A Way to Find Loot outside Missions; Outdoors Hunting; Dyna-camp Ideas etc

[Hajkster]

w00t some progress ^^

This is a wounderful sight actully

Both respawnable and nonspawnable dynacamps? =)

[Nyadach]

The Dyna-camps sound very interesting...guess its something to look forwards too. Hadn't been hunting outside for weeks till last night when we helped a lower level guy without a plane get to a mission. Was great, had forgotten the great open space, the lovely scenery, the bucket loads of adds. Ahhh hunting outdoors - gotta love it. These dyna-camps sound like a nice idea to liven up the world, which is badly needed of late as missions do get stagnent very very fast.

[Cosmik]

Originally posted by Hextorr
Cosmik: Can you change the thread name to "A Way to Find Loot outside Missions; Outdoors Hunting; Dyna-camp Ideas etc" It will reflect better the kind of discussion and ideas we are having here

Done.

[Cosmik]

Small update:

On closer inspection, and after talking to one of the designers responsible for the dyna camps, it appears I was a little off target about one factor of dyna camps. These camps will be more static in location (rather than randomly spawning around the place as I previously said), with other factors being dynamic (the looks of it and so forth). Everything else stays cemented - yes, especially the bit about boss MOB loot dropping there. Made double-sure of that.

[_____________Hextorr]

Yes, in all my travels and explorations i very very rarely came accross anyone. The world is practicaly deserted of players as if a plague hit the world that only kills humans and the animals rule the world (ala Twelve Monkeys ;P)

Back in july 2001 when i started playing i began to do some missions, it was all so new and you could hardly stay connected, i leveled from 1-5 on the backyard then 5-15 doing solo missions. arround this time i went on vacations and back to my home country to visit my family, i took 3 weeks.

At lvl 15 i went to the NW outpost where i heard large groups of people were gathering, it was a living place whith lots of players and quickly you could form a group to go hunt arround those parts, i leveled to about 25 arround those places and soon after we began going to the temple area, that place had a good spawn and was very exciting with the ocasional syper coming along after i hit 40 i start going to Varmit woods, i found my way to the outpost, and we began hiting all the OT camps, the blub bag mountain the snake pit, then the bullies bridge, running and avoiding the big panthers in the region, i even got my map upgrade monsters to detect the dangers better. after 55 i went to avalon where i learned of a place called the "factory" it was not far from camelot, there were this mutants and shades and the ocalional chaos minion that was a big chalenge for any team, we also started to hit the sypder area near there when we broke the spawn at the factory, we normaly only do that when we had a big tank and a good healer because the spyders would add like crasy.

Reaching 60ish i took a pause from leveling, i need to save some credits to build some implants, word on the guild forums was you could get missions from avalon to two specific mission locations in clon**** where the mission was almost always small, so i blitzed for money and eventualy got enough for a set of ql125 implants that i couldnt yet equip put soon would.
At this time we started going to the Cyborg mountain, we would stand on the ramp and pull the borgs walking arround and then try to pull from the inside, sometimes we would get adds and was very exciting trying to keep the team alive, then the anun birds would come wandering by and aggro us, was an exciting place.

Arround 73 i went to mort, we started to do the static missions just near the grid, one of them was broken, there was the big and the medium if i remeber well. and the small was broken. sometimes we would go outside arround the crater where elmer is and try to kill some borgs but it was dungerous, the cyborg generals would aggro and wipe out our entire team.
Then one day when i was 78 or so someone come screaming in guild chat "The borgs are giving mad exp!!" it was the patch when they changed the experience reward and now mobs gave a lot more experience than before (thats why people lvl so fast at low level now) so we started killing the borgs outside, the zone started to flowrish and the first "camping" of the Borg factory started to happen, soon after they changed the borgs to start carrying ranged weapons, players were killing them easly by having the targeted player run in circle arround the team while the other shoot the borg that only had melee attacks.

