Thought Experiment: How Could Rotations Be Competitive?

[Danth]

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

Account sharing is still the one thing that throws a wrench in the whole analysis of old EQ, but there's literally no way to prevent that here.

Some other video game emulators use custom launchers that tie accounts to individual computers as a solution to that issue.

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

The biggest issues plaguing the raid scene are that we have rules that aren't enforced and the players aren't monitored or penalized. And when they are enforced its months later, which is not helpful in behavioral shaping when punishments aren't dealt in a timely manner.

That's not just an issue with the raid scene. GMs are barely seen anymore and it's been clear for awhile that there aren't enough staff manhours available for them to properly maintain the existing ruleset. I don't think there's a good solution to it. At its fundamental level this game was designed around the assumption of having fulltime professional customer support and we don't have that here.

Danth

[Reiwa]

Why not just set a gatekeeper competition mob for rotation entry?

Compete for that and save everyone the trouble of bearding for Zlezax or whatever dragon has bad item, as an example.

[zati]

ok so posky is on rotation already; perhaps we start there.. and we reorder OP's original tall order to.... can posky be competitive ? then replace those slowly to other raid targets

only thing i can think of without any implementation of unclassic stuff is:

guild that clears x isles quick as possible (timetrial)
guild that clears x isles wit least amount of people (minimalist)
guild that clears x least amount of player deaths (survivalist)
guild that clears x with no clerics or some whacky class combination (explorer)
guild that clears x wit lower lvl avg (adventurer)

Prob more examples but then it just raises the question.

How do you validate these things?
Who is in charge of compiling all the data?
What rewards are appropriate?
Have the changes increase players desire to raid?

^ now requires gm intervention to answer because people lie and needs unclassic coding --> hours of disputing on discord --> back to square 1 /shrug

[Ooloo]

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

Some other video game emulators use custom launchers that tie accounts to individual computers as a solution to that issue.

Yeah it's almost like there's a million ways around that, some of which are totally legitimate; like hey I'm just playing my normal account on a different computer. There are a million reasons people might change computers, and thus mac addresses. Which is why the box test here is just getting two people to do a very simple thing at the same time.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

ok so posky is on rotation already; perhaps we start there.. and we reorder OP's original tall order to.... can posky be competitive ? then replace those slowly to other raid targets

only thing i can think of without any implementation of unclassic stuff is:

guild that clears x isles quick as possible (timetrial)
guild that clears x isles wit least amount of people (minimalist)
guild that clears x least amount of player deaths (survivalist)
guild that clears x with no clerics or some whacky class combination (explorer)
guild that clears x wit lower lvl avg (adventurer)

Prob more examples but then it just raises the question.

How do you validate these things?
Who is in charge of compiling all the data?
What rewards are appropriate?
Have the changes increase players desire to raid?

^ now requires gm intervention to answer because people lie and needs unclassic coding --> hours of disputing on discord --> back to square 1 /shrug

The issue with PoSky is the keys. That is the only reason why it is rotated. To make PoSky competitive, you would need to either make keys permanent, or have more keys drop. Both are non-classic changes, so that is the first hurtle.

For your specific suggestions:

1. Any time challenge is typically player number based, rather than skill based. Why? Because unless your raid is extremely unorganized or bad at the content, 60 players are going to clear content much faster than 40 players. If the intent of "competitive rotations" is to get lower skill, lower player count guilds into the mix, time challenges are out. The top two guilds would win the vast majority of the time.

2. The minimalist challenge is interesting, but again it is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Unless you are on a server where everybody is equally geared or equally unfamiliar with PoSky, the big guilds would win in a minimalist competition. Why? Because they have top tier raid gear, which means they can typically clear things faster than normal/undergeared players. So ironically the only way to win the minimalist competition is to have all of the best gear, which you can't get because you are a smaller and/or less skilled guild.

3. Survialist has the same issue. More people = less deaths. Why? Because you can just bring a lot more clerics/druids/Shamans to keep players alive. You can also bring more DPS to kill mobs faster than they can kill you.

