IGB changes for Luclin - proposals

[Rohaise]

With the release of Luclin, I imagine many current rotations will be altered, and new priorities made.

We obviously cannot foresee everything that will happen, and Verant has only given vague hints as to the new high level content.

My crystal ball tells me that the first few weeks will be a mess, as some people get the expansion late, or find out they need a computer upgrade, and guilds will be scattered as people rush to learn the new content.

I'd like this to interfere as little as possible with what we've built here.

Suggestions:

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Removing "trading"

One proposition I have is to remove "trading rotation spots" when Luclin is released.

Maybe my guess is wrong, but it seems likely that as guilds are scattered around Luclin, and some people have the expansion and others don't, and new mobs are found and old ones deemed not as worthy, that there will be a lot of passes and missed turns in the current rotations.

I'd like to do away with this "trading" that has been going on. It will only lead to increased confusion over who is up for what spawn, and prolong the rotations for those who still want the older content.

If it's important enough, you'll kill it.

If it's not a priority, you'll pass.

NTOV certainly comes to mind here. The last thing I think we want to see is people starting to trade NTOV spots. And I can guarantee that if you've found some phat new Luclin mob, some people will drop everything to get a "first", or whatever, and even sacred NTOV will end up on the trading table.

Let's not let that happen, k?


The goal here is to speed along the rotations as quickly as possible. Some guilds will put priority on some mobs that others will only give slight concern to. Removing trades allows those guilds who REALLY want a certain mob to do it, while guilds who would rather be doing other things should really be doing them instead of postponing their slots on less important (to them) rotations.


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Fine tuning the "monthly extension" rule.


A concern that some have expressed recently is when guilds use an extension to get a "second try" at something they failed the first time.

With Luclin, there will be a whole slew of mobs that I'm sure many of us will be vying vigorously for. People will want their "firsts". Delicate egos will be battered. Let's make sure this rule is crystal clear, in advance.

You get your one day to kill a mob.

An extension cannot be used to give yourselves a "second chance". If you lose, then step aside and let the next guild try it. You'll get another turn.

You also need to advise the IGB of your intent to use an extension before you go to sleep the night you missed your mob. The next guild in line needs to know in the morning what to tell their guildmates.

If the IGB is not notified of your extension request by sunrise then it's counted as a Pass.


Additionally, I would also suggest that monthly extensions not be allowed on any new Luclin mobs until at least January.



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Establishing new rotations for Luclin mobs

This is going to be the trickiest of all, and really test our ability to stay civil here and maintain the integrity of the IGB.

Velious was an entirely different creature than Luclin will be, I think. When Velious was released, there wasn't a guild in the game who could even think of touching NTOV for many months. Vindicator was OMG! The Statue was something no one wanted to mess with. Tormax and Yelinak were IMPOSSIBLE.

But then we adapted to Verant's new uber style. Main Tank, what a concept. Heal rotations. Wow. Positioning! Gee whiz! Then it all became formulaic. This was all derived from Verant breaking the 32k mark for HPs.

I'm not sure what tricks, if any, they have to throw at us in Luclin. We learned how to deal with 32k mobs. We learned how to deal with 500k mobs. Not really sure what they can do here.

Which means the learning curve we had in Velious won't really exist in Luclin.

Which means (unless I'm wrong and they did manage to find a new approach to the high level game) that Luclin won't have many new challenges to figure out, and it'll be the same old stick one tank on it, heal him, and everyone else stab and nuke.

Which means the new ubers there are gonna be added to the rotation list in short order. :p

Soooooooo

How to deal with this in a fair manner?

Unless they put in some reason *not* to kill a mob (faction for example), we can expect several guilds here to want to kill him, and be capable of it.

Druzzil Ro has three guilds who have proven they can kill basically anything in the game right now, and one or three others who have yet to prove, but show the potential. So there can't really be the argument "you can't kill it, don't waste our time by getting on the rotation".

Failures will pretty much just be a matter of adjusting strategies, or waiting for some friend in "Fires of Steel" to pass you the l33t strat you seek.

So then what happens when we all want to try killing "Vah Shira, Queen of the Cat People"?

Do we immediately make a rotation list of every guild who expresses interest in trying?

The current rules we have for "unrotated ubers" and adding a new uber to the rotation schedule are really not going to apply.

And I'm not sure what to do about this.

Or even if it's something we need to worry about?

