Odii

Some irony here...

If some of these whiners spent as much time in game, spending time raiding with people that have likewise schedules, instead of posting on a forum all day long, maybe you would have more time to dedicate to killing contested.

I'm on the Guk server, and in my guild we used to have alot of people who would complain about NPU. There would be the old "There goes NPU those fucks" I would ask them "What has NPU ever done to directly affect you or this guild in any manner that would justify those feelings" They would reply "Those fucks are always pharmin and just annoying bastards.

I would crack up at this, because its basis is unfounded.

Those people are now gone, due to not wanting to put forth the time in game to accomplish the goals they wish they could achieve.

Sure its not easymode on a server with NPU as far as contesteds are concerned, but we're not making a push for contesteds... they are.

They don't keep us from getting our thing done, ever.

Our guild is happy completing the content as it comes to us. We only raid 3 days a week for a scheduled 12 hours, and we finish end line quests and all non-contested content without much trouble, just takes longer time frame due to 12 hour a week schedule.

We have professionals, we have people who have no job, we have business owners, we have moms, dads, we have it all, but if you want to make the time 12 hours a week, you can.

We have people from PST, EST, central... we even have one dude (Verve) from Sweden... when he joined our guild he had to adjust his schedule so he could make our raid times, but he did it, because he chose to.

You can either have it one way or the other, not both.

Don't bitch cause someone has contesteds locked, but not bother or even want to bother to put up the effort to do so yourself if they were not around.

Alot of this bitching and whining comes from people want to be given handouts, the reason why harder mobs (be it strat, spawn times, availability, class makeup wtfever) drop (usually) better gear is the risk vs. reward.

If everyone solo ^ in the game dropped the end fabled armor, the same people bitching about guilds doing contested, would be bitching about individual people who were killing that mob every time it popped.

Don't be jealous because some people we able to find 24-30 other people with similar play times and play styles.

Like i said, spend less time bitching about people who are doing "omgsupercoolfunstufficantdotheymustsuckabigdickIR L" and go and try it for yourself.

Uyaem

That is not the issue, it's not about when it's killed or when it spawns, it's about killing it and that's it for the rest, and of course watching others try, fail, succeed.
Instances give everyone an infinite amount of time, that is still the difference.

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Gage

Listen. Seriously listen. Do we have players who play 15-16 hour days? YES. Is it the majority in our guild? HELL FUCKING NO. Have we, once since this expansion, raided for 15-16 hours a day to figure out content? NO. Will we? NO. Are we one named from being in Trak's lair? YES.

The majority of people in CL work fulltime jobs and have families. Our guild leader is one of these people.

We raid normally from 4:30pm pst until about 9pm pst. We do normally raid 7 days a week, but we only require 80% attendance and routinely have people do things during raid time, like oh I dunno, our MT who normally takes Sunday nights off to hang out with his irl friends.

I work almost every Thursday night. All year. FFS I'm missing four straight days this week.

The point is these crazy time requirements and call lists aren't required. Period. They just aren't. I'm telling you this from experience. For every guild wasting 16 hours a day trying to blast through this content there is a guild doing it for 4 to 5 hours a night and getting just as far.

Its all about how you do it and who you do it with, not how much time you spend doing it.

Period.

Last I checked EQ2 is a persistant world that waits for nobody. I'm looking for a bunch of assassin masters and I want them really bad. What happens if someone loots one and sells it while I'm sleeping, or working or doing something other than EQ2? I lose out on that master until the next time its for sale or until I get it myself during my playtime.

That is how a persistant world works. SOE realizes that people have real lives and time constraints, so they try to cater to those types of players the best they can via instances.

However, if they instance everything or put in some mechanic for everything that allows people to access everything when they want to, on their own time, on demand - it starts to take away a lot of the feeling of a real, persistant world and it becomes more of a single player game with online chat.

The reason the mobs are called contested, is because who gets to kill them each time they spawn is up for grabs.

