Alter End-Game Mechanics

[somnia]

Who would be in favor of altering end-game mechanics as to allow more guilds to experience end-game content?

Please vote.

[Silentone]

if you mean by instancing, no.
if you mean by faster repops Well that has pro's and con's

[somnia]

I mean whatever you want. I'm personally in favor of tokens so guilds can spawn targets at will. This would more or less simulated a multi-server environment whereby each server has one raid guild.

[Silentone]

Thats like instancing, im against it. Main reason i enjoy Classic EQ is no instancing. which is what most MMO's are currently moving towards.

[erog84]

/sarcasm on
Can we also change the xp so more people can enjoy lvl 60? Can we also remove xp penalties off every race/class so more people can enjoy 60 too? Oh yea, can we also have FBSS'S/FUNGI'S/EPICS/ETC drop off random mobs so more people can enjoy being uber too?
/sarcasm off

See where I'm going with this?

[somnia]

/sarcasm on
Can we also change the xp so more people can enjoy lvl 60? Can we also remove xp penalties off every race/class so more people can enjoy 60 too? Oh yea, can we also have FBSS'S/FUNGI'S/EPICS/ETC drop off random mobs so more people can enjoy being uber too?
/sarcasm off

See where I'm going with this?

/freshmanphilosopher on

Reductio ad absurdum.

/freshmanphilosopher off

[Lazortag]

Should we change classic-mechanics here to allow more guilds access to raid content?

Why change the classic stuff when there's unclassic stuff that should be changed first (like the incredibly long variance for raid mobs)?

[somnia]

Why change the classic stuff when there's unclassic stuff that should be changed first (like the incredibly long variance for raid mobs)?

Only further validates what I'm trying to say - mechanics are already not classic as it is.

[Lanuven]

Why change the classic stuff when there's unclassic stuff that should be changed first (like the incredibly long variance for raid mobs)?

[Crug]

Personally I'd rather see hybrid xp tax removed first. But honestly, the tokens could be fun. Every week a guild gets a token to pop certain raid mobs? Im all for that.

[fischsemmel]

And by "yes, I would be in favor of altering end-game mechanics as to allow more guilds to experience end-game content" I mean "yes I am in favor of velious."

[Faywind]

Hmmm....make a classic server less classic. Sounds retarded to me. I vote no!

[MiRo2]

I'm personally in favor of tokens so guilds can spawn targets at will.

/auc WTS Token Turn ins!

[batkiller]

Hmmm....make a classic server less classic. Sounds retarded to me. I vote no!

Would you say that classic was perfect?

[Flunklesnarkin]

Tokens / triggers are nice


but i doubt the devs have the willingness / ability to add something like that to the game.


and like every game mechanic.. is open for abuse... whats to stop a guild in which each member has 3 or 4 alts / bought accounts (with plat!!) from making 4 or more different guilds to just power farm stuff to RMT or sell.


I do like the idea because it would give guilds a chance to get smashed by dragons for fun without having to poopsock / zerg stuff. I just don't see it being realistically added as they can't even bring themselves to do simple fixes to end game that would make GM's / guides job easier.


Like some sort of FTE announcement for raid targets to prevent 2 or more guilds zerging a dragon in the hopes that they had FTE.

then wait on a guide to show up.. and more likely than not have them not do anything about loot even if the guild without FTE looted.

[porigromus]

I like the idea of tokens. It should be a grind like getting keyed in later expansions. Turn in 1000000000000000000000001 gnoll ears to NPC X to receive a token to spawn raid mob :D

[somnia]

I like the idea of tokens. It should be a grind like getting keyed in later expansions. Turn in 1000000000000000000000001 gnoll ears to NPC X to receive a token to spawn raid mob :D

You kid but exactly the idea.

[Callnoutthenewbs]

Would be nice so 1 guild doesnt take all the endgame dragons
Cause after all most of us are here to experience things we didnt get to on live right?

or a rotation on trak to start

[Faywind]

Would you say that classic was perfect?

I would say it's as close to perfect any MMO has ever been IMO.

[fischsemmel]

You want to kill dragons without effort?

Go play Skyrim.

[falkun]

You want to kill dragons without effort?

Go play Skyrim.

Or be like this guy and join TMO! You joined after the war was over, you have no room to talk and should see yourself to the door now.

[fischsemmel]

All right, fine.

/em walks out the door, surrounded by pretty, floating, blue musical notes.


More seriously, are you really going to blame me for not being on the server back when there was a war between the raiding guilds? Most of the time you trolly folk are excited to point out how I play too much, but now you're going to blame me for not playing enough! And are you really going to blame me for picking the winning side when I did get here? Of course I joined the best guild on the server, and why I did so had already been explained to other mad, epicless bards on the forums before.

And more importantly, these people probably aren't talking about how they want to avoid raid-guild wars. They're talking about how they want to be able to kill dragons on their own schedules without anyone else showing up to take their merbs. AKA they want Skyrim/instances/whatever. Hence my original comment.

[falkun]

All right, fine.

/em walks out the door, surrounded by pretty, floating, blue musical notes.

Who earned that for you, and how much time have you spent on poop mountain?

[fischsemmel]

Only a troll (or a mad, epicless bard) would pick that part of my post to comment on, and totally ignore the "more seriously" part.

[Alarti0001]

Only a troll (or a mad, epicless bard) would pick that part of my post to comment on, and totally ignore the "more seriously" part.

Speaking of we have a bard epic for sale... go find out link in EC tunnel Deajay.


More seriously, fisch has good raid attendance and logs alot of tracking hours. He has more than earned his bard epic.

[fischsemmel]

More seriously, fisch has good raid attendance and logs alot of tracking hours. He has more than earned his bard epic.

:)

Trying to get back on topic though: Dea, I'm all for a change in end-game mechanics that end up giving more people a chance at kills/loot... it just has to be mechanics that aren't so counter to everything classic EQ stood for.

Guilds being entitled to a certain number of boss spawns per week, instancing, etc., those are the exact opposite of a wide-open game where people can deal with each other and compete with each other for the limited resources that are available ingame.

Everyone and their brother on these forums likes to yell about how TMO is such a bunch of losers that they have fun clearing every raid mob every week with no one to race against. But then a bunch of you come into a thread like this and say you want the chance to do exactly the same thing. Wtf, mate?

[fischsemmel]

Why change the classic stuff when there's unclassic stuff that should be changed first (like the incredibly long variance for raid mobs)?

So you'd have, for example, VS spawn exactly 7 days after his last death?

Anyone who is in favor of this system realizes that it means the only way you'd get raid kills is by poopsocking and FTE racing, right? And that these are the exact same things that 90% of people on the forums like to bitch about being the bane of all that is good and right in the universe?

[falkun]

"You want to kill dragons without effort?"

You didn't experience the racing when it mattered, your point will ALWAYS be moot because of the fact you don't know the effort involved in racing.

"...ignore the "more serious" part."

What part? Your post was literally 2 lines before you edited it. One agreed with me that you never participated in the race, and the other admitted that even though you haven't participated in the race, you still have your epic (a taunt insinuating you are therefore better because you have it). What's the more serious part I'm supposed to address? I'll get right on that as soon as you post one.

"come into a thread like this and say you want the chance to do the exact same thing"
"realizes that it means the only way you'd get raid kills is by poopsocking and FTE racing"

You realize this is EXACTLY the same as what's already happening? You do...

"90% of the people on the forums like to bitch about"

So what's the difference? If we went to a static respawn, instead of the variance, the only difference is you'd have to spend less time tracking. You'd know about the poopsocking and FTE racing if you experienced the guild wars. But you didn't, so you sound like a moron talking about how the server would digress back into them.

My point still stands: you don't know what the race was like, you need to stop talking about it like you do. Pack your epic and your uncontested raid loot and go back to the TMO server forums where someone might care what opinion you have. Here, you have no experience, and therefore no opinion, journeyman.

[Norok]

Competition is what made classic EQ great. Equal-opportunity-raiding is what makes WoW a commercial success in that it is accessible to everyone. That's why I don't play WoW.

Scarcity of resources is what creates value. There is value in raid content and rewards because not everyone can access it. This dynamic challenges people to improve their play and form effective guilds.

[Alarti0001]

Competition is what made classic EQ great. Equal-opportunity-raiding is what makes WoW a commercial success in that it is accessible to everyone. That's why I don't play WoW.

Scarcity of resources is what creates value. There is value in raid content and rewards because not everyone can access it. This dynamic challenges people to improve their play and form effective guilds.

There are WoW vanilla emu's that are pretty fun. Check em out@!

[falkun]

And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not arguing against the scarcity at all. Whenever I do get around to completing my epic, it'll be worth that much more. That's why I've abstained from this poll.

I could see the end-game being changed either way. I've seen how variance affects the end-game, and I can see how tokens, rotations, and/or static spawns would also change the raid scene.

The fun fact is our current overlords are taking new mechanics to the extreme, well beyond intended purposes. Server resets have been tried recently to allow smaller guilds to obtain targets. Instead of that happening, however, TMO outmobilizes the smaller guilds to the targets they can contest and then leisurely kills the targets smaller guilds cannot contest.

Its well within their power to do, and they obviously are. But they even admit their loot is rotting, and they are still actively denying other guilds content, I don't know for what reason. The whole reason TMO usurped IB/TR was because IB was actively denying content to other guilds. TMO has become the very thing they wished to destroy.

"When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you."

Not that anything will change, and not that I care to be the instrument of that change personally. But realize you are what you so desperately wished to destroy. Embrace it, for you've damned yourselves to it.

[fischsemmel]

For the sake of argument, we will assume that I am entirely ignorant about everything.

Now, please Falkun, please do explain how a system with no variance will result in the "little guys" getting more raid kills. That is, after all, what this thread is supposed to be about (and was about, until you started the discussion about guild wars and whatnot).

[fischsemmel]

But they even admit their loot is rotting, and they are still actively denying other guilds content, I don't know for what reason.

Lol. You're serious?

[fischsemmel]

I've seen how variance affects the end-game, and I can see how tokens, rotations, and/or static spawns would also change the raid scene.

You have first-hand experience with how these things function on p99? Because if you don't, I'll remind you, then by your own reasoning you are not allowed to have an opinion on the subject.

[falkun]

I never said static respawns would allow the little guys to get more raid kills.

However, if everyone knew when a raid mob would spawn, the only thing determining who gets loot would be FTE or who received EXP. It becomes a camp then, wait the timer out and you can pluck off the mob when it respawns. Variance actually caters to the larger guild(s) that can field a raid force at any hour, on demand, instead of only during the hour the mob is guaranteed to spawn. Mobilization is effectively moot. Raid size is effectively moot (as all would engage at the same moment, so the mob is guaranteed to die).
Lol. You're serious?
I am serious. You have a bard epic (or more) rotting/for sale, BPs are for sale, and you've given Trak's teeth to L51 alts. What do you need Trak for other than to deny other guilds BPs/teeth/epics? And that's just one example. TMO admits their VP tracking bot has a full set of VP weapons. Please, explain why you are killing mobs other than to deny the mobs to other groups. Keeping the items scarce through any form of denial is no different than what IB did to TMO.
You have first-hand experience with how these things function on p99? Because if you don't, I'll remind you, then by your own reasoning you are not allowed to have an opinion on the subject.

Tokens: Server rules dictate the person who spawns a mob is entitled to that mob. How would tokens be any different? I've seen this on Keeper in Sky.
Rotations: You wouldn't know it because you didn't exist yet, but Trak was on rotation. You wouldn't know it because you didn't exist yet, but Ragefire wasn't always on rotation. Rotation has been good to stop the poopsocking on Ragefire. Trak rotation allowed people to not spend >75% of their time camped out on poop mountain. I've spent my time camped out on poop mountain, have you?
Static Spawns: Epic mobs (that aren't raid targets) are still static spawns. The first force to show up with adequate numbers is entitled to first shot at the mob, per server rules. I've helped with static, long-term epic spawns. I'm almost sure you have too (unless you are even more greedy than I think you are).

Why am I explaining this to you again? O ya, because you don't have any experience on your own to already know this.

[Ravager]

All right, fine.
They're talking about how they want to be able to kill dragons on their own schedules without anyone else showing up to take their merbs.

This would be ideal for the casual players who came to this server to see content they never got to see on live, but have careers and families now that they can't devote their time to poopsocking mobs.

The majority of the population isn't TMO. TMO is the only guild with the player base that actually wants to spend their entire day raiding or poopsocking, which makes the raid scene practically unplayable for any other guild.

How is it fair that one guild gets to set the terms for content access in a game?

[fadetree]

It's fair because they are the only ones willing to put up with what it takes. It doesn't get any fairer than that. You might mean 'I think it takes too much, and it should be changed so it's easier to do'. That's a different thing...and one that I personally don't think should be done on this server, even though I am very unlikely to be willing/able to do what it takes either.

[Alarti0001]

I never said static respawns would allow the little guys to get more raid kills.

However, if everyone knew when a raid mob would spawn, the only thing determining who gets loot would be FTE or who received EXP. It becomes a camp then, wait the timer out and you can pluck off the mob when it respawns. Variance actually caters to the larger guild(s) that can field a raid force at any hour, on demand, instead of only during the hour the mob is guaranteed to spawn. Mobilization is effectively moot. Raid size is effectively moot (as all would engage at the same moment, so the mob is guaranteed to die).

I am serious. You have a bard epic (or more) rotting/for sale, BPs are for sale, and you've given Trak's teeth to L51 alts. What do you need Trak for other than to deny other guilds BPs/teeth/epics? And that's just one example. TMO admits their VP tracking bot has a full set of VP weapons. Please, explain why you are killing mobs other than to deny the mobs to other groups. Keeping the items scarce through any form of denial is no different than what IB did to TMO.


Tokens: Server rules dictate the person who spawns a mob is entitled to that mob. How would tokens be any different? I've seen this on Keeper in Sky.
Rotations: You wouldn't know it because you didn't exist yet, but Trak was on rotation. You wouldn't know it because you didn't exist yet, but Ragefire wasn't always on rotation. Rotation has been good to stop the poopsocking on Ragefire. Trak rotation allowed people to not spend >75% of their time camped out on poop mountain. I've spent my time camped out on poop mountain, have you?
Static Spawns: Epic mobs (that aren't raid targets) are still static spawns. The first force to show up with adequate numbers is entitled to first shot at the mob, per server rules. I've helped with static, long-term epic spawns. I'm almost sure you have too (unless you are even more greedy than I think you are).

Why am I explaining this to you again? O ya, because you don't have any experience on your own to already know this.


You aren't arguing for the server, you are arguing for bda, every raid mob we left up went to bda recently- its hard for much smaller guilds like taken, acyrid, divinity, etc to compete against that if we start leaving more mobs up( which will prob happen soon anyways) they will just go to BDA so get off your high horse, you are just begging for scraps again.

[Ravager]

I'm not saying the content should be easier. I'm saying the content should be accessable. This isn't a PvP game. If TMO really wanted the competition that they claim to want, they'd be on the Red server where competition is the game. As it stands they are killing mobs they don't need just so that other guilds can't have them.

And to a casual player who wants a trip down memory lane and a chance to see parts of the game they didn't have a chance at the first go around, yes, it is indeed unfair.

[Ravager]

You aren't arguing for the server, you are arguing for bda, every raid mob we left up went to bda recently- its hard for much smaller guilds like taken, acyrid, divinity, etc to compete against that if we start leaving more mobs up( which will prob happen soon anyways) they will just go to BDA so get off your high horse, you are just begging for scraps again.

So it's better that they all go to TMO instead, where the loot gets sold or rotten?

[falkun]

And that's why, as I mentioned earlier, I abstained from the poll.

Both sides have merit. A classic feel is killing dragons, not training the other guild so you can kill dragons. In my experiences from Live, if another guild was present at a kill, we went and found a new target, not fight for FTE.

At the same time, a classic feel is 7 day respawn, not "kill on token summon" when it fits my raid's schedule. This meant we were often beat to server pops by Asian time-zones.

Since I feel this server contains an overall more casual playerbase, it would benefit from some form of more casual raid schedule ability. However, since the server's goal is a reproduction of classic, it would benefit from static respawns. Since I can't decide which weighs more heavily, the goal of the server or the wishes of the playerbase, I am a "hung jury" on changing the server.

I will agree, however, that the current variance system does not cater to the majority of the server's player base and also is not classic.

[fischsemmel]

This would be ideal for the casual players who came to this server to see content they never got to see on live, but have careers and families now that they can't devote their time to poopsocking mobs.

The majority of the population isn't TMO. TMO is the only guild with the player base that actually wants to spend their entire day raiding or poopsocking, which makes the raid scene practically unplayable for any other guild.

How is it fair that one guild gets to set the terms for content access in a game?

The server wasn't created to enable casual players to kill raid mobs that they didn't see in classic. It was created to recreate a classic experience. And there certainly wasn't much killing of raid mobs in classic just because you thought it would be fun to go do it once, as far as I can remember.

[nilbog]

I am still interested in hearing proposals for better end game systems. In the past, I have tried to comment on the ones I thought were good and still in the spirit of classic, non-instanced raiding.

If there was a perfect system in which raid targets spawned simultaneously within a certain window:



Would guilds still poopsock?
Would a single guild still get most of the targets?

From what I've seen, raiding guilds on p99 have far greater numbers than were historically on my eqlive server. I would hate to make a system that somehow made things worse :T

Anyways, keep up the proposals. Hopefully something is suggested that supports more guilds getting targets without diminishing competition.

[SamwiseRed]

enable pvp in raid zones on blue. :D

[thrump]

What do you need Trak for other than to deny other guilds BPs/teeth/epics? And that's just one example. TMO admits their VP tracking bot has a full set of VP weapons. Please, explain why you are killing mobs other than to deny the mobs to other groups. Keeping the items scarce through any form of denial is no different than what IB did to TMO.

There are still people needing breastplates and other trak loot, including keys. You really think we wake up at 3am just to deny others loot we have no use for? Lol. Neg. I like sleep. Shockingly, some classes have their bps while other classes still need. Repeat for other mobs... or are you really wanting Draco for those bone razors? Didn't think so.

[Ravager]

The server wasn't created to enable casual players to kill raid mobs that they didn't see in classic. It was created to recreate a classic experience. And there certainly wasn't much killing of raid mobs in classic just because you thought it would be fun to go do it once, as far as I can remember.

Variance should go then.

From the front page:
"Relive the classic Everquest MMORPG Gaming Experience as it was in 1999 and onward. Project 1999 is a free to play Emulated Everquest Server giving Players the opportunity to experience Classic EQ Once again, starting with the original 3 continents and a max level of 50, with the look and feel of the old interface and several modifications making game mechanics similar to how the game used to be. Project 1999 is the best and most popular classic Everquest experience."

I can't experience it if one guild blocks the content. It's a hobby server created for nostalgic purposes. If it isn't for the casual player, which makes up the majority of the population, who was it created for?

[Slave]

Why change the classic stuff when there's unclassic stuff that should be changed first (like the incredibly long variance for raid mobs)?

I am agreeing with Lazortag in a thead on the forums.

[HarrisonStillPosting]

Why change the classic stuff when there's unclassic stuff that should be changed first (like the incredibly long variance for raid mobs)?

I remember when the variance was put in to deter poopsocking faggotry, and people just poopsocked harder.

That's part of what ruined this server at the endgame. The other part was not banning hundreds of cheaters, but whatever.

If poopsocking was made illegal the endgame would be so much more pleasurable for more people. Not everyone is a disgusting piece of shit that wants to sit on a spawnpoint for a week because they're incapable of legitimately competing with a superior guild for FTE. (Read: back when there were more than the single sad zerg left on the server)

[fadetree]

I'm not saying the content should be easier. I'm saying the content should be accessable. This isn't a PvP game. If TMO really wanted the competition that they claim to want, they'd be on the Red server where competition is the game. As it stands they are killing mobs they don't need just so that other guilds can't have them.

And to a casual player who wants a trip down memory lane and a chance to see parts of the game they didn't have a chance at the first go around, yes, it is indeed unfair.

Well, it is accessible, if you outcompete TMO. In other words, it's not accessible because competing with TMO at this point is very hard, not because of some system feature or the hardness of the encounter itself or TMO exploiting ( as far as I know ).

On a personal note, if TMO is really killing stuff they don't need just to deny others, that sucks, but I have exactly zero knowledge of whether they are or not. I can't see why they would at this point.

I'm not personally against any change to how end game raiding works, but I think that it would have to be pretty extensive to really make a difference. I think it's got to look pretty much like instancing unless people are willing to put up with enforced rotations.

[fischsemmel]

From the front page:
"Relive the classic Everquest MMORPG Gaming Experience as it was in 1999 and onward. Project 1999 is a free to play Emulated Everquest Server giving Players the opportunity to experience Classic EQ Once again, starting with the original 3 continents and a max level of 50, with the look and feel of the old interface and several modifications making game mechanics similar to how the game used to be. Project 1999 is the best and most popular classic Everquest experience."

I can't experience it if one guild blocks the content. It's a hobby server created for nostalgic purposes. If it isn't for the casual player, which makes up the majority of the population, who was it created for?

It says it was created for you to have the OPPORTUNITY to experience classic EQ. It says it was created for you to relive the classic EXPERIENCE. It does not say that the server was created so you can experience things you missed out on back in the day. It does not say that it was created so you can experience everything as a casual.

You have an opportunity to experience every single piece of the p99. If you can't/won't seize on that opportunity, that's fine! But don't complain that you aren't being handed the game on a silver platter as if you were promised that with p99 any more than you were with classic.

[Alarti0001]

I am still interested in hearing proposals for better end game systems. In the past, I have tried to comment on the ones I thought were good and still in the spirit of classic, non-instanced raiding.

If there was a perfect system in which raid targets spawned simultaneously within a certain window:



Would guilds still poopsock?
Would a single guild still get most of the targets?

From what I've seen, raiding guilds on p99 have far greater numbers than were historically on my eqlive server. I would hate to make a system that somehow made things worse :T

Anyways, keep up the proposals. Hopefully something is suggested that supports more guilds getting targets without diminishing competition.

I have a suggestion.....Velious ;)

More targets, more opportunities

[fischsemmel]

I remember when the variance was put in to deter poopsocking faggotry, and people just poopsocked harder.

NO ONE FUCKING POOPSOCKS ANYMORE (except on maestro, from time to time).

