Anti-Draft Week

[Ooloo]

The hardcore players would just start an alt guild(s) to monopolize the anti-draft week

[fortior]

It would be cool to have planar events to give unguilded/small guild players a taste of raid content during draft, though. But that's up to the participating guilds, not the GMs. The draft isn't a GM event giving out free pixels, it's a truce between player guilds with GM enforcement

[Menden]

Interesting idea, but really hard to organize and enforce. I really don't want to perform background checks on every player that attacked and killed X mob to see if they have "raiding guild" ties. Not a great use of my time.

But, I think I understand where you are coming from. I've always loved the draft, working with players to create it was awesome. It enforces my desire to open content up for more players to experience that was historically locked down to just the top guilds. When the draft was first created we had a "staff pick", where staff acted as a raid entity during the drafting process. These would be open raids for all to join. But due to game limitations, having 400+ players in Kael or ToV just didn't work out, lots of lag and desyncing. Till we figure out those limitations, staff picks are on pause.

If someone wants to form a new guild and start raiding with it, nothing is stopping them. They can start competing for targets and ask for UN speaker rights. Or join an alliance like Sanctum(blue).

[WarpathEQ]

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

Been awhile since I last heard the Ragefire draft discussion, but IIRC they locked it out to ensure that it didn't interfere with someone's Nagafen pick. Logistically it makes sense.

At any rate, that's one mob and it's one single week where it's locked out. The rest of the time Ragefire is fully open and hardly monopolized at all times.

This is the type of decision making that this post was created to expose, I believe most people would say the reasonable solution if you can't lock down Naggy without locking down ragefire is to not lock down Naggy, but something like that will never be offered as a suggestion in the current UN structure as it doesn't benefit the insiders.

We saw the same thing with Wraith in fear during this draft. Not a draft target, as soon as a drafting guild who thought they had free reign on it realized someone else killed it they immediately started lobbying for it to be locked down and the other guilds immediately start agreeing because it has the opportunity to benefit them in future drafts.

The Reality is Ragefire is a big gate keeper for players to form up for taking on tough content. The cleric epic is widely regarded as the most useful epic in P99 and a necessary item for advancing gameplay. Any cleric I've interacted with that socked Ragefire would challenge the thought that is is hardly monopolized.

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

The draft isn't a GM event giving out free pixels, it's a truce between player guilds with GM enforcement

I may be in the wrong here but my understanding based on comments in the UN discord is that draft week is enforced server wide and not just amongst drafting guilds. I.E. a group of players that are not part of the UN/Draft would receive punishment from GMs for killing draft targets during draft week. If this is correct then you cannot categorize it as a player agreement when the overwhelming majority of players have no say in any agreements that are made.

If this is not correct I would love to see this clarified. To the point of some of the comments earlier if 95% of the draft targets are unkillable by non-draft guilds then there should be no reason to enforce draft week outside of the drafting entities. Let's put our money where our mouth is and find out. I know plenty of outsiders that would love to snipe a large portion of the lockout targets and see if they have what it takes to take down some of these targets before the drafting guild does. If we're so confident these mobs are only killable by the draft entities then the "raiding guilds" should have no problem with this concept. Effectively the only people locked out of targets on Draft week would the members of guilds that participated in the draft. Maybe @Menden or another GM can opine and clarify here.

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

I've always loved the draft, working with players to create it was awesome. It enforces my desire to open content up for more players to experience that was historically locked down to just the top guilds. When the draft was first created we had a "staff pick", where staff acted as a raid entity during the drafting process. These would be open raids for all to join. But due to game limitations, having 400+ players in Kael or ToV just didn't work out, lots of lag and desyncing. Till we figure out those limitations, staff picks are on pause.

I do want to make it clear that while I've intentionally taken a counter viewpoint in this thread that I too am actually a big fan of the draft. I can only imagine that the gameplay experience for the members of Lineage is at an all time high right now as they go through their first draft as a qualified entity. This is a massive win for a guild when they first get in and I can think of several other similar groups that are not far behind them that will benefit greatly when their time comes.

