Does "Classic" mean a few dozen hold thrawl? Or why every mob should pop every 6 hrs

[EdTuBrutus]

P99 is a fantastic festival of nostalgia. It is wonderful to spawn in your home town (instead of a weird mix zone), to play the game and see it look like you remember). This is why I made a char on P99 and why I play the game and have really enjoyed the nostalgia of being back in Norrath.

To me, that is Classic. Not only that, but the look and feel of the game in general is all that is needed to be Classic. Being "Classic" is not a reason to keep broken and fundamentally alienating aspects of the game. Some of those, like the ridiculous pace of levelling you can over come. I think it should be changed but at the end of the day, there is nothing actively preventing you from overcoming this idiotic part of Classic EQ.

But there is an aspect of the game where you are actively and intentionally blocked by other players - a tiny number of the player base - from participating in the game. That is raid encounter mobs. And the kicker is that it is worse on P99 than it ever was on Live.

Now I'm not going to spend a lot of time speculating why that is. But the reality is that by Velious, Fear and Hate were not camped, Old World Dragons were not camped. Aspects of P99 are removed from the game from the bulk of players which, if they let the high content consumers move on, were never out of reach in Live.

And that's a real problem because it seems to me the game could be much more popular and much more active without it. At the moment a few dozen players (for greed in resale or for Kicks'n'Giggles) are locking a bulk of the audience out of end game encounters. Much of which is purely because "hey we can".

There has never been any reason, whatsoever, for raid end mobs to be rare and spawn on such a long time scale. The thinking (back in 99 to the early 2000s) was that players would simply quit en masse if they achieved end game encounters. We know this idea is wrong. There have been countless games which offer the full end game experience to players no matter what level their play time allows them to participate at and none of them have found this to be a problem. The entire justification to rare end game encounters has been found to be false.

So why persist on this? If every single end game mob repopped every 4 to 6 hours, what would be the effect on the game? It would still be Classic, it would look and feel like it did back in 99. The only impact it would actually have would be to remove the opportunity for a tiny number of players (and lets be real here, we are talking about less than 100 players) to block content for thousands.

If every raid mob respawned every 4 to 6 hours, then you could, if you had a job and commitments outside EQ, schedule raids, raid mobs and not be cock blocked specifically because a tiny subset of the player base gets their kicks out of stopping you from enjoying the content. The game would not be easier. There is nothing easier about killing a mob than setting up a camping schedule to track a respawn.

Classic EQ has a huge amount going for it. But that doesn't mean it should be static (clearly there are significant changes to the Live EQ of the Velious age). Fixing the end game would be the best way to get players to enjoy the game, stay in the game. And if it costs the server a few dozen players whose entire enjoyment comes from cock blocking content - well, that sounds like a Win to me.

[Nibblewitz]

get rekt

[skarlorn]

sounds like you do not deserve it

[EdTuBrutus]

get rekt

Now that sort of reply is Pure Classic!

[Lojik]

I think a new server could implement a few "non classic" mechanics to alleviate people over camping shit with knowledge that people didn't have so easily back in classic.

1) legacy items (mana stone etc.) drop for entirety of server, but with ridiculously low drop rates (1 in 1000.)

2) bard aoes do no damage if mob is moving, ae damage limited to 25 mobs for wizards

3) +-90% variance on ALL mobs. This way it's not easy to just afk xp camp dungeon spawns or afk hold down named camps. Getting timers wouldn't be as effective either, and it encourages grouping to reduce risk of getting overwhelmed. Raid mobs...have fun tracking those windows

[EdTuBrutus]

I think a new server could implement a few "non classic" mechanics to alleviate people over camping shit with knowledge that people didn't have so easily back in classic.

1) legacy items (mana stone etc.) drop for entirety of server, but with ridiculously low drop rates (1 in 1000.)

2) bard aoes do no damage if mob is moving, ae damage limited to 25 mobs for wizards

3) +-90% variance on ALL mobs. This way it's not easy to just afk xp camp dungeon spawns or afk hold down named camps. Getting timers wouldn't be as effective either, and it encourages grouping to reduce risk of getting overwhelmed. Raid mobs...have fun tracking those windows

My point is this.

There is no mechanic you can introduce to promote rareity without it being exploited with those who have huge amounts of time. Which is a tiny portion of the server population.

The only way to actually fix rare drops is to stop them being rare. Nothing else actually works and the experience of dozens of other games is that this does not do anything to reduce the game experience.

time investment is not difficulty, it is not harder to need 16 hours to get a mob which you kill in 30 seconds. The entire idea of rareity failed in EQ and doesnt appear to be needed in any other game.

