Project 1999 - The pampered experience group (deferential players and forward GMs)

Project 1999 (/forums/index.php)

- Green Server Chat (/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=73)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ELance (Post 3018275)

How can judges be fantastic among stories of unjustice?

I hope this to be a practical thread, and hope it will stir thought in the right direction. As things stand now, people are afraid, I have seen, to pull mobs through other groups and even to pass by other groups for further camps-- especially if that camp is not commonly taken. To make matters worse, the petitioners, emboldened by past successes (and I think any public show by a GM is a success for them, most people don't want to deal with that), will immediately harass people through tells, say or OOC. No different from classic, except people are much more afraid since it's private server. To my mind, the easiest way to recreate Everquest is through fewer rather than more rules. People openly stole kills and intentionally trained in classic, and never feared more than a warning--from the GMs. On the other hand, the beauty of classic Everquest, was that we learned lessons from our fellow players and their treatment of us after we did these things. If you trained people at high levels you were done for, and not by the GMs; you had better hope you were the brother of a guild leader--or had some very loyal friends. You were ostracized. The game became unplayable and you rerolled or left. I know cause I did eye for an eye then; it wasn't the GMs that were a problem (I never saw one of those), it was the other players.

Getting back to the players, yes, by hook or by crook it seems one group in a popular zone will have their one or two dozen mobs to pull back to back, unless a concerted group interferes and is willing to go to trial. Pick up groups will sink into their shells and go. Overcrowding? I haven't even seen elementary attempts at sharing. I saw someone in Befallen the other day say "basement is camped guy". What does that mean? The whole third floor? Isn't that big? It's worth considering when people see a GM pop up on a private server they are afraid. Most people don't want to be banned. A little of that goes a long way, and I have seen no hesitation to act from GMs. I actually saw one appear in the middle of a group the other day, less than 2 minutes after a petition for a petty camp dispute. Certainly stories like the above do not help things, I do not blame someone for pusillanimity.

The problem with your argument is that's it's simply incorrect in terms of what you stated things were like in classic. Rules were very quickly put in place. When I was on the CSR team we definitely banned people for things like kill stealing, griefing, training, etc. etc. One of the people we banned actually tried to sue myself and a couple of other CSR team members.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cd288 (Post 3018293)

You're not Keith Rekoske are you? A pad CSR from SOE that was let go by daybreak?

Quote:

Originally Posted by bum3 (Post 3018302)

You're not Keith Rekoske are you? A pad CSR from SOE that was let go by daybreak?

Lol no. He looks like he was there for 15 years. Was he sued or something?

Quote:

Originally Posted by flacidpenguin (Post 3017991)

So many threads recently where people seem to have the complaint of "I want to be a toxic player, but the GMs tell me not to be a toxic player, and this is somehow unfair!"

They're the abandoned manchildren of Youtube "philosophy" channels.

Quote:

I want to train other players
I want to kill steal
I want to ninja loot
I want to grief other people off the server

So you're not a productive member of society I take it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by cd288 (Post 3018311)

Lol no. He looks like he was there for 15 years. Was he sued or something?

Lol.. yeah.. I'm still on facebook with him. He's not in the gaming industry anymore. He's now a train conductor.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Khorza (Post 3018120)

Camps should have been defined 10 years ago.

Erm camps were defined yearsss ago. https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...d.php?t=325349
Specifically, in open world you can only claim 1 spawn. In dungeons you basically only claim 1 room. Claim meaning that you are the only one "allowed" to kill the mob(s) in question, anyone else is KSing. But that doesn't mean you can't pull from other rooms, so long as said room isn't also claimed by a player. So if there are 2 rooms near each other, and there is a group in each room, anything outside of those rooms can be pulled by either group, but not in the room the groups are camping in.

Or something like that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cd288 (Post 3018293)

[...] One of the people we banned actually tried to sue myself and a couple of other CSR team members.

Wow.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bum3 (Post 3018319)

Lol.. yeah.. I'm still on facebook with him. He's not in the gaming industry anymore. He's now a train conductor.

Lol what an interesting career path

Quote:

Originally Posted by cd288 (Post 3018016)

I'm still somewhat confused about what you're saying should be done here. A lot of the examples you cite are from the very early days when the PnP was still being fleshed out. As someone who was part of the CSR team back in the day, I can tell you two things.

1. Prior to the PnP being put in place, the CSR rulings varied depending on the server (and at times depending on the specific individual handling the petition). So there were certainly plenty of instances where CSR members would intervene in situations.

2. Post-PnP I think you might be mis-remembering a bit. CSR members frequently intervened in camp/kill-stealing situations and adjudicated a solution. Telling the players to "figure it out themselves" wasn't the response because if they had been able to figure it out themselves there wouldn't be a petition. They needed a CSR member to step in and enforce how things should be done, whether that be to expel someone from the camp for being a jerk and KSing, split the camp between the two people, etc. And we had some flexibility as well. I.e. if they hadn't been able to solve the issue prior to petitioning because one party was simply being a total jerk unwilling to compromise at all and being like "lol ok petition me then" I would often just tell that person to get lost and award the camp to the people they were being a jerk to.

It would be nice if you drew some relationship between this and the point of my thread. You seem to be trying to undermine what I am saying though, so I will spare a few lines. My knowledge isn't first-hand, it's from continual examination of Usenet. I did great research for this when I argued the point a while ago, but I don't have the sources any more. Yet I will find a few more, since you are questioning the wholesomeness of my assertion.

"A group of us were working a spawn site.
Another group shows up and they take the next kill while we were medding.
An arguement then ensues about what the rules are about sharing
spawn sites. First group says that whoever gets there first OWNS the site
and does NOT have to share with people who arrive later. Second group says
first group must SHARE with those who arrive later.
A HUGE competitive kill stealing contest then erupts
One person calls a GM. The GM arrives and just says that everyone has to
work it out themselves and he then proceeds to force every mob that
spawns to commit suicide. Both groups continue to argue for 30 minutes
while every mob spawns and instantly commits suicide. GM finally calls the
HEAD GM for the server who arrives. HEAD GM talks to certain
people for 30 more minutes telling them they must come to some argreement
but
REFUSES to say what that agreement should be. Meanwhile everyone else is
standing
or sitting around for an hour watching the mobs commit hari kari.
Finally everyone agrees to share the site and GMs leave." 11/12/99

Actually this one example should be enough. The GM and head GM waited an hour for players to work things out themselves. They did nothing in the dispute, and it is likely (from other evidence) they were there because of the kill stealing, not the petty argument about who owned what. I have not seen much evidence in '99 that Sony acknowledged camps.

As to the play nice policy, since we are being so factual, rather than speaking of general truths, that was about a month before Ruins of Kunark, a year after release of Everquest. The pertinent part of that, as someone wrote, is "anyone needs to share a camp with anyone who comes along wanting to hunt there too." Your comments show again as I wrote before the erratic behavior of various such enforcers, and testify to the advantage of their absence. Your arguments about jerks and people getting lost show your emotional attachment. I wouldn't let you on a jury, or be a judge. Maybe a traffic cop. Something simple.