Handull
01-08-2014, 02:52 PM
edit: see also http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134507
I'll try to lay down the idea first, as simply as I can, and then go into some pretty lengthy and boring details. Obviously any finer points can be debated/changed by guild leadership.
Basic Idea: There are no tiers. Half of the raid mobs are considered FFA, and anyone who wants to compete is allowed to compete. The other half of the raid mobs are put on a rotation, to which all guilds are invited. This system does not put one guild ahead of another, it puts playstyles first. Choose how you want to play, no one style is favored. A robust play nice policy is GM and server enforced.
Some Finer Points:
-Until Velious is release and/or more guilds can compete in VP, VP will be 100% FFA and is the only major exception to the rule.
-If server repops happen frequently and do not reset the server, OOA will be left up, allowing for multiple Dojo spawns. Since Dojo will be special, he can be included in the normal 50/50 split, made 100% rotation, or made so that you only get him if he is up during your sky day (guilds that don't raid sky have no use for dojo loot, for the most part).
-Repops: Repops alternate between FFA and rotation. It does not matter how many happen per month. After each FFA repop officers of rotating guilds get together to determine who gets what mobs at the next rotation repop. If the next repop isn't for a while, and the guilds involved change, a new plan can be made.
-Any and every guild is invited to the rotation. Any new guild wishing to join the rotation after it is started, will have some short wait time (2 weeks/1month/1cycle/etc).
-Guilds will have 24 hours to engage rotation mobs. Failure to kill your mob within 24 hours will result in a penalty (likely missing a slot in the rotation).
-Rotation repops can also have a 24 hour window if deemed appropriate, though perhaps a 12 hour window would suffice?
-Guilds will be allowed to wipe once to the rotation mob they choose. This allows guilds to learn the ropes as well as try new strats and try to kill a mob with low numbers. Each additional wipe will incur a small penalty (drop back 1 slot in the seed, so if your guild wipes twice to Trak before killing him, and next round you rolled 3rd choice, you would now instead have 4th choice, and the original 4th seed would get 3rd choice). These penalties is to avoid mobs sitting up for too long, and to avoid guilds attempting targets they are not able to handle. I think the 'wipe penalty' is very light, especially with a 24 hour window, but it could removed. I think the non-kill penalty is important to keep, since you waste everyone's time by not killing a mob.
-Each guild is responsible for policing their own members to ensure no one is doubling up by having an alt in another guild. Guilds are free to allow members to be a part of multiple guilds if they truly wish, but if it becomes a problem, guilds will be blocked from the rotation.
-If a guild is known/discovered to have entered the rotation purely as an alt guild to get more targets, that guild and its primary will be removed from the rotation and the other raiding guilds will ask for GM punishment on the primary guild.
-Any guild intentionally interfering with another guild's rotation mobs will be removed from the rotation if they were in it, and should be blackballed by all the guilds in the rotation (no trading, porting, rezing, grouping, etc). If a guild truly wishes to abstain from the rotation, they are welcome to, and there will still be 50% of the spawns over which they can FFA compete. GMs will also be asked to step in.
-A spot can be made in the rotation for a PickUp Raid. Rules will be to be agreed upon for this such as At most 15% of the raid can be from the Raid Leader's guild, No guild may make up more than 25% of the raid, etc. Those two rules alone ensure at least 4 different guilds are involved. An additional rule might be that the raid leader must have proven PuG Raid Experience (aka must have lead a PuG hate/fear/sky raid that can be confirmed by the general server).
-How do we want to handle any mobs that aren't killed within their time limits? Maybe each guild meeting also roll for three "clean up" slots, who get first shot at any mobs not killed. Aka Gore isn't dead after 24 hours, the guild who was up on Gore gets the harsh punishment, and Clean Up #1 now has 24 hours to kill Gore. If this then happens to another guild, or if Clean Up #1 failed, Clean Up #2 would be up, etc.
