The battle for Epic mobs

[GalemThawn]

Well, after being in my first Epic fight with Reklar today, I don't think that the problem is with Camping.

2 groups.
Group A with 5 dragons, 2 healers and 1 cleric.
Group B with 2 dragons, 1 healer, and 1 paladin.

Reklar spawned right on top of group A, but group B was able to pull/damage Reklar by a difference of .03 seconds according to some log comparrisons.

Battle began at [04/24/08 11:45:00]

Almost fully 2 minutes later, the Paladin makes it to Reklar and within the next 30 seconds he deals out 40,460 points of damage.

[04/24/08 11:46:53] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer with Multistrike IV for 2132 Reklar Slayer damage.
[04/24/08 11:46:53] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer with Multistrike IV for 1840 Reklar Slayer damage.
[04/24/08 11:46:53] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer with Multistrike IV for 1894 Reklar Slayer damage.
[04/24/08 11:46:53] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer with Multistrike IV for 1511 Reklar Slayer damage.
[04/24/08 11:46:57] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer with Critical Strike for 9082 Reklar Slayer damage.
[04/24/08 11:46:58] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer with Cleave for 5210 Reklar Slayer damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:06] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 1762 Reklar Slayer damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:06] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 1990 Reklar Slayer damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:08] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 2514 Reklar Slayer damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:11] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 124 slash damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:11] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 124 slash damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:13] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 92 slash damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:13] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 92 slash damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:16] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 92 slash damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:16] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 93 slash damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:18] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 100 slash damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:18] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 113 slash damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:21] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 1667 Reklar Slayer damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:21] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 1870 Reklar Slayer damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:23] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 2017 Reklar Slayer damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:23] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 2128 Reklar Slayer damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:26] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 2003 Reklar Slayer damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:26] XXXX hit General Reklar Plaguebearer for 2010 Reklar Slayer damage.
[04/24/08 11:47:26] General Reklar Plaguebearer has been killed.

Please note that there were other actions in the midst of all that, I've just included the Paladin's damage.

I don't see the culprit here as campers (both groups were waiting for the spawn). The damage dealing Paladin is not to blame. Instead, the real problem here is a newer player's inability to get an item as powerful as a Boar's Hide Mask. This single item makes a huge difference when fighting against epic mobs. Of course player skill comes into play also.

Hopefully, with the addition of the Blighted Labrynth and some T6 content, we will see some items that will level the playing field. Until that time, I now understand why some people don't even try to camp the epics. You can't see a .03 second difference in real time combat. And once engaged, a player (maybe Paladin in specific?) with a BMH is going to deal out enough damage to take the kill. Shoot, there were 2 minutes before he engaged. Once group A engaged, the Paladin could have been alone and still out-damage the 5 dragons and taken the kill.

Do we need to attack the players and force them to share? Of course not. It's not their 'fault' that they have gear that newer players can no longer get. It's just a fact. If I had a BMH, I'd use it at epic fights. Who would handicap themselves by NOT using it?

The argument of some players getting multiple epic items and not selling or sharing? Some players have multiple characters and want each epic item for each character. Why not? I've also been told that it can take months to get all the pieces to complete even a single item since they come in random pieces.

Anyway, that's my take on it.

Some cheating going on? No.
Someone not sharing? Yes. But I didn't read in the EULA that we had too.
Some inequality here? Yes. But only the Devs can correct that, and not by nerfing what already exists.


PLEASE! Don't turn this thread into a firestorm that will get locked.

[gopher65]

*Tries to calculate the maximum damage of his crossbow with all the correct items, stats, training points, schools, and abilities.* Woe is me. Crossbows suck.

I still say, as a have for a long time, that any game design that requires camping is a bad game design. The same goals can be accomplished with well put together quests (limiting the number of kills any individual player can get, etc) or instances. Personally I'm not a fan of unnecessary instancing, and Istaria doesn't support it anyway, but I don't see any reason why these epic mobs couldn't be tied to repeatable quests.

