making new contacts in SoD. One of the best parts of this game is that there are so many things to do to progess your toon, you don't have to be caught up in one single that at any given time. Aradyn, I noticed u have like a bizillion alts. If you dedicated all your time to main character, I'm 100% sure you (and anyone else for that matter) would have alot more success in your progression goals.

What you get is what you put in. You've seen the posts on here, it has taken certain people months to find and down single mobs, that's dedication.

There might be some level of bias because of having player gm's/devs, but it's a free fucking game and they run this show voluntarily and do a pretty damn good job doing it. Accusing them of leaking mob timers without any hard evidence is a pretty undeserved slap in the face

Eamonn
 
Obscenitor said:
Over time as content is added the barrier to entry for the raid game changes. Several years ago, entry level raids started at tier 1/2 with Crusher, Gnok, AWT, ART, The Rotlord, Parcelan, Plaguefang etc. (this was when Inner Prison was THE end game). Nowadays, in the same amount of time it would take a fresh 65 back then to be ready to raid (back then it was expected you have 300-400 AAs to raid nDHK) you can easily be tier 4/5 due to there being more accessible content, as well as significantly better buyable items. The end game now is still in Prison but is about 5 tiers higher than Inner Prison (objectively of course).

If you haven't caught on by now, my entire point is over time as more content is added it becomes easier to progress to a certain point of the raid tiers (potentially bypassing entire raid zones) as the barrier to entry has changed. Another byproduct of this is that over time the population of players that can Solo/Duo/3man what used to be considered "entry level" increases. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Staff favoritism it is a fact of how this game is designed. Edit: And I do not think that this is an issue, considering how the raid tiers have evolved, and the addition of better droppable equipment and quests, there are more options for progressing your toon than there ever have been in the past.

I would agree with your points on issues that impact lower tier players (such as tmap dig locations) not being addressed as often/timely as issues that impact the more vocal higher tier players but I think that is more of an issue of there not being enough Staff volunteer time to go around.
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Thank you for a good, and well thought out response. And I agree with you for the most part. But there are people who would rather not depend on buying gear they couldn't get themselves etc. Sure there are many opportunities out there for progression that didnt exist before, but I think the bigger problem is the idea of putting items intended for higher tier players on lower tier mobs. It just signals that this game does not care about entry level players - whether that is true or not. I think it is easier to progress as an individual, but harder to progress as a guild as a result of changes in the game. I also understand it is how he game is designed, but I think it could be avoided in some instances with deciding on quest drops and such. I honestly do not know the best solution at this point.

PS - I don't really buy the "staff favoritism" thing, just that staff tends to listen to the more vocal, more time dedicated player base. That makes sense but is maybe not necessarily logical. It is obvious the population is declining, and I think it is at least in part due to newer players being quickly disillusioned. That's all I'm saying really.
 
pkin5 said:
PS - I don't really buy the "staff favoritism" thing, just that staff tends to listen to the more vocal, more time dedicated player base. That makes sense but is maybe not necessarily logical. It is obvious the population is declining, and I think it is at least in part due to newer players being quickly disillusioned. That's all I'm saying really.
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I think you're right about this. Lots of lower level/newer players often lack a voice because they don't frequent the forums or aren't familiar with the avenues used to contact staff. I don't know if making things easier is really the answer because you still require an amount of content decompression but some quality of life changes could certainly be added to make the game more palatable for people starting out such as no debt or death effects until level 10, or at least a better explanation of death effects. Bounty hunting was such an insanely good addition to the game but might require too much of an investment to ever get anything worthwhile in a timely manner (would a tier 5 focus be relevant to someone doing rust factory? I don't know).

A large problem for fresh 65 characters is also that player expectations have gotten out of control and that's a very difficult thing to solve, it's a pretty bad time to be new and emerge at 65 when you're competing for group spots with people that have tens of thousands worth of ikisith droppables on themselves and hundreds of AAs they ground out at level 55.
 
Yeah The quest chains that expand several tiers are a bitch plane and simple. Just Skip it you can get around. I've finished like 3 quests the MQ, and the 2 thurg armor quests. and I've gotten pretty far with out the rest
 
Rorne said:
I think you're right about this. Lots of lower level/newer players often lack a voice because they don't frequent the forums or aren't familiar with the avenues used to contact staff. I don't know if making things easier is really the answer because you still require an amount of content decompression but some quality of life changes could certainly be added to make the game more palatable for people starting out such as no debt or death effects until level 10, or at least a better explanation of death effects. Bounty hunting was such an insanely good addition to the game but might require too much of an investment to ever get anything worthwhile in a timely manner (would a tier 5 focus be relevant to someone doing rust factory? I don't know).