-This is likely going to be a point of debate, but I would argue that helping another guild kill their mob is against the rules. The only exception I could see being made to this is if a guild was attempting an especially low numbers kill, and wanted to invite specifically well geared members of other guilds to help. Let's say The A-Team wanted to try and 6man VS with war/rog/4xBPclr (technically silly example, but go with it). Maybe they even have 1-2 BP clerics, they would be allowed to invite some other BP clerics to help them. However if A-Team wanted to try Trak, and they wiped with their own 20 man force, they couldn't just call up a random group of Taken to help them out in a pinch. This helps prevent guilds from trying content they are utterly unprepared for, and having other guilds offer to help in exchange for plat or loot (aka 'We'll help you kill CT, and you can have any epic drops, but we want the AoN if it drops.' etc)
The Nitty Gritty: Now that you've come this far, how do we actually split the mobs 50/50 by play style? Splitting the repop mobs is very easy. I can think of a few different ways to split the normal spawns, but I think they all have issues.
-Alternate Weeks. Week 1 FFA, Week 2 Rotation, Week 3 FFA, etc. This is nice because then each week guilds can /ran for their seed, make choices, and win. New guilds can wait until the following rotation week to join. This is a problem because with variance we don't know how many spawns we'll get each week. A solution is GMs turn off variance for the rotation weeks. This should not be too hard, and I (and I'm sure others) would be willing to help with the logic behind it (how to deal with different unique situations that can cause problems, etc). I would argue to number the months 1-52, see note below as to why*.
-Alternate Mobs: Trak 1 FFA, Trak 2 Rotation, Trak 3 FFA, etc...., CT 1 FFA, CT 2 Rotation, CT 3 FFA, etc.... This is nice because it spreads everything out. Usually at least one mob will be FFA and one guild will be up in their rotation, so there is less structured downtime. (However structured downtime has its advantages.) This is a problem because how do we divy up mobs without clear start/end boundaries. We could do a per-mob rotation, or have guild leaders meet a few times a month to /ran and pick the next four 7day spawns and the next nine 3day spawns, etc. The nice thing from a variance standpoint is that GMs can put in a simple counter to count how many times a mob spawns outside of repops. Then based on that number being even or odd either have variance or don't have variance.
For the GMs:
-Are you willing to reduce the variance on FFA mobs? Maybe reduce this a bit at a time, ensuring everything goes well. I would strongly urge to keep extended windows, as I think they did more than anything else to reduce/kill poopsocking.
-Are you willing to remove variance from selected spawns to facilitate a partial rotation?
-Are you willing to sponsor 3-4 repops per months regardless of the specific rules the server agrees to, at least until Velious is released?
-With repops, are you willing to have repops not effect spawn timers? Would you be willing to make special rules if a mob was set to spawn but its repop version was already up? (aka Gore is set to spawn at 6:30pm, a repop happens at 4pm, but Gore does not die until 8pm. Would you be willing to then have Gore repop ~15 minutes later as the normal spawn version, or would you prefer to just have the 'normal spawn death timer' become the time the repop version was killed? Part of your answer to this question effects the time limit guilds would have to kill a mob after a repop. If a repop mob staying up can ruin a known or variance normal spawn, we might want a special ruleset about this, such as if a rotation-repop happens at 6pm and a rotation mob is known to be spawning at 7pm, and the repop-rotation mob is not going to be killed by 7pm, the rotation guild can kill the repop version and the repop guild can kill the normal spawn version, if that makes sense.
-Are you willing to disband/punish guilds who interfere with an agreed upon guild rotation and/or try to play the system to get more spawns?
I'm sure I missed a few details, so feel free to point anything out, or comment. Thanks for reading
*Note about numbering of months: To say there are four weeks in a month is close, but just off enough to matter. A better approximation is to say there are 52 weeks in a year, or 4 weeks in a period, where there are 13 periods in a year. This is a common practice in business, especially when you want to compare 'monthly' sales year to year. Rather than saying this is Week 4 of Period 3, we can just call it Week 12.