[Daldaen]

At the end of the timeline they should just set every mobs respawn to 2 hours and remove raid rules.

Can you imagine, scheduling a NToV or a Statue/Tormax raid on your calendar and knowing it will likely be sitting there for you to take a shot at?

[EdTuBrutus]

At the end of the timeline they should just set every mobs respawn to 2 hours and remove raid rules.

Can you imagine, scheduling a NToV or a Statue/Tormax raid on your calendar and knowing it will likely be sitting there for you to take a shot at?

It would be amazng.

And most of the server and game population would find it fantastic.

That it isn't standard, is kinda disappointing. As I said earlier, it does not make the game easier, it does not remove the look and feel of Classic.

[Ravager]

Velious will fix everything.

[skarlorn]

At the end of the timeline they should just set every mobs respawn to 2 hours and remove raid rules.

Can you imagine, scheduling a NToV or a Statue/Tormax raid on your calendar and knowing it will likely be sitting there for you to take a shot at?

won't happen - it's not classic. p99 leadership does not BEND to the demands of the casual masses. they will NOT obliterate classic mechanics simply to try and improve the server here :rolleyes:

[EdTuBrutus]

won't happen - it's not classic. p99 leadership does not BEND to the demands of the casual masses. they will NOT obliterate classic mechanics simply to try and improve the server here :rolleyes:

The question I have, is why you are playing Classic. Im playing (and enjoying) the look and feel of the game from 15 years ago. I'll likely be done once I have a couple of chars at 60 and the end game remains off book and the chance of epic is non existed (which did NOT happen on Live).

No Raid Encounters is Not Classic. It needs a bodge, just like they just bodged AE.

[ZiggyTheMuss]

I agree with you OP. It's too bad the GMs don't share this same vision.

[delfi]

the chance of epic is non existed (which did NOT happen on Live).


I sorta agree, the rarity is probably unnecessary to the degree we have it here.

But lets not exaggerate...not sure what epics you are talking about, but many were very much off-limits for a very long time for majority of players on live. You couldn't just casually get your epic for many classes, that was the point of them really.

[EdTuBrutus]

I sorta agree, the rarity is probably unnecessary to the degree we have it here.

But lets not exaggerate...not sure what epics you are talking about, but many were very much off-limits for a very long time for majority of players on live. You couldn't just casually get your epic for many classes, that was the point of them really.

The Cleric Epic was just stupid. Beyond stupid really.

I don't really recall ever class, I'm sure some were equally retarded as Cleric. But the bulk involved minor Planar or other bosses, bosses you could expect to kill outside of the hardcore Raid Guilds. The problem with P99 is that the hardcore people (remember a TINY fraction of the population) are using those drops as cash cows.

[Lojik]

My point is this.

There is no mechanic you can introduce to promote rareity without it being exploited with those who have huge amounts of time. Which is a tiny portion of the server population.

The only way to actually fix rare drops is to stop them being rare. Nothing else actually works and the experience of dozens of other games is that this does not do anything to reduce the game experience.

time investment is not difficulty, it is not harder to need 16 hours to get a mob which you kill in 30 seconds. The entire idea of rareity failed in EQ and doesnt appear to be needed in any other game.

It's not even the fact that people have more time, it's just they race to the top by abusing classic mechanics and classic knowledge, then there are bottlenecks since we have so many high levels AND everyone is trying to be efficient by just logging in for the good parts. In kunark, one guy permacamped tranix for like 2 months, he probably only had to play for 2 hours a day. The end game for classic eq a) isn't very good even in its best incarnation and b) isn't designed to accommodate 65% of a server that regularly gets 1200-1500 people on it. I like the fact some shit is hella rare, even if it's others that have it.

[Ruinous]

The entire appeal for classic EverQuest for a good portion of players is precisely what you want changed. When you go to a game like WoW, where it's practically a loot pinata waiting for you around every corner, to the point where you see sub-par players running around with the same high-end items you have, they lose value and meaning.

Granted a lot of us have grown up and don't have the same obscene amounts of time to commit to playing a video game any more, personally I came here knowing that much. Knowing that I likely wouldn't ever get to partake in any regular raiding schedule. And I was okay with that. Because this IS what classic EverQuest was, and if I wanted a different game, I could go to any number of different games that garner to that play style.

