Thought Experiment: How Could Rotations Be Competitive?

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

While I appreciate your staying on topic, I disagree with "Competition has winners and losers, where-as rotations do NOT have losers".

I mean, c'mon: I gave a very clear example in my initial post of a rotated system with "winners and losers". And I came up with that in five minutes, just to get the ball rolling.

It's not my fault y'all have a serious lack of imagination ... but competitive rotations are absolutely possible. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] Try being creative instead of repeating the same tired arguments over and over (and that's addressed to everyone, not you specifically Deaths).

No offense taken! I disagree with the premise your example actually blends competition and rotations. Basically bag limits are rotations that turn on and off. So you aren't blending competiton and rotations, you are just switching between the two. Your example simply changes the frequency of bag limits.

[JDAm0nk]

I find it interesting how a segment of the player base seems so hung up on the idea that "competition" is essential for an enjoyable EverQuest experience. Like it validates and justifies their spending 30+ hours awake camping legacy items and/or shitting in a sock. In a completely meaningless, artificially handicapped setting. Lost in it all is a sense of community. Which, to me at least, was always one of the most important aspects of EverQuest & MMOs. And has anyone who has played on Green for an extended period ever honestly said, "yeah, this community rocks"? It wasn't my experience. This thread on the Blue forum shows older members of the community mourning what the project's culture has devolved into - "a greedy affair." Seems to be closely related with these concepts of competition.

(Saying this, I hope other people have had nothing but positive experiences with the community here. As the most visible + popular EQemu, I hope it continues to succeed. I caught Sugz's stream yesterday where someone was saying they had lost their 22 bard's corpse at the bottom of TD and didn't know how to get it back. I ran over, emptied out my bank (17kpp), and gave them all my 57 bard's equipment - not great but probably ~20-30kpp's worth. I hope they have a grand ol' time and pay it forward when they get the chance. But certainly leveling up two toons 50+ was enough time spent on these servers for me.)

[Jibartik]

What if you had a system where you split the raid bosses into different leagues to balance competition, and force mobs to be left up for the slower guilds.

Naggy, vox, gore idk level 1 raid bosses

Level 2 raid bosses

Level 3 raid bosses

And your guild would be ranked, and you could only compete for raid bosses in your tier against other guilds that are in that tier.

If you ever down all the mobs on a tier then you are moved up a rank or something? If you failed to down a mob during a cycle you would be moved down a tier.

That been tried before?

[Danth]

Originally Posted by JDAm0nk [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I find it interesting how a segment of the player base seems so hung up on the idea that "competition" is essential for an enjoyable EverQuest experience.

It's less about competition--I've never seen a losing side say they love competition--so much as it's about the feeling of "winning" something and having control over one's virtual life. I know many (hundreds, at this point) of the top-end players who've come and gone pretty well after going on 13 years here. The large majority are exactly what you'd expect--drug addicts, mentally ill, drunkards, forever-aloner's, divorcees, a few high-functioning mentally challenged, under- or unemployed, layoffs, the occasional retiree, a smattering of college students, and generally people who's real lives are trainwrecks or at least incomplete/missing something in some fashion. In many cases they desperately need EQ because it's a refuge and it's the only bright spot they have. So I'm okay with letting them have it, they need it more than I do. I won't name names since I do actually like quite a few of these people, and for a *lot* of them P99 was a transitory thing and they later pulled their lives together. I'm not going to kick a man for being down at some point because most of us go through hard times sooner or later.

------------------------------------------

You want competition without rotations, that's easy: Everything respawns on scheduled weekly downtime, with occasional unscheduled quakes (as we already have) to maintain the batphone aspect. To hell with variance and staring at walls. You do that, everyone knows it's coming and is ready for it and you don't need rotations to ensure one guild doesn't gobble everything up. You're certain to have plenty of guilds fighting over pixels. Doubt the staff wants the petition workload it'd generate, though. I sure wouldn't. The present ruleset is the result of many years of trying to maintain competition while minimizing staff workload, two seemingly contrary goals.


Danth

[Mblake1981]

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

It's less about competition--I've never seen a losing side say they love competition--so much as it's about the feeling of "winning" something and having control over one's virtual life. I know many (hundreds, at this point) of the top-end players who've come and gone pretty well after going on 13 years here. The large majority are exactly what you'd expect--drug addicts, mentally ill, drunkards, forever-aloner's, divorcees, a few high-functioning mentally challenged, under- or unemployed, layoffs, the occasional retiree, a smattering of college students, and generally people who's real lives are trainwrecks or at least incomplete/missing something in some fashion.

Danth

What will we name our new video game studio.

[Danth]

Originally Posted by Mblake1981 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

What will we name our new video game studio.

The wife has spent about the past ten years or so insisting she'd love to make a game. She has a vision for one, at least. That's about as far as it'll go since neither of us are coders, I'd just as soon hit my PC with a hammer as try to program something, and she is blissfully unaware of the scope of such a project.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

I am not sure why people think competition is bad. We have plenty of games that revolve around competition, Basketball, Chess, Etc. If you don't like those games, don't play them. Everquest has competition built into it, which isn't a bad thing.

[Reiwa]

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

I am not sure why people think competition is bad. We have plenty of games that revolve around competition, Basketball, Chess, Etc. If you don't like those games, don't play them. Everquest has competition built into it, which isn't a bad thing.

Why is competition good for those things and why is it good for EverQuest? What is measured?

[loramin]

Originally Posted by JDAm0nk [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I find it interesting how a segment of the player base seems so hung up on the idea that "competition" is essential for an enjoyable EverQuest experience.

As I said in my opening post, it's not about the players. Rogean and Nilbog want competition: it doesn't matter what anyone else wants, because they make the server and set its rules.

[Mblake1981]

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

Why is competition good for those things and why is it good for EverQuest? What is measured?

quantifying fun?