Classic PvP: I was there. The truth about teams, item loot, etc

[Doktoor]

Lots of discussion about this and new servers and the perennial issue of stocking a PvP server. I see a lot of 1/2 truths, misinformation, and more than anything, opinions based completely off of individual desires for what a server would be for their particular play style, rather than making a server that would bring lots of people to it and lots of PvP. For what it's worth, I'm just trying to help, not trying to fit the server to how I would like it to be. (Most likely will not be playing on either server)

A quick background about me, my first char, Doktoor (human bard) was on Vallon Zek. I started in December of 1999 a few months after the server opened up. I played VZ exclusively and had over 500 days /played on that char alone, a 50 mag pvp alt with over 100 days /played, all of it non-bazaar time, before I quit shortly after the servers were merged.

I also played a bard to 60 on the progression server and bards to 60 twice on the VZ/TZ servers. I'm currently playing my lvl 41 bard on P99 after a 2.5 yr hiatus.

This is how it was and in a lot of ways, still is. I will offer reasoning and proof for all my main claims:

Claim number 1. The majority of people do not like item loot.

a) The reasons in no particular order:

Reason #1: EQ is a grind. Whether that be exp or gear, it's a grind. Even with 5x exp, it takes a day or days to get one item in many cases. Case in point, quest armor. On live, upon reaching mid 30s in levels, a pally friend of mine and I stopped leveling and started working on the armor quests. It took us 3 months of daily playing to get outfitted with almost full Lambent/Armor of Ro. Sure, we were newbs, but even now, on Doktoor's 5th go-around, it still took me 2 weeks at lvl 39/40 for 5 pieces. From personal experience, even with the escapability of a bard, a full 8 hours of PvPing can easily lead to 3 deaths unless hit-and-run is your idea of PvP. 7 days of gearing, lost in 1 day of PvP = gay (and very possible). I could go further, in relating losing an item like a god haste item which could be completely irreplaceable.

Reason number 2: Item loot PvP favors casters. They can med up naked and have enough mana to down someone, especially if they sneak up on someone who's experiencing and is not full health. This leads to people becoming disillusioned with the server once they lose an irreplaceable item out of nowhere when a random caster nukes them down with no risk: Caster dies, no corpse to loot. Caster lives, loots an item and gates.

b) The proof:

It's simple folks. After the team servers had been out about a year (maybe 9 months, I don't remember exactly), there was an option given with a /movelog command to switch servers. These servers at the time had 1k people playing on each of them primetime. Thousands of people were given the option.

The result?

After being given a few weeks to think about it, after everyone was saying their goodbyes, a few days before the patch for the /movelog, it was called off by Verrant. The reason listed was that the numbers were overwhelmingly disparate. A small number of casters were going to remain on an unpopulated server while the bulk of the server left. The /movelog was canceled in the 11th hour and both team servers were changed to coin only - thus ending item loot except on Rallos where it would continue with a whole lot of bitching about getting mana burned and seeing your fungi on ebay the next day while the wizard waited in the Nexus for the manaburn button to refresh, and where people were labeled, blacklisted even, for being a "pk." There were no "pks" on Vallon - because everyone was one. PvP suffered because losing your best items blows.

I've been there. I've done the looting and I've been the looted. It sucks more to lose a piece that you worked very hard for than the opposite of whatever "it sucks" is, when you loot an item from a few minutes of PvP.

No, item loot doesn't encourage PvP (in general). Item loot encourages running, gaiting, and unplugging of computers while zoning.

PvP is fun because PvP is fun. It's fun putting your wits against another human being instead of a predictable computer. Trying to incentivize PvP is futile: "If you build it, they will come." Make the PvP balanced and people will play it. Have it waste your time or be on sided and people will not play it.


Claim number 2. PvP teams is just not a good idea and leads to weak teams vs strong teams, with everyone ending up on the strong side, and the guild(s) at the top ending up basically like a blue server, cupping each other's balls or wishing they could kill the other guild even though they cant, all the while taking a big steaming shit on the lower population team(s).

I'll add, that from a roleplaying standpoint or from just a "let's do something different" standpoint, it seems like a good idea.

a) The reasons: Through natural Darwinian means, teams become one-sided numbers-wise. One side beats up on the other side. This results in two things: First, people start to reroll because most people don't like the odds stacked against them. Second, the stronger side ends up with a gear advantage which feeds the feed-back loop.

One thing I've learned after playing on a PvP server for so long, is that there are 2 levels of PvP: The casual low level PvPer who may or may not have a guild association, but pvps for the enjoyment of one on one PvP. This char can often be an alt of a higher level char. But ultimately, all PvP devolves into guild war. This guild war is what results in weak teams and cross-teaming. Hard coded teams prevent cross teaming and create even more weakened teams through no back-door to avoid the disparity of a weakened team.

b) The Proof

I'll get into just the histories of two servers as this is already taking a long time.

Vallon Zek: This server had 4 teams, human, elf, shorty, and darkie. In the early days of the server, the darks had the most casters, the most pvpers, the most experienced players from other servers, and the advantage. For the first year of the server, they owned the server for the most part and in the early days of the server, it ended up (with tiny non-significant exceptions) as a 3 team vs 1 team server, or, light vs dark and evolved to a 3 team vs crossteamer vs 1 team. Cross teaming also started very early on. Ultimately, the number one Dark guilds either folded or merged to become other 4-team guilds. The lightie horde had taken over and it devolved into lightie guilds cupping each other's nuts vs 4 teamers and the fragment of remaining darkies.

