Nilbog's Old Teams back to the top

[Ret.SaxonAlex]

Sorry, just talking fast. Sometimes I hate thinking about my words. I guess in that sense two teams could work. I still think player cities could bring a level playing field for everyone. Also in shadowbane there were mine fights. A mine can give a certain resource. But once you have it you have it for a X given time. Maybe if one guild is only on at a certain time then another guild can get resources for their city. I realize thats for another game but /shrugs. I guess two teams might work, would be cool if there was something else to level the playing field though.

I also thought, for super everquest; NPC cities could be conquered too. But also its like a random hurricane. Sometimes the NPCs can revolt and take back their city. Also, if good team dies, then there is a small chance they can get back Felwithe.

[Gustoo]

A little too complex Saxon.

Sullon had heavy imbalance and I think that is why we want to try 2 teams to make it a bit more straight forward. Also 3 teams makes it hard to get all teams the right classes. Sullon Zek to outsiders is most known for being heavily permanently imbalanced in favor of evil team and the same would be the case here.

Rallos zek was +-4 for its history, but on this server there was originally a variable PVP level range that was later switched to the steady 4 that we have now. May have been switched at the same time they removed the PVP exp death and I believe tinkered with the resists.

I wanna say that was 100 years ago and the last time R99 was touched. Not sure tho.

[Vexenu]

Region based teams are a good idea to encourage intra-team cooperation. I outlined my version of the idea extensively in this post, which I will just re-paste below in full.

PvP server idea: Norrathian civil war

This is something I've theorycrafted a lot over the years. I think Sullon Zek's ruleset should be used as the starting point, with three hardcoded teams (no cross-teaming) and unrestricted level range PvP. I would also allow training as a tactic. Basically encourage a very laissez faire approach by the GMs: anything goes besides hacking, boxing, etc... It should be a feeling of anything goes total war between the teams. This also makes the server much easier to police by the GMs and discourages favoritism and rule lawyering. Three teams is better than two because it creates a much more chaotic and unpredictable atmosphere. But one of the big problems with SZ was that the Evil team enjoyed too many advantages over the Good and Neutral teams. They not only had better races, but they had the entire continent of Kunark as their home turf. So while the Goods and Neutrals were fighting each other constantly to level on Antonica, Odus and Faydwer, Evils could mostly level in peace on Kunark. So SZ played out with the Evil team snowballing the early leveling advantage Kunark provided into dominance for most of the server's life. So you'd need factors in place to prevent that from repeating itself.

Another consideration is that you really want to encourage zone control by each team, and so grouping teams geographically makes a lot of sense. This allows each team to have relatively safe low and mid-level zones to level in and naturally groups teams together to better defend against enemy incursions into their territory.

A third consideration is that each team needs to have access to each class if they are going to be equally viable for raiding. It's just not fair to deny a team Monks or Bards or Shaman and expect that endgame-focused players would bother to roll there knowing they would be screwed when it came to raiding.

All that being the case, I would divvy the teams up in the guise of a Norrathian civil war, with three factions fighting each other, which are:

Qeynos Team
- Humans
- Barbarians
- Erudites
- Half-Elves

This team would naturally control all of Odus and the area around Qeynos, extending from Halas through the Karanas and into Highpass Hold.

The Dark Team
- Ogres
- Trolls
- Dark Elves
- Iksar
- Traitor Humans

The Dark Team would naturally control all of Southern Antonica, from Grobb/Oggok to Lavastorm, including Freeport where the Traitor Humans would start.

The Shortie Team
- Dwarves
- Gnomes
- Wood Elves
- High Elves
- Halflings
- Traitor Barbarians
- Traitor Humans

The shorties would control all of Faydwer.

So you basically have a race war server with humans/Barbs as the wild card being able to defect to any team. This is necessary in order to give the Dark team access to Monks, Bards, Druids, Rangers and Paladins (mostly the first two) and the shortie team access to Monks, Shaman, Necros and Shadowknights (mostly the first two). The Qeynos team would already have access to all classes.

You would need to make some minor modifications for this ruleset to be viable. Though unclassic, I think these changes are minor enough and justifiable enough in the lore given the context of a Norrathian civil war disrupting the normal order of things and creating refugees:

1) Halflings allowed to start in Kelethin.
2) Shortie Humans and Barbs allowed to start in Kelethin.
3) Monk and Shaman trainers placed in Kelethin.
4) Necro and SK trainers placed near the chessboard in BB.

The end result is that each team would have access to every class and would have natural zone control over large contiguous areas of Norrath. You also preserve a degree of RP in that you have teams that make sense within the context of EQ lore. Humans (and the odd Barb Shaman) as wildcards make sense, with the other races being more locked in to their faction alignments/racial loyalties.

Loot mechanics: Item loot has its advantages (the emphasis on NO DROP gear adds a neat layer of complexity to the game) but overall it's just too much of a turn off for most players to stomach. I would instead suggest full coin loot and 50% XP loss for a death to a player within 5 levels of you. If you die to a player who cons red to you (>5 levels higher) you lose no XP and they are unable to loot anything from you. They can kill you but you don't lose anything. Loot and scoot should be up to the teams themselves to grant and police. A respected foe might be granted safe passage. A known shithead/griefer might get corpse camped for days. No guarantees. Corpse camping should be a legal tactic/option.

Kunark and Velious:
The expansions need to be treated judiciously, because they both offer challenges for PvP balance on a Teams server. Kunark is a problem because it is a natural safe haven for the Dark team. And Velious is a huge problem because high-end Velious gear basically destroys PvP balance by making melee classes unkillable. So the first team to get a bunch of NToV geared melees will steamroll everyone else. That being the case, I would propose the following:

1) Kunark release must be delayed at least 6 months, or even a full year as per the classic timeline. This would probably be enough to prevent the Dark team from completely dominating the continent, because by the time it comes out the other teams will have enough high level players to make successful incursions into Kunark.

