League Promotion System
 

I had a kind of random idea in RNF that I thought it deserved its own post. I don't expect anything to happen here, but I do think it's an interesting idea for how the staff could create a competitive environment that doesn't center around poopsocking. Without further ado:

• Raid mobs are divided into tiers. For sake of argument, let's have Tier1: Loot Pinatas (Tunare, AOW, Dozekar), Tier2: NTOV (Eashen through Vulak), Tier3: Velious Dragons (Klandicar, Yelinak, LTK, etc), Tier 4, 5, etc down to Tier 27: Maestro of Rancor
• 6 earthquakes per month. No normal spawns. Repops are announced in advance.
• Each guild picks a start time and is scored based on their time to kill every target in their tier. If a guild is up for multiple tiers, they still only get one start time, so they are likely to have a bad score on one of them.
• Each cycle lasts as many earthquakes as guilds signed up in the most crowded tier. Guilds are slotted in by their completion time.
• At the end of every cycle, the fastest guild is promoted and the slowest guild is demoted from each tier, unless the slowest guild avoided demotion in a higher tier. Promotion overrides demotion.
• If guilds fail to kill their targets within 24 hours, they are demoted from that tier and all higher tiers and cannot repromote for 1 penalty round.
• All NPCs must be killed more or less on their spawn points, not the zone in.
• Guilds can enter the system at some nonzero tier by killing Derakor the Vindicator rather than having to grind their way up through Kunark dragon tiers for months on end. So most of Kunark would be effectively rotated . . . if anyone cares.

I think this system has some interesting outcomes:

• No free pixels. If Aftermath clears Plane of Growth faster than Awakened and demotes them to Tier 2, they can keep them (and everyone else) out of Tier 1 forever by clearing NTOV fastest. You can't promote just because you can clear the content.
• At the same time slot stacking makes it difficult for guilds to completely monopolize content, e.g. if Tier3 is Aftermath/Awakened/CSG but Tier2 is Aftermath/Awakened/Aftermath, then both A/A will have to make tough choices on which tier to clear; if it takes them 3 hours to clear the Velious dragons and 5 more hours for NTOV, their official NTOV time will be 8 hours.
• Tons of opportunities for strategy: how do you set up your groups and communication to clear most efficiently? Do you split your forces east and west in NTOV? Do you collude with other guilds to deny promotion chances when your rotation slots line up?
• This means that players compete by actually playing EverQuest better and more efficiently rather than poopsocking harder and at more inconvenient times.
• Tier sizes don't bloat because super small guilds will not be able to match the clear times of larger guilds, and thus won't ever promote.
• No mechanics changes required. It's classic!

Only thing that isn't classic is the second point 'No normal spawns'
VS Yael Statue would have only 6 spawns per month instead of around 10 making those targets much more rare.

I like the creativity though, we need something besides what we have currently. It's kinda boring.

seems like your system has lesser guilds giving up kunark for a good chance to never get promoted

Are you also working on the Republican tax proposal?

Lost some brain cells here. Should have known when the very first sentance mentioned rnf.

First of all, i think this is just trying to please bored raiders. I think just taking a break from the game and coming back a year later after recharging your batteries is a much better approach.

Secondly, you seem to allow guilds to compete in more than one tier (or all of them), should not be allowed if you are looking to open up content. Should only be able to compete in your tier and the one below your current tier.

Third, this made me cringe:
You are basically setting it up so "the rich get richer". You are making it so small guilds will just become feeder guilds to the large guilds that have content locked down.

Why not just create a giant rotation schedule for all guilds who want to raid. The ones that want to but are too inexperienced to successfully do it still get their raid days so they can practice and do it, fail or not it's their raid day. The ones that conveyor-belt dragon pixels within 10 minutes or less still can do so, they just can do so only on their specific raid days. How bout them apples?

Rotating all mobs with all guilds would be a total cluster.

Having 12 guilds on Severilous and 2 guilds on Tunare, with every mob inbetween... that would be so awful to handle.

At best, I'd suggest bundling:

• Classic - Nagafen, Vox
• Planar - Draco, Golems, CT, Inny
• Kunark - Sev, Fay, Tal, Gore, Trak, VS
• VP - Phara Dar, Hoshkar, Nexona, Silverwing, Xygoz, Druushk
• Kael+Dozekar - KT, Statue, AoW, Dozekar
• Velious - KelorekDar, Zlandicar, Klandicar, Velketor, Yelinak, Dain
• WToV - LTK, Telk, Gozz
• NToV-1 - Ikatiar, Eashen, Cekenar, Zlexak, Sevalak, Jorlleag
• NToV-2 - Aaryonar, Feshlak, Dagarn, Kreizenn, Vyemm, KoiDoken, Mirinella, Nevederia, Vulak
• Ring War
• Tunare

This way you don't have to deal with guilds who can defeat Ikatiar but not Cekenar etc. making the rotation a nightmare to keep up with. Also every guild would see quite a few mobs each week.

What P99 really needs is to get rid of the Sim Repops and implement Hard Server Resets bi-weekly. This was on Al'Kabor and it functions extremely well with rotations. It allows respawn windows to hard reset every other week and it allows rotation guilds to leave up their targets for a few days without it interfering with other guilds spawns. It means during your rotation, you have a two week period where the mobs are yours.

For example, every other Friday the server comes down and up at like... 3AM PST. When it comes up let's say CSG has NToV-2. They can crawl NToV on Saturday and Sunday, then next week wait until Wednesday and Thursday to crawl NToV again, and with the reset happening that Friday, the spawns all reset and their casual waiting to kill the mobs doesn't delay the next guild's spawns.

This sounds good. ^

When can we get this on P99?

This is not a plan designed to transfer pixels from A/A to casual scum. The staff want a competitive server, not a rotated one. The key idea of the League Promotion System is that you win by building a strong, efficient, well-coordinated guild rather than by COH ducking at 3AM. It's not easier to win; but it should be encourage a form of competition that is both a lot more fun and a lot more classic than our current system.

And yes, I realize the chance of this ever being implemented is somewhere between zero and 'after hell freezes over'. I just like ideas to be honest. I'm overtrained.