A large problem for fresh 65 characters is also that player expectations have gotten out of control and that's a very difficult thing to solve, it's a pretty bad time to be new and emerge at 65 when you're competing for group spots with people that have tens of thousands worth of ikisith droppables on themselves and hundreds of AAs they ground out at level 55.
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This is all pretty good stuff here. I would not say things need to be made easier though - I would say things have been made harder for people who are not at the mid-late raid game by making it desirable to kill targets that are far under tier for many people. The only possible solution besides just not having these drops on such mobs would be to make quest mobs scale with the most advanced person engaging them - this is a stupid idea and I in no way advocate it. Stuff like getting rid of death effects below lvl 10 and stuff makes sense (didn't we have this a long time ago?)

Bounty hunting is a great idea, but I don't know that the time invested to get anything worthwhile is worth it beyond the seeds. I mean 50 bounties to get the thurg neck? That's what 25 straight days of doing both bounties each day?

Finally - you are correct that fresh 65s have too much to compete with these days. Especially if those people want to progress through their own initiative rather than riding on someone else's success. I really hate it when I see someone complain about not being able to accomplish task X because there are far better equipped people always preventing them from it, and the suggestion is "just get in their group and loot what you want." That is pretty hollow to me. We play the game to feel like we accomplished something - simply grabbing an item someone else basically got for you is not accomplishing anything; yet this is a response in every single one of these threads. Why not instead step back and ask - should we be putting elements into the game that are intended for individuals who are over equipped for the encounters required at the expense of newer players?

A final thought in this post - Verant/SoE knew from the start that while there are people who are going to pour a ton of time into their game, the casual players are their bread and butter. They made a game that allowed you to log in for a couple hours here and there, and actually accomplish something without worrying about people who had no business blocking you being compelled to do so. SoD has never been especially about the casual player, an unfortunate fact. I am sure plenty of you will come up with examples of stuff casual players can do, etc. but the fact is SoD is about the hard core players and has become increasingly so over the years. The problem with that is the server population is going to die, because the base that sustains the population is not the hardcore who eventually get burned out it is the casual player who just keeps chipping away at small goals they don't need to invest hours upon hours on.
 
CharmCitysKing said:
Accusing them of leaking mob timers without any hard evidence is a pretty undeserved slap in the face
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I'm going to turn the other cheek on that one and offer 2 comments.

(1) If you think someone on staff that isn't me is doing this, then feel free to contact me directly. If something like this is getting past me, I'd really like to know and nail that person to the wall.

(2) If you think I'm doing this, then ask around. Being around me in-game tends to be a pain in the ass for people because I'm a pain in the ass about rules, the spirit of the rules, and not skirting the grey area. By the way, I don't have vah back and I don't plan to get it any time soon. I simply am not willing to put in the type of effort it would take for that item.
 
There's Tarutao being really right/telling the truth.

cPuSm.jpg


edit: I'm serious too. But I mean, if ever anything clamored for the all seeing eye. It was this.
 
All you had to do when you were there and saw me in there with my group was ask if you could get in on a drop. I wasn't after Tarlisha yesterday however it would have been nice to get that part of the Vah out of the way. I make it a point to never even consider going to exp in a zone where my Dev toon has been so there is never any question about what I'm doing.

I'm very easy to get along with, all you have to do is talk to me if you're after something where I am. Just ask around, I've let people leech from me and let people in my group to get quest drops on numerous occasions.

Like I said, just talk to me. Coming here and complaining because I was in your way ONCE is not the way to go about it.
 
First let me clear up a couple of my points...
1) I was not saying it was Quila (and actually spoke with her in IRC about it. She saw Aradyn pop into the zone while she was there, when I was porting out my track bot...well after the fact). But this is not the first time I have ever seen this happen... Just the first time I talked about it in the Forums (mainly because the server was down and I didn't have anything better to do).
2) I could really care less about less about getting this item for myself. So, please enough with the if you want it, just ask us and we will get it for you threads, I've turned down randoms on the artifact there probably about 10 times now. (Especially seeing as I rarely play Aradyn anymore). I've had my invites to the T10 guilds over my several years of playing this server and while I used to be in the hard core raiding guilds, it's not for me. The game is about choices, and that's my choice. I was tracking for someone else, who was not online, so the why didn't you ask to join policy does not apply. I have played this game long enough that if I desperately need to get an item, I know I can get it. I don't know how many times I've passed on the Giant Aug because I know someone was super anxious to get it so they could progress.
3) Once again, this is not about me. It's about the friends I keep seeing quit the server because of issues like this. And the friends I see quitting because they have gotten fed up of trying to finish quest after quest without success due to mobs never being up.

I will probably play this server until it dies, and I am content in getting things over time. While the you gotta focus on one character and get them up to T14 as fast as possible applies for some people, this game is about decisions and having them, and I enjoy the content where I'm at, to the point I enjoy repeating it over and over again. Even if the content was opened up and you didn't have to track a mob for 5 months just to finish a quest, people still wouldn't make T14 in a year... There are still AA's to be gotten and so many quests at this point, that people have endless routes to take that side spin them all over the place.

