RAID SUSPENSION RESOLUTIONS

[Zipity]

First and Foremost this isn’t in RnF for a reason. Please submit one or two serious ideas of a solution for the current raiding scene that you think might possibly be agreed upon across all parties. NO CSR or MAKE it Red or Rotate everything are not constructive. This is a serious thread for us to brainstorm on a player made agreement that will 1) lighten the load on GM involvement 2) create less petitions 3) keep this server fun and competitive without pseudo instancing.

[enjchanter]

psuedo instancing is the actual answer tho

[Fammaden]

Rotate...some things?

Prime candidates: ST, Tunare, AoW, all city leaders, Vulak, Dozekar, CT.

For the remainder of mobs institute FTE lockouts. Others who have very recently (mostly Freedom members I might add) proposed a lockout system would have better details on the nuts and bolts.

This meta of trains and standoffs in NToV simply has to end, and lockouts seem like one of the most direct and simple methods if we agree to preserve the so called "competitive" aspects. They rooted the dragons and the playerbase's response in service of your precious "competition" has been to create giant clusterfucks of controlled train behavior. No GM can figure this shit out fairly from grainy fraps and screenshots, half the time the guilds in question can't even determine who's at fault for what since everyone's a millisecond from utter chaos anyway.

Somewhat related, I'd add that "unroot dragons" is also not constructive, though I'd disagree with you that rotating the majority of content isn't a constructive road to walk.

[Dirkus]

Instances

[Zipity]

My suggestion is FTE race for a 45 minute lockout on a mob. Vulak would need special consideration.

[Dreenk317]

Id honestly love to see a hybrid rotation system, similar to what Fammaden suggested.

But moreover, crying wolf punishments need to be real, and have teeth. If I file a petition against guild A, for violating a rule, and it turns out they didn't violate that rule, my guild should get a one week suspension, simple as that. I feel it wouod take a lot of the petty raid crap off the table, because it wouldn't be worth being wrong. As of now, filing a false/wrong/petty petition has no consequence.

I want to see a count of the number of petitions filed by each guild over the last month or two. Let's put it in real perspective.

[Zipity]

Race for FTE, whoever gets yellow text, their guild has 1.5hr to kill that mob uncontested. Racers must die or flop to not train after FTE. You cannot FTE anything new until your mob is dead or time expires. If FTE is on vulak and a lord/lady spawns timer instantly resets. Rotate tunare and ringwar. This keeps it competitive and would drastically cut CSR involvement.

[Fammaden]

Id honestly love to see a hybrid rotation system, similar to what Fammaden suggested.

But moreover, crying wolf punishments need to be real, and have teeth. If I file a petition against guild A, for violating a rule, and it turns out they didn't violate that rule, my guild should get a one week suspension, simple as that. I feel it wouod take a lot of the petty raid crap off the table, because it wouldn't be worth being wrong. As of now, filing a false/wrong/petty petition has no consequence.

I want to see a count of the number of petitions filed by each guild over the last month or two. Let's put it in real perspective.

Petitionquest is a major factor in what got us here, adding more conditions on petitionquest doesn't seem like a reasonable path back out. Everything you try to do can and will be manipulated by the human actors involved in the system. Continuing to complicate the ramifications of petitioning doesn't create a less toxic atmosphere IMO.

[supercalif]

Id honestly love to see a hybrid rotation system, similar to what Fammaden suggested.

But moreover, crying wolf punishments need to be real, and have teeth. If I file a petition against guild A, for violating a rule, and it turns out they didn't violate that rule, my guild should get a one week suspension, simple as that. I feel it wouod take a lot of the petty raid crap off the table, because it wouldn't be worth being wrong. As of now, filing a false/wrong/petty petition has no consequence.

I want to see a count of the number of petitions filed by each guild over the last month or two. Let's put it in real perspective.

I agree with this, similar to sports you get charged a timeout for a challenge if it doesn’t get overturned.

[gamarun]

Race for FTE, whoever gets yellow text, their guild has 1.5hr to kill that mob uncontested. Racers must die or flop to not train after FTE. You cannot FTE anything new until your mob is dead or time expires. If FTE is on vulak and a lord/lady spawns timer instantly resets. Rotate tunare and ringwar. This keeps it competitive and would drastically cut CSR involvement.

Successful petitions = 1 week raid suspension from all content.

Do this and a failed petition = 1 week raid suspension from all raid content. Stops petitions in their tracks unless its absolutely clear (in which case it will probably be resolved on its own)

[Grumph]

How about treating this more like The Street

... I mean street basketball. Like on And-1 dawgs!

Where you call your own fouls.

If I say you fouled me - you fouled me.

But I don’t have read access to the UN - so what do I know?

[azeth]

hi morons, rotate everything.

end.

[FatBalloon2]

This is all solved VERY VERY easily.

Every single petition results in a ban for either the guild who submitted the petition for a false petition or the petitioned guild for a violation.

In real life, I can tell my kids to not do something 100x, but if I don't enforce some level of punishment and accountability, not only will they not stop, they will literally increase the number of times they do it.

[Dreenk317]

ya, i dont understand why we dont expect people to play by the rules of real life. If i constantly call the police for no good reason, I GET ARRESTED!!! If i constantly file petitions, for no good reason, I SHOULD GET BANNED!!

[Grumph]

I mean - having some higher stakes for GM involvement is a great idea I think.

I think a 1 week automatic ban at stake to one, the other, or both parties would have a great effect on relations. GMs would probably feel more respected. And guilds would respect each other more. Win win win.

But the issue with that is:

GMs rn seem to be saying “y’all figure something out - bc we’re tired of dealing with it fam”

(But wth do I know? I don’t have read access to UN)

...so telling the GMs “hey! Here’s what YOU need to do to fix this!”

Is kind of a backwards approach isn’t it?

[Fammaden]

Do you guys really think every petition is simply that cut and dry? There's a lot of grey areas, a lot of give and take, a lot of interpretations of the rules, a lot of misunderstandings.

This idea of punishing "wolf calling" belies an underlying belief that there's specific entities who are more guilty of frivolous petitions than others, and I truly don't believe that to be the case. Every petition can be argued by either side convincingly, this stuff isn't ever as simple as we'd like it to be and the evidence is notoriously hard to evaluate.

There's simply no objective way to say someone's acting in bad faith, most of the questionable petitions tend to be questions of intent, which is nearly impossible to determine, rather than something that you can immediately call an outright lie or bad faith petition. Additionally, with the long delays involved in the process of ruling on these things a punishment is not as significant of a deterrent. Behaviorally, its well established that punishment doesn't work for shaping when its randomly applied and the longer its delayed from the target behavior.

"You will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view" — Obi-Wan Kenobi, Return of the Jedi.

[Dreenk317]

Do you guys really think every petition is simply that cut and dry? There's a lot of grey areas, a lot of give and take, a lot of interpretations of the rules, a lot of misunderstandings.

This idea of punishing "wolf calling" belies an underlying belief that there's specific entities who are more guilty of frivolous petitions than others, and I truly don't believe that to be the case. Every petition can be argued by either side convincingly, this stuff isn't ever as simple as we'd like it to be and the evidence is notoriously hard to evaluate.

There's simply no objective way to say someone's acting in bad faith, most of the questionable petitions tend to be questions of intent, which is nearly impossible to determine, rather than something that you can immediately call an outright lie or bad faith petition. Additionally, with the long delays involved in the process of ruling on these things a punishment is not as significant of a deterrent. Behaviorally, its well established that punishment doesn't work for shaping when its randomly applied and the longer its delayed from the target behavior.

"You will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view" — Obi-Wan Kenobi, Return of the Jedi.

When a guild is currently engaged in behaviour that they petitioned you for the week before. You point this out, and there response is "we know the rules, your wrong".... Should be an automatic ban, because either they clearly cried wolf the week before, or are intentionally breaking the rules right now. And this exact scenario comes up almost every week.

It very often is that cut and dry/ black and white

[Fammaden]

Maybe it is, I don't know, but it never seems that simple to me. At least half of the shit lately feels like "we think they were kiting"...."no way we weren't kiting they are just mad they lost"....GM: "k they were kiting this time I guess fuck if I know, they concede the next one or two I guess".

[kaizersoze]

Harsher concessions idea - No more concede 2 on a single target - apply to entire zone. For places like TOV this becomes a way to make sure people are MUCH more careful with their trains, to the point they wont sit their raid force on another raid force at all most likely unless absolutely necessary. No more of this, we wait on top of them for them to clear the trash then run in stuff.

Anti leapfrogging - 20 minute lockout on FTE as soon as you feel your raid force is ready to engage in that time. Be it killing adds, figuring out kites, whatever, 20 minutes to get your shit together or lose your FTE and another guild can engage. That's the time between statue / AoW and basically all turn ins like Zordak so why not make it universal?

Rotation proposals -

ST- Just give one guild ST every week who can kill there and rotate it. Dont worry about individual golems on X day under Y circumstance because Z killed them last time. Dont make it over complicated, make it simple. Its 24 hour windows for mobs that 99% of the time drop only plat. Gross.

Tunare - If you can actually clear growth ON YOUR OWN within 10 hours, you get a rotation slot. Every third week give the option to let guilds who cant do it on their own band together to try.

Ring war - Rotate if you can clear it. If you cannot start it within an hour of pop, let the next guild in line know and they can take that one, and you will be given your shot at the next one. This keeps the respawn almost as fast as possible for more ring 10s.

Leave everything else as is. This work for everyone? :P

[Dreenk317]

Maybe it is, I don't know, but it never seems that simple to me. At least half of the shit lately feels like "we think they were kiting"...."no way we weren't kiting they are just mad they lost"....GM: "k they were kiting this time I guess fuck if I know, they concede the next one or two I guess".

that is definitely part of the problem. They do not follow the precedent that they establish.

[Fammaden]

This work for everyone? :P

I might be way off base and I'm at risk of beating a dead horse both here and in RnF now, but my impression is that we are causing far more headaches in NToV and very specifically on Vulak than anywhere else. Anything that doesn't solve this absurd and horrible meta in NToV doesn't really address the biggest problem we are facing IMO.

Rotate the stuff you mentioned too, it all makes sense to rotate, in fact those encounters make the most sense to rotate. But if there's one other place in the game that needs some compromise and changes in the way raiding works its the inner ring.

[kaizersoze]

I might be way off base and I'm at risk of beating a dead horse both here and in RnF now, but my impression is that we are causing far more headaches in NToV and very specifically on Vulak than anywhere else. Anything that doesn't solve this absurd and horrible meta in NToV doesn't really address the biggest problem we are facing IMO.

Rotate the stuff you mentioned too, it all makes sense to rotate, in fact those encounters make the most sense to rotate. But if there's one other place in the game that needs some compromise and changes in the way raiding works its the inner ring.

I attempted to leave some competitive aspects in as a compromise to full blown rotation since some people live and die for the competition. I think it's pretty fair to both parties and makes some of the shitty things like clickfest RW go away.

[HitsmeChanter]

For places like TOV this becomes a way to make sure people are MUCH more careful with their trains, to the point they wont sit their raid force on another raid force at all most likely unless absolutely necessary. No more of this, we wait on top of them for them to clear the trash then run in stuff.

Anti leapfrogging - 20 minute lockout on FTE as soon as you feel your raid force is ready to engage in that time. Be it killing adds, figuring out kites, whatever, 20 minutes to get your shit together or lose your FTE and another guild can engage. That's the time between statue / AoW and basically all turn ins like Zordak so why not make it universal?

The problem with both of these is that trains are only really bad because of rooted dragons, we all have to claw to get as close to that target as possible then at the last second train and get an edge for loot. Solve this with an FTE race and a lockout. FTE'rs die at the end of their race, and no trains are needed.



ST- Just give one guild ST every week who can kill there and rotate it.

Tunare - If you can actually clear growth ON YOUR OWN within 10 hours, you get a rotation slot.

Ring war - Rotate if you can clear it. If you cannot start it within an hour of pop, let the next guild in line know and they can take that one, and you will be given your shot at the next one.


All of these ideas are just ideas to preserve/protect the super guilds. Kinda makes it hard for any other guilds to have a chance. If you can't get a shot at something, you can't prove that you can do it. Moreover, its hard to hold member interest to build numbers for something if you cant just compete and try for it.

As for the idea of if you cant kill it within an hour, you forfeit, that's just jockeying to get riot more mobs. Everyone knows there is only one guild on the server that can kill anything at any time of day. A rotation slot should allow for 24 hours to complete the content. If you don't think you can complete it in time and concede it within say 6 hours of pop, then you can take the next pop IMHO.

It seems to me that a lot of our problems can be resolved with FTE races. If your guild FTE's the mob you have a set amount of time to kill it. If you fail, you're out until all other present competitors have taken a shot at it, or for like 1.5 hours, whichever comes first. I think that this eliminates the need for the massive trains that honestly seem to cause a lot of our petitions.

[Ripqozko]

Fte races + 3 hour lockout. Bring back 2017

[FatBalloon2]

Door pulls!

[lookitsjb]

Do you guys really think every petition is simply that cut and dry? There's a lot of grey areas, a lot of give and take, a lot of interpretations of the rules, a lot of misunderstandings.

This idea of punishing "wolf calling" belies an underlying belief that there's specific entities who are more guilty of frivolous petitions than others, and I truly don't believe that to be the case. Every petition can be argued by either side convincingly, this stuff isn't ever as simple as we'd like it to be and the evidence is notoriously hard to evaluate.

There's simply no objective way to say someone's acting in bad faith, most of the questionable petitions tend to be questions of intent, which is nearly impossible to determine, rather than something that you can immediately call an outright lie or bad faith petition. Additionally, with the long delays involved in the process of ruling on these things a punishment is not as significant of a deterrent. Behaviorally, its well established that punishment doesn't work for shaping when its randomly applied and the longer its delayed from the target behavior.

