Shroud Grief

[Postumus]

Just do what I (used to) do:

Put up your own LFM, put in LFM "double run, parts 1-4 recall/reset then run for completion".

You save the time from fighting Harry in phase 5. You keep a full group. You save yourself from having to wait at the end of phase 5.

Great idea.

[MindCake]

Generally I assume anyone who puts one up is either stupid, or is deliberately trying to grief the party. Sadly I'm seen more than one person griefed by a Ddoor caster that left the innocent party member unable to get the end chests.

I put one up because some people like it. And when I lead the LFM mentions ddoor will be available.
I usually mention to the people actually using the ddoor that recalling is better, but if they want to keep up their habit, no matter how silly it may seem to me, I don't feel the need to grief them.

You average .5 larges a run if you don't complete.

If you do complete you average 1.5 on normal, 2 on hard, and 2.5 on elite. I believe in this example we were talking about an elite run so that means on 20 runs, you would have earned 10 larges your way (not enough for a GS dual shard), while the person who completed earned 50 larges (30 if they only ran normal), plus 5+ larges and 10+ vale ingredients from the 20 completion end lists, plus a +2/+3 tome list and/or a cleansing stone.

Sounds like a real fools errand to failed to complete.

Or you could recall twice then complete, rinse and repeat, and thus, over the 60 days you'd get 20 completions, 40 non-completions for the total of (whatever you'd get with just 20 completions) + 20.

Perhaps not exactly the most effective way of using your playtime. But if someone wants to do it, IMHO they should be allowed to, and I'm not going to grief them or try to force them to play the game my way.

[Gremmlynn]

The problem is im a fighter so i get interrupted if i try your suggestions, and if i back up and do that before he is dead it feels like im basically saying "im outta here at 10% so i dont care if you actually get the kill"

Also death and recall dont do anything if someone hits the altar while you're waiting for either to take effect.
Maybe you guys are real good at timing it but im not.
If ddoor is so outdated, then why is there someone putting one up after each shroud run?

The problem with completing for me is that i was just off the timer today and wanted to run shroud a few times over the weekend since its a holiday, now i cant because of other people's grief.

I dont really care if they decided to change it so everyone HAS to complete, i just hate being at the mercy of someone who feels like messing it up for everyone else is a funny thing to do.

There are very few reasons not to finish? really? are you serious? You like getting 1 maybe 2 larges then waiting
3 days to get more? really? Make any dual shard weapons lately?

I have to laugh at all the people complaining that two min would waste their time...boohoo..
If you can think of a better way to stop the grief im all ears.

I really have a hard time thinking of finishing a quest to quickly for others to cheese out of the raid timer as griefing. I also can't see any dev taking this suggestion seriously. If they thought this was a problem they would just remove the raid timer, not inconvenience others who are completing as intended so that some can more easily use a work around to avoid it.

[Delt]

For the record, based on devs comments, the Shroud was originally envisioned as a multi-tiered raid, that offered payoff whether you completed or not. Of course, every group completes nowadays. I only mention that because I read a few posts that seem to suggest the idea of "not finishing" is completely counter to devs intentions.

That said, the OPs idea is still silly. And don't use Ddoors, we don't end up on the beach/Korthos anymore (no more free xp...NOOOO!).

[LazyTigerLily]

I was in that run.

If this was one of our runs OP should be embarrassed for themselves. I say this because as a guild/group we only run shroud on hard. Also the old school methods of running/farming shroud are now obsolete.

When they revamped the number of chests per difficulty and started giving shroud ingredients as end rewards there became no reason to farm, as was the practice prior. When you farm the part 4 chest and ransack the chest you have about 50/50 chance of pulling a large ingredient with each chest, so 7 runs you are looking at 3 maybe 4 large ingredients if you're lucky. Then for the next 7 days you can't pull anything from that chest.

Each of these 7 runs to ransack will take somewhere between a half hour and 40 minutes (less if a really good group) and I'm guessing there is also some waiting around for the groups to fill. This totals about 3.5 to upwards of 5 hours per week/ransack. If instead of ransacking this chest and you complete, then use that time to level a second or third character you could easily have 4 to 5 characters all running shroud and farming ingredients so you don't have to spend so much time farming/ransacking the shroud. You would also be free to run and complete at least twice a week. So you could be looking at 3 ingredients from the chest and possibly one from your end rewards twice a week so that is 5 to possibly 8 ingredients in that same week from completion chests and end rewards instead of the 3 to 4 you get from ransacking then depending on normal or hard completions another 2 or three netting you a possible total 6 - 7 plus you don't have to waste all that time and can have more characters capped!

OP please quit making people wait for you because you want to use some archaic form of shroud farming that has not made sense for months and really wastes a lot of time, both yours and mine.

[Malshier]

If this was one of our runs OP should be embarrassed for themselves.

It wasn't. It was a late night Sarlona PUG, with everything that entails.

[AdamSmith]

Griefing is hitting the portal in part 4 before everyone has looted their chests (and shrined) (but you can go back to the chests if you finish part 5).

Griefing is not:
1) clicking on the altar in part 1, entering the portal from part 1 to part 2
2) clicking on the altar in part 2, entering the portal from part 2 to part 3
3) clicking on the altar in part 3, entering the portal from part 3 to part 4
4) clicking on the altar in part 4
5) clicking on the altar in part 5

no need to wait for slowpokes, click on all the altars as fast as you can and speed up the raid completion for the whole group.

[LazyTigerLily]

It wasn't. It was a late night Sarlona PUG, with everything that entails.

Normal?

[Melondrop]

Yup was a normal sarlona pug..im amazed this got to 7 pages.
Even tho noone agrees with me, some of these posts are really funny.
Thanks for the entertainment

[PopeJual]

All I can say is wow. Just...wow. There are some incredibly rude and obnoxious ppl in this thread, even just on the first page.

There are some people who were rude in this thread. The people who were rude in this thread were also correct. It's better to be both polite and correct, but I'd rather see posts that are rude and correct than polite and incorrect.

You just spend 20-30 mins (or more if it was a really bad run) doing the raid, and you are complaining about waiting an extra 60 seconds while someone DDoors out? REALLY?

I don't see people here complaining that they have to wait an extra 60 seconds to DDoor. I see people here saying that it's foolish to DDoor because it invites griefing and that it's rude to DDoor because it creates possibilities for other people to be screwed out of Shroud end chests when they click on it by accident.

And yes, that has happened to me. Someone threw a DDoor on the end chest and I clicked the chest with my mouse just as the DDoor was appearing. I did not get that Shroud end chest. I sincerely believe the DDoor's caster when he apologized and said that the DDoor was an accident, but ANY DDoor in the Shroud is a bad idea.

Recall at 5/10/20%? Sure thing, great idea -- except when both of your healers dont want to be timered, and your raid wipes because they both recalled out early on elite, and suddenly all of your melees just got killed, then Harry starts systematically demolishing all of the ranged toons without his chew toys to distract him.

1) /death when Harry is at 1%. You'll get out faster and more effectively than
2) people who run Shroud on Elite don't leave without a completion for three reasons
a) it's 3 chests. Who doesn't want 3 Shroud larges?
b) if you were going to farm Shroud parts 1-4, you're going to do it on Normal and not Elite
c) the kind of people who recall from a Shroud aren't going to be able to get past part 4 on Elite in the first place.

Now I'm sure that every person posting all this negativity is able to solo shroud elite, naked, but for the other 99.9% of the playerbase, lets have a tad bit more common courtesy.

Are there great throngs of people in this thread calling for the altar to be clicked as soon as Harry dies? ...or are people merely saying that you should be prepared for an immediate click if you did want to leave without the completion because it sometimes happens?

Solution: (Barring teaching everyone to play nice together) Change the mechanic so ONLY the person with the star can touch any of the altars. Then at least you know who to blacklist when they dont show simple courtesy. No more wondering who did it, no more worrying about 11 different ppl being too rude to wait a few seconds.

Solution: Just /death when Harry is slivered. It works fine. We've seen what can happen when someone "fixes" a raid by the fun "improvements" that have happened in the Abbot raid recently. Please don't call for changes to any mechanics in the Shroud aside from the obvious upgrade of a barter interface on the altars of Invasion/Subjugation/Devastation.

No changes = no new bugs.
No new bugs = happy players.

Also, making it so that ONLY the person with the star can touch any of the altars can lead to *real* griefing as opposed to the imagined griefing that the OP perceived.

I dont care either way if someone wants to farm the raid. Almost everyone has doen it at some point (myself included) before learning that it is better to just take the timer and do it again in 3 days-- esp if you have multiple shroudable toons. I dont begrudge someone else doing it. I will wait an extra couple mins to give them a reasonable chance to get out. Thats plenty of time for them to die/DC/recall/whatever. Past that -- well you had your chance.

I'm happy to give someone a couple of moments to get out. But if someone does happen to click the altar, I also don't want to hear a bunch of whining in party chat. A couple of minutes isn't a reasonable chance to get out. It only takes a couple of minutes to kill Harry on Normal or Hard. If you can't figure out how to get out of the raid in 30 second, then you were just piking the raid in the first place and I have no sympathy.

Stop pretending the victim is at fault when some ****** wont wait to hit the altar. We have an entire guild on Argo that is famous for this BS move, forcing auto-completes on everyone in the raid.

Which guild is that?

The server-wide solution is to not allow them in raids, and not to join their raids unless you definitely plan to complete (and you WILL complete in their raids -- they are pro at shroud). All because a small group of players takes it upon themselves to decide that no one else is allowed to farm Shroud. And cos they think its cool to be jerks about it.

When it's 100% possible for *anyone* to get out of that a Shroud hosted by "entire guild on Argo" without a completion, it seems to me that the best course of action isn't to berate people on the forums who notice that altar clicks happen. The best course of action is to teach people to stop DDooring and love the bomb. And by bomb, of course, I mean /death when Harry is slivered.

Just /death when Harry is slivered. It's quick. It's easy. It's 100% guaranteed to avoid a completion.

Every time I see someone mention in party chat that they don't want a completion, I mention that they can get out of the Shroud without a completion by using /death when Harry is slivered without having to worry about an "early" click. And even after I make that suggestion and even after I mention that there are a fair number of people who enjoy clicking the altar quickly, there are STILL cries of surprise and alarm when they fart around and pick their nose for 20 seconds after Harry dies and get caught by the altar click.

I can accept that they are angry. I think that their anger is misdirected, but I can at least understand it. What I can't understand is the surprise. I warned them. Other people in party chat warned them. And they're still surprised.

[PopeJual]

Also, don't cast DDoor in the Shroud.

Just take it right off your hotbar. There is no reason to cast a DDoor in the Shroud. Ever.

[Meetch1972]

Ok, throwing it out there. It'll avoid the chance of this "griefing" completely, tho it's likely messy to change and avoiding exploitation needs to be considered:

Make the completion mechanic atomic. If YOU hit the altar, YOU complete for YOURSELF. Nobody else does - whoever wants to complete hits the altar. Anyone else can recall/ddoor/whatever as they want.

Issues:
- The mechanic for quest completion is different, obviously. It might take a significant amount of work that can be better spend on fixing bugs.
- Some exploitation potential as some linger, waiting for others to open the chests and assign the shard to them if it appears, keeping the option to recall without completion open when they don't get what they want.

The second issue could be worked around with more complex logic and potentially cause a little confusion - something along the lines of when your loot is generated you can only reassign it to others who have already hit the altar - if they haven't completed at that time, you can't assign your loot to them.

If I don't want to complete, well there's lots of wisdom about dealing with that already. I'm still happy to complete accidentally as long as I can loot the chests. The key to this is of course avoiding ddoors.

