easy_lee
07-25-2014, 07:28 PM
This will be a long post, so I’ve included a Long Story Short section at the bottom (tl;dr).
This post assumes that the P1999 administration wants to encourage PvP and raid competition and is willing to make changes to Red to do so. This post concerns only Raid PvP. Low-level PvP is at least technically possible under the current system as long as you stay away from twinked alts. There are still a great many reasons (http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158594) why the current system discourages new players from engaging in low level PvP, but I won't get into that here.
The current system on Red does not encourage Raid PvP. For those unaware, high-end raiding on this server is almost completely under the control of one guild: Nihilum. Their basic strategy is simple - once a respawn cycle, gather as many people as possible and zerg the raid targets in order. They are too numerous and too well-geared for any other guilds to contest them.
Nihilum, thus, has a monopoly on BIS pixels. It’s rare for anyone unaffiliated with Nihilum to acquire desirable pixels without first paying Nihilum. It's not uncommon for payers to pay Nihilum tens of thousands of platinum just for permission to loot an item that Nihilum doesn't need. I’ll leave accusations of RMT out of this post.
As hundreds will attest, this does not bode well for any non-Nihilum players. Competition is impossible for several reasons:
Nihilum has superior pixels because they've been in control for so long. In an even-numbers competition, Nihilum will win. Magical trickery will not get around this because of the nature of resists. You need more people to win.
Nihilum has superior numbers. Since the guild has been the established power for years, most raiding players are members of Nihilum because otherwise they would be unable to get pixels. You will never have more people.
Nihilum is able to time raid target respawns for exactly when they want them to be, at times that work for their schedules. Even if you had more people, they would all have to have an open schedule (read: no life).
Why fight Nihilum when you can join them? Even if you had more people with coordinated schedules, most of them would just join Nihilum.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that raid PvP is never going to happen under the current system. A larger, better equipped raid (Nihilum) stomping a small resistance happens all the time. Real raid-to-raid PvP, like what we saw during live, is nonexistent.
There is a very simple reason for this: limited resources. When resources are scarce, such as food or money in the real world or pixels in our case, the natural outcome is for one large, powerful group to gain a near-monopoly on that resource.
This is why, in real life, aid packages containing food or other basic needs sent to struggling countries are often intercepted by warlords, and never make it to the intended recipients. The warlords have too much power for anyone else to compete with them. It doesn't make sense for locals to try and compete with them for resources; they'll just get shot. The only sane option is to join up, even if you don’t agree with the way they run things.
The only way to break this system, without changing the rules, would be if we suddenly had a massive influx of new players. They would have to poopsock. They would have to grind. They would have to be coordinated. And they would all have to want to contest Nihilum. Years of p1999 history tells us that this is never going to happen without massive changes.
I’d also like to point out, as I and many others have before, that the current system encourages raiders to grief new players. A larger population is bad for whoever controls the raid pixels, because it means increased possibility of competition. Raiders who realize this simple fact (and many do) would benefit by twinking out lowbie alts for the sole purpose of griefing anyone trying to level up. After all, they have nothing better to do between zergs. The only reason they'd want more people to join is if they were running an RMT market, but I won't cover that in this post.
Summary of the problem: Under the current system, nobody can or ever will be able to compete with Nihilum. Even if another guild managed to organize hundreds of dedicated members to usurp Nihilum, the only result would be that we would have another Nihilum. Why fight over raid mobs when you can just join up and get them faster, more easily, and uncontested? And no one is ever going to usurp Nihilum anyway, unless half of that guild quits.
Possible solutions:
Server Wipe: Everyone already knows how I feel about this: the server should have been wiped and reset years ago, and ought to be wiped every 7 months to simulate the actual classic timeline. This is the most organic solution, but the Project1999 administration seems unlikely to do this.
Variance: Like Sim repops, variance is unlikely to help. As numerous people have stated, Nihilum would still get most of the raid targets, it would just be less convenient for them due to batphoning. Some other guild might occasionally get a raid target, but it would be infrequent and would not solve the core problem. As long as resources are scarce, the most powerful group will gain a monopoly and, without third-party intervention, will continue to hold that monopoly. Just like Blue, raiding on Red would to require no-life poopsocking (more than it already does), and I don’t think anyone wants that.
