Contested Need to Go

Alvane@Unrest wrote:

Loot is a big thing, NOT the only thing and its not the most important thing but it has to have some reward potential to bother with it 50+ times and for me neither of them have anything that make me wanna put forth that effort.

Alvane@Unrest wrote:

Theres no replay with encounters that are easy with bad loot.
Its pretty sad when they need to design raid mobs under the assumption that 24-30 people on each server can play eq2

Leovinus wrote:

Thats pretty much how I feel about crafting, heroic zones and solo quests

Alvane@Unrest wrote:

There are tons of scrub guilds, why do you think so many progression threads are full of guilds who can't kill HM encounters.

Alvane@Unrest wrote:

Exactly like golf, actually.
Which is why HM/EM is appropriate in instanced content.
Using golf as an example, since you bought it up, contested encounters are kind of like the Masters. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to golf, but I am fairly sure the other golfers did not recieve a handicap when playing against Tiger Woods when he was at his peak. Handicaps are for casual gold, and light competition, not for the top end competitive golf.
I shouldn't need to say this, but in EQ2, that translates to handicaps being fine in casual raiding content (instances), and in my opinion, actually a very good addition to the game. When it comes to the top end competitive end of raiding, though, handicaps have no place. Unless/until they add a form of raiding that is more competitive than contested raid encounters, these fights remain the Masters of EQ2. They are the top end, the most competitive a guild can get, and as such, handicaps are simply out of place.
I am all for increasing the competition of contested encounters by making them gamewide spawns, instead of server specific spawns.

Quite frankly, the Devs no longer want to itemize contested to consider the fact of drastically less loot entering the game then an instance mob. That means contested should no longer exist. If it isn't going to be itemized appropriately for a contested just put it in an instance.

slippery wrote:

I do agree, but I also see why the developers are not itemizing contested loot due to rarity.
The intent of contested is that the loot is rare. If this loot is spread around multiple guilds on a server, it can be very good quality without making a single raid force overly powerful. As soon as all that top quality loot gets put in to a single guild, they are suddenly particularly overpowered as a whole.
The blame for only one guild on most servers getting the bulk of contested loot can be placed in many places - the guild in question for not giving other guilds a chance, the other guilds for not being good enough (my particular choice), or the developers for not having a wide enough spawn window - but the fact that most servers did have only one guild killing contested does remain the same.
This is also the basic reason why I would like to see "contested" raid mobs implemented in a game wide manner. It is far less likely that a single guild will get the bulk of contested kills if they are competing against every other guild in the game.

You could make that argument about my guild being particularly overpowered because of the instance loot we have. The fact is contested loot this expansion covers 2 slots, it should have been vastly better. However, between the Avatar nerfs and the loot from these they clearly show they don't want to itemize based on rarity (ironically as they continue to do it on the rare drops from instances).

slippery wrote:

Contested loot last expansion was overpowered. Thats when your guild was overpowered for wearing it.
This expansion it just sucks.
I personally think its less about just how rare an item is, but more about how many guilds are likely to get that item.
An item that is very rare from an instanced encounter can be better than an item that is from a contested encounter. While the contested encounter item may only drop three times in an expansion, chances are those three drops will all go to one guild. If a rare instanced item only drops 6 - 8 times in an expansion, there is a very good chance that no guild will have more than one.
Its not something I particularly like, but I can understand the reasoning behind it.

Pervis wrote:

If contested loot was so overpowering last expansion how is it that Slippery's guild was beaten out by a non contested killing guild halfway through the expansion then ran off the server?

BChizzle wrote:

TBH you can say that about almost every guild out there now, except NPU and Strike. Tryanny didn't leave server but they did break up and reform.
So, gratz?

Gaige wrote:

So basically it proves my point that contested loot isn't as OP as he was claiming right?

no it proves the point that you bring up things you know nothing about on official forums to try and bait people into an arguement... petty :/

Jeal@Unrest wrote:

Really? So your guild wasn't chased off of a server not once but twice? I get it though its an entirely new guild name so it is wrong of me to think D12=HW=Equil right? Sorry, that is how I see you guys, not much you can say that is going to change peoples minds, besides what is the big deal anyways you should be proud of overcoming the failures of the past.

Your guild has not been worth mentioning for year"s" idk what you are trying to prove : /

Not to mention the fact that they are month"s" ahead of you and your guild

BChizzle wrote:

No. It wasn't halfway through the expansion...sometimes around late TSO I believe. Besides, HW had been killing contested under Conviction's radar for so many months (10?) until we had to split from the old leader and officers.

BChizzle wrote:

Uhh...so what if we moved servers twice? Really now, no one cares anymore. It's in the past, get over it imo.
Plus, Equilibrium consists of ~10% D12/HW people and ~90% different people that weren't from either HW or D12. So, you should probably research more before you continue to spew out false assumption that we have the same core roster as HW had. :>
P.S. Did we kill stuff before you? Yes. Like Davionx said, your guild has not been worth mentioning as of lately, unfortunately.

