FTE Raid Change

[Daldaen]

1. Trackers cannot get FTE. The person attaining FTE must not have been in zone when the mob spawned basically (for purposes of enforcing this rule as it seems easy enough to check in-zone when spawned, and not so easy to check WHERE)

This will reduce the jav-spam for outdoor dragons and make the race more about your pullers / trackers coordination, and less about automating your ranged attack.

It will shift to people camping out their pullers in zone and having them coordinate with the tracker who tails the mob to update them on the dragons location in their pathing. Which seems to me to be more competitive than 1 dude spamming a jav.

2. Outdoor Dragons can spawn anywhere along their pathing nodes. Not just at one fixed point.

Adds a random element to it, and is likely very classic. But impossible to prove that they didn't have static points. Makes it so that tracking is actual tracking. Not face tracking.

I've yet to hear why these are bad changes to the current rule set?

[Imslap]

You going to code #2?

[Daldaen]

Plenty of mobs spawn in the way in suggesting in #2. I don't imagine it would be very difficult to add. It's like... 4 mobs for that specific one.

[Supaskillz]

I don't think 1 changes that much you have a ranger tracking and puller camped at spawn point. Becomes fastest login instead of fastest jav. I like the change in # 2, but this doesn't effect many if the mobs.

[Erati]

baby steps Supaskillz......baby steps...

anything is better than dragons being tagged in fractions of a mili second

[Knots]

baby steps Supaskillz......baby steps...

anything is better than dragons being tagged in fractions of a mili second

In that case, I propose that the FTE character cannot exist before engaging a dragon. It must be created and then run to the dragon before engaging for their guild.

[Joyelle]

In that case, I propose that the FTE character cannot exist before engaging a dragon. It must be created and then run to the dragon before engaging for their guild.

It should probably be guild-tagged also :P

[Socratic]

#1 Yes please.

#2 Meh. Not a big fan of a ranger/bard monopoly here. Can deal with it tho.

[Splorf22]

Daldaen, I used to think like you. Then I realized that fixing the Kunark raid scene on a mob by mob basis is fundamentally impossible. The mobs are simply too easy, so the "competition" will revolve around silly things like who jav spams, who poopsocks, who camps out, who has an SSD to log in fast, who is fastest at scrolling through the tracking list, who levels the most ranger alts, whatever.

There are only three legitimate ways to fix the Kunark raid scene:

Spawn targets via simultaneous repops only. At this point the competition becomes about moving around as quickly as possible and killing the minimum of trash.
Increase mob hp by 2-4x, to the point where 30 idiots can't buy 20k of resist gear and faceroll their keyboards for 60 seconds successfully. In other words, the Velious expansion.
Enable PVP


Unfortunately Nilbog will never allow deliberately non-classic changes, and EQ PVP is pretty bad, so we are left with repops. And the repops we have are great, although I think we have only had 1 in the past month? The reality is the raid scene for Class R guilds has massively improved over the past 4 months. Of course now we have Doljo* to drag us back into the FTE hell <shrug>

[Frieza_Prexus]

Both changes have been suggested before, and both would help ameliorate the issues we currently face.

Nothing will permanently fix the raiding environment, but we can make it more palatable.

[Daldaen]

Both changes have been suggested before, and both would help ameliorate the issues we currently face.

Nothing will permanently fix the raiding environment, but we can make it more palatable.

This.

I agree Loraen, Velious will help solve a lot of things. But one small rule enforcement and one small spawning change on 4 mobs may help competing on mobs be a *bit* less retarded.

[Juevento]

Why do you need a rule change for this?

Just instruct your raid force to not have trackers pull. It's pretty simple.

[Artaenc]

#2 suggested here.
http://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=146303&page=4

[Hitpoint]

Why do you need a rule change for this?

Just instruct your raid force to not have trackers pull. It's pretty simple.

Because other guilds will use their trackers and beat you every time. Unless there's a rule.

[SyanideGas]

Guys, BDA should get all of the dragons. Thats all we want, lets stop playing. geeze.

[Juevento]

Because other guilds will use their trackers and beat you every time. Unless there's a rule.

Then maybe work with them to come to an accord?

There's this thing called working with others that you all should probably figure out one of these days. I am pretty sure this would fall I to the camp of a player made agreement that the staff is looking for.

[Daldaen]

This can be a venue for that. Or maybe it can get copy / pasted into the Raid Discussion Forum and all the guilds can comment there.

