Anti-Draft Week

[YendorLootmonkey]

When the next iteration of green opens up, make Green 1.0 instanced or rotation. People who want competition can go enjoy that on Green 2.0. People who want rotations can finally enjoy that on Green 1.0 with whoever is remaining.

Win-win for everyone, because they can play on the server that best represents their playstyle, and stop crapping on the other playstyle because it is on a completely different server and does not impact them in any way whatsoever.

[Ooloo]

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

When the next iteration of green opens up, make Green 1.0 instanced or rotation. People who want competition can go enjoy that on Green 2.0. People who want rotations can finally enjoy that on Green 1.0 with whoever is remaining.

Win-win for everyone, because they can play on the server that best represents their playstyle, and stop crapping on the other playstyle because it is on a completely different server and does not impact them in any way whatsoever.

You can do this on eqlive. This entire project is a repudiation of the direction eqlive ended up going.

Veto.

[loramin]

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

You can do this on eqlive. This entire project is a repudiation of the direction eqlive ended up going.

Veto.

That's a moronic response that pretends live is equally as good as P99 ... when we both know it isn't.

This place is special because of classic EQ. And if we're being honest, the raid scene here isn't classic: races literally never existed on live.

If P99 switched to instances or rotations, people would raid the way they did back in 2001 ... ie. the classic way.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

You have said two things
1) With no instancing, in a guild monopolizing content it takes years to get full bis.
2) With instancing people would get bis too fast.

Why not allow instancing for a guild at current respawn frequency (or a bit slower)? Could lock out guild characters who joined the guild less than X days ago if the instance has a frequency of X days. This would prevent shenanigans of a guild splitting into a bunch of copies and characters tag switching to get more instances. If time limits for instances were made, there would still be stakes. Eg if you wipe them there will not be enough time to recover and complete the instance.

Of course implementing the code for this might be a headache and/or large amount of work (depending on the current codebase).

This would speed up the loot acquisition process on the server by at least 5-10x, depending on how many guilds end up splitting. While your suggestion does theoretically prevent people from constantly making new guilds to get around restrictions, people will still end up making as many guilds as possible to maximize how many raid bosses are killable per week.

Unfortunately no MMO has really solved the issue of instancing causing too much loot to enter the market. Players simply care less about the problem these days, since they don't have as much time to play games. It's a really tough problem, because the feeling of accomplishment comes from the loot's rarity. Someone would need to find a way to make loot feel accomplishing outside of rarity, which hasn't been done yet to my knowledge.

On P99 players obviously still enjoy loot rarity, which is why they play here instead of TLP. We don't really have the problem of modern gamers rejecting the time sink, because most people playing here are players who already like the game as it is. It is a niche market for people who enjoy the older style of MMO's.

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

That's a moronic response that pretends live is equally as good as P99 ... when we both know it isn't.

This place is special because of classic EQ. And if we're being honest, the raid scene here isn't classic: races literally never existed on live.

If P99 switched to instances or rotations, people would raid the way they did back in 2001 ... ie. the classic way.

One of the biggest differences between TLP and P99 is instancing vs. non-instancing. You cannot simply ignore that fact and assume that P99 would be better with instancing. Ooloo is correct that instancing was a core direction change on live. Based on how the TLP servers have operated, it's not a stretch to assume the P99 player base would start leaving P99 once they got their loot quickly via instancing.

I am not sure why you think people would change their raiding strategies if instancing was added to P99. They would still use the same strategies, which are not classic because people didn't have 20 years of game knowledge in 2001. There really isn't a way to put the genie back in the bottle in terms of player knowledge. People are going to play differently on P99. There wasn't instancing in 2001, so that wouldn't be raiding "the classic way" either.

[Ooloo]

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

That's a moronic response that pretends live is equally as good as P99 ... when we both know it isn't.

This place is special because of classic EQ. And if we're being honest, the raid scene here isn't classic: races literally never existed on live.

If P99 switched to instances or rotations, people would raid the way they did back in 2001 ... ie. the classic way.

Sorry but I fundamentally can't see how adding instancing of all things to p99 would make it more classic. Instancing is totally antithetical to the point of the project.

"Classic" is a super elastic term anyway. Everquest only has classic mechanics. You can emulate those mechanics perfectly and there will still be new emergent playstyles. Some servers had rotations, others didn't, yet they all existed during vanilla\kunark\velious. So which playstyle is the genuinely "classic" one? I think the raid system here works about as well as it possibly can; it's mostly meritocratic but smaller guilds can still work their way up and get stuff. Please god no instancing though.

[enjchanter]

Instancing would literally save the server

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

Instancing would literally save the server

Save it from what? The population has remained steady for years. There's around 1.5-2k players at peak times when looking at both servers. The population was also around 1.5-2k players on Blue before Green launched at peak times.

There are some people who play on both servers at the same time, and some boxers, but I doubt that is making up a significant portion of the numbers. Unless someone can show otherwise.

[erasser]

The notion that P99 devs can simply implement instances into this locked patch version of Everquest is laughable. This is not going to happen.

[WarpathEQ]

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

You have said two things
1) With no instancing, in a guild monopolizing content it takes years to get full bis.
2) With instancing people would get bis too fast.

Why not allow instancing for a guild at current respawn frequency (or a bit slower)? Could lock out guild characters who joined the guild less than X days ago if the instance has a frequency of X days. This would prevent shenanigans of a guild splitting into a bunch of copies and characters tag switching to get more instances. If time limits for instances were made, there would still be stakes. Eg if you wipe them there will not be enough time to recover and complete the instance.

Of course implementing the code for this might be a headache and/or large amount of work (depending on the current codebase).

Interesting concept. While I think adding instancing will never happen and would likely require too much of an overhaul of the backbone of P99 if you think about it the current quake environment is a form of instancing. Maybe there is a way to improve how quakes are done to create a more desired outcome.

It seems like recently the GMs have been testing quake ideas with rolling quakes that only impact one zone at a time to spawning multiple of the same mob at once and having guilds team up to take them down.

Maybe there is an opportunity to create more of a dual platform of naturally spawning content that the poop sockers can stare at for hours on end while they sit cross legged alongside some planned spawn events that can open up raid experiences to more players, especially those currently outside of the UN. There could be a happy middle ground here that preserves the rarity of loot that promotes longivity in gameplay while giving some opportunities to folks that are locked out of content by the lack of progression for the UN folks to engage in.

[loramin]

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

I am not sure why you think people would change their raiding strategies if instancing was added to P99. They would still use the same strategies, which are not classic because people didn't have 20 years of game knowledge in 2001. There really isn't a way to put the genie back in the bottle in terms of player knowledge. People are going to play differently on P99. There wasn't instancing in 2001, so that wouldn't be raiding "the classic way" either.

I was referring to the unclassic "PvP" aspect of the current raid scene (eg. racing for mobs, starting at a race line ... a race line that never existed on Live, and so by definition is unclassic). Obviously the PvE aspects would remain (largely) the same.

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

"Classic" is a super elastic term anyway.

This is the crux of it. Our current raid scene is unclassic in key ways. For instance, back in 2001 guilds didn't compete directly (eg. by racing for a mob), because there wasn't the kind of competition for those mobs that there is here, there weren't the same FTE rules as we have here, etc.

Instances would solve that unclassic aspect of P99 ... but in return they would require a sacrifice of making something else unclassic (instances obviously didn't exist in 2001). It's impossible to make P99 100% classic in every way, so no one is (really) talking about classic or unclassic: they're talking about making their preferred aspect of the game classic.