Phase 1 : Low Population Server issues

[Devicus]

I find it ironic that as we approach the anniversary of the river of souls debacle, trion are making a similar mistake of excluding people and making them powerless.

I applaud their ambition but this is really badly implemented and ill thought out. It will take about 800 man hours in prime spots to make us reach the goal, there's probably only a handful of really great spots and these won't work at peak hours. So if people just grind where ever that's about 1600 man hours. #

That doesn't sound much on a busy server but there's a few hundred active players in my faction tops. Of which 80% don't have *any* spare time to throw away like that. They might be able to make time for say.. one bonus hand in but a lot of players have raids, dailies and real life. I'm a loser with a lot of spare time but I need ISS, PA levels, all stuff I can't get while doing any grinding of any efficiency for this quest. Realistically they're expecting 40 or 50 people to put 5 hours a night in doing this. A server like blood iron will need maybe 60 minutes a night from these sort of players to make up the 80K gap we're facing. Except they'll get about 60-80K without trying. So they'll have 5 times as many players and that large number will have a gap a fraction of the size to bridge.

No one in their right mind will grind it on a low pop server. Why throw away that sort of time just to still not get it? This is one that gets worse in an exponential (or at least quadratic) fashion because more players doesn't just mean more people to do the optional hand ins (above and beyond the 5 a day) but it needs less of this grinding in the first place.

[Yolen]

Any active EU servers that I might move to to get titles?

I didn't get Insomniac and Avowed and all the event titles to now miss a few just because my server is lacking active people.

PS. I still wait for my exclusive title for being a founding member and missing TWO titles I was unable to get just because I started TOO EARLY.

[Lokyst]

For future events Trion should consider not putting in a such a tight deadline.

Rather than having a set time to roll over to the next phase, make it so the phase rolls over when we complete the server quest.

It might not have been feasible for this event because they don't want to still be having their birthday in June, but it's something to consider.

[Rokkual]

I know a lot of players dont care about the title from completing this phase, but what about the upcoming phases with similar goals of 100k? What are the rewards for those? If people actually miss out on something good there will be rage....

[Yolen]

I know a lot of players dont care about the title from completing this phase, but what about the upcoming phases with similar goals of 100k? What are the rewards for those? If people actually miss out on something good there will be rage....

Theres a title for each of 6 phases.

[Rokkual]

Theres a title for each of 6 phases.

Ah, well then. In that case just let them svrew us.

[Daenu]

While scaling might be more difficult, there is something that they could do to help those of us that are farming. Instead of people having to kill low level mobs, making us take up questing areas that are frequented by newbies, allow us to far the higher level mobs a little easier.

Mob level 1-10 would drop 1 skin
Mob level 11-20 would drop 1 skin
Mob level 21-30 would drop 3 skins
Mob level 31-40 would drop 4 skins
Mob level 41+ would drop 5 skins

The same could be done for mining and foraging nodes as well. Or they could break it up by zone. As it is right now, it's going to be really tough for us to get this done which is a shame for people that are trying for the titles. We can't MAKE people band together to get this done, but it could be made easier for those that are working towards completing the objective.

[the_real_seebs]

Apart from the quite obvious difference between low and high pop shards, which itself is confusing as to why the end goal figure would be the same over shards.

Sounds technical to me. Consider: Does the shard "know" how heavily populated it is over time? It may know that there's 1700 people logged in. It probably doesn't have any convenient way in code to ask "what is the largest number of people I've had logged in at once over the last week". And they probably haven't previously had cause to make quest parameters tunable-by-server.

[Tenof]

Sounds technical to me. Consider: Does the shard "know" how heavily populated it is over time? It may know that there's 1700 people logged in. It probably doesn't have any convenient way in code to ask "what is the largest number of people I've had logged in at once over the last week". And they probably haven't previously had cause to make quest parameters tunable-by-server.

Yeah, I believe it's very technical and is more difficult to implement than one would think.

