Your ideal red server setup

[Tradesonred]

Here it is, my final hurrah, my last contribution to feedback into red in the hopes that devs are watching and taking some hints from player feedback. We may or may not ever get another red server, but to me it would really be a sad affair to have another meme setup and watch, groundhog day style population numbers decrease steadily during the first weeks. After this i will take a huge break and watch from time to time but it will give me "closure" and move on to other things.

-------------------------------------------

Gonna keep it simple.

- FFA 4 levels

- No xp loss in pvp

- xp group bonus. Soloing is boring and nostalgia will not help now that most of us have experienced EQ again one time through one server or another. When all else fails, you solo.

- Item loot 1 item ONLY IF the devs can be bothered to code no drop sets that will offset the harshness of losing items. The sets are just lesser versions of regular gear that is found for that level range on regular mobs' loot tables with maybe some pieces on nameds/rarer mobs. Maybe even let crafters make the basic pieces no drop.

It will 1) Make Gfay what it was on Rallos: A big economy hub for items trade and low level pvp hub. 2) Kill RMT 95% as most anyone isnt stupid enough to pay 50$ for a lootable fungi.

If devs dont have the manpower / dont want to do this, then just coin loot no item loot. Re-reading my post before pressing go makes me see that my item loot setup would be top tweak eq emu while keeping it vanilla but quite a bit of work so 1.0 setup seems to be the way to go, without the xp loss debacle of the first 1.5 years.

I may be forgetting something, ill add it later if it comes up.

[Jibartik]

rallos zek + firiona vie

[Tradesonred]

rallos zek + firiona vie

Lets make this thread something worth reading with some constructiveness. What do you mean, expand on that a little? I dont think i even ever knew what the FV setup was.

[DRAGONBAIT]

I played tallon zek back in the day, teams. Is true that on raid lvl guilds were formed by a mix of races and during guild fights there would be some targets you couldnt literally attack but u can still disarm a raid force, meanwhile outside of the raid scene and while leveling up people have a safer sense since not everyone can kill them and they can hang out in areas they race control, so its a safer environment to lvl up while still having enough pvp options.
My 2 cents

[Old_PVP]

I'll keep it short, cause it's all been discussed before.

TEAMS with /guildwar function enabled. Guilds can go total war and KOS everyone if they choose. Appeases to the FFA crowd & Team crowd.

Teams is a classic feature... /guildwar also classic.

Maybe sprinkle in some item loot for flavor. Would be a huge blow to RMT, and would be interesting especially if zones became sort of territory based with certain teams monopolizing dungeons.

[Tradesonred]

I'll keep it short, cause it's all been discussed before.

TEAMS with /guildwar function enabled. Guilds can go total war and KOS everyone if they choose. Appeases to the FFA crowd & Team crowd.

Teams is a classic feature... /guildwar also classic.


Im making this thread in the hope that we can weight the pros and cons of each setup, and have it all in one thread instead of spread out. So when and if red 2.0 is announced, we can just point to this thread and tell em please look at this before you put the setup in stone.

With respect, personally i dont see the appeal of that setup, unless im missing something. Part of my criticism of teams is if one team starts to win heavily, it might demoralize everyone else and we have a server that is once again bleeding players heavily, which might even happen the first year. This would be a repeat of red 1.0.

This solves nothing about this and adds on top that a big guild like seal team can cockblock PVE content by declaring war on smaller guilds on their own team.

[Old_PVP]

Im making this thread in the hope that we can weight the pros and cons of each setup, and have it all in one thread instead of spread out. So when and if red 2.0 is announced, we can just point to this thread and tell em please look at this before you put the setup in stone.

With respect, personally i dont see the appeal of that setup, unless im missing something. Part of my criticism of teams is if one team starts to win heavily, it might demoralize everyone else and we have a server that is once again bleeding players heavily, which might even happen the first year. This would be a repeat of red 1.0.

This solves nothing about this and adds on top that a big guild like seal team can cockblock PVE content by declaring war on smaller guilds on their own team.

Well honestly the same thing can, and does happen on FFA servers. One guild gains dominance and steamrolls everyone. Unfortunately, people will always be sheep and always want the easy path. In this case, easy path to pixels.

There would maybe need to be certain measures put in place to curb people abusing the /guildwar system, obviously. If the devs ever considered it, I'm sure it would get fleshed out further. But just off the top of my head and to give you an idea:


You can't just declare war, attack your own team, then leave the guild right away to be non-KOS to avoid PVP.
Perhaps a limit on the amount of guilds you can be at war with at any given time? 5 active wars seems reasonable.
This in turn may bring a political sense back into the game, sort of like old RZ. Guilds would be inclined to parlay and make peace eventually, so they can then war other guilds.
NO RULES / Sullon Zek style. Training is allowed.


Teams is essential to attract the numbers we need. The bluebie numbers. That is step one. People want the safety net of a team environment early on otherwise they won't invest time in the server. End game is where the PVP will get vicious, political, and brutal. It will be hard for 1 guild to hold top spot with a whole other team opposed against them, as well as possibly the top 5 contending guilds on their OWN TEAM as their enemy. With training and no rules, no crying, anything goes tactics. (except blatant hacking)

[Jimjam]

Me and 2 or 3 elf pals vs whatever the server throws at us - friend or foe.

