Special Encounters

[astuce999]

I still think the solution is more servers; Teal has dramatically improved life on both Green and Teal, a 2nd split (this one with a guaranteed reunification upon Kunark) would be enough to improve the upcoming raid scene.

The conundrum with "Classic" is that you basically have two fundamentally opposed camps; Nostalgia and Competition.

Nostalgia is looking to relive the glory days of content "I remember that!" or achieve certain bucket list goals "back in the day, I was never able to get soandso item or kill soandso mob".

Competition is looking to relive the glory days of competing with, outwitting, outsmarting, outwaiting, outgearing, outfarming, and just plain denying other players. Killing Nagafen has no meaning in itself. Killing Nagafen First, Killing Nagafen Solo, Killing Nagafen while 2 other guilds were racing, Killing Nagafen every week to make sure no other guilds do, is everything.

At its worse, Nostalgia has very rosy glasses (e.g. I should be able to get a manastone with 2-4 hour playtime a week) and Competition is toxic.

At its best, Nostalgia takes very little to please the player (e.g. I ran from Kelethin to Erudin, it took 3 hours and I loved every second) and Competition feels olympian (e.g. I got the AC in Sro with 4 farmers in zone but my antonian javelin got me FTE, it was epic, I didn't sleep that night).

cheers,

Astuce

[Talislor]

One last time, thanks everyone for your participation. I think we’ve gathered enough information on this topic to say there is no consensus, there is insufficient motivation, and there is doubt that the volunteer staff could pull it off (not that I wouldn’t be willing to help). Kindly remember that I’m just a new guy asking questions and try not to hold any grudges. XD

@kul69: You’re right that P99 isn’t classic EQ, but the market placement creates that illusion. I think this is confusing because sometimes you see great efforts going into the facsimile, but it’s missing a lot of important details. More focus on player experiences with the special encounters is the one single area I would have chosen for improvement.

@Ekl_Mortain: Meta gaming only speaks to the amazing possibilities of the open world game-play found in EverQuest. I like meta gaming, especially the halfling runs. However, when a single group can solo a dragon it kinda ruins the lore (among other things). I used to read all of it back in 1999. The lore is rather brilliant.

@Endonde: I don’t want to detail too much on how you could raise the difficulty of the special encounters, but my preference would be to add more randomized behaviors and eliminate predictability. I think this would be effective in increasing the required raid size without complicating gear requirements. This approach could also be an effective countermeasure to thwart certain Gina triggers.

@derpcake2: I think you’ve mis-characterized my intent.

Thanks again everyone. I’m pretty much done with this thread. I appreciate all the replies though.

[Wallicker]

Nerf clickie aggro and make Soulfire Paladin only.

[Evia]

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

Nerf clickie aggro and make Soulfire Paladin only.

+1

[Ekl_Mortain]

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

@Ekl_Mortain: Meta gaming only speaks to the amazing possibilities of the open world game-play found in EverQuest. I like meta gaming, especially the halfling runs. However, when a single group can solo a dragon it kinda ruins the lore (among other things). I used to read all of it back in 1999. The lore is rather brilliant.

Oh when i say meta i should clarify that players skip the learning process, Which is what i found to be the most fun on EQ. I know there is a wiki with all the information on it, i use it for maps when i am lost, but i would much rather find my way first, or if its for a tradeskill see if i can find someone who will teach me. That was the adventure i loved.

And agreed, the lore is wonderful and continuous. The constant mystery of the world of Norrath.

[aaezil]

Naggy/vox both been killed with single groups i think

[kul69]

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

Hahaha true enough. They do a grand job. They need to find more volunteer staff me thinks. Get that Interview and Guide apprenticeships going hahaha.

You make a very valid point about changes and how young the server is. Give it time and see what happens when the next part of the timeline is out and compare the Then from Now.

There are more than enough volunteers. The bottleneck is not on applicants.

Also I think every single server GM has turned out to be corrupt on P99 except Braknar who quit out of disgust that the PMs weren't doing anything to let him support the server as it needed to be supported.

P99 is getting stale and it's because of the all the cheese not being nerfed. The game is boiling down to basically spending level 20-50 in HHK and then farm a list of specific cheese raid clickies to have your chance at some 30 year old dragon loot depending on how the same 5-10 cheaters feel. How long it takes a player to figure out that this is all the end game has to offer is up to them.

It is undeniable that the staff is supporting this. Like I said, most of those people from the "top guilds" on P99 should have been permanently banned years ago and on all the alts they keep farming up to break rules.

People have said this forever and then it comes out GMs are handing out items to e-whores and telling people when dragons are going to spawn. The whole end game scene on P99 is full of scumbags and it would be pretty easy to clean it up if there was even the slightest bit of will to do so. It would start with getting rid of cheese clicks like soulfire and actually making the dragons a challenging encounter as OP stated would have happened in live.

If entire guilds were farming soulfires to click from inventory so they could kill dragons easily it would have been nerfed. Not on P99 though. Instead it's endless discussions of rotations, or rooted dragons, or whatever nonsense while ignoring the rotting core of P99 raiding being a trivial joke where no one ever wipes if they have the prerequisite cheese items to trivialize everything.

[Ligma]

Charmed mobs tanking dragons while raids heal them with soulfires is a nice fantasy for angry nerds to rage about but isn't a thing in reality.

[Frostback]

Great post op! Have you seen the other streams of seal team taking down vox? I don't have experience raiding on live but there was a lot of people in each raid for seal team, all lvl 39+. While raiding on the blue server, guilds used similar tactics but had to race each other to get the numbers required to take down the dragons which makes it a lot more competitive and risky.

[kul69]

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

Charmed mobs tanking dragons while raids heal them with soulfires is a nice fantasy for angry nerds to rage about but isn't a thing in reality.

Um an SK "soloed" a dragon with just buffs and clickies. You're just trying to cover up what you're a part of. Raiding on P99 is clicking soulfires, supporting charm, and everyone healing a tank spamming clickies for aggro.

Seal Team poop socking nets making it a requirement for loot. Hilarious. I guess hoops are out, have to find the next clicky. Good thing they won't nerf soulfire, then you'd really be fucked.

I've never liked raiding in EQ but P99 is a whole new level of boring trivialized content. Funny to me that clicking lifetaps on dragons was the line but as long as a fight is "simulated" and instead soulfire heals are used it's totally fine.

P99 is not classic. Don't worry. No one is going to take your pretend raids away Ligma.