How realistic is casual raiding?

[Connor]

I've had no problems at all on green joining raids as a casual player.

[Keebz]

It should also be noted, you can generally earn DKP on your own schedule through non-raid activities like leveling bots (shared guild chars), farming idols, etc. This way you can have decent buying power for the raids you do attend.

[cd288]

Honestly I would support raid instancing on P99. Not for regular dungeons so certain things like Kael would still get contested but for things like the planes and ToV whatever just instance it. The whole Zerg and clickie meta nowadays is so unclassic anyway that why not just shove the big groups of man children into their own respective instances and call it a day.

I could imagine one benefit being maybe the staff is more engaged on other things because they’re not spending all their free time dealing with whiney raid petitions.

[PlsNoBan]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Honestly I would support raid instancing on P99. Not for regular dungeons so certain things like Kael would still get contested but for things like the planes and ToV whatever just instance it. The whole Zerg and clickie meta nowadays is so unclassic anyway that why not just shove the big groups of man children into their own respective instances and call it a day.

I could imagine one benefit being maybe the staff is more engaged on other things because they’re not spending all their free time dealing with whiney raid petitions.

That's the thing. I can see the argument against instances. I understand the fear of losing players if gear becomes easier to get. The game CAN become stale if you get full bis gear and "run out of things to do". Stuff like instances or raid rotations or removing variance and reducing spawn times or whatever other changes you can come up with will all have their pros and cons. I'm just personally of the opinion that the current system has far more cons. The p99 endgame raid "meta" is the most absurd bullshit. It's really unbelievable how dumb it has become. Making gear easier to get and having some people burn out or get bored is a small price to pay for making an overall better experience for everyone else.

Like I said before TONS of people play this game and never raid at all. They aren't all going to magically quit if raiding becomes more approachable. They still find enjoyment in the game after years and years without even touching raid targets.

[Troxx]

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

That's the thing. I can see the argument against instances. I understand the fear of losing players if gear becomes easier to get. The game CAN become stale if you get full bis gear and "run out of things to do". Stuff like instances or raid rotations or removing variance and reducing spawn times or whatever other changes you can come up with will all have their pros and cons. I'm just personally of the opinion that the current system has far more cons. The p99 endgame raid "meta" is the most absurd bullshit. It's really unbelievable how dumb it has become. Making gear easier to get and having some people burn out or get bored is a small price to pay for making an overall better experience for everyone else.

Like I said before TONS of people play this game and never raid at all. They aren't all going to magically quit if raiding becomes more approachable. They still find enjoyment in the game after years and years without even touching raid targets.

I could get behind this specifically for blue. Green and future green 2.0 can always strive for strictly classic but what we have on blue is so far from classic it isn’t even funny. Classic raiding was nothing like p99 raiding where you have hundreds of players with high end gear and umpteen alts … all of whom are willing to park their alts all over Norrath and log in for a 2am batphone.

P99 raiding is about as far from a classic experience as you can get.

[tadkins]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Honestly I would support raid instancing on P99. Not for regular dungeons so certain things like Kael would still get contested but for things like the planes and ToV whatever just instance it. The whole Zerg and clickie meta nowadays is so unclassic anyway that why not just shove the big groups of man children into their own respective instances and call it a day.

I could imagine one benefit being maybe the staff is more engaged on other things because they’re not spending all their free time dealing with whiney raid petitions.

Agreed. I feel bad for the staff who has to deal with all of that mess.

I'd also be in support of having a more accessible endgame. Instances would be great. If P99 is supposed to be a museum, then why can't it be a museum we're allowed to actually enter?

I just really hate the cutthroat competitive attitude that seems required if you just want to see some raids and maybe earn a piece of cool loot that can't be simply bought in the EC tunnel.

I know nothing's going to change anytime soon, I just wish there was a chance to succeed at the game without having to kiss up to certain guilds.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

There is one surefire way to determine the best course of action, but it will probably never happen.

When the next Green Server comes, put faster raid respawns on it. Roll the old Green characters into Blue and keep the normal raid respawn timers on Blue.

Then we have two servers, one with normal raid respawn timers and one with faster raid respawn timers. Then we will see which server ends up with more players at the end of the next Green server, and we don't lose existing players because you can still play Blue.

Based on the current data (TLP vs P99), I think the normal raid respawn timers will win. But you never know.

[PlsNoBan]

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

There is one surefire way to determine the best course of action, but it will probably never happen.

When the next Green Server comes, put faster raid respawns on it. Roll the old Green characters into Blue and keep the normal raid respawn timers on Blue.

Then we have two servers, one with normal raid respawn timers and one with faster raid respawn timers. Then we will see which server ends up with more players at the end of the next Green server, and we don't lose existing players because you can still play Blue.

Based on the current data (TLP vs P99), I think the normal raid respawn timers will win. But you never know.

The numbers could be lower. In fact I suspect they probably will be by a little bit. I just think lower numbers with a healthy endgame is preferable to more players with extremely toxic nonsense. That's all. Being that P99 isn't a business trying to make money it doesn't harm them to have slightly less players. As long as there's enough players to do stuff it's fine. I've been on other emu servers with ~100 players and it was still fun. I don't think there's any chance P99 dips under like 400-500 per server at peak almost no matter what they do. I do like the idea of trying new things on green 2.0 though! That's a good way to experiment without compromising blue. If it ends up being bad for whatever reason they can always nix it for green 3.0 in 2078

[unsunghero]

I think the forums creates a biased impression that the game is mostly high end raiders while the actual majority of players are casual unguilded scrubs that only play a couple hours a week/month, don’t raid, and don’t even realize this forum exists

The appeal of this game to many casuals is that you can stay casual because you aren’t falling behind a never-ending new-expansion-release power curve. The reality is you still probably can’t ever catch up to the current high end but at least you can pretend you can. Whereas with TLP or modern MMO’s you know you’ll never catch up because by the time you do, another expansion has released invalidating all the current gear

[PlsNoBan]

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

I think the forums creates a biased impression that the game is mostly high end raiders while the actual majority of players are casual unguilded scrubs that only play a couple hours a week/month, don’t raid, and don’t even realize this forum exists

The appeal of this game to many casuals is that you can stay casual because you aren’t falling behind a never-ending new-expansion-release power curve. The reality is you still probably can’t ever catch up to the current high end but at least you can pretend you can. Whereas with TLP or modern MMO’s you know you’ll never catch up because by the time you do, another expansion has released invalidating all the current gear

100% this. This is why I think that no matter what you do to the endgame (even removing raid targets entirely from the game) would not kill the server(s). There's a lot more non raiders than I think some people believe.