Does "Classic" mean a few dozen hold thrawl? Or why every mob should pop every 6 hrs

[EdTuBrutus]

P99 is a fantastic festival of nostalgia. It is wonderful to spawn in your home town (instead of a weird mix zone), to play the game and see it look like you remember). This is why I made a char on P99 and why I play the game and have really enjoyed the nostalgia of being back in Norrath.

To me, that is Classic. Not only that, but the look and feel of the game in general is all that is needed to be Classic. Being "Classic" is not a reason to keep broken and fundamentally alienating aspects of the game. Some of those, like the ridiculous pace of levelling you can over come. I think it should be changed but at the end of the day, there is nothing actively preventing you from overcoming this idiotic part of Classic EQ.

But there is an aspect of the game where you are actively and intentionally blocked by other players - a tiny number of the player base - from participating in the game. That is raid encounter mobs. And the kicker is that it is worse on P99 than it ever was on Live.

Now I'm not going to spend a lot of time speculating why that is. But the reality is that by Velious, Fear and Hate were not camped, Old World Dragons were not camped. Aspects of P99 are removed from the game from the bulk of players which, if they let the high content consumers move on, were never out of reach in Live.

And that's a real problem because it seems to me the game could be much more popular and much more active without it. At the moment a few dozen players (for greed in resale or for Kicks'n'Giggles) are locking a bulk of the audience out of end game encounters. Much of which is purely because "hey we can".

There has never been any reason, whatsoever, for raid end mobs to be rare and spawn on such a long time scale. The thinking (back in 99 to the early 2000s) was that players would simply quit en masse if they achieved end game encounters. We know this idea is wrong. There have been countless games which offer the full end game experience to players no matter what level their play time allows them to participate at and none of them have found this to be a problem. The entire justification to rare end game encounters has been found to be false.

So why persist on this? If every single end game mob repopped every 4 to 6 hours, what would be the effect on the game? It would still be Classic, it would look and feel like it did back in 99. The only impact it would actually have would be to remove the opportunity for a tiny number of players (and lets be real here, we are talking about less than 100 players) to block content for thousands.

If every raid mob respawned every 4 to 6 hours, then you could, if you had a job and commitments outside EQ, schedule raids, raid mobs and not be cock blocked specifically because a tiny subset of the player base gets their kicks out of stopping you from enjoying the content. The game would not be easier. There is nothing easier about killing a mob than setting up a camping schedule to track a respawn.

Classic EQ has a huge amount going for it. But that doesn't mean it should be static (clearly there are significant changes to the Live EQ of the Velious age). Fixing the end game would be the best way to get players to enjoy the game, stay in the game. And if it costs the server a few dozen players whose entire enjoyment comes from cock blocking content - well, that sounds like a Win to me.

[Nibblewitz]

get rekt

[EdTuBrutus]

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

get rekt

Now that sort of reply is Pure Classic!

[skarlorn]

sounds like you do not deserve it

[Lojik]

I think a new server could implement a few "non classic" mechanics to alleviate people over camping shit with knowledge that people didn't have so easily back in classic.

1) legacy items (mana stone etc.) drop for entirety of server, but with ridiculously low drop rates (1 in 1000.)

2) bard aoes do no damage if mob is moving, ae damage limited to 25 mobs for wizards

3) +-90% variance on ALL mobs. This way it's not easy to just afk xp camp dungeon spawns or afk hold down named camps. Getting timers wouldn't be as effective either, and it encourages grouping to reduce risk of getting overwhelmed. Raid mobs...have fun tracking those windows

[EdTuBrutus]

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

I think a new server could implement a few "non classic" mechanics to alleviate people over camping shit with knowledge that people didn't have so easily back in classic.

1) legacy items (mana stone etc.) drop for entirety of server, but with ridiculously low drop rates (1 in 1000.)

2) bard aoes do no damage if mob is moving, ae damage limited to 25 mobs for wizards

3) +-90% variance on ALL mobs. This way it's not easy to just afk xp camp dungeon spawns or afk hold down named camps. Getting timers wouldn't be as effective either, and it encourages grouping to reduce risk of getting overwhelmed. Raid mobs...have fun tracking those windows

My point is this.