[Thangorodrim Atanatari]

the logs differ from eachother, in my logs Group A was first. so was group A in many of the other logs... only the server log can tell who was really first..

if 2 groups engage a mob at almost the same time, is this seen by the devs as honest competition? or is the 1 that unknowingly was later on the serverlogs in violation with the EULA?

this asside from the fact that many subs can and probably will be lost if the devs dont do anything about a small group of players monopolizing a big part of the endgame content

the labyrinth will hopefully solve this problem.
if its not going to be an ''instance'' the same could occur there by the way..

its just not fun waiting 5 or 12 hours only to find the reward being taken from you

[Thangorodrim Atanatari]

but I don't see any reason why these epic mobs couldn't be tied to repeatable quests.

now that is a brilliant idea!

a quest with a cooldown!

this way people who like to play together can synchronize their cooldowns to fight it together.. or the quest mechanism should support a group-quest..

not that much work for the devs as any other solution, and totally solving the problem!

[Amerelium]

It's a question of not being polite. When the epic spawns in the middle of group A, it's unpolite for group B to do that. I have NEVER done that in any form of waiting-for-mob battle. It is called kill-stealing.

Unfortunately, we all know this is going to continue as far as the epicsa are concerned...

[GalemThawn]

Here's the thing about pulling though, if you do it manually, you will likely never get the first hit.

Instead, players have hotkeys running to /Select Mob and then immediately hit with some instant ability (hence the severly small time difference of .03 seconds that I show).

If the mob appears in the midst of either group, the other group will still automatically engage. Now, it would be a matter of politeness to not rush and engage the other group since the mob did spawn right in the middle of them. It would be nice to be polite in the midst of a competitive activity, but I don't think anything requires it.

[LOVWYRM]

PLEASE VI TAKE THAT SERIOUS

it has become VERY serious atm.

(I`ll write more later)

[Abraxes]

its just not fun waiting 5 or 12 hours only to find the reward being taken from you

What do you think camping and competition is about?

[GalemThawn]

With all the frustration that comes with this topic, I'd like to say that the base of the problem is not with the players, but with a system that allows the current conditions.

If I could solo Reklar and get the kill every time, I may just do it until I get all the items that I need. Why sit waiting 6+ hours for a 'chance' at a random drop and then tell someone else, "You go first, I'll just wait another 6 hours for another spawn."

I don't think any players are at fault, it's the system that creates these conditions.

[pevil2000]

While I agree to an extent with this, if there's no competition it can get a little... boring. I certainly don't like instances; they take away from the MMO persistant world feeling.

I 'grew up' on UO as an MMO newb and it was basically free-for-all. Luckily I wasn't on payshards, just a free server, and we had a good community. We had a couple of 'epic' mobs that a few of our higher level members camped almost continuously, but because of the community if someone else showed up (like myself) for a quick random kill, they would allow us to kill it.

While having it as a quest-tied mob would solve some of the problems, you'd still get people waiting for someone else to spawn it as a part of the quest and then kill-steal, plus it just wouldn't lend itself to that terror as it randomly spawns on top of you or you accidentally run into it.

Note I've not gone on an epic hunt yet; I'm too low level. I don't know quite how it all works in this game, but as a general rule I think this community is grown-up enough to sort it out their own way. Perhaps make it so that it's whoever damages the mob first gets the loot/exp (one thing WoW has right) as opposed to whoever does the most damage. (Note here I mean as a group, not just the first player to hit it). And/or make the spawn time more feasible. The guys on UO didn't mind letting me have the odd kill because it was never more than half an hour (and usually only 5-10 minutes) to wait for the respawn.

