New P99 = instanced?

[salimoneus]

Aren't all the new raiding rules basically moving towards an instancing scheme? With the guild tiers, server repops, additional repops, it basically results in handing out loot to any guild that wants to make an attempt, even though there are more capable guilds that are being prevented from going after those same mobs.

So that's reserving mobs for a specific group, while disallowing others a shot at those same mobs. Sounds a hellova lot like instancing to me. And I thought being non-instanced was a fundamental part of what made EQ so much fun back in the day, the open shared-world nature of the game. Otherwise how does it really differ much from WoW?

Are people really happy with this new scheme? Sure I see some good numbers online, but could it be the impending release of Velious giving the population a boost? Do people have the same feeling of accomplishment when taking down a boss, knowing that they didn't really earn it the hard way, because it was handed to them?

I wonder how Velious is going to play with this new instancing.

[lecompte]

I think the new raiding rules are amusing at the least.

I'm really just pumping your post cause I want you to sent me a tell on whatever toon you are leveling so we can be secret lovers again... PST.

[Argh]

pump

[Ahldagor]

https://boswelling.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/watty1.gif?w=584

[innocent51]

Interesting troll.

If you ever played on live in the 20th century you'd remember Player Nice Policy was more or less respected. The high raid targets were contested, killed on spawn and that is what is happening even with the "new rules". The soft (older) raid targets were "most of the time" left to a organised cycle for lower tier guilds.
GM even monitored some recurring incident and tried to keep the PNP respected.

You can argue that on some servers, at some period in time there were high end guild cleaning every possible loot boss to block others progression but it was never the case on all servers or for a very long period of time. The way TM0 "ruled" on P99 is actually linked to the way this server is designed and of its very particular population and is far not representative of how EQ was back in the days.

If you let me go deeper on the two aspects :
1- Project 99 is a non progressive server. That means no raid content ever becomes "old". After a handful of years or farming the same content over and over it became obvious that different rules than "FFA" should be applied in order to actually give things to do to the player base.
Since you ask about Velious, the introduction of new content will obviously make the old one, if not obsolete, at least less wanted. So even without rules you could expect Vulak guilds to be less keen to crush Trakanon on spawn.

2- The original population of P99 was mostly made of nostalgic old raiders disappointed of low-playtime-friendly modern mmos. So it happened on this server exactly what would have happened on old EQ if you threw the 10% most hardcore raging jerks of every top tier guilds on one server. And that situation, after a few years, obviously needed to be controlled.


Now about the use of the word "instanced". You are VERY wrong.
The first reason is that it is not, instanced. You can put whatever rules you want, keep a rotation on raid targets and respawn some low spawn mobs, the game is still not instanced. The world server is still one and no parallel instance of the universe is allowed to exist.
That's not just a roleplay matter. The game is not just Trakanon or Nagafen. The zones, the dungeons, the xp areas, everything is open. And you still need to ask for a CC if you want to go to Guk, you still can ask for a rez to the Disco group if you wiped, you still can meet your group at Shrooms at peak hours without having to invis because the place is crowded. THIS, not the rules, make the game different.

The rules merely forces people to be mildly nice. To be very honest, I would consider a friend and respect anyone who is crazy enough to actually play such a unforgiving, slow and ugly game. We'r a family, play nice.

[SamwiseRed]

Aren't all the new raiding rules basically moving towards an instancing scheme? With the guild tiers, server repops, additional repops, it basically results in handing out loot to any guild that wants to make an attempt, even though there are more capable guilds that are being prevented from going after those same mobs.

So that's reserving mobs for a specific group, while disallowing others a shot at those same mobs. Sounds a hellova lot like instancing to me. And I thought being non-instanced was a fundamental part of what made EQ so much fun back in the day, the open shared-world nature of the game. Otherwise how does it really differ much from WoW?

Are people really happy with this new scheme? Sure I see some good numbers online, but could it be the impending release of Velious giving the population a boost? Do people have the same feeling of accomplishment when taking down a boss, knowing that they didn't really earn it the hard way, because it was handed to them?

I wonder how Velious is going to play with this new instancing.

I'd rate the accomplishment of killing 15 year old content on an emulated server somewhere in between putting my shirt on correctly and wiping my own ass.

[Ravager]

I'd rate the accomplishment of killing 15 year old content on an emulated server somewhere in between putting my shirt on correctly and wiping my own ass.

lol

[Frug]

I'd rate the accomplishment of killing 15 year old content on an emulated server somewhere in between putting my shirt on correctly and wiping my own ass.

