Hard Coded Vs Soft Coded Teams Discussion

[Zade]

for the record, ive stopped ultramodding this thread [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] Thanks for all the input. rant on

[Nytch]

Originally Posted by Chronoburn [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Post is pretty accurate but some things need to be considered. Velious was already out when SZ launched. <Ruin> poopsocked straight for epics/ToV and never looked back (They never pvp'd until they were rocking NTov gear). This was historical poopsocking. I know some of there members were replacing banded with HoT gear.

A progression based team server having such a small community would hopefully never allow this.

Chronoburn, you bringing back tides on t99?

[Kergan]

SZ was supposedly very low population by the time Ruin rose to prominence (which was early). Very good point about Velious being out, but do we know for a fact that isn't going to happen with T99?

And Chrono, if you bring ToW back and coax Draganov out of retirement I'm in! I hit him up a few months ago to see if he'd be interested in R99 but alas, he has retired from MMOs.

[limit]

Hardcoded or there really is no point.

[Zade]

Originally Posted by tomato2 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

no one is reading any of these threads btw

thanks for reading

[Chronoburn]

Originally Posted by Nytch [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Chronoburn, you bringing back tides on t99?

Would be pretty cool but if ToW comes back, it won't be because of me. I'm in contact with maybe 10 people from ToW, half of which you see on these forums. Plus, I'm way too casual now but T99 may change that.

Originally Posted by Kergan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

SZ was supposedly very low population by the time Ruin rose to prominence (which was early). Very good point about Velious being out, but do we know for a fact that isn't going to happen with T99?

I hope there is some sort of progression on T99 but I don't think its been stated anywhere whether or not T99 will follow some sort of time table. It would be a mistake to release with Velious. I don't think it would be a huge issue to release with Kunark though.

[RoguePhantom]

Originally Posted by Kergan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You're kidding right? Hate (and Ruin before them) had a bigger stranglehold on that server than TMO or Nihilum have here, and with dozens more raid targets. Through PoP neutral never made it to the elemental planes and barely touched VT. Goods had it even worse...ask Nizzar. Did the good team ever kill any raid target in the current tier in the first 2 years of that server?

Neutral was pretty much held to raiding current content several tiers behind, Velious targets, etc. Luclin and PoP were pretty much the easiest expansions ever to control as everything had huge timesink key entry (VT) or "achievement" based progression (PoP). You could choke off entire tiers of content or entire raid zones by cockblocking a single mob like Emperor Ssra.

In every sense we do NOT want T99 to turn out anything like SZ did from a competitive standpoint. As Hate held exclusive access to more and more content as expansions were released their gear advantage grew. This led to good/neutral people quitting or rerolling evil perpetuating the advantage.

The only way other teams were able to compete was to pay the $40 transfer fee to go to Legends, get geared there off instanced content and then transfer back. That of course is not an option here.

If you take training out of the Equation, SZ ruleset is perfect for the crowd that WANTS to play Red99 as a PvP server, not as a secondary Blue box.

Neuts, who I was with from the beginning, were behind. But Neutral to Evil was never as bad as Nihi vs Server is here on Red99 (Yes, Goods were so far behind, but that was due to no strong guilds/players). Sure Speedd with MQ and Warping (and others from Neuts, myself included) were able to stop raids. But you take straining and MQ out of the equation, T99 with no limit PVP will work fine with Velious.

Velious is the FIRST expansion when EQ could truly support a PvP server. There simply isn't enough content for teams to progress through and stay relevant. One team can lock down the entire server (Look at Mage/Wizard Epics and all stuff off of CT/Inny that Nihi has on complete lockdown) when there are only a few GOOD Raid targets. Velious was able to add many more targets, and the gear "Tier" was not that hard to overcome. Kunark/Epics were still very very competitive with Velious gear (Got real out of hand during high Tier PoP/PoTime zones) and no one team could lock everything down.

You talk about people quitting/rerolling from Good/Neut to evil, but more people have jumped onto Nihi than ever quit SZ because of gear/guild advantage.

[Kergan]

Originally Posted by RoguePhantom [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If you take training out of the Equation, SZ ruleset is perfect for the crowd that WANTS to play Red99 as a PvP server, not as a secondary Blue box.

Neuts, who I was with from the beginning, were behind. But Neutral to Evil was never as bad as Nihi vs Server is here on Red99 (Yes, Goods were so far behind, but that was due to no strong guilds/players). Sure Speedd with MQ and Warping (and others from Neuts, myself included) were able to stop raids. But you take straining and MQ out of the equation, T99 with no limit PVP will work fine with Velious.

Velious is the FIRST expansion when EQ could truly support a PvP server. There simply isn't enough content for teams to progress through and stay relevant. One team can lock down the entire server (Look at Mage/Wizard Epics and all stuff off of CT/Inny that Nihi has on complete lockdown) when there are only a few GOOD Raid targets. Velious was able to add many more targets, and the gear "Tier" was not that hard to overcome. Kunark/Epics were still very very competitive with Velious gear (Got real out of hand during high Tier PoP/PoTime zones) and no one team could lock everything down.

You talk about people quitting/rerolling from Good/Neut to evil, but more people have jumped onto Nihi than ever quit SZ because of gear/guild advantage.

I don't think removing training would have done much. Hate would have just used force to hold the choke points. As much as Speedd did to hold down the good/neutral teams, training actually benefited neutral more than anyone. They didn't have the numbers and gear to take anything by force from Hate.

And the only reason SZ didn't end up exactly like R99 is because of the hard coded teams. Had neutral/good people been able to freely move into Hate it would have been Nihilum on steroids there. As it was, Hate still controlled the end game content to a Nihilum/TMO like level and that was with probably 10 times the raid content in the PoP era.

I think we can all agree we wouldn't want T99 to turn out like either SZ or R99 correct?

[ChubbyBubbles]

Originally Posted by Lartanin63 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Trolls dont hold hand with elves. They eat em. It is the way if is meant to be.

[Nytch]

Originally Posted by Kergan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I don't think removing training would have done much. Hate would have just used force to hold the choke points. As much as Speedd did to hold down the good/neutral teams, training actually benefited neutral more than anyone. They didn't have the numbers and gear to take anything by force from Hate.

And the only reason SZ didn't end up exactly like R99 is because of the hard coded teams. Had neutral/good people been able to freely move into Hate it would have been Nihilum on steroids there. As it was, Hate still controlled the end game content to a Nihilum/TMO like level and that was with probably 10 times the raid content in the PoP era.

I think we can all agree we wouldn't want T99 to turn out like either SZ or R99 correct?

You are basing your statement on PoP era content. Hate was able to lock down end game content in PoP because all they had to do was train 1 encounter (Rallos Zek) over and over again to make it so the Neutral team could not get flagged into the elemental planes. I remember plenty of PvP wars in Velious/Luclin against Hate that ended up with them retreating into PoP zones that we couldn't chase them into and them sending Speedd in to just straight train our raids until we left. On a Velious Timeline PvP will be much more relevant if training is taken away because nothing is keyed except Sleepers Tomb and TOFS I believe? There will be no flagged content to hide behind everything will be up for grabs.

I'm not saying we didn't benefit by being able to train but if it is taken away without flagged zones to hide in PvP will be much more relevant and equal.

Remember those top end guild (Hate for example) spend all their time poopsocking and gearing up, but when it comes time for real PvP they have little to no skill that the other teams had. Having gear is one thing, but not knowing what to in PvP will level the playing field for the "under geared" team who knows how to actually PvP.