One thing I've found that we have in common as humans is that we will always do what we're incentivized to do. There is no incentive for drafting entities to think about all the other players that are on the outside and it shows in the UN dialogue especially surrounding the draft which is why I targeted the draft in this post. My biggest hope is that this thread simply gets the gears turning on how we can shift incentives to better represent a larger segment of the population of Norrath. The challenge I see building every day is this line in the sand of raid target versus not raid target and as people continue to lobby to include more targets in these lock outs we put a greater and greater emphasis on the draft/UN and being an insider or outsider. Maybe we need to define intermdiate content (things like naggy/vox/phinny and the planes come to mind, but would love to hear others thoughts) that require some level of organization to kill but are certainly attainable outside of folks in the existing UN/Draft. This would help create more of a build up to going from a solo player, to starting to organize, to establishing a guild, to being ready to take on the true high end targets that are already in scope of the existing draft and eliminate some of the 0 or 100 dynamic the current state of the UN is creating.

I think there is something to this staff pick concept. While FFA opportunities can be really cool they do require someone to step up and help plan/facilitate them and for anyone that went to Kael for AoW we all understand limitations on the infrastructure that can negate the wins from these opportunities. What about a concept of staff picks giving the staff the ability to pick one drafted target from each drafting entity that the entity is required to host as an FFA event? To address the zone attendance limitations the entities could either work together to go after the FFA targets on the same day so attendees are split up between targets in different zones or a mass sign up with a target preference where we can cap how many FFA players can join each entity and assign them based on their target preferences. This would give the drafting guilds the opportunity to still stack the box on attendence and have a good shot at winning loot through random rolls but also open up content for more folks. Even as an insider I preferred to take down some of the less challenging targets in a more FFA setting where I can win loot via rolls vs. hard earned DKP from time to time.

[Pootle]

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

To the point of some of the comments earlier if 95% of the draft targets are unkillable by non-draft guilds then there should be no reason to enforce draft week outside of the drafting entities. Let's put our money where our mouth is and find out. I know plenty of outsiders that would love to snipe a large portion of the lockout targets and see if they have what it takes to take down some of these targets before the drafting guild does.

SO what's stopping you gathering these players together and camping the target outside of the draft. All the raiding guilds will be normally running around doing quake day stuff, so wait on your selected target whlie they are busy with higher end stuff.

Instead of moaning about the draft, Put YOUR money where YOUR mouth is, and proove that you can take part.

[WarpathEQ]

Originally Posted by Guesty07 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Anybody that thinks the combined total of Good Guys, Kingdom, Nova, Safe Space, Castle Alliance, Drift, Fires of Heaven and Lineage is the minority of the server is crazy

The methodology I used to approximate the statistic was the typical raiding forces I've seen from the UN draft guilds multiplied by the number of guilds divided by the active population on the server from the login screens. Another way to approximate is using examples like the AoW FFA where approximately 400 people come to participate at a time when there are 1200ish people on the server.

To your point these guilds have massive volumes of people tagged but not all are active, online, or raid level. If you wanted to look at the sum total of everyone tagged in these guilds you would have to compare it to the sum total of all characters ever created on the server. That would be much harder to guesstimate but I would imagine the character count would have to be in the 5 figures and these groups would still represent a similarly sized minority. This approach is less valid because one actual human can account for a large amount of toons. Using active counts helps to better gage the actual amount of distinct humans that are actively engaging in real time.

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

SO what's stopping you gathering these players together and camping the target outside of the draft. All the raiding guilds will be normally running around doing quake day stuff, so wait on your selected target whlie they are busy with higher end stuff.

Instead of moaning about the draft, Put YOUR money where YOUR mouth is, and proove that you can take part.