Maybe it'll all just work out perfect and we'll live happily ever after?


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SUMMARY:

- "Trading" has got to go away come Dec 4th. It's only going to cause more confusion and frustrations. Either kill the mob, take your once a month extension, or pass your turn. End of story.

- "Monthly Extension" needs to be clearly defined. I suggest no extension of *Luclin mobs* for a month; no use of an extension if you failed on the first day; notification to the IGB of your intent to use an extension before sunrise of the extension day.

- Integrating new Luclin mobs into the rotation schedule. Just looking for comments, thoughts, whatever. Not sure if we can really come up with a clear way to handle this.

[Andaas]

I really don't think that rotation trades are a big problem, however I do think that the way they are tracked is confusing as hell. Originally, a trade was something done between two guilds, and not something necessarily tracked on the boards -- maybe placing the tracking/administration of trades back into the hands of those involved with the trade would make things easier.

Or perhaps its just that there are too many spawns tracked and guilds involved to keep the list as clean as it once was. There are 14 separate rotations currently tracked on the list... some of those accomodate 14 guilds (Ragefire). Maybe its time to break the rotation thread into 2 different threads. One that covers the non-Velious and lower end (ie, more crowded) rotations, and one that covers the higher end (less crowded) rotations.

It would create more work for some of us, in having to check/update two threads, but I think each thread would be much less information to absorb and a lot less overwhelming to look at.

And I do agree that the 24 hour extension rule needs to be defined, since it seems several of us have differing views of how it can be used.

The integration of new spawns into the rotation has never really proven to be a problem in the past. Typically there has been one front runner guild to get their feet wet with something, and then others try their hand shortly afterward. This is the foundation of a rotation for any specific encounter.

As for the new challenges forthcoming in Luclin, I have heard that Luclin will have something to address the main-tank battle tactics that are used throughout Luclin. I sure as hell hope that its more interesting than maintaining a heal rotation on 1 warrior, heh... if it isn't it may not keep me interested for very long.

[Ciner]

Agree on the trading, I think and always have thought its quite silly.

Agree on the rules for the 24hr extention.

I do think SoL will be throwing some new stuff at us, should be fun, hopefully we'll all get a kick out of it and wont butt heads too much.

I'm pretty sure we will recognize which mobs are going to be phenominally hard almost immediatly though, and as Andaas said, some will play around with them, others will dabble with the new zones.

Lots of mobs will get passed though I'm sure the first few weeks. As they have said, SoL will not be better armor really, just more specialized. So, I dont think it will be like SoV was for RoK, basicly making RoK usless and noone really bothered going there anymore, I think SoV and SoL will fit together nicely like two puzzle pieces and they will be the main area we'll be killing in.

[Yendii]

Why not make SoL FFA for the first month? I don't mean trying to coh past each other or pouncing on a boss when a guild wipes out, I just mean don't start any rotations. At the end of the first month we'll know more about spawn times and have a good idea of which guilds are going to want to kill what.

We can be civil can't we? Survive the first month by working things out in game, give people a chance to have their server firsts, then start rotations.

I'm sure there is going to be a lot of passing on the old rotations, and I think you should decide at the beginning of the day if you are going to do your rotation mob or do SoL stuff. Don't make the next guild wait 24hrs if you know you are raiding Luclin.

As far as trading, I think we should keep it around but if you want to say no trading on NToV thats fine.

[Ubar]

Additionally, I would also suggest that monthly extensions not be allowed on any new Luclin mobs until at least January.

I disagree with this, if someone can kill a mob (In Luclin or Velious) but they have too much to handle in one night, let them use there monthly pass on it and pass for it a day and get it the next, as long as They have proven they can kill it. Proving to kill it entails killing it at least TWO times.

Adressing the issue of trading, let the guilds trade there spots, it shouldnt affect anyone or deley the rotation in any way shape or form.

[Rohaise]

Andaas wrote:


The integration of new spawns into the rotation has never really proven to be a problem in the past. Typically there has been one front runner guild to get their feet wet with something, and then others try their hand shortly afterward. This is the foundation of a rotation for any specific encounter.


Yeah but there is no way that this will be the case in Luclin.

When Velious was released, our guilds all were in different stages of "endgame". None of us had even completed the Kunark endgame yet (VP at that time). Talendor and Gorenaire were very difficult. Epics were still a huge time sink with many to be done yet. The majority of all our guildmembers weren't even level 60. In summary, we had a LOT of ground yet untread before we could even think of diving into Velious full throttle.