Arround 80 something if i recall i equiped most of my ql125 implants, then a week or so later the patch supposably fixing the treatment clinics came out, a few days after i managed to equip the rest of my implants i was missing some base abilities in. After that a trader friend found a mission for a mausser ql145 and gave me the key and the coords, i assembled a group of friends and we went to try and get the item, some time and many casualities after we had the item, returned it to the trader and got the mausser. Now i had to equip it, in those times there was only 2 people in the whole wide server that could cast riot control and only about 4 traders that could do the 132 wrangler i spent a few days trying to catch both people online and then i finaly had my mausser equiped, i was doing amazing dmg!

Arround 90 we started going to the NW crater in mort and i stayed in mort until lvl 123 when i got tired of mort and realised there was no other place to hunt, there were the medusas but people hardly ever went there, at this time i took my first AO break it was arround end of october, i took a five week breack and only came back in december.

When i came back, my old friends told me the new hot thing was BS City of Home missions, i said missions?! thats for getting items, how wrong was i, the experience was much better mostly because we didnt have to share the mobs, mort had become over camped and there were no other zones for high lvl hunting... but another group of players that didnt like missions were now regularly hitting the medusa valley in Eastren Fouls Plains i devide my time between BS and the medusas depending of where i could find a group, eventualy the medusas got nerfed, we loged in to a patch that made the medusas hit very hard and very fast, i was lvl 133 or so and the medusas were no more.

So it was back to BS and only BS mission after mission, arround january i was without internet for 10 days and hence forced on a breack, 10 days later of course nothing changed it was mission after mission after mission, i grew in lvls and we started encountering the Izzigimers... the insta-kill nukers in missions, we had to endure those for a long time before they were removed from missions, a long time. BS became a lag hell and we started doing missions just north of 20k in the mutant camp, at arround 170 i was completly burned out of missions, i tryed outdoor hunting again with a fixer friend we tryed killing plants to find grid armor, i must have killed over 500 mobs that are confirmed Grid armor disc dropers but i never got one. I tryed to pvp more, but not only was i a weak class (Fixer) but i also got struk by yet another bug, chain crits, everyone chain crit me on my maxed evades and evade driven implants, even a lvl 101 killed me with chain crits, i reported it to FC and was prompty ignored, i canceled my account and stoped playing for one month, i came back to find the same issues, finaly i got someone to listen to me in the exploints forums (bugs forum, bugs email, feedback email, petitions, everyone had ignored me) so i got in touch with someone and started giving him detailed reports of what was happening to me, finaly i was heard and belived and they are still looking into the causes of this problems. Crits are out of hand, but talking to many people none was as affected by the chain crit as me, thats back to back crits, same as currently with the grid armor when encountering some types of mobs.

So disheartened i put in my mind that it was either hiting 200 fast so i could stop this mission nonsence and wait for the fixer patch or i would quit. so i started doing lots and lots of missions, progressing fast in levels, finaly the insta-kill nukers were removed. Recently the team missions were introduced, i was arroun lvl 185 i think, then team mission after team mission, i reopened my account at lvl 194 and finaly hit lvl 200 wich i did by killing Cyborgs in the NW crater in mort like old times.

At lvl 200, after a long hard work getting here, i never blitzed missions for exp or any other exp exploit scheme, im legit all the way, i am now looking back and i wish i could have done it in the outdoors, missions are so very mind cripling, i dont want to prevent anyone that enjoys them from doing them, but i want the same opportunity for people who choose to hunt outdoors.

You may ask why am i complaining now that i am 200 and i dont need exp. Well i have complained about this many times, and if i am to start new characters i want to do it outdoors. Also dont forget the pleasure and the excitment of hunting, of progressing through a zone of mobs, get to the centre of a camp, kill a chalenging mob, go explore zones and hunt bizzare beasts, and get good loot by doing that, this game should not be about missions, it should not be solely about leveling, i realy wished i could have leveled outside missions and i am happy to see that this is an issue beeing addressed and going to be fixed.

I want fun, rewarding, meaningfull, challenging and exciting hunting/exploring at lvl 200! and at all levels.

Hextorr
Level 200 Fixer

[_____________Hextorr]

Originally posted by Cosmik


Done.

