FTE Raid Change

[Brut]

The fundamental problem is that the more hardcore guilds are always going to stretch whatever rule is made to have the max advantage in getting the merbs. FTE javspam is no different from the 15-in-zone poopsock nonsense years before. Unless the dragon spawns invulnerable and checks for /rand 0 100 from a member of each guild to decide FTE, there really isn't much of a way to make these equal opportunity for everyone.

Best rule anyway was Ambrotos' "do not pull crap out of their spawn areas"-rule. Made CT competitive when you couldn't just kite the zone for a retarded bumrush engage, made Inny a race. Should've applied to dragons too imo, fighting fay in the bottom of the ocean would be hilarity as tanks are dropping to clerics interrupting as they float around. Or Talendor while getting swarmed by roamers in the zone.

[Daldaen]

I agree that the high end guilds will see how close they can get to bending the rules before getting banned, and make that a new norm.

But currently the ONLY thing determining FTE on the mobs I'm referring to, is who has better latency and an autofire macro running.

Look at the IB raid suspension thread Derubael posted:

# Entity Name Guild Name Level Class Engage Delay Disengage Length Group Damage Hate
1 Golden The Mystical Order 55 Bard 00:26:25 0 00:26:29 4 18334 0 584
2 Necromansir's Pet (skel_pet_41_) Inglourious Basterds 41 Warrior 00:26:26 1 00:26:41 15 18172 286 551
3 Necromansir Inglourious Basterds 54 Necromancer 00:26:26 1 00:26:47 21 18172 0 0
4 Nissmo Taken 59 Bard 00:26:27 2 00:28:02 95 18089 0 0
5 Facetious The Mystical Order 60 Monk 00:26:29 4 00:36:34 605 18334 272 781

Four different people and three different guilds tagged within the first 4 seconds of a mob being spawned. With the FTE occurring about 1 second after spawn.

That's just dumb. Let's make trackers and pullers coorindinate. Make it so that when you tag a mob you actually have a semi viable raid force in zone. Not just 2 dudes and you get the other 70 zerglings by the time you get to the pull spot.

Here's how I see the extreme version of this panning out, the mob spawns, trackers batphone, and people log in. The pullers will likely end up being bards with selos camped at zone lines who can figure out the quickest path to where the mob is.

This seems like more of a race and less of an automated spamfest crapshoot.

*Personally* I'd agree with a suggestion made awhile back where people had to have a WC or OT zone 'flag' their account to be able to engage the dragon. So that people actually have to port to WC or hammer to OT, then mobilize as a guild and port+run to where the dragon is. Rather than camping out at the closest location allowable with your entire raid.

But, the suggestion I made in the OP seems to me to be more agreeable by all parties and reduce a little bit the retardation of the current FTE situation.

If Class C wishes to keep the 16hour jav spam in VP or something, I suppose they're welcome to do that if jav spam gets your blood really pumping.

[Brut]

Flag things go way too far into unclassic territory methinks.

Give all raid targets ability to summon at 100% = no pulling to zoneline 4minutes away = race the raid to the mob instead of people logging in at where the mob is brought to hit autoattack and log off. And prohibit kiting zone trash altogether because having to clear parts of Fear is actual competition as compared to bards running circles and derps chain training Nwall until one manages to survive long enough to down the potato.

4 seconds sounds super slow btw. Javspam = constantly clicking the air and tabbing range hotkey, not just watching the screen and being rdy to click and range attack once your reaction time kicks in. Unless loading the dragon model gave people a 3second lag spike.

[Daldaen]

Yea unclassic mechanic I know. FTE is as well though. But regardless that's my ramblings and not the purpose of this post.

This is Faydedar we are talking about. I just pulled that example out to show how stupid letting trackers pull is. On more legit/desired mobs the FTE battles are even closer together. We had one of our pullers comment on Sev last time that he shouted FTE before it even appeared on our pullers screen (possibly lag on their end... But still, dumb).

I like your idea of engaging the mob where it stands to an extent. But that removes the skill/art of pulling from the game. Which is a very unique aspect of EQ that most other MMOs don't have, they just have derpfaceaggro. Now granted... Pulling Fay or Gore or Sev is no real challenge. But come Velious pulling Tormax to the zone, while it does negate part of the script, is extremely classic and extremely challenging to do quickly. You need some boss pullers to do that.

If the engage where it stands thing goes in the engages would likely end up going to which guild can group the most bards. Whereas my suggestion it would just go to which bard can zone in and get there quickest. Which seems a bit more reasonable IMO. (And doesn't require the winning guild to have 3+ bards each kill... With out broken 500 resist cap, bards are already valuable enough on raids)

[BlkCamel]

*

[Brut]

There are alot of engages currently that both tier C guilds wipe on frequently, and wouldn't if they had a bard each group doing the appropriate resist song. There's rarely enough bards to go around, especially in the fast-engage-environment where you don't have the time to start assigning people to log on bards to have enough of them around. I'd imagine the only group that would run up with a bard is the MT group, rest would follow up at SoW speed. And this is only in a situation where the whole raid is camped at zoneline. If multiple targets were in window and people had to evac from KC to skyfire, it could go to any guild that happened to have the proper setup of classes available.

Still, all of this sounds like ohmygod a race.

Also VP pulling has been turned into practice where the mob aggros entire zone on it's way down and is singled out of the train like clockwork through means of clickies. I doubt Tormax will be much of a hassle.

Personally I just prefer the fight-at-spawn rule due to it fixing CT/Inny from the absolutely retarded trainfests that they degenerate into in the current rulesets. If people are genuinely disinterested in logging on for specific targets because said target is always a trainwreck of lag, desyncs and dying repeatedly to trains, something is seriously wrong with the ruleset there imo.

[Freakish]

Who remembers a month and change back when nobody could get out of vp? There was some anti-camp code put in and nobody could go up the ramp in picture room, walking over objects warped you back to the beginning of bedroom etc. Anti-camp rules are fun.

[Splorf22]

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

Best rule anyway was Ambrotos' "do not pull crap out of their spawn areas"-rule.

I like this a bit better than the OP. Both would be improvements for sure, though.

P.S. Butchh are you ashamed of your old army-style sig??

[Freakish]

I thought my sig was awesome. I'll make a new one at some point, an ms paint one.

[fishingme]

EQ raiding is too serious, nuke it.