That's why ToV North wasn't beaten until 9 months after Velious was released.

Yelinak and Tormax only became common kills 6 months after release.

Luclin is different. We're going to have at least 3 guilds entering it, who have already finished the Velious endgame. Who already have epics, primals, armor, and levels. And who also have a large member base after constant ramp-ups for Velious content.

It's not going to be a case of "one front runner guild" here. With Velious we weren't starved for content. We still weren't done with Kunark. It took MONTHS for any of us to even start attempting the things we now kill at spawn time.

With Luclin we are all STARVING. We've eaten up the current high-end content. We've all got a solid foundation of bored level 60s in our guilds with fancy sets of equipment, ready to charge into Luclin. None of us were near as ready for Velious when it came out.

Again, maybe I'm worried about nothing, but I think you're not seeing this how it's going to be.


Ubar wrote:


as long as They have proven they can kill it. Proving to kill it entails killing it at least TWO times.

Not really sure where this thought comes from. But it ties into my paragraphs above. ML, Vindication, Hoss are all equally capable of killing anything in this game. Put aside your webpage propaganda for a minute and look at the reality. There's not a lot of skill involved in this game. There's only four things that effect the outcome of a raid.

1) Game experience. A powerleveled 60 rogue *sucks*. Watch them always die. Watch them waste cleric heals. But we've all got a solid base of players now, who have been to dozens of raids and learned what to do, and more importantly what NOT to do. We're all equal here.

2) Equipment. This is the least important, but still a factor. Increased DPS, increased HPs, AC, Mana, all allow you to run a raid with fewer people. The three ToV North guilds are all equal here. We've all got 75% or more of our melee outfitted in primal. We've all got hundreds of ToV north items spread out. We're all running around in mostly complete Kael/SS armor.

3) Levels. We're all level 60 now, which was not the case when Velious came out. Again, all the guilds are equal.

4) Organization. This is the #1 factor that affects the outcome of a raid. We've all got our leaders. People who have run literally hundreds of raids. We've got our motivators. We've got our uber pullers. Judging this is subjective, but the successes on all of our webpages shows that we've all got this covered.

5) "Strategy". I hesitate to include this, because it's mostly a bunch of baloney. This game is one of the easiest I've ever played, at its core. The only hard part is ensuring your resources (players) are all paying attention and doing what they need to. Any idiot can figure out how to kill something after trying a few times. There is NOTHING in this game that any of us have been unable to kill without persistence and repetition until we discover a way that works. And once we figure it out, we'll always win, unless we're missing key personnel, maybe a level 60 shaman, or lacking a good leader that night.

Bottom line is don't give me any of the "you must prove you can kill it" BS to any guild that's cleared ToV North. IMO Vindication and Hoss still haven't "proven" they can kill (the current) Yelinak. Yeah, you did a couple times after many failures. But ML has been consistently killing him for months now, with only two wipeouts out of 15 kills. And only once did we "fail" after figuring out the encounter (I wasn't there that night, no idea what happened).

Likewise, you may not feel that ML has "proven" itself against The Statue, which we only killed once, even though it was on our first attempt. Or Tormax. We spent one night figuring out the Toamax pull, and failed the first attempt. The next time we tried was after the Kael zone crash/weirdness, and we got him to 20% with *0* Shaman, 1 wizard no GB, 2 warriors, and 4 clerics. To me it's obviously a trivial encounter for us with a basic raid crew online, but we haven't "proven" we can kill.

This "prove you can kill" stuff is all BS, because it is entirely subjective and based on prejudices and misinformation about how another guild operates.

Don't get into the "more uber than thou" mindframe. We're all equally capable of killing this crap.

Once you let that sink in, maybe you'll understand why I'm having this Luclin anxiety about how the new spawns will be dealt with. 3+ equally capable guilds rushing to kill who knows how many new mobs.


Summary: Velious was an evolution for all of our guilds, and we started out in different stages. Now, at the end of Velious, we are all equally evolved. Luclin will be an extension of that evolution, but with several guilds all starting "equal" we will see a lot more parallel movement between us, and instead of moving at different paces we will all be rushing forward at the same pace. I don't think it will be anything like our Velious advancements, and I just want to be sure we are all conscious of this and remain civil, at least in actions (if not words). ;p

[Sirensa]

Ubar's "prove you can kill it" reference ONLY had to do with using an extension on a mob.

