[Tsrwedge]

This was prognosticated about 5 minutes after the price reduction was announced. Scum will be scum.

[Kafeen]

Originally Posted by Empedocles

I realise this, but the main 3 Dyna LS's that run at the same time as us have their leader(s) talk with ours at the end of the month for scheduling next month, and usually come to an agreement so we aren't headbutting.

The LS that takes our runs knows our scheduling system and ignores it so they can do what they want and damn everyone else.

Things like this have been tried in the past, there was a website where people could schedule dynamis runs. Unfortunately unless everyone agrees to them they don't work. Its good if you can minimise the number of conflicts you're going to have but you're never going to eradicate them completely without a change to the way Dynamis works.

Different shells are doing to respond whatever people try. If we're waiting for a zone along with another LS we'll often offer then the chance to /random for the zone, the loser going to another zone to save waiting around for no reason. Some LSs will agree, others won't. Similarly some LSs won't agree to go by someone elses schedule, they're always going to try and get the zone for themselves.

[Lunaryn]

On the comparison to camp theft, you're correct that in isolation they aren't doing anything wrong, but to take that analogy further:

1) Party A finds a camp and starts to xp there.
2) Party B comes in sometime later and camps on top of them.
3) Party A is upset and asks them not to do this.
4) Party B takes offense, insists they have the right to do this, how dare they try to make them move, etc.
5) Party A gets fed up and moves on to look for another camp.
6) Party B, still pissed at Party A, follows them to camp on top of them at their next camp.
Obviously, a line is crossed in step 6 between contention over resources and poor etiquette, both allowed under ToS, and harassment, which is not, and a GM could be called to intervene in. Up to that point, they were merely refusing to respect a convention and propriety established by the community for its own benefit. It could be motivated by selfishness or by a grudge, we wouldn't know, and GMs wouldn't likely try to make a judgment call on that. The italicized portion moves it out of that ambiguous realm and into the realm of direct persecution.

This is where the matter of the knowledge of the schedule and the establishment of a pattern would come into play. If a shell knew of the dynamis schedule and chose not to respect it, that falls into the first, non-actionable category. If they were using the dynamis schedule to make sure they wouldn't get shut out by your group, but simply not caring about the trampling effect of not getting in early enough to be out by the time you were going in, that's more ambiguous. If they are in fact choosing their dynamis runs specifically to interfere with yours because they don't like your shell or its methods, that's harassment and should be actionable.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Until Dynamis gets instanced, it will never be truly fixed.

[spiderwebs]

I have never run dynamis. From what I have read a LS needs to trade an item to "Reserve" their spot in that specific dynamis zone. And other LShells need to wait for them to finish the zone or leave for the next trade "Reservation" to work.

First thing I ask myself is "why would SE approach such demanding events in that fashion?"

SE throws a bone at emaciated dogs and expect them to be civil; each dog taking a small piece of the bone. Perhaps the balancing of end-game items from dynamis among other things would drastically affect the economy. I'm too lazy to see how it would though...

I believe SE knew exactly what they were doing with how they instated the mechanics of this end-game event. Either the server attempts to cooperate w/ planned schedules or first come first serve.

Either option works for me. When I get to end-game I will do whatever I need to meet my expectations of my character's progression. If I can't go around it in a civil fashion than so be it.

Thoughts?

[TheGrandMom]

Originally Posted by spiderwebs

When I get to end-game I will do whatever I need to meet my expectations of my character's progression. If I can't go around it in a civil fashion than so be it.

Thoughts?

I've been in ls's where assholery ruled the day for Dynamis and I've been in ls's where people were civil even if other ls's were not. I have to say that I prefer to be who I am and not stoop to the level of others in order to acheive my goals. I had a good laugh once at one of my ls leaders. He decided to go the assholery route and use his glass and hold the zone until more people came. So basically, he went in alone and when enough people were there he would come out and another sac would grab the zone again. Unfortunately, the sac wasn't fast enough and the competing ls took the zone. Thats 1 million coffer gilz gone for nothing. At least the other ls got a good laugh out of it.

Assholery gets you a rep that you might not want and always check with your ls leader/sacs to see if your assholery will be appreciated or not before engaging it. This has been a public service announcement.

[Kitalrez]

Diabolos server deals with this problem by not having a schedule period. I'm not convinced this was the solution to the problem so much as the fact that DarkStatic, Poisoned, PapaJohns and Mercenary were all run by pricks and thus didn't care whether they stepped on anyone or not. Their decendents are still run by pricks, been annoyed with NGNG more than I care to discuss.

In any case, you really get around the problem by griefing the shell messing with you the same way they get you. Send in one random guy with the hourglass, when you notice them gathering, and take your time getting there. Same deal they do, really. Generally the first step to convincing them that there's a problem with what they're doing is showing them what it feels like to be on the other side of that problem. Either they'll shape up and join the rest of humanity, or they'll end up like Diabolos's endgame and become even bigger dicks who eventually have to switch servers to leave the storm they've created.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Originally Posted by spiderwebs

I believe SE knew exactly what they were doing with how they instated the mechanics of this end-game event. Either the server attempts to cooperate w/ planned schedules or first come first serve.

