Understandable, so lets dig a little deeper. The issue here isn't whether or not it should be changed, but rather, there needs to be more man power to accommodate the petitions/enforce the rules if it does get changed. This project is literally busting at the seams with players, and this change is a step in the right direction in getting even more long term players. In order for the change to happen though, more people need to step up and volunteer/apply as GMs to handle the higher work load.

On that note I think the current staff have done an awesome job with such a small crew on getting the project to this point, now the question for them is do they expand the staff further to make these types of changes reality and continue to see player growth or are they content with the current numbers?

Only thing with this, is that top end raiders don't want just anyone handling these petitions and neither does Sirken (I'd imagine anyhow). The top end raiders bitch the loudest and having bad calls and the endless RnF threads bitching about how GMs handled a call ends up being very bad press. It's as bad or worse than how things are now with training.

More CSR isn't a bad thing, just have to remember that they all need to be vetted by Sirken and Rogean and those people have to earn their trust and position over a long period of time (generally speaking).

blablabla dude always the same song however the server population keeps stable and at some points growth up.

in general i have found most people dont want to put the time and what is needed to experience high end raidin.
like having proper sets of resists, key quests and many other stuff.

Not true, the server population IS up right now. There were times though during the first year of kunark when the population was absolutely dreadful. I would say there was a 3-6 month period where the server pop going over 500 people was good.


Either way, the raiding scene is stagnant and there are some simple fixes that would help it out as well as provide a more classic representation of Everquest. Why should we not discuss these issues? Even Nilbog himself said he would consider removing training from VP (as it is not classic) so obviously people want to discuss how we can get this done as well as other potential fixes to the raiding scene.

Now granted, I did not create this thread with the intention of forced rotations, but there is something to be said about this post.

There are a lot of good ideas out there that could be utilized to make raiding more fun.

I am sure that most guilds wouldn't be able to kill just any raid target they wanted to. In old EQ, that was actually what typically devided one raid guild from another. Most "raid" guilds in classic (pre-Kunark I'm talking here) couldn't kill more than the sub bosses of a given planer zone.

Some possible ways to make raiding more entertaining and "fair"?

No more poop socking. Restrict players from camping out at a raid mob.

Have completely random raid mob respawns. Create scripting that lets the system ensure the mobs aren't overspawning, but ensure it isn't predictable for a given window range.

Or yes, even a rotation could work with rules.

A rotation where you must prove you can defeat a given raid target within 2 hours once it spawns. This could be coupled with a no poop-socking rule. Trak spawns, you have two hours to move your entire raid force there, buff, and kill him.

A single wipe pushes the next guild on the rotation to the top of the list.

I understand how vehemently against these kinds of ideas are for some of the raiders out there, but it would in fact greatly reduce the need for GM intervention.

You know when it's your turn or not, and you're still under a constraint. You can't sock, so can you get your force to the target and take it down in one kill in 2 hours?

Is that too long? Then make it an hour. Is that too long? Make it 30 minutes.

It then becomes what it should be, a fight against yourself. You remove the troubles associated with fighting other guilds, accusations of other guilds, and attempted hindrances from other guilds (IE: guilds breaking rules and GM interventions).

If you fail to take down the mob? Maybe you're forced to skip the next rotation as a continued penalty. This ensures that the guilds who are still the most focused will still get the most kills.

I've seen every raid-able guild on this server wipe on raid mobs, even recently. Yes, even TMO. Now plop down not being able to sock along with forcing a timer and things just might get even more interesting.

So then who keeps track of this? The system could. A system could track the spawn time of a raid mob, who's up on the list, who got the kill, if someone outside the guild did anything to said raid mob, etc. This could all be automated (I'm assuming we have professional quality coders on this server, that of which, no offense to the administration, but I do not know).

Now mind you these are ideas, but frankly I think I would feel like I accomplished more this way than by mindlessly logging 50 people off at Trak and being the first guild to mass log everybody in to zerg rush it before the other guild does.