[Cecily]

Please stop trying to ruin raiding with your ideas.

[Nirgon]

Nothing is wrong with EverQuest, just this time line... no need to change all this shit like doubling mob HP etc (no offense).

Go help with Velious.

[Splorf22]

Nothing is wrong with EverQuest, just this time line... no need to change all this shit like doubling mob HP etc (no offense).

Go help with Velious.

Well unfortunately, Nirgon, we are in this timeline.

Also to say that nothing is wrong with EverQuest . . . I mean I could write pages and pages on what is wrong with EverQuest. It's just that there are neat things that counterbalance the idiotic things.

[Erati]

Please stop trying to ruin raiding with your ideas.

do you track things?

[Cecily]

About 200 tracking hours for my guild. How many do you have?

[Ciroco]

Velious isn't going to suddenly fix the raid scene. The top guilds are going to work through it fairly quickly, and the only way they'll leave current raid mobs alone is if they pop in the middle of another raid. In fact, if there's 0 competition for, say, AoW, aren't the TMOs of the world going to make sure to take out Sev and VS first and save AoW for when nothing else is in window?

That being said, any changes to the raid scene need to be reworked after Velious launches anyway. I don't see any point in pushing for them now.

[Socratic]

I wonder how many people shitting on this thread actually FTE spam at these raid targets. It's horrible, and #1 in the OP would be a welcome change.

[Pint]

Both of those changes are pretty mild, don't really see why there would be resistance to either

[Getsmurfed]

Please stop trying to ruin raiding with your ideas.

It's already been ruined by being 3 years released.

[Splorf22]

Velious isn't going to suddenly fix the raid scene.

Well it depends what you mean by fix. If you mean "equal raid pixels for all" then no. But no one will sitting there jav spamming . . . well almost anything.

[Ciroco]

Well it depends what you mean by fix. If you mean "equal raid pixels for all" then no. But no one will sitting there jav spamming . . . well almost anything.

I disagree. If top guilds are currently competing for crap mobs like Draco, what makes you think they won't still be going for Kunark mobs then?

[Supaskillz]

people will still be jav spamming kunark mobs. dont fool yourself.

[jaybone]

About 200 tracking hours for my guild. How many do you have?

Get a job

[Tasslehofp99]

I disagree. If top guilds are currently competing for crap mobs like Draco, what makes you think they won't still be going for Kunark mobs then?

How is draco a crap mob? He drops the best caster belt in game atm; which is still fairly nice into velious.

[Ciroco]

How is draco a crap mob? He drops the best caster belt in game atm; which is still fairly nice into velious.

Exactly. He has one piece of loot that is still worth going after. The same can be said for essentially all current raid mobs in Velious. The additional content will help dilute things a bit, but it's not like any guild is going to ignore a Kunark dragon.

[Splorf22]

I disagree. If top guilds are currently competing for crap mobs like Draco, what makes you think they won't still be going for Kunark mobs then?

Sure, but who cares? Velious gear shits all over Kunark gear. And if you really want those Kunark pixels, you can always go after them during a repop when FITEMOBS will be busy for 6+ hours in NToV.

[Yinikren]

I'm all for adding spawn points on pathing nodes of roaming dragons and making a rule that trackers must collaborate with the guild and not be the first people on a mobs hatelist.

Fuckers need to stop relying on auto spam ranged attack macros and give rangers something to do.

[Ciroco]

Sure, but who cares? Velious gear shits all over Kunark gear. And if you really want those Kunark pixels, you can always go after them during a repop when FITEMOBS will be busy for 6+ hours in NToV.

Like I said, there's still going to be plenty of times where those guilds aren't busy with high end raid mobs. The moral of the story: if you think Kunark raid mobs are going to become easily accessible when Velious is released, you're gonna have a bad time.

[Splorf22]

Like I said, there's still going to be plenty of times where those guilds aren't busy with high end raid mobs. The moral of the story: if you think Kunark raid mobs are going to become easily accessible when Velious is released, you're gonna have a bad time.

It's almost like you are willfully ignoring everything I am saying.

[Ciroco]

Actually, I just don't see how it's relevant. Velious gear is generally better, yes. That doesn't mean current raid mobs aren't going to be javspammed come Velious.

[Splorf22]

OK, let me try and be a bit more detailed.

First, nearly half of all targets will appear on repop days.

