Bob's Perfect World- A wall of text regarding the raid scene on P99

[Acillatem]

That won't work becuz in my research the bigger guilds had 3 primary concerns:

1 - they didn't want to completely eliminate the thrill of racing to a mob
2 - the mobs lost by a rotation of any kind had to be in line with time gained by not having to poopsock
3 - hey still wanted to have a sense of seniority that is so often lost in a calendar.

Keep those 3 things in mind and you have one sides concerns in regards to a rotation.t

[stormlord]

It's pretty clear to me that in classic EQ there wasn't enough to raid; if live was anything like p1999. Keep in mind that I didn't raid on live until about 2007. So I don't know what it was like back then. Did they cycle raids so that every guild had a chance at it? Is it possible that something in p1999 is different and that's what's causing the raid problem.

Maybe hte experience gain is too high and it's creating more high levels (raiders)? People know a lot more about EQ now than they did back then. Much more information is available via Allah. Players level up faster.

But the thing is, live had two to three times more players than we do. How did they manage raids with so many more people than us? It could be that even having more population than us they STILL progressed markedly slower and thus the conflict at the higher levels was less than it's here. Must have been a lot slower. Is the conflict here imagined?

Some people say instances are the answer, but they forget that changing classic EQ to what we want it to be misses the whole point of the server. But I will admit that some things ARE different; for example, we know a lot more than we did back then, and there're not nearly enough players on p1999 to equal what was on the live servers. But changing p1999 might inevitably lead to an experience that's not like classic EQ at all. That's the danger. But more than that, I'd like to see somebody offer an answer that doesn't use the instancing mechanic. There should be plenty of ways to do it. The question is: which is easiest to do and which most fits the character of EQ up to and including Velious?

Personally, I don't feel instancing fits the character of EQ in that era. Instancing wasn't introduced, as far as I know, until LDON. So I think the answer, if any, should be non-instanced. Besides, instancing is cliche and overused.

And are we willing to change p1999 to accommodate raiders? Are they the majority population? My previous post touched on this, but being a majority population is important if a server is going to change itself for that population. If you only have a minority that disagrees then you can live with that. But if you have a majority that disagrees because the server changed itself to appease a minority then you have a majority population that's not in agreement.

To explain this further, I will give an example. This server is not averse to changing itself, if it's necessary. We implemented global chat when population was low. This change made p1999 different from live. But it was necessary because most, if not all players travel and communicate. That precedent showed that we will change p1999 if we have to, given that some things are different from live and cannot be resolved by not changing anything. The question is whether changing how raiding works is necessary or not - dependent on whether raiders are a majority population.

Thank you.

[Gmal]

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

What's to stop them now?

1) Get 15 players in zone.
2) Get lucky and be FTE
3) Watch as TR and TMO burn Trak down as soon as it spawns.
4) Petition GM because you had FTE
5) Watch shitstorm as your guild gets handed loot based on previous precedence.

That's what it's turned into.

This is incorrect. The rules state that you need to have a raid force capable of taking down mob in question for FTE to apply.

Even if your FTE and you dont have the force required to burn down said mob we will just watch you give it a good quarterback effort and res you after we have distributed the loot. If by chance you can take down Trak with 15 players we will give you mad props =-)

[Dr4z3r]

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

People know a lot more about EQ now than they did back then. Much more information is available via Allah. Players level up faster.

These three factors are the biggest reason there's raiding drama on this server despite having fewer players than most live servers. It's not that the experience gain is wrong, it's that the players are better at Everquest, so a much larger portion of the playerbase is raid-capable.

That said, any raiding-related drama seems to far, far, out-last the actual incident and its ramifications on the server.

[Lazortag]

Originally Posted by Dr4z3r [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If you signed up for classic EQ, and expected to reap high-end rewards without dedicating an exorbitant amount of time to it... I don't believe you actually played pre-Luclin EQ.

