Bob's Perfect World- A wall of text regarding the raid scene on P99 - Page 10

Acillatem · #1 09-07-2011, 08:52 AM

Last September I had approached all raiding guilds (big or small - as long as they did Planar raids) about a "Tiered Seeded Calendar Rotation". I had researched about 10 different Calendar Rotations to come up with this idea. There were about 10 guilds on my list. All but one guild agreed to at least consider it. (And that one guild was NOT DA or IB).

It was the type of rotation that allowed SOME, not ALL mobs to be put on rotation (therefore keeping the "Thrill of the Chase" intact for some mobs). It kept people in line with their current capabilities allowing room for growth at a rate that wouldn't compromise current competition rates beyond a "reasonable" level (reasonable was a varied opinion however based on "Time Saved by not poopsocking").

Targets were chosen week to week with first choice alternating each week, yet with Top Guilds receiving more choices.

It included "Priority Guarantee" for Top guilds so that they weren't getting shafted with the 10th pick of the week just becuz they were 1st last week. It had a sense of seniority, even tho the Draft Order changed week-to-week.

It was as close to a win-win as I could come up with. I even did comparisons showing current target "take-downs" and projected to show that over the course of a month, a Top Guild was receiving 2-4 less kills per month (total, not just per mob), but was not having to sacrifice the TIMESINK of poopsocking.

It really just boils down to "Do you think poopsocking is worth 1 more mob a week". Think of the time spent in an average week. How many Total "man-hours" is spent per guild per week, for 1 extra mob. Becuz ultimately that was the difference between the Tiered Seeded Calendar rotation and the current state of affairs.

Those man hours could be spent doing a multitude of other things to benefit the guild from a different perspective.

Then I got a new job working 15 hours a day and so I kinda had to drop it. I could dig it up again I'm sure. I spent a lot time doing the research on it, and all the Guild Leaders at the time (most of which still exist today) were at least willing to consider it, some more than others. At the time, DA/IB's main concern wasn't that they didn't like it - they were both more concerned whether the OTHER guild was willing to try it (lol).

Foxx · #2 09-07-2011, 10:17 AM

simple solution

play red99, fight others for the mob.

qq less

Nirgon · #3 09-07-2011, 11:24 AM

Train mobs on other guilds until 4:30am, kill mob while normal people sleep. Good for server.

Asher · #4 09-07-2011, 12:06 PM

Another idea, if it hasn't already been said:

Make people that have already killed the mob recently have to wait X number of hours before they can engage it again. Block them based on IP and boot them from zone similar to what vox and naggy do. Remove variance timers.

You participated in the mobs kill when it last spawned you must wait 4 hours.

You killed the one prior you must wait 2 hours.

You killed the one prior to that you must wait one hour.

If you haven't participated in a kill on it in the last three spawns it is open season when it pops.

Asher

Acillatem · #5 09-07-2011, 01:31 PM

That won't work becuz in my research the bigger guilds had 3 primary concerns:

1 - they didn't want to completely eliminate the thrill of racing to a mob
2 - the mobs lost by a rotation of any kind had to be in line with time gained by not having to poopsock
3 - hey still wanted to have a sense of seniority that is so often lost in a calendar.

Keep those 3 things in mind and you have one sides concerns in regards to a rotation.t

stormlord · #6 09-07-2011, 01:50 PM

It's pretty clear to me that in classic EQ there wasn't enough to raid; if live was anything like p1999. Keep in mind that I didn't raid on live until about 2007. So I don't know what it was like back then. Did they cycle raids so that every guild had a chance at it? Is it possible that something in p1999 is different and that's what's causing the raid problem.

Maybe hte experience gain is too high and it's creating more high levels (raiders)? People know a lot more about EQ now than they did back then. Much more information is available via Allah. Players level up faster.

But the thing is, live had two to three times more players than we do. How did they manage raids with so many more people than us? It could be that even having more population than us they STILL progressed markedly slower and thus the conflict at the higher levels was less than it's here. Must have been a lot slower. Is the conflict here imagined?

