Raid Respawn Timers

Status
Not open for further replies.
Foolra

Foolra

Misser of Due Dates
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I would like to make another post about this issue. The first one I made was posted on the 19th of September, almost 3 months ago. I inquired about the possibility of randomizing respawn timers as a method of splitting up the spawns more fairly. This was the first reply in the thread, from Woldaff:

No matter how we randomize the code the Euros still really get first pick just because they have much longer for everything to spawn than the North American guilds. Randomizing this more would not be as easy as you think because of trash but I can look into it.


I think this will go away completely when a certain guild stops back gearing and progresses to a certain huge blue man who lives in a tower.
Click to expand...

It is true. If you look at the US guilds that raid on tier 7-8, our average raid time is from as early as 6PM EST to about 1AM EST, about 7 hours. Now, let's assume something spawns within that time frame, which is 29% of a day, it should be long to the American guilds. I'll even give us anything that spawns after midnight, which is unlikely for a guild to take during that last hour. At current time, there are 5 guilds that raid on tier 7-8 in that 7 hour time frame. Revelation, Chaotic Winds, Numinous, Bane and Goon Squad.

On the other hand, anything that spawns from 1AM EST to 6PM EST belongs to the guilds that raid during that time, the European guilds, of which there are only two on this tier - Exodus and PR. That means TWO guilds get 17 hours worth of respawn time, and FIVE guilds get 7 hours worth of respawn time. That seems incredibly unfair to me.

Now, I understand that it is not the goal or the job of those that run the server to make sure everything is 100% fair and even for those that play. I'm not asking for that. I do think however that this is a gross imbalance, and it is severely hurting the playerbase at the high end, in both European and American guilds.

The second part of Woldaff's comment must have been referring to Exodus, who has been squatting on this tier for what seems like forever now, either because of having to backgear, or some other reason. If the guild that had such a huge advantage in spawn availability was willing to gear up and move on, this wouldn't be an issue. They would be on tier 9 and competing with Twilight for spawns on that tier. There is just such a HUGE bottleneck in Thaz, ToT, PoFrost right now that nobody can move. Believe me, the American guilds do want to move on. It is not a lack of desire or motivation that is keeping us pinned down.

Last week, Revelation held a raid Friday night, a time when no other American guild raids. It is also 5 days after Sunday, a day when every guild raids. So, there should be a good number of targets up. What happened was a European guild took 80% of what was up, and we were left with what they didn't want. Granted, we got some nice upgrades and took down a LT wing for the first time in 2 months, but it seems like nothing we do can make a difference. We are at such a disadvantage that whatever we try to do, including eliminating ALL our same-time competition for a night, leaves us with little choice.

Now, I don't want this to sound like I'm whining, but I'm sure some will take it that way. Honestly, I don't know what can be done about this situation. I do know that I have spoken with guild leaders of two other guilds on our tier, and they have very much the same feeling. Enough so that I decided to make another post about this topic in hopes of coming up with a solution other than us sitting around waiting on Exodus to shit or get off the pot. It may be desirable for them to do the exact same content for 5 months straight, 6 days a week, but it definitely isn't what I would consider "fun" - which is what this comes down to. It is a game, and I would hope that the ultimate goal in every thing that is done by those that run it is to ensure that the people that play it have fun.

Let's keep this discussion civil and on topic. Do not ruin a good discussion yet again.
 
I would really like to see if Ikisith would help guilds have more targets, but I am really not sure when that will be out.

I really hate the idea of instancing because it takes away from guild to guild interaction, and it discourages competition over targets. I am also not for lowering respawn timers, because realistically, if the guilds who are beating you to the spawns in the first place still want the targets, they will get them before you no matter how short the respawn rate is.

I think the best thing to do is have a larger randomization timer so that guilds have to constantly scout all targets instead of only having to do it once every 5 days. Making spawns 2-7 days (for example) would allow for spawn timers to be spread out, and for guilds to have to continually check targets each day. The solution probably won't work, but I do like it better than instancing and just shortening the spawn timers altogether.
 