This is a red herring. Of course I expect to have to devote lots of time to the game (like hundreds of hours of grinding), but the amount of time you have to devote on this server to be a hardcore raider is absurdly longer than what was required in classic. It doesn't matter if the time dedication was a lot in classic, what matters is that the dedication required is unfairly greater on this server.

[Silentone]

Well let me explain why calander and rotation and carebear wont work. Its not that high end raiding guilds mind losing 2 or 3 mobs within a month its that they dont want the competing guilds to get loot/keys. Its a simple fact that if you stop other guilds from recieving the loot then you stay on top of the game. As soon as random guilds are getting a fair share of the loot then you start losing your own player base. As it is now if you want to effectivly be in a raiding guild you have only 2 choices, which means those guilds will allways have a constant application list and in the end be raid capable. So in 2 months when VP comes out..there will only be 2 guidls inside instead of 4 or 5, and if possible both raiding guilds will try to keep each other out as well. Its just the way classic EQ was. Even back in velious era, you would see guilds still killing trak to not allow other guilds to get VP keys, until they were done farming VP. Priority for guilds has allways been to
a) get keyed/geard
b) to stop others from getting keyed/geared

Its just the way EQ works....

[Lazortag]

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

Well let me explain why calander and rotation and carebear wont work. Its not that high end raiding guilds mind losing 2 or 3 mobs within a month its that they dont want the competing guilds to get loot/keys. Its a simple fact that if you stop other guilds from recieving the loot then you stay on top of the game. As soon as random guilds are getting a fair share of the loot then you start losing your own player base. As it is now if you want to effectivly be in a raiding guild you have only 2 choices, which means those guilds will allways have a constant application list and in the end be raid capable. So in 2 months when VP comes out..there will only be 2 guidls inside instead of 4 or 5, and if possible both raiding guilds will try to keep each other out as well. Its just the way classic EQ was. Even back in velious era, you would see guilds still killing trak to not allow other guilds to get VP keys, until they were done farming VP. Priority for guilds has allways been to
a) get keyed/geard
b) to stop others from getting keyed/geared

Its just the way EQ works....

Except the time investment that's required is completely different. How many times do I have to say this? Did anyone in classic have to track a mob for up to 96 hours? No, because no mobs had 96 hour windows.

The thing is, it would make sense for the top guilds to agree to a rotation because they'd get more mobs per minute that they spend playing the game, and would probably have more time to enjoy the game, level their alts, or just go outside.

[Doors]

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

The thing is, it would make sense for the top guilds to agree to a rotation because they'd get more mobs per minute that they spend playing the game, and would probably have more time to enjoy the game, level their alts, or just go outside.

If these fucking nerds would stop caring so much about pixels and besting random person A from guild B raiding on this server probably wouldn't be as shitty.

[Skope]

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

If these fucking nerds would stop caring so much about pixels and besting random person A from guild B raiding on this server probably wouldn't be as shitty.

Doors, remember that the more time i sit /afk and the shinier pixels = i'm better at everquest than you.

If you replace the word everquest with p99 then it's probably true. And quite sad, actually. haha

[Dr4z3r]

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

the amount of time you have to devote on this server to be a hardcore raider is absurdly longer than what was required in classic. It doesn't matter if the time dedication was a lot in classic, what matters is that the dedication required is unfairly greater on this server.

I don't quite understand what's "unfair" about the situation, at least with regards to what's been discussed in this thread. If you want the windows shortened, you should advocate for that directly, but it's tangential to Bob's suggsted lasseiz-fair raiding ruleset.

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

The thing is, it would make sense for the top guilds to agree to a rotation because they'd get more mobs per minute that they spend playing the game, and would probably have more time to enjoy the game, level their alts, or just go outside.

This goes straight back to game the Game Theory we were discussing earlier. If Guild A and Guild B agree to a 50/50 rotation, but there are no in-game consequences for breaking the rotation, it's not hard to figure out what the Nash Equilibrium of the system is: No rotation.

I can only think of two possible changes that would make agreeing to a rotation the dominant strategy: GM enforcement, and extreme time-commitment in VP, such that competing for other mobs is no longer possible.