Gaige wrote:

I'm not disagreeing or anything, but I'm also not one to leave an inaccuracy... it may be a long time ago, but don't go forgetting exactly how Strike ended up on LDL. Its not the server they started on.
BChizzle wrote:

No. And to be honest, your 'logic' seems a little off.
Guilds move servers on occasion when another guild starts pulling and killing contested encounters. I didn't pay attention to D12/HW, or the reasons for them leaving their server, but I am assuming it was because they were missing out on contested kills.
Not sure if you are aware of this, but the way you lose a contested spawn is by having another guild log on and kill it before you (kill the same mob before you...). I may well be missing it, but I have yet to see an item in this game that will log a character on and kill a mob when it spawns.
If such an item does not exist, then contested loot does nothing to help a guild kill contested mobs before another guild gets them. Contested loot would have helped kill the encounter, but only if there were people on line wearing it.
If such an item does exist, however, I'll retract this entire post if you link it.

Your assumption would be quite wrong. I'll illustrate things for you and give you a little history lesson about me. I'm Arabel, the Wizard. I was a Wizard for a very long time. I came up on Faydark, which got merged in to Befallen. In EoF I started to make a name for myself and rapidly moved up through guilds. I started in the dieing Eternal Chaos, went to Saints of Norrath for a while, then to Second Dawn where I became an officer right before the merge to Confirmed (which was made on Unrest to not be a Second Dissolution or Dissodawn type of guild if we stayed on either server), where I was also an officer. At this point my life started to change, times got tough, I needed money and sold Arabel on the Bazaar. I started playing my SK in a late night PST guild on Oasis (I could no longer raid EST). I ran in to someone on Oasis I knew, and ended up leveling my Templar to play in D12. My hardcore attitude and aptitude rubbed of on some people. We got an Avatar kill or two towards the end of RoK. D12 killed Gynok before Tyranny, and then killed the first Avatar on Oasis in TSO. Suffice to say that was enough to make some people want more, but D12 was a really casual guild. So, we left Oasis for Mistmoore, leaving behind a lot of casual people, and started a new life as a more hardcore guild. We had to compete with Conviction, although they are not really comptetition. We stomped them in to the ground and killed literally hundreds of Avatars to their like 3. Now, without getting too much in to the politics of the guild, I basically ran things except the guild leader just wanted to say no. When I ran things, we did extremely well, when I didn't we sucked. I gave everyone time to see this, and eventually had enough. After years of a few people telling me I need to just have my own guild I decided it was time. I had had enough of a leader I didn't agree with telling me no, and enough of tanks I felt where terrible. So I made my own guild, I had like 2 groups. We could obviously kill Avatars, as all 3 spawned in extremely short order a day or two after forming. We killed disease with 2 groups in like 2 minutes with no lag. We walked over to Health and suddenly the game was completely unplayable with lag, lag that followed us in any over land zone. Conviction got caught by Devs and Customer service using a command to flood the zone and make it unplayable. The command is now fixed (as far as I know), but I had a choice to make. Stick with people who are obviously willing to cheat and should have been banned which didn't happen, on a dead server in what would be a shadow of my own making always compared to said guild. Or move to Unrest, a server I quite enjoyed when there last, and start a new. I made the call to move after talking it over with everyone, and it is one I don't regret at all. I lost a few more people moving to Unrest, and I had to compete with 2-3 other guilds for Avatars at the start, and it was fun. We lost a couple early, but it was all part of the ride and competition. It was an extremely short time before we locked them down again with the help of a stream of new recruits. The rest is history as you can see my guild today. Saying Equilibrium is Hallowed Wrath is like saying Infamous was Strike, it really isn't applicable. Also, this is after Avatar loot got completely obliterated by successive nerfs to not only mechanics but the gear itself. What initially drove people on Avatars was that the loot was awesome, it made people go wow, it made people really want it. Then it got obliterated and people stopped caring. Just like contested loot now, people don't care about it. When people don't care about the reward, they don't care about the contest. This also really shows when it comes to my guild right now. I don't call for contested, even if someone else is pulling. The reward is not worth making people take time away from their lives. The loot from them is going to make no difference in what we kill. No reward = no motivation. If there is no motivation just put the content in an instance so everyone can experience it.

slippery wrote:

Not something I would say, tbh.
Guilds move servers, and contested is usually the reason. Its not always because of excess competition, its often because of a server with no competition on it at a given point. This is exactly what happened when Confirmed formed, guilds moved to Najena and Nektulos en masse, simply because there were avatars not being killed.
Though none of this changes the point of my post: contested loot will not help you kill a contested that another guild beats you to.

Actually, when we formed Confirmed no guild moved to either Nektulos or Najena for a long time. The guilds behind attempted to step up, although eventually (and ironically) one from Nek is now on Najena. There have been some attempts and failures in between then and now, but it was a decent time frame before a new guild was on Najena.

It is also more often the case then when a guild goes defunct and a server is left void of that top guild you end up with more competition on that server than any other because everyone feels now is their chance.

That doesn't change the fact contested now are not Avatars. They don't have desirable loot. They aren't attracting call lists and competition. Guilds aren't actively trying to lock them down (I left Klaak up for like 4-5 days recently and Ascendant eventually exploited it).