Feedback on Tier One SSRA

[Mien]

I actually had a conversation with Higgs (another Night Terrors member) about this recently, so I figure I'll pipe up as well, since the guild I'm in is in a similar situation. Actively looking for the mob, I've found him up once in about a week. By the time guildies who needed the flag were home from work half an hour later, he was dead - with no flags offered in /ooc, so I sure hope they went to another similar guild who actually needed them.

Realistically, I want a challenge. That being, I want to have to overcome the boss in order to progress, rather than having to overcome any of the numerous more-progressed guilds on the server just for a shot at it. What holds a guild back should be whether or not they have the people, the gear, and the ability to counter the mechanics of the fight - these are plenty of limiting factors, and meeting new folks, gearing up, and learning a fight are fun. Waiting around and hoping that you can match everybody's schedules against the limited timeframe that a contested progression spawn is up is not. (I've done it in classic EQ for epics, and vanilla WoW for world bosses, it wasn't fun there, either, and it hasn't improved with time.) And this is only going to become more of an issue as the server becomes more populous. I can understand that the people at the top end of content like contested spawns, though even Sony eventually decided that it wasn't such a good idea in a lot of cases, so here are a few suggestions:

Idea 1: Leave the top tier (or two, or three, as seems appropriate) as uninstanced content. As new tiers are added, instance the lowest of these tiers for guild instanced use. (Say, now that T8 has been added, T7 remains uninstanced, but T6 becomes instanced, for example.)

Idea 2: Move all tiers to the T2 style, wherein there is one uninstanced raid zone, and one instanced raid zone in the same tier. Admittedly, this would require a significant amount of additional dev work, but it would allow people both the enjoyment of the open zones, and a place to go if their raids tend to be at odd times, long after the normal server restart times. The LDoN raids might be a possibility here, if there's worry about expending the available potential raid zones.

Idea 3: As Farine said, with the improvements in available gear, T1 isn't a challenge even to T1 guilds at this point, provided they have enough warm bodies, so an alternate keying method for T2 can be devised. Emp key seems somewhat reasonable, though I wouldn't mind some kind of instanced single boss (maybe even lootless) to use as the barrier for entry.

As to token flagging, from observation it seems that they're rarer in the past couple of weeks. If I'd seen it coming, I would've spent more plat on them and just tokened guildies into T2, but such is life. I won't say that the token rate should be reincreased (I know it's been modified a time or two, and read the threads on it), but I will say that, with Emp usually unavailable (at least, by the time folks get home from their day jobs), tokens are the only way to reasonably expect to get into T2, and thus raid with guildmates, in a reasonable timeframe.

Here's a can of worms: Maybe it could even become the next plat sink. 30k/character for T2 access? (I kid... but it might just work.)

[Micah]

Maybe it could even become the next plat sink. 30k/character for T2 access? (I kid... but it might just work.)

It is already there with people selling Vulak Tokens, etc.

[Mien]

Well, I was using it in terms of "taking excess plat out of the economy" in the Casino kind of way, rather than transferring it from one player to another, but your definition works. heheh

I think where I differ from Farine here is that I'm fully willing to just skip the tier, if I can find a manageable way to do so with my guildies. If we can key just enough to start killing Vulak, and token the rest of the folks that way, I'd be (almost) perfectly happy. (50% chance on a two day spawn, even assuming we can down him every time, will take a while, of course, but at least it's an active chance at progression. Folks' boxes will just have to wait a bit.) It's unfortunate, but likely, that I'll find another five or so Vulak tokens available before I'll find Emp available at a time that my guildies can actually be on.

Also, I forgot to mention it as an idea earlier, but would it be possible to implement the 80% limp-in coding? It'd be nice if a guild could just do that rather than going back and eating a flag mob for a person or two.

[Microdia]

Why not add tier tokens as casino rewards as well? Would be nice to have a few more items useful items on the prize list. Sure beats fireworks and illusionist stones or beer goggles lol.

[Micah]

I am posting this mostly as a player, not as a GM.

I believe the reason behind the Tokens was to make it easier to get alts flagged, not to bypass the content itself for every player, especially if it a hard mob to kill. If a player(s) can't kill the top mob of a tier, they more likely will have problems in the next tier.

AFAIK the drop rate was reduced for the Tokens as they had become the currency of the server at some point

Unless I am mistaken, there are no plans to make SSRA an instanced zone. We want to have some contested zones so people can get to know each other, form guilds, etc.

I know there is work being done on adding more zones that will cover all tiers

I do understand the main reason why the OP started this thread, but seems they got Emp last night, anyhow.

[ChaosSlayer]

My 2plat worth:

I think that progression access mobs should not be loot-raid targets - this way people who looking for loot will not kill them.
I also think that progression related mobs should not be just on a static timer - they should be quest turn in triggered, hence the difficulty of access should be based on being able to defeat this encounter, to prove that you worthy of next tier access, rather than just getting lucky and just finding this mobs standing untouched at some weird time of the day, like at 6am in the morning
Considering all the higher tiers are instanced, and have no guild competition issues, its silly to have a low rank access mob to be the only one you have to camp for days just to kill him in 2 min to get anywhere.
Personally I am not a fan of instancing at all. I do believe in guild competition, but for LOOT dropping targets ONLY, not for access targets.

Again, difficulty should be in being able to kill the mob, not in proving that your guild can stay awake 24/7 just to catch him spawn at some odd hour.

[Zaria]

rather than just getting lucky and just finding this mobs standing untouched at some weird time of the day, like at 6am in the morning

Your 6am in the morning is my 11am and not a weird time at all. =D

I also think that progression related mobs should not be just on a static timer - they should be quest turn in triggered,

Another - and possibly easier - solution would be to make the time random. Have the mob spawn anywhere from 18-24 hours. This would prevent a guild from locking down a mob. I'm not sure if anyone is locking down the Emperor but I know it happens with Phinny and Miragul. It also happens in instances - especially with Lady M.

[Brontu]

I have been on both sides of this issue. So i understand how frustrating Ssra can be, in fact if you look around on the forums theres probably a ton of posts with me pushing for an instanced ssra.

They did reduce his reuse timer some time ago - but this actually makes it harder for guilds to get the necessary flags imo. Its great for HH but awful for Flagging. Simply because u can kill him one night at a set time, and he will spawn 12 hours later and could spend 1-3 hours up before anyone kills him, thus throwing him off the time that was set by the people who killed him previously.

Now that works both ways, it DOES help prevent a single person/guild from locking him down which isnt a bad thing, but it does make getting flags frustrating. I think overall my main issue was always that Emp ssra shares 2 purposes, just like Nag/AD/Trak - the HH quest as well as flag/quest items. Now most people are kind enough to shout rots for but with ssra, most people dont, and even then theres the added hassle of not being able to coh into the emps room (which i totally understand with the key quest and all).

Honestly i think its Ssras place in the HH quest that i think needs to be looked at. but thats my 2 cents 8D.

[Drythe]

The BoT Idea isnt too bad - Add/Modify loots, adjust mobs accordingly, throw a quest or two in there and it's a wrap! Every tier has two zones, why not Tier 1? Just sayin'....

[Farine]

Chaosslayer did a better job of summing up my feelings about it.

And Yes Micah we got an Emp Kill the other night but we flagged maybe 7 people, 4 of whom were just one persons boxed toons, we didnt get the core raid force because it was to late at night for those people to stay up.