Thx Munch

[_____________Hextorr]

Originally posted by Cosmik
Small update:

On closer inspection, and after talking to one of the designers responsible for the dyna camps, it appears I was a little off target about one factor of dyna camps. These camps will be more static in location (rather than randomly spawning around the place as I previously said), with other factors being dynamic (the looks of it and so forth). Everything else stays cemented - yes, especially the bit about boss MOB loot dropping there. Made double-sure of that.

Thx for the update
That is not necessarly a big problem if there are enough Dyna-camps to go arround, so no one dyna-camp is overly camped.

I'm sure there will be lots of feedback once the dyna-camps go live and maybe one day they will be made to spwan dynamicaly

[einexile]

Originally posted by Sabkor
90% of the server population spends their time in missions that noone else can go into. There's no spot (like the outposts outside Tir USED to be) that you can go to find a whole bunch of people your level to group with.

Dammit, now I'm all depressed.

Tir Expanse a few months back was so much fun...it was like a one of those old Busy Box toys for little kids, tons of different things to do, each with its own character, each full of danger; all these people running back and forth across the zone, people you'd see every day and know just because they were around, not because of their guild, the forums, etc.

Rows of people crossing the radar screen. Helping people when they were in trouble. Getting lost and getting rescued. Just sitting and chilling because it was a nice day out, which you can do anywhere - you can do it offline in your screenshot directory if you want - but the thing is there were other people just sitting and chilling because it was a nice day out, and it made the experience real.

There's still a little bit of that going on in North Fields and Rhino Cockpit, but not on that grand and wonderful scale.

It all comes back to risk/reward. For example, I lead a dungeon with some clan-mates to the TLR dungeon. We were all ~50, so the whole upper area was green, we thought it'd be a blast.

Do yourself a favor and lose interest in leveling. One day it dawned on me: The more levels people gain, the more unhappy with the game they seem to be and the more they view the game as pointless. Well who needs that? What am I going to get out of it?

The journey *is* the destination. Screw the greens; hunt greys. Too easy? Find some greys that will kick your ass. Lots of areas to spend time getting dumb loot and losing all your xp or getting none at all. Who needs it? Not me; I'm not interested in peeling back the creamy skin of the game to expose the zombie rot. I'm level 73 right now and if you see me at level 74 before the Summer I think it'll be quite by accident.

Not that I don't agree with you 100% here; just sharing my own (hopefully temporary) solution.

[Ogiebogie]

weiii!

Dyna camps! yes yes hubba hubba .

15.8 patch? hoho... j/k...


No but that sounds great! /applause hextorr for creating this thread and the poll about it all

now my demon might actually do some good, not getting stuck in walls all the time.. hehe...

/// halofire, yeah its an atrox. yeah he has a demon and a tank armor.

NO hes not gimped... well.. not THAT gimped... i mean.. oh shut up.

[Lazz]

About which patch can we expect dynacamps then?

[Kuro]

Originally posted by Cosmik
Small update:

On closer inspection, and after talking to one of the designers responsible for the dyna camps, it appears I was a little off target about one factor of dyna camps. These camps will be more static in location (rather than randomly spawning around the place as I previously said), with other factors being dynamic (the looks of it and so forth). Everything else stays cemented - yes, especially the bit about boss MOB loot dropping there. Made double-sure of that.

Dunno, Cos. I think the outdoor areas could stand some dynamic location camps. Perhaps with some sort of timer, where if nothing in the camp has been attacked for a certain amount of time it automatically despawns.

Something I encountered a long time ago on a lpmud (yeah, that text thing people played in the times of EGA graphics). A coder on that lpmud had built an area that, for all intents and purposes, was completely unbalanced against the rest of the game. It yeilded superior XP and superior loot than the rest of the areas in the game. What balanced it was its entrance location was completely random. It changed locations once a minute, with the entire game geography to choose from. Allegedly, even the coder could never predict where it was going to be.

