Thought Experiment: How Could Rotations Be Competitive?

[Reiwa]

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

We tried that I believe with Vindi, since he is one of the only fast respawning raid mobs. Unfortunately the vast majority of raid mobs cannot be gate keeper mobs, due to their slow respawn rate. We would need some kind of custom content that allowed you to take your "rotation trial" whenever you wanted to. For example, spawning raid mobs in the Arena zone and letting the new guild fight them.

No we wouldn't. Just make it Sontalak and everyone compete for it every respawn.

Win the dragon? Grats you're on the rotation for a month or whatever starting next week on the day you killed. No more raid petitions about anything but Sontalak.

Qualification decay at X months? So everyone needs to continue competing to remain.

[Mblake1981]

Jump through hoops for the greater good.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

No we wouldn't. Just make it Sontalak and everyone compete for it every respawn.

Win the dragon? Grats you're on the rotation for a month or whatever starting next week on the day you killed. No more raid petitions about anything but Sontalak.

Qualification decay at X months? So everyone needs to continue competing to remain.

The problem with using a 7 day spawn mob is you are basically permanently locking the mob out from the guilds who can kill Sontalak. There could be a new guild tryout every week if it's one guild per week.

Or you would have to ask a GM to sit there for literally hours watching multiple guilds try to kill Sontalak over and over on a specified time. Good luck getting people to agree to either of those situations.

[zati]

ok so posky is on rotation already; perhaps we start there.. and we reorder OP's original tall order to.... can posky be competitive ? then replace those slowly to other raid targets

only thing i can think of without any implementation of unclassic stuff is:

guild that clears x isles quick as possible (timetrial)
guild that clears x isles wit least amount of people (minimalist)
guild that clears x least amount of player deaths (survivalist)
guild that clears x with no clerics or some whacky class combination (explorer)
guild that clears x wit lower lvl avg (adventurer)

Prob more examples but then it just raises the question.

How do you validate these things?
Who is in charge of compiling all the data?
What rewards are appropriate?
Have the changes increase players desire to raid?

^ now requires gm intervention to answer because people lie and needs unclassic coding --> hours of disputing on discord --> back to square 1 /shrug

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

ok so posky is on rotation already; perhaps we start there.. and we reorder OP's original tall order to.... can posky be competitive ? then replace those slowly to other raid targets

only thing i can think of without any implementation of unclassic stuff is:

guild that clears x isles quick as possible (timetrial)
guild that clears x isles wit least amount of people (minimalist)
guild that clears x least amount of player deaths (survivalist)
guild that clears x with no clerics or some whacky class combination (explorer)
guild that clears x wit lower lvl avg (adventurer)

Prob more examples but then it just raises the question.

How do you validate these things?
Who is in charge of compiling all the data?
What rewards are appropriate?
Have the changes increase players desire to raid?

^ now requires gm intervention to answer because people lie and needs unclassic coding --> hours of disputing on discord --> back to square 1 /shrug

The issue with PoSky is the keys. That is the only reason why it is rotated. To make PoSky competitive, you would need to either make keys permanent, or have more keys drop. Both are non-classic changes, so that is the first hurtle.

For your specific suggestions:

1. Any time challenge is typically player number based, rather than skill based. Why? Because unless your raid is extremely unorganized or bad at the content, 60 players are going to clear content much faster than 40 players. If the intent of "competitive rotations" is to get lower skill, lower player count guilds into the mix, time challenges are out. The top two guilds would win the vast majority of the time.

2. The minimalist challenge is interesting, but again it is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Unless you are on a server where everybody is equally geared or equally unfamiliar with PoSky, the big guilds would win in a minimalist competition. Why? Because they have top tier raid gear, which means they can typically clear things faster than normal/undergeared players. So ironically the only way to win the minimalist competition is to have all of the best gear, which you can't get because you are a smaller and/or less skilled guild.

3. Survialist has the same issue. More people = less deaths. Why? Because you can just bring a lot more clerics/druids/Shamans to keep players alive. You can also bring more DPS to kill mobs faster than they can kill you.

4. Explorer is similar to the minimalist challenge in the sense that the better geared you are, the better you would do, and the top guild is always going to be better geared.

5. Low level also has the same issue, since the top guild can twink.

[zati]

^nicely detailed, exactly. you get it. It doesn't have to be posky either. it's the game itself won't let you make rotations "competitive" without GM literally changing stuff at the base layer. we're back to square 1 no matter how many times or imaginative someone could be to spin it. I would love to be proven wrong if someone has legitimate ideas w/o GM hand holding throughout its process. until then im just gonna play EQ my way and if i desire to neckbeard to get x items you gotta just accept the terms n conditions that come along with endgame raiding

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

^nicely detailed, exactly. you get it. It doesn't have to be posky either. it's the game itself won't let you make rotations "competitive" without GM literally changing stuff at the base layer. we're back to square 1 no matter how many times or imaginative someone could be to spin it. I would love to be proven wrong if someone has legitimate ideas w/o GM hand holding throughout its process. until then im just gonna play EQ my way and if i desire to neckbeard to get x items you gotta just accept the terms n conditions that come along with endgame raiding

Agreed!

[Ooloo]

If we could somehow solve human nature I think we could make the idyllic p99

[Reiwa]

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

The problem with using a 7 day spawn mob is you are basically permanently locking the mob out from the guilds who can kill Sontalak. There could be a new guild tryout every week if it's one guild per week.

Or you would have to ask a GM to sit there for literally hours watching multiple guilds try to kill Sontalak over and over on a specified time. Good luck getting people to agree to either of those situations.

I wouldn't ask for them to agree. Defend(by killing!) the rotation gatekeeper from interlopers or lose your other mobs to the rotation starting next week.

There will be no unearned attempts or kills.

And no petitions for the other mobs.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

I wouldn't ask for them to agree. Defend(by killing!) the rotation gatekeeper from interlopers or lose your other mobs to the rotation starting next week.

There will be no unearned attempts or kills.

And no petitions for the other mobs.

Then why have this system at all? I guess I don't understand your point. If your idea is "the winner gets the mob", then that is just normal Everquest without rotations lol.