System rotation target ?

[Nedala]

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

This idea that no variance will lead to poopsocking is just as flat-out idiotic. With FTE rules there is no poopsocking. Don't like FTE because it'll cause too much drama and GM involvement? Make it /random. Whoever gets there 20mins beforehand with 20+ gets to /random and you go in that order. Hell, make it FFA and train your asses off, i don't care. What i do care about is that the single thing that's furthest from the actual classic experience here is this decrepit crutch that was put up to stop shitty behavior from guilds that ultimately didn't work or help, and now people are looking for any reason we can muster up to keep it.

Ok you dont want to understand it right? Can we PLEASE make it FTE without variance just for one week so skope finally understands its the biggest bullshit ever? Why doesnt it get into your head? If you had it FTE it would end every single time with multiple guilds sitting on a mobs spawn before he spawns and zerging him down in a few seconds and then get a GM to decide who gets loot! God damnit we had that at noble dojorn why in hell of earth cant you see how this sucks?? Ok you could prevent that with your /random idea, but guess what /random for raidtargets is not classic! And you couldnt force guilds to do that anyway, so you would have to setup a rule again like first 20 in zone which would lead to poopsock again.

No matter what: remove variance = kill the raiding scene.

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

The concept of "racing" was invented here. On live the only racing that was done was when a server came back up or when there were 2 targets that spawned at ~the same time (which was incredibly frequent because of how common it was for live servers to go down and back up again, but because of variance you very very very rarely have that here). This notion of "racing", aka answering a batphone and spending 4 pointless days waiting for something to spawn, is strictly a p99 thing. You can do without it -- that's called classic.

The concept of racing was NOT invented here. Like youself stated, it happend on each server down and that was a lot. And by very very very very very very very very very very very rarely, you mean like once each 1-2 weeks, right? Because thats about how often we have full server repops on p99. Doesnt sound very rare to me. Oh and there was batphoning on live too, guess you never were in a raiding guild.

Seriously, what we have now is as classic as it can get. Because what would happen on this server without a variance, is certainly more unclassic than what we have now.

[Skope]

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

I have not played a "play" character since end of november. I have always firmly believed if a guild wants a target, then effort needs to go into preparing for it and time needs to go into tracking for it. Its a union of ideas to get the target, and that is what TR has done and that is what The A Team are currently working on doing (with good results).

oh ffs, hobby. my point, and the point being reiterated over and over again here, isn't about "effort" or "drive", it's about the rules which govern all of that. You have (and in classic you had) effort, and drive, and coordination with or without variance. The issue here is the variance, not how much you want something.

To boot, it can't stay the same as it is now with velious unless the GMs are willing to completely change the way some zones worked -- and i would throw VP in that boat as well.

Nedala, I'd be happier with training and KSing and rotation and dirty tactics. That's how the game actually worked, the fact that you wouldn't like it doesn't mean 2 shits. If you're smart about the rules you can still avoid all of that and do it without variance.

With the number of patches/reboots per month on live you didn't need to track. When did stuff spawn? oh yes, exactly 12.22am, 2 days ago when the server came down, +3 or +7. Now pick which target you think you want the most and which guild will be at which target. It was more about which target should we aim for when it gets back up or when they're going to spawn at the same time, whereas here it's wait 4 days, batphone, get hammer out, proc, port.

One last thing... keep saying I didn't play classic, but before you do, ask some of your guildies who remember me from back on prexus, then stfu. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Humwawa]

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

oh ffs, hobby. my point, and the point being reiterated over and over again here, isn't about "effort" or "drive", it's about the rules which govern all of that. You have (and in classic you had) effort, and drive, and coordination with or without variance. The issue here is the variance, not how much you want something.

To boot, it can't stay the same as it is now with velious unless the GMs are willing to completely change the way some zones worked -- and i would throw VP in that boat as well.

First it was complaints about poopsocking. Variance was implemented.

Now it's complaints about variance.

It's the Circle of Life, and it moves us all; through despair and hope; through faith and love, until we find our place on the path unwinding in the circle - The Circle of Life.

[Susanbanthony]

I wouldn't mind keeping the variance and at least shortening the window to +/- 24 hours so we don't have to park our main's in a spot for (up to) 4 days out of the week.

[Doors]

They should just instance all the raid encounters amirite

[Shiftin]

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

as you mentioned you will get upgrades as soon as vp goes into play. by tier one agreeing to this they will also get first crack at epic so the dragonscale point is mute as well as CT /Inny(which would be defaulted to you if the said guild couldnt kill them). You are also not seeing that tier 2 and 3 would be giving up what is considered top priority targets(IE curently all of kunark dragons and VS). Tiers would work and what I wrote down is a rough draft. Tier rules would have to be something everyone could live with and thus guild Leaders would have to sit down and come up with said rules.

I want you to view this from the perspective of the people who already kill almost everything. You're telling us that agreeing to not get loot will ensure that guilds which can't currently compete with us will let us have first crack at things that are in more in demand at some later abstract date. Why would TR (or asc, or TMO or whatever) agree to not kill mobs that have things we need? The immediate trade off is that we dont' have to race guilds who can't necessarily kill all of the kunark targets anyway?

