System rotation target ?

[Uaellaen]

Even if you wanted to track them all 24/7 you'd be at a massive disadvantage against the guild who recruits anything with a pulse.

dont think we have been at a disadvantage against guilds that recruit everything with a pulse, they usualy shoot them selfs in the leg, because exactly those people that do not have more then a pulse are still cappable of wiping whole raids ;)

[Skope]

dont think we have been at a disadvantage against guilds that recruit everything with a pulse, they usualy shoot them selfs in the leg, because exactly those people that do not have more then a pulse are still cappable of wiping whole raids ;)

And don't you think it'd seem a bit more suitable and reasonable had this all happened on rules that at least somewhat resembled classic raiding and not introduced a new mechanic?

[Hasbinbad]

A friend of mine recommended this thread to me. He said it delivers. He was right.

I've never seen so much arguing - so much passionate debate - over something which hasn't even been presented.

Skope I have to give it to you. This is a masterful troll. 10/10. Hands down the best troll of 2011 so far.

..which of course begs the question: "WTF happened to Divinity?"

Hasbinbad, signing off.

[Uaellaen]

And don't you think it'd seem a bit more suitable and reasonable had this all happened on rules that at least somewhat resembled classic raiding and not introduced a new mechanic?

man we tried it all, we had a "guild council" going with divinity, transcendence, remedy, and IB ... even gothic circle came to some meetings and we setup raid rules and so on ... but there will always be a bunch of people that dont want to act according to those rules, and the guides / GMs have better things to do then babysitt us with our petty rules ...

so after a while the staff changed the server raid rules to what they are today, and from that day on it got a bit more peaceful on this server ... and you want to go back and unleash that training hell from 1 year ago? lol ...

the only thing getting rid of the variance would do is go back to a poopsock fest and test guilds as to who is willing enought to poopsock the longest to claim spawns ...

at the moment its FTE and mobilisation / knowing when a mob poped is what gets you raid mobs ... if you do not want to invest that kind of time, you do not have to ... Remedy kept out of that shit for a long while, and we still got the odd draco or inny ... of course now there is way more competition, but tracking a target with a handfull of people cycling the tracking is not that hard ...

[Nedala]

And there are also enough server repops so you could still compete for many targets without having to track.

[Skope]

man we tried it all, we had a "guild council" going with divinity, transcendence, remedy, and IB ... even gothic circle came to some meetings and we setup raid rules and so on ... but there will always be a bunch of people that dont want to act according to those rules, and the guides / GMs have better things to do then babysitt us with our petty rules ...

so after a while the staff changed the server raid rules to what they are today, and from that day on it got a bit more peaceful on this server ... and you want to go back and unleash that training hell from 1 year ago? lol ...

the only thing getting rid of the variance would do is go back to a poopsock fest and test guilds as to who is willing enought to poopsock the longest to claim spawns ...

at the moment its FTE and mobilisation / knowing when a mob poped is what gets you raid mobs ... if you do not want to invest that kind of time, you do not have to ... Remedy kept out of that shit for a long while, and we still got the odd draco or inny ... of course now there is way more competition, but tracking a target with a handfull of people cycling the tracking is not that hard ...

it's not about hard, forget hard. we created hard. it shouldn't even be an option or mandatory merely because it never existed on live. getting rid of variance + FTE = no such thing as poopsock. Poopsock can't exist with FTE. The two shall never meet. What you will have is clusterfucks, but you can get around those.

Hasbin, are you back with IB? or DA? or is it IB again?

[Shiftin]

it's not about hard, forget hard. we created hard. it shouldn't even be an option or mandatory merely because it never existed on live. getting rid of variance + FTE = no such thing as poopsock. Poopsock can't exist with FTE. The two shall never meet. What you will have is clusterfucks, but you can get around those.
Hasbin, are you back with IB? or DA? or is it IB again?

We're all still waiting on you to tell us how.

[Versus]

getting rid of variance + FTE = no such thing as poopsock. Poopsock can't exist with FTE. The two shall never meet. What you will have is clusterfucks, but you can get around those. ?

It will still exist. Trak spawns in 3 hours...Camp your mains @ Lair fully buffed and play an alt until 2 mins before hand (3-5 guilds will do this). This is still poopsocking, except you're spending your time on an alt in the meantime. First one to log in 15-20 and shoot a bow @ Trak while Idol DA'd while the remainder of his raid logs in and joins the fight wins.

Fucking dumb.

Either:
1. Make it a random-timed full spawn so guilds have to prioritize targets. (And thus smaller guilds can get some too)
-or-
2. Leave it the way it is and the guilds who are more dedicated to tracking will get the payoff. There are many things about this server that are un-classic. Deal with it.

[Skope]

We're all still waiting on you to tell us how.

go back one page and read. That's building on the dude's /shout idea. Poopsock, camp, sit on the spawn if you want, if you dont aggro first it's not yours. Throw in a window (comparatively small compared to the one we have now) and only the guild who's fully prepared and engages first when the mob spawns would be able to take it. the /shout actually would serve the dual purpose of clarity as well, as there should be no questions as to who gets first claim. If you want to wake up at 3am or wait the 2-3 hours (or whatever it is) you'll get more spawns. Not classic, but at least way more classic than what we have now.

There's more ways to kinder to the FTE style without having all of that, but there's also others that don't demand FTE and still require guilds to be present, active and skillful.

Hasbin, this may seem like a tough pill for you to swallow (though, considering how much swallowing you do on a daily basis, perhaps it's not: guilt, shame, your own words and other biological entities to name a few), most of the people i've spoken to in div regarding this have disagreed with me. Yea... skope is actually being impartial. Holy fuckballs, right? also, let's be honest, i don't think either of us have seen you post anything worth a damn in ages. RnF is that way ~~~>>>

[Shiftin]

If most people in your own guild, and the other raiding guilds, all disagree with you... at some point you have to consider the possibility that you're not making sense.

[Rhambuk]

most of the people i've spoken to in div regarding this have disagreed with me.

You're not a gnome anymore, your words mean nothing.

[Versus]

The mob shouting a name would alleviate the random person whose raid is presently unprepared throwing a Jav/Arrow @ a mob .5 seconds before someone in the prepared raid does.

If this happened, the prepared raid would see it and know to let the unprepared raid wipe, instead of engaging it, (without knowing it was tagged by the unprepared raid .5 seconds beforehand) killing it, and having to hand the loot over because the GM's saw in the logs that the unprepared person actually engaged first.

[Skope]

If most people in your own guild, and the other raiding guilds, all disagree with you... at some point you have to consider the possibility that you're not making sense.

and through damn near 30 pages I haven't seen a single reason as to why i'm wrong, shiftin. Hell, you even agree with some points i've made.

The biggest reason that people have against dumping or shortening variance is one i've stated repeatedly: it doesn't address the issue of GM involvement. Clusterfucks will happen. As I've told Hobby, though, unless there are clear boundaries as to where and how GMs will get involved then you can't really patch that up, can you?

If you're unprepared and pull before you're ready you'll wipe. Have fun with your rezzes. Communication is rather important now, isn't it? So are mind games. Do i even want to engage first? are you sure we should be sitting on trak's spawn point so we get to engage first? Honestly, i would love to see, if only once, 5-6 guilds being fearbombed by trak.

[Aadill]

The mob shouting a name would alleviate the random person whose raid is presently unprepared throwing a Jav/Arrow @ a mob .5 seconds before someone in the prepared raid does.

If this happened, the prepared raid would see it and know to let the unprepared raid wipe, instead of engaging it, (without knowing it was tagged by the unprepared raid .5 seconds beforehand) killing it, and having to hand the loot over because the GM's saw in the logs that the unprepared person actually engaged first.

