Aggressive Leve Locations

[Razor]

Let me start off by saying that a good part of this might end up being a rant, but I'll go ahead and outline what the important part of this is for those who don't want to read a tl;dr.

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Some leves, in particular the defense leves, need to be further adjusted so they are not in a field of aggressive monsters. (In particular Efts because their aggro range is broken.) For a party it isn't much of a problem, but since leves are being designed for solo players, I'm narrowing this thread to a solo perspective only. It is not fair to solo players, who have no one to resurrect them when they die, to have to fend off the defense point from regular monsters instead of their leve targets. Regular monsters are much beefier than leve mobs, and make the situation very frustrating. Efts in particular are broken when SE removed the curiousity aspect (for who knows why), their old "detect" range was substantially larger than their relatively small "aggro" range and when curiousity was dropped their huge detect range became a radial aggro field.

Disclaimer A: This comes from the perspective of a Gladiator, which is one of/the least squishy classes at the moment, and is specifically designed to handle multiple monsters. I don't know how other classes get by...

Disclaimer B: I understand this is an environment full of hostile monsters, and part of the tactical aspect of this game is avoiding aggro from monsters. But being forced to stand in a hostile area for five minutes fighting monsters is not tactical, its just stupid.

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Rant:
As a gladiator, I'm not squishy so I generally have little problem with leves and the fact that I have issue with this then it must be completely impossible for any job other than archer. Lv40 Leves introduce the "defend the area" objectives, which are usually pretty easy because the mobs die fast and the spawn time between "waves" (1-2 monsters =/= a wave but whatever). Difficulty of the leve is not the issue here though, it is the location of the leve thats an issue.

For me doing 1 star would be just as hard as doing 5 star because of the simple reason that the monsters AROUND the defend objective are aggressive and meaty. The radius you can stand in for these leves is usually of a decent size to stand in and so its generally possible for me to find a bush or tiny corner to stand in where the Efts can't use their satelite imaging service to find me from 30ft away.

Problem solved, right? Just stand away from Efts noob, yes? No. The monsters you have to fight are ranged/magic. That means unless I am an archer I cannot fight them from the ONLY spot in the bloody area that is free of aggro and forces me to move into them otherwise die a horrible death. At this point one or both or the entire forest moves and aggros me, at which point is nearly impossible for me to survive. As a gladiator, it is nearly impossible to survive. I have Sentinel, Rampart II, Guard, all those lovely abilities and I can't survive. What does that mean? That must mean every other class dies a horrible violent death over and over again on these leves.

Root of the problem: The curiousity system made it so monsters high up on the difficulty chain: (Drakes, Piestes, Efts, etc) would "notice" you from afar but would hold their ground and watch you unless you provoked them. Now that the curiousity system was entirely removed (different thread entirely, so I won't rage about how annoyed I am at that) the "detect" range monsters used to had became full aggro ranges. Which now makes those particularly difficult monsters (who still lay sprawled about in crossroads and bottlenecks) very difficult to avoid. And sure, as a 47 Gladiator I can kill a r44-46 Eft, but it becomes stupid with several r50 gnat levemobs on me. I'm at the point now where I almost don't even get these leves from the counter, the gil they reward you with is hardly enough to cover the 40-50k of repairs I have to pay just to finish the bloody mission.
/Rant.

EDIT: Let me just say again that the purpose of this is to address the issue SOLO players have with this. I don't really care if you can do the leve fine with your Linkshell because so can I. This is about the woes of trying to defend the area solo. I'm also not suggesting all leves be void of aggroing monsters (although I wouldn't complain, either) because that adds a little spice and strategy to your objective. But this one is just so frustrating I could no longer resist the urge to rant.

[Azurymber]

This won't get fixed till they can re-balance jobs (1.20 +) and then after that reshuffle mobs and mob levels.

How do I know this? Simple... coeurl step. Its basically just a lazy way to avoid having to go and fix leves every time they move mobs around.
Why do I say that?: Because there are almost no normal nodes near aggro mobs, There are already abilities in the game to take agro off you which cost guild points, and because they didn't bother to take NMs into consideration (which tend to be by normal nodes and not leve nodes)

In other words, expect your leves to be broken for months.

edit: Let me give an example as to why they cant fix this.
A quest has you kill rank 28-ish roselings in humblehearth.
Bot and Mining leves in humbehearth have you cut and mine right by the roses
the roses agro anyone under 33 or 34ish
To fix this they either have to change the leves which are semi-randomized. This would mean leves wouldn't use up all the space in the areas
... or, they would have to move the quest mobs away from leve nodes and redesign the quest
To go through every leve and quest in this game and make sure that there are no leves near agro mobs would be too difficult, especially since they will prob change mobs and spawn locations once the games battle system is updated.
So they just leave it, and give you coeurl step. And if your a meelee, just remember which leves suck and dont do them :x

[Murugan]

So... that's why in the last patch they moved the location of about 20+ guildleves and a bunch of NM's?

You are ridiculous.

[Deminia]

I guess I am of a slightly differing opinion. I don't mind the presence of aggressive mobs near levequest destinations for DoW/DoM as long as the mobs are of similar rank to the mobs in the levequest range. I do have a problem with much higher level mobs (far too high to kill solo and even quite challenging for a party to tackle) being too close to the leve area, however. Also, if there are aggro mobs near the leve location, they should not be a huge pack that a solo player can't either skillfully avoid or at least quickly fight first to clear the area. Dodging aggro is challenging and can be fun but should not become ridiculously hard to the point where you spend your entire levequest timer dealing with those mobs.