Forced Break-up: Another solution I’ve seen proposed is to simply force Nihilum to break up. This has some real-life basis; it’s a common US government practice to force monopolies to break up into smaller companies, like they did with AT&T decades ago. However, this is messy; who leaves and who stays? And the new guilds would probably just form an alliance and keep doing the same thing anyway.
None of those solutions solved the problem.
In my opinion, the best possible solution would be to fix the core problem: pixels, are scarce. Each raid mob appears only once a week, limiting access only to the most powerful group (which is always Nihilum). This is a common practice implemented by MMO developers to artificially extend the life of their MMO. The only reason why it ever existed in the first place was to limit how quickly players could get through content, giving the developers time to create more.
There is no reason why Project1999 needs to be artificially extended. We play it not because we want to farm pixels, but because we love classic Everquest.
Long respawn times should be done away with entirely, because they are no longer relevant to the server: Raid targets shouldn't stay dead for longer than half a day, if that long. This would give every guild a shot at taking a raid target when the competition was offline or busy with a different target.
But then Nihilum would just chain-farm every boss and still have monopoly on pixels! Wrong. Nihilum can’t be everywhere at once, and their members can’t stay online all the time. They would have to spread their forces thin while raiding, meaning other guilds could easily compete for particular raid mobs.
But then lots of people would have delicious pixels, they wouldn't be that rare anymore! So what? This server is about PvP. PvP much more fun when everyone has a shot at equality, rather than one guild consistently stomping everyone else because they have gear.
But people will max out their characters and quit! Unlikely. If you play red, it’s because you want to PvP. Decked out players would be the best at PvP, and would raise alts, help their friends, or PvP to improve their own skills.
But that’s not classic! The server is already non-classic simply by how long it has been around. The bonus experience, designed to help new players and usher them toward the endgame, isn’t classic either. And those are just two of the most obvious deviations.
And there are other benefits to shortened respawn times. More than just enabling, this change would encourage competition. If you hear a rival guild is trying to farm a particular mob, get your boyz together and go pick a fight. Raid-to-Raid combat would be downright common under this system.
There would be more guilds, because people who don’t like the way a particular guild is run can always leave and go to another one. That’s not an option right now because Nihilum has a monopoly on raiding, but it would be commonplace under a more gracious system. Rather than one large guild, several smaller, more tight-knit guilds would be the norm because it’s what the system would encourage.
Paying for end-game pixels would be less common if not gone entirely. Average players would actually have a shot at acquiring high-end pixels without paying.
Best of all, it would bring new players to the server in droves, all hoping for a shot at pixels that they could never get before. It wouldn’t matter how busy your schedule was as long as you coupld hop on a few hours a week for a raid. At any given time, there might be a fight going on for a raid target. Veterans would love it because they could raid anytime they wanted to. The server would be many times more fun and exciting. Players would always have something to do, rather than raiders playing once a week and everyone else complaining that they don’t get pixels. OOC would be full of people hyping this or that fight, or anticipating the next spawn.
The only players who would not benefit from this system would fall into three categories:
Power-hungry neckbeards with a God-complex, who don't want anyone else to succeed without their permission
RMT Traders
Twinked-out grifers
That's it. Everyone else would benefit. This one simple change would go a long way towards improving the Red community.
Long Story Short: As long as raid mobs spawn slowly enough for one guild to realistically claim them all, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Monopolies are a natural, guaranteed occurrence in any system where resources are scarce and monopoly is possible. Even if another guild usurped Nihilum, they would just become the new Nihilum. And there is no reason why they should not resort to griefing in order to reduce the server population and ensure their own monopoly.
The best way to give the majority of the server a chance at BIS pixels is to make raid targets respawn quickly enough that a single guild cannot possibly claim them all. Under this system, there would be widespread Raid-to-Raid PvP fights over targets, since the largest force can’t be everywhere at once. It would simultaneously help new players, encourage PvP, promote a more balanced PvP environment, discourage RMT, and increase the server population.