This is the only concept in this thread that thus far proves to be a change that would work for the better and would be relatively easy to integrate ala Gorenaire's current shout mechanic upon being agroed. DTing mobs still have the issue of first-dead-second-pull agro but if that portion of the rule were to be removed then it would be much more simple.

If you're unprepared and pull before you're ready you'll wipe. Have fun with your rezzes. Communication is rather important now, isn't it? So are mind games. Do i even want to engage first? are you sure we should be sitting on trak's spawn point so we get to engage first? Honestly, i would love to see, if only once, 5-6 guilds being fearbombed by trak.

Who the hell would not be ready for a mob that spawns at a very specific time? With a small variance of even 8 hours you can expect people to sit there buffed and ready to engage. The reason the variance is so big is because it DISSUADES people from sitting on their asses for four days and instead race for targets when they DO spawn.

[Skope]

make it an hour? make it two? So long as it's long enough where it's not free is fine. It's about FTE, aadill, and not sitting there and holding in your piss.

[Aadill]

make it an hour? make it two? So long as it's long enough where it's not free is fine. It's about FTE, aadill, and not sitting there and holding in your piss.

Buffs last about an hour and would be easy to keep up. 8 hours doesn't phase most people with xp mobs around to kill. 24 hours keeps people up at night but not unwilling to give it a shot. 48 hours makes people wary. 96 hours makes people go do other things and play the game.

You admit to the fact that you don't like the variance and expect skill in the form of a mob kill when it's been stressed over and over again that there are MULTIPLE raid guilds on this server, way more than live, that have all the information to engage a target, diminishing that concept.

You claim skill doesn't come from rushing your opponents from all corners of the world in attempts to buff up, setup up a pull spot, and engage the mob with haste without wiping.

To me, you are shooting blanks, bud. FTE exists in the current state. You want more of a dice roll, because there are multiple guilds willing to go to great lengths to beat you out on loot even in your ruleset.

[Skope]

Buffs last about an hour and would be easy to keep up. 8 hours doesn't phase most people with xp mobs around to kill. 24 hours keeps people up at night but not unwilling to give it a shot. 48 hours makes people wary. 96 hours makes people go do other things and play the game.

You admit to the fact that you don't like the variance and expect skill in the form of a mob kill when it's been stressed over and over again that there are MULTIPLE raid guilds on this server, way more than live, that have all the information to engage a target, diminishing that concept.

You claim skill doesn't come from rushing your opponents from all corners of the world in attempts to buff up, setup up a pull spot, and engage the mob with haste without wiping.

To me, you are shooting blanks, bud. FTE exists in the current state. You want more of a dice roll, because there are multiple guilds willing to go to great lengths to beat you out on loot even in your ruleset.

aadill, not only have you been completely wrong before (a la poopsock) but you're incredibly wrong again. Your notion of raiding here isn't everquest. It's unnecessary p99 behavior. You've raped raiding so hard that if you were to take a time machine back to your original EQ server you wouldn't know what they hell they were doing. you'd point and laugh and call them pussies because they had free time on their hands and planned their raids a week in advance.

What the fuck is wrong with you? "There are many raid guilds on this server" isn't a viable reason to keep a massive fucking window. That's an excuse that says: I like the way my assembly-line of a guild has operated since early last year and I don't like the idea of competition from various angles by various guilds in the spirit of classic. I'm not shitting on competition. I don't want a rotation, i don't want poopsocking, but let's at least open your eyes and see that the raiding scene here is the furthest thing from the classic experience as there is on this server, and it has nothing to do with how many guilds there are that can engage and drop a target.

As I've said before, if it's not classic it's not my job to explain why something that IS classic should be put in, but rather why something that ISNT classic is left in. If you want the answer for two-boxing you're welcomed to use the search feature, as i'm sure there are already half a billion threads and explanations on that one.

[Troy]

You want more of a dice roll,

Ultimately that's all EverQuest is... a series of dice rolls.

[Aadill]

aadill, not only have you been completely wrong before (a la poopsock) but you're incredibly wrong again. Your notion of raiding here isn't everquest. It's unnecessary p99 behavior. You've raped raiding so hard that if you were to take a time machine back to your original EQ server you wouldn't know what they hell they were doing. you'd point and laugh and call them pussies because they had free time on their hands and planned their raids a week in advance.

What the fuck is wrong with you? "There are many raid guilds on this server" isn't a viable reason to keep a massive fucking window. That's an excuse that says: I like the way my assembly-line of a guild has operated since early last year and I don't like the idea of competition from various angles by various guilds in the spirit of classic. I'm not shitting on competition. I don't want a rotation, i don't want poopsocking, but let's at least open your eyes and see that the raiding scene here is the furthest thing from the classic experience as there is on this server, and it has nothing to do with how many guilds there are that can engage and drop a target.

As I've said before, if it's not classic it's not my job to explain why something that IS classic should be put in, but rather why something that ISNT classic is left in. If you want the answer for two-boxing you're welcomed to use the search feature, as i'm sure there are already half a billion threads and explanations on that one.

Correct me if I'm wrong but your guild as a whole publicly announced that it was removing itself from the raiding scene the moment variance hit. Upon Sky being released you re-entered the raid scene on old-world mobs, eventually moving to Sky, as well. After Kunark released I have honestly and genuinely not seen a Divinity tag*. I assume that this is due to people wanting to play the game and explore their old favorite haunts, much like everyone else on the server is doing.

The GMs have pointed out that the variance isn't to reduce poopsocking it's to get people to shut the fuck up and win or lose without having to be babysat by someone who doesn't care how the population deals with raiding in the first place. You can use the search function for posts on that just as easily as you can find stuff on two-boxing. The raiding guilds that continued to poopsock did so because they wanted the mobs. It was stupid and that has since ended; not a single guild is poopsocking a target unless the last window on the last raid target for the week is about to close, something we've seen twice.

The mention of multiple raid guilds on this server has everything to do with everyone wanting something but no one reaching out for it. Ascension, at this point, races for mobs and on multiple occasions has succeeded. TMO has also put up a fight in racing for mobs. Vesica Dei has also gone after mobs. Even better, on patch days it's an easter egg hunt and everyone is a winner. Each of these guilds are willing and capable of attacking a raid target. All of these guilds, with prior knowledge of the spawn time of a raid mob, will be there to kill each and every mob independent of your idea that this is somehow more fair: Press target nearest NPC and auto attack with everyone buffed and in the right spot, something any guild with prior knowledge can and will do. The entire argument IS based on numbers, so throwing that under the rug misses the entire point of what everyone in this thread has been saying.

This server EMULATES classic. It is NOT classic. There are, as previously mentioned, a LARGE number of guilds that consider themselves raiding guilds that WILL fight for the limited number of targets.. a MUCH larger number of guilds than on live. What proves identity of any one of these raiding guilds is the willingness to adapt to a system that still provides competition for a much larger population of individuals that wish to raid end-game content.
Fear had 150 people in it last week because 150 people wanted dracoliche and CT. 30 or 40 some people got it. 100 others showed up. Expect that at every raid target if it's plannable in advance, classic or not.

Do I contend that the variance window is fair and reasonable? No, I think it should be halved and an FTE shout should be introduced for raid mobs. That will reduce burnout on a population of a server that wants to kill mobs and currently does and also reduce frustration of players that want to kill mobs and do not currently have the means to do so. What you have been unyieldingly suggesting is that somehow a "classic" raid environment is the best idea for a server that simply cannot support that style of play for such a top-heavy population.

