Static Dungeon Spawn Time Discussion

[Cheddar]

The first responses of this thread are golden. Abunari, Bionitrous, Lucid, and the others really have the issues surrounded. These views should form the basis for all future changes.

Which brings me to another point Cosmik - ultimately the most important one...

The time for talking is long over. How many times must the same concerns be repeated by your custumers?

Your company is 95% wind, 5% action.

At this rate, your epitaph is going to read: Funcom, they talked a good game, but never made it.

Honestly, listen to your custumers and then act quickly. We just want to have some fun... that's all we ask.

[gnuman]

Originally posted by Obergeist
Nikki

You're incorrect about the Rust Pitted ring drops. They dropped slow AFTER whatever patch. I forget, they're all the same unless it's something major. It seems like one minor change in code effects something else. There was a period in patches were Blessed with Thunder and certain armor types did not show up in stores. But who knows, this is Funcom we're talking about.

Yup they dropped quite often when they were introduced.

[______________Blanch]

Omni that I know of haven't killed Tarasque in long time. Storm lives outside the castle with many other off beat clan guilds. Then again guess nice have the camelot castle right within easy reach. Be funny place something right in center of omni hq. Probably best discuss this issue on Storm guild chat or clan leader chat.

[_____________Nalissa]

Rare items:
We want that. Those who say they don't want some items to be rare haven't thought it through. Admitedly i can see that a lvl 10 straight out of the backyard might wish that everyone else lost their primus so the newb wouldn't feel so goofy in nail armor. Doesn't mean he's right
Rare Items: yes

Boss mobs:
Whats the difference between a Boss Mob and mission mob? Boss Mobs are tougher, but if we wanted that, we'd fight Real Means. Boss mobs give very little xp/difficulty - no bonus there. Boss Mobs are rare to see. Now THAT is a criteria. If you hang a mission dispencer outside every dungeon you turn it into another mission literally. The unique flavor of the boss mob is lost if you can waltz in and kill it anytime you choose. A boss mob that you can generate and kill at will is sounding alot like a mission. Last time i checked people prefer hunting (spawn timers) to missions (generate at will).. Please don't flame me yet - you haven't read the whole post
Limited Frequency on Boss Mobs: Yes

Dungeons:
A special dungeon is a nice sight, but of course there are lots of 'unique' places scattered around Rubi-ka. I dont see people lining up in DAV to see the Medusa structures hanging in the air. There must be a reason that people want to 'experience' unique dungeons. Since Camalot isn't a big hit either when the dragon is gone i'd have to say that the appeal of the dungeon is linked to the unique mob in some way. Most probably it's the 'epic quest' feeling, but having been in on quite a few Tara kills i never had an epic quest feeling come over me. After the first kill it was kind of boring. In camalot the unique feeling came from teaming up with 50 people, from PvPing to hold the loot rights.. THAT part is fun. (I'll take fighting human opponents over AI anyday).

At this point i have to say that it sounds more fun to me if we have Loot remain rare, if we have special bosses that aren't always there and if we have places where those bosses are to be found. That's what we have now in fact.

The idea of a key dispencer is fine, and solves some of the problems but it's too regulated. The 'feel' of the quest would be destroyed. 'Walk up, punch your card, and sign in for 1 hour ride of adventure'. Sounds like an amusement park and i can see those in RL. What i want to have is a 'raw' feel to it, where you beard the dragon in his lair, not where you punch you card to entitle you to shoot the dragon. Excuse me but that's kind of lame. Could you steralize it any more? Maybe if we put the dragon in a cage and had hand-rails all around it? I think this is a case of the child wanting more cookies (dragon killing/loot gethering) but if you let him he will make himself sick from too much.

___________________

No, I'm going to have to go with NikkiDial and Wolfe on this one. They have the right idea. Instead of making the mobs less rare, just add more 'rare' mobs. Each with a unique feel in some way. Make the item drops more rare if you like and people will go all day killing Bosses for fun (and occasional loot). Also remember that while people are killing Bosses they aren't leveling. That solves another problem

The large guilds can't cover 100 spawns a day, nor will they care. It's the excitement here that is key. By making the mobs few and far between we limit the supply of excitement - and that supply will naturally be 'hogged' by the ones dedicated to getting it. Increase the supply and you get more excitement for everyone.

To use a metaphor of an amusement park:
The unique mobs are the Amusement rides.
THe players are the ticket-holders.

Increase the number of rides to meet your ticket holders and you keep them amused.
Leave it as it is, and less people will pay admission - no one likes standing in line.
Or you could just package it up and release the watered-down version of the rides on Nintendo (which is what dungeon keys do. Please don't ruin my experiences with carbon-copy sterilized dungeon keys. I like the chance of meeting people there, I just prefer less chance than is current).

