Your ideal red server setup

[Jibartik]

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

One thing I didn't see mentioned (granted I skimmed) is plugging. My brief stint on red was a non-stop plugfest. If someone wasn't clearly winning they were immediately B-lining to the nearest zoneline and alt f4'ing to avoid YT. I don't know what the best solution is. I don't know how realistic/possible this is to code but maybe something like if you've taken PvP damage in the last 30 seconds you can't zone? I don't know if the server can differentiate pvp damage and pve damage. If not maybe just add an item with an instant clicky you can debuff people with that prevents zoning. Click item on someone and it applies a 30s debuff that prevents zoning. This could be abused to grief but you always have the option of just killing the person debuffing you. It would have to be restricted to +/- 4 levels or whatever so you don't have 60's spam griefing lvl 20s or whatever.

I guess another solution would be to make it so disconnecting mid-zone still sends your character to the other end of the zoneline for ~30 seconds where you could be killed. This could cause some unfortunate situations where you legit DC during a zone and are helplessly murdered on the other side. But I think the trade off of putting a stop to plugging is probably worth it?

if you cant kill someone before they plug thats on you

[Gustoo]

When you plug, you fucking lose. You hard lost the game. You disconnected your game from the server because you couldn’t hack it.

Kill / Death ratio is for lamers from other games. If you drive someone to plug, you win. If you wait for them to log back on and have em plug again that’s an option you can choose.

That’s part of the item loot game. How far from a zone line do you wear gear of what quality? Real pros don’t give a damn they are playing 18hr a day anyways and will recover any lost gear in short order and will make up for it in the crap they get from other people.

The anti item loot chumps never lived it. The rallos zek economy was the bomb because good droppable gear was always a risk so it traded at reasonable prices all the time. Fungi is never 120k when it’s best value is a twink item and twinks can be ganked. Pks flipped the junk they acquired quick because they wanted to go kill more players, and didn’t wanna waste time scratching the last 1kpp of value out of an item. Resellers had a great time basically serving as a fence for PKd goods.

But yeah its a bit much to swallow for people not accustomed to a better way of playing a game.

Teams with item loot would be a good compromise

[Tassador]

Terrible thread by people who don’t read the room well. Enjoy disappointed #6969 post numbnuts….

[Tradesonred]

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

The anti item loot chumps never lived it. The rallos zek economy was the bomb because good droppable gear was always a risk so it traded at reasonable prices all the time. Fungi is never 120k when it’s best value is a twink item and twinks can be ganked. Pks flipped the junk they acquired quick because they wanted to go kill more players, and didn’t wanna waste time scratching the last 1kpp of value out of an item. Resellers had a great time basically serving as a fence for PKd goods.

But yeah its a bit much to swallow for people not accustomed to a better way of playing a game.

Teams with item loot would be a good compromise

Im just worried that item loot didnt age so well and we might be seeing it with rose-tinted glasses. Not everyone will want to sit in Gfay to sell loot and periodically reload on items, after youve experienced things like wow AH and other newer mechanics with better QoL that lets you sell items while you play.

One of the top priority imo should be to make a server setup that can get the pop and keep it for as long as possible. I wouldnt have this conversation if EQ emu pop was a potential 25k between blue green and red + you could box your item seller char. But we gotta work with we have. I wish they would code in the no drop sets because thats the best of both worlds (and kind of vanilla, since no drop sets were in-game during halloween event of 2001). You get item loot, you get an economy but casuals are not going to play naked either. Its especially bad for melees. But this will 99% not happen so.

[greatdane]

Three teams. Teams are pretty important, otherwise the server is just automatically won from the start by whoever makes the most tryhard guild. We've seen time and time again that P99 servers are always dominated by one guild, and that's even more the case on a PvP server where the incentive is much greater to dominate the server. Without teams, players who are not in the #1 guild just get shit on too hard and end up quitting. With teams, everyone has something to fall back on, and the two lesser teams can form temporary alliances to keep the stronger team in check. There should be no grouping or beneficial casting between teams, the only interaction would be communication and trade.

Every team should have access to every class. There's no real good way to determine teams based on deity or race since this gives an automatic advantage to whatever team has the best options available to it. Proposed system: everyone starts with a blue book, a yellow book and a green book. At level 8 or something, turn one of these in to a PoD to be permanently assigned to one of these three teams or be FFA (red) if you don't. If you try to join the team with the most players, you have to also hand in 1000p with the book in order to join it. This encourages equal teams while still allowing players to join their friends even if those are on the biggest team. Name color will indicate a player's team.

Cash loot only. Some people love to insist that itemloot is important, but it's so brutally punitive to new/casual/loner players and massively encourages griefing while discouraging fair fights to the point where most players will actively avoid any encounter that isn't a cheap gank. It's also harsh on melee classes from two different angles: they're generally weak in PvP until endgame geared and can't easily get away from opponents, and they're the most gear-dependent by far. Casters can function pretty well naked and can just gate or remove their important items, and aren't hurt much if they do lose some gear. Itemloot is one of those tryhard "I'm such a badass, I need people to see that I'm in favor of itemloot so they know how tough I am" things, but the reality is that it will guarantee a tiny playerbase where people resort exclusively to gank squads picking off helpless loners, avoid any fight they could lose, and play mostly naked casters. It's not viable. Item loot ensures that the playerbase will be one fifth the size that it would without it.