I do agree with you that classically-aligned "linear" style raid encounters such as NToV and the like SHOULD be considered non-varianced and simply worked out amongst the guilds that wish to kill the mobs and can find ways to schedule things. On my server, it was very common to find that "lower-tier" stuff went untouched by high end raiding guilds but they still attempted to share the high end stuff with each other simply to not have any confrontation. The rift between the high end raiding guilds become larger and even that content didn't matter as much. As of right now, though, the only content are things that EVERY guild STILL WANTS and therefore compete to get said items by actually racing each other to get the kill, not the first hit, which is what the current system provides: a reasonable level of competition that actually merits the most deserving entity (explained as such by multiple people as the group that puts in the most time, has the fastest mobilization and sound strategies to engage and kill the mob).

The only idea that you've mentioned is FTE, which already exists, but in a non-varianced manner. You gave no solution to how this would pan out except that, to paraphrase, "it somehow would." Upon revelation of the idea that has already been discussed last year to introduce an FTE shout system to simply make the lives of GMs easier, you added that to the list. I agree with that idea and I agreed with it last year. What I don't agree with is how you ask everyone to PM you and when someone does they find that your manner is much the same as it has been in this public channel: obstinate.

I suggest that you stop trying to turn this into an RnF thread. You've admitted that a portion of your guild disagrees with you but attacking people that are attempting to persuade you from your argument whilst being flamed in return isn't exactly going to help your case. We aren't trolling you or being hard-headed, we've been giving you our firsthand perspective on the situation and what it actually entails. Posts like "Does this mean I win?" really irritate me because in my opinion you've only solidified my perspective even further that the rules are agreeable to the people that are currently participating.

Ultimately that's all EverQuest is... a series of dice rolls.

Indeed. In a sense, this is very true. Lots of things go to random chance but others are left to other devices. Project1999 has introduced a much more meaningful "dice roll" that requires players to be situationally aware outside of a week-long wait, 5 minute raid before they log off again after making an attempt on a mob. Some people play more than that and can log in for 2, 4, 6, 12, 24, or even more hours before they feel like logging off again. I'm not faulting them or applauding them for being logged on for so long, but I can tell they have dedication to a cause, whether it be a guild or simply the game.

*Except for Ninik.

PS I write books.

[Skope]

You're right, it's not a divinity thing; it's a Skope thing. And you're actually agreeing with me and you see the errors in the current system, and btw, so have the other people who've been trying to flamebait me.

What you despise is the fact that I've offered no perfect solution. wake up, there is none. That's always done at the table.

The /shout idea is great if you want an FTE system (which isn't the only system). But i'm going to favor something that's classic because this is P99, and the "it's not classic" line has been uttered more times than i can remember. Is hybrid exp penalty fair? Not in the slightest. It's actually incredibly stupid when you consider the way EQ works and that the hybrid classes (pally/SK mostly) have a far harder time soloing than some pure wis/int classes (minus cleric). Does it mean more GM intervention if we scaled hybrid penalty back? No. But guess what, Aadill? It's classic. Dumping exp penalty and giving wizards early AAs would make more sense than introducing variance -- unless the GMs don't want a headache. They're doing this shit for free, so why should they? Let's make it classic and alleviate their headache.

But if you're expecting 100 people at a raid, classic or not, why the 4 days of sitting on your hand with your thumb up your ass? It's unnecessary. The /shout idea alleviates the headaches and allows for lower variance (significantly lower). It stays FTE and more active, attentive guilds who make less mistakes will always win out on more loot. Clusterfucks? The mob shouted, if you help in killing it then thanks for the extra DPS. If you loot it or train then enjoy your ban -- just like it is now.

The "did i win?" comment was directed toward Humwawa. One flamebait deserves another.

[Aadill]

I see the errors in the current system but find the proposed to be a less desirable choice, which is why I am attempting to persuade you.

No one in any guild that's currently racing for targets has one person sitting on their ass for 4 days? Try 2, 4, 6, maybe 12 hours on the weekend or if they are funemployed~ People play in shifts both for the purpose of playing the game and for killing raid mobs. I only track when I'm on which is when I'm xping or going for loot, otherwise I'm not "on-call" for stuff... Ascension doesn't work that way, and neither does TR. When people are "sitting on their hands with their thumb up their ass" they are doing so when they're sitting on their ass IRL reading a book, watching a movie, making dinner, and mashing track every once and a while.

What you perhaps call unnecessary behavior, to some, means at least some level of interaction with the game (even if minimal) that keeps people occupied. I can think of quite a few folks that would gladly log on, kill a mob, and log off for a week till the next spawn if there was a timer that could be set.

An argument I will make FOR your case, is that the players that are online that are doing things such as XPing in PuGs or something all of the sudden drop group to go kill a raid mob. I've done it and I feel bad but I usually try to announce it before hand as a possibility, or stick to guild groups which contain the people that I enjoy being around anyway. That's a flaw in the current system that promotes adherence to the ruleset moreso than social interaction.

[Humwawa]

The "did i win?" comment was directed toward Humwawa. One flamebait deserves another.

Oh, you've won, baby. You've won.

There's a reason you chose this particular non-classic aspect of the emulator, over all the other flaws on the server, to champion. I wonder what it is?

[Skope]

Aadill, i don't want to put alternatives on the table until people can agree that there's a problem. Once that's accomplished you can propose and go through the alternatives to see if you can find something that's more suitable to all parties involved.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/71/StepByStepOpening.jpg

day by day.

I have a tendency to be belligerent, but don't take it personally. I'm actually quite harmless.

[Versus]

Aadill, i don't want to put alternatives on the table until people can agree that there's a problem. Once that's accomplished you can propose and go through the alternatives to see if you can find something that's more suitable to all parties involved. .

Here's the thing. Other people *are* thinking of alternatives, and drawing a blank at something that is better than what is established currently. Take the leap, think of something that is better before you get a consensus of agreement. That's what everyone else is doing.

I know I don't want to sit at each and every raid target with 100+ other people counting down the seconds until the spawn. You'd have 50 people literally SITTING on the spawn point, and luck would determine who Naggy/Vox/Inny,etc. aggros. and what guild gets to engage. It would be a fucking mess. Like its been stated a million times over, this server is simply too top heavy for this shit to work, classic be damned.

[Aadill]

Thinking about a recent Innoruuk kill might clue some insight into what to expect - one guild gets FTE, wipes, and the next guild that attempted FTE (or a random guild that attempted FTE) gets agro and finishes the mob off because it never resets. Does a GM then transfer loot? Does the guild decide to give it back? Is that even an expectation? This is lessened by actual competition for even being ready for the mob, whereas a static timed mob would have a lot of these issues. That is the single and largest issue that results from the proposed and why no one here is agreeing to it.. it's more work.

[Skope]

You don't want a clusterfuck? I don't want a hybrid XP penalty. Unfortunately both are classic and what you "want" doesn't compare to what "makes sense." These two are very different statements of which only the latter can be reached by being impartial and unbiased. The one prior is the epitome of bias.

Furthermore, there are ways to get by the training, the kill stealing and generally antisocial behavior that people turn to when somebody takes their pixels. One of those I've proposed already -- be stiffer with the bans. The GMs have ways of finding out just who aggros a mob first and it's been used on this server, a mere /shout would simply let everyone else know. You've got your true FTE.

What would prevent a guild from poopsocking the spawn? make it an hour window. Let 15 guilds sit there the entire time, you shouldn't be dictating who gets a shot anyway -- trakanon does.

It's FTE anyway, phisting. Luck determines who gets it now and it's determined it in original everquest as well. You're creating your own unnecessary problems by stretching the luck to 4 days, weeding out people that the original everquest never did. Let the dragons and community sort it out, not some dumbass mechanic.

