Project 1999 <> Rallos Zek

[Smedy]

Originally Posted by HurtinuDaily

It is really too bad that a small portion of the PVP player base has ruined it for everyone else. It is bad enough that they made VTZ unbearable to play... but now people are afraid to even touch a pvp server due to the rep these select few have given the pvp community.

You can blame the community, but i think the staff is ultimately the ones to blame for how bad vz/tz turned out. They were the ones not listening to the single few who were trying to save the server and ultimately wiped it over and over again for various reasons.

I'm still a firm believer that vz/tz died with the wipe that occurred at the end of 2009.

If Rogean takes on this project to make a PVP server (I really hope he does) i expect him to wipe both the staff & database clean. I don't think anyone want to play under the same staff that ultimately showed that they cannot make the right decisions when needed to once more.

I think a pvp server would do really great in the right environment. First of all you need that slow P99 style exp to prevent people from cheating. How does slow exp prevent anyone from cheating? Well it's simple. People who cheat takes risks doing so, they know this. If they get caught, they usually just roll up another character on another account since it only takes them a week or two to get max level. With a huge exp time sink cheaters will give up quickly if you have proper logging & active GM's.

With the cheaters out of the picture and a solid GM crew that rules with justice and iron fist + p99 grind exp, i think you'll filter out the bad seeds very quickly and end up with a pvp community that enjoys the pvp aspect of the game but still can be mature about it.

[revloc02c]

I am not a PvPer so I am just wondering if someone is kind enough to provide some brief answers:

Originally Posted by HurtinuDaily

It is really too bad that a small portion of the PVP player base has ruined it for everyone else. It is bad enough that they made VTZ unbearable to play... but now people are afraid to even touch a pvp server due to the rep these select few have given the pvp community.

What did they do?

Originally Posted by haynar

There are a ton of headaches that come with a pvp server.

And beyond some bad members of the community, what are some of the other headaches?



I am just curious about how some in the PvP community got such a bad rap. Thanks in advance if you take the time to answer.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

IMHO PvP server is one type of server, where player's drama NEVER needs to be addressed by GM

You have a problem with someone? Kill them

[Smedy]

I think i can partially answer this.

PVP players are naturally very competitive and will go very far to win, this means breaking some / all of the rules.

Attempting to police a PVP server takes it toll on the staff as you will have to listen to many different stories but you can't be sure of which are true etc, ultimately this leads to burned out staff.

What happened on VZ/TZ wasn't really anything of a surprise, the server was wiped 4+ times and eventually casual players left and the only ones still playing were the real hardcore ones.

I don't think it's necessary to fear the pvp community, we ain't that bad. Just rule with the Iron fist and make sure you're not corrupt (cause that shit will come out eventually and when it does there's a shitstorm).

I think a big mistake was made on vz/tz part where they kept everything very secretive, not letting the community know who had done what, who was banned, why they were banned etc. I think if they were more open to let us know what was going on a lot of people would have stayed. Many left cause they though things were corrupt behind the scenes and no one could really prove them wrong, rumors spread fast and can have a huge impact if no one stops them.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

well thats the thing, outside of handling obvious exploits - why police PvP server? Let them kill each other =)

[Smedy]

Originally Posted by ChaosSlayerZ

well thats the thing, outside of handling obvious exploits - why police PvP server? Let them kill each other =)

They actually tried the "No Rules" for a little while but i don't think you can imagine how competitive people on pvp servers are, the casual pvp players left the server cause they were getting corpse camped for hours and being chain trained since there were no rules.

You do want certain rules in place, like no training, corpse camping etc, but those rules cannot be hardcoded, thus policing is required.

[ChaosSlayerZ]

well there are few options you can do without hard coding:

-declare some zones (like some cities) to be no combat - so there is some place relatively safe

-via player.pl file you could say cast Divine Aura on a player who just been killed, which will last until he recovers his corpse

-you could also remove corpse recovery - so players respawn with all their gear. But if you want to institute a penalty, upon death you could run a script that:

-will remove a certain amount of plat from dead player and give it to his killer
-if no plat was found, a random item removed, while random item is given to killer.
-Amount of plat will be based of your level

so you get same kill-reward, just without having corpse issue in between.

Basically try to handle via scripts as much as possible so there is as little artificial rule enforcement as possible.

[Smedy]

I guess more stuff can be hardcoded then i though, then again i've yet to play on a pvp server which utilizes these things.

My hopes goes for the incredible team behind p99 to take on the challenge of making a pvp server, i know for a fact that it's harder to make a pvp server and the pressure from the community will be bigger, but if someone can take this on it's clearly the p99 crew as their server is an amazing accomplishment compared to what sony does with their so called "classic progression" which is just a normal build but they lock the zones (No real rollback to classic).

[TheLieka]

Legit PvP servers on EQEmu are a massive pain in the ass if you have any intention of integrity. Since the EQ client is so easy to hack (and I use the term "hack" very loosely - since the vast majority of it is MQ, with a few people fucking with their spell file mixed in), you spend all of your time chasing down these loopholes and exploits, and trying to implement server side counter-measures for them. After expending all this time and effort trying to make the field more level, the staff realizes that they just spent an absurd amount of time, and still have not refined the mechanics or content for which they had set goals.

Every player to plays PVP doesn't hack, but most of the names that you see frequently on the forums do. It's not necessarily because they are bad people (though I wouldn't rule it out), but it is so easy and so tempting. Once other players get wind of it, they start looking for ways to hack as well, then the average new player needs MQ just to compete.

VZ/TZ did not suck when it was actively being developed (though it was FAR from perfect). VZ/TZ sucked when the developers burnt out from dealing with this bullshit day after day, month after month, and year after year.

The P1999 staff are not green, and they know what they're doing. To the rest of you entertaining the idea of starting a PVP server, if you want your developers and staff to stay, either 1) avoid building a PVP server, or 2) expect to spend a sizable chunk of time combating MQ2 and other exploits (and still being told that you are a useless fag for not addressing all of them).

THAT is why you don't have any PVP Servers to play on.

<3,
Dax

[Smedy]

You don't get to deal with less bullshit just because you run a none pvp server, in fact.. you might have to deal with more bullshit.

It's clear that anyone that tries to counter hacks through server side measures are wasting their time. What needs to be done is to have a application that somehow hooks up to the server and auths a logon, without running this app on your machine, you won't be allowed to play.

And this app can meanwhile scan for third party hooks (mq2, myseq etc).

Rogean did post in high confidence about stopping all hacks, and i believe if someone could do it, it would be him. I have a hard time thinking anyone could stop ShowEQ tho, but then again i'm thinking 99.9% of the population don't know how to setup such a system anyway so it's not a huge issue.

After a Smedy funded campaign towards a red p99 interest has been showed by the staff, but no real word yet.

We have managed to recruit our greatest developer of all time on VZ/TZ (Null) to help see this come to life as well. From what i've been told we will get more information once Rogean & Crew is done polishing Kunark for the live version of P99.

Hopes are high, we need a pvp server that's for sure!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCP2yRUj3to <- p99 blue vs p99 red