Please Change the Zone Cap in Rikti War Zone

[Zeraphia]

Please, change this to something like 200+ capacity. There are numerous task forces, regular missions, and an entire event RAID in the same zone. Having to click between two different versions of the same zone repeatedly is utterly annoying, tedious, and a source of unrelenting grief for me to recruit people. Also, it forces people who aren't even wanting to join in MSRs to fill spots. I am so beyond relief sick and tired of explaining "come to Rikti War Zone 2" to someone who takes 20 minutes to switch zones. 

 

This is insanity. Please for the love of all that is holy, change this ASAP.

[Apparition]

2 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

Please, change this to something like 200+ capacity. There are numerous task forces, regular missions, and an entire event RAID in the same zone. Having to click between two different versions of the same zone repeatedly is utterly annoying, tedious, and a source of unrelenting grief for me to recruit people. Also, it forces people who aren't even wanting to join in MSRs to fill spots. I am so beyond relief sick and tired of explaining "come to Rikti War Zone 2" to someone who takes 20 minutes to switch zones. 

 

This is insanity. Please for the love of all that is holy, change this ASAP.

 

 

Honestly, I'd rather see the zone MSR sunsetted in favor of the instanced MSR.  The instanced MSR is better than the zone MSR in every single way, yet people won't use it because it locks out lowbies who bring little to nothing of value to a raid anyway.

 

Also, this is more of an Excelsior problem than a Homecoming problem.  All of the MSRs ran on Indomitable server are instanced, while I think MSRs are only ran on Torchbearer every other Friday evening.  Meanwhile, zone MSRs are ran on Excelsior nearly 24/7, causing chaos.

[Zeraphia]

6 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

 

Honestly, I'd rather see the zone MSR sunsetted in favor of the instanced MSR.  The instanced MSR is better than the zone MSR in every single way, yet people won't use it because it locks out lowbies who bring little to nothing of value to a raid anyway.

 

Also, this is more of an Excelsior problem than a Homecoming problem.  All of the MSRs ran on Indomitable server are instanced, while I think MSRs are only ran on Torchbearer every other Friday evening.  Meanwhile, zone MSRs are ran on Excelsior nearly 24/7, causing chaos.

Honestly you know what dude, I couldn't care less at this point whatever solution they wanna do with it, this I'm all for, and I'm throwing my hands up in the air over how beyond stressful this crap is.

[Apparition]

2 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

Honestly you know what dude, I couldn't care less at this point whatever solution they wanna do with it, this I'm all for, and I'm throwing my hands up in the air over how beyond stressful this crap is.

 

I hear you.  Honestly IMO, it's a bit rude to run a zone MSR and say "who cares about stuff other people are trying to run," while the instanced MSR exists.  Especially during weeks where Apex TF, Tin Mage TF, or LGTF are the weeklies.

 

But, as I said, it's mainly an Excelsior issue, which is one of the reasons why I've also been playing on other shards as of late.

[Templarstone]

Raising the zone cap again won't matter for what you want as that means all the more raiders will pile in and more lag then already is made. So you'll still have the same issues that promoted you to make your post.

 

I'm sure a mob with pitchforks and torches is coming soon at the mention of removing the zone MSR as that removes the way many power level their characters and will throw gatekeeping around frivolously as their reason why they it needs to stay.  

 

[TemporalVileTerror]

Anyone who powerlevels at a Mothership Raid is demonstrably wasting their time.  I would be legitimately shocked to find anyone actually doing that after seeing the far less processor-intensive AND much more rapid powerlevelling exists in other venues.

And gatekeeping is always a legitimate concern to be raised, in all contexts.

 

The Instance was created for those who want a less laggy and more organized version of the Raid.  If people on your Shard are interested in the Raid for the Raid alone, I think you should encourage them to join the Instance.  I believe @Apparition made a public service announcement post about it a while back, in fact.  Perhaps signal-boosting that thread would be a good way to entice more people to join up.

If people agree with the merits of the Instance, knowing that someone is willing to lead it will probably help to sway the otherwise undecided.  

 

On the other hand, I'm certainly not against raising zone caps if server stability and performance issues can be adequately resolved.  But I believe the implementation of the Instance in the first place was specifically because addressing those stability and performance issues is prohibitively infeasible for the Devs at this current time.

[Zeraphia]

4 hours ago, Templarstone said:

Raising the zone cap again won't matter for what you want as that means all the more raiders will pile in and more lag then already is made. So you'll still have the same issues that promoted you to make your post.