I completely agree with Foolra about the fun part. It's no fun logging in to raid and never having anything to kill in terms of progression. It's been 3 months since our MT (who happens to be me) has gotten an upgrade, 3 1/2 if you don't count ED Tmap loot. That's right about the time these posts started...
 
Foolra said:
... Exodus to shit or get off the pot. It may be desirable for them to do the exact same content for 5 months straight, 6 days a week, but it definitely isn't what I would consider "fun" - which is what this comes down to.
Click to expand...

I don't speak for my guild, but the reason we kill a lot is simple.

We raid a lot.

We raid - every single day - hardcore - including Fridays and Saturdays, from very early to very very late. We do this to gear our members as fast as possible so that we can finally progress from this tier and your frankly *asinine and childish [see above]* insults. Euro guilds have always had a huge disadvantage over US guilds in with regards to the number of potential members. During the Euro playtimes, there is on average less then half the number of people (and potential members) available as during US times. This make encounters, especially high end ones, much much more difficult and time consuming to complete - as TU and wold can testify to.

Of course, everyone is capable of raiding at this time, and TU has proven it time and time again. However, most people, including yourselves, are inherently lazy and want everything handed to them on a silver platter at any time they play.

You are basically saying, give us free loots because we don't raid as much as you but want them anyway.

Basically - you need more members with no irl jobs.
 
Last edited:
Apokriphos said:
I don't speak for my guild, but the reason we kill a lot is simple.

We raid a lot.

Basically - you need more members with no irl jobs.
Click to expand...

I never said you didn't raid a lot, and I think that you do have every right to the targets you can get to. Especially considering that you do raid as much as you do, I, and others, feel like you should have progressed past the point you are at now.

I do not buy the you point that you are at a disadvantage due to less European people playing the game. There are two Euro guilds to choose from. There are currently 5 American ones. You need 18 people to have your pick of whatever target you want. We have to fight against 4 other guilds to find members. Just because there more people that play from the US doesn't mean that we have a glut of players in our guild. Every guild has issues with keeping members, made all the more hard by having no content to do.

The argument of: "raid during our time" or "get more members without a job" is a little silly. It is a game, something we do in our spare time. You raid in your spare time. Are you honestly telling me that Exodus would switch their raid times to midnight to 6AM (your time) on a daily basis to get targets? I'm sorry, but I don't believe that.

I think the fact that you get first pick of targets every day is an advantage, one that is made stronger by the fact that no one raids for twelve hours prior to your raid start time.
 
Exodus would be past this tier if we didn't have to backgear half a raid full of unrelic'd and under AA'd new recruits.

Unfortunately we do, and that means doing back content.

I'm sorry this upsets you so much that you feel the need to take shots at our guild in each and every one of your posts.

It makes you sound childish and adds little credibility to your plea to "keep things civil" when such comments could have just as easily been omitted.
 
Apokriphos said:
You are basically saying, give us free loots because we don't raid as much as you but want them anyway.
Click to expand...

I think you missed the entire point of the original post.

It has nothing to do with a desire to raid. It has to do with the fact that even if those 4-5 American guilds raided 7 days a week, they still wouldn't have any more kills than they do currently due to the massive difference in the respawn timer window. (ok, they may get a few to be fair, but very few)

When named get scattered out, it most likely means that anything the American guilds kill has to spawn during the time they raid at, not before. Which is the opposite for European guilds....there is a massive dead-zone between the end of the American raids and the beginning of the European raids which is when a lot of these named are spawning.

It really has nothing to do with Exodus. It's simply a matter of guilds in the raid window having a massive innate advantage on target selection simply due to the current raid respawn timer system used.

I know a lot of players in Euro guilds hate it when people complain about the "euro advantage", but it's simple math that can't be denied.
 