"You will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view" — Obi-Wan Kenobi, Return of the Jedi.

The concept here is to indirectly force guilds to work together. A member acting in bad faith versus an accident is, in most cases, clear. And in most cases, is something that is recognized immediately. These accidents don't always need to result in concessions, however, and I feel like that's where we need to start.

If someone runs through North Door, trains wyverns, and wipes a guild, the guild leaders can work together to pause all progress until both guilds are back to their "pre train" status. However if that happens, and the guild proceeds to FTE and kill a target (leapfrogging the trained guild), they used a clear accident to benefit them and should yield a punishment (concession or whatever). If that doesn't get resolved and a petition is filed, the GMs can choose to punish the guild that trained the wyverns, or punish the guild that filed the petition. But if it gets to the point where GMs need to be involved, a ban should be the outcome for one or both guilds.

IMO; The toxicity of the raid scene is stemming from the lack of consequence for actions. More, and more, people feel slighted while raiding and are actively looking for things to call other guilds out on, because be it tiny accidents or gigantic fuck-ups; they always go to petition since the leads wont work together. At worst, if the GM rules against you, you're forced to concede 1 or 2 of the target and thats it, which ultimately yields the same consequence as if you hadn't involved the GM to begin with. So I ask; Why bother the GMs, and not own your mistakes and move on? (Your being a generic 'you'.. not pointing at any guild/person directly)

The raid rules clearly state; "if you request that another guild concede a mob, you better be 100% certain that they made an error, otherwise you may be punished harshly." Let's use the one rule that's black-and-white as the foundation for the steps moving forward.

Another black-and-white on the same topic, "Note on Rule Lawyering – I think the spirit of everything we are trying to accomplish here is pretty clear. Anyone that tries to twist the words to support and/or justify nefarious actions will not be rewarded. There will be no “technically this could be that”, or “well it doesn’t exactly say this word for word”. From this point forward we will be actively enforcing the spirit of these rules more so than the exact letter of the law. Don't expect to skirt passed a raid suspension on a loop hole or technicality."

[FatBalloon2]

IMO; The toxicity of the raid scene is stemming from the lack of consequence for actions.

This.

[kjs86z]

How about not being unbearable cunts?

Also I recommend exercise, clean eating, sunshine, and sex.

[kaizersoze]

The problem with both of these is that trains are only really bad because of rooted dragons, we all have to claw to get as close to that target as possible then at the last second train and get an edge for loot. Solve this with an FTE race and a lockout. FTE'rs die at the end of their race, and no trains are needed.



All of these ideas are just ideas to preserve/protect the super guilds. Kinda makes it hard for any other guilds to have a chance. If you can't get a shot at something, you can't prove that you can do it. Moreover, its hard to hold member interest to build numbers for something if you cant just compete and try for it.

As for the idea of if you cant kill it within an hour, you forfeit, that's just jockeying to get riot more mobs. Everyone knows there is only one guild on the server that can kill anything at any time of day. A rotation slot should allow for 24 hours to complete the content. If you don't think you can complete it in time and concede it within say 6 hours of pop, then you can take the next pop IMHO.

It seems to me that a lot of our problems can be resolved with FTE races. If your guild FTE's the mob you have a set amount of time to kill it. If you fail, you're out until all other present competitors have taken a shot at it, or for like 1.5 hours, whichever comes first. I think that this eliminates the need for the massive trains that honestly seem to cause a lot of our petitions.

I would be fine with amendments to my suggestion to make things like RW a same day kill. Though as far as things like proving they can do Tuna (im aasssuming youre referring to that?) Maybe set aside the 4th week for an attempt. If they can do it, on their own, then add them to the rotation and make the joint raid take the week after the last guild was added.

I also never said that you just conceded the mob after the timer would expire, only that a different guild could engage. You could still go after it, but any trash you cleared would then also be out of their way as well and they could snag the next lock. However to prevent people from chain locking and not engaging, institute a strict one time limit on their first lock. No just running to the dragon, getting yellow, dancing around the engage to go lock it again later just to prevent people from engaging.

The ST zone rotation I proposed would give guilds like Kittens, who used to not be in the rotations, a slot since im 99% sure they have enough keys to compete if they really wanted to. They just sort of dont, I think.

As for the rooted dragons? Im sorry people need to actually play EQ and not just wait at the zoneline, but this is the current situation and I dont think theyre going to go back on it now.

[Nexii]

Fte races + 3 hour lockout. Bring back 2017

It was one hour. But yea it worked.

The main issue with it was a lack of server wide announce when a lockout expired. Guilds not knowing when they could legally FTE.

I imagine a bot feeding into a public Discord channel could solve that problem next time around. Guilds could be mandated to declare their FTEs there

[Ripqozko]

It was one hour. But yea it worked.

The main issue with it was a lack of server wide announce when a lockout expired. Guilds not knowing when they could legally FTE.

I imagine a bot feeding into a public Discord channel could solve that problem next time around. Guilds could be mandated to declare their FTEs there

I know I adjusted to 3 hours since it’s rooted now

[Endonde]

It wouldn't work for the same reasons it died last time, people would just accuse people of cheating on the races and it would die. We just started foot races in Kael not long ago and people already accuse anyone who wins of cheating.

Same thing happened with coth races, people complained that everyone was cheating and then we moved to foot races, now everyone claims the foot racers are cheating so next we're going to just /random for FTE probably who knows.

[Awweshux]

"More, and more, people feel slighted while raiding and are actively looking for things to call other guilds out on" This. Recognize that every time you react with a petition, you set everyone, including the GMs, up for a snowstorm of additional petitions in response. "Well, if this is the way it is going to be, then ok here you go."

How about a monthly ish rotation of meta: Even months - rotation (instancing); odd months - race (current meta). Rotations could include open to smaller guilds slot.

[feniin]

Rotate. Everything.

Stop being toxic. Learn to share.

[Incubo]

It was one hour. But yea it worked.

The main issue with it was a lack of server wide announce when a lockout expired. Guilds not knowing when they could legally FTE.

I imagine a bot feeding into a public Discord channel could solve that problem next time around. Guilds could be mandated to declare their FTEs there

A system announcement that state's <GUILD ABC> is unlocked, etc. would be nice. Fr/AG had to guess on the Doze lockout, guessed poorly and got petitioned/banned as you all know.

[Ovaltine]

NTOV/Dain/CT Rotation
WTOV/Doze/Kael/Yeli Rotation

For four weeks while leadership discuss how to be friendly after the rotations end on week 5. No terms? Continue rotation.

This may get the suspended guilds out of suspension before repop day, quicker than negotiations could. While discussing free and open FTEs and how to handle that, we could all still get mobs.

[voydent]

NTOV/Dain/CT Rotation
WTOV/Doze/Kael/Yeli Rotation

For four weeks while leadership discuss how to be friendly after the rotations end on week 5. No terms? Continue rotation.

This may get the suspended guilds out of suspension before repop day, quicker than negotiations could. While discussing free and open FTEs and how to handle that, we could all still get mobs.


LOL i shared the same exact solution a few hours ago with my guild. only difference was how the mobs are split. mine was all of TOV + klandi and zlandi vs everything else

kinda happy we think alike :)

[Ovaltine]

LOL i shared the same exact solution a few hours ago with my guild. only difference was how the mobs are split. mine was all of TOV + klandi and zlandi vs everything else

kinda happy we think alike :)

How mobs are split is up to whomever to change, though I didnt even think about Klandi/Zlandi so thanks for reminding me they exist. Just tried to even out BiS type mobs and stuff. The better point to this is the rotation to get back to raiding before pop day. However anyone wants to distribute mobs on the rotations is whatever to me, lets just get back into this and show everyone there is a way to have cake and eat it too.

[Incubo]

LOL i shared the same exact solution a few hours ago with my guild. only difference was how the mobs are split. mine was all of TOV + klandi and zlandi vs everything else

kinda happy we think alike :)

The problem with all rotations is, who gets included in the rotation? TOV is only being killed by Fr/AG and Riot. Do other guilds like TSS / DB etc. deserve a rotation slot?

[Fammaden]

Any rotation would build in a method for proving yourself. Maybe that means you have to go beat the rotation guild that week to a certain mob and win it. If TSS/DB can't commit to that they don't get a chance for a slot. This is basically just an extension of what we've already had for Tunare/ST/RW in the past, it never prevented other guilds from trying if they were motivated to, it just rotated between Riot/AG.

[saftbudet]

Successful petitions = 1 week raid suspension from all content.

Do this and a failed petition = 1 week raid suspension from all raid content. Stops petitions in their tracks unless its absolutely clear (in which case it will probably be resolved on its own)

Sounds good, GMs kinda brought this on themself, by not issuing harder penalties. Some guilds does not fear the ruling of GMs, because the punishments are so soft.

[saftbudet]

Like if a new FTE goes out on Vulak Aerr, mid fight .... the guild killing him, should be so afraid of the punishment and imedietly dropping it.

[Ovaltine]

The problem with all rotations is, who gets included in the rotation? TOV is only being killed by Fr/AG and Riot. Do other guilds like TSS / DB etc. deserve a rotation slot?

Excellent point Mr. Incubo and I'm glad you brought that up.

BLUF: No

I recommend that the rotation be Riot and AG/F. AG/F as one entity. 2 guilds on the rotation. Any guild like TSS/Kittens/AEGIS that want a piece of the action ask, or be assigned, a guild that has a rotation spot to tag along with. They can raid and win loots on the kind of population roll system AG/F uses.

Just an idea.

[Endonde]

The problem with all rotations is, who gets included in the rotation? TOV is only being killed by Fr/AG and Riot. Do other guilds like TSS / DB etc. deserve a rotation slot?

Yea this is how that's going to go. Top 3 guilds decide to rotate, but Freedom and AG want separate slots. Well if Freedom gets a slot, Kittens has killed more targets as a guild than Freedom has solo so what's the reason to exclude Kittens? Then Kittens gets a slot so what's the reason to exclude TSS?

Unless you are going to do a full blown rotation it's impossible to please everyone. If you do a full blown rotation you end up with larger guilds splintering into several smaller guilds to maximize the benefit of the rotation which leads the rotation to being longer than it normally should be. Then you have to deal with how guilds are allowed to join the rotation, while most guilds won't want to add new guilds to an already inflated rotation.

I'm personally fine with rotations because I've played this game long enough that I don't care how often I kill a specific dragon, but I'm sure there is a vocal minority who would hate it.

[xdrcfrx]

Requiring that a non-rotation guild beat a rotation-guild to [mob x] to earn a rotation slot is bad system design. the rotation-guild is already at an inherent advantage because it can dedicate resources to the specific gatekeeper mobs without having to bother competing for other, also rotated, mobs.

IMO the only fair way to manage the rotation is to have some other metric, like "can kill [mob x] solo or in [y amount of time]." Let guilds request and be given the opportunity, to get the kill on whichever is the gatekeeper mob. If they fail, some kind of cool-down before they can request again. Maybe add some other function whereby a guild can lose its rotation spot if it fails to achieve some basic result, and then also has to sit on cool-down for a few weeks before getting back in.

Importantly, this needs to be a GM enforced meta, though. If it's just a player agreement, all it takes is one guild to say "no, we're not agreeing to that. we will consider all mobs FFA," to ruin it.

[HitsmeChanter]

realistically rotation between the big guilds just guarantees those mobs for those guilds, makes no real chance for other guilds to build up for that mob, its easier for people to just go to one of those guilds...

[Ovaltine]

realistically rotation between the big guilds just guarantees those mobs for those guilds, makes no real chance for other guilds to build up for that mob, its easier for people to just go to one of those guilds...

Isn't it the same even without rotations?

[Toomuch]

To start off with, I'd like to thank the (VOLUNTEER) staff for trying. This game is something that a lot of us really like, waaaay too much, so we all get really emotionally invested. Every now and then, when the fit's hitting the shan with server drama, I step back and realize that it's all being managed by volunteers. As players on the server, we've got to do better. What exactly can we do, and how, are the questions we need to answer together.

1. Personally, I strongly agree with the "Cry Wolf" punishments being increased, substantially. I'm thinking we need to not make it quite as harsh as the actual penalty for violating the raid rules, or at least have it start 1 step lower, and then progress similarly? Example: First Cry Wolf offense = official warning, 2nd Cry Wolf = 2x concession on that mob, 3rd Cry Wolf = 1 week zone-wide ban, 4th Cry Wolf = 1 week blanket raid ban, 5th Cry Wolf = 1 month blanket raid ban. If no Cry Wolf petitions have been submitted in the last 3 months, then it resets back to 0.

One of the most frustrating things to deal with, whether it's in a game or in life, is hypocrisy.

When a guild is currently engaged in behaviour that they petitioned you for the week before. You point this out, and there response is "we know the rules, your wrong".... Should be an automatic ban, because either they clearly cried wolf the week before, or are intentionally breaking the rules right now. And this exact scenario comes up almost every week.

It very often is that cut and dry/ black and white

This point is huge. This is rampant right now. There are indeed some bans worth handing out in relation to this, I'm 100% certain.

Now, this isn't to say we should throw out the FORMAT for how to submit petitions. The current format (well written documentation) is probably for the best. We just need to make 100% certain we're cutting out all the BS for the staff, and ensure that we're trying to resolve it ourselves.

2. My next point is something that's out of our control though, and I'm throwing it out there for context, for both players and staff to see: there has never been a time when the server had more level 60's ready and willing to compete for top-tier content. Or in other words, there's more level 60 "mouths to feed" that want to see top-end content, then there has ever been before. By nature, there's going to be increasing competition, and probably some associated hard feelings, when there's more and more people going after the same number of things (or DECREASING number of things, when you account for no Warders in game anymore, and a seeming decrease in the average number of quakes in the last year or so). It's literally economics: the supply isn't increasing, if anything it's decreasing, and the demand is definitely increasing. In economics, what does that do to the price of goods? (spoiler: the price goes up.)

