Is grouping to hunt, a bad thing?

[Warsong]

I group hunt, I rather enjoy it, I also Solo alot which isnt as much fun but alot of time friends are busy crafting. I cant say I prefer to group or solo hunt but I know i'm better at solo hunting. I can hold my own in a group hunt since my main is Healer. But given the choice I would group hunt.

Now all of this aside sometimes I call on friends in the community to do something fun like attack the EB or SOG, Nothing like getting members of the community together for a little head bashing. I know that I personally have given up looting when in group. If I see something I want I say something if I get it good if not doesnt matter.

I have had some groups that are very interesting and there are few people I just wont group with out of fear they will get us all killed. I have seen people recall in the middle of an SOG fight after one or two dps. So although I agree you have to becareful who is in your group I also think they need more interaction with skilled players to learn how and when to use abilitys.

Just my opinion

[Dravatar]

I hope that the developers realize that it's WE the vets that got them here. Had we not stuck it out through all the nerfs, adjustments, and tweeks, HZ would really have folded.

Forgive my intrusion, but this is probably one of the most arrogant statements I've read.

Please explain to me how a vets $12.95 a month entitles him or her to any more say in game direction or suggestion than a newbie. It is NOT in any games best interest to cater to a specific group of players as doing so only alienates other groups. The TG employees that are responsible to decisions on the how and where the game is going are paid to be as objective as they can. Players are not. Rarely do you ever see a suggestion that does not have some sort of self-serving result applicable to all. The last one I saw like that was the addition of the - and = hotkey bars.

I seem to remember a post stating that you and your wife left the game. I'm not trying to put you on the spot, but please explain to me why it is TG's best interest to retain your $12.95 a month than go after a new players. Burnout and turnover happen as a fact of life. Potential new players are made every day. From a business perspective, if you can net enough fish to begin with, who cares about the holes in the net? As long as intake exceeds output, you're golden.

I'm not saying that TG should forget about vets either, but the logic of your statement seems to suggest that the recent growth we've seen at TG is solely due to the influx of new players. I'm not sure that is the case. I believe that TG has learned from its past mistakes. One of the lessons is not to wallow there trying to make amends for them when it is past time to move on.

[Seranthor]

I respectfully disagree Dravatar, in the quote you clipped Aamer is saying it is the vets that have carried HZ this far, and I have to agree that he is correct.

However, I among other are not convinced that the lessons from the mistakes of the past actually HAVE been learned. *Cough* Nadia *Cough*

Can you honestly tell me that a T5 triple teched tool should cost 1.8g+, without a reasonable expectation of being able to find all the components in even a day of hunting in some cases? It looks like an extremely heavy handed overreaction to the player base trying to cope with the original problem of the inavailability of the components and sounds like totally pure arrogance on the parts of certain PTBs to try and remedy the player solution instead of actually focusing on the actual problem in the first (censored) place.

Its arrogance in ignoring whats broken in order to fix whats not broken thats making it easier and easier every day for many to decide to move on. Had the lessons of the previous exoduses truly been learned then there would be less arrogance and more thought before acting irrationally or irresponsibly.

[Dravatar]

Disagree away, Seranthor. It's what the forums are for.

I do not doubt that vets are in some part responsible for the current longevity of the game. I highly question the amount to which a capitalized "WE" alludes, however. Vets are by far not the only reason for this.

I cannot truly speak about the expectation of the triple-teched tool. That depends entirely on what the desired rareness of said tool should be in the minds of the devs. Everyone expects to be able to use the biggest or best equipment. I'm not convinced that should be the case.

There isn't a dev in the world that can predict exactly how users will use their software. When Nadia was originally introduced, I'm quite sure it was never intended for it to become the problem so many make it to be. It wasn't the devs who exploited it. Any MMOG to some degree or another is an experiment.

There is nothing anyone can do to satisfy the wishes of all who play. One player's or group's interpretation of how the game should work will not match another. The dev's interpretation will not exactly follow the players and so on. I won't deny that mistakes have been made, but I will say that these mistakes are not one-sided. I also would introduce the possibility that many problems have multiple solutions and that one solution is no more valid than another.

People will move on. There is nothing anyone can do to stop that and quite honestly, other than in the most general terms, I'm not sure it should be stopped.

[Seranthor]

There isn't a dev in the world that can predict exactly how users will use their software. When Nadia was originally introduced, I'm quite sure it was never intended for it to become the problem so many make it to be. It wasn't the devs who exploited it. Any MMOG to some degree or another is an experiment.

Certainly it was the devs through action or inaction that created the problem that the playerbase has had to deal with for approaching TWO years regarding the real or percieved rarity of certain tech components. It IS the developers that knew why the Vielo were introduced and rather than actually do something about WHY they have to exist they do something about trying to ripe the band-aid off the gapping wound that is now infected and could be treated IF in fact they'd do something about the problem and not the band-aid. Do you personally think its an accident that the drop percentage for items in the loot table was removed from the GI.net pages?