Aadill, if you help them kill it then they can thank you. If it aggros you after they're dead then it's yours. What complications?

[baalzy]

If variance is eliminated guilds will be forced to prioritize much of the time on which mobs they want.

The reason being this: No guild is capable of killing Sev/Tal/Gore/Trak/Nag/Vox/CT/Inny/Draco/VS all at the same time. However, there are enough raid capable guilds to engage and kill all those targets at nearly the same time.

If variance is eliminated, much of the time these mobs will all end up dieing withing 20-30 minutes of each other as different guilds will be in position to take them out when they spawn. So while everyone knows when the mobs will spawn, if they're all spawning near enough to each other then guilds will have to prioritize on which mobs they want/need the most.

I know currently TR dominates on full server repops via mobilization & ability when it comes to the Kunark dragons, and they also get a large number of planar pops on these days because they use tactics that are effective, if somewhat douchey when you consider that someone else was up working their way to the mob 20min before you entered the zone. But thats something that the guild should work out amongst themselves.

But this is largely because they're able to be mobilized quickly. If variance were gone, then after the initial scuffle after a patch, everyone now knows when a mob will be popping and can position at what they prioritize on.

TR wants their Trak teeth & Kunark BPs? Well, they're going to be there. Do they also want their Kunark pants? They'll probably be at VS too. Are they also going to be sitting in EJ, SF, DL, SolB, Perma? Probably not. This would leave it up to the individual guilds to decide on what they want to do. Do they compete for Trak or settle for Naggy?

It's not perfect, Time-Of-Death will slide and some encounters will start repopping later compared to others over-time. If the GMs commited to a reboot cycle every 5-8 weeks regardless of patch status just to reset the times this would reset the cycles and start the competition all over again.

Will there be issues with multiple guilds sitting at an individual camp waiting for a repop? Yes. Will the server be dominated by one or two guilds that are big enough and mobile enough to dominate the majority of raid content? Probably not. Will those guilds get the more sought after targets? Probably. Will smaller guilds have chances at old-world raid mobs? Probably a better chance then they do now.

And just for the record, at the moment I'm fine with variance, but I also wouldn't have a problem with removing it.

[Skope]

Refer to baalzy, apparently someone that actually raided during classic.

After a while, you got tiered progression. Some guilds would prioritize trak whereas other guilds would hit VP. Some would cockblock trak and others knew that so they hit VS. Welcome to everquest.

[Asher]

Zepp, the problem isn't that a single guild got a majority of the kills... I played on prexus where KTF was literally 10 steps above everyone else. The problem, though, is that if KTF played here they wouldn't be able to do the same, or have any chance at all. Why? Because of variance.

Keepers were good people. They even managed the rotation and gave any guild(s) a shot at a target if they were ready.

Everything was great until Stasis Fed it up for everyone.

Asher

[Skope]

Asher, they were also a small guild that locked recruiting for damn near their entire duration on the server. Had they played here they'd have no shot because of variance. I played WoW beta with a couple of them, and they were good people.

And yes, statis/PDF were assholes =P

[Aadill]

The complications I am referring to is the recent incident apparently involving Divinity, TMO, and TR. This is second hand information but apparently TMO wiped and Divniity got the kill after doing 11% of damage because they had attempted to FTE but lost, yet still maintained agro. If it was the opposite and Divinity DID have FTE and TMO engaged and still wiped, that's one thing. It's also another if Divinity returned the loot to TMO or waited for the mob to reset, but that is just one instance that will occur every time a guild that gets FTE and doesn't get the kill will go through.

No mobs are currently spawning at the same time EXCEPT on server ups, so the idea of prioritization is moot, because mobs still regularly spawn in between server ups and eventually timers will be shifted outwards as mobs are slowly killed, shifting hours, which is enough time for a guild to remobilize and force the same situation as it is currently - 1 or 2 guilds receiving the majority of the kills. We don't have enough server repops to keep the timers simultaneous. The idea of committing to a planned server repop has been discussed before and was never something that the staff indicated as something they would pursue. You can easily cry foul in those instances, and it forces the GMs to keep up with it.

Everyone against variance has been hinging on the fact that somehow the guilds that immediately drop groups, hammer/gate/get ported to a raid zone and run to the raid mob within the first 10 minutes that it spawns are somehow not inclined to take the rest of the mobs as well. There is no tiered progression on this server until level limits are introduced or a server repop occurs, which is rare.


I think the main issue that I have here is that the majority of this was discussed and turned down by the playerbase/staff already (or some things were never implemented). I'd suggest revisiting the original threads and pulling from there. At this point, no one is standing on the platform of "keep it classic," though.

[Skope]

You have tiered progression as soon as trak dies and VP keys are dropping. Kunark introduced tiered progression.

There is a mighty difference between an hour variance and 96. It's actually exactly 95 hours. Furthermore, for the 1 hour variance to reach anywhere near that 96 hour window would require either 6 months of not a single patch or Nilbog/Rogean to look over the variance code because something would clearly be broken. With an hour window things will pretty much be spawning at ~ the same time frame. There will be deviations, but that actually encourages mobilization and tracking but not to this ridiculous extent. Get in, drop it, port out and track to see what's still up.

I repeat, the only reason it's here now is ease the pressure on GMs/Devs. There are clearly other ways to go about that that won't rape classic EQ raiding. Don't forget it was this same argument that people defending poopsocking were making against FTE... How'd that end up, btw?

[baalzy]

I'll just say this.

In live classic the servers went down regularly for patches, every couple of weeks. Due to slower development time that isn't always the case on P99.

Having the devs do a server reboot (so everyone is kicked out of game regardless) after it's been up uninterrupted for a while would SIMULATE the classic experience.

These server reboots then reset the playing field. It's not going to be perfect, nothing is, but the big reason why people are arguing for a rotation system or SOMETHING is to allow smaller guilds a chance at mobs by forcing guilds to prioritize somewhat. If those smaller guilds aren't strong enough to kill Naggy within 5-10 min of its pop and after 4-5 weeks his repop is stretched out to the point where TR can kill Trak and then make it to Naggy and kill him too? If it gets to the point where TR can time and hop to every single raid mob because of the spread in repop times? Good for them, that is competition and means that they're that awesome and its everybody elses fault for not being good enough to kill their targets fast enough to prevent this.

But, eventually the server will reboot and the playing field is leveled again.

[Skope]

That ^^, btw, was how you got tiered guilds. Not because some assholes are willing to waste 4 days alt-tabbing.

After a while smaller or not-as-skilled guilds would look for easier targets to down whereas the big boys went after the big targets and went out hunting for the other pieces that others (or everyone) left behind.

[Trimm]

The complications I am referring to is the recent incident apparently involving Divinity, TMO, and TR. This is second hand information but apparently TMO wiped and Divniity got the kill after doing 11% of damage because they had attempted to FTE but lost, yet still maintained agro. If it was the opposite and Divinity DID have FTE and TMO engaged and still wiped, that's one thing. It's also another if Divinity returned the loot to TMO or waited for the mob to reset, but that is just one instance that will occur every time a guild that gets FTE and doesn't get the kill will go through.
.

I'll address this one because it seems to come up every once in a while. TMO got the first attempt in and claims to be trained, and got Inno to 11% before they wiped and FD'd. Inno then aggroed our raid and didn't reset, so we killed him. That's all that happened. Any other guild would have done the same. We're not going to sit there and let Inno wipe just because he didn't 'reset' yet.

