Increasing group bashing experience

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Comments

  • @Sarapis have you considered having two sets of abilities in every skill, one (the existing set) that can only be used on adventurers and a more robust one that can only apply to PVE combat?

    You could make certain classes follow the tank/healer/DPS archetypes for denizen combat that way, even if they don't in PVP.

  • edited June 2014

    @Sarapis I don't think you'll ever have to worry about people not wanting to pvp in Achaea. There are more than enough opportunities to do so and while not all of us are the best at it, and admittedly some go out of their way to avoid it, I'm sure you guys will think up plenty of future reasons for direct conflict if it were to ever wane.

    As for the worry of leeches, I can only speak for myself but I'm sure there are others that are of the same mindset, most of us don't intentionally leech. I've been in groups with dragons in the past and it does often tend to be dragons that get the most kills. I still do my best to keep trying to hit and, despite what some people, @Santar, seem to assume, not all of us even have auto-bashing. I have an insanely long list of aliases and highlights for stuff, but I don't have anything that is purposely auto (harvesting, bashing, fishing, etc)... the Garden isn't dumb and these types are pretty easy to spot and hopefully still appropriately punished regardless of how many creds they might have bought.

    As my forum newbie status shows, I don't often come here let alone comment because I get sucked in for hours and I'd rather be playing, but I felt feedback was necessary enough. I didn't partake in much of the recent group hunting, but I did enough to notice and I saw the fun others were having in both House and city. The sheer lack of experience in group hunting has in the past kept me a solitary hunter. Usually if I went on a group hunt it was for purposes other than exp, such as gold to save up for an improvement in the House or a gold contest for the city. I don't expect to see a higher gold/shard/talisman drop for group, but more exp? Definitely. You're overhauling all the Houses with the intention on making the city a bigger priority or whatever, yet it's difficult to bring people together physically in any org if there are few benefits to being in a group. Making group hunting more palatable is a good start.

    I don't think solo hunting need be touched at all for group hunting to be more effective.

    And as far as people socialising goes, I don't know about you but I can type fast enough between hits to carry on a semi-decent conversation, lol.

    @Florentino I'm not really sure something like that's even necessary. We all have one or two bashing abilities since there's no need for a deeper level of interaction with denizens like that as there is with combat. I couldn't imagine having two full sets of abilities per skill just for bashing.

  • edited June 2014

    Splitting experience based on damage dealt would ignore support things like healing, curing, reflecting, shielding, tanking (hitting first so everything targets you; does that still work, or is the group targetted more randomly/evenly now?), etc., which can make a big difference. I'm not sure how you could quantify those things in order to factor them into the split.

  • CaladbolgCaladbolg Campbell County TN
    edited June 2014

    Siduri said:

    I think what Tohran meant was that dragons are powerful enough to substantially block lower-leveled players from even landing a hit in some areas. It's less a matter of leeching than an issue stemming from the huge power discrepancy between dragons and non-dragons when it comes to PVE.


    Trying to do any group hunting with a dragon usually makes this happen, especially if bashing with more than one dragon, also with gmcp allowing you to target as soon as you walk in the room with out having those scripts to automatically target seems like that having to switch target (say for instance switching from sidhe to unsidhe) everythings dead before you can finish typing t sidhe

    Sarapis said:

    So....in other words the Dragon is doing the bashing and you're just there getting free xp? That sounds, unless I misunderstand, like exactly what we don't want to reward.

    To be honest, along time ago Dragon ment something. Now it's just a time consuming process. I think we have more dragons playing actively than we do non dragons at this point, and while I personally don't think that power-leveling someone while another is afk is a -good- thing at this point I think the game needs something more at 99 than just dragon.


    Also for the record alot of people are going to dislike this.

    But I think bashing would be alot better and alot more easier to balance if crits we're removed from the game entirely.

    Perhaps lessen the amount of experience it takes to actually get to 99 but remove crits so it also slows down the rate of bashing ability you have,

    From my understanding 85-92ish seems to be the hard part about leveling because at 92 your crits go up so high that you can clear areas extremely fast allowing you to move to your next area.

    What this also does is kinda screw over everyone else who wants to bash that area because while we do gain more experience for it % wise, it takes us along time to bash compared to our dragon friends. and it's also kinda infuriating to be bashing some place for 20 minutes get about half of it cleared, and someone walks in clears the rest of it in 5 minutes then moves on to the next area.

    and one last thing, the slower mobs die the slower the ability to gather gold from bashing becomes and unless things have changed recently gold is going around way to easily. 


    Edit: As far as what I said about dragon meaning something along time ago, I was talking about when dragon was just a race and you kept your original class. With dragon being the way it is currently it's just another class, and no longer game breaking (and the other level 99 stuff in game I was talking about didn't mean something game breaking)

  • Sena said:

    Splitting experience based on damage dealt would ignore support things like healing, curing, reflecting, shielding, tanking (hitting first so everything targets you; does that still work, or is the group targetted more randomly/evenly now?), etc., which can make a big difference. I'm not sure how you could quantify those things in order to factor them into the split.

