Grouping

[jezer]

Jake asked the question on gossip about people's opinions on grouping etc...

1) He talked about the mentality of people not grouping because there were "no tanks"...
2) Making grouping more fun.
3) Grouping at lower levels.

Lots of people had opinions... And there are probably a whole bunch more. I've got a bunch of opinions but in group at the moment... will post later heh.

[jezer]

*The changes to castle hindered the progress of new leaders
*Epics killed the frequency of XP Groups (Good XP, requires Tards)
*Two man is often faster xp than any xp group
*XP loss and Looting discourages people from trying new things
*Spam in groups makes it easy for important factors to be missed.
*The protect system leads to botting
*Sponging makes people never learn anything new
*Groups too dependent on warrior and cleric classes (Staying Alive, #4)
*Valk (the training ground) is nearly all solo, with badish xp.
*Some classes don't really have group skills (druid) and once a necro has debuffed, or a thief/monk has his two seconds with an opener... groups are pretty much all about warriors and cleric's healing them.
*2 man xp always seems better than 3man? (Because 3men run 2men mobs)

I think these are some of the problems... but I don't think they are very big. I group because of the social aspect and the colorful characters that play this game and make it entertaining!

So how can we making grouping better?

Well, I was stuck for ideas, then I started thinking about the military... and then I thought, why not introduce group "vehicles." Mobs that can be "ridden" by a group and used by certain players at certain levels etc, unlocked by autoquest or something. Imagine for 30mins riding around on the back of a dinosaur having mobility and maybe ac a little higher.

The basic concept behind vehicles is that it removes the need for groups to need warriors AND clerics AND to some degree mages. With the fewer players on... the ingrediants that make groups are getting harder to find... it's not always tanks in shortage...

For a short time, two clerics could group, on a vehicle that gives them ac... Two warriors could group on a dinosaur that gives them a little blast power.

[b:115wxzio]The vehicles could be limited to class, area's, size in so many ways, in order to not unbalance the game[/b:115wxzio], but remove that need for all the ingrediants that are required to make a group... work.

The best groups I have been in, the memorable ones... have all been because of temp rewards... I'll always remember the first eq pop on sloth, and the holy handgrenade group from new years. Everyone wants to group then! It brings everyone together and it's fun and rewarding, even if it's only temp. It just makes grouping that little bit extra fun and interesting than chop.

[Rynquald]

Some of the best experiences I've had grouping have been in times where a group was running hard on the last fumes of mana, where everyone's, including the low level character's, healing (or blasting, or what have you) counted.

I'm not sure how it could be implemented, but at the moment there's little real risk for a group to do anything. If you run out of mana on primary healers or loose a couple of people from half way down the prot chain, you just staff and try again. If it was less possible to control the exact circumstances of a fight (or even a run) after it was started, it could bring back the necessity of real group coordination.

Imagine being trapped deep inside Moria/MH/Dweb etc. with low mana and mobs that actively attempt to attack you rather than just stand around waiting for someone to come to them, and needing to fight and sneak your way back to the surface. You would need everyone paying attention and using their abilities.

I guess what I'm describing in this post would involve significant risk compared to current grouping, but balancing a leader that knew when to quit, with group members that weren't too bored to watch what was happening would mitigate it.

It seems like the way to make a group interesting for everyone is to make everyone's contribution important, and the obvious consequence of an important contribution not taking place is something going wrong (hence the need for everyone to pay attention, if this is making sense).

Probably an unworkable idea on levels I'm not seeing at this time of night, but maybe not

[jezer]

I think that would be exciting too...! But I really hate dying I mean really hate dying...

XP loss is partly why I don't do epic's, don't just have fun exploring... prefer to run solo (Some people will get you killed!), I hate trusting my weak butt in the hands of a group with botter's and afkers. Death teaches you things, but in sloth you get penalized for those lessons.

I slept at titanic polar bear today, didn't know better, and then that stupid snake shocked me... I just wanted to quit again... I guess every player is different, and the good ones tend to die a lot... I don't think I'll be one of them.

Kind wish I could not suffer xp loss for a week, and just explore and learn things. It would certainly help my confidence in my playing ability.

[Tap]

Things were also exciting when psteal was ingame. When there aren't groups or group that are closed, solo'ing can, at time, be boring/frustrating. However, pthievery always seemed to keep people on their toes and gave
the soloers and groups alike something to keep their eye out for.

[Rynquald]

Ouch, didn't know you shocked at the bear, sorry I was afk or I would have gotten you.