Now while that would be more suitable for a themed mission area, something similiar could be applied to dynacamps. An NPC organiztion sets up camp somewhere temporarily to mine some notum crystals for nanoformula creation. The mobs there would have things appropriate to the theme such as ore extractors, instruction disks, and isotope separators. Or a scouting team from Omni-Med would be out collecting specimens with the mobs carrying blood plasma, receptive bots, and mimicking cell oil. Along with whatever might be needed to survive the 'threat' of the wilderness (lower ql 'special' weapons and armor found around the game). After a certain amount of time, the camp disappears and a new one spawns in a new playfield or location.

The static missions will always appeal to the Achiever and Powergamers. Those people that have to have the best items in the game. Or have to beat that new mob. And that's fine. If the absolute best item is only availible there, it will keep them coming. But by offering lesser, but still good, versions of those items in totally random locations you set up an incentive for the Explorers and a "lucky break" for the Casual Gamer that may happen across the random spawn.

Trust me, dynamic content or not, these dynacamps will get camped if their locations are set in stone. That will lead to lines, kill stealing, and other headaches we'd all rather avoid.

[Bionitrous]

The locations of these dynaCamps absolutey MUST be unpredictable. Either that or there must be well over a thousand possible spawn locations.

Anything else and you end up with static camping again. What is the difference between Zuwadza and a dynaCamp if you can put both their coordinates on a website and give approximate spawn times.

We really were looking to crest a ridge and find one of these DynaCamps as a pleasant surprise, not go to some web site and write down the coordinates and then hop from one set of coordinates to the next.

A couple thousand potential spawn locations IS a viable alternative, however. Nobody is going to fly in their Yalms between two thousand spots. Almost as good as random. Still not nearly as good as predictive spawning unless a spawn location can 'trigger' based on a hunting party's approach.

[Darkbane]

Listen to Bionitrous - much sense he speak...

If dyna-camps have a large number of possible locations, but a smaller number that can actually exist at one time (say about 30 locations per playfield but only 6 active at any given time) then make the activation and later deactivation random (when one deactivates, another at a currently inactive location activates for say 1-3 hours - could even allow the same spot to reactivate so camps could persist longer). This isn't as good as truely random, but is a whole lot better than fixed always present locations.

Each possible location would have a base QL that it spawns MOBs at, and as MOBs are killed, the location monitors how long it takes, too fast and the MOB QL is raised, too slow, and it will drop (could set minimum and maximum levels though). Boss MOBs would spawn at random with a QL a few levels above the current level of the camp.

Loot should also be as random as possible, though different types of MOB should be more likely to drop certain types of item than others, and of course, Boss MOBs have loot all of their own. MOB drops from dyna-camps should include stuff that is currently mission only. Would suggest 50% chance of a MOB specific loot table, 40% chance of a general loot table, and 10% chance of a rarer loot table (including mission stuff) - tweak numbers to suit.

I can't wait, get this right and AO could become a hunter's paradise... now if only we could get dynamic outdoor quests too...

[Bionitrous]

Very nice site, CBehrens40. I only hope FunCom can make it worth more than simply as a novelty site.

Outdoor hunting is no good because you have lvl200 MOB's mixed with lvl100 MOB's.

Outdoor hunting is no good because the loot is a bone and a monster part.

Outdoor hunting is no good because you attack one monster and 299 others come to attack you.

Outdoor hunting is no good because if you have gotten a half level of experience you have to travel an hour to go save somewhere and get back.

Outdoor hunting is no good because if you die in a high level area you not only lose a bunch of experience, you have to travel an hour to get back to where you were.

Outdoor hunting is no good because there's not really any place to go because 'these guys drop weapons' or 'these guys are good for Waitte armor'.

Outdoor hunting is no good because all the new stuff is in the Team Missions which are not even a notch above the solo missions in terms of non-boringness.

Outdoor hunting is no good because if you try to do it at a semi-well-designed area like Ace Camp or Mort, you have some jackass who's gonna grief your group and cause you to lose hours of experience and possibly loot.

