Hami being spawned prior to scheduled Raids

Hi All,

Here is what my reply this morning to the bug report I sent in regarding the Hami being spawned prior to out regular raids.

My response is below, not sure it will go any where but it's worth a try.
Hi,
I am well aware of how the Hamidon works having led a raid myself and been the Main agro tank for many months, the point is this is new that Hamidon is being spawned early before the raids that have been advertised, We are trying to reach out to those that might be trying to do a raid and failing so we can help/give guidance so they will have an enjoyable raid and not get frustrated and give up as we have seen on the Red side Hamidon raids. My SG has led at least 1 success full Red side Hamidon raid in the past few weeks and had a great turnout. We are not new to the game and are some of the most veteran player playing and when you schedule and advertise something only to have people show up and then have to buy the EOE’s which can cost as much as 2mil each it take longer to get started and people get frustrated at the wait. Now the only other in game event that requires special inspirations is the Eden trial and that is a Task Force so it’s hard to not be prepared for that as you get them in the Task Force. I can only see two ways a single player can spawn Hamidon, 1. Droning the monsters or Badge hunting ( this would mean Hamidon spawn is based on a timer due to Monster agro/attention to a hero/vigilante. If someone is doing this to make it harder for us to raid then I consider this griefing and that is something you should look into, if it’s the badge hunting then we need to now so we can setup a raid and badge hunt session at the same time to help those that need the badges. We try to work together as a large group on Freedom across many SG’s to have events like the Hamidon raid, COP, and the Rikiti Mother ship raids so that there will be enough events for people to attend due to real life schedules as well as zone number limitations. I would like this to be escalated to one of your Dev’s so they can answer back to me and we can discuss this as I see this a way to reach out to those that may need guidance in raiding as well as to see why if any are causing this problem. I am getting the feeling after I have returned from the game that Dev’s are taking an interest in a more community based involvement as I have seen at least 1 Dev a this past Halloween Hamidon raid on Justice ( I think it was Avatea (sp?) and have seen Zwillinger (SP?) show up many times to get things going during major changes. We have been raiding Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights now for months and would love to have some new players join us. If you look at your logs you should see how many people show us for this event, to me this shows a good dedication to the Freedom server and the people who use it.

Lady Sera

I think Xionaque's angle on this is correct. Anyone can go into the Hive/Abyss and take on the DE monsters; in some cases, all it takes is one monster kill to spawn the Hami. "By design", this is working as intended.

Implications: Someone is using the Freedom Hive/Abyss for EOE farming. This is permitted within the game, and doesn't constitute "griefing", even if it can have a similar (but probably unintentional) impact. The negative is your harvesting EOEs just before your scheduled raid. However, it doesn't close your sources to EOEs. You can try the other side's Hami zone, for instance; or hoard EOEs from other harvesting attempts in PI, Monster Island or the two Hami Zones; etc.

Personally, I'd suggest the stockpiling option by the raid leaders. Preparation is part of leadership. On-site EOE harvesting is nice, but if that's not feasible, then a backup stockpile should be the next step.

If you intend on doing these regularly, I'd spend the time AFTER the raid to begin immediate EOE harvesting with the DE spawns that come up. Guarantees that no one's touched them yet, and you'll be ready for the next raid.

@TURGENEV - Freedom Server / IRON / B.A.N.E / HORDE

Turg Fiction: Ghost in the Machine Acts III & IV coming 2012!
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It should be noted that posting responses from GM's on the forums is against forum rules.

Either way, this happens on Virtue as well (and I'd safely assume other servers too).

For what it's worth, I've idled in the Hive and seen monsters "roam" near the drones and get themselves droned. So it's not necessarily a player or players griefing the zone.

Between in-game email, SG storage and remote auction house, there are alternative ways of getting EoEs.

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| Home Server: Virtue |

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Thanks you Solar, I edited my post to remiove the GM respone, Didn't notice that in the forum rules.

Lady Sera.

Turg,
Your right, anyone can go ina nd attack rthe monsters and farm for EOE's as is the same in PI. I hadn't thought of the stray GM's getting droned (I'm not sure what the statistics of this are given it's been happening the last few raids). What I am trying to get to them is if someone is tryimng to raid and is unsuccessful then we as the leaders could help them and thus get more people trained in leading the various teams as well as raids themselves. We Farmed PI for EOE's prior to the raid yesterday and may have to have to this or as you suggest.

Lady Sera.

The problem with this happening is that it forces the regular raiders to go out of their way to acquire what we need for every Hamidon Raid.

