A Dain Proposal (Coldain Ring 9)

[JackofSpade]

I have encountered an extremely annoying problem in the last month, and from talking with lots of other people, I know I am not the only one who is very frustrated by this. The issue is the difficulty of completing the turn in to Dain Frostreaver for Coldain Ring 9. With the current raiding situation, he is pulled within 18 seconds of spawning, which means hardcore socking his spawn for up to 16 hours, or risk missing your chance to hand in. If you are AFK or not looking for even 30 seconds, you can easily miss the opportunity to turn in your quest pieces, and then you have to wait another week just for the chance to sit there for hours on end all over again.

I've seen a lot of the same people showing up week after week (obviously myself as well) and waiting for hours on end with no luck completing their hand in. I even heard about one guy this last week who lost his ring 8 as Dain was pulled while he was mid hand in. My proposal is based on a few premises that I hope we can all agree with:

1) Only the guilds Riot and Aftermath currently compete for Dain (on non earthquake spawns)

2) With the nature of the pull, there is a roughly 50/50 chance of each guild getting the kill. The information I received is that out of the last 10 Dain spawns, each guild has 5 kills.

3) Poopsocking Dain sucks for everyone. For people waiting to hand in for Ring 9, for people waiting to get a new declaration of war, and for people waiting to get a protection of the dain.

4) It also sucks for the guilds involved in contesting him, and is a tremendous waste of time and resources. Between tracking him, having people waiting to run, having people sitting at the entrance ready to fight him, and having people constantly running outside thurg to refresh their SoW, it adds up to a lot of hours that I am sure people would rather spend doing something else.

So, given those premises, I suggest the following solution that I think works for everyone:

Aftermath and Riot agree to rotate Dain, and allow a 15 minute grace period from the time he spawns so that everyone can do their quest turn ins. There can also be a 30 minute limit put in place to engage him from the time he spawns, after which he becomes free for all (so a guild doesn't just leave him up indefinitely). This would only apply to Non-Earthquake Dain spawns.

To implement this solution, three things would need to happen. First, there would need to be a consensus among us P99ers that this is a positive change that a majority of us would like to see happen. I am including a poll to see if other people like this idea, and people can also leave their feedback in this thread. Second, Riot and Aftermath would have to agree to the rotation. If the server overall supports this idea, I hope that Riot would step up to the plate and be the first guild to join in. Riot has been very server friendly and pro-partaking in things that take into account helping all the people who play here. If Riot agrees, then I hope that AM would follow suit after (or maybe even be the first to agree to something that is helpful to us casuals for a change!) Third, the other guilds would have to agree to not be part of the rotation. Lastly, I would hope that all the guilds who have not been contesting Dain for months would agree to this, since it would benefit all of their members trying to get their ring 9 with no downside for them.

Thanks for taking the time to read and consider this idea. Any and all feedback / alternate ideas here are great, and if I am alone or in the minority of people wanting to be able to hand in for ring 9 stress free then post that as well!

TLDR; Riot and Aftermath should agree to rotate Dain so that all of us can hand in our ring 9 quests without crazy poopsocking, and also so they don't have to spend a ton of their own time and resources poopsocking Dain themselves.

[Legidias]

inb4 'casual plebs', 'we totally do it for the competition feeling', 'welfare pixels', 'I am so skilled at video games I can watch a wall for 16 hours', etc

[Titanas]

I love the classic contesting of high value mobs, but when a main quest is involved and you get stupid bottlenecks like this its just bad design.

what about a script that spawns Dain after death in a new location that drops no loot, and rewards no faction?

Dain could re-spawn as a ghost in the hall of ancestors?

[feniin]

Maybe allow Chamberlain to complete the quest? Socking Dain/Tormax/Yeli is awful.

[remen]

Those are both good ideas but the devs are never gonna implement something that wasn't in classic. There has to be a better solution than rotating dain, but I don't know what it is

[Pindrought]

Those are both good ideas but the devs are never gonna implement something that wasn't in classic. There has to be a better solution than rotating dain, but I don't know what it is
:confused: Do you play on this server?

[Sacer]

With the current raiding situation, he is pulled within 18 seconds of spawning

There is no way he's constantly pulled within 18 seconds of his spawn, I don't believe it. May be if the windows get super low and no other major mob are in window but that's very rare.

I even heard about one guy this last week who lost his ring 8 as Dain was pulled while he was mid hand in

You mean mid MQ, cause if you got the ring and the box you either can turn in or not you can't lose ring 8.