Your arguement here could be used for anything varying from the Spore King named in Sebilis to the brokers.

Should everything really be catered to each individual player whenever they're ready for it?

I don't think so, personally.

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Cleansing the internet of e-whores since 2003! Just saying!

Odii

QFE

Its not how much time, its how you spend the time.

arieste

yes and right now that's not the case.

What I'm talking about is this:

Take something that takes "skill". For the sake of argument, let's say doing 100k dps as a raid sustained over 2 minutes is a skill.

I'm not saying it's most important or only skill, but let's take it as an example. Doing 100k dps as a raid over 2 minutes requires 2 minutes. Not less and not more. There is some organisation time, etc.

Now, let's make this skill a part of a contest. Put a big "contest box" or whatever you want to call it at the Freeport arena. At any given point, a group of people can come out and try for how much DPS they can do in 2 minutes. They can only try once a week. Their dps score is noted.

At the end of the week, the group that got the highest score gets "Key1" to a contested mob which gives them access to a mob for 30 minutes. Keys 2 and 3 are also handed out, everyone else is SOL. So if the WINNER of the CONTEST doesn't kill the mob in 30 minutes, 2nd place people get their 30 minutes, etc.

Once the keys are used or mob i dead, contest starts again.

Now take every skill in the game and add it to this contest, put in DPS, put in coordination, put in heals, put in whatever you want. Anything but "logging in at a certain time" and "logging in for a certain period of time".

If you are the best there is, you will still dominate. But on any given week, if someone else can show more SKILL, nothing stops them.

All the mentioned things are still here: test of skill, losing your chance if you aren't fast enough, etc. (honestly, you can make every key be 1 pull if you want.)

That's basically the kind of contested I'd like to see.

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Manratten

Kind of a derailment, since this really what I was talking about, but this did make me curious. So, I went ahead took a gander at the playtimes for the Officers and Sr Members of Chaotic Legion, to see if this backed up what you said.

Holy Guacamole, that's a big no. Heck, a big NOOOO. Every person I looked at seemed to fit the mammoth playtime to a tee. (One was right out of the ballpark, chuckle...

I'm sure alot of the time you and your guild play, you aren't actually raiding. However, the extreme times also could dictate why call lists aren't necessary...you'll all freaking on already!! Again, the information isn't complete, just what my 3 minutes of research turned up, and for all I know, half the people I looked at joined the guild 6 minutes ago.

Now, I don't have any issue with it, since, hey, what people want to do with their spare time is their business. Heck, I probably spend too much time on EQ2 myself, but there are worse hobbies. But it certainly appears as if time matters.

Odii

Certainly an interesting idea. But once you start moving too many things around, you lose the sense of what the game is...

If they incorporated that into a quest, or access, or progression, or involved it into some lore, then maybe it would make sense, but at some point asking for alot of changes that gets away from the dynamics of the game, you are basically asking for another game. and if thats the case, there are quite a few more MMOs out there.

Gage

That is the same thing as instancing them and it removes the point of them being contested.

Besides, being able to do a lot of DPS has nothing to do with raiding effectively, its only one facet.

I'm curious, what exactly is your guild's excuse for losing out on contested that spawn during your playtime window?

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Gage

This proves what? Nothing. I've already stated what our raid times are and the time we put forth raiding weekly. So in case you're calling me a liar, I don't see any relevance to the topic.

I said myself we have players who are on all matters of the day and night. But the majority isn't.

Also, a lot of people just leave EQ2 logged in with /afk up. So playtime numbers are pretty meaningless.

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Cleansing the internet of e-whores since 2003! Just saying!

Uyaem

@Manratten
I really doubt that people spend all their /played time at the screen, think back when there were no persistent instances... and we camped over in EH for like 3 or 4 days, meaning that is 4 * 19 hours just having the computer running to keep the instance alive...

@arieste
The problem with your idea is that the actual contest or competition shifts away from the actual thing...

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