Some more context on the people involved:

Some of these level 60's are those types of players that have been slowly leveling for years, never had drama with anyone ever, never submitted a petition ever, have casted 1000 rezzes and/or ported 1000 people for free, etc, and are finally 60, and feel they truly are deserving of some top-end content, as they've been the "server good-guy" for as long as anyone else, if not longer.

There are others that are undeniably more hardcore. They've been level 60 and raiding on p99 for so long that they can tell you the differences between the management styles that each of the GM's have had. They've done their homework on all the raid encounters, know how to race to mobs the fastest, know every corner to hide behind to dodge AE's but still be in range to land heals, are constantly swapping characters based on the location or needs of the raid, and are always on the leading edge on how to handle each encounter in a new/better way to beat the competition. They feel like they are deserving of the top-end content, because they put in the prep-work, beat out the competition for it, etc.

And then there's all kinds of variations of people in-between, but everyone wants their slice of the pie.

So, what does all this *mean*? Do we rotate 100% of the top-tier content, and take the competition out of it? I don't know. That doesn't seem like Classic EQ to me, but neither does having 400+ level 60's ready, willing, and/or literally sitting there waiting to go after the same raid boss when it pops. I think I like the idea of rotating some things, sometimes, essentially expanding on what's been done with Plane of Fear golem rotations.

Should we cry and whine and moan for a way to add more top-tier content, to offset/meet the demand? Even if it were nicely requested or voted on by the masses in the most thoughtfully worded essay/poll, would that even have any affect? If we prove we can play nice, would this even be considered, as a reward of sorts? I don't know. I'd sure like to know though.

[Solist]

Delayed races w/ lockout.

2 targets must be up in zone.
After 2nd mob pops, 30min until race.
Roll based race aka golems/KT/Statue.
1hr lockout on FTE.

Then at least 1 loser gets a mob too, and it tries to keep windows a little tighter.

[7thGate]

Not in the top, but Quakes seem like they're both fun, competitive and (usually?) less full of problems since people do much less head to head conflict since there are other targets to switch to on a FTE loss. If that's not the experience of Riot/Freedom/AG, then never mind, but it looks that way from here.

Maybe something like, noone kills anything on the 7 day spawns until everything repops, then everyone goes. Maybe also have Vulak be an open raid mob for the whole server to remove the biggest source of direct head to head competition with the weird standoffs that can happen with his invulnerability flag.

That preserves competition, and the lion's share of the loot and big targets goes to the big players that can quickly mobilize across targets and kill them efficiently without wipes, but it also removes the horrible time suck of tracking windows for everything and lets smaller guilds prioritize stuff like Talendor to practice raiding.

I don't know how many petitions usually come out of a quake vs. non-quake stuff, but it might be a fix?

[kaizersoze]

We have talked a lot about guild punishments, but I think there needs to be single player repercussions to actions as well tbh. If a GUILD is suspended for a person's actions, then it should be two fold for the player. So like a one week suspension would be 2 for said individual. I do know one problem with this is people having easy access to shared accounts, but it would mean very harsh consequences to individuals, and subsequently guilds, if some of their "star players" need to sit out for 2 weeks (or at the very least not use the characters on said account, which could be very bad if people are say, getting their cleric accounts suspended.)

[lookitsjb]

We have talked a lot about guild punishments, but I think there needs to be single player repercussions to actions as well tbh. If a GUILD is suspended for a person's actions, then it should be two fold for the player. So like a one week suspension would be 2 for said individual. I do know one problem with this is people having easy access to shared accounts, but it would mean very harsh consequences to individuals, and subsequently guilds, if some of their "star players" need to sit out for 2 weeks (or at the very least not use the characters on said account, which could be very bad if people are say, getting their cleric accounts suspended.)

I would leave this up to the guild, in the end. If a guild gets banned for a week for someone accidentally doing something, shit happens, right? If that same person does it 3 times and isn't learning, the guild can remove that person and that blocks them from raiding. Any additional infractions would be GMs banning accounts if they're unguilded doing shady shit. Right?

[xdrcfrx]

IMO the answer here is a rotation of rotations, with some kind of objective criteria to be added or removed. Don't gate keep the rotation behind out-racing another guild to a target. Make it simple - "can kill [mob], and you're in; fail to do [thing] and you're out.

Split ToV as follows:

West
Doze + Eashen + Iki+aary
Inner Ring Right side (fesh -> lord K)
Inner ring left side (vyemm -> lady M)
Trips + doubles
Vulak

Also have rotations for: Tunare, ring war, city leaders, VP, zlandi, klandi. KD, and kunark outdoor dragons can be counted together. Have vox work on a lockout basis - you killed her, x number of weeks before you can kill her again (alternatively, have vox be off limits to anyone who gets to kill gore).

There's enough content that everyone could get a nice slice of it each week. Allow for each rotated group to be FFA every 2nd or 3rd spawn. Establish a criteria for being part of the rotation that discourages fracturing of guilds (although, some of that will certainly happen if you no longer need to have 150 people to get the loots).

[Allishia]

Have we ever tried no gm involvement? Like ffa raid zones..trains kill steals, everything goes, 500 ppl camped at raid spawn, no petitons allowed?
Go total mad max eq and see what happens, maximum toxicity till it corrects itself and everyone finally behaves? mwahahaha :p

[sedrie.bellamie]

max 60 person engage on any mob, anyone past the 60th person gets banished to zone line of the next zone (ala naggy/vox)

stop 200 people zerg guilds

if 60 is not enough for AOW, the max guilds at 80 person on engage

break up the zergs like Ronald Regan

expansion draft like the NBA

zipity/wallicker is like 2000s Gerald Wallace (all upside but will never reach his potential)

[Dreenk317]

Have we ever tried no gm involvement? Like ffa raid zones..trains kill steals, everything goes, 500 ppl camped at raid spawn, no petitons allowed?
Go total mad max eq and see what happens, maximum toxicity till it corrects itself and everyone finally behaves? mwahahaha :p

Yes, when VP opened up it was a CSR free zone. Was a very fun sort of hell. In my opinion.

[Dreenk317]

max 60 person engage on any mob, anyone past the 60th person gets banished to zone line of the next zone (ala naggy/vox)

stop 200 people zerg guilds

if 60 is not enough for AOW, the max guilds at 80 person on engage

break up the zergs like Ronald Regan

expansion draft like the NBA

zipity/wallicker is like 2000s Gerald Wallace (all upside but will never reach his potential)

Alot of the ability to get small number kills went out the window with the rooted dragons and the push change, the recharge change as a result of green didnt help either. It simply just requires more people than it used to for a lot of encounters.

[Tunabros]

Instances

https://media.tenor.com/images/1ceb993c0f57c07cf329fc5bdcd90186/tenor.gif

[kaizersoze]

Made some amendments to my suggestion

Harsher concessions idea - No more concede 2 on a single target - apply to entire zone. For places like TOV this becomes a way to make sure people are MUCH more careful with their trains, to the point they wont sit their raid force on another raid force at all most likely unless absolutely necessary. No more of this, we wait on top of them for them to clear the trash then run in stuff. Individuals (the account rather) responsible for said shenanigans receiving a punishment 2x as long.

Anti leapfrogging - 20 minute lockout on FTE as soon as you feel your raid force is ready to engage in that time. Be it killing adds, figuring out kites, whatever, 20 minutes to get your shit together or lose your FTE and another guild can engage. That's the time between statue / AoW and basically all turn ins like Zordak so why not make it universal? This means you still have to play the game and work for your pixels and compete with the other guilds to clear toward targets faster, but wont get screwed over at the very end by a leapfrog. Please note this does not mean a concession on said target, it just means people can then step in.

SPECIAL VULAK ADDITTION
If the final blocker is engaged, races for Vulak must start from a fresh coth / clear. No more sitting on Vulak with guard pre-kites leaving yellow text up to the RNG of who hits it first when the blocker dies. Gives -all- the guilds in TOV at the time the same opportunity to start moving and the ability to compete.

Rotation proposals -

ST- Just give one guild ST every week who can kill there and rotate it. Dont worry about individual golems on X day under Y circumstance because Z killed them last time. Dont make it over complicated, make it simple. Its 24 hour windows for mobs that 99% of the time drop only plat. Gross. This would be (as far as i know) AG, Freedom, Riot, and Kittens having one week slots with 6 golems per month as theirs. If there are more guilds that have enough ST keys and interest or more become keyed enough, they could also be added. It would basically be 6 golems every month / 5 weeks at that point without mindlessly socking 24 hour windows. Better for EVERYONE"S sanity.

Tunare - If you can actually clear growth ON YOUR OWN within 10 hours, you get a rotation slot. Every third week give the option to let guilds who cant do it on their own band together to try. So far the guilds that have interest is AG, Freedom, and Riot. If Kittens has the interest, I'd say give them a slot as well, they're certainly large enough if they wanted to try. Idk if Freedom has / can clear PoG on their own in said time, but if they CAN, give them a slot. No team ups on solo slots. Week after rotation completion - If any smaller guilds want to band together to clear PoG leave the option open to them. If they pass on said option, rotation starts anew.

Ring war - Rotate if you can clear it. Same day clear as spawn. If you have no interest in doing your RW because it conflicts with the spawn cycle, pass along to the next guild, if they don't want to, on to the next guild, if there is no guild left in rotation - open it to non rotated guilds or it becomes FFA next day, but then rotation continues as normal. As of right now the guilds able / wishing to TO MY KNOWLEDGE are AG, Freedom, Riot, Kittens for initial rotation proposal.

Leave everything else as is. Kael, Dain, VP races are what keep some people going, it's fun, and anyone who is keyed / factioned is eligible.

***TOD's on rotated mobs to be shared in the UN on their final kill of that guilds spawn cycle so that everyone does knows when their mobs come into window and can plan accordingly**

Is this something all of the leadership would agree to so that we can all get ourselves lifted from our suspensions?

[Fammaden]

As far as petitionquest, how about we have a limit to how many times per week or per month a guild can even file a raid petition? Like in the NFL where the coach only has so many red challenge flags per game. That way people aren't petitioning every tiny little slight and technicality in hopes the GM's rule in their favor, you have to use your petitions wisely.

[kaizersoze]

As far as petitionquest, how about we have a limit to how many times per week or per month a guild can even file a raid petition? Like in the NFL where the coach only has so many red challenge flags per game. That way people aren't petitioning every tiny little slight and technicality in hopes the GM's rule in their favor, you have to use your petitions wisely.

Lumped petitions to 1x a week I feel would be a good addition. Though if there are multiple infractions, severe punishments.

[HitsmeChanter]

I think this would turn the current 20 page petitions the GMs have to read into 100 page petitions because guilds would try to bundle them...

[Fammaden]

Then throw out the whole thing if you get to a second incident in the same petition.

[HitsmeChanter]

The real problem is that we're encountering a lot of problems around racing, training, leapfrogging etc... those ALL stem from rooted dragons...

[HitsmeChanter]

Another option is FTE race with a 1 hour lockout 3 weeks of every month. Every 4th cycle the big guilds, Freedom, AG, Riot don't participate for a full 24 hours post first pop, that allows casuals time to band together and go after any target(s) they want.

[Fammaden]

Well Galach has made it clear that ToV specifically is only one part of a ten point list of problems and bringing up rooting/unrooting to him is pointless.

[galach]

Not dev/management. I can't unroot.

[Zipity]

FTE lockouts literally solves every single issue in one fell swoop and we already have yellow text in place. I say we try it for a month.

[Raev]

The problem is that EQ is simply not designed to have two competing raid forces in the zone. There is no magic rule set that will make it work. I logged on to Riot discord today and read some of the quotes from the UN about Jorlleag AEs and Tunare and my brain began to rot.

I used to think rotations were the answer until I played on TAKP and watched one of the guilds there fail to kill KT with 40 boxes for 6 hours "because the throne room repopped too fast". Project 1999 is popular precisely because it's difficult to get those raid pixels.

So the solution has to be some sort of indirect competition, aka a time attack. The magic of quakes was always that the guilds who were most efficient got the most pixels, rather than the guilds that poopsocked/tracked the hardest. Making everything quakes would be a big step in the right direction IMO. But I still think my League Promotion System (https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=329201) is even more reasonable.

[Fammaden]

FTE lockouts literally solves every single issue in one fell swoop and we already have yellow text in place. I say we try it for a month.

It doesn't solve petition quest and likely makes it worse without server side notifications of when a guild is locked/unlocked.

[HitsmeChanter]

The problem is no matter what someones going to be irate about the solution. Could we consider other options than just a straight rotation. I feel like that will just lead to an extremely long line of guilds all trying to get their piece of the pie... just off the top of my head...

- could we reduce spawn times?
- enact nuclear level penalties for abusing petitions?
- enact nuclear level penalties for repeat rule violations?
- expand the guide team to lower the workload?
- create a player counsel to debate, discuss and decide on the outcome of petitions? (with GM oversight to avoid abuse, or even to prelim a decision and pass to GMS to give a thumbs up or down)
- Pick the core mobs that cause the most contention and rotate those, aka, city leaders, vulak, CT?


I think that this problem is too complex for a simple solution like, just rotate all.

[HitsmeChanter]

FTE race + Lockout + player "supreme court" to prelim petitions for GM approval?

[Dreenk317]

Disband, every, single, guild. Start there.

[xdrcfrx]

Disband, every, single, guild. Start there.

why should the unbanned guilds be disbanded just because AG / F / R can't play nice?