[Tradesonred]

I see the appeal of teams though, as in its a pain in the ass to harass people starting out on teams vs how relatively easy it is on FFA. Holocaust took advantage of this during the first week or 2 of red by blocking the entrance of Guk, training people with a high level cleric, probably a char they took shifts in leveling and inflicting xp death on people 10vs2 regularly. No xp loss is way less punishing so its a question of how many people would enjoy low level pvp, i know i do.

Typing this, i realize it would be one pitfall. A guy who trains you, but you cant kill him. So that would be one point against an anything goes train-wise setup. Someone from say, shorties team could create a troll char to cockblock people from using guk.

Another edit: maybe youre right about pvp only happening at high levels and to me its a con. We already had this on red and (to me) it was a journey that was alot more boring than my time on rallos, where i only reached lvl44 in 1.5 years or something because it was so much fun to mess around on the way up. Im not sure where zones start to interact with a teams setup, 30-40 to me would be an acceptable middle ground where i still get to enjoy pvp but newbs are safer.

I mean im all for something fresh and new but i keep my expectations down because if its a setup that needs to be babysat it might not work out long run as they seem to dont have the manpower or willingness to keep an eye on how the server is evolving. But if devs are willing to put in extra work id totally play a tweaked out teams server.

[Jibartik]

Lets make this thread something worth reading with some constructiveness. What do you mean, expand on that a little? I dont think i even ever knew what the FV setup was.

rallos zek item loot pvp

firona vie has no no drop items

[Tradesonred]

rallos zek item loot pvp

firona vie has no no drop items

Id vote against that then because i have thicker skin than 95% of modern MMO players id say (i played eve, wow classic pvp, albion online, darkfall) and i dont think i could roll with getting my shit stripped by zergs regularly. Thats a deal breaker even for me. I wouldnt even start playing on such a setup. In albion online, you have like wardrobes of gear waiting to be replaced in storage, like stacks of chests, boots, etc... This isnt the case with EQ.

This is why i would be pushing for item loot only with the no drop sets tweak, to modernize/QoL it a bit so its more palatable to at least a good amount of people. This would make it more like Eve online, where you "fly" your best shit only when you are out with the guild. AKA only fly what you can afford to lose.

That and a no level limit pvp server where starting out a level 40 can one-shot you, those are the setups i can think of where i would probably not even waste my time starting to play on the server.

You could put these servers online but im pretty sure it would be a niche setup and right from the start you wouldnt attract numbers.

[Gustoo]

1. Rallos zek actual classic server (for fucks sake) zero customization as classic (live) as possible.
2. Nilbog 2 teams - Only customization being starting zones and non classic hard coded teams
3. Discord (permadeath, seasons) vanilla only - no customization/deviation from live except the live version had LDON era noob quests enabled and shit (blackened alloy and stuff, no era correctness) which we would not have

I really don't like to fantasize about custom servers anymore, but if it came to customization it would be a rallos rules with customized no-drop system like Tradesonred has mentioned. I would say there should be no custom items because that just isn't gunna happen, but customized droppability, and level requirements.

Anything that can be used for twinking will be droppable.
Anything that is good and no drop, will have level requirements.
Maybe make Sol-Ro armor quest items all no-drop, with a level requirement equivilent to the level that those quests are actually achievable without having out of level range assistance, like level 30.

Level 1-29 would be banded for melees. Trash for casters.

Possibly make it so player crafted armor and jewelry can be no drop enabled somehow once equipped. Makes crafting worth doing even if the stuff is kinda crappy. That could also remove the need to make sol ro temple gear no-drop.

A lot of high level gear would be made droppable to make it dangerous.

This would be especially important in the kunark and velious eras.


And in all renditions of all future servers there should no longer be "legacy items" with planned "no longer dropping" dates, because it creates an entirely unique to project 1999 shitty ass progression server, where the only progression that REALLY matters is spending the appropriate amount of time acquiring the appropriate amount of "legacy items" before they progressively stop dropping in the game. For everything else you have 10 years to get it. It's also purely custom, where egg shaped pumice was not added into the game and available to purchase from vendors for a specific amount of time, and probably other stupid stuff. If we like manastones and we like lockets of escape, lets implement them into the game in a way that is actually like the classic game instead of totally unclassically including them in NEW servers, that was never done by LIVE. The simplest solution is a casino vendor that mostly just eats plat but offers some of these items as rewards. This eliminates the inflation problem in a long term server, and means people can actually quest classically in the vanilla era.

Because the no-brainer race to level 50 and spend as much time getting manastones as possible because you can then buy every other item in the game by just logging out for 5 years is just the worst mechanic in any game.

[DRAGONBAIT]

About the training : it happened in pvp servers back in the day, it happened in pve servers back in the day (even more than in pvp ) and it will happen again, in a pvp environment i think its easier to just allow people to deal with it.

About item loot : with all my respects u guys are delusionall, do u want a new eq classic pvp server in the near future wich is populated? you need to catter more to the blue playerbase, item loot is a deal breaker even for many pvpers. This is everquest, wake up.