Another way is to give *almost* as good items as just regular drops or quest rewards. This isn't a pvp game so it's not like you really need that 'edge' but it is nice for bragging rights. So say... give an item that's only 2 less damage perhaps, or has only one extra resistance on it. Just to make it slightly easier for someone who has bested the best to kill off normal mobs, but not so that they're tearing a swathe through everything while the 'regular' players are taking 4 times as long. And a lot of people, if faced with a low enough reward will not be too bothered if they never get the kills. Whereas if it's a huge upgrade, that will encourage a lot of people to fight for it. A good thing and a bad thing.

[Amerelium]

Tak's got a great idea - Locking a char or account from attacking an epic for a certain time after a kill. Would take care of a lot of the problems...

[Creme]

Quote:
Reklar spawned right on top of group A, but group B was able to pull/damage Reklar by a difference of .03 seconds according to some log comparrisons.

Reklar spawns in random locations, the fact that he spawned on top of where some players were standing does not mean that he's automatically "owned" by that group.

I will say that most fights I've seen, Reklar is actually physically "pulled" to another location, which makes it cleaner and easier to determine who actually pulls "first".


Quote:
I don't see the culprit here as campers (both groups were waiting for the spawn). The damage dealing Paladin is not to blame.

Thank you for the honesty.


Quote:
Instead, the real problem here is a newer player's inability to get an item as powerful as a Boar's Hide Mask. This single item makes a huge difference when fighting against epic mobs. Of course player skill comes into play also.

Couple of points I'd like to make here.

1. Group "B" would not have engaged had they not known that they had attacked Reklar first.

2. Boar's Rage is dispellable by Reklar, and has been dispelled, and also was dispelled during the fight.

Quote:
Hopefully, with the addition of the Blighted Labrynth and some T6 content, we will see some items that will level the playing field. Until that time, I now understand why some people don't even try to camp the epics. You can't see a .03 second difference in real time combat. And once engaged, a player (maybe Paladin in specific?) with a BMH is going to deal out enough damage to take the kill. Shoot, there were 2 minutes before he engaged. Once group A engaged, the Paladin could have been alone and still out-damage the 5 dragons and taken the kill.

As I mentioned earlier, the location Reklar was engaged was unusual. Other set ups I've seen there is usually a very clear pull where it's easy to determine which group actually engaged first.

Reklar cannot be damaged significantly without Primal Boon being up. A paladin could not take him out by himself.

Quote:
If I had a BMH, I'd use it at epic fights. Who would handicap themselves by NOT using it?

There are many players with BHM that choose to play either a dragon or a healer at mobs such as Reklar, Daknor, Fafnir.

Quote:
The argument of some players getting multiple epic items and not selling or sharing? Some players have multiple characters and want each epic item for each character. Why not? I've also been told that it can take months to get all the pieces to complete even a single item since they come in random pieces.

Yes, it can and does take a very long time to be able to put an item together, especially since the piece drops are random, and forms drop quite frequently.

Quote:
Some cheating going on? No.
Someone not sharing? Yes. But I didn't read in the EULA that we had too.
Some inequality here? Yes. But only the Devs can correct that, and not by nerfing what already exists.


PLEASE! Don't turn this thread into a firestorm that will get locked.

I would suggest that an easy fix would be to lock mob aggro so that whichever group engages it first, gets the kill/loot unless they wipe. LOTRO is set up this way and I feel it is a good system.

This would solve the killstealing accusations and leave no doubt as to which group did pull first.

One player did ask to be allowed to kill Reklar as he has not in a couple of years. We offered to let him join our group to experience the kill and he declined.

[gopher65]

1. Group "B" would not have engaged had they not known that they had attacked Reklar first.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that you can tell who pulls a mob first. You can't. Have you ever had a mob "warp" from place to place? That's because your client thinks the mob is in one place, but then the server tells the client that the mob is actually somewhere else. Then the client updates, and the mob warps to its new location. This client is notoriously unreliable (ever seen yourself do damage to a mob after it's already dead?). So as long as there is less than a few seconds between when the two groups hit the mob, both groups can see themselves as having "pulled" the mob. Neither group would be wrong either. So they couldn't "know" that they pulled the mob first. Far from it. This is just one of the many things that makes camping unreasonable in this game (and all other games for that matter:P).