    Yep, not perfect, but better than "Simply be present."


  • @Sarapis have you considered having two sets of abilities in every skill, one (the existing set) that can only be used on adventurers and a more robust one that can only apply to PVE combat?

    You could make certain classes follow the tank/healer/DPS archetypes for denizen combat that way, even if they don't in PVP.

    There's no way for that to work without making a hard separation between being in "PvE" mode and "PvP" mode, which is too artificial for my taste, and almost impossible to separate in our case because of things like city guards. Otherwise, you still have problems with things like the extreme speed at which adventurers can heal themselves,  

    And beyond that, it's just completely not worth the massive amount of work that'd be tbh. 

  • Caladbolg said:

    I think we have more dragons playing actively than we do non dragons at this point

    Not even close actually. Dragons remain a distinct minority. Around 270 Dragons have logged in within the last month, while just yesterday about 800 different people logged in. It's also not that relevant - making bashing more interesting is of primary interest because it's essentially required for newbies. By the time you're a Dragon, you've been exposed to a vast swathe of the game that isn't about bashing and are, presumably, still here largely because of those aspects.
  • edited June 2014
    In a similar vein to what Daeir said, rather than remove crits all together, have them scale in frequency to the number of people in a given group. Solo = full crit rate, two people = less, groups above five or six, no crits.

  • From a new, outside point of view, I've come to really enjoy the idea of Achaea's leveling practices. Coming from Aetolia, it isn't entirely uncommon to see someone reach Ascended state (Level 100) while still being 18-19 years old. Here, it seems like it means a lot more when you finally grind your way up to Dragonhood. Personally, I think any changes that would speed that along would both take away from the 'status' that Dragonhood gives you, as well as become a personal sort of snub for those that have, and still are, trying to make their way up to that level of experience alone/on their own.

  • IsaiahIsaiah Georgia

    maybe I misread but you could just make it so that groups get exp bonuses but nobody can be a dragon if you want to receive the bonus. That way there aren't 1 or 2 people pushing the group and it would from my little understanding require a lot less behind the secenes on the back side.

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  • People (alts) now routinely reach dragon by 25 or so and people have done it by 20 or 21, so I wouldn't say it's a particularly different state of affairs over here.
  • People (alts) now routinely reach dragon by 25 or so and people have done it by 20 or 21, so I wouldn't say it's a particularly different state of affairs over here.

    Until you've seen the stark difference in amounts of level 99+ from there to here, well. Achaea outnumbers Aetolia by.. shit, double sometimes? Triple? But you'll see a hell of a lot more Ascended there then you will here. I think that's that point I'm trying to make, why make it all easier and not as challenging. Sure, maybe adding group stuff in would be neat, but that's where it all starts in my opinion. Next thing you'll have double-exp chocolates, double-exp chalices, bashing orbs, etc, etc, so forth.

  • MelodieMelodie Port Saint Lucie, Florida
    Dresian said:
    People (alts) now routinely reach dragon by 25 or so and people have done it by 20 or 21, so I wouldn't say it's a particularly different state of affairs over here.

    Until you've seen the stark difference in amounts of level 99+ from there to here, well. Achaea outnumbers Aetolia by.. shit, double sometimes? Triple? But you'll see a hell of a lot more Ascended there then you will here. I think that's that point I'm trying to make, why make it all easier and not as challenging. Sure, maybe adding group stuff in would be neat, but that's where it all starts in my opinion. Next thing you'll have double-exp chocolates, double-exp chalices, bashing orbs, etc, etc, so forth.

    These have existed before, though in a different form - during one or two of the February promotions, there are chocolates that give a random effect, including crit rate, stat boosts and things. Instead of double-exp though, I believe it's just a chunk of exp given to you. But they're very limited, and run on a timer/eventually decay, so they don't stick around for years.

    I also believe double-exp orbs existed during a single promotion years ago, but they never brought those back. I mostly remember because @Agrias and @Metzger told me about theirs.

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  • edited June 2014
    Dresian said:
    People (alts) now routinely reach dragon by 25 or so and people have done it by 20 or 21, so I wouldn't say it's a particularly different state of affairs over here.

    Until you've seen the stark difference in amounts of level 99+ from there to here, well. Achaea outnumbers Aetolia by.. shit, double sometimes? Triple? But you'll see a hell of a lot more Ascended there then you will here. I think that's that point I'm trying to make, why make it all easier and not as challenging. Sure, maybe adding group stuff in would be neat, but that's where it all starts in my opinion. Next thing you'll have double-exp chocolates, double-exp chalices, bashing orbs, etc, etc, so forth.