Skope has his own ideas and opinions about the server and raid scene. As stated before, many people in Div disagree with him and most everyone doesn't have a problem with raiding on this server. If this is a personal crusade he wants to continue, more power to him.

[Aadill]

Baalzy came into this thread and actually provided a somewhat reasonable alternative. It's still more GM interaction but there are a combination of things that have been discussed in this thread that far outperform "removing variance," which by itself only causes problems. The interesting thing about the proposal is that you're emulating random events (server repops) and somehow have to make *that* fair without catering to one crowd or the other, too much. "The windows are too far apart and xxxx guild is getting too many kills, reset the windows early!"

I'll address this one because it seems to come up every once in a while. [...]

Skope has his own ideas and opinions about the server and raid scene. As stated before, many people in Div disagree with him and most everyone doesn't have a problem with raiding on this server. If this is a person crusade he wants to continue, more power to him.

I understand, only citing an example.

[Skope]

Aadill, with zero variance (or classic variance) you're emulating that week in and week out. The only difference would be that one would be spontaneous whereas the other merely weekly occurrence.

err, not emulating, *reliving*. =P

[Troy]

The most plausible solution I'd support is that written by baalzy: zero to minimal variance with server resets every ~month.

If I were in charge I'd just have the mobs spawn all at once every 25 hours with 1/7th or 1/3rd the loot depending on their original spawn time. Would promote smaller guilds or at least smaller raid forces, making things much more challenging.

[anthony210]

Want no varience? Lets see how fun having all the raid capable guilds on this server know the exact time a boss is going to spawn. Picture all of these guilds raids sitting there waiting for the spawn. All of them try to hit the boss first as soon as he spawns.

This server has more raid capable guilds in it that our classic live servers had. Classic spawn cycles would not work here it would be total chaos. Its one thing to deal with 2 guilds showing up and having them work it out. But when 5-6 or more guilds show up to a kill boss its going to be impossible to come to some sort of agreement.

If its not broken dont fix it. The raid scene right now is just fine. The only thing I would like to see changed is lower the varience windows on the bosses. Cut it half or something.

[baalzy]

"The windows are too far apart and xxxx guild is getting too many kills, reset the windows early!"





It would take about 5 minutes to develop a tool the GMs could put up on the website that randomly generates a date/time for the server reboot (within a certain range, obviously), the server gets rebooted at that time which everyone knows about and the state of raid pops is left to whatever it happened to evolve into until that point. Patches were generally known in advance, so this would continue with the simulation of classic-feeling.

Emergency maintenance/random outages are surprises to everybody, which is also classic.

[Skope]

Jinsho, you won't have 10 guilds at one spawn point if everything pops at once, and if you do, it certainly won't last long. Other targets are free and they too drop good loot. People will realize it's better to have a 90% shot at sev than it is to get a 10% shot at trak.

You have 4 guilds at targets now too, what the hell is the difference?

[Dravingar]

Jinsho, you won't have 10 guilds at one spawn point if everything pops at once, and if you do, it certainly won't last long. Other targets are free and they too drop good loot. People will realize it's better to have a 90% shot at sev than it is to get a 10% shot at trak.

You have 4 guilds at targets now too, what the hell is the difference?

Trakanon would like to have a word with you.

[Nedala]

Jinsho, you won't have 10 guilds at one spawn point if everything pops at once, and if you do, it certainly won't last long. Other targets are free and they too drop good loot. People will realize it's better to have a 90% shot at sev than it is to get a 10% shot at trak.

You have 4 guilds at targets now too, what the hell is the difference?

The difference is, right now it doesnt come down to who has the luck to strike the first hit, but who is the fastest to get there and be ready to kill him.

Skill/effort vs. luck

[Troy]

The difference is, right now it doesnt come down to who has the luck to strike the first hit, but who is the fastest to get there and be ready to kill him.

Skill/effort vs. luck

It never took "skill" to get a shot at spawns in classic, only to actually kill them if you were lucky enough to win a shot. Why change that here?

[Skope]

You'll still have skill vs luck, Nedala. After you kill one target you race to the next, and that guild that's at the other target can't wipe or you'll get there and take it. That's skill and luck. Sometimes you'll even have targets which aren't claimed at all, now you have to plan to split your raid party or stay at trak or leave trak and take that target.

Skill isn't sitting around for 4 days and answering a batphone. Alt+tab every 5 minutes isn't skill. All that does is encourage SEQ and dual-boxing. What I've described takes far more skill, strategy and planning. You can still use your batphone, btw, but it would be on patch days or simulated patch days.

And what Troy said. That notion of skill you have was created here. It can just as easily die here. There are other forms of skill in EQ, but to go so low as to consider tracking 4 days as one of those skills is absolutely ludicrous. -- unnecessary p99 behavior.

EDIT: You also had guilds planning with each other which targets they'd go for on the next round of pops. If you were missing an epic piece off nags you could talk to another guild who's been doing nag and tell them you'd leave vox if they leave nag. This type of cross guild communication doesn't exist here.

[Shiftin]

It never took "skill" to get a shot at spawns in classic, only to actually kill them if you were lucky enough to win a shot. Why change that here?

I wasn't sitting there next to you 11 years ago to know if you're just making this up or not, but this was hilariously untrue on so, so many servers.

[Troy]

I wasn't sitting there next to you 11 years ago to know if you're just making this up or not, but this was hilariously untrue on so, so many servers.

I've heard of servers that did:

rotations - no skill involved

FTE - no skill involved

/random on occasion - no skill involved

I guess brute force KSing/Training did involve skill, but I was under the assumption that the leadership here would never consider adopting that strategy. I love how all you ever say in response to me is say that I'm so wrong and clueless, but never bother to elaborate on this elusive truth which I can't seem to find.

How about it Shift, what oh-so-skillful tactic did you employ to procure chances at bosses in 1999-2000? Enlighten us, please.

[YendorLootmonkey]

Basically, when you boil this entire debate down to the very crux of the matter, you're asking the top guild that gets most of the targets to be okay with a system that results in them getting less targets than they currently do. Because, let's face it, threads like these aren't started to help the top guild get MORE targets.

[Skope]

Basically, when you boil this entire debate down to the very crux of the matter, you're asking the top guild that gets most of the targets to be okay with a system that results in them getting less targets than they currently do. Because, let's face it, threads like these aren't started to help the top guild get MORE targets.

Getting people to agree because they "like" or "dislike" has nothing to do with it, and neither does favoritism. As I said, my own damn guild disagrees with me, but as this thread has progressed it's clearly showing to be far more reasonable. How it affects people's loot didn't cross my mind. Poopsock days you had guilds that didn't agree, they didn't agree for a long time. Blood started boiling, GMs saw that there were clearly some errors and things got changed.

The crux of the argument is that a 4 day variance doesn't make sense when eliminating variance completely tackles the same issues and in fact provides a healthier raiding atmosphere -- don't care which guild you're from.

[Troy]

Basically, when you boil this entire debate down to the very crux of the matter, you're asking the top guild that gets most of the targets to be okay with a system that results in them getting less targets than they currently do. Because, let's face it, threads like these aren't started to help the top guild get MORE targets.

Or asking everyone to participate in a closer to classic experience because that's supposedly the goal of the server.

[Ronas]

Trying to get a timeline what would probably happen on this server off what happen on my live server

http://doa4life.tripod.com/DoA4Life/id11.html

This part the best to resolve issues

Well all day on the 7th, our guildmotd said "Starting VP as soon as we get 4 warriors and 4 clerics online" and for some strange reason it took until 9 PM cst for that to happen. Lo and behold we start filing into VP and ANOTHER guild(cough* SR cough*) starts heading to VP as well. At one point there were 49 people in there and we were about to start shouting camp check when a GM showed up. He gave us 4 options to figure out the dilemma. 1) Have the guild leaders decide amoung themselves 2)Work together to clear 3)random 1 100 for VP 4) have a single member from our guild fight a single member from their guild. Clearly option 4 was the only choice. We sent one of our best duelers, Tyranid the Nerfo, and they sent their flagship leader Faelagund. We are not the type of guild that flaunts victory on their main page, so please click this link for the pics LOL.

