THE ISSUE
The server has grown stale in terms of endgame content.
One group of 20 people is locking down ~90% of bosses and the reason is because everything spawns at a DIFFERENT time.
The entirety of endgame content on this server is unfair to players on the weaker side (it should be the opposite) solely because if you aren't able to defeat the "top" guild that currently has the content on farm in a head-on full numbers fight, you'll never get any content whatsoever, ultimately creating a snowball effect.
Originally in patch 3.5/4.0/4.5 (I don't remember which one exactly), some of the more desirable bosses were made to all spawn at the same time and were given very short despawn timers. This forced groups/guilds that were freefarming to have to make DECISIONS on what they wanted to do - they couldn't simply show up to individual events like kraken and red dragon, and then lock down the timer for DGS.
If you have any suspicion of my intentions here... I was in a freefarming PN at the time these changes were going to be implemented and GUESS what! We tried our hardest to make sure they DIDN'T go through so we could keep freefarming - the changes weren't put in, and just think about how the last year has gone and where we are now!
THE HISTORY
A top argument against the current set individualized boss timers is that people in off-timezones or ones with weird schedules won't be able to attend, let's be honest here and look at what has happened under the current system historically on this server the majority of the time:
1. PN kills kraken (always has spawned at a fixed time, you never had a chance here anyway under a "bad" timezone)
2. PN kills RD (always has spawned at a fixed time, you never had a chance here anyway under a "bad" timezone)
3. PN locks down the timer for DGS (no popup when spawned, only they know when it comes up, popup when killed but its probably too late or your raid isn't assembled. very skewed towards being snowballed content)
THE SOLUTION
Like I said earlier, under this system, one group of 20 people can attend every event for the entire duration and make sure either they kill the boss, or at the very least, nobody else does.
My proposition is to make things spawn at the same time, force groups that actually want to do content to make tradeoffs and decisions.
Ex: "Sure we can kill kraken, but we will have to leave at least one DGS undefended if we want to do so" (this creates an opportunity for a lesser group to at least have a chance of downing the content, even if they don't necessarily get the packs in that time)
"We can camp freed so nobody does DGS and flare to RD if anyone starts attempting, but we get no reward for the day other than denying everyone!" (if you want to try super hard to make sure nobody gets any content, at least everyone gets a bunch of PvP and the "leading" guild isn't any more ahead than they were beforehand)
THE SCHEDULE
A revised schedule that would actually give most players more of a chance to participate in endgame content at least a few times per week (versus NA players always getting to go and hardly anyone outside of there) could go as follows. feel free to suggest something different! - COMING FROM A NA PLAYER BTW
Sunday: 3 DGS spawns + Kraken spawn (2hr timer, all spawn 2hr before sieges hostile period starts to avoid any overlaps)
Monday: 3 DGS spawns + RD Spawn (2hr timer, all spawn at 4pm server)
Tuesday: 3 DGS spawns + Kraken Spawn (2hr timer, all spawn at 5pm server)
Wednesday: 3 DGS spawns + RD Spawn (2hr timer, all spawn at 6pm server)
Thursday: 3 DGS spawns + Kraken Spawn (2hr timer, all spawn at 7pm server)
Friday: 3 DGS spawns (2hr timer, all spawn at 8pm server)
Saturday: 3 DGS spawns + RD Spawn (2hr timer, all spawn at 2pm server)
Once again, these times are totally up for debate I just wanted to give everyone an idea of a general structure that could definitely work better than what we've got right now.
Maybe admins don't want to mess around with the RD timer because they may or may not merge certain phases of the 5.0 update together and give us the instanced RD? Totally fine too, a system like this could still definitely help with balancing DGS and Kraken activities.
THE CONCLUSION
I am proposing that at the very least people think about and consider how endgame content is going as of right now on the server. By no means is my suggestion perfect, but I hope it serves as an example of a method to potentially rectify some of the issues that are currently going on in ArcheRage!
PS, you could always just alpha us and put in the timers how they should be in this patch - Could even just implement the timers working how they do by default in this patch for a month or two and see if there's any difference!
