Over in the leashed mob conversation, Xonth brought up a related (and just as important) topic. Linked mobs. I'm sure we all know what linked mobs are - but just in case, linked mobs are mobs that cannot be split when you pull them. They share an agro table. You pull one of them, you get all the mobs that are part of the link - period.
In practice, this has sometimes manifested itself in silly ways. For example: I've seen two mobs linked that are in completely different areas of a camp. You pull one, and a linked mob that is on the back side of 10 other mobs comes with it... but the 10 mobs it runs past - don't.
On the other hand, it could be a dynamic used to create some interesting game play - add emotional "oh crap" responses from players, etc...
SO - similar to the leashed mob conversation - the question here is simple... how do you feel about linked mobs?
I like the idea, it forces you to make some kind of plans for crowd control be it mez, root or off tanking. I also like calls for help, mobs that scout, etc.; it forces the players to be more aware of their surroundings not just on autopilot when you have someone who can always single pull everything. I don't think all mobs should be linked, but it could be random. Daoc had an additional awesome mechanic called BAF (bring a friend code) which is a way the game generated adds that i would love see implemented in some version. When you pull a BAF mob, extra mobs came with it provided the puller was grouped with enough players to trigger the code. It's more elegant than simple linking because it has a smaller chance of destroying a small group. Daoc's BAF design (based on an eight person group) was:
1 player would usually get 1 mob
2 players would usually get 1 but occasionally 2 mobs
3 or 4 players would usually get 2 mobs
5 or more players would get 3 or more mobs.
I don't like linked mobs except when they are for attaching adds to a raid mob.
I don't want to have encounter size dictated by artificial links.
It leads to some mobs being underpowered because they are linked in larger packs like in EQ2.
Too many packs of easy mobs just leads to watering down the content as they are easily AE'd down.
Kiz~
Reht said:
I like the idea, it forces you to make some kind of plans for crowd control be it mez, root or off tanking. I also like calls for help, mobs that scout, etc.; it forces the players to be more aware of their surroundings not just on autopilot when you have someone who can always single pull everything. I don't think all mobs should be linked, but it could be random. Daoc had an additional awesome mechanic called BAF (bring a friend code) which is a way the game generated adds that i would love see implemented in some version. When you pull a BAF mob, extra mobs came with it provided the puller was grouped with enough players to trigger the code. It's more elegant than simple linking because it has a smaller chance of destroying a small group. Daoc's BAF design (based on an eight person group) was:
1 player would usually get 1 mob
2 players would usually get 1 but occasionally 2 mobs
3 or 4 players would usually get 2 mobs
5 or more players would get 3 or more mobs.
Not sure how well i'd like the BAF design. I feel like it takes away from understanding the mobs a head of time if mobs are going to randomly generate based on the number of people in my group.
Rivacom said:
Not sure how well i'd like the BAF design. I feel like it takes away from understanding the mobs a head of time if mobs are going to randomly generate based on the number of people in my group.
That's exactly why i like it, you always have to be on your toes, you can't just autopilot through a camp for 8 hours because you have someone who chain pulls singles. It adds a certain dynamic of danger to it. Like linked mob, people eventually learn which mobs can BAF.
I hated linked mobs in Everquest 2. Took away quite a bit of immersion,too. Why shouldnt I be able to pull away a friend from another with some kind of trick?
For me the only way such a link would work is with magic ...like 2 mobs are chained to be near each other...boss fight for example.
To me being able to single pull a mob out of a pack of mobs with impunity while your group is close and in clear sight of the pack is more immersion breaking to me. I tend to see it linked mobs as more immersion making than breaking in most cases. I always thought it was silly that random mob 1's friends 2-8 never backed him/her up just because you pretended to play dead for a few seconds.
I think EQ had linked mobs right, but I would be ok with a few dynamic encounters - scouts, mobs that shout and call for help, etc.
I don't like all mobs that are coded to be linked. I would much prefer adds to be off agro distance. If you pull a wanderer that is too close to a static mob, you will basically then create linked mobs. If there are 3 static mobs standing next to each other, you pull all, etc.
If I pull a solo kobold that is away from view of the main camp, the rest shouldn't come because they are linked, that's just unrealistic - you should be able to pick off a mob away from a main camp if it is not within agro distance.
And, I do think there should be class skills that assist with pulling - mobs should be able to be split by skilled players through FD pulling, etc., it adds more class utility and is a good feature to increase class interdependence and a need for pulling types in a group.