[Rhambuk]

July 7-8, 2001 VP CLEARED(more or less hehe)

Well all day on the 7th, our guildmotd said "Starting VP as soon as we get 4 warriors and 4 clerics online" and for some strange reason it took until 9 PM cst for that to happen. Lo and behold we start filing into VP and ANOTHER guild(cough* SR cough*) starts heading to VP as well. At one point there were 49 people in there and we were about to start shouting camp check when a GM showed up. He gave us 4 options to figure out the dilemma. 1) Have the guild leaders decide amoung themselves 2)Work together to clear 3)random 1 100 for VP 4) have a single member from our guild fight a single member from their guild. Clearly option 4 was the only choice. We sent one of our best duelers, Tyranid the Nerfo, and they sent their flagship leader Faelagund. We are not the type of guild that flaunts victory on their main page, so please click this link for the pics LOL.

Sounds like this issue took about 2 minutes to solve, and could be applied in tons of circumstances right now.

He also sounds surprised at 49 people being in one raid zone at a time, lawl at pofears 100+ on p99

[Hobby]

The current system is just fine. There is nothing wrong with it except "its not classic". Well tough titty said the kitty. Until there is a better system that does not require any sort of GM involvement (like now....), then we will simply not change it.

[Skope]

The current system is just fine. There is nothing wrong with it except "its not classic". Well tough titty said the kitty. Until there is a better system that does not require any sort of GM involvement (like now....), then we will simply not change it.

Removing variance altogether settles the issue of having swarms of players on the same target. And if they are on the same target just make them /roll, or go FTE with a shout, or PvP. All of these mean less or equal GM involvement, Hobby. The idea of FTE w/ a shout is something that would be very close to what we have now.

If all targets pop at the same time every week (minus 3-day targets, but they too would share the same exact window) you'd have fewer guilds going for the same single target. It's actually a smart idea to leave the 2 other guilds at trak while you down VS. Or go after sev or gore while there's a clusterfuck elsewhere. The issue resolves itself, this notion that everyone wants 1 target and 1 target only is because this server works on variance and having 2 targets pop at once is practically unheard of.

[Troy]

The current system is just fine. There is nothing wrong with it except "its not classic".

EQ Live is just fine. There is nothing wrong with it except "it's not classic."

Classic is why the damn server exists. Intentionally introducing non-classic things is ridiculous on this server.

Hell, if the problem is just GM involvement then recruit someone to deal with the issues. I bet multiple people would step forward willing to help out. I know this because I'd be one of them.

[Hobby]

Never mind. Im finished with this topic as it is not going anywhere,

[Troy]

Why? I'm offering to solve your problems for you. I'd call that getting somewhere.

[Skope]

Never mind. Im finished with this topic as it is not going anywhere,

yet you won't say what can and can't be done to limit involvement, but sure like to get your uninformed and unreasonable opinion out. A couple of ideas have already been tossed around, and instead of explaining why they would or wouldn't work you simply choose to ignore them.

[Hobby]

We are not opposed to editing and improving rules. But, as they are right now, theres very little reason to change anything. If better ideas become public consensus, then its now something we would consider amongst ourselves.

Keep in mind that we enjoy the competition, and reducing competition to a poopsock time-sink only causes more problems. Its nice to think "well we wont need gm's if we do this..." but this isnt a fairytale. Every change in a rule will either increase work for us or decrease it. We have FTE Varience because it takes us almost out of the equation --- 200 people do not sit on a spawn point, its clearly a race and people will see who engage it first 90% of the time, thus leaving very little to us to monitor.

A smaller varience is nice in theory, but it increases the risk of poopsocking, thus increasing the risk of causing US issues.

My favorite idea has been and always will be a completely random spawn. Sunday to Saturday, every mob has a chance to pop only once in that entire week (except draco), if the mob hasnt popped by saturday night it would be forced. Then sunday all timers start again. That will never happen, but i personally like it.

And creating more work for gm's is what is out..It is easy to change a timer, its easy to change and enforce rules...The thing that will never change is : Mob A spawns, players B~Z kill. We will not make zone-repops happen for every mob, we will not change encounters period.



Mob A spawns, players B~Z kill it.

Skope I am not going to say anything more than this: There are 20x more issues involved with having static timers as compared to a varience.



I call bullshit, sir.

[Skope]

And i just told you no variance = less people at each target. Unlike you I have proof: it's called classic. That's how it happened. And on classic every guild didnt go for 1 single target, they went for 1 each and would bump into other guilds.

You telling me that there's "issues" doesn't explain to me what these issues are. I said before there would need to be GM guidelines as to what could and can't be done. Shit, I can tell you there's a giant flying spaghetti monster, too. In fact here's a website. http://www.venganza.org/

Ask me what it is and why it's there? Oh, i'm not answering those right now.

EDIT: and you're *really* changing encounters as soon as you add a 96 hour variance. You may not think it's a big deal now, but i can promise you it will need an overhaul come velious. And a rather big one if you want to claim that you're not changing encounters and keep a straight face.

[Shiftin]

Why do you keep pretending there was no variance on live? Kunark dragons didn't spawn on server up but sometime in the day or two afterwards. Trak was a 3 day spawn so was offset with VS after an initial server up, and they both had small natural variances as well. Within a week of a server being up with no repops we had very natural variance and were out tracking targets, just like here, but with smaller windows.


On top of that, we raced our asses off when all of these things spawned. We had multiple guilds at Trak and VS constantly. Statue and Tormax when velious opened.

This is very close to classic raiding, with slightly larger windows to ease the workload on our GMs. Get over it.

edit: There was no server on live during kunark with 200+ people wanting to raid. Different things have to be done mechanically to avoid us all being on top of each other.

[Skope]

Slightly? you're talking more than double in a lot of these cases. Furthermore, not all of them had a variance either.

Toss in the comparatively rare instances where this server comes up with mobs spawned and you're only lying to yourself.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/EQ:Respawn_Timers

again, not even close. The only 2 remotely close are nag/vox, and we know the bigger change that affects those 2.

With the amount of patch days the spawns were never too far away from each other. Mobilizing/tracking was a better option then sitting there for 12 hours.

[Bubbles]

edit: There was no server on live during kunark with 200+ people wanting to raid. Different things have to be done mechanically to avoid us all being on top of each other.

this x1000.

there's a good 5 servers worth of raiding guilds crammed into 1 little sandbox. And no rules permutation or bright idea is ever going to allieviate that.

I always championed the one real 'classic' solution: a second server.

Of course, that requires essentially 2x the Customer Service staffing, and the initial hurt of transferring toons/guilds to "server b". You could lessen the hassle there by just putting up a second server as a 'race from scratch', which would allow latecomers to start on even footing, with either a "classic-only progression thang" happening, or full kunark from the get go.

If a decent guess would be roughly a year until veilous is good to go, thats plenty of time for some serious magic to happen.

/shrug. It's a thought, anyways.

[Zereh]

^^

[Raavak]

The thing is this is an emulator. The people here are generally going to be the fanbois of classic EQ, the old power endgamers. The people that live and breath Everquest. The people that took it less seriously don't even think about it anymore and are long gone. Those that are here just have to make it work.