[Ravager]

It says it was created for you to have the OPPORTUNITY to experience classic EQ. It says it was created for you to relive the classic EXPERIENCE. It does not say that the server was created so you can experience things you missed out on back in the day. It does not say that it was created so you can experience everything as a casual.

You have an opportunity to experience every single piece of the p99. If you can't/won't seize on that opportunity, that's fine! But don't complain that you aren't being handed the game on a silver platter as if you were promised that with p99 any more than you were with classic.

I'm not asking to have things handed to me. Getting 30+ people together to kill a dragon that you have an even chance of wiping to, isn't the same thing as having something handed to you. I'm simply saying it's unfair that one guild gets to dictate the access to the end-game content.

[Ravager]

NO ONE FUCKING POOPSOCKS ANYMORE (except on maestro, from time to time).

Noone poopsocks anymore because the people who want to are TMO. The only players on this server that tried to 'compete' this way either burned themselves out or were griefed off the server.

Once BDA starts going after more targets, the poopsocking will start all over again.

[fischsemmel]

If there was a perfect system in which raid targets spawned simultaneously within a certain window:



Would guilds still poopsock?
Would a single guild still get most of the targets?

From what I've seen, raiding guilds on p99 have far greater numbers than were historically on my eqlive server. I would hate to make a system that somehow made things worse :T

Anyways, keep up the proposals. Hopefully something is suggested that supports more guilds getting targets without diminishing competition.

1. With any kind of window, either poopsocking or tracking is going to happen until the server gets to a point where no one cares enough about kills/loot to put in the time. And that doesn't seem likely to happen short of all the un-casual players quitting.

2. One guild would not have gotten most of the kills on the last two repops if either a) the other guilds had picked targets they could realistically kill before TMO showed up to compete and/or b) everyone knew what time the repop was going to occur. It also would have helped for the repop to be during a time when the most players tend to be logged into the server.


Imagine the system below:

1. Trak, maestro, and draco have a 1-hour window in which all three of the mobs will simultaneously spawn. This happens every 3-ish days.
2. Oldworld dragons, gods, outdoor dragons, VS, and VP have a 1-hour window in which all of the mobs will simultaneously spawn. This happens every 7-ish days.
3. The "-ish" accounts for a staff-selected time when the window will be near the 3/7-day mark.
4. The window's opening and closing times will be made known on the p99 site and ingame.

The 1-hour window is there just for a bit of... I don't know, I guess excitement. A chance for people to maybe make it in in time even if they aren't free at the instant the window opens. Whatever. It isn't really of consequence, I don't think, whether this exists or not. HOWEVER, any larger of a window will certainly work against the casual guilds being online in full force when stuff pops.

The 3-day window forces the more dedicated guilds to race/FTE/whatever for Trak to get those tasty BPs and teeth at the cost of missing out on the couple of nice things maestro and draco still have for these guilds. Yeah, TMO could split its forces and kill trak, draco, and maestro at the same time, but I think that thinning of forces really increases the chance of losing 1+ of the mobs to a guild that focuses. Smaller/more casual guilds get to head to/already be in hate or fear, though they certainly still need to be racing because enough people were certainly logged out on ledge to kill trak within minutes of the server coming up.

The 7-day window forces the more dedicated guilds to pick their priority targets. Maybe a guild can split 2 ways, but certainly not 3. VS, Inny, and CT are most likely the biggest targets, but so long as not all of the guilds try to race each other to those three targets, there are still 6 dragons out there sitting around just waiting to cough up their scales and cloaks and belts and shields and such.

Staff picking the windows can try to spread spawns out so that things aren't always popping at 8-11 pm est, etc. Everyone being on notice of when the window opens will give everyone an equal warning to try to be online at the right time, saving the more casual guilds from having to play 24/7 to compete and letting the more dedicated guilds play their alts or farm or whatever without worrying about being interrupted by a batphone.



Alternatively, the 1-hour window remains 1-hour but not everything spawns at the same time. Logging out at your highest priority target is suddenly a huge risk, because if he doesn't pop right away you could potentially lose an hour of other guilds killing everything else.

Random idea, not sure exactly how it would work because I lost my train of thought on it: raid mobs despawn if not engaged within a certain amount of time, and then perhaps their respawn is shortened cumulatively with multiple despawns? I don't know what the hell I was going for when that popped into my head.

[falkun]

Would guilds still poopsock?
Would a single guild still get most of the targets?

From what I've seen, raiding guilds on p99 have far greater numbers than were historically on my eqlive server. I would hate to make a system that somehow made things worse :T

If raid mobs all popped at the same, known time, guilds would poopsock their highest priority targets.
A single guild (TMO currently) would still get most of the targets because they are large enough and/or have enough well-placed alts to mobilize multiple forces and/or quickly mobilize or camp over to other targets, as they have done on previous full respawns lately (Vox+Trak anyone?).

Raiding guilds are much larger on this server than Live because we are all in one place and the competition caters to guilds of the largest size.

These factors were mitigated on Live by rapid deployment of content (faster than one person could achieve multiple characters to absorb the content on), creating a longer grind (necessity of AAs meant players did not have time to devote to alts), and raid size restrictions (originally 72, now I think Live raids are 30man?). Classically, you cannot accomplish any of these (except maybe content deployment, which is determined by server staff capability) because AAs and raid interface are two non-classic additions to Everquest.

You, as a server developer, are stuck between a rock and a hard place and I do not envy you. As has already been mentioned in this thread, scarcity creates demand. Unless you dilute the item pool, you will not reduce the demand. At the same time, a lot of players stick around and don't "get max level and quit" because things are not diluted and the time investment is so great.

The only reason things have improved lately is because people stopped fighting. To quote Alarti, "IB is gone, VD is gone." There isn't another guild that wishes to, as Amelinda puts it, "TAKE mobs from TMO". The effort doesn't justify the rewards and the support the rest of the server would need from staff in enforcing the rules is not adequate (not that they don't do a good job when they are available, but they cannot humanly resolve everything). So the fighting is done, TMO owns the server, and the rest of us bitch at TMO for owning the server.

It'll go like this until either another guild steps up and "takes mobs from TMO", making Amelinda's life miserable but giving her exactly what she asked for or TMO gets bored killing the same thing without competition, realizing they'd rather have a PVP game than trying to PVP within some arbitrary bounds of PVE. After that next coup, we'll see if the new overlords turn out to be the same as the old (similar to IB -> TMO), or if they will be better or, Tunare forbid, worse. Eventually we'll reach some form of equilibrium, much as EQMac has now that its seven (is that right?) years old. I'm sure EQMac had some hard times in its adolescent time as well. EQMac, as a server, is wise in its old-age.

Back to the original topic, I think full server resets are nice. They give the smaller guilds a shot, at least, at one or two targets before TMO sweeps all they can kill away. They also add additional loot (the dilution I mentioned earlier) because they force spawn mobs faster than their intended range. EQMac has full resets every other week, I think something similar here would be nice, even if every 3 weeks.

I think the variance is a bit on the ridiculous side. The only people you're still getting to waste time with tracking is TMO. The rest of us wait for the "scrap of the week" from TMO, and then casually track that one target until it spawns. If we have the people on, we kill it, if not, its left for the next guild to casually kill at their leisure. Changing the variance to +/-12hrs on either side will still allow raid mobs to spawn at times more opportune for other time zones (as opposed to 11PM EST killing Gore and then the Asian time zones always being screwed out of his static respawn time), but TMO's trackers will get to breathe (unless they REALLY love tracking -that- much).

I'm conflicted about tokens. While I'd love to get my epic, and I'm sure other players would too, its definitively "not classic". However, I can see the argument for implementing the "spawned" mobs sooner. Spawned VS, Undead Bard (spawned Trak), spawned Faydedar, moving Hate/Fear epic pieces from the gods to the minibosses; these are all Velious classic changes that we will see on this server, help the raid scene, and can be implemented ahead of time. If you want to stick to classic, then change them when they were chronologically changed, "the change was implemented X months after epic release on Live, so implement it here X months after epics were released on P99, regardless of if Hate as a whole has been updated to 2.0 or if Velious has (not) been released yet."

As for the future, I'd suggest increasing the difficulty of Velious mobs. You already have charm on Kunark dragons (not classic as far as I can tell), but something more needs to be done. As you've mentioned, the guilds are larger, and as we all know, the strats are 10+ years old. I don't know how you'd do this, whether through more HPs (hello shitty Vex Thal), add additional raid boss mechanics (not classic), make them hit harder (hello shitty random number generator "IH8U" roll), or some other method. You might make more "linked" fights, IE: you pull Vindi, but you have to deal with the 3 guards that come with him (hello Emp Ssra) (that can't be monk-split or DoT+COS+COH pulled). I don't know all the solutions you can come up with, but make the content harder. Velious getting cleared in a night would make me a sad panda. I'm sure TMO might actually enjoy a PVE challenge for once too, instead of begging the server for a PVP challenge.

[falkun]

1. Nobody poopsocks!!! The closest thing to a full raid force sitting on a spawn, ready for the engage the second the mobs pops, that exists in p99 is the occasional maestro poopsock. Other than that, guilds have individual characters that sit in zones watching for a raid mob to pop.

GET OUT OF THIS THREAD YOU GOD DAMNED NOOB. I've warned you before, you know nothing about the raid scene on this server and this post, this #1, just lays your ignorance out on the table for EVERYONE to witness and laugh at. The only reason people aren't poopsocking is because we've given up trying to combat TMO, as Ravager has already pointed out. Poopsocks will commence again when someone challenges TMO.

2. With any kind of window, either poopsocking or tracking is going to happen until the server gets to a point where no one cares enough about kills/loot to put in the time. And that doesn't seem likely to happen short of all the un-casual players quitting.

The only ones that care that much is TMO and yourself (congrats on putting in the tracking hours for no competition!). The only un-casual players are TMO, and possibly the more hardcore members of BDA/Divinity/Taken/Acyrid.

3. One guild would not have gotten most of the kills on the last two repops if either a) the other guilds had picked targets they could realistically kill before TMO showed up to compete and/or b) everyone knew what time the repop was going to occur. It also would have helped for the repop to be during a time when the most players tend to be logged into the server.

Again, you display your ignorance for everyone to mock. TMO can outmobilize anyone. If TMO shows up to Hate to kill Inny when BDA is already in Hate, TMO will fight for FTE instead of going to Fear to get CT, then they will beat Taken+Divinity (fictitious alliance) to CT because Takinity are clearing the zone instead of training it. TMO could just as easily spend an hour clearing VP and then the rest of the server would have most of the non-VP targets down by then, but they don't. TMO actively chooses to kill non-VP targets first knowing they will not have competition in VP. There is not a single target that any other guild "could realistically kill before TMO showed up to compete".
How do you people not get this? Leapfrogging is a dick move. It's not about "rules" or "ZOMG IT HAPPENED ON MY SERVER ITS FAIR".Truth.
TMO will do it, whether its fair or not, because its allowed by the server rules. "TMO gives 0 fucks", and will do what it wants until its banned by server rules (even then they'll push the envelope). If you think a server repop gives any other guild a shot at anything beyond their initial target, you're more ignorant to the guild you are in, the raid scene you participate in, and the server you play on than I realized.

Edit: I captured your post before you got to clean up some of your moronic dribble, Fisch.

[Jimes]

People are complaining about not getting mobs, but you really just want them handed to you on a platter. There have been a couple of times in the past month or two where the servers went down and every single raid target respawned. All you guys managed to drop were what, maestro and vox? What makes you think you deserve raid content if that's the best effort you can bring to the table. Enjoy your hate clears and KC xp groups, because that's going to be your EQ experience until you pull your shit together and take what you want. If there are people on the server that want it more than you, then whose fault is that exactly?

[achtung]

ITT falkun posts over and over again about how good TMO is at mobilizing. Quite the compliment.

[Splorf22]

I am still interested in hearing proposals for better end game systems. In the past, I have tried to comment on the ones I thought were good and still in the spirit of classic, non-instanced raiding.

If there was a perfect system in which raid targets spawned simultaneously within a certain window:



Would guilds still poopsock?
Would a single guild still get most of the targets?

From what I've seen, raiding guilds on p99 have far greater numbers than were historically on my eqlive server. I would hate to make a system that somehow made things worse :T

Anyways, keep up the proposals. Hopefully something is suggested that supports more guilds getting targets without diminishing competition.

Here's a list for you Nilbog :D


What is your definition of competition in PVE EQ? I just don't think this whole concept makes sense really.
I'm a scientist. You are asking questions that can be verified experimentally and easily. Setup two or three dates where you preannounce when you are going to reboot the server. Measure results. TMO claims they'll still get everything - lets find out.
It's not hard to implement anti-poopsocking code. Just make it so that whenever a raid mob spawns, everyone in the zone is immediately evacuated to the zone in and the entire zone is repopped, plus anyone who logs in while said raid mob is up logs in at the zone safe point regardless of where they camped out. The guild that camps out right outside the zone will still have the advantage of course, but it won't be nearly as high as it is now. Part of the reason TMO is so unstoppable at this kind of thing is that many of them have 2 or more L60 toons, especially now with the IB character RMTs. With 2-3 targets in window at most with variance, they can simply park one toon at each raid mob.
Alarti is right and Velious is the real answer. Although personally I'm almost inclined to quit just because I'm currently the unluckiest player on the server and am simply unable to win a roll on anything. I calculated that I had a ridiculous 1/1000 chance to go 0-20 something on fungi tunics in 2-4 man groups. I just have to laugh at guys like Treats and Quizy because I can kill the king easily duo, I just can't beat the RNG :D

[Grozmok]

Yes.

Velious first however (which might be the panacea anyway)

[falkun]

Imagine the system below:

1. Trak, maestro, and draco have a 1-hour window in which all three of the mobs will simultaneously spawn. This happens every 3-ish days.
2. Oldworld dragons, gods, outdoor dragons, VS, and VP have a 1-hour window in which all of the mobs will simultaneously spawn. This happens every 7-ish days.
3. The "-ish" accounts for a staff-selected time when the window will be near the 3/7-day mark.
4. The window's opening and closing times will be made known on the p99 site and ingame.

The 3-day window forces the more dedicated guilds to race/FTE/whatever for Trak to get those tasty BPs and teeth at the cost of missing out on the couple of nice things maestro and draco still have for these guilds. Yeah, TMO could split its forces and kill trak, draco, and maestro at the same time, but I think that thinning of forces really increases the chance of losing 1+ of the mobs to a guild that focuses. Smaller/more casual guilds get to head to/already be in hate or fear, though they certainly still need to be racing because enough people were certainly logged out on ledge to kill trak within minutes of the server coming up.

You really are that ignorant... Even for casual guilds it only takes 15ish people to kill Draco and Maestro. TMO could keep 25 at Trak and still dispatch 15 for Maestro and Draco simultaneously. TMO would also go for Maestro first, Draco second, and Trak third because Maestro is the most heavily contested and easiest to get. Draco is the second easiest to get, and no other guild could muster the forces to kill Trak before TMO logged back over and engaged Trak. I can't believe your ignorance in the end-game raid scene to even suggest otherwise.

The 7-day window forces the more dedicated guilds to pick their priority targets. Maybe a guild can split 2 ways, but certainly not 3. VS, Inny, and CT are most likely the biggest targets, but so long as not all of the guilds try to race each other to those three targets, there are still 6 dragons out there sitting around just waiting to cough up their scales and cloaks and belts and shields and such.

Staff picking the windows can try to spread spawns out so that things aren't always popping at 8-11 pm est, etc. Everyone being on notice of when the window opens will give everyone an equal warning to try to be online at the right time, saving the more casual guilds from having to play 24/7 to compete and letting the more dedicated guilds play their alts or farm or whatever without worrying about being interrupted by a batphone.

Alternatively, the 1-hour window remains 1-hour but not everything spawns at the same time. Logging out at your highest priority target is suddenly a huge risk, because if he doesn't pop right away you could potentially lose an hour of other guilds killing everything else.

Random idea, not sure exactly how it would work because I lost my train of thought on it: raid mobs despawn if not engaged within a certain amount of time, and then perhaps their respawn is shortened cumulatively with multiple despawns? I don't know what the hell I was going for when that popped into my head.

This is no different than the 3-day idea. TMO would camp at VS because he's an easy and also high priority target. Then they would go get Inny (who has the best shot at dieing to another guild). Third would be CT due to his high priority. TMO will get a train going, and will drop that train on any other guild who engages CT (I've seen it happen for both CT and Draco). After CT, they'd go for the Kunark dragons, probably Faydedar (if he hasn't been killed by anyone who decided not to go for CT) while the CT guild still CRed from their train. After Faydedar, TMO would head to Talendor or Severilous, then the other, and finally Gorenaire (who probably wiped the other guilds first and only attempt). Finally, after they've swiped up every pop except 2-3 (tops), they'd stroll into VP to claim their free loots because the competition is over.

But, if you had raced TMO during a full respawn before, you might already know this. Seeing as how you have neither raced against, nor with TMO for any serious respawn, you have no idea how this works.

The only one you are fooling with your idea is yourself. I'm content with challenging 1-2 things against TMO per respawn cycle, but do not attempt to delude your ignorant beliefs upon others.

[Alarti0001]

GET OUT OF THIS THREAD YOU GOD DAMNED NOOB. I've warned you before, you know nothing about the raid scene on this server and this post, this #1, just lays your ignorance out on the table for EVERYONE to witness and laugh at. The only reason people aren't poopsocking is because we've given up trying to combat TMO, as Ravager has already pointed out. Poopsocks will commence again when someone challenges TMO.



The only ones that care that much is TMO and yourself (congrats on putting in the tracking hours for no competition!). The only un-casual players are TMO, and possibly the more hardcore members of BDA/Divinity/Taken/Acyrid.



Again, you display your ignorance for everyone to mock. TMO can outmobilize anyone. If TMO shows up to Hate to kill Inny when BDA is already in Hate, TMO will fight for FTE instead of going to Fear to get CT, then they will beat Taken+Divinity (fictitious alliance) to CT because Takinity are clearing the zone instead of training it. TMO could just as easily spend an hour clearing VP and then the rest of the server would have most of the non-VP targets down by then, but they don't. TMO actively chooses to kill non-VP targets first knowing they will not have competition in VP. There is not a single target that any other guild "could realistically kill before TMO showed up to compete".

TMO will do it, whether its fair or not, because its allowed by the server rules. "TMO gives 0 fucks", and will do what it wants until its banned by server rules (even then they'll push the envelope). If you think a server repop gives any other guild a shot at anything beyond their initial target, you're more ignorant to the guild you are in, the raid scene you participate in, and the server you play on than I realized.

Edit: I captured your post before you got to clean up some of your moronic dribble, Fisch.



Everyone has a right to comment on this thread.

Maybe you should log off the forums for a few, go for a run or something, and come back when you are less volatile cause you are making yourself look like an idiot, and an asshole, and I personally don't think you are one.

[Jimes]

You really are that ignorant... Even for casual guilds it only takes 15ish people to kill Draco

Sounds like a pretty simple task. Why don't guilds do it then? Get it tracked, use the tools available to communicate the spawn quickly to the guild, get ports, kill, and do it faster than tmo if you want the kill. It's not hard. As of now you put forth zero effort and then shed tears all over the forum about how entitled you are to the kill. Doesn't work that way.

[fischsemmel]

3. One guild would not have gotten most of the kills on the last two repops if either a) the other guilds had picked targets they could realistically kill before TMO showed up to compete and/or b) everyone knew what time the repop was going to occur. It also would have helped for the repop to be during a time when the most players tend to be logged into the server.

Again, you display your ignorance for everyone to mock. TMO can outmobilize anyone. If TMO shows up to Hate to kill Inny when BDA is already in Hate, TMO will fight for FTE instead of going to Fear to get CT, then they will beat Taken+Divinity (fictitious alliance) to CT because Takinity are clearing the zone instead of training it. TMO could just as easily spend an hour clearing VP and then the rest of the server would have most of the non-VP targets down by then, but they don't. TMO actively chooses to kill non-VP targets first knowing they will not have competition in VP. There is not a single target that any other guild "could realistically kill before TMO showed up to compete".

Quit raging for a minute and re-read this stuff.

I'm talking about a situation where there was a full repop and everyone knew it was coming and it was at a time when multiple guilds could field decent raid forces.

Do you really think that TMO would have left VS, CT (and draco), Inny (and maestro) up to have split forces to contest Sev, Tal, and Gore, if BDA, Taken, and Divinity had gone after those dragons instead of going up into the planes?

That's what I'm talking about. The other guilds on the server can get multiple kills on a full respawn IF THEY PICK THE RIGHT TARGETS. And, of course, the right targets are NOT VS, Inny, and CT.

[falkun]

I was wondering when my "u mad brew" post would arrive.

Thanks for not disappointing Alarti!

If Fisch would comment on the raid scene, I could take it, but he's proclaiming downright untruths as facts. He has no idea about the poopsocking and is completely ignorant of the raiding meta-game.

He blames the 2nd tier guilds for taking on targets that are more difficult than farm status as the reason for their failure. If we wanted everything on farm status, we'd just join TMO wholesale and no one would fight again for raid content, we'd all just run arond as a 200-man raid force killing it all. If you expect us to never try more difficult content, then stop asking us for competition. We like our friends, and we like doing content that's not trivial for us. We don't like leapfrogging, its a dick move; but its legal so we suck it up and move on.

[falkun]

Sounds like a pretty simple task. Why don't guilds do it then? Get it tracked, use the tools available to communicate the spawn quickly to the guild, get ports, kill, and do it faster than tmo if you want the kill. It's not hard. As of now you put forth zero effort and then shed tears all over the forum about how entitled you are to the kill. Doesn't work that way.

The last time VD did this before it disbanded, Fauss dropped a train on our kill and we wiped at 1%. No I don't have fraps, and no you won't believe me because I don't have any evidence, but I know what you did.

Its not zero effort, its a moral decision to not resort to the same underhanded tactics.

[Ravager]

People are complaining about not getting mobs, but you really just want them handed to you on a platter. There have been a couple of times in the past month or two where the servers went down and every single raid target respawned. All you guys managed to drop were what, maestro and vox? What makes you think you deserve raid content if that's the best effort you can bring to the table. Enjoy your hate clears and KC xp groups, because that's going to be your EQ experience until you pull your shit together and take what you want. If there are people on the server that want it more than you, then whose fault is that exactly?

Having an opportunity to attempt a mob that you can just as easily wipe to without interference is not the same thing as having it handed to you on a platter. This is the very attitude that destroys the end game for the majority of the population who don't want to spend their game time sitting on spawn points, logging off DT cycles, dodging trains or corpse running.