[Nexii]

The problem is that EQ is simply not designed to have two competing raid forces in the zone. There is no magic rule set that will make it work. I logged on to Riot discord today and read some of the quotes from the UN about Jorlleag AEs and Tunare and my brain began to rot.

I used to think rotations were the answer until I played on TAKP and watched one of the guilds there fail to kill KT with 40 boxes for 6 hours "because the throne room repopped too fast". Project 1999 is popular precisely because it's difficult to get those raid pixels.

So the solution has to be some sort of indirect competition, aka a time attack. The magic of quakes was always that the guilds who were most efficient got the most pixels, rather than the guilds that poopsocked/tracked the hardest. Making everything quakes would be a big step in the right direction IMO. But I still think my League Promotion System (https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=329201) is even more reasonable.

Yea exclusive lockouts were pretty much a time attack. You wanted to clear your lock ASAP by killing your target. It worked as it was competitive and yet kept guilds more spaced for less petititons. However exclusive locks had some issues that led to Sirken getting rid of it rather than reworking it.

[Ripqozko]

Yea exclusive lockouts were pretty much a time attack. You wanted to clear your lock ASAP by killing your target. It worked as it was competitive and yet kept guilds more spaced for less petititons. However exclusive locks had some issues that led to Sirken getting rid of it rather than reworking it.

That and alt tab jumping, but the client FPS fix is in so that’s not issue now. Give 3 hours and even casual guilds would have time.

[HitsmeChanter]

Disband, every, single, guild. Start there.


This solves nothing... discord message goes out... PM these players for re-inv into guild... within 24 hours same guilds are re-established, maybe 1-2 smaller guilds would rename, poof or pop up...

[Nexii]

Maybe 1 hour for most targets, 2 hours for inner ring. IMO it shouldn't take 3 hours to clear to Vulak. Riot and FR/AG clear that trash in about 30-45 minutes and that's while stepping on each other's toes. A lot of the time it takes forever because of the trains, wipes, and standoffs

[Ripqozko]

Maybe 1 hour for most targets, 2 hours for inner ring. IMO it shouldn't take 3 hours to clear to Vulak. Riot and FR/AG clear that trash in about 30-45 minutes and that's while stepping on each other's toes. A lot of the time it takes forever because of the trains, wipes, and standoffs

Right so add 1 hour for casuals to assemble. 3 hours

[Toomuch]

As far as petitionquest, how about we have a limit to how many times per week or per month a guild can even file a raid petition? Like in the NFL where the coach only has so many red challenge flags per game. That way people aren't petitioning every tiny little slight and technicality in hopes the GM's rule in their favor, you have to use your petitions wisely.

Nope, that'd be bad, that leaves the door wide open to serious shenanigans.

Example:
Part 1: It quakes. There's a blatant train on raid force A by raid force B during a Dozekar engage. Raid force A wipes, and raid force B kills Dozekar. Fraps are taken, and it's a very clear raid violation. It gets petitioned by raid force A, because that's what you'd do. (at this point your only petition is used up)
Part 2: 30 minutes later, There's a blatant train on raid force A by raid force B (again), this time during an Aaryonar engage, raid force A wipes, and raid force B kills Aaryonar. Fraps are taken, and it's a very clear raid violation. (Raid force A is out of petitions)
Part 3: 2 hours later, There's a blatant train on raid force A by raid force B (again), this time during a Vulak engage, raid force A wipes, and raid force B kills Vulak. Fraps are taken, and it's a very clear raid violation. (Raid force A is out of petitions)

Or say it's 3 days after a quake, and all ST golems are in window, and same thing one raid force trains the other one on 3 separate encounters. Or say it's 3 weeks after a quake and the ST windows are now spread out over the course of 48 hours, and one raid force trains the other raid force for all 3 ST golems.

I hope you're getting the idea: You need to be able to petition extremely bad behavior, whenever it happens, and the punishment(s) should fit the crime(s). Allowing for only 1 petition to be submitted basically opens the door for future bad behavior. It'd become a game of "ok we're going to get 1 bad thing out of the way, so they petition it, and then we're home free, we can do whatever the hell we want until the hammer comes down on that 1st thing we did, and the rest will be un-reportable. So let's make sure to train them on all low to mid-level targets, hope they submit that petition, and if they didn't, well, free mobs! And if we're able to confirm they already submitted a petition, train them after that too, and more free mobs!"

In short: What needs to STOP is 1. the bad behavior (not the reporting of bad behavior), and 2. the reporting of non-issues, "grasping at straws" kinds of issues, issues where it's truly not the player's or raid force's fault that something happened, and "crying wolf" types of issues.

[Raev]

Yea exclusive lockouts were pretty much a time attack. You wanted to clear your lock ASAP by killing your target. It worked as it was competitive and yet kept guilds more spaced for less petititons. However exclusive locks had some issues that led to Sirken getting rid of it rather than reworking it.

The problem with FTE lockouts is that every guild was dependent on a small number of people on adderall staring at their screen for hundreds of hours per week.

Another idea that occurs to me would just be to have representatives hang out and roll, but rather than an even roll your guild would get some sort of bonus based on their last kill times. So let's say for example Tunare spawns, and clear times were Riot: 3 hours, F/AG 4 hours, Aegis 5 hours, then the roll might be 0-50 riot, 51-80 F/AG, 81-100 Aegis. I'm sure there would be a million hours of lawyerquesting going into exactly how that roll would work! But it would keep the rotation from blowing up as the smaller guilds would be slower and thus get fewer chances, and it would also maintain an element of competition.

[Nexii]

As long as it's not all day or something ridiculous where little guilds can hold a lock that they have no chance of killing. 3 hours is even a pretty long stall.

[kaizersoze]

Most of my last suggestion is liked by Riot it seems like, but the only real stick in the mud is the AG / F alliance. If the two want separate slots, if they cease to be allied anymore, it seems like that would bring this all to it's conclusion, in a single day.

If we increased the lockout to 45 minutes, added a stipulation that no pre-clearing to Vulak can be done and we start from a standard starting point, and left the rest of my proposed idea as it stood in the last message is that something all 3 of those guilds could agree to?

I want to hear suggestions from the AG / F people on that concern that Riot raised. Like I said, the issue I got most from fellow Riot members was if Freedom and AG want separate slots, they have to be separate entirely.

[HitsmeChanter]

Most of my last suggestion is liked by Riot it seems like, but the only real stick in the mud is the AG / F alliance. If the two want separate slots, if they cease to be allied anymore, it seems like that would bring this all to it's conclusion, in a single day.

If we increased the lockout to 45 minutes, added a stipulation that no pre-clearing to Vulak can be done and we start from a standard starting point, and left the rest of my proposed idea as it stood in the last message is that something all 3 of those guilds could agree to?

I want to hear suggestions from the AG / F people on that concern that Riot raised. Like I said, the issue I got most from fellow Riot members was if Freedom and AG want separate slots, they have to be separate entirely.

Could you make it more obvious that you're trying to cater to a zerg?

[Nexii]

The problem with FTE lockouts is that every guild was dependent on a small number of people on adderall staring at their screen for hundreds of hours per week.

Another idea that occurs to me would just be to have representatives hang out and roll, but rather than an even roll your guild would get some sort of bonus based on their last kill times. So let's say for example Tunare spawns, and clear times were Riot: 3 hours, F/AG 4 hours, Aegis 5 hours, then the roll might be 0-50 riot, 51-80 F/AG, 81-100 Aegis. I'm sure there would be a million hours of lawyerquesting going into exactly how that roll would work! But it would keep the rotation from blowing up as the smaller guilds would be slower and thus get fewer chances, and it would also maintain an element of competition.

That's how it is now with instant pulls though. In fact it takes a bigger team to FTE something and have an RTE team ready so you don't wipe. With exclusive locks it's just X racers which can be any number

But yea if you wanted to end racing, weighted rolls after the boss pops, based on how many people from each entity show up. 50 riot show up they get 1-49, etc etc. Probably would need a minimum though it'd be silly to hold a lock with a small turnout

[kaizersoze]

Could you make it more obvious that you're trying to cater to a zerg?

Ag can field as many as Riot does during prime time. The only one of those 3 who isn't a zerg is Freedom and they're still not that small by any means. The rules as they are now, and in the past, has been if you regularly team up you are one raid entity for the sake of petitions, concessions, etc. 45 minutes should be plenty of time for Freedom, AG, or Riot to clear through to a mob after they get the initial FTE lock imo. Freedom brags about having the most playmakers and best leadership, prove it. Stand on their own, take their own slot.

If you have an actually constructive comment on how to amend that proposal that a lot of Riot seems on board with if AG / F become separate entities entirely again, please do say something. If you don't have anything to say though, please let the adults work it out.

[Oldschoolplayer]

The Race FTE lockouts can probably vary for certain content but couldn't be nowhere near 1:5-2hrs. 45min- 1hr I imagine. Otherwise the big guilds lose their competitive advantage and will split.


For inner ToV the meta favors big numbers. It's just the way it is.

You can accomplish the targets on low numbers - sure .

Can you do crazy train aways or do a 6 guard Vulak kite with 40 people? Probably not

[HitsmeChanter]

Ag can field as many as Riot does during prime time. The only one of those 3 who isn't a zerg is Freedom and they're still not that small by any means. The rules as they are now, and in the past, has been if you regularly team up you are one raid entity for the sake of petitions, concessions, etc. 45 minutes should be plenty of time for Freedom, AG, or Riot to clear through to a mob after they get the initial FTE lock imo. Freedom brags about having the most playmakers and best leadership, prove it. Stand on their own, take their own slot.

If you have an actually constructive comment on how to amend that proposal that a lot of Riot seems on board with if AG / F become separate entities entirely again, please do say something. If you don't have anything to say though, please let the adults work it out.

I've been posting ideas all along, just read. None of my ideas favors "my guild" like yours clearly does. The difference is I'm trying to actually come up with a solution, as opposed to trying to get an edge over my competition.

[kaizersoze]

I've been posting ideas all along, just read. None of my ideas favors "my guild" like yours clearly does. The difference is I'm trying to actually come up with a solution, as opposed to trying to get an edge over my competition.

The literal only thing different about what you've said and what I've said is about how the races would be done. a 45 minute timer to engage after some trivial clearing and he separation of AG / F is literally the only difference. If all the guilds are actually clearing, it should be a rapid engage regardless. My suggestion just puts an end to leapfrogging right at the end, where yours just gives X amount of time racing from the zone in on foot.

The difference between what I've said and what you've said is relying on 1-2 people to do all the legwork for yellow text, where mine says the entire guild should contribute. Larger numbers would have the advantage, but wouldn't necessarily be insurmountable. Even our time difference isnt that much. You literally only dislike it because it would make AG / F stand on their own it feels like, which is why we are in this predicament.

[HitsmeChanter]

you've clearly read one of my ideas, but that's besides the point. The entire reason that freedom and AG teamed was so that they could be competitive with the Riot Zerg. For what a year now, the only option that players that wanted pixels had was to join the zerg. The Freedom / AG alliance has been chiseling away at that requirement, to allow more options for players.

Your suggestion is just merely relying on the numbers of the players that riot has been hoarding for a year because there was no other option. With an FTE race, there is skill involved and it shifts the focus away from just a pure numbers vantage to instead a who can better prepare to win prospect.

Again, this was just one of my suggestions... I had a list of ideas, including things like:

- a player run council to prejudge petitions for the GM staff (with GM oversight or a GM thumbs up or down to prevent corruption)
- extremely painful penalties for both rule violators and failed petitioners (1 week total raid bans, etc).

[Loke]

Have we ever tried no gm involvement? Like ffa raid zones..trains kill steals, everything goes, 500 ppl camped at raid spawn, no petitons allowed?
Go total mad max eq and see what happens, maximum toxicity till it corrects itself and everyone finally behaves? mwahahaha :p

This is what no-CSR VP was during Kunark, and imo it was the most fun the raid scene has ever been. The raid scene was actually fresh and fun because guilds constantly altered their strategies to get a leg up and their competition guessing. It would be a lot different in ToV though due to the increased mob hp and clicky nerf.

That said, they should 100% bring back no-CSR VP. Training Hosh & friends into your competition's raid and wiping 30+ of them was incredibly fun.

[Tune]

what is the major thrill blue-ing it up in 2020?

grow a pair, bring your guilds to red and fight for your pixels

less gms needed, problem solved

[Beldan4]

In one week you can have a lvl 60 on red (hard, but not impossible). NToV hasn't died since they rooted mobs (due to lack of bodies), Tunare (never killed), AoW (not killed since after the first year). Is there pvp? yes. Is there toxicity? yes. Is it worse than blue? Why don't you ask the 20+ blue people that have come over here to stay in the last month.

[Toomuch]

I don't think anyone really likes where we're at right now, I hope we can start there, and all agree on that. It feels like one of those overdone moments in film where there's like 2 gangs, a group of cops, and a mercenary group that all arrive at the same location at the same time, all after the same thing, and everyone has guns drawn, everyone's yelling at everyone else to put their guns down, and then the cliche moment happens where someone fires the first shot, mayhem ensues, and almost everyone dies. So basically that's where we were, and Menden shut it down. Good for him, let's try and fix this.

I kinda like Raev's idea, but it's a little complicated. Maybe that's what we need, or need to work towards. I kinda like what we've been doing in Plane of Fear with Golems, with some elements of competition, but still spreading the wealth around a little bit for the "little guy".

I also kinda like this gem from Raev's "League Promotion System (https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=329201)" post -

You must have misunderstood what goes on here. This is P99. More time spent staring at walls is better because that's how the game was meant to be played. Why politely rotate mobs 50/50 when you can instead poopsock them for hours and get 50/50?