[Rhambuk]

I like the variance more than FTE, its just a personal opinion, but I feel that the variance is going to rape raid zones like VP and Ntov. These zones were designed to enter do a full clear and leave, with the variance in place youll see one dragon pop at the far end of the zone and guilds will rush/train trying to get there first. With 6 dragons in VP spawning randomly over a 96 hour period it sounds like theres a lot of possibilities for guilds to step on each others toes and petition.

I know its going to be a Long Long time before there are multiple guilds in vp, but with no variance and fte you could see multiple guilds zoning in and going for different dragons, instead of 2 guilds racing and fighting over the same mob you have them splitting up and heading into different wings/areas.

[Skope]

no variance alleviates clusterfucks -- no matter how much some of you wish to deny it.

variance of more than an hour or two encourages poopsock -- and we don't want this again.

classic variance encourages poopsock behavior unless they're in the same exact window -- but you can still discourage poopsock in other ways. The issue would be the drift of windows that wasn't seen on live because of the rarity of patch days here.

The biggest one, though, is how these play into /petitions and general player antisocial behavior.

[Hobby]

Just....FYI : We can make any raid target do anything we want. I doubt VP will be varienced...




edit: i have no say in whether or not it will be varienced or not.....this is just personal opinion.

[Dravingar]

I like the variance more than FTE, its just a personal opinion, but I feel that the variance is going to rape raid zones like VP and Ntov. These zones were designed to enter do a full clear and leave, with the variance in place youll see one dragon pop at the far end of the zone and guilds will rush/train trying to get there first. With 6 dragons in VP spawning randomly over a 96 hour period it sounds like theres a lot of possibilities for guilds to step on each others toes and petition.

I know its going to be a Long Long time before there are multiple guilds in vp, but with no variance and fte you could see multiple guilds zoning in and going for different dragons, instead of 2 guilds racing and fighting over the same mob you have them splitting up and heading into different wings/areas.

This is something that I kinda agree with Skope on cause he was bitching about NToV/VP too. Perhaps tie all NToV/VP spawns together and first to engage/kill Aary or Silverwing gets the rest of the zone since that's how it was on multiple servers(Atleast NToV, my server didn't have a rotation for VP). So that way it's not a huge clusterfuck(ok, a lesser clusterfuck) and makes it easier to have a clear through because currently when VP comes out, you'd get a VP clear every 9 days as of 7 since anyone smart would wait for all of VP to respawn before clearing.

Edit : Hobby ninja posted before me

[Rhambuk]

Just....FYI : We can make any raid target do anything we want. I doubt VP will be varienced...

yay

[Aadill]

Just....FYI : We can make any raid target do anything we want. I doubt VP will be varienced...

There are "raid" mobs right now without a variance so I would make the same assumption, because no one has ever said "ALL RAID MOBS WILL BE ON VARIANCE". Dojorn and Phinigel Autropos don't have that variance and those mobs are already available and killable.

The variance was put in for classic because there were so few targets and the previous rules sucked.

The variance is still in Kunark because there are enough targets but it breeds actual competition. It, however, also creates frustration that *could* be alleviated by dropping the variance a little.

For zones that it wouldn't make sense to have variance in (VP and NToV) that can be tuned as such and regulated more by player interaction; a NECESSARY P99 behavior, which is what Hobby stated.

[Versus]

Bubbles...Now I've got a hard on for a second server that will never happen. God damnit.

[Hobby]

Lets start a 17 thread discussing the benefits/cons of a new server...

[Versus]

Lets start a 17 thread discussing the benefits/cons of a new server...

I'm not THAT stupid. I'll let someone else do it

[Bubbles]

Lets start a 17 thread discussing the benefits/cons of a new server...

Not much to discuss really. ;) Either it happens or it doesnt.

At least in 'this' thread there's a 0.00001% chance that the hardcore raiders randomly stumble across a non-gm-intervened solution that solves the issue.

If i was to start a whole new thread it would just be the post i just made with a buncha 'neato!'s after it. Just a matter of if the powers at be are interested enough to make it happen.

Honestly who would be against a second server? EC trade mules? It would have to be a short list. The bottleneck is getting the Devs interested (or it simply won't happen), the CS staff to cover it, and figuring out if it would generate a greater cost to the project in terms of bandwith or hosting or whatever (I'm no IT guy, believe me). :)

[Nedala]

Id hate a second server, i like it crowded. When my favorite places became empty in eq live i stopped playing.

[Mcbard]

Id hate a second server, i like it crowded. When my favorite places became empty in eq live i stopped playing.

My sentiments exactly!

[YendorLootmonkey]

The solution is simple, it's just that no one wants to do it. If you're not happy with the way things are on the server, you have to put up a fight. That's exactly what the top tier guild(s) want... competition. So bring the fight right to their front door:

1) All non-uber raid guilds get together and split out targets amongst themselves & position trackers.

2) Camp buffed mains at agreed upon targets.

3) Track and mobilize.

4) Beat them at their own game until they fall apart and the game is no longer fun for them.

They want competition, give it to them. :) The problem is no one else is willing to do 2 & 3 because very few other people are willing to devote that amount of time/energy into a computer game. Which is fine, there is nothing wrong with that... but then why should we expect the devs to cater to those who can't put in the time/energy to get the raid targets? Unfortunately, Classic Everquest was always about the time/energy spent being proportional to the progress of your toons/guild. We more casual players knew that 11 years ago, and it shouldn't be a surprise to us now.

[Troy]

Unfortunately, Classic Everquest was always about the time/energy spent being proportional to the progress of your toons/guild.

Not to this extent and not like this, not ever. You know this is fact, as does everyone else involved here, and still spew these stupid statements.

Sitting in place doing absolutely nothing for 4 days was NEVER EVER beneficial to any character or guild on any live EQ server. It's pure bullshit.

[YendorLootmonkey]

Not to this extent and not like this, not ever. You know this is fact, as does everyone else involved here, and still spew these stupid statements.

Sitting in place doing absolutely nothing for 4 days was NEVER EVER beneficial to any character or guild on any live EQ server. It's pure bullshit.

I didn't make a specific statement about "sitting in place doing absolutely nothing". I made the statement "time/energy invested was proportional to the progress of your toon/guild", which is entirely correct for classic Everquest until they started dumbing it down.

Show me someone who logs in one hour a day vs. someone who actively plays 12 hours a day. Convince me the first guy has more progress on his character than the latter guy. Show me a guild who plays casually and uses guildchat like a chat program/price check system, and then show me a guild who devotes time to recruiting good players with lots of opportunity to play, has a twitter/text network up and running, has a mobilization plan, willing to log their mains somewhere to play alts for a few days, etc, etc, etc. Convince me the first guild gets more raid targets than the latter guild.

Just like it was in the classic trilogy. We had the casual vs. powergamer discussions 11 years ago just like we do here. More Time/energy => Better Results

We had the uberguild on Xegony that did this, and some of them are here now in the uberguild here. And the rest of the server got their scraps too until an alliance of three other guilds started giving them a run for their money. Anyone who spent time in Classic/Kunark/Velious on Xegony remembers this and knows which guilds I'm specifically talking about. :P

[Troy]

They spent time actively doing stuff, not sitting waiting 4 days for a spawn or waiting for a text message.

With classic spawn timers there was no benefit to playing 12 hours a day for most raid targets. Again, this has been gone over many times in this thread and elsewhere.

Did you miss the first 30 pages?

[ClassMan352]

Thanks a lot...

