Blue players - would you try a Teams PVP p99 shard?

[Dulu]

If they launched a fresh server with a ruleset like this, would you play it?


RP PVP Server (Similar to Sullon Zek)

-No level limit on PvP, but safe zones in starter areas and capital cities where you have non-KOS faction
-Coin loot only, and only to players within a level range of +4/-4
-3 Factions, no communication, grouping, buffing, or trading allowed between the three.

Blue team: High Elves, Dwarves, Wood Elves, Marr Barbarians [No Shadowknights or Necromancers]
Orange team: Erudin erudites, gnomes, halflings, Zek Barbarians [No Shadowknights]
Red team: Dark Elves, Ogres, Trolls, Iksar, Paineel Erudites [No Paladins, Druids or Rangers]

Humans and half elves would be split among the 3 teams, depending on which god they worship.

Innoruuk, CT, Bertoxx followers would be on red team, while Tunare/Marr/Quellious would be on blue, etc. Barbarians would be split between good and neutral, depending on their deity.

[Floraline]

I'd definitely be for this!

[Jimjam]

Half elf warrior of Innoruuk.


I always play new servers. That new server smell is intoxicating!

Not sure how long I'd stick with it though.

[Squabbles123]

I'd at least roll on a Team PvP server, not sure if I'd stick around, but its a much more fun concept than FFA PvP

There still needs to be a limit of some form on PvP though, no level limit at all would cause MAJOR problems in just 1-2 weeks time.

[Dulu]

I'd at least roll on a Team PvP server, not sure if I'd stick around, but its a much more fun concept than FFA PvP

There still needs to be a limit of some form on PvP though, no level limit at all would cause MAJOR problems in just 1-2 weeks time.

Sadly, history has shown us that level limits create more problems than they solve.

You have to deal with level 1 spies in high level areas, "out of range" clerics healing PvP fights while no one can touch them, etc.

We could make every starting area and every capital city a sanctuary (No PVP) though to compensate.

[kempoguy80]

No. I hate EQ pvp

[Rizzle]

Sadly, history has shown us that level limits create more problems than they solve.

You have to deal with level 1 spies in high level areas, "out of range" clerics healing PvP fights while no one can touch them, etc.

We could make every starting area and every capital city a sanctuary (No PVP) though to compensate.

Dulu I completely agree with you. I think you would have to have pvp open to all level ranges but can only loot coin from someone within a 5 level range, so you don't have high levels killing low levels and taking all their coin. If you had XP loss in pvp it would only be from someone within that 5 level range as well.

Also, if this was to be more like Sullon Zek would these teams be deity based? So you could technically have difference races on different teams based on the deity they chose?

Another thought, since red99 doesn't have the largest population it might make more sense to have teams be just 2 teams, evil and good. Otherwise you could be spreading the teams out too thin if not enough people play on it.

[Dulu]

Dulu I completely agree with you. I think you would have to have pvp open to all level ranges but can only loot coin from someone within a 5 level range, so you don't have high levels killing low levels and taking all their coin. If you had XP loss in pvp it would only be from someone within that 5 level range as well.

Also, if this was to be more like Sullon Zek would these teams be deity based? So you could technically have difference races on different teams based on the deity they chose?

Another thought, since red99 doesn't have the largest population it might make more sense to have teams be just 2 teams, evil and good. Otherwise you could be spreading the teams out too thin if not enough people play on it.


I'd say no XP loss in PvP. You don't want to discourage combat at all. Dying and losing your camp/coin is harsh enough.

And yes, coin loss only to players within a certain range is perfect.

I don't want to copy the exact system from Sullon - I think if we base it primarily on races, it will be easier for players to figure out which faction they will be on. For example, on Sullon, you could pick a Barbarian of Rallos Zek, and you'd be evil. Well, that's not going to be obvious to everyone who isn't a lore nerd. I want it to be very clear when you select your character, which faction you will be on.

And the benefit to having a 3rd faction is sort of a self-police force. If one faction becomes too strong, for example, the Red team becomes too strong, and is taking all of the content, then the blue and orange team can work together to overthrow them.

[Lhancelot]

I enjoyed SZ. I would try a teams PVP server if it began here.

[Dulu]

Another interesting idea is to allow the looting of non-reagent gems.

Things like rubies and diamonds etc, in addition to coin.

This way, people out farming sea-furies are prime targets! Carrying all that phat lewt.

[Nuggie]

Yes.

[Vexenu]

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=120312

^ Old thread I started about an SZ-style server with ideas for balance modifications. Not sure I would still agree with all of those proposals (I think race-based teams might be better if done correctly) but some balance changes like FV hammers and FFA PvP within the Evil team would be very necessary to ensure long term balance between teams.

