Process oriented solution for team compositions

[Sixsixsix]

While the hard coded vs. soft coded debate seems pretty one sided, there appears to be greater diversity in team composition opinions. I think the various opinions are good, and I think there is significant value discussing the pros/cons with each approach.

However, I do worry about us (the community and admins) making a poor decision before the server launches despite our best efforts to think of all possible outcomes. Consequently, I am wondering if our decisions about team composition could be made via a testing process. This might look something like the following:

Continue discussing pros and cons of various team compositions. Distill options to a few number of choices and try to gauge community interest (which might also include some from the blue server) in each via polls. Administration decides based on their best judgement, poll results, tarot cards, or whatever they want which team composition option they think is best. Then, they test this set up for some elongated amount of time. If this set up works, then we advertise the launch of the server, delete all testing characters (or merge them to red99 or blue99), and start enjoying a quality server. If the set up did not work well, we repeat the process with the knowledge we gained from the testing phase.

Pros/Cons of this approach
Clearly, there are some problems with this approach. I believe the two biggest factors limiting this approach is getting people to play during the test phase and remaining patient during the elongated testing phase. It is possible that these cons are too much to overcome, but I believe if we can solve/deal with them, we might be able to reap delicious rewards.

The benefits to this approach, seem to me, related to ensuring we have a quality, classic PVP server forever. Project 1999 has shown its amazing longevity. They even stuck with red99 when it was suffering. I would prefer to make important decisions carefully rather than rush a system out. This is especially true when considering how long the server may exist. If we learn a chosen team system has significant flaws within a few weeks/months, we may forever have crappy classic pvp experiences forever.

Ultimately, I don't care exactly what testing process we use to determine team composition (e.g., maybe 6 months of testing could be cut down significantly), but I think the process for making that decision is probably more important than the specific decision we make. Everyone is going to have an opinion about team composition, and it is possible all of them would need some specific changes or subtle tweaks to make them work in reality. I haven't heard people talking about the process we will use, but I think its an important issue and am wondering others' thoughts.

[Sixsixsix]

Assuming people agree with the idea to implement some sort of explicit testing phase to ensure the team designations are solid, we can start talking about specifics. I will propose solutions to several issues related to a testing phase, and others can critique them and add additional solutions/problems.

1. How to get people to seriously play if there characters may not be permanent?
If you could, after the testing phase, merge characters to p99 or r99, perhaps it would be worth it, especially if an exp bonus is present. Personally, I would like to see characters merged to p99 (or perhaps a choice for r99/p99). I believe that this would get some people on p99 to try out pvp, especially if they wanted to level an alt. Furthermore, it gives a wider perspective to testing than just our r99 community. While I love the r99 community, I am hoping it will expand.

I do not know how this would be received by the admins or the p99 community. I like the idea, even if character transfers from the testing phase to p99 did not include items or money.

2. How long does the testing phase need to be?
I think 3 months is enough to figure some things out that made r99 rough initially, but I am not sure if it helps us figure out any meaningful raid concerns. Similarly, I don't know if figuring out raid problems is something we can even consider solving with a testing phase.

3. How do exp bonuses, if any, need to be applied to the testing phase?
The main issue for exp bonuses during testing is if they are too fast we don't realistically test mid level pvp. If they are too slow we don't test high level content. I like the idea of a similar exp bonus that is currently on red for the first month or so of testing. Then, we increase the exp bonus (maybe double it) for people above level 30 or 40 or something for the rest of testing. This way, we get people grinding/pvping to get to a certain level for the big bost. It encourages play up front so we dont speed through the mid levels while also testing higher levels more quickly.

I like this proposal because it removes artificial leveling, gives people an incentive to play the testing phase, and provides a relatively useful arena to see of our teams decision works. I'd be open to other thoughts though too.