Thoughts on end game raiding

[hobart]

Thoughts on end game raiding.

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Two things that don't belong in the same post.

[Sadiki]

Thoughts on end game raiding

It's bad because most of the people motivated to do it are terrible individuals who are willing to drag hundreds of other people into the mud and argue every day of their lives; not to see content, but just to get the pixels at the end of the zoneline pull.

Avoid it if you're sane, end of story.

[gutterbrain]

Trying to discourage socking is dangerous. Why would you want to force the most dangerous inmates to mingle with the general population?

[Kesselring]

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

I also disagree with guild competition being fun as well, but only because it's not quite competition. A competition implies a lot of things that EQ raids don't have. This is more like a bunch of greedy animals in a Walmart trampling each other on a black Friday sale. There's no real competition. We all know the state of it, there's no need to go into it, but not many people actually find this fun. They just do it for the pixels.

On the opposite end of things instancing content or increasing spawnrates to the point where things aren't rare eliminates the point of this content as well. This works in a themepark like WoW because no one playing those games regularly has even a single brain cell. They farm that gear which is then totally useless for anything other than doing the same raid again. In EQ you can use that gear for other things, so flooding the server with it has a hugely negative impact, moreso than me not having a raid drop. Of course item inflation isn't such an issue on blue because everyone is geared AF, and if there's ever a new server neckbeards will dominate things like snowfeather to the point where normal players will never ever have a chance of getting it.. but..

The problem ultimately isn't that we need more game, or even that there's too many players. It's just that EQ was great when no one knew anything and learning stuff off the internet was barely even a concept. Now everyone knows everything, and the people who find nothing else fun but playing EQ every waking moment of their life will do what they do. That's just the way it is. Much like the anti-green haters, we must all learn to accept the neckbeards, for they were once people too, and we may become like them in the future.

It's already like 4 years into velious, the problem will always exist because guess what, people have alts and want the best gear for them as well. I think making the variance a little smaller would help the smaller guilds more than the big guilds, when windows get spread out Aftermath usually dominates. If you repopped the server and everything dies within 3 hours, you then have 25+ targets ALL in the same variance window roughly for 7 day spawns. If the variance is only 2 hours long there is no way in hell massive guilds can zip through each target because they will be popping up crazy fast. Guilds like Aftermath and AG will have to pick and choose the targets they want to stay at in fear of it popping soon while the more casual guilds will probably find more raid targets up when they check.

[foxchris509]

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

#Rootthedragons

Bet you there would be a whole lot less raiders if they had to work for their pixels and not answer a batphone, log on for 10min and bank dkp

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

Put every raid mob in window 1 hour after it dies, can leave # of days as is for when a guaranteed spawn would be, this removes 16h window socking nonsense that plagues the server. Unlink Vulak to facilitate this or don't, not a big deal. Exceptions could be made for Naggy/Ragefire & VS/VSR. Let people sock spawns, who cares anyways mobs are always in window, can only do it so long and let's people idk kill in zones without being penalized. Only have to deal with train petitions this way, as any means of getting FTE otherwise is fine and other mobs can spawn at any moment.

There you go problem solved, you're welcome. Have fun socking mobs 24 hours a day if you want to be insane, this otherwise reduces GM work and opens up targets to a broader audience and adds more without instancing anything or removing respawn windows entirely. Maybe people will just kill a few mobs here and there for fun instead of socking everything. (yeah I know, what a naive statement, of course socking mobs 24/7 is what real classic EQ players do! I must be a peasant).

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

What if each guild can declare a window for the week? Window limited to 6hrs. If a mob is engaged is in your window you can kill it. You can break your window up however you choose (so have multiple smaller windows)

Maybe there is a standing 3hr FFA window.

This would limit socking hopefully, encourage some strategy around declaring a time, and still have a competitive window for everyone.

Guild leaders post window to private forum, GM reveals windows via public sticky post update.

Kind of dumb, but maybe a solution that can please everyone.

These are all great ideas!

Originally Posted by snyder43 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Competition in p99 raiding is one guild's pull team of 3-6 members vs another guild's pull team of 3-6 members trying to get FTE on a mob while the other 60-140 people in the competing guilds stare at the wall.

This is exciting if you're part of the pull team, but otherwise it's just sad.

I feel you but even if your guild gets the FTE and engages the target wipes are still possible and happen a lot. This opens up the opportunity for the next guild to try. There are a lot of other important factors involved like the cleric ch chain, having enough dps, tank/ramp tank not holding agro etc like could result in the guild not getting their target. Everyone has to play there part not just the pull team although I agree they are very important. This also leads back to my original comment about zerg guilds.

