ATTN: All Raiding Guilds

[arsenalpow]

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

ToV has 3-4 safe spots basically.

Entrance, LTK, Eashen Stairs and 1-2 little hallways/corners in HoT.

If guilds aren't allowed to pull to entrance, which I do understand the motivation behind, there aren't many safe spots left. Now... You can suggest people just clear up, but as long as FTE remains the mode of determining rights to a mob that's bound to encourage training, leapfrogging and QQ.

The zone simply was not designed for multiple guilds competing for the same mob. It's a dungeon that has linear paths where guilds must herpderp on top of one another.

Removing the non-classic Flurry Drakes that roam between Triplets and Doubles would add 2 more safe spots which would alleviate some of the issues, but not all of them.

Eashen stairs are only kinda safe. If a force is at the stairs, pulling anything from North will likely eat that raid force, it's just like pulling through someone at the entrance hallway.

Everything you're saying is why we need to re-think the raid scene somehow. You're right, ToV wasn't meant to be shared because there are a minimal number of spots, so let's figure something out. We are in this super unique scenario where there's literally 10 guilds that could kill stuff in ToV, and probably 5 or 6 that could merc Vulak or Vyemm. That's never been something any EQ server has had to deal with, the next expansion would open and the pressure would be released. We don't have that here. Footraces for a shot are a tiny improvement over a coth race but it's still a tiny bandaid on a gaping wound.

[bktroost]

If winning weren't important you could just rotate single attempts on mobs each week. Do you know how many failed attempts the casual guilds would have on the dragons they actually CAN kill? There would be plenty of ffa competition each week.

Also, very few casual guilds want to spend their entire weekend killing every Dragon in ToV, especially if we are killing up to the mobs. Too much time investment. So if you went down the rotation road you wouldn't be divvying up the zone into equal shares. Hard core would stay Hard core and not all guilds would be created equal...which is 100% fine by everyone involved.

[Daldaen]

It's not so much winning that's important/fun, what's important to most of my guildmates and what make raiding fun for them is feeling pressured/strapped for time by competing guilds contesting and engaging mobs before you know whether you're truly going to win. Whether the Ch chain is still being tossed together, adds are still being cleared/removed, people are still logging in, etc. I'm sure everyone can remember their most fun raid encounters.

Many of them stem from one of two things, atleast for me personally (this extends to live, Mac and P99). A solid guild effort working towards a goal and eventually downing a boss you had wiped to many times before, or managing to pull off a kill of a mob you have been farming when the odds were against you and your class makeup was far from ideal. Those fights when a paladin tanks 40% of the fight. Or where the clerics are running on fumes for 30%, etc.

Rotating ToV would not work out well. If you were leading an AG raid to Kreizenn and Vulak spawns... Awakened and Aftermath are going to want to pull Vulak immediately. Waiting an hour or two for you to clear into Kreizenn to kill him just isn't feasible. This goes for about everything in ToV. If you're clearing to a target, and another one spawns, the zone is too linear for guilds to not have to pull/run/train through each other.

[Katpal]

Banning the train pulling would be a nice start. Trash mobs are there for a reason and clearing to the target is the easiest way to avoid disrupting a zone. No one said it would be easy, but I would prefer to play the game, not manipulate it.

Working together along with GM assistance is how we solve this and I hope this is what Sunday is all about.

-Katlin, Divinity

[bktroost]

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

It's not so much winning that's important/fun, what's important to most of my guildmates and what make raiding fun for them is feeling pressured/strapped for time by competing guilds contesting and engaging mobs before you know whether you're truly going to win. Whether the Ch chain is still being tossed together, adds are still being cleared/removed, people are still logging in, etc. I'm sure everyone can remember their most fun raid encounters.

Many of them stem from one of two things, atleast for me personally (this extends to live, Mac and P99). A solid guild effort working towards a goal and eventually downing a boss you had wiped to many times before, or managing to pull off a kill of a mob you have been farming when the odds were against you and your class makeup was far from ideal. Those fights when a paladin tanks 40% of the fight. Or where the clerics are running on fumes for 30%, etc.

