Raiding proposal - Level the playing field
 

I wanted to put forth an idea, that's probably been discussed a hundred times. I believe one way to vastly improve the blue raid scene would be to start having 3-4 quakes per month. I think that at least 1 should be weekday 7cst, and one should be weekend 1pm. One for European Times, and then 1 per month that is random.

This would vastly reduce stinky socks, while still being very competitive. Doesn't increase item drops, or if it does it's just by a little. The big guilds will still get the high value targets, but smaller guilds will have a crack at some things. I believe it could also reduce petition quest a bit too. It's easier to pivot to another target if another guild beat you on assembling when you aren't all fighting over the only target that's up.

And lastly, it would be very fun. Imagine knowing a quake is coming every other week, can preplan with the family that they just don't get to talk to you that day. And logon and see how many targets your guild can get this time. And some could argue that this proposal is more classic-like than our current iteration. We had almost weekly repops for years on live.

GMs please consider this, even for one month as a trial. Thank you!

I think 3-4 is excessive, but 1 Euro friendly and 1 US friendly quake per month would be more than welcome.

3-4 quakes a month would basically replace the weekly natural respawn cycle, I guess. I guess you'd end up with a net increase in 3-day and 5-day spawns, though.

I've always been fond of the idea that ToV, or at least North, be changed so that it's like the CT fear spawn - when Vulak pops, the whole wing repops. You'd have some interesting risks to take, if inner ring dragons were up and vulak was still in window, and would maybe make the competition in ToV a little less fraught, which might help alleviate some of the urgency which drives the petitionquest game.

Yea, 1 US, 1 Euro and maybe 1 random every 1-2 months might be more realistic. Would go a long way toward player fun and server health.

Would be some kinks to work out. Maybe the quest mobs shouldn't repop with scheduled Quakes., and we just keep rotating, air clicking or randoming for those

It'd be fun to trial for a month, but if you make that permanent you take away a lot of really fun competitive encounters (most Zlandi coths, all racing, ladyn/jorll coth RTE races). It's kind of like a pseudo rotation, in essence. Almost every encounter would be non-competitive except for the last few hours of NToV. Tightening up the windows twice (or even once) per month would be very welcomed though and would still give smaller guilds more targets.

yeah, there's def some points you'd need to work out, and I'm sure there's some unanticipated consequences that would pop up. My thinking is that if you just did the vulak/NToV change, then it would still allow for natural respawn of mobs in north, such that the coth races for doubles/trips, the foot race for ikatiar, etc., would all still be in play at times. Other zones would of course not be implicated.

It would even (quelle horreur) provide an interesting incentive for guilds to cooperate with one another. If Vulak spawn caused all of north to pop, the server could theoretically let vulak drift a bit from the rest of the names mobs in the wing, and then guarantee itself a second set of inner ring dragons every week. Just have to be willing to let vulak sit for a day, each spawn. maybe pick a single blocker to leave up as a kind of alarm so that if someone moves to snipe, others have time in advance to gather and contest.

Think most agree that blue raid scene needs something to accommodate competition while maybe discouraging the petitions, at least. Maybe not, though. I'm sure there's a fair number of people totally fine with how things are at present.

How to resolve petitions - FTE lockouts

How to resolve casual access to dragons - alter mindset of casuals from thinking that because they are casual, that they must be in a casual guild. If what you seek is to play casually, but kill dragons when you do play - then you are a casual raider, not a casual player. Your guild affiliation should reflect this.

There - solved both of the major problems with the server, without requiring a code change that won't happen, or quakes that won't happen.

Most casual raiders don't want to login at 2am to get targets. More timely Quakes solves that and allows folks to stay with their chosen community.

Plus camping out for 16 hours for one mob is less fun than logging on and slaying 5 in one night. But that's just me :)