And to insinuate that they're lazy or don't want it enough is a little ridiculous. EQ is a grind. For most people to get to the level to see this content they've got a /played in the weeks and months.

You say other guilds don't deserve these mobs, but what makes you feel entitled to these mobs on a free server? Do you feel entitled to all the free samples at the grocery store because the other customers didn't want them bad enough?

[fischsemmel]

You really are that ignorant... Even for casual guilds it only takes 15ish people to kill Draco and Maestro. TMO could keep 25 at Trak and still dispatch 15 for Maestro and Draco simultaneously. TMO would also go for Maestro first, Draco second, and Trak third because Maestro is the most heavily contested and easiest to get. Draco is the second easiest to get, and no other guild could muster the forces to kill Trak before TMO logged back over and engaged Trak. I can't believe your ignorance in the end-game raid scene to even suggest otherwise.

It's not that simple in reality, though.

We did wipe out of hate a couple maestros ago, and that wasn't splitting forces.
We did wipe out on trak a couple weeks ago, and that wasn't splitting forces.
I don't recall a wipe to draco lately, but that train can be tricky and if it gets loose it can take a while to get into kill-ready state again, I guess.

Shit happens, ya know? And that's why I said it would be risky to split forces 3 ways on this hypothetical repop, assuming that the other guilds were all present with decent raid forces too.


This is no different than the 3-day idea. TMO would camp at VS because he's an easy and also high priority target. Then they would go get Inny (who has the best shot at dieing to another guild). Third would be CT due to his high priority. TMO will get a train going, and will drop that train on any other guild who engages CT (I've seen it happen for both CT and Draco). After CT, they'd go for the Kunark dragons, probably Faydedar (if he hasn't been killed by anyone who decided not to go for CT) while the CT guild still CRed from their train. After Faydedar, TMO would head to Talendor or Severilous, then the other, and finally Gorenaire (who probably wiped the other guilds first and only attempt). Finally, after they've swiped up every pop except 2-3 (tops), they'd stroll into VP to claim their free loots because the competition is over.

Again, do you think TMO would split 3 ways to contest a few outdoor dragons and leave VS and the gods up?



Also, what do you have to say about the "everything respawns at some point within a 1-hour window, but not necessarily simultaneously within that window" idea? Wouldn't that address the whole issue of camping out at the highest target and then proceeding through mobs in a certain order?

Hypo: TMO logs in at trak ledge. Trak's not up. BDA has 50 people on ledge also. Inny is up. Fay is up. Taken has 30 in hate clearing to Inny. Divinity has 20 in oasis waiting on raft. What's going to happen? Hell if I know. But I bet TMO isn't going to clean sweep the server.

[HarrisonStillPosting]

His idea of legit competition is poopsocking, exploiting, and training. That's why he's in TMO.

He, and they, are completely incapable of playing properly. Their shit would have never flied on live. They'd be suffering massive amounts of bans for the shit they've been doing since FB -> DA -> Fusion -> TMO -> blah blah whatever shit name their give their talentless homogenization of cheating scum.

[Alarti0001]

I was wondering when my "u mad brew" post would arrive.

Thanks for not disappointing Alarti!

If Fisch would comment on the raid scene, I could take it, but he's proclaiming downright untruths as facts. He has no idea about the poopsocking and is completely ignorant of the raiding meta-game.

He blames the 2nd tier guilds for taking on targets that are more difficult than farm status as the reason for their failure. If we wanted everything on farm status, we'd just join TMO wholesale and no one would fight again for raid content, we'd all just run arond as a 200-man raid force killing it all. If you expect us to never try more difficult content, then stop asking us for competition. We like our friends, and we like doing content that's not trivial for us. We don't like leapfrogging, its a dick move; but its legal so we suck it up and move on.

I didn't say you mad brew. That is an antagonistic trollpost. I asked you to take a break and come back to argue your case with ideas instead of e-yelling at people who debate you. Also, you were acting in a manner unbecomming of a BDA member. Be good in your new home, don't ruin BDA with your vitriol BDA has always been a pretty cool guild.

[fischsemmel]

So you guys refuse to kill easier targets that you know you can get and instead are going to keep trying to get to kills that you have just said TMO will win every time?

Somethins wrong with you, imo.

[HIYO]

And DJ said he was going to join TMO last week after VD broke up. To bad they only take 60's now and you can not even leveling the easiest class in game past 56 in over a year. Quit menstruating all over the boards you embarrass yourself your guild.

[Jimes]

Having an opportunity to attempt a mob that you can just as easily wipe to without interference is not the same thing as having it handed to you on a platter. This is the very attitude that destroys the end game for the majority of the population who don't want to spend their game time sitting on spawn points, logging off DT cycles, dodging trains or corpse running.

And to insinuate that they're lazy or don't want it enough is a little ridiculous. EQ is a grind. For most people to get to the level to see this content they've got a /played in the weeks and months.

You say other guilds don't deserve these mobs, but what makes you feel entitled to these mobs on a free server? Do you feel entitled to all the free samples at the grocery store because the other customers didn't want them bad enough?

I never said I was entitled to anything. And that's the point. No one is entitled to anything. EQ has no instances, so the mobs are there for whoever is strong enough to get them. I think there's enough people and gear on this server for multiple guilds to be strong enough to get these kills, but at the moment only one puts forth the effort to make it happen. The others are too busy typing out walls of text about how unfair it is.

[Splorf22]

Quit raging for a minute and re-read this stuff.

I'm talking about a situation where there was a full repop and everyone knew it was coming and it was at a time when multiple guilds could field decent raid forces.

Do you really think that TMO would have left VS, CT (and draco), Inny (and maestro) up to have split forces to contest Sev, Tal, and Gore, if BDA, Taken, and Divinity had gone after those dragons instead of going up into the planes?

That's what I'm talking about. The other guilds on the server can get multiple kills on a full respawn IF THEY PICK THE RIGHT TARGETS. And, of course, the right targets are NOT VS, Inny, and CT.

Didn't you join TMO after IB disbanded and VD imploded Fisch? I think that's what's frustrating Deajay, because as recently as two months ago there was massive poopsocking and general faggotry in the raid scene (from both sides) whereas now TMO mostly gets a free pass. This state is kind of self-reinforcing as well because anyone who really wants to raid seriously joins them now, and if you never experienced the ridiculous amounts of time and energy people devote to "competition" in EQ you don't really know what you're talking about. If you joined TMO three months ago I take that all back of course.

Uhoh, I broke my rule not to flame on the forums again. Somehow the forums turn nice people into utter douches. I think every single person in this thread is way way way nicer in game than they are on the forums.

[HarrisonStillPosting]

Sitting on top of spawn points for a week, or training VP, is not strength. It's pathetic.

[Splorf22]

I never said I was entitled to anything. And that's the point. No one is entitled to anything. EQ has no instances, so the mobs are there for whoever is strong enough to get them. I think there's enough people and gear on this server for multiple guilds to be strong enough to get these kills, but at the moment only one puts forth the effort to make it happen. The others are too busy typing out walls of text about how unfair it is.

By 'strong' you mean 'willing to sit at the computer for hours on end'. But other than that I agree with you.

MUST QUIT FORUMS MY GOD

[falkun]

You won't split your forces three ways, I never said that. No one is going to bother contesting Trak because its not happening. So you guys race for Maestro. After maestro, you'll have your kite up and ready to drop on any contesting Draco. So out of 3 spawns, the only one you might lose would be Maestro, as has already happened.

As for your staggering respawns, as soon as you do that, mobilization > poopsocking. You might have an argument for the short window though. Then its who gets lucky with spawn order to allow them to move on to the next target?

You might have an idea with that last one: "simultaneous repop with very small window".

[fadetree]

Well, since Nilbog asked, here's a suggestion ( from an earlier thread )

You know, I spent some time on one of the TLP Servers. They 'solve' this problem by enforcing a rotation. Your guild has to reach some qualifying level, ie., killing mob x, to qualify for the rotation. Then each guild is assigned a kill window on certain mobs on a certain range of time. If you kill your mob in the kill window ( within 7 hours of spawn, for example ) great. If not, its FFA. Offending guilds lose their rotation spots to the guild they KS'd.

Plenty of problems there too, but it seemed to work better than not having it. I don't know if the server admins here are willing to put up with the hassles though, but maybe...just MAYBE...if we all try really hard...maybe we could set it up and run it ourselves. Sort of a more formal version of what TMO is doing for the endangered list.

We could have a couple of 'tiers' :
1. Noob tier - low qualifier, ie., you have to actually have a guild and have killed (something larger than a gras snake), vox and naggy and the like on the list.
2. Midrange - qualifier : killed all noob tier targets. Kunark dragons, some epic fights maybe, etc.
3. Pro - qualifier : killed all midrange targets. Vp dragons, etc.

[Ravager]

I never said I was entitled to anything. And that's the point. No one is entitled to anything. EQ has no instances, so the mobs are there for whoever is strong enough to get them. I think there's enough people and gear on this server for multiple guilds to be strong enough to get these kills, but at the moment only one puts forth the effort to make it happen. The others are too busy typing out walls of text about how unfair it is.

But that's the thing. This is a PvE game. There should be no effort to get them beyond whatever obstacles are built in the game. This is a cooperative game, people band together to take down mobs. The only reason there's competition is because TMO or whoever is on top at the time, creates it. This kind of environment benefits only one guild and only one kind of player.

As far as typing out walls of text about how unfair it is, that's because it is unfair and a public forum is the place to bring it up. If it were fair and the server were fine the way it is with one zerg guild monopolizing the content, I don't think Nilbog would be asking for suggestions.

I'd be all for forced rotations on this server, and for the majority of the server, I'm sure it will only enhance the fun of the game. I would suggest something along the lines of any guild that can kill a mob on their own gets in the rotation, leave one slot as a free-for-all so that people can have their competition and bragging rights and also use that slot as a qualifier for new guilds to attempt the mob and try to get in the rotation. If any guild wipes on their mob or don't kill it in a certain time, it becomes free for all.

For the people who want to compete for mobs all the time, that's what the Red server is for.

[YendorLootmonkey]

I am still interested in hearing proposals for better end game systems. In the past, I have tried to comment on the ones I thought were good and still in the spirit of classic, non-instanced raiding.

If there was a perfect system in which raid targets spawned simultaneously within a certain window:



Would guilds still poopsock?
Would a single guild still get most of the targets?

From what I've seen, raiding guilds on p99 have far greater numbers than were historically on my eqlive server. I would hate to make a system that somehow made things worse :T

Anyways, keep up the proposals. Hopefully something is suggested that supports more guilds getting targets without diminishing competition.

Not so much a solution to poopsocking, but more of a solution to offload "referee" burden from the guides/GMs:

Is there a compelling reason (except for "its not classic1!!1") why a zonewide shout by a raid mob indicating FTE and return to target seek mode could not be implemented? Then, the guides dont have to waste time trying to sort out what happened and transferring loot around, and no one can rules-lawyer FTE. Or even a death message that indicates who had FTE during the encounter that led to its death (although the preference would be knowing FTE at the beginning of the encounter so you can pull your raid force and let your opponent reap the consequence of their premature engage.)

[fischsemmel]

If the 1-hour window was known to everyone, then a lot of people would be online for it. Sure some people will be at work or otherwise busy IRL but this is the best chance I see for multiple guilds having raid forces ready to go when stuff pops.

And then say we've got that 1-hour window and every mob is going to pop at some point in that window. There's all kinds of room for things to play out in a ton of different ways with that, I think.

Guilds could make a choice to try to find out what's up and then mobilize quickly, or they could pick 1-2 targets that they really want and sock them (guess you can't call it poopsocking when it only takes an hour, lol). Guilds could get lucky with spawns and log in to their highest priority target being right there, guilds could get unlucky. Etc.

The idea someone else mentioned about you always log back into a zone at the zone-in after the server is down for this repop thing seems to have merit too. Can't log in fear, it boots you into feerott. Can't log at ledge (or even have coth there), it boots you to zone. Etc.

Trak is a less appealing target suddenly because of the work to get down to him. But at the same time, you can't just leave him alone and go kill other stuff because someone else might come down and fight for him. Sure TMO can get back over there and probably leapfrog to trak, but in the meantime how many other bosses have died?

[HarrisonStillPosting]

We've tried to make a ruleset that would benefit everyone and promote healthy competition. (Read: not poopsocking zerg-style)

TMOs current members are part of the guilds who refused to follow these guidelines made by the players and actually made the situation worse. Now that VP is open season for them to exploit and train away without punishment, there is little hope of any legitimacy being regained via any player-made agreements.

GMs need to do it, and not limpwrist any punishments handed out for offenders. (Such as suspending a guild for exploiting Nagafen, rather than banning them permanently as they should have been...that kind of limpwristing)

[Jimes]

I'd be all for forced rotations on this server

Of course you would, because you and everyone else seem to have zero motivation to do anything for yourselves. Just do yourself a favor and reinstall WoW. This game is obviously far too competitive for you.

[HarrisonStillPosting]

Jimes thinks training and poopsocking is competition...lol

You're so bad at EQ. I wonder who your character is.

[falkun]

HIYO, I'm sorry you feel the need to troll me. If you have any issues with my posts on a private forum, please post them there. I will state that I am no more committed to applying to TMO than I am to any other raid guild, as is clear where it matters. Right now, my #1 priority is my upcoming wedding, so any raid guild would have to wait until I'm done with that stress (ugh, wedding) and joy (yay, honeymoon), because I will not have the time to devote to the game with those two major events in my life.

My posts have resulted in outright trolling and I've already offered my suggestions to the original topic.

[Seaweedpimp]

Would be nice so 1 guild doesnt take all the endgame dragons
Cause after all most of us are here to experience things we didnt get to on live right?

or a rotation on trak to start



KEEP DREAMIN GIRLY BOY

[Seaweedpimp]

You're so bad at EQ. I wonder who your character is.



herp de derp dur


ironic

[Ravager]

Of course you would, because you and everyone else seem to have zero motivation to do anything for yourselves. Just do yourself a favor and reinstall WoW. This game is obviously far too competitive for you.

I take offense to your remark. Please don't be insulting.

I like EQ as a cooperative game, the game it was designed to be. Killing a dragon with your friends is fun. I don't play WoW, because I just don't like it. It's too repetitive and the encounters just aren't that engaging.

What I don't like is how content to the end game is arbitrarily blocked by one guild because they want "competition" in a game that was designed by nature to be cooperative.

[Fountree]

All i see in this post is fucking whining from people who never put in the work to compete. You want something? BOO HOO I WANT VP LOOT. fucking take it and stop complaining. We did. Honestly no sympathy at all for anything said by the other side. And no, this game isn't supposed to be 100% cooperative. Anyone who says otherwise is a moron.

You know what would fix the QQing? Keeping new content rolling close to the original timeline. Guilds move on and older raid/end game content is then made more easily accessible for other players. EQ is supposed to be an EVOLVING game. Any hinderance to it's evolution will cause problems and kick up server drama like this. TMO has handed several targets over on a silver platter over the past month, and all I see is more whining. Take your handouts with one hand gladly and QQ some more with your other hand.

[Hitchens]

As a casual player I have no problems whatsoever with TMO monopolizing raid targets because as a casual player I won't be raiding them anyway. TMO is willing to invest more of their free time than I am, therefore TMO should see raid targets and I shouldn't.

EQ is both a co-operative game a competitive game.

[Jimes]

What I don't like is how content to the end game is arbitrarily blocked by one guild because they want "competition" in a game that was designed by nature to be cooperative.

Blame game. It's not TMO's fault that you refuse to put forth the effort that it takes to compete with them. Are you even trying? No, you aren't. So you really have no room to complain.

[porigromus]

Here is the solution. Spawn each raid boss at random times in any random zone. I mean any. It would not only be impossible to place a tracker in every zone but it also would be hilarious to see raid targets end up in east commonlands ravaging everyone. There is the fix.

[Ravager]

Blame game. It's not TMO's fault that you refuse to put forth the effort that it takes to compete with them. Are you even trying? No, you aren't. So you really have no room to complain.

I have plenty of room to complain. I've poopsocked Trak plenty against TMO. I've wasted Sunday afternoons sitting through DT cycles in Fear. I sat on VP's spawnpoint constantly hitting the attack button trying to get FTE. I've woken up at 3am on dozens of occasions to answer a batphone.

I quit trying, because that kind of game isn't fun. It's not even a game at that point and that is currently why TMO has no competition, because I'm not the only person who got burned out on doing that. I'm not asking for handouts, I'm just asking to play the game.

[porigromus]

Here is the solution. Spawn each raid boss at random times in any random zone. I mean any. It would not only be impossible to place a tracker in every zone but it also would be hilarious to see raid targets end up in east commonlands ravaging everyone. There is the fix.

Ps: cities are not off limits!

[Jimes]

I quit trying

The end. Enjoy WoW or whatever it is you do and let us enjoy our classic EQ instead of shedding tears on the forums trying to get it changed to suit your casual play style.

Also, cry me a river. You guys put up about 2 weeks worth of a fight before giving up. The rest of us went through months of that before we were on top.

[Ravager]

Here is the solution. Spawn each raid boss at random times in any random zone. I mean any. It would not only be impossible to place a tracker in every zone but it also would be hilarious to see raid targets end up in east commonlands ravaging everyone. There is the fix.

CT in Crushbone would be amusing.

[Daldolma]

The problem is that competition has been replaced by unemployment. On live, variances were much smaller and raid rules were much less restricting. Competition took place in the form of mobilization and training each other, not sitting at a spawn for absurdly long periods of time and responding to text messages at 2PM, 4AM, or whenever else a mob happened to spawn.

It used to be a disadvantage to have a massive raid force. Zerg guilds took too long to mobilize, too long to organize, and too long to rez up after they'd been trained. Now, it's a pure numbers game. You need 25+ capable of logging in at any hour of any day. As long as you've got that, you're golden.

[falkun]

Here is the solution. Spawn each raid boss at random times in any random zone. I mean any. It would not only be impossible to place a tracker in every zone but it also would be hilarious to see raid targets end up in east commonlands ravaging everyone. There is the fix.

That's actually not half bad. Any raid boss (in window) in any zone. Would definitely keep encounter mechanics in the flux, but its also as unclassic as ANYTHING I've ever heard suggested here. Imagine trying to deal with Fear with Gorenaire popped in Sebilis Disco. Or having CT summon the whole zone to his side in Skyfire. Clearing might become a thing again for some pops, but would also be completely negated in other zones. Fears, DoTs, DTs, gfluxes might mean something. And tracking...o what a nightmare tracking would be.

[Ravager]

The end. Enjoy WoW or whatever it is you do and let us enjoy our classic EQ instead of shedding tears on the forums trying to get it changed to suit your casual play style.

Once again you insult me. Please don't. I think I've shown you that respect, if I haven't, I whole-heartedly apologize.

[Fountree]

Our members have been doing all the things you said Ravager for a solid year or more. Think we were outclassed at first? We certainly were. Persistence is key, as well as good organization and committed leadership/membership. TMO has taken steps in the last month or so (unlike any other guild in server history) to open some end game content for guilds who don't necessarily want to put the time in to compete. So there you go, your problem is solved.

[bylbob]

Velious will not fix anything without a strong GM team, I have raided very little but yet I saw a lot of dirty and nasty shit going on as some officer, of a well known guild, admitted here... .If you had GMs banning left and right at each bad step (and not come back to their decision because they get facebook bombed by said peoples), the raiding scene will have come to its own solution to resolve the issue at hand pretty fast.

People claiming deejay/rav/... are jsut whinning and don't want to put the effort in it (strangely they all have a TMO tag, go figure...) are just trolling as usual because they know they did and the only reason they stopped is because what they call competition went completly out of hand, so they don't want to get involved in it anymore because after all it is just game, wich some of you seem to have forgoten.

But that's not surprising me much when you know this server is mostly popular because of FoH boards wich is heavily populated by degenerates.

Anyways pro tip to anyone wanting to beat TMO, gather 20 or so unemployed peoples or peoples able to log at any time, let TMO engage, make KS group, KS and ninja loot, 9/10 times you will get out free with loot, the 1/10 time left Amelinda will give you a tap on the hand and tell you to give back the loot, ask Stealin. Also remember to troll down any thread negative about your guild or not going your way, and cyber GMs even if you talk about them as big cow behind their back.

[falkun]

Also, cry me a river. You guys put up about 2 weeks worth of a fight before giving up. The rest of us went through months of that before we were on top.

You've earned it, as I've admitted in other posts. But should you have had to go through that? No. If you turn around and enforce that on any other guild, you're no better than the people you sought to destroy. But you've earned your position and I'm not here to take it away from you. Enjoy your time on P99.

[Daldolma]

Anyways pro tip to anyone wanting to beat TMO, gather 20 or so unemployed peoples or peoples able to log at any time.

This is all you needed to post, because it's the truth. 98% of raid content on this server is damn near trivial with 30 people. So if you have 20 unemployed guild members that can and will log on at any time, combined with a regular force that comes and goes, you're guaranteed to have 30+ at any given time if a raid mob is to spawn. That's all you need. There's no skill involved; there's no "competition". It pops, you have your 30 members ready to rock within minutes, and you kill it. If another guild is there too, you both kill it and 2 weeks later a GM sorts out the logs to determine whose loot it is while you both accuse the other of zerging, KSing, and cheating.

The end-game on classic EQ was so much more. It wasn't about who wanted it most -- it was about who played best. But the GMs on this server understandably cave to the squeaky wheel. The people that want it most complain the most, and the rules inevitably bend to their favor.

The worst thing in the world for TMO (and before them, IB) would be classic variances and classic enforcement of raid rules. With monstrous variance and play-nice rules, they can outlast any competition. With tiny variance and no strict enforcement of anti-training rules, etc, they'd lose out on a lot more mobs -- and likely be forced to split in the long-term, as such a massive force would be counterproductive.

[Jimes]

Yes, keep telling yourselves that it has something to do with unemployment if that dries your tears.

[Susano]

You guys put up about 2 weeks worth of a fight before giving up.

The competition VD received from TMO included underhanded actions like breaking into our private forums and posting RL pics of our guild leader and cherry picked comments to ridicule. Not to mention every dirty trick available in the book when it came to in game competition, which is completely denied now since the victors write the history.

You won, grats, but don't act like the fight was all above board. We gave up because we were ill equipped technically and morally to fight back.

[Jimes]

You won. . . We gave up. . .

bye.

