Red 99 SZ/Team Server

Chanur_sl said:

Well item loot dooms the server before it even opens. It will have a population of about 60 and everyone will be on the same team because you won't be able to raid otherwise .

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It depends on how it's done, really. It'll be tough to prevent rampant griefing, though, especially at higher levels. I can't see a scenario where this server tops 100 people after a few months, just like Red99.

Chanur_sl said:

Item loot is always going to turn off most people unfortunately. It's a bad way to go. Coin loot was fine I thought.

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If they want item loot, give me access to that naked Wizard's three most expensive items in his bank.

Big Flex_sl said:

As much as I like item loot, I agree. This dude named Milburn or something posted a system that people are saying is like old Asherons Call (if anyone played AC please elaborate) loot system. Seems interesting. I think a new, custom loot system if done well could be great.

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The system you listed is exactly how the loot system on AC and Darktide was.

Again as stated, items dropped depended on level. The higher the level you were the more items dropped.

Items that dropped where the highest value items you had both on you and in your inventory. No drop quest items, DID NOT DROP!

This is why everyone on Darktide ran around in the best and cheapest armor they could find and high dmg or high armor items that had very low value were worth the most on DT.

What everyone then did is carried a bag of Death Items. Usually very light (weight still meant something in the old MMO?s) and high value items like jewelry or gems so that these would always drop instead of stuff you were wearing. If you were careless though and didn?t replenish your DI?s before getting into a fight, you could actually lose the stuff you were wearing.

The loot system was a bit different in AC though, it was all ROG stuff and items were valued not by how good they were but by what they were made of. Example, my UA/Archer on Darktide used a Pine 113+ yumi (bow). Pine is a very low end material so even though my bow had max damage, it was valued by the game at very little. Teak, Ebony or other high end wood bows that dropped would be valued more because those woods were deemed more valuable.

In EQ it will have to be different because items aren?t ROG based, they will just have a sell figure to the vendor. It actually makes it easier, you just have to make sure to carry items that are valued more than anything you wear.

I have this insane idea

Use the classic item loot mechanics

I know, I know

I got a crazy hair today

I'm surprised so many people here are opposed to item loot. I enjoyed the old one item, no bags no weapons system. Then those dedicated pvp guilds can get raid loot without raiding.

not sure how I feel about item loot. being forced to play naked is dumb.

It's especially dumb when you realize the actual reason why R99 failed: the admins did nothing to stop people like Holocaust and their likeness from griefing/annoying everyone off the server. While other factors contributed, that is ultimately what kills a server. Itemloot is only going to make that a lot worse as the incentive to ultra-grief people into the ground is so much greater. If everyone played the pipe dream way and didn't constantly try to fuck everyone else over, itemloot would actually work. Instead you just know it'll be a server where 75% of the playerbase are druids/necros/wizards, people will train and hack and corpsecamp, zoneplug and bag gear, avoid any fight that isn't completely one-sided, and the atmosphere will be so vile that no mentally balanced adult can tolerate it for any length of time. This is why they need to make a PvP server that can function despite these inevitabilities, not one that's doomed to fail because of them.

I don't know anything about what went down later on, I quit after like a month which was when the server basically died. This was before Nihilum was even formed. At the time, the server was falling apart for three reasons:

1) Null's ridiculous custom resist system that nobody wanted

2) The devs had launched the server and then promptly left it to fend for itself, ignoring it completely

3) The VZTZ people (most of whom were in Holocaust at the time) were griefing to the absolute max, causing dozens of unguilded players to quit each day

They obviously weren't the only griefers, but they're the ones who make a deliberate goal out of getting as many people to quit as possible. Rampant training, camping of newbie zones, things like that. There's a distinctive group of people in that community (I lump VZTZ and P99 in with "that community") who get a kick out of being as vile and hostile as they possibly can, creating an unbearable environment both on the forums and in-game. There's room for them if the server is built in a way that they don't get to destroy it, but that wasn't the case on early R99 since the admins were pretty much ignoring everything but a few of the most notable exploits, and if they really do make T99 an itemloot server, this type of player will have an even easier time destroying that server.

The server will need to be somewhat enforced to prevent the more extreme forms of abuse (corpse camping newbies for entire days, training over and over, etc.) and also have a hardcoded design that encourages PvP instead of discouraging it. There's always gonna be people who fight dirty and that's not a problem in itself, but if the server is set up in a way that they're allowed free reign to do as much damage as possible with no safeguards against excessive griefing, so many players will quit that the server isn't sustainable. It's frankly silly to suggest that the server was ruined by Holocaust getting banned. Quite a lot of them should have been banned before they did, and even so, a server doesn't die because 5% of its playerbase gets banned.

Amusingly, the initial Holo crew would never really PvP, part of the reason I quit was that there simply wasn't any PvP unless you ran around alone and looked for 1v1s. They just fucked about in the most remote places, getting PLed by Cast and running at the first sign of trouble. I never managed to see a single IF vs. Holo fight in like three weeks and then I quit out of boredom when I saw that the server was dying already. People quitting the server was what killed it, not the banning of a group of players. It was dead before Nihilum was formed, they were a symptom of the server being DOA.

Axeman name more than 2 Holo who griefed you or a friend off the server

Nobody griefed me off the server, I quit because the server was garbage. It was also two years ago and I haven't touched it since. Don't get your panties in a bunch because I said something about your friends.