System rotation target ?

[Aadill]

The complications I am referring to is the recent incident apparently involving Divinity, TMO, and TR. This is second hand information but apparently TMO wiped and Divniity got the kill after doing 11% of damage because they had attempted to FTE but lost, yet still maintained agro. If it was the opposite and Divinity DID have FTE and TMO engaged and still wiped, that's one thing. It's also another if Divinity returned the loot to TMO or waited for the mob to reset, but that is just one instance that will occur every time a guild that gets FTE and doesn't get the kill will go through.

No mobs are currently spawning at the same time EXCEPT on server ups, so the idea of prioritization is moot, because mobs still regularly spawn in between server ups and eventually timers will be shifted outwards as mobs are slowly killed, shifting hours, which is enough time for a guild to remobilize and force the same situation as it is currently - 1 or 2 guilds receiving the majority of the kills. We don't have enough server repops to keep the timers simultaneous. The idea of committing to a planned server repop has been discussed before and was never something that the staff indicated as something they would pursue. You can easily cry foul in those instances, and it forces the GMs to keep up with it.

Everyone against variance has been hinging on the fact that somehow the guilds that immediately drop groups, hammer/gate/get ported to a raid zone and run to the raid mob within the first 10 minutes that it spawns are somehow not inclined to take the rest of the mobs as well. There is no tiered progression on this server until level limits are introduced or a server repop occurs, which is rare.


I think the main issue that I have here is that the majority of this was discussed and turned down by the playerbase/staff already (or some things were never implemented). I'd suggest revisiting the original threads and pulling from there. At this point, no one is standing on the platform of "keep it classic," though.

[Skope]

You have tiered progression as soon as trak dies and VP keys are dropping. Kunark introduced tiered progression.

There is a mighty difference between an hour variance and 96. It's actually exactly 95 hours. Furthermore, for the 1 hour variance to reach anywhere near that 96 hour window would require either 6 months of not a single patch or Nilbog/Rogean to look over the variance code because something would clearly be broken. With an hour window things will pretty much be spawning at ~ the same time frame. There will be deviations, but that actually encourages mobilization and tracking but not to this ridiculous extent. Get in, drop it, port out and track to see what's still up.

I repeat, the only reason it's here now is ease the pressure on GMs/Devs. There are clearly other ways to go about that that won't rape classic EQ raiding. Don't forget it was this same argument that people defending poopsocking were making against FTE... How'd that end up, btw?

[baalzy]

I'll just say this.

In live classic the servers went down regularly for patches, every couple of weeks. Due to slower development time that isn't always the case on P99.

Having the devs do a server reboot (so everyone is kicked out of game regardless) after it's been up uninterrupted for a while would SIMULATE the classic experience.

These server reboots then reset the playing field. It's not going to be perfect, nothing is, but the big reason why people are arguing for a rotation system or SOMETHING is to allow smaller guilds a chance at mobs by forcing guilds to prioritize somewhat. If those smaller guilds aren't strong enough to kill Naggy within 5-10 min of its pop and after 4-5 weeks his repop is stretched out to the point where TR can kill Trak and then make it to Naggy and kill him too? If it gets to the point where TR can time and hop to every single raid mob because of the spread in repop times? Good for them, that is competition and means that they're that awesome and its everybody elses fault for not being good enough to kill their targets fast enough to prevent this.

But, eventually the server will reboot and the playing field is leveled again.

[Skope]

That ^^, btw, was how you got tiered guilds. Not because some assholes are willing to waste 4 days alt-tabbing.

After a while smaller or not-as-skilled guilds would look for easier targets to down whereas the big boys went after the big targets and went out hunting for the other pieces that others (or everyone) left behind.

[Trimm]

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

The complications I am referring to is the recent incident apparently involving Divinity, TMO, and TR. This is second hand information but apparently TMO wiped and Divniity got the kill after doing 11% of damage because they had attempted to FTE but lost, yet still maintained agro. If it was the opposite and Divinity DID have FTE and TMO engaged and still wiped, that's one thing. It's also another if Divinity returned the loot to TMO or waited for the mob to reset, but that is just one instance that will occur every time a guild that gets FTE and doesn't get the kill will go through.
.

I'll address this one because it seems to come up every once in a while. TMO got the first attempt in and claims to be trained, and got Inno to 11% before they wiped and FD'd. Inno then aggroed our raid and didn't reset, so we killed him. That's all that happened. Any other guild would have done the same. We're not going to sit there and let Inno wipe just because he didn't 'reset' yet.

Skope has his own ideas and opinions about the server and raid scene. As stated before, many people in Div disagree with him and most everyone doesn't have a problem with raiding on this server. If this is a personal crusade he wants to continue, more power to him.

[Aadill]

Baalzy came into this thread and actually provided a somewhat reasonable alternative. It's still more GM interaction but there are a combination of things that have been discussed in this thread that far outperform "removing variance," which by itself only causes problems. The interesting thing about the proposal is that you're emulating random events (server repops) and somehow have to make *that* fair without catering to one crowd or the other, too much. "The windows are too far apart and xxxx guild is getting too many kills, reset the windows early!"

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

I'll address this one because it seems to come up every once in a while. [...]

Skope has his own ideas and opinions about the server and raid scene. As stated before, many people in Div disagree with him and most everyone doesn't have a problem with raiding on this server. If this is a person crusade he wants to continue, more power to him.

I understand, only citing an example.

[Skope]

Aadill, with zero variance (or classic variance) you're emulating that week in and week out. The only difference would be that one would be spontaneous whereas the other merely weekly occurrence.

err, not emulating, *reliving*. =P

[Troy]

The most plausible solution I'd support is that written by baalzy: zero to minimal variance with server resets every ~month.

If I were in charge I'd just have the mobs spawn all at once every 25 hours with 1/7th or 1/3rd the loot depending on their original spawn time. Would promote smaller guilds or at least smaller raid forces, making things much more challenging.

[anthony210]

Want no varience? Lets see how fun having all the raid capable guilds on this server know the exact time a boss is going to spawn. Picture all of these guilds raids sitting there waiting for the spawn. All of them try to hit the boss first as soon as he spawns.

This server has more raid capable guilds in it that our classic live servers had. Classic spawn cycles would not work here it would be total chaos. Its one thing to deal with 2 guilds showing up and having them work it out. But when 5-6 or more guilds show up to a kill boss its going to be impossible to come to some sort of agreement.

If its not broken dont fix it. The raid scene right now is just fine. The only thing I would like to see changed is lower the varience windows on the bosses. Cut it half or something.

[baalzy]

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

"The windows are too far apart and xxxx guild is getting too many kills, reset the windows early!"

It would take about 5 minutes to develop a tool the GMs could put up on the website that randomly generates a date/time for the server reboot (within a certain range, obviously), the server gets rebooted at that time which everyone knows about and the state of raid pops is left to whatever it happened to evolve into until that point. Patches were generally known in advance, so this would continue with the simulation of classic-feeling.

Emergency maintenance/random outages are surprises to everybody, which is also classic.