Feedback on Tier One SSRA

[Farine]

In the world of now tier 8 and tier 7, tier 1 has become more than a hindrance than actual progression.

Sure any brand new guild can smoke out SSRA easily because its an easy zone now in the world of LDON gear and the like. But I'm going to be selfish here and talk about my new guild Night Terrors. We keyed up about 12+ new people on the server who hit 70 in the past two days, and its almost impossible for us to find an Emp whose up when we ask for people to sign on to get a raid going. But what do we do when Emp isnt up? We have 12 or so people online and we can kill the other bosses in there easily and half the gear either rots or goes to bots. In all Honesty, the Emp Key alone is practically the progression for how annoyingly long it takes for a lot of people to get it.

Now we got to wait and hope some tier 7/8 Sk doesnt decide to kill Emp cause hes bored and wants to flag some alt he will play once a month? I know all you t7/8 people are going to sit there and be like oh boo hoo cry more we had to deal with it so do you. Well yeah that is great for you, times change and the server is not in the same place it was when tier 1 came out, trust me i know because i was around when tier one and tier 2 were the only two zones that existed for raids.

My possible solutions to this annoying problem with SSRA is either, make Emp on a much shorter respawn timer, eliminate killing emp at all to get into ToV and making getting the Emp key other quest in zone to get ToV access. Or turn ssra into a guild instance.

Also I dont want anyone to say that the backflag tokens are a viable option. Being forced to farm plat on your own for you're own guild to progress and actually oh i dont know HAVE FUN ON A SERVER THAT PROMOTES HAVING FUN, is actually anti-fun. We just want to get into ToV so we can actually set up a raid time that most of our friends can log on, and all of have a good time, because as of right its a cat race to get to emp first and I find it a little unfair in this current state of the server.

I hope you will take my feedback and consider changing it, because as it stands now, ssra is a joke and only causes guilds who want to have fun, to actually not have fun.

[Borneheld13]

Patience, you will get him eventually...and if someone beats you to him they should at least give out flags, only the 1 kill is needed so it's not like anything needs to be changed really.

[Farine]

Patience, you will get him eventually...and if someone beats you to him they should at least give out flags, only the 1 kill is needed so it's not like anything needs to be changed really.

Not the point. The point is its not fair to ask people to log on a certain time and him not be up, we are people with jobs and lives and such and its not fair to leave people out due to these sorts of issues, considering this mob can be killed with 2 people now.

[Mjolnir]

As a fellow officer of Night Terrors, I share Farine's sentiments. I will express my current frustration and my guild's predicament, and then offer up a simple solution. I do not know anyone in our guild who would consider the competition aspect of Ssra Temple fun. I also know other new guilds, whom share our view of not wanting to buy Tokens, are in the same boat. Hopefully some of them will make a post to this thread with their thoughts =)

If we wish to do a guild-only kill of Emp Ssra with our low tier geared main characters, the odds are low that he will be up during our casual raid times or when we have enough people online. Other guilds have told stories of waiting to get people online, but not being quick enough before someone from a higher tier (solo or box) killed him for Headhunter. Keep in mind that at our guild's gear level, you would need 2 groups at least, depending on which tanks and dps are online.

We do not wish to have a higher tier person carry us through this kill and let us have their flags. It is definitely possible to piece together flags from others kills here and there. But then what would be the purpose of having guilds raid Tier 1? Instead, we love the rush that we have gotten from doing things by ourselves, such as our first AoW kill a while back or our first High Priest kill.

I think many will agree that Ssra Temple, while a truly enjoyable zone (especially to those of us with fond memories from live), is instead viewed on this server as a cesspool that must be trudged through. As a casual guild, I have been leading proxy raids every night, in the hope that he will spawn during our hours. If I keep it up, I am definitely sure Night Terrors will get a kill in a week or two, however this is not in any way fun nor conducive to the spirit of our guild nor the server. It instead discourages people from wanting to raid the low tier content.

As it stands, we usually have no targets outside 1 or 2 basic named mobs in Ssra (maybe some Kael named, Froggernought, etc). Others outside our guild have given up and turned to buying Tokens of Vulak, but those are scarce right now as well and not something our guild will be considering (not because of the money, but because of the spirit of progression).

My proposal:
For the sake of guilds that want to progress normally as low tier 70s, without skipping content, I would love to see the spawn time on Emperor Ssra reduced, OR have him removed from the Headhunter Quest.

I do not like the second option, because I love the idea of higher tier players joining lower tier guilds on kills and sharing in the Headhunter credit. Instead, with a shorter spawn time, it is more likely that he will be up during the evening raid hours of most casual guilds. This would allow for them to progress when they are ready to progress, instead of being stressed about finding a single spawn up.

In my opinion, the progression part of Ssra Temple is the Key quest, since getting a guild full of new level 70s keyed takes a whole guild effort. We actually turned our "no mobs up in Ssra or Kael" nights into keying groups instead.

As a former hardcore raider, this request goes against everything I loved about competition for mobs. So I know a lot of you will not understand why we seem so impatient. But there was a recent post asking about problems with pre-Tier 2 progression, and here is one of the biggest perpetrators.