Interesting; you can't solo those 2 activities?

[Fett]

Interesting; you can't solo those 2 activities?

http://img.pandawhale.com/23683-Ashton-Kutcher-burn-gif-95QB.gif

[Fountree]

Lol, interesting troll? OP is totally right :P

Innocent is mad and very threatened in this thread its pretty hilarious /popcorn.

Short answer is that people cried alot about wanting raids and loot since the expansion timeline is much longer here than live (which leads to alot more 50+ players), so they changed the rules in unclassic ways and started GM enforcing things like raids. Sorry it happened but it's that way now because people couldn't play nice (or beat TMO).

[myriverse]

Lol, interesting troll? Dude is totally right :P
Only totally right about being completely wrong.

[Fountree]

How is it not instanced? You designate what guilds can get mobs at a certain time. Tell me again how thats not close to instancing content.../willy wonka

And I'm not saying the current system is right or wrong (obviously I have my own opinion on that) :P

[Synthlol]

How is it not instanced? Tell me again how thats not close to instancing content.



Instanced content removes the requirement that mobs and their loot must either be fought for or shared. On p99 currently, players must share mobs or compete for them. You're easy.

[Fountree]

Instanced content removes the requirement that mobs and their loot must either be fought for or shared. On p99 currently, players must share mobs or compete for them. You're easy.

You're right, p99 circa 2-3 years ago. You just conveniently forgot to mention anything about a system being in place that prevents people from doing those things at certain times. You're easy.

[Fountree]

Also let me just say that when "sharing" is mandatory, its not sharing lol.

[Swish]

http://media3.giphy.com/media/tROozRfcLZSGQ/giphy.gif

[Erati]

Inb4RnF

[myriverse]

Also let me just say that when "sharing" is mandatory, its not sharing lol.
Sure it is. It's just the caring is left out.

[Supaskillz]

Rotations are not totally unclassic. Some servers had them. Also no servers were swarming with so many top geared lvl 60s at this stage in classic.

FFA incentive is to always have the biggest guild so anytime of day enough people log in and so that you can just zerg the encounter without prep and still win. Obviously this is a personal preference but I think that is a lame raid environment and is not classic raid scene. My server must have been full of noobs bc dragons would sometimes be alive for days. I remember always being a bit worried about gore when running to kc and participating in a pickup nagafen raid not associated with a guild. It's difficult in my opinion to compare the raids to "classic" here in our 3rd year of kunark on a server where everyone already knew how to do everything. I just came back but the current rules seem better than every pop people trying to bend but not break the play nice policy and people petitioning.

[Danth]

P1999 has long provided an exhibition of why most newer role-playing games use instancing: 6 guilds fighting over 1 spawn means 5 guilds go home unhappy. Instancing simply keeps more people happier. The main losers in an instanced or regulated environment are the folks who don't care about the content itself so much as about the victory of denying said content to other folks.

Danth

[Daldaen]

Lols.

[Erati]

hah totally missed the double negative with my trolling eyes and deleted my post :P

[Ganjar]

DO IT!! IT AINT CLASSIC ANyWAYs like iven been saying a few years now. Acting goofy as hell is the funnest part of everquest anyways . Groups are great, raids make memories . DO IT, DO IT NOW!

[Daldaen]

Eh not worth it.

[QuasiGnome]

I played on The Rathe Server with well established rotations (http://www.rathetravelagency.com/viewforum.php?f=48&sid=327548fcb46462ada7fe5c20ab49e709) for 5 years.

Had a full rotation set up from way back. It worked pretty damn well and allowed 7 or 8 raiding guilds to get steady loot.

It was actually brought up and supported by the server GMs. New guilds came and went but always had a shot at raid content.

Instancing means everyone that wants one can have their own generated raid target and it's loot when they want it. It diminishes the value of raid targets and their loot. It was the beginning of the end for EQ Live and it would be the same here. Why would you even consider going down that same road?

[Daldaen]

Doesn't diminish the value unless it's so easy a caveman could do it.

Raid loot value either economic or social, shouldn't be influence by the fact that it's only available to the guild who poops in a sock longest, stays up latest, or has their turn in the rotation. It should be because your guild is one of the few who had the players with the skills, execution, gear, and strategy to defeat big-bad boss X.

People say instancing was the beginning of the end. Quite to the contrary. It allowed them to create some uber hard events that only a select few could defeat and led to increase the value of raid targets and their loot. How many people did you know with a CoA BP or OMM loot during OoW? Or Mayong loot during Demi? Or Solteris loot during 75. Etc.

