Open petition to reduce variance to +/- 4 hours

[maestrom]

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

A small amount of variance is good because of timezone differences and RNG, but 16 hours variance with weekly mobs spread from Friday to Tuesday is not fun for anyone. It promotes Rampage levels of neckbearding, burns out trackers and it keeps growing guilds limited to the Gorenaire and Wuoshi-like mobs noone cares about.

I liked your whole post but I thought this part was interesting.

Can variance be applied globally?

Right now, stuff is 168 + X hours, where X is a number between -8 and 8. Instead of having the variance done per mob, can it be applied globally to all targets?

So the respawn on all mobs would still be 168 + X but instead of each mob having its own X variable, they all pull from ONE X variable defined at a top layer. I'm not a coder, so I have no idea if this is possible or what the code would look like, but the output would be something like this example.

Currently, there are 4 targets on the 168 + X timer. With current variance, you could have:

Target A at 162 hours,
Target B at 176 hours,
Target C at 171 hours,
Target D at 167 hours.

Would global variance be constructable such that the same X is applied to all targets?

Targets A, B, C, D all have spawn timers of 173 hours.

The main purpose of this would be to move "raid night" around during the week. +-8 wouldn't be ideal in this situation though because a prime top repop would have a stronggggggg chance of putting the entire raid spawn either in the middle of a workday or in the middle of the night. Some testing and tweaking would be necessary to ensure raid spawns "walk" through the week but still stay clumped up.

[Swish]

Are earthquakes still a thing?

[am0n]

Therein lies the important tidbit. This isn't about just removing variance. It's about removing variance and sim repops regularly (every few weeks). This means a lot more stuff would be happening at once, forcing guilds to be more selective in their choices. By forcing the big guilds to be in a different place when something else spawns, it means other guilds have an opportunity. Plus, it means you can turn the socking into a 1-2 day event instead of an entire week. Perhaps people will be able to enjoy other zones in the game if every night wasn't a sock night.

But all this is moot. The devs aren't interested in it. Even though they claim not to play on the server, which means doing this wouldn't actually impact them.

[am0n]

And that only lends itself better to the fact that No Variance + Random Repops (to mix up whose play window the targets are in, every few weeks) would do wonders to help out smaller guilds get some raid targets. Forces the big guys to contest for the most important mobs while the smaller guilds can do Old World + Kunark stuff.

[Seltius]

So since we are now having a healthy discussion why do you think variance should be increased? Say to +/-16 hrs? I know some of you said the variance needed to stay or be extended.

[am0n]

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

So since we are now having a healthy discussion why do you think variance should be increased? Say to +/-16 hrs? I know some of you said the variance needed to stay or be extended.

The only "benefit" I can see to extending variance is that it will spread out spawns more. However, this only benefits the larger guilds that can field a force to sock and raid at all hours of the day.

[Legday]

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

So since we are now having a healthy discussion why do you think variance should be increased? Say to +/-16 hrs? I know some of you said the variance needed to stay or be extended.

Longer variance would just spread the windows out even farther, and believe it or not, a 32 hour long window would still be tracked and/or sometimes socked by the big guilds. Thats how bad the sickness is.

What people don't seem to understand is that there are a lot of hardcores that play this game that just want it more than you do. They have the time, resources, and backwards priorities necessary to make their pixel dreams come true. The ONLY thing keeping them from tracking and killing that mob you want to kill is the mob they want to kill more having a chance to spawn at the same time.

TL;DR Someone should be documenting this whole thing as a social experiment.

[maestrom]

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

The ONLY thing keeping them from tracking and killing that mob you want to kill is the mob they want to kill more having a chance to spawn at the same time.

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

The staff's ultimate goal is to make sure this emu is running as stable as possible. They've said, they want this to be archival quality. They are not here to entertain us.

That being said, it is fair to ask the staff to see what they can do. Continent specific earthquakes. Zone specific. And as I said, bump up variance as the trade-off if need be. We need a little spice in our gumbo. Decreasing variance just changes the batphone terms. It does nothing to alter the flow of the server. My point is, add some spice.

[Monty405]

Decrease variance so guilds can fte mobs and get on with their lives (some people do need this intervention).