Rotating ToV would not work out well. If you were leading an AG raid to Kreizenn and Vulak spawns... Awakened and Aftermath are going to want to pull Vulak immediately. Waiting an hour or two for you to clear into Kreizenn to kill him just isn't feasible. This goes for about everything in ToV. If you're clearing to a target, and another one spawns, the zone is too linear for guilds to not have to pull/run/train through each other.

The problem is that is ALREADY how it works. In our current scenario, If mob A pops and your guild is already killing mob B at entrance, I can log my guild in at entrance and start cothing them and fighting through the trash and flurries to mob A. You cannot immediately pull through a camp without training them and that's your responsibility as the one controlling the train. It is not the responsibility of the bystander raid that is actively fighting to that encounter. Now if the guild sets up camp in a pull spot and is waiting for more players to log on, etc then they are intentionally causing zone disruption. However, that does not mean you can pull through them and train them. Two wrongs get both guilds suspended; two wrongs do not make a right.

That being said. A rotation would be exactly the scenario we are currently in now as far as pulling is concerned. You would in fact have to wait for that other guild to move to their mob before pulling the other mob to entrance if that is how you chose to race for that mob. (though in that scenario the guild just cleared all the way up so there's no reason why you couldn't just race your raid force up to the mob)

[Pint]

i find it unlikely that the staff is going to 180 and support the idea of a rotation. i also dont think you guys are being realistic about clearing to dragons for kills. it is a lot of fun, but it will take you 1-2 extra hours at a minimum per dragon in a wing with 15 dragons. you will kill your guilds clearing through the wings, you will train your guilds trying to split out dragons, you will fail the fight itself due to being in the middle of a hostile wing with poor positioning choices to set your fight up or simply due to being green at the specific encounter. this will take you 2-5 hours per dragon and during that time the bigger better organized guilds will simply walk over your corpses and kill the mob in front of you. im not trying to be an asshole, im simply trying to depict the reality of how these things would play out, especially at the start. this would compound with the fact that their are 15 dragons in north wing, even if it was one of the more capable guilds it would still take them 2 hours per dragon and them working in the wing would effectively lock you out of it. the only way a rotation would work is some form of extreme rotation in which the entire wing was given to a specific guild for a large span of hours and then you would have to hope for the mobs to spawn at the perfect times on the ideal days for your raid force. it seems to me that before the staff went through the serious amounts of headache and overhaul it would take to institute a real workable rotation that they would instead just throw up their hands and declare tov a FFA nut house and walk away.

[Pan]

At the heart of it, it's a resource distribution problem that's exacerbated by the reasons that Chest mentioned (i.e. ecosystem filled with a ton of potentially apex-ish predators).

The predators (guilds) in this ecosystem, don't have a switch for "sated". And, really, none of us are yet anyway. We all have people who still "need" things (spanning the gamut in a lot of cases).

It's also pretty clear that a lot of folks enjoy competition in one form or another. If we didn't, we'd all build our own emus and play there.

-------

I think that the real issue here - and it's not been addressed anywhere - is what the owners of this emu want it to look like - in terms of raid culture AND resource distribution. On some level, that's up to them - and the rules that they write and enforce should support that "vision".

They've said in the past that they want an open system - that it's "classic" for one guild to dominate and consume all the resources (pixels). Yet we have seen that's not entirely true because they implemented the R/C/FFA solution to break the TMO monopoly on consumption. So we have to think that definition of "classic" isn't exactly what they want.

If it were up to me, I'd press the owners/gods of this server (Rogean/Nilbog) for their vision - what they want the thing to look like - how they want the resources to end up falling out - and THEN tune to that.

There are a million ways to get that done - a million rulesets that you could implement - a million tiny tweaks to code to support that outcome. Some better than others, but even the dumb ones could get the job done. If the job were actually defined.

But really, I don't think they know what they want. Or haven't approached it that way nor communicated that. So we're rather left in the dark trying to answer questions that haven't been asked. And to lead our guilds in ways that make sense and make p99 meaningful to the players who choose to share our tag.

