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

[john_savage1982]

Originally Posted by Dr4z3r [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I lumped you in because you said this:



Put simply, 'socking is the dominant strategy. This is where the prisoner's dilemma becomes relevant: As soon as Guild A chooses Defect, Guild B must choose the same in order to have a chance at anything. You're right that it's not directly analogous to the Prisoner's Dilemma, but the Dilemma still serves as a simplified illustration of the dominant strategy. Given that raid mobs on P99 are all-or-nothing (your guild gets all the loot, or none of it), a decision matrix for a 2-guild standoff would look like this:

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Where the numbers represent the approximate chance to get the mob. So, can 'sock, with a chance of either .5 or 1 to get the mob, or you can not 'sock, and have a chance of either 0 or .5.

Given that the goal is to get the mob's loot, what is the correct strategy?

So, here we have our rational, self-interested decision. Of course, in the long run, everyone involved in 'socking mobs for a long period of time will be unhappy, burn out on the game, or just stop giving a fuck. It will detriment the lives of those players, those guilds, and ultimately the server as a whole. This is, of course, the Tragedy of the Commons.

This analysis deals with a game played once. When a game with these payoffs are played over and over, cooperation can become increasingly likely. However, if all parties are determined and willing to expend the resources (time, energy, etc) necessary to get loot then cooperation may never occur. Further, the problem with socking is that payoff is not 50/50 since the guild that was there first wins the game.

The situation here is that P1999 players will expend ridiculous amounts of energy to increase their chance to get loot...even if that chance is only increased slightly.

Perhaps a more relevant academic subject that you should be examining is elements of learning and conditioning. Everquest, like many addicting games, has a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement, where players are rewarded based on variable level of behavioral compliance. Examples of this includes randomized loot from raid targets, boss spawns, random timer on AC in OOT, and so forth. All of these systems are designed to keep you waiting one more second in hopes your commitment will payoff, which only makes you play more and more. At the high end of Everquest you have players that will devote hours upon hours of their lives to the game. Mind you, this is sitting in front of a computer for hours clicking buttons and looking at graphics on a screen.

The even sicker part is the way the reinforcement of the game substitutes for many players as a form of personal achievement. So instead of playing for fun, they play for the sense of achievement that playing brings them when they get items that are rare or other players don't have.

[G13]

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

Let me know when your comedy central special is airing.

The rules are the rules. They're only a page long. Read them.

They need to either be enforced strictly or publicly removed for everyone, because the half assed nature of the last month is the source of more raiding angst and headaches than i could have dreamed possible and every guild is losing raiders who are getting tired of dealing with this nonsense.

The irony of this post is amazing

[Kassel]

your game theory needs more consideration of the huge negative externalities present.

[Dr4z3r]

Originally Posted by john_savage1982 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This analysis deals with a game played once. When a game with these payoffs are played over and over, cooperation can become increasingly likely. However, if all parties are determined and willing to expend the resources (time, energy, etc) necessary to get loot then cooperation may never occur. Further, the problem with socking is that payoff is not 50/50 since the guild that was there first wins the game.

The payoff for 'socking depends on the ruleset. If the rules are enforced exactly as they're written in the current P99 PNP (sufficient force on spawn point), then you're right that there's no 50% chance of payoff, but those rules haven't really been enforced as written lately. The case I was writing about was assuming a FTE ruleset, where being on the spawn point just means that you have essentially a chance of (1/# of guilds present) of being the first person to "engage" the mob by being attacked.

Originally Posted by john_savage1982 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Perhaps a more relevant academic subject that you should be examining is elements of learning and conditioning.

I've read about Skinner Boxes, but that's off-topic. If you'd like to convince people to quit EQ, then by all means start a different thread.

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

your game theory needs more consideration of the huge negative externalities present.

Externalities considered:

Originally Posted by Dr4z3r [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So, here we have our rational, self-interested decision. Of course, in the long run, everyone involved in 'socking mobs for a long period of time will be unhappy, burn out on the game, or just stop giving a fuck. It will detriment the lives of those players, those guilds, and ultimately the server as a whole. This is, of course, the Tragedy of the Commons.

[tekniq]

i concur sir.

[Silentone]

I still dont undestand why there is so much complaining about raiding. If you want to kill a mob spend the time to do it, if you dont then quit whining for the mobs to be handed to you with x amount of time for you to log in and kill it with guild A and B. This is a classic server and most of us are playing on it for that reason exactly, competition. You dont want to waste your life/time camping mobs thats fine too, jus wait till the content is semi old and raid it when the top guilds arent actively farming the mob.

[Lazortag]

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

I still dont undestand why there is so much complaining about raiding. If you want to kill a mob spend the time to do it, if you dont then quit whining for the mobs to be handed to you with x amount of time for you to log in and kill it with guild A and B. This is a classic server and most of us are playing on it for that reason exactly, competition. You dont want to waste your life/time camping mobs thats fine too, jus wait till the content is semi old and raid it when the top guilds arent actively farming the mob.

The complaining comes from the fact that the amount of time required for most of the higher end content is longer than any server ever required in the classic period, due to the outrageously long variance on raid mobs.

[Silentone]

In that case make a post about having the variance removed not having a raid mob rotation.

[Noser]

Raiding Trak would be fun if they spawned him in a random world zone, once a week, at a random time. Obv not classic but people would have to race for him which beats poopsocking his lair imo.

[citizen1080]

Perhaps the best way would be to have Someone on the staff post a poll for the entire server. Leave it up for a month. Have the top 3-4 ideas for a new Ruleset for raiding as the old one obviously is not working well. No account that is less than a month old may vote and the outcome will be reviewed by staff and implemented within X amount of time. The entire server would be able to vote on how they want it handled. No one guild has a membership big enough to swing the vote in a direction the server disagrees with.

This would

A. Fix current issues

B. Put the responsibility on the people. If they vote one way and it turns out to not work the staff and just point the finger back at us and say "You asked for it"

As we all know there are MANY versions of classic EQ as far as raiding is concerned. We have used one of them on this server and it is simply not working. I do not see why we can not try one of the many others that evolved over the years on EQ servers.