[QuasiGnome]

Killing an actual server spawn always meant more to me than killing target_copy_3212 in an instance. If we disagree, then we disagree.

It only hurt the top raiding guild that could have poopsocked everything if they wanted. Thankfully, when I played, the top guild didn't mind sharing and the guild I was in had a full raid schedule for years.

But, again, we may just disagree. /shrug

[SamwiseRed]

i have a love/hate with instances. they ruin world pvp but pve wise they are superior. they stop this whole, bring 80 people to VP and kill dragons in 4 seconds. putting a hard cap on the number of players that can engage a raid mob is a good thing. it prevented encounters being successful because you had dozens of useless players to throw at them. this was the beginning of the end of just being a warm body and zerg recruiting.

[Daldaen]

Killing an actual server spawn always meant more to me than killing target_copy_3212 in an instance. If we disagree, then we disagree.

It only hurt the top raiding guild that could have poopsocked everything if they wanted. Thankfully, when I played, the top guild didn't mind sharing and the guild I was in had a full raid schedule for years.

But, again, we may just disagree. /shrug

We likely do, but what Samwise said is correct.

Instancing forced you into a limited number of people which has 2 sides.

Bad side - if you are a large guild people get left out.
Good side - your entire guild isn't left out because they aren't as hardcore as the top guild.

Also raids became a lot more based on skill and strategy later on. Partially due to instancing but largely due to more complex events. Mobs didn't have just 2 AEs now. They would spawn adds if anyone does, they would get stronger or weaker based on what was happenings in the raid, they would punish people for not paying attention etc.

[Erati]

one of the lamest part of instances was when your forming an exp group:

Half your group zones in.

"Instance fills up"

Then the rest of your group joins "Version 2" of the zone and your group is separated lol

that happened alot in EQ2, maybe they fixed it, but early on was the pits.

[QuasiGnome]

I respect that view, I do.

I'm new here as well and not trying to insult anyone.

But one other aspect of instancing is that this raid content is easier to get to and get to more often. Which, according to the history that I remember, led to content (therefore the game) not lasting as long as it would have with the classic, world spawned (only 1 at a time) mobs and zones.

[Champion_Standing]

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view4/3695268/stop-whining-o.gif

[Calibix]

i have a love/hate with instances. they ruin world pvp but pve wise they are superior. they stop this whole, bring 80 people to VP and kill dragons in 4 seconds. putting a hard cap on the number of players that can engage a raid mob is a good thing. it prevented encounters being successful because you had dozens of useless players to throw at them. this was the beginning of the end of just being a warm body and zerg recruiting.

This guy knows whats up.

I am a pvp guy in every game I play (except EQ, I've never even dueled someone lol). Instancing makes OWPVP nearly dead in most games. However, in terms of raiding it is far superior in the challenge sense. While beating other people to dragons is enjoyable to me, modern raiding is significantly more challenging and rewarding. When you only have 20-40 people in a raid, the amount of people you can carry goes down drastically. Sure everyone gets a chance at it, but only the top tier people beat that content quickly enough to get uber. Whereas here with the rotation/raid scheme, its just show up for x duration and get your loot eventually. Granted, Velious will provide some more mechanically challenging raids, they are quite simple for people like us who have been playing MMO's for 15 years.

[Daldaen]

Eh even Velious... Most of the scripts are bypass able.

Tormax - pull to WL zone and you ignore all the adds his script triggers
Yelinak - place a CoV friendly CotH not ignore the Jesus long clear
Tunare - clear the entire zone to ignore the summon aid mechanic
Vulak - see above
AoW - use charmed giants to circumvent the whole "he can 1 round a bis warrior"
Dain - pull into basement to avoid dealing with banish

I mean I guess these are strategies... But they just negate the issue instead of figuring out a way to cope with it. Most all in intended I think. Clearing zones for Tunare and Vulak I'm sure they are counting on though. True tests would be killing Dain and Tormax where they spawn. If Tunare / Vulak spawns one or two named and some trash at HP intervals forcing you to off tank the boss while you kill the spawns. Etc.

[Calibix]

Eh even Velious... Most of the scripts are bypass able.

