[dev 1026] Petition against proposed claim system and portions of new party system.

[Naqaj]

You can always heal that person fighting it and buff them, unless it is an NM they are fighting.

Not an option for non-healers. Also besides the point. A restrictive claim system puts up an artificial barrier that prevents people from just joining up and helping each other. Which becomes especially important once the game moves to the PS3 where people need to be able to interact with each other without having to go through a bunch of menues first to form a party.

A possible alternative to this would be system where joining an ongoing fight simply does not take anything away from the people who "claimed" the mob first. The joining party would need to cross a certain threshold of participation before they become eligible for rewards of any kind. In this case, SP/EXP/items wouldn't be split, but the additional participants would be awarded from a seperate, additional SP/EXP/item pool.

[Xzen]

Not an option for non-healers. Also besides the point. A restrictive claim system puts up an artificial barrier that prevents people from just joining up and helping each other. Which becomes especially important once the game moves to the PS3 where people need to be able to interact with each other without having to go through a bunch of menues first to form a party.

A possible alternative to this would be system where joining an ongoing fight simply does not take anything away from the people who "claimed" the mob first. The joining party would need to cross a certain threshold of participation before they become eligible for rewards of any kind. In this case, SP/EXP/items wouldn't be split, but the additional participants would be awarded from a seperate, additional SP/EXP/item pool.

The system you seem to have in mind sounds like good system but then the looting and sp/xp would need to be awarded the way you have outlined. =)

[Naqaj]

The system you seem to have in mind sounds like good system but then the looting and sp/xp would need to be awarded the way you have outlined. =)

Well of course. Mob claiming and loot system are intrinsically connected. If you change one, you must consider the effects on the other and compensate.

If they allow multiple parties to engage and "help" defeat an NM, I think most people would welcome it if each party gets their own loot table. I don't see why only one rare item should be awarded to the first party that claimed or the party that does the most damage. Why not, for example, give each party that participates a certain amount, say at least 20-30% of damage, a chance of getting some rare loot, and those who merely participates can get a chance at common loot. Each winning party can each get their own Ura skin for example. But most likely, everyone will get nothing cuz the drop rate for it is so crappy...~.~

Exactly, that's pretty much the idea. Don't punish people who want to help you, encourage them.

[Kazimir]

One problem with the proposed system: it doesn't allow ad-hoc cooperative play without formal party forming.
More simply: if I ran past you and see you're struggling with a mob, I can't actually help you kill it.

That's not really an excuse for having a poor claiming system. Besides, allowing things like that only works in games that have only instanced content, which this game does not. In XI there was a "Call for help" option due to this, and they could implement something similar. Hopefully not in a location where someone can hit it on accident. In fact they could combine the call for help feature with this suggestion you made:

A possible alternative to this would be system where joining an ongoing fight simply does not take anything away from the people who "claimed" the mob first. The joining party would need to cross a certain threshold of participation before they become eligible for rewards of any kind. In this case, SP/EXP/items wouldn't be split, but the additional participants would be awarded from a seperate, additional SP/EXP/item pool.

In general a good idea, though I would suggest a cap on the number of mobs or mob groups that can be claimed at a time. Perhaps 3? Without that cap, or with a cap too large, open world mob zerging could be an issue.

I considered that this could be an issue. However with the changes to the battle system/combat we are supposed to have more engaging battles. To me this would mean fights that last longer than a few seconds that actually require attention. This would make it so mob zerging would be very difficult or impossible. I'm taking a more wait and see approach to this issue because I don't know how it would work until I know what the changes to combat are.

Much too early to conjecture. I'm sure the dev team knows about the issues involved and I think the majority of the players would adapt to whatever system is in place.

But I understand instancing is usually only about 1 group per instance. Where do you get the idea that multiple parties will be allowed in massive dungeons? They said sought after items will be instanced so I don't think there will be much drama in the open world on who gets the aldgoat horn...

That's an assumption I'd rather not hope for. I personally feel it's best to get your opinions out before a system is implemented. It makes it easier for them to change things not yet implemented if they agree with you.

Instances can be for more than one group. An example of this would be Dynamis from FFXI. You buy a specific item from an NPC then you trade the item to everyone who will be joining, all players trade said item to a spot and that allows them to enter. I don't know or assume that they will put something like this in the game. That comment was more so because the system would allow them to if they chose to in the future. Also, yes they did say sought after items will be instanced, they did not say all sought after items are going to be from instancing. I doubt with them adding even more NM's in the game they'll change all current items into instances and make all current and future open world NM's worthless.