 

I'm sure a mob with pitchforks and torches is coming soon at the mention of removing the zone MSR as that removes the way many power level their characters and will throw gatekeeping around frivolously as their reason why they it needs to stay.  

 

You misread my post.

 

I do NOT care about the lag. I do not lag. I care about the extreme ANNOYANCE that is recruiting with two versions of the zone, that can randomly get filled and wasting tons of time and patience telling people "oh no you have to go to RWZ2 because the first one is full" for the 20th time, and then the guy can't figure out how to get to the second area or went to the wrong place on the map and takes 40 years, then if you tell them to use the base teleport they don't understand what that is nor have it available, etc. 

 

Gatekeeping this issue is stupid. 

[Teirusu]

It is also a bit of an issue on Everlasting too as we just run the zone version of the MSR as well.  Two every night.  And they're always run in RWZ1.  Since we have them at the same times, people collect well before they're suppose to start and the people whom are in RWZ1, but not for the raid, usually aren't very many and typically filter out.  So, we don't usually have too many problems with people not being able to get in but it does happen.  Also, we usually consider a raid full with 7 people on each team so more people can filter in during the start phase.

 

 

That all being said, we don't care if there's a bunch of lowbies that join, it's a community event.  It's not always about the maximum V-merits you can get.  It's about the fun!  Not everyone wants to power-level, farm, or spam DFBs to get their lowbies up and you can easily get from 1 to 20-22 within a single raid.  That's not bad for what... 45 minutes of time?  Ish?  So, as far as I'm concerned, they should just get rid of the restrictions on the instanced version, if possible.  Let the raid leader decide if they want to bring lowbies along or not.

[Zeraphia]

7 hours ago, Teirusu said:

It is also a bit of an issue on Everlasting too as we just run the zone version of the MSR as well.  Two every night.  And they're always run in RWZ1.  Since we have them at the same times, people collect well before they're suppose to start and the people whom are in RWZ1, but not for the raid, usually aren't very many and typically filter out.  So, we don't usually have too many problems with people not being able to get in but it does happen.  Also, we usually consider a raid full with 7 people on each team so more people can filter in during the start phase.

 

 

That all being said, we don't care if there's a bunch of lowbies that join, it's a community event.  It's not always about the maximum V-merits you can get.  It's about the fun!  Not everyone wants to power-level, farm, or spam DFBs to get their lowbies up and you can easily get from 1 to 20-22 within a single raid.  That's not bad for what... 45 minutes of time?  Ish?  So, as far as I'm concerned, they should just get rid of the restrictions on the instanced version, if possible.  Let the raid leader decide if they want to bring lowbies along or not.

Well sure, but realize that for every 1 of these "noobies" there has to be someone covering their load for them. A lot of this community is fine with that aspect, but that is the reality. If the league was filled with all noobs, and no one to carry all these people, then they surely all die and get very little merits. Even if there's several carries, you still wasted merits to that person carrying you. I have to describe it as selfish behavior overall, especially for experienced players who are using the raid purely as an AFK AE bypass. 

 

Further, there is leveling content catered to these levels. An MSR contains many 54-level enemies, the likes of which are comparable to iTrials and TinPex. What level do those events require? Level 50. 

Edited April 10, 2021 by Zeraphia

[srmalloy]

19 hours ago, Apparition said:

Honestly, I'd rather see the zone MSR sunsetted in favor of the instanced MSR.  The instanced MSR is better than the zone MSR in every single way, yet people won't use it because it locks out lowbies who bring little to nothing of value to a raid anyway.

And while we're at it, can we go back to the old form of exemplaring for TFs, where someone who was too high level for a TF had to be paired with a character who was in the level range for the TF, so we can control the number of people bringing high-level characters to low-level TFs and being overpowered compared to the people who are "legitimately" doing the TF, diminishing their contribution and ruining their emjoyment?

 

If you can't recognize it, yes, this is sarcasm. The changes I've seen made in the game over the years (barring certain nerfs I decline to address, and which are a matter of opinion, anyway) have been to expand the ways that you can play the game. Zones used to be level-locked, forcing groups to break up if someone had missions in them; now, if you want to, a high-enough-level character can take a bunch of low-level characters into any zone and run content there. Exemplar and sidekick used to be strict pairing, meaning that you had to have one high-level character to match to each low-level character to sidekick or exemplar, and you could be kicked from TFs if that broke, or have part of a team suddenly stop getting XP or get roflstomped by mobs now a dozen or more levels higher than they are; now, you just team up and it's all handled automatically.  Wiping the zone MSR out of the game because you don't want to deal with the hassle and consider lower-level characters in an MSR to be useless is taking away options from the players. The existence of zone MSRs is not stopping you from forming instanced MSRs to your heart's content; go have fun your way, and let other people have fun their way. If you can't get enough people for your instanced MSRs because they're running zone MSRs, then that says something about what they prefer.