There is no mechanic you can introduce to promote rareity without it being exploited with those who have huge amounts of time. Which is a tiny portion of the server population.

The only way to actually fix rare drops is to stop them being rare. Nothing else actually works and the experience of dozens of other games is that this does not do anything to reduce the game experience.

time investment is not difficulty, it is not harder to need 16 hours to get a mob which you kill in 30 seconds. The entire idea of rareity failed in EQ and doesnt appear to be needed in any other game.

[Lojik]

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

My point is this.

There is no mechanic you can introduce to promote rareity without it being exploited with those who have huge amounts of time. Which is a tiny portion of the server population.

The only way to actually fix rare drops is to stop them being rare. Nothing else actually works and the experience of dozens of other games is that this does not do anything to reduce the game experience.

time investment is not difficulty, it is not harder to need 16 hours to get a mob which you kill in 30 seconds. The entire idea of rareity failed in EQ and doesnt appear to be needed in any other game.

It's not even the fact that people have more time, it's just they race to the top by abusing classic mechanics and classic knowledge, then there are bottlenecks since we have so many high levels AND everyone is trying to be efficient by just logging in for the good parts. In kunark, one guy permacamped tranix for like 2 months, he probably only had to play for 2 hours a day. The end game for classic eq a) isn't very good even in its best incarnation and b) isn't designed to accommodate 65% of a server that regularly gets 1200-1500 people on it. I like the fact some shit is hella rare, even if it's others that have it.

[Ruinous]

The entire appeal for classic EverQuest for a good portion of players is precisely what you want changed. When you go to a game like WoW, where it's practically a loot pinata waiting for you around every corner, to the point where you see sub-par players running around with the same high-end items you have, they lose value and meaning.

Granted a lot of us have grown up and don't have the same obscene amounts of time to commit to playing a video game any more, personally I came here knowing that much. Knowing that I likely wouldn't ever get to partake in any regular raiding schedule. And I was okay with that. Because this IS what classic EverQuest was, and if I wanted a different game, I could go to any number of different games that garner to that play style.

The raiding system didn't change because it didn't work, it changed because it didn't work to make as large a profit as these AAA-title game companies wanted to make. It came down to making content easy enough for even the worst player to keep their subscription fees rolling in. Fortunately, P99 is not for profit and won't ever have to conform to that market strategy.

[EdTuBrutus]

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

The entire appeal for classic EverQuest for a good portion of players is precisely what you want changed. When you go to a game like WoW, where it's practically a loot pinata waiting for you around every corner, to the point where you see sub-par players running around with the same high-end items you have, they lose value and meaning.

Granted a lot of us have grown up and don't have the same obscene amounts of time to commit to playing a video game any more, personally I came here knowing that much. Knowing that I likely wouldn't ever get to partake in any regular raiding schedule. And I was okay with that. Because this IS what classic EverQuest was, and if I wanted a different game, I could go to any number of different games that garner to that play style.

The raiding system didn't change because it didn't work, it changed because it didn't work to make as large a profit as these AAA-title game companies wanted to make. It came down to making content easy enough for even the worst player to keep their subscription fees rolling in. Fortunately, P99 is not for profit and won't ever have to conform to that market strategy.

That's the thing though.

High end loot in Classic WoW is not a pinata because it is significantly harder to actually get than in EQ. Classic WoW raid encounters are immensely more complex than Classic EQ raid encounters.

The biggest difference, perhaps the one you are referring to, is how mid-range gear in WoW is much easier to come by. But again that't nothing to do with complexity of encounter (which in WoW is generally more involved and difficult) but with stupid rareity which - and lets remember this - turns out not to have served the purpose it was intended to.

Rareity in WoW was created because the Game Designers believed that lacking rareity would kill the game. We know today, from countless of examples, that it is not true and if anything, the exact opposite. Rareity kills the game.

[Kaziel]

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

When you go to a game like WoW, where it's practically a loot pinata waiting for you around every corner.

Yet WoW has a huge subscriber base. If you're claiming just anyone could rock up to a heroic raid and clear it then you're doing it a massive disservice.
I know everyone wants to hate on WoW, but saying high end gear was a loot pinata is just bullshit.