Can we report the Baldesion Arsenal discord group?

[Adrestia]

One thing I can be sure with all of this, is that this game community is too toxic to have public raids. Some premade think they own the place and don't want to acknowledge other people equal right to entry. And some pug/other pple not premade don't want to acknowledge the right to premade to entry.

Everyone has equal right to get in. It's like people just don't talk to each other and just barge in and then slash at each other troats.

With that we may not see public dungeons. Even if it may be different since it would requiere less people in.

Maybe a solution to that though would be to not have a restricted number of people being able to get in. This I don't get. It's supposed to be public/entry for all, and the limit is 52 or something. I guess it's the usual problem of capacity but still... Here we are.

Thing about BA is it's not really anything like a "public dungeon." Eureka proper is much closer. BA lacks objectives for multiple separate groups to do and expects everyone to form up together. If the true design is that we're just supposed to make a ragtag team out of everyone who enters and the players in the area are obligated by some code to invite every single person who zones in, obligated to spend resources raising them, etc., then how is it anything but Duty Finder? At that point it's really the same thing but with the expectation that players do all the inviting, and the penalty that no matchmaking is done to ensure a viable party composition with enough of each role to complete their expected duties.

The closest analog to a "public dungeon" is really outdoor Eureka. It compares reasonably well to a revered public dungeon like Sebilis


https://wiki.project1999.com/Old_Sebilis

Basically every labeled area on that map is an independent objective with its own purpose for being. This is your "heat box farm" in the same zone as your "reflect farm" in the same zone as your "NM prep party." Your group, of any size of your choosing, has its own little pocket of something to do (which may be contested by other players), but you're still in a shared public map so if your party needs raises, or someone else's shouts for support, you can reach each other for that sort of thing.

But what about the raid targets in the zone? Trakanon down there at location 4 on the floor 2 map? That's your "public raid" target. You'd bring a few groups, maybe 20-60 people depending on the skill level of your guild and on who was available, and so would the other guilds who were interesting in trying. At that point, it was a fight to be the first guild to perform an aggressive action on the boss. If a raid who did *not* get first aggro attempted to kill the boss and take the loot, they could be reported to a GM for breaking the rules. This was brutal. Most guilds for most targets would just try to be there first with a holding party strong enough to aggro it and stay alive until the rest of their raid arrived. Some would intentionally train the other guilds with surrounding mobs to try to get them killed. What absolutely never, and I really mean never, happened, was that two separate raids would help each other kill the boss and share the loot. If your raid leader thought the other group might wipe, you'd stay there to pull the boss when they died. If your raid leader felt that wasn't gonna happen, you'd move on to the next target. Going one step further, sometimes there was a progression in an expansion wherein your guild had to kill one raid boss several times before you could even attempt another raid boss (either because the first boss dropped keys, or because you really needed the gear). In practice, what this meant was that the top uberguilds on a server would go back and kill old targets they did not need any loot from for no purpose other than denying any other guilds even the chance to come compete at the higher tier content.

So outdoor Eureka is the "light" version of that. Everyone gets shared credit for raid boss kills, so there's not much reason to try to exclude people who aren't your tribe from helping to kill them. So great, outdoor Eureka has made a modern, more tame version of a "public dungeon" with "public raid targets".

So what's the deal with Baldesion Arsenal then? Well, it's a "raid zone" more akin to something like Vex Thal.


Every numbered spot on that map is a raid target. The trash is designed to be fought by a large raid. There is literally nothing to do here if you're not part of a large group. Sound familiar? Yep, that's the Baldesion Arsenal model all right.
So how was Vex Thal handled? Well first of all, the higher tier guilds on the server were monopolizing every Emperor Ssraeshza spawn, a boss in a completely different zone who dropped per-player keys needed to enter Vex Thal. So right off the bat, if you wanted to get in, you left your guild and your friends and joined a top tier uberguild, or you accepted that it was going to be months of trying your best to snipe a few Emp kills out from under the noses of the uberguilds. Good luck, because they had every resource under the sun. Even if you got first aggro and got to try, you were probably going to wipe, and the other guild was going to walk in and kill the boss, preventing you from getting any practice. And what they certainly were not doing was sharing their strategies with you. Anyone who got caught doing so was risking their guild membership and their reputation. Okay, but let's say you've spent the months, gone through that process, and gotten your entire guild keyed. Now what? Vex Thal was a first aggro zone. If my guild killed the first boss, your guild had to leave the entire zone or be punished by GMs. We won for the entire week. Game over.

