Request for a different policy on (game-changing) specific item camps

[Bubbles]

I bet you were one of those kids on the playground who sat behind someone on the swings and counted their swings till 20.

Man that was the worst rule ever.

No one could possibly enjoy their time on a swing with someone behind them as a constant reminder that the clock was ticking.

[Shiftin]

You guys should really stop glossing over the distinction between intentionally denying people something and that being a biproduct of an extremely limited resource being consumed for a very direct benefit.

[Dr4z3r]

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

You guys should really stop glossing over the distinction between intentionally denying people something and that being a biproduct of an extremely limited resource being consumed for a very direct benefit.

But I wanted to take it personally! :*(

[Serin]

I've seen this from both perspectives.. Personally, I believe the whole thing could be solved by just a little consideration for other people.. The fact is I've passed off camps to other people and I've passed on camps to guildies/friends.

If you want a more realistic perspective think of it this way. You're in line at a concert to try to get tickets and there's a limit of 2 per person. You walk up and see 2 people in front of you and realize there's a supply of about 10 front row tickets.. So, you measure your odds and say "Okay, this is a pretty good situation.. I still have a shot at front row tickets, and the line should be fairly short" An hour later the guy at the front of the line sees a friend and says "HAI MAN How's It Goin?!" the other guy says "Oh, Hey.. Yeah.. I just woke up. Guess I wasn't the first person here.. you mind if i just stand behind you?" and the other guy says "Oh, hell yeah.. That's fine dude.." In another hour the same thing happens, and again, and again, and again..

How would you react, would you happily chew on the crap sandwich? or would you speak out and say something?

That's the situation that the people who started this post are frustrated with. It's not the fact that your guild want's <Insert contested item name here>, cause most people could give a crap. It's that when they walk up there's 4 people at a camp and every time one person gets their item, they leave and 1-2 more people show up and jump right in front of the people who have been sitting there waiting patiently for 3 hours for the 2 people they originally saw to get their fill.

Now for the solution.. Like I said, a little consideration would help a lot. If you see someone sitting there waiting and it's a guild camp.. You might say

"Hey, I'm going to be here for another 3-4 hours and I've already promised the camp to a few guildies after that and I've got no idea how long they'll be on but they're usually online pretty late.. So, if you want to wait I'll warn you.. It'll be at least 8 hours."

Or!

You could do what I do.. And if someone's actually sitting with me waiting for the camp and they're there, at keyboard, and ready to jump.. They get it when I'm done.. Why? you ask. Because the person who's not sitting there at the camp isn't showing any dedication and is pretty much just flat out asking for a camp/loot handed to them on a silver platter just because they have a tag under their name that matches yours. If I'm taking 6 hours out of my life to camp some ridiculously rare spawn and instead of helping me they decide that they have better things to do and want to exp instead of sitting with me and helping, and then ask "Hey, can you just tell me when you're about to leave?"

As I said, a little consideration goes a long way.. Just take this as my whole contribution to this siituation..

[YendorLootmonkey]

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

You could do what I do.. And if someone's actually sitting with me waiting for the camp and they're there, at keyboard, and ready to jump.. They get it when I'm done.. Why? you ask. Because the person who's not sitting there at the camp isn't showing any dedication and is pretty much just flat out asking for a camp/loot handed to them on a silver platter just because they have a tag under their name that matches yours.

But that doesn't get your guild geared up for X zone or Y encounter. And that's the difference between a power gamer mindset "gotta get the guild keyed for Howling Stones!" and a casual gamer mindset "screw my guildmates, they ain't here... this guy is. I don't care if my guild gets into Howling Stones more quickly."

To tweak your analogy a bit:

There is a line at a concert to try to get tickets. There is no limit. The more of your group of friends gets in, the better concerts you can all get into later on down the line.

You orchestrate with your friends some ingenious plan to coordinate a bunch of people and schedules to make sure you are there first.