The raiding system didn't change because it didn't work, it changed because it didn't work to make as large a profit as these AAA-title game companies wanted to make. It came down to making content easy enough for even the worst player to keep their subscription fees rolling in. Fortunately, P99 is not for profit and won't ever have to conform to that market strategy.

[EdTuBrutus]

The entire appeal for classic EverQuest for a good portion of players is precisely what you want changed. When you go to a game like WoW, where it's practically a loot pinata waiting for you around every corner, to the point where you see sub-par players running around with the same high-end items you have, they lose value and meaning.

Granted a lot of us have grown up and don't have the same obscene amounts of time to commit to playing a video game any more, personally I came here knowing that much. Knowing that I likely wouldn't ever get to partake in any regular raiding schedule. And I was okay with that. Because this IS what classic EverQuest was, and if I wanted a different game, I could go to any number of different games that garner to that play style.

The raiding system didn't change because it didn't work, it changed because it didn't work to make as large a profit as these AAA-title game companies wanted to make. It came down to making content easy enough for even the worst player to keep their subscription fees rolling in. Fortunately, P99 is not for profit and won't ever have to conform to that market strategy.

That's the thing though.

High end loot in Classic WoW is not a pinata because it is significantly harder to actually get than in EQ. Classic WoW raid encounters are immensely more complex than Classic EQ raid encounters.

The biggest difference, perhaps the one you are referring to, is how mid-range gear in WoW is much easier to come by. But again that't nothing to do with complexity of encounter (which in WoW is generally more involved and difficult) but with stupid rareity which - and lets remember this - turns out not to have served the purpose it was intended to.

Rareity in WoW was created because the Game Designers believed that lacking rareity would kill the game. We know today, from countless of examples, that it is not true and if anything, the exact opposite. Rareity kills the game.

[thedonkdonk]

I like the fact some shit is hella rare, even if it's others that have it.

Exactly. I'm not here to own all the pixels. I'm here to fight for all the pixels. If I wanted to own all the pixels I could spin my own server or play some other emulated game like DAOC or WoW.

If some turbonerd wants to spend ∞ time camping something, awesome. I'll camp the shit out of stuff like my enchanter epic, and not stress the rest. Some times I like to go outside. Some people don't. Let them have more pixels than me. It's okay.

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

At the end of the timeline they should just set every mobs respawn to 2 hours and remove raid rules.

Can you imagine, scheduling a NToV or a Statue/Tormax raid on your calendar and knowing it will likely be sitting there for you to take a shot at?

You know who else thought this way?

[EdTuBrutus]

Exactly. I'm not here to own all the pixels. I'm here to fight for all the pixels. If I wanted to own all the pixels I could spin my own server or play some other emulated game like DAOC or WoW.

If some turbonerd wants to spend ∞ time camping something, awesome. I'll camp the shit out of stuff like my enchanter epic, and not stress the rest. Some times I like to go outside. Some people don't. Let them have more pixels than me. It's okay.

It's not about having more pixels. Its about what you say when you say your "here to fight for all the pixels". What if you don't ever get to do that. That's the point.

You want your chanter Epic, good luck. I hope you get it, IIRC its the most trivial Epic in the game. Now go get the Cleric Epic which requires you to camp a spawn for up to 12 days. Not hours. Days.

Oh and when it pops you need 20+ other players to turn up and engage before someone else gets their 20+ other players there.

[Ruinous]

That's the thing though.

High end loot in Classic WoW is not a pinata because it is significantly harder to actually get than in EQ. Classic WoW raid encounters are immensely more complex than Classic EQ raid encounters.

The biggest difference, perhaps the one you are referring to, is how mid-range gear in WoW is much easier to come by. But again that't nothing to do with complexity of encounter (which in WoW is generally more involved and difficult) but with stupid rareity which - and lets remember this - turns out not to have served the purpose it was intended to.

Rareity in WoW was created because the Game Designers believed that lacking rareity would kill the game. We know today, from countless of examples, that it is not true and if anything, the exact opposite. Rareity kills the game.

I never said anything about classic WoW. I simply stated WoW, which is in reference to the game in its current state, which has evolved to cater to a much broader range of players as nearly every current-day MMO has. And let's get something straight - rarity hasn't been phased out due to the reason you're claiming, else this project wouldn't have been as successful as it has been over its years running.

Rarity was phased out to cater to MORE players thus making a BIGGER profit. Period. It's a marketing strategy, plain and simple.

Now, I don't for a second deny that raids in present day MMO's are more complex in nature. They've increased difficulty through making game mechanics more involved and complex. That's fine, I agree.

