Teams - whats better?

[Tubzy]

2 teams horrible idea 99% of the time in MMOs because it ensures one team ultimately will become dominant and then everyone will just switch to that team. In a 100 pop server there's the dilemma that 3 teams is just too much spread for such a low pop but 2 teams you will see a team become dominant much faster, maybe almost instantly like within 1-2 weeks. Therefore I would say FFA is the only way to go unless this server somehow gets to 500+ active population.

tl;dr: I love 3 team PVP like DAOC but this servers too small to have teams.

[Pokeman]

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[Faerie]

What Sirken had to say about teams tonight on his twitch thingy (thanks for doing that for us, btw) made me feel really hopeful for the future of our server. That the devs are even looking into teams as a possible way to improve our experience here is wonderful. It shows they care, and this thread is evidence of them expressing a desire to hear our input. Since we know that our characters will never be "wiped", I'm going to explore some different rulesets keeping in mind the community we're dealing with.

FFA:
Our current ruleset of course, and one I pushed for before the server was released. At the time I thought that VZ softcoded teams would basically be FFA anyway, and hardcoded teams would stifle player creativity and prevent the fun politics (the reason I fell in love with EQ pvp) from happening. Maybe if I'd made it past level 20 on VZTZ I would have known better. Instead of making the game interesting by building alliances or fighting over exaggerated morals and mores (anti-PK, good vs. evil), everyone was just RPK and even apathetic. Even when players disagreed with their guilds over issues like exploiting and training, the most anyone ever did was camp out in protest. No one disbanded and attempted to fight the evil, and they were right back next week healing the mean guys in pve.

No one cared much about the grief play, even though it was so obviously eating away at the server. The politics became us vs. them, and not for any good or even interesting reasons. It was just determined by arbitrary association. Everyone griefed, and everyone was griefed. No one dared to be different once guilds became established. Holocaust, Nihilum, Azrael, Force, Classic, etc. They're all the same to me, and it's boring. One of them would have won out eventually, and all that's different is their guildname.

So what does a future of FFA look like? Nihilum raiding Velious and increasing that gear gap, and everyone continuing to grief whenever possible.

VZ (softcoded) teams
Sirken's choice. IMO this is basically a FFA ruleset with some hardcoded anti-grief mechanisms in place. I see absolutely no downsides to implementing these teams, as all current guilds will remain intact. It's doubtful that a single person would try to play with the teams as the purists of old did. The time of Illuvitae, Shanks and Xanit K'ven ended long ago.

Doing this might pull in some bluebies and other players, because increased safety in a community of sociopaths makes the server seem a little less unappealing. Note that I didn't say "more appealing". This could increase the population some which is a good thing, but we'd still be in the exact same situation end-game and politics wise. Players apathetically griefing one another for any/no reason, and failing to create alliances to compete with Nihilum.

2-3 hardcoded teams
This could be split into two categories, but honestly the distinction between softcoding/hardcoding is much more important than the number of teams. 3 teams would create more opportunities for pvp and interesting politics, but I've kinda lost faith in this community doing anything too surprising. The initial splitting of the guilds would be a huge benefit of doing this, spreading around the various players be they hardcore/casual, raid geared or otherwise. It would breathe life into the server, new players would join, and there would once again be serious high-end competition.

Splitting the guilds would also be detrimental, and perhaps even contrary to the legitimacy of this project. Nihilum would feel slighted, having put in the work long ago to achieve their status as top pve guild. A handful of them might even quit, or sell their characters to buy blue gear/PLs and join TMO. Is breaking up a guild really something that MMO developers should be doing?

In this case, I think the answer is yes. You did it to their competition, and at this point Nihilum is a net negative force for the server and the server community, much like Holocaust was. Holocaust was broken up for exploiting naggy (something Nihilum also did). IMO, one underserved naggy kill is not a big deal at all when compared to the harm of having one uncompetitive and hardcore recruiting guild with many members that log on once per week just to raid everything. Besides, the benefits far outweigh their feelings.

If we really want this server to thrive, we need more of what blue has: community. <Serenity> and some people in other guilds try to help in this regard, but this all goes back to the sociopathic apathy I've been talking about: players don't care. They don't seem to understand that pvp is a double-edged sword to be handled carefully, and end up hurting themselves. Maybe it shouldn't be the dev's responsibility to fix their game for players that ruined it for themselves, but we're not all bad and I think there is a lot of untapped potential in most of us. Hardcoded teams is basically turning a portion of the population blue to itself, and giving us vision and focus in determining our enemies. It would give us a shared sense of purpose, and put an end to the apathetic RPK attitude that plagues our community.

Here's an extreme scenario to illustrate my point:

What if Nihilum vs. everyone became actual hard-coded teams? New characters are created on the same team as Serenity, Classic, etc. and only able to fight Nihilum. Until they reached the level where Nihilum would be in range (not long, Nihilum would start recruiting anyone they possibly could regardless of level), it would be a blue server. Finding groups and knowing the safety that comes with their team being unable to attack would go a long way to foster a sense of community, and when they do become involved in pvp with Nihilum they start to realize that they truly are the enemy. In time they make honest and true efforts to take Nihilum down instead of being half-assed about it while PKing their teammates.

So yeah. Go hardcoded teams, and my vote is for good/neut/evil teams.

[big league chew]

need pvp at all levels
need no teams just ppl to get priorities straight
aka when in zone with me & nilly kill the nilly with me then worry bout me
just like my opinion man

[Something'Witty]

Too Many Words

When is there too much talk, too many words
About the same old things
The same thing you've heard
A thousand times before
I can't listen no more

[Kevynne]

3teams. Deity based. Put in Veeshan hies and other sz(or cz forgot whic) exclusive deity combos.
Good deities
Neutral
And evil deities.

[SamwiseRed]

except every teams based pvp mmo has been more populated than everquest ffa (RZ)

[Nuk3Afr1ca]

Two teams, good vs evil. See you at da party Richter.

[Turp_SmokinPurp]

3 team.
Lights vs Darks and than your Neutrals.

One thing that sucked on live was X teaming though, if there was a way to implement lights not being able to heal darks and vice versa it would work great! and Neutrals can go either way anytime so they are open to be hit by both sides.
So it would make the invulnerable healer not possible.

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

lol wut?

Trying to think of a way to get that classic fun team PvP without the pain of X team
( if your not sure on x team? If that was your lol wut question?? heres an example. Its when a light healer heals his dark friend why the dark friend beats on you and your also a lightie and you cannot kill his healer because he is ally therefore you are screwed.)
Somehow removing this or causing the "immortal" healer to be flagged pvp or something would make the 3 team idea great and bring a whole slew of new players to your server.
No Xteam if want more than 50players, if not. Enjoy )

[Vile]

so this was a troll?