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

[Mcbard]

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

Sure it does. The ridiculous amount of time you spend tracking just for a ~50% chance at loot, you can now spend doing something productive! Plus you would still get the vast majority of mobs. You would get proportionally more mobs per minute that you play the game, so just think of it that way.



How?

To me tracking isn't some nail biting chore that I spent 48 hour sessions doing as you described. As Aadill pointed out, that's not even close to the truth, we rotate and track when we can. It's not really "that bad". I'm tracking as I type this, and after I stop reading interwebs I'm going to work on some stuff in xcode4 and do some homework.

Seriously, it's not hard. If I didn't want mobs all of the time then I wouldn't do it.. so the whole "mobs per minute thing" is a moot point.

[Lazortag]

If it isn't so draining, why doesn't every other raid capable guild do it? Just because you have no life outside of the game doesn't mean it's easy for every other guild to be able to take shifts tracking mobs. At this point you probably wouldn't get enough people willing to waste that much time in any single guild aside from TR/TMO. It's also entirely irrelevant that you spread the 48 hours (this is an average, by the way - sometimes it's more, and this is only for one raid mob) amongst your guildies - that's still 48 hours of time completely wasted, and I think you can understand why other guilds shouldn't be expected to make that same sacrifice just for the possibility of pixels. It's important that I emphasize that this is done so that you can get a chance at a raid mob - it's not even guaranteed, so all that time (which for a lot of people really is a huge time commitment) might just be for nothing. That's not fun at all, that's not classic, and like Skope said it hasn't made the server any healthier.

edit: also, Aadill, it's kind of ludicrous to argue that casual guilds would have LESS of a chance of their members completing their epics if there were some kind of rotation, since these guilds would be getting more mobs than before. Don't act like the current ruleset somehow empowers the less hardcore players.

[Aadill]

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

Any discussion regarding rules or even changes in the rules should be done after the 4-day variance is kicked.

As far as tracking goes it would be non-existant with zero variance. Without variance there is no possibility for non-US based raid guilds to have a timezone advantage over US based raid guilds or vice versa, as all mobs would spawn at a very specific time and only shift out a few minutes at a time. This would not promote fair competition between guilds. That's a downfall I see to NO variance. I do believe the variance is too much and could be shortened only if the 15 man rule is permanently removed.

As far as the rotation system you suggested: it seems complex to me. If I'm reading it correctly the only way to be added to a rotation is to beat all guilds that currently have ownership of the mob, otherwise it's an understood agreement between them to alternate on the kills (except in the case of sole ownership). This "in" would only occur on server resets, which may or may not occur on a regular basis. At that point you're racing for rights once instead of the mob every time.

Sole ownership of a mob also limits other guild's abilities to work on their epics. If it's understood and enforced that a guild with sole ownership has full rights to it until a server reset then absolutely no epic pieces would be given out to another guild, and that guild wouldn't even have to race to go destroy the loot (if they so chose).

[Skope]

Classic variance, then slowly work out the rest. The 15 FTE rule is garbage and only promotes dirty socks, and considering the difficulty of kunark mobs it's also incredibly unrealistic and outdated.

[Nirgon]

Sounds like there is gonna be some P in VP.

[Aadill]

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

Sounds like there is gonna be some P in VP.

It'd be nice to know if VP was working on a single spawn time or if each mob is to have it's own variance.

[Duie]

Another posablility is to be given a chance at said mob w/ the loot still going to the guild that had that time slot in the rotation if said guild did happen to kill it.

An even more feasable posablility would to have a Test Mob spawned w/ no loot for the guild who wanted to be in rotation.

[YendorLootmonkey]

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

Most of the time multiple people use tracker accounts and at best you're maybe sitting online on a level 60 character chatting up a storm or watchin movies for a few hours. There's not much to gain/be productive doing while tracking, yes.. but there's also not much reason to be productive on that particular character. Everyone else on the raid is logged out with an incapacitated character or may be out leveling in the same zone or on another character.

READ: your raid force and tracker tethered to a 100-foot radius of their computer for the duration of the target window. So they can clock in, kill the dragon, and clock back out. Because that's what this 'game' has been watered down to.

