Originally Posted by Loke
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Before I get to the meat & potatoes of this post, I’d like to ask people to keep this discussion civil and productive. I know as a former frequent RnF poster and with my checkered history on this server, this post coming from me might have a polarizing effect, however, having already been a member of many of the successful raiding guilds on this server and taking a break after my suspension I really couldn’t care less about past or current guild drama. My intention in making this post is in attempt to start a discussion about how we can handle some issues important to the server with less emphasis on the “us v. them” or “burn the witch” mentalities. As someone who still plays here on occasion, albeit far more casually than before, and someone who would like to raid in velious if my RL schedule allows it, seeing all these players going out of their way to get each other suspended is just ridiculous and something that is unhealthy for an already niche community. Also, I know this is a huge wall of text, sorry, but I wanted to provide a lot of examples of what I was talking about, also, I am really bored and have some time to kill. Anyway...
I was recently having a conversation about all the drama between the raiding guilds on this server and a friend said something to the effect of “I think a lot of people who raided on this server would have a lot more fun if they didn’t care so much and played more like Abacab.” This got me thinking and if you look at what Abacab did while he played on this server, all he really did was find creative ways to use server/game mechanics to grief other players. Many of the things Abacab did were considered exploits or a violation of the play nice policy, and I agree that a lot of those things should not have been allowed. However, Abacab was also kind of a great example of the type of player who helps discover new ways of playing a game, or emergent game play as it has been called.
If you look outside of EQ at other gaming titles you’ll find quite a few games that have evolved a play style completely different than what the developers of the game intended. Half-Life with Bunny Hopping is a good example. What was an unintentional bug in the game became a method of movement and a skill that good players had to master. In the same way, but on a more extreme scale, skiing in Tribes which was also originally just a bug has become one of the most central aspects to the entire franchise. Tribes without skiing simply wouldn’t be tribes. In these two examples, both half-life and tribes embraced what was originally a bug (to varying degrees) and allowed players to adapt their play style to the bug as opposed to declaring it an exploit.
Now I realize those are both first person shooter games and maybe you think embracing emergent game play is something that might not work in a large scale MMO; however, EQ itself has a long tradition of embracing emergent game play. The examples of this are all over the place. FD for example was never intended to be used as a pulling/splitting tool, however, innovative players found a way to utilize game mechanics in a new manner that allowed them to turn what was intended as a multiple mob encounter into a single pull. Camps in dungeons are also a good example of EQ allowing innovative game play. I remember reading an interview with someone on the development team who remarked they originally envisioned dungeons more like WoW where players would crawl through them. However, with short respawns and static named players found it more effective to remain stationary and thus the camps we all know were created by the players and community. I'm also pretty sure the various methods of kiting were not envisioned by the EQ developers, but I can't really remember the back story to that. These are just a few examples, but I think it illustrates that EQ as a game does have a history of allowing and even encouraging certain unintentional styles of play, at least in the early days.
So what does this have to do with p99? I’ve noticed throughout my time playing here that players are quick to cry “cheat” or “exploit” whenever some new way of utilizing a mechanic pops up. Most recently we’ve seen this with the IP exemption /q thing in VP. Now, I’m not saying that the IP exemption thing isn’t an exploit, I think due to the fact that not everyone has an exemption and that it gives an unfair advantage to those who do something should probably be done. That isn’t to say that anyone needs to get banned or suspended over it, but maintaining a level playing field is important across the player base. However, there are things that are equal across all players that we’ve declared exploits such as warping eyes (something you could do on live), lev trick (although it is rarely enforced), sneak/hide/invis (don’t think I’ve seen a ruling on this, but expect it’ll be fixed), etc. These are all issues that have been around for quite some time and have yet to be fixed, but are still punishable offenses. To me these all seem like issues that are kind of in the same vein as FD pulling. I don’t think any one of the “exploits” I listed is any more powerful or game changing than FD splitting, yet because verant allowed FD splitting we are ok with it while we are not ok with those other tricks.
The people who play P99 are more knowledgeable and dedicated than our counterparts from 14 years ago. We have a wealth of knowledge provided by those who went before us and by expanding on that knowledge we are bound to find methods of accomplishing things that players on live never did. Additionally we have a server staff that is much smaller and has drastically less time to devote to fixes and development than EQlive had. Considering these two factors, I wanted to propose the idea of reexamining the way we handle some of these “exploits.” It seems at the moment our go-to method of deciding whether something should be allowed is whether or not it was classic; however, as I discussed before, allowing certain bugs or “exploits” to alter the way EQ is played is in itself a classic aspect of the game. I can’t help but think that through our rigid attempt to recreate the experience of classic everquest, we may be falling folly to the same mistakes Sony made when they took over. With Sony EQ lost a lot of the sandbox feeling it had before and felt more like everything was designed with strict intention. So I’m not sure adhering to the mission of “recreating classic everquest” with such rigidity and little consideration for game evolution or emergent game play can actually accomplish the task of “recreating classic everquest.”
So if you’ve actually read this far, here is my suggestion. With things like eye warping, lev trick, or sneak/hide/invis, instead of declaring them exploits, not fixing them (whether the devs are unable to, or simply don’t have the time), and punishing players who abuse them, why not allow the abuse until either a) they are fixed or b) there is a clear and universal declaration from the server staff regarding the use of these mechanics? This would allow players to test the limits of said exploits and their potential for being allowed as emergent game play, while also not punishing people who are unsure of the legality of usage of such exploits. The problem with our current “if you don’t know, don’t do it” is that it makes players fearful of trying to find new ways of using the tools available to them and stifles innovation in the game. To my knowledge there has been no clear or universal ruling on the sneak/hide invis trick or the lev trick, yet both have been in the game for quite some time and used by many players without getting banned. If a fraps were to appear on RnF of a player doing these things to gain an advantage over their competition I’m sure there would be exploit and cheating allegations with calls for punitive action. To me that seems unfair as the said player is simply using a mechanic, whether intentional or not, to find a new and better way of doing something, again, much like FD pulling.
I’m definitely not trying to say that all things should be allowed. For example, the recent IP exemption fiasco should be dealt with by either fixing it or making a clear announcement regarding its use as it is unfair to players without exemptions. I just think that maybe the server could benefit from a more open minded and laissez faire attitude toward emergent game play. Did things like the Ivandyr’s hoop need to get nerfed for “trivializing an encounter” while DA tanking with idol allowed L50 players to kill things in sky that would have been almost impossible without the idols? Sure, it trivializes an encounter for 40-60 person raids, but that is only a bad thing if we are trying to maintain the status-quo. Had we allowed Ivandyr’s hoops to stay in game as they were, instead of seeing two 50 person raids competing for Trakanon FTE, we might see 5 or 6 20-25 man raids using hoops to compete for mobs. I don’t know if that would be better, but just because it is different that shouldn't be our sole justification for nerfing it. Or rez/bindsight pulling in sky? Sure, it kind of ruined the idea of linear progression in sky, but so does corpse summoning and corpsing keys. Even fixing the rez pulling opened up a new method of training using rez boxes. So did these fixes REALLY need to be done? Or were they examples of emergent game play that could have been embraced as new and innovative ways to do an encounter? To be completely honest, I don’t have the answer since there are a lot of factors to consider. But that brings me to the point of this post which is to try to start a discussion about how to handle these issues in a more civil way while attempting to get us away from the mentality that every questionable new tactic should be declared an exploit resulting in suspensions, bans, or raid suspensions simply because it is something new and different from EQlive and isn’t “classic”.
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03-22-2013, 09:26 PM
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