Proposed amendment to Scout Roll

[Xulia]

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

You want to win Scout loot, so you and your group of friend shows up. You /list, and so do any other groups who show up. When Scout pops, the system randomly selects one full groups to "win" (if there are no full groups, it tries all groups of five, then four, and so on). That group can then do the turn-in.

That group then has X minutes (10? 15?) to kill a Kromzek Captain, and they have exclusive rights (no one else can damage him, or if anyone tries they get ported out of the zone Vox/Naggy-style, or something). If you brought even more friends, they can help with the other giants, but the captain is "owned" by the group that won. However, if for some reason they fail to kill him in that time, they lose their chance, and a new group gets a shot.

This would give all the benefits of not having a clickfest, but it would restore Scout to how it worked in classic: you have to bring friends to get the loot. And if Scout worked this way, with no "free raid force", I strongly suspect the amount of people doing this quest would decrease dramatically ... to the point where groups showing up at Scout might not even have to "roll" at all sometimes (again, the way it worked on Live).

This seems to encourage being able to 1 group the captain - I'm guessing this includes the kiter - so 5 man him? Seems like that would be a tall order unless you already had ToV gear. This would make the Scout Roll highly exploitable if you had a guild of people that could do that on their own...

[loramin]

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

This seems to encourage being able to 1 group the captain - I'm guessing this includes the kiter - so 5 man him? Seems like that would be a tall order unless you already had ToV gear.

If P99 had official raid forces I'd suggest rules based around those, but since it doesn't I suggested using groups. The idea is not that you should have to do Scout with one group, it's that you should have at least a group of people there indicating they are willing to help you, for you to have a shot. Some random person alone without a force shouldn't.

In other words, it's not "let's only let groups do it", it's "let's prioritize the people that bring raid forces, and since we can't measure those we'll measure the next closest thing (groups)."

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

This would make the Scout Roll highly exploitable if you had a guild of people that could do that on their own...

That's the idea! [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] Scout was never meant to be a lottery ticket to awesome loot. Instead, it was was very much designed to be like the other epic Velious quests: Shawl, Dain Ring, Garzicor, etc. all assume/require you to have friends willing to help.

Saying it's an exploit to make you have to have a guild to do Scout is like saying it's an exploit that you need a full group to do Sebilis King. Because of implementation details it used to be possible for people to duo/trio King, but when the staff fixed it so you needed a group again that wasn't "introducing an exploit", it was "making the server classic again".

Making scout require a raid force would be the same thing. Clickfests were classic in that way, but terrible in every other way. Rolls are better than clickfests in every way ... except that they require everyone to help. Generation 3.0 ("automated GMing") could give everyone a fair chance (no clickfest) without giving everyone free loot.

[Xulia]

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

That's the idea! [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] Scout was never meant to be a lottery ticket to awesome loot.

I'm sorry, Loramin - With all respect, I'm at a hard disagree here. As much as I don't like lvl 30-40 alts trying to roll for it, helping others with the scout fight is a unique event that brings a handful of people to work together towards a common goal. I'm not about denying pixels to someone that's put in the time of 55+ levels just because they didn't show up with a full group ready to go at 9:00 AM on a weekday.

I think the solution we have is the best - allow players to roll, respect the rolls, and vote with their feet if they want to help.

[elwing]

Scout is perfect as is

[loramin]

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

I'm sorry, Loramin - With all respect, I'm at a hard disagree here. As much as I don't like lvl 30-40 alts trying to roll for it, helping others with the scout fight is a unique event that brings a handful of people to work together towards a common goal. I'm not about denying pixels to someone that's put in the time of 55+ levels just because they didn't show up with a full group ready to go at 9:00 AM on a weekday.

I think the solution we have is the best - allow players to roll, respect the rolls, and vote with their feet if they want to help.

There's good, and there's classic. Is it good (or I'd go farther: awesome) that everyone works together and helps each other? Yes. Is it classic? No.

That's the story of this place. Is losing XP when you die painful? Yes. Would it be "good" if you didn't? Yes ... but it would have a side effect, of making the game overall less fun (see WoW).

Same deal here. I truly do like that everyone gets together and helps with roll fights, but it's 100% unclassic, and it's precisely the reason why we have giant lines with tons of people rolling ... when on live Scout was pretty much a "show up, bring your raid force, and do it" kind of a deal.

This place is meant to re-create the game from 1999-2001, worts and all. That game expected you to get a bunch of friends together to do the quest: the fact that you don't have to here means it's not the same game, and the devs are failing (in some very minor way) at their stated goal.

[LazyHydras]

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

There's good, and there's classic. Is it good (or I'd go farther: awesome) that everyone works together and helps each other? Yes. Is it classic? No.

That's the story of this place. Is losing XP when you die painful? Yes. Would it be "good" if you didn't? Yes ... but it would have a side effect, of making the game overall less fun (see WoW).

Same deal here. I truly do like that everyone gets together and helps with roll fights, but it's 100% unclassic, and it's precisely the reason why we have giant lines with tons of people rolling ... when on live Scout was pretty much a "show up, bring your raid force, and do it" kind of a deal.

This place is meant to re-create the game from 1999-2001, worts and all. That game expected you to get a bunch of friends together to do the quest: the fact that you don't have to here means it's not the same game, and the devs are failing (in some very minor way) at their stated goal.

I'm in agreement with Loramin here. And I haven't always agreed with him on everything. It may lock people out of getting Scout Roll if they can't muster a force at the exact time of Scout Roll, but, then again, there are a lot of scenarios (both here and in Classic) where players were shut out of gear opportunities due to logistical reasons. This was never designed to be free pixels, so I think that requiring your own group is a fair compromise. Playing solo and don't have access to a group? Look for a guild and become friendly with your guildmates; they will, in most cases, be glad to help you get that scout roll piece you've been yearning for.