And to your point Reht on group auto-pilot, I get it, and dont want easy-mode either, but I think it would be more beneficial for multiple ways to handle a situation, through FD pulling if a monk type class is in the group, or by handling adds with an enchanter, rather than basically forcing all groups to have to have crowd control to be capable of handling content.
Raidan said:
I think EQ had linked mobs right, but I would be ok with a few dynamic encounters - scouts, mobs that shout and call for help, etc.
I don't like all mobs that are coded to be linked. I would much prefer adds to be off agro distance. If you pull a wanderer that is too close to a static mob, you will basically then create linked mobs. If there are 3 static mobs standing next to each other, you pull all, etc.
If I pull a solo kobold that is away from view of the main camp, the rest shouldn't come because they are linked, that's just unrealistic - you should be able to pick off a mob away from a main camp if it is not within agro distance.
And, I do think there should be class skills that assist with pulling - mobs should be able to be split by skilled players through FD pulling, etc., it adds more class utility and is a good feature to increase class interdependence and a need for pulling types in a group.
And to your point Reht on group auto-pilot, I get it, and dont want easy-mode either, but I think it would be more beneficial for multiple ways to handle a situation, through FD pulling if a monk type class is in the group, or by handling adds with an enchanter, rather than basically forcing all groups to have to have crowd control to be capable of handling content.
I absolutely agree, my ideas actually make CC more of a necessity. I am not saying make everything linked, BAF, shout for help, scout. Make it random, force players to constantly adapt and change strategies for the camp they are working on. That mechanic as much as making content difficult in other ways will encourage people to group up.
I created a longer post earlier so i'll try to keep this one simple.
I prefer Everquest 1 style of group mechanic with pullers (Bards, Monks, Rangers, Enchanters). I loved reading a situation to determine the best way to pull a room or area. This type of thinking allowed me to enjoy the game a lot more over newer games that had linked mobs like EQ2 and pretty much every game to come out afterwards.
I disliked linked mobs in EQ2, WoW, and other games because everyone just rushes into a room and does mass AE over everything without caring that their MT dies or has a hard time holding agro. People rush ahead of the group and never learn group mechanics because the games basically become DPS races. Even when you have a great tank and a good group all the tank does is run into a room grabs agro and everyone DPS everything until they are dead. The group is never challenged and they never have to interact with each other about the best way to pull a group. This leads to terrible players at later stages because they don't know half of their abilities or even how to play in a group correctly.
Anasyn said:
I created a longer post earlier so i'll try to keep this one simple.
I prefer Everquest 1 style of group mechanic with pullers (Bards, Monks, Rangers, Enchanters). I loved reading a situation to determine the best way to pull a room or area. This type of thinking allowed me to enjoy the game a lot more over newer games that had linked mobs like EQ2 and pretty much every game to come out afterwards.
I disliked linked mobs in EQ2, WoW, and other games because everyone just rushes into a room and does mass AE over everything without caring that their MT dies or has a hard time holding agro. People rush ahead of the group and never learn group mechanics because the games basically become DPS races. Even when you have a great tank and a good group all the tank does is run into a room grabs agro and everyone DPS everything until they are dead. The group is never challenged and they never have to interact with each other about the best way to pull a group. This leads to terrible players at later stages because they don't know half of their abilities or even how to play in a group correctly.
That's more of a failure of other grouping mechanics rather than pulling mechanics in my opinion. You can get away with mass AEing in other games because AE abilities are too powerful in comparison to single target ones and mob HP is too low. It becomes purely a min/max type thing, can you pump out enough AE dps before you die, kind of like old school non-scripted EQ raids. Just a FYI, there are linked mobs in EQ, it's just not used outside of raids but it does exist. I want EQ style pulling and CC, but i want it to be more challenging than the snorefest it has been since they started giving most classes fade, mez, harmony abilities.
Would depend on the encounter for me. Not opposed to it in certain situations, events, or camps. I know some are saying that it's 'artificial' but I think if implemented correctly it would actually increase the sophistication of the AI.
I have to say it's very easy to fall prey to basing my opinion on how linking has been implemented in other games. I've hated it pretty much everywhere I've seen it used as a common, normal, see it every other pull feature to a game.
It does, in fact, end up with very bad behaviors from players - run in, whoever wants to (meaning whoever can click a button the fastest) hits a mob - they all come - the group usually survives (sometimes narrowly, sometimes easily). No strategy there... unless you consider run and gun a strategy.