[Taryth]

People are complaining about not getting mobs, but you really just want them handed to you on a platter. There have been a couple of times in the past month or two where the servers went down and every single raid target respawned. All you guys managed to drop were what, maestro and vox? What makes you think you deserve raid content if that's the best effort you can bring to the table. Enjoy your hate clears and KC xp groups, because that's going to be your EQ experience until you pull your shit together and take what you want. If there are people on the server that want it more than you, then whose fault is that exactly?

I was going to post this in response to another post in this thread, but I decided not to. After reading for a few minutes more, I came to your post. Now it seems appropriate:


I've personally never liked raiding- too much epeen gets whipped out. People get too into it, and begin treating each other like sub-humans. "Lawyering" often crops up at this stage, as common sense and courtesy have long been abandoned.
-------------




Any time someone is backed into a moral corner, and they know they've done/are doing something morally wrong, they will resort to rules and lawyering. Always. So it's pretty funny to see almost every member of TMO that is in this thread quoting rules, fairness, etc . . I seem to recall extremely wealthy people in RL spouting that same thing whilst they sit back and billions suffer for lack of even a little coin. Yeah, it's legal and perfectly "within the rules," but you're still an egregious piece of shit.
People are hilariously predictable. Also, disgusting.

[Splorf22]

Why aren't you willing to play 80 hours a week like me you crazy people with jobs and social lives??

FTFY

[Jimes]

FTFY

You guys must be super busy then, because it takes about 15 minutes total to log in and kill something.

[Ravager]

You guys must be super busy then, because it takes about 15 minutes total to log in and kill something.
True, for uncontested mobs.

[mwatt]

I'm very pleased that Nilbog is interested in listening to input on this. He certainly doesn't have to, so first of all, thanks to Nilbog.

As to the actual matter of suggestions, only three make sense to me, when one takes into account the preservation of classic play mechanics and conservation of development time.

Winning idea number 1: Increase spawn frequency by a large amount. This is at heart, a supply and demand problem. People will say that TMO will just get more Dragons this way, which is true. But eventually they will be equipped faster and less interested in camping what they don't really need, if targets respawn frequently. When you factor in idea number 2 below (elimination of windows) we may find that other guilds will score more frequently anyway.

Winning idea number 2: Do away with known spawn times plus variance, i.e. get rid of the idea of a "window". Nothing is less fun than sitting in a zone waiting hours for a mob to pop, or alternatively having to constrain play so that your character can be almost instantly to the spawn point. Simply spawn these Dragons at random times, but there should be a minimum respawn time of say an hour and the randomized frequency should be high enough so that the delay is never longer than say, a week or so (but this limit should not be publicly known and perhaps should vary too).

Winning idea number 3: Get Velious out ASAP.

I don't expect that any of these ideas will FIX the problem. They will just lessen it. It might be the best we can do if we want to respect classic mechanics (i.e., not tokens, no instancing, no max dragons killed per guild in one week, etc.) and also not require any significant development effort other than what it takes to get Velious out.

[fadetree]

Idea 1 above is probably along the right lines imo. I think the only downside is it lets people get equipped 'too fast', ie., burn through timesinks and content too fast ( from the original developers perspective ). In this day and age, it might be the way to go though.

Maybe set old world and kunark to this mode, but leave velious at current spawn rates for a while after open.

[bylbob]

Yep and it is actually classic, back in the days servers crashed a lot with full respawn each time = faster respawn.

[Alarti0001]

The competition VD received from TMO included underhanded actions like breaking into our private forums and posting RL pics of our guild leader and cherry picked comments to ridicule. Not to mention every dirty trick available in the book when it came to in game competition, which is completely denied now since the victors write the history.

You won, grats, but don't act like the fight was all above board. We gave up because we were ill equipped technically and morally to fight back.

You mean like bisch did to us or IB before him?

[bylbob]

You mean like bisch did to us or IB before him?

What exactly did Bisch? Don't tell me it was the memblurring because you guys started it.

[falkun]

Alarti, do not bring VP tactics into this debate, you and I both know its a separate zone even more unruly than standard. VP has the server rules TMO wants to play with, using it as a counter-point only harms your own argument.

The other part TMO loves to downplay in VP is the initial opening, which was a GM-enforced rotation. TMO got 3 dragons, IB/TR got 3 dragons. You also all had time to pal around, checking it out, setting up tracker bots, CotH bots, playing with positioning and pulling while not under duress from another guild. Any other guild walking into VP since then (the only example being VD), has been heavily contested by TMO's train team.

As far as IB's treatment of you, you guys fought tooth and nail against it, I doubt I even know all the underhanded in-game tactics. But I don't remember seeing TMO's RL pictures in server chat, TMO's guild message boards strewn across Server Chat. Disregarding any in-game shenanigans that IB probably did, TMO went lower, taking the animosity way past the game. If TMO wants to do whatever it can get away with in the name of "competition" in-game, fine. But your outright lack of respect even out of the game has shown the jaded state your competition with IB/TR left you in.

No other guild desires to pay that price. You've paid it, you've earned it. Enjoy it, -ALL- of it.

[Rais]

You mean me responding due to your guild member bluring our rightful dragon, or trains us at vs those two weeks? VP was fair game to dish it out. The trains, exploiting pathing, using FD mechanics for FTE rights when your guild only had 2 people in the zone is what made VD quit. It had nothing to due with racing to a target. It was your guilds actions and breaking server rules and no action from the staff in reaction to this was the issue.

Make the variance windows smaller and do an average of 1 or 2 random respawns of all bosses a week at the same time like if sony just did a random patch. Make it so it won't happen untill all bosses are dead. Also strict policy for the actions above. Nothing has happened for this stuff since before kunark and the lack of staff involvement to deal the punishments out has caused the issue.


I don't care about pictures, guildchat,message boards. Stick with the issues the server has seen or been through. That stuff has nothing to do with raid npcs,and I would even say guild spies are real tactics to use and don't fault anyone for using them.

[Jimes]

Yes, random repops. That will totally get kills for guilds who are already unwilling to track spawns with known spawn timers, and who can't snag a single kill when every mob in the game is up.

[falkun]

No, but it'll bore you out faster.

[Alarti0001]

Alarti, do not bring VP tactics into this debate, you and I both know its a separate zone even more unruly than standard. VP has the server rules TMO wants to play with, using it as a counter-point only harms your own argument.

The other part TMO loves to downplay in VP is the initial opening, which was a GM-enforced rotation. TMO got 3 dragons, IB/TR got 3 dragons. You also all had time to pal around, checking it out, setting up tracker bots, CotH bots, playing with positioning and pulling while not under duress from another guild. Any other guild walking into VP since then (the only example being VD), has been heavily contested by TMO's train team.

As far as IB's treatment of you, you guys fought tooth and nail against it, I doubt I even know all the underhanded in-game tactics. But I don't remember seeing TMO's RL pictures in server chat, TMO's guild message boards strewn across Server Chat. Disregarding any in-game shenanigans that IB probably did, TMO went lower, taking the animosity way past the game. If TMO wants to do whatever it can get away with in the name of "competition" in-game, fine. But your outright lack of respect even out of the game has shown the jaded state your competition with IB/TR left you in.

No other guild desires to pay that price. You've paid it, you've earned it. Enjoy it, -ALL- of it.

When did I mention VP?

[Ravager]

At any rate, TMO has to admit something has to change in the end game if they truly want competition, because they're certainly not getting it the way the raid scene is now.

[Daldolma]

Yes, keep telling yourselves that it has something to do with unemployment if that dries your tears.

Dude, if anyone here is crying, it's you. Nobody is allowed to levy any kind of critique on the status quo without you going into hyper-defensive mode about "earning" mobs. Newsflash: you didn't earn anything. You're a non-core member of a massive guild with a core membership that is completely self-sufficient. There's nothing TMO can do with their full membership that they couldn't do with half their membership -- the half that is responsible for tracking every minute of every day. Your contribution is convenience.

It doesn't take some kind of super-human to join TMO. On the contrary, TMO accepts some terrible players pretty regularly. Don't take it the wrong way: there's no reason not to. That's the problem with the server status quo. Numbers are far more important than quality. TMO is a rational actor within the system that's been created.

And yes, having a core of unemployed players that can be ready within minutes for 18 hours a day is what has put TMO on top. It's not meant as an insult; merely an observation. It was the same thing that had put IB on top. In classic EQ, variances were much smaller, and patch days overlapped windows. Spawn times were far more predictable and it was often impossible to camp out at a certain location without hurting your chances of getting another raid mob if it were to spawn first. Here, windows are so massive that it's just about who can be ready at any time of the day. Nobody is going to bother tracking for a dragon/god when it is just as likely to spawn at 2AM Tuesday as 8AM Friday, or some other hour they have no chance at mobilizing for since their guild members are asleep, working, or otherwise being functional human beings. TMO knows they can get 30 players on at any hour of any day; tracking can be split up between the masses; that's why you "earn" more mobs.

That didn't used to be the ultimate trump card in classic EQ. On P99, availability has replaced ability. It's a server flaw. Server staff got sick of dealing with 90-man poopsock forces fighting with each other, so they made variance enormous. What they should've done is simply eliminate the play nice rules. Poopsocking doesn't work if you're getting constantly trained by your competition, and patch days reset windows so they overlap.

[Lazortag]

I am still interested in hearing proposals for better end game systems. In the past, I have tried to comment on the ones I thought were good and still in the spirit of classic, non-instanced raiding.

If there was a perfect system in which raid targets spawned simultaneously within a certain window:



Would guilds still poopsock?
Would a single guild still get most of the targets?

From what I've seen, raiding guilds on p99 have far greater numbers than were historically on my eqlive server. I would hate to make a system that somehow made things worse :T

Anyways, keep up the proposals. Hopefully something is suggested that supports more guilds getting targets without diminishing competition.

I'm going to post a really long response to this, so please read it! I support a system with simultaneous repops, although I think there are lots of variations on how it can be done that all work fine. Here's an example of a system I like that I think is very simple and intuitive, and a lot closer to how things worked in classic:

-All 3 day spawns except Draco (so Maestro and Trak?) would be on the same timer, with the same variance they have now, except that all of them share a variance (ie they all spawn at the same time)*
-All 7 day spawns except Noble Djorn and VP mobs would be on the same timer (Nagafen, Vox, Inny, CT, Faydedar, Talendor, Gorenaire, Severilous, VS, and anyone else I missed), with the same variance they have now, except that all of them spawn simultaneously.
-All VP dragons would have the same timer/variance as they do now, except they all spawn simultaneously.
-Phinny would still be a 12 hour spawn, Noble Djorn is still a 7 day spawn, with no variance.
-Draco would still be a 3 day spawn with variance, who gets respawned whenever CT pops.

Additionally, I would have it so that ALL mobs repop at the same time after any content patch (so not a maintenance patch or a server crash, but after an intentional content patch), since this was classic.

The way it would work is that the timer for a set of mobs would start as soon as all of the mobs sharing a timer are dead. Draco has to be on a different timer because he's a 3 day spawn but CT also repops Draco. VP dragons have to be in a different group or else TMO could just cockblock the entire server by leaving one VP dragon up (I know they would never do this, but since no one else has access to VP, this shouldn't be allowed). I've thought of this system for a while and feel very comfortable defending it, so if someone disagrees with any part of it I'd like to hear why.

Here are some reasons why this system is better than the current one:

Time investment
The current system involves too much of a time investment, both for what was expected in classic, and for what should be expected of an average person with a full time job. Every 7 day spawn except Noble has a 96 hour window currently, which means guilds can waste anywhere from 0 to 864 hours a week tracking just 7 day spawns (compared to classic where raid mobs had very short variances). This leads to a lot of problems:
(i) Burnout: players invest way more time into this server than they would have needed to in classic, leading to a much higher burnout rate. It's no surprise that many players from high end guilds end up selling their accounts or quitting. It's bad for the server's population to have high burnout rates.
(ii) Discouraging competition: players from casual guilds try tracking, but feel that their time is wasted when the mob spawns while their guildies aren't awake, or if they just end up being outmobilized. Because of this many players feel it's not worth it to track raid mobs, leading to a raid scene that is more likely to be dominated by one guild.
(iii) Problems at the low-end: players spend so much time tracking that they don't have time for alts, which means that there are less players to group with at low levels, which is bad for the server's longevity. Also, many players hear about the raid scene since it's constantly complained about, and are discouraged from entering it, leading to some players quitting early so that they don't waste their time.
(iv) Rule-breaking: empirically we know that the current system makes players break the rules more than they would. Because of the time investment, tensions are higher when a raid mob spawns, and players are more likely to resort to training and other offenses. Also, using 3rd party programs to track raid mobs is a problem, as well as cheating to find out when mobs spawn (such as the incident where several guilds knew when mobs were going to spawn because they had access to an old GM account).
(v) Poopsocking: again, because of the massive time investment required, guilds sometimes resort to poopsocking (camping a raid mob with 15 or more players for the duration of its spawn window) because it's the only way to guarantee they will get a certain mob. This is very anti-competitive and has discouraged many players from entering the raid scene.

GM intervention
When you have mobs spawning at different times, it's more likely you will have multiple guilds present at the same raid. In contrast, when mobs spawn simultaneously, guilds often head for separate targets because there's simply more content available to kill. You also have all mobs dying within the space of a few hours. All of this leads to less work for GM's because there are less opportunities for raid interference, and all raid interference that would happen is contained within a small space of time. Some input from a GM would be nice, but I'd guess that the amount of work GM's had to do during the last repop was a lot less than the amount of work GM's have to do in the space of an entire week.

Bug reporting
When content is less accessible to other guilds, you have less opportunities for players to report bugs with that content. Case in point, when we first engaged VS (months after Kunark was released), we discovered that runes weren't blocking his lifetap proc (this was actually a really big bug that affected other encounters, not just VS). Similarly there was an issue on the red server where certain epic pieces were dropping in fear, which went unnoticed for a while. When you have various people with different knowledge of classic and experiences with classic content all seeing the same encounters, it's easier to fine tune those encounters and make them more accurate to classic.

As for this:


Would guilds still poopsock?
Would a single guild still get most of the targets?



1-Yes, but they would gain less from poopsocking. When mobs spawn at different times, you could theoretically poopsock all of them. When mobs spawn at the same time, poopsocking all of them leads to guilds being severely overstretched. I would guess VS and Trak will still be poopsocked from time to time, but there's like a dozen other raid mobs so I don't see this as a big deal.
2-No, a single guild wouldn't get most of the targets (and if they did, they'd get markedly less than they get now). They wouldn't even necessarily get all of the good ones. Our guild's only VS kill was during a server repop, and it happened because everything spawned at once and we knew the top two guilds would be fighting over Trak. On other repops (around the release of kunark) we usually got 2-4 mobs (like Naggy, Vox, Draco, Inny, Faydedar, Noble, Maestro), which isn't bad at all given the amount of time we invest in the game. In addition to the mobs we got, we also got to attempt bosses we normally wouldn't have much of a chance at seeing. I know the last repop led to TMO getting most of the mobs, but it wasn't representative of how repops usually play out on p99, or how they will play out in the future. Trust me when I say that if the system were changed it would really rejuvenate interest in the raid scene, and you wouldn't see guilds monopolizing content to the same extent that they do now.

*edit: I forgot Master Yael.

[Alarti0001]

At any rate, TMO has to admit something has to change in the end game if they truly want competition, because they're certainly not getting it the way the raid scene is now.

Nothing can fix the competition aspect other another guild who has the drive to compete all the solutions above would still result in tmo getting a vast majority of the kills.

A competiting guild needs to decide it wants it enough to put in the time to start pinching kills and gearing up. Competition won't be solved until months after velious release,(large amount of active raiders returning to the server disregarded)

[Alarti0001]

Dude, if anyone here is crying, it's you. Nobody is allowed to levy any kind of critique on the status quo without you going into hyper-defensive mode about "earning" mobs. Newsflash: you didn't earn anything. You're a non-core member of a massive guild with a core membership that is completely self-sufficient. There's nothing TMO can do with their full membership that they couldn't do with half their membership -- the half that is responsible for tracking every minute of every day. Your contribution is convenience.

It doesn't take some kind of super-human to join TMO. On the contrary, TMO accepts some terrible players pretty regularly. Don't take it the wrong way: there's no reason not to. That's the problem with the server status quo. Numbers are far more important than quality. TMO is a rational actor within the system that's been created.

And yes, having a core of unemployed players that can be ready within minutes for 18 hours a day is what has put TMO on top. It's not meant as an insult; merely an observation. It was the same thing that had put IB on top. In classic EQ, variances were much smaller, and patch days overlapped windows. Spawn times were far more predictable and it was often impossible to camp out at a certain location without hurting your chances of getting another raid mob if it were to spawn first. Here, windows are so massive that it's just about who can be ready at any time of the day. Nobody is going to bother tracking for a dragon/god when it is just as likely to spawn at 2AM Tuesday as 8AM Friday, or some other hour they have no chance at mobilizing for since their guild members are asleep, working, or otherwise being functional human beings. TMO knows they can get 30 players on at any hour of any day; tracking can be split up between the masses; that's why you "earn" more mobs.

That didn't used to be the ultimate trump card in classic EQ. On P99, availability has replaced ability. It's a server flaw. Server staff got sick of dealing with 90-man poopsock forces fighting with each other, so they made variance enormous. What they should've done is simply eliminate the play nice rules. Poopsocking doesn't work if you're getting constantly trained by your competition, and patch days reset windows so they overlap.


You have no idea what you are talking about most of our core members have full time jobs as well as hobbies. We happen to have euro and asian/aussie players to help us on the weaker hours. I'm uundeniably a core member, as you call it. And I'm away at work 10hrs a day, am at the gym 90 mins a day, and limy g/f demands my attentions most of the remaining time, yet I maintain a 40-50% raid attendance and never have my phone on for sleep time batphones.

Get some new material

[Daldolma]

Nothing can fix the competition aspect other another guild who has the drive to compete all the solutions above would still result in tmo getting a vast majority of the kills.

A competiting guild needs to decide it wants it enough to put in the time to start pinching kills and gearing up. Competition won't be solved until months after velious release,(large amount of active raiders returning to the server disregarded)

You're making a mistaken assumption that TMO will remain in tact and as constructed. You will inevitably lose players to burnout -- lots of them. Currently, you're rolling in new applicants because you're monopolizing end game content. Anyone that wants to raid has to pick you or find a big enough core with enough free time to compete with you. Joining is just easier. And you get enough loot to keep everyone happy.

If reforms changed the landscape of the raid content, you'd have more competition, fewer applicants, and more disgruntled members. You'd still dominate end-game for a while, but that would eventually give way to a more natural state of competition with other guilds.

[Hitchens]

You're making a mistaken assumption that TMO will remain in tact and as constructed.

If reforms changed the landscape of the raid content, you'd have more competition, fewer applicants, and more disgruntled members. You'd still dominate end-game for a while, but that would eventually give way to a more natural state of competition with other guilds.

You just answered one assumption with another.

[Alarti0001]

You're making a mistaken assumption that TMO will remain in tact and as constructed. You will inevitably lose players to burnout -- lots of them. Currently, you're rolling in new applicants because you're monopolizing end game content. Anyone that wants to raid has to pick you or find a big enough core with enough free time to compete with you. Joining is just easier. And you get enough loot to keep everyone happy.

If reforms changed the landscape of the raid content, you'd have more competition, fewer applicants, and more disgruntled members. You'd still dominate end-game for a while, but that would eventually give way to a more natural state of competition with other guilds.

You are making a mistaken assumption that TMO won't remain intact and as constructed. We will lose people and gain people over time naturally, but as you said our core can handle it, and a lot of our core has been playing together since 99 others for years as well. We actually enjoy each others company and would play for that even if fully geared. Sorry friend

[Alarti0001]

You just answered one assumption with another.

Good job catching that

[Daldolma]

You have no idea what you are talking about most of our core members have full time jobs as well as hobbies. We happen to have euro and asian/aussie players to help us on the weaker hours. I'm uundeniably a core member, as you call it. And I'm away at work 10hrs a day, am at the gym 90 mins a day, and limy g/f demands my attentions most of the remaining time, yet I maintain a 40-50% raid attendance and never have my phone on for sleep time batphones.

Get some new material

Undeniably? That's a strong word. You're an auxiliary DPS class and your raid attendance is 36%. You talk a lot on the forums and have been in the guild for a long time. Are you actually a core member? That's debatable.

Your core members are the reason you function as a dominant raid guild. You're not the reason you function as a dominant raid guild. Necrious doesn't miss raids. Zagum tracks constantly. Jeremy has spent 80+ hours a week just camping fungi tunics -- he's always available. Zeelot, Fazlazen, Fauss, Portsche, Xeli, Baxter, Darkdeath, Elethia, etc, etc. If you really want, I can run through your 15-20 members that are your 'core' and the reason you dominate. The ones like you, that work full time and don't respond to early AM and work-hour batphones, are no different than the majority of active members in non-raiding guilds. You benefit from your guild's core that carries out the vital processes.

You do have Asian, Aussie, and Euro players. There's no debate on that. But they're not the exception. Most guilds have foreign players; plenty of guilds have 10-15 players on at any given time. What most guilds don't have is that core of hardcore, dedicated, and available players that can be on at just about any time of any day. That base is what sets TMO apart; and the importance of that base is magnified by the server's non-classic end-game mechanics.

[Alarti0001]

Undeniably? That's a strong word. You're an auxiliary DPS class and your raid attendance is 36%. You talk a lot on the forums and have been in the guild for a long time. Are you actually a core member? That's debatable.

Your core members are the reason you function as a dominant raid guild. You're not the reason you function as a dominant raid guild. Necrious doesn't miss raids. Zagum tracks constantly. Jeremy has spent 80+ hours a week just camping fungi tunics -- he's always available. Zeelot, Fazlazen, Fauss, Portsche, Xeli, Baxter, Darkdeath, Elethia, etc, etc. If you really want, I can run through your 15-20 members that are your 'core' and the reason you dominate. The ones like you, that work full time and don't respond to early AM and work-hour batphones, are no different than the majority of active members in non-raiding guilds. You benefit from your guild's core that carries out the vital processes.

You do have Asian, Aussie, and Euro players. There's no debate on that. But they're not the exception. Most guilds have foreign players; plenty of guilds have 10-15 players on at any given time. What most guilds don't have is that core of hardcore, dedicated, and available players that can be on at just about any time of any day. That base is what sets TMO apart; and the importance of that base is magnified by the server's non-classic end-game mechanics.