[Mcbard]

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

If it isn't so draining, why doesn't every other raid capable guild do it? Just because you have no life outside of the game doesn't mean it's easy for every other guild to be able to take shifts tracking mobs. At this point you probably wouldn't get enough people willing to waste that much time in any single guild aside from TR/TMO. It's also entirely irrelevant that you spread the 48 hours (this is an average, by the way - sometimes it's more, and this is only for one raid mob) amongst your guildies - that's still 48 hours of time completely wasted, and I think you can understand why other guilds shouldn't be expected to make that same sacrifice just for the possibility of pixels. It's important that I emphasize that this is done so that you can get a chance at a raid mob - it's not even guaranteed, so all that time (which for a lot of people really is a huge time commitment) might just be for nothing. That's not fun at all, that's not classic, and like Skope said it hasn't made the server any healthier.

edit: also, Aadill, it's kind of ludicrous to argue that casual guilds would have LESS of a chance of their members completing their epics if there were some kind of rotation, since these guilds would be getting more mobs than before. Don't act like the current ruleset somehow empowers the less hardcore players.

Ya dude, I have no life. Nobody who tracks does. Great generalization. It couldn't just perhaps be that the time you see as "wasted" is just what we consider doing business. Most of us literally have no other reason to play our characters, do you understand this? I would rather spend 5 hours tracking a mob and surfing the web then I would 5 hours logged on my main camping some item for platinum, because above all else, I would rather spend time in this game killing dragons. Not playing an alt or sitting in EC tunnel. I guess you don't understand this.

A rotation negatively impacts people in the guilds already getting mobs because now they get to kill them, or at least have the chance to kill them a whole lot less. That's why your idea doesn't work, it doesn't benefit everybody. It only benefits those who don't want to spend time tracking mobs currently. End of story.

In regards to it not being classic, I agree, variance isn't classic but neither is the P99 playerbase.

Really any debating about it further is just sending us in circles. I understand that you A) want to kill dragons, and B) don't want to spend anytime tracking them. You don't seem to understand that your idea doesn't A) benefit everyone, and B) isn't "more classic" then what we currently have, so I don't see how it's a relevant solution.

Edit: To answer your first question btw: simply put because they don't want to and it's not what they enjoy? The reward isn't worth the effort they would need to put in. That's not how they enjoy the game. Same reason I'm not leveling an alt all day.

[Lazortag]

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

As far as tracking goes it would be non-existant with zero variance. Without variance there is no possibility for non-US based raid guilds to have a timezone advantage over US based raid guilds or vice versa, as all mobs would spawn at a very specific time and only shift out a few minutes at a time. This would not promote fair competition between guilds. That's a downfall I see to NO variance. I do believe the variance is too much and could be shortened only if the 15 man rule is permanently removed.

As far as the rotation system you suggested: it seems complex to me. If I'm reading it correctly the only way to be added to a rotation is to beat all guilds that currently have ownership of the mob, otherwise it's an understood agreement between them to alternate on the kills (except in the case of sole ownership). This "in" would only occur on server resets, which may or may not occur on a regular basis. At that point you're racing for rights once instead of the mob every time.

Sole ownership of a mob also limits other guild's abilities to work on their epics. If it's understood and enforced that a guild with sole ownership has full rights to it until a server reset then absolutely no epic pieces would be given out to another guild, and that guild wouldn't even have to race to go destroy the loot (if they so chose).

A lot of those mobs would be really easy to race to since the primary target of TR/TMO on server resets is Trak. If they want Trak, well obviously it's going to be tough to mobilize to Trak before TR/TMO do, but intuitively that seems fair. Also, I think you're really underestimating how many of the casual raid guilds have killed bosses that drop epic pieces. I'm pretty sure each of these guilds has a white and a red dragon under their belt, and if they don't, well, Vox and Naggy usually aren't TR/TMO's first priority on server resets, so this would be a pretty easy hurdle to get around.

The reason I suggested server repops as a means to getting added to the rotation is actually because I thought it would be fairer to the top two guilds. Otherwise you'd just have guilds poopsocking Trak to be added to the rotation, which hardly seems fair. I guess that's what happened on most classic servers (if I'm to believe what people say), but I don't think socking a raid mob is proof that you're worthy of rights to it.

What you mentioned in the first paragraph is probably true, which is why I said "significantly reduce the variance", not "eliminate it entirely", though I guess Skope is in favor of just eliminating it so maybe you were responding to him. I think non-US guilds should get a slice of the pie too since project 1999 is only one server and so we're going to have people from all sorts of different time zones.

Either way, I've gone into more detail about my little suggestion than I wanted to, I don't think my idea is the best in the world and just reducing the variance would alone be a huge step for the health of the raid scene, so I'm glad we at least sort of agree on that.

Originally Posted by Duie

An even more feasable posablility would to have a Test Mob spawned w/ no loot for the guild who wanted to be in rotation.

I really don't think this would be fair to guilds who have had previous success on this server. There still needs to be some kind of competition, just not the way we have it now.