They did a nice job relocating some of the levequest locations in the last patch and hopefully they will continue to do so.

[Azurymber]

So... that's why in the last patch they moved the location of about 20+ guildleves and a bunch of NM's?

You are ridiculous.

have you actually done the leves or are you just going by what other people have said? Because there are tons of leves with problems. And if what your saying is true why is SE wasting time on stealth for gatherers?

I mean you can't have it both ways.
either. 1. SE is wasting time and incompetent
or 2. SE realizes there is a problem with mob placement and will be int he future, and has created a way to get around it.

[Razor]

To go through every leve and quest in this game and make sure that there are no leves near agro mobs would be too difficult, especially since they will prob change mobs and spawn locations once the games battle system is updated.
So they just leave it, and give you coeurl step. And if your a meelee, just remember which leves suck and dont do them :x

Unfortunately any kind of stealth ability wouldn't help this particular leve "Nine Ivies Is A Stage" because its a DoM/DoW leve that has you defend a location from gnats for 5:00. And although they are semi-randomized, I've done this leve about 5 or 6 times, sometimes solo sometimes in a party, and the node has always been in one of three places. ALL THREE places are "open"ish (the copy and pasted circular points with a tree in the center) areas that include 2-3 R40 Buzzards and 2 R44-46 Black Efts (that share a spawn with a R45 Vulturetrap). So in this particular example, my request would be to not put this node in the middle of efts mostly because their aggro radius is broken. And they are hard to solo even near 50.

So... that's why in the last patch they moved the location of about 20+ guildleves and a bunch of NM's?

You are ridiculous.

I don't particularly recall them moving any NMs, at least none of the ones I've fought although I could understand if some of them were moved. *cough*DaddyLonglegs*cough*.

EDIT: I stand corrected, I'm fairly certain they moved Mosshorn's spawn because he was a <insert language would that would be censored>

I don't know if they so much moved the guildleves either, just gave the leve more potential locations.

[Azurymber]

Unfortunately any kind of stealth ability wouldn't help this particular leve "Nine Ivies Is A Stage" because its a DoM/DoW leve that has you defend a location from gnats for 5:00. And although they are semi-randomized, I've done this leve about 5 or 6 times, sometimes solo sometimes in a party, and the node has always been in one of three places. ALL THREE places are "open"ish (the copy and pasted circular points with a tree in the center) areas that include 2-3 R40 Buzzards and 2 R44-46 Black Efts (that share a spawn with a R45 Vulturetrap). So in this particular example, my request would be to not put this node in the middle of efts mostly because their aggro radius is broken. And they are hard to solo even near 50.



I don't particularly recall them moving any NMs, at least none of the ones I've fought although I could understand if some of them were moved. *cough*DaddyLonglegs*cough*.

EDIT: I stand corrected, I'm fairly certain they moved Mosshorn's spawn because he was a <insert language would that would be censored>

I don't know if they so much moved the guildleves either, just gave the leve more potential locations.

I realize that. my point is moving the node or moving mobs around is too much work for SE. The stealth thing is like saying it takes too long for them to actually fix the problem. They are going to move mobs around again soon so just moving a node is a temporary solution. Gatherers get -really- screwed because you always get the same 2 leves, so they gave them stealth. DoW/DoM get 3 out of 6+ leves in each area and can actually kill the mobs. I realize its unfair but my point is i think its too difficult for SE to actually fix it. Again. if they fix it now, next time they shuffle mobs around they have to fix it again.

[Razor]

I realize that. my point is moving the node or moving mobs around is too much work for SE. The stealth thing is like saying it takes too long for them to actually fix the problem. They are going to move mobs around again soon so just moving a node is a temporary solution. Gatherers get -really- screwed because you always get the same 2 leves, so they gave them stealth. DoW/DoM get 3 out of 6+ leves in each area and can actually kill the mobs. I realize its unfair but my point is i think its too difficult for SE to actually fix it. Again. if they fix it now, next time they shuffle mobs around they have to fix it again.

Ah, yeah. I understand where you're coming from and I agree with that. I figure when/if they redo zones it will require leves to be entirely recoded which at the current point would be terribly annoying. (Probably why they are pushing leves to the side and adding new ways of EXP. Not only gives the players some variety but avoids the inevitable mountain of recoding when the zones get modified.) DoL do get screwed vigoriously so I think its a good temp fix for them, and 99% of DoM/DoW leves are fine as they are now. There's just still those small handful that make me want to ragequit. And hopefully 1.19+ will see a little tlc given to those neglected leves.

[MariyaShidou]

Disclaimer A: This comes from the perspective of a Gladiator, which is one of/the least squishy classes at the moment, and is specifically designed to handle multiple monsters. I don't know how other classes get by...

Let's just say my PUG and CON handle it just fine. If anything, clear the Eft before guarding leve location.

[Mikita]

There have been many people calling for more of a sense of danger when out in the field, and Yoshi P did address this in one of his letters... so this is basically what we got. Since 1.18 there are more aggressive monsters all over.

I do admit that it can be somewhat frustrating at times, but it sure makes things a lot more exciting.

The other day I was doing Dunesfolk for Dinner by myself.
While fighting 2 Blotched Mongrels for the leve, I was suddenly engaged from behind by a Dwarf Diremite and a Miteling. Desperately casting cures on myself and blasting away with AoE attacks in between, I barely survived the fight. But it was memorable and exciting.

Still, I think I'll follow Mariya's advice and pay more attention to what's around before I engage leve targets -- making sure to clear nearby aggressive monsters first. ^^;