I heard of people geting the ring but who didn't had time to get the declaration, it's annoying for sure.

[feniin]

There is no way he's constantly pulled within 18 seconds of his spawn, I don't believe it. May be if the windows get super low and no other major mob are in window but that's very rare.


Pretty sure it's less than 18s now.

[aaezil]

This guys never heard of poop socks

Oh what it was like to be young and naive...

[loramin]

inb4 'casual plebs', 'we totally do it for the competition feeling', 'welfare pixels', 'I am so skilled at video games I can watch a wall for 16 hours', etc

This guys never heard of poop socks

Oh what it was like to be young and naive...

[loramin]

Those are both good ideas but the devs are never gonna implement something that wasn't in classic. There has to be a better solution than rotating dain, but I don't know what it is

Why are you so certain? This server has rotated one zone (Plane of Sky) for years on this server. It's been incredibly successful (as evidenced by the fact that it's still going after all these years). There's also been various other forays in to rotation (eg. see the player-agreed one formed during the Class C/R period). And for a long time the staff effectively enforced a rotation of one guild (TMO) by letting them monopolize the server ;)

Plus, I see stuff like player agreements on rolls as being the same thing, or at least in the same vein, as rotations. They're the players of the server coming together and agreeing to make the game better because the in-game mechanisms for deciding who gets what suck. And they suck several orders of magnitude more here vs. live because of the vastly increased player knowledge and vastly increased percentage of "neck beards" (which I'll define as people who play EQ as if it were a job).

The point being, rotations are not an anathema here at all. On the contrary, I see them as the natural server progression: over time the server keeps getting better and better as the players (sometimes with, sometimes without, staff help) improve the server.

[Tarskin]

I personally would love any initiative to reduce time sinks and allow people to do turn ins on similar quests.

[garfo]

What if another guild wants to contest Dain? Does it become a 3-way roll?

[Tarskin]

Could consider a buy in type clause as was present in some former rotations, where if a guild wanted to be added they would be tossed at the end of next cycle. However, taking size of guild into account would be nice too in that context but now I'm just dreaming :p

[azeth]

I think a good compromise would be to race for FTE but not require an immediate pull like was the case a few rule sets ago.

So whoever gets the FTE wins the right to have a period of time (15, 30 mins?) thereby allowing people to turn in while they setup etc.

[Ostepop]

A 3rd guild wanting in should end the rotation, giving said guild an opportunity to prove able to compete in FFA. Then restart the rotation after a sufficient amount of cycles.

[Xulia]

I think a good compromise would be to race for FTE but not require an immediate pull like was the case a few rule sets ago.

So whoever gets the FTE wins the right to have a period of time (15, 30 mins?) thereby allowing people to turn in while they setup etc.

This sounds like a great idea. Allows plenty of time for turn-ins and allows the guild preparing to pull time to test the CH chain, buff up, etc.

[Zemus]

Good idea, not sure it has to be a riot/am monopoly, but let’s make it happen.

[JackofSpade]

I think a good compromise would be to race for FTE but not require an immediate pull like was the case a few rule sets ago.

So whoever gets the FTE wins the right to have a period of time (15, 30 mins?) thereby allowing people to turn in while they setup etc.

This is an excellent idea, better than the idea of rotating even. This way if the guilds do want to continue to poopsock, track, and race for FTE they can still do all of that stuff as per usual, but then allow for everyone else to complete their quests before they actually kill him.

Either that change, or a rotation on Dain, would be a vast improvement over the current situation with little to no downside for anyone! I'll also mention this thread to the 15+ people that will be waiting along side me to hand in for ring 9 to Dain this weekend.

[JackofSpade]

A 3rd guild wanting in should end the rotation, giving said guild an opportunity to prove able to compete in FFA. Then restart the rotation after a sufficient amount of cycles.

Good idea, not sure it has to be a riot/am monopoly, but let’s make it happen.

I think that neither Riot or Aftermath would agree to a rotation involving a third guild since nobody else has competed for Dain for months (non Earthquake Dains that is). Ostepop is on the money for what would need to happen should a third guild want to join in.

I would also be fully in favor of changing the quest mob to complete this quest, but I imagine it would be harder to convince the developers to make that change than it would be to get 2 guilds to agree to not insta kill Dain. It doesn't make any sense and sucks for everyone that ring 9 can only be handed in for an 18 second window once a week. And that 18 second opening can occur anywhere in a 16 hour window. That's crazy.