EoE is an item which is considered "necessary" by those Tankers (or Brutes) who show up to be part of the aggro management. Therefore, as part of the raid process, we have been able to kill enough monsters to "farm" the few inspirations we need before Hamidon spawns.

Now, I think that we (the regular Hami leaders and raiders) have made a good attempt to reach out to anyone else attempting raids. If, as I have heard, there are others who wish to host raids, we seek to reach out and include them in our "group" so that they might have a chance to learn from us so that their raids can be a success. In fact, I have encouraged anyone else willing to host to coordinate with the Freedom Hami Raids channel. That way other raid hosts can be well-supported by people who know what to do and can help them.

As far as reaching out goes, there has been no response. As far as we are concerned, whoever is causing Hamidon to spawn prior to our normal raid times is creating more problems than we need. We already have enough to worry about with teaching new people how to raid. I would prefer it if others did not add a pre-spawned Hamidon to our list of "worries." It forces us to have to go out of our way to be prepared when EoE could be easily gotten by spending a few minutes killing monsters prior to the raid.

Now, if Hamidon is spawning due to something beyond anyone's control (a bug or monsters wandering over to the drones), that also needs to be fixed. Again, it causes us to have to allocate extra time farming EoE.

However, if the administration genuinely believes there is no real fix for the problem, I'd like to know that too. If setting aside some extra "farming" in the short term is the only solution, then we will adapt and do that.

It is not acceptable for us to be asking people to spend 2 million (each) on something which is only needed for a short time and can be gotten FREE with a little effort.

The other thing you can do is get everyone in the hive and when a hive 2 spawns just move over there. Honestly as an old raid leader I have hundreds of EoE's in base so i would just run to the base to get some. That's the easiest thing to do.

I appreciate the suggestions. But, the main point of inquiring into what has been happening is to fix the problem (or devise a regular alternate solution).

The suggestions you are making fail to address the problem of (currently) having to make extra preparations when, in the past, that preparation has been done as part of the raid as a whole.

The way we have conducted the monster farming [essentially] at the start of the raid also serves to teach newcomers that it is something that is a crucial part of the raid. We need some EoE and we need to spawn Hamidon so we kill (x-number of) monsters to do that.

We had this issue back awhile ago on Justice. It was actually players purposely trying to grief raids. They where reported with screen shots and as far as I know nothing was done. They know there is a griefing potential, but I doubt they are going to change a game mechanic because occasionally a hami raid is inconvienced. The fact that this has been going on for years and nothing has changed would just support that.

With the idea that they are not going to change a game mechanic, I would look at the alternate methods of dealing with this.

A) a set time for EOE farming (preferably a night before a server reset since you will most likely spawn hami)
B) Teaching people to bring 3-4 EoE's to the raids
C) Spawning a hive 2 and conducting the raids there
D) Announcing at the raids that EoE farming prior to a raid is bad and explain that it can spawn hami (you would be amazed at how many people do not know this)

If it's happening frequently then you most likely have a griefer or a well meaning raider who is unaware of the zone mechanics.

*waves to Turg*

Unless you're one of the tanks is it even really necessary to have EoEs?

The Hamidon raid I and my Sg The Unders lead was kind of rough start but we manage to down Hamidon again for the 2nd time Will be leading Hamidon raids on Saturdays daily with my Sg The Unders and The Unders United which is another Unders Super Group

Ok first off Turg the problem with your suggestion is this unless it is a Sunday Night, Freedom dose HAMI on Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday night. So if we do the EoE hunt after each HAMI on Friday, and Saturday then HAMI is spawned by the next HAMI. Sunday is better because no raid on Monday on freedom. Second Philly the problem bout spawning a HIVE 2 is trying to get enough ppl to join HAMI in the first place. Now for the third one as far as holding on to EoEs as raid leader is really hard to do since u can only hold on to 40 EoEs in the first place, Via 20 in email, and 20 in inspiration tray, unless u put some extra at the auction house and have the ability to use it from the Hive. But then again As philly has pointed out depends on the emps u have u might not need that many EoEs if any at all. I have lead every team there is on HAMI including leading a HAMI raid and if you do not have enough emps or emps that do not know what to do then u will go through a lot of EoEs. But I also believe that for a person to lead a HAMI like I did before I lead one was do a few HAMIs, Like Quiller did tonight, or like Primat did so they can get a handle on how things work before leading one. I have EoEs on different servers from HAMIs I have done on those servers for just in case emergency's like for the past few weeks on freedom. Also because of this less regulars has been coming to HAMi on freedom for either HAMI being prespawned or bad leadership having some one who only has done a few HAMIs.