[TygerDarkstorm]

3 hours ago, Zeraphia said:

Well sure, but realize that for every 1 of these "noobies" there has to be someone covering their load for them. A lot of this community is fine with that aspect, but that is the reality. If the league was filled with all noobs, and no one to carry all these people, then they surely all die and get very little merits. Even if there's several carries, you still wasted merits to that person carrying you. I have to describe it as selfish behavior overall, especially for experienced players who are using the raid purely as an AFK AE bypass. 

 

Further, there is leveling content catered to these levels. An MSR contains many 54-level enemies, the likes of which are comparable to iTrials and TinPex. What level do those events require? Level 50. 

Funny, Everlasting's community views this totally differently. Not only do we not have an issue with 50's showing up, we have 50's who will gladly volunteer to give up their spots so a lower level toon can participate in the MSR. We run two raids a night; if someone wants to take up hosting one for only high level toons, they're welcome to do so.

[Greycat]

10 hours ago, Teirusu said:

That all being said, we don't care if there's a bunch of lowbies that join, it's a community event.  It's not always about the maximum V-merits you can get.  It's about the fun!  Not everyone wants to power-level, farm, or spam DFBs to get their lowbies up and you can easily get from 1 to 20-22 within a single raid.  That's not bad for what... 45 minutes of time?  Ish?  So, as far as I'm concerned, they should just get rid of the restrictions on the instanced version, if possible.  Let the raid leader decide if they want to bring lowbies along or not.

 

This. 100%. The raids take a little bit of coordination and are mostly (other than the pullers) button-mashing. It's more a regular social event than something that requires a lot of thought or coordination to do successfully.

 

Frankly, I can't think of the last time we had "too many lowbies." Even my incarnates will run around trying to find something to hit before yet-another-Judgement wipes out the group I'm running towards.

 

[Apparition]

17 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

And while we're at it, can we go back to the old form of exemplaring for TFs, where someone who was too high level for a TF had to be paired with a character who was in the level range for the TF, so we can control the number of people bringing high-level characters to low-level TFs and being overpowered compared to the people who are "legitimately" doing the TF, diminishing their contribution and ruining their emjoyment?

 

If you can't recognize it, yes, this is sarcasm. The changes I've seen made in the game over the years (barring certain nerfs I decline to address, and which are a matter of opinion, anyway) have been to expand the ways that you can play the game. Zones used to be level-locked, forcing groups to break up if someone had missions in them; now, if you want to, a high-enough-level character can take a bunch of low-level characters into any zone and run content there. Exemplar and sidekick used to be strict pairing, meaning that you had to have one high-level character to match to each low-level character to sidekick or exemplar, and you could be kicked from TFs if that broke, or have part of a team suddenly stop getting XP or get roflstomped by mobs now a dozen or more levels higher than they are; now, you just team up and it's all handled automatically.  Wiping the zone MSR out of the game because you don't want to deal with the hassle and consider lower-level characters in an MSR to be useless is taking away options from the players. The existence of zone MSRs is not stopping you from forming instanced MSRs to your heart's content; go have fun your way, and let other people have fun their way. If you can't get enough people for your instanced MSRs because they're running zone MSRs, then that says something about what they prefer.

 

 

Getting enough people for my instanced MSRs isn't a problem.  I average about 40 people and 1,600 Vanguard merits per run.  The issue is that running a zone MSR (especially nearly 24/7 on the Excelsior shard), effectively locks out and breaks up teams trying to run other content in the RWZ when there is an alternative option to run the MSR available.  Raising the RWZ zone cap isn't a solution, as it will just fill up with more people for the MSR, still locking out people trying to do other things.

Edited April 10, 2021 by Apparition

[Andreah]

On Everlasting, these MSR's are about a lot more than maximum vanguard merits, or power-leveling. Yes, lowbies can get levels in an MSR, but it's not about how fast they get them, but how much fun they have while getting them. And our raids are productive as well -- typically 1200-1600, and I've seen as high as the low 1900's. It's one of the most open and fun community events we have, and it's multiple times per day. People start gathering almost an hour in advance; yes, some to be sure to get a spot on the main raid league (it fills to capacity by the time we're in the bowl virtually every run), but also to hang out and be social, both as regular players and as roleplayers. And afterwards, some hang around in the Vanguard base to chill and interact as well.

