A simple poll regarding player raid rules

[Humerox]

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

What is the server going to do when there is enough big guilds to perma camp each of the raid bosses, and no other guilds will be able to push them out?

We're already there. Big guilds are even starting to split camps. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Remiel]

Rotation but with only 1 hour windows, imo.

the 2nd guild on the list for the raid boss can call 1 hour to engage on the 1st guild and if they failed, 2nd guild gets their 1 hour to engage.

This:
- eliminates poopsocking (if the guild is confident on their ability to mobilise quickly - otherwise it's the guild's choice to keep poopsocking)
- gives other guilds a chance to the raid bosses given the 1 hour window

Fair system. everyone has their shot, if they dont work hard to get their kills, other guilds will get their shots.

[Daldolma]

FFA, IMO. First to engage has rights to the mob. EverQuest was never fair, it's not meant to be fair. It's meant to be fun and competitive. And here's what's not fun or competitive: camping a 15 minute encounter for 3 days. Here's what is fun and competitive: finding out Naggy just popped and seeing if you can mobilize enough people fast enough to a) beat Guilds X, Y, Z there, and b) actually succeed in killing Naggy.

And if you AFK 3/4 of your guild on top of a raid mob's spawn point, IMO, you should be 100% susceptible to being trained. Does it suck to get trained? Yeah. But it also sucks to ruin a game, and I'd argue that days-on-end AFK camping of raid mobs does a lot more to ruin this server than a little bit of rivalry. The irony is, NOBODY wins under the current server rules. Sure, IB and DA get the phat lewtz, but do they really enjoy AFK'ing for 48 hours and getting texted at 4 AM to log in for rezzes while poopsocking raid targets? I'm gonna venture a guess and say no -- I assume they do it because if they didn't, someone else would.

I appreciate everything the GMs do on this server, but in this case, IMO, they need to lay off and let the game dictate itself. In the grand scheme of things, I believe the multi-day camping of mobs is a lot worse for this server (and a lot more out of the classic-experience) than unfairness, training, and competition between guilds.

That being said, I do realize that discussing what is best for the server is a bit idealistic, as politics unfortunately play a large role in this matter.

[Agaron]

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

FFA, IMO. First to engage has rights to the mob. EverQuest was never fair, it's not meant to be fair. It's meant to be fun and competitive. And here's what's not fun or competitive: camping a 15 minute encounter for 3 days. Here's what is fun and competitive: finding out Naggy just popped and seeing if you can mobilize enough people fast enough to a) beat Guilds X, Y, Z there, and b) actually succeed in killing Naggy.

And if you AFK 3/4 of your guild on top of a raid mob's spawn point, IMO, you should be 100% susceptible to being trained. Does it suck to get trained? Yeah. But it also sucks to ruin a game, and I'd argue that days-on-end AFK camping of raid mobs does a lot more to ruin this server than a little bit of rivalry. The irony is, NOBODY wins under the current server rules. Sure, IB and DA get the phat lewtz, but do they really enjoy AFK'ing for 48 hours and getting texted at 4 AM to log in for rezzes while poopsocking raid targets? I'm gonna venture a guess and say no -- I assume they do it because if they didn't, someone else would.

I appreciate everything the GMs do on this server, but in this case, IMO, they need to lay off and let the game dictate itself. In the grand scheme of things, I believe the multi-day camping of mobs is a lot worse for this server (and a lot more out of the classic-experience) than unfairness, training, and competition between guilds.

That being said, I do realize that discussing what is best for the server is a bit idealistic, as politics unfortunately play a large role in this matter.

Wow. Someone else who feels the same.

[xorbier]

FFA. That would be so much fun. Rotation = welfare.

[Daldolma]

It's worse than welfare. Rotation doesn't fix the core problem of the current system, which is the total elimination of competition. The encounters in classic are not hard, given sufficient time and personnel. If you agree to just let one guild amass 30 people and spend half an hour prepping for a raid mob, this game is fucking easy. What made EQ end-game challenging was the time constraint, the fact that you were always on this time crunch to engage before another guild could beat you to the punch.

The whole dynamic is thrown off when there's no competition. You don't have to make the choice between engaging Naggy with 16 or waiting 5 minutes for another 5-6 people. There's no risk to waiting. In live, there was. You were trying to engage before the next guy, which means every guild would engage the second they had what they considered to be the absolute bare minimum in terms of personnel and preparation. That led to under-manning raid mobs, which is fun. And difficult. It's easy to wipe when you're going at it with too few raiders -- which would open the floor up for the next guild.

EQ Live end-game raiding was baseball. At the moment, P99 end-game raiding is tee-ball. You're not playing against anyone. You're just sizing it up and whacking the shit out of it.

[rioisk]

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

It's worse than welfare. Rotation doesn't fix the core problem of the current system, which is the total elimination of competition. The encounters in classic are not hard, given sufficient time and personnel. If you agree to just let one guild amass 30 people and spend half an hour prepping for a raid mob, this game is fucking easy. What made EQ end-game challenging was the time constraint, the fact that you were always on this time crunch to engage before another guild could beat you to the punch.