VP doesn't have upgrades for every slot, and gearing up an entire guild through VP would take forever when it eventually comes out.

Something else you are missing as well. In a tier system you would not be recruiting unequiped players. By the time a player gets bored or wants to join the top dogs , they are mostlikely going to have planer and dragon loot from the old world. Human nature dictates youll still get your recruits But more likely than not, you wont have to backtrackto get the new batch equiped

There are current, longstanding members of the "tier 1" guilds who have been around for more than 6 months raiding without a BCG, or CoF, or RBB, or Inny book etc. Loot does not fall from the sky and people who have been rewarded with dragon haste or uber items don't typically jump ship. Loot actually enters the world slower here than it did in classic because of how infrequently we have patches which add in repops, and then you have to spread it out over a top heavy population

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

About VP and velious: (this is something i'm stealing from a guildie who's on the fence about the issue that i didn't think about)

What about guardian bosses/mini bosses? Certain zones/encounters were meant to be cleared from start to finish in a chronological order. The velious raiding zones are a prime example. How would that work? All the bosses should spawn in order, otherwise you're defeating the purpose of the zone. You can't have vulak spawning before the others unless you plan to change the way the zone was meant to work. But with variance, right now that's exactly what would happen.

We can't keep this up forever. It needs to go sooner or later; why not now?

These are all legitimate concerns and points, i'd like to think. Not that a GM has to answer, but it would certainly be nice if they chimed in on this.

I understand your passion for this, but you're getting some things wrong. ToV North is the only velious raid zone meant to be killed "in order" to any degree (except maybe statue -> AoW). The Vulak ring event wasn't triggerable until every dragon in north was dead and we have rules for triggered spawns. Let's cross the ToV bridge when we get to it in 18 months.

Time equaled effort in classic as soon as they added long key quests. VP key can take 50-60 hours and VT key later took even longer. Certain classes' epics involve a crapton of waiting around.

Also, everyone loves to forget (or never did these raids during classic) but there was some variance in classic EQ. Kunark outdoor dragons didn't all spawn on server up. Vox/Nag had 8 or 12 hour variances. It's not like it was here, but you didn't show up at vox knowing she's spawn at 3:02 on the dot with a raid foce buffed and ready to go. Again, I led these raids and there was a few times we'd go kill naggy and vox wasn't up yet so we had to push her to the next night despite killing both of them back to back the previous week.

Originally Posted by tj218 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

What about limiting the size of the guilds to say 40-50?

That would force guilds to work together (unless all guildies are on at the same time) and share the raid mobs while still keeping the "effort" and mobilization aspect in place.

This is the most insane thing in the entire thread. Force a hard cap on guilds so you have to split loot between them every time a mob spawns and you don't have enough on?

[Aadill]

I would also vote for variance being dropped to a smaller window, as well. That would at least alleviate some of the complaints but still warrant effort/time/whatever you want to call it into reaching mob targets.

As far as VP/NToV/Sleeper's etc I would like to think that once two or more guilds are capable of entering them and killing the mobs that it is done in a much more reasonable manner without variance on those mobs. Take a look at how VP and ToV are done - kill the first dragon and the rest is yours. Race is over. That should be continued here for sake of less issues, and it would be possible to maybe agree to a rotation at that point but for now regular raid mobs not being on variance and possibly being on FTE/rotation would cause more bottlenecks and frustration.

Furthermore, not all "raid" mobs currently have a variance and not all "raid" mobs require one. I use quotes because depending on how you look at it they may be construed as raid targets and therefore worthy targets. Every target without variance? Nah.

[Skope]

If it were dropped to 4-12 hours i'd be fine with it, but right now we're talking ten times that number.

Shiftin, i think you understand my point. Those zones (particularly the velious ones) were structured in such a way that the word "progression" would be deemed as the best possible way to describe a guild's approach. You went from one to the other. Iirc there was no variance in those zones either; not even a small one. Keeping a variance in those zones, perhaps even any sort of variance, would defeat the purpose of how and why they were made.

EDIT: actually, no i'm not. Unless it's like classic where the ones that had a small variance have a small variance and those that don't still don't, i wouldn't be happy. I'd just be *happier* with a far far smaller window. The fact is, though, it doesn't address the concerns of /petitions and clusterfucks. Like i said a million times over, dealing with the clusterfuck issue has little to do with variance, it's just that a large variance discourages it. There's still many ways to deal with the issue of having 5-6 guilds at a single target. Because, right now variance serves only that purpose: keep clusterfucks to bear minimum.

[Hobby]

Skope I am not going to say anything more than this: There are 20x more issues involved with having static timers as compared to a varience.

[Aadill]

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

Because, right now variance serves only that purpose: keep clusterfucks to bear minimum.

With a small crew of unpaid devs doing this for their own enjoyment they chose this as a reasonable alternative. Sure it may not be perfectly classic but neither is having previous knowledge on how to attempt a mob even before you've set foot in the zone where it spawns. Keep variance in, maybe lower the window size. That would make everyone happy if anything were to be changed.