1. Rotation allowed any guild to apply for a slot in a rotation. Each guild had a 3 hour window from time of spawn til they kill it before the mob became "FFA within Class R". The primary reason behind this was to prevent the mobs from going the full 6 hours at which point they become fully FFA and the Class C guilds who already get 75% of the raid content can snipe that mob.
There were several iterations of the rules here. In the first, a guild could determine a black-out period (hours in which they weren't responsible for the mob and the rotation would drop down to whomever was next on rotation and not in blackout). This resulted in the 24-hour guilds (the big 3 if you will), rarely reaching the top of the rotation but having to kill every mob at a shitty hour. After coming to the table, showing that these guilds were infact not getting more kills (which I believe was the original justification), black-out periods were removed. All guilds became responsible for their entire window when they were atop the rotation.
The second rule change came when guilds were consistently allying to kill mobs. IE a mob spawns in their old black-out period, where they don't typically have many members online, what would happen instead is they would call upon another guild in the rotation to help them kill this mob. There was also some dumb rule where if you were locked out, the rotation would skip you, if you assisted in the above case. What ended up happening was all guilds were allowed to choose a 12-hour window of time where they are allowed to ally with a guild (encouraging them to be able to take on solo any mob spawning the other half of the day).
The current fight is about a few things. One is just Chest wanting to screw over Omni. The other is the 12-hour allying rule. Guilds are occupying slots in the rotation and quite often not killing them themselves. Also due to the current rules, a guild assisting in a kill keeps its rotation slot and does not drop down. Even though they participated in the kill and split the loot. The goal (atleast from my point of view) of the most recent talks should've been saying no allying, you should share a rotation slot if you often ally for a mob OR keep the 12-hour allying but any time you assist in killing a mob - or kill a mob outside of your rotation slot (like after 3 hour window) you drop to the bottom of the rotation. (But the guild whose at the top of the rotation for this mob should always be dropped to the very bottom). The last is the reduction of a 3hour window where the rotation target is yours, down to 1 hour. This is just done to screw with the little guilds. I don't think its a good idea.
2. Changes are being made because the big 3 see the rotation moving too slow for their liking, leading to less pixels (let's be honest pixels are the motivation for every party involved here, big guild or small guild; they will continue to be until all mains have epics, etc. - IE Always). The reason for this - in their opinion - is too many guilds. Specifically, too many guilds who are occupying slots but can rarely kill mobs on their own with no assistance.
3. Class R was set up to give the majority of the Raiders on the server access to content that they previously were unable to access without vastly changing their play style (requiring full poopsocks, 96-hour tracking, Autofire jav-spam, etc.). The reason the rotation was set up, was to allow for a fair environment for everyone to share equally. Also there were some who wanted to do a rotation to prove the server could behave in a decent way, not rofltraining each other in a race for pixels. At this point, some feel it is not fair for their guild. Possibly that is an indication they should move to Class C. Or possibly it is an indication some rule changes are warranted - you may be the judge.
4. Possibly? I'm of the personal opinion that Maestro and Draco shouldn't be rotated. I'd tend to say Nagafen and Vox also, but they are a core part of claasic and people attempting to relive a classic experience should have access to them without 16-hours of socking.
I'm a member of one of the big three guilds. I don't participate in socking, tracking, CotH ducking, jav spamming or any of that shit beyond about 30minutes (Noble, or late in window sort of shit). I camp out my character and if Im around when my phone buzzes, and I'm not asleep... I will get on.
I think the push for a 1-hour engage window is pretty weak and I think those trying to claim altruism in saying this helps guilds in Velious are laughibly transparent. You're doing that to stick it to more casual guilds, nothing more.
Really the crux of the issue in my eyes is guilds allying frequently when they are unable to kill the mob. More over the guilds assisting don't get dropped down from their slot in the rotation. I think most people outside of the system believe it is logical that when two entities (let's say 1st slot and 3rd slot) kill a mob, both should drop down after participating. They had their chance to participate and get loot off the mob, you killed it, now you drop to the bottom. OR remove allying completely and if your guild is frequently requiring an ally to kill certain mobs or at certain times, come together and decide to occupy a single slot in the rotation as two different guilds.
ALL OF THAT BEING SAID.
The largest issue here is a non-classic feature the developers put in the prevent poopsocking. Variance.
If you remove Variance, put in place some common sense rules on poopsocking (You cannot have more than 3 players in zone when the mob spawns, and those tracking or even in zone - get rid of Mages - may not FTE)... So many issues go away. The problem for many casual guilds is the fact that they have to be available 16-hours of the day to kill a mob. For especially small guilds with few people from different time zones, this is very difficult. If you however do know the exact time of spawn and when your 3-hour window ends small guilds can much more easily plan ahead to down these mobs.
Variance has failed time and time again to prevent poopsocking. For fucks sake, there are Class C people sitting on the pad in VP when mobs aren't in window just incase of a sim repop. They poopsock fucking repops... Shits ridiculous. They poopsocked entire 96-hour windows too. It has been a colossal failure that rewards people for wasting their life staring at a wall NOT EVEN PLAYING THE GAME. It's SOOO dumb.
GMs need to approve rules that limit numbers of players in zone when a mob spawns. If your guild cares to contest the mob, be underneath that number of players. If they don't, exp away. A simple hardcap on the number of guildmates in zone would be easy to /time, /who, /screenshot spawned boss /time again.
Then the devs just have to remove variance or drop it down to a reasonable 30min or less. So that the game is far more classic.
PS - I apologize if the post has areas of scatterbrainedness. I picked it up and kept writing 3-4 different times inbetween working on stuff.
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