-Ploktor
I'll try to lay down the idea first, as simply as I can, and then go into some pretty lengthy and boring details. Obviously any finer points can be debated/changed by guild leadership.
Basic Idea: There are no tiers. Half of the raid mobs are considered FFA, and anyone who wants to compete is allowed to compete. The other half of the raid mobs are put on a rotation, to which all guilds are invited. This system does not put one guild ahead of another, it puts playstyles first. Choose how you want to play, no one style is favored. A robust play nice policy is GM and server enforced.
Some Finer Points:
-Until Velious is release and/or more guilds can compete in VP, VP will be 100% FFA and is the only major exception to the rule.
-If server repops happen frequently and do not reset the server, OOA will be left up, allowing for multiple Dojo spawns. Since Dojo will be special, he can be included in the normal 50/50 split, made 100% rotation, or made so that you only get him if he is up during your sky day (guilds that don't raid sky have no use for dojo loot, for the most part).
-Repops: Repops alternate between FFA and rotation. It does not matter how many happen per month. After each FFA repop officers of rotating guilds get together to determine who gets what mobs at the next rotation repop. If the next repop isn't for a while, and the guilds involved change, a new plan can be made.
-Any and every guild is invited to the rotation. Any new guild wishing to join the rotation after it is started, will have some short wait time (2 weeks/1month/1cycle/etc).
-Guilds will have 24 hours to engage rotation mobs. Failure to kill your mob within 24 hours will result in a penalty (likely missing a slot in the rotation).
-Rotation repops can also have a 24 hour window if deemed appropriate, though perhaps a 12 hour window would suffice?
-Guilds will be allowed to wipe once to the rotation mob they choose. This allows guilds to learn the ropes as well as try new strats and try to kill a mob with low numbers. Each additional wipe will incur a small penalty (drop back 1 slot in the seed, so if your guild wipes twice to Trak before killing him, and next round you rolled 3rd choice, you would now instead have 4th choice, and the original 4th seed would get 3rd choice). These penalties is to avoid mobs sitting up for too long, and to avoid guilds attempting targets they are not able to handle. I think the 'wipe penalty' is very light, especially with a 24 hour window, but it could removed. I think the non-kill penalty is important to keep, since you waste everyone's time by not killing a mob.
-Each guild is responsible for policing their own members to ensure no one is doubling up by having an alt in another guild. Guilds are free to allow members to be a part of multiple guilds if they truly wish, but if it becomes a problem, guilds will be blocked from the rotation.
-If a guild is known/discovered to have entered the rotation purely as an alt guild to get more targets, that guild and its primary will be removed from the rotation and the other raiding guilds will ask for GM punishment on the primary guild.
-Any guild intentionally interfering with another guild's rotation mobs will be removed from the rotation if they were in it, and should be blackballed by all the guilds in the rotation (no trading, porting, rezing, grouping, etc). If a guild truly wishes to abstain from the rotation, they are welcome to, and there will still be 50% of the spawns over which they can FFA compete. GMs will also be asked to step in.
-A spot can be made in the rotation for a PickUp Raid. Rules will be to be agreed upon for this such as At most 15% of the raid can be from the Raid Leader's guild, No guild may make up more than 25% of the raid, etc. Those two rules alone ensure at least 4 different guilds are involved. An additional rule might be that the raid leader must have proven PuG Raid Experience (aka must have lead a PuG hate/fear/sky raid that can be confirmed by the general server).
-How do we want to handle any mobs that aren't killed within their time limits? Maybe each guild meeting also roll for three "clean up" slots, who get first shot at any mobs not killed. Aka Gore isn't dead after 24 hours, the guild who was up on Gore gets the harsh punishment, and Clean Up #1 now has 24 hours to kill Gore. If this then happens to another guild, or if Clean Up #1 failed, Clean Up #2 would be up, etc.
