First in Force.

[maestrom]

Hey folks!

I've been reading a lot of craziness on the forums lately and I wanted to see what people think about raid rules. This is what I think would work. I wanted to make some acknowledgements and assumptions to start out with though.

First. I'm fully aware that the staff "likes" it the way things are and that any major changes like the one I'm about to suggest are unlikely. Thinking about this kinda stuff is just fun for me and I wanted to see what other people thought.

Second. I'm really not looking to start a fight here. Maybe FTE is really the "best" way to do things. I'm perfectly happy to be convinced that FTE leads to a healthier, happier, more fun server. To that end, go wild with comparing different scenarios under both rulesets and why one or the other yields a better result.

The Rule: A guild or alliance may at one time claim one unclaimed target by: (1) gathering its raid force in the zone where the target spawns and (2) communicating clearly to the zone, and to any party who asks, which target the guild or alliance intends to claim. Once a claim is made, the claiming guild or alliance must maintain its raid force in the zone or forfeit its claim. A guild or alliance has 2 hours from the spawn of the target to kill its target, at which point the target becomes FTE. Unclaimed targets are FTE.

Definitions:

Alliance: A group of two or more guilds that have agreed in advance and on the P99 forums to act together for the purposes of FIF. Formation/Dissolution of an alliance will take effect 7 days after both guilds have posted in the appropriate P99 forum.

Raid Force: This term would need negotiation and would be target specific. One objective way to address this issue would be to look at raid force sizes for the target for the past 5-6 kills and take an average.

Target: This is the one that needs the most negotiation. Statue but not AoW? NToV targets but not Aary? I think that generally, Target = 1 single mob + anything it triggers. This would keep people from claiming AoW and then another guild claiming Statue and then sitting on Statue for the full 2 hours to grief the AoW claimant. Similarly, there would be problems with Aary that would need to get worked out. I know currently Rampage is the only guild doing most of NToV, but it won't stay that way forever.

The reason I like this system is it forces guilds to prioritize targets and it allows smaller guilds to pick up lower priority targets without fear of groups of Uber_Guild_1 alts from jumping past them to snipe a Trak kill. Similarly, there is relatively small opportunity to "steal" targets through rule lawyering here. There's no reason to train trash away, because you can take your time and clear it. Any petitionquesting would take place at IZ, without trains, and would be over whether or not the raid force was actually in the zone, which can be pretty easily tracked.

Let me know what you guys think!