[loramin]

I'm not sure it's very productive to imagine a specific ruleset when you have almost no chance of getting it. The staff is going to make whatever rules they want on any new server, taking in to account stuff we don't even consider (like what rules would require the least GM time), and the odds that those rules wind up matching the suggestions of any player(s) are slim to none.

But with that being said I will definitely be creating a new character on day 1 of any future teams/discord server.

[Stuka]

SZ rocked, go Newts!

Stuka

[TimTheToolmanTaylor]

no pvp sucks in this game /thread.

[Croco]

No. PvP is garbage.

[papito]

YES PLEASE TEAMS 2017

[Dollar]

I really like the idea and it sounds fun, but I can't help but assume you would end up with exactly what you have now. You would basically get all the bed red papers now stacking one team. People would keep joining the winning team because people like to win, and you would have the same result. One team griefing everyone off the server. Could always just enforce a wipe if his happened. I'm not sure.

[Dollar]

I would try it. If nothing else it would be fun raiding with class limitations.

[Baler]

YES, I would even be happy with guild wars on blue.

[Reis]

Having played on Sullon Zek when it launched, I greatly enjoyed it as it was really the first time I was able to play on my own account (shared one with my brother prior to that). That being said, it was a long time ago, and PVP doesn't have the same draw for me. I have good memories from that time, but I wouldn't do it again.

[Swish]

Anything p99 fresh, definitely

[fadetree]

I'd try it.

[Rick Sanchez]

The red community would ruin it I'm sure.

[Brut]

Sure would, albeit this sounds like history repeating itself and evulz team just dominating.
Unless we're smart enough to keep Kunark closed at the beginning.

[AmukTZ]

yes

[Dulu]

Sure would, albeit this sounds like history repeating itself and evulz team just dominating.
Unless we're smart enough to keep Kunark closed at the beginning.



We could put Iksar on a 4th faction, all alone. It would be closer to the actual lore.



I'm aware "Evil" races have a lot of appeal, so I'm trying to handicap the team as much as I possibly can.

Perhaps the Iksar faction could be "FFA PvP", even among themselves. They can still group, trade, communicate with other lizards, but they could kill them as well. Basically it would make playing a Lizard very hard for anyone but the most hardcore element.

There was an all Iksar guild in Firiona Vie on live, and they actually were clearing content in PoP. Granted it wasn't PvP - but I think it's possible.

Another option would be to also allow Dwarves or Barbarians to have frontal-stun-immunity. Taking the best tanking racial and giving it to one of the Good tanks.

[Ivah]

The red community would ruin it I'm sure.

Shit player base mindset. Were very sorry the majority of red is better at Eq overall. Not really though.

[Dulu]

This is what the city break-down would look like with this set-up.

BLUE (Good) - Halas, Qeynos, Kaladim, Felwithe, Kelethin
YELLOW (Neutral) - Erudin/Paineel, Rivervale, Ak'Anon, Freeport
RED (Evil) - Neriak, Oggok, Grobb
GREEN (Iksar) - Cabilis

After playing with the map a bit, I think it would be much easier to just make all Erudites neutral. Strengthens the neutral team with shadowknights, and doesn't really take anything away anything from the evil team. Also makes the starting zones much simpler.

https://preview.ibb.co/fd3LSa/Zek_99.jpg (https://ibb.co/bYsEna)

The highlighted zones would be sanctuary (can't be attacked) if you're not KOS to that city and on that faction.

[Rizzle]

A downside I see to splitting this into 4 teams is that your spreading the numbers even thinner making endgame content even harder to get numbers to do if this server lacks a large population like red. I think 3 teams is more than enough.

It was a very long time ago, so I have no idea how balanced Sullon Zek was compared to Good, Neutral and Evil, but I can't see adding a 4th team being the solution.

[Jimjam]

Sure would, albeit this sounds like history repeating itself and evulz team just dominating.
Unless we're smart enough to keep Kunark closed at the beginning.

Keep Kunark closed altogether. It's a completely different game to vanilla.


.. Having iksar their own faction could work too if we must suffer epics, fungis and so on.

[Baler]

Iksar should just join evil races upon kunark release.

Good- Barbarian, Dwarf, Halfling, High Elf, Wood Elf
Neutral- Erudite, Gnome, Half Elf, Human
Evil- Dark Elf, Iksar, Ogre, Troll

[Grizzler]

I would try a server like this.

[Dulu]

Iksar should just join evil races upon kunark release.

