System rotation target ?

[Nedala]

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

Nedala, if you're gonna be pulling shit out of your ass you may start with some common sense.

I never said poopsocking was the next alternative, in fact you did. Poopsock was there because the first group of 15+ in a zone got claim to a target. If you get rid of variance you wouldn't have that. Sat in the zone for 4 days to get innoruuk? tough shit, here's 20 people who are gonna engage him first that got here 5 minutes ago because they knew when he was going to spawn. Variance came in to discourage poopsocking because people thought nobody would actually poopsock. Well... they did anyway.

Want to cure poopsock with no variance? Make it rotation, make it FFA, make it FTE, make it /random between the guilds there. All of these imply no poopsock.

You are right, but these imply the other option i mentioned: A huge clusterfuck. We had this at noble dojorn before, when multiple guilds knew he was going to spawn. Cant you imagine what happens? How can you tell who was first to engage when 100+ from different guilds are sitting on his spawn point? You cant even call that raiding anymore, a mob spawns and multiple guilds beating on him so he goes down in 5 seconds, and then get a GM to decide who gets the loot, yay.

Make it /random between guilds? seriously?

None of your ideas is even nearly as good as what we current have. At least not for people that want to compete. And thats what EQ raiding is about, if we had a rotation i could go play EQ2 or WoW and raid instanced based.

[Splorf22]

You know I have a cousin who is a doctor. He actually ended up moving practices because in his old location he had doctors in the office who wouldn't do their share of call. Apparently this is a huge problem in the medical world, because no one wants to be on call. It's pretty obvious that no one likes to be available 24/7.

I don't understand how Shiftin makes it to 50% of TR's raids while living a normal life. Let's assume he is a standard wage slave who sleeps 8 hours a day and spends 10 hours per day at work (counting lunch/commuting) five days a week. That's already 106 out of 168 hours, leaving a mere 37% of time available for potential raids even if he is willing to stop taking showers, having dinner with his kids, or any other activity when a raid is called.

So while the current system may be meritocratic, if you want to even smell a raid target on Project 1999 you basically have to commit leaving whatever you are doing at any time, and join a huge guild so that they will have enough available people at any given time to take down a raid. In my humble opinion, this sucks.

I much prefer Susanbanthony/Skope's suggestion of just popping all the raid targets at once, but with no variance, about once a week (I suggest every 6 days 18 hours to rotate through all timezones) and temporarily suspending all rules in the raid zones for about two hours.

I think there are a number of huge advantages:

1. Raid night immediately becomes a huge event for the 50+ crowd. The server population would be 1200+ easily. With all targets up the uberguilds would make sure 100% of their population was on.
2. Casual players actually have a chance to either make time in their schedule or just skip the event. Smaller guilds can ally for targets.
3. With training and ks'ing OK for the event, the challenge and excitement level would go way up. You can't just clear a few roamers on the way to Cazic Thule any more, you have to burn down the zone or risk some other guild dropping it on you. Raid night would probably last 5-6 hours before all the mobs were down because of this.
4. Alternatively, players could just play nice and divide up the targets reasonably (kinda boring IMO).
5. This is easy to try. Just schedule it once and see what happens.

[Skope]

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

The system is fine the way it is, there currently is one guild that is significantly more prepared for some of the harder fights than others right now. When the other guilds catch up, there wont be as much of a monopoly.

damnit juju, the notion of preparedness =! tracking. Variance didn't exist on live. Preparedness meant organizing your guild's resists and gear and telling them what to do, not spend 4 days waiting for something to spawn in a massive window.

And Nedala, welcome to everquest. All of those clusterfucks and KSing and training and even rotations were all classic EQ behavior and rules. This idea that variance encourages people who try harder isn't classic either. People didn't get targets because they sat in the zone for 4 days, they got it because they were able to kill it when other guilds weren't, or were willing to wake up when other guilds didn't. Not to mention, you can cure the clusterfucks and whatnot. 6 guilds at a target with 20+ for each? /random to see who goes in what order. Don't want to wake up at 4am to kill a target? you still don't have to.

My point is variance is unnecessary and benefits only those who mass recruit and who are willing to waste time (or cheat) -- this is a COMPLETELY new concept that was invented here to stop poopsocking, which didn't work, and now to ease the GM involvement, which is unnecessary.