Outdoor hunting is unfortunately no good just like missions are no good. Every MOB has the same exact behavior with the exception that some are ranged and some are melee. (At least the plants, and to a certain degree fish, used to be different in that you could use some strategy to them. Rather than fix them properly, we ended up with the range nerf and no exp for 'fishing'.)

Outdoor hunting is no good because there are no 'social centers' to organize a hunt even if it were well laid out, safe from griefers, and offered some decent kind of reward vs. Broken Shores missions. Even if PW were 75%, would we all be meeting in Sabulum and constantly fighting off the Mantises simply to have an area to form groups?

Related to the above, outdoor hunting is no good because if you happen to lose a player out of your Deep Artery Valley hunting party you are S.O.L. to get a replacement in short order. Now you pretty much need to make due with 5 rather than 6. Five minutes in B.S. and you've replaced the guy who had to go burp the baby.

Outdoor hunting is no good, for many people, because of the damned non-stop weather effects. Sure, if it made a difference in gameplay such as lowering attack rating or imposing a small DoT, we could deal with the stupid lightning or sand storms. But after a year of playing and hearing the same damn thunderclaps over and over, many of us just want a way to turn that crap off. It don't do anything and after the 'gee whiz' wears off, it's only a head-ache inducing annoyance. "Less Storms that Actually Matter", please.

Outdoor hunting is no good since they totally borked up the /follow command. In case you don't know, it actually used to work for a month or so after release. Almost impossible to keep a group together now. Even in Yalms, you waste so much time 'where you guys?' 'gimme coords', 'no we're EAST of you', 'ok pee break, til' you guys catch up', etc. etc. Fix Follow so it works the way it used to before you f'd up view distance.

Outdoor hunting is no good since the range reduction travesty. 6 months later and the coders still can't fix the lame ass kludge to plant-exploiting. Agents used to be good at pulling with their long range. NT's could hang way back away from danger and drop big bombs. Outdoor hunting pretty much sucks now with everyone holding hands in a nice little 'kill me' circle.

Solutions:

- Fixers (or whoever with B&E) be able to hack those orphaned reclaim terminals to set their teams respawn point to that terminal.

- Implement the 'Crat Exp-saving nanoformulas. (How much you want to bet it's some stupid-ass PvP argument that's preventing these from being put into the game?)

- Make monsters take into account the TEAM 'con' when deciding whether or not to attack. A 'green' of lvl 100 should NOT decide to attack a player in a team that has 700 total combined levels.

- Up the Outdoor monster loot to have certain 'Outdoor-only' items that are totally random and somewhat rare. Simple example: a variation on Waitte armor that simply adds 1 NCU per piece. Not spectacular. Sure make you happy to get it maybe.

- Fix the range nerf. Plain and simple, take the time to fix what you forked. It's YOUR fault that there were vunerabilities with the too-small 'zone of awareness'. Don't ruin the game by never addressing the kludge of a 'fix'.

- Stop forcing people into fighting each other. People want to fight each other as part of the storyline. They don't want to be 'griefed' or have some guild bring in their 'big five' to wipe out your group so their 'alts' can camp the spawn you were just enjoying. No PvP zones should ever be laid out with PvM in mind. PvP zones should be designed for PvP.

- Once and for all, fix the problem with your outdoor unique MOB's. Put them on a patrol path at least. I want to see Zuwadza get into a Yalm and speed off somewhere just as the campers are logging in. Improve your NPC scripting engine to accomodate this.

- Implement non-combat Adventurer items such as 'Repellent Beacons'. This item is essentially a 30th century version of the classic 'campfire' that is essentially a superpowered Rat Repeller. Most monsters can't stand the ultrasonic waves it sends out and won't venture within 10 meters of it. Good place to retire to for pee-breaks or to rally around.

- Reduce the amount of annoying sand and thunderstorms. Instead make it actuallly matter if it is thundering or the sand is blowing. Make sand reduce your ATK and impose a 5HP per tick DoT effect. Make the effect worse in dangerous areas. Newbie gets caught in a Mort sandstorm? He's dead in 30 seconds. lvl150? He can deal with it.

