Official Raid Rotation Post

Krim brings up a good point. The 'bully your way in' is just another way to say FFA. The point of rotations is to prevent poopsocking and guilds fighting each other for pixels. 'Bullying your way in' is just going to cause more drama, perhaps even more then straight FFA. Blocking new guilds from joining the rotation is what caused them to breakdown on AK towards the end.

 

you have to be in a raiding guild on rotation to do raid targets? what if some drunk puggers wanna take a stab at it?


edit: Not trying to start drama, I only ask cause I did all the raid targets for my nec epic with pugs and it was awesome.
For keeper of souls we literally had 1 cleric, 1 druid, 1 paladin, 1 wiz, and about 15 rangers( no joke) and me as the necro. Sooooo many rangers ate the DT's for me. Was probably the worst keeper of soul fight ever and we prolly would of wiped if it wasn't for the wiz being there with his damage. Me and the wiz were friends and everybody else was a pickup. One of my fondest moments in EQ.

 

Halve the respawn timers

 

If there are three guilds in a dragon rotation (which there will be really fast), a guild that wants to join the rotation would be able to make an attempt on any dragon they want, whether it is guild A's turn, guild B's, or guild C's. I find it extremely unlikely that they would not be able to power their way into an attempt during all 3 guilds attempts and would be beaten by poopsocker/campers each time.

My question for you is how easy do you really want this? Should I have to start keeping a list of when any raid target was killed, whos turn is up next, and also let them know when the mob spawns for them too? For ROK mobs and SOV mobs too? Should the GM's have to for years on end? Who is going to do all this work and hold everyones hands for them? Why should they be forced to do this just so every single person on the server can get their share of the dragon loot? If a guild wants to be on a rotation it is going to take work for them. Work they shouldn't expect the GM's or other guilds to do for them.

The problem with rotations is that they suck the life out of raid mobs. I'm not going to be holding dragon timers and venril sathir timers for people what's next, killing the mob for them and giving them the loot? Do your own work. This will also allow for "pickup groups" to form together as a raid target goes FFA after the 24hour (or 12 hour, 48 hours is way too long) window is up, and other people have mentioned wanting a small % of FFA's happening during a rotation.

-Adaephon, Starvald Demelain

 

Spawn variances do a fine job of preventing poopsocking. A lot of people here have brought up poopsocking but who has actually done it? Ain't nobody in my guild poopsocking shit and I can't see any other guilds here doing it either. Who is actually going to sit around in FG hall or IG hall for hours on end? The only guild that did that so far on this server already quit.

Poopsocking sucks, but its getting to the point where people use fear of poopsocking to get stupid raid policy put in.

-Adaephon Delat, Starvald Demelain

 

To summarize my last few posts: I'm hoping the officers of the dragon killing guilds can help hash out the minor details of this rotation that got voted in. How new guilds get added to the rotation, and how long a guild has when a mob spawns for their official rotation claim window.

My proposals would be new guilds wishing to join a rotation would have to prove their worth by fighting their way onto it (first to engage with no claim windows, very little GM upkeep required) by killing the target before whoever is next in the rotation goes for their kill, this would push everyone down a week on the rotation and the new guild would be added last on the list. As for Naggy/vox simply killing either of them would add you to both lists.

For guilds already on the rotation, a 12 hour window to kill after mob pop would be my choice but it seems the server would favour 24 hours. Any longer is catering too much, killing dragons requires effort, the rest of us shouldn't have to be waiting around as dragons stay up 10 days.

If a rotation guild fails to kill their raid target within the time limit (12 or 24 hours), they forfeit their kill for that turn in the rotation and the target becomes FFA (again with first to engage rules, no claim windows. low upkeep for GM's that simply means you get 1 shot once you engage the mob and anyone else is free to engage after it resets if you wipe). After awhile guilds will get a little complacent and there will be a small % of FFA dragons which the community seems in favour of anyway, this will allow pickup groups and such exciting opportunities.

The other leading alternative to joining the rotation seems to be "form a guild and send adaephon a tell asking to get added to the list". I am just going to go ahead and guess that any guild already on the rotation will vehemently be against this type of policy, and any guild not on the rotation will be the opposite and be very much in favour of it.

-Adaephon Delat, Starvald Demelain

 

Spawn variance does not stop poopsocking. The idea that casuals will get more targets sounds good, but is not true. Those that would poopsock it, then move to more of a batphone system. And they still get the mobs.

Variance is not a fix, to allow casuals to get more targets. Been there done that. Proved it does not work. And even though we proved it, people still throw it out as a fix.

It makes it worse for casuals, since they cannot drop everything and get on at any time. Variance ends up with casuals getting less targets.

