Project 1999 PvP Open Broadcast Discussion *Rescheduled*

[Tradesonred]

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

Useless counter arguments? You still have yet to respond to any of my points in my post as to how variance will help the opposition and not result in what I said. You think I give a fuck what happens here? I have literally every BiS in the game. I'm immersed in WoW currently and 5.4 launches in 2 weeks. It makes no difference to me, just don't spew bullshit that variance will help when it will cripple the oppositions ability to contest. Just because you're too short sighted or bitter to see it doesn't make it any less true.

From my month in nihilum, this is what happens: Raid scheduled at 9, 40 people on. Raid ends, /who nihilum 3 people online.

I doubt nihi could batphone that many people at 2am, which would open an opportunity for the rest of the guilds to work together and down a target, which happened before with dentists/classic etc

[Tradesonred]

To me the server is fubared. It might not be if there was something better than a bunch of cliques using the same guildchat with not much other options if they dont want to join nihilum.

Its gonna be hard either way, to convince people to reroll on a new server or keep playing here with nihilum sucking in 3 out of 4 new player on the server like a vortex. Good luck trying to build up a viable opposition to nihilum with that setup with cards that stacked in their favor after a year of uncontested farming. Im not thinking in terms of taking nihilum down, i really approach it as what setup makes for a thriving, snowballing increasing its pop, fun server.

Im repeating myself (no shit) but the big mistake was xp loss in pvp. Camp control would have been established anyway through pvp without this ridiculous hindrance to contesting which allowed the server to become what it is now.

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit, its the only way to be sure.

[Elderan]

Originally Posted by Stasis01 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Holocaust, FF, Force, Azrael, Doming, Heresy, probably missing lots etc etc etc.

There is a population around, plus all the randoms we've lost - they just can't compete with the current ruleset. Nihilum has the thickest beard lets just put it that way, and they have the exact time and place every time to flex their numbers/willingness to stay on top of an advantage gained by time investment/skill.

There are crews around, but this rule set makes you go heads up - which is counter productive to small crews that might be able to assemble/do shit faster. Or just be lucky and have their entire force around doing other shit and a mob spawns at a weird time and are already mobilized and buffed - which was how it seemed on live more often than not.

Either way this is all theory quest and I just look at the history of red99 as well as the current state of red99 and want to puke being this one of the last chances of a decent nostalgic live like pvp box - Rallos Zek policed itself, today gamers aren't so new and pathetic. This is the grief troll age of online gaming bros, the harder you grief the better rep and this ruleset hands it to ya. Shit exp loss alone I can't think of how many hours me and Tyrionn took away from poor party.

All of those guilds you mentioned with the exception of Heresy are exactly the people they don't want or need to try and attract back.

At most you would bring back 40-60 people with this. They have proven they wont play unless they can hit raid targets. High end raiding can only support 80ish active people max. Those types of numbers wont get us anywhere, except to try and screw Nihilum which your only objective in this argument for variance.

If you want to fix the server you need to focus on the BULK of the server. NON raiders. Look at blue, they have 80-90 active raiders and then 800 non active ones nightly. That is what needs to be focused on this server. The NON raiders.

[Tradesonred]

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

If you want to fix the server you need to focus on the BULK of the server. NON raiders. Look at blue, they have 80-90 active raiders and then 800 non active ones nightly. That is what needs to be focused on this server. The NON raiders.

But what do non-raiders have to look forward to here really? Getting smashed to pieces by geared alts who wont be easily deterred because there is nothing on the line for them, IE they never risk losing any gear from running into 4 naked noobs for lulz.

Dont anyone say then bring back xp loss, as the ones eating it were 90% on the casual/ungeared side.

Thats another reason why i think chances at having a rallos like server is gone, we had the opportunity at launch to take the 600 players we had and push the pop up. But since it was a pve heavy, grindy, no-pvp beyond getting steamrolled by a wrecking crew, with a learning curve thats retardedly steep for noobs because you cant practice pvp without eating more huge grind to the face, that didnt happen. These were the people running against the vztz crowd who knew the game inside out and had 45 people lined up to go and grief people off the box with xp loss. It failed because it wasnt fun to pvp like rallos was, no room for growth of pvp players in that griefy, PVE heavy environment where each pvp death adds more pve grind. I dont think there should be no consequences to dying, but a corpse run and having to med to me was punishing enough, considering the ones who are gonna do it most are the new guys trying to learn what works and what doesnt work in pvp.

Of course thats my opinion and i might be wrong, but thats my assesment of it. I was getting steamrolled by twinks on rallos, but i had fun doing it because i kept practicing and getting better at gauging which fights i could win or not. You learned that through pvp, and here you paid a steep price for trying to get better at pvp. We never got to that crushbone/blackburrow/queynos hills pvp scene here, where youre only faintly aware of the raiding scene because its just too fucking fun to pvp rumble it in every zone on the way up. Thats what was cruelly missing from this server when it launched, all that was left was the soul-sucking, mind numbing PVE most of us had been through before. EQ pve nostalgia was a really small puddle to drink from i discovered pretty soon without the pvp to keep it fun.

Had the opportunity to keep those non-raiders you were talking about, but ruleset made sure there was no place for them on the server. So the leftovers are the PVE zerg raiders who won the box because ruleset was tipped in their favor from the beginning and the griefers. Then theres the friendly, helpy guys like me and samwise who will probably never ever will be a force here because theres nothing to gravitate to. If we had kept a healthy pop of semi-casuals with a different ruleset, then things might be different.