When you find a group of players you can utterly trust, and run small groups with (probably if/when you join a clan), being able to rely on them can make for some fun times.

On the not loosing xp thing, getting a good collection of icq numbers is really all you need, unless you die a spectacular amount of times and start shocking out of sheer probability.

And I really don't mean to undermine your point, but if you enjoy exploring and soloing, you can always gain far more xp than you're ever going to loose by running some quick 2-3 man lyme, xp shouldn't deny you something good that you can get out of the game.

[Rynquald]

Psteal was a good way to get some pvp going, pitty you guys were always so weak

On a side note, a tourney, or even just exploring the minefield of making some kind of small reward for using the arena that isn't ludicrously exploitable could inject some fun, and you sure can't bot while something that isn't being controlled by Sloth's code tries to kill you.

Yes I realize Sloth isn't a pkill mud, and I would never suggest turning it into one, but it's not like we haven't been enjoying fighting each other on friendly terms for quite some time.

[jezer]

[quote="Tap":28q3i19t]Things were also exciting when psteal was ingame. When there aren't groups or group that are closed, solo'ing can, at time, be boring/frustrating. However, pthievery always seemed to keep people on their toes and gave
the soloers and groups alike something to keep their eye out for.[/quote:28q3i19t]

That disgusts me. You like pthiefing because you have everything to gain and nothing to loose... and you think the misery of other's is a good time... you can not get any lower.

And Ryn, don't sweat it, the snake mob in dark chasm devours your corpse causing you to shock instantly, there was nothing u could do. No chance to raise...

[firebrand]

imho, a tiny fraction of people don't like to get into a group due to the lag coded into actions such as bash, trip, RESCUE and several others actions i know i have forgotten to list or simply don't know because i mainly play an oldskewl wa prime. ppl group to gain xps and perhaps eq, drachma, honor - whatever the main purpose of the group is - not to die/shock/corpse/lose lev or xp because the tank is lagged. when a groupie is getting attacked and sings for a rescue, there should not be a bloody lag that winds up getting groupie dead instead of actually rescued! yes i know we have second wind but second wind should work for when you are running and run out of moves instead of counteracting the lag coded into what are supposed to be beneficial actions. honestly i wish there were some other checks and balances to some things rather than the worn and WAY overused lag. and yeah, my thoughts are all over the page and slightly off topic, so flame me if ya will, pick me apart - whatever, but i am throwing my two cents out there as food for thought - or at least spam to take up space on this thread.

"hard to see, the dark side is" -- yoda --> star wars the phantom menace

[Medios]

I would hope that my groups are exciting and hard to bot in. I don't let ppl hog mana and I try to pay attention to whos blasting/debuffing. I also run the group until all the mana is gone. So if your sitting on mana you cause players to die. Then I let them tongue-lash you for you being a scrub. The free market usually works itself out, even in sloth. If you bot and piss a bunch of ppl off you will get a reputation and not be welcome to join. I have several ideas about getting more small vk type groups running and I am going to talk with a few imms about implementing them.

[Widow]

One of the concerns about groups I routinely hear is botting and 'there's nothing for me to do'. I gotta say, that's bunch of horsepucky. There isn't a classo out there that can't kick, bash, blast, sing, heal, or whatever. On Every mob. Just because it isn't the most damaging thing you can do, doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Hell, I've kicked Tiamat plenty of times and I've got bard 4 with 16 str!

Another solution is to have smaller groups. I'm not against everyone on the mud piling into MH or dmount, I think it's fun. But if it bugs you that some ppls aren't pulling their weight - the leader should be able to group people they want to and eject others that they don't want. This is something i found astounding about Sloth when I came. I fol someone and automatically I am grouped - no questions asked!

It would really be no headache at all to code a command where the person being followed has to group each member individually. They would also be given the ability to ungroup a member. It also makes grouping around lurkers or MIA ppls much easier.

[Toxis]

There are several things I have noticed that makes grouping a big pain. If people just worked harder at helping the group, they'd realize they'd get xp two or three times faster. I once did an example with a group, after everyone was basically botting... I told everyone to blast and pay attention and the mob died twice as fast.

People have to realize that evey little bit of blasting helps. If we have 10 people in the group at full mana for an hour and only 1 or 2 people are healing... then those people need to blast, destructions or dispel evil, whatever, they need to blast. I was killing dragon mountain with a HUGE group and it was taking forever to kill the black dragons. We weren't dying, far from it, we had thousands of mana of people that didn't have mage... they were necro/druid/clerics who were just waiting to heal. Well sometimes you gotta just blast.. blast out and the mob will die twice as fast. Have druids shapeshift, necros cast destruction, dispel evil, do whatever you can to hurt the mob. It helps. There has to be a balance to healing you need and blasting you need.