About teams : honestly, its been pointed out, long story short, safer environment to lvl up and get into pvp for newer players. U will have an end game raid scene full of training and ganking zerging and pvp, and u will have a "lvling up" scene with a less toxic and safer pvp environment wich would be fun, like it was back in the day.

edit : Things i remember was shorties coming to gfay and cb and there would be so much fun even at lvls 8, 9 10 being an elf and having to fight those shorties grps wich were coming, lots of elfs joined to help, good times.
As a dark elf i remember the newbie log, and from time to time people would shout "LIGHTIES IN ZONE" wich meant some humans from freeport came looking for a fight, again darkies would team up and fight the invaders. This low lvl pvp situations were so much fun, u could almost choose to pvp or not, u could choose to go to another races zone or to just defend ur safer racial areas, it was fun, it was awesome. Then u lvl up and joined raid scene and high end pvp for raid targets but that lower lvl enviroment, if populated, was just so much fun and cant happen in a FFA.


About custom : Teams was a classic thing, no need to custom anything, keep it classic with minimum interference.

TLDR : if we want a thriving pvp eq classic server somewhere in the future with a healthy playerbase we need to wake up and forget about exp loss, item loot and other features that make it more hardcore. Everquest is hardcore on its core, just having the possibility of fighting another guild/player for wathever reason, test ur characters power, its more than enough to enjoy eq pvp and what most people look for, U spend hours gearing and leveling ur character and even the most blue player want to measure his strengh, an eq red server is not happening cos its not been envisioned correctly. Exp loss was an 80IQ move ( or something else ) We need players, think out of ur box come on.

[Kohedron]

I see a whole lot of not classic

[Jibartik]

and i dont think i could roll with getting my shit stripped by zergs regularly.

sorry i got your warder loot (zerg guilds would be at the disadvantage with FV loot rules btw)

we cant have item loot on p99 anyway though for reasons that are obvious if you think about it.

you need to catter more to the blue playerbase, item loot is a deal breaker even for many pvpers. This is everquest, wake up.


green is about to be deleted... People are learning pixels are fleeting. Live players get this

the problem with eq pvp is that people think their items matter, and they do not. The best PVPers part and parcel are not in the zerg item guilds, theyre in the pvp guilds.. and if there is no reason to zerg, then the bluebies will join those guilds instead of the zerg ones.

if you build it (rallos zek + FV loot) they will come

(but we cant because of obvious reasons)

[Old_PVP]

About the training : it happened in pvp servers back in the day, it happened in pve servers back in the day (even more than in pvp ) and it will happen again, in a pvp environment i think its easier to just allow people to deal with it.

About item loot : with all my respects u guys are delusionall, do u want a new eq classic pvp server in the near future wich is populated? you need to catter more to the blue playerbase, item loot is a deal breaker even for many pvpers. This is everquest, wake up.

About teams : honestly, its been pointed out, long story short, safer environment to lvl up and get into pvp for newer players. U will have an end game raid scene full of training and ganking zerging and pvp, and u will have a "lvling up" scene with a less toxic and safer pvp environment wich would be fun, like it was back in the day.

edit : Things i remember was shorties coming to gfay and cb and there would be so much fun even at lvls 8, 9 10 being an elf and having to fight those shorties grps wich were coming, lots of elfs joined to help, good times.
As a dark elf i remember the newbie log, and from time to time people would shout "LIGHTIES IN ZONE" wich meant some humans from freeport came looking for a fight, again darkies would team up and fight the invaders. This low lvl pvp situations were so much fun, u could almost choose to pvp or not, u could choose to go to another races zone or to just defend ur safer racial areas, it was fun, it was awesome. Then u lvl up and joined raid scene and high end pvp for raid targets but that lower lvl enviroment, if populated, was just so much fun and cant happen in a FFA.


About custom : Teams was a classic thing, no need to custom anything, keep it classic with minimum interference.

TLDR : if we want a thriving pvp eq classic server somewhere in the future with a healthy playerbase we need to wake up and forget about exp loss, item loot and other features that make it more hardcore. Everquest is hardcore on its core, just having the possibility of fighting another guild/player for wathever reason, test ur characters power, its more than enough to enjoy eq pvp and what most people look for, U spend hours gearing and leveling ur character and even the most blue player want to measure his strengh, an eq red server is not happening cos its not been envisioned correctly. Exp loss was an 80IQ move ( or something else ) We need players, think out of ur box come on.

1000% agree.

Some of my best EQ memories were also lowbie pvp on SZ teams. Defending the zone! or Invading some other team.

We need bluebie players people, this isn't rocket science. Bluebies WON'T do pvp without TEAMS! Period.

[PlsNoBan]

One thing I didn't see mentioned (granted I skimmed) is plugging. My brief stint on red was a non-stop plugfest. If someone wasn't clearly winning they were immediately B-lining to the nearest zoneline and alt f4'ing to avoid YT. I don't know what the best solution is. I don't know how realistic/possible this is to code but maybe something like if you've taken PvP damage in the last 30 seconds you can't zone? I don't know if the server can differentiate pvp damage and pve damage. If not maybe just add an item with an instant clicky you can debuff people with that prevents zoning. Click item on someone and it applies a 30s debuff that prevents zoning. This could be abused to grief but you always have the option of just killing the person debuffing you. It would have to be restricted to +/- 4 levels or whatever so you don't have 60's spam griefing lvl 20s or whatever.