 

I feel it would be utterly terrible for Everlasting if the open zone MSR were retired.

 

If other servers prefer people to use the instanced version, create and maintain a server tradition of doing them that way.

[Zeraphia]

This has kind of derailed into an MSR discussion, which may be fair game, but overall that's not why I started this thread, and if people really want the lowbies, again, it's not really my care one way or the other. Not the hill I want to die on.

 

I am tired of dealing with the Rikti War Zone cap. It is a nightmare to deal with. For a zone that hosts the raid, numerous end-game task forces, and several badges for exploration, it doesn't make much sense to cap it to a level where the raid alone takes up 80% of the space. 

 

Again, I'm not adverse to going with the raid in the instanced version or not, I simply just don't care as I don't even like doing MSRs to begin with, what I truly dislike is how frequent this becomes and how much grief this causes me for recruiting.

 

FYI, I can give screenshots/proof of people not understanding how the two zones work and holding up teams *10 full minutes* trying to figure out the zoning. People were requesting me to kick this person. 

Edited April 10, 2021 by Zeraphia

[Teirusu]

7 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

This has kind of derailed into an MSR discussion, which may be fair game, but overall that's not why I started this thread, and if people really want the lowbies, again, it's not really my care one way or the other. Not the hill I want to die on.

 

I am tired of dealing with the Rikti War Zone cap. It is a nightmare to deal with. For a zone that hosts the raid, numerous end-game task forces, and several badges for exploration, it doesn't make much sense to cap it to a level where the raid alone takes up 80% of the space. 

 

Again, I'm not adverse to going with the raid in the instanced version or not, I simply just don't care as I don't even like doing MSRs to begin with, what I truly dislike is how frequent this becomes and how much grief this causes me for recruiting.

 

FYI, I can give screenshots/proof of people not understanding how the two zones work and holding up teams *10 full minutes* trying to figure out the zoning. People were requesting me to kick this person. 

 

 

Ahhh, hmmmm... so, it's not directly related to MSRs but just that people don't understand the multiple zones mechanic of the game.

You know, come to think about it, it be really -really- nice if they did something like the following:

 

There is already a little circle icon that shows up in the zone list when you have a mission in a particular zone.  It be really -great- if they could, somehow highlight/bold/icon which zone your teammates are in.

Like bring the Zone X to the top of the list when your teammates are in it and highlight it green or something.

 

One other thing that be nice is if Broadcast chat was across all zones, but the Request channel was zone specific.  That way, request could continue to be used to give directions during stuff.

[Greycat]

12 minutes ago, Teirusu said:

 

One other thing that be nice is if Broadcast chat was across all zones, but the Request channel was zone specific.  That way, request could continue to be used to give directions during stuff.

 

All for the highlight idea, but this... dear god no. :D Broadcast going across all zones would just be chaos, with people not knowing how to use local, costume contests and the like using it, etc.

[Grindingsucks]

I had no idea they were that much trouble to organize and run.  Granted, I've only been on 3 MSR's and have never run one (I don't like them, myself, so that's something I'll never have to worry about).

 

When I see the doppleganger zone pop up, I do generally try to use the 2nd one, because I don't want to cause lag for the people running an MSR in RWZ1.  I've never had it impact me as a player doing other stuff in the zone, though (and I've never experienced being "forced" to join an MSR.  Not even sure what that means, tbh 🤷‍♂️).

[Uun]

Not sure if this is doable in CoH, but in other games there's a button/pulldown on the zone map for "change instance". This would allow folks to change from RWZ1 to RWZ2 instantly.

[Teirusu]

3 hours ago, Uun said:

Not sure if this is doable in CoH, but in other games there's a button/pulldown on the zone map for "change instance". This would allow folks to change from RWZ1 to RWZ2 instantly.

 

I think this is a feature that CO had, if I recall right and that would be nice.  Just as long as it 1.) Put you in the same spot in the new zone and 2.) Could not be used while in combat and/or didn't work in PVP zones, that be fine.

 

20 hours ago, Greycat said:

 

All for the highlight idea, but this... dear god no. 😄 Broadcast going across all zones would just be chaos, with people not knowing how to use local, costume contests and the like using it, etc.

 

Yeah, I could see that being problematic for sure.  Although, I think this is another feature that CO had but I'm not 100% sure, it's been so long since I looked at that game.  My intention would be that Broadcast would be updated so that it mentions which zone the person is in.  That way, there would be (Hopefully) no mistake which particular zone someone is in when they're talking in Broadcast.  But yeah, I could see it being an issue when you're talking about costume contests and such.