Some Fun Raid Changes

[Splorf22]

After posting my rage thread about the difference between the raid scene being fair and fun, Sirken suggested I do just a bit more, so here I am, to the dismay of the trolls. I just wrote up a few of the ideas I had and put them into a poll: the options are separate so you can vote for each one if you like it or not if you dislike it.

Simultaneous Repops: Previous polls have shown that pretty much everyone likes these. Simultaneous repops are great and all, but they last about 45 minutes on Project 1999. So the next set of changes are designed to slow the players down a little, hopefully in more or less classic ways.

Forbidding training in Veeshan's Peak, if only during the reset, is one of the easy ones. The whole point of a reset is to spread out the players, but currently you can just send a few trainers to lock down VP until everything else is dead. Veeshan's Peak is something like 1/3 of all raid mobs, and if the top guilds were forced to go there immediately, even if only for Phara Dar, it would really open up the rest of the world.

Antipoopsocking code: Very few people on live would have had a spare 'raid toon' to camp out at targets fully buffed, and the fact that raid guilds demand this of their members is one of the biggest drawbacks for people with only one high-level toon. Solution: Any toon camped in one of the raid zones will log in at a different spot during the 2 hours immediately following a reset. So for example anyone camped in Sebilis would respawn at the portal outside; anyone camped in the Plane of Hate would appear at the WC spires, and so on. The goal would be to force players to actually mobilize with one toon rather than just shuffle between camped alts.

Reset All Named: I like this as a way of giving all players a little bit of access to the raid scene. When the server resets; respawn every mob but increase the chance of rare spawns and the chance of rare drops (say 50% rather than 25%). This gives everyone a little something to do. In addition, all camp rights would poof on a server reset.

The chance of a reset occurring is proportional to the number of players logged in: I like about 1 reset per 500 population per week (I'm guessing we're probably at about 750 average population right now, so we'd get 3 resets every two weeks on average). So every tick the server flips a coin with chance #players-online / (500*10*60*24*7). This not only will bias resets towards the times when the most people are on, it will naturally account for shifts in population given the summer/winter cycle or Velious or whatever. edit: At least when I proposed SR, I proposed them as a replacement for variance spawns, not an addition

Antileapfrogging policy in Fear: The classic method of clearing Fear one mob at a time is completely impossible with FTE rules on P1999; instead it turns into nasty pseudopvp with train wars and death touch cycles. I'm thinking something like: killing one mob in fear gives you the right to the whole zone for one minute; a window which would be extended an additional minute with the next mob, and so on (but capped at 15 minutes). edit: this really should not be much harder to implement than the FTE code

Change Nagafen and Vox to banish L56+: This is specifically not classic, but a L56 cap would encompass a lot more new players who are actually leveling up instead of alt armies designed specifically for this purpose.

Move TMO to the red server: I'm just kidding guys [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Nogdar]

Can't like em all but quality suggestions for sure! [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[August]

The chance of a reset occurring is proportional to the number of players logged in

I'm a sucker for elegant solutions. When you pair this with:

Antipoopsocking code

I think you get a much healthier environment. Enforces mobilization, destroys raid windows, only requires you to have 1 high level toon that can be wherever he needs to be, and spreads out loot distribution assuming we're talking simultaneous reset of all targets.

The other ones seem specific to raid encounters and I hate whitelisting/blacklisting content that should really reflect a change to an entire policy not a special case situation. Don't believe that training should ever be allowed. Don't believe 'leapfrogging' should be tolerated - although in my time guilds who did this were shunned, and that's how we enforced it.

[zanderklocke]

Originally Posted by Splorf22 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Antileapfrogging policy in Fear: The classic method of clearing Fear one mob at a time is completely impossible with FTE rules on P1999; instead it turns into nasty pseudopvp with train wars and death touch cycles. I'm thinking something like: killing one mob in fear gives you the right to the whole zone for one minute; a window which would be extended an additional minute with the next mob, and so on (but capped at 15 minutes).

I didn't vote for this because I thought it sounded messy as hell to code and a little too complex for my taste.

[Frieza_Prexus]

Excellent suggestions.

I disagree with the Vox/Nag changes, and the fear changes sound messy.

Perhaps the only change I would suggest for fear is that any guild actively clearing when Cazic pops can have an uncontested 1.5 hours (or something similar) before any other guild may raid the zone. The burden of proving "when" he popped would be on the clearing guild, and if they cannot substantiate (via fraps or /time stamped SS's) they lose the protection of the rule.

[Estu]

Some of these changes seem rather too complicated to be realistic or viable, but I like the first two (especially if the simultaneous repops were weekly at least).

Personally, one complicated change I think would be fun would be to replace variance as it currently is set up with an exponential probability distribution. This would basically mean that a given raid mob would have the same chance of spawning at any given span of time (so for example, it would spawn an expected amount of twice in any given seven-day span, an expected amount of 2/7 in any given 24-hour span, and so on), but there are no restrictions on how short or how long the times between spawns are. So there's no such thing as being near the beginning or end of the window; it's just as likely to spawn at a given time right after having just been killed as it is to spawn a week after it was killed. This is a very natural probability distribution and occurs in real life a lot (at least, approximately; it's kind of like flipping a coin every millisecond to see if the monster spawns. Realistically for P99, you'd be flipping a coin every server tick), and I think it would make more sense than having windows as we currently do. Plus, it would be fun to know that there's a small chance that right after you kill a boss, it respawns while you're still looting it [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The implication of using this distribution for raid mobs would be that people wouldn't be sitting around poopsocking at the end of the window because they know it's bound to spawn soon (as they would with the old variance set-up), but also, you don't have the extended variance mechanic which comes with its own set of flaws (as it's currently set up, it reduces the number of spawns, and also, monsters are more likely to spawn if you're in a period of extended variance (I think; haven't read the exact description in a while)).