H

 

/guildwar on

 

^
/agree

A 12 hour variance won't help rotations or casual players. If anything it makes it so they have to put in more time and effort.

 

Where is this proof you speak of? People who compare this server to p99 forget that p99 is a server that spends years in each expansion era. Spending that much time in ROK is going to lead to congestion problems no matter what type of policy you have setup. This game isn't designed to support an experienced community of that size, especially in these early expansion.s This server right now is also 1/10th or less the population of that server.

The evidence I have suggests spawn variance works in preventing poopsocking. One guild tried it once on this server and were vehemently against poopsocking afterwards. That guild also does not play here anymore. I doubt they would last long poopsocking week after week. EQ is a marathon game and just because someone poopsocks once doesn't mean casuals will forever be fighting the war against poopsockers nor does it mean we should put in ridiculous raid policys where everyone gets their hands held and loot handed to them.

I shouldn't have to say this here but Lady Vox has been up for over 12 hours and no poopsocking or camping is taking place. I am against people using "fear of poopsocking" in attempts to get ez-mode hand-holding rotation policy in effect. If poopsocking becomes an issue on this server then it can be discussed at that time imo, as for right now, I just dont see anyone poopsocking anything here.

-Adaephon Delat, Starvald Demelain

 

On an effort scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the dragon is killed for you and the loot given to you to distribute as you please, and 10 being you have to fight your way into a rotation vs multiple guilds poopsocking a dragon lair, where would you like to see this server at for "casual players"?

You make it sound like time and effort is a bad thing. That's what EQ is, that's what it takes to kill high end content. That's what makes the content desirable for people in the first place. You need time, effort, coordination, and luck to do high end content. If you take that away you may's well put in instances and have mercenarys to do the work for you. if all 50 people on this server are simply entitled to their 1/50th of the dragon loot simply when they reach level 50 then it takes away the essence of what makes high end content desirable in the first place.

-Adaephon Delat, Starvald Demelain

 

Server population < 100 distinct IP addresses, will not have a poopsocking issue.

Variance is not a solution to a poopsocking problem.

Variance ensures casuals are at a disadvantage.

Just how it is.

H

 

I think your taking this way too personal.

I didn't vote for rotations, I voted for FFA.

Rotations got picked by other players/GMs. Straight FFA lost, get over it.

Since rotations got picked the only thing to do now is figure out how they will work.

I think the majority of players on this server are casuals just like on AK.

 

I disagree. Spawn variance was put in place specifically to counter poopsocking/camping. If I know a dragon is going to spawn in 4 days time at exactly 8:15 pm this allows me to easily prep my guild to engage it within 5 seconds of it spawning if I so desired. Meanwhile if the dragons spawn is going to be anywhere from 12 hours before 8:15 pm to 12 hours after 8:15 pm it makes it much, much more difficult for me and my very small guild to prep and immediately engage the dragon. How can you say that variance is not a solution to poopsocking?

Does spawn variance make things easier for so called "casuals"? No, but anything that will make encounters easier for "casuals" will make them exponentially easier for other, more serious players as well. EQ isn't an instanced game and it seems people expect "casuals" to be hand fed loot. That's not what EQ is.

-Adaephon Delat, Starvald Demelain

 

Adaephon--I sense you may be fighting a losing battle here. The community has spoken pretty clearly that raid rotations are the preferred way of handling high-end encounters. If you don't like that and prefer FFA, you are probably well served to go play on an FFA server instead of trying to convert a raid rotation agreement into FFA by insisting that a guild must beat out other guilds to earn a spot in the rotation.

 

xate states the only guild that poop socks is now gone (he's talking about AnH) but he failed to mention the guild AnH was competing poop sockage against was his guild from 11 PM EST on a Saturday to 6 AM EST Sunday. Lol.


I played on The Rathe which created the first rotation raid style. Here is a link to the boards which answers the best way to handle a lot of the issues that have risen, we should model our approach off of this.

I can't remember if +/-12 hour variance is classic or not.

http://therathetravelagency.yuku.com


Here is an excerpt which should make xate happy

 

casuals should get less spawns, hardcores play alot for a reason to get more loot and get end game, casuals who log in twice a week should get the same chance at loot imo!

 

Wha... how... *sighs*

I've stated that I'm fine with abiding by raid policy set on this server. Don't confuse my dislike of a rotation system with me not willing to abide by them. I am simply here because the minor details of said rotation need to be hashed out. As it stands right now I have representatives from a handful of guilds waiting for me to reply to them about joining the rotation. I did not ask to be some gatekeeper of a rotation that has to reply to any group of 50s with all the info they want about raid targets that is normally hard to come by and takes work. There is no structure setup for joining the rotation and I am here trying to get that hashed out. I am in favour of guilds having to prove their worth to join the rotation, this is something they would only have to do ONCE, then they get the gates opened to free regularly scheduled loot being members of the rotation.

