"Fair and legitimate chance at a target" (cont)

[arsenalpow]

Originally Posted by Sirken

I wasn't gonna post in this thread, but then 293 posts later, my opinion changed and there's a couple things I'd like to say.

Firstly, we as a staff and as a community, are juggling many different play-styles here on P99. That includes everything from players that will only ever reach mid levels and those level appropriate dungeons, it includes super casual guilds that may only get together once a week or every other week to farm planes, guilds that are capable of downing content but do not want to do anything besides show up to partake in that content, as well as guilds that are willing to track, race, be in voice chat & on batphones, mobilize & react to things extremely fast at any time, and a bunch of play-styles that fall between the aforementioned descriptions.

When you are dealing with that many different people, with that many different play-styles, it is literally impossible for one single course of action to make everyone happy. Surely it's possible to make one group happy, but i'm a firm believer in the school of a good negotiation means no one walks away from the table completely satisfied.

It really bothers me when I see some (not all) of the casual guilds acting like the staff doesn't care about them, and never does anything to help them. We dramatically shorted the variance window from what it was as a direct response to casual guilds complaining that it was too big (and lets be honest, hardcore guilds hated it and complained about it too), so we agreed to shorten the windows on the condition that players would stop poopsocking; we held up our end of the bargain, players did not. At this point, we will not entertain offers from players that involve the promise to stop the sock (because they already spent that card, and the staff is still awaiting it to be delivered), and we will not offer to shorten the variance any more (for the same reason).

Now, as for racing; my personal opinion aside, there is literally no universe in which an argument can be made that having an hour to kill a target that you FTE does anything besides help casual guilds get to experience more content. This change was added solely for the purpose of helping casual guilds, without destroying or removing play-styles that are enjoyed by the more hardcore guilds.

That said, Project 1999 is literally the only place where you can play Classic EQ with any kind of population and also still enjoy a competitive raid scene. It is not a server that allows you to just show up and press the "free loot" button, and it's not a server that rewards you for simply existing. And as much as I hate saying it, I have had to tell guild leaders that if all they really want is instanced raid zones, or a forced rotation, that maybe P99 just isn't the right server for them or their guild. Literally every other server has instances and/or rotations, and some guilds might just be happier there.

Before anyone tries to jump in and play the "we don't care about pixels, we just care about experiencing content" card, let me just stop you because if it was just about content and not about loot people would have been more than ok with rotating all but two VP dragons (PD & Hosh), and people would have been ok with literally any mob split or agreement, as it would still result in casual guilds getting more content than they would be getting if there was absolutely nothing in put in place (be it by staff or a player agreement).

People can complain all they want, but at the end of the day if you guild isn't forcing its members to be in voice chat, isn't utilizing some form of batphone, or is somehow still under the belief that you have to stare at a screen for 16 hours to get a mob, then you guys need to look inwards and fix those problems (and yes, those are absolutely problems if you want to be a raiding guild) because there's literally nothing that the staff or player-base can do to help you if you aren't willing to help yourselves first.

In closing, I'm sick of hearing things aren't "fair". Things are more fair now than they have been in 5+ years. Fair doesn't mean everyone gets the same amount of mobs or loot. Fair means everyone gets the same opportunity to kill those mobs or get that loot, and right now, while it might not be the perfect system for your desired play-style, it is a 100% fair system as it gives everyone a fair and equal opportunity to engage any content, and doesn't even require your raid force to be parked or even in game anymore as you now have the hour to kill.

This message has been brought to you by the letter P and the number 99.

Translation: shit ain't changing, gtfo casuals.