I guess another solution would be to make it so disconnecting mid-zone still sends your character to the other end of the zoneline for ~30 seconds where you could be killed. This could cause some unfortunate situations where you legit DC during a zone and are helplessly murdered on the other side. But I think the trade off of putting a stop to plugging is probably worth it?

[Tradesonred]

About the training : it happened in pvp servers back in the day, it happened in pve servers back in the day (even more than in pvp ) and it will happen again, in a pvp environment i think its easier to just allow people to deal with it.

About item loot : with all my respects u guys are delusionall, do u want a new eq classic pvp server in the near future wich is populated? you need to catter more to the blue playerbase, item loot is a deal breaker even for many pvpers. This is everquest, wake up.



If you allow training people will go crazy. This isnt like live, its like a den of snakes. Like i said holocaust cockblocked guk during red's first week even with the no training rule. Youll have some almost-to-the-point-of-shooting-up-a-school social misfit who will make it his life's work to train people 12h a day. That would be as bad as xp loss in pvp with regards to making people quit.

I think item loot, within a game like EQ (where stuff is rarer compared to Albion like mentioned above, less bank space to make it work) will not appeal to much people. Its too harsh. Yeah maybe zergs will not be able to hang on to their warder loot but neither will casuals with their shitty cloth. You need a good amount people to get a decent classic experience instead of a theme park ghost museum. No drop sets are a good idea IMO, with Gustoo's tweak of level Req's but realistically i dont see it happening here. So probably just a repeat of 1.0 but with the major thing that theres no xp loss starting out to bleed the population dry.

Oh and pleasenoban just touched on something i forgot: For a server that prides itself on a classic experience, yellow text was a terrible idea, at least in the way it was implemented. Why on earth would you custom something in that makes it easier for a heavy on the griefy side server to find people to harass? If it must be kept, then remove the zone in which the player is killed at least. Even then its bad cuz if someone was harassing a newb, then the YT is just an alarm that his prey is back online and to log in his alt for some lulz.

For plugging i dont really care. If i was a melee id plug all the time.

[PlsNoBan]

For plugging i dont really care. If i was a melee id plug all the time.

That's literally the problem. So would everyone and in my limited experience literally just about everyone did it when they started to lose. It's an extremely lame bullshit mechanic that shouldn't exist. I don't mind people having the option of running away but being able to essentially safely log out of the game whilst being chased in a PvP encounter is insanely stupid. You should always have the ability as the aggressor to chase down your target and reasonably be able to catch them. Barring any class specific mechanics like selos or just running away and gating or whatever.

[Tradesonred]

That's literally the problem. So would everyone and in my limited experience literally just about everyone did it when they started to lose. It's an extremely lame bullshit mechanic that shouldn't exist. I don't mind people having the option of running away but being able to essentially safely log out of the game whilst being chased in a PvP encounter is insanely stupid. You should always have the ability as the aggressor to chase down your target and reasonably be able to catch them. Barring any class specific mechanics like selos or just running away and gating or whatever.

Yeah but sometimes you run into 4 people and you just not feeling walking back 3 zones after being stomped with no chance. I said i dont really care. If they found a way to fix it, sure, but meanwhile ill probably be plugging on a melee char with this scenario.

[Jibartik]

One thing I didn't see mentioned (granted I skimmed) is plugging. My brief stint on red was a non-stop plugfest. If someone wasn't clearly winning they were immediately B-lining to the nearest zoneline and alt f4'ing to avoid YT. I don't know what the best solution is. I don't know how realistic/possible this is to code but maybe something like if you've taken PvP damage in the last 30 seconds you can't zone? I don't know if the server can differentiate pvp damage and pve damage. If not maybe just add an item with an instant clicky you can debuff people with that prevents zoning. Click item on someone and it applies a 30s debuff that prevents zoning. This could be abused to grief but you always have the option of just killing the person debuffing you. It would have to be restricted to +/- 4 levels or whatever so you don't have 60's spam griefing lvl 20s or whatever.

I guess another solution would be to make it so disconnecting mid-zone still sends your character to the other end of the zoneline for ~30 seconds where you could be killed. This could cause some unfortunate situations where you legit DC during a zone and are helplessly murdered on the other side. But I think the trade off of putting a stop to plugging is probably worth it?

if you cant kill someone before they plug thats on you

[Gustoo]

When you plug, you fucking lose. You hard lost the game. You disconnected your game from the server because you couldn’t hack it.

Kill / Death ratio is for lamers from other games. If you drive someone to plug, you win. If you wait for them to log back on and have em plug again that’s an option you can choose.

That’s part of the item loot game. How far from a zone line do you wear gear of what quality? Real pros don’t give a damn they are playing 18hr a day anyways and will recover any lost gear in short order and will make up for it in the crap they get from other people.

The anti item loot chumps never lived it. The rallos zek economy was the bomb because good droppable gear was always a risk so it traded at reasonable prices all the time. Fungi is never 120k when it’s best value is a twink item and twinks can be ganked. Pks flipped the junk they acquired quick because they wanted to go kill more players, and didn’t wanna waste time scratching the last 1kpp of value out of an item. Resellers had a great time basically serving as a fence for PKd goods.

But yeah its a bit much to swallow for people not accustomed to a better way of playing a game.

