Yesterday, I was playing the game and killing some spiders in the jungle for some experience as I wasn’t quite high enough level to finish the quest I was on.
I started chatting and killing the same mob with another player. Individually, we both could solo one mob at a time. But if we partied up, we would always pull 2 mobs no matter what, which would cause us die sometimes.
We wanted to party for shared experience and slightly easier kills (as each mob was close to the limit of our skills soloing), but we ended up just killing one mob at a time together without a party. It would have been nice to share experience better and talk through the compass when we died, but we didn’t want to have to fight two mobs at once.
I feel like 2 people should be able to party up and kill one mob. I understand pulling more with three or more people, but sometime you just want to fight one at a time, and still be in a party with a friend.
So this is an intended mechanic. When facing against a party mobs will “call for help” from other nearby monsters to prevent groups of players from steamrolling through a grind and reaping the benefits of the experience bonus with no real threat of dying.
There are a few ways to play around this mechanic. You can make use of your class’ CC abilities to help control the fight (ranger traps and runemage polymorph are especially useful since they take mobs out of a fight for a long period of time), you can find more people to party up with to better your odds and see which party member sizes provide the best odds against the number of mobs pulled, or you can each fight the same mob solo. If you choose the last option you will each receive experience and loot drop chances based on the damage dealt to the mob.
I have had this happen to a group and it annoyed us as well. The idea that you can’t partner up to fight a mob that may be too tough to fight alone but then the game forces a double pull is a bad mechanic - in my opinion. Pulls and agro should be based on proximity. The idea that a monster sees one person attacking him, looks around and tells his friends “I got this” but then calls for help when two people are in a group seems silly. It also presupposes that monsters somehow know the two people are in a party and then call for a friend to help - but just one friend. It is an artificial mechanic I think should be removed to give players freedom to choose how they want to fight. Not every fight should be a swarm fight simply because you group up. It actually can act as a disincentive to group which seems contrary to a group-based and multiplayer game.
I can add a lot more on why this is an odd mechanic but will leave that for now unless there is widespread community support for it that would require a more detailed debate.
I actually like the mechanic, as it evens out the playing field for solo and group play.
If this wasnt there, a group of 5 could easily run through much higher level areas, and get the best xp possible for killing mobs singularly, and very quickly run through killing everything and leveling quickly, also using the multiplier as well to get even better xp. Then you look at the solo player, who if they tried to attack a mob at the same level the party was killing, would get almost immediately destroyed. this would force him to fight lower level mobs for less xp, and fall behind the party fighting high level mobs with a added multiplier.
with the call for help, and group of 5(or 2) cant just team up on a strong monster, as there will be more of those high level mobs to fight as well.
So you and a friend can’t kill a monster and group up but then get killed because you just now have to fight two? I just find it nonsensical. I understand your point but I think it is reaching and that the much more common scenario is the concept of smaller groups or duo teams getting killed because of a forced mechanic that doesn’t make sense - at least to me. I know this isn’t real life but the last time I attacked wasp nest they all swarmed even though it was just me. However, if I kill a solo wasp that is separated from the others it doesn’t have magical telepathic powers that spawn another wasp to attack me.
So, its not that we couldn’t kill the two mobs together, but the point of partying up was to make it slightly easier. Soloing the mobs was on the edge of our ability each. Teaming up therefore didn’t help us at all, and hurt us if one of us made a mistake.
I don’t know how I feel about this mechanic yet in regards to if it is useful to balancing groups steamrolling higher level mobs; I just wanted to start the discussion and see if anyone else felt the way I did.
Again, I think it would make sense to get rid of this mechanic for groups of two people only. Once you have three or more, it becomes more of a steamrole. But plenty of people team up with their friend or random stranger to help kill slightly harder mobs.