[aaezil]

You cant turn in to dain because pixel addicts cant wait 5 minutes for you to turn in your quest piece like decent human beings.

Instead they need to screenshare to watch for pop (not classic and violation of boxing rule?) or pet track macro (not classic and very exploity) then play mario kart 99 race their little avatars in an unclassic pvp race the millisecond it spawns.

Suggestions on how to make it better are retorted with “not classic” (lol the irony considering what currently happens)

Everquest in 2019!

[elwing]

Seriously, not able to pop for a 18 second turn in? Are you even aware of the 10second window to roll on the 8h variance of angry goblin?

[Jimjam]

Just popped in for pointing out this is an AG plot to deny Riot and AM of Dain pixels.

[Legidias]

FYI, player rotation agreements of just 2 parties only applies to those 2. Any other entity would be able to race for Dain even though Riot / AM would agree to rotate, so it wouldn;t work.

[Jimjam]

FYI, player rotation agreements of just 2 parties only applies to those 2. Any other entity would be able to race for Dain even though Riot / AM would agree to rotate, so it wouldn;t work.

As I said, kittens consspiracy to get meow dains.

[Legidias]

As I said, kittens consspiracy to get meow dains.

Just popped in for pointing out this is an AG plot to deny Riot and AM of Dain pixels.

AG = Kittens is the real conspiracy

[Kayso2]

Why would AM get a spot in a two-slot rotation over whatever entity is actually in the number two slot now?

[Jimjam]

AG = Kittens is the real conspiracy

The cats out the bag.

[Ruhtar]

I think a good compromise would be to race for FTE but not require an immediate pull like was the case a few rule sets ago.

So whoever gets the FTE wins the right to have a period of time (15, 30 mins?) thereby allowing people to turn in while they setup etc.

This

[rezzie]

Why are you so certain? This server has rotated one zone (Plane of Sky) for years on this server. It's been incredibly successful (as evidenced by the fact that it's still going after all these years).

It makes sense for a zone that repops every 8ish hours, not for one that repops every 7 days.

14 guilds can rotate Plane of Sky each week and experience all the content. It would take nearly 4 months to do the same for ToV.

[Fammaden]

It makes sense for a zone that repops every 8ish hours, not for one that repops every 7 days.

14 guilds can rotate Plane of Sky each week and experience all the content. It would take nearly 4 months to do the same for ToV.

Yes, so you wouldn't rotate all of NToV as a zone, you would be rotating individual mobs. Similar to what already exists with Tunare.

For the sake of simplicity let's say we have four NToV capable guilds, each could get one Vulak and one Vyemm rotated to them each month. The remainder of NToV bosses could be rotated based on your position in the rotation, less valued ones being relegated to whoever has the more valuable top bosses of the zone.

And of course there are many other bosses that can factor into a rotation, Dain/Yeli/Tormax, CT. Maybe Doze and AoW are part of the meta rotation or maybe they have their own rotation depending on which guilds are capable.

Could establish ground rules for determining which guilds are considered capable of the content, and how to determine if they've regressed far enough to lose their rotation spots. Rules for engaging like kill Vulak etc. within 24 hours of spawn on your turn or it goes to the next rotation guild or goes FFA. There will never likely be 14 guilds to split between like in your quote, there's really not even fourteen for sky as all slots aren't even claimed.

Quakes could of course remain total free for alls. Maybe Kunark/Hate/Nag/Vox are completely out of the rotation and FFA across the board.

Again, this would take a lot of up front work to establish but once it was rolling it would be reasonably automatic. We'd have a nice shared google drive calendar to check your guild's place in it all instead of socking and racing a window like a manic headcase. Its not that hard to imagine considering the amount of work and organization that's gone into the rules of raid engagement by both staff and players over the years. If we can have a rule for every possible foot race scenario, then certainly we can come up with a raid calendar of relative fairness and common sense.

But of course there's always that one guild, previously AM and currently Riot, who is getting the vast majority or even all of those high value targets every spawn. For them there is zero motivation to agree to share anything until they are usurped by the next mega guild to take their place at the top.

[aaezil]

Any group of 40 lvl 60s with enough clerics and a competent raid leader can kill virtually every mob in the game.

Theres no such things as guilds not “capable” of killing high end stuff.

Its just they have jobs/wives/lifes outside of eq that’s the only difference.

[Fifield]

You would still have to sit at your computer for a 16 hr window just to hand this in. Even with a 15 min grace period your still wasting your entire day.