One thing that's not going to happen is me being the gatekeeper of the rotation that hands out dragon timers, spawn updates, claim windows, rotation lists to people wishing to join and current members of rotation as well.

-Adaephon Delat, Starvald Demelain

 

exactly xate, if i log on and the mobs up im kiling it if i have enough!

 

This is something I shouldn't even have to explain, as general strategy on raid content is something privy to the guilds using that strategy and nobody else. You have flamed me before on this forum so allow me to provide a more accurate history (again) of dragon encounters to date:

Dragons went in on patch day and A&H killed nagafen the day of (a wednesday), they left Vox up several days and SD killed her a few days later. No poopsocking there. The following week, A&H (perhaps a little worried?) pre-emptively sat in the fire giant halls in solb for 6+ hours waiting for nagafen to spawn. My guild wanted nothing to do with poopsocking so we did not even show up for nag that day. We however sensed a problem arising in future dragons and decided that at some point we were going to have to show a little muscle and make a stand against the guild with 15x our numbers to show that simply poopsock-bullying would not guarantee them easy dragon loots over us.

This led to the second vox night, where we showed up to afk for a few hours as part of an overall strategy (which I should not be expected to fully explain in detail) that effectively worked almost exactly as we planned it. Did we poopsock vox that night? No we did not, A&H got vox alone for over an hour, and in fact made some attempt(s) before we were even ready to do so.

It is now the 3rd vox week and again, I shouldn't have to point this out, but vox has been up for 14+ hours now and there's no poopsocking or camping going on. There is even other guild(s) actively making attempts right now without any conflicts between any guilds. I'm sorry to tell you that your huge guild was the source of a lot of the conflicts that people seem to want to avoid on this server, not us.

Once again I feel the need to stress to people not to let the "fear of poopsocking" be the only aspect they are thinking of when setting raid policy.

-Adaephon Delat, Starvald Demelain

 

Please take a moment.

Step back.

Realize you are arguing about Vox and Nagafen loot.

Share it. Cloaks of Flames and Runes Bolster Belts don't matter. Kunark doesn't really matter.

Come Velious the hardcore players will separate themselves from the casuals in what they are able to kill. More so in Luclin and in PoP.

The server is small enough for everyone to participate. So let everyone participate and have fun. Thanks.

 

Xate - i totally agree. Fear of the sockers should not have been a factor in determining raid policy. Regardless, those that would be sockers, are usually ones that will create drama, no matter the system.

I have played my hardcore years. Those are in the past.

H

 

OK I've finally read the rest of surron's post about the rathe server or whatever's raid policy and how guilds enter, it's pretty much what i've been vying for but with more thought put into it looks like. Look's pretty good to me. We are definitely in favour of something like that. I'll take a step back from this thread until officers in other guilds (divine right, destiny, etc.) have had a chance to chime in.

SD did make a previous arrangement with divine right (before I realized how many dragon-capable guilds there were, DR was the first guild to send me a tell after the rotation went in), but under this polcy it looks like pre-arrangements are still allowed, so SD is fine honouring that if other guilds dont have issues either.

-Adaephon Delat, Starvald Demelain

 

Most raid mobs are going to be a 3 or 5 day respawn. Give each guild two weeks to get in as many (or few) kills, at their leisure, per rotation spot.

 

Retracted

 

Im also for FFA, maybe my post didnt seem like it. I was just curious about how things were working.

 

Cool

 

I think the rotation is pretty fair. The only thing i want to mention is that i think that a guild should have to kill both Nag and Vox to get on to both rotations.

For example: I don't think a guild should be able to kill Vox and Get on Nag's rotation automatically.

This game is hard, it takes allot of commitment and a group effort to do big things and get big loots. While i'm against poopsocking, people should have to step up to the plate if they want to stake a claim on the Dragon(s)

 

This ^

I've said before during the initial rotation vote. We should re-poll ffa / rotation every expansion.


Anyways, apparently The Rathe and Karana were the only servers to have a rotation system. Karana only went up to velious mobs, everything after that was FFA. The Rathe's rotation system was in play up until PoTime, pretty much the last non instance raid zone.

I think we should model after this system. Pretty sure there was no variance on spawn times back then, I do not see any posts describing rules.

You can get the full list of rules and etiquette for individual raids here. http://therathetravelagency.yuku.com/fo ... OvN0PmCSSo


Here is the general rotation etiquette

The calendar isn't operational anymore but the way it worked was... Each raid had its own thread, 1 rep from a guild is chosen and reports each time that raid mob was killed and at what time, if its their first or 100th kill.