The only way I would touch an item loot server with a ten-foot pole is if there was a custom option to permanently turn an item no drop, allowing you to keep it but ensuring that you could never sell it and give it to an alt. But I would just rather not have item loot in the first place. It may have been interesting two decades ago on RZ where nobody knew dick about EQ and players hadn't min-maxed the gameplay to perfection, but it would be a clusterfuck today. Those cool politics and high-stakes fights won't be returning in 202X. You'll just get a server where nobody is willing to fight if there's any chance they might lose. Horse enthusiasts might pine for a time before cars, but that doesn't mean you could succesfully run for office on a policy of banning all forms of motorized transportation. For the same reason, flexlords might like the idea of an itemloot server where they get to dunk extra hard on those level 46 casuals, but that doesn't mean such a server would be popular. I especially laughed at the idea of "RZ + FV rules." That guy must have fantasies of a server with 50 players, 35 of which are naked magicians. There's a reason Everquest tried itemloot once and never again.

Classic resist system. What red99 had was trash, at least the first iteration (don't know if it was ever changed). PvP becomes garbage if you can land root/snare on geared players. Melee can't even really participate in PvP under the system that red99 launched with, where spells seemed to have like a 25% baseline minimum chance to land regardless of resists and fire/cold resist did practically nothing. If you have ~150 in a resist (or 250 for a -100 check spell, etc.) it should be exceedingly rare that a spell of that resistance type lands fully. While this does kind of screw one or two classes over, the alternative is worse as it makes PvP into a wildly polarized affair. Most caster classes have spells with negative resist checks and/or strong poison spells for which most players don't have high resists. It's really mostly magicians that get shafted, and they still do have their pets and you can try to get off a Mala and land some half-damage nukes. If you team up with an enchanter, that plus tash is like -75 MR.

[greatdane]

Also, training is an issue because there's basically nothing you can do against it. If someone decides to train you, you might be able to thwart him some of the time, but it's impossible to really protect yourself against it. We saw plenty of that on SZ where a certain player almost single-handedly prevented an entire team from raiding at all. It's so easy to train and so hard to stop a trainer that if it's allowed, it will absolutely guarantee that the playerbase will shrink steadily over time as players just give up because they experienced systematic training to the point where they were literally prevented from playing the game at all.

There has to be a rule against it or it'll be possible for a few players to effectively opt to kill off the server by simply training 24/7 until people give up because they can't get anything done. This took a huge toll on Sullon Zek which started out booming but dwindled over time until it was the smallest server in all of Everquest, in large part because the team with access to the largest number of effective training classes (this being team evil, with its monopoly on shadowknights and necromancers) was able to train the other two teams into irrelevancy.

[Tradesonred]

Thanks for the effort of posting that great dane. Its the first post i read that makes me think i could flip on FFA vs teams. This is why i created this thread and good reads so far. Im not there yet though. The problem i see with teams vs FFA is that with teams the pop is hard locked behind 3 teams.

Yes in FFA theres often (always?) a dominant guild but from what ive seen on red, at least the first year, is that xp loss in pvp sort of funnelled things into that state of affairs. Nihilum could just sit in fear forever and no one would challenge them because no one wanted to eat xp death, it was that bad. But with no xp loss, smaller guilds can guerilla fuck with bigger guilds, if your guild leaders are toxic assholes, a part of that guild can break away and start something else. This is what heartbrand tried to do with red dawn when there was basically only nihilum and lite's inner council's loot pinata as options. I guess you could raid with 2 guilds on teams but it makes everything more complicated. If heartbrand and the others who started red dawn are in the dominant guild's team, theres not alot of options. Once again typing something leads to another thought. What do you do with raiding on the same team? One more thing to manage (raid target locks) for devs.

I do like the argument that you always have something to fall back on with teams though.

[Stonewallx39]

I am most concerned with a community that thrives long term. No problem if you want to camp someone so hard that they quit and throw their computer out the window. I want a server that’s fun to play.

I’d like:
200% base xp - to incentivize people to try it/come back/stick it out
Group xp bonus on top of base bonus
200% named spawn rate (More loot floating around to help keep casuals in the fight)
No item loot/no cash loot - pvp is about dominance
No petitions for disputes. Settle it in blood…
Training is a-okay guilds will find a way to stop it (a team of enchanters to stun/root/break invis, etc)
Full damage spells but fix resists, seems like spells land too often against a given resist

[Gustoo]

^same thing but with item loot.

Training sucks but completely removing GMs from the need to police the server is worth it. They can just anti hack and anti box and no worries about drama. It seems like it makes the GM job a lot better and means the community can focus on the game more than complaint lobbying which will also improve GM / Community relations in a way that will be healing for the whole community.

The lawyer work makes it hard for the GM to be cool with the community.

[PlsNoBan]

Originally Posted by Stonewallx39 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

200% base xp - to incentivize people to try it/come back/stick it out
Group xp bonus on top of base bonus
200% named spawn rate (More loot floating around to help keep casuals in the fight)
No item loot/no cash loot - pvp is about dominance
No petitions for disputes. Settle it in blood…
Training is a-okay guilds will find a way to stop it (a team of enchanters to stun/root/break invis, etc)
Full damage spells but fix resists, seems like spells land too often against a given resist

I would 100% give this server a go. This sounds pretty fun actually. I could see a case for item/cash loot but I could go either way on it. VERY big fan of fast xp/increased named/loot. Also very big fan of no GM policing except for stuff like boxing/rmt/active hacks. Letting people settle disputes on their own is the way to go and is less work for staff so win/win.

I've never actually played teams pvp so I can't comment on that. Part of me thinks teams pvp might actually be better tho.