The whole dynamic is thrown off when there's no competition. You don't have to make the choice between engaging Naggy with 16 or waiting 5 minutes for another 5-6 people. There's no risk to waiting. In live, there was. You were trying to engage before the next guy, which means every guild would engage the second they had what they considered to be the absolute bare minimum in terms of personnel and preparation. That led to under-manning raid mobs, which is fun. And difficult. It's easy to wipe when you're going at it with too few raiders -- which would open the floor up for the next guild.

EQ Live end-game raiding was baseball. At the moment, P99 end-game raiding is tee-ball. You're not playing against anyone. You're just sizing it up and whacking the shit out of it.

Remember that in 1999 the vast majority of players were probably playing on dial-up. Further, cell phones weren't huge then and neither was text messaging. It isn't the same game because we aren't the same players. We have hindsight of all quests, all mobs, all zones. Of course the game will seem like tee-ball. There's no challenge the second time around.

I'm sure many of these hardcore raiders on P1999 just want to relive their glory from 1999 because of the novelty of being uber back then in a mmorpg. Today's mmorpgs don't provide that satisfaction because everybody walks around in the same equipment because everything is instanced (think WoW). They need to feel cool with their god loot. Let them. If they want to spend a large portion of their life on this game - let them have as much loot as they want. Remember, even if you win the special Olympics -- you're still retarded.

[Dukat]

Raiding is kind of a boring, tedious activity. This game IS freakin' old. Thats why I welcome any kind of competitive metagame. I think FFA is as classic as this server can get. I think players would start talking to other players instead of to GMs.

There comes a time when you need to take the training wheels off and ride freely....

[rioisk]

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

Raiding is kind of a boring, tedious activity. This game IS freakin' old. Thats why I welcome any kind of competitive metagame. I think FFA is as classic as this server can get. I think players would start talking to other players instead of to GMs.

There comes a time when you need to take the training wheels off and ride freely....

I have to agree. Yeah it's "civilized" to not allow training or behavior that negatively affects others but in the current state of things the raid scene is boring as hell without it. I'm sure people would have a hard time poopsocking AFK is they run the risk of being trained while they were away.

Think of all the problems it would solve. GMs should just say "we'll fix bugs and glitches but otherwise players are left to their own devices, they can make of the world what they wish". May be the game will turn into a cutthroat train-fest. May be in the beginning it will be that way before guilds start figuring out ways to not step on each others toes. That's just the point though - if there are limited mean to step on the toes of others then the only leverage anybody has in the game is going by the GM rules to win.

Let's face it, we might see complaints on the forums about trains to the EC tunnel and banning people who do them but while we're sitting in EC trying to buy an item for an hour or so we can't help but smile when we see a huge pile of mobs run past us with a huge flux of /ooc and /shout screaming "TRAIN TO TUNNEL". We scramble with mixed feelings of "not again" to "thank god a reason to get up and cast a spell". I watch as many players go to town on destroying the mobs that some a-hole brought to piss people off.

I've heard it said many times by many people involved in the poopsocking that they don't like it. They continue only because it's the only way to win. These concepts are at odds - enjoyment and winning - when they really ought not to be - especially if we as the playerbase can help influence the rules.

What do you guys really want? Do you want a carebear environment where things are handed to you so long as you "maintain a presence at a camp", idle, chit chatting about football with your guild and cracking internet jokes, and quickly springing to attention when you get a pop. OR do you want a dynamic, fast paced, unforgiving world where people can totally screw you over and you can totally screw them over. Where you can act nobly and respect a guild as they get a kill or become notorious for stealing and doing whatever it takes.

The game will become much more than sitting around waiting for easy kills. It will become a game of politics, of eagerness, of preparation, of collusion, of training, of leapfrogging. You say "But if we allow training it will happen 24/7." perhaps, but may be not, may be in the beginning people will train left and right, but perhaps eventually learn nobody will get anywhere if that's all they do it one another. Perhaps an enchanter can camp frenzy in lguk but a group can get rid of him by training....in the process losing something....their reputation as respectful players. If done enough time, they'll be refused groups with the people they train. They'll be socially blacklisted. Eventually though I think players will form their own solutions to not have to harm one another's game play, and it will be their solution, the players, not the GMs telling them to play nice - because they aren't required - but because it's a social game where people must deal with the positive and negative inclinations of others.

A FFA system isn't as bad as people anticipated and those who fear it fear the destructive capabilities of others to prevent them from obtaining loot. This is nothing more than hiding behind the GMs.

You can choose to look at FFA as unlocking the gate to the deepest darkest motives to grief others in the game OR as a huge layer of complex and dynamic challenge of interacting with other REAL LIFE human beings in a social environment where one is given the choice of how one wishes to interact: the social consequences and benefits in full swing.

[rioisk]

Why have we not looked at an obvious solution? Keep camp rules the way they are and return boss mobs to no variance. This would make it so if a guild wants to go kill Nagafen when they know he'll spawn then they must forfeit their camp rights to another target. Make it so a guild can only claim one target at a time so you don't get huge guilds split between multiple mobs.

This system would essentially equate to each raid target being permacamped by a single guild and switched between one another when they want different loot. Might be messy now with so few targets to kill but it'll get better with kunark. There must be less guilds than raid targets for this to work.