You obviously have no clue my attendance is currently 53%, and you definitely don't understand the value of a wizard. We do top dps on, every battle, and we provide somethng you don't seem to understand....mobilization.
Mobilization is what gets mobs, and I have always been the master of mobilization.

[Daldolma]

You obviously have no clue my attendance is currently 53%, and you definitely don't understand the value of a wizard. We do top dps on, every battle, and we provide somethng you don't seem to understand....mobilization.
Mobilization is what gets mobs, and I have always been the master of mobilization.

Don't get defensive: I'm not insulting you. I got your attendance from TMO's website -- it says 36%. If that's mistaken, I apologize. And yes, I get the value of mobilization. In fact, the changes I want would emphasize the value of mobilization far more than it currently matters. You would be far more valuable in a system where you actually have mobilization competition. As of now, you're unopposed on more than half of your dragon/god kills, and the competition is weak at best on the rest. You're either tracking against nobody or tracking against guilds that can only get enough raiders online for a few primetime hours.

53% attendance seems somewhat unbelievable if you don't respond to bat phones during work hours, gym hours, girlfriend hours, or sleep hours -- but let's just assume it's true. That would indeed make you a core member. I have to admit, though -- I'm curious as to how you manage to make more than half of TMO's raids when you work 10 hours a day, workout 90 minutes a day, and sleep -- let's say 7 hours -- a day. Not including a spare moment for your girlfriend, friends, meals, bars, or any other hobbies, that would make you available 5 hours per day during the week. I'd be surprised to find that more than 50% of TMO's raids consistently occur within a 5-hour prime time block.

[Alarti0001]

Don't get defensive: I'm not insulting you. I got your attendance from TMO's website -- it says 36%. If that's mistaken, I apologize. And yes, I get the value of mobilization. In fact, the changes I want would emphasize the value of mobilization far more than it currently matters. You would be far more valuable in a system where you actually have mobilization competition. As of now, you're unopposed on more than half of your dragon/god kills, and the competition is weak at best on the rest. You're either tracking against nobody or tracking against guilds that can only get enough raiders online for a few primetime hours.

53% attendance seems somewhat unbelievable if you don't respond to bat phones during work hours, gym hours, girlfriend hours, or sleep hours -- but let's just assume it's true. That would indeed make you a core member. I have to admit, though -- I'm curious as to how you manage to make more than half of TMO's raids when you work 10 hours a day, workout 90 minutes a day, and sleep -- let's say 7 hours -- a day. Not including a spare moment for your girlfriend, friends, meals, bars, or any other hobbies, that would make you available 5 hours per day during the week. I'd be surprised to find that more than 50% of TMO's raids consistently occur within a 5-hour prime time block.

I sleep like 6 hrs or so, my g/f lives with me so a quick 10 min raid doesn't bother her too much. If you want more informarion into "how I do it" you will have to come shadow me however.

The 36% is lifetime raids attended since the merger, I took a few months off for a move across country, and job hunting.

[Mantel]

To say Alarti works out 90 minutes a day everyday is slight overkill... Ive talked with him over vent and he sounds like pee wee herman..

[Daldolma]

OK -- so we're not including your time off while busy. We're talking about your raid attendance given perfect conditions.

You're kind of missing the point, though. The point is that a player like you, that is theoretically only available to raid for about 6 hours of the day, is not terribly different from most active members of BDA, Taken, Divinity, etc. Based on the way you're describing yourself, you're not the type of player that is swinging the balance. For the vast majority of each day, you're not tracking and you're not available to raid.

The people that are responsible for TMO's monopolization of end-game content are the ones that can track for 8+ hours a day during off-peak hours. They're the ones that can make raids at 2PM, 8PM, 2AM, and 8AM. They're the ones that can do things that normal people with normal jobs and normal lives can't.

Classic EQ didn't used to be dominated by people that could dedicate 18 hours a day to being available. It wasn't that huge of an advantage. People generally knew when mobs would spawn, and patch days kept primetime pops more prevalent. P99 has created an environment in which only the hardest of hardcore have a realistic chance at tracking and killing the majority of end-game mobs. You need to be able to have sufficient numbers at any moment of any day in order to kill a mob.

[Alarti0001]

OK -- so we're not including your time off while busy. We're talking about your raid attendance given perfect conditions.

You're kind of missing the point, though. The point is that a player like you, that is theoretically only available to raid for about 6 hours of the day, is not terribly different from most active members of BDA, Taken, Divinity, etc. Based on the way you're describing yourself, you're not the type of player that is swinging the balance. For the vast majority of each day, you're not tracking and you're not available to raid.

The people that are responsible for TMO's monopolization of end-game content are the ones that can track for 8+ hours a day during off-peak hours. They're the ones that can make raids at 2PM, 8PM, 2AM, and 8AM. They're the ones that can do things that normal people with normal jobs and normal lives can't.

Classic EQ didn't used to be dominated by people that could dedicate 18 hours a day to being available. It wasn't that huge of an advantage. People generally knew when mobs would spawn, and patch days kept primetime pops more prevalent. P99 has created an environment in which only the hardest of hardcore have a realistic chance at tracking and killing the majority of end-game mobs. You need to be able to have sufficient numbers at any moment of any day in order to kill a mob.

Actually I am describing the majority of tmo players there are maybe 10 or so players with availibilities you describe.....if that

[Alarti0001]

To say Alarti works out 90 minutes a day everyday is slight overkill... Ive talked with him over vent and he sounds like pee wee herman..

Well in all honesty its 60 to 90 mins a day depending if its anaeorbic or aerobic

[Gwence]

it's misleading, alarti is the janitorial assistant at the gym, his 90 minutes are spent freshening up the locker room and giving hand jobs on the side

I'm sure his asshole gets a work out

[Gwence]

Oh and you better watch out dude, Jimes seems to be positioning himself to make a run at your title of "dumbest fucking idiot on the planet"


u guys live together irl?

[Alarti0001]

Oh and you better watch out dude, Jimes seems to be positioning himself to make a run at your title of "dumbest fucking idiot on the planet"


u guys live together irl?

Lol gwence so mad, but I love you, you always bring the lulz.
You always seem to be imagining me in homesexual situations. Stop repressing yourself grow up and come out of the closet, I won't judge you I support gay rights.

[Gwence]

I would've thought the other post would've been a better one to quote if you wanted to come back with homophobic responses..

I just am speechless sometimes at your lack of intelligence

[Awwalike]

I would've thought the other post would've been a better one to quote if you wanted to come back with homophobic responses..

I just am speechless sometimes at your lack of intelligence

you're still alive you bastard?

[Awwalike]

o shit all of TMO and their multi's voted no! what a surprise!

[Seaweedpimp]

gwence mad as a mueselman

[Gwence]

yea I'm alive, I won't delve into my real life itinerary to try and impress people like Alarti, but I will say that I had this burger for lunch today at this place called Culver's, don't know if anyone has heard of it

shit was delicious

[Alarti0001]

yea I'm alive, I won't delve into my real life itinerary to try and impress people like Alarti, but I will say that I had this burger for lunch today at this place called Culver's, don't know if anyone has heard of it

shit was delicious

My life of working a normal job, living with my g/f, and taking some time to keep in shape causing me to have very little "chill" time impresses you? Sorry, man I didn't know you a your life was so terrible that a "normal" life becomes impressive. I'll tone it down, don't want you to kill yourself broseidon

[Grozmok]

broseidon

I fucking lol'd, I'll admit it.

Thanks for the lulz, brochacho.

[Alarti0001]

I fucking lol'd, I'll admit it.

Thanks for the lulz, brochacho.

;)

[Danyelle]

I had this burger for lunch today at this place called Culver's, don't know if anyone has heard of it

Had a Culver's near where I used to live up in Ohio. Moved in October, now no Culver's anywhere to be found :( It was indeed delicious food/ice cream.

This is what we should be discussing. We need more conversations about food and less about TMO.

[LizardNecro]

I am still interested in hearing proposals for better end game systems. In the past, I have tried to comment on the ones I thought were good and still in the spirit of classic, non-instanced raiding.

If there was a perfect system in which raid targets spawned simultaneously within a certain window:



Would guilds still poopsock?
Would a single guild still get most of the targets?

From what I've seen, raiding guilds on p99 have far greater numbers than were historically on my eqlive server. I would hate to make a system that somehow made things worse :T

Anyways, keep up the proposals. Hopefully something is suggested that supports more guilds getting targets without diminishing competition.

I'm very interested in the token system proposed on the sleeper emulator server.
What I like about it is that it gives top guilds the ability to get *most* raid bosses, just not *all* raid bosses.

The token idea, as I understand it, gives guilds the ability to have a certain number of spawns on demand per week. The vast majority of spawns are still normal spawns, and the guild that puts in the most work would get those spawns. But, each guild would still be able to use tokens to get some spawns.

Ravager has made a very good point that most people on this server just want to play EQ cooperatively. They want to kill dragons with friends. The current raid environment doesn't allow this.

I think I'd like to see a solution that has the following criteria:

a) Gives smaller guilds the ability to do content.
b) Gives hard working guilds rewards for their work.

Instances meets a), but doesn't meet b). The current situation meets b), but doesn't meet a).

I think tokens are a great solution that meet a) and b).


However, I can see the argument for implementing the "spawned" mobs sooner. Spawned VS, Undead Bard (spawned Trak), spawned Faydedar, moving Hate/Fear epic pieces from the gods to the minibosses; these are all Velious classic changes that we will see on this server, help the raid scene, and can be implemented ahead of time. If you want to stick to classic, then change them when they were chronologically changed, "the change was implemented X months after epic release on Live, so implement it here X months after epics were released on P99, regardless of if Hate as a whole has been updated to 2.0 or if Velious has (not) been released yet."

If not tokens, then this seems like a very nice idea as well.

[Alarti0001]

Had a Culver's near where I used to live up in Ohio. Moved in October, now no Culver's anywhere to be found :( It was indeed delicious food/ice cream.

This is what we should be discussing. We need more conversations about food and less about TMO.

Molly moo's in seattle is pretty awesome ice cream

[Alarti0001]

I'm very interested in the token system proposed on the sleeper emulator server.
What I like about it is that it gives top guilds the ability to get *most* raid bosses, just not *all* raid bosses.

The token idea, as I understand it, gives guilds the ability to have a certain number of spawns on demand per week. The vast majority of spawns are still normal spawns, and the guild that puts in the most work would get those spawns. But, each guild would still be able to use tokens to get some spawns.

Ravager has made a very good point that most people on this server just want to play EQ cooperatively. They want to kill dragons with friends. The current raid environment doesn't allow this.

I think I'd like to see a solution that has the following criteria:

a) Gives smaller guilds the ability to do content.
b) Gives hard working guilds rewards for their work.

Instances meets a), but doesn't meet b). The current situation meets b), but doesn't meet a).

I think tokens are a great solution that meet a) and b).




If not tokens, then this seems like a very nice idea as well.


Oh look we are back on topic....good!

[Slave]

Nothing can fix the competition aspect other another guild who has the drive to compete all the solutions above would still result in tmo getting a vast majority of the kills.

A competiting guild needs to decide it wants it enough to put in the time to start pinching kills and gearing up.

I totally agree with this part of the quote.

You are making a mistaken assumption that TMO won't remain intact and as constructed. We will lose people and gain people over time naturally, but as you said our core can handle it, and a lot of our core has been playing together since 99 others for years as well.

Here is where you lose me. From what I saw of TMO, in an admittedly short period on the inside, is that you are losing your competitive spirit and edge. I was called out for even suggesting that we compete with Bregan over Innoruuk, a significant raid target. He was very late in his window and Bregan had left to kill Severilous. The only reason that they subsequently lost him was the login server outage.

There are a lot of (extremely) hardcore players out there who are no longer a part of TMO or never were and never will be. As soon as TMO starts to lose raid targets, and the recent Bregan-VD merger will certainly cause that to happen soon, you will lose those disgruntled or opportunistic members who joined, having seen TMO as their only choice. Many of those will be highly driven trackers and raid attenders.

Obviously your guild does not strictly need those hardcore people right now, if I was so easily dismissed. After tracking for 20 hours in one week and attending the majority of raids, porting, CotHing for hours, helping at every turn when asked, I think it is safe to say TMO is now at the maximum capacity of players they can handle. And yet Bregan-VD has just become a larger guild, with harder core elements mixed in who can start to influence the whole. When they begin to consistently win Maestro/Inny, CT, Trakanon, and other epic raid mobs, TMO will also lose the "hardcore independents," that very important class of player who wishes to win at EQ. And they will lose them to the very guilds that are defeating TMO, exacerbating the exodus.

A core is very important, but in order to continue winning, you must continue winning, and with the current paradigm that trend is doomed. We of P99 have a relatively small player base and after you decide to remove a dozen or two loyal and productive members for nebulous reasons, you have burned bridges and paved the ground for rival guilds to defeat you.

TMO will not be on top forever, server history has shown this clearly, and the scales will likely tip sooner rather than later, especially with recent officer behaviors contrary to guild health. Removing variance will only speed up this process, and all to the good.

[Alarti0001]

I totally agree with this part of the quote.



Here is where you lose me. From what I saw of TMO, in an admittedly short period on the inside, is that you are losing your competitive spirit and edge. I was called out for even suggesting that we compete with Bregan over Innoruuk, a significant raid target. He was very late in his window and Bregan had left to kill Severilous. The only reason that they subsequently lost him was the login server outage.

There are a lot of (extremely) hardcore players out there who are no longer a part of TMO or never were and never will be. As soon as TMO starts to lose raid targets, and the recent Bregan-VD merger will certainly cause that to happen soon, you will lose those disgruntled or opportunistic members who joined, having seen TMO as their only choice. Many of those will be highly driven trackers and raid attenders.

Obviously your guild does not strictly need those hardcore people right now, if I was so easily dismissed. After tracking for 20 hours in one week and attending the majority of raids, porting, CotHing for hours, helping at every turn when asked, I think it is safe to say TMO is now at the maximum capacity of players they can handle. And yet Bregan-VD has just become a larger guild, with harder core elements mixed in who can start to influence the whole. When they begin to consistently win Maestro/Inny, CT, Trakanon, and other epic raid mobs, TMO will also lose the "hardcore independents," that very important class of player who wishes to win at EQ. And they will lose them to the very guilds that are defeating TMO, exacerbating the exodus.

A core is very important, but in order to continue winning, you must continue winning, and with the current paradigm that trend is doomed. We of P99 have a relatively small player base and after you decide to remove a dozen or two loyal and productive members for nebulous reasons, you have burned bridges and paved the ground for rival guilds to defeat you.

TMO will not be on top forever, server history has shown this clearly, and the scales will likely tip sooner rather than later, especially with recent officer behaviors contrary to guild health. Removing variance will only speed up this process, and all to the good.

False prophet- You based your accusations and predictions on 0 evidence

TMO history on this server shows that when we are competing or even losing is when we play the hardest.

[porigromus]

I'm very interested in the token system proposed on the sleeper emulator server.
What I like about it is that it gives top guilds the ability to get *most* raid bosses, just not *all* raid bosses.

The token idea, as I understand it, gives guilds the ability to have a certain number of spawns on demand per week. The vast majority of spawns are still normal spawns, and the guild that puts in the most work would get those spawns. But, each guild would still be able to use tokens to get some spawns.

Ravager has made a very good point that most people on this server just want to play EQ cooperatively. They want to kill dragons with friends. The current raid environment doesn't allow this.

I think I'd like to see a solution that has the following criteria:

a) Gives smaller guilds the ability to do content.
b) Gives hard working guilds rewards for their work.

Instances meets a), but doesn't meet b). The current situation meets b), but doesn't meet a).

I think tokens are a great solution that meet a) and b).




If not tokens, then this seems like a very nice idea as well.

I think killing creatures and obtaining items to complete a long drawn out quest would be an option for guilds that do not wish to compete with big guilds for random spawns. Think of it like the solution for jboots. To make sure this isn't the ideal method it should quite some time to complete .. not a week .. maybe more like 3 - 6 weeks to complete with everyone in a guild working in tangent collecting items.

Collect 5000000000000000 goblin ears, add super rare custom items to monsters in places that do not get much activity such as "a shattered dragon tooth" etc etc that has to be collected. Create super slow random named monsters that must be killed and collect the head "Sir Norty the Evil Gnome's Head" .. whatever you get the point. After the entire guild gets all the items together maybe add quest to some NPC .. I prefer to keep to the theme of classic and give NPC a regular name, not like some servers "Turninitemshere TurninNPC1" but that is just me. Back on topic ..

You get the point. These would be fun long drawn out activities for bored smaller guilds and also it wouldn't be attractive to big guilds because the current random spawns would still be the fastest most lucrative option which would be definitely needed if this system was implemented.

You want guilds to look at the competitive option as ideal. The other option is just to keep smaller guilds together, with a goal. If this isn't implemented now, I think it should be considered when custom content is thought about in the future. :D I didn't spell check but I hope you get the idea.



This would give smaller guilds goals to work towards, keep from getting bored and eventually slowly get loot. It would actually add to the Everquest game.

[Splorf22]

I think that's a lot of makework - of course that's what this game is all about :D

If you want to implement tokens, I think the best way is simply to give them out to raid leaders with a certain limited frequency (2 per week sounds about right). If you successfully kill said raid mob within one hour, you get your token back one week later. Otherwise it despawns and you don't get your token back for a month or so. All the ordinary boss mob pops would work as normal. It does seem like a reasonable balance between instancing and competition, although I don't know if I like the idea of guilds getting to spawn personalized raid mobs.

[porigromus]

I think that's a lot of makework - of course that's what this game is all about :D

If you want to implement tokens, I think the best way is simply to give them out to raid leaders with a certain limited frequency (2 per week sounds about right). If you successfully kill said raid mob within one hour, you get your token back one week later. Otherwise it despawns and you don't get your token back for a month or so. All the ordinary boss mob pops would work as normal. It does seem like a reasonable balance between instancing and competition, although I don't know if I like the idea of guilds getting to spawn personalized raid mobs.

That takes the EVERquest out of it. :D Everquest has always been about long drawn out quest. Lazy to hand guild leaders tokens to activate.

[Galelor]

Velious will not fix anything without a strong GM team, I have raided very little but yet I saw a lot of dirty and nasty shit going on as some officer, of a well known guild, admitted here... .If you had GMs banning left and right at each bad step (and not come back to their decision because they get facebook bombed by said peoples), the raiding scene will have come to its own solution to resolve the issue at hand pretty fast.

I 100% agree with this quote. Once NToV, a few dragons, and a few named giants are live, the raid scene moves there. The same types of poopsocking, training, and leap frogging are going to happen without a strong GM team. Those of us that raided on live remember the strong GM presence via the bannings/suspensions etc... Think back and remember why Sony moved to instances raiding... Most of us in the end game were actually happier with instances once we got use to them...

We have some real issues on this server that change the classic experience.
1. Expansions and patches do not happen nearly as much as classic.
2. While the GMs here work hard, they are no where near as present as on live.
3. Everyone has a huge bank of internet resources to assist them in EQ. (maps, vent/team speak, highly organized message boards, walk throughs, batphone!.)
4. Spawn variance...

The raid scene here is different from classic due to the above. That means that the raid scene is already not classic.

We are on a so called "friendly" PvE server. If racing, training, and leapfrogging one another are why everyone plays on this server then so be it. That said, I highly doubt that the majority of the server enjoys that type of play...

I like the idea of instances/tolkens as it promotes friendly play (which is what this server is meant to be) and it keeps average guild sizes lower. Considering the server admin doesn't like the way the raid scene is playing out, (see his post on a previous page,) I would suggest people add to this conversation in a more constructive manner.

[porigromus]

I think killing creatures and obtaining items to complete a long drawn out quest would be an option for guilds that do not wish to compete with big guilds for random spawns. Think of it like the solution for jboots. To make sure this isn't the ideal method it should quite some time to complete .. not a week .. maybe more like 3 - 6 weeks to complete with everyone in a guild working in tangent collecting items.

Collect 5000000000000000 goblin ears, add super rare custom items to monsters in places that do not get much activity such as "a shattered dragon tooth" etc etc that has to be collected. Create super slow random named monsters that must be killed and collect the head "Sir Norty the Evil Gnome's Head" .. whatever you get the point. After the entire guild gets all the items together maybe add quest to some NPC .. I prefer to keep to the theme of classic and give NPC a regular name, not like some servers "Turninitemshere TurninNPC1" but that is just me. Back on topic ..

You get the point. These would be fun long drawn out activities for bored smaller guilds and also it wouldn't be attractive to big guilds because the current random spawns would still be the fastest most lucrative option which would be definitely needed if this system was implemented.

You want guilds to look at the competitive option as ideal. The other option is just to keep smaller guilds together, with a goal. If this isn't implemented now, I think it should be considered when custom content is thought about in the future. :D I didn't spell check but I hope you get the idea.



This would give smaller guilds goals to work towards, keep from getting bored and eventually slowly get loot. It would actually add to the Everquest game.

I have another idea that isn't classic but ....

Why not use the skins of the current dragons and rename them and add additional raid mobs around the world to the point one guild could not possibly kill all of them. The trouble would be to place the dragons in places it wouldn't look odd and wouldn't cause issues. Make these dragons have different mechanics, spawn times, and maybe a rarer chance to drop any loot. It could be same stats as other dragon loot but with different names.

[Splorf22]

The problem with all these ideas is that they are not classic. On the other, hand rebooting the server frequently *is* classic. Mobs without variance *is* classic. This is a brilliantly simple and classic solution and I really don't understand why the devs haven't implemented it.

If I were in charge, I would do a 3 reboots/2 weeks strategy, with the three times unchanging and picked so that everyone gets something in their timezone more or less. Something like Friday evening 10PM EST / Wednesday evening 4PM EST / Sunday morning 9AM EST / repeat. Now this is not 100% classic: Verant did not patch on a precise schedule because they would have bugs and other problems, and they did not announce times in advance, although there was quite a bit of regularity. But what is less classic: our superior devs being more regular with server reboots, or adding a huge variance to all raid mobs? I think the answer there is clear.

I think that single and 100% classic change (combined with FTE shouts as Yendor keeps saying) might be enough to fix the raid scene. But if I were in charge I would probably go ahead and implement anti-poopsock code as well [spawning raid mobs repop the zone, teleport players to the zone safe point, and also any players logging in while the raid mob is up log in to the zone safe point regardless of where they camped out]. Let me add that if TMO continues to get every mob under those circumstances, then they have legit bragging rights and everyone else needs to shut up, because there is no reason people with normal lives can't make a decent number of 2 hour timeslots 1-2 times per week.

