Classic PvP: I was there. The truth about teams, item loot, etc

[Rokannis]

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

SZ was the culmination of EQ PvP. It was a ruleset specifically engineered by EQ devs to address the failures of RZ, TZ and VZ. No item loot. No crossteaming. No level ranges. No immortal healers, no naked casters, no frantic bagging of items or other incentives to avoid PvP. Just lots of meaningful PvP between teams competing for leveling spots, item camps and raid mobs. Big fights, small fights, multi-zone skirmishes. PvP everywhere. It was war, and it felt like it.

There's a reason that an SZ-like ruleset has the most vocal support. That's not some kind of accident. It's because the people who experienced SZ (most of whom also played on RZ or VZ/TZ, by the way) know for a fact that it is the EQ ruleset that created the most memorable server experience by far.

Yep. However kids with only live BLUE experience and then Red emu experience don't understand. If you haven't played it, its very foreign. It works, everyone who played on it will tell you the same thing. We have been searching for the same experience but no other MMO has re-created the experience that the SZ ruleset brought us. Contesting for exp zones, raid mobs, etc created natural PVP which was the best. You always had SOMETHING to fight for. In FFA you fight just to fight. People need motivation, or else their motivation turns to "I just want to be an asshole and camp kids".

[Tradesonred]

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

Yep. However kids with only live BLUE experience and then Red emu experience don't understand. If you haven't played it, its very foreign. It works, everyone who played on it will tell you the same thing. We have been searching for the same experience but no other MMO has re-created the experience that the SZ ruleset brought us. Contesting for exp zones, raid mobs, etc created natural PVP which was the best. You always had SOMETHING to fight for. In FFA you fight just to fight. People need motivation, or else their motivation turns to "I just want to be an asshole and camp kids".

I dont get how fighting for camps/exp spots is different on a FFA server vs a teams server, maybe you can explain it to me. Oh its got exp loss in pvp, doesnt last for long and lets you focus on the important stuff (PVE), is that it?

[Rokannis]

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

I dont get how fighting for camps/exp spots is different on a FFA server vs a teams server, maybe you can explain it to me.

Because on FFA its all about you, or your guild. On teams, its about your TEAM and your guild. You are never just fighting for yourself. The health of your team is important to your experience, and it drives / motivates you to assist in that. Its a WHOLE different meta than anything you've seen unless you have actually played it.

Its clear that anyone who plays an EQEMU is a fucking nerd. We wouldn't be playing a 15 year old game if we weren't. Whether you are a closet nerd or 500 pound neckbeard nerd. You are one. Psychologically people like to associate themselves to something, for most of us its a game, for non-nerds, they have favorite sports teams. When in a game that has "team" choice, we associate ourselves with a team, and then our race/character. For non-nerds, they become die-hard fans of their team. Win or lose, its "fuck the other guys, my teams the best". This holds true in nerd-world. When playing SZ rules (good, evil or neutral), its "fuck the other guys, my teams the best, I'll defend this zone till my fingers bleed and be an e-hero". Kids love being e-heroes, its really the only reason people play this shit. E-hero with E-pixels. In an FFA scenario, you have nothing to fight for but your own survival. Sure you can join a guild, but that is still a very small minority of players that you care about. Those who are non-guilded have no incentive to do anything but fend for themselves.

Its all psychology man. No one is thinking of these rules in terms of game design. Game design, rules, and mechanics promote certain game play. You have rules that make the player only care about himself, you get a selfish community. You have rules that promote team play and co-operation, you see much less selfish players. They don't dissappear completely, but they die down. Team play promotes community, people play MMO's to play with others.

Theres a reason why SZ rules worked on live, and a reason why it was the last PVP rule-set server to be released because it was supposed to be a solution to the problems all the other ones had. Guess what, it worked, and we all had a fucking blast and have yet to re-live that same experience.

[Bogart]

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

Because on FFA its all about you, or your guild. On teams, its about your TEAM and your guild. You are never just fighting for yourself. The health of your team is important to your experience, and it drives / motivates you to assist in that. Its a WHOLE different meta than anything you've seen unless you have actually played it.

