Variance Changes

[Mortiiss]

Originally Posted by YendorLootmonkey [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This only helps guilds willing to park their entire primary, secondary, or tertiary raid force -- made up of characters they have been buying up for months -- at a target (because that's what constitutes mobilization nowadays) while they play 3rd/4th alts.

At least before, if non-poopsock guilds knew the mob was short in window, it wouldn't be unheard of to hang out for a bit and add to the competition that some of these guilds have allegedly been yearning for.

Doesn't exactly level the playing field. All you've done is given the mob to the guild with the most IP Exemptions so they can log in their raid force the quickest. Not sure if that was the intent here.

Sorry they have more characters? Start leveling more up! Or buy some with plat.

I approve of these changes and I think it will get rid of socking. I feel bad for the guilds without that many characters, though.

[Scowlie]

If the goal was to prevent poopsocking, I don't really see this changing much. The problem isn't that 100+ players are waiting ingame for a boss to spawn, it's that everyone has 2-3+ characters sitting at every target. When VS spawns, there are usually only 5-10 people ingame. Within 5 minutes, there will easily be 80-100+.

Just like Kunark was a temporary solution to the content problems in Classic, Velious will only be a bandaid. I would have to imagine that a lot of players will come back for Velious and there will be more raiding guilds than there are now.

[Lazortag]

Before this thread devolves more than it has, I just want to give my perspective on the new changes. Like all other threads about variance, people will use this to (a) promote whatever agenda they have (rotations, removing variance entirely, tokens, whatever), (b) trashtalk big guilds for having no lives/being unemployed/etc., (c) ridicule smaller guilds for being unskilled/unprepared/socialist, just to give a few examples. Because of this, it's easy to dismiss people on either side as repeating the same tired arguments, and of being biased because of whichever type of guild they belong to. So here's my no-nonsense post about why the new changes are bad. Realistically, this will change very little - there's only a small chance of the windows being increased for a given raid mob, and when they are, the increase isn't by that much. I think the problem is that several months ago there was a very productive discussion about how to go forward with the raid scene, and most people were very supportive of the proposed changes (which you can read here: )

Originally Posted by Rogean [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Here is what nilbog and I are currently planning/designing/brainstorming:

We will be cutting the variance in half on the existing raid spawns.

We will be implementing an FTE notice of some sort, whether this is an emote or some type of message.

We will be implementing a simulated patch day respawn. Here is how it will work.

The server will pick one day of each week (Random 1 to 7, Sunday through Saturday). It will then pick a random time. I will not disclose the range of the possible times, but it will only include afternoon and evening hours, so as to give the best chance for the most people to benefit from it.

A serverwide message will go off indicating that the simulated patch day respawn has or will be taking effect shortly. All raid mobs will (either immediately, delayed, or spanned, tbd) respawn.

These respawns will NOT affect the normal respawn times of the mob. For example. If Talendor was killed on Monday, and on death the server determined he would spawn again on Sunday. A simulated patch day occurs on Thursday, his death on Thursday will not reset his scheduled respawn time on Sunday.
Exception: If the mob's spawn time is scheduled to occur within (To be determined, probably either 6 or 12 hours) of the simulated patch day respawn, it will calculate a new spawn time for the mob as it would had he been killed normally, when he dies from the simulated respawn.

The main change to the raid scene would be simulated repops - I think most of us can agree that even if the windows were a billion years long, it wouldn't matter because what casual guilds (and pretty much all guilds) want most is regular repops. But halving the windows was also a big change, and this new change is mutually exclusive with that. It's as if everything that was said about the variance creating barriers to competition and the raid scene being unfair was completely ignored. We were left in the dark about when the new raid changes would happen, and now several months later, we get a change that's the opposite of one of the most desired changes.

It's not like this change is going to ruin the server. It's very low impact (both in that it won't discourage poopsocking, and it won't hurt casuals that much), but it's still a step in the wrong direction and like many others, I'm wondering why the staff changed their minds from months ago when they agreed that the windows were too long.

[Sizzle]

Originally Posted by Rogean [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's not so much if you aren't sitting around on it's spawn point waiting for it.


Hiyyyoooo

Someone will be with a ranger somewhere tho LOL sucks for anyone who wants dragons now.

[Splorf22]

Originally Posted by Rogean [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'd like to clarify some misinformation that was provided with the latest patch, starting with the lack of a patch note and then an error in confirmation on my part.

Back when we were discussing changes about extending the window of a mob's spawn when it fell within the last 15%, I wrote some code to show as an example. Turns out that code ended up staying in and I had forgotten about it, and it went live with the latest compile.

So...

Patch Note: Respawn timers that fall within the last 15% of a window will now be extended by a random amount up to 24 additional hours, repeating accumlatively until the window is under 85% for total potential spawn time. This currently applies to all mobs who have any variance at all, but will be adjusted next patch to only include mobs that have a minimum base spawn of 2 days or more.

So I am with Giegue: after a huge flamethread the community pretty much settled on simultaneous repops + fte shouts (and I even made a poll about a week ago which was in favor of this solution over the current raid scene by votes of about 15:1. Obama would sell his soul to be elected by that margin) and you made a post indicating that was roughly what you and Nilbog were planning, not to mention less variance. And there was much rejoicing. Now the patch comes and instead we have more variance, not less. I went to google 'wtf' and found this insane video. Take that!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihOva...ture=fvwp&NR=1

[Triangle]

With all due respect, this is a bad decision. In fact not only is it a bad decision, it is coincidentally the exact opposite of what a good decision would be.

[Nlaar]

Originally Posted by Triangle [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

With all due respect, this is a bad decision. In fact not only is it a bad decision, it is coincidentally the exact opposite of what a good decision would be.

Agreed.

Those "in charge" need to reread Yendor's / Lazortag's / Splorf's posts.

[Crazyeye]

Cant imagine how far were actually off on velious arrival if were just now attempting to fix the end game of kunark after 2 years. You can't fix whats broken, if your gonna attempt fix something do it the right way with focusing on more content to fill the needs of the massive top end player base.

adding 24hours of variance ontop of the 92hour windows on the total of 14 ( 8 excluding VP ) major boss mobs we currently have 150+ players contesting for, or adding 30+ raid mobs to the mix while freeing up the current to other guilds ?

You are even getting major support from us players recently trying to help the progression of velious. Why not take advantage of this and update the crowdscouring or whatever else it is that we can assist with getting that here rather than wasting your time on this crap?

[Sizzle]

Just make all dragon/god loot no drop.

[Shinko]

Just make all dragon/god loot no drop.


im ok with this 100%