This post assumes that the P1999 administration wants to encourage PvP and raid competition and is willing to make changes to Red to do so. This post concerns only Raid PvP. Low-level PvP is at least technically possible under the current system as long as you stay away from twinked alts. There are still a great many reasons (http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158594) why the current system discourages new players from engaging in low level PvP, but I won't get into that here.
The current system on Red does not encourage Raid PvP. For those unaware, high-end raiding on this server is almost completely under the control of one guild: Nihilum. Their basic strategy is simple - once a respawn cycle, gather as many people as possible and zerg the raid targets in order. They are too numerous and too well-geared for any other guilds to contest them.
Nihilum, thus, has a monopoly on BIS pixels. It’s rare for anyone unaffiliated with Nihilum to acquire desirable pixels without first paying Nihilum. It's not uncommon for payers to pay Nihilum tens of thousands of platinum just for permission to loot an item that Nihilum doesn't need. I’ll leave accusations of RMT out of this post.
As hundreds will attest, this does not bode well for any non-Nihilum players. Competition is impossible for several reasons:
Nihilum has superior pixels because they've been in control for so long. In an even-numbers competition, Nihilum will win. Magical trickery will not get around this because of the nature of resists. You need more people to win.
Nihilum has superior numbers. Since the guild has been the established power for years, most raiding players are members of Nihilum because otherwise they would be unable to get pixels. You will never have more people.
Nihilum is able to time raid target respawns for exactly when they want them to be, at times that work for their schedules. Even if you had more people, they would all have to have an open schedule (read: no life).
Why fight Nihilum when you can join them? Even if you had more people with coordinated schedules, most of them would just join Nihilum.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that raid PvP is never going to happen under the current system. A larger, better equipped raid (Nihilum) stomping a small resistance happens all the time. Real raid-to-raid PvP, like what we saw during live, is nonexistent.
There is a very simple reason for this: limited resources. When resources are scarce, such as food or money in the real world or pixels in our case, the natural outcome is for one large, powerful group to gain a near-monopoly on that resource.
This is why, in real life, aid packages containing food or other basic needs sent to struggling countries are often intercepted by warlords, and never make it to the intended recipients. The warlords have too much power for anyone else to compete with them. It doesn't make sense for locals to try and compete with them for resources; they'll just get shot. The only sane option is to join up, even if you don’t agree with the way they run things.
The only way to break this system, without changing the rules, would be if we suddenly had a massive influx of new players. They would have to poopsock. They would have to grind. They would have to be coordinated. And they would all have to want to contest Nihilum. Years of p1999 history tells us that this is never going to happen without massive changes.
I’d also like to point out, as I and many others have before, that the current system encourages raiders to grief new players. A larger population is bad for whoever controls the raid pixels, because it means increased possibility of competition. Raiders who realize this simple fact (and many do) would benefit by twinking out lowbie alts for the sole purpose of griefing anyone trying to level up. After all, they have nothing better to do between zergs. The only reason they'd want more people to join is if they were running an RMT market, but I won't cover that in this post.
Summary of the problem: Under the current system, nobody can or ever will be able to compete with Nihilum. Even if another guild managed to organize hundreds of dedicated members to usurp Nihilum, the only result would be that we would have another Nihilum. Why fight over raid mobs when you can just join up and get them faster, more easily, and uncontested? And no one is ever going to usurp Nihilum anyway, unless half of that guild quits.
Possible solutions:
Server Wipe: Everyone already knows how I feel about this: the server should have been wiped and reset years ago, and ought to be wiped every 7 months to simulate the actual classic timeline. This is the most organic solution, but the Project1999 administration seems unlikely to do this.
Variance: Like Sim repops, variance is unlikely to help. As numerous people have stated, Nihilum would still get most of the raid targets, it would just be less convenient for them due to batphoning. Some other guild might occasionally get a raid target, but it would be infrequent and would not solve the core problem. As long as resources are scarce, the most powerful group will gain a monopoly and, without third-party intervention, will continue to hold that monopoly. Just like Blue, raiding on Red would to require no-life poopsocking (more than it already does), and I don’t think anyone wants that.