I've seen more death and time taken just getting to Trak for example, or for ports to a given zone to hit up a contested mob than I have probably during the fight itself. That's actually part of the difficulty of Everquest: being forced to travel, and sometimes quickly.

Logging out at the feet of a given spawn is, well, it's dumb. We have rules saying you can't just bind at the efreeti lord so you can gate there and claim the mob (someone else could move in while you're gone and legally claim the spot), and yet we have the very same tactics utilized on raid targets that we full well understand are ridiculous when used on smaller target lesser named.

For me on a personal level, one of my biggest gripes is the poop socking. In EQ, I raided a lot. I was in fact also a member of Fires of Heaven for a short while (those guys are nuts and I decided their raid requirements in terms of time commitment were just too much for me in the long-run), and through all of my raid experiences on live up through Velious, no guild I'd ever raided with ever "poop socked".

A mob spawned, and we moved our force there to kill it. Hell, that was probably harder than actually fighting the mob. Getting 30+ individuals to a given spot with good time, getting buffed, getting ready to engage--is a pain in the ass sometimes.

Already being there, ready, buffed, with just the right classes... Well it kinda trivializes the raiding in EQ. I'm sorry but I must completely disagree with the "hardcore" raiders here when they speak of the current system putting them and theirs as "the best", because poop-socking is too dumb to accept.

Just some thought dropping.

Here's another idea: Can you beat your best record?

What if we took the above idea, but your guild happens to kill Trak in 12 minutes (say this is the server-best)? Maybe they get double loot once per month from the GM's as a bonus.

The incentive is, shit, you get 2x the Trak loot on one kill that month. It's incentive to not FIGHT with anybody other than yourselves.

Which is where true competition lies. Olympians aren't better than everyone else because they look to everyone else then train. They're better because they look to themselves then train.

You find your time, then you beat it. You find out your weaknesses, then you make them strengths. You fight against the clock, your own clock.

That's what makes a champion. Fighting the competition for the sake of thinking you're the best is meaningless. You're the best when you're the best with yourself.

Becoming a better person is a daily struggle, and worth every second in every way.

I'm not defending the idea, nor am I against it, but I have to point this out:

Say this came to fruition. You have a forced rotation. You have TMO splitting up into 4 guilds, FE into 2, BDA into 3...

Ok, so now TMO is getting 4 parts of a pie of 9 pieces. FE getting 2 of 9, and BDA 3 of 9.

All hypothetically of course, much assuming naturally.

But what's the big problem with that?

You have no superficial FTE rules being enforced. No GM intervention wondering who got the kill. No poop-socking required. Players can just log in and play the game for as long as they want on whichever characters they want, and just go to any given raid target when its their turn when it spawns.

Tell me the negatives, besides potentially getting less loot for a single guild.

Hell, some guilds might get MORE loot. TMO might even get more loot on a forced rotation system. I also added some ideas to the possibility of a rotation with some interesting rulesets. Even additional timer based rewards for guilds who are especially efficient. Please read that post.

Honestly, I see only positives with this. The only downside I really see (not saying there aren't some I do not see off of the top of my head right now) is that those who want to feel superior to everyone else because they "WON", can't feel that way anymore.

Boo hoo?

yes after massive ban fest there was a donwside of population , now u gonna blame tmo or the like 70 players from vd who got caugth?.

The problem with this, is that now you have legit guilds who have to wait months for their turn to come up on the rotation.

TMO would take a months worth, or more, then have to wait months for their slot/s to roll back around, same for every other guild.

Now TMO goes from raiding every week to raiding a few months a year.

in first 5 years of EQ before first true instancing, no one ever solved the raid problem GLOBALLY (the fact that your little server had rotations, doesn't mean that every server did).
Pre-PoP era EQ simply has too few raid targets to satisfy everyone (and even post that we had to fight for every decent drop with like 5-10 other guilds).
Specially on a Emu server that collected hardcore raiders from all over EQ.

Add more raid targets or stop whining.