[branamil]

I find it funny that BG cries that AM brought more to Trak and BG lost. Well, Core beats AM all the time with like, 15, people. So maybe you could just play better?

[Mblake1981]

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

I think to suggest that one top guild dominating raid content isn't classic is ignorant. It's not used now, but anyone remember the term "Uberguild"? It referred to that one or two guilds on a server that completely dominated the content. Always hated by most of the rest of the server. I bet most of you can probably even still name the ones from your servers, or the more famous ones that everyone knew. There was always huge pushback against these guilds. Sometimes that worked into a rotation, most often not. My server forums had a thread title "Trakanon is FFA" in the velious era that as long and bitterly fought over as anything we've ever had on RnF for P99. For me personally, this is a part of the game that I loved and missed with the era of instancing for raids. Honestly, if you just want to be able to raid on your own schedule, why even play P99? That's what the instanced raids are for.

yes, I remember and agree.

I suppose if the difference cant be readily seen then it can't be helped. Less exclusionary and more accepting. The knowledge is already out there and easily accessed. Just join and get the good stuff you deserve.

I'm not sure what is Uber about it.

[Rygar]

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

What if each guild can declare a window for the week? Window limited to 6hrs. If a mob is engaged is in your window you can kill it. You can break your window up however you choose (so have multiple smaller windows)

Maybe there is a standing 3hr FFA window.

This would limit socking hopefully, encourage some strategy around declaring a time, and still have a competitive window for everyone.

Guild leaders post window to private forum, GM reveals windows via public sticky post update.

Kind of dumb, but maybe a solution that can please everyone.

By way, I meant every day of the week you have a kill window, and every day of the week there is a FFA window. Re-reading made it sound like you only had 9 hrs / week to kill dragons (i.e. neckbeard suicide) but meant you have 63 hrs / week to kill dragons (neckbeard part-time raider).

[Mblake1981]

I suppose if there was a small pack of a few players on P99 that were doing content no one else could, for a variety of reason, and were very picky about who they let in then I would most likely consider them Uber/L33t.

I would see them run by, hear rumors of eye opening things they have done, inspect a member and see loot I have never heard of or knew existed. I would think "Damn, these are some l33t uber fucks right here".

Me: "Hi, you guys are awesome. Can I join?"

Uber: "Will a member vouch for you and do you meet our requirement?"

Me: "No."

Uber: "Then get lost you fucking scrub."

Me: "I hate these guys, because I am not these guys"

[Razdeline]

I think the raid scene has further homogonized into a machine of bots, clickies, bat phones, gina and more to degrade the "classic" experience. It actually used to be better here- an opinion from someone that has raided on and off here since 2011.

Adding changes that shore up the classic experience may be the best route to resolve some of the issues, as someone here mentioned already, while not crushing the "competition" aspect. Some of the problems I think most can agree on:

-Pulling raid mobs to the zone line to trivialize the raid encounter
-Training an entire zone to trivialize the raid encounter
-Having Bots for ALL roles parked at all meaningful spawn locations 24/7 ready to be activated by any random person
-Complete reliance on certain item clickies to trivialize the raid encounter (da idols)

You can't blame people that follow the path of least resistance to get their reward. This is human nature and collectively is pretty evident over the past 9 years here. Probably the biggest culprit is being stuck in the box for 9 years. The immediate solution would be to add new servers.

If there are no new servers coming, tackling the non-emergent player behaviors above would be a start. The reliance on the community to "shape up" and change their ways will likely never happen outside of GM intervention or some hard coded solution. Expecting this will always leave the GM's in a cycle of resolving petty CSR issues while players continue to exploit CSR to maybe get a rule lawyered in their favor. Here are some high level solutions:

-No more fighting raid encounters at zonelines to trivialize raid encounters
-No more training an entire zone to trivialize raid encounters. Force people to clear stuff someway, somehow
-No more unlimited access to all classes or provide some sort of throttle to this behavior. Maybe x amount of accounts accessible per IP.
-Nerf item recharging, completely remove the mechanic as it's non-immersive and doesn't make sense. People never exploited it in classic to the extent they do here

Fixing the above won't resolve everything, but it'll leave the raid experience in a better place. As it stands- You log in for 10 minutes after a bat phone, do your RNG against the "competition" via clickies, training, engaging with your bot army, and then hopefully enjoy your deposited raid mob at the zoneline.