IF a compound wound is bleeding you dont cover it with a band-aid and when that wound continues to bleed you dont look at it and go 'Dang, that is still bleeding, lets put a smaller bandaid on it and maybe it will stop'.

[metagruen]

What is the point in multiclassing if you gimp the hell out of it and take away the majority of the abilitys gained ? your idea to jack up the crossover abilites and spells as a way to make grouping more viable is stupid to say the least... your way of thinking is what needs a revamp not the way multiclassing system is as of currently.

To me the multiclassing is a way of enjoying a greater line of classes wihtout having to switch to a new toon.
When I got enough of slashing away mobs with sword I can switch to caster schools and still I am online with my Character.
I am always the same character. My friends know when I am online and do not have to remember all the names of my alts.
Multiclassing to me is not completely about shaping the ultimate toon.
To some degree: yes.
So it's a cool thing, to go for a KNoC/Mage COmbo for example.
But a classcombo like this should not be able to heal, too.
Multiclassing should allow to mix the abilities for a certain "archetype" like damage, control, healing.
But it should not be able to mix all three types into one char.

YOu still could switch to healer, if you want to heal. So all that is good in multiclassing would be doable, but still groups would be a thing you will have better succes in.

[Solanaceae]

I cannot truly speak about the expectation of the triple-teched tool. That depends entirely on what the desired rareness of said tool should be in the minds of the devs.

Sadly I am begining to belive that the developers have it in their minds that standing at a T5 node and getting 1-3 per hit is supposed to be the norm. I've picked up on a trend over the past few months of what appears to be an attempt to insert tedious grind as a substitution for a lack of content.

This is derailing the thread a bit however. In an attempt to get back on track here, we've pretty much come to the agreement that grouping has some real drawbacks that could be addressed. So I came up with some ideas for solutions that would make for some incentives for players to group again.


1. Mob aggro insanity is a major problem and promotes lame tactics such as stacking. It would be nice if the heavy melee schools like warrior had a way to draw aggro off of other group members with a degree of effectiveness.

2. Exp gains in groups are pretty pathetic even with the group bonus. If this was designed to stop powerleveling, it failed, as I've watched people powerlevel alts from 1-100 in about 18 hours of gameplay. Bring this more into line with what a solo player could make in the same time expendature

3. Mob looting system is terribly cumbersome. There's no easy way to select corpses, and then having to open the loot window for each one, rembering which ones you've looted already, and doing this all before the corpse disapears is quite tedious. Even worse when in a group and continiously killing. The lack of automatic randoming of loot leaves some group members feeling like they are getting short-changed. Take a look at Lineage II or GuildWars for examples of looting systems that don't suck.

4. Mob are difficult to select. There isn't a way to easily cycle between targets, and mousing them is difficult due to bounding box errors. A key to cycle between mobs at melee range would be very useful. Fix assist so that it targets the selected player's target, without requiring them to attack the target.


Discuss solutions.

[Aamer Khan]

Dravatar, I find it very interesting that you are taking personal exception to some post a player makes. I don't believe I broke any rules in that post, but you can alert me if I did. However, I understand you're a player and a person too.

As to your question, the answer is quite simple. IF, we vets had not had belief in the game, and IF a goodly number had quit, then HZ would have folded under it's own weight. That's not arrogance, it's basic business understanding. Like you said, if the number of players coming in, is greater than those leaving your golden. But back during the many flight periods, there were few NEW players joining, and many leaving. If at that time those of us that stuck it out had quit in larger numbers would we be playing today? Vets did indeed help keep HZ afloat.

Perhaps your taking umbrage, because they are trying so hard now to put the past in the past, and feel I'm being overly harsh. What I'm trying to do, is keep those points fresh in all our views, so that after the issues of the past are corrected, we ALL can move on... devs and players alike.

[Deth]

I cannot truly speak about the expectation of the triple-teched tool. That depends entirely on what the desired rareness of said tool should be in the minds of the devs. Everyone expects to be able to use the biggest or best equipment. I'm not convinced that should be the case.

I am of the mind if the Devs did not want everyone to have fully teched item, with some work, be it adventureing or crafting, they never would have put in the Veilo or at least not with all the techs. If they wanted them to remain truely rare they could have just as easly added just the missing tech items and removed them as they were replaced or added to mob drops.

Also as others have stated else where the mobs are built better then a player class because they can not get teched items and gear. How fully "teched" out I am not sure but thier is some exspectation there that a player will have at least some teched gear. No it does not say all gear has to be maxed teched. That would again depend on how teched out a monster is.

[Dravatar]

Mob looting system is terribly cumbersome. There's no easy way to select corpses, and then having to open the loot window for each one, rembering which ones you've looted already, and doing this all before the corpse disapears is quite tedious. Even worse when in a group and continiously killing...

I had this problem as well but found a workaround for it. I created a hotkey that does a /loot, /selectnearestenemy, /attack. This one pops up the loot window of the most recently dead mob and starts whacking on the next. If you loot as you go, you don't have to sort out what's looted and what isn't.