Team warfare except for some small lowbie guilds never took root, even in the early days of VZ and even after the balance of power shifted, team PvP was never more than the wet dream of a few people. (yes, there were a few, but they were a small minority)

Sullon Zek: I'm not going into a huge history of this server, but I rest my case: Uneven teams from the start that ended up in a low population server with an uneven power balance.

There is no escaping it. One guild will dominate the server (even on blue) and eventually everyone else quits or rerolls and the result is a blue server with a resilient minority taking it in the rear.




Ok, I lied, I'm not going to offer reasons and proof for everything. I have some more points to make, but this is just getting too long so I'm going to summarize.

Bots/multiple accounts: Bad for PvP. From my exp on VZ/TZ, you end up with a bunch of people with druids and clerics in the next zone over getting you fully buffed to which you run back to once you get to 60% and debuffed, rinse and repeat = bad for PvP. They're nice for leveling and for getting around. They're nice to have for extra clerics on a raid. Other than that, they're bad for all things classic and for PvP.

Exp loss with PvP: Worst idea of all. Discourages PvP for all except the the best geared and roaming death squad types. Your average person is going to run from PvP if they think they have only 49% chance of WINNING.

Exp Bonus on PvP servers: Good idea. Gives more time for PvP - people have already done this.

Leadership boards: Dont matter. They encourage like 5 people to PvP.

In summary, I'm going to quote myself in the same post because out of all the shit I just said, this is key:

PvP is fun because PvP is fun. It's fun putting your wits against another human being instead of a predictable computer. Trying to incentivize PvP is futile: "If you build it, they will come." Make the PvP balanced and people will play it. Have it waste your time or be on sided and people will not play it.

P.S. People who want things the way they want them will argue the minute nuances of things I've listed above. If you don't agree with me, argue with the proof I listed. It happened and it's true.

[runlvlzero]

Theres lots of other good threads that illustrate these points from multiple perspectives (many of yours I disagree with) stop spamming new threads in blue. Post in the threads that are already there. You just spammed this to get your opinion to the top.

[Splorf22]

I don't understand why there cannot be some sort of programmatic means of keeping the teams balanced in terms of numbers. A couple of simple examples:

1. Measure the total playtime of light vs dark and prevent players from creating toons of the other class

2. Give some sort of bonus (the simplest one would be a resistance bonus) to whichever side is losing, i.e. if its 60/40 dark/light then the lighties get +20/all, if its 80/20 the lighties get +100/all

3. Randomly spawn kos-to-strong-side NPCs, e.g. if there is a big PVP event going on and one side is hugely outnumbered, 20 gnome warriors might suddenly spawn and attack the dark elves from behind

[Doktoor]

Wrong.

I posted because I'm trying to straighten out some misinformation.

And if my "opinion" is wrong, please point out the flaws in my "proof."

You read very fast sir, I reread 1/2 of my post then hit F5 and your post was already there, so I doubt you read it to have an "opinion."

EDIT: The thread is valid in this forum due to the fact that last night, on Blue, the MOTD was regarding a pvp server. Its a cross server issue right now.

[Doktoor]

Splorf, that's impossible.

EDIT: And would result in oceans of tears.

[thugcruncher]

boring and irrelevant

[runlvlzero]

Originally Posted by Doktoor [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Wrong.

I posted because I'm trying to straighten out some misinformation.

And if my "opinion" is wrong, please point out the flaws in my "proof."

You read very fast sir, I reread 1/2 of my post then hit F5 and your post was already there, so I doubt you read it to have an "opinion."

EDIT: The thread is valid in this forum due to the fact that last night, on Blue, the MOTD was regarding a pvp server. Its a cross server issue right now.

Go post in the appropriate threads and forums and stop making red look bad or pretending to. That is the reason I give as to why you are trolling, mad, or just REALLY wanting to be heard right now.

I'm telling you your post is falling on more deaf ears because of the way you are implementing your communications protocols. Fix em plz.

-- final post in this thread I'm out. Good luck bluebies, hope you don't suffer much because of this new teams discussion.

[Doktoor]

Boring for sure.

How is history irrelevant?

Still yet to see anyone argue the facts of history.

[Doktoor]

Originally Posted by runlvlzero [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Go post in the appropriate threads and forums and stop making red look bad or pretending to. That is the reason I give as to why you are trolling, mad, or just REALLY wanting to be heard right now.

I'm telling you your post is falling on more deaf ears because of the way you are implementing your communications protocols. Fix em plz.

-- final post in this thread I'm out. Good luck bluebies, hope you don't suffer much because of this new teams discussion.

First off, I have nothing to be mad about. As I said above, I'm not playing there now and probably wont.

Really wanting to be heard? That's laughable. Next you'll be making assumptions about my weight and demographics? I've been reading the arguements one way and another and figured I'd weigh in, the same way you weigh in on every thread on these boards. For some reason, it's ok for you and not for me.

EDIT: And I really doubt anyone is "suffering," other than the people who's ears don't want to hear things that are contrary to what they believe.

[Azure]

What makes this thread more special than the rest? That its about the truth. Only the truth will be heard/allowed in this thread? No truth bashing? No other opinions are valid.

Thats what I got from quickly scanning the TLDR ranty post you made. Sorry. Nice try though.[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]