I understand some people like to hit content and move on with it, but there are others (like myself) that like doing the same content over and over again until I get bored with it, and then I eventually do move on to something else. The choices in the game shouldn't be based on, can I dedicate myself to a hard core raiding guild so I can get friends with track bots that can find something, only to stomp through it by a probably random shadow box of someone who formerly played, or alternate, I never finish quest X.

And yes I am guilty of playing these random shadow boxes, quite more frequently than in the past, and I will probably get bored of them and create a new alt and screw around for a bit... It's the choice that makes the game great.

Outside of the fact of the top 20 characters on the server losing sleep because they think the other 300 still existing players won't be drooling about how great their character is, I don't see the point of intentionally making these road blocks so that people can't finish a quest that they have already probably dedicated hours to just trying to start. And yes I realize if these are opened up, some people will abuse them by bringing in over tiered people to get them super items over night and likely get bored of the character and abandon it, but at the same time many more people will be inclined to take on tier groups to be able to actually complete many of these endless quests and enjoy their time doing it. I think they would appreciate the item even more when they can actually keep their real life friends playing long enough to show it to them. And the abuse rate would probably drop very quickly, especially after elite character X says he's sick and tired of doing the same quest over and over for the 100th time, and tells his low tier buddy to find some friends on the same tier to help him go through it... I think this would pan out even more to be the case.

I'm just trying to get back to the point of, the server numbers keep declining, and the thread about this issue gets posted, mocked, deleted in that order over and over again. How many more people have to leave this server due to this issue before the issue gets taken seriously?
 
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If you take away all of the bottlencks/roadblocks, then won't everyone just rush right to the top of the raid game and quit from lack of targets? Not being snarky, this is a genuine question. How much longer will SoD hold it's charm for a player if there were no impediments to progression? It seems to me that the players with the dedication (mental illness) required to play this game all the way thru the end game content are going to regardless of impediments while those who can't handle the extra time it takes to maneuver around the road blocks would more likely get bored and drop out anyway. Competition gets worse as you progress, not better.
 
DookeyKing said:
If you take away all of the bottlencks/roadblocks, then won't everyone just rush right to the top of the raid game and quit from lack of targets? Not being snarky, this is a genuine question. How much longer will SoD hold it's charm for a player if there were no impediments to progression? It seems to me that the players with the dedication (mental illness) required to play this game all the way thru the end game content are going to regardless of impediments while those who can't handle the extra time it takes to maneuver around the road blocks would more likely get bored and drop out anyway. Competition gets worse as you progress, not better.
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This is just wrong really. These roadblocks were not here before most of the top tier guilds passed the content they exist at, meaning it still took them a really long time. Plus, as was mentioned earlier, it is really easy to skip a ton of stuff these days just by buying loot and stuff. The point is people who want to do it on their own can't and like I have mentioned before, getting to "tag along" is not always what people are wanting to do. Really a ton of the problem here would be solved if there were not a lot of high tier quests involving low tier mobs. I'm sure they are really cool quests, but they are not entry-level player friendly. I don't think the request is remove all roadblocks to progression, just remove things that cause people to be competing with those way out of their league.
 
DookeyKing said:
If you take away all of the bottlencks/roadblocks, then won't everyone just rush right to the top of the raid game and quit from lack of targets? Not being snarky, this is a genuine question. How much longer will SoD hold it's charm for a player if there were no impediments to progression? It seems to me that the players with the dedication (mental illness) required to play this game all the way thru the end game content are going to regardless of impediments while those who can't handle the extra time it takes to maneuver around the road blocks would more likely get bored and drop out anyway. Competition gets worse as you progress, not better.
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Yeah the bottlenecks and roadblocks are the necessary evil that is why I think effort is better spent on coming up with / giving you productive stuff to do at different tiers aside from exping instead of just making it easier to zoom up to the cutting edge. Make sitting at the same tier feel productive in alternate way instead of just feeling like you're treading water on a stepping stone towards the actual cool stuff. The problem is what do you give a player that has the capacity to be rewarding on-tier but not skew progression(ie: competitve items obtained by easier means, etc).
 
Just out of curiosity what mobs are you complaining about? Almost all of the vah mobs have minimal loot, and a lot of the polore quest mobs are not only killed for the qp but also because they are relic droppers. There is a lot of content in the tier range that most likely stays up for a while to be killed by people trying to progress through the tiers. Also, if your friends are quitting now over of getting quest mob x in a certain timeframe it only gets worse the higher up you go. For instance cw not getting akarn or gloom for months, or not getting any/many attempts on a few 6 mans because they die within hours of spawning.
 
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