[______________Takhai]

No camping! I quit Evercamp because of it.. I'll quit Camparchy Online too if that's what it comes to.

I also left Dark ages of Campalot because I had to camp crap just to get certain "special" weapon types.

I quit World Camp II Online because it was basically "Camp the enemy base for them to spawn" or "Camp your base HQ to defend it"

Dont let AO turn into another campathon.

[Kithraks]

As a guild leader of a non-uber guild I can't stress how annoying it is to know that you have zero chance of getting any of the bosses with even remotely useful items because they're camped by 4-5 full teams of level 150+.

Give teams the ability to spawn their own copy of a static dungeon. I spend 2 hours organizeing a raid on the Foreman dungeon only to find that the Lab Director was killed 10 minutes ago and we need to wait 4 hours?!? That isn't fun. It was a waste of our time.

Make the boss mobs spawn faster than 18 hours....I've tried going after Nugget a few times and the amount of people that show up during the last 15 minutes is depressing for us regular players that only have a few hours a day to play.

Sincearly,
Kithrak

[_______________ayabe]

A little story to help illustrate some of the points already made by Lucid and a few others. I havent attempted a single static dungeon since around november or whenever the LR dungeon came out. Very bad experiences with Omni in SoM with their 4 level 130s camping and actually telling us we will not get a chance until they get the 3 cloaks they came for, warping in level 30 newbs to loot after they killed Neleb. Hmmph. But yesterday I decided to be adventurous and go to Smugglers Den for the first time. I was sick of the BS power levelling so jumped into a group with some really nice fellows who were all in a guild together and we made a go of it. After about the third kill of a loot warden we were fighting a 4th when a 180ish Omni crat came in with her guild and proceeded to leach our kills, even going so far as to charm the mob we were killing and running away with it. Im sure everyone in this game has a similar story, probably many more grief laden than mine. There is no way that the average player can compete with these people. These are the kind of people that plan their lives around playing, but for those us of who dont have 10+ hours a day to play, life gets boring. This has to come to an end.

[_____________Nalissa]

And to the people that say Camelot is unfair because it is in a clan town:

Pfftt..

To players of lvl 130+ the few guards that surround Camelot are a joke to kill. Furthermore, you dont have to kill them, you just fly your jet on in and ignore the 1 or 2 Veteran Knights in between you and the castle. Additionally, they are MELEE knights. They can't even touch you in a yalm if you are clever enough to sit more than 15 feet off the ground.

ANy player with a yalm can get into camelot with 0 effort.

Noer really makes me laugh with his PR campaign comments. He would love to see a dungeon placed in Omni HQ. Why? Because the Omni-Pol Supremes have ranged weapons. Because there are LOTS of them. because they hit for 2-3 times as much damage as the Veteran knights do.

Come on Noer. Don't you think you have enough advantage with the primary PvP zone being full of guards you can abuse as defense/pull over to break 15 second protection? You might even brush those grey guards off as a non-issue, but they instant spawn. You have a limitless army of greys on your side as it is. In a PvP field no less!

You know why you guys can't get the Dragon? Because you are too busy backstabbing each other to form a coalition of more than 40-50 people. THe problem with omni is lack of leadership. You guys need a Phillip Ross. No wait - he's fictional. You need a Wolfe. You need a Julius Ceaser. Heck, what you really need is to let some lvl 100 guy with leadership ability take your spot.

Start treating all omni as your friends and you might just have a chance to stop the united Clan front. otherwise, you're going to need a big diaper to cover up the red marks from the spankings you've been getting. Of course.. On the other hand i'm guessing you have a massive supply..

[Stratah]

(side note)
/me gets sick every time she sees a Storm member post anything
(/sidenote)

I remember when AO was new and all the new things in the world of Rubi-Ka were neat. Before the megacamping. If I heard of a new or unique item, I thought it was interesting, maybe something to find out how to get my hands on. Or a new dungeon to check out..."wonder what's in there?"

Now I don't bother.

The items can't be obtained, you can't check out the new dungeons as they were intended, and you probably won't even get to see what the (insert mob name here) looks like. You can't plan a guild run to the dungeon (with the exception of gamma ejector hunts in TLR - but the boss mobs in the dungeons will be camped, so don't even bother to try to take a crack at them).

As others have said, these 'unique' items don't even exist in this game to me. I don't even bother reading about unique items and mobs anymore. It's not the work required to obtain the item that deters me...
It's the CAMPING

The items *should* take work (in-game!) to get. They *should* be hard to get. But the challenge should be the MOBS, not OTHER PLAYERS!