Either way if you guys make this happen, I would be a happy man. This is a good thing for the server whether either guild likes it or not, and thats what i am interested in.

PS. an easy solution to this is just to hand in items like this and doze quests on repops like i do rather then tracking. I understand this requires being in a guild that batphones repops but still, its a million times easier if you are just patient and dont need it RIGHT away.

[Batso]

It's my ring 9 and I need it now!

[Naethyn]

I'd rather another npc for the turn in. FTE with free hour is terrible.

[Alanus]

I like the ghost idea.

Ghost of Yelinak, Ghost of Tormax, Ghost of Dain.

[JackofSpade]

You would still have to sit at your computer for a 16 hr window just to hand this in. Even with a 15 min grace period your still wasting your entire day.

Either way if you guys make this happen, I would be a happy man. This is a good thing for the server whether either guild likes it or not, and thats what i am interested in.

PS. an easy solution to this is just to hand in items like this and doze quests on repops like i do rather then tracking. I understand this requires being in a guild that batphones repops but still, its a million times easier if you are just patient and dont need it RIGHT away.

This isn't true Fifield, with the amount of people that have access to a batphone, or a friend who can message them on discord, all they need to do is be able to log on for a minute to do the hand in. Or they can play on other toons and have plenty of time to log over once they get notice he has popped. I also agree it is easier on quakes but those are happening like every 5-6 weeks and are totally random luck if you are around when it happens, you can't plan for or count on that.

I'd rather another npc for the turn in. FTE with free hour is terrible.

I agree another turn NPC woud be absolutely ideal, I just don't know how to even get the ball rolling with the people who could make this change, or if they would be remotely amenable to it. If you have any way to float that idea to the right people that would be fantastic. Also, nobody said a free hour, the proposed idea was 15 minutes but that was just an arbitrary starting point that seemed like a good compromise for not leaving him up too long but still giving people time to log in and finish their quests.

I like the ghost idea.

Ghost of Yelinak, Ghost of Tormax, Ghost of Dain.

This really is a fantastic idea and I would love to see it implemented. The reason I didn't include this idea in my OP is I don't have any ability to reach out to the people who could make this change, aside from randomly PMing them here. Again, if anyone has more direct contact with them and could pass this idea along, that would be awesome.

And as always, thanks to everyone for the feedback here!

[Fifield]

This isn't true Fifield, with the amount of people that have access to a batphone, or a friend who can message them on discord, all they need to do is be able to log on for a minute to do the hand in. Or they can play on other toons and have plenty of time to log over once they get notice he has popped. I also agree it is easier on quakes but those are happening like every 5-6 weeks and are totally random luck if you are around when it happens, you can't plan for or count on that.




tell me about it, have a doze mask to hand in just never around for LTK

the ghost idea is a cool alternative,

[remen]

I'd rather another npc for the turn in. FTE with free hour is terrible.

I like the ghost idea.

Ghost of Yelinak, Ghost of Tormax, Ghost of Dain.

tell me about it, have a doze mask to hand in just never around for LTK

the ghost idea is a cool alternative,

This ghost idea is silly, and more importantly NEVER going to happen. Would take extra time from devs to implement and is most definitely NOT classic. Players are gonna have to work this out ourselves

[Twochain]

Handing in shit to KT/Dain/Yelinak is terrible. Absolutely terrible. I really do think we should fix that.

The only fair way I can think of is......
(Maybe remove variance from those mobs)

Agree to leave those mobs up for a certain period of time (1-6 hours or something like that)

Afterwards have guilds race for the mob with a /random countdown.

I.E /random 100, only 97 and above you may run. False starts DQ you from the run.

[JackofSpade]

Handing in shit to KT/Dain/Yelinak is terrible. Absolutely terrible. I really do think we should fix that.

The only fair way I can think of is......
(Maybe remove variance from those mobs)

Agree to leave those mobs up for a certain period of time (1-6 hours or something like that)

Afterwards have guilds race for the mob with a /random countdown.

I.E /random 100, only 97 and above you may run. False starts DQ you from the run.

It really is the absolute worst, finally obtaining the quest pieces for these awesome items, only to have to wait a week or weeks to finally get a chance to hand them in. In classic EQ, the thing is that these mobs were NOT tracked through every second of their window with raid forces sitting by waiting to pull and kill them the second they spawn. On my server in classic, nobody knew about zone line pulling and raids just didn't happen until the evening time (no guilds could or even wanted to attempt to organize a raid force mid day). So mobs like Dain, KT, Yeli and WToV dragons would be up for many hours, or even a day or two sometimes.