Its clear that anyone who plays an EQEMU is a fucking nerd. We wouldn't be playing a 15 year old game if we weren't. Whether you are a closet nerd or 500 pound neckbeard nerd. You are one. Psychologically people like to associate themselves to something, for most of us its a game, for non-nerds, they have favorite sports teams. When in a game that has "team" choice, we associate ourselves with a team, and then our race/character. For non-nerds, they become die-hard fans of their team. Win or lose, its "fuck the other guys, my teams the best". This holds true in nerd-world. When playing SZ rules (good, evil or neutral), its "fuck the other guys, my teams the best, I'll defend this zone till my fingers bleed and be an e-hero". Kids love being e-heroes, its really the only reason people play this shit. E-hero with E-pixels. In an FFA scenario, you have nothing to fight for but your own survival. Sure you can join a guild, but that is still a very small minority of players that you care about. Those who are non-guilded have no incentive to do anything but fend for themselves.

Its all psychology man. No one is thinking of these rules in terms of game design. Game design, rules, and mechanics promote certain game play. You have rules that make the player only care about himself, you get a selfish community. You have rules that promote team play and co-operation, you see much less selfish players. They don't dissappear completely, but they die down. Team play promotes community, people play MMO's to play with others.

Theres a reason why SZ rules worked on live, and a reason why it was the last PVP rule-set server to be released because it was supposed to be a solution to the problems all the other ones had. Guess what, it worked, and we all had a fucking blast and have yet to re-live that same experience.

This guy is in a tail spin. He has a logically inconsistent premise and is malfunctioning like Hal. I hope Teams99 launches soon.

[valithteezee]

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

Because on FFA its all about you, or your guild. On teams, its about your TEAM and your guild. You are never just fighting for yourself. The health of your team is important to your experience, and it drives / motivates you to assist in that. Its a WHOLE different meta than anything you've seen unless you have actually played it.

Its clear that anyone who plays an EQEMU is a fucking nerd. We wouldn't be playing a 15 year old game if we weren't. Whether you are a closet nerd or 500 pound neckbeard nerd. You are one. Psychologically people like to associate themselves to something, for most of us its a game, for non-nerds, they have favorite sports teams. When in a game that has "team" choice, we associate ourselves with a team, and then our race/character. For non-nerds, they become die-hard fans of their team. Win or lose, its "fuck the other guys, my teams the best". This holds true in nerd-world. When playing SZ rules (good, evil or neutral), its "fuck the other guys, my teams the best, I'll defend this zone till my fingers bleed and be an e-hero". Kids love being e-heroes, its really the only reason people play this shit. E-hero with E-pixels. In an FFA scenario, you have nothing to fight for but your own survival. Sure you can join a guild, but that is still a very small minority of players that you care about. Those who are non-guilded have no incentive to do anything but fend for themselves.

Its all psychology man. No one is thinking of these rules in terms of game design. Game design, rules, and mechanics promote certain game play. You have rules that make the player only care about himself, you get a selfish community. You have rules that promote team play and co-operation, you see much less selfish players. They don't dissappear completely, but they die down. Team play promotes community, people play MMO's to play with others.

Theres a reason why SZ rules worked on live, and a reason why it was the last PVP rule-set server to be released because it was supposed to be a solution to the problems all the other ones had. Guess what, it worked, and we all had a fucking blast and have yet to re-live that same experience.

This.

[Doktoor]

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

There's a reason that an SZ-like ruleset has the most vocal support. That's not some kind of accident. It's because the people who experienced SZ (most of whom also played on RZ or VZ/TZ, by the way) know for a fact that it is the EQ ruleset that created the most memorable server experience by far.

There's also a reason that SZ had by far the lowest server population out of all servers.

EDIT: And I suppose I should clarify that I believe it was more because training was allowed (which means its de facto encouraged) than it was the teams, but the fact that the goods and nuets never really had a chance was a smaller reason, but a reason nonetheless.