For everyone's sakes, players and management included, I'm starting to think we need to TOTALLY flip the script right now. I'm thinking we need some kind of set timeframe as a trial period for fixing the server, maybe a trial of 3 months or so, where we rotate waaaay more things, maybe starting with just about everything, so we can simply play nice. Then, as agreed upon by guild leadership that WILL work together on this in the UN channel, we'll re-introduce elements of competition until the correct balance is struck.

My point/idea here is that I think we should try coming at this starting from the complete other side of the competition spectrum, where we begin with (almost?) everything rotated, and then implementing things like Raev's "indirect competition" as we go, and then eventually introducing more direct competition on mobs/zones, as agreed upon by leadership, IF we prove we can play nice. Maybe the updates/changes to approved competition go month by month, baby steps toward more competition.

And maybe, just maybe, if we can prove that we can play nice enough, we can request from Rogean that more quakes happen, or possibly even certain era-level content get re-added to the game. (More content to spread around would help ease the supply/demand issue).

And then if this "3 Month Play Nice" trial just totally fails, well then we can just reset back to square 1, where we're at right now.

Thoughts?

[Clazxiss]

Now that Green has been released, which offers a Norrath that purists love, the time for custom changes to Blue and Red is now! Rogean, Menden, and Galach please offer instances to the blue and red servers. End the reign of 1 guild dominance!

[kaizersoze]

you've clearly read one of my ideas, but that's besides the point. The entire reason that freedom and AG teamed was so that they could be competitive with the Riot Zerg. For what a year now, the only option that players that wanted pixels had was to join the zerg. The Freedom / AG alliance has been chiseling away at that requirement, to allow more options for players.

Your suggestion is just merely relying on the numbers of the players that riot has been hoarding for a year because there was no other option. With an FTE race, there is skill involved and it shifts the focus away from just a pure numbers vantage to instead a who can better prepare to win prospect.

Again, this was just one of my suggestions... I had a list of ideas, including things like:

- a player run council to prejudge petitions for the GM staff (with GM oversight or a GM thumbs up or down to prevent corruption)
- extremely painful penalties for both rule violators and failed petitioners (1 week total raid bans, etc).
You realise harsher penalties is also outlined in my suggestion, for both guilds and invididuals involved in said transgressions lol. I do agree petitions need to be less often and harsher though, I dont think concede 2 should be a thing. Though if we are going to increase how harsh they are, and limit how many are submitted, if there was a hard cap on one submission every week with all issues in it, it can portray patterns of behavior as a whole and the guilds responsible can be hit harder for both cry wolf and those who are guilty.

Another note with FTE races - if you think you -can- engage a dragon within some magical timeframe, you theoretically COULD footrace for it. But if you trained a guild clearing for it, you'd still be liable for said train. The only difference here is the amount of time set. What is FEASIBLE for a Freedom engage for example? an hour? hour and a half? How long would it take you to coth, do the minimal clearing necessary, assign kites etc, and engage a dragon?

AG had gotten plenty of dragons in ToV when I was a member in the last like 2 years. Sure, it wasn't all the dragons, but there were still Vulaks they got. They could kill Tunare on their own. They could do ring war, ST, etc. The point of making them separate for the sake of raid slots is what would stop Riot from just splintering into 3 guilds, taking 3 slots, and just teaming all the time for them? Nothing. They could theoretically triple dip. Then it would still be crying about Riot and friends having superior numbers and getting more loot than anyone else via rotation. Is that better?

[Naethyn]

P99 has a very lord of the rings feel to it in that over time everything gradually becomes less magical and the items of old become more valuable over time. Lets not change this.

[Hideousclaw]

unrooting will fix issue A but create issue B. Pathing was pretty decent back when they were unrooted, pathing now is hot garbage. If Lord Fleshlight moves slightly in the wrong direction people will micromanage it into oblivion and create more petitions. AG/Riot/Freedom will nitpick all of those nuances to hell. Unrooting would be fun, I love and miss Unrooted ToV, but its not the solution to end all solutions, and if you've convinced yourself of that then I want to sell you some bargain bin beach-front property.

[Stroboo]

I think it is clear that the GMs are requesting that the Raid entities change their perspective to look at the opposition as an equal who is trying to follow the rules and not as an enemy that needs to be removed, but that is just my opinion. how to convey this to your opposition in a sincere way and put it into application is more difficult i would think, but i see this as the requested avenue

my solution would be pretty simple:
What if you were not allowed to kill the following mobs twice in a row

Vulak, Doze, KT & Dain.

These are the main prizes anyway and fuel much of the toxicity imo, and this would not be a rotation, but more of a restriction and easy to track....

Best solution i can think of overall would be the change how ToV works from a programming level - make all of NTOV repop when Vulak spawns similair to CT in Fear except make is so none of the other dragons spawn before vulak, so ALL of ToV spawns when Vulak spwans. Then there would be mobs for everyone every week.

[Raev]

I kinda like Raev's idea, but it's a little complicated.

The general feedback was that my system was too complicated. I understand that we all have limited brain power and don't like reading other people's nonsense, but have you compared my proposal with the current raid rules (https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=189856)? Not to mention there are specific raid rules for another handful of zones, and the pages and pages of text people write lawyerquesting them?

Anyway, the key point of that system is "measure the amount of time it takes a guild to kill their target and allocate pixels accordingly". There are plenty of ways to do it if you don't like my particular proposal. But this is the only proposal I have seen that:

Virtually eliminates lawyerquest & all of the negative emotion involved. It's easy for the staff to check when NPCs actually died and verify times if necessary.
Does not end up in a 57 guild rotation for Venril Sathir.
Keeps some level of competitive pressure. Can you imagine Detoxx ranting in discord because the F/AG pull team brought in two Plane of Growth minis at once and cost them 10 minutes on their Tunare clear time?

[getsome]

my solution would be pretty simple:
What if you were not allowed to kill the following mobs twice in a row

Vulak, Doze, KT & Dain.

This type of lockout is a defacto rotation between the two most dominant entities.

[7thGate]

I like Raev's idea. How fast you kill stuff being the differentiating factor in what you get is a much healthier competition than head to head on the same mobs and fits a PvE server better anyway.

I think you could get something simpler by just agreeing to simulate a quake each week by not killing anything until there's a full repop of the 7 day mobs, but really, anything that pushes competition in a faster clears = more kills direction is probably a good idea.

[Teddie1056]

I got a really crazy idea.

If you petition a raid, your guild has to concede the mob first. If the petition is successful, the punishment for the other guild is a month long ban for that mob.

[Toomuch]

@Raev, I like the idea. I personally would go with it, or at least be on board for a trial period of a few months. Maybe I should have said "I guess I can see how people would say it's a little complicated." The thing is, I most certainly agree that the current raid rules, and how they differ and seem to contradict themselves from zone to zone or instance to instance, is indeed more complicated, in my opinion.

I'm with you on this bud, don't worry.

Mostly I'm thinking that, for the sake of the server, we actually need to start even FURTHER towards the "everybody love everybody! Come on!!" side of the spectrum, and start with straight up rotations, basically across the board. Then once we've played nice for a month, we can introduce some of the elements of indirect competition. Once that is all sorted out for a month or so, and if we're all still playing nice, maybe we can introduce some direct competition.

[enjchanter]

I think it is clear that the GMs are requesting that the Raid entities change their perspective to look at the opposition as an equal who is trying to follow the rules and not as an enemy that needs to be removed, but that is just my opinion. how to convey this to your opposition in a sincere way and put it into application is more difficult i would think, but i see this as the requested avenue

my solution would be pretty simple:
What if you were not allowed to kill the following mobs twice in a row

Vulak, Doze, KT & Dain.

These are the main prizes anyway and fuel much of the toxicity imo, and this would not be a rotation, but more of a restriction and easy to track....

Best solution i can think of overall would be the change how ToV works from a programming level - make all of NTOV repop when Vulak spawns similair to CT in Fear except make is so none of the other dragons spawn before vulak, so ALL of ToV spawns when Vulak spwans. Then there would be mobs for everyone every week.

Vulak being up while any blocker is up is like 65% of the reason no system works

[Zipity]

FTE Lockout Plan:
ToV - 3hr lockout on a mob or until death. timer starts at Yellow Text.
* If you fail to kill in three hours your lockout extends an additional 2Hours regardless if the mob dies sooner. You do not have to drop the mob if you are mid kill on the raid mob.
* If a guild is engaged on Dagarn, Feshlak,Kreizenn and/or Vyemm/KoI/Lady M, you must run the opposite way around the inner circle as to not train their engage, doing so will result in a one week suspension on all 3 mobs on the respective side.
* If a Lord or Lady spawns while a Vulak FTE is out your lockout ends immediately and there will be a 5minute pause so you can evacuate and then a /random race will be done for the start of the new dragon. -upon death of this dragon a NEW race for Vulak will start 5minutes from that death via random (/grabs popcorn gotta keep Vulak Spicy).
* You may NOT cross the race line until your current mob is dead so no trying to time a race at 2% if something new spawns mid fight.
*No Coth FTEs
*Unlimited Racers
*No shenanigans(crown of rile, rez/coth FTEs/dueling for knock back procs/shadow step etc)
Race for Zlandi is from no further than the entrance portal pillars.
Race for Klandi is from the corner of SG zoneline.
Keep KD(CS Dragon) as is with new lockout timers.
Keep Dain Race as is with new lockout timers.
Keep Kael as is with new lockout timers.
Rotate Tunare/RW/Yelinak
Keep Kunark/Classic Mobs as is.

On quakes you may not accidental FTE inner ring! No skipping some dragons!(exception with Trips/Twins for obvious reasons) this can play out like a chess match depending on number of guilds competing.

This will alleviate pretty much all petitions or greatly reduce, allows the bigger guilds advantage through kill speed and more racers, keeps game competitive, and allows for smaller guilds to race for mobs if they do choose. The additional lockout for failures or slow speeds also will prevent numbnuts from FTEing at 6am and trying to wait til 8am to kill a mob when his guild doesn’t have a force.

This sums up my idea for a competitive,fun,fair Norrath. Could make it a tentative 3 month agreement that will be re-addressed January 1.

[Nexii]

FTE Lockout Plan:
ToV - 3hr lockout on a mob or until death. timer starts at Yellow Text.
* If you fail to kill in three hours your lockout extends an additional 2Hours regardless if the mob dies sooner. You do not have to drop the mob if you are mid kill on the raid mob.
* If a guild is engaged on Dagarn, Feshlak,Kreizenn and/or Vyemm/KoI/Lady M, you must run the opposite way around the inner circle as to not train their engage, doing so will result in a one week suspension on all 3 mobs on the respective side.
* If a Lord or Lady spawns while a Vulak FTE is out your lockout ends immediately and there will be a 5minute pause so you can evacuate and then a /random race will be done for the start of the new dragon. -upon death of this dragon a NEW race for Vulak will start 5minutes from that death via random (/grabs popcorn gotta keep Vulak Spicy).
* You may NOT cross the race line until your current mob is dead so no trying to time a race at 2% if something new spawns mid fight.
*No Coth FTEs
*Unlimited Racers
*No shenanigans(crown of rile, rez/coth FTEs/dueling for knock back procs/shadow step etc)
Race for Zlandi is from no further than the entrance portal pillars.
Race for Klandi is from the corner of SG zoneline.
Keep KD(CS Dragon) as is with new lockout timers.
Keep Dain Race as is with new lockout timers.
Keep Kael as is with new lockout timers.
Rotate Tunare/RW/Yelinak
Keep Kunark/Classic Mobs as is.

On quakes you may not accidental FTE inner ring! No skipping some dragons!(exception with Trips/Twins for obvious reasons) this can play out like a chess match depending on number of guilds competing.

This will alleviate pretty much all petitions or greatly reduce, allows the bigger guilds advantage through kill speed and more racers, keeps game competitive, and allows for smaller guilds to race for mobs if they do choose. The additional lockout for failures or slow speeds also will prevent numbnuts from FTEing at 6am and trying to wait til 8am to kill a mob when his guild doesn’t have a force.

This sums up my idea for a competitive,fun,fair Norrath. Could make it a tentative 3 month agreement that will be re-addressed January 1.

That's more or less 2017 raiding except Yelinak was a COTH race, and it was 1 hour

[Arvan]

I have a good idea hear me out its gonna be crazy:

Be excellent to each other

[Dreenk317]

Like if a new FTE goes out on Vulak Aerr, mid fight .... the guild killing him, should be so afraid of the punishment and imedietly dropping it.

Why? With the current meta, kiting his guards, and mem blurring any that go back to the raid. Sometimes the chatners single target memblur is refreshing, so they use the AoE, and its possible to get a memblur on vulak, wihich would generate a new fte, but nowhere in the rules does it say you cant memblur your own mob..... So why should this be a punishable thing?

[Daetien]

While I'm not in any of the big guilds involved in this issue, I'd like to point out that Rallos Zek actually had a rotation back in the day. We could kill each other, train each other, do all kinds of other BS, but eventually the leading guilds decided to rotate the mobs.

I understand why the Riot / Fr/AG are against rotations and guaranteed mobs/long lockout windows. That said, some of us in smaller guilds could actually do some of these mobs if we ever had time to assemble during peak hours for us.

From what I understand/remember on Rallos we had 24 hours to kill the mob and if we didn't get it down, it passed on to the next guild on the list. There were no 24 hour a day batphones. I logged in at night and we raided 6 nights a week from about 8pm EST to midnight. (You didn't have to make all of those raids.) The mobs were up and waiting for us. We didn't sit around poopsocking stuff. It was FUN. We acted like adults - mostly because for a few years there was chaos and lots of crazy shenanigans. The people on the server got sick of it. The top guilds enforced the rotation. (There were guilds that tried to gank mobs and break up the rotation, but it was a PVP server.. we hunted them down and made life miserable for them...) In the end, if a server full of assholes like Rallos could calm down and work together to create some sanity, this server can. We are all 20 years older, and should be more mature.. Maybe that isn't the case and some people just have a hard on for being assholes though..