    I haven't been in Aetolia, but spending a lot of time in Imperian right now.  Even if the other games may have gone overboard on generosity, Achaea is what I would call "stingy", in just about every possible area.  I mean *every* area you might think of.  Even our poor newbs "graduate" from portals at level 11 now, and the gold you can make as a genuine newbie in Achaea... I'm so glad I'm a credit whore.  

    But more directly related to the topic here, at least we got rid of really significant xp loss for deaths, even though many forumers had been deadset against it for many years.  I sure as hell wouldn't go down to Annwyn for pudding if it weren't for that (and many probably still wouldn't).  The change means that I as a non-com player feel I don't have to be so utterly cautious, which is a very good thing.  I can still die, and it hurts a little, but it isn't holy shit devastating.  

    I commented on the first page that I certainly don't want to encourage people to afk while someone else bashes but frankly, I don't really care if someone is a young dragon, even if I internally raise an eyebrow at them.  I don't even mind if dragon transitions from its super special snowflake status (let's be frank, it already has).  Also, when I see people like that I don't think "oh, there's too much easy xp", I think, this person is at the very least semi-automated.  

  • KyrraKyrra Australia

    I miss those Valentine chocolates. I got three levels off them. 87 to 90 I think. Would buy again.

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  • TohranTohran Everywhere you don't want to be. I'm the anti-Visa!
    Gawi said:

    I did not realize that the group bashing was a bug until reading this >_< Hashan had gotten a regular group together that bashed all the time. They even made a clan.  I was really enjoying getting to know all types from the city. Very disappointing that it was only a bug. I really hope that the Garden does something to encourage this!

    Eleusis did much the same.


  • SarienoSarieno Spokane, WA
    Gawi said:
    I did not realize that the group bashing was a bug until reading this >_< Hashan had gotten a regular group together that bashed all the time. They even made a clan.  I was really enjoying getting to know all types from the city. Very disappointing that it was only a bug. I really hope that the Garden does something to encourage this!

    The thing with the Hashan group was that it was encouraging some, well, for the want of a better word, fellowship between players who before actually had very little interaction outside of the occasional 'hello' on CT.  It actually formed some bonds between players, and was even starting to encourage roleplay. It also gave some of the more farflung novices a sense of inclusion in city events, something which is actually kind of hard to come across in Hashan at times, especially for the younger members.



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  • How recently was that group hunting clan formed? The bug was only around for less than a month* (May 27th to June 25th), and presumably didn't immediately become common knowledge, so did the group bashing and eventual clan really start because of the bug, or before it? From the talk of forming bonds and causing other changes, it doesn't sound like something that was just started a few weeks ago.

    *Actually, it was never said that the bug was introduced with the group changes, so it could have been around for 4 years instead of a month, in which case the recent perception of changes was entirely imaginary and group bashing isn't much different than it's always been.

  • ShirszaeShirszae Santo Domingo
    No? I actually believe it was at least implied that the bug was introduced when they changed how groups behave, @Sena.


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  • It was implied (by the timing and the large changes to groups), but not explicitly stated. I just brought that up as a possibility.

  • ShirszaeShirszae Santo Domingo
    Sena said:

    It was implied (by the timing and the large changes to groups), but not explicitly stated. I just brought that up as a possibility.

    No. I was referring more to @Sarapis' posts on the raves thread at the time the iron elite bug was discovered. Easy enough to just ask him, though.  

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  • edited July 2014

    As far as I can tell, I'm agreeing with you. What do you disagree with? I'm also referring to those posts, which don't explicitly say that the bug was found in the new changes.

  • WeiWei Monterey, California

    The clan only existed for a few days or so before the bug got fixed, but there was major group hunting in Hashan for possibly up to a week before that.

  • ShirszaeShirszae Santo Domingo
    Sena said:

    As far as I can tell, I'm agreeing with you. What do you disagree with? I'm also referring to those posts, which don't explicitly say that the bug was found in the new changes.

    I think I just misread, really. In my defense, I don't know why I am awake :(


    And you won't understand the cause of your grief...


    ...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.

  • KerriaKerria The Red Lioness

    I'm confused as to why people who do nothing but bash to dragon and not interact with anyone (therefore getting dragon at a "young" age) are being used  as examples why there should be a blanket punishment in place for hunting instead of a reward. 

    Not everyone likes pvp, there is currently no active reward for rp (save for the possibility of truefavours) so why take out or remove bashing completely...

    Unless you WANT to play the game all by yourself or with the 12 or fewer people who only want one thing, with no variety or anyone else to talk to... 


    For me that would get boring fast.

  • EiredhelEiredhel California

    :( I hate bashing. (Anyone who knows me knows this) but I was super happy how into it everyone was at the time even if I didn't participate. I'd rather read help scrolls from 1 all the way up, but then again I'm not normal. Looking forward to seeing how the adjustments come along and that'll determine whether I allow myself to be kidnapped long enough to become a Lego. :)

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