Everything I just said applied to Final Fantasy XI as well. Just with more overt racism because people are stupid.

So what's the tl;dr here?
Not cooperating and sharing raid bosses is nothing new. It's not caused by "kids these days." It's not caused by "WoW players infecting my precious FFXIV." It's something that has never in the history of mainstream MMOs worked. Baldesion Arsenal as a "public dungeon" was a fundamentally flawed idea (even though I love the zone itself and think it's really fun . . . once you get in). Eureka proper already is the public dungeon, it's just mostly outdoors. If you want a public dungeon, ask for more Eureka. If you want a public raid, go to university, double major in Sociology and Game Development, minor in Psychology, finish a PhD or two, and make that game. We'll wait.

[Lacan]

I think the "no one owns the portals" defense has some holes in it. You're not considering that when a premade group isn't in the instance, no one wants to even touch the portals. The random players don't even think of trying to group up and attempt BA on their own. The only time anyone is suddenly interested in the portals is when a group is there and planning to go in.

These players that say they saw a portal and just wanted to go inside to help are telling a tale if you ask me. :v Wonder why they only ever get an itch to experiment with the portals when 56 other players happen to be trying to do the same content. Sounds like quite a coincidence.

[Alucard135]

Just because you're not saying it doesn't mean other people aren't, and those are the sorts of people I wouldn't want to join a discord with. And because of those attitudes, I don't find it terribly difficult to believe that they play by the rules in discord because they want to be part of the group but they let loose in game where it's up to reports and GMs only to stop them.

What you're saying would be true back in the first two weeks of Hydatos release. But now, in all the time I spent in Hydatos, I have yet to see the premade group enter act as if they own the portals and are bossing people around. In fact, I see the opposite happening quite often. Just yesterday, a player that was known for sniping many runs have been rallying up people in shout chat telling them to take a portal if they can, just because they knew there's a premade there. What did the premade group say in shout chat? nothing. In fact even on VC on discord they said "The sniper is not breaking any TOS, don't engage with them in shout chat". Others in the instance of course replied back to them, but they were not in the premade group. And the main reason the sniper was doing that, is because they were kicked from the discord group breaking the rules of not sniping portals from other runs (even though they got the mount with the discord group help lol).

What did the sniper accomplish by doing that? They got two new players that had no idea what's going on killed and deleved (one of them took one portal from the first set and the other took a support group portal). The sniper made it sound in shout chat as if BA is like an event that just started and everyone should jump in to give it a try. And didn't even mention that the premades are going for an Ozma clear and it will get a new player killed easily. And on top of that, after AV was killed, the new player that took one support portal obviously died. The sniper then started saying in yell chat "this guy that died is new. You guys should res him". I really felt bad for the new player that got trolled by that sniper. They didn't even have their Eurekan weapon and most likely took the portal because the sniper was shouting all the time that people should jump in and try it, while the premade group said nothing in response. The group got the clear in the end and more than 10 players got their mount.


So what do I see from this? The discord group helps new players clear daily and get the mount, while the other side that is advocating sniping a portal from a premade got a lot of new players killed.

[Mixt]

Actually there are SOME people who do try going in even when there isn't already a group there.

I should know, i'm one of them.

Problem is there are not enough of these people, so typically you only end up with maybe 5 to 8 people, nowhere near enough to actually attempt the content.

So yeah, there are people who do go in even without an premade group in the instance, there just aren't enough of them to get anywhere.

Stuck in the entry hall every single freaking time

[Alucard135]

Actually there are SOME people who do try going in even when there isn't already a group there.

I should know, i'm one of them.

Problem is there are not enough of these people, so typically you only end up with maybe 5 to 8 people, nowhere near enough to actually attempt the content.

So yeah, there are people who do go in even without an premade group in the instance, there just aren't enough of them to get anywhere.