I'd never claim that my guild (DB) can do NTOV, Tunare, etc... but we could do Vindi. We just have a tough time getting enough people of the right classes on at a moments notice which means that the current system is really tough for us. Yes... we could join other guilds, but I like the people in my guild. I don't want to leave them when we are successful in our own way, and could be more successful if the deck wasn't stacked against us with the way the server is set up.

I'd be fine with setting up different tiers of raid mobs and having a mob that you need to kill to prove that you can do mobs of that tier. While it isn't in Riot or FR/ AG's interest to give guilds like DB a chance and instead starve us from mobs until we give up and join Riot / FR/AG, it would be in the best interest of the server's health.

[bodenn]

guild wars

[ScottBerta]

Instance zones and allow each guild to do every target once per week. Guilds can decide when they do each raid target. Can allow more guilds to get decent items, see content and have fun. Also give more RL time to all Raiders. No need to poop sock, etc..

[kanis999]

Everyone not in the 3 guilds suspended is under a glass ceiling imposed by the big 3 (especially one of them, you know who you are). You've eliminated most of the competition through monopoly and zerging. There's still a massive, massive number of players out there who aren't in those 3 guilds, have their pre-raid gear list complete, play 40 hours a week, and can hardly get any gear beyond HoT pieces without joining the elitists (if you don't think 40 hours/week is enough to 'deserve' good loot then you are the definition of an elitist, as you are clearly in a 'privileged' enough position to either not have a family, ignore your family, or not have a job).

Instances or server split (half the population gets their characters ported to a Blue clone) seem like the best options to me, but that just requires more work for the devs, which I don't really want to see either. Perhaps you can recruit an EZ server dev, bc they have a solid instance system.

Fundamentally, one person hit the nail on the head when they suggested that the number of level 60 'mouths to feed' are excessively high. We may just need less people on the server overall.

[chaos1990]

Instance zones and allow each guild to do every target once per week. Guilds can decide when they do each raid target. Can allow more guilds to get decent items, see content and have fun. Also give more RL time to all Raiders. No need to poop sock, etc..

Guilds are internally tagged with a ###

with a bit of work couldn't guild leaders or officers of guild403 do /instance and get a zone403 for 403 guild that exists for a week?

The only loss from instancing I see is the toxicity. Anyone arguing for 'muh classic' is just trying to mediate as much as possible the natural occurrence of social friction while pretending that's not what they're doing.

[chaos1990]

by the way the amount of people suggesting instancing is the same feeling I got when legalization was happening

good vibes

[Man0warr]

I doubt instancing is on the table. You should probably just ignore it as a solution.

[Fammaden]

You should ignore anything that requires a patch or changing game code. The only thing really on the table is new player agreements with the GM's as oversight. No one indicated that Rog/Nil were interested in being involved in solving shit for us.

[White_knight]

psuedo instancing is the actual answer tho

Yup. It's 2020, we are all 35ish now. Let's do this. Blue only.

Also imagine how little CSR support is needed with this solution.

[Zipity]

Well it seems we are down to:
1)Full rotations
2)Instancing(Devs may have said not gonna ever happen)
3)FTE lockouts

I think leaders need to get together with GMs see which of these solutions they would actually approve, if it’s only one we have our answer if it’s two or three let’s try each out for a month then have vote on which to keep or let GMs decide which they prefer and let’s move on with the Dragon killings. At this point we are beating a dead horse and our stubbornness to try these new things is preventing us from raiding on the game we all love.

[Fammaden]

You can do partial rotations too, its not impossible. Its even been done before, we've rotated Tunare, RW, Sleepers, there was even a brief Vulak rotation during the Jorl stand off days earlier this year. Rotating the most petition happy encounters doesn't mean you have to rotate every single thing all the way down to Yael and Kozz.

So get the fuck out with this "well its full rotations or instances or lockouts, no other choices I guess!" bullshit. We get it, Freedom wants FTE lockouts. We'll see if AG and Riot let you have them or not.

[Allishia]

I pray this gets fixed soon, I have to tank dragons to win eq /nod

[Endonde]

Well it seems we are down to:
1)Full rotations
2)Instancing(Devs may have said not gonna ever happen)
3)FTE lockouts

I think leaders need to get together with GMs see which of these solutions they would actually approve, if it’s only one we have our answer if it’s two or three let’s try each out for a month then have vote on which to keep or let GMs decide which they prefer and let’s move on with the Dragon killings. At this point we are beating a dead horse and our stubbornness to try these new things is preventing us from raiding on the game we all love.

The entire point of this is we bug staff too much, so we have to do it on our own.

And lockouts have been done before and you have to ask if that was the answer why did we get rid of them?

Rotating is the best answer for now.

[Dreenk317]

Really, the only thing that actually needs to happen. Is for everyone to stop being petty. Stop blaming everyone else. Follow the actual spirit of the rules. And just accept that you aren't going to get everything you want, all of the time. No petitioning them for extra racers because they had someone a foot past the line that didn't even race, etc. Act like adults, or at least mature teenagers.

[jolanar]

My 2 cents: just ban the problem players permanently and call it a day.

[Fammaden]

How about this one, what's everyone think?

[Ripqozko]

Let’s just give f/ag/riot couple months off then figure it out

[Dreenk317]

How about this one, what's everyone think?

Really, because you can kill vindi you can claim a doze slot? Seems like a very low barrier of entry. How about, kill vindi to qualify for ring war, kill ring war to qualify for tunare.

Something tiered, having vindi as the sole barrier to entry, is just way to low of a bar.

[Fammaden]

Not my proposal but since we can't just go look at blue UN....

[Endonde]

Really, because you can kill vindi you can claim a doze slot? Seems like a very low barrier of entry. How about, kill vindi to qualify for ring war, kill ring war to qualify for tunare.

Something tiered, having vindi as the sole barrier to entry, is just way to low of a bar.

If you cant kill the target you pick you only hurt yourself by wasting a pick.

[Grapeape]

If you cant kill the target you pick you only hurt yourself by wasting a pick.

no, you also hurt everyone else that you're blocking from killing that target by picking it.

[Ripqozko]

How about no resolution and casuals farm free for several months with less toxicity.

[fritzad1]

Really, the only thing that actually needs to happen. Is for everyone to stop being petty. Stop blaming everyone else. Follow the actual spirit of the rules. And just accept that you aren't going to get everything you want, all of the time. No petitioning them for extra racers because they had someone a foot past the line that didn't even race, etc. Act like adults, or at least mature teenagers.

Lol. I see your new here.

[bradsamma]

Really, because you can kill vindi you can claim a doze slot? Seems like a very low barrier of entry. How about, kill vindi to qualify for ring war, kill ring war to qualify for tunare.

Something tiered, having vindi as the sole barrier to entry, is just way to low of a bar.

I too love the idea of a tiered system. I think it would be fair for everyone from DB to riot.

[Praxcthius]

Let the casuals farm free. You mean the guilds who put in almost no effort into trying to upgrade their own toons or help their own guildmates get better slot items? HAHAHAHAHAHA. The only time casuals get any significant amount of loot from anything above epics that don't require planes mobs is when the guilds that go out each week and compete get banned for 1. being douchebags, 2. being douchebags 3. Getting butthurt cuz the new meta isn't what they are good at. and also being douchebags.

Then the casuals step in. "omgersh fred we're in tov and not in HOT!!!" wipe, wipe "omgersh what's wrong how come we're not getting the free pixels??" "oh lets team up with that other guild of casuals" "yay we won" "wait how come I didn't get an item??" oh right that's cuz you either have the worst dkp system in the world and/or loot council where the officers assign themselves or buddies with that once a year loot.

Now my proposal for the people who want to compete let's do this. 1. Don't cry everytime you lose fte for a mob. 2. Don't write 20 page petitions (This isn't the law offices of <insert any random tv lawyer ad here> 3. Announce when yer pulling one of the non rooted dragons completely in a spot that's not normal in this meta to kill it in. ie Jorlleag being pulled to trips and only having something said in say. ooc that shit thanks. 4. Since there is code for root/unroot on dragons how bout each quake there be a random generator for dragons in all tov (including doze/wtov) where you just don't know if you have to run up raid or can drag it to a more amenable kill spot.

5. rotate tunare random to see which guild starts rotation. (kill upon spawn within an 18 hour window). cuz the stupidity of "it's a camp we were here first" is just asinine in a plane. 6. vp goes back to no gm support chaos free for all. so pick your toons that are going to get stuck. 7. once a year respawn warders so we can have new rounds of "sorry you don't have warder loot" responses on the forums. that doesn't get old

8. go with number 6 but make it for all raid targets...... chaos reigns supreme.
9. have gms actually watch raids instead of taking the time to answer petitions about bobby and sally having an issue with x mob in no one cares zone and the guy who said they were afk but was at the camp. I don't think they'd have to watch every single engage but i'd suggest when it comes to the big clusters kt/dain/ct/innerring tov maybe a bit of gm invis and observation might go a long way for them to see who the actual troublemakers/crywolfers are.
10. erase all the rules of the server and see #8.

[Ripqozko]

Let the casuals farm free. You mean the guilds who put in almost no effort into trying to upgrade their own toons or help their own guildmates get better slot items? HAHAHAHAHAHA. The only time casuals get any significant amount of loot from anything above epics that don't require planes mobs is when the guilds that go out each week and compete get banned for 1. being douchebags, 2. being douchebags 3. Getting butthurt cuz the new meta isn't what they are good at. and also being douchebags.

Then the casuals step in. "omgersh fred we're in tov and not in HOT!!!" wipe, wipe "omgersh what's wrong how come we're not getting the free pixels??" "oh lets team up with that other guild of casuals" "yay we won" "wait how come I didn't get an item??" oh right that's cuz you either have the worst dkp system in the world and/or loot council where the officers assign themselves or buddies with that once a year loot.

Now my proposal for the people who want to compete let's do this. 1. Don't cry everytime you lose fte for a mob. 2. Don't write 20 page petitions (This isn't the law offices of <insert any random tv lawyer ad here> 3. Announce when yer pulling one of the non rooted dragons completely in a spot that's not normal in this meta to kill it in. ie Jorlleag being pulled to trips and only having something said in say. ooc that shit thanks. 4. Since there is code for root/unroot on dragons how bout each quake there be a random generator for dragons in all tov (including doze/wtov) where you just don't know if you have to run up raid or can drag it to a more amenable kill spot.

5. rotate tunare random to see which guild starts rotation. (kill upon spawn within an 18 hour window). cuz the stupidity of "it's a camp we were here first" is just asinine in a plane. 6. vp goes back to no gm support chaos free for all. so pick your toons that are going to get stuck. 7. once a year respawn warders so we can have new rounds of "sorry you don't have warder loot" responses on the forums. that doesn't get old

8. go with number 6 but make it for all raid targets...... chaos reigns supreme.
9. have gms actually watch raids instead of taking the time to answer petitions about bobby and sally having an issue with x mob in no one cares zone and the guy who said they were afk but was at the camp. I don't think they'd have to watch every single engage but i'd suggest when it comes to the big clusters kt/dain/ct/innerring tov maybe a bit of gm invis and observation might go a long way for them to see who the actual troublemakers/crywolfers are.
10. erase all the rules of the server and see #8.

Toxic , that’s why ya banned

[Endonde]

Let the casuals farm free. You mean the guilds who put in almost no effort into trying to upgrade their own toons or help their own guildmates get better slot items? HAHAHAHAHAHA.


The classic "I deserve the pixels more because I have no social life, poor hygiene, and no job." argument, an oldy but a goody.

Also sorry you don't have warder loot.

[Arvan]

Let the casuals farm free. You mean the guilds who put in almost no effort into trying to upgrade their own toons or help their own guildmates get better slot items? HAHAHAHAHAHA. The only time casuals get any significant amount of loot from anything above epics that don't require planes mobs is when the guilds that go out each week and compete get banned for 1. being douchebags, 2. being douchebags 3. Getting butthurt cuz the new meta isn't what they are good at. and also being douchebags.

Then the casuals step in. "omgersh fred we're in tov and not in HOT!!!" wipe, wipe "omgersh what's wrong how come we're not getting the free pixels??" "oh lets team up with that other guild of casuals" "yay we won" "wait how come I didn't get an item??" oh right that's cuz you either have the worst dkp system in the world and/or loot council where the officers assign themselves or buddies with that once a year loot.

Now my proposal for the people who want to compete let's do this. 1. Don't cry everytime you lose fte for a mob. 2. Don't write 20 page petitions (This isn't the law offices of <insert any random tv lawyer ad here> 3. Announce when yer pulling one of the non rooted dragons completely in a spot that's not normal in this meta to kill it in. ie Jorlleag being pulled to trips and only having something said in say. ooc that shit thanks. 4. Since there is code for root/unroot on dragons how bout each quake there be a random generator for dragons in all tov (including doze/wtov) where you just don't know if you have to run up raid or can drag it to a more amenable kill spot.

5. rotate tunare random to see which guild starts rotation. (kill upon spawn within an 18 hour window). cuz the stupidity of "it's a camp we were here first" is just asinine in a plane. 6. vp goes back to no gm support chaos free for all. so pick your toons that are going to get stuck. 7. once a year respawn warders so we can have new rounds of "sorry you don't have warder loot" responses on the forums. that doesn't get old

8. go with number 6 but make it for all raid targets...... chaos reigns supreme.
9. have gms actually watch raids instead of taking the time to answer petitions about bobby and sally having an issue with x mob in no one cares zone and the guy who said they were afk but was at the camp. I don't think they'd have to watch every single engage but i'd suggest when it comes to the big clusters kt/dain/ct/innerring tov maybe a bit of gm invis and observation might go a long way for them to see who the actual troublemakers/crywolfers are.
10. erase all the rules of the server and see #8.

velious was cleared in kunark gear

next!