-This is likely going to be a point of debate, but I would argue that helping another guild kill their mob is against the rules. The only exception I could see being made to this is if a guild was attempting an especially low numbers kill, and wanted to invite specifically well geared members of other guilds to help. Let's say The A-Team wanted to try and 6man VS with war/rog/4xBPclr (technically silly example, but go with it). Maybe they even have 1-2 BP clerics, they would be allowed to invite some other BP clerics to help them. However if A-Team wanted to try Trak, and they wiped with their own 20 man force, they couldn't just call up a random group of Taken to help them out in a pinch. This helps prevent guilds from trying content they are utterly unprepared for, and having other guilds offer to help in exchange for plat or loot (aka 'We'll help you kill CT, and you can have any epic drops, but we want the AoN if it drops.' etc)
The Nitty Gritty: Now that you've come this far, how do we actually split the mobs 50/50 by play style? Splitting the repop mobs is very easy. I can think of a few different ways to split the normal spawns, but I think they all have issues.
-Alternate Weeks. Week 1 FFA, Week 2 Rotation, Week 3 FFA, etc. This is nice because then each week guilds can /ran for their seed, make choices, and win. New guilds can wait until the following rotation week to join. This is a problem because with variance we don't know how many spawns we'll get each week. A solution is GMs turn off variance for the rotation weeks. This should not be too hard, and I (and I'm sure others) would be willing to help with the logic behind it (how to deal with different unique situations that can cause problems, etc). I would argue to number the months 1-52, see note below as to why*.
-Alternate Mobs: Trak 1 FFA, Trak 2 Rotation, Trak 3 FFA, etc...., CT 1 FFA, CT 2 Rotation, CT 3 FFA, etc.... This is nice because it spreads everything out. Usually at least one mob will be FFA and one guild will be up in their rotation, so there is less structured downtime. (However structured downtime has its advantages.) This is a problem because how do we divy up mobs without clear start/end boundaries. We could do a per-mob rotation, or have guild leaders meet a few times a month to /ran and pick the next four 7day spawns and the next nine 3day spawns, etc. The nice thing from a variance standpoint is that GMs can put in a simple counter to count how many times a mob spawns outside of repops. Then based on that number being even or odd either have variance or don't have variance.
For the GMs:
-Are you willing to reduce the variance on FFA mobs? Maybe reduce this a bit at a time, ensuring everything goes well. I would strongly urge to keep extended windows, as I think they did more than anything else to reduce/kill poopsocking.
-Are you willing to remove variance from selected spawns to facilitate a partial rotation?
-Are you willing to sponsor 3-4 repops per months regardless of the specific rules the server agrees to, at least until Velious is released?
-With repops, are you willing to have repops not effect spawn timers? Would you be willing to make special rules if a mob was set to spawn but its repop version was already up? (aka Gore is set to spawn at 6:30pm, a repop happens at 4pm, but Gore does not die until 8pm. Would you be willing to then have Gore repop ~15 minutes later as the normal spawn version, or would you prefer to just have the 'normal spawn death timer' become the time the repop version was killed? Part of your answer to this question effects the time limit guilds would have to kill a mob after a repop. If a repop mob staying up can ruin a known or variance normal spawn, we might want a special ruleset about this, such as if a rotation-repop happens at 6pm and a rotation mob is known to be spawning at 7pm, and the repop-rotation mob is not going to be killed by 7pm, the rotation guild can kill the repop version and the repop guild can kill the normal spawn version, if that makes sense.
-Are you willing to disband/punish guilds who interfere with an agreed upon guild rotation and/or try to play the system to get more spawns?
I'm sure I missed a few details, so feel free to point anything out, or comment. Thanks for reading
*Note about numbering of months: To say there are four weeks in a month is close, but just off enough to matter. A better approximation is to say there are 52 weeks in a year, or 4 weeks in a period, where there are 13 periods in a year. This is a common practice in business, especially when you want to compare 'monthly' sales year to year. Rather than saying this is Week 4 of Period 3, we can just call it Week 12.
-Ploktor