The problem here is mostly Funcom's system. Part of the problem is that most people are on RK1 in the first place. Too many players, not enough dungeons/mobs/content on the server.
There should be multiple copies (of some type) of the dungeons and mobs or some other way to fight these mobs/obtain these items. I don't fully agree with the dungeon key idea though, as sometimes it's that stranger who lends a hand that saves the day (and maybe your exp!).

I don't pretend to have all the answers to fix the problem, but hey, we pay you guys to do that ...so fix it Funcom.

[Stratah]

The large guilds can't cover 100 spawns a day, nor will they care. It's the excitement here that is key. By making the mobs few and far between we limit the supply of excitement - and that supply will naturally be 'hogged' by the ones dedicated to getting it. Increase the supply and you get more excitement for everyone.

To use a metaphor of an amusement park:
The unique mobs are the Amusement rides.
THe players are the ticket-holders.

Increase the number of rides to meet your ticket holders and you keep them amused.
Leave it as it is, and less people will pay admission - no one likes standing in line.
Or you could just package it up and release the watered-down version of the rides on Nintendo (which is what dungeon keys do. Please don't ruin my experiences with carbon-copy sterilized dungeon keys. I like the chance of meeting people there, I just prefer less chance than is current).

Preach on brotha!

Funcom, please tattoo this quote to the insides of your eyelids. Thank You.

[___________Obergeist]

How about kicking logged players back to the enterance after X amount of minutes of being logged off in a static dungeon.

[Stratah]

Originally posted by NikkiDial
Blahhh Noer

You have admitted your guild did it before when your members where announcing what they where doing. Now you guys don't want to look bad so you say you have stopped and are not doing it.

Blahhh

You guys did it and even threatened Storm you would do it again if we didnt share the spawn with The Council and keep all other Omnis out while you guys kept all clanners out and the loot would be split 3 for Storm 1 for The Council. Yet we told you guys to stick it up your omni arse and the blocking began again :O(

Why aren't guilds that do these things banned or disbanded for this type of stuff yet anyway?
Here they both are talking about manipulating game mechanics (exploiting) to grief other players and gain an unfair advantage.

Funcom please explain this.

An exploit is regarded as a bug that we have to fix. We expect players to inform us about exploits, not tell other players about their discovery and to not use the exploit after they have found it. Exploits could lead to suspension of your account or banning. This has happened to some accounts already.

[Zerosignal]

Originally posted by Nalissa
And to the people that say Camelot is unfair because it is in a clan town:

Pfftt..

To players of lvl 130+ the few guards that surround Camelot are a joke to kill. Furthermore, you dont have to kill them, you just fly your jet on in and ignore the 1 or 2 Veteran Knights in between you and the castle. Additionally, they are MELEE knights. They can't even touch you in a yalm if you are clever enough to sit more than 15 feet off the ground.

ANy player with a yalm can get into camelot with 0 effort.

Noer really makes me laugh with his PR campaign comments. He would love to see a dungeon placed in Omni HQ. Why? Because the Omni-Pol Supremes have ranged weapons. Because there are LOTS of them. because they hit for 2-3 times as much damage as the Veteran knights do.

Come on Noer. Don't you think you have enough advantage with the primary PvP zone being full of guards you can abuse as defense/pull over to break 15 second protection? You might even brush those grey guards off as a non-issue, but they instant spawn. You have a limitless army of greys on your side as it is. In a PvP field no less!

You know why you guys can't get the Dragon? Because you are too busy backstabbing each other to form a coalition of more than 40-50 people. THe problem with omni is lack of leadership. You guys need a Phillip Ross. No wait - he's fictional. You need a Wolfe. You need a Julius Ceaser. Heck, what you really need is to let some lvl 100 guy with leadership ability take your spot.

Start treating all omni as your friends and you might just have a chance to stop the united Clan front. otherwise, you're going to need a big diaper to cover up the red marks from the spankings you've been getting. Of course.. On the other hand i'm guessing you have a massive supply..

LoL
How you guys come up with this?
its quite funny please keep it up

[Inocybe]

Bionitrous, Scorus and Lucid Flow nailed it on the head on so many points.

Funcom - Stop asking us the ludicrous question over and over again. Your players have been telling you about camping and grief-looting SINCE Steps of Madness and you NEVER listen. Finally DO something that will get you out of the poor light you are in. That is impression we get - that you are not commited to making this game more fun and exciting, instead you keep making it more frustrating and unfun.

The majority of your players will never able to linger and marvel at the insides of Camelot dungeon ... or triumph over a long-hard-fought battle with some high-level mobs ... or feel exhiliration of looting a very nice piece of treasure ... or spend an hour or so having FUN, just dungeon crawling with their guildmates/buddies ... because they cannot .... due to the uttely inept, unfair and unfun system in place. Camelot has NO meaning to these players.