[YendorLootmonkey]

You're missing everything I'm saying. My point is "time/energy invested was proportional to the progress of your toon/guild". You cannot dispute that. Do not twist or add stuff to that sentence. It is simply "time/energy invested was proportional to the progress of your toon/guild". If you want to progress more than the local uberguild, you have to be willing to put in more time/energy into doing so.

Or, from the other angle, if your group of people puts in LESS time/energy into something, and somehow reap MORE reward than a group of people putting in MORE time/energy into something, is that somehow more fair/fun?

Keep in mind, I'm speaking as a casual player. I know I will never see certain encounters on this server, just as I never saw them on Live. I understand that. Real life is more important to me.

[JenJen]

yendor wins as usual :)

[karsten]

yendor, as usual, brings a tempered logic into a topic that i gave up on and started trolling basically at the same time it was created

[JenJen]

i like yendor more than you shhhhh

[Troy]

You're missing everything I'm saying. My point is "time/energy invested was proportional to the progress of your toon/guild". You cannot dispute that. Do not twist or add stuff to that sentence. It is simply "time/energy invested was proportional to the progress of your toon/guild". If you want to progress more than the local uberguild, you have to be willing to put in more time/energy into doing so.

Or, from the other angle, if your group of people puts in LESS time/energy into something, and somehow reap MORE reward than a group of people putting in MORE time/energy into something, is that somehow more fair/fun?

Keep in mind, I'm speaking as a casual player. I know I will never see certain encounters on this server, just as I never saw them on Live. I understand that. Real life is more important to me.

Time sitting doing nothing as "investment" is ridiculous and not how classic raiding was. Do you really dispute that?

Classic "time invested" involved ACTUALLY PLAYING THE GAME.

[YendorLootmonkey]

Time sitting doing nothing as "investment" is ridiculous and not how classic raiding was. Do you really dispute that?

Classic "time invested" involved ACTUALLY PLAYING THE GAME.

Because there are 349683496 (exaggerated for effect) hard core raiders all crammed into one server with about 10 raid targets, which also isn't classic, "time invested" here means:

Cultivating a raid force
Gathering intel on spawn windows
Positioning and logging into trackers
Creating a text/Twitter communications network outside of game
Mobilizing for the target within minutes of spawn

To them, all of that is "ACTUALLY PLAYING THE GAME". It is a whole different level than what you or I consider "ACTUALLY PLAYING THE GAME". They are not "doing nothing", in their minds. They are "doing what it takes to beat everyone else to the target." To them, that is the game. Not pressing auto-attack and popping a few complete heals and getting some pixels.

Assuming that raid forces A, B, and C all have good intel on the mob spawn window (note as variance decreases, that intel needs to be way more precise, which is another aspect to "the game they are actually playing"), the less variance on respawn down to a limit of 0, the more information everyone has on when that boss will randomly spawn.

The more information everyone has on when a mob is going to spawn, the more it's going to come down to who is willing to 'poopsock' X amount of time. As that X decreases, more people are open to sitting around waiting for the mob to spawn. So you have more raid forces present, and then it essentially becomes FTE.

So all the skill and prep work and mobilization planning and everything that creates this competition all comes down to, as someone said earlier, who fires the arrow first. Is that really competition any longer? Is it fun anymore? Is that really what we want? Shit, we may as well /random the boss mob between guilds present then.

At least now, the variance is so great, only the guild(s) who really want to do what it takes to get the mob are attempting it. Unless the rest of us light a fire under our asses and try to out-mobilize them, we aren't even on the same level unless we get lucky and happen to be there doing something else (i.e. Hate clear, FG clear, etc) when the mob spawns. Less drama, less screaming, less GM intervention. In that light, it is completely understandable why variance is in.

Because we failed to act like mature adults and to work things out on our own.

[Troy]

So all the skill and prep work and mobilization planning and everything that creates this competition all comes down to, as someone said earlier, who fires the arrow first. Is that really competition any longer? Is it fun anymore? Is that really what we want? Shit, we may as well /random the boss mob between guilds present then.


Because we failed to act like mature adults and to work things out on our own.

First paragraph: Aren't there people in TR all over the boards talking about how much better they are at the actual fights? Why don't they let it be down to "chance" who gets first shot, if they think everyone else is going to wipe anyway? Let them prove that they are actually that good...

Last line: Well yeah, that's how people are on the internet everywhere. Set someone in front of a computer and they become a jackass, it just works that way whether you're dealing with teenagers (classic) or "adults" (p99).

[Rhambuk]

At least now, the variance is so great, only the guild(s) who really want to do what it takes to get the mob are attempting it. Unless the rest of us light a fire under our asses and try to out-mobilize them, we aren't even on the same level unless we get lucky and happen to be there doing something else (i.e. Hate clear, FG clear, etc) when the mob spawns. Less drama, less screaming, less GM intervention. In that light, it is completely understandable why variance is in.

If more guilds competed you would see more petitions about target disputes and i bet not before to long the gm's would remove the variance because it stopped working, takes gm's out of the raid scene.

The variance just sets the bar so damn high that only a small percentage of the server can do what it takes to get targets. Most people can't be at a moments notice withing a 96 hour window to log on and mobilize, a 96 hour window is kind of unreasonable...

[Trystych]

Nobody from TR is running around saying you suck and we rule. We are saying that not all fights are even possible for some of the guilds to beat at this time. The difficulty on the kunark raid bosses in particular has only been going up since release, and rightfully so.

TMO today had ample time to buff and prepare for gorenaire, engaged it at their leisure and got the dragon to 98% before wiping. This doesn't mean TMO are a bunch of drooling mouthbreathers who can't push the same ability buttons TR does, it means they aren't ready in terms of gear for encounters like that. Last patch reset there was some wipe action going on at Venril Sathir, the week before without the melee nerfs there was some wiping happening at Trakanon. The tactics to defeat 32k hp mobs aren't rocket science but it is a bit more involved than walking up to the target, pointing your finger at it, and shouting bang hoping that it coughs up the loots.

Nobody in TR favors camping buffed and ready at spawn points, our preference is to track and mobilize. Back in classic though a different guild adopted that tactic and set the bar to require it because they kept winning with it. There is no denying that a guild already buffed logging in at the spawn has an advantage and we had to play ball on that field. With Kunark you see us back to tracking and moving since nobody is really doing the camp thing, except that one time.... and that forced us to join in on it too.

Others have posted it too, but we love competition. There is no victory sweeter than one done in front of an opposing force or on their corpses. It's like hungry hungry hippos and gobbling up raid targets on these patch days, we missed a few old world spawns this week, as we often do, and already have the thousand monkies at TR HQ drafting up plans on how to get all the marbles.

Right now the scene on the server has guilds that had absolutely zero of the god/dragon kills in classic competing for the old world versions of them. With the top heavy balance of the server there are a lot of players wanting a finite amount of raid targets each week, but each are competing and meeting some success. When Velious is released the bottlekneck to the current bosses are basically lifted and a new titan of the 32k hp mob will be crowned when the guilds currently dominating this content will have little interest.

[Hobby]

The tactics to defeat 32k hp mobs aren't rocket science but it is a bit more involved than walking up to the target, pointing your finger at it, and shouting bang hoping that it coughs up the loots.

.



I laughed IRL...

[Zeelot]

TMO today had ample time to buff and prepare for gorenaire, engaged it at their leisure and got the dragon to 98% before wiping. This doesn't mean TMO are a bunch of drooling mouthbreathers who can't push the same ability buttons TR does, it means they aren't ready in terms of gear for encounters like that

We called it off and camped out when healers all got feared, which allowed the tanks die to right away. It's more about levels than gear imo. Resist Gear and a solid force of level 60s is what tougher 32k encounters like Gorenaire require.

[JenJen]

98%