In all honesty there isn't much that can be done when a guild raids 7 days a week, and start raiding in the weee hours of the morning US time. The only thing that can fix it would be more content in that projected tier. Other then that all but one guild is pretty much SOL.

Randomizing the spawn timer hasn't seemed to really help much. There is still a huge window for them to pop and be ripe for the picking before US guilds even wake up. There has even been a few instances of bosses or mini's spawning before trash.

Instancing would help but we just don't have the population here so boo thats not going to work either.

So really there is nothing that can be done besides more raiding content. I guess we'll all just fight for progression scraps till then and see.


Well I guess Apokriphos made a post while I was posting.

He claims Exo raids every day.. Grats you guys! Ours raids 4 sometimes more a week. Euros are not at a huge disadvantage no matter how much you claim they are. First dibs is still first dibs. Your window for spawning is greater then anyone elses.

I also don't get why calling people lazy will accomplish anything besides getting this thread canned.. Hmmm I wounder hehe. :tinfoil:

Being inherently lazy has absolutly nothing to do with other guilds having nothing to do most nights. Raiding at the absolute butt crack of dawn and getting zones claimed and down before anyone even has a chance to wake up is more the issue. Grats on being all hard core and all but don't go calling people lazy who don't even have a prayer of forming a raid that early to compete with EXO. It's frankly not possible. Even having loads of people who are jobless wont work. Those same guild would still be forced to raid US times.

So really it's not about being lazy, having jobs or not. It really boils down to fist dibs and the ability of having first dibs every single raid day. Nothing will change this fact except for having more raiding content.
 
Last edited:
More content would be awesome. I'm super bored of the old and I don't even raid every day.
 
booster said:
hi haters.
Click to expand...

lol :)

Yeah, I know it has to come off like that sometimes. It's just a frustrating situation with how timers are. I don't blame Exodus at all for raiding 7 days a week since apparently they have targets available each day....if I was in their situation and had to backgear all those people I would do the same. If we had targets available during our raid time we would probably raid more (yah we raid 4 days a week but for a while now we don't have viable raid targets those 4 days, usually 1-2 of the days at least are spent backgearing alts or a new main or two.)

Though like Gregar mentioned....I don't see any realistic "fix" for the situation apart from new raid content. So I guess for now it's just a situation of sit and wait.
 
Those of you who claim Exodus has any disadvantage to their raid times are not aware of the issues that come from building a guild at a low population time, nor have they thought of the issues that arise from building a guild that is bot heavy (as can be necessary during low population times) on many encounters which gain major benefit from single botting. Having raiding with Exodus (as well as many USA time guilds) I can vouch that these can be very distinct and in some cases crippling disadvantages. There are major tradeoffs to raiding euro times.

The bottom line is that if you don't raid as often, you won't be able to hit as many targets, and the targets you do hit may not be prime. We as staff are not intending on doing anything to promote near end-game raiding for the more casual gamers in a way that is a detriment to hard-core gamers.

The staff is aware of the overall issue and has been taking steps to work with it; but as I've pointed out, it's a lot more complex than it is being made out to be. Simply adding content isn't a fast and easy process to do right. Simply adding content will not remove any bottleneck from the game, period. Simply adding content is what got us into this mess in the first place (Lack of competition at planar levels due to extra planar tier zones being released so as to remove a planar level bottleneck.)

Having said that, I'm locking this thread for two reasons:
1 - This post is full enough of guild drama and hate that I'm not convinced it's worth keeping around. I'd tell you to cut it out the next time you post about the issue but I don't want there to be a next time.
2 - The issue is known, and posting every 3 months isn't going to make us more aware of it. We do what we can but the 'to do' list is rather long and changes aren't going to be made overnight. Make do where you can, and please try to appreciate the effort the staff puts into all the changes they make - whether they be new raid zones, new exp zones, GM events, dps parses, deity quests (with augs!), item vendor pricing, or a slew of new instrument modifiers on back end content.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom