Instance timers need to go

[Fensfield]

I agree, and liked.

.. Because frankly they're just irritating. Sure most of the dungeons give you 'enough' time, but.. why put in a time limit at all? To prevent abuse? That's why we're class-locked once we're in the dungeons, and why the enemies and treasures don't respawn. To prevent trolling? We already sorely need ant-trolling measures anyway and I don't see the timers rectifying the sort we have already - if anything, they contribute to the ability of people to spoil instances for people. To stop RMT'ers using them? Hey, suddenly a reason for that /tell lockout they insisted on (because seriously what RMT'er would consider up to seven people an adequate audience for adverts? And hey we're back to needing anti-trolling measures)!

Meanwhile there are people like me who want to go into dungeons and appreciate just exploring and taking in the visuals and design, or -god forbid - run the dungeon in-character. The only gameplay reason I can think of that justifies the timer is so the people using the Duty Finder don't get lumbered with groups that don't want to run the dungeon solely for the sake of completing it quick as possible without skipping cutscenes. Okay, that's fine. Disable the timer for full groups going in without grabbing players from the waiting list?

Seriously all the timer does is limit the number of ways available to enjoy what content that we have. Which is a brilliant(sarcasm) idea for any game that lacks a focus on dynamic/emergent content and can only give anything new when the dev's spend resources on expansion.

And server capacity? Well, setting aside the fact that means it's an excuse to minimise spending on adequate infrastructure.. perhaps they, dare I say, ought not have gone with such an over-reliance on instances? Perhaps this wouldn't be an issue if some of the 'dungeons' were actually just other areas in the open world, so there was an alternative for those of us would like to take time and smell the roses? Even if only some places were set up that way, maybe the timer would just be adding a different sort of flavour to the game instead of looming over everything.

[Astarica]

The timer is almost certainly just there to make up for inadequate instance server capacity as opposed to serving any real purpose. If you can't beat a dungeon in the time alloted, you probably won't be beating it even if you take another 6 hours anyway so it's not like it's actually stopping people from winning, because anyone who would run out of time probably isn't winning to begin with. It's also irriating when queue up for 20 minutes and joined a dungeon that has 10 minutes left before expiring.

[ZohnoReecho]

There wasn't enough room in the worlds, players requested an afk timer.
DF has timers to free instances, players want to remove it.

[jdnyc]

There wasn't enough room in the worlds, players requested an afk timer.
DF has timers to free instances, players want to remove it.

Basically this from what I understand. Remember those AK wait times? Imagine how long all the queues can be with no timer.

Let's says you have a Sunken Temple dungeon. Now we know that SE handles this as its own instance server. Let's say that the server load will accomadate 250 groups at the same time. Now imagine if that group can hold that spot indefinitely. If dozens of groups do that?

A timer ensures that can't happen.

[amnie]

I was a little annoyed in a Sunken Temple run yesterday
by the time we reached the second boss we only had 40 minutes left

long story short we didn't even beat the second boss.

that's when I realised that the timer at least meant I wouldn't be stubburn and stay in the instance as long as it would take. with that group we would have never made it.

so, while I do think the timer is a little silly on the '90 minutes for almost everything', in general I'm a fan. I just wish the timer would be more reasonable for the different dungeons.

in Stone Vigil for example, the first time I did it I watched all the cutscenes, we failed once on the first boss and twice on the last boss, and we had about 10-15 min left at the end.
that's hardly a lot of time for mistakes, and we had a pretty damn good tank that knew exactly how many mobs to pull, pull them around corners, explained all the boss mechanics in a pretty straight forward way.

[Dale]

I was a little annoyed in a Sunken Temple run yesterday
by the time we reached the second boss we only had 40 minutes left

long story short we didn't even beat the second boss.

that's when I realised that the timer at least meant I wouldn't be stubburn and stay in the instance as long as it would take. with that group we would have never made it.

so, while I do think the timer is a little silly on the '90 minutes for almost everything', in general I'm a fan. I just wish the timer would be more reasonable for the different dungeons.

in Stone Vigil for example, the first time I did it I watched all the cutscenes, we failed once on the first boss and twice on the last boss, and we had about 10-15 min left at the end.
that's hardly a lot of time for mistakes, and we had a pretty damn good tank that knew exactly how many mobs to pull, pull them around corners, explained all the boss mechanics in a pretty straight forward way.

Yes that's the instance I've been having the most trouble with the timer on. You really only have enough time to finish that instance if you start fresh with a group that already knows the fights. All it takes is a couple of wipes and you are pretty much done, to say nothing of trying to find the time to replace a member who had to go or some asshole who decided to abandon the group because he/she finished their log.

The time limit either needs to be removed or at the least increased. And I think most reasonable people would agree with that. The problem is you have all of these people who are so desperate to feel superior to others over a video game they put their ego before reason.