Second, because of low variance and frequent server resets most targets are popping in a 24 hour window centered on about noon EST saturday. Go look at the 'raid targets' list for Velious. There are like 25 of them. And this isn't Kunark where everyone logs in and roflstomps the target for 5 minutes. ToV North trash is harder than Kunark gods. IB/TMO will be busy in Velious for at least half of that 24 window if not all of it.

Third, if you are jav spamming you have to have a force camped out in the zone (no time to port). Do you think IB/TMO are going to be busy camping all of their alts in Kunark or Velious?

Fourth, I don't think anyone likes jav spamming. Even Flippie posted in RNF that it gets old real fast.

When you put all this together, which Kunark targets are really worth it?

[Ciroco]

So many assumptions in that scenario, including:

-current raid mob windows will stay clustered
-TMO/IB will make no effort to ensure Velious mob windows do not fall into that cluster
-TMO/IB are the only guilds who would javspam

[Splorf22]

It's almost like you are willfully ignoring everything I am saying.

[Ciroco]

bravo, well played.

[Kingore]

So many assumptions in that scenario, including:

-current raid mob windows will stay clustered
-TMO/IB will make no effort to ensure Velious mob windows do not fall into that cluster
-TMO/IB are the only guilds who would javspam

I am a TMO FTE spammer. Loraen makes sense. You do not.

[Ciroco]

Lord Bob will be javspamming dragons into 2016

[contemptor]

About 200 tracking hours for my guild. How many do you have?
sounds like a blast, you sure compete hard

[Clark]

Nothing is wrong with EverQuest, just this time line... no need to change all this shit like doubling mob HP etc (no offense).

Go help with Velious.

[Orruar]

sounds like a blast, you sure compete hard

Don't be mad just because you don't have the tracking skills of the P99 elite. We have the cream of the crop on this server. It's like the top 5 players from each live server came here to show what EQ skills are really all about.

[Socratic]

The current situation is pretty horrible for FTE spammers. I really do hope we can get something like this in the rules to make autofire useless and the whole process less miserable.

[Cecily]

Please stop trying to ruin raiding with your ideas.

My knee-jerk reaction is to scoff at and ridicule whatever raid rule changes Class-R proposes. In this very isolated incident, I actually agree with what the OP suggested. It's a necessary change.

[applesauce25r624]

2. Outdoor Dragons can spawn anywhere along their pathing nodes. Not just at one fixed point.

i like the idea of gorenaire and other dragons dropping on top of noobs

massacre

[Origin]

Both great ideas that should definitely be implemented.

[Brut]

The fundamental problem is that the more hardcore guilds are always going to stretch whatever rule is made to have the max advantage in getting the merbs. FTE javspam is no different from the 15-in-zone poopsock nonsense years before. Unless the dragon spawns invulnerable and checks for /rand 0 100 from a member of each guild to decide FTE, there really isn't much of a way to make these equal opportunity for everyone.

Best rule anyway was Ambrotos' "do not pull crap out of their spawn areas"-rule. Made CT competitive when you couldn't just kite the zone for a retarded bumrush engage, made Inny a race. Should've applied to dragons too imo, fighting fay in the bottom of the ocean would be hilarity as tanks are dropping to clerics interrupting as they float around. Or Talendor while getting swarmed by roamers in the zone.

[Daldaen]

I agree that the high end guilds will see how close they can get to bending the rules before getting banned, and make that a new norm.

But currently the ONLY thing determining FTE on the mobs I'm referring to, is who has better latency and an autofire macro running.

Look at the IB raid suspension thread Derubael posted:

# Entity Name Guild Name Level Class Engage Delay Disengage Length Group Damage Hate
1 Golden The Mystical Order 55 Bard 00:26:25 0 00:26:29 4 18334 0 584
2 Necromansir's Pet (skel_pet_41_) Inglourious Basterds 41 Warrior 00:26:26 1 00:26:41 15 18172 286 551
3 Necromansir Inglourious Basterds 54 Necromancer 00:26:26 1 00:26:47 21 18172 0 0
4 Nissmo Taken 59 Bard 00:26:27 2 00:28:02 95 18089 0 0
5 Facetious The Mystical Order 60 Monk 00:26:29 4 00:36:34 605 18334 272 781
Four different people and three different guilds tagged within the first 4 seconds of a mob being spawned. With the FTE occurring about 1 second after spawn.

That's just dumb. Let's make trackers and pullers coorindinate. Make it so that when you tag a mob you actually have a semi viable raid force in zone. Not just 2 dudes and you get the other 70 zerglings by the time you get to the pull spot.