But I have said this hundreds of times without any luck so I'm not optimistic now.

[Alarti0001]

I think killing creatures and obtaining items to complete a long drawn out quest would be an option for guilds that do not wish to compete with big guilds for random spawns. Think of it like the solution for jboots. To make sure this isn't the ideal method it should quite some time to complete .. not a week .. maybe more like 3 - 6 weeks to complete with everyone in a guild working in tangent collecting items.

Collect 5000000000000000 goblin ears, add super rare custom items to monsters in places that do not get much activity such as "a shattered dragon tooth" etc etc that has to be collected. Create super slow random named monsters that must be killed and collect the head "Sir Norty the Evil Gnome's Head" .. whatever you get the point. After the entire guild gets all the items together maybe add quest to some NPC .. I prefer to keep to the theme of classic and give NPC a regular name, not like some servers "Turninitemshere TurninNPC1" but that is just me. Back on topic ..

You get the point. These would be fun long drawn out activities for bored smaller guilds and also it wouldn't be attractive to big guilds because the current random spawns would still be the fastest most lucrative option which would be definitely needed if this system was implemented.

You want guilds to look at the competitive option as ideal. The other option is just to keep smaller guilds together, with a goal. If this isn't implemented now, I think it should be considered when custom content is thought about in the future. :D I didn't spell check but I hope you get the idea.



This would give smaller guilds goals to work towards, keep from getting bored and eventually slowly get loot. It would actually add to the Everquest game.

I'd rather they add velious

[porigromus]

I'd rather they add velious

Me too :)

[HarrisonStillPosting]

The only thing that is going to fix the end game is a GM team that comes down hard on pieces of shit like TMO who rely on poopsocking, training, etc.

Any other suggestions are a pipe dream until they decide to actually do something, and if the past is any indicator, nothing will be done because it is very apparent that they'd rather take a hands off approach and let TMO train, exploit, etc. at the end game than ban them as they should be. (Repeat offenders)

[Alarti0001]

The only thing that is going to fix the end game is a GM team that comes down hard on pieces of shit like TMO who rely on poopsocking, training, etc.

Any other suggestions are a pipe dream until they decide to actually do something, and if the past is any indicator, nothing will be done because it is very apparent that they'd rather take a hands off approach and let TMO train, exploit, etc. at the end game than ban them as they should be. (Repeat offenders)

Known sexist,racist, Tin hatter and frequent crazy rager, who has never experienced end-game has opinion about end-game.

[HarrisonStillPosting]

I experienced end game long before EQemu.

I also experienced it here before the training, zone crashing, exploiting, and poopsocking began again.

I don't take part in that faggotry. (nor will I play on a server that allows it)

The reason you do, is because you're a talentless hack that could never compete in a legit environment.

[Spudsy]

To be honest, the raid scene here is not much like what I experienced in classic. Just for reference, my experience is from the era of Release through luclin on Xegony server. There, it was standard that if a raid force was building or pulling towards a mob, the dominant guild would let that "lower" guild give the mob a try and take the mob if they failed. Steamrolling was not typical and was looked upon very negatively.

I think an agreement like this would be mutually beneficial for all sides. Allowing smaller and less dedicated guilds to thrive is good for the server and a healthy server means more exciting competition for the top guilds and more pride involved in being on the top. I certainly don't think this should be forced or a mechanic should be put in place to enforce it but I do feel like this outlook towards other players would be beneficial.

[Supaskillz]

I hear that there are alot of raid mobs up in PoS. I also hear that the loot there is some of the best in current content. I guess while tmo is tracking every dragon you could go there

[fuark]

I'm uundeniably a core member, as you call it. And I'm away at work 10hrs a day, am at the gym 90 mins a day, and limy g/f demands my attentions most of the remaining time, yet I maintain a 40-50% raid attendance and never have my phone on for sleep time batphones.

Lol I have nothing against TMO at all, but I just had to point that there's no way that's true. Interesting thread, but come on now.

24 hours in a day, 10 hours at work, 90 mins in the gym, 8 hours of sleep.

That's 4 1/2 hours of free time in a day, not counting any time you spend with your girlfriend. Not counting driving to/from work. Not counting eating. Not counting going to the store for groceries. Not counting etc, etc. Much less being able to make 50% raid attendance for a guild that kills raid targets at all hours of the week.

I work 8 1/2 hours a day, spend about 90 minutes at the gym every day myself not counting driving time (bbing is my main hobby, 15 mins to gym, 15 mins home from gym), and I BARELY have time to be at the computer for any stretch of time long enough to kill much of anything in a raiding environment. I can solo my way to 60, but even 30-45 minute intervals of unbroken time for raiding are hard to do. Sometimes if I am home around 10 pm at night I can raid for an hour or two at that specific time, but otherwise lol good luck, it's back to AFK mode. Jimes is right, that's why the vast majority of people can only raid some Fear or Hate trash, and then log.

That's why I like being in a casual raid guild, and don't care if TMO gets targets that we don't, because claims like the above simply aren't reality. Again I don't have any personal problems with TMO and none of this matters to me one way or the other -- I experienced all of these raids on live Tarew Marr where we had 5-6 active guilds that all got targets with minimal effort -- but you can't act like you guys are only putting in 15 minutes a day to clear the server of raid mobs with 50% raid attendance.

[falkun]

Epics are better than most of the loot in VP, and take a long time to complete relative to slaying VP_Dragon_02. Also, most epic quests were altered shortly after Velious to increase their availability, making it a classic change. Release the spawned mobs/altered loot tables and the smaller guilds will have more epics to work on for a while.

As far as Velious, I'm worried about how the raid scene will work there with our current PNP:
1) HoT (TOV-East) is a section where you DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR, otherwise any force inside will get trained. Since leapfrogging happens here all the time, I can see this being an issue.
2) NToV has many raid mobs, and the ultimate one calls the lesser bosses to his side. If timers/variances/spawns hate you, you could engage Vulak and get a whole 2nd (or more) boss on top of you, which would suck. But maybe that's incentive for greater cooperation within NToV as well.
3) PoG: Tunare, like CT before her, summons the whole zone to her side. I do not know if her spawn respawns her plane the same way CT respawns Fear. If it does not, the guild clearing PoG should have first shot at Tunare, disallowing another guild to leapfrog the guild who spent hours clearing the zone ahead of time.

[Maze513]

http://www.luceperformancegroup.com/cp/galleries/633513402041350060/large/63351342139669493512.jpg

[Ravager]

[QUOTE=fuark;641696]
I experienced all of these raids on live Tarew Marr where we had 5-6 active guilds that all got targets with minimal effort --QUOTE]

I wish this were the case here. This thread wouldn't be needed if 5-6 active guilds were getting targets.

[Alarti0001]

Lol I have nothing against TMO at all, but I just had to point that there's no way that's true. Interesting thread, but come on now.

24 hours in a day, 10 hours at work, 90 mins in the gym, 8 hours of sleep.

That's 4 1/2 hours of free time in a day, not counting any time you spend with your girlfriend. Not counting driving to/from work. Not counting eating. Not counting going to the store for groceries. Not counting etc, etc. Much less being able to make 50% raid attendance for a guild that kills raid targets at all hours of the week.

I work 8 1/2 hours a day, spend about 90 minutes at the gym every day myself not counting driving time (bbing is my main hobby, 15 mins to gym, 15 mins home from gym), and I BARELY have time to be at the computer for any stretch of time long enough to kill much of anything in a raiding environment. I can solo my way to 60, but even 30-45 minute intervals of unbroken time for raiding are hard to do. Sometimes if I am home around 10 pm at night I can raid for an hour or two at that specific time, but otherwise lol good luck, it's back to AFK mode. Jimes is right, that's why the vast majority of people can only raid some Fear or Hate trash, and then log.

That's why I like being in a casual raid guild, and don't care if TMO gets targets that we don't, because claims like the above simply aren't reality. Again I don't have any personal problems with TMO and none of this matters to me one way or the other -- I experienced all of these raids on live Tarew Marr where we had 5-6 active guilds that all got targets with minimal effort -- but you can't act like you guys are only putting in 15 minutes a day to clear the server of raid mobs with 50% raid attendance.

the 10 hours of work includes my transit time and a little extra, i dont sleep more than 6 hours a day.

its true sorry you don't believe.
fear and hate trash take a whole lot longer to raid then most of TMO's raids

[Lazortag]

No offense, but a lot of this thread has turned into red herrings and silly non-classic suggestions that have no chance of being implemented. A lot of you are suggesting things that you'd personally find fun or fair, which is fine, but that's not really the point. You need something that's competitive, actually resembles classic, and isn't a massive deviation from the current system, or else the devs are going to reject it. Obviously I don't speak for them, but I'm pretty confident there's no chance that we're going to have "tokens" any time on this server. I know my post was long but it sucks that no one responded to it, since I feel it was the only one that directly responded to Nilbog's post: http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=641064&postcount=127

If Nilbog says something like "what would happen if we had simultaneous repops", you should probably talk about repops. Not tokens, or rotations, or anything like that.

[fischsemmel]

No offense, but a lot of this thread has turned into red herrings and silly non-classic suggestions that have no chance of being implemented. A lot of you are suggesting things that you'd personally find fun or fair, which is fine, but that's not really the point. You need something that's competitive, actually resembles classic, and isn't a massive deviation from the current system, or else the devs are going to reject it. Obviously I don't speak for them, but I'm pretty confident there's no chance that we're going to have "tokens" any time on this server. I know my post was long but it sucks that no one responded to it, since I feel it was the only one that directly responded to Nilbog's post: http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=641064&postcount=127

If Nilbog says something like "what would happen if we had simultaneous repops", you should probably talk about repops. Not tokens, or rotations, or anything like that.

I like your ideas generally, but I'm not too keen on everything that shares a window spawning at exactly the same time. I prefer the "everything that shares a window spawns within 1 hour of the first mob that spawns."

I guess having 3 or 9 or whatever mobs spawning at the exact same time would help keep 1 guild from getting to all of them, when those mobs spawning randomly over the course of 1 hour would potentially aid 1 guild in getting everything. And I guess that having a 1-hour window of spawns once one mob does spawn would also not help to reduce the tracking requirements as much, since you couldn't just have 1 tracker watching 1 of the 7-day mobs and then when it pops you know they are ALL up.

But I think that this would add a little zest to things that simultaneous spawns does not, especially in the event of a server reset.


Although, nevermind I guess. That 1-hour thing wouldn't really help the more casual guilds much. They'd have to get lucky to know mobs were starting to spawn, whereas the more dedicated guild(s) would have trackers watching multiple potential targets and so would have a better chance of knowing that mobs were popping right at the beginning of the 1-hour spawning window. Plus they are more likely to have tracker alts in position to check up on everything.

[Alarti0001]

No offense, but a lot of this thread has turned into red herrings and silly non-classic suggestions that have no chance of being implemented. A lot of you are suggesting things that you'd personally find fun or fair, which is fine, but that's not really the point. You need something that's competitive, actually resembles classic, and isn't a massive deviation from the current system, or else the devs are going to reject it. Obviously I don't speak for them, but I'm pretty confident there's no chance that we're going to have "tokens" any time on this server. I know my post was long but it sucks that no one responded to it, since I feel it was the only one that directly responded to Nilbog's post: http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=641064&postcount=127

If Nilbog says something like "what would happen if we had simultaneous repops", you should probably talk about repops. Not tokens, or rotations, or anything like that.

All of these ideas would take away from velious development, and velious is the single best thing that could happen for the raid environment

[fischsemmel]

All of these ideas would take away from velious development, and velious is the single best thing that could happen for the raid environment

An olympic sprinter is slowed down by the 1-ounce necklace that he wears while racing, too. But that isn't what matters. What matters is that is how much it slows him down balanced against how much he wants to wear it.

[falkun]

All of these ideas would take away from velious development, and velious is the single best thing that could happen for the raid environment

Velious will bring its own set of problems/issues to deal with:
As far as Velious, I'm worried about how the raid scene will work there with our current PNP:
1) HoT (TOV-East) is a section where you DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR, otherwise any force inside will get trained. Since leapfrogging happens here all the time, I can see this being an issue.
2) NToV has many raid mobs, and the ultimate one calls the lesser bosses to his side. If timers/variances/spawns hate you, you could engage Vulak and get a whole 2nd (or more) boss on top of you, which would suck. But maybe that's incentive for greater cooperation within NToV as well.
3) PoG: Tunare, like CT before her, summons the whole zone to her side. I do not know if her spawn respawns her plane the same way CT respawns Fear. If it does not, the guild clearing PoG should have first shot at Tunare, disallowing another guild to leapfrog the guild who spent hours clearing the zone ahead of time.

[fuark]

the 10 hours of work includes my transit time and a little extra, i dont sleep more than 6 hours a day.

its true sorry you don't believe.
fear and hate trash take a whole lot longer to raid then most of TMO's raids

Right, but the point was that most people (with the amount of RL things you say you have going on) can only raid for a very specific amount of time, on a specific night, and that's their only opportunity. They can't be part of a hardcore raid guild with over 50% attendance that kills mobs at all hours of the day. When the only thing up on Wednesday night from 9 pm - 11 pm is hate or fear trash, that's all your going to raid. Like I said I don't care at all that TMO gets all the raid targets, but what is ridiculous is seeing hardcore members claiming they apparently play less than everyone else too.

[Alarti0001]

An olympic sprinter is slowed down by the 1-ounce necklace that he wears while racing, too. But that isn't what matters. What matters is that is how much it slows him down balanced against how much he wants to wear it.

Velious was designed as a raid expansion, it has double if not more raid "bosses" then are currently available, also 4 armor farming sections. This spread out content esp when coupled with older dontent. Once velius is released it would be a good idea to reasses the raid scence but probably not before

[Alarti0001]

Velious will bring its own set of problems/issues to deal with:

Which we can't address until velious

[Lazortag]

... And I guess that having a 1-hour window of spawns once one mob does spawn would also not help to reduce the tracking requirements as much, since you couldn't just have 1 tracker watching 1 of the 7-day mobs and then when it pops you know they are ALL up.

I'm concerned about this too. But it's not that big of a deal and it's not that far off from classic - in 2000 knowing that one 7-day mob spawned usually meant that another had either spawned already or was on its way very soon, because server resets caused mobs to die around the same time (and therefore respawn around the same time). Also server resets (both on Live and on p99) allow you to know that all mobs are up if one is up, and that's classic too (so here if there's a patch, I can check if Vox is up, and if she is, I can be pretty sure that all the other mobs are up too, meaning I don't necessarily need a tracker in every zone).

All of these ideas would take away from velious development, ...

I'm not sure what you're saying, could you clarify?

[porigromus]

This thread is classic Everquest. Thank you for bringing me back to 2000 once again! These same issues were recognized and discussed then as well.

[fadetree]

Well, except in this situation we have a real chance to realize some of the ideas...back then, SoE wasn't listening.

[Alarti0001]

Well, except in this situation we have a real chance to realize some of the ideas...back then, SoE wasn't listening.

Back then it was Verant!

[finalgrunt]

I am still interested in hearing proposals for better end game systems. In the past, I have tried to comment on the ones I thought were good and still in the spirit of classic, non-instanced raiding.

If there was a perfect system in which raid targets spawned simultaneously within a certain window:



Would guilds still poopsock?
Would a single guild still get most of the targets?

From what I've seen, raiding guilds on p99 have far greater numbers than were historically on my eqlive server. I would hate to make a system that somehow made things worse :T

Anyways, keep up the proposals. Hopefully something is suggested that supports more guilds getting targets without diminishing competition.

Here is my proposal:

Facts:

- On many live servers, competition was never what it is here (ridiculously hardcore), because raiding playerbase was much smaller.
- On many live servers, there was a rotation going for many targets, and EQ was still considered a hard game which needed investment. Also because somehow back then, guild leaders knew about playing nice and fairplay.

Proposition

GMs from this server write down a list (which can be updated by them) of the bosses and give each of them one of the following status:

Status could be:

[Rotation] which means the boss is put to rotation. Rules are:
- any guild can ask to pass a test to enter the rotation. Target will be spawned by a GM, no loot will be received from that event of course. GMs will decide if it's a number of attempts or amount of time required to "clear" the test.
- guilds who are granted a kill due to rotation rights have 2 attempts max or an hour before it's open to other guilds who are part of the rotation on a FTE basis (see below).

[Tiered Rotation] which means the boss is put to rotation too but this time, it's left to the player base to come to an agreement which are the requirements to enter/leave the rotation.
- guilds who are granted a kill due to rotation rights still have 2 attempts max or an hour before it's open to other guilds who are part of the rotation on a FTE basis (see below).

[Contested] which means open to race / competition on a FTE basis (see below).

FTE rule changed to:

Each guild appoints a raid leader who must now claim engagement. There will be 2 shouts from that person:

First one requires at least 10 members from guild/alliance to be in the target's zone: "<Guild Name> is willing to be part of the hunt for <Target>". It notifies any other guild that they are now part of the effective rotation.

"<Guild Name> is engaging the target now!" which announces for a FTE claim.

From this point, the guild must engage under a minute.
If the guild engages under a minute and kills the target, grats. If it's a wipe, other guilds can claim engagement, as long as they also engage under a minute and the target is back to full health when they do so.
If a guild fails to engage under a minute, it loses one turn and must wait for the next guild to claim FTE and do its attempt. This rule stops applying if 10 minutes have passed without an engage from any competiting guild.

Punishment
Failing the rules will result in a 15 days raid ban guild wise.

Variance
Will be removed.

Example 1 (overly complicated, to show the boundaries):

Gorenaire is set this month to [Contested] and spawns.
TMO races and are first in the zone. As long as no other guild / alliance shows up with 15 players, they can't claim to be on the rotation, and TMO may have as many attempts as they want.
BDA has got 15 players in the zone, and thei raid leader shouts:
"<BDA> is willing to be part of the hunt for <Gorenaire>".
From that moment, TMO raid leader or BDA leaders must now shout their respective engagements before going in.
Let's say TMO shouts for engage and fails again. There is still no restriction.
Divinity enters the raid scene, and shouts for rotation inclusion and are gathering their raid forces.
TMO thinks BDA is about to engage but they're not totally ready, so TMo shouts for engage, but can't engage immediatly. More than a minute passes with no engage from TMO, they lose their turn and can't engage. Either BDA or Divinity now have 10 minutes to claim their FTE, or TMO can go again. BDA engages but is wiping.
TMO claims again FTE before Divinity, as BDA is losing their members. TMO here gambles that BDA will have wiped and Gorenaire will be back to full health under a minute.
BDA tanks & healers heroicly survive more than a minute, and TMO lost it's gamble, the "lost turn or 10 minutes" rule applies again.
Divinity claims FTE after 5 minutes, and kills the target.

Example 2:

Venril Sathir is set this month to [Rotation] and spawns. BDA is the guild which has got engage rights. BDA takes some time to gather and buff, and do their first attempt after 45 minutes. The hour mark is hit, and BDA is not ready to go again. TMO shouts for rotation inclusion, and immediatly shouts again for FTE. They wipe. As BDA is about to shouts for FTE, TMO shouts for FTE again as they rush back to the room. They are allowed to so since they engaged under a minute the previous attempt, and kill it.

If the logic here is flawed lemme know.

Why would this be good?
It's easily monitored by players themselves, and GMs won't have to watch if they don't want to. It allows for competition and casual friendly environment. Like on live, mind you.
Also this system is very flexible (easily customized) to reflect what the GMs/devs want to do with their server by putting the status they want, what tests must be passed, and how much they'll have to manage the rotations (them or the player base).

[Callnoutthenewbs]

Here is my proposal:

Facts:

- On many live servers, competition was never what it is here (ridiculously hardcore), because raiding playerbase was much smaller.
- On many live servers, there was a rotation going for many targets, and EQ was still considered a hard game which needed investment. Also because somehow back then, guild leaders knew about playing nice and fairplay.

Proposition

GMs from this server write down a list (which can be updated by them) of the bosses and give each of them one of the following status:

Status could be:

[Rotation] which means the boss is put to rotation. Rules are:
- any guild can ask to pass a test to enter the rotation. Target will be spawned by a GM, no loot will be received from that event of course. GMs will decide if it's a number of attempts or amount of time required to "clear" the test.
- guilds who are granted a kill due to rotation rights have 2 attempts max or an hour before it's open to other guilds who are part of the rotation on a FTE basis (see below).

[Tiered Rotation] which means the boss is put to rotation too but this time, it's left to the player base to come to an agreement which are the requirements to enter/leave the rotation.
- guilds who are granted a kill due to rotation rights still have 2 attempts max or an hour before it's open to other guilds who are part of the rotation on a FTE basis (see below).

[Contested] which means open to race / competition on a FTE basis (see below).

FTE rule changed to:

Each guild appoints a raid leader who must now claim engagement. There will be 2 shouts from that person:

First one requires at least 10 members from guild/alliance to be in the target's zone: "<Guild Name> is willing to be part of the hunt for <Target>". It notifies any other guild that they are now part of the effective rotation.

"<Guild Name> is engaging the target now!" which announces for a FTE claim.

From this point, the guild must engage under a minute.
If the guild engages under a minute and kills the target, grats. If it's a wipe, other guilds can claim engagement, as long as they also engage under a minute and the target is back to full health when they do so.
If a guild fails to engage under a minute, it loses one turn and must wait for the next guild to claim FTE and do its attempt. This rule stops applying if 10 minutes have passed without an engage from any competiting guild.

Killing a raid target even after failing the minute engagement will result in a 15 days raid ban guild wise.

Example 1:

Gorenaire is set this month to [Contested] and spawns.
TMO races and are first in the zone. As long as no other guild / alliance shows up with 15 players, they can't claim to be on the rotation, and TMO may have as many attempts as they want.
BDA has got 15 players in the zone, and thei raid leader shouts:
"<BDA> is willing to be part of the hunt for <Gorenaire>".
From that moment, TMO raid leader or BDA leaders must now shout their respective engagements before going in.
Let's say TMO shouts for engage and fails again. There is still no restriction.
Divinity enters the raid scene, and shouts for rotation inclusion and are gathering their raid forces.
TMO thinks BDA is about to engage but they're not totally ready, so TMo shouts for engage, but can't engage immediatly. More than a minute passes with no engage from TMO, they lose their turn and can't engage. Either BDA or Divinity now have 10 minutes to claim their FTE, or TMO can go again. BDA engages but is wiping.
TMO claims again FTE before Divinity, as BDA is losing their members. TMO here gambles that BDA will have wiped and Gorenaire will be back to full health under a minute.
BDA tanks & healers heroicly survive more than a minute, and TMO lost it's gamble, the "lost turn or 10 minutes" rule applies again.
Divinity claims FTE after 5 minutes, and kills the target.