As a casual guild officer in a casual guild on a server that is always great place to relax and have fun, I can not see how the current status of Tier 1 is in anyway conducive to keeping players interested in level 70 raiding. Please reconsider the current Tier 1 situation, I will love you forever =)

Regards,
-Higgs, Hadron, Dirac, Moro, Feynman

*edited for readability

[Grey]

Good post. Keeping in mind the fact that the spawn timer has been reduced several times in the last year this zone is still a real pain in the butt and not fun at all for those that need to progress though it and want to do it on their own power.

[Zaria]

It sounds like you want this mob handed to you. You don't want to farm plat to buy the tokens. You don't want to camp the mob day after day. Well, life isn't fair and neither is EQ.

Eventually you'll get your mob. Until then, camping a mob is part of the game. No, it's not fun but it's still part of the game. You want to experience it all? Well, camping a mob is part of that experience.


As I side note: I've seen a few people blame mobs being down on T7/T8 geared people. Do you guys really think we go and farm mobs for no reason? When you get to that point in the game, you'll have plenty of plat and buy the token instead of camping the mob. How do I know this? Because I've done it. I tried to get the Emperor for two weeks before I gave up. It's not fun for a T7/T8 toon to hope to catch the Emperor up either.

[Drythe]

I could understand reducing the spawn timer a bit considering the increase of players this summer. Or even making it guild instanced? But I agree it is a PITA sometimes - I am currently flagging 6 new alts and its no bueno...I could spend the time to farm plat for tokens but the likely-hood of there being 6 tokens available at any given time is near impossible. T1 is like the chokepoint getting into the tiers - it is good for new players to learn to be patient and camp different parts of zone and such for key pieces...but There has been times where I zone into SSRA to start getting other key parts for alts and there are 30+ people in zone....quite irritating if you ask me. But none the less - I do think you should have to work for something with great reward - but competing for it can be a PITA sometimes....just my 2 cents =)

[Farine]

It sounds like you want this mob handed to you. You don't want to farm plat to buy the tokens. You don't want to camp the mob day after day. Well, life isn't fair and neither is EQ.

Eventually you'll get your mob. Until then, camping a mob is part of the game. No, it's not fun but it's still part of the game. You want to experience it all? Well, camping a mob is part of that experience.


As I side note: I've seen a few people blame mobs being down on T7/T8 geared people. Do you guys really think we go and farm mobs for no reason? When you get to that point in the game, you'll have plenty of plat and buy the token instead of camping the mob. How do I know this? Because I've done it. I tried to get the Emperor for two weeks before I gave up. It's not fun for a T7/T8 toon to hope to catch the Emperor up either.

Handed to me? I fail to understand that. With guild instances in most zones like t2 and t3 the mobs in there are practically handed to any guild with people who are online and the instance is reset. It makes it much easier for a new guild to tell people hey we gonna go through ToV this saturday at around 6pm est be really fun if you guys can make it there.

I understand your argument that this is EQ, however SSRA and Fire are the two raid zones that get cleared out by anyone I dont see how it becomes productive to the server to hinder those who would like to progress casually.

We got Emp last night at 4am in the morning, and guess what only 4 of us were actually there. Everyone else was actually in bed. And btw all my toons on this server were already flagged for ToV, I was merely making this post on behalf of my own guilds frustration in not being able to do anything when we have a sizeable raid force online.

[Flacco]

What's all this talk about having to learn about bottlenecks and slow camps? Personally, I don't know anyone on this server that didn't play EQ on a live server. We play here cause it's free and we don't have to spend 40+ hours a week for months and months just to see some end game content. It's obvious that Emp is a bottleneck, however I do agree that it shouldn't be just handed to people -- that defeats the idea of progression. Perhaps some other noncontested mobs can be buffed to emp level or harder and made keyable. Does anyone kill that dragon in TD that was a part of the druid epic? Or that one in Cobalt Scar? I suppose that is a work around to the emp key also, something that I don't think should be lost. I dunno, just thinking out loud.

[Rats]

Well ye, it is kinda meh that you can't instance ssra. Alot of the encounters there are a bucketload of fun (...excluding the Exiled, pox on the SoE dev who thought after kunark/velious that bringing back DT would be a great idea... POX ON HIM/HER!!!), but you'll have to wait for Pluto Venus and Mercury to align to see arch lich up and not some uber to zoom past you otw there (Altho I've seen emp standing around twiddling his thumbs there plenty, so dunno, maybe you guys just got a shoddy timezone to deal with! =p).

I don't really agree myself with the idea that the t7/t8 SKs offering to CoH you for the flag... I might as well play minesweeper then and set the level size to max and mine amount to minimum, which is about as interesting. Prefer figuring out and killing the major things myself rather than getting stuff just handed to me.

But if we don't wanna instance the zone, how about just making Agnarr a bypass to t2? Getting the key up to Torden is a pretty hefty work (altho the tower bosses in BoT are kinda pushovers if you ask me, worst part was getting them danged spheres), and the arena fights leading to Agnarr are quite tough actually. I mean I find myself able to handle High Priest/Creator/almost AoW, but I didn't make it past Emmerik after couple tries on it. Agnarr is probably on an even harder level, then! =p

Besides, BoT is a fun zone, but empty as heck since it serves zero purpose to the server progression. The mobs are almost as tough as in kael, but the loot there is relatively underwhelming. More gems, more icechips, some clickies and shielding% and mana regens on the gear and it'd be greatness! =X Oh and the last guys in the zone progression had no loot tables from what I saw. Even Agnarrs loots seem to be same stuff that the tower bosses were dropping!