If they allow multiple parties to engage and "help" defeat an NM, I think most people would welcome it if each party gets their own loot table. I don't see why only one rare item should be awarded to the first party that claimed or the party that does the most damage. Why not, for example, give each party that participates a certain amount, say at least 20-30% of damage, a chance of getting some rare loot, and those who merely participates can get a chance at common loot. Each winning party can each get their own Ura skin for example. But most likely, everyone will get nothing cuz the drop rate for it is so crappy...~.~

I doubt most would welcome it. Allowing people to zerg NM's would just make all the fights way too easy and boring. It would be the opposite of what most people want.

Another issue is people “helping” to fight an NM or mob when that person does not want help. If I try to fight something difficult for the fun of the challenge I don't want someone running up to “help” and ruin it. I can't count how many times this has happened to me in WoW.

[Naqaj]

That's not really an excuse for having a poor claiming system. Besides, allowing things like that only works in games that have only instanced content, which this game does not.

I agree, it's not an excuse, it's in fact a damn good reason to come up with something better. Supposedly MMOs are about playing together with other people. Why is there a system that prevents that?

And I disagree on you second observation, it works very well in the open world part if you design it properly. It has been done before, I don't see a reason why SE couldn't do it as well, if not better.

[Kazimir]

I agree, it's not an excuse, it's in fact a damn good reason to come up with something better. Supposedly MMOs are about playing together with other people. Why is there a system that prevents that?

There isn't a system that prevents playing with other people. Parties and Alliances = playing with other people. You don't have to have a system where someone can jump in on a mob whether you want them to or not just to play with others.

And I disagree on you second observation, it works very well in the open world part if you design it properly. It has been done before, I don't see a reason why SE couldn't do it as well, if not better.

How would you design it to prevent people from fighting mobs someone or their group is fighting when they don't want help? Do you have an example of it working well?

As I've said before, people "helping" on mobs and NM's, regardless of how SP/Loot is distributed is unwanted by anyone who actually wants a challenge.

[Naqaj]

How would you design it to prevent people from fighting mobs someone or their group is fighting when they don't want help? Do you have an example of it working well?

As I've said before, people "helping" on mobs and NM's, regardless of how SP/Loot is distributed is unwanted by anyone who actually wants a challenge.

Short version:
If they don't need any help, why would I interfere?
If they do need help, why wouldn't they want me to provide it?

If you want to have a challenging fight, design the mob in a way that it can react to the numbers of players, so that a player that joins you doesn't change the level of challenge.


Long version:

One way to approach this is to design situations so that you simply wouldn't want to not play along other people around you.
DCUO did that by designing it so that players who were in the same place usually had the same objectives, so they would naturally want to just work together.
GW2 is taking that basic idea further and pretty much designs the whole open world PvE experience around that premise.

If you really are all about the challenge, you can either design monsters with the ability to scale with player numbers, or you situate them in a place where you're in control over the fight parameters. How many participants, what roles, what rank/gear quality etc. Instances or arenas are the best place for that kind of setup. Without that level of control, you're already watering down the challenge by introducing uncertain variables. Is it a challenge to try kill the big dude with just 4 people? Is it still a challenge if you bring 5?

Is my point clear? Do you get what I mean? That is a situation where it's all about the mechanics, so you'd be better served to isolate it from any outside intervention in the first place, and set up a frame where your achievement actually becomes measurable.

That is a very specific situation though. I don't think it's feasible to extrapolate it on every encounter you'd run into in the open world. Out there, we're all out for the same goals. We shouldn't ever have to think twice about helping out a fellow adventurer. That's the whole point of the game, isn't it? To grasp the opportunity for adventure when it presents itself.

[Azurewrath]

Honestly, I agree. A little bit of instanced stuff is okay. That way dungeons can be interesting. Pieces of ground falling behind you so you're stuck moving forward so you have to think before you move on, and move with your whole party, communicate, coordinate, etc (In non instance this would trap everyone else in other groups behind).

Other than stuff like that, and a few instances (Dynamis style, or even like other MMO instances, this wouild be a cool addition, but shouldn't be the main bulk of content like in most other MMOs)

I don't like too much instanced content. I play MMOs to play with others. Not just my party either. It's the thrill of seeing random people I've never met before run past, to make the world feel more alive. Conversations I have no part in happening on the side. In real life, the world doesn't revolve around you, and neither should it in an MMO (Instances do)

I want to see people who arent as experienced as me fail, or prevail, and I want to see people more experienced than me fail and prevail. Something to strive for.

With instances, you don't get to go in with these advanced groups, you know they go in, win it using the same strategy as always, then pop out and you never get to see them in actions.

I'm totally for more open world content.