[kanis999]

The classic "I deserve the pixels more because I have no social life, poor hygiene, and no job." argument, an oldy but a goody.

Also sorry you don't have warder loot.


Same reaction. That guy clearly enjoys shitting on 'casuals'. These 'casual' guilds are still playing the game a shitload of hours per week by the standards any non degenerate normal person with a job and family.

If you're going to propose solutions, you need to have solutions for 'casuals' too, because a lot of them are actually 'intermediates' living on a monopolized server wherein the only path to success is to become friends with virtual tyrants.

P.S. there is such thing of looking at gear as a means of making you more competitive against the NPCs rather than other players. I want good gear bc that means I can solo stuff better and help on raids more. Helping. Imagine if that word existed.

[Raev]

I have no warder loot

But seriously, this is the whole point of my proposal. I get that rotations are boring. But surely there is a way to compete for NPCs that doesn't involve poopsocking, tracking, 3 AM batphones, and other neckbeardery?

The simple solution is to have a rotation where the guilds that clear fastest get more and better slots. Voila.

No more brain rotting 'u aed my raid force' 'no ur puller eye trained us' because two guilds will not be in the same zone competing for the same NPC. The staff can finally do actual staff things like helping tools who turn in a 10th ring to Dain without ally faction (thanks Sirken)
The rotation doesn't balloon to 500 guilds of 10 alts each because they won't clear the content quickly enough.
Competence (at actual EQ type things, not mario kart or taking adderall to watch spawn points for 16 hours) actually matters. Casuals get some but not most pixels as guilds like BDA are mostly about drinking and talking to each other.


I really see no draw backs to this.

[gamarun]

The rotation doesn't balloon to 500 guilds of 10 alts each because they won't clear the content quickly enough.
I really see no draw backs to this.



This feels like a situation that will turn into this...

Vulak spawns at 3 AM. Riot could kill it by 3:30. Other guilds say 10 AM. Therefore Riot can kill 14x faster than the other guilds and deserves more loot.

If that isnt the scenario then i fear it would be this:

the bigger your zerg the more merbs u get. Essentially throws out the window those that try to small man content with competency and preparedness... That seems like a cater to riot approach.

[Ghost of Starman]

The more I think about it the more I think instancing is honestly the only real solution, no matter what sort of rules are put in place the 10-20% of toxic players will find ways to exploit them and break the spirit of the rules. It's a shame since you'd think a playerbase this old would be able to work together, but 10+ years of experience has shown that pixels mean more than people to a significant number of players.

[pogs4ever]

instancing or rotations

[pogs4ever]

also, root VP, Dain, KT

[Solist]

1hr Lockouts, but you don't race until TWO mobs are up in zone. So loser(s) get a chance at a mob. And you only start racing like you do now with statue/golems, on a random roll to begin race.

Geographically more friendly.
Smaller guild friendly.
Halves tracking and mobilising amounts (as only mobilise for every 2nd mob)
Lockouts let smaller mobs get organised.


Example:
Lady M spawns. You cant do anything. 3 hours later Lady N spawns.
After 10mins, start a /random to start race. FTE on whatever of the two mobs wins the mob, and the 2nd mob is now up for grabs for fte/lockout too.


Could lead to some hilarious psychouts to force lockouts on other guilds etc

[Raev]

1hr Lockouts ... racing

Why is there any need for Mario kart? It's not exactly classic.

[apathe]

Harry Potter trivia for each mob hosted by the GMs.

Upon spawn, GMs will ask a Harry Potter trivia question -- first guild to provide the correct answer gets a one hour lockout for that dragon.

[Fammaden]

1hr Lockouts, but you don't race until TWO mobs are up in zone. So loser(s) get a chance at a mob. And you only start racing like you do now with statue/golems, on a random roll to begin race.

Geographically more friendly.
Smaller guild friendly.
Halves tracking and mobilising amounts (as only mobilise for every 2nd mob)
Lockouts let smaller mobs get organised.


Example:
Lady M spawns. You cant do anything. 3 hours later Lady N spawns.
After 10mins, start a /random to start race. FTE on whatever of the two mobs wins the mob, and the 2nd mob is now up for grabs for fte/lockout too.


Could lead to some hilarious psychouts to force lockouts on other guilds etc

I kinda dig this one, not that I think its remotely close to happening.

Why is there any need for Mario kart? It's not exactly classic.

Nothing about raiding here is classic. No Velious era server had this many 60's, this many epics, this much VP loot, this much Chardok 2.0 loot, to say nothing of all the Velious loot itself. Many servers didn't kill AoW until the last day before Luclin yet here we are time locked and trying to come up with solutions to help fix a raid environment that was already very flawed back then and is utterly broken by the nature of the server now.

[Solist]

Why is there any need for Mario kart? It's not exactly classic.

Bro...please. You should be the last person to ever parrot about classic. Nothing is classic about this server and you exploited it's failure to have classic mechanics, and custom mechanics to enforce classic gameplay throughout the entire time you played here.

It's not about classic, its about fair, equitable, aggregate highest concessions tolerable by all entities. Balancing those combined with the geographical requirements, and taking a healthy dose of personal rivalry away from the process. You need simple solutions, not walls of text and subsections.

What should be happening right now is guilds having meetings, discussing what their members actually want. Not strong arming the UN with hastily put together piles of dogshit.

We're two days into suspension and chill. The last set of major class based agreements took 4 weeks, the first in force agreements took a month or two. The playerbase is significantly more developed than before, and further spread around the globe.

There is ZERO chance anything currently on the table addresses the group requirements of each guild, if anything I bet anything leaderships are spouting is at odds with what guild members want.

That said; Mario kart worked bloody well as it rewarded almost every type of player that raids, mix mario kart up a bit with some delays to start, concessional prizes, and it's darn near a perfect solution. The primary shortcomings of mariokart have been addressed in mechanics with fixed frame rates now. It worked across huge differences in guild size, capability, and especially timezones.

[Endonde]

Bro...please. You should be the last person to ever parrot about classic. Nothing is classic about this server and you exploited it's failure to have classic mechanics, and custom mechanics to enforce classic gameplay throughout the entire time you played here.

It's not about classic, its about fair, equitable, aggregate highest concessions tolerable by all entities. Balancing those combined with the geographical requirements, and taking a healthy dose of personal rivalry away from the process. You need simple solutions, not walls of text and subsections.

What should be happening right now is guilds having meetings, discussing what their members actually want. Not strong arming the UN with hastily put together piles of dogshit.

We're two days into suspension and chill. The last set of major class based agreements took 4 weeks, the first in force agreements took a month or two. The playerbase is significantly more developed than before, and further spread around the globe.

There is ZERO chance anything currently on the table addresses the group requirements of each guild, if anything I bet anything leaderships are spouting is at odds with what guild members want.

That said; Mario kart worked bloody well as it rewarded almost every type of player that raids, mix mario kart up a bit with some delays to start, concessional prizes, and it's darn near a perfect solution. The primary shortcomings of mariokart have been addressed in mechanics with fixed frame rates now. It worked across huge differences in guild size, capability, and especially timezones.

Did you even play during Mario Kart Motec?

It did not work across huge differences in guild size A/A got the vast majority of targets, the smaller guilds did get some stuff but just because A/A would get each other suspended often enough that the casual guilds could work out rotations.

The one time a guild not named A/A managed to get a Vulak FTE during lockout meta, A/A trained them during their engage and cost them the mob.

[SantagarBrax]

Rotations = Not classic and probably against Rogean / Nilbog's wishes. We've done this before and it elicits more bad behavior. (figuring out how to cheat to shave miliseconds)
It turns this server into another non-competitive server just like all the rest and loses its appeal.

Unroot Mobs = Back to the era of FTE / train to zone in. Log in to see if your guild received FTE, if not log out. If you received FTE, kill, log out. How dull and boring that era was and back to complaints about never killing flurries. This lessens interaction between people and anything that decreases interaction is bad. (port stones, bazaar, instancing, etc.)

Petitionquest is an effect of a perceived violation of the PNP and Raid rules, therefore it's not the root of the problem. The bad and progressively bad behavior without significant repercussions to deter such behavior is the actual root of the problem. Increase the severity of infractions and the vast majority of this goes away.

Lack of enforcement by GM's has only encouraged bad behavior and allowed it to prosper. In my opinion, GM's should automate this process as much as possible and only have to deal with clarifications of the rules if requested. A guild shouldn't thrive on "frapse or it didn't happen", you're an adult and know if you did right or wrong 90% of the time.

Simply put, GM's need to have a conference with Rogean and Nilbog and figure out which direction THEY wish to go in. Someone has already mentioned that this Classic experience was not designed to handle this amount of traffic. I think everyone here knows that the GM's are not equipped with complete autonomy to make the changes as they see fit, and until they receive guidance from Rog/Nilb, their hands are tied and limited as to what they can actually implement.

We need to hear from Rogean and/or Nilbog, then we can choose a path forward.

Thanks

[slayer69]

Rotation and restricting - could always say newly formed guilds have to wait 90 days before joining any rotation... or some other restricting qualifier... have at least 30 members, etc.

Bag limits - assign values to each raid mob. Each guild can only get x # of points per spawn cycle or time period...

FTE lockouts - still have to race and people cheat and petition... not a great solution unless you eliminate the race for FTE.

Rotate the first 2 or 3 natural spawns after a server reset / quake. Then, everything is an FTE race on the 4th spawn cycle... will still have issues and petitions I expect.

Eliminate the Player versus Player mentality and make it PvE focused again...

[SantagarBrax]

(figuring out how to cheat to shave miliseconds)

I conflated FTE Lockout with Rotations. Still.

[Bardp1999]

Open server raids for every single raid target for any class 50+. If you are at the mob when it dies you can roll on any and all loot that drops that is applicable to your class.

[YendorLootmonkey]

It turns this server into another non-competitive server just like all the rest and loses its appeal.


This is already a non-competitive server. The competitive server is over on Red. Enough with "but we want competition". That is absolutely false.

For over ten years this server has had to endure sweaty try-hards dictating to the rest of the server how the raid scene has to work. Because they want "competition". Yet any time actual competition has ever arisen through an alliance, a merger, etc. those efforts have been met with trolling on the forums, petitionquest, subterfuge, and whatever else the "metagame" that plays out on forums and in game entails.

The real competition is over on Red. Go for it. You want a raid target? Mobilize for it. Fight another guild for it. Train the hell out of everyone else. Steal the kill with a DPS group. Establish a defensive perimeter against PVP. Create tons of alts and COTH bots and ranger Trueshot strike squads. Batphone away. No more raid petitions ever, GMs! Work it all out in PVP. True, unadulterated competition. To the victors go the spoils! Lord all those shiny pixels in the faces of the defeated. Losers lick their wounds and try again next cycle. Make a secret alliance. Betray your allies in the final moments. More drama and competition than you could ever want!

See, their mouths should be slathering with drool over this. Right?

No, they don't want "competition". They want "competition" on their terms. Not actual competition. They need casuals to be jealous of their gear. They need petitionquest to lawyer around loopholes when they lose a target. And so the raid scene on Blue has stayed toxic and controlled by a minority for over TEN YEARS, so a handful of players can receive their validation and stroke their egos at the expense of the other 80% of the community.

Move the guilds who want real competition (if any) to Red. Let guilds who can work together in a rotation stay. No more raid petitions. No need for them. It's almost a no-brainer, really.

So why not? What's the real reason?

[SantagarBrax]

This is already a non-competitive server. The competitive server is over on Red. Enough with "but we want competition". That is absolutely false.

You haven't been raiding on Blue recently by this statement, or perhaps ever?

Believe it or not, while the past year of no competition at the raid scene or little competition, no offense intended towards anyone, has had it's benefits with more loot dropped and cheaper prices on loot, a majority of the raiders welcome competition.

What we didn't expect was an all out escalation in tactics against the PNP policy and against established raid precedents with little to no enforcement.

Outside of these tactics and the Vulak stalemates, things have been enjoyable and I think the majority of raiders would agree.

[Endonde]

No, they don't want "competition". They want "competition" on their terms. Not actual competition. They need casuals to be jealous of their gear. They need petitionquest to lawyer around loopholes when they lose a target. And so the raid scene on Blue has stayed toxic and controlled by a minority for over TEN YEARS, so a handful of players can receive their validation and stroke their egos at the expense of the other 80% of the community.

Pretty much exactly that, the majority of people who say they want competition don't even really want it, they just want to brag about denying others in RnF. The minority of players who want to continue that toxic mentality dictate the way the majority has to play the game, and until you fix that problem nothing will ever change.

Even in the past the top guilds have rotated targets amongst themselves to avoid competition while maintaining their monopoly on content. It really makes no sense in a time locked server that has been in Velious for 6 years that we are still trying to fight over the same pixels.

[SantagarBrax]

Pretty much exactly that, the majority of people who say they want competition don't even really want it, they just want to brag about denying others in RnF. The minority of players who want to continue that toxic mentality dictate the way the majority has to play the game, and until you fix that problem nothing will ever change.

Even in the past the top guilds have rotated targets amongst themselves to avoid competition while maintaining their monopoly on content. It really makes no sense in a time locked server that has been in Velious for 6 years that we are still trying to fight over the same pixels.

This isn't true.

Racing against Furoar on a Dain FTE is exhilarating even though I haven't beaten him yet. Seeing ridiculously complex tactics implemented and actually working is impressive, engaging, and provides motivation to innovate and interact more to accomplish a task.

