Just thought I'd post something I've been thinking a lot about lately, hunting. Is it just me? Poeple don't hunt anymore, I never see people forming groups to go hunting, but 99% of poeple solo in Missions or rarely/at high level, do missions as a team.
Hunting USED to be the way to gain experience. Man, if you wanted some quick levels all you had to do was head out to one of the many many hunting spots that were fairly close to town, Athen Shire, Greater Tir County, Vermint Woods, Aegean, Avelon, Newland Desert, just to name a few of the zones easily accessable by clanners for good hunting. I'm sure there are just as many, if not more, zones that were great hunting for OT poeple. I don't play OT so I couldn't comment.
Unfortunately over a series of patches, and months, this began to change. Very early on, those areas that appeared to be popular hunting grounds had there MOB spawn increased or decreased to help out the players. A great example of this was The Beach in Athen Shire. It turned out a LOT of clanners loved hunting there at 10-20th level, so Funcom increased the spawn rate. It was not unknown to gain 10 levels in just a few hours hunting there. From there people moved onto the dangerous game of hunting at the Junk Yard, or trying another zone, perhaps The Longest Road, great great hunting for 30-50 poeple, and it remains one of those zones that is still very highly populated with mobs, from Virulent Minibulls to Twinger Scorpiods to Bloodcreapers and Hammer Breeders.
But as I said.. after months of time, missions began to take over as the more popular method of experience gain. I am here to exam why.. and to help provide funcom with a way to bring hunting back into the game, after all, many would agree hunting in the wilds of Rubika is perhaps the most fun Anarchy Online has to offer.
So here we go..
REASONS MISSIONS REPLACED HUNTING AS #1 EXPERIENCE GAIN
- Missions offer a limited and safer environement, less chance of death.
- Missions offer tokens, which give great bonuses especially the higher level boards. Mission tokens are doubled, trippled and quadrupled as the player gets higher and higher level.
- High level players find getting a team together and doing missions far above there level to be very productive (and rightly so).
- Team missions offer even more experience as well as many unique items that can ONLY be found in said missions, as either mission-only rewards/drops, and boss only drops.
- Missions and team missions pay more money then hunting, and always has. Back in the early days, up till perhaps 6 months after release, people hunted for experience and did missions on the side to make money.
- High level players find hunting and soloing unfeezable do to mob toughness, mostly in MOB damage, partly do to MOB hitpoints. I will come back to this one further in the post.
REASONS TO HUNT INSTEAD OF DO MISSIONS/TEAM MISSIONS
- To see the beautiful sights and MOBS found throughout rubika
- Find some unique and mob-drop only items, such as rare nano-disks, cyborg armor and a few other items.
As you can see above, doing missions FAR OUTWAYS going hunting, simply because it has many more perks and offers much more safty and controlled environment.
Poeple simply have no reason to hunt anymore, very few of us (myself included) find the desire to explore rubika, and that is a sad fact. Rubika is an extremely diverse and beautiful planet, with a LOT to explore. I don't know the exact dimensions of the planet in miles, but I do know it's an aweful lot. I would estimate that 90% of the population has never been to any of the wonderful places or seen some of the amazing monsters found in the more diverse and distant areas of the planet.
People seem satisfied to just do there missions and complain about being bored with the game.
Now back to the high level game. It does lack a lot of content, it can be boring, and part of the reason is the implausability of solo hunting. At level 80 or 100+ mobs simply are to powerful to hunt solo. Many many classes and players find taking down an even level or even slightly under-level mob to be just to difficult to enjoy it. Mobs at this level have to many hitpoints (which I have reason to believe was reduced silently a few patches back).
I've tested this myself. With my 92 soldier I recorded the hitpoints on several of the mobs I fought. I found that humaniod mobs typically had 2-5x my own hitpoints. But that is not the problem as a whole, because monsterous MOBs tend to have less hitpoints then the NPC MOBs, the primary problem is the damage these mobs do.
My soldier has quite a lot of hitpoints, with full life implants of QL110 he has 2.6k hitpoints. He's not atrox so thats limited by a small ammount, but stamina and body dev are both maxed out. He is wearing QL120ish Flowers Tech and QL125 Medium Tank Armor. He is not, nore ever was OE'd, all his items accept the tank are self-equipped. He has just shy of 2900 on the 3 main ACs.
Humaniod MOBS typically hit him for 70-100 damage at maximum speed of .5/.5 or once every second. Do to the hitpoints of mobs his hitpoints are usually at 1/2 or less when he does defeat an even-con mob, and that is usually with MKIV. MKIV does not make soldiers invincible, when he uses it his damage take from humaniod mobs dips down to around 30dmg per hit. This has saved his life more times then I care to count, but it has not prevented his death on numerious occasions.
This may not seem bad, but this is humaniod MOBs. One must remember that humaniod MOBs are what most missions are populated with. However, Monstrous MOBs do MUCH more damage. Typical monsterous mobs of his level, lesser Anuns, Greywolfs, Chaos Minions, do 100-150 points of damage a hit, and hit VERY fast, faster then Humaniod MOBs. This can cause his hitpoints to drop very fast.
Luckely he is a soldier who can deal good damage (144 Nova, 110 Flashpoint, both self-equipped) as well as having MK Shield. But many classes aren't as tough as he is at his level. They cannot handle combat like he can, infact there aren't that many classes at his level that can. I dread what my fixer will have to deal with when he gets that high.
My point is, at this level and higher, mobs are to tough. I cannot comment on 100+ as I have no characters that high (I've been playing since beta4, I'm just a slow leveler hehe.) There hitpoints are a little to high, and the damage they deal, at least monsterous MOBs, is to high. I have been told that mob damage increases sharply as one levels past 100.
So can you see why poeple don't hunt? Why go out and hunt monstrous MOBs that do far more damage when you can do higher level missions against mobs that aren't as deadly, in a safer environement, with lower risk and MUCH higher reward?
This is the question I'm asking you Funcom. Hunting needs a boost, it NEEDS to be brought back into the game, and back into your players lives. It's no wonder people get board, all they do day in and out is missions because they are SO rewarding.
A lot of poeple don't realise that missions used to pay even more! Back in the early days missions payed 2 or 3x what they do now. I can remember at low 30's getting missions in avelon that payed 30-40k a pop. But mission locations were much farthur away on average, and poeple cried for change. Location distance was reduced and monitary pay out was reduced as well. I'm glad I was on an extended holiday (I took a 3 month brake between late summer until just after Christmas) because I'm sure this board was was full of hate posts lol. But back in the subject...
I keep dragging this post out more and more, but I'm just trying to get my point acrossed that something must be done to improve hunting. The risk version reward is WAY out of balance for one.
Something must be done.. and Funcom I'm hoping your reading this, and doing something about it.
On a side note, please add to the post and bumb people, especially those of you who miss hunting as much as I do.