Given how different the dynamics of this server's raid scene are as compared to live, I actually think changing the mob to turn in these quests to would make the server more akin to the way things were during classic. It would be similar in spirit to rooting the dragons, or reducing the numbers of mobs a bard can kite, etc. to recreate the feel of classic EQ.

If anyone reading this has the ear of any GMs / Devs please toss this idea out to them!! Anyone attempting any of these quests would be extremely grateful I am sure :)

[Naonak]

So whoever gets the FTE wins the right to have a period of time (15, 30 mins?) thereby allowing people to turn in while they setup etc.

Engaging a FTE mob and not being ready to kill it is against server rules?

[Naonak]

Also do the tracking time, will help. 18 seconds not enough time to open trade window?

[azeth]

Engaging a FTE mob and not being ready to kill it is against server rules?

You left out the first half of my post:

"I think a good compromise would be to race for FTE but not require an immediate pull like was the case a few rule sets ago."

[remen]

In classic EQ, the thing is that these mobs were NOT tracked through every second of their window with raid forces sitting by waiting to pull and kill them the second they spawn. On my server in classic, nobody knew about zone line pulling and raids just didn't happen until the evening time (no guilds could or even wanted to attempt to organize a raid force mid day). So mobs like Dain, KT, Yeli and WToV dragons would be up for many hours, or even a day or two sometimes.

Given how different the dynamics of this server's raid scene are as compared to live, I actually think changing the mob to turn in these quests to would make the server more akin to the way things were during classic. It would be similar in spirit to rooting the dragons, or reducing the numbers of mobs a bard can kite, etc. to recreate the feel of classic EQ.

Dead wrong, I remember having to sock these hand ins back on live. Sure a change would be a quality of life improvement for everyone, but it's never gonna happen

[remen]

Also do the tracking time, will help. 18 seconds not enough time to open trade window?

18 seconds enough time open trade window, do tracking time help aslo

[Legidias]

I mean, like 30 people would air click scout...

[remen]

I mean, like 30 people would air click scout...

Static respawn with 0 variance. Only one person can compete the quest each time. How does that have anything to do with this discussion?

[Legidias]

People used autofire there for years without repercussions, just do the same on Dain

[Ghilran]

Dead wrong, I remember having to sock these hand ins back on live. Sure a change would be a quality of life improvement for everyone, but it's never gonna happen

I second that, On karana there were enough guilds that nothing stayed up for long - we had a couple of major japanese guilds, the 2 or 3 french and european guilds worth mentioning, and of course your garden variety US top guilds, which made anything succeptible to die in any timeslots.

Yet i don't remember Yelinak/KT or Dain turn ins beeing much of a problem, probably because although raid targets were raced any time of the day, sock pooping wasn't really the norm and you probably had 20 to 30 min to turn in after a pop even though there was a guild, somewhere, on the move.

I don't remember it being an issue on RageFire either; but pops were much faster and we had a short stretch of being the dominating guild so we could turn in at our leisure. Got my FT boots week 1 of velious IIRC.

As a side note I totally enjoy being a clueless noob on this server, but perusing the forum i get a confusing picture of the raid scene and its rules; is there a thread somewhere with informations? like what the hell is "FTE" ?

[Legidias]

Alternatively, make people race from Thurg entrance (from GD) and not from his own zone for funsies

[Benanov]

Alternatively, make people race from Thurg entrance (from GD) and not from his own zone for funsies

It's like you work for an SSD manufacturer...

[theonesler]

I think a good compromise would be to race for FTE but not require an immediate pull like was the case a few rule sets ago.

So whoever gets the FTE wins the right to have a period of time (15, 30 mins?) thereby allowing people to turn in while they setup etc.

Nice idea but takes away the pull rush pull factor. Dain isn't the easiest pull in the world and it's not uncommon for a guild to botch the pull due to time constraints and the general rushed nature of the pull.

This kind of agreement would more or less eliminate that form of competition. Not saying it can't be done but it is an element that would be lost in this agreement.

[Legidias]

It's like you work for an SSD manufacturer...

Just because my Samsung SSD allows me to boot up a computer in 10 seconds and zone in 2 seconds, as well as being very durable and affordable doesnt meant I work for any sort of specific SSD manufacturer.

[JackofSpade]

People used autofire there for years without repercussions, just do the same on Dain

A lot of us don't cheat or want to. Especially for something as dumb as this