Example 2:

Venril Sathir is set this month to [Rotation] and spawns. BDA is the guild which has got engage rights. BDA takes some time to gather and buff, and do their first attempt after 45 minutes. The hour mark is hit, and BDA is not ready to go again. TMO shouts for rotation inclusion, and immediatly shouts again for FTE. They wipe. As BDA is about to shouts for FTE, TMO shouts for FTE again as they rush back to the room. They are allowed to so since they engaged under a minute the previous attempt, and kill it.

If the logic here is flawed lemme know.

Why would this be good?
It's easily monitored by players themselves, and GMs won't have to watch if they don't want to. It allows for competition and casual friendly environment. Like on live, mind you.
Also this system is very flexible (easily customized) to reflect what the GMs/devs want to do with their server by putting the status they want, what tests must be passed, and how much they'll have to manage the rotations (them or the player base).

Read this and it just sounds like a headace to be honest.

[finalgrunt]

Read this and it just sounds like a headace to be honest.

Well it's not RnF material for sure, and if you don't plan on being a raid leader, you won't have to bother, just wait for engage order ;)

[Callnoutthenewbs]

1 thing Im getting from this thread is that there clearly is a problem with the endgame raiding game even though TMO members will say different.

Something clearly needs to be done to improve the server for the better and help these small guilds get more raid targets

I know of alot of people that are level 60 with very little motivation to even play anymore cause
they refuse to join TMO from having past faggotery shit happen to them/guild ie tmo training and just plain being complete and total assfucks with no class.

I am glad alot of the other guilds refuse to do shit like tmo, thats what EQ is about playing together and not being a classless whore doing anything they want to get pixels over another guild.

Im glad alot of people will see and read this thread and see TMO are classless idoits that will run over your guild and use any dirty trick in the book to get pixels.

[Alarti0001]

Here is my proposal:

Facts:

- On many live servers, competition was never what it is here (ridiculously hardcore), because raiding playerbase was much smaller.
- On many live servers, there was a rotation going for many targets, and EQ was still considered a hard game which needed investment. Also because somehow back then, guild leaders knew about playing nice and fairplay.

Proposition

GMs from this server write down a list (which can be updated by them) of the bosses and give each of them one of the following status:

Status could be:

[Rotation] which means the boss is put to rotation. Rules are:
- any guild can ask to pass a test to enter the rotation. Target will be spawned by a GM, no loot will be received from that event of course. GMs will decide if it's a number of attempts or amount of time required to "clear" the test.
- guilds who are granted a kill due to rotation rights have 2 attempts max or an hour before it's open to other guilds who are part of the rotation on a FTE basis (see below).

[Tiered Rotation] which means the boss is put to rotation too but this time, it's left to the player base to come to an agreement which are the requirements to enter/leave the rotation.
- guilds who are granted a kill due to rotation rights still have 2 attempts max or an hour before it's open to other guilds who are part of the rotation on a FTE basis (see below).

[Contested] which means open to race / competition on a FTE basis (see below).

FTE rule changed to:

Each guild appoints a raid leader who must now claim engagement. There will be 2 shouts from that person:

First one requires at least 10 members from guild/alliance to be in the target's zone: "<Guild Name> is willing to be part of the hunt for <Target>". It notifies any other guild that they are now part of the effective rotation.

"<Guild Name> is engaging the target now!" which announces for a FTE claim.

From this point, the guild must engage under a minute.
If the guild engages under a minute and kills the target, grats. If it's a wipe, other guilds can claim engagement, as long as they also engage under a minute and the target is back to full health when they do so.
If a guild fails to engage under a minute, it loses one turn and must wait for the next guild to claim FTE and do its attempt. This rule stops applying if 10 minutes have passed without an engage from any competiting guild.

Punishment
Failing the rules will result in a 15 days raid ban guild wise.

Variance
Will be removed.

Example 1 (overly complicated, to show the boundaries):

Gorenaire is set this month to [Contested] and spawns.
TMO races and are first in the zone. As long as no other guild / alliance shows up with 15 players, they can't claim to be on the rotation, and TMO may have as many attempts as they want.
BDA has got 15 players in the zone, and thei raid leader shouts:
"<BDA> is willing to be part of the hunt for <Gorenaire>".
From that moment, TMO raid leader or BDA leaders must now shout their respective engagements before going in.
Let's say TMO shouts for engage and fails again. There is still no restriction.
Divinity enters the raid scene, and shouts for rotation inclusion and are gathering their raid forces.
TMO thinks BDA is about to engage but they're not totally ready, so TMo shouts for engage, but can't engage immediatly. More than a minute passes with no engage from TMO, they lose their turn and can't engage. Either BDA or Divinity now have 10 minutes to claim their FTE, or TMO can go again. BDA engages but is wiping.
TMO claims again FTE before Divinity, as BDA is losing their members. TMO here gambles that BDA will have wiped and Gorenaire will be back to full health under a minute.
BDA tanks & healers heroicly survive more than a minute, and TMO lost it's gamble, the "lost turn or 10 minutes" rule applies again.
Divinity claims FTE after 5 minutes, and kills the target.

Example 2:

Venril Sathir is set this month to [Rotation] and spawns. BDA is the guild which has got engage rights. BDA takes some time to gather and buff, and do their first attempt after 45 minutes. The hour mark is hit, and BDA is not ready to go again. TMO shouts for rotation inclusion, and immediatly shouts again for FTE. They wipe. As BDA is about to shouts for FTE, TMO shouts for FTE again as they rush back to the room. They are allowed to so since they engaged under a minute the previous attempt, and kill it.

If the logic here is flawed lemme know.

Why would this be good?
It's easily monitored by players themselves, and GMs won't have to watch if they don't want to. It allows for competition and casual friendly environment. Like on live, mind you.
Also this system is very flexible (easily customized) to reflect what the GMs/devs want to do with their server by putting the status they want, what tests must be passed, and how much they'll have to manage the rotations (them or the player base).



You obviously put a lot of thought into this and that is to be respected, but this would kill guilds and kill community. Most of the targets can be killed woth sgnificantly less numbers than tmo or bda bring to raids. This would cause large communities of friends to splinter into smaller guilds. Ill type a more detailed and cogent response when I get home

[Slave]

I fail to see anything wrong with removing variance and adding a raid mob shout that declares who was first to engage it. This will have nothing but positive impact on the raid scene and will actually add depth and complexity to the strategy aspect of hunting gods and dragons.

Casuals will have an opportunity to raid while hardcores will have an opportunity to level alts, auction in EC, and play with their cats because they are not on 24/7 batphone alert.

Best of all, it is absolutely Classic. All these complicated ideas for rules and mechanics are, to put it very frankly, completely retarded. There is no reason whatsoever to add such nonsense when we have a perfectly elegant and Classic solution right under our noses.

Remove variance and add a FTE shout to the raid mob being engaged. That's it!!

[Arteker]

u guys forgot what first mean casual raidin in classic.

in classic a casual raidin would be hit /fear /hate / sky/kael(thurga armour) and maybe if enough well geared people( hot).

We are in a classic server or supsoed to be in one , what u guys seek is everything .

1: little effort no job : loot.
2: what u couldnt do back in live now can be done but in a cheap way , u couldnt beat the game in 2000 and now u want to try it but still fail.
3: u cry about no enough content for casual player . this isnt the age where u got augmentations and got shit from lost dungueons of norrath .
4: there will be always a topr aid guild and this situation will rinse and repeat over and over .


Growth up . EQ isnt wow or other games who followed it . Most people i believe never where in a real raid event back in live and dont know what it cost .


If people in tmo got all the candys is because they log in euro time est time or space time to raid.

they would conetst any mob . that doesnt stop trying to contest mob .

[HarrisonStillPosting]

Here is my proposal:

Facts:

- On many live servers, competition was never what it is here (ridiculously hardcore), because raiding playerbase was much smaller.
- On many live servers, there was a rotation going for many targets, and EQ was still considered a hard game which needed investment. Also because somehow back then, guild leaders knew about playing nice and fairplay.

Proposition

GMs from this server write down a list (which can be updated by them) of the bosses and give each of them one of the following status:

Status could be:

[Rotation] which means the boss is put to rotation. Rules are:
- any guild can ask to pass a test to enter the rotation. Target will be spawned by a GM, no loot will be received from that event of course. GMs will decide if it's a number of attempts or amount of time required to "clear" the test.
- guilds who are granted a kill due to rotation rights have 2 attempts max or an hour before it's open to other guilds who are part of the rotation on a FTE basis (see below).

[Tiered Rotation] which means the boss is put to rotation too but this time, it's left to the player base to come to an agreement which are the requirements to enter/leave the rotation.
- guilds who are granted a kill due to rotation rights still have 2 attempts max or an hour before it's open to other guilds who are part of the rotation on a FTE basis (see below).

[Contested] which means open to race / competition on a FTE basis (see below).

FTE rule changed to:

Each guild appoints a raid leader who must now claim engagement. There will be 2 shouts from that person:

First one requires at least 10 members from guild/alliance to be in the target's zone: "<Guild Name> is willing to be part of the hunt for <Target>". It notifies any other guild that they are now part of the effective rotation.

"<Guild Name> is engaging the target now!" which announces for a FTE claim.

From this point, the guild must engage under a minute.
If the guild engages under a minute and kills the target, grats. If it's a wipe, other guilds can claim engagement, as long as they also engage under a minute and the target is back to full health when they do so.
If a guild fails to engage under a minute, it loses one turn and must wait for the next guild to claim FTE and do its attempt. This rule stops applying if 10 minutes have passed without an engage from any competiting guild.

Punishment
Failing the rules will result in a 15 days raid ban guild wise.

Variance
Will be removed.

Example 1 (overly complicated, to show the boundaries):

Gorenaire is set this month to [Contested] and spawns.
TMO races and are first in the zone. As long as no other guild / alliance shows up with 15 players, they can't claim to be on the rotation, and TMO may have as many attempts as they want.
BDA has got 15 players in the zone, and thei raid leader shouts:
"<BDA> is willing to be part of the hunt for <Gorenaire>".
From that moment, TMO raid leader or BDA leaders must now shout their respective engagements before going in.
Let's say TMO shouts for engage and fails again. There is still no restriction.
Divinity enters the raid scene, and shouts for rotation inclusion and are gathering their raid forces.
TMO thinks BDA is about to engage but they're not totally ready, so TMo shouts for engage, but can't engage immediatly. More than a minute passes with no engage from TMO, they lose their turn and can't engage. Either BDA or Divinity now have 10 minutes to claim their FTE, or TMO can go again. BDA engages but is wiping.
TMO claims again FTE before Divinity, as BDA is losing their members. TMO here gambles that BDA will have wiped and Gorenaire will be back to full health under a minute.
BDA tanks & healers heroicly survive more than a minute, and TMO lost it's gamble, the "lost turn or 10 minutes" rule applies again.
Divinity claims FTE after 5 minutes, and kills the target.

Example 2:

Venril Sathir is set this month to [Rotation] and spawns. BDA is the guild which has got engage rights. BDA takes some time to gather and buff, and do their first attempt after 45 minutes. The hour mark is hit, and BDA is not ready to go again. TMO shouts for rotation inclusion, and immediatly shouts again for FTE. They wipe. As BDA is about to shouts for FTE, TMO shouts for FTE again as they rush back to the room. They are allowed to so since they engaged under a minute the previous attempt, and kill it.

If the logic here is flawed lemme know.

Why would this be good?
It's easily monitored by players themselves, and GMs won't have to watch if they don't want to. It allows for competition and casual friendly environment. Like on live, mind you.
Also this system is very flexible (easily customized) to reflect what the GMs/devs want to do with their server by putting the status they want, what tests must be passed, and how much they'll have to manage the rotations (them or the player base).

This makes sense but the punishment needs to be extreme. TMO are massive repeat offenders, multiple raid suspensions, training, exploiting, etc.

15 day raid suspension is weak.

[Alarti0001]

This makes sense but the punishment needs to be extreme. TMO are massive repeat offenders, multiple raid suspensions, training, exploiting, etc.

15 day raid suspension is weak.

My quote server to sum up your post

[HarrisonStillPosting]

You guys haven't been raid suspended multiple times? You have never been caught exploiting a mechanic in the game as a guild in VP? You haven't been caught training other guilds numerous times?

I'll await your lies here.

[Maze513]

You get outta this game you put into it... same as life, work, relationships, you know the drill. And besides anything thats just handed to you just lessens the feeling of accomplishment.
Its like Sky quest items. Ya it takes umpteen hours to get the items a chance youll screw up the hand in, but when you get it, its a great feeling! That your hard work and time wasted earned you something.
Now if I can just hang in 3500 gnoll teeth to Captin Tillin for JB legs, yea it seems like a good idea. But then its just WoW and people are just handed what they want, and that takes away from any feeling of worth for the people that have devoted time and effort into advancing themselves. So I guess I just feel like, if people wanted to play End Game they would, they only thing stopping they is themselves and we've all seen there is little you can do to protect people from themselves. (harrison)

TL;DR
I wated more life then you so I get gear Fool!

/rabble off

[HarrisonIsStillPosting]

Abusing the server's lack of punishment for exploiting, training, and gaps in the rules to poopsock etc. isn't "putting in work" it's pathetic.

Stop trying to act like you're some dedicated, hard-working, upstanding individual that is trying hard against all odds to overcome some difficult thing.

You're just not getting punished for what you should be getting punished for, that's it.

[Slave]

I just feel like, if people wanted to play End Game they would, they only thing stopping they is themselves

In many cases, the only thing stopping them is other people in a giant guild.

[Slave]

Let's look at this in a different way: is there any good reason whatsoever that anyone can think of for why unClassical variance exists on this server?

[HarrisonIsStillPosting]

Let's look at this in a different way: is there any good reason whatsoever that anyone can think of for why unClassical variance exists on this server?

The variance was originally put in place to stop poopsocking.

All it did was make the no-talent clowns in DA poopsock harder, and now they're in TMO.

The only thing that will change the end game is a GM team willing to come down hard on these people, and no one has had the balls to do it yet. Hundreds of confirmed(probably thousands unconfirmed by now) cheaters running rampant that never got banned, entire guilds(multiples of them) exploiting in front of GMs(TMO pulling mobs through walls while Amelinda watched for hours) without punishment, some even on video, etc.

We need a team that doesn't take shit like they have been. The limpwristing of punishments has gone on long enough. It is disgusting what groups of people get away with on this server.

Why are there even rules if when they're broken blatantly, in front of the GMs, nothing is done about it?

Third Party Tools, Exploiting
We do not tolerate cheating on Project 1999. Any program that provides an unintended advantage or gleams access to information not otherwise available is very strictly prohibited. Please be aware that while other EQEmulator servers may allow the use of such programs, we do not. We have many systems in place to detect the presence and usage of these programs passively, with regular sweeps to purge users that have utilized them. This is typically a permanent ban.

Do not make the mistake that you may get away with it because you used it on Live Everquest. We put much more effort into the detection of these utilities than SOE ever did. You will be caught and banned if you use them.

The same holds true for exploiting. If you have the slightest doubt that what you are doing may not be intended, please cease immediately and seek clarification from the server staff. Failure to do so and discovery of your actions will lead to disciplinary action.

TMO was seen by Amelinda pulling through walls in VP for hours. I can dig up the quotes of her saying she watched them do it, but that is very public knowledge anyways. Was TMO banned for it? Of course not. We need GMs who don't limpwrist these punishments that are right on the front page.

[Artah]

Who would be in favor of altering end-game mechanics as to allow more guilds to experience end-game content?

Please vote.

I voted no because I want real competition not play hand over the dragon in a silver platter on a skewer!

Competition is so exhilerating.

[HarrisonIsStillPosting]

Right now there is zero chance for legitimate competition while camping on top of spawnpoints is legal, or training/exploiting not going punished (as is the case right now)

[Artah]

Right now there is zero chance for legitimate competition while camping on top of spawnpoints is legal, or training/exploiting not going punished (as is the case right now)

What exactly is it that TMO is doing that you can't do? It's not TMO's fault that a lot of the other smaller guilds choose to stay in their respective little guilds so that they are always divided and has no chance of becoming a real competition?

You are too stuck on your own smaller divided guilds and like the way it's running? It's all good there's no harm in staying in your comfort zone to enjoy the game. You can always do joint raids with multiple guilds.

Well what you are doing is obviously not becoming a TMO compeditor so don't be sad about it because it's really not TMO's fault seriously, it's a choice you are making.

This is like someone nailing their fingers to the table and then turning around and asking the guy next to him why he didn't try to stop him from immobilizing his fingers... I know kind of graphic but you get the idea.

[HarrisonIsStillPosting]

It's obvious you're incapable of realizing that the only reason TMO is "on top" is because there has never been a GM team with the balls to crack down on the end game and enforce the rules.

It is very clear that the GMs don't want people to poopsock. This is why they put in the variance in the first place. What they didn't expect was that you guys would be SO pathetic that you would quite literally sit on top of a spawnpoint for a week straight to circumvent the variance/rules.

The reason no one is banding together to do the same is because it's not legitimate nor is it even remotely logical to sit on a spawnpoint for days. It's pathetic.

We won't even get into the "let's let them train away, and exploit without repercussions in VP!"(the endgame currently) situation going on currently that has decimated the raid scene entirely.

You aren't talented. You aren't skilled. You just have the largest group of pathetic people under one guild tag willing to exploit, train, and poopsock longer than anyone else.

[Daldolma]

Honestly, Slave is right. The solution is so simple.

1) Remove variance.
2) Have gods/dragons shout FTE.
3) Remove play nice rules, allow training (but not KSing or ninja looting).

#3 is necessary to maintain competition. With no variance, everyone will poopsock. Which is how it worked on Live, too. But on Live, you were more or less allowed to train your competition since GMs mostly took a backseat. More importantly, the risk of being trained while engaging the god/dragon made clearing a necessity. That meant that "poop-socking" was really more like competitive clearing.

I don't see what's wrong with bringing that back. What is better about the current scenario, where you have one guild with 60+ members tracking every god/dragon for pretty much every minute of every day and jumping into the zone, bypassing most intermediate mobs, and clearing the god/dragon within 3 minutes of spawning? There's no competition, no skill, and no appreciation for the zone the mob is in. CT gets killed while the entire zone is being kited around and the competition can't do anything about it. That's so weak. Allow training and all of a sudden, if you want to do CT, you either need to start clearing (and god forbid, cooperating) or be able to handle 40 adds mid-fight. Allow training and rotations begin to make sense without being authoritatively enforced. Allow training and skill actually begins to play a role in raids. If you can handle 20 shrooms being dropped on you, congrats -- you earned Trak.

Move past this doom and gloom mindset where training is going to lead to never-ending griefing. It won't -- at least not in the raid game. It'll lead to legitimate competition and, eventually, cooperation.

[HarrisonIsStillPosting]

Training isn't competition and that's why it is illegal.

Your first two points make sense, though.

[Daldolma]

If training isn't competition, then what is? What's to stop 3 different guilds from parking on top of Trak's spawn with 40 people and just waiting? FTE isn't competition -- it's luck. One idiot gets aggro before a bunch of other idiots, through no actual ability, and somehow his guild has more right to the mob than anyone else? And don't kid yourself, these dragons/gods are trivial. Get the numbers and they go down easy, assuming there are no extenuating circumstances (trains).

I don't see how training isn't competition. It is. I'm going to drop 30 mobs on you, you're going to drop 30 mobs on me -- let's see who's standing afterward. Conversely, if you want to avoid that type of dog eat dog mentality, you can just clear the majority of the zone. Or you can choose to cooperate and/or rotate in order to avoid training each other into submission. Raiding can take a lot of different forms when training is allowed. When it's not, raiding looks like this: FTE, mob melts down, see you next week.

[HarrisonIsStillPosting]

Sitting on top of spawnpoints is the root of the problem. Make it illegal. Force people to mobilize, clear to the raid target, race.

That is what classic everquest raiding always was until PoP/flagging/instancing.

No one fucking sat on spawnpoints for DAYS. That shit is ridiculous and the variance was supposed to stop it, but like I said, the GMs didn't expect people to be that pathetic.

GMs need to put their foot down and make it illegal, ban guildleaders and officers permanently when caught breaking it, period. Problem solved. No one is going to risk a permanent ban if the GMs actually enforce their rules. They knew the rule. They chose to break it. Punish them. Stop giving out endless "one-time passes" on cheating/exploiting/training/blatant raid interferences.

The solution isn't to legalize another illegitimate tactic to fix another non-classic one. Just remove the non-classic variance, and get to the root of the problem directly. Ban poopsocking.

[Frieza_Prexus]

exploiting in front of GMs(TMO pulling mobs through walls while Amelinda watched for hours) without punishment, some even on video, etc.

If you want to be taken seriously, at least try to use something that has traction. You're trying to make a point, but not once have you defended your claim. If you're really trying to appeal to an undecided reader, you would take the time explain yourself. Instead, you just make the same statement over and over. This is not how the reasoning process ordinarily works. If you're not sure where to start, or how your statements have been challenged, I suggest you start here:

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=591771&postcount=14
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=591737&postcount=46
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=592272&postcount=87
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=593242&postcount=147
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=593331&postcount=153
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=593346&postcount=157
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=593877&postcount=163
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=594047&postcount=178
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=594190&postcount=189
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=595124&postcount=218
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=601466&postcount=403

To those who are not in the high end scene yet: Don't let Harrison or anyone else bring you down. Many of these posters have not even tried to participate in the high end scene. There are problems, but they're not deal breaking. I think if you try, you'll find the majority of the people there are actually nice.

I think Daldolma has touched upon a good point. Many people think that unrestricted raiding leads to utter monopoly. This is a false conclusion. There are some, but not many barriers to entry for the raiding scene. From an economic stand point, the competing guilds WILL bump heads, but eventually equilibrium and cooperation will be achieved as it is the most efficient outcome for two or more similarly situated competitors.

It's all very Zen.