You get there first and eventually there are people waiting behind you. These people cannot help you get into better concerts later on down the line. Some of your group of friends show up, you let them in line in front of you so they can get tickets, too, because that benefits your entire group of friends.

The guys waiting behind you can get their tickets later. If they wanted tickets now, they should have came up with their own plan to get there first.

[Serin]

Guess I'm a liar. <.< but just so you understand my mindset.. It doesn't matter to me how ingenious your plan is, or how orchestrated and complex it is. To be perfectly honest it wouldn't matter to them if you set off a smoke bomb behind the crowd, had a gigantic tv screen playing porn to catch their interest and then they descended from an orbiting satellite and then parachuted on top of a sky scraper and were lowered down by pulleys manned by the strongest "little people" in the world. Just to let them get in line before everyone. (that pulls into an entirely different issue though because you refer to them "standing in front of you" when in reality they're standing in front of all the people behind you while you get yours and tip your cap and leave.. sounds a bit worse in that context eh?)

It all boils down to a concept that's been happening for years and years ... In the words of every grade schooler at some point "You're Cutting! QQ"

What's happening is exactly as I've described it. Now, Please note I am not referring to mobs that give access to other areas.. IE: Xalgoz and the Sarnak dude.. I understand that key mobs are special cases.. Those items are naturally limited to one per person in the guild <.< (I get item, i turn in, i have no desire to get any more) I guess I could have explained that better =/ my apologies.

The items that I believe are in question are vanity/limited use items that are pretty much for fun/cash. That guilds are applying this sense of "Guild privilege" to in order to make their individual member's platinum coffers swell while casual players are told to take a number, and have a crap sandwich. (Or at least i'm referring to them)

Btw, before anyone says "Zomg you said you weren't saying anymore" <.< Sorry, I'm easily baited into response =)

[Shiftin]

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

If you want a more realistic perspective think of it this way. You're in line at a concert to try to get tickets and there's a limit of 2 per person. You walk up and see 2 people in front of you and realize there's a supply of about 10 front row tickets.. So, you measure your odds and say "Okay, this is a pretty good situation.. I still have a shot at front row tickets, and the line should be fairly short" An hour later the guy at the front of the line sees a friend and says "HAI MAN How's It Goin?!" the other guy says "Oh, Hey.. Yeah.. I just woke up. Guess I wasn't the first person here.. you mind if i just stand behind you?" and the other guy says "Oh, hell yeah.. That's fine dude.." In another hour the same thing happens, and again, and again, and again..

How would you react, would you happily chew on the crap sandwich? or would you speak out and say something?

That's the situation that the people who started this post are frustrated with. It's not the fact that your guild want's <Insert contested item name here>, cause most people could give a crap. It's that when they walk up there's 4 people at a camp and every time one person gets their item, they leave and 1-2 more people show up and jump right in front of the people who have been sitting there waiting patiently for 3 hours for the 2 people they originally saw to get their fill.

Now for the solution.. Like I said, a little consideration would help a lot. If you see someone sitting there waiting and it's a guild camp.. You might say

"Hey, I'm going to be here for another 3-4 hours and I've already promised the camp to a few guildies after that and I've got no idea how long they'll be on but they're usually online pretty late.. So, if you want to wait I'll warn you.. It'll be at least 8 hours."
Or!

I want to take this in 2 parts. It's a good post but slightly misguided because what happenned to secure one of the most contested camps in kunark wasn't made public before Kunark opened (for obvious reasons).

Leading up to kunark, we did more than a few walkthroughs of how to get to specific zones and camps within those zones on other EMU servers to drill it into people. We tested the fastest routes, built backup plans and sent a team with built in redundancies to both xalgoz and chancellor. So you understand the margins we were working with, we missed chancellor by 2 seconds to a Fusion bard and "easily" got xalgoz (by about 45 seconds). Teams were sent to other camps in similar fashion. All told, we had probably 30 people with specific instructions and redundancies to attempt to capture high priority targets. Without fail, these were pretty much the first 30 people with howling stones keys on the server.