The server has grown stale in terms of endgame content.
One group of 20 people is locking down ~90% of bosses and the reason is because everything spawns at a DIFFERENT time.
The entirety of endgame content on this server is unfair to players on the weaker side (it should be the opposite) solely because if you aren't able to defeat the "top" guild that currently has the content on farm in a head-on full numbers fight, you'll never get any content whatsoever, ultimately creating a snowball effect.
Originally in patch 3.5/4.0/4.5 (I don't remember which one exactly), some of the more desirable bosses were made to all spawn at the same time and were given very short despawn timers. This forced groups/guilds that were freefarming to have to make DECISIONS on what they wanted to do - they couldn't simply show up to individual events like kraken and red dragon, and then lock down the timer for DGS.
If you have any suspicion of my intentions here... I was in a freefarming PN at the time these changes were going to be implemented and GUESS what! We tried our hardest to make sure they DIDN'T go through so we could keep freefarming - the changes weren't put in, and just think about how the last year has gone and where we are now!
THE HISTORY
A top argument against the current set individualized boss timers is that people in off-timezones or ones with weird schedules won't be able to attend, let's be honest here and look at what has happened under the current system historically on this server the majority of the time:
1. PN kills kraken (always has spawned at a fixed time, you never had a chance here anyway under a "bad" timezone)
2. PN kills RD (always has spawned at a fixed time, you never had a chance here anyway under a "bad" timezone)
3. PN locks down the timer for DGS (no popup when spawned, only they know when it comes up, popup when killed but its probably too late or your raid isn't assembled. very skewed towards being snowballed content)
THE SOLUTION
Like I said earlier, under this system, one group of 20 people can attend every event for the entire duration and make sure either they kill the boss, or at the very least, nobody else does.
My proposition is to make things spawn at the same time, force groups that actually want to do content to make tradeoffs and decisions.
Ex: "Sure we can kill kraken, but we will have to leave at least one DGS undefended if we want to do so" (this creates an opportunity for a lesser group to at least have a chance of downing the content, even if they don't necessarily get the packs in that time)
"We can camp freed so nobody does DGS and flare to RD if anyone starts attempting, but we get no reward for the day other than denying everyone!" (if you want to try super hard to make sure nobody gets any content, at least everyone gets a bunch of PvP and the "leading" guild isn't any more ahead than they were beforehand)
THE SCHEDULE
A revised schedule that would actually give most players more of a chance to participate in endgame content at least a few times per week (versus NA players always getting to go and hardly anyone outside of there) could go as follows. feel free to suggest something different! - COMING FROM A NA PLAYER BTW
Sunday: 3 DGS spawns + Kraken spawn (2hr timer, all spawn 2hr before sieges hostile period starts to avoid any overlaps)
Monday: 3 DGS spawns + RD Spawn (2hr timer, all spawn at 4pm server)
Tuesday: 3 DGS spawns + Kraken Spawn (2hr timer, all spawn at 5pm server)
Wednesday: 3 DGS spawns + RD Spawn (2hr timer, all spawn at 6pm server)
Thursday: 3 DGS spawns + Kraken Spawn (2hr timer, all spawn at 7pm server)
Friday: 3 DGS spawns (2hr timer, all spawn at 8pm server)
Saturday: 3 DGS spawns + RD Spawn (2hr timer, all spawn at 2pm server)
Once again, these times are totally up for debate I just wanted to give everyone an idea of a general structure that could definitely work better than what we've got right now.
Maybe admins don't want to mess around with the RD timer because they may or may not merge certain phases of the 5.0 update together and give us the instanced RD? Totally fine too, a system like this could still definitely help with balancing DGS and Kraken activities.
THE CONCLUSION
I am proposing that at the very least people think about and consider how endgame content is going as of right now on the server. By no means is my suggestion perfect, but I hope it serves as an example of a method to potentially rectify some of the issues that are currently going on in ArcheRage!
PS, you could always just alpha us and put in the timers how they should be in this patch - Could even just implement the timers working how they do by default in this patch for a month or two and see if there's any difference!
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