First to Engage: Exploiting the mechanic?

[Sadre Spinegnawer]

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

Halls of Testing armor, the freeing up of Kunark boss mobs/epic quests, and the availability of non-boss Velious drops (Willsapper is a good example) really equaled the playing field in EQlive on my old server. Guilds were able to do more with this gear because it was much more accessible, easier to obtain, and less contested.

It will be interesting to observe how things play out.

Good question. I played eq2, which at least had a thriving playerbase for several years, and for the first few years, a lot of contested content. You could do worse. The game was fair enough. And, as I say, it had a playerbase. Always nice to see a couple dozen servers running.

Was in two guilds first 5 years, with each of them, we killed contested spawns even if no one needed the items. At the time, it was just how we rolled. Mob spawns, phone rings, kill.

If another guild was there before us, we always gave them a free and stress-free one try. The fact they could not execute was not our problem.

And we were not zerg guilds. In both my eq2 guilds, our roster was 30ish. It just is not rocket science to lockdown a server, is the point. (too much time on my hands, apparently, during the mid 2000's)

And so, your question is an interesting one.

Not sure what the culture is among the top end guilds here. Not sure I care. But, it is a huge assumption that lots of people make, that moar content = less lockdown.

Not true. Not necessarily.

[Splorf22]

There are simply too many high level toons. Kunark will be out for three years soon. The 'casual' players have a max toon and a 50+ alt. The 'hardcore' players have 2-3 max toons. And there are people with legit armies like Jeremy and Treats. If Velious had come out 8 months after Kunark, when a much smaller fraction of the server was maxed it might solve some problems. As is, it'll make stuff better but it's not the answer.

What I don't understand is why the staff is so hellbent on competition. Suppose each guild got 2-4 tokens per week to spawn whatever bosses they wanted. Voila, casual guilds can do their thing without getting cockblocked, and the elite raiders can go nuts sitting in VS's pit for 96 hours.

[justin2090]

Originally Posted by Splorf22 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

What I don't understand is why the staff is so hellbent on competition. Suppose each guild got 2-4 tokens per week to spawn whatever bosses they wanted. Voila, casual guilds can do their thing without getting cockblocked, and the elite raiders can go nuts sitting in VS's pit for 96 hours.

This is a good idea but there are negatives to everything. What's stopping those guilds from not recruiting? Guild X gets 2-4 tokens a week and shuts down all recruitment. They keep 20 people and gear their mains and every alt. Sure you could say, "GM's shut their tokens's down cause their greedy" but then we're adding more work to our voluntary GM's.

Some of the server wants a competitive raid scene and some just do not have the time in RL to be apart of it. Somewhere in between is where the solution is. Someone just has to find it.

[Splorf22]

Originally Posted by justin2090 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This is a good idea but there are negatives to everything. What's stopping those guilds from not recruiting? Guild X gets 2-4 tokens a week and shuts down all recruitment. They keep 20 people and gear their mains and every alt. Sure you could say, "GM's shut their tokens's down cause their greedy" but then we're adding more work to our voluntary GM's.

Or they could form a new guild, and get their own tokens.

Originally Posted by justin2090

Some of the server wants a competitive raid scene and some just do not have the time in RL to be apart of it. Somewhere in between is where the solution is. Someone just has to find it.

The whole point of tokens is to make that split. The casuals can gradually progress through the content without batphoning and tracking, while the hardcore guilds still have their VS poopsocks and superior magelo profiles to look forward to.

[Visual]

No one will dispute that Nizzler is at the root of all that is bad

[JayN]

Release velious problem solved!

All this crazy token shit is cray cray

[heazels]

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

Release velious problem solved!

All this crazy token shit is cray cray

This will not solve the overcrowded end game. Server Split or new server is the only answer.

[justin2090]

The token idea is good don't get me wrong. But having the GM's moderate the amount of tokens a guild gets based on raid size, shut them off if they get greedy, or giving every newly formed guild a set of tokens is asking to much. I mean me and 19 other ppl could make 19 different alts and form 20 different guilds witha set of tokens for each.

And thats just with 20 people doing it. 500 hundred people using alts to make guilds would be well 500 guilds. You would have to give tokens to 3-4 different guilds tops. Then if they get greedy and shut down recruiting?

EDIT:
Also I dunno how many Donal Breastplates are on the server currently but lets just say its 200. Now if every guild could spawn him 4x a week would that not increase the amount of Donals on the server significantly? They would be so abundant and cheap. Hell even I would have a lvl 1 cleric witha Donals. So it's not just giving guilds raid targets. Tokens would have a severe impact on the economy.

Sure you could say make the loot no drop but then you could bring your alt in and loot awesome gear. Why would you shop in EC when you can be pimped with tokens? The only way tokens would work is if the dragons drop no loot at all and that just doesn't sound fun to me.

[Ravager]

Originally Posted by justin2090 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The token idea is good don't get me wrong. But having the GM's moderate the amount of tokens a guild gets based on raid size, shut them off if they get greedy, or giving every newly formed guild a set of tokens is asking to much. I mean me and 19 other ppl could make 19 different alts and form 20 different guilds witha set of tokens for each.

And thats just with 20 people doing it. 500 hundred people using alts to make guilds would be well 500 guilds. You would have to give tokens to 3-4 different guilds tops. Then if they get greedy and shut down recruiting?

EDIT:
Also I dunno how many Donal Breastplates are on the server currently but lets just say its 200. Now if every guild could spawn him 4x a week would that not increase the amount of Donals on the server significantly? They would be so abundant and cheap. Hell even I would have a lvl 1 cleric witha Donals. So it's not just giving guilds raid targets. Tokens would have a severe impact on the economy.

Sure you could say make the loot no drop but then you could bring your alt in and loot awesome gear. Why would you shop in EC when you can be pimped with tokens? The only way tokens would work is if the dragons drop no loot at all and that just doesn't sound fun to me.

The economy only matters to the EverCommonlanders or the people who block content to sell ranger epics for 1 million plat. It means nothing to people who actually play the game to acquire loot. More loot only hurts the exceptionally greedy.

[Tanthallas]

ruh roh