Saving racks?

[Uther]

Would be fun to see what AoB and the other wizards thinks about this?

Gorboth ? Your Point of view ? Tapakah ? Cotillion ?

[gorboth]

I'm a bit too old school for this topic, actually. I've never played at anywhere near elite levels, so for me all the fuss over whether the "Best items" in the game save in a rack or not ... well ... I used to roleplay a monk who refused to use armours or weapons at all!

Ask Petros. He's actually been looking at this. I think Cotillion too.

G.

[Ilrahil]

Well I personally like the idea of saving racks, especially for things such as crashes, or with the stupid state gear is in now.

Saving racks while a nice benefit I do not think are necessarily what needs changed. Rather it is the gear system again. Whatever algorithm is used, and I apologize to the coder of it in advance. It is seriously flawed. Below are my reasons why.

1) Last Armageddon, BDA racks were fairly nice. I had to start at armageddon with a pair of blackened steel bracers and an ivory-handled sabre which I obtained directly before the storm hit. Frustrating when you have an active guild, nice racks and nothing saves. What's even worse is the dreaded fact that you can spend the last day before armageddon recycling gear through by destroying it, and recloning it and almost be guaranteed a saving piece of it. However after armageddon NONE of the gear will save again.

2) The Drop tables are just wrong. For example last night I will go into some extreme specifics of why things are not being distributed right.

-Akugla (Orc Captain), reset 3 times in a row with a Midnight black platemail
-Directly after Armageddon, the yeti spawned with a silvanesti shield 3-4 times in a row.
-I killed one set of shadow-elves on the Holm yesterday and gathered 3 runies from one set of 5.
-The Octopus in Avenir reset with golden gauntlets back to back

Now I may be off the mark here, but isn't this the reason the equipment system was changed? So that the gear timetables were spaced out more? Instead you have a day 3-4 days in where everything drops. And then you can gear the last day to recycle things through and get it to save.

Hijack over, yet I think this directly relates to saving racks.

Also another addendum. For objects like the Sword of Mergula or Flaming Black Broadswords or Crystal axes (for anyone other than Irk who lives in Mithas.) For many especially the first two, they are extremely rare. Items like that if I ever had them were the first things I checked after the Renewal to see if they saved again. Now its a waste of my time because I know the answer will be no. Some quest items that are highly valued like the Great helm of the hawk or the Azure rune-etched longsword among others also no longer have a chance of saving for more than one time period. To me as a player that is frustrating, even more so than losing racks because I didn't realize Armageddon was going to hit.

Also I like Emma's idea. Please post something on the website of a countdown of sorts to when the next Armageddon hits. For those who cannot access from work, or who would have to do it from a cell phone, it would be convenient for them to be able to know if they need to log in to save the racks without guessing for a time.

[Anahita]

Non-saving racks give people a reason to "wake up" in game. Thats a good thing, even if its only briefly. It would be nice if we had a longer cycle than a week though.

I do agree with Ilrahil's (and others) assertions that the current formula is not ideal. From a huge rack of equipment having only a few items save means that there is maybe enough to equip one person for gathering more, and that is a huge burden post-Arma if more than one guildmember wants to team to team for something challenging.

[OgreToyBoy]

The big issue for most people are they can't get the best items even if they play for
10 hours on any given day due to NPC's not spawning with the items or the cap
for the item is already reached. Not sure if the cap change when an item is broken
else that could be something to look over as some do not have the item recycled
when it breaks, instead just drop it on spot and move on with the next item in their pack.
For me it is no worry with racks or cap or glowing items, but for most non-ogres
it is a source of frustration.
One solution is to remove the cap so every axeswinger get a crystal axe or every
RDA got a serrated halberd etc. Remove the non-dull properties of said super-items
so you have to get new ones from time to time. In general Genesis got a good coverage
of items, a wide range of really good stuff in my opinion. Problem is when a wizard want
to add a new item he/she pretty much need to make it top notch else none will
even think twice on getting the item.

[Recoba]

Non-saving racks give people a reason to "wake up" in game. Thats a good thing, even if its only briefly.

Well yes, but a player who only wakes up for saving on arma doesn't really count for much. She won't even be seen outside the rack room.

Though maybe even a brief entry might subject her to being lured out to travel by active comrades, of course.

[Zorath]

I guess this will be a note out of frustration.

But yeasterday I checked when arma would hit.. so I could be there to actually save what I had been gathering this last week.
And now that I logged on, it had hit 2 hours before.

This is to frustrating for me atleast, and this would not be a problem if we have saving racks.
Perhaps the game is to stuck with its old habits for all I know.. but this isnt going to be a game for me I guess if things wont change.

[Recoba]

I guess this will be a note out of frustration.

But yeasterday I checked when arma would hit.. so I could be there to actually save what I had been gathering this last week.
And now that I logged on, it had hit 2 hours before.

This is to frustrating for me atleast, and this would not be a problem if we have saving racks.
Perhaps the game is to stuck with its old habits for all I know.. but this isnt going to be a game for me I guess if things wont change.

I wonder, what is the reason for arma not occurring on an exact preset time? It would seem more normal for it to do so.

[Laurel]

my understanding of the current drop-rates is:

1-3 days into Arma - crap+crap*crap with a VERY rare usable piece of eq - if you didn't save something great over Arma, you run around with mediocre items
4-5 days into Arma - eq rain! only rarely saving tho
6-7 days into Arma - if you don't spend THIS time recycling what you got in the previous 4-5 days, you're screwed at next Arma - most great eq is distributed by this moment anyway, so it's recycling only ...

so what is good for casual gamers?
a. login at 4-5 days and lay your hands at something (it may even save)
b. login at 6-7 days and run into a saving piece of eq that someone is recycling

what is good for people who play quite more?
nothing you have to recycle, to have something good after arma -> you need to have the items for recycling -> 3-4 days of eq checks -> everybody turns into more or less eq-whores

[Rhynox]

Maybe a compromise? The main problems we have are crashes and unexpected reboots (which, truly speaking, doesn't happen that often) and inactive guilds where you lose all your racks because nobody was there to save items. I think keeping the racks the way they are now, but with an autosaving feature that works automatically: if the game crashed or there was an unexpected reboot (for example, when a wizard needs to update something and calls for an early reboot), the autosaving feature will recover all the items that were placed in the racks (including non saving ones). And during common Armageddons, only a fraction of the saving items inside the racks would be recovered.

This would, I believe, be the best option. Crashes are completely unexpected, so it would be nice to leave the world (at least regarding equipment) as it was before it. Unexpected reboots (when wizards call for them) usually allow players to save everything, including non saving items. However, since they are unexpected, many times there aren't members around, or there are too few to save everything. And for common Armageddons, playing roulette and letting the system randomly choose a fraction of the items you had in your racks is better than starting with nothing. Wizards could even tweak it so that unique or pretty important items are neved autosaved, or that some lesser equipment (for example, smith forged armours and weapons) to always autosave.