Scout Quest is Going Away (Woot)

[shovelquest]

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

Agreed. Or better yet, just do what the staff said they would do: no one gets deleted, but after you've gotten to play on a classic server for a classic amount of time, you get sent to the unclassic server (ie. Blue).

yea...

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[Ciderpress]

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

But I'm not talking about the mechanics, I'm just arguing that guilds ... not a random assortment of players wanting to win the lottery ... did Scout in classic.

Guess what happens when not many people show up to scout roll because it's at an odd hour? The winner asks their guild for help. Sometimes things go sideways and the "winner" doesn't get the disk and captain depops before the force can recover. Your "lotto ticket" analogy is full of caveats.

Emergent player behavior is classic, and the devs choosing to alter or not alter emergent player behavior depending on it's nature is also classic. Rooting dragons sadly made sense here because it was a complete clusterfuck letting guilds pull everything to ent or wherever. By contrast, the server community organically coming to an agreement about scout is totally fine and people prefer it that way, thus the devs don't have to and shouldn't intervene.

[WarpathEQ]

Interesting take that its lottery-like not because its a /random roll but because the community stays and helps the winner with the engage...

[loramin]

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

Interesting take that its lottery-like not because its a /random roll but because the community stays and helps the winner with the engage...

It's because of both.

Look, if it was purely a random chance for some loot, and either you or your group had to kill something to get that random chance, it'd be classic (and like every other normal item in the game). If the loot required both random chance and a raid force, so you had to join a guild (or otherwise motivate a raid force yourself), that too would be classic: every raid mob and every Velious raid quest works that way ... except Scout.

In classic no one got a Talisman of Benevolence, Coldain Ring, or that spiffy Naginata, just for showing up and being lucky. That is 100% unique to P99, and it doesn't fit the "DNA" of classic. On live doing stuff by yourself got one level of gear, joining a group got you better gear, and joining a guild got you still better gear: that was the game.

Again, showing up and hoping to be handed raid gear for being lucky is not classic EQ ... it's a lottery ticket.

[Jimjam]

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

It's because of both.

Look, if it was purely a random chance for some loot, and either you or your group had to kill something to get that random chance, it'd be classic (and like every other normal item in the game). If the loot required both random chance and a raid force, so you had to join a guild (or otherwise motivate a raid force yourself), that too would be classic: every raid mob and every Velious raid quest works that way ... except Scout.

In classic no one got a Talisman of Benevolence, Coldain Ring, or that spiffy Naginata, just for showing up and being lucky. That is 100% unique to P99, and it doesn't fit the "DNA" of classic. On live doing stuff by yourself got one level of gear, joining a group got you better gear, and joining a guild got you still better gear: that was the game.

Again, showing up and hoping to be handed raid gear for being lucky is not classic EQ ... it's a lottery ticket.

It isn’t showing up and being lucky. It is showing up and offering your help to an organised group of people with a chance of being the person who benefits from everyone’s offer to help. Scout is basically a dark guild.

[shovelquest]

Luck doesn't exist, the universe is cause and effect, and everything is determinism.

[WarpathEQ]

So the concern is that this item is not gate keeped by guilds?

Even though the encounter has been duo'd many times and could be solo'd if someone wanted to expend the same resources they do for other solo challenges?

[Ciderpress]

I think loramin is just mad at losing scout roll or something. It's completely fine and good and IS classic, for the simple reason that it's emergent behavior, and emergent behavior is classic.

Sometimes devs step in to intervene against emergent player behavior, and sometimes they allow it to remain, which is also completely classic behavior by the devs.

There will literally never be an emu server where people take action within the game the same way they did in 1999, even if the client and game mechanics are identical. That's kind of what makes mmo's interesting as a genre in the first place.

[cd288]

I mean, in the classic era plenty of people solicited non-guild help to help with certain things like certain epic fights that only need a group or two, etc. Not sure where this idea that it was guild only comes from or that it's not classic because you get to show up and have people who are not in your guild help you.

Seems to me like requiring people to join a guild and have guild members present in order to do the scout quest would just result in basically having to join the top guild in order to do the quest rather than having a chance to do it with other people, which doesn't seem classic to me nor does it seem beneficial to the community.

[Jimjam]

It is a lottery* as to whether Nathan will help on a black dire kill for an unguilded young shaman.


* it is actually one of those claw machines that let you keep playing til you win. What a legend.