Custom teams

[Aenor]

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

It adds flavor to the game, makes team choice more meaningful, and adheres to the game's lore (an important but undervalued consideration).

Totally undervalued. My first char was a half elf druid from Surefall Glade and that zone will always be home to me in EQ. If there was ever an invasion, I would be there to defend it. It's this sense of place that I believe EQ delivers more than any other game, even after all these years. That's why I think the REP YO CITY server is a good idea... it encourages community.

[Aenor]

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

Here's the thing about trying to create a mix of custom teams: you probably can't come up with something better than what SZ had. When you start tinkering around making seemingly minor changes, you end up with much bigger impacts than you might initially realize. The SZ teams were not just pulled out of the developers' asses back in the day. They were based upon the experience of both RZ and VZ/TZ, and the expert understanding of the devs regarding class balance and raiding needs.

Why then was SZ such a failure compared to the Race War ruleset? I understand that a lot of hardcore SZ fanbois are on P99 but it doesn't change the fact that Race War was DRAMATICALLY more successful than Sullon Zek, even with its inherent flaws.

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

This is why you can't do something silly and deny an entire team access to Bards, or Shamans, or Monks

This has been addressed.

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

Further, one of the best reasons to use classic SZ teams on the new Teams server is not just that we know their strengths, but their weaknesses as well.

Precisely, we know that SZ teams fails to retain population to the degree that Race War did.

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

This is why I think going with SZ teams is the best bet. They are proven and they are tested, both their pros and cons.

SZ teams are tested and proven to be inferior to Race War teams in retaining population, which is the stated goal of P99's developers.

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

There's a reason you don't see nearly as many people championing RZ or TZ/VZ rules: because they simply weren't as good in comparison.

Care to venture an opinion on this, Sirken?

[Junkman]

yea i mean if they do it evil/good by diety yea bard can be evil

[Lowlife]

+1 for Rep yo city rules WITH class exclusion

[Ebony]

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

Why then was SZ such a failure compared to the Race War ruleset? I understand that a lot of hardcore SZ fanbois are on P99 but it doesn't change the fact that Race War was DRAMATICALLY more successful than Sullon Zek, even with its inherent flaws.

Precisely, we know that SZ teams fails to retain population to the degree that Race War did.

You are 100% right. Even with the Soft Coding problem which is HUGE, TZ & VZ totally killed SZ in popularity.

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

SZ teams are tested and proven to be inferior to Race War teams in retaining population, which is the stated goal of P99's developers.

Yes Devs, please don't make the Team split like SZ had it.

SZ was a total failure from the start because the diety system they used made the Teams EXTREMELY Unbalanced & most players figured that out quickly.

It was like a 2 team server where the "Good" Team was cut into 3rds. 2 of the 3rds being merged into Team Neut & the last 3rd being called Team Good. Good Team had ZERO Team only races or Cities while team evil had a 3 or 4 & I think neut had 1 or 2.

Having a Team only race & City is HUGE for any Team. With out a Team only race or City you have no home area for your Team & all your new players end up harassed by PKs from their own race in their own home city at lvl 1. Please DON'T make it like SZ where one Team had ZERO Team only Races & Cities like it was for Good Team which was already looked down at because people thought Evil was Best from a Race/Class point already.

Each Team needs the same number (or close to, if one Team ends up with 4 & the others 3 it's not the end of the world) of Team only races/cities.

Splitting the Teams by Race or City like Aenor has talked about before would work Really well in my humble opinion!

[Lowlife]

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

You are 100% right. Even with the Soft Coding problem which is HUGE, TZ & VZ totally killed SZ in popularity.




Yes Devs, please don't make the Team split like SZ had it.

SZ was a total failure from the start because the diety system they used made the Teams EXTREMELY Unbalanced & most players figured that out quickly.

It was like a 2 team server where the "Good" Team was cut into 3rds. 2 of the 3rds being merged into Team Neut & the last 3rd being called Team Good. Good Team had ZERO Team only races or Cities while team evil had a 3 or 4 & I think neut had 1 or 2.

Having a Team only race & City is HUGE for any Team. With out a Team only race or City you have no home area for your Team & all your new players end up harassed by PKs from their own race in their own home city at lvl 1. Please DON'T make it like SZ where one Team had ZERO Team only Races & Cities like it was for Good Team which was already looked down at because people thought Evil was Best from a Race/Class point already.

Each Team needs the same number (or close to, if one Team ends up with 4 & the others 3 it's not the end of the world) of Team only races/cities.

Splitting the Teams by Race or City like Aenor has talked about before would work Really well in my humble opinion!

quoted for troof

[Origin]

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

Racial teams proposal with a human twist. Designed for the purpose of having a lore-friendly and class equal distribution between the three teams. The three key classes (bard, shaman, monk) need to be accessible to all three teams if this server is to thrive in the long run.

