P99 makes gear obsolete, an MMO analysis

[azxten]

I was just thinking, the basic formula of EQ was that you need gear to progress. Almost every class is dependent on good gear to better perform their role either for grouping or raiding. This is the "carrot" that is supposed to make the grinding rewarding.

On P99 the end raiding game has no guild that is gear dependent. There is no guild that was able to gear up the best and maintains an elite core of members that can down raid mobs with very small groups due to their superior equipment. All guilds are now zerg guilds. The ridiculous numbers of high levels, account sharing, known strategies, etc has turned raiding into a player numbers game not a skill or equipment issue.

The reason is that fights are trivial and the only "fight" that happens is a race to FTE no matter how the system changes to tweak this game. Raiding is entirely an FTE game now which means the only thing you really need is numbers to ensure you can kill whatever you FTE. A guild that tried to rely on skilled highly geared players will just be working extremely hard to first win an FTE and then actually win the fight compared to other guilds that will have an equal FTE chance but a much easier time securing the kill.

In short, player skill and gear is meaningless. Gear won't change if you can FTE better and skill is pointless if zerging is the better strategy for ensuring you get loot.. but the loot is meaningless.

Similarly group content is trivial. You could say that better gear lets you kill faster or live through fights you wouldn't otherwise but to what end? Presumably you are grouping to either level up or get gear. We just determined gear is pointless except to level faster. It has no bearing on raiding now.

Logically then P99 is only about leveling fast. Raiding doesn't matter because the gear doesn't matter for raiding. It only matters for power leveling other characters because you're already max level if you're raiding.

All effort in P99 is to level alts faster. The "ding" of a level giving you a dopamine hit or being able to say you "beat" another guild at getting FTE is the only goal on P99. Your character is pointless. Your guild is similarly pointless or basically only comparing FTE skill.

Just an observation of the state of things...