P99 is a Meritocracy, not a Democracy

[Ennewi]

Originally Posted by slard271 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's convenient that you stopped the boldface of "less competition" right before "for camp sites." Gimme a break, are raid mobs "camp sites?"

The bold text merely emphasizes the most relevant info, no different from a bug forum post. As Tethler pointed out, raiders do set up camp while waiting for raid targets. Once those targets have spawned, they need to move in and establish a presence elsewhere to begin clearing their way towards those targets. Of the guilds I've been in, all officers have referred to that designated location as camp. River during ring war? That's camp. West wall in plane of fear? Camp. "What's camp looking like?" A puller will often ask in discord, always referring to where the rest of raid is currently killing the most recent pulls. Raid mobs aren't camp sites, no, but then fungi king isn't engaged and killed right on his spawnpoint either. Yet most everyone knows where groups set up camp in order to pull that named.

Another quote from McQuaid:

https://web.archive.org/web/20081201...p/t-21705.html

Of course, we all (hopefully) agree that too much competition is bad. Overcrowding is bad.

...

Now we may debate when crowding becomes overcrowding, where that line is crossed, and we do, and everyone has different tastes. But despite arguing over where the line is, I think it’s safe to say that almost everyone agrees that in principle too much competition is not a good thing. If you don’t, well, stop reading this and do something else.

He elaborates on quite a bit, some of which could be used to prop up opposing views/playstyles but only so much. A brief summary of his perspective can be found in another interview about Vanguard...

http://gamestudies.org/0901/articles...uaid_mcpherson

BMQ: With Vanguard, however, we are making a significant effort to introduce mechanics and content that better entertain people with varying time commitments. There will be areas more geared towards the casual gamer, the traditional ‘group with your friends’ player, as well as the ‘hard core’ player who enjoys ‘raiding’ and playing for many hours at a time. We also want those different types of players to co-exist in an environment where they can interact better, and definitely don’t think these different play-styles are mutually exclusive in any way.

And piggybacking off an argument in Discord earlier...

hulkanowski — Today at 3:10 PM
competitiveness for simple dungeon mobs is different than competition for raid mobs. Hope this helps

To the point made by McQuaid, many of the traditional high level PUG zones did contain at least one raid target. Kedge Keep. Nagafen's Lair. Chardok. Burning Wood. Karnor's Castle. Lake of Ill Omen. The Hole. And most of the old world raid targets have been reduced to group/solo content thanks to years of Velious gearing.

Also, what was considered raid content back then isn't given a second thought today. Classic screenshots and captions depict Sir Lucan as being a raid target, but on p99 he's soloed regularly without issue by certain classes. A simple mob, not even requiring a dungeon crawl. But when soulfires were all/all on p99, there was some fierce competition over that non-raid target.

hulkanowski — Today at 3:21 PM
they wanted to reduce mob competition in dungeon CAMPS

hulkanowski — Today at 3:21 PM
they didnt discuss raid mobs in that interview

Yet their actions indicated that the same want also applied to raids, with Brad and company releasing Scars of Velious, the expansion that offered more raid-related content than before, to spread out that portion of the playerbase across massive zones on a separate continent, thereby reducing competition. The original devs also widened some of the least casual-friendly epic bottlenecks.