Adds based on party size?

Suggestions
#1

I noticed as of this week (I’m guessing with the latest patch as I don’t remember it before), that in a party, you will typically pull additional mobs, even though if you were solo, you would not. I found this rather frustrating. Prior to this, my friend and I would challenge ourselves to take on more difficult mobs, which we would not be able to on our own. Now, we have to continue pulling creatures we could solo, because we basically end up facing two of them. We could just not be in party together to pull single creatures, but then we don’t share experience evenly, and we are trying to stay close to the same level. In addition, the adds can come from really far away, which seems broken. If I pull something 50 feet in front of me, I shouldn’t get a second creature attacking me from 50 feet behind. We had something pretty close to that happen yesterday.

SUGS:

  1. I do think it sometimes makes sense for multiples to pull if they are near each other, but there should be a range of effect. The adds shouldn’t come from far away
  2. It feels very unrealistic for adds to happen based on parties. Why would creatures act differently depending on whether the two attackers are “in a party” or not? If they pull others, they should do it for solo too.
  3. If the goal is to limit power-leveling, then limit experience based on level difference.
  4. I’m disappointed that I can no longer tackle something higher level when grouped with my friend, as we now have to face two of them, whereas I couldn’t have taken one when alone.

Just suggestions. You guys are awesome and are making great choices. Just wanted to share my thoughts.

2 Likes
#2

Something I was thinking about was if the mobs could do a “Call for help” when they started to get low to pull other mobs in the area. This way people could tackle the higher end stuff and at least get it kind of damaged before the other mob gets there. This effect could continue based on the party size.

#3

I wanted to add to this:

Currently it appears that it works as follows:
Solo player - One creature pulls
Two Players - Two creatures pull
Three Players - Two creatures pull
Four Players - Three creatures pull

As it is right now, playing this game without a musketeer is miserable. As a runemage I can kill a ‘Red level’ mob ONLY if it’s health is low enough that I can do the damage to kill it before it reaches me, if I miss a spell or two i’m likely just dead. As a warrior, my fiance can barely kill a ‘Yellow level’ creature solo. Watching my buddy play Musketeer, he can just solo 2-3 ‘Red level’ creatures because the healing just makes it so they have unlimited sustain.

It feels frustrating that the disparity between classes out in the world is so high. In a dungeon I would expect to need a Tank / Healer to be able to deal with the damage being output, I don’t expect this kind of damage out in the world (outside of avoidable AoE, which I think makes sense to be punishing because it is avoidable). As another note, so far in the leveling dungeons we’ve just had the musketeer do all the tanking because it’s easy for them to get AoE threat by just healing a ton. It’s crazy to me that they can so easily be a Tank / Healer / and DPS.

In my head if we group together, maybe we can actually kill a ‘Red level’ creature without it just being a race between my health and theirs, but because of this mechanic we can’t. Instead we pull two creatures and then just die because we lose the health race.

Honestly if creatures out in the world were much less punishing this mechanic wouldn’t bother me, and I would find it to be enjoyable. But with how the game is currently tuned playing in the world without a musketeer is just miserable, and this mechanic makes it worse.

#4

Agreed, Decoy! Calling for help would make more sense, as it’s how real creatures might behave.

#5

I get what you’re saying but there are ways around that for both mage (polymorph) and the ranger (trap). Warriors have a large shield to better handle multiple mobs but it makes them rely on the dps of the team to do so.

#6

I agree with Allen.

Another possibility is, as found in other online games, that some mobs are social and some are not. That way the party can select the mobs they attack based on whether or not they can expect adds.

3 Likes
#7

Like I said, if I play perfectly and don’t miss a spell I can handle it, and we’ll live. However, a Musketeer doesn’t have to play perfectly, they can just load up their Heal turrent, throw out a HoT, throw out a heal circle and just heal through basically anything by a “Star / Implossible level mob”.

Generally they only even need one of those three heals to hit to out heal the damage done by creatures. Meanwhile I die after like 3 melee swings because I failed at casting my follow up Ice Lance once so they creature didn’t die before it reached me.

And even with the large shield, it’s again a race between our health and theirs. Musketeers don’t have to race, they can just sustain for an unlimited time against world creatures, and even bosses. We’ve had dungeon bosses where the tank goes down due to being out of line of sight to the musketeers, then I die as a Runemage due to no tank, and then the musketeer just soloed the boss because they can Tank / DPS while doing a large amount of healing.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t even think that musketeers or overpowered, I just think the sustain combat tools for the other classes is woefully inadequate. The provoke healing talent that was shown in the talent preview may help this issue in the future, but right now I was on the verge of just decided to quit playing the game outright multiple times this weekend because every time our musketeer took a break it felt like the game was unplayable.

1 Like
#8

I do like the idea of having some monsters that are social and use that to call for help and others aren’t. However, I think the root of the issue here is that the mechanics are different based on if there is a party or not.

As for Musketeers being op, I’m not sure I’m entirely on board with that. There is a trade of for all that healing. Namely, it takes a lot longer to kill things. As a good mage (not me, I fizzle too much) or ranger you can pump out enough dps to take things down quickly. This lets you burn through 2 in the time it would take for a musketeer to kill 1. As long as you are kiting things effectively you shouldn’t take that much damage. I’m not sure how this works out for Warriors though. I assume there damage is somewhere between ranger/mage and musketeer and kiting really isn’t an option for them.

1 Like
#9

I don’t think Musketeers are OP, I think they are where other classes should get to.