- Introduce 'Unique' outdoor abberations. Have your spawn engine everynow and then produce a really bizzare monster out of doors. Give us a 'Shimmering Malle' that has the radiation attack of that blobby thing in the Steppes of Madness and a runspeed of 1000. Whatever. Just open up the attribute table everynow and then to create 'Freaks of Nature'.

I don't know, just do something. You are killing the game and are killing off everyone I know by making character advancement only possible indoors in missions. Another one quit a couple days ago after hitting 105. It's not too late to sneak _something_ into 14.2 to address this problem. The new loot _only_ going into Team Mission is a slap in the face to everyone who likes to solo or feel the suns on their face.

[_____________Hextorr]

Cosmik, i guess the first dyna-camps will be static locations, but does the system allow for any kind of random Dyna spwans in the future?

[DaveDread]

I dont even care for the specific about this... I just listened to some AO music. Man... it is absolutely fantastic. I recalled so many beautiful moments exploring Rubi-Ka, and quite remember my shock when I realised how big it actually was... I wanna go outdoors again. It's been 50 levels or so. Please, let me out.

[Tyndel]

Some more ideas for making outdoors hunting better.
Make it less likely that mobs add on you right away. I.e make it possible to walk into a camp, and taunt/entice a mob to follow you out of range, and there kill it. Doesnt have to be riskfree, but should be possible. Right now, the only thing you can do is wait for the mob to wander off on its own, and that sortof boring if the spawn consists of 30 greys and 5-6 yellows/oranges.

So basically.. Change the social agg to work in stages.. I.e give each mob close by a chance to agg for every second the other mob is in combat, or chance to agg compared to how much hp it loses, or something like that.

Also make several different sorts of social agg. Guards should assist eachother right away, but why on earth should EVERY type of monster agg on you even if they are social? I mean, picture you walk through a pack of scorpions or something, none of them aggs on you,(they are all grey). Why should then all 20 scorpions agg on you at the second one of them get one hit?

Tyndel.

[Inocybe]

My thoughts on the proposed dyna-camps ...

Please please make it so that it doesn't turn out to be a replicate of indoor missions or static dungeons. And by that, I mean:

* It should provide all professions the space they need to perform their combat/support/healing abilities.

Right now, indoor missions are just closet space halls where ALL professions are FORCED to do close combat whether they are designed for it or not. Dyna-camp should be the opposite. Give the Fixers, Agents, NTs and Adventurers the range and space they need to do their best.

And finally an outdoor-type environment where the Adventurer can use polymorphs without being hampered and stuck in some narrow cave corridor and be frustrated with telescoping 1st/3rd camera views.

* Spread out the traffic but not too inconveniently.

There should be enough of these spread out in normally quiet zones, say for example, Andromeda, Aegean, Wailing Wastes (btw where's the map?). Zones accessible to all levels, jet or no-jet. Then players can find groups without it being a hair-tearing experience.

* A few camps is not enough. You must be fair to your customers playing from different time zones. You must also be fair to casual gamers who don't always play during the so-called peak US and Euro times.

There is already a big issue about not enough story events happening to suit different time zones and dimensions. There is already a bigger issue surrounding dungeons and slow-spawning unique bosses being camped by uber guilds. Please DO NOT make the same mistake with these dyna-camps.

***

Boss mob camping/griefing and long tedious team mission hours are already driving out your customers. This is your chance to rectify the mess - do it right and your customers might end up being more forgiving about the lack of story events and special content.

And while your story events may not reach as many players as possible and be accessible across levels, these dyna-camps could fill that void. Just as missions and team missions as accessible to any level, make dyna-camps just as accessible. When we are kept busy and entertained with varied things, we might end up more patient about things like the frequency of special content.

When is that very soon patch?
Very soon is too late already. This was needed like 3 months ago or something

[Bionitrous]

Some way to 'interest' or 'lure' a MOB without necessarily harming it. Like the Shades in PM. If you could dangle a shiny trinket and get him to wander over to you.

This could be a very nice addition to strategy.

[Inocybe]

*bump*