Here's how I see the extreme version of this panning out, the mob spawns, trackers batphone, and people log in. The pullers will likely end up being bards with selos camped at zone lines who can figure out the quickest path to where the mob is.

This seems like more of a race and less of an automated spamfest crapshoot.

*Personally* I'd agree with a suggestion made awhile back where people had to have a WC or OT zone 'flag' their account to be able to engage the dragon. So that people actually have to port to WC or hammer to OT, then mobilize as a guild and port+run to where the dragon is. Rather than camping out at the closest location allowable with your entire raid.

But, the suggestion I made in the OP seems to me to be more agreeable by all parties and reduce a little bit the retardation of the current FTE situation.

If Class C wishes to keep the 16hour jav spam in VP or something, I suppose they're welcome to do that if jav spam gets your blood really pumping.

[Brut]

Flag things go way too far into unclassic territory methinks.

Give all raid targets ability to summon at 100% = no pulling to zoneline 4minutes away = race the raid to the mob instead of people logging in at where the mob is brought to hit autoattack and log off. And prohibit kiting zone trash altogether because having to clear parts of Fear is actual competition as compared to bards running circles and derps chain training Nwall until one manages to survive long enough to down the potato.

4 seconds sounds super slow btw. Javspam = constantly clicking the air and tabbing range hotkey, not just watching the screen and being rdy to click and range attack once your reaction time kicks in. Unless loading the dragon model gave people a 3second lag spike.

[Daldaen]

Yea unclassic mechanic I know. FTE is as well though. But regardless that's my ramblings and not the purpose of this post.

This is Faydedar we are talking about. I just pulled that example out to show how stupid letting trackers pull is. On more legit/desired mobs the FTE battles are even closer together. We had one of our pullers comment on Sev last time that he shouted FTE before it even appeared on our pullers screen (possibly lag on their end... But still, dumb).

I like your idea of engaging the mob where it stands to an extent. But that removes the skill/art of pulling from the game. Which is a very unique aspect of EQ that most other MMOs don't have, they just have derpfaceaggro. Now granted... Pulling Fay or Gore or Sev is no real challenge. But come Velious pulling Tormax to the zone, while it does negate part of the script, is extremely classic and extremely challenging to do quickly. You need some boss pullers to do that.

If the engage where it stands thing goes in the engages would likely end up going to which guild can group the most bards. Whereas my suggestion it would just go to which bard can zone in and get there quickest. Which seems a bit more reasonable IMO. (And doesn't require the winning guild to have 3+ bards each kill... With out broken 500 resist cap, bards are already valuable enough on raids)

[BlkCamel]

*

[Brut]

There are alot of engages currently that both tier C guilds wipe on frequently, and wouldn't if they had a bard each group doing the appropriate resist song. There's rarely enough bards to go around, especially in the fast-engage-environment where you don't have the time to start assigning people to log on bards to have enough of them around. I'd imagine the only group that would run up with a bard is the MT group, rest would follow up at SoW speed. And this is only in a situation where the whole raid is camped at zoneline. If multiple targets were in window and people had to evac from KC to skyfire, it could go to any guild that happened to have the proper setup of classes available.

Still, all of this sounds like ohmygod a race.

Also VP pulling has been turned into practice where the mob aggros entire zone on it's way down and is singled out of the train like clockwork through means of clickies. I doubt Tormax will be much of a hassle.

Personally I just prefer the fight-at-spawn rule due to it fixing CT/Inny from the absolutely retarded trainfests that they degenerate into in the current rulesets. If people are genuinely disinterested in logging on for specific targets because said target is always a trainwreck of lag, desyncs and dying repeatedly to trains, something is seriously wrong with the ruleset there imo.

[Freakish]

Who remembers a month and change back when nobody could get out of vp? There was some anti-camp code put in and nobody could go up the ramp in picture room, walking over objects warped you back to the beginning of bedroom etc. Anti-camp rules are fun.

[Splorf22]

Best rule anyway was Ambrotos' "do not pull crap out of their spawn areas"-rule.

I like this a bit better than the OP. Both would be improvements for sure, though.

P.S. Butchh are you ashamed of your old army-style sig??

[Freakish]

I thought my sig was awesome. I'll make a new one at some point, an ms paint one.

[fishingme]

EQ raiding is too serious, nuke it.

[Clark]

EQ raiding is too serious, nuke it.

Lol