Tormax - pull to WL zone and you ignore all the adds his script triggers
Yelinak - place a CoV friendly CotH not ignore the Jesus long clear
Tunare - clear the entire zone to ignore the summon aid mechanic
Vulak - see above
AoW - use charmed giants to circumvent the whole "he can 1 round a bis warrior"
Dain - pull into basement to avoid dealing with banish

I mean I guess these are strategies... But they just negate the issue instead of figuring out a way to cope with it. Most all in intended I think. Clearing zones for Tunare and Vulak I'm sure they are counting on though. True tests would be killing Dain and Tormax where they spawn. If Tunare / Vulak spawns one or two named and some trash at HP intervals forcing you to off tank the boss while you kill the spawns. Etc.

Right. Nothing crazy by today's standards, but certainly more strategy needed than vanilla/kunark.

[innocent51]

Innocent is mad and very threatened in this thread its pretty hilarious /popcorn.


Nope. Raid rules actually doesn't really matter to me playing or not P99. Just stating facts here.

By the way you shouldn't /popcorn while talking so much, you could choke.

[Rhambuk]

Cry harder maybe theyll change it back to cater to the 1% of players that do nothing but screw over everyone else and RMT loot when they're 6th alt doesn't need it.


I love seeing how upset these folks get after ruining the raid scene for 4 years when it finally becomes tolerable they cry and blame casuals for it.

[Tecmos Deception]

Otherwise how does it really differ much from WoW?

Oh give it a rest.

Instancing allows everyone to have everything exactly when they want it. This system doesn't have ANY of those features. Class R guilds don't get class C mobs. Mobs still spawn on their own and if you don't engage them quickly enough you lose them. No one is forced to follow the PLAYER-CREATED rotation. Many mobs still spawn as FFA. Etc.

[salimoneus]

Well obviously there isn't actual instancing on P99, but it seems moves have been made to make it as instance-like as possible. This seems to go against everything that made classic EQ what it was up to this point, through Velious, and beyond.

Restricting one group and giving preference to another during a certain period of time is nothing more than rationing, a gimpy version of instancing if you will.

I guess if everyone is cool with a "socialized" classic EQ experience then fine, but let's just call it what it is. Whatever you call it, it seems hard to continue using the term "classic" anywhere in the description.

[innocent51]

You also cant call "classic" if you don't pay, you can't call it classic if its bound not to evolve, you can't call it classic if you have a graphic card, you can't call it classic if you are not 17 years old any more.

Or maybe you can, can't you?

[nilbog]

you can't call it classic if you have a graphic card

EQ was the first game to require a 3d graphics card I think.

[innocent51]

Damn I was trying to make a point there!

[JayN]

sad but true!

[salimoneus]

Cry harder maybe theyll change it back to cater to the 1% of players that do nothing but screw over everyone else and RMT loot when they're 6th alt doesn't need it.


I love seeing how upset these folks get after ruining the raid scene for 4 years when it finally becomes tolerable they cry and blame casuals for it.

Of course this just goes back to the same reasons that caused the changes to occur in the first place: This server has not been able to stay on schedule with content releases, thus the amount of plat and number of geared toons has grown out of control.

The only real way to fix it, is not by rationing out loot in an attempt to make the enormous casual population happy, but by fixing the timeline. Wipe it, start from scratch, and release according to the same schedule as the original. People won't have 6th alts to be gearing, nor will they have as much plat as a small country. No alt armies camped at every boss. That's a much more classic approach than loot rationing IMO.

[JPMorgan]

This server has not been able to stay on schedule with content releases, thus the amount of plat and number of geared toons has grown out of control.

I think you're lost. Here, let me help:

http://www.fippydarkpaw.com/

[salimoneus]

I would be very interested in seeing how a new PVE server would fair. I honestly think that a decent number of players would opt to start fresh, knowing the timeline would be correct, and so many of the problems the server has seen would for the most part be non-issues.

I mean, it surely would do better than the current red server, where they typically have what like 5% of the active population of blue? I wonder why they even bother to use the resources to continue supporting red any longer, clearly the preference is geared towards PVE. I just checked and right now there's 746 players on blue and only 51 players on red.

[thefloydian]

I don't think there's any real way to fix a game like EQ. People hate it for the same reasons they love it. And there are always going to be people with fucked up priorities who play 18 hours/day or stay "on call" to throw numbers at digital dragons. I don't think there are any raid rules that will make people any happier. They will probably just cause new problems.

[Clark]

Lol, interesting troll? OP is totally right :P

Innocent is mad and very threatened in this thread its pretty hilarious /popcorn.

Short answer is that people cried alot about wanting raids and loot since the expansion timeline is much longer here than live (which leads to alot more 50+ players), so they changed the rules in unclassic ways and started GM enforcing things like raids. Sorry it happened but it's that way now because people couldn't play nice (or beat TMO).