But Reht makes a very salient point. It's not the mobs being linked that causes this - it is the player to mob power ratio that does. People run in and blast away because they can. Modern MMO's are generally created to permit this. It's not a matter of the encounter being a linked one with 100 mobs, or a single mob - the intent is to make you feel powerful. YEAH - WE BLASTED THAT!
But - that gets boring.
EQ was different. EQ (old EQ) constantly pointed out your fallibility. In EQ, you were weak - even if you were uber. The thought of running in and blasting a mob in EQ was anathema. You didn't do it. If you did, you would die. This would be true for single mobs or linked mobs.
I for sure don't want to see linked mobs implemented the way they are in EQ2, WoW, etc... meaning - I don't want the combat designed around "run and gun and feel powerful"
But I could see linked mobs forcing you to really, truly, have to learn encounters, mobs, etc...
Here's an example:
Say through playing the game your experience tells you that "scouts" and "runners" are usually linked. That might make sense, right? Scouts and runners might go out looking for enemies - and - when the scout finds something, the runner goes back and reports.
Now apply that to the example in my original post - put the scout somewhere at the front of the camp, put the runner somewhere at the back - and make it so that instead of the other mobs just standing there, they get pulled too if you pull the link... meaning - your experience would tell you that you have to deal with everything around the link before dealing with the link so that you don't get overwhelmed.
Now your group has to worry about keeping the link out of the fight while also keeping mobs around the rest of the mobs out of the fight as you pull.
It's just one example that (I think) shows that used smartly - a set of linked mobs in a game where combat not geared around "run in and smash everything" can actually make the game play more compelling.
Gadgets said:
While we are brushing on the topic of 'run in and smash it,' I think that it's safe to say that Parthenon mobs and encounters will not embrace that philosophy. And If it does go in the direction of smash and bash, it probably won't matter to 95% of us whether the mobs are linked or not, because it won't be a game we play to begin with :)
Exactly correct - which (again as Reht pointed out) - has an impact on a conversation regarding linked mobs. It shouldn't be the same as in EQ2... because run in and smash stuff - should amount in you getting smashed, not the mobs.
Reht said:
I like the idea, it forces you to make some kind of plans for crowd control be it mez, root or off tanking. I also like calls for help, mobs that scout, etc.; it forces the players to be more aware of their surroundings not just on autopilot when you have someone who can always single pull everything. I don't think all mobs should be linked, but it could be random. Daoc had an additional awesome mechanic called BAF (bring a friend code) which is a way the game generated adds that i would love see implemented in some version. When you pull a BAF mob, extra mobs came with it provided the puller was grouped with enough players to trigger the code. It's more elegant than simple linking because it has a smaller chance of destroying a small group. Daoc's BAF design (based on an eight person group) was:
1 player would usually get 1 mob
2 players would usually get 1 but occasionally 2 mobs
3 or 4 players would usually get 2 mobs
5 or more players would get 3 or more mobs.
I agree with some of what you say here and it has good merritt. When I say I am for mobs not being linked I mean I don't want a mob being pissed I slapped them in the face for 5 steps and them stopping persuit. I do think there has to be some distance or time frame in which the chase ends. Eventually they should catch me or realize they can't and head back.
As far as mobs tied together ANYTHING that causes need for CC, Good Heals and group skill I am for. I seem to remember certain orc's not being tied and then in the same camp were some higher lvl orcs who by their lvl brought others with them.
I AM FOR ANYTHING REQUIRING STRATEGY, SKILL AND EFFORT!!!!
Reht said:
Anasyn said:
I created a longer post earlier so i'll try to keep this one simple.
I prefer Everquest 1 style of group mechanic with pullers (Bards, Monks, Rangers, Enchanters). I loved reading a situation to determine the best way to pull a room or area. This type of thinking allowed me to enjoy the game a lot more over newer games that had linked mobs like EQ2 and pretty much every game to come out afterwards.
I disliked linked mobs in EQ2, WoW, and other games because everyone just rushes into a room and does mass AE over everything without caring that their MT dies or has a hard time holding agro. People rush ahead of the group and never learn group mechanics because the games basically become DPS races. Even when you have a great tank and a good group all the tank does is run into a room grabs agro and everyone DPS everything until they are dead. The group is never challenged and they never have to interact with each other about the best way to pull a group. This leads to terrible players at later stages because they don't know half of their abilities or even how to play in a group correctly.
