Raid Scene Rage Thread

[Splorf22]

So I have been reading/flaming the various raid scene threads. Let me sum them up for the casual scum reader who doesn't feel like immersing themself into the sea of pseudo-RNF sewage:

Forceful Entry got on the ball first with their 2 hour delay. Strangely, this would seem to hugely benefit them once TMO comes back: they'll get half the mobs, something they did not manage to do pre-TMO-ban, and with significantly less work. Bregan D'Aerthe, as the more or less consensus third guild, realized that this would be quite beneficial to them during TMO's ban and immediately agreed, trumpeting the new era of sharing. But once TMO comes back, they'd really prefer that the 2 hour delay apply for two weeks. Strangely, this would seem to hugely benefit them: they'd get close to one third of the mobs since they wouldn't have to compete against FE/TMO on week three and they can out-zerg/out-track most of the other guilds. The Mystical Order, not being retards with the exception of a few well-known trolls who shall remain nameless to keep this thread out of RNF for a few hours at least, immediately figured out these plays. Their goal is to share a bit here and there to keep Rogean more or less happy, but to give as little as possible to their competitors of the aforementioned guilds. Their strategy seems to be to wait and see. Taken and Azure Guard want a straight up rotation. Strangely this would seem to hugely benefit them: despite having less experience at batphoning and poopsocking and plausibly deniable trains and rushed engages and such then their competitors, they'd get a substantial crack at things.

So, not too surprisingly, everyone is pushing for the rules that benefit them while throwing out a bunch of rhetoric about how TMO is evil. So far nothing close to a consensus has emerged, and I see no reason why one will, if only because FE/IB and BDA are currently enjoying the fruits of TMO's suspension, and if Rogean will really keep TMO raid suspended until they agree to something, then FEIBDA has every incentive to make the negotiations last as long as possible.

What is driving me nuts this whole time is the obvious superiority of server repops to anything that can be negotiated:

• Rogean wants fewer petitions and wasted CSR time; repops put other guilds in different zones where its harder to fuck things up. Furthermore, the guides can figure out a repop time in advance when they can all be on and watching rather than 15 different times.
• Rogean wants a bit of a spread on loot, and repops give that: its very hard for one guild to run the table, especially since TMO can't train-delay in VP. Empirically, the last repop resulted in a pretty even distribution of mobs.
• The zerg guilds who roll with 50+ to trivialize the encounters hate the idea of 'handouts' (defined by them as mobs killed without time pressure regardless of actual mob abilities and level and such); those do not exist during repops
• Everyone can compete to their hearts content and it will be real competition to see who can do the encounters as quickly and cleanly as possible, not who can log on their 5th alt the fastest at 5AM.
• Server resets have been demonstrated to be extremely classic; variance is extremely not-classic.

Furthermore we now know that Rogean can make a repop happen with a total of 15 lines of GM commands, because it happened this Sunday. If Sirken were to make this a macro, he could make a repop happen in 3-4 seconds. There are zero technical hurdles. It's trivial. It doesn't take away from Velious development or anything else. And its clearly way less work that tackling hundreds of petitions.

All we need is repops and two simple rules: guilds are not allowed to split their forces, and players are not allowed to rotate between camped alts.. Boom, all raid problems solved. It's a win for everyone: the uberguilds get to compete without stepping on each others toes and get a bigger piece of the pie, the guides have less work to do, and the casual scum get a chance at the encounters without camping out alts, poopsocking, batphoning tracking, and all of the other nonsense.

Which brings me to Tinfoil Hat Time, courtesy of Derubael. Rogean is a smart guy and I'm sure he's realized all of the above. So the question is why hasn't he tried it?

OK, I had to get all this off my chest. You may now all flame me.

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[Derubael]

I'm so glad I clicked refresh before taking a break for the night.

Thx for summing up the days events for us casual scum. No way was I going to sift through 20 pages of talk about pts distribution and rotation discussion.

That being said, I laughed the hardest when you slipped in your repop idea for the last half of the post. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

As far as repops go, it's kinda like pumping blood into someone who's bleeding out from a mortal wound. Yeah, they aren't going to die, but they're going to keep bleeding until you do something about the wound.

I agree that the occasional repop is not only awesome, fun, and enjoyable, but the reality is it's not something we can do every week or every other week.

[quido]

Trying to combat people using alts is a hopelessly lost cause.

[Reguiy]

Regulating how people maneuver during repops or in general isn't a plausible idea imo. Whatever agreement is reached, it needs to be relatively simple and easy to implement and control. If the alt rule is breached in your proposed scenario, then GMs would be sifting through IP addresses and alt names for hours in order to punish the rule breakers.

Personally I feel like the easiest answer to this problem would be to repop mobs randomly every week or so, and prevent them from repopping at any other time. It would spread the loot without having to track or have people training/stalling/etc. But it is not classic at all.

[zanderklocke]

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

Personally I feel like the easiest answer to this problem would be to repop mobs randomly every week or so, and prevent them from repopping at any other time. It would spread the loot without having to track or have people training/stalling/etc. But it is not classic at all.

Confused by how this is different from current variance?

[quido]

My bias aside, it's a ridiculous notion and you know this. You should probably stop making non-classic suggestions that require massive amounts of coding/overhead from Rogean.

[Reguiy]

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

Confused by how this is different from current variance?

Every mob would repop at the same time every time. It's like repops only mobs do not pop on any other days other than repop days.

Also, I don't think we as a guild have "Taken" a stance on how the raid scene should go. Some of our more vocal members in this whole thing actually are officers who are vehemently against a rotation, as it would discourage competition. One of the unique things about EQ classic (imo) is you can actually compete for mobs.

[Mud]

+1

Simulated patch days (=weekly repops) would give smaller guilds a chance to actually compete. This is especially relevant after Rogean's announcement -- VP will now have to be considered right off the bat by the guilds that compete there. Before, VP would be saved for the end of a repop due to trainers staving off any attempts to kill dragons there.

Simulated patch days/repops are completely classic and was one of the funnest aspects of raiding on live.

[Turp_SmokinPurp]

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

Trying to combat people using alts is a hopelessly lost cause.

^ good luck

[happyhappy]

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

I'm so glad I clicked refresh before taking a break for the night.

Thx for summing up the days events for us casual scum. No way was I going to sift through 20 pages of talk about pts distribution and rotation discussion.

That being said, I laughed the hardest when you slipped in your repop idea for the last half of the post. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

As far as repops go, it's kinda like pumping blood into someone who's bleeding out from a mortal wound. Yeah, they aren't going to die, but they're going to keep bleeding until you do something about the wound.

I agree that the occasional repop is not only awesome, fun, and enjoyable, but the reality is it's not something we can do every week or every other week.

Weeklyish Repops are very classic and had been considered in the past by members of the staff, heres posts from 2012-2013 from Rogean and nilbog tossing out ideas how repops could work.

http://www.project1999.com/forums/sh...postcount=1208

http://www.project1999.com/forums/sh...&postcount=107

For those who asked: weekly simulated patch day respawns are still on my agenda and will continue to be worked on amidst velious development.

This idea is neither new, nor just isolated to Loraen's mind.