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#1
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A no variance system rewards the guild/force/team that is most dominant. Why is this? It should be fairly easy to understand, but let me explain this for anyone who might have some sort of cognitive deficiency:
First, what do I mean by the guild/force/team that is most dominant? I'm referring to the guild that is able to kill the majority of the raid content--currently Nihilum(?), previously Azrael (few weeks), and then before that Nihilum (?). The group that kills Dragon X dictates when Dragon X will respawn... to the second. In this way, the group that is in power gets more powerful by getting more loot and getting an *exact* timer. The particularly problematic part of this equation, is that the "strength in numbers" strategy is simply too strong in Everquest. This can be observed in a strict PVE context where we are talking about 32khp dragons and a non-capped raid force. Clearly it is advantageous to recruit/bring as many people to a raid as possible, since "zerging" is an incredibly effective strategy that is viable because of the open-raid structure of this game. So we can see that in PVE there is a clear and massive advantage for zerging down content. Now when we contextualize this purely pve example within the confines of a pvp server... well, now there is even more reason and even more benefit to bringing even more people. Surely some of this content is doable with 2-3 groups (assuming no interference). Yes, it would be more brainless with more people, but let's assume possibility of interference (since this is a pvp server) and at this point "strength in numbers" is the only strat worth considering. With a no variance system, guilds/teams/forces can schedule "raid" and "pvp" times. Again, make clear note that the dominant force will actually be able to control spawn timers (and I believe there was a period of time where dragons were repopping and being slain at 6am in the morning (I have no idea what time zone, assumedly somewhere in the US)). This is a clear counterexample to the argument that when everyone knows the spawn timer for a raid boss, there will be pvp contention. When the dragon-slayers have complete control of when a boss dies, it makes the server less competitive. PvP at end game on this server is sort of like old school warfare. Everyone knows the time and the place that the war is going to take place, and each force lines up their infantry, artillery, and cavalry. I am not kidding when I tell you that these guilds spend hours buffing/rebuffing in preparation for the first repop... logging out hoards of alternate characters/other accounts in the vicinity of where the first pvp battle will take place. It is anything but spontaneous, and in this way it's categorically different than any pvp that takes place lvl 55 and lower. In my opinion, pvp loses a lot of the fun when it becomes so structured and contrived. The most surprising part of all of this is that the blue server apparently has variance. And you know what they all complain about? FTE ruling. Well -- I do not think the concept of tracking a zone for 12+ hours, or this concept of javelin-spamming at spawn point are the sort of problems that red players can't work out amongst themselves... Most importantly, with variance a 100 person guild will not be able to schedule 80% of their members to show up at a specific time on a specific day to contest an entire week's worth of raid content. Instead, players/groups/guilds will be awarded for being online (AND DISCOVERING) that a raid target is up. Extra emphasis will be placed on quickly discovering targets are up, forming a raid force and mobilizing to either kill or contest the mob. Bat-phones exist, but with a variance system there will NECESSARILY be less people contesting the mob from each side which will make both the strict pve as well as the pvp encounters **more skill focused and less numbers reliant**. Variance adds different avenues to outplay a more dominant guild that relies heavily/primarily on numbers/static timers. Again, finding a raid-target shortly after it has spawned, being able to quickly mobilize, attempting pve content with smaller numbers (if a dragon is up and you have people and there is no competition... try to kill the dragon with what you have before the opposing force realizes its up)--these will all be new and important components of strategy for each guild. There is no easy way to hard-code in some formula for population balance, especially since this is a "FFA" pvp server (which in functionality is a 2 team pvp server lvl 56+). Nevertheless, population balance is a integral part of this game. My recommendation is to hard-code in some very easy fixes, starting with a variance system that you are apparently already running on blue. Copy/paste should not be so difficult. Implementing variance will definitely help decrease how much reward any group/team/force gets for stacking numbers. This is not to say that "strength in numbers" will discontinue being an effective strategy... the people employing it will just not be rewarded as heavily. | ||
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Last edited by hivemind; 05-30-2014 at 02:47 PM..
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#2
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#3
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#4
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its like taking sharp objects away from your retarded children
and them throwing a fit | ||
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#6
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all you need is sim repops that reset timer and happen more frequently. thx.
[also velious]
__________________
Checkraise Dragonslayer <Retired>
"My armor color matches my playstyle" | ||
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#7
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In general, I think it is a bad idea for the GM's to put into place some mechanism that they have to constantly and mechanically iterate in order to help bring some better sense of balance to the server. I am referring to simulated repops... People have already complained, over and over and over again that it has been X days since last repop, and that they understand GMs and/or Rogean are busy. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to try to balance things out with a mechanical process like this? If you didn't realize or otherwise don't have a clue, adding more rules or adding more mechanical inputs for the GMs to deal with is not actually a good thing. Look at blue compared to red, all the bullshit petitions that they have to deal with because neckbeards can't work out pixels amongst themselves. You give them the opportunity to kill each other (ie work things out amongst themselves) and all of a sudden you don't have to expend hours upon hours scouring petition after petition trying to make all parties happy. The GENERAL idea is that the less time GMs/Rogean have to spend trying to babysit this server... and the more that they can implement code or automatic processes (ie "Variance", the title of this post), the more time they can spend elsewhere improving the quality of these two servers. Let me reiterate once more that the idea of having manually simulated repops is a terrible, terrible idea. Not only is it not a true analog to variance, it requires all this additional work on the GM/staff side that ultimately only results in people QQing and asking for more frequent repops (and pixels). | |||
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#8
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Also, simulated repops are a terrible idea. Quoting myself since I'm not going to retype: Quote:
You might realize that you are one of the many people that I am referring to in the last bit of quoted (blue) text. Sim repops only results in people asking for more and more of them which is inherently problematic since they require staff implementation, as well as a myriad of other reasons that I'm honestly not even interested in going into. | ||||
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#9
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[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] although... I'd still be interested in seeing variance playout. I strongly believe it will cause fights to spark all over the world at random times. | |||
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#10
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+1
classic to have them repops too funny how that works aint it | ||
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