[dredre9987]

I dont remember asking for sympathy, i asked for a way to stop grief.
I think some of you guys arent understanding what im trying to get across.

One person should not be able to "mess up" other people in the shroud or any other quest in the game.
So really all the "just do this" advice doesnt really help, and wont until the mechanic is changed.

Kinda like the people that like to throw grease around, they think its hilarious, but to most everyone else its just
an annoyance...just like this.

Im amazed at the amount of negativity you guys seem to have.

You don't seem to get that you are supposed to complete and any means to get around the timer is basically an exploit.

[Meetch1972]

You don't seem to get that you are supposed to complete and any means to get around the timer is basically an exploit.

Perhaps it is an exploit of sorts, but it's also allowed. The way things work currently is that in most PUGs instead of bailing out at the end of part 4 to guarantee you don't get put on timer, you can actually help the team right up to the point of completion.

Whether there's any point to not completing a run these days is a completely different argument.

[mobrien316]

I haven't seen this mentioned yet, so I'll throw it out there...


As far as not completing, the only reason I have not completed the Shroud is when there is a scheduled guild event. If my guild is planning to run the Shroud on Friday night, and I decide to hit an LFM on Wednesday or Thursday, I will leave without a completion so I can run it with my guild.

[Gkar]

You don't seem to get that you are supposed to complete and any means to get around the timer is basically an exploit.

No, its NOT an exploit. It's WAI. That was confirmed by devs way back when the raid was released.

For it to be an exploit you would have had to find a way to loot the Pt5 chests and still not complete (hint: I wonder why the chests no longer appear in Pt5 behind the barrier until after completion)

[Algreg]

Seriously, is this really such a big issue? In my whole DDO time (with 2 toons exclusivley shroud farming while one TRs or does more interesting stuff) I had this happen twice. The respective guys were easily identified and probably ended up on 11 blacklists. It was annoying back then, but hardly calling for yet another timer mechanic. Now most of the incentives for recalling before completions are gone. I can understand your anger, but in the greater picture, your experience is rather a nuisance so please no more turbine resources wasted on things that rank really low on most people´s priority lists.

[Chai]

Best way to solve this:

Chat message w/who clicked the alter.

Any time theres a way to grief without having to reveal ones self as the griefer, you might as well have given the griefer the license to do so. Most of the known repeat offenders groups look like ghost towns nowdays and they only toss up their own LFMs when they cant get into others groups for the same reason.

It would be worth the few lost chests to find out who these people are each and every time they do it.

[Chai]

Griefing is hitting the portal in part 4 before everyone has looted their chests (and shrined) (but you can go back to the chests if you finish part 5).

Griefing is not:
1) clicking on the altar in part 1, entering the portal from part 1 to part 2
2) clicking on the altar in part 2, entering the portal from part 2 to part 3
3) clicking on the altar in part 3, entering the portal from part 3 to part 4
4) clicking on the altar in part 4
5) clicking on the altar in part 5

no need to wait for slowpokes, click on all the altars as fast as you can and speed up the raid completion for the whole group.

Develop a history of that, and wonder why you dont get accepted into 90% of the LFMs for raids anymore in the future. I know quite a few people who did this in the past whose LFMs I see up for 45 minutes or longer for each raid. Its hilarious that saving themselves 1 minute in the past a few times now means taking longer than everyone else to get things done due to the high percentage of cats who wont join their LFMs + leave if the griefer joins an LFM they are in after letting the leader know why.

[matttherat88]

I remember about a year ago there was a guy who would declare that "I'm a jerk" in the LFM.

At the end he would make a point of racing to the altar to force every1 to complete.

To the OP: I have sympathy for you since you like running the Shroud, it's probably the only fun quest you get to run, and that now you can't due to someone being inconsiderate. The quest is meant to be completed though. What you are really asking for is removal of the 2.75 day timer.

I think that at least they could shorten the interval for Shroud, since so many people like to run it.