[Splorf22]

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

None of your ideas is even nearly as good as what we current have. At least not for people that want to compete. And thats what EQ raiding is about, if we had a rotation i could go play EQ2 or WoW and raid instanced based.

Hey, I'm all for competition. The question though is what kind of competition. And right now that competition is who is willing to drop whatever they are doing at any given time to kill a raid mob.

[Ronas]

Sorry no hand out for you. Plus taking out bosses only takes around 20-30 people. Its not all that much if you consider most guild at the moment have over 50 people. Its just most guild are not willing to put in the work/time and organization to be able to have only 1/3, 1/2 of there guild to come on when things are up.

Really quite simple, if your current guild cannot do that then join one that can. There is currently around 6 guilds that have the numbers to take out bosses. 1 with double the others, 5 with generally the same amount yet only 2 are competing. What the hell are the other 4 doing?

[Skope]

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

Sorry no hand out for you. Plus taking out bosses only takes around 20-30 people. Its not all that much if you consider most guild at the moment have over 50 people. Its just most guild are not willing to put in the work/time and organization to be able to have only 1/3, 1/2 of there guild to come on when things are up.

Really quite simple, if your current guild cannot do that then join one that can. There is currently around 6 guilds that have the numbers to take out bosses. 1 with double the others, 5 with generally the same amount yet only 2 are competing. What the hell are the other 4 doing?

Ronas, your idiotic notion of competing has nothing to do with the original everquest. This idea that a guild who gets a target in a 4-day window is somehow "competing" has been invented here on p99. Nobody's looking for a handout, and i'm certainly not. What I want is actual classic raiding.

[Ronas]

Skope, if you gonna try to lawyer in that variance isnt classic, then they may as well remove the two boxing restriction, allowing MQ/ShowEQ, put back all the bugs/exploits.

It was put into p99 to make the server in a way where it doesn't jeopardize the classic feel. As in people now know everything, whilst when it was on live everything was new. Now everyone knows loopholes to make life harder/easier to get the unfair advantage over others. And this is why they put all these limiters in to cut down on that kind of unfairness as well as save themselves the headache.

I said it before, that this server was like my server on live, and if the variance were to be removed, you have 200+ players lagging one another out to get the boss kill, KSing/Training/Memblurring bosses and burning it down, etc. It not gonna work, and rotation wont work too because on this server the raid side of things is cut throat.

[Skope]

No, it was put into p99 to prevent poopsocking, which it didn't prevent at all. It stayed because it eases the pressure on GMs from hearing /petitions, and that's not needed. You still had training/KSing/Memblurring even with variance. Your point is moot.

this notion that it'll cause more KSing, training and etc... it won't. That has more to do with the raiding and server ruleset than it has to do with variance

[gnomishfirework]

Originally Posted by Mcbard

This sounds like a terrible idea imo. When it comes to playing and raiding at a high level in classic EQ (read: competing) I don't think any guild or group of players should have to be forced into giving something up so that the others, who are not as good as them, have a shot at the same mobs/loot. If they want to kill certain mobs/loot they should be given every opportunity to compete with the dominating guild(s) but there should not be an established rotation that hinders the dominant group of players from getting what they have worked for. If they wanted to make a rotation because they no longer wanted those mobs, or maybe another guild had locked down something that they now wanted access to and so a bi-spawn rotation or something was worked out between those guilds, then I would be all for it, but a forces rotation isn't really classic, and doesn't really reward the competitive atmosphere that so many know and love about EQ.

LOL

You should willingly do a rotation because it's the fair thing to do. Everquest doesn't reward you based on skill but on time you are able to devote to the game. A good rotation will have "free days" where anyone can kill. So you can plug your ass or fill your socks and feel superior to those guilds comprised of people who aren't willing or able to devote all their time to a decade old game.

It must be fun to have a PvP mentality on a pve server. Very safe of you.

[Stumpes]

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

What the GMs need to do here is stop giving a crap about leading the babies by their hands and let it settle itself. No training? fine. FTE / KSing, it's all fair game.

I totally agree. Most guilds are not suited for raiding, and would take hours to even attempt to get the group together for 1 attempt, let alone if they wiped and tried multiple times.

The GMs need to stop being so picky about raiding. Let the people play like they remember, not being dragged around by some worthless rules that were not enforced in the game we are EMULATING!