It wasn't just us - some of the highest value camps went to Fusion, TMO and divinity in a similar manner because we all, as guilds (playing together with shared goals and values) decided these things were more important to us than the GM event loot, exploring, etc.

We had a minimum of 3 people in kaesora until we all had our xalgoz fangs and people rotated in to take their (sometimes extremely long) turns sacrificing experience to ensure we could key not just our individual toons, but our friends and guildmates so that we would actually be able to form groups to crawl the dungeon. When we got all our xalgoz fangs... we left.

We also had people watching the chancellor camp and as soon as fusion messed up and lost the camp, we were able to do the same thing at chancellor. This meant 2-3 people at a time sitting for 8-12 hours (or longer before the patch to fix the drop rate) in a room not getting exp, staring at a chair ready to answer AFK checks. Understand that if we don't pass it off to our guildmates, we have useless keys. The analogy of guildies "waking up late and cutting in line" is not particularly apt because to get a spot in line for a key, you had to show up at the appointed time, often times rolling out of another guild assignment or waking up in the middle of the night to take your minimum 8 hour shift (done again to ensure redundancy).

As to the second bolded part, that's exactly what happenned. I had plenty of people wander up and ask to get the next prod. I politely explained the length of time I had been there, how many people we had to key, and could list the next 24 hours worth of people who would be there. I let them know roughly how long it would take us to get keyed and that they should try back after that point.

The other option, as I explained, is not viable in this instance as it negates our ability to efficiently make groups (one of the ways the list for keys was prioritized), but is perfectly understandable in many situations.

I hope this sheds some light on the situation. Our interactions with folks over these camps were significantly more pleasant and reasoned than the people actually showing up late to the party now demanding to be let in.

[Nagash]

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

Leading up to kunark, we did more than a few walkthroughs of how to get to specific zones and camps within those zones on other EMU servers to drill it into people. We tested the fastest routes, built backup plans and sent a team with built in redundancies to both xalgoz and chancellor. So you understand the margins we were working with, we missed chancellor by 2 seconds to a Fusion bard and "easily" got xalgoz (by about 45 seconds). Teams were sent to other camps in similar fashion. All told, we had probably 30 people with specific instructions and redundancies to attempt to capture high priority targets. Without fail, these were pretty much the first 30 people with howling stones keys on the server.

To bring that back to the concert analogy (quite a good one), you simply planned ahead to avoid traffick and park your car in the parking lot before everybody so you could be first in the queue. Doesn't mean your friends who are arriving later can jump the queue.

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

There is a line at a concert to try to get tickets. There is no limit. The more of your group of friends gets in, the better concerts you can all get into later on down the line.

You are mislead here: the analogy refers to front seats, not just seats, and that is very different (if you re-read it, you will see that it is actually fundamental for the analogy). There is no concert with unlimited front seats.

Man, I'm drooling again...

Nagash/Petitpas

[Kassel]

7. We do not have a rule for how a camp will be handed off to another player. It is recommended the player interested in obtaining a camp work that out with who is on the camp already.
*Example* Player a is on jboots, player b comes and sits and just waits. If player a wants to hand off to his friend rather than player b, he has that right. If player a wants to hold a list and give to the next player on that list, that is also his right. GMs will not moderate that unless player b can prove he was deceived by player a with how the camp would be handed off

Equality for all! the early bird gets the worm. This aint no affermative action server and nor should it be. This is everquest. Get some friends or get leftbehind.

[mwatt]

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

Equality for all! the early bird gets the worm. This aint no affermative action server and nor should it be. This is everquest. Get some friends or get leftbehind.

Sure, the early bird should get the worm. And maybe the next. And maybe the next. And the next. And the... But at some point, the other birds are going to be chirping angrily because they are friggin hungry. Especially when there is only one worm hole.