Splitting Inner Prison and Outer Prison

Thinkmeats

Thinkmeats

War Is Good For Business
It's obvious that the Prison of Adymyzzra has a pretty big split of mob strength in it. The IP dragons are far and away stronger than MotG. That isn't unique--other zones have big spreads in mob strength--but Prison isn't on the same tier as other zones. Only Sepulcher and Caverns are similar in power, but there's really no replacement for prison. If torment is full, a guild can go to air. If air is full, a guild can go elsewhere still, and so on. If prison is full, a guild can go to... where? If there were as many zones in the prison teir as there were in the lower tiers, this wouldn't be a problem. If there was only one guild in prison, this wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, neither of these conditions is true.

Forsaken still rumbles prison frequently, Ruin does OP when we can, and PR has been sniffing around OP for a while now. There's a traffic jam at the big house--only one raid can be in the zone at the same time, even though they might be raiding significantly different content. Right now it's mostly Forsaken and Ruin rubbing shoulders, but who's to say it won't be Ruin and Phoenix Rising later? Phoenix Rising and Escuhardtospell? The guild landscape is a bit more populus nowadays, but there's still only one Prison.

It's not just crowded people. The Manifestations encounter has severe lag problems too it, and I know from experience that if I try to play on a dialup Prison basically chokes the shit out of my connection. The zone is just plain busy--there's lots of content in there, and more going in, but there's still only the one zone.

How to fix it? Instancing is out of the question. Too much gear goes into the system too quickly, and implementing it serverside would be pretty rough. My favorite solution involves splitting the zone into segments based on tier. For now, OP in one zone, IP in the other; both zones would the same zone map, but entering the portal to OP in EF would take you to prisonA, and at the physical location where OP becomes IP on the map, there'd be a mechanism to zone players into prisonB. PrisonB would use the same zone map as prisonA, but only the IP segment would be populated; in A, only the OP segment would be populated. Mobs would respawn as normal, but the zones would have seperate player caps, being techincally different zones. The mechanism could be switching a door from open on click to zone on click, it could be an NPC you hail, it could be really anything. So long as it was reasonably possible for an IP guild to enter IP while someone's in OP, or an OP guild to do OP while someone's in IP, it would work.

Overall, I feel this solution is the best among the options. No nasty inflation side-effects, relatively simple to implement and mantain (going into the "wrong part" of your zone would just have you wandering the empty halls--no harm in that), and it avoids cockblocking guilds, be they hitting IP or OP. This could be left in indefinitely, or reversed when more prison-teir zones enter the game.

Oh, and I shouldn't have to mention this, but let's keep this thread clean, no?
 
Its not a bad idea at all, Prison is the current end-all be-all of raid zones and there isn't much other than CoD / Sepulch to compare... However I'm not sure if Wiz wants this implemented, granted the nameds die twice as quick, but where do you "split" the zone.. ? In order to complete archaics you need to do Phase Golems which are after the second event in the zone in OP, so there would still be reason for an IP guild to enter the OP prison to farm the zone and then just move back to IP once they've cleaned out OP.
 
I suppose you could split it up past Taesh before IP. Make something port you to another prison that only has the IP mobs spawned in it and only OP reached by way of everfrost would contain current OP mobs. Almost like an instance except only having one set of IP and OP mobs divided into two zones.. and of course the fact that you couldn't run two of either at once.
 
It's possible but would be a fuckton of work to just appease the whininess of both guilds. It's easy enough to lift the cap on the zone, and it wouldn't really affect a guild to have another in a separate part of prison, but the issue lies with whether the guilds don't create a huge fucking dramastorm shitfest 2006.
 
Sepulcher is very much an alternative to Outter Prison. There are very obvious reasons some of the loot isn't exactly the same quality as OP. For one, Sepulcher you can pick and choose what named mobs you want to kill, and it's not blocked by any combines like you have to do to get to MoTG. We've said this time and time again, that the loot from MoTG is higher quality than normal due to the time you have to spend gathering the orbs before you can even attempt him.

If you're looking for somewhere to go then Sepulcher is the place easily. If you think some of the encounters are too hard, then post feedback here. It's not that tough - they went through some balancing a while back and I'm open to look at them again.
 
Lifting the cap sounds good in theory and is far away the easiest solution, especially if you place blame on the "whininess of both guilds" but prison is hardly playable for alot of folks w/ 36 as is. The Manis are murder on connections where we typically ask people to log out before engage just to have a shot at the encounter, and I am sure there are a ton of other spots that have "LD" written all over them. But If you say that 72 peeps in prison would be no more lag/connection stress then 36......maybe it is the way to go.
 