Evil Team:
Dark Elf
Ogre
Troll
Iksar (with Kunark)

Neutral Team:
Barbarian
Dwarf
Erudite
Gnome

Good Team:
Half Elf
Halfling
High Elf
Wood Elf

Humans can be a part of ANY team based on their diety. So, a human bard can be evil, neutral or good if, for example, he/she worships Rallos Zek, Veeshan or Tunare, respectively.

The evil team gets fatties, necromancers, shadow knights and doesn't get paladins, druids or rangers (and start without monks).

The good team gets fairies, druids, paladins and doesn't get necromancers or shadow knights

The neutral team don't get paladins, druids or rangers (start with monks).

Here's the catch: In order for the good team to get shamans, Barbarian shamans need to be able to worship a good diety (since they can only worship The Tribunal, which is more neutral). If they could worship Mithaniel Marr or Erollisi Marr, or something similar, which has some lore relevance, they could be fit into the good team and make the good team complete and able to compete.

The Evil team will initially be a notch underpowered due to the fact that Iksar get released with Kunark. So the Evil team will be lacking monks all throughout Vanilla. Seeing as how the Evil team is generally the most attractive anyways, not having Iksar/monks in the short term will be a good test as to the balance of this kind of ruleset. However, keep in mind that this disadvantage will be offset by the 9,309,398 shadow knights that this team will have.

Slightly modified proposal i made before.

You retards saying that every team should get every class should just not play EQ at all.

[Vexenu]

It's disingenuous to say that SZ was less popular than the race war servers, because the server came out after both VZ and TZ, which obviously meant a huge chunk of the PvP playerbase had no interest in re-rolling from scratch on SZ. There's also the fact that SZ's hardcore ruleset (no level limit PvP, training, etc...) turned off many players.

But those things have nothing to do with how well SZ's deity-based team structure worked.

It's obvious that most of the people calling for a city-based team model never played any significant time on SZ, or else they would realize that SZ was a de facto city-based server. Each team had at least one city they considered a stronghold (Goods had Halas/Qeynos, Neutrals had Rivervale & Kaladim, Evils had Neriak, Cabilis, Grobb/Oggok & OT). The remaining cities were contested. Each team would cluster around its stronghold cities for protection while leveling as much as possible. It was very obvious when you went into "enemy territory", and people generally didn't do so unless they were specifically looking for PvP or were rolling with a full group to hit a dungeon.

And yes, the SZ ruleset was not perfect due to the imbalance between the Good and Evil teams, which is something I already addressed. I also wrote a giant thread that's been viewed almost 4k times specifically outlining very simple changes to correct this imbalance. As I said earlier, the fact that we know the weaknesses of the SZ system is not a bad thing. It's a good thing, because it means we know what to do to fix them. Using an untested ruleset is much more problematic in this regard because we won't know what problems will emerge from it until it's too late.

This server cannot afford to have a bad launch. We only get one chance, which is why it needs to be done with the right ruleset to encourage high population retention.

[Origin]

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

It's disingenuous to say that SZ was less popular than the race war servers, because the server came out after both VZ and TZ, which obviously meant a huge chunk of the PvP playerbase had no interest in re-rolling from scratch on SZ. There's also the fact that SZ's hardcore ruleset (no level limit PvP, training, etc...) turned off many players.

But those things have nothing to do with how well SZ's deity-based team structure worked.

It's obvious that most of the people calling for a city-based team model never played any significant time on SZ, or else they would realize that SZ was a de facto city-based server. Each team had at least one city they considered a stronghold (Goods had Halas/Qeynos, Neutrals had Rivervale & Kaladim, Evils had Neriak, Cabilis, Grobb/Oggok & OT). The remaining cities were contested. Each team would cluster around its stronghold cities for protection while leveling as much as possible. It was very obvious when you went into "enemy territory", and people generally didn't do so unless they were specifically looking for PvP or were rolling with a full group to hit a dungeon.

And yes, the SZ ruleset was not perfect due to the imbalance between the Good and Evil teams, which is something I already addressed. I also wrote a giant thread that's been viewed almost 4k times specifically outlining very simple changes to correct this imbalance. As I said earlier, the fact that we know the weaknesses of the SZ system is not a bad thing. It's a good thing, because it means we know what to do to fix them. Using an untested ruleset is much more problematic in this regard because we won't know what problems will emerge from it until it's too late.

This server cannot afford to have a bad launch. We only get one chance, which is why it needs to be done with the right ruleset to encourage high population retention.

Wisdom.

[Something'Witty]

Teams Green, Red and Blue, hardcoded and chosen at character creation. I know all you role players would HATE it, but it would be class / race balanced.