Why should a Runemage need to have to perfectly cast every single runecast while kiting in order to kill a creature, but a Musketeer can just pull 3-4 and tank them all, easily out heal them, and actually do almost as much damage because their poison cleaves. With the Musketeer ult you can get briefly get 3 poison dots rolling at the same time, which can all be cleaved when creatures are in a nice pile. As a runemage I can Frosbolt 3 creatures and then icelance through all 3, which feels awesome, but is only possible in a group. The musketeer can do that all the time because they aren’t reliant on anyone else.

Really the TL:DR of my posts are that I think creatures in the world just deal way too much damage. I’m okay with needing a tank and a healer in a dungeon, and WANT that. I don’t want that out in the world.

I enjoy playing the Runemage solo. I enjoy playing the Runemage in a Warrior / Musketeer / Runemage gruop. Playing Runemage in a Runemage / Warrior group feels next to impossible, and it’s frustrating to see easy it is for the Musketeer to solo the exact same pulls we are failing at as Runemage / Warrior.

Yes we can play better, and we can perfect all of our decisions. Musketeer doesn’t have to do that, they can stand there, miss heals, face tank everything, and still live, and still kill their targets. We just have to go and try and find some low level creatures that give us only 100xp and grind those out for hours.

It’s inexcusable how wide that gap is.

#10

I think it’s just a trade off. They kill so slowly when they do that. Good runemages don’t really have a problem soloing anything in the game currently. (Granted you do have to kite, but personally I feel like a strong dps class should be like that)

2 Likes
#11

Yeah, the trade off between damage and survivability is what I was getting at.

I do see the gap you are talking about though. I think the problem is a lack of survivability in the classes that can’t heal themselves. Hopefully something in the upcoming talents patch will help to narrow that gap.

#12

Yup. My gut is that Warriors should be able to take MUCH more damage than they currently can and that dungeon bosses especially need to hit harder. This would make tanking the bosses with a musketeer impossible, but their healing would still be required.

This feedback is based on the 8 / 12 / 16 leveling dungeons and not max level. I would love to do the max level dungeons but we’ve been finding leveling the Warrior for that goal has just been not enjoyable at all. And considering the 80 hours we’ve put in so far, it’s getting a little annoying how harsh it is to level.

I could have easily leveled solo to 20 by now, but I don’t want to play without my fiance who is playing the Warrior (just so we have it at 20, she hates it and is miserable and wishes she had just leveled a musketeer) and leveling as a duo without our musketeer really has proven to be no fun at all in its difficulty. The only shining moment that keeps us leveling is that the dungeons are fun and we really look forward to max level dungeons because that kind of gameplay is just not found in other VR games right now.

Honestly right now even just changing it so a group of two players only pulls one creature would have a significant increase to the enjoyment we have while playing. We can always manually pull a second creature if we think we are up to the challenge, but it is hard to unpull a creature. I’m okay with getting 2 creatures in a three man group but it seems unnecessary for a two man group, especially if your 2 man group doesn’t have a healer.

#13

Not to nitpick, but as the OP, this thread has gotten way off topic. While I agree a discussion of class soloing capabilities is worth having (perhaps a new thread), my original suggestion was a rethink of the system that pulls multiple mobs when in party. Two weeks ago, my friend and I (both mages) could pull red creatures and sometimes stars, because working together we did more damage than solo. As of the change, we can’t do that any more.

See original post for details on my SUGS.

2 Likes
#14

On at least 2 occasions I’ve traveled with 2-4 people and chosen not to group up. We just all do damage to the creature to get a share of exp rather than pulling 2-3 at a time and being overwhelmed.

I don’t normally do this, but that it is tempting at times does highlight it’s a problem.

#15

My main is musky atm but want to do runemage and ranger.

I think they need to rework the monster levels somehow. In the tutorial I died to a redtail and it took me some attempts to get the hang of how I kill one. Overall I think the monsters, even ones with same level hit too hard for solo players. As it often becomes a race between their health and ours. This however is put into perspective because of the rapid regen players have. Usually killing same level monsters I have to wait for full health to continue and this is how I manage.

Also I don’t know if this is a bug or not but when holding an orb to reload on a musky they are able to “run”. Perhaps not to run away, I haven’t tried, but I get a speed boost.

#16

It’s not a bug, using the grip (with or without orb) is a sprint feature.

#17

Agreed @Tumoroh! The system seems broken if it actually encourages people to play together ungrouped. I’d much rather get less experience per battle but be more likely to survive. If grouping means we die more often, at the end of the day, we’d get less EXP anyway.

#18

So you’re saying that two weeks ago you didn’t pull more than one mob when you were in a party? As far as I know this mechanic should have been working for you then as well. Would you mind sharing details about the situation? What level you were, which branch you were playing on, which mobs you were fighting etc.?

As far as your concern with the mechanic itself that is something that has been brought up before. It’s definitely something we are aware of and will be taking a look at.

#19

It may have been longer than two weeks, but that feels about right. We are level 10 now. Back when we were level 8, we were in a party down in Wenderwood. We would pull Grund Wargs, Armored Wargs, Bandits and the Wenderwood Wyrms and only get one at a time. The Wargs would often howl to call for help, but that’s a very different mechanic than pulling two or three as soon as you attack. The Wyrms and the Bandits never pulled more than one. I did switch over to the Beta around the same time as I noticed the change.

#20

The additional mobs mechanic is actually several months old so I’m still pretty certain it should have been working. I’ll have to look into that.

Just to clarify you’re saying you switched to beta around the same time you noticed mobs pull additional help? So if I wanted to verify that mobs don’t pull additional help I should be in a party on the main branch?