Good- Barbarian, Dwarf, Halfling, High Elf, Wood Elf
Neutral- Erudite, Gnome, Half Elf, Human
Evil- Dark Elf, Iksar, Ogre, Troll

Yeah I just worry that Evil would be too strong.

Dark Elves are already the most popular choice for every caster, and many clerics. Until Kunark comes out that is, and then Iksar seem to take over. Both being on the same team, appears problematic.


Red99 is such low pop because it has a garbage "afterthought" ruleset, that had to be altered so many times... If we had a strong, consistent, fun ruleset from the start, people would play it.

[Baler]

Good races are coming in pretty frigin strong imo...
Neutral is a nice balance allow a pick from both evil and good classes.
mind you evil has no druids... meaning only wizard ports. So that put's them at a slight disadvantage in terms of travel,. Especially if and when a raid target pops.

Evil races are strong when they're not competing against neutral and good races... Try to detach from non-team based ideals.

[Rizzle]

I wonder if this is why Sullon Zek worked out, because it was deity based. I don't know what deities Dark Elves can be, but it's possible that there could be both Nerutral and Evil Dark Elves, helping to avoid the problem of evil being overpowered. I personally prefer the idea of deity based alliances as I think it opens up the door to more diverse teams versus a race based one.

[Dulu]

I wonder if this is why Sullon Zek worked out, because it was deity based. I don't know what deities Dark Elves can be, but it's possible that there could be both Nerutral and Evil Dark Elves, helping to avoid the problem of evil being overpowered. I personally prefer the idea of deity based alliances as I think it opens up the door to more diverse teams versus a race based one.

Yes, Dark Elves were mostly Innoruuk (evil) but had the option to be Agnostic (neutral).

I think we need a mix of both. I like the mostly-race based system because it allows people who all start in X area, for example Neriak, to group and be on the same team.

If you use the SZ style strict-deity based system, you could have people in Freeport from all 3 factions.

I think ideally, you should not encounter people from the enemy faction until you are OUT of your starting city and noob zone. :)

[loramin]

I wonder if this is why Sullon Zek worked out, because it was deity based. I don't know what deities Dark Elves can be, but it's possible that there could be both Nerutral and Evil Dark Elves, helping to avoid the problem of evil being overpowered. I personally prefer the idea of deity based alliances as I think it opens up the door to more diverse teams versus a race based one.

I think the concern about basing it on religion is that it makes it obvious which team certain players are on (eg. Ogres are clearly evil) but it makes it impossible to tell which team other players (eg. Humans) are on, because the same race with different religions can be on multiple teams.

That being said, personally I think something like the color of your name should be enough to identify your team, and I think it'd be worse to make the teams unbalanced and obvious than to be balanced and sometimes ambiguous.

[Baler]

Yes, Dark Elves were mostly Innoruuk (evil) but had the option to be Agnostic (neutral).

I disagree. I think for DE it honestly doesn't matter what religon you pick. For erudite however. Agnostic all the frigin way. There are far more random npcs who have strange hate towards dark elves. Erudites are like the ultimate neutral race.

Racism is alive and well in everquest.

---

HOWEVER this brings up an INTERESTING question!!!

Would cities factions be based on teams or regular EQ?

[Dulu]

Evil races are strong when they're not competing against neutral and good races... Try to detach from non-team based ideals.

But you see, I've played through Sullon Zek when it was alive, and I've played Red99 for a long time.

Ogres, Trolls, Dark Elves, Iksar are ALL extremely strong and popular in PvP.

[Baler]

Yeah,.. as an iksar SK on red. I do understand what you're getting at. I just want to believe otherwise :(

[Vexenu]

On SZ you could just con people and tell what team they were on.

For evils, good conned scowls and neutrals conned threateningly.
For good, evils conned scowls and neutrals conned threateningly.
For neutral, evils conned scowls and good conned threateningly.

Your own teammates conned amiable or indifferent, I don't recall which. Point being, there was never any problem telling friend from foe because they were a human or other deity-ambiguous race. You knew instantly upon seeing them, if you weren't familiar with the name already (which you were 95% of the time).

SZ demonstrated conclusively that the Evil team (under an SZ rules system) had a number of structural advantages that made it much more powerful than the Good and Neutral teams. Some of these included:

1) Exclusive access to the two best races (Ogre and Iksar)
2) Exclusive access to two of the best PvP classes (SK and Necro)
3) Practically exclusive access to the OT hammer
4) Perhaps most important of all, near-exclusive access and total control of the entire continent of Kunark, allowing for faster leveling and gearing with much less interference from other teams

The story of SZ was powergamers (Ruin) realizing the structural advantages of the evil team and fully utilizing them to roll up an enormous PvE head start on the Neutral and Evil teams. That gap never closed in the classic era and the newts and goods were playing from far behind for all that time. And when I say a gap I'm talking about top Evil guilds (Ruin, then Hate) clearing ST and NToV while most Neutrals don't even have Thurg armor. And the Goods were barely even capable of a Hate/Fear clear. It was a tremendous disparity.