Also, when people join groups and do nothing, you have to yell at them to enter portals 100 times... it's no wonder no one feels like leading. I know people like to not pay attention, to watch tv or read stuff in another window. That's cool, I do that from time to time. But you have to pay attention as much as possible... there has got to be a line between being distracted for a second and not paying attention for a whole minute or more. (this is not botting, this is people joining and just not paying attention.. I call em scabs- don't be a scab)

As far as tanking goes, I never wanted to play a tank all the time. I only made Toxis to tank on days when we needed a tank.. but it just seems you can't get halfway decent tank now. I feel stuck in Toxis just for the mud's sake, I guess that's wrong thinking on my part but... is that a problem with warriors? Or is that because we can't group without a tank? I mean, what is the problem and how can we compensate for it?

People feel we can't have a tank unless they're -11, I think that's just far from the truth. I see no reason why a -9 or -10 can't tank mh and dmount, no reason... everyone flocks to those groups anyway so there is plenty of healing... I just very rarely see a halfway decent tank on that wants to group. Either they're not on or they're busy and don't want to tank for xp.

[pri sec ter qua] Players
-----------------
[ *Wizard* ] Lis *Battle Mage* ~[DoW]~
[ *Hierarch* ] Doc wa
[ *Arch-Lich* ] Adagio please vote
[ *Grand Druid* ] Stryx ~[DoW]~
[ *Juggernaut* ] Rodek Lord Rockarm ~[Dow]~
[ *Harvester* ] Elwin <~Knights~>
[ *Diabolist* ] Zero ..
[ *Burglar* ] Cizin [[[CSK]]]
[ *Bandit* ] Restive ... Who moved my cheese?!?
[40t 40m 40c 38d] Kokoro [[[CSK]]] now hates Atlas
[40c 40d 40n 35b] Nakita ---
[40n 40d 38m 22b] Kraz Loves dead trees and a Frostbolt SB
[40b 40m 37c 23o] Afea .
[40c 38m 22t 15w] Java *
[36o 30c 23m 16d] Mangrove .
[20m 20d 20c 19n] Eta .
[11o 4w 0m 0c] Vander
[ 5w 1t 1n 1c] Nimski the Untitled

I asked Rodek if he was there and wanted to tank but he was afk. I guess Nimski is batter up. Now I'm joking, and it's only 3pm eastern so not many people are on but you can see the ratio to non casters/casters. I bet we could get Afea to tank

-Toxis

[Rynquald]

Just thinking from Brad's post...it would be nice if a mob could equally focus on fighting more than one or two people. A group of casters running without prots and all taking a hit or two a round would be pretty fun, and you can be sure people aren't going to bot when they're actively getting beat up.

Obviously it would still be more efficient to have a tank so everyone wasn't using potential blasting mana healing themselves (I'm figuring most casters don't run enough ac to get more than a few misses against good group mobs), but it would at least be more feasible to run tankless.

I know most changes based on "realism" come off pretty weird, but it would also get rid of the interesting mental image of 10 people standing in single file to fight.

Also:
[quote="Toxis":1uqw939w]People feel we can't have a tank unless they're -11, I think that's just far from the truth. I see no reason why a -9 or -10 can't tank mh and dmount, no reason...[/quote:1uqw939w]

Exactly.

[Tap]

Jezer wrote:[quote:br57c6r7]That disgusts me. You like pthiefing because you have everything to gain and nothing to loose... and you think the misery of other's is a good time... you can not get any lower. [/quote:br57c6r7]

Whoa there, kinda harsh aren't you? Who said misery of other's is a good time. I could settle that flagged pthieves couldnt rent. That way they "have" to stay ingame and run around. They could hang out in peace rooms as long as they aren't boarded between "jaunts". Could also be flagged that upon a successful psteal they can't drop for "x" amount of time or hide in peaceroom. I think part of this is already coded. I don't care if psteal goes back in or not, it's just the pvp for something different. We don't have enough off-port tourneys, so fault me.

[Rynquald]

[quote="Tap":sm8zpbdf]it's just the pvp for something different. We don't have enough off-port tourneys, so fault me.[/quote:sm8zpbdf]

Dear God. I agree with something Tap said.