Teams PvP confirmed by Rogean, transcript of convo..

[Frug]

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

Serious question.

What would you rather have? Red in it's current state with 40 people in perpetuity.. or a brand new Teams PvP server with a thriving community?

"Thriving community" is a pretty large presumption. I'm sure fewer people want all-out PVP as opposed to teams, but my gut says even that population is pretty small and prone to rapid decay after the honeymoon is over <shrug>

[Bigsham]

Still no confirmation of anything from anyone

[Nirgon]

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

Great points. I think a hardcoded teams environment may help mitigate some of those issues given a non unipolar guild server as well as a future box not having 7 years of Kunark etc

There's gonna be a huge evil team guild

Probably that guild alone will be larger than the entire "good" team faction, and all max lvl

Would love to be wrong btw

[Danger]

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

There's gonna be a huge evil team guild

Probably that guild alone will be larger than the entire "good" team faction, and all max lvl

Would love to be wrong btw

That's assuming teams are divided into good/evil

Nilbog had an East VS West teams lineup that was something along the lines of

Erudites
Barbarians
Humans
Halfling
Dark Elves
Ogres

VS

High Elves
Gnomes
Dwarves
Trolls
Wood Elves
Iksar

Half elves can go either way depending on starting location.

[Rick Sanchez]

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

They missed the root problem.

Why does Red get stale after a month or 2? Because that is when the gear gap starts to increase from your casual pvpers and unbalanced PVP classes who don't need gear. One guild starts to dominate raid content and push other guilds out of getting gear almost entirely, then they fall behind, to where they have to join up, or risk never catching up.

Instance the main raids and it gives other guilds a chance to get in and safely obtain gear, with the danger being the pvp that will take place on the way to the instance and so on. It creates a spot of guaranteed pvp, as guilds will need to traverse to the instance points and can battle along the way. This keeps them in the game longer and allows them to stay within distance. EQ pvp isn't balanced between classes and gear makes it even less balanced, this is one of the more fun aspects of it but having both working against a person, it becomes no longer exciting. Hence 2 months in, people are like screw this, not logging in to feed trolls and get shit talked for 6 hours a day, with no chance of actually winning, new server plz.

Keep an open world spawn that guilds can compete over for extra loot, this allows that one dominate guild or multiple guilds a chance to compete for an increase in premium loot and still gives them a chance to set some distance, but never allows them to get so far out of reach, that there is no longer a point to log in.

Agreed.

[heartbrand]

I would respectfully disagree with that conclusion. The one guild situation doesn't materialize due to a gear gap, even though there is certainly a sizable one in Velious.

The "gear gap" is minimal in Classic, almost to the point of being non-existent, and somewhat present in Kunark but again not incredibly relevant from a PvP perspective. Nonetheless, we experienced a situation where only one guild ruled on top, with occassional PvP action for a week or two here and there.

So why is that? I would propose that it's not because of some "gear gap" but rather because of the fundamental nature of mass pvp in EQ. This is a game that by design makes everything take a long time. It's part of the allure of this game over the modern MMO where everything is a click away, gear becomes irrelevant with the next cookie cutter content tier, etc., etc. On the other hand, because everything takes a long time, people want to maximize the use of that time to achieve their goals with the least difficulty possible. This typically involves funnelling into one large zerg guild who can defeat everything with ease.

Mass PvP usually involves hours of buffing, staring at zone lines, and training. Even when one side "wins" this combat, it then devolves into people doing everything possible to delay the winning sides ability to enjoy the raid mob they just fought for. In classic, we saw Nihilum literally stay up till 4am in the morning to prevent Holocaust from engaging Nagafen. We saw this again in Velious. Most normal human beings do not have an interest in this nor patience for it. It's just not enjoyable for almost anyone involved to stare at a wall as monks go at it with one another and try to lock down a zone, particularly in classic where it's incredibly easy to get past a raid force guarding a zone and fuck with your raid. At that point, the "losing side" stops logging in, or, the "winning side" stops logging in and now the losers become the winners as we saw in Velious [with everyone just guild hopping to the new "winners" team].

The fabled "mass pvp" is usually just a 10 hour blue balls fest followed by about 3 minutes of action. It's just not something that is sustainable in it's current form. They tried to create the PnP and what not, but it was never really enforced, had contradictory rulings [what is a "raid force" for contesting], and never caught on. This will only continue to happen on future boxes unless all sides involved make their own agreement [unlikely], or a real PnP is created and enforced that encourages guild vs. guild PvP, but in a way that allows the winners to then engage the mob and for everyone to go to sleep before 3am and fight another day.

My 2 cents.

[Christina.]

I'm going with ranger this time around or maybe shadowknight

[Platexchange]

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

I would respectfully disagree with that conclusion. The one guild situation doesn't materialize due to a gear gap, even though there is certainly a sizable one in Velious.

The "gear gap" is minimal in Classic, almost to the point of being non-existent, and somewhat present in Kunark but again not incredibly relevant from a PvP perspective. Nonetheless, we experienced a situation where only one guild ruled on top, with occassional PvP action for a week or two here and there.

