IMO Kiting was more like exploitation than emergent gameplay. It completely trivialised significant areas of the game. Personally I done it myself as Quad Kiting and with certain classes Zone Kiting was easy and much quicker than grouping, often you can kill things solo that entire normal groups of equivalent or even lower level can’t even touch, plus any loot that dropped was yours. So it was all reward with essentially no risk or limited risk. Numerous mechanisms were introduced to limit kiting such as summon etc but this was only to stop kiting in specific areas.. to be fair you were limited to non dungeons generally but XP was always easily and immediately available.
Ultimately you either stop it mechanically, make it undesirable or clearly significantly less XP efficient. Personally I think you should get the same XP solo as in a 6 man group (e.g. if you get say 240 XP for killing a mob solo you get 240 in a group of 6 not 40) and a modifier that reduces rare loot drops the less people in a group… so want that ultra rare its proportionally more likely to drop as a group of 6 than solo. I used to port around EQ in a cycle killing “named” mobs for drops, your only competition was others doing the same.
If kiting is easy, faster XP and loot all to yourself then people will simply create those classes.. meaning less people to group with. IMO the game needs to maximise the number of people wanting to group and kiting reduces this but I still think it should be possible but certainly you should not get the same XP and loot to promote grouping.
If kiting is in the game which I think it will be and it’s not hamstrung XP and loot wise then I think on the whole it will be bad for the game.
Still it’s VR and I say let them get on with it as they know more about game design and obviously understand the downsides of Kiting so I suspect they will make grouping much more desirable from the two things that really matter.. XP/Loot. If its easy fast XP and exclusive loot then I'm afraid i'll be tempted to the Dark Side....
IMO this is an example of tedious gameplay over hard game play.
I hope npc AI is better than this, tbh. 4 mobs running around in a circle chasing someone who is hitting them = mobs so stupid the species would be extinct.
If someone was throwing rocks at you and they were so fast you could not ever reach them, would you keep chasing them and getting hit by rocks for 15 minutes? I sure hope not. Even animals are smart enough to run away. If there are 4 of them, why chase directly behind? one go left, one go right and he cannot circle. AT LEAST, pick up the rocks and throw them back. If he were backpeddling, he may well trip, but certainly slow down. Again, if you cant figure how to get to him, you figure how to get away.
Vanguard had... triginting (30 mobs at a time - thank you Alch for having the patience to do this almost every night.) This was VERY useful for collecting the souls needed for the epics. While killing the mobs one at a time would have taken much longer, this was so boring and meaningless whoever was doing it would have the sorc kiting while the rest of the full group stood at the side, sometimes one person with several accounts tabbed. after mobs were killed everyone ran around to loot then go back afk. It would have been better to have taken 20 hours of playing the game to collect the souls then 20 hours of triginting or several hundred hours of playing the game to get them.
alephen said:IMO this is an example of tedious gameplay over hard game play.
I hope npc AI is better than this, tbh. 4 mobs running around in a circle chasing someone who is hitting them = mobs so stupid the species would be extinct.
If someone was throwing rocks at you and they were so fast you could not ever reach them, would you keep chasing them and getting hit by rocks for 15 minutes? I sure hope not. Even animals are smart enough to run away. If there are 4 of them, why chase directly behind? one go left, one go right and he cannot circle. AT LEAST, pick up the rocks and throw them back. If he were backpeddling, he may well trip, but certainly slow down. Again, if you cant figure how to get to him, you figure how to get away.
As logical as your argument is, this is actually not true. Humans act this way IRL (especially when enraged or affraid). You see it a lot in boxing matches where one guy is clearly outmatched but still chases the other guy around the ring whilst getting pummeled in the face until the get knocked out. The only difference here is that the NPCs have an exorbitant amount of health to make it a video game.
Madae said:zoltar said:5. Feign death. Mob drops to the ground, pretending to be dead & preventing the player from attacking it. The player must get within melee range to reveal the mob's status. If the player moves away a certain distance, the mob jumps up and then goes in to the run away mode.