[Vlisson]

yes but what happens if you farm a lot of monsters at the same time, mass killing lower mobs...

then you cant loot fast enough then the bodies decay

and its frustrating if the mobs die on each other, only 1 pixel left

[tramsan]

That's where setscale comes in handy.

[Vlisson]

ok then i need this to use too ^^

how does it work?

a hotkey with an command?

[Aamer Khan]

on the hot key interface, use text command, and type in /loot on the input line and hit the + sign to save that line, then do it again for /selectnearestenemy, then again for /attack. save the hotkey and BAM! your set

[Aamer Khan]

auf der heißen Schlüsselschnittstelle tun Gebrauch-Textbefehl, und Typ in der/-Beute auf der Eingangslinie und Erfolg + Zeichen, um diese Linie zu sparen, es dann wieder für/selectnearestenemy andererseits für den/-Angriff. sparen Sie den hotkey und BAM! Ihr Satz

[tramsan]

Boy, are the Germans gonna have a laugh over that, Aamer.

Vlisson, setscale is explained in a thread in player customizations.

[Aamer Khan]

totally true tramsan, just used a translator addy online...

[Goriax]

Just got around to this thread and here's my quick reply.

First of all, HZ IS group friendly. It's got a group experience bonus and in fact it's the only game I know which allows groups of 10. Every other game I've played has had 6 as the absolute maximum.

However, unlike many other MMORPGs, HZ does not REQUIRE grouping to accomplish something. I consider this an EXTREMELY nice feature.

For those coming from many MMORPGs this is fantastic. It means the game is much more casual player friendly. You can often log on for 15 minutes and actually accomplish something. Force people to group and you can EASILY waste half an hour to an hour finding the people and getting them to where you want to hunt. Many times people are forced to hunt not where they want, but where they can find a group. Heh, in games with forced grouping MANY times people have to log by the time the group is together.

I would be VERY upset if HZ tried to become less solo friendly. To get the interaction people have guilds, friends, big crafting projects, buying and selling etc. You can have interaction without forced grouping. When I'm in the game I'm almost always in chat groups and will often find myself dropping things to help a fellow guildie (they called for help or something I know they wanted dropped for example).

I suppose that some people will always interpret a solo friendly game as a group hostile game. In the sense that people aren't forced at gunpoint into joining a group I suppose that's true. I think it just makes for a much friendlier easy going game.

When will people get it out of their heads that social interaction is not limited to forcing people at gunpoint to go out in groups of six?

[peladon]

This is ridiculous.

Of course we aren't trying to get rid of "vets". "Repairing all the mistakes of the past" is indeed much more accurate, and that requires changes.

Sure, some of the work we do is clearly to help newer players, such as more quests in New Trismus and Lesser Aradoth. But we'll get to the higher levels, and hopefully improve and balance the content along the way.

Regarding the thread, I do agree that aggro management needs more effective and additional tools. But that will have to wait until a comprehensive review of school abilities and roles can be done.

I can also see the case for softening the penalty for rating difference in a group. Multi-schooling means mismatched ratings quickly. Still, wildly mismatched ratings should retain a severe effect. The same goes for the AI target preferences.

Smeglor god. Mine words are but the whisper of a forgotten wind, and if it be meet, let them be lost as that wind.

That which is meet to me is not of need. Nor is that ill to me full well of woe. But by thy words, ' wildly mismatched ratings should retain a severe effect'.

There is the Lightning, and aye there is the Thunder. And we dance, and we dance in twain, and that is the manner of our dancing. And the reasons be many and more. And in that dancing, the point is mine, and there are mayhap a Foe or so that fall to me.. But there is ever that the lightning walks on two legs, and I bear wing. And she stands even now rated some 179 in her learning, or 188 in her full caparison. And I? 100 I be. And will be next waking, aye and the one beyond that and beyond... And thus is any drake that walks with any two leg of might or more schools of war than one.

Thy words would set barrier and spar between such. The Lightning and I.. that which we are, we are. And the dance would yet continue, aye and be no less of joy. But that others of two leg and wing be set apart? Is this of merit?

My words are but the whisper of a forgotten wind. Let them be lost as such, or no as is meet to those that greet it.


Sephiranoth, called by some ShadowSeeker
Nobody and Nothing ever, save the Five do Feast

[LaughingOtter]

Still, wildly mismatched ratings should retain a severe effect. The same goes for the AI target preferences.

I hadn't noticed this line until Sephiranoth pointed it out.

I respectfully consider the attitude expressed in that statement to be in need of adjustment.

Very low levels and very high levels might group for social or guild hunting, as a teaching exercise, in order just to chat, etc., and not be XP leeching; yet they are punished as though that's what they intended. I guess I can live with that in order not to have people powerlevelling leeches, but I think it's a baby & the bathwater thing.

However, a high-level & a very high level? Why should that be punished the same way? Can any group of rating 100+ players seriously be considered "wildly mismatched"?