One way I can think of is to produce NPCs who turn in the quests, whose number depends on the current % completion, yelling around "Hey you! Help us! Come on!".
The contribution from NPC never exceeds 80% of the objective requirement for the given time span, so that players have to contribute.
With this, people can't just sit around for NPCs to complete the event, and people on low pop servers will be encouraged with the feeling "Oh we may be able to do it!".

[Femgame]

From what I have seen at the title vendor it states " Participate in the event to purchase the title" does this mean you have to complete all of phase one or just help out on a character (s) you want the title on? Who knows but my vote is with the latter. So those who at least log in, participate with getting the mats even if it does not reach the final goal will be able to buy the title.

[Chaosoul]

I have to say that I agree with those unhappy about the imbalance.

I have my very populated servers, Laethys and Greybriar, but then at the other side of the spectrum I have my wee low populated servers (/em waves at Threesprings and Silkweb).


Personally, I believe that the titles should be Account Wide. While there are many players who only invest in single character (possibly due to PA) and maybe an alt, there are those of us that play on several servers, each with their own level ranges and agendas. The portion of us that play that way and have fun with the RPG side of things as well as the MMO.

Do you realize how daunting a task it is to try and obtain things like event titles or mounts when you have that many characters?

They did a great thing making the event-purchased items Account Bound. Likewise, I believe anything event-related should be Account Bound (Or until equipped in the case of Mounts or Companions of course). That is the logical course for being fair to all styles of play, IMHO.


As for not receiving the titles if you do not reach your server goal in time. Yeah, that's an insane oversight given the huge population differences. Even putting aside the faction imbalance, some servers are overflowing while others have a nice, quiet little atmosphere. I enjoy playing in both scenarios. But I don't feel that my "small town" characters don't deserve rewards any less than those on the more populated shards.

Truly, this can't be intended. It makes no logical sense. Not everyone can devote their life to a game. I have a hard enough time with all of the characters I juggle - But *that* is my choice and part of the fun. But when half of my characters are penalized due to where they live, that's just not right.

That's how I feel about it, anyway.

[Anuhart]

Didn't even know there was a title vendor. Found him skulking around between two kiosks.

It says "Complete the phase 'n' world event quest".

[the_real_seebs]

Personally, I believe that the titles should be Account Wide.

Hah, I'd just come to the forums to find this thread so I could post that idea.

[Mystydawn]

It's not so much getting or not getting a title that bothers me. It's grind framing crap. I spent most of my playing time the last 2 days just grinding livel 50 wolves and bats in Iron Pine. Well, I'm pretty much bored! One of the big reasons I left WoW was grinding daily quests over and over. I don't mind some but this is pretty crazy. Especially crazy when a level 50 can kill level seven mobs and get the same amount of skins as a level 50 killing a level 50 mob. There should be some progression to killing and awarding more skins if you are at least working at your level. Mining and Picking the same if your mining in IPP it's a bit harder than in the leve 10 areas.

[Carabas]

I believe our server has a chance to get this now, but I believe it is down to one reason. The AH was full of the leather. Yesterday I spent at least 1000 plat buying the leather to hand in for the quest. I did feel this is kind of wrong as it is more than likely gold seller bots who are selling it, and I'm therefore funding them. But I see no other way we could have got this title and it's now givien us about an extra 10'000 towards the quest. Now instead of farming the leather I am going to farm plat so I can buy more and ensure we finish the quest.
I did also look at the future event quests, and I have to say that it is disheartening. There is one where we kill defiants, if that is in warfronts then it shouldn't be too hard. If it's in the world itself, it won't happen for us. The defiants have all but left our server, I have a defiant alt, and there are normally no more than 10 online in Meridian even at peak time.
Also the next quest where you gather mats during a parade, I don't think bots wil be farming that, as well as not particularly wanting to waste even more of my plat on bots. So I imagine we will also fail that.
Overall the whole idea seems great, but if the server is low populated it's really quite unfair. Just because we're on a lower server we've not got chances to gain titles which will come easily on a high populated one. I am still hoping this thread will be noticed and something changed so that all the servers are treated fairly and have a chance of the same rewards. I think that's all that most people on here are asking for. An equal chance of the rewards as every other server.