So why is that? I would propose that it's not because of some "gear gap" but rather because of the fundamental nature of mass pvp in EQ. This is a game that by design makes everything take a long time. It's part of the allure of this game over the modern MMO where everything is a click away, gear becomes irrelevant with the next cookie cutter content tier, etc., etc. On the other hand, because everything takes a long time, people want to maximize the use of that time to achieve their goals with the least difficulty possible. This typically involves funnelling into one large zerg guild who can defeat everything with ease.

Mass PvP usually involves hours of buffing, staring at zone lines, and training. Even when one side "wins" this combat, it then devolves into people doing everything possible to delay the winning sides ability to enjoy the raid mob they just fought for. In classic, we saw Nihilum literally stay up till 4am in the morning to prevent Holocaust from engaging Nagafen. We saw this again in Velious. Most normal human beings do not have an interest in this nor patience for it. It's just not enjoyable for almost anyone involved to stare at a wall as monks go at it with one another and try to lock down a zone, particularly in classic where it's incredibly easy to get past a raid force guarding a zone and fuck with your raid. At that point, the "losing side" stops logging in, or, the "winning side" stops logging in and now the losers become the winners as we saw in Velious [with everyone just guild hopping to the new "winners" team].

The fabled "mass pvp" is usually just a 10 hour blue balls fest followed by about 3 minutes of action. It's just not something that is sustainable in it's current form. They tried to create the PnP and what not, but it was never really enforced, had contradictory rulings [what is a "raid force" for contesting], and never caught on. This will only continue to happen on future boxes unless all sides involved make their own agreement [unlikely], or a real PnP is created and enforced that encourages guild vs. guild PvP, but in a way that allows the winners to then engage the mob and for everyone to go to sleep before 3am and fight another day.

My 2 cents.

100% agree. The challenge with EQ PVP in its current state is that without a PnP it degenerates down to who is willing to stay up the longest and put in the most hours. Ironically, they solved this issue over a decade ago when servers like Vallon Zek came up with their own PnP ruleset that actually made PVP and PVE competitive and available for the masses. What you have seen on EMU servers the past 10 years is a result of the small subset of degenerates, who CAN spend countless hours griefing, all playing on one sandbox of 100-150 dudes.

Conclusion, find a way to implement a player enforced PnP that doesn't get the gm's involved and you'll see a thriving server. Yes there will be retards who don't follow it, but that's what blacklisting is for. Only reason people get away with it on the emu boxes is every person is needed and not replaceable.

[White_knight]

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

I would respectfully disagree with that conclusion. The one guild situation doesn't materialize due to a gear gap, even though there is certainly a sizable one in Velious.

The "gear gap" is minimal in Classic, almost to the point of being non-existent, and somewhat present in Kunark but again not incredibly relevant from a PvP perspective. Nonetheless, we experienced a situation where only one guild ruled on top, with occassional PvP action for a week or two here and there.

So why is that? I would propose that it's not because of some "gear gap" but rather because of the fundamental nature of mass pvp in EQ. This is a game that by design makes everything take a long time. It's part of the allure of this game over the modern MMO where everything is a click away, gear becomes irrelevant with the next cookie cutter content tier, etc., etc. On the other hand, because everything takes a long time, people want to maximize the use of that time to achieve their goals with the least difficulty possible. This typically involves funnelling into one large zerg guild who can defeat everything with ease.

Mass PvP usually involves hours of buffing, staring at zone lines, and training. Even when one side "wins" this combat, it then devolves into people doing everything possible to delay the winning sides ability to enjoy the raid mob they just fought for. In classic, we saw Nihilum literally stay up till 4am in the morning to prevent Holocaust from engaging Nagafen. We saw this again in Velious. Most normal human beings do not have an interest in this nor patience for it. It's just not enjoyable for almost anyone involved to stare at a wall as monks go at it with one another and try to lock down a zone, particularly in classic where it's incredibly easy to get past a raid force guarding a zone and fuck with your raid. At that point, the "losing side" stops logging in, or, the "winning side" stops logging in and now the losers become the winners as we saw in Velious [with everyone just guild hopping to the new "winners" team].

The fabled "mass pvp" is usually just a 10 hour blue balls fest followed by about 3 minutes of action. It's just not something that is sustainable in it's current form. They tried to create the PnP and what not, but it was never really enforced, had contradictory rulings [what is a "raid force" for contesting], and never caught on. This will only continue to happen on future boxes unless all sides involved make their own agreement [unlikely], or a real PnP is created and enforced that encourages guild vs. guild PvP, but in a way that allows the winners to then engage the mob and for everyone to go to sleep before 3am and fight another day.

My 2 cents.

This is exactly why I say you have to make a PvP server more casual orientated for it to be successful.

EQ PvP dynamics dictate that no-lifers "win" by default. If systems could be put in place to enhance the desirability for more people to play, whilst facilitating PvPing then a server could be more successful.

Allowing a server's entire raid content be dominated by 1 guild, usually with 15-20 no-lifers at helm, is one of the reasons what keeps these servers low pop.

A normal person doesn't have 15 hrs to play EQ in a day because 5 people decide to spend their Monday training a raid.

Also I don't agree with LNS, that system is shat.

[crossplay]

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

Still no confirmation of anything from anyone