But that's NOT classic EverQuest. EverQuest's difficulty came largely in part from the sheer amount of time it took to accomplish anything. It's a commitment that separated the casual players from the hardcore raiders and it's part of the appeal of the game for a lot of people. Getting to kill such and such a target or finish such and such a quest feels like a much bigger accomplishment.

Personally, I do enjoy not having to invest so much time in newer MMOs. But I also knew exactly what I was getting in to when I came back to this project, and you should have too. This is classic EverQuest.

And that's not even touching on how increasing spawn rates like this would affect the economy.

[Ravager]

I never said anything about classic WoW. I simply stated WoW, which is in reference to the game in its current state, which has evolved to cater to a much broader range of players as nearly every current-day MMO has. And let's get something straight - rarity hasn't been phased out due to the reason you're claiming, else this project wouldn't have been as successful as it has been over its years running.

Rarity was phased out to cater to MORE players thus making a BIGGER profit. Period. It's a marketing strategy, plain and simple.

Now, I don't for a second deny that raids in present day MMO's are more complex in nature. They've increased difficulty through making game mechanics more involved and complex. That's fine, I agree.

But that's NOT classic EverQuest. EverQuest's difficulty came largely in part from the sheer amount of time it took to accomplish anything. It's a commitment that separated the casual players from the hardcore raiders and it's part of the appeal of the game for a relative minority of people. Getting to kill such and such a target or finish such and such a quest feels like a much bigger accomplishment.

Personally, I do enjoy not having to invest so much time in newer MMOs. But I also knew exactly what I was getting in to when I came back to this project, and you should have too. This is classic EverQuest.

And that's not even touching on how increasing spawn rates like this would affect the economy.
Corrected for accuracy. How the end game was handled on your server on Live wasn't the same as how it was on all servers on live. So what you call classic is just an arbitrary choice of all of the classic server options that there were in that time. For many people, rotations were classic.

[Ravager]

Not to mention on classic Live, because of all the server choices, you didn't have to stay on one if you didn't like how the guilds were operating at the top, there was more room and opportunity to find what you liked. No such choice exists here so the majority are forced to play like the minority want, because the GMs want to run things with as little oversight as possible, and I can't say that I blame them.

[Kaziel]

There has never been any reason, whatsoever, for raid end mobs to be rare and spawn on such a long time scale. The thinking (back in 99 to the early 2000s) was that players would simply quit en masse if they achieved end game encounters. .

The thing about this server is that people SHOULD be quitting/moving on. People didn't back in the day because there was something else coming. I agree with your sentiment of letting everyone have a go.

I don't even understand what people are "competing" for here.
Do they honestly not see how serial-killer insane it is to be so obsessed over it?

[Kaziel]

When you go to a game like WoW, where it's practically a loot pinata waiting for you around every corner.

Yet WoW has a huge subscriber base. If you're claiming just anyone could rock up to a heroic raid and clear it then you're doing it a massive disservice.
I know everyone wants to hate on WoW, but saying high end gear was a loot pinata is just bullshit.

[FatMice]

+1 OP.

Oh wait... would this mean that BDA would come back?

[EdTuBrutus]

Yet WoW has a huge subscriber base. If you're claiming just anyone could rock up to a heroic raid and clear it then you're doing it a massive disservice.
I know everyone wants to hate on WoW, but saying high end gear was a loot pinata is just bullshit.

I've noticed that the comparison's between Classic EQ and WoW tend to be about current WoW and not Classic WoW, which seems unfair in comparison. As you say, in Classic, WoW didn't hand out end game loot freely to anyone.

While I haven't done a raid in WoW in 6 years, I suspect that even if its current dumbed down form of class design, the raid encounters are still massively more complex than anything EQ ever did.

[Dolalin]

The majority being frustrated by a few top-end guilds monopolizing all content is pretty damn classic.

[maskedmelon]

Now go get the Cleric Epic which requires you to camp a spawn for up to 12 days. Not hours. Days.

Oh and when it pops you need 20+ other players to turn up and engage before someone else gets their 20+ other players there.

What exactly are you talking about here?

Also, on topic, you can very much play very casually and see endgame content. The top two guilds are very easy to join. Pick one ^^

[raato]

If we wanted as accurate classic gaming EXPERIENCE (not mechanics) as possible, like P99 advertises itself on FRONTPAGE, we would have to take original EverQuest subscription base and divide it with server count available back then and compare it to the p99 subscription base and adjust raid boss spawn timers to reflect to original player count.