IE - suggesting that 24-hour extensions be disallowed to guilds who haven't had past success with a mob.

I read it as a suggestion - no different than the suggestions Rohaise made at the start of this post.

No need to be so defensive.

Personally - I am wary of committing to any pre-rules regarding Luclin until we see how it goes. Unlike some other guilds, Hoss doesn't have people in Beta this round, so we will just have to see what the expansion is like the same as anyone else unpriviledged to have gotten into beta.

[Quintall_ML]

If there's ML in Beta, they aren't sharing, doomit!

I want mah spoilers too. :p

All in all though, Roh makes some very valid points here. Regardless of how a mob goes down, it does indeed go down 99.9% of the time for ML/Vind/Hoss. Personally I don't care if you used 2 warriors getting timed chain CH's from 20 clerics, or 20o people bum rushing a mob (ya, both extreme and unrealistic examples, see what I mean?), how it dies matters not at all, the only thing that matters is that it does.

We're at a pretty equal staging in guild power, with others very very close right now (/nod Dlgoth), and still more coming up very nicely (/hats off to VE for a well executed Trak run I was privledged to attend). There's certainly something to be said for addressing this ahead of time as we are doing.

What remains to be determined is what will happen with the current rotations. And don't forget, the travel time to Luclin as mentioned by VI will be a HUGE factor in geting people to leave it once they are there.

[Ubar]

I have a feeling we will be pleasently suprised at the high end content in Luclin, Im sure there will be a front runner guild(s) like there always is. Luclins high end game will be drasticly different then the Velious high end game, so we will all not be ready for it, it will take modified strategy. My suggestion was just so you couldnt be up to try a new Luclin uber then have it put off for a night when you havent even proven you could kill it, just because we can all rape Velious doesnt mean any of us can kill the real ubers in luclin and I feel the guild who has proven they can kill it has the right to use an extension, while those who have not proven they can kill it should not be able to use an extension.


(This post is in no way a flame against anyone or saying someone is better than someone else, im just saying the Luclin high end game is gonna be alot different from the Velious high end game, so dont assume any of us can kill sheit there.)

[Ciner]

I'd say we have proven we can kill Yel as we've done it 2x. Whereas ML has not proven they can kill Tormax, as they've done it 0 times.

And who are you kidding, all of ML isnt 60 :eek:

More to the point though, I gotta agree with Sirensa, shouldnt set anything down until we know what were dealing with. Then we can properly judge.

[Yendii]

Quintail, why so disguise you're SoL info? I know for a fact you have a very high profile member in Luclin beta.

Back to what I said earlier, lets make Luclin FFA for the first month, then make rotations

[Quintall_ML]

Yendii, if we have someone in SoL, they aren't talking, lol. I was serious, not disguising, as no one has mentioned that they are in it.

Ciner, why split hairs? ML has more 60's than you have members, big whoop de doo. The point is that we are all fairly equal strength here, regardless of how we do things.

As far as Tormax, he'll die our next run. Don't forget, we only tried Yelinak one night before we killed him the first time. How many days was Vind up there straight? 4 or so if I recall right. Stones in glass houses man, relax. :)

[Rezz]

to my knowledge, a good deal of the "inside" info on luclin has been leaked, check out the safehouse and a few guild's websites, a good deal of information is already available. Yeah, the transfer time is gonna be a rather large deal, and I do forsee some short term passing on a lot of mobs by some guilds because of Luclin and the race to be first to kill blah blah blah. Then again, with the relative congestion we have at the high end game on d-ro, one rotation mob a week in SoV and the old world is probably all any of us will see for awhile yet... split server plz~

I'd say friendly FFA is probably the best way, friendly being defined as not KSing/training/leapfrogging and crap like that. I just hope VI pulled their heads out of their arses and made more than one high end-be all dungeon, or the shissar place is gonna be packed for awhile yet to come. Also, I see the advancement deal as possibly taking up a lot of people's time and interest, and a whole new level of xp-loss fear will be introduced. I do however disagree with Ubar, VI isn't that creative. We might see some interesting AEs or mobs that throw a few curve balls, but the baddest of the bad will still require 35-50 people following instructions. Welcome to Everquest hah ;)

All in all, we should probably either go with buisness as usual or make Luclin FFFA (friendly free for all :p) either way, lets remember there's people out there, and try to be civil eh? =)