That's more of a failure of other grouping mechanics rather than pulling mechanics in my opinion. You can get away with mass AEing in other games because AE abilities are too powerful in comparison to single target ones and mob HP is too low. It becomes purely a min/max type thing, can you pump out enough AE dps before you die, kind of like old school non-scripted EQ raids. Just a FYI, there are linked mobs in EQ, it's just not used outside of raids but it does exist. I want EQ style pulling and CC, but i want it to be more challenging than the snorefest it has been since they started giving most classes fade, mez, harmony abilities.
no, he pretty much nailed it on the head imho. part of the strategy in all my groups were to "break" a area or room to use and start clearing from there. This was the enjoyment to me in a group setting from EQ. No other game gave me that group organized feeling since.
I am certain fade, mez, harmony, FD abilities were there all along...one of the beautiful and masterful things about EQ was how the players utilized those abilities beyond what they were intended and it fit.
When I played EQ1 one of my favorite aspects of the game was pulling. EQ gave certain classes abilities that allowed you to split mobs. Not only did you have to do this with the correct mobs at the right time you also had to avoid mobs on the way out. I don't believe I would totally be against the example Wandidar gave I just don't want to see every encounter follow the same rules. For example EQ2 you would click on a mob and you could tell that it had 3 mobs linked to it and no matter what you did they were going to all come. You had classes with CC but nobody every used it and they would just burn the mobs down either by taking one on at a time, off tanking, or AE'ing.
I must remember EQ1 differently then others I remember playing a monk and being able to split mobs that were together in a room. I also did this on my Ranger for years in outdoor areas. I guess I always thought of mobs for example in a room together would help each other out if attacked. You basically had an area that surrounded the mob and if that area passed over another NPCs bubble :) after you had engaged they would now assist and attack you.
Borneheld said:
I am certain fade, mez, harmony, FD abilities were there all along...one of the beautiful and masterful things about EQ was how the players utilized those abilities beyond what they were intended and it fit.
No, not the point they are now. These abilities have been farmed out to multiple classes. Every class has some sort of a fade in EQ. Bards have an instant AA called fading memories that has no reset, you can easily pull a single mob the length of a zone through a camp if you have any knowledge of the class. Monks have mez and harmony now. Rogues have mez traps. Wizards have a fade they can use every 1.5 minutes, so you can root/snare and single pull most things, etc. Rangers have harmony arrow which used to (i havent used it since it was changed) that would allow you to pull a single mob out of a pack and also has instant roots with memblur component. Shadow Knights were given an ability that death knights in WoW had that allows them to pull a mob to them out of a pack, etc. Just about any class can pull these days.
Reht said:
Borneheld said:
I am certain fade, mez, harmony, FD abilities were there all along...one of the beautiful and masterful things about EQ was how the players utilized those abilities beyond what they were intended and it fit.
No, not the point they are now. These abilities have been farmed out to multiple classes. Every class has some sort of a fade in EQ. Bards have an instant AA called fading memories that has no reset, you can easily pull a single mob the length of a zone through a camp if you have any knowledge of the class. Monks have mez and harmony now. Rogues have mez traps. Wizards have a fade they can use every 1.5 minutes, so you can root/snare and single pull most things, etc. Rangers have harmony arrow which used to (i havent used it since it was changed) that would allow you to pull a single mob out of a pack and also has instant roots with memblur component. Shadow Knights were given an ability that death knights in WoW had that allows them to pull a mob to them out of a pack, etc. Just about any class can pull these days.
Won't this issue in a sense be fixed by how they are doing the duo spec? let's say the enchanter is CC king or Queen : ) and as a shaman I go the enchanter route for my secondary spec, while the abilities I get from that tree are not as strong as the enchanters, I would or should be able to do some type of cc'ing but that would only be if I spec'd into that class. Maybe I am off point though because maybe your targeting more specifically the ability to drop agro. I think the tank is there to fix the agro problem or your enchanter if they can't do it then you probably are not assisting well enough and should die. I would think they won't be making Pantheon where everybody get's one of everything. Just a hunch though.
Xanier said:
Reht said:
Borneheld said:
I am certain fade, mez, harmony, FD abilities were there all along...one of the beautiful and masterful things about EQ was how the players utilized those abilities beyond what they were intended and it fit.