Some people say instances are the answer, but they forget that changing classic EQ to what we want it to be misses the whole point of the server. But I will admit that some things ARE different; for example, we know a lot more than we did back then, and there're not nearly enough players on p1999 to equal what was on the live servers. But changing p1999 might inevitably lead to an experience that's not like classic EQ at all. That's the danger. But more than that, I'd like to see somebody offer an answer that doesn't use the instancing mechanic. There should be plenty of ways to do it. The question is: which is easiest to do and which most fits the character of EQ up to and including Velious?

Personally, I don't feel instancing fits the character of EQ in that era. Instancing wasn't introduced, as far as I know, until LDON. So I think the answer, if any, should be non-instanced. Besides, instancing is cliche and overused.

And are we willing to change p1999 to accommodate raiders? Are they the majority population? My previous post touched on this, but being a majority population is important if a server is going to change itself for that population. If you only have a minority that disagrees then you can live with that. But if you have a majority that disagrees because the server changed itself to appease a minority then you have a majority population that's not in agreement.

To explain this further, I will give an example. This server is not averse to changing itself, if it's necessary. We implemented global chat when population was low. This change made p1999 different from live. But it was necessary because most, if not all players travel and communicate. That precedent showed that we will change p1999 if we have to, given that some things are different from live and cannot be resolved by not changing anything. The question is whether changing how raiding works is necessary or not - dependent on whether raiders are a majority population.

Thank you.

Dr4z3r · #7 09-07-2011, 02:05 PM

Quote:

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

People know a lot more about EQ now than they did back then. Much more information is available via Allah. Players level up faster.

These three factors are the biggest reason there's raiding drama on this server despite having fewer players than most live servers. It's not that the experience gain is wrong, it's that the players are better at Everquest, so a much larger portion of the playerbase is raid-capable.

That said, any raiding-related drama seems to far, far, out-last the actual incident and its ramifications on the server.

Silentone · #8 09-07-2011, 03:21 PM

Well let me explain why calander and rotation and carebear wont work. Its not that high end raiding guilds mind losing 2 or 3 mobs within a month its that they dont want the competing guilds to get loot/keys. Its a simple fact that if you stop other guilds from recieving the loot then you stay on top of the game. As soon as random guilds are getting a fair share of the loot then you start losing your own player base. As it is now if you want to effectivly be in a raiding guild you have only 2 choices, which means those guilds will allways have a constant application list and in the end be raid capable. So in 2 months when VP comes out..there will only be 2 guidls inside instead of 4 or 5, and if possible both raiding guilds will try to keep each other out as well. Its just the way classic EQ was. Even back in velious era, you would see guilds still killing trak to not allow other guilds to get VP keys, until they were done farming VP. Priority for guilds has allways been to
a) get keyed/geard
b) to stop others from getting keyed/geared

Its just the way EQ works....

Lazortag · #9 09-07-2011, 03:48 PM

Quote:

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

Well let me explain why calander and rotation and carebear wont work. Its not that high end raiding guilds mind losing 2 or 3 mobs within a month its that they dont want the competing guilds to get loot/keys. Its a simple fact that if you stop other guilds from recieving the loot then you stay on top of the game. As soon as random guilds are getting a fair share of the loot then you start losing your own player base. As it is now if you want to effectivly be in a raiding guild you have only 2 choices, which means those guilds will allways have a constant application list and in the end be raid capable. So in 2 months when VP comes out..there will only be 2 guidls inside instead of 4 or 5, and if possible both raiding guilds will try to keep each other out as well. Its just the way classic EQ was. Even back in velious era, you would see guilds still killing trak to not allow other guilds to get VP keys, until they were done farming VP. Priority for guilds has allways been to
a) get keyed/geard
b) to stop others from getting keyed/geared

Its just the way EQ works....

Except the time investment that's required is completely different. How many times do I have to say this? Did anyone in classic have to track a mob for up to 96 hours? No, because no mobs had 96 hour windows.

The thing is, it would make sense for the top guilds to agree to a rotation because they'd get more mobs per minute that they spend playing the game, and would probably have more time to enjoy the game, level their alts, or just go outside.

Doors · #10 09-07-2011, 03:52 PM

Quote:

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

The thing is, it would make sense for the top guilds to agree to a rotation because they'd get more mobs per minute that they spend playing the game, and would probably have more time to enjoy the game, level their alts, or just go outside.

If these fucking nerds would stop caring so much about pixels and besting random person A from guild B raiding on this server probably wouldn't be as shitty.