When AG/F first started kiting 6 Vulak guards around, with the guards going back to Vulak and being kited back out again while successfully ending up in a kill, it was simply impressive. When Riot wiped on Vulak and was able to recover quick enough to beat AG/F out on a new FTE, and kill Vulak after a 40 minute all out war against attrition attempting to get to mana neutral while CR'ing, was phenomenal.

I've seen some amazing feats performed by various guilds over there years and there are numerous examples, too many to list. All of these feats bring a whole new excitement and sense of accomplishment to the game that will never been seen again due to "rotations" or whatever ruleset is implemented that decreases interaction between players.


EDIT:
THIS is why we play the raid scene, even with all of the problems that come along with it. THIS is why, 6 years after Velious dropped, 20 years after the game launched, we are still seeing new, innovative and complex maneuvers pulled off to win a kill on a target. Some people just don't understand this and I hope this post helps.

[YendorLootmonkey]

You haven't been raiding on Blue recently by this statement, or perhaps ever?

Believe it or not, while the past year of no competition at the raid scene or little competition, no offense intended towards anyone, has had it's benefits with more loot dropped and cheaper prices on loot, a majority of the raiders welcome competition.

What we didn't expect was an all out escalation in tactics against the PNP policy and against established raid precedents with little to no enforcement.

Outside of these tactics and the Vulak stalemates, things have been enjoyable and I think the majority of raiders would agree.

I raided on Blue until Velious was released, and kept up with the forums well after that. If you raided during that time, or even the year or two after Velious released, you would know full well how toxic the raid scene was -- so if you weren't around for it, then a) consider yourself lucky, and b) I understand how you may not share the same perspective. I'm happy you have had one year of relatively drama free raiding. I can't help but notice that year overlaps with the opening of another P99 server that was ripe for domination.

But yeah, I'm on Green now where the Blue raid scene will most likely happen all over again relatively soon. :)

[YendorLootmonkey]

When AG/F first started kiting 6 Vulak guards around, with the guards going back to Vulak and being kited back out again while successfully ending up in a kill, it was simply impressive. When Riot wiped on Vulak and was able to recover quick enough to beat AG/F out on a new FTE, and kill Vulak after a 40 minute all out war against attrition attempting to get to mana neutral while CR'ing, was phenomenal.

Yes, but imagine how even more impressive and phenomenal pulling that off would be while defending that attempt against a competing guild PVPing them! Why, they would go down in competition history and become legends!

I've seen some amazing feats performed by various guilds over there years and there are numerous examples, too many to list. All of these feats bring a whole new excitement and sense of accomplishment to the game that will never been seen again due to "rotations" or whatever ruleset is implemented that decreases interaction between players.

You're right... so moving these guilds who want competition over to Red is a step in the right direction because it will INCREASE interaction between players. ;) I'm not trying to pick on you, you are just making points that I feel like my solution addresses.

See how Red = Competitive is just the right answer for solving this? The solution is already there... competitive guilds just need to accept true competition and not their convenient definition of competition.

Then we have a rotation server and, more importantly to players sharing your mindset and the exhausted GMs, a competitive/race/FTE server that, by design, does not generate raid petitions because everyone competing has the ability to work it out themselves.

How is this not a win-win-win-win for casuals, competitive players, GMs, and the 4 people who still play Red that would like to see a higher population?

I think it boils down to "I can't handle the true raw competition of another guild able to PVP me or not being able to petitionquest an encounter... I just want light competition" or maybe just simply "well, if we're all winning and losing raid targets, who can I show off my pixels to in order to receive validation?"

[Naonak]

"Lack of enforcement by GM's has only encouraged bad behavior and allowed it to prosper. In my opinion, GM's should automate this process as much as possible and only have to deal with clarifications of the rules if requested. A guild shouldn't thrive on "frapse or it didn't happen", you're an adult and know if you did right or wrong 90% of the time. "


I agree. GMs helped make this situation and then just try and wash hands and fade back onto the green server for a crushbone petition.

[SantagarBrax]

@Yendor - You may very well be right. I'll have to consider that more in depth and I'm sure there are a few reasons why people would not want to do that.

Regardless, we need input from Rogean / Nilbog, the rest of this is all just fluff at the moment. Once they provide a path they want the server to follow, then we can start planning accordingly.

ANYTHING that decreases interaction is bad for an MMO.

[White_knight]

This is already a non-competitive server. The competitive server is over on Red. Enough with "but we want competition". That is absolutely false.


As someone who has played both Red99 and Blue99 this statement is utterly and completely false.

Red is so uncompetitive in the Raid scene, it's a pixel pathway aslong as you join the current #1 team. Why do you think all that's left on red is a few unemployed drug addicts and washed up blue players?

You have to remember historically 95-100% of raid pixels on Red go to 1 guild....and all you needed (past tense) to do was show up at X time to get a chance at them. Coupled with the fact that there aren't enough players to even compete with whatever #1 guild is at the time; i.e there never was 2-3 top tier raiding guilds at the same time.

On blue atleast guilds have to be proactive in trying to get their raid targets, pre-camp out, farm consumables.

-----

In terms of resolving Blues raid 'issues' IMHO it would be to create some form of instancing so that the top heavy server has more loot distribution. I disagree with making the WHOLE game instanced. I think only NTOV should be instanced. The rest of the game should remained open for Guild v Guild. In doing this it will open up NTOV to most guilds with a 5-7 day lock out timer.

Make it so whenever you zone in to an instanced version of NOTV it pops your toon back to the entrance so that CoTH bots can't be stationed around the zone trivializing the content. Also make all trash mob repop as normal (i.e it doesn't stay dead so you gotta clear it each time, or train mages around/rez scroll farm/monk FD corpse).

We're all 35 years+ now, I don't got time anymore to sit in NTOV for 24 hrs a week hoping I have enough DKP for 1 upgrade if my guild gets a tag at x,y,z raid target.

[Clazxiss]

We're all 35 years+ now, I don't got time anymore to sit in NTOV for 24 hrs a week hoping I have enough DKP for 1 upgrade if my guild gets a tag at x,y,z raid target.


The 35 year old part hits the hardest and is probably the most frustrating to the GMs. They know they're player base is older, yet the players act like they're children. I mean, it's this kind of behavior that WoW payed the most attention to when they made quality of life improvements to MMO genre.

[Solist]

Bag limits is the only real solution.

[elwing]

The raid knapsack problem?

[MaCtastic]

This is already a non-competitive server. The competitive server is over on Red.

Pras.

[Ravager]

I used to think rotations were the answer until I played on TAKP and watched one of the guilds there fail to kill KT with 40 boxes for 6 hours "because the throne room repopped too fast". Project 1999 is popular precisely because it's difficult to get those raid pixels.
Nope. P99 is popular because there's no boxing allowed. Excluding launches of expansions and servers, the population was healthiest the handful of times there were rotations. Expect a spike in blue population while these guilds are banned.

[supercalif]

This isn't true.

Racing against Furoar on a Dain FTE is exhilarating even though I haven't beaten him yet. Seeing ridiculously complex tactics implemented and actually working is impressive, engaging, and provides motivation to innovate and interact more to accomplish a task.

When AG/F first started kiting 6 Vulak guards around, with the guards going back to Vulak and being kited back out again while successfully ending up in a kill, it was simply impressive. When Riot wiped on Vulak and was able to recover quick enough to beat AG/F out on a new FTE, and kill Vulak after a 40 minute all out war against attrition attempting to get to mana neutral while CR'ing, was phenomenal.

I've seen some amazing feats performed by various guilds over there years and there are numerous examples, too many to list. All of these feats bring a whole new excitement and sense of accomplishment to the game that will never been seen again due to "rotations" or whatever ruleset is implemented that decreases interaction between players.


EDIT:
THIS is why we play the raid scene, even with all of the problems that come along with it. THIS is why, 6 years after Velious dropped, 20 years after the game launched, we are still seeing new, innovative and complex maneuvers pulled off to win a kill on a target. Some people just don't understand this and I hope this post helps.

This is a great post. As an active raider in AG this is why I log in to raid each week/day. Could we do without the extreme socking and petty behaviour at times? Of course but the fundamentals shouldn’t change or else you’ll lose the heart of the server.

We needed more concise rules that remove the guesswork and require petitions.

If I wanted it to be easy I wouldn’t be playing classic Everquest.

[Toryas]

We needed more concise rules that remove the guesswork and require petitions.


Or staff who have a desire to properly enforce the rules. It takes months to get petitions answered, so we're no clearer as to what is allowed or not allowed and what is considered breaking the rules.

I get that it's voluntary, and I appreciate all the staff do here, but competitive environments need refereeing. Imagine a sport game where the players refereed themselves? Lol.

[Toryas]

We're all 35 years+ now, I don't got time anymore to sit in NTOV for 24 hrs a week hoping I have enough DKP for 1 upgrade if my guild gets a tag at x,y,z raid target.

But some people on this server do. They live for the racing/socking. It's why it's popular with the "hardcore few".

[Ravager]

Or staff who have a desire to properly enforce the rules. It takes months to get petitions answered, so we're no clearer as to what is allowed or not allowed and what is considered breaking the rules.

I get that it's voluntary, and I appreciate all the staff do here, but competitive environments need refereeing. Imagine a sport game where the players refereed themselves? Lol.
Golf.

[Toryas]

Golf.

Nope, golf has referees.

[Ravager]

Nope, golf has referees.
Only in tournaments, and that's just a formality for whenever there's a need for a rules clarification and score verifying. Otherwise it's a gentleman's game. You know, exactly the sort of thing the GMs are requesting...


Also, imagine what a nightmare it would be to officiate golf if the players didn't take turns. Just sayin.

[pogs4ever]

this is more like pick up basketball. in golf you take turns and watch each other. pick-up bball thats competitive w/o refs is basically non-stop arguing about what's a foul, and/or ending in fists.

[Ravager]

And clearly the GMs have a preference of one over the other.

[Toryas]

And clearly the GMs have a preference of one over the other.

Then the staff should enforce rotations.

[Ghost of Starman]

People that want Mario kart are a minority here, why are they the ones being catered to?

[Ravager]

Then the staff should enforce rotations.
They've always said they would enforce player made agreements. I'm sure that includes rotations. It just seems to me like they don't want to babysit the rotations.

[YendorLootmonkey]

As someone who has played both Red99 and Blue99 this statement is utterly and completely false.

Red is so uncompetitive in the Raid scene, it's a pixel pathway aslong as you join the current #1 team. Why do you think all that's left on red is a few unemployed drug addicts and washed up blue players?

Yes, I get that in it's current state, there is no competition on Red. I am talking about if guilds who truly sought "a competitive raid scene" self-identified and were moved over to Red. Then they would have:

A) Extra competition - not only do you have to mobilize faster and secure FTE more quickly than your competition, you also have to defend against their attacks, trains, etc. Neckbeard it out over there.

B) No need for raid petitions - PVP mechanics allow/force every guild to work things out themselves. GMs can focus on other things finally.

C) Blue server freed up for rotations - the other 80% of the community finally has a place to enjoy Classic content after ten years.

D) Red players would have a re-vitalized server - The injection of players is what they have been dreaming of for years.

[Tunabros]

Rotate...some things?

Prime candidates: ST, Tunare, AoW, all city leaders, Vulak, Dozekar, CT.

[SantagarBrax]

Or staff who have a desire to properly enforce the rules. It takes months to get petitions answered, so we're no clearer as to what is allowed or not allowed and what is considered breaking the rules.

I get that it's voluntary, and I appreciate all the staff do here, but competitive environments need refereeing. Imagine a sport game where the players refereed themselves? Lol.

Honestly, all it takes is a GM to sit in NTOV on a cycle for a little bit. Get a grasp on what's actually going on.

Hand down one or two severe punishments to set the tone and follow established raid precedents, or call out the intolerable behavior as you see it.

That's Literally It.

[SantagarBrax]

My proposition to keep this server competitive and take infractions out of the GM's hands:

1. AG/F choose to merge, split off, or be considered 1 entity for raid purposes.
2. Rotate Vulak, Doze, PoG , RW between the 2 or 3 entities. (Riot / AG/F) Barrier for Entry for other guilds.
3. All Guilds in this agreement understand that their rotation mobs are able to be Contested by smaller guilds (Casuals) under the current meta.
4. All arbitrations will be settled by an objective 3rd party, never going to GM's, utilizing a payment system of 1 item per week per raiding entity in the agreement paid to the Arbitrating person/guild, or any other system that works to maintain objectivity. Raid targets may be killed by the offending party, yet if found guilty, will forfeit their next rotated mob or 3 concessions on the target that was killed when the infraction occurred, whichever they prefer.
5. All other current meta remains the same. (City Leaders, etc)

[Fammaden]

K Riot guy thanks for the ideas. I nominate Bladefrenzy for #4.

[Skarne]

If guilds can’t work things out themselves why don’t the GMs just send the 2 guild leaders to this room, https://images.app.goo.gl/FiRggHHyyYkKM2DC7
Enable pvp loser can’t get their corpse for 3 days winner gets to come out of the cat room
Then ruling

[SantagarBrax]

K Riot guy thanks for the ideas. I nominate Bladefrenzy for #4.

4. ......"or any other system that works to maintain objectivity."

[Psyborg]

Rotate ST/Fear/Tunare/Ring war, the rest are good how they are with FTE lockouts. Anytime Vulak is unblocked after the death of associated dragons all entities who wish to compete must re-enter the zone and race on a random roll 900+. at least 1 hour lockout for Vulak.

[JackofSpade]

Wow 19 pages of stuff that is gonna have 0 influence on what ultimately is or isn't agreed upon.

Nobody cares about whatever dumb opinions or ideas you post here, you can stop wasting your time and energy on it. Hope this helps.

[Naethyn]

Kill a mob, concede the mob.