An alternative to variance

[Juryiel]

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

You aren't being limited in getting kills due to rotation constraints.

Your own membership's size, and playtime, coupled with stupid 16-hour variance windows are what are inhibiting your guild from killing Trakanon.

The reason I care is because it allowed guilds to get 2 kills in the time others got 1, because getting a kill and lockout wasn't dropping guilds to the bottom of the rotation.

And again, you can suggest these guilds could threaten to go FFA, but they won't. Because they are casual and only have 4-hour windows to work with.

Still makes no sense to me. 2 guilds capable of killing a mob get 2x the kills as 1 guild capable of killing a mob. They get more kills but there's more guilds. Both are assumed to be capable to solo the mob. If you want to participate in more kills you can always ally with guilds too. YOU could be one of the guilds the smaller guild goes to for an alliance friend when they need one, and you can share in the kill and the loot.

As far as FFA, if the class R list is 10 guilds long and a mob spawns once a week, that's 10 weeks. If I get one shot at it every 10 weeks and only have a 17% chance to have it spawn during a time I can kill it (Since I'm barred from an alliance) it is definitely far better for me to try my hand at FFA. If my guild is competitive during those 4 hours we're on, we'll surely get more that way. And even if we don't, we'll at least have the fun of trying. Getting together to go after a dragon etc.

The FFA thing is not a 'threat', again I think you think of it wrong. It's just that there is no incentive to be bound by the rotation if I'm in that situation. Why woudl I give up the freedom to go after a mob whenever it spawns during my window? What do I get in return for doing that? The rotation slot is not a reward to be given. The rotation slot is a sacrifice from any guild who can kill a mob. They are doing YOU (and other rotation guilds) a favor by being in that slot. If they are not in that slot, all other guilds on the rotation suffer to the point where it can lead to rotation collapse. Maybe such a guild can't outcompete the larger class R guilds, but it probably can outcompete the smaller ones, so yes if they FFA and were actually capable, they would screw up the rotation.

[Troubled]

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

As far as FFA, if the class R list is 10 guilds long and a mob spawns once a week, that's 10 weeks. If I get one shot at it every 10 weeks and only have a 17% chance to have it spawn during a time I can kill it (Since I'm barred from an alliance) it is definitely far better for me to try my hand at FFA.

Not that I understand what you guys are getting at by talking about the rotation in a thread about FFA variance/socking, but just to clarify, you would get a shot at it once every 30 weeks. R slots come along 1/3 of the time.

The rub was that guilds would gimpatron up for mobs like Gore and disperse for shit like VS, creating actual scenarios where you'd see your shot at the mob once every 30 weeks. It would have been acceptable if all those guilds could kill the rest of the mobs solo, but they couldn't and that's why we introduced gatekeepers in a tiered progression system. Keeping the rotation as is was going to create even MORE smaller guilds to clog it up. We weren't looking to make sure every guild survived. Just wanted to keep things moving along.

Since the fall of the rotation, the health of surviving R guilds has improved and the raid scene has become more competitive, which is a great thing for guilds actually looking to survive winter in the wild west environment that it will undoubtedly be. I know my guild has learned a lot and I can tell others have as well, as well as more people showing up ready to raid FFA targets.


Anyway, I still think ending variance is the only way to stop socking, unless they actually coded in random repops as Sirken mentioned.

[Juryiel]

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

Not that I understand what you guys are getting at by talking about a rotation in a thread about FFA variance/socking, but just to clarify, you would get a shot at it once every 30 weeks. R slots come along 1/3 of the time.

The rub was that guilds would gimpatron up for mobs like Gore and disperse for shit like VS, creating actual scenarios where you'd see your shot at the mob once every 30 weeks. It would have been acceptable if all those guilds could kill the rest of the mobs solo, but they couldn't and that's why we introduced gatekeepers in a tiered progression system.

I thought the thread was about the best solutions to the poopsocking problem (rotation!) [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

And yeah that number was just to be a simple example (1/10) and not based on server circumstances.

I think the issue with the second point is because guilds are just put on the rotation for all mobs by default. Though, every person I spoke with seemed to appreciate that concern and be willing to come to a reasonable solution (that did not involve making Gore a gatekeeper).

[Troubled]

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

I thought the thread was about the best solutions to the poopsocking problem (rotation!) [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

And yeah that number was just to be a simple example (1/10) and not based on server circumstances.