Teams with item loot would be a good compromise

[Tassador]

Terrible thread by people who don’t read the room well. Enjoy disappointed #6969 post numbnuts….

[Tradesonred]

The anti item loot chumps never lived it. The rallos zek economy was the bomb because good droppable gear was always a risk so it traded at reasonable prices all the time. Fungi is never 120k when it’s best value is a twink item and twinks can be ganked. Pks flipped the junk they acquired quick because they wanted to go kill more players, and didn’t wanna waste time scratching the last 1kpp of value out of an item. Resellers had a great time basically serving as a fence for PKd goods.

But yeah its a bit much to swallow for people not accustomed to a better way of playing a game.

Teams with item loot would be a good compromise

Im just worried that item loot didnt age so well and we might be seeing it with rose-tinted glasses. Not everyone will want to sit in Gfay to sell loot and periodically reload on items, after youve experienced things like wow AH and other newer mechanics with better QoL that lets you sell items while you play.

One of the top priority imo should be to make a server setup that can get the pop and keep it for as long as possible. I wouldnt have this conversation if EQ emu pop was a potential 25k between blue green and red + you could box your item seller char. But we gotta work with we have. I wish they would code in the no drop sets because thats the best of both worlds (and kind of vanilla, since no drop sets were in-game during halloween event of 2001). You get item loot, you get an economy but casuals are not going to play naked either. Its especially bad for melees. But this will 99% not happen so.

[greatdane]

Three teams. Teams are pretty important, otherwise the server is just automatically won from the start by whoever makes the most tryhard guild. We've seen time and time again that P99 servers are always dominated by one guild, and that's even more the case on a PvP server where the incentive is much greater to dominate the server. Without teams, players who are not in the #1 guild just get shit on too hard and end up quitting. With teams, everyone has something to fall back on, and the two lesser teams can form temporary alliances to keep the stronger team in check. There should be no grouping or beneficial casting between teams, the only interaction would be communication and trade.

Every team should have access to every class. There's no real good way to determine teams based on deity or race since this gives an automatic advantage to whatever team has the best options available to it. Proposed system: everyone starts with a blue book, a yellow book and a green book. At level 8 or something, turn one of these in to a PoD to be permanently assigned to one of these three teams or be FFA (red) if you don't. If you try to join the team with the most players, you have to also hand in 1000p with the book in order to join it. This encourages equal teams while still allowing players to join their friends even if those are on the biggest team. Name color will indicate a player's team.

Cash loot only. Some people love to insist that itemloot is important, but it's so brutally punitive to new/casual/loner players and massively encourages griefing while discouraging fair fights to the point where most players will actively avoid any encounter that isn't a cheap gank. It's also harsh on melee classes from two different angles: they're generally weak in PvP until endgame geared and can't easily get away from opponents, and they're the most gear-dependent by far. Casters can function pretty well naked and can just gate or remove their important items, and aren't hurt much if they do lose some gear. Itemloot is one of those tryhard "I'm such a badass, I need people to see that I'm in favor of itemloot so they know how tough I am" things, but the reality is that it will guarantee a tiny playerbase where people resort exclusively to gank squads picking off helpless loners, avoid any fight they could lose, and play mostly naked casters. It's not viable. Item loot ensures that the playerbase will be one fifth the size that it would without it.

The only way I would touch an item loot server with a ten-foot pole is if there was a custom option to permanently turn an item no drop, allowing you to keep it but ensuring that you could never sell it and give it to an alt. But I would just rather not have item loot in the first place. It may have been interesting two decades ago on RZ where nobody knew dick about EQ and players hadn't min-maxed the gameplay to perfection, but it would be a clusterfuck today. Those cool politics and high-stakes fights won't be returning in 202X. You'll just get a server where nobody is willing to fight if there's any chance they might lose. Horse enthusiasts might pine for a time before cars, but that doesn't mean you could succesfully run for office on a policy of banning all forms of motorized transportation. For the same reason, flexlords might like the idea of an itemloot server where they get to dunk extra hard on those level 46 casuals, but that doesn't mean such a server would be popular. I especially laughed at the idea of "RZ + FV rules." That guy must have fantasies of a server with 50 players, 35 of which are naked magicians. There's a reason Everquest tried itemloot once and never again.

Classic resist system. What red99 had was trash, at least the first iteration (don't know if it was ever changed). PvP becomes garbage if you can land root/snare on geared players. Melee can't even really participate in PvP under the system that red99 launched with, where spells seemed to have like a 25% baseline minimum chance to land regardless of resists and fire/cold resist did practically nothing. If you have ~150 in a resist (or 250 for a -100 check spell, etc.) it should be exceedingly rare that a spell of that resistance type lands fully. While this does kind of screw one or two classes over, the alternative is worse as it makes PvP into a wildly polarized affair. Most caster classes have spells with negative resist checks and/or strong poison spells for which most players don't have high resists. It's really mostly magicians that get shafted, and they still do have their pets and you can try to get off a Mala and land some half-damage nukes. If you team up with an enchanter, that plus tash is like -75 MR.