Rogean - Nilbog: Tell us what you want this place to look like. Tell us what your expectations are of the raid scene. Tell us how the pixels should fall out, in your minds, among the hierarchy of the predators. ----- and "classic" is NOT an answer - the nature of the server isn't classic for a TON of reasons - not the least of which is its topheavy nature. So that's just a copout. You have something here that's eclipsed "classic" and there's no replicating classic relationships among guilds and vs. E of PvE. (and I'm not suggesting that the code, generally, nor the mechanics deviate from the "classic" that you've replicated - it's more the economics, broadly (resource distribution, for one) that have gotten lost and loose and can nor will ever be "classic" - and that's an important distinction)

Then let us get together and propose some solutions to support your vision. Be willing to implement them - including maybe some code changes. And be willing to tune to that vision that we all share (we will have bought in evidenced by the participation of those who chose to continue).

I kinda feel like we've been trying to patch the same thing since the R/C/FFA talks. And, if you'll recall, those talks and Sirken-implemented outcomes got turned sideways and replaced by Rogean...with something that he hoped would support his vision (whether he'd articulate it that way or not).

Yet here we are again.

I realize that this is long and pretty conceptual. But what do they say the definition of insanity is?

[bktroost]

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

i find it unlikely that the staff is going to 180 and support the idea of a rotation. i also dont think you guys are being realistic about clearing to dragons for kills. it is a lot of fun, but it will take you 1-2 extra hours at a minimum per dragon in a wing with 15 dragons. you will kill your guilds clearing through the wings, you will train your guilds trying to split out dragons, you will fail the fight itself due to being in the middle of a hostile wing with poor positioning choices to set your fight up or simply due to being green at the specific encounter. this will take you 2-5 hours per dragon and during that time the bigger better organized guilds will simply walk over your corpses and kill the mob in front of you. im not trying to be an asshole, im simply trying to depict the reality of how these things would play out, especially at the start. this would compound with the fact that their are 15 dragons in north wing, even if it was one of the more capable guilds it would still take them 2 hours per dragon and them working in the wing would effectively lock you out of it. the only way a rotation would work is some form of extreme rotation in which the entire wing was given to a specific guild for a large span of hours and then you would have to hope for the mobs to spawn at the perfect times on the ideal days for your raid force. it seems to me that before the staff went through the serious amounts of headache and overhaul it would take to institute a real workable rotation that they would instead just throw up their hands and declare tov a FFA nut house and walk away.

I actually did this. I was trained 5 Times and killed a .GoV Dragon in about an hour. I am using real data. You are hypothesizing. Where is your data?

[bktroost]

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

I actually did this. I was trained 5 times and killed a. NToV Dragon in about an hour. I am using real data. You are hypothesizing. Where is your data?

I realize that sounds more like I'm being snarky than actually inquiring. All I've seen was pulling to entrance since early on. I wasn't watching the first month. I'm actually asking to get the data you are referring to when things must have been different and didn't work.

[Daldaen]

When competition started in ToV, most kills occurred in the Aaryonar tunnel. The guilds would clear the 2 statics at the stairs and then pull every dragon past the Aary stairs where it would get tagged out and pulled into camp.

The problem with this of course was there is only 1 single location for guilds to occupy. Guilds would often train each other with the baby drakes, Eashen guards and wyverns when late comers would run by recklessly. Also some guilds would be parked out at the stairs up to Aary and some at the Eashen ramp, the later has to pull through the former. It's very messy. Plus there were some issues with certain individuals summoning eyes and dropping trains on other guilds thinking it was undetectable. In short, guilds being asked to sit on top of each other in the one viable camp leads to huge issues.

Veeshan's Peak has operated and will continue to operate in the same capacity that it has for the past 2-3 years where dragons are pulled across the zone and ripped off.

What about ToV makes it not allowable for the same strategies to take place? Yes it's a level 46 zone rather than a keyed quest. And yes there are HoT raids that occasionally occur. But even with those in mind. ToV is the end zone like VP. I think high end/neckbeard guilds can be more vocal about trains coming through, holding aggro on them, dropping them in better locations and giving warning when dropping them like the raid rules ask.