2) Velious must be released in two stages: stage 1 would allow access to all of IC, EW and GD, as well as Thurgadin and Kael (minus AoW/Statue). This gives teams access to low-end Velious raid targets and Thurg armor. This stage would probably represent the ideal point of class balance for EQ PvP, and the server could easily be stopped here indefinitely. But it should pause at this stage for at least six months to a year. This would allow each team time to be competitive for acquiring a baseline of Velious gear. Then you could release stage 2 of Velious and open up the high-end ToV loots, which would start to be the end of the good PvP on the server but players would probably demand after getting bored of being stuck in stage 1.

Team balance: The Devs could promote team balance by giving the weakest team a standing 20% XP bonus. Team balance would be determined by a simple function of population and the teamwide K/D ratio and could be calculated on a weekly basis.

Random balance considerations:
- SoulFire is Paladin-only
- Amulet of Necropotence is made NO DROP
- OT hammer is removed from game, or a comparable FV hammer is added via a similar quest in FV. Necessary to prevent Dark team from having a big mobilization advantage in Kunark/Velious era.

[Gustoo]

I like your whole build out Vexenu but I think that the 2 teams dynamic is 1: something that hasn't been tried before and 2: easier to balance.

For example, access to guk and CT and basically the lower disgusting part of Antonica is pretty much the most important part of vanilla game. Faydwer is great but it really is just a place to level up to get ready to go to Guk. Without changing a lot about the game I don't see how you can really make 3 teams viable contenders for Guk. At the very least it is very challenging geographically.

Also, getting enough good players and at least 3 good leaders (one for each team) is something that I think will also be significantly challenging here. Your idea might be the very best one but I am afraid about it being less practical, or requiring more customization than a 2 teams setup would require.

My ideal concept is one that is something that is relatively simple to implement on this project with the limited resources available to us.

The staged velious roll out is pure gold.

[Vexenu]

Certainly valid concerns, especially in regards to the importance of Southern Antonica. I don't think this would be a big issue, however. The main reason you want to have geographically contiguous "homelands" for each team is to facilitate a reasonably safe early leveling environment for new players. So the fact that Faydwer doesn't have any dungeons to match Guk is fine. It doesn't need to. As you said, it's simply a place where the Shortie team can level relatively safely into the mid levels. The entire Southern Antonica area running from Lavastorm, through Freeport/Commonlands and over to Guk would end up being the warzone of the server, where all three teams wind up battling heavily for access to the two classic endgame dungeons.

As for leaders, I think you would be surprised how people rise to the occasion and how nature abhors a vacuum. Look at what happened with Green and Teal. When Green split, many people (and guilds) intentionally went to Teal to have more breathing room and opportunity. The same dynamic holds true with having multiple teams. No competitive guild wants to play second fiddle to another on its own team. Competitively-minded players with leadership qualities would thus naturally spread out among all three teams. Ultimately I think you would end up with one major endgame-PvE capable guild on each team, with a smattering of smaller PvP focused guilds who are there to enjoy the fighting, acting as zone enforcers/protectors and PKs.

[Gustoo]

One can hope.

Wizard port in to South Ro wizzie spires, right in the heart of the home town of some ogres seems like a difficult avenue of attack. Same with porting into lavastorm.

Most importantly, Ogre, Troll, and Iksar are the number 1, 2, and 3 race for murderers and Dark elfs being a close 4th. The only race missing is Gnome on that team for having literally every race of choice for people who commit acts of violence in everquest PVP. That is probably the biggest challenge with this cool setup.

Probably more importantly, the Qeynos team is a total dumpster, with 3 blind races, and then the worst race in the game (half elfs) and 2/4 of their races are available on the other teams. That qeynos team goes straight into the trash can, day one unfortunately. Their only exclusive race, the erudite, is quite unpopular because they are blind and their supreme intellect is partially impaired by their need for +5 agility and their lack of hide (dark elf) and their lack of hax vision (gnome) for casters.

Probably regardless of the other problems, that blind team in the least popular region of norrath is going to struggle hard.

[Gustoo]

Also I need to add that as a halfling I am offended that you would think I would ever start outside of the shire without first being flayed alive and turned into a pile of goose jelly for a troll to eat. We don't leave the shire bro.

Lets go with Nilbogs idea since its easier to split up and no team is super terrible, what do you think?

[Vexenu]

I would certainly play it if was the only option for a Teams server. But, and I can only speak personally here, the lore-defying nature of that team split would never stop bothering me. High Elves teamed with Trolls and Iksar? Wat? I feel like a better team split that still maintains some semblance of EQ lore is possible, whether it ends up being two or three teams.

[Ret.SaxonAlex]

everyone vs iksar. but iksars level faster. /scoffs in iksar. your "modernized" Firiona Vie only makes you depressed and destroys kunark.

[Gustoo]

Everquest classes and races don't split well into two teams. The natural alliances of most of the races don't work well in a (halfway balanced) pvp environment. Everquest live had 3x teams servers with 3 teams each and none of them were very good. Sullon was cool but only because it had some flair, but in the end it was the least balance of all with evil team mega squashing.

So we would need to add another piece of lore. Like there is some world breaking event taking place and one side decides that they want to see the world broken, and the other side wishes to see the world persist.

So while high elfs do not want to see trolls exist, they believe that life is worth saving and if the scum trolls will fight along side the high elfs, the high elfs will do so in order to save existence.

Something like that.