With all due respect, Sirken, you're no Solomon.

[Uteunayr]

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

The GMs owe nothing to anyone. They own and operate and you play voluntarily. If you don't like it, don't play. No small guilds ever went to Verant or Sony and demanded more raid targets because they could not get them on their own.

If the GMs want smaller guilds to have clean shots at raid targets then they should just implement a ruling themselves. Asking the players to work it out and then attempting to control the outcome by forcing a compromise is just pissing people off. If you want in on the targets there are means. You can do this through alliance (more resources), force, or politics. It is no ones responsibility to hand it out. Infact it wasn't that smaller guilds didn't get content that got the server here, it was The guilds at the top taking it to far. That should be the problem being addressed. Guilds who can and do kill and control the content owe nothing to anyone. Just like the GMs don't either. And if they want a compromise they should en force it themselves.

Everyone is right. It's all about play style and personal differences. It's a MMO. You work it out yourself unless someone is breaking specified rules. Everquest was that way and this server should be that way. If you want it, find a way. Form an alliance so you have more resources to track and park. Use your own force on targets you want one at a time. Create an agreement with a larger guild. If your not interested, so be it. Don't demand mechanics change and that everyone needs to share just because you play here too. They don't.

IMO just address the bad behavior of the guilds killing the targets ( staggered engages or some sort of play nice policy). If you want the big guilds to give up targets then let them decide how to do that. If you want to ensure it happens then instead of Sirkens idea being a proposal, make it policy.

No, they don't owe anything to anybody, but they want a meaningful improvement to the quality of the raiding scene on the server, and that can be achieved. The answer isn't to exclude people who want their classic experience, it is to try and create a way in which each can experience their classic experience, without gimping or interfering with the other.

The vast majority of issues come from two different type of raider trying to engage in playing a game the way they remember their classic experience. If you want to reduce the number of conflicts, you must keep ideologically polarized groups apart, and show them that there is a way to coexist, and experience what they want without degrading the other. This is a scientific truth that is pretty readily accepted in international relations, and if you wish to have that backed up, go read Mark Haas' (2007) book, Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics. It is very applicable here.

Any plan that keeps casuals being hardcore, and keeps hardcores dealing with casuals, it is going to lead to conflict, conflict that can be reduced. Casuals are not looking for hand outs, casuals want to earn their keep, but they don't want to do it by delving into the depths of hardcore raiding, an atmosphere that many of us have seen before, and despise. I work hard in my guild, I work hard with other guilds, I work hard with other necromancers of any guild, and one day, I hope to be able to do enough that when my guild gets a crack at CT, I am able to rip a Slime Blood off of him and know I earned it. I don't want to buy it from TMO or another top end guild because they have it on lock down. I don't want to join a raiding style that makes me feel like a horrible person because of what it encourages. I want to have fun, and I want to earn my epic, a goal I never achieved in live back in the day.

These are two sets of people who find enjoyment from totally different things, and mutually enjoyment is not going to happen. If you can create a system in which each can enjoy their type of environment without degrading the environment of the other, awesome. And that's what the Staff Plan allows for.

The big issue with the rotation side coming naturally, the more casual approach to raiding, is that there are none of the mechanisms necessary to make it come about naturally, given that the server is so heavily influxed toward the top end, more so than it would have been on live. You don't have states of relative equal power, who create lasting conflicts that are so degrading that it encourages the growth of cooperation (See Keohane & Nye, 1977, Power & Interdependence). This creates a situation in which there's no way to counter-balance a higher guild enough to encourage a rotation, there's no way to blacklist their people from ports, sales, etc. due to the high top-end population. You can't do these things to create a rotation, and a casual system, so it can't come about through natural player means as it would, for the same reasons that this server isn't 100% classic. And that's fine. But lets make an environment where each side can flourish. Why not? If it is for competition, hardcores should be behind this. If it is for schadenfreude, and their enjoyment comes from the failures of others, then it is incompatible with a harmonious, less conflict prone server.