Greetings.
Problem:
We spend hours of time and effort to cycle certain mobs and pop items, ranging from specs to biggest mobs in the areas only to lose loaded items on crashes/reboots. This is greatly disappointing and means that we waste hours of our life for nothing - even if playing a text game is a fruitful pursuit.
It means that to pop the item again, the players not only need to kill an empty mob - right now most mobs appear w/o eq - but spend the same time/effort to pop the item(s) again.
Solution 1:
Save the state of items in use on mobs larger, than 5mil, every repop (ideally, all mobs > 1mil)
When a crash occurs, load that state of eq.
If there were no items, allow the few of the items - mostly books/keys/etc- load on crash/reboot as they do now.
The only exception is choppers we pop: we typically drop them on the ground, since we need tons to lead large groups, especially, if taking into account breaking specs.
Solution 2:
Load items on kill.
It'd help if choppers on the ground remained on the ground as well.
Keeping spellbooks in the libraries might be helpful as well.
To demonstrate the problem, I am and will be posting items with:
- which items were lost and how many of them
- effort required to pop them
- when it happened.
I'll start with:
1. Before June 12th: I spent about 8-12 hours across 3 days to pop 30-40 specs total before they are poofed on crash. I pop another batch, and it crashes again. It crashed 3 times on me, and I kept popping specs, and then it crashed again. I popped them again. I wonder, if this is a sign of a mad addict, than a healthy person.
2. June 12th:
Neptune pre-loaded eq on 150-200mil mobs.
A group of 6-7 spent at least 3-4 hours killing 1 200mil mob per run, which later popped.
There were 5-7 items I knew - about 3 were actually popped, not Neptune-loaded - that were lost in a scheduled reboot 24hr after the quest.
3. June 14th.
Ezekiel and I have spent at least 4-5 hours popping specs, solo, 2man and in a chop group.
About 20+ specs were lost in a scheduled reboot.
A found shaping peri.
4. Every time a crash/reboot happens, the fargate we enable manually is reset and not renewed.
It takes at least 5-9 min for 2+ 9x40 players to regen for the kill, and after the kill.
5. Countless times, when I have killed a big mob, went to bed, only to find that the MUD has crashed/rebooted, while I slept, leaving it a mystery, whether it loaded.
Sometimes I wonder, if I should bother with popping specs or enabling fargate.
Now I wonder, if I should bother cycling eq.
I invite players to share their stories of lost items: please tell us, when the items were lost, the effort required to pop them and how many of the items were lost.
I'd appreciate, if immortals fix this black hole of eq - and I'll be providing feedback as long as this bug lives.
Thank you.
P.S. If someone wants to tell me that popping eq isn't what we play for: play how you want, but do not tell me how to play the game
P.P.S. I'd like to note that some imms do:
- save choppers, if they are on
- re-enable fargate, if they are present - but not always
- enable random extra bonuses.
However, this isn't an imm rule, more a whim, and random extra global bonuses - except gempop - don't compensate for lost pops, only for the loss of aged exp on mobs.