This wouldn't make any item more "common" than it was back then, because we have to take in consideration that instead of one server, there was atleast 32 servers back then. So in fact there was 32 times more content and items available.

For example (pulling these numbers out from my hat since I dont have time to search history or have access to the p99 data):
- Original EQ (2001): about 300k subscriptions on 32 servers means about 9k subscriptions per server
- P99: about 25k (just pulling this out of my hat) active accounts within few months

-> Original respawn time of raid mob 7 days
-> P99 respawn time of raid mob (7d / (25k / 9k)) = 2,5 days

And with limiting 1 kill per raid boss per guild per original spawntimer (7d for example) to make it so not a single guild can abuse lower spawn timers.

And if we want to get even more accurate top end content, we could compare 60lvl chars on live back in 2000 (might be harder to find info on this) and on P99. I remember that there was times of day when on live at the server I played there was under 20 60lvls online, top end content was contested by 100-150 players, not 700 players that we have on P99 contesting.

And then there is also restrictions what servers were capable of back then, I bet 200 players in zone is something that wasnt possible back then because it will desync zones on p99 too.

And since AoE nerf went live on P99, it has been clear that GMs are willing to make the non-classic mechanics to ensure classic EQ, I just hope they make the step to make top end content more classic too.

Change like this would make top end alot healthier: Top end guilds didnt have to recruit every mouth breather and asshole on the server to make sure they get 50+ ppls online at any time of day, nobody would have to stare at the wall for 16 hour variances to see the top end content, raid rules would not be needed for most parts. If top end guilds had to compare their e-dicks, they could compete on who killed mob with less ppl or fastest or whatever makes them feel superior.

[Ravager]

If we wanted as accurate classic gaming EXPERIENCE (not mechanics) as possible, like P99 advertises itself on FRONTPAGE, we would have to take original EverQuest subscription base and divide it with server count available back then and compare it to the p99 subscription base and adjust raid boss spawn timers to reflect to original player count.

This wouldn't make any item more "common" than it was back then, because we have to take in consideration that instead of one server, there was atleast 32 servers back then. So in fact there was 32 times more content and items available.

For example (pulling these numbers out from my hat since I dont have time to search history or have access to the p99 data):
- Original EQ (2001): about 300k subscriptions on 32 servers means about 9k subscriptions per server
- P99: about 25k (just pulling this out of my hat) active accounts within few months

-> Original respawn time of raid mob 7 days
-> P99 respawn time of raid mob (7d / (25k / 9k)) = 2,5 days

And with limiting 1 kill per raid boss per guild per original spawntimer (7d for example) to make it so not a single guild can abuse lower spawn timers.

And if we want to get even more accurate top end content, we could compare 60lvl chars on live back in 2000 (might be harder to find info on this) and on P99. I remember that there was times of day when on live at the server I played there was under 20 60lvls online, top end content was contested by 100-150 players, not 700 players that we have on P99 contesting.

And then there is also restrictions what servers were capable of back then, I bet 200 players in zone is something that wasnt possible back then because it will desync zones on p99 too.

And since AoE nerf went live on P99, it has been clear that GMs are willing to make the non-classic mechanics to ensure classic EQ, I just hope they make the step to make top end content more classic too.

Change like this would make top end alot healthier: Top end guilds didnt have to recruit every mouth breather and asshole on the server to make sure they get 50+ ppls online at any time of day, nobody would have to stare at the wall for 16 hour variances to see the top end content, raid rules would not be needed for most parts. If top end guilds had to compare their e-dicks, they could compete on who killed mob with less ppl or fastest or whatever makes them feel superior.
I'm sure they'll give this idea all the thought and consideration they've given every other idea and then implement something completely different that just adds another layer of poopsock in 3-5 years.

[Rygar]

Need to do what the did in England with prisoners back in the day, send em all to a far off land, never to return.

Create an 'end game' server where only level 60s can one-way transfer. It would be a non-classic server with very fast respawns, people could kill whatever content they wanted and fill out their magelo profile of their dreams... they could just never return to blue or red.

Non-Classic server is non-classic, Blue server stays classic. Win.

[Dinbin]

Need to do what the did in England with prisoners back in the day, send em all to a far off land, never to return.

Create an 'end game' server where only level 60s can one-way transfer. It would be a non-classic server with very fast respawns, people could kill whatever content they wanted and fill out their magelo profile of their dreams... they could just never return to blue or red.
Yup, call it "You Are Uber Awesome If You Are Here" if they wish and let them have at it.