not a single player has told me to plan on raiding

[Faerie Blossom]

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

Essentially, I want to recreate classic eq. When it goes beyond the actual work, it ... sucks. Managing people sucks. Managing people's expectations sucks worse.

Managing people and their expectations does suck, I would imagine. Which is why most modern developers choose not to, and implement systems that segregate people from one another instead. Instancing is the preferred method of keeping players out of one another's affairs these days, and it's not a bad way to go for PvE servers. Instancing is kind of blah though, imo, and the token idea seems like a much better route.

Raiding should be a challenge because the encounters themselves are difficult, not because the opportunities to raid are so scarce. Some bluebies may disagree with me, but batphoning and racing to raids is not competition; it's punctuality (without variance, anyway). And while punctuality may make you a good percussionist it has very little to do with being skilled at a video game.

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

The token system is a GM-enforced rotation by another name.

Yes, except it's easier on the GMs. So you get the benefit of forced rotation without all of the trouble, win/win. Another plus is that, depending on how it's implemented, the top guilds wouldn't even need to give up any of their spawns to give others a chance at the content. The only reason I could imagine a player taking issue with this would be that they miss out on the aforementioned punctuality contest. If you ask me though, there is currently way too much PvP on the blue server.

If anyone really cared about competition, they would have rolled on the red server where that sort of thing is possible beyond a petty game of "well I guess you should have logged in harder than us." Casual guilds want a chance at the content now that it's been a decade; can't the hardcore people just let them have it so long as they don't lose out on loot for it? How could a token system possibly be a bad thing?

Maybe the devs take issue with it for being too unclassic, and that's their business seeing as this is their server. But come on, as players we should have the best interests of our community at heart.

[Danth]

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

Casual guilds want a chance at the content now that it's been a decade; can't the hardcore people just let them have it so long as they don't lose out on loot for it? How could a token system possibly be a bad thing?

The 'hardcore' mindset isn't merely interested in getting pixels; it's interested in preventing anyone else from having those same pixels. Folks of that mindset will resist any change that will result in people who aren't them getting said pixels. If it were up to me I'd ignore those folks and implement a system that spread things around (take your pick, any of a number of proposals could work), but it ain't up to me. Good for me that I have no particular interest in raiding on P1999.

Instancing would of course fix most of the problems associated with raiding here (save for the folks who measure their success in terms of what other folks don't have). Threads such as this one continually illustrate why newer games tend to use liberal amounts of instancing. EQ's an old game and it has its flaws.

Danth

[pharmakos]

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

Raiding should be a challenge because the encounters themselves are difficult, not because the opportunities to raid are so scarce.

this 100%