[Silentone]

Harrison they should just ban you for posting. doesn't even matter what you post.

[HarrisonIsStillPosting]

rofl look at this spin machine loser spending an hour on a post

I was here and raiding long before you were, and I wasn't poopsocking, training, or pulling mobs through walls when I was, either.

You can't make the same claim, no-talent chump.

[Silentone]

If you want to be taken seriously, at least try to use something that has traction. You're trying to make a point, but not once have you defended your claim. If you're really trying to appeal to an undecided reader, you would take the time explain yourself. Instead, you just make the same statement over and over. This is not how the reasoning process ordinarily works. If you're not sure where to start, or how your statements have been challenged, I suggest you start here:

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=591771&postcount=14
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=591737&postcount=46
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=592272&postcount=87
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=593242&postcount=147
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=593331&postcount=153
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=593346&postcount=157
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=593877&postcount=163
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=594047&postcount=178
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=594190&postcount=189
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=595124&postcount=218
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showpost.php?p=601466&postcount=403

To those who are not in the high end scene yet: Don't let Harrison or anyone else bring you down. Many of these posters have not even tried to participate in the high end scene. There are problems, but they're not deal breaking. I think if you try, you'll find the majority of the people there are actually nice.

I think Daldolma has touched upon a good point. Many people think that unrestricted raiding leads to utter monopoly. This is a false conclusion. There are some, but not many barriers to entry for the raiding scene. From an economic stand point, the competing guilds WILL bump heads, but eventually equilibrium and cooperation will be achieved as it is the most efficient outcome for two or more similarly situated competitors.

It's all very Zen.

exactly, what happend when IB and TMO went at it for months on high priority targets(trak, vp) we went on rotation. Any guild if commited can force that same rotation, Good lucky people

[Daldolma]

You can't ban poopsocking. Trak's due to spawn in 45 minutes and all of a sudden TMO wants to start a Fungi king group and a shrooms group and a reets/juggs group, and farm Prot and Tola. Oh, and they've got some friends coming along to help from out of group. Who's to say that's illegal? It's perfectly logical. Those are decent camps and Trak is due soon, so might as well. It's not poopsocking, but it might as well be. Etc, etc.

CT is due in 2 hours. Divinity decides to clear Fear with 35 people. Poopsocking? For all intents and purposes, yes. Enforceable? Of course not. Who's to say they can't farm planar armor?

Etc, etc forever. Almost every zone with a dragon/god has legitimate camps, and most of the time, those camps are exactly what's blocking the way to the dragon/god.

You can't ban poop-socking. You'll have rule lawyers on every single engagement, and enforcement would end up being highly inconsistent. The next best thing is to let the player base combat poop-socking themselves. If you want to sit idly on Trak's spawn waiting for a pop, then I want to bring 25 juggs to Trak ledge right as Trak spawns. Something gives me a feeling people won't just sit idly at ledge after that.

[HarrisonIsStillPosting]

It's easier to forgo the training, exploiting, and poopsocking and just enforce a faggoty rotation. (Rotations are fucking dumb, but it's better than cheating, training, and poopsocking.)

Know how to stop rule lawyers. Ban them. It's very simple.

When I caught people exploiting on my FPS server, I didn't let them rule lawyer their way out of it by saying "the game lets me do it, so it must be legit!" I just banned them.

It's that simple. They are cheating scum and should be dealt with as such, and were. We need GMs like that, but it will never happen. You just get GMs that watch guilds pull mobs through walls for hours and slap them on the wrist with a fuzzy slipper.

[Artah]

It's obvious you're incapable of realizing that the only reason TMO is "on top" is because there has never been a GM team with the balls to crack down on the end game and enforce the rules.

It is very clear that the GMs don't want people to poopsock. This is why they put in the variance in the first place. What they didn't expect was that you guys would be SO pathetic that you would quite literally sit on top of a spawnpoint for a week straight to circumvent the variance/rules.

The reason no one is banding together to do the same is because it's not legitimate nor is it even remotely logical to sit on a spawnpoint for days. It's pathetic.

We won't even get into the "let's let them train away, and exploit without repercussions in VP!"(the endgame currently) situation going on currently that has decimated the raid scene entirely.

You aren't talented. You aren't skilled. You just have the largest group of pathetic people under one guild tag willing to exploit, train, and poopsock longer than anyone else.

I am not sure I agree, I once witnessed TMO with about 2 groups kill faydedar and only 1 cleric in the raid with 2 druids and a shaman. I would have to say there was some skill and talent involved there. I also witnessed TMO kill gore with about 35 people and another time heard about 90 non TMO people that kept wiping to gore. The last time I saw TMO poopsock was months ago but I did hear about other guilds "poop socking" Maestro many times recently.

So when you want a rare mob to spawn you pass by it occasionally and hope that it's up or do you sit there for hours killing the PHs until the rare spawns? I say that because that's basically poopsocking in a much smaller scale and the majority of the players on the server is guilty of it. I am not trying to lawyer my way in this discussion but before you bash other guilds please take a look at it from as many angles as possible.

TMO is on top because they are a collection of people that's driven by the burning desire to win and they are not doing anything that other people can't do on the server. I guarantee you there is enough people that's not in TMO that could legitimately bring in the challenge, they just need to come out and present themselves.

[Daldolma]

exactly, what happend when IB and TMO went at it for months on high priority targets(trak, vp) we went on rotation. Any guild if commited can force that same rotation, Good lucky people

Right, that's true. But the problem is that the level of commitment required to force that equilibrium on P99 is not equivalent to the level that was required in classic. Having to track a dozen targets for days on end with no real idea of when they will spawn is not classic. Classic was a clusterf*ck of activity surrounding a few hot hours when a mob was expected to spawn. Think about if, right now, VS's variance was wiped (this is just an example). If everyone on the server knew that VS was spawning at exactly 4:05 PM EST today, there would be 100 people fighting for that spawn. Over the course of multiple mobs and multiple weeks, there would eventually be stalemates. TMO dominates the current system, but in a more classic system, it would not be possible for TMO -- or anyone else -- to dominate this thoroughly. You'd likely still be the #1 guild on the server, but you wouldn't be leaps and bounds above the pack, and there would actually be significant incentive for your guild to split and form two able bodies instead of one.

That's a more classic scenario. In my opinion, it's better for everyone involved -- including TMO. Phat lewtz aside, it's no fun to be on top of the mountain with nobody else in eyesight. You'd all probably be happier to still be #1, but with legitimate competition.

[Zallar]

You should make raid zones FFA PvP.

[Frieza_Prexus]

Know how to stop rule lawyers. Ban them. It's very simple.

When I caught people exploiting on my FPS server, I didn't let them rule lawyer their way out of it by saying "the game lets me do it, so it must be legit!" I just banned them.

It's that simple. They are cheating scum and should be dealt with as such, and were. We need GMs like that, but it will never happen. You just get GMs that watch guilds pull mobs through walls for hours and slap them on the wrist with a fuzzy slipper.

I, for one, am thankful that you do not wield decision making power here. You're telling everyone that you want justice, but your solutions are anything but.

Edit: @ Daldolma: We can't assume that equilibrium would be achieved for every mob at the same time. If IB had said nuts to every mob BUT Trak when he was on rotation, TMO would still have agreed to it. As long as it was efficient for us to rotate in the long term, we'd do it. This is what allows guilds to get their foot in the door. When TMO first started against TR, we raced to a few targets, but we put everything we had into Trak. We moved on from there.

[HarrisonIsStillPosting]

Banning people for breaking rules (such as exploiting, pulling mobs through walls for example) is a rule and consequence for breaking said rule, right on the front page.

I'd only be enforcing what is currently not being enforced. (and never has been through the history of the server to now) So, of course you're thankful that I'm not enforcing the rules that you are constantly breaking. You'd be out of a game to cheat on.

350+ cheaters caught yet never banned anyone?
TMO pulling mobs through walls in VP for hours up to the ledge in picture room?
Holocaust on R99 exploiting Nagafen
Nihilum on R99 exploiting every raid encounter possible

The only repercussion to any of that? Nihilum and Holocaust got their loot removed 5 months after they exploited it multiple times.

That would have never occurred under my watch. And you would never have made it past the first hour of pulling mobs through walls in VP without being banned. None of this is made up. All of it is public knowledge on these forums. The lack of punishment is tarnishing a wonderful project needlessly, when its own rules are right on the front page blatantly disregarded.

[Daldolma]

Yeah, I agree with that. By equilibrium, I don't mean that every mob would result in rotation. At present, TMO might be the only guild even capable of taking down VP dragons. I'm talking about the fear some people have that unregulated raiding will lead to never-ending train wars. I don't think that will be the case at all. Maybe for a few weeks, or maybe if bad blood emerges at some point in time. But in the long run, nobody is going to want to spend 3 hours locked in a train-stalemate with a similarly-capable raid force. Raids will learn to cooperate or rotate, while weaker parties will drop out of competition.

[Frieza_Prexus]

That would have never occurred under my watch. And you would never have made it past the first hour of pulling mobs through walls in VP without being banned.

Exactly my point. You refuse to investigate, reason, or engage. You've yet to respond to a single point made to counter your claims. Instead, you summarily draw conclusions.

That is the definition of unjust.

[Lazortag]

I still can't believe there are people saying that you just have to 'work harder' to do well in the raid scene. For me to work any harder at tracking mobs I would have to study less or drop out of school. There are things in real life that prohibit me and other casual players from investing the amount of time that the raid scene requires. If this were how it was like in classic I wouldn't complain, but it wasn't. For some reason this point keeps getting ignored. I'm not asking for a handout, I'm asking for a system that allows for competition in the raid scene and somewhat resembles classic. If your idea of competition is hitting the track button for four days straight until Venril Sathir pops, or parking your entire guild on his spawn point precisely so that other guilds can't compete, then frankly you're crazy.

If you want my suggestion for how to fix the raid scene, see page 13 of this thread.

[HarrisonIsStillPosting]

The only ones who don't want a solution are the ones currently exploiting the broken end game, destroying it in the process.

[Fazlazen]

The only ones who don't want a solution are the ones currently exploiting the broken end game, destroying it in the process.

I would Actually say that the current VP dragons are much harder than they were on live. For example, Nexona harm touches for 4k dmg ( much more than it classically was ) and he does it multiple times in a fight ( again not classic ). If the end game is broken, it certainly is not in favor of the raiders, but the dragons. We like it because it provides a challenge.

Also, it has been said many times that the dragon pathing in VP affects in no way the encounter. Whether it comes through wall or through the normap route has no effect on the fight. It comes single, perhaps a little faster if through a wall instead of its normal path.

[quido]

I want to know exactly what pet it is that Hoshkar is casting. Should a Kunark era shaman dragon really be casting some pet from a much later era? What else are these dragons casting?

[Daldaen]

I would Actually say that the current VP dragons are much harder than they were on live. For example, Nexona harm touches for 4k dmg ( much more than it classically was ) and he does it multiple times in a fight ( again not classic ). If the end game is broken, it certainly is not in favor of the raiders, but the dragons. We like it because it provides a challenge.

Also, it has been said many times that the dragon pathing in VP affects in no way the encounter. Whether it comes through wall or through the normap route has no effect on the fight. It comes single, perhaps a little faster if through a wall instead of its normal path.


Pulling dragons single because of how invis works with social aggro isn't really classic either... That sounds pretty broken in favor of raiders IMO.

[Artah]

Pulling dragons single because of how invis works with social aggro isn't really classic either... That sounds pretty broken in favor of raiders IMO.

The point is if those guys from TMO walked up to the dragon's lair it will still die no matter what with the same machanics. The dragons don't morph into emperor crush on it's way to the raid.

[Fazlazen]

Pulling dragons single because of how invis works with social aggro isn't really classic either... That sounds pretty broken in favor of raiders IMO.

It actually is classic. Real raiding guilds on live pulled every single dragons in VP at the zone in. The no social aggro due tu being invised is a 100 % classic mechanic, from what I heard stopped working somewhere past PoP but I was no longer playing back then.

[fischsemmel]

I want to know exactly what pet it is that Hoshkar is casting. Should a Kunark era shaman dragon really be casting some pet from a much later era? What else are these dragons casting?

You just wish that you could summon a red-con pet too.

[Danyelle]

You just wish that you could summon a red-con pet too.

I sure do :(

[Danyelle]

This message is hidden because Reikerz is on your ignore list.

[Lazortag]

This message is hidden because Reikerz is on your ignore list.

Win.

It actually is classic. Real raiding guilds on live pulled every single dragons in VP at the zone in. The no social aggro due tu being invised is a 100 % classic mechanic, from what I heard stopped working somewhere past PoP but I was no longer playing back then.

Isn't the problem that none of the wurms in VP see invis? I really don't know either way, but I heard that mentioned at some point.

[Danyelle]

And for the record, that "one person in the community I cannot stand" wasn't you, Harrison. Though you sure like pushing your way to the number two slot...

OMG WHO WHO!!! :confused::confused::confused:

This message is hidden because Reikerz is on your ignore list.

[Frieza_Prexus]

Isn't the problem that none of the wurms in VP see invis? I really don't know either way, but I heard that mentioned at some point.

They do. It's just that server resets being rare allows them to all be killed until they respawn as non see invis.

[porigromus]

Another solution:

1. When raid mobs spawn they will one shot everyone unless a certain item is found to reduce their power. "Kryptonite"

2. Once a raid mob spawns, a quest to locate said item will be available via Priest of Discord in every town.

3. There could be a pool of different quest (20 -40?) that could possibly be the one that will be available at the Priest of Discord to reduce the raid mob's strength to make it possible to engage to prevent guilds from squatting at learned targets. *** Edit so there is no confusion, ONLY one quest from the pool would be available at the time of a raid mob spawn. I am not saying you have to choose from 20 quest and hope you are on the right one. I only mean you have a chance of 20 different quest being the one available at a time to prevent people "poopsocking" those targets.

4. The quest could evolve killing a certain type of mob/mobs until the item needed drops. The item wouldn't be available until the raid mob is up and the quest has become present. Once the item is found, no more can be found until the next time that quest comes available and the raid mob is up.

5. The guild who finds the drop will get a chance at the raid mob. Now that the raid mob's powers have been reduced back to normal, if that guild fails it's fair game for all.

[Jimes]

Another solution:

1. When raid mobs spawn they will one shot everyone unless a certain item is found to reduce their power. "Kryptonite"

2. Once a raid mob spawns, a quest to locate said item will be available via Priest of Discord in every town.

3. There could be a pool of different quest (20 -40?) that could possibly be the one that will be available to reduce the raid mob's strength to make it possible to engage to prevent guilds from squatting at learned targets.

4. The quest could evolve killing a certain type of mob/mobs until the item needed drops. The item wouldn't be available until the raid mob is up and the quest has become present. Once the item is found, no more can be found until the next time that quest comes available and the raid mob is up.

5. The guild who finds the drop will get a chance at the raid mob. Now that the raid mob's powers have been reduced back to normal, if that guild fails it's fair game for all.

How about when something spawns, all guild leaders of all guilds random /100. GMs will then /kill the dragon and hand out the loot to the high rollers.

Jesus fucking christ.

[Rubin]

Another solution:

1. When raid mobs spawn they will one shot everyone unless a certain item is found to reduce their power. "Kryptonite"

2. Once a raid mob spawns, a quest to locate said item will be available via Priest of Discord in every town.

3. There could be a pool of different quest (20 -40?) that could possibly be the one that will be available to reduce the raid mob's strength to make it possible to engage to prevent guilds from squatting at learned targets.

4. The quest could evolve killing a certain type of mob/mobs until the item needed drops. The item wouldn't be available until the raid mob is up and the quest has become present. Once the item is found, no more can be found until the next time that quest comes available and the raid mob is up.

5. The guild who finds the drop will get a chance at the raid mob. Now that the raid mob's powers have been reduced back to normal, if that guild fails it's fair game for all.

http://cdn.head-fi.org/c/cc/ccefe530_Jackie-Chan-Meme.jpeg

[porigromus]

Another solution:

1. When raid mobs spawn they will one shot everyone unless a certain item is found to reduce their power. "Kryptonite"

2. Once a raid mob spawns, a quest to locate said item will be available via Priest of Discord in every town.

3. There could be a pool of different quest (20 -40?) that could possibly be the one that will be available at the Priest of Discord to reduce the raid mob's strength to make it possible to engage to prevent guilds from squatting at learned targets. *** Edit so there is no confusion, ONLY one quest from the pool would be available at the time of a raid mob spawn. I am not saying you have to choose from 20 quest and hope you are on the right one. I only mean you have a chance of 20 different quest being the one available at a time to prevent people "poopsocking" those targets.

4. The quest could evolve killing a certain type of mob/mobs until the item needed drops. The item wouldn't be available until the raid mob is up and the quest has become present. Once the item is found, no more can be found until the next time that quest comes available and the raid mob is up.

5. The guild who finds the drop will get a chance at the raid mob. Now that the raid mob's powers have been reduced back to normal, if that guild fails it's fair game for all.

I wanted to add to this, had a few more thoughts will on the crapper .....

The item would cast a spell for a great enough distance to reduce the raid mob back to normal.

If this was implemented I say remove variance. Every guild will know when what is going to spawn ... yet it will be impossible for any guild to "poopsock" the target. No one would know what quest will be up and it will be a race to see who can find the item needed.

To prevent exploitation, a small guild finding the item and "locking down the raid target for ever without using the item", the rare item can be found multiple times UNTIL it has been activated on the raid mob. At that point the quest is completed and the item is no longer available on quest mobs and all temporary items poof on log out just like mage summon items or even better if possible poof once quest is completed by someone

The reason for this is, we also do not want guilds to farm items to hold for future uses.

This not only stays in the spirit of competition, it avoids making raid mobs "instanced".

What do you think? Gay? Cool?

[porigromus]

How about when something spawns, all guild leaders of all guilds random /100. GMs will then /kill the dragon and hand out the loot to the high rollers.

Jesus fucking christ.

I have no idea how you got that from my post ..... it's still a race .. just not one you can sit on top of. The "reduced" strength is the raid mobs normal strength. I might add a more fun race, you can still "batphone" in but everyone will know when the spawn happens and I can bet your butt all will be waiting at the Priest of Discord to find out which mobs will be the ones they must kill to locate said item.

Race to find the item which can be a random quest of maybe 20 or so ... can't poopsock that.

[Jimes]

I have no idea how you got that from my post .....

Hint: both ideas are completely retarded.

[porigromus]

http://cdn.head-fi.org/c/cc/ccefe530_Jackie-Chan-Meme.jpeg

This is how you would feel if you tried to "poopsock" the dragon BEFORE you completed the quest to bring him back to normal. :)

[porigromus]

Hint: both ideas are completely retarded.

Maybe because it couldn't be guaranteed kills any longer, competition would exist? And thank you for your constructive insightful post on why this idea wouldn't be fun.

Also, hint: Kill the quest mobs faster than the other guilds to have a better % of a chance to get the item first. :)

[Daldolma]

Sigh. All these suggestions to create a new, pseudo-Everquest are not worth posting. I'm not saying they couldn't conceivably be fun, but this is a classic EQ server -- not a "hey, imagine if..." server.

What could be more classic than reverting to classic variances and simulating uninterested GMs that don't care about raids training each other? THAT is classic. Bring it back and let the server sort it out for itself.

The ONLY non-classic angle that I'd be in favor of is some sort of shout or zone-wide broadcast about who had FTE -- just so you don't have three guilds claiming FTE and holding loot ransom in the mean time.

[Hitchens]

Posting in thread.

[porigromus]

Sigh. All these suggestions to create a new, pseudo-Everquest are not worth posting. I'm not saying they couldn't conceivably be fun, but this is a classic EQ server -- not a "hey, imagine if..." server.

What could be more classic than reverting to classic variances and simulating uninterested GMs that don't care about raids training each other? THAT is classic. Bring it back and let the server sort it out for itself.

The ONLY non-classic angle that I'd be in favor of is some sort of shout or zone-wide broadcast about who had FTE -- just so you don't have three guilds claiming FTE and holding loot ransom in the mean time.

The server developer/owner has requested ideas, that is what I have added. I am trying to come up with non-instanced suggestions to allow more fairness for guilds to compete. If you have better ideas. Let us know! By the way I like your idea as well.

[Zallar]

You should make raid zones FFA PvP.

Get those grudges out of your system.

[hdawg06]

Easiest way would be to release velious. But that won't happen any time soon if ever...

[Arteker]

I still can't believe there are people saying that you just have to 'work harder' to do well in the raid scene. For me to work any harder at tracking mobs I would have to study less or drop out of school. There are things in real life that prohibit me and other casual players from investing the amount of time that the raid scene requires. If this were how it was like in classic I wouldn't complain, but it wasn't. For some reason this point keeps getting ignored. I'm not asking for a handout, I'm asking for a system that allows for competition in the raid scene and somewhat resembles classic. If your idea of competition is hitting the track button for four days straight until Venril Sathir pops, or parking your entire guild on his spawn point precisely so that other guilds can't compete, then frankly you're crazy.

If you want my suggestion for how to fix the raid scene, see page 13 of this thread.

It was in classic . main reason they added expansion like lost dungueons of norrath for such people.

examples: 1- cleaning vex thal: atleats with luck 5 hours (no wipes )
2:pog: velious . only the brownies took you 20 mins per one

Darling main reason most mobs went from 32khps to insane amounts of hps ac hit power velious+w as exactly for that reason .

In solusek ro in kunark age we have the same problem Magna charta quicker mobilization ruthles allowed us to domain whole server.

Less nagafen/vox for this we payed smaller guilds to clean it for us .

[Joroz]

I am still interested in hearing proposals for better end game systems. In the past, I have tried to comment on the ones I thought were good and still in the spirit of classic, non-instanced raiding.


The solution to fixing the endgame is pretty simple. Lay down real punishments when people break the rules instead of sudo bans that get ninja lifted. Or remove the special rules for raids since it just hurts only those that try to follow them.

[HarrisonIsStillPosting]

The solution to fixing the endgame is pretty simple. Lay down real punishments when people break the rules instead of sudo bans that get ninja lifted. Or remove the special rules for raids since it just hurts only those that try to follow them.

This.

When TMO pulls mobs through walls for hours in front of Amelinda, ban them. They are repeat offenders.

Don't turn VP(the endgame currently) into a trainfest because you don't have the manpower to police it. Ban them for training. They will stop if you actually punish people for once and not limpwrist them with a 2 week raid suspension that gets lifted early in secrecy.