I wouldn't equate having too much faith in people to act selflessly with "they knew exactly what they were doing." I would peg it more as "It just seemed like a good idea at the time."

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Originally Posted by Kitalrez

Diabolos server deals with this problem by not having a schedule period. I'm not convinced this was the solution to the problem so much as the fact that DarkStatic, Poisoned, PapaJohns and Mercenary were all run by pricks and thus didn't care whether they stepped on anyone or not. Their decendents are still run by pricks, been annoyed with NGNG more than I care to discuss.

In any case, you really get around the problem by griefing the shell messing with you the same way they get you. Send in one random guy with the hourglass, when you notice them gathering, and take your time getting there. Same deal they do, really. Generally the first step to convincing them that there's a problem with what they're doing is showing them what it feels like to be on the other side of that problem. Either they'll shape up and join the rest of humanity, or they'll end up like Diabolos's endgame and become even bigger dicks who eventually have to switch servers to leave the storm they've created.

But you see, the thing here is that assholery is rampant on small servers and you can't do much about it since when your server population is already small, that means your tank/mage/support players are even smaller. They actually tend to be amoung the biggest of assholes as well. People will take the asshole thats a BRD because he still has a BRD.

Shit people pull on those servers will not fly on the bigger servers. Your name can and will get around, you will gain a reputation and you will gain it quickly. If you pull shit with your BRD on a larger server, the shit you thought you could pull elsewhere, you'll quickly find out being a BRD on the larger servers isn't quite as special as being one on the larger server. More BRDs to choose from, some of which behave better.

So, when in Rome...

[Kyleet]

Happened to us on Friday. Got our Dyna-Xarc "stolen". The shell we're in is pretty large and they've been doing Dynamis a long long while. So many RDM in our shell rejoiced at the new drop rate increase and I know I was sure lookin forward to our first Xarc since the update. But that didn't happen. Another LS there sent a small pt in to manaburn the timers while their group showed up, and not only that but they acted like jerks IMO, parading around in front of us and acting like they 'might' give us the zone 'back'.

By their leader's choice of words "I was about to give the zone back." It's obvious these shells know they're stepping on other people's plans and schedules. They know the calendars exist, but instead of using it to plan their runs on a time that's not taken, they use it to make sure they can stop another LS from getting in. I mean if you know another shell is gonna be there, why even put up with competition if you could use the calender too and schedule a time for your shell without conflict?

It's pretty sad if SE ignores this problem. Since we never had this happen before the update, pretty sure its just gonna get worse now that its here.

[eticket109]

Originally Posted by Kyleet

Since we never had this happen before the update, pretty sure its just gonna get worse now that its here.

While I can understand your frustration, that's an odd leap in logic in my opinion. It's only happened to you once but it's sure to be an epidemic?

Seriously though, SE just needs to instance this shit. If people drop this in with all the AV questions at Fanfest, we may actually get an answer on this one.

[Lunaryn]

If not instancing, at least reservation-in-advance; even if it's the sort of crappy exactly-72-hours-in-advance reservation they put on Diorama, it'd still mean you'd know 72 hours in advance whether or not your schedule had been disrupted.

Given the high rate of contention, it might make sense to have the reservation expire if no one enters within 15 minutes, though. That'd still allow some room for setup and timing error while not holding a zone egregiously long for a group that might not actually show up.

I don't necessarily agree with SE's reasons for keeping this non-instanced, but if they're going to be rigid on that point, it's worth noting that it's not the only possible solution to this particular problem.

[Jonastb]

The problem with reserving Dynamis ahead of time, is the time limit changes. Some LS's can only handle an hour, while some can max out the time. Do you just shut it down for 2 hours, and not let others have a chance, or do you let someone else go and automatically kick them when then next ls's time comes up?

Any way you do it, someone gets hurt.

And people have already stated that SE doesn't want more currency in the economy. Instancing Dynamis x number of times, increases currency by x. If they lowered the drop rate of currency to compensate, then you are right back in the same boat with the price since most LS's fund their runs by currency.

[Lunaryn]

Way I'm thinking that'd likely go is this:
1) Reservation comes into effect.
2) Within 15 minutes, someone with an hourglass connected to the reservation enters, or the reservation ends.
3) Assuming people enter, reservation lasts until everyone leaves.
4) In the event another reservation is booked within 3.5 hours, players will receive a warning before attempting to reserve that tells them how long they have until the reservation kicks them out (hard limit on time extensions). They can judge for themselves if it's worth taking the zone, given that.

Again, a comprehensive, flexible scheduling system in-game would alleviate the difficulties outlined here significantly, but I think even a minimal system would be something people could work with.

Also, if there's enough server infrastructure now that instancing is now about a 'limit how many dynamis runs a server as a whole can do', maybe it'd make sense to instance Dynamis as an architectural change, and limit reservations to a static 1-hour, after which the next group can get started on their run in another instance? Of course, you could also just make the NPC 'run out' of hourglasses similarly to a guild NPC (but without the price fluctuations, please) and go full-instanced. So I think this is less about what SE wants to accomplish and more about reluctance to revisit old decisions.