Outer prison is a bottleneck for guild progressions comparable to no other zone at this tier. Telling a guild to instead do sepulcher is not relevent as their is no comparable item with value to a raiding guild as a mirror bp or, bracers with haste or, the range from mani's or, any of the the neccessary drops from motg or, the gems for combine from the area past mirrors to taeshlien, or taesh himself who is irreplacable in gear. Telling a guild to do sepulcher instead of outer prison is tantamount to telling a starving mass hungry for bread to instead eat cake.

As for the 72 limit raise, this is absurd also due to the lag it would generate and the spam in traditional raid channels. To alleviate this lag would mean placing further zone servers processing power into one zone as was done with bazaar or EC on live. If you do this, it would be just as simple to dedicate that power into 2 seperate distinct zones.

You could place the break after taeshlin and use a portal or clicky that summons individuals or raids. This mechanism is inconsequential.

This change would allow 2 guilds to raid inner prison and outer prison without conflicting with their goals or raidtimes.

The only justification for not implementing this change would be either: the time it would take to code the different mob spawn split, or the justification of preventing other guilds from progressing in a bottleneck which does not fall in line with the goal of providing a fair and friendly player enviroment for the health of the community at large.

Inter-guild drama would be alleviated and the current anti-competitive stance of blocking op or ip would disappear overnite.

As for the half the archaic pieces dropping in op, with or without a split this would still happen. I would place the public backlash close to farming NDHK for relics to sell to any guild who just does op for archaic drops. Perhaps another idea could be presented from the community for solving this problem.
 
We do sep everytime its up, 10 day repops make both choices a once in a rare thing.

Also, lifting the cap would be awesome if manis were fixed not to lag to all hell and back
 
I agree if raiding the player cap in the zone would be awsome and don't really see how it would cause "drama" but with 60+ in the zone wouldn't lag be a issue?
 
I'd be happy to up the cap, but the moment Ruin and Forsaken get into the kind of drama that made me create the cap the first place it's coming right back.
 
Ruin will play nice if Forsaken wants to =)

Boyscouts Honor.



Also, in response to Xeldan saying to post requests about sepulcher, I think the loot and the difficulty fits perfectly except on Eurikos and Spouses. They both have good items, but the 2 booby items each can wear on you.
 
ThunndarrNameless said:
Wouldn't it just be easier to flag prison to hold 72 people?
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When's the last time you've ever seen a zone be stable with 72? Let alone a script-heavy zone like Prison?

rab said:
It's possible but would be a fuckton of work to just appease the whininess of both guilds. It's easy enough to lift the cap on the zone, and it wouldn't really affect a guild to have another in a separate part of prison, but the issue lies with whether the guilds don't create a huge fucking dramastorm shitfest 2006.

...

Probably splitting prison.
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The solution I proposed was chosen because it seemed to be the least work of all alternatives (more raid zones, instancing, etc etc). If whole new raid zones are really easier than making half of a pre-existing, already-tested zone, then by all means, I'll support the new zones. If the zone would be stable with 72, I'd be fine with that, but I really really really doubt it'd be stable. Also, I'm hard-pressed to think of any problem that couldn't just be dismissed as 'whininess'.

edit:

Xeldan said:
Sepulcher is very much an alternative to Outter Prison. There are very obvious reasons some of the loot isn't exactly the same quality as OP. For one, Sepulcher you can pick and choose what named mobs you want to kill, and it's not blocked by any combines like you have to do to get to MoTG. We've said this time and time again, that the loot from MoTG is higher quality than normal due to the time you have to spend gathering the orbs before you can even attempt him.

If you're looking for somewhere to go then Sepulcher is the place easily. If you think some of the encounters are too hard, then post feedback here. It's not that tough - they went through some balancing a while back and I'm open to look at them again.
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As others have said, Seph is awesome but due to the long repop is nowhere near robust enough to be any kind of alternative. It's a nice bonus, but that's about it.
 
I should have said childishness.

Also, it's probably not less work, but it's certainly the less attractive option when working on a zone. Why spend time that could be spent on creating content than just altering existing stuff when an easier workaround exists? (Also known as: rab admits he was wrong.)

Also, this idea was suggested for NDHK oh so long ago and it got shot down then, so I really don't think we'll ever see one zone split up like that, but what do I know!

TM said:
When's the last time you've ever seen a zone be stable with 72? Let alone a script-heavy zone like Prison?
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The 72 won't be near each other and won't be receiving many packets from the other 36 at all. Unless the fights themselves crash the zone, you won't be that affected by the others.
 
rab said:
The 72 won't be near each other and won't be receiving many packets from the other 36 at all. Unless the fights themselves crash the zone, you won't be that affected by the others.
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That's cool. I'd be up for a 72 limit if it was stable.
 
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