The point of this being: if you want to resurrect something similar to SZ rules, you would need to address these foundational problems. That was the entire basis of my proposed ruleset that I re-posted on page 2 of this thread.

Easiest fixes to balance teams under SZ rules:

1) FFA PvP within the Evil team
2) Introduce FV hammer (exactly the same as OT hammer except ports to FV, obtainable through a very grindy drolvarg fang quest)
3) Moderately buff the starting stats of goods and neutrals to compensate for their inherent structural disadvantages

[NegaStoat]

This was already promised several months prior to the release of Velious. That release was delayed due to Daybreak launching their own progression server after a quiet talk and agreement with the server staff. It is strongly speculated that as long as Daybreak continues to launch and support progression EQ, P1999 will not have the ability to launch any new servers. Ever.

I'm still looking for evidence to the contrary on this, and it's still not being presented. The evidence that HAS been presented was the server staff's ambition to launch such a server with the idea of eventually merging in the old red PvP server, as discussed on Red's forum board and Sirken's streams. All of that was quietly forgotten.

My advice is to just enjoy what you have, or attempt to get what you want from a different project. This one is parked indefinitely.

[Swish]

My advice is to just enjoy what you have, or attempt to get what you want from a different project. This one is parked indefinitely.

It's good advice, but I did think there was some speculation about Columbus Nova selling off the EQ franchise at some point.

[Beastagoog]

I would play a pvp or teams server if daybreak launched it.

Dont trust p99 gms. Their lack of care is very evident in that red99 could have been something so special yet its a cesspit.
I know coz I spam the forums daily as an example of how cesspit like it is.

Want more evidence? All the pyschopaths, druggies and liars+cheats on blue server migrate to red because it calls to em.

[Swish]

It's just going through a rough patch lately, that's all..

[fadetree]

Want more evidence? All the pyschopaths, druggies and liars+cheats on blue server migrate to red because it calls to em.

Working as intended, then. :)

[Dulu]

If I were DBG, I'd be OK with p99 releasing a PvP server, since DBG clearly has no intent to ever release a PvP server.

[Dulu]

On SZ you could just con people and tell what team they were on.

For evils, good conned scowls and neutrals conned threateningly.
For good, evils conned scowls and neutrals conned threateningly.
For neutral, evils conned scowls and good conned threateningly.

Your own teammates conned amiable or indifferent, I don't recall which. Point being, there was never any problem telling friend from foe because they were a human or other deity-ambiguous race. You knew instantly upon seeing them, if you weren't familiar with the name already (which you were 95% of the time).

SZ demonstrated conclusively that the Evil team (under an SZ rules system) had a number of structural advantages that made it much more powerful than the Good and Neutral teams. Some of these included:

1) Exclusive access to the two best races (Ogre and Iksar)
2) Exclusive access to two of the best PvP classes (SK and Necro)
3) Practically exclusive access to the OT hammer
4) Perhaps most important of all, near-exclusive access and total control of the entire continent of Kunark, allowing for faster leveling and gearing with much less interference from other teams

The story of SZ was powergamers (Ruin) realizing the structural advantages of the evil team and fully utilizing them to roll up an enormous PvE head start on the Neutral and Evil teams. That gap never closed in the classic era and the newts and goods were playing from far behind for all that time. And when I say a gap I'm talking about top Evil guilds (Ruin, then Hate) clearing ST and NToV while most Neutrals don't even have Thurg armor. And the Goods were barely even capable of a Hate/Fear clear. It was a tremendous disparity.

The point of this being: if you want to resurrect something similar to SZ rules, you would need to address these foundational problems. That was the entire basis of my proposed ruleset that I re-posted on page 2 of this thread.

Easiest fixes to balance teams under SZ rules:

1) FFA PvP within the Evil team
2) Introduce FV hammer (exactly the same as OT hammer except ports to FV, obtainable through a very grindy drolvarg fang quest)
3) Moderately buff the starting stats of goods and neutrals to compensate for their inherent structural disadvantages


Name color, in addition to '/consider' works fine.

Enemy factions should be "Threateningly", while your team should be "Regards you as an ally".


I don't think FFA PvP on the evil team would be a good idea. Too many ways to abuse that in mass PvP..

Yes - we absolutely would need an FV hammer, or... remove the OT hammer. Either works.