[greatdane]

Also, training is an issue because there's basically nothing you can do against it. If someone decides to train you, you might be able to thwart him some of the time, but it's impossible to really protect yourself against it. We saw plenty of that on SZ where a certain player almost single-handedly prevented an entire team from raiding at all. It's so easy to train and so hard to stop a trainer that if it's allowed, it will absolutely guarantee that the playerbase will shrink steadily over time as players just give up because they experienced systematic training to the point where they were literally prevented from playing the game at all.

There has to be a rule against it or it'll be possible for a few players to effectively opt to kill off the server by simply training 24/7 until people give up because they can't get anything done. This took a huge toll on Sullon Zek which started out booming but dwindled over time until it was the smallest server in all of Everquest, in large part because the team with access to the largest number of effective training classes (this being team evil, with its monopoly on shadowknights and necromancers) was able to train the other two teams into irrelevancy.

[Tradesonred]

Thanks for the effort of posting that great dane. Its the first post i read that makes me think i could flip on FFA vs teams. This is why i created this thread and good reads so far. Im not there yet though. The problem i see with teams vs FFA is that with teams the pop is hard locked behind 3 teams.

Yes in FFA theres often (always?) a dominant guild but from what ive seen on red, at least the first year, is that xp loss in pvp sort of funnelled things into that state of affairs. Nihilum could just sit in fear forever and no one would challenge them because no one wanted to eat xp death, it was that bad. But with no xp loss, smaller guilds can guerilla fuck with bigger guilds, if your guild leaders are toxic assholes, a part of that guild can break away and start something else. This is what heartbrand tried to do with red dawn when there was basically only nihilum and lite's inner council's loot pinata as options. I guess you could raid with 2 guilds on teams but it makes everything more complicated. If heartbrand and the others who started red dawn are in the dominant guild's team, theres not alot of options. Once again typing something leads to another thought. What do you do with raiding on the same team? One more thing to manage (raid target locks) for devs.

I do like the argument that you always have something to fall back on with teams though.

[Stonewallx39]

I am most concerned with a community that thrives long term. No problem if you want to camp someone so hard that they quit and throw their computer out the window. I want a server that’s fun to play.

I’d like:
200% base xp - to incentivize people to try it/come back/stick it out
Group xp bonus on top of base bonus
200% named spawn rate (More loot floating around to help keep casuals in the fight)
No item loot/no cash loot - pvp is about dominance
No petitions for disputes. Settle it in blood…
Training is a-okay guilds will find a way to stop it (a team of enchanters to stun/root/break invis, etc)
Full damage spells but fix resists, seems like spells land too often against a given resist

[Gustoo]

^same thing but with item loot.

Training sucks but completely removing GMs from the need to police the server is worth it. They can just anti hack and anti box and no worries about drama. It seems like it makes the GM job a lot better and means the community can focus on the game more than complaint lobbying which will also improve GM / Community relations in a way that will be healing for the whole community.

The lawyer work makes it hard for the GM to be cool with the community.

[PlsNoBan]

200% base xp - to incentivize people to try it/come back/stick it out
Group xp bonus on top of base bonus
200% named spawn rate (More loot floating around to help keep casuals in the fight)
No item loot/no cash loot - pvp is about dominance
No petitions for disputes. Settle it in blood…
Training is a-okay guilds will find a way to stop it (a team of enchanters to stun/root/break invis, etc)
Full damage spells but fix resists, seems like spells land too often against a given resist

I would 100% give this server a go. This sounds pretty fun actually. I could see a case for item/cash loot but I could go either way on it. VERY big fan of fast xp/increased named/loot. Also very big fan of no GM policing except for stuff like boxing/rmt/active hacks. Letting people settle disputes on their own is the way to go and is less work for staff so win/win.

I've never actually played teams pvp so I can't comment on that. Part of me thinks teams pvp might actually be better tho.

[Gustoo]

The community is ripe for a p99 pvp server. It solves so many problems with camp disputes and weirdo rmt activity and makes like 50 percent more items in the game valuable.

[Tradesonred]

At this point id like to add that i would probably not go against a teams server. I still think it will likely result in a server with less longevity, but it would sure be fun to try to see where it leads.

At the very least though, i think a teams server would have to think about some kind of balance mechanic to keep the pops sort of equal in numbers. People quitting noticeably on one side, should lead to some advantage to this team. Or we can just have a plain teams server, play it for a year and enjoy it while it lasts.

Also, no no-level pvp limit, that would just be silly, i could never play an alt and would not even play on such a server, wont play on an xp loss server either.

[Gustoo]

No level limit is part of the no GM enforced anti training. If training is allowed than every trainable dungeon needs to be FFA.

Maybe literally every dungeon besides like befallen should be FFA

With teams that’s OK, if your teams high levels are in dungeon, than you can go level there without worry.

4 level pvp limit flat at all levels in the non FFA zones

[Tradesonred]

No level limit is part of the no GM enforced anti training. If training is allowed than every trainable dungeon needs to be FFA.

Maybe literally every dungeon besides like befallen should be FFA

With teams that’s OK, if your teams high levels are in dungeon, than you can go level there without worry.

4 level pvp limit flat at all levels in the non FFA zones

See im not that good of an EQ player, im the definition of casual. I will openly admit that and the toxic elitist nerds who are adults while doing it raging about people adding inputs because say they dont know how many placeholders you need kill before an end game velious rare pops are just funny to me. I have a grip on some things, which is why i created this thread to add my 2 cents but it is there so we can brainstorm it.