Actually, applying these distributions to every monster in P99 would make the game a lot more chaotic and interesting, in my opinion, though, granted, not classic.

[Splorf22]

Guys, I have a PhD in computer science. For example, the antipoopsocking "code" (please forgive my mixing twelve different programming languages), inserted somewhere into the login function:

when (getTime() - lastRepopTime < TwoHours) {
  case player.zone:
     Sebilis: player.location = {Trakanon's Teeth, -100, -100, -100}
     Hate: player.location = {West Commonlands, -100, -100, -100}
     t: /* do nothing */
}

Or, the fear leapfrogging code:

String engagedGuild = "";
int ticksRemaining = 0;

OnMobEngage(player p) {
  if(engagedGuild != "") {
    engagedGuild =  p.guild;
    ticksRemaining = 20;
  }

  if(engagedGuild != p.guild)
     QueueTell(to:p, from:"Rogean", text: "You have leapfrogged guild X! They may choose to petition you!"
}

OnMobKill() {
  ticksRemaining += 10;
}

OnTick() {
  ticksRemaining -= 1;
  if(ticksRemaining <= 0) {
    QueueBroadcast("GuildX has timed out!"
    EngagedGuild = "";
 }
}

Also I'm curious that not more people like my repop probability proportional to player population. At least when I suggested simultaneous repops, I meant them mostly as a replacement for the retarded variance scene we have now, not an addition.

[August]

Originally Posted by Splorf22 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Guys, I have a PhD in computer science. For example, the antipoopsocking "code" (please forgive my mixing twelve different programming languages), inserted somewhere into the login function:

when (getTime() - lastRepopTime < TwoHours) {
  case player.zone:
     Sebilis: player.location = {Trakanon's Teeth, -100, -100, -100}
     Hate: player.location = {West Commonlands, -100, -100, -100}
     t: /* do nothing */
}

Or, the fear leapfrogging code:

String engagedGuild = "";
int ticksRemaining = 0;

OnMobEngage(player p) {
  if(engagedGuild != "") {
    engagedGuild =  p.guild;
    ticksRemaining = 20;
  }

  if(engagedGuild != p.guild)
     QueueTell(to:p, from:"Rogean", text: "You have leapfrogged guild X! They may choose to petition you!"
}

OnMobKill() {
  ticksRemaining += 10;
}

OnTick() {
  ticksRemaining -= 1;
  if(ticksRemaining <= 0) {
    QueueBroadcast("GuildX has timed out!"
    EngagedGuild = "";
 }
}

Also I'm curious that not more people like my repop probability proportional to player population. At least when I suggested simultaneous repops, I meant them mostly as a replacement for the retarded variance scene we have now, not an addition.

The repop probability is the best suggestion.

i love people who comment about coding.

[Handull]

I like the Anti-Poopsocking code from the stand point of it does what you say about making it harder to camp out a raid for a mob during a repop. I don't like the idea because I feel like in the end it will just be another rule that guilds get around by having the right classes camped out in the right spots with the right buffs. I think it sounds elegant for some zones (seb, hate, etc), but can get messy with others. You would also have to fix the training/agro mechanics in order to have this (this would also help fix some of the train war issues that happen in fear, but not all of them) that being if you run past me with a train, I should get on that train's agro list, currently I won't be on their agro list unless I engage them, buff/heal you, or you lose agro (die/zone/fd) while I'm inside their agro range. With the current system Trak would become a race for monks/necros/sks to train away see invis mobs so a guild could run down and fte+stall tank. Stopping to fight any see invis juggs or, heaven forbid, engaging prot/tola before Trak would cause a guild to lose the race, etc.

But nice post, there is a lot that can be said about all this.

edit: forgot to say, i think the biggest/best thing we can have is the simultaneous repops. Being in a smaller guild that raided the planes a while ago, we got to experience one or two server repops, and we tried to go after mobs. The biggest problem we faced was the organization. When you plan a planar raid there is no rigid start time, log on 15 minutes late and no one really cares. Don't have ot hammers, wc caps, and convenient bind spots set up, and its just a small inconvenience for your porters to run out and collect everyone. But when racing for a raid mob, those minutes add up, and the best way to get better at it is experience. People will get ot hammers/wc caps/etc when they learn the hard way that they are going to miss an attempt at Inny because they were left behind for being in lake rathe with no way to gate, etc. A repop here and there is a little fun, but if we started to see them regularly we'd start to see more and more smaller guilds figuring out how to organize just a little better to make sure they get an attempt at a mob, rather than spending 20 minutes trying to organize just to watch a top end guild run in get their 4th kill of the repop on the mob you wanted.

[Wotsirb401]

It all boils down to people know way too much about this game now. Back in 1998/9 people didnt farm idols beacause there was no need to stall tank etc. At least on my server everything was up for the most part and roatations were communicated.