Abyssea chests & memory limits, Part DeuxFollow

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've made a thread about this before. Not going to bother looking for it. It's time for another one, anyway, because as I anticipated in said earlier thread, the problems are worsening.

Right now in Abyssea, during most if not all hours of the day, I'm starting to encounter some severe problems with getting enough Sturdy Pyxides to drop for whatever it is I'm doing. Normally, capped pearlescent makes the drops around 95%. Lately though, I'm lucky to get over 50% overall, and I will sometimes go for stretches of 10-20 or so kills without seeing a single box.

We know that this is because the zones can only handle a certain amount of chests on the ground at any one time. Thing is, with all of the higher level players now and all of the folks doing a mad rush for empyrean weapons and setting up cleaves/AoEburns and whatnot, this is really starting to pose a problem for everyone in Abyssea regardless of what they're doing. This problem will only get worse as we approach level 99. Something needs to be done about it or else the enjoyability of Abyssea is going to be largely impacted for many players, myself included.

Some ideas:

1) Allow players to choose what types of box contents they do not want showing up on their killshots. For instance, if a chest was going to drop that would contain temporary items, the chest will just not appear at all if the player has elected it. This relies on player effort to work properly, but I think many people would elect to block temporary item chests from dropping if they could choose to (really, there's far too many of them that drop), as well as EXP boxes (many people are already capped on EXP and merits). So much of this problem is caused by people just leaving behind boxes with things they don't want. If they could eliminate some of those things they don't want, not only would it save them some time looking through the boxes (EXAMPLE: if I knew all the blue boxes that appeared from my kills contained either cruor or TEs, I'd know I could just key them without bothering to check them, making them stay on the ground for only a very short period of time), it would lessen the strain on the entire zone.

2) Lower the duration of time that chests will stay on the ground if the limit is being reached. I mean, if you're hardly getting any boxes to begin with, you probably don't need the full 3 minutes to deal with them, anyway.
2a) Alternatively, make a box despawn sooner if it isn't examined at all. For instance, sometimes people want absolutely nothing that's inside red boxes, if they have already attained their ideal lights. In such a case, the only purpose of putting more red boxes on the ground for those players is to contribute toward the memory limits.
2b) Alternatively, make a box despawn sooner if it IS examined and then subsequently left alone. For instance, if it is left alone for one minute afterward (assuming the standard 3 minute limit isn't reached first)

That's that, for now. If anyone else has any other (reasonable) ideas, feel free to chime in. I just hope that this problem can be nipped in the bud soon before it is allowed to get worse. I enjoy Abyssea greatly and I do not want to see it go down the tubes because of this issue.

Edited, May 29th 2011 4:10am by Fynlar

The problem is there, sure. However i'm fairly sure your solution isnt going to be pleasant. Nor do i think there's any other solution other than just... i dont know, adding more chests to memory?

1) Selecting what chests you want or not want. You're going to need one of those other chests at one point, and then you're screwed.

2) Lower duration at cap? bad idea since you can always get a link that takes some time dealing with, or otherwise if you are mass AoE farming, it takes some time going through all the chests.

2a) Again, if something comes up, you finally get a chance to go for the box and it'll despawn infront of you.
2b) Least troubling for people, but there will always be situations where it's less than ideal.

I know SE is going to ruin the solution to this already. Instead of just adding more memory, or more chests to memory, they're going to reduce the droprate. So simply bringing up problems is a bad idea in general.

Instead, how about you add an option to the bottom to DESPAWN THE CHEST. And in order for people to do so, add in a little incentive. Either some small amount of cruor, or a FREE Forbidden Key. That way people will definaely despawn unwanted chests.

I don't even think you need an incentive for force despawning, but if you're gonna insist, maybe make it like a 30s TE. Personally, I love blue temp item chests and would get pissed if people blocked them off. The unneeded golds or red chests with lights people don't need can gtfo, though.

Eh, getting rid of unwanted chests if you're cleaving would be plenty incentive for me as a key whore. Then again, I don't think many are actually aware of the zone limits if what I'd seen in Zeruhn is any indication with people leaving blues or browns with unwanted junk just sitting there. Besides, while the number of people in the zone could possibly hint at the flow of chests being spawned, it's possible 20 people could mess things up more than 100+.

I'll take credit for this just because I'm cranky Ankabut hasn't spawned for my GS trial after 4 hours of killing PH.