I just dont see training leading to good things though. The good toxic players will take this to its utmost limit. Im more against PVE enforced mechanics like preventing a guerilla force from fucking with a raid force engaging a target they couldnt take. At least its an effort that takes some time to pull off, will have to drag their corpses if they fail. Not a naked necro lolpulling 20 mobs.

[Gustoo]

The issue is just removing play nice policy from the list of things the GM has to do. On PVP it seems like the PNP has caused massive staff burnout. So the idea is to abandon it.

Dungeons being FFA is in order to allow people to stop trainers. If training is legal and there is a fixed level range, having a low level training class like a level 1 cleric with divine aura means you can train with impertinence, so it is definitely a broken tactic.

It's always a bad corrupt tactic but involving GM's to solve it is too much. It happens on accident in real PVP, and turning real dungeon PVP into a petitionfest because something technically got "trained" is a nightmare.

I don't like intentional training either. But making the game more "no holds barred" will mean the staff can just ban cheaters and RMT guys which are gunna be the people most toxically training anyways.

Again a custom 2 teams server will go a long way to mitigate the negative impacts of training for people trying to level up. You aren't gunna be grinding in a contested zone so you will be not too subject to trains.

CUSTOM WARNING:

There might need to be a way to banish people's bindpoint like if they die at a bind point 20 times in a row they revert to original bind point in front of their starting city. Point of this is so you can bind camp a PK who otherwise wants to port in to your teams zone and train you guys on a regular basis just to be a dick without really trying to pvp, just to waste peoples time. So you bind camp him till his bind point is gone and he goes away for a longer period of time.

It's called bind deletion. It also protects bindcamped players from.....being bindcamped.

The need for this customization results from having no play nice policy.

I strongly believe the best server is just original rallos zek, but the people saying staff can't keep up with a regulated play nice EQ PVP server are probably right and I think some creative solutions need to be considered and tried.

[Pudge]

like i said in my pervious post:

-3 teams sullon zek style (3 teams based upon deity choice). but in order to be balanced, team stats and resists based upon population. so the less your team's pop, the more stat bonuses you get. in real time. if at 10pm evils are the most pop, they get 0 extra stats. while goods and neuts get a proportionate boost based on their numbers. if Goods have the least numbers, they get the most stat bonus, because they are only 20% or whatever. this incentivizes people to create characters on the underdog team, according to their playtime. then if a zerg of Goods logs in at 11pm or whatever, Goods don't get a bonus anymore because they are more populous. this gives a chance for the underdogs to contest, and no "dead server because the other guild/team already won". Balance the stats according to population.

-to ensure ppl arent making chars on the opposite team, a limit of 3 chars per account, ip address, mac address, phone number, rogean-spyware, and whatever else. force ppl to log in on their actual team. so less lvl 1 clerics training/spying/gaming the system to lower opposing team's stats by sitting afk. (maybe even 2 factor authentication to log in? this might be going too far for the average enjoyer)

-xp caps: some people have all day to play, but some to not. XP caps will incentivize ppl to pvp (what else do they have to do?) while also adding to the longevity of the server, by creating an environment where people aren't as focused on leveling faster than everyone else, and maybe spent their time PVPing or leveling up their (capped at 3) characters evenly. slowing progression allows for more interpersonal interaction and helping the other ppl on your team (more casual players) by grouping up and getting them some exp. while limiting the grief factor on opposing teams, because you have your own team to help. it will also push people to spread out across zones, both in search of pvp, as well as avoiding it (for those who need to catch up in exp). team areas of control will be grayer/under more contestation

-no item loot. we want to attract blues and pixel farmers. i played on live with item loot. it had its highs and lows, but people want to feel secure. *maybe* item loot on one or two item slots, like rings or earrings. if someone wants to wear their +10 all resist jewels, then that's their risk? no-drop items obviously cannot be looted

-training is legal, unless you - egregiously, obviously - train in a raid zone. we want to lessen the burden on GMs. and hopefully the above mentioned restrictions (on alt-team accounts) limits training.

-no xp loss on pvp death. (but yes coin loot. that's a given, and will making trading with opposing team riskier/trading actual items and not plat more common). make pvp more enticing, not less. dying/losing an area of control is enough of a loss. losers already take enough of a beating.

that's all i got for now. it's past 3am time to hopefully get to bed

[Cwall 146.0]

the ideal pvp server is one that isn't hosted by the p99 staff

[Secrets]

the ideal pvp server is one that isn't hosted by the p99 staff

ok but what if Rogean and I worked together on Red 2.0

[Cwall 146.0]

I don't trust rogean not to do dumb shit

[Lord Casey]

The gazette will only start printing new issues if Rogean gets off his fat ass and becomes a man

and by that I mean open a new red server you niglet

get this shit done rog

[Zuranthium]

1.) Revamp of the entire spell/resist system such that PvP in EQ would play out similar to Guild Wars 1 (but with an open world), which is still the best PvP game in existence and already shares some similarities with EQ (can only use 8 spells at a time).

2.) 3-way team server with self-balancing mechanic to buff/debuff the teams based on their populations and the amount of zones they control (a team controlling a zone could be defined as whichever team has most frequently killed the "boss" NPC's in a zone over the past month).