You cant turn back time like in that cheesy Cher song where shes riding cannons as if they were huge dicks, i think it will be really hard (see what i did there?) to get back all those people we lost during server early days and dont think theres an infinite pool of people you can attract to an EQ1 pvp box. But im pretty sure it would be easier on a fresh new box with xp loss taken out right in the beggining. Bonus would be it would definitely be harder for a guild like Nihilum to emerge with xp loss not being there to deter contesting of zones.

You also have to try to compute how many people would quit the game if server was rebooted, or if half the pop would quit for a new server that never quite takes off. So yeah my assesment of things is pretty grim beyond a perpetually purple, low pop server.

[Stasis01]

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

Useless counter arguments? You still have yet to respond to any of my points in my post as to how variance will help the opposition and not result in what I said. You think I give a fuck what happens here? I have literally every BiS in the game. I'm immersed in WoW currently and 5.4 launches in 2 weeks. It makes no difference to me, just don't spew bullshit that variance will help when it will cripple the oppositions ability to contest. Just because you're too short sighted or bitter to see it doesn't make it any less true.

All your points have been crushed into the ground, you just failed to see it. Kringe proved that outside of prime time Nihilum can be beat - anything other than that is pure speculation. We know that heads up no other guild can contest, and has infact quit due to its unfair unbeatable set up. There are plenty of guilds that can mobilize and contest quickly, just not heads up primetime vs Nihilum every week - people just look at the result of the ruleset rather than all the people/guilds we have lost along the way.

The ultimate lie "You think I give a fuck what happens here?"

Yes you keep your raid DKP up for velious loot - that would be a strong indicator of caring. Another gem that shoots all your credibility to shit, anyone reading this must be laughing at how transparent you are as Nihilum's lawyer.

[Elderan]

Originally Posted by Stasis01 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

All your points have been crushed into the ground, you just failed to see it. Kringe proved that outside of prime time Nihilum can be beat - anything other than that is pure speculation. We know that heads up no other guild can contest, and has infact quit due to its unfair unbeatable set up. There are plenty of guilds that can mobilize and contest quickly, just not heads up primetime vs Nihilum every week - people just look at the result of the ruleset rather than all the people/guilds we have lost along the way.

The ultimate lie "You think I give a fuck what happens here?"

Yes you keep your raid DKP up for velious loot - that would be a strong indicator of caring. Another gem that shoots all your credibility to shit, anyone reading this must be laughing at how transparent you are as Nihilum's lawyer.

Like I said, too much attention has been put on such a small section of the server. Need to focus on the 200-300 people we need nightly who will never raid, like on blue.

[Stasis01]

Which is what teams would help with, providing safety/pub groups where people tend to work things out and work together better than FFA. A scaling group experience bonus, REMOVING the 200% so people are actively looking to add numbers to their groups to make it faster, regardless of what class/lvl.

Teams is classic, RZ policed itself in a different era of gaming - it WILL not and HAS not worked here. Current exp bonus favors people PLing solo, or playing solo classes. There is still no incentive to group here, and a lot of the classes create more of a burden than help, and get snubbed.

We tried FFA with logical assumptions, and we tried no variance in the same fashion - THESE THEORIES WERE WRONG, that doesn't mean the idea of EQpvp is dead.

[Drone]

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

Like I said, too much attention has been put on such a small section of the server. Need to focus on the 200-300 people we need nightly who will never raid, like on blue.

Improving the state of pvp on the pvp server is important though. Newcomers want to see those SS's and videos of epic fights over raid targets, it's something to look forward to, an incentive to keep playing. And people who play on blue want to see that there's actual competition in the end game to even consider coming over.

I'm not saying y'all didn't earn your topdog status, but the lack of variance unnecessarily reduces the difficulty of maintaining that status by lowering the incidence of important pvp encounters (ie contest opportunities).

That being said, of course the non-raiding population should be emphasized and I love the idea of both getting rid of hybrid xp penalties and including an xp bonus for grouping. In addition, low/mid-level players should be able to be involved with the economy. Item loot (with the exception of primary slot?) would benefit all players by constantly stimulating the low/mid-level economy and would encourage pvp at all levels.

It's important to try ideas that encourage pvp because it is the pvp server. The experience should be expressly distinct from blue.

[Tradesonred]

Originally Posted by Stasis01 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Which is what teams would help with, providing safety/pub groups where people tend to work things out and work together better than FFA. A scaling group experience bonus, REMOVING the 200% so people are actively looking to add numbers to their groups to make it faster, regardless of what class/lvl.

Teams is classic, RZ policed itself in a different era of gaming - it WILL not and HAS not worked here. Current exp bonus favors people PLing solo, or playing solo classes. There is still no incentive to group here, and a lot of the classes create more of a burden than help, and get snubbed.

We tried FFA with logical assumptions, and we tried no variance in the same fashion - THESE THEORIES WERE WRONG, that doesn't mean the idea of EQpvp is dead.

Teams does have the advantage of some form of protection against griefing, but theres no way to balance which side of teams gets stronger. If you dont like most of the people that rolled on your side of the team, or your team is losing, well, tough shit, youre stuck there.

We never really had a good FFA ruleset to begin with, they patched it in much too late and after the dices were already loaded in Nihilum`s favor.

I would totally agree on group xp bonus, but i think you need to attain a certain level of population before it gets patched. If theres a group bonus and no solo bonus, and its hard to find a group, it doesnt help.

[porigromus]

A PvP server would do better if it never had an expansion. The gear from Kunark really hurt PvP. Also no XP loss and x5-x10 times the leveling speed for PvP server would help. No in zone /who and I think personally think the person should be able to loot any 1 piece of equipment no matter if in a bag or equipped. An item can not be looted if in the bank. Last, I the PK could only attack characters withing +/- 5 levels.

If it was a custom server I would say a bounty system should be set up. But that is a complete different story.