As I said. Lack of imagination on the part of the designers. No one thinks camping is fun, yet they keep making games that require camping. That's not smart.

I don't know quite how it all works in this game, but as a general rule I think this community is grown-up enough to sort it out their own way.

It isn't. They aren't. Just because people are physically old doesn't mean that they are mature. The very fact that people have got so worked up about all of this shows that they have been unable to work these problems out on their own.

[Amerelium]

2. Boar's Rage is dispellable by Reklar, and has been dispelled, and also was dispelled during the fight.

Point of interest: I've got a log saying a single hit did more than 9k damage...

[GalemThawn]

Please, let's all stay civil.
I know that this topic always turns into a storm of flames, but I'd like to talk calmly and perhaps effectively about this. No direct accusations or flaming or the thread is bound to be locked.

[Creme]

You seem to be under the misapprehension that you can tell who pulls a mob first. You can't. Have you ever had a mob "warp" from place to place? That's because your client thinks the mob is in one place, but then the server tells the client that the mob is actually somewhere else. Then the client updates, and the mob warps to its new location. This client is notoriously unreliable. So as long as there is less than a few seconds between when the two groups hit the mob, both groups can see themselves as having "pulled" the mob. Neither group would be wrong either. So they couldn't "know" that they pulled the mob first. Far from it. This is just one of the many things that makes camping stupid in this game (and all other for that matter:P).

Yes, this was a fight that was far too close to call @ engagement

As I said. Lack of imagination on the part of the designers. No one thinks camping is fun, yet they keep making games that require camping. That's not smart.

This is an opinion, but yes, a good number of players feel that camping is unpleasant, just as a good number of players don't feel there is anything wrong with it. There was a long, exhaustive thread in rants about it, should anyone care to revisit it.

Re: the 9K damage - strength, build points, gear, all those things contribute to damage.

If you were to do a 20 minute damage comparison between an ancient dragon, with full strength gear, points, potions, buffs, etc. the ancient would wind up with more top end damage over any biped, with or without a mask.

[Amarie Ancalimon]

I'd rather not lock the topic. I have faith that this community can respect Galem's request, as well as the forum rules, and have a mature discussion about the topic without accusation and finger pointing.

Thank you,
Amarie

[GalemThawn]

Just to clarify :Please don't think that I'm complaining about group B or that I'm accusing anyone of anything.

I just wanted to start a dialog about how this happens, the perceptions, and what can be done to remedy it.

To Creme:
Yes, some people in my guild may have a BMH, but I don't and there is no way, even through extensives quests, to obtain one or any type of gear like it. Am I bitter about someone having better equipment than me? Not at all. I have some pretty awesome blighted equipment. However, everyone has the opportunity or possibility to get blighted equipment just as good or better. There is not that opportunity to get an object like the BHM.

And Creme, thanks for the corrections on number of people there.

[LOVWYRM]

We are not talking about camping-but monopolizing

We are not talking about competition- pls no eyewash with words
The prob is well known for a long time- and I am not the only one , who has foreseen it would escalate one day- with serious consequences to the game.

I ask all who are involved or in authority not to underestimate the situation.
There has been too much damage already- limitation of damage is required.

[Silverblaze]

new adage says

"don't hate the playa, hate the game"

I suggest not hating either, but he point is the game is set up to camp, with timers and all that great stuff.

if you want a lack of competition

1- instances

2- make timers something like 2 hrs on even the big bads, nobody is gonna spend all their time hat way.

3- take the mobs out

4- try raid rules via EQ

just some ideas, reform isnt needed with the players if my opinion matter an ounce. its the way the bosses are set up.

as for boars masks, older layers were rewarded for good playing, long time playing and insight on what to save. to cheapen that is a tragedy.

New players should be able to even the playing field some, yes, but nothing should be quite as good as the days of old...also, my opinion.