3.) Structured PvP tournaments with a set number of players per team. Various rewards are possible for the winners and also the winning team's overall server team could gain some kind of small bonus for the week, which incentivizes each of the 3 server teams to care about PvP.

4.) Items in the game more balanced so as not to create such a big imbalance between those who happen to have tons of Raid gear and those who don't. Also more options for Best-In-Slot gear, so that people have more ability to choose how their character looks, rather than being forced to used a specific piece of gear.

5.) Standardized zoning times and disabling the plugging mechanic.

6.) Increased XP gain and also gaining XP from PvP (there are various ways to prevent this from being abused but I won't type it all out there). The game should be less about PvE, if that is a player's inclination.

[Gustoo]

I support standardized loading times because being on the west coast sucks.

[greatdane]

No level limit is part of the no GM enforced anti training. If training is allowed than every trainable dungeon needs to be FFA.

SZ had no level limit and it was the training server. A lack of level restriction doesn't change anything. If some level 10 idiot comes flying around the corner with a huge train on him, it makes no difference whatsoever whether or not you can attack him, because that train is on you faster than you could ever hope to react. That's the issue with training: there's practically nothing you can do about it. The live server without level restrictions for PvP died out because of systematic training. It wasn't done by low-level alts, it was done by mains.

All you get out of removing the level restriction is griefers who go around wiping out all the players in leveling zones for the lulz. And you know as well as I do that there are people in this community who would make it their mission to do that regularly. This community is way too damaged for a server to function where it's legal to grief others, because people will go out of their way to get other players to quit.

Training has been mostly kept at bay on P99 just by virtue of the risk of suspension, and there's no reason it couldn't be the same on a PvP server where grievances can be settled through actual PvP. It shouldn't take that many man-hours to police this, it's 2022 and anyone can record their gameplay and send in footage for review. I'm pretty sure that allowing training wouldn't make it any easier for the GMs who would instead have to deal with a community that is constantly on fire from players training each other all day (which literally happened on SZ), and plagued by the fact that running ShowEQ becomes extremely important for protection against trains.

[Jimjam]

I support standardized loading times because being on the west coast sucks.

Try the west coast of the Aegean Sea!

Srsly tho, this is a novel idea, am interested.

Also red 2.0 needs to support forum meme images so lulz can put people in wells or put fedoras on the heads of outsiders.

[Gustoo]

Greatdane you’re probably right.

More credence to the “why on earth did p99 team decide to go full custom on the rule set” versus just being rallos zek.

I guess if they’re looking at full custom still, a two teams but with rallos rules could be a cool way to make it a bit softer but still nerf twinks and make low level pvp fun.

[Tradesonred]

All you get out of removing the level restriction is griefers who go around wiping out all the players in leveling zones for the lulz. And you know as well as I do that there are people in this community who would make it their mission to do that regularly. This community is way too damaged for a server to function where it's legal to grief others, because people will go out of their way to get other players to quit.


This will 100% happen if they groundhog day this without asking for feedback first and would be one of the setups where i wouldnt even waste my time starting a character. At this point i should go get my fucking head examined just entertaining the idea that we might get another red.

[Rust1d?]

I am most concerned with a community that thrives long term. No problem if you want to camp someone so hard that they quit and throw their computer out the window. I want a server that’s fun to play.

I’d like:
200% base xp - to incentivize people to try it/come back/stick it out
Group xp bonus on top of base bonus
200% named spawn rate (More loot floating around to help keep casuals in the fight)
No item loot/no cash loot - pvp is about dominance
No petitions for disputes. Settle it in blood…
Training is a-okay guilds will find a way to stop it (a team of enchanters to stun/root/break invis, etc)
Full damage spells but fix resists, seems like spells land too often against a given resist

This, with a few adjustments. Make it so level 1's cannot go into SolB and train. Clerics casting DA and just non stop training is dumb. That is the only form of training that is dumb.

Make it teams. Good vs evil or just make two teams. The issue with Guilds is one guild always absorbs all the players and it becomes one huge guild vs a bunch of smaller guilds. Or limit guilds to 12 players.

Coin loot is fine. gives a little risk/reward and does not hit hard like item loot.

Fix resists. Fix resists and fix resists.

[Jimjam]

Add min (or even max) levels to dungeons to reduce oor interference (and twinking of low level pvp trolls).

[Tassador]

Let’s keep talking about imaginary servers cause we aren’t crazy.

[hekbringer]

Having a server time cap per account or character would be interesting. Perhaps the greatest determining factor in a characters power level is time spent playing.

We could balance the game by only allowing a certain number of hours to be played per week. As the player base, for this historical game, continues to age, presumably an increasing majority of players have to come out of mothers basement and produce on some level outside of the virtual world.

Something like 20-30 hours per week could allow players to work, create complex works of art, etc. They could then still come play and not get trounced by the few independently wealthy players whom can still commit every waking hour to our "sport".

This would perhaps boost the player base because the need to grind to the point of diminishing quality of life would be diminished if not removed.

Any thoughts?

[Jimjam]

I like that. Parents kicking you off the computer for spending too long feels classic!

I also suggest that once a character has existed for 3 years it should be locked out (lore wise it is ported off to the moon for bigger and better things).

[Painbow99]

lol