Interesting concept, but would probably end up being predictable to the point of not at all mattering anymore. Would you get experience for making them do this? Double for killing them again? Implementing this sounds like it would be quite the endeavor to get right rather than making it just another tedious process to finish the job.
Hmm, what if the mob appeared to die. What if it had no loot. What if you turned to walk away and 3 seconds later it charged without warning. What if that was a random effect for certain class NPC's. That would be fun!
Blood
rocketmagnet said:If kiting is easy, faster XP and loot all to yourself then people will simply create those classes.. meaning less people to group with. IMO the game needs to maximise the number of people wanting to group and kiting reduces this but I still think it should be possible but certainly you should not get the same XP and loot to promote grouping.
Kiting was never better exp than grouping. I played a necromancer for years and have kited mobs in all different areas. Grouping was always faster exp. The only thing kiting was good for was if you knew you needed loot from something and didnt want to roll.
Can't say I agree there Porygon. If you were a group only class when you were not in a group you earned Zero XP/hr when you take this into account unless you had a regular group crew your average XP per hour didn't even come close to what you could earn Quad or Swarm kiting. There is no or little XP dead time really with clarity etc just log in and start grinding XP instead of sitting about in a group queue or kite XP while you wait for a group, heck as a Necro your never Mana limited and could kill constantly or even go to bed while your pet killed for you in early EQ :).
Getting a good group and into a rhythm took time hence why people used to play solid for stupidly long hours once they got a good group. With my Kiting solo class any free time I can log in and grind XP for an hour with no real risk and gain XP and loot, so overall a solo class is much easier to level as on balance you've got much less XP dead time.
rocketmagnet said:Can't say I agree there Porygon. If you were a group only class when you were not in a group you earned Zero XP/hr when you take this into account unless you had a regular group crew your average XP per hour didn't even come close to what you could earn Quad or Swarm kiting. There is no or little XP dead time really with clarity etc just log in and start grinding XP instead of sitting about in a group queue or kite XP while you wait for a group, heck as a Necro your never Mana limited and could kill constantly or even go to bed while your pet killed for you in early EQ :).
Getting a good group and into a rhythm took time hence why people used to play solid for stupidly long hours once they got a good group. With my Kiting solo class any free time I can log in and grind XP for an hour with no real risk and gain XP and loot, so overall a solo class is much easier to level as on balance you've got much less XP dead time.
You could also argue that for tanks and healers (and pulling classes) it was significantly easier to get a group than it was for pure dps classes.
The point was that it was never more efficient to solo RATHER than to group.
Draygon said:I would prefer that there not be kiting. I think it was an unintentional thing in EQ and they made moves to make it much less effective eventually (reduction of DOT efficiency when pursuing, etc). We don’t need a one-for-one equivalents of all things EQ in Pantheon. What should be done is to take the things which made EQ great and challenging, pushing for grouping and social interactions. I am not against soloing but it should be a progression which is much slower than grouping (diminishing returns). I did a considerable amount of soloing on EQ due to time constraints so it’s not like I have a hate on for soloing. Again, it should be a much slower XP gain than when grouped (assuming the preference of the game designers is on grouping).
I definitely don’t want swam kiting when bards show up (sorry bards) as this was a royal pain in EQ when a single player tied up a pile of mobs, not leaving much for others. Ideally, the devs will find that right balance while pushing the players in the direction which the game is being designed for. I feel confident that lessons were learned over the years from the variety of MMO’s out there and we will see some great design decisions being made.
The removal of it made it more boring.
rocketmagnet said:Ultimately you either stop it mechanically, make it undesirable or clearly significantly less XP efficient.
Not having leveling revolve around endlessly farming XP on mob kills would help reduce this issue as well. Who finds mindless grinding mobs for hours on end fun? xD
Naunet said:rocketmagnet said:Ultimately you either stop it mechanically, make it undesirable or clearly significantly less XP efficient.Not having leveling revolve around endlessly farming XP on mob kills would help reduce this issue as well. Who finds mindless grinding mobs for hours on end fun? xD
you might be surprised!