Teams kinda worked on VZ and TZ for a time because there were over 1K (I remember seeing 1400 frequently throughout Y2K) people playing on the servers at peak hours. There's no way that this server is going to match that.

If people really want teams, then the more teams you have, the more you're going to dilute the playing field and thus the pvp interaction. It's just numbers. If you're gonna do it, there should be 2, or one is going to become completely irrelevant, just like on SZ.

[Absynthe2k5]

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

There's also a reason that SZ had by far the lowest server population out of all servers.

EDIT: And I suppose I should clarify that I believe it was more because training was allowed (which means its de facto encouraged) than it was the teams, but the fact that the goods and nuets never really had a chance was a smaller reason, but a reason nonetheless.

Teams kinda worked on VZ and TZ for a time because there were over 1K (I remember seeing 1400 frequently throughout Y2K) people playing on the servers at peak hours. There's no way that this server is going to match that.

If people really want teams, then the more teams you have, the more you're going to dilute the playing field and thus the pvp interaction. It's just numbers. If you're gonna do it, there should be 2, or one is going to become completely irrelevant, just like on SZ.

You said it had the lowest pop I'd like to facts cause my memory says different but I could be wrong also.

On SZ population meant nothing in terms of power, in fact evils having higher pop just made a target rich environment. I had bags and bags of coins and was most likely the crappiest gear crappiest played ranger on the server.

Now I loved SZ but I also like FFA, if you can make it so guildies can't screw with each other for raiding. Though FF in battle is a whole other good dynamic for mass pvp. I don't mind lvl ranges but it fosters twinks wheras no lvl engage limit you can have a 60 com in and clean out the bajillion platinum geared twinks.

[Doktoor]

Originally Posted by Absynthe2k5 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You said it had the lowest pop I'd like to facts cause my memory says different but I could be wrong also.

Your memory fails you. I don't know how to offer proof for this.

Although there were a bunch of people on SZ for the first month, the numbers fell sharply after that with all the people jumping ship saying how much it sucked to get trained, attacked while exping, corpse camped, etc.

Within months of SZ's creation, VZ and TZ were still getting 900 to 1000 people daily and SZ was riding round 350 to 450.

Lady Dagarmo's pet project was deemed a failure very early on.


Here's the problem and this is key: If you have 500 people on a PvP server, you're going to have 500 different play styles. Some are going to be all out pvp with no interest in leveling, some are going to be all out pvpers with interest in getting up to high level. Some are going to have moderate interest in pvp and moderate interest in PvE. Some are going to have higher interest in PvE and less interest in PvP, so and and so on.

SZ ruleset favors only the uber Red and the uber Blue, and the people who just like to be ass holes. The ass holes corpse camp newbies for no reason other than to be ass holes, the uber red keep everyone on their toes and the uber blue end up having a gear advantage and what you're left with is a single uber guild mixed with uber red and uber blue folks with a huge gear advantage, kicking the shit out of the rest of the server which causes disillusionment and quitting or rerolling.

[Absynthe2k5]

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

SZ was the culmination of EQ PvP. It was a ruleset specifically engineered by EQ devs to address the failures of RZ, TZ and VZ. No item loot. No crossteaming. No level ranges. No immortal healers, no naked casters, no frantic bagging of items or other incentives to avoid PvP. Just lots of meaningful PvP between teams competing for leveling spots, item camps and raid mobs. Big fights, small fights, multi-zone skirmishes. PvP everywhere. It was war, and it felt like it.

There's a reason that an SZ-like ruleset has the most vocal support. That's not some kind of accident. It's because the people who experienced SZ (most of whom also played on RZ or VZ/TZ, by the way) know for a fact that it is the EQ ruleset that created the most memorable server experience by far.

+1

[JayN]

IN classic when some one consented you; you could loot their whole corpse, abuse-able yes but classic nonetheless, horrible pathing bugs where you could exploit mobs without ever being touched (standing on wall/tent/building anything).

A lot of classic thing wont be the same for good reasons