I think the most obvious buff we can give to Good/Neutral, would be allowing Frontal Stun immunity on Dwarves and/or Barbarians. Or... remove Frontal Stun immunity from Ogres completely.

((Another thing to consider would be opening up the Froglok or Vah Shir races.. we could allow them to start in freeport or something, but it would give one of the factions more flexibility. I don't think we should do this, but it's something to consider. I think we could balance the classic races.))

[Kohedron]

I work 100% be in favor or this, and it'd bring me back to this game

[Dulu]

A mechanic that I thought worked well in the game called 'Planetside', was an XP bonus (we could also make it coin, or drop rate/spawn rate, etc) for the lowest population faction.

For example, if at launch we had..

400 evil
200 neutral
200 good

Good and Neutral would both get a +20% XP bonus, and +20% coin drop. It would scale according to how big the numbers advantage is.

New players would be warned about it before picking a faction, and you could only have 1 faction per IP.. Yes, there are ways to circumvent that, but most players wouldn't bother.


If it ever got to the point where Evil is still just mollywhopping the server, we could MERGE good and neutral, and just make it a 2 faction pvp server. Not ideal, but it's an emergency solution if we ever need it.

[Qtip]

News flash! A new pvp server is never coming. No one but 40 people want to play that garbage. Go play a game designed for pvp or move along.

[Swish]

A mechanic that I thought worked well in the game called 'Planetside', was an XP bonus (we could also make it coin, or drop rate/spawn rate, etc) for the lowest population faction.

For example, if at launch we had..

400 evil
200 neutral
200 good

Good and Neutral would both get a +20% XP bonus, and +20% coin drop. It would scale according to how big the numbers advantage is.

New players would be warned about it before picking a faction, and you could only have 1 faction per IP.. Yes, there are ways to circumvent that, but most players wouldn't bother.


If it ever got to the point where Evil is still just mollywhopping the server, we could MERGE good and neutral, and just make it a 2 faction pvp server. Not ideal, but it's an emergency solution if we ever need it.

I could dig it ^^

[Sage Truthbearer]

I've never heard anyone call a server a shard outside of DAoC.

[Fifield]

No. I hate EQ pvp

[Tecmos Deception]

News flash! A new pvp server is never coming. No one but 40 people want to play that garbage. Go play a game designed for pvp or move along.

It's not really a problem with the design of the game, imo. I mean, PVP in EQ isn't any more quirky than PVE in EQ. It's just that a PVP server really only thrives on a healthy population, and red didn't have that for long enough to attract and keep players except for those who already were used to and looking for EQ PVP. And when there isn't enough population for curious-but-not-convinced players to get their feet wet and actually have groups and real PVP while leveling and friendly twinks to deal with the hostile twinks and shit... go figure the population is sloping down down down forever.

[Swish]

It's that whole cycle of "I'd play if more people played"

[papito]

Whatever ruleset the devs pick THAT SHIT HAS TO BE HARD CODED INTO THE GAME! So many people would abuse the shit out of oor healing/cross faction healing/cross faction trades/cross faction buffing/etcetcetc..

[Tecmos Deception]

It's that whole cycle of "I'd play if more people played"

It's not a cycle. There WERE a lot of players to begin with. And for quite a while after that there were still "enough" that the server wasn't on life support like it has been more recently. But it just never had a critical mass to keep it afloat, imo. You can't expect everyone is going to like it, and with P99 there just isn't a big enough crowd that you will see 500+ playing on red nightly in order to be a robust enough server to keep attracting people to give it a(nother) shot.

[Swish]

It's not a cycle. There WERE a lot of players to begin with. And for quite a while after that there were still "enough" that the server wasn't on life support like it has been more recently. But it just never had a critical mass to keep it afloat, imo. You can't expect everyone is going to like it, and with P99 there just isn't a big enough crowd that you will see 500+ playing on red nightly in order to be a robust enough server to keep attracting people to give it a(nother) shot.

There's more to it than that, particularly the staff messing with XP bonuses. When it got to 250ish they removed the old XP bonus (set it to blue levels) and the population tanked back down to 70ish.

A patch happened and it was put back in. Heartbrand said he was seeing people who hadn't played in months that had heard it was back on. Then the next day it was removed again, and the population died again.

It's never recovered from that, and while the new(er) scaling XP bonus did draw a bit of a crowd, it's not all been griefers keeping the pop low. Just need to put that in there ^^

[Tecmos Deception]

Ah, yeah, I remember that now that you mention it. I had started my enchanter on red shortly before that, got pumped when it came in, then was like "wtf?" when they took it out right away. Lol.

[Sancta]

I've never heard anyone call a server a shard outside of DAoC.

I guess you've never played UO then