I think the issue with the second point is because guilds are just put on the rotation for all mobs by default. Though, every person I spoke with seemed to appreciate that concern and be willing to come to a reasonable solution (that did not involve making Gore a gatekeeper).

The socking problem is not just an R problem which is the only place you can invoke the rotation, making it basically futile as a means to stop all socking.

P.S. We made CT the gatekeeper in the last couple iterations of the proposal.

[Juryiel]

I didn't see every iteration of the proposal, only because the whole ultimatum and short time window thing seemed like a bad approach. Why not even have each mob be its own gatekeeper? I would guess not many people would object to that. At least not of the sort of "Well you are gate keeping an easier mob behind a tougher mob".

Also, GMs can do whatever. Maybe they'll surprise us by abolishing C/R/FFA and make everything into a rotation! I guess I'm not sure what the thread is about. Removing variance is the easiest thing to do but by far not the best. It is definitely the one most likely to get done, but then, that doesn't really require a thread does it? GMs know we sock and that we want lower variance.

PLayer rotation would eliminate socking in R and lower it in FFA (less R guilds would compete in FFA), and no GM intervention is required. So I think it's highly related. You want the GMs to do something to eliminate poopsocking? Why don't you try to do something to at least reduce it first to show GMs how important it is to you? [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] Personally, as long as things are FFA I support as large variance as possible, so instead of reducing variance I would make the probability density function for a mob spawning to be uniform, so that a mob has an equal chance to spawn at any point in time. Would love to see people poopsock that. There will be no windows [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Pint]

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

The reality was Taken/Div wanted a much tighter system, the small guilds wanted a very forgiving system, BDA played moderator. For a year the loose system was employed. Once it became clear there were some serious flaws in the system BDA re-evaluated our position and pushed for reform to fix the system and to prepare our guild for velious, those views happened to fall more in line with taken and divs thoughts.

The rotation fell apart because the small guilds would rather fight for loot then agree to the reformed system. The facts don't change just because you dislike how it went down.

Again, open up that fap archive, let everyone see just how it went down.. They're just the facts after all right?

[Culkasi]

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

replace all raid spawns with completely random earthquakes that may or may not ever happen. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I understand why some people glorify this option, but reality is, it will just turn into a 24/7 sock. Guilds that want to see mobs will have to ask their members to camp out on certain raid spawns all the time, and the guilds where people have multiple level 60s will be able to 24/7 sock multiple spawns at the same time, whilst guilds where people are still working on leveling/gearing their characters are out of the game.
With a 16 hour window, even the casualest guilds have a chance to plan for a window and attempt the mob - if we have no idea when the mobs spawn, it'll just be even crazier.

Reality is, that kind of poopsocking happens because guilds choose to do it - they clearly have members that are willing to spend their time on it - hats off to them. We used to have a good class system that seperated those that were wiling to do it, and those that wanted to play the game differently - lets focus on fixing that so it once again denotes that difference, and don't try to fix something, that for the poeple who want this playstyle, is not broken.

[Brocode]

Want to end Socking? Random Spawns with no fixed timers, aka, people cant sock what they dont know when it will happen, but tracking would increase.

Want to end tracking? Make FFA spawn on any dungeon of the game.

Want to make it challengeful? Make different classes of Spawn, not only by guild but first hours can be stronger/weaker than normal.


Just food for thoughts, its not about classic anymore, its about making the raid scene better for the server. And there might be a lot of ideas for the raid enviroment, top guilds will always try to exploit the most of it.

[Daldaen]

If they ever went to random spawn timers I hope they do it the way sim repops are done.

Whenever a mob dpawns a yellow text goes out with an earthquake and the yellow text is specific to the mob who spawns.

"An undead dragon roars from his lair" - Trakanon Spawns
"The sound of bones flying together to create a monstrosity rings in your ears" - Draco spawn
"The God of Hate awakens" - Innoruuk dpawns
Etc.

That way you don't get rewarded for shitting in a sock staring at a wall or spamming track. The entire Server knows it spawned and may choose to contest it if it's a good time for them to do so.

Or they could just move to fully sim repops and we could emulate a Euro server that was going down all the time with tons of server Respawns.

[Llodd]

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

Again, open up that fap archive, let everyone see just how it went down.. They're just the facts after all right?

Yes please. Could we see how this went down? I assume there's nothing to hide in there? Who has the right to this archive anyway?