No, not the point they are now. These abilities have been farmed out to multiple classes. Every class has some sort of a fade in EQ. Bards have an instant AA called fading memories that has no reset, you can easily pull a single mob the length of a zone through a camp if you have any knowledge of the class. Monks have mez and harmony now. Rogues have mez traps. Wizards have a fade they can use every 1.5 minutes, so you can root/snare and single pull most things, etc. Rangers have harmony arrow which used to (i havent used it since it was changed) that would allow you to pull a single mob out of a pack and also has instant roots with memblur component. Shadow Knights were given an ability that death knights in WoW had that allows them to pull a mob to them out of a pack, etc. Just about any class can pull these days.
Won't this issue in a sense be fixed by how they are doing the duo spec? let's say the enchanter is CC king or Queen : ) and as a shaman I go the enchanter route for my secondary spec, while the abilities I get from that tree are not as strong as the enchanters, I would or should be able to do some type of cc'ing but that would only be if I spec'd into that class. Maybe I am off point though because maybe your targeting more specifically the ability to drop agro. I think the tank is there to fix the agro problem or your enchanter if they can't do it then you probably are not assisting well enough and should die. I would think they won't be making Pantheon where everybody get's one of everything. Just a hunch though.
It's hard to say, we won't know until see some sort of in-depth explanation of the colored mana system and how it's going to work, there are just too many questions and not enough answers about it. Yeah, i assume they won't give everything to everybody, but as the game progresses evolves through new expansions you still have to give people access to new abilities to make them feel like they are getting more powerful. I would just like to see a more complicated pulling mechanic. This does not in any way diminish the need for pullers or CC, but it does involve other members of the group a little more.
For example, monk is at Orc 1 camp and has been pulling for a while and then a new set spawns and viola, something is little different. The mobs appears to have gotten a little smarter and aren't falling prey to him playing possum individually. A smart player is going to realize his traditional tools aren't going to work so he and his party have to come up with a new strategy for this group, one that requires him to pull all three and the wizard to root one, while the monk kites one while the tank handles the first one. It doesn't have to be a big percentage of chance that these random mechanics are used, but even the occasional chance is going to be enough to make players, or at least the puller, be a little more aware of their surroundings.
Let's take this one step further, your group has broken the camp and has all the spawn timers perfectly split so that there is never more than 1 up at any time, why not have a small chance of an extra mob or two spawning to make it exciting instead of boringly predictable.
For me the big issue was when you have a single mob that has strength of let’s say 100%. You then have another encounter with two mobs linked and each has the strength of 50%. A bit farther you have an encounter with 5 mobs and each is only 20%. To the developer all these encounters had a total strength of 100% so they are considered equal. The problem then becomes that it’s easier to AE the 5 mob encounter really fast then to work on single mob encounter.
Now back to the need to make the game harder I think it again falls to the developers to think outside the box on how to organically create ways to increase difficulty.
Maybe you have wandering mobs that have multiple paths that are hard to predict. They may walk into your camp every ten minutes or you might not see them for 30 minutes. Maybe you put them on a very eradicate spawn cycle so there is no way to predict how long you have (1-15 minutes). Perhaps you have algorithms that increase the spawn rate depending on how many mobs are currently dead or maybe you spawn harder versions.
This goes along with my raid cap discussion. Don’t take the easy path and just to artificially increase the difficulty, but rather find creative ways to do it.
Reht said:
I am not talking about reducing the strength of the mobs because they are linked, they all stay their inherent base power, you just randomly get more that you need to deal with.....
Random + mob encounter = never should be used in the same sentence, unless we're talking about a raid boss. Linked mobs shouldn't exist in Pantheon outside of possible raid encounters, and at most final dungeon bosses. They already said FD will be coming back, and pull mechanics will be a lot like Everquest, so having mobs that are linked outside of their normal aggro radius' will not be necessary, simply put them in the right location to make the scale of pulls you expect players to have to deal with.
In Everquest they had Cazic Thule spawn all of the mobs in the zone to his side, to force you to clear the Plane of Fear before engaging him, but if you had very very geared and good pullers, you could kite the entire zone around and kill him before they could reach him to help him. In Rift we figured out that the first boss of Greenscale Blight could be kited for the entire duration of the fight if you used a boot enchant to increase your run speed, which was later nerfed.
Some people would call these things exploits, and in Rift's case I would say it was an oversight for them to not have the boss be able to catch you. In Everquest's case however, I don't consider it a problem at all, if you are skilled enough at the game to kite an entire zone of mobs that can charm you, dispell you, fear you, nuke you... more power to you.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, skill and character strength always need to come into every equation, and linking mobs is taking out player skill and ingenuity in favor of artificial difficulty.