Current state of rare purges

[Mikoos]

It can feel overwhelming especially if you start playing the second week of the month knowing that you have to build up your character again to be competitive only to start back at square one in two weeks. Makes me just want to wait out the month and not play then hope for the best the next month.

I like the idea of every item having a thirty day timer that’s not based on the calendar, but starts running once obtained. But maybe that would break some people’s routines/schedules. I dunno. Programming that would be a bitch.

[Matrix]

it would be possible to exempt rares less than 5 days old from the purge, but that would probably go based on the repop date (date of creation) rather than the time you looted it if you loot it from another player. That would probably be unfair to pkers. It would be hard to use the multi log because you could easily transfer it to another player and back again so the code would be complicated

[Davairus]

Players would rather grind gold for 3 hours and gamble than spend 3 hours running around looking at empty rare holders. So I created a bounty task that pays people gold to seek and destroy mobs that are rare holders, along with a slow-release of sacced rares to their holders. A good problem deserves a good solution.
I think the hours required per month is just too high. Some people like the bottleneck because it creates a hoarder scramble for hours. I personally would prefer a weekly run with the minimum of 2-3 hours being met by Tuesday Mornings so that we can have a smaller bottleneck that gets uncorked right before the Eastern Timezone surge

[Vhrael]

We’ll call it...

(Wait for it...)

“Purge ‘n Surge!”

[Grayden]

Honestly the limited items are more available then they used to be, and now with the codex, you know what mob to periodically kill.

I remember you used to have kill tough people and then when you identify the item, you realize you wasted so much time. It is much better now.

Clarity it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Davairus]

silly grayden, the evermore smuggler was converted to relics and then the saccing for relics was removed. ergo, need rares, no time, roll chaotic.

[Grayden]

So bonus relics for diminishing and helping the younger characters or back to gold with the smuggler.

[Necrobotica]

So I am a bit confused. I've been operating under the impression that if you check a mob and it does not have a rare you're seeking loaded, there is a chance it'll load ... once that rare is returned to circulation?

Is that not the case? Do you actually have to kill the mob to get see if it'll reload?

[Kalist19]

2 hours per week would be awesome. Enough to keep a guy accountable but not so high to feel insurmountable. Sometimes mid month I look at hours and think “fuck how am I going to make it”. Then I have to look at wife’s schedule/tell her I am gonna skip a bit of our “kids in bed alone time” to go make sure I get enough hours before end of the month.

[Ceridwel]

ME, playing AR trying to get my rare hours in: "Honey, I'm in a really tight spot here, I need like 2 more hours before I come to bed"

My wife in response: "If you don't stop playing that god damn game that is the last tight spot you'll see for six months!".

[Kalist19]

Haha my wife is pretty supportive. Near the end of every month she will say “so did you log in all of your fifties?”.

[Erlwith]

I don't think making it weekly is a good idea. Especially 2 hours. That time min. seems like a reward for not logging in, and much more would put a lot of pressure and anxiety on a week.

I think that this is not a broken situation. For every person that complains about the purge, someone else logs in to collect the rares in circulation.

But if you felt that the monthly min. is just too high, maybe looking into a different way of policing rare circulation is in order? Something like an achievement based system or tasks, busy work, refurbishing rares or they turn into ordinary armor, collecting items you get from normal every day stuff like I think those mystic tokens used to be, or something like that.

[Lorne]

I also don't like the weekly quota, that would just make me wear all gambled equipment.

You can still wear all gambled equipment and be competitive. I think rare circulation is quite balanced at the moment. You want the top end gear, you need to play the hours.

[Davairus]

I just read Kalist loses time with his kids to keep his rares? This does not sound great. It sounds more like torture. Do you guys want to try lowering the duration needed for level 50s to keep rares? Its probably way too high considering the duration was chosen for a time period where the average age of the playerbase was 16 years old and we had 80 people online. Does anybody actively playing AR at level 50 have any objection to lowering that? I'm just looking at the recent purge activity and I dont see why characters like Flinnegan and Solumndi are being treated like storage characters and unloaded. Maybe we could look at the playtimes at the end of eachmonth and follow how much they drop off after a character hits 50. I think it would be worth at least looking into other ways to qualify as "active". Like, if you actually did any fighting that put the rares to use, as opposed to training script whie watching netflix. Five minutes of Kalist fighting 1v2 level 50 could be outweighing 6 hours of gold farming.

http://abandonedrealms.com/players/index.php?sort=mplayed

[Grayden]

How about Tiers, like unique items & rares currently not in the game still purge as normal, but if your activity is low and that item is available, then no need to purge.

Is that possible? I am not the one stuck coding.

If you are holding onto unique items and not playing, that is wrong, but I also think family is more important.

Little less time required and tiers if possible, maybe.

[Kalist19]

Dav that would make me so happy. I basically have an anxiety meter that resets on the 1st of the month and goes up every day until I hit my hours and have logged in all my guys to prevent inactive (have to keep those oldies going!). I would be such a big fan of lowering the hours and seeing how it goes - could always adjust again if all the rares suddenly disappear. I usually do a lot of fighting so logging enough hours to keep rares helps a lot.

[hamsandwich]

I don't want to single anyone out, and I don't want to be a dick to Kalist, as I have no reason to be, so please don't be offended by this, but trying to look at this objectively, it seems like one of the reasons Kalist has a hard time reaching the active hours limit is because of the sheer number of characters. If he only had 2-3 levels 50s maybe he wouldn't have such a hard time.

Is having more than 3 50s a normal thing that everyone does? If so then maybe I'm totally out of line here, but if not then maybe the solution isn't to lower the hour limit but to maybe lower the character juggling?

With all that said though, I'm not against lowering it I don't think. And I don't have any reason to prevent Kalist from keeping all his chars active. So if that's what we want to do then great. I'm just trying to paint a full picture before any changes are made.

[jaran]

Go for it Dav.

[Davairus]

Yeah I did notice some people have alt-itis. No decisions can be made until we have collected several months of playtime to look at. Not changing it by guesswork.

[Lorne]

I am actually opposed to making it easier to keep rares by just logging in alone. Obviously no offense to Kalist, I have kids myself and I know how hard it is to play these days...so much easier when I was 14.

When we had the guild commission keep rare thing, that annoyed the shit out of me. Herald Healers sitting behind kaddar faeries with titanium tenor just logging in for like 2 hours in total per month or that dude that logs off instantly from scripting the mines soon as anyone that has any pk potential logs on, and certain rare set items are never fucking in, like the spider slippers. It really put me off. So I am strongly opposed of lowering the hours. For instance, if you're Kalist and you're keeping rares on say 3 players. You should have to play the absurb amount of hours to keep them, because essentially you are taking 2 full sets out of circulation, as you can only log on one character at time. So that comes with a price.

I do however like Dav's idea of giving incentives to lower your amount of hours. IE, during the times you have aggressive adrenaline, that can count as 2xtime for instance. Or for cabal members, your hours are automatically lower perhaps (As, in theory you can always draw cabal members out to fight by invading instead of some uncaballed hoarder sitting in winter).

I think any instance where you have an increased chance of losing your rares, you can get bonuses on the time to keep your rares.