Stuck in the entry hall every single freaking time

I also did that many times before. And as you said, there aren't enough people. You barely have at most two full parties and they just leave after. And if it wasn't for discord, BA would mostly be dominated by big FC's (world first was a well known FC on Aether) or hardcore raid link shells. And the same problem would start even if discord didn't exist. What discord did was make BA accessible to a huge number of players (unlike what SE was intending).

[jameseoakes]

What you're saying would be true back in the first two weeks of Hydatos release. But now, in all the time I spent in Hydatos, I have yet to see the premade group enter act as if they own the portals and are bossing people around. In fact, I see the opposite happening quite often. Just yesterday, a player that was known for sniping many runs have been rallying up people in shout chat telling them to take a portal if they can, just because they knew there's a premade there. What did the premade group say in shout chat? nothing. In fact even on VC on discord they said "The sniper is not breaking any TOS, don't engage with them in shout chat". Others in the instance of course replied back to them, but they were not in the premade group. And the main reason the sniper was doing that, is because they were kicked from the discord group breaking the rules of not sniping portals from other runs (even though they got the mount with the discord group help lol).

What did the sniper accomplish by doing that? They got two new players that had no idea what's going on killed and deleved (one of them took one portal from the first set and the other took a support group portal). The sniper made it sound in shout chat as if BA is like an event that just started and everyone should jump in to give it a try. And didn't even mention that the premades are going for an Ozma clear and it will get a new player killed easily. And on top of that, after AV was killed, the new player that took one support portal obviously died. The sniper then started saying in yell chat "this guy that died is new. You guys should res him". I really felt bad for the new player that got trolled by that sniper. They didn't even have their Eurekan weapon and most likely took the portal because the sniper was shouting all the time that people should jump in and try it, while the premade group said nothing in response. The group got the clear in the end and more than 10 players got their mount.


So what do I see from this? The discord group helps new players clear daily and get the mount, while the other side that is advocating sniping a portal from a premade got a lot of new players killed.

That is sad if people are spreading misinformation, can I ask how civil the group was the poor guys who followed this advice?

[Alucard135]

That is sad if people are spreading misinformation, can I ask how civil the group was the poor guys who followed this advice?

They had to leave him. I just sent him a tell telling him "Sorry you got trolled by **********, but we can't sacrifice a healer and raise you, since you're still new and would get us killed with Ozma. You can level back quick if you go to sprite island and use reflect against the sprites". I didn't get a reply back, though. So they were probably really pissed off.

I also did forget to mention that the sniper refused to party with any group in premades and our group ended up with 7 people (so we couldn't get LB3) saying "I only go solo". And once they knew about the about the one who isn't in the premade, they invited them to their party.

[AxlStream]

Maybe a solution to that though would be to not have a restricted number of people being able to get in. This I don't get. It's supposed to be public/entry for all, and the limit is 52 or something. I guess it's the usual problem of capacity but still... Here we are.

No. The issue of that is that it then becomes a zerg fest like anything else in Eureka.

[Mixt]

I also did forget to mention that the sniper refused to party with any group in premades and our group ended up with 7 people (so we couldn't get LB3) saying "I only go solo

Okay, THAT was a really dumb thing to do.

Especially considering that Healer LB3 is the one thing that allows you to raise people without Sacrifice, if you don't count the proc-based self-raise from Remembered.

[jameseoakes]

They had to leave him. I just sent him a tell telling him "Sorry you got trolled by **********, but we can't sacrifice a healer and raise you, since you're still new and would get us killed with Ozma. You can level back quick if you go to sprite island and use reflect against the sprites". I didn't get a reply back, though. So they were probably really pissed off.

I also did forget to mention that the sniper refused to party with any group in premades and our group ended up with 7 people (so we couldn't get LB3) saying "I only go solo". And once they knew about the about the one who isn't in the premade, they invited them to their party.

Understandable with the raises, they do sound like they are a resource that has to be used with great care. Quite a few people running pre-mades in these treads have been advocating a don't interact with anyone who goes in not in the pre-made but with no ill intent and that seemed unduly rude to me. Hopefully the guy doing the griefing get bored or just stops :/