Forced Break-up: Another solution I’ve seen proposed is to simply force Nihilum to break up. This has some real-life basis; it’s a common US government practice to force monopolies to break up into smaller companies, like they did with AT&T decades ago. However, this is messy; who leaves and who stays? And the new guilds would probably just form an alliance and keep doing the same thing anyway.
None of those solutions solved the problem.
In my opinion, the best possible solution would be to fix the core problem: pixels, are scarce. Each raid mob appears only once a week, limiting access only to the most powerful group (which is always Nihilum). This is a common practice implemented by MMO developers to artificially extend the life of their MMO. The only reason why it ever existed in the first place was to limit how quickly players could get through content, giving the developers time to create more.
There is no reason why Project1999 needs to be artificially extended. We play it not because we want to farm pixels, but because we love classic Everquest.
Long respawn times should be done away with entirely, because they are no longer relevant to the server: Raid targets shouldn't stay dead for longer than half a day, if that long. This would give every guild a shot at taking a raid target when the competition was offline or busy with a different target.
But then Nihilum would just chain-farm every boss and still have monopoly on pixels! Wrong. Nihilum can’t be everywhere at once, and their members can’t stay online all the time. They would have to spread their forces thin while raiding, meaning other guilds could easily compete for particular raid mobs.
But then lots of people would have delicious pixels, they wouldn't be that rare anymore! So what? This server is about PvP. PvP much more fun when everyone has a shot at equality, rather than one guild consistently stomping everyone else because they have gear.
But people will max out their characters and quit! Unlikely. If you play red, it’s because you want to PvP. Decked out players would be the best at PvP, and would raise alts, help their friends, or PvP to improve their own skills.
But that’s not classic! The server is already non-classic simply by how long it has been around. The bonus experience, designed to help new players and usher them toward the endgame, isn’t classic either. And those are just two of the most obvious deviations.
And there are other benefits to shortened respawn times. More than just enabling, this change would encourage competition. If you hear a rival guild is trying to farm a particular mob, get your boyz together and go pick a fight. Raid-to-Raid combat would be downright common under this system.
There would be more guilds, because people who don’t like the way a particular guild is run can always leave and go to another one. That’s not an option right now because Nihilum has a monopoly on raiding, but it would be commonplace under a more gracious system. Rather than one large guild, several smaller, more tight-knit guilds would be the norm because it’s what the system would encourage.
Paying for end-game pixels would be less common if not gone entirely. Average players would actually have a shot at acquiring high-end pixels without paying.
Best of all, it would bring new players to the server in droves, all hoping for a shot at pixels that they could never get before. It wouldn’t matter how busy your schedule was as long as you coupld hop on a few hours a week for a raid. At any given time, there might be a fight going on for a raid target. Veterans would love it because they could raid anytime they wanted to. The server would be many times more fun and exciting. Players would always have something to do, rather than raiders playing once a week and everyone else complaining that they don’t get pixels. OOC would be full of people hyping this or that fight, or anticipating the next spawn.
The only players who would not benefit from this system would fall into three categories:
Power-hungry neckbeards with a God-complex, who don't want anyone else to succeed without their permission
RMT Traders
Twinked-out grifers
That's it. Everyone else would benefit. This one simple change would go a long way towards improving the Red community.
Long Story Short: As long as raid mobs spawn slowly enough for one guild to realistically claim them all, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Monopolies are a natural, guaranteed occurrence in any system where resources are scarce and monopoly is possible. Even if another guild usurped Nihilum, they would just become the new Nihilum. And there is no reason why they should not resort to griefing in order to reduce the server population and ensure their own monopoly.
The best way to give the majority of the server a chance at BIS pixels is to make raid targets respawn quickly enough that a single guild cannot possibly claim them all. Under this system, there would be widespread Raid-to-Raid PvP fights over targets, since the largest force can’t be everywhere at once. It would simultaneously help new players, encourage PvP, promote a more balanced PvP environment, discourage RMT, and increase the server population.