Your current system and proposed system only breeds and encourages the worse behaviour out of players - elitism, selfishness, cronyism and resentment. This plus the myriad of recurring bugs and server stability issues drives away customers from your MMO game. Got it?

Also the other suggestion about linking tradeskills and creation of special items is wonderful. This helps to alleviate a situation where the economy and/or supply of certain special items are controlled by only a few.

So I say again ... Bionitrous, Scorus and Lucid Flow nailed it on the head on so many points. So many fine, excellent suggestions and points have been stated - get the devs to read them and commit them to memory.

Get your act together and make this game FUN again for many players, instead of just a few. You don't have much time left. People have left because this game stopped becoming fun a long time ago. Got it?

[__________Lucid Flow]

I just notice that the only people who actually oppose easier finds on boss mobs and want things to stay the same or worse are very high level and belong to an uber guild.

As a guild leader of a non-uber guild and a non uber person myself, I just look the other way.

To me, Funcom is adding content that might as well not exist. It's sad they spend painful hours and precious money to produce "content" 99% of the players in the game that paid for those items will never see.

In essence, Funcom is making players pay for content/items they will never have a chance in hell of obtaining.

[Razzitazz]

Many, many good posts.

Man I miss Diablo II when you KNEW that you would deal with THOUSANDS of cool items throughout your game, the regular items where dismissed. I remember seeing tons of stuff drop, then grabbing the yellow, blue or green text ones just to see what was in my "fortune cookie".

Hmm, Blizzard... Diablo II....

Blizzard.. Worlds of Warcraft...

And SWG is coming in September.

Hope your heart is racing Funcom.

---

By the way, wayyyyyy before many of the problems were fixed I previewed and then reviewed this game

http://games.tucows.com/review/preview/213042.html

I got feedback saying that I was nuts and that the game was full of bugs. For some reason I saw your vision.

It's getting blurry guys.

[Tyndel]

Here is what i think we(most players) want.
We want to be able to go to a uniqe dungeon, fight our way in, face the boss, and if we win, then we want to have a chance to get the loot.(not a 1/1000 chance, make it a 1/10 chance tops).

Here is what we get:go to a uniqe dungeon, fight our way in, face the XXX amounts of highlvl players camping the mob, or an empty room where the boss should have been.

Now.. How hard can it be to understand this isnt fixed by making LONGER spawn times???

Instead, i would like to suggest the following changes.
If you log out in a dungeon(for longer than 5 minutes, to avoid being booted by losing link) then you should login again at your savespot. you should NOT login in the dungeon.. It should NOT be possible to log out in the boss room and login to just kill the boss every 6 hours.

Add inn some "checkpoints" in the dungeon, where you HAVE to be out of fight to pass on. I.e So you cant just rush in to the boss, and train along 30+ mobs with you, just kill the boss, and leave.

If a mob is overcamped.. increase its difficulty.. I know.. there is a lot of items there planned for lower lvl people.. But hello! Its better that you need to take your guild along to have a chance to kill the mob than it is you need to take your guild's 5 biggest member to have a chance to outdamage the lvl 150 team sitting there camping the mob!

Oh yes.. one last thing.. LOWER the SPAWN TIME!!! 18hours plus PROMOTES camping.. it doesnt reduce it. If camping is bad, add other measures.

[Dhurdahl]

Well one idea to stop or limit the amount of camping is to forbid, or rather remove the possibility to log out in a dungeon.
If you go LD or in any other way you should be spawned outside when you log in again.

Sure, it opens some holes that can be used.... but this way noone can log in after 17.57, wait 3 min and then start whacking the mob... they gotta get through the dungeon again...
Sure, if you have been afk during all that time... fine
A couple of fast spawn mobs should fix that.

[gnuman]

Originally posted by Stratah


Why aren't guilds that do these things banned or disbanded for this type of stuff yet anyway?
Here they both are talking about manipulating game mechanics (exploiting) to grief other players and gain an unfair advantage.

Isn't it manipulating and bending game mechanics to empty a dungeon and tell people not to enter it so it can respawn? I think there is a reason why the mob has a 18 hour spawn and not 20mins.

[Destria]

Small Point:

The only person that I know of (AFTER he tried it) who tried to make a deal with Storm was not an Advisor. Hence it wasn't a Guild action, but a sole member who was trying to help in a misguided way.

We actually had a discussion after we found out and decided that it'd actually be a very boring arrangement even IF one could be made.

I think everyone would agree that the fun of Camelot is the battles that sometimes happen there. The loot is nice, but I have more fun in battles (ones where the sides are roughly equal anyway... like when Apocalypse and ourselves had a confrontation there a way back) than when we don't even see a Clanner. Even when we lose.

And has anyone checked the relative number of 150+ players in the top Omni/Clan Guilds recently?