4. Explorer is similar to the minimalist challenge in the sense that the better geared you are, the better you would do, and the top guild is always going to be better geared.

5. Low level also has the same issue, since the top guild can twink.

[zati]

^nicely detailed, exactly. you get it. It doesn't have to be posky either. it's the game itself won't let you make rotations "competitive" without GM literally changing stuff at the base layer. we're back to square 1 no matter how many times or imaginative someone could be to spin it. I would love to be proven wrong if someone has legitimate ideas w/o GM hand holding throughout its process. until then im just gonna play EQ my way and if i desire to neckbeard to get x items you gotta just accept the terms n conditions that come along with endgame raiding

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

^nicely detailed, exactly. you get it. It doesn't have to be posky either. it's the game itself won't let you make rotations "competitive" without GM literally changing stuff at the base layer. we're back to square 1 no matter how many times or imaginative someone could be to spin it. I would love to be proven wrong if someone has legitimate ideas w/o GM hand holding throughout its process. until then im just gonna play EQ my way and if i desire to neckbeard to get x items you gotta just accept the terms n conditions that come along with endgame raiding

Agreed!

[Ooloo]

If we could somehow solve human nature I think we could make the idyllic p99

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

Why not just set a gatekeeper competition mob for rotation entry?

Compete for that and save everyone the trouble of bearding for Zlezax or whatever dragon has bad item, as an example.

We tried that I believe with Vindi, since he is one of the only fast respawning raid mobs. Unfortunately the vast majority of raid mobs cannot be gate keeper mobs, due to their slow respawn rate. We would need some kind of custom content that allowed you to take your "rotation trial" whenever you wanted to. For example, spawning raid mobs in the Arena zone and letting the new guild fight them.

The core problem with rotations (besides a lack of competition) is you incentivize people to make a bunch of splinter guilds who meet the minimum requirement for rotation entry.

This basically makes rotations extremely unfun, because you could have 10+ guilds in the rotation. That means you basically get to kill raid boss X 5 times a year lol, and that assumes raid boss X even drops the item you are looking for in those 5 times.

The problem with rotations that lengthy is it disincentives people from playing the game while their rotation is on cooldown. So you are going to end up with more spikes of low population periods, which really hurts the health of the server.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

Yes, and other competitive events like that have rules and enforcement in real time by a third party arbiter. Referees, umpires, judges, etc.

The biggest issues plaguing the raid scene are that we have rules that aren't enforced and the players aren't monitored or penalized. And when they are enforced its months later, which is not helpful in behavioral shaping when punishments aren't dealt in a timely manner.

With all due respect to our overworked and underappreciated volunteer staff (who believe it or not have a lot of other shit to do that's unrelated to raiding), the raid game is totally lacking in this enforcement that's necessary for head-to-head competition.

This is not a controversial take. Basically every raider agrees with this issue, doesn't matter if you're Vanq or Riot, Seal/Force or Kingdom/Safe, everyone agrees this is a problem. They only disagree on who should be getting the most penalty flags thrown at them.

Because the raid scene is lacking the needed officiating, its not valid to hold up competitive raiding as some sort of virtue on P99. Competitions need straightforward and consistent rulebooks with someone ensuring that both teams are playing by the rules at all times, or it devolves into a chaotic race to the bottom.

I do agree with your assessment here. But the answer is quite simple: Remove the rules that require GM intervention, and let the players govern themselves. Yes, there will be a few weeks of people going wild and training other guilds ad-nauseum. But eventually everybody would get tired of it (including the trainers), and the players would govern themselves.

The staff should create a sandbox in which the players figure out what's best. That is what made Everquest a much more social game than most modern MMO's these days. You actually had to make friends and uphold agreements. It isn't like modern MMO's where you can get everything you want without needing to talk to anyone, due to the exact systems people are suggesting. Instancing is the modern form of rotations, and games have given you what you asked for close to 20 years now. P99 is awesome because it is one of the few MMO's that does something different.