Nothing is stopping me...I have, am, and will continue to do so. This thread isn't about moaning about the draft, I offer my praises for the draft in addition to my sharp criticisms. The draft/UN is a relevant topic here because it is an overlay on top of classic and the main avenue the GMs have chosen to give a voice to players about the future state of gameplay on P99. This thread is intended to expand that voice and to propose creative ideas on how we advance the game from here while also highlighting the potential (and in my opinion current reality) that the will of the UN is not the will of the overall population.

I mean if nothing else you at least have to stop and chuckle about the irony of a draft concept that is intended to open up content by locking it down. I don't know about you but I've never opened a door for someone by locking it [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Pootle]

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

I mean if nothing else you at least have to stop and chuckle about the irony of a draft concept that is intended to open up content by locking it down. I don't know about you but I've never opened a door for someone by locking it [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

As a member of a casual raiding guild/coalition on Blue, we had set raid evenings/times, so we could not sock or batphone targets much at all. We could not practace on many targets without the the massive zerg guilds racing to them before us, or presuring us to fail so they could leapfrog.

I found the Draft allowed us to raid waaaay more content than we were able to on normal quakes etc.

We even managed to score Trak Teeth on a few Drafts, then partner up with another guild to do Veeshans Peak on a later Draft week.

So personally (in my experience) i really have to disagree with your above statement.

[7thGate]

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

If you wanted to look at the sum total of everyone tagged in these guilds you would have to compare it to the sum total of all characters ever created on the server. That would be much harder to guesstimate but I would imagine the character count would have to be in the 5 figures and these groups would still represent a similarly sized minority.

As an aside, I think its probably higher than 5 figures. I would guess somewhere in the low 6 for green, blue might get to 7 given how long its been around.

I had a program I wrote that parsed my log file and uploaded it to a google sheet with the last seen history of each guild character, and Auld Lang Syne had 1590 characters seen by me in a /who over the course of 2017 to 2019 with 203 level 46+. This was much higher than I was expecting given that even at our peak we could never field a raid force over 40 people.

[cd288]

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

To the point of some of the comments earlier if 95% of the draft targets are unkillable by non-draft guilds then there should be no reason to enforce draft week outside of the drafting entities. Let's put our money where our mouth is and find out. I know plenty of outsiders that would love to snipe a large portion of the lockout targets and see if they have what it takes to take down some of these targets before the drafting guild does. If we're so confident these mobs are only killable by the draft entities then the "raiding guilds" should have no problem with this concept. Effectively the only people locked out of targets on Draft week would the members of guilds that participated in the draft.

This is just a really dumb idea that defeats the whole point of the draft (which is to give smaller guilds a shot at content that is normally monopolized by one or two larger guilds).

The only reason to be against a draft is if you are IN the one or two larger guilds that normally monopolize the content. As a result, you are clearly someone who is too immersed in one of those guilds and trying to make up some reason why the draft harms smaller guilds/ordinary players, which it doesn't in any way shape or form.

If these groups were capable of sniping content as you seem to be claiming, they would be sniping content. They don't have to wait to draft week to do it. There's 3 weeks of of the month where the content is an FTE free for all. So either get one of these "disenfranchised by the draft" groups of people together and go snipe some raid targets this week or STFU.

[loramin]

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

But due to game limitations, having 400+ players in Kael or ToV just didn't work out, lots of lag and desyncing. Till we figure out those limitations, staff picks are on pause.

If this is truly the blocker, why not just limit the number of players somehow? For instance, what if you had a "GM pick" where only characters whose names start with A-G could participate (and then later on, have one for names H-P, and then Q-Z)?

Or, alternatively, you could just decrease the demand overall. For instance, I imagine a lot of "non-raiders" would love a chance to participate in certain raids ... even without any chance at loot (or a much-reduced chance).

Why? Simply to have the classic experience of fighting a famous dragon (or giant, or whatever). If you got rid of (or lowered) the loot from a GM pick, "raiders" wouldn't come to these raids ... leaving room for non-raiders in the zone.