Camping - the worst feature in AO

[Sethil]

Everytime when I try to get an item I would like to have for my character, which is RARE and drops only on static bosses, I end up really diappointed and frustrated.

I.e. the T.I.M. scope.
Its not a problem for me (as a lvl 177 Soldier) to go to the dungeon, killing all guards inside (only lvl 80-) and finally reach T.I.M.s den. The problem is: This bot was never there when I arrived. I decided to wait (not everytime but often). When you wait ingame you see several ppl come and go, some wait, some go, but in every case a group comes along (or they already wait) a short time before the T.I.M. spawns and kills him, w/o any chance for me to outdamage them.

Then, I have to wait for the next spawn with probably the same result...

Hey, T.I.M. dungeon is a joke compared to the Tara camping and there is really NO, NO, NO way for my style of playing to get some of the good stuff from Tara, except I buy it for a horrible amount of credits... Im not a member of one of the uber guilds camping Tara since she is introduced in the game......

Why isnt it possible to create for each solo-player/team/multiple-teams (i.e. everyone who is in a chatgroup) a new playfield for his/their own and let them fight their way through to get the boss and the loot?

Create a quest given from a doorwatcher, which is quite easy and takes not much time. When accomplished handout a key to every member. Then let them access the dungeon to fight their way to the boss and let them get all the promised loot they want.
The keys are UNIQUE and NODROP and cant be deleted, they disappear after some hours/days/weeks/month (whatever). If you have a key in your inventory/bank/bag you cant access this dungeon again.
Maybe its not the best way to avoid camping, but hey, its only a suggestion with less details...

And the other way are quest where you use only your brain to accomplish the mission. Why isnt it possible to make quest and let the people build something, ask them some question and they get the answer elsewhere in the game or let them dance for credits in a bar... let them discover the world, send them to dangerous places, where they have to avoid fighting, because they would die when detected. There are several ways for quest, but the only thing FC implements to get the rare and wanted loot is 'Kill-the-mob'. Every solo player should be able to get every item in the game by using his brain instead of 'build-a-multi-user-group-and-kill-the-gazillion-HP-mob-befor-the-other-group-kills-it'

I will never camp bosses for hours or days with no chance of a real good reward. Thats plain and simple: stupid

[engelstein]

Get some of your guildies to come. Just the top three people in your guild could probably do a buttload of damage.

[____________Dominata]

Originally posted by Shubalubdub
Get some of your guildies to come. Just the top three people in your guild could probably do a buttload of damage.

Could you miss the point any more if you tried???

When it was released AO was supposed to be a different MMORPG, no static dungeons and no camping whatsoever.
A little more that one year later this has changed completely and in order to get your hands on some of the most useful items in the game you have to camp, which is a game killer to a lot of people. It's not about bringing a team and dealing the most damage at all, it's about how insanely stupid and boring camping is.

Rare items and drops belongs to big, high level factions almost exclusively which is wrong. There has been a lot os suggestions as how to solve this, nothing has happened yet and probably never will either...

Hmmm...this reminds me, time for a rare bump to a post of mine that talks about this...

[engelstein]

Originally posted by Dominata
Could you miss the point any more if you tried???

Yes.

[____________Ejeckted]

yup.

the dungeon and boss itself should be the challenge,
not a competition to see who has more time to waste,
or whos RL schedule allows them to play at the right time.

funcom have totally shut out the casual gamer.
(most of the market)

I have a job that allows me to play as much as I want
at any time night or day, but that doesn't entitle me to anything,
and doesnt make me turn a blind eye to an unfair situation.

all the current system does is make players pissed off
at the game and pissed off at eachother and log off
and/or quit in frustration.

camping is stupid. 18 hour spawns is stupid.
putting players against eachother in this fashion
only creates animosity and a hostile playerbase.

I know why Funcom is doing it, but that strategy is obsolete,
and does not extend subsciptions the way they're hoping for.

there is too much competition out there now to act like theirs
is the only game in town, and they are being overly optimistic
in players loyalty/addiction to thier product.

[_____________Rubikat]

Yes, I totally agree in every way camping is stupid, it seems if the item is half decent, you either 1. Have to camp 4-18 hours and outdmg a crapload of other players, having that many people causes lag, and often the game crashes and its absoulutly no fun. or 2. The spawn is semi fast but the itmes almost never drop!! example: I went to Smugglers Den the other day trying to get some MKII armor, a while ago, you could get it reletivly fast, dropped maybe 1 outta 20 times, which still sucked, but today, oh my god! my team camped the place for 5 hours! i somehow managed to waste 5 hours of my life camping this stupid place, trying to outdamage the other teams, yelling and screaming about kill stealing, people threatening eachother left and right out of frustration, its was horrible, but to top it off, after *5 hours* we got one single peice of MK II armor.. not one each.. just one! which was rolled for, so one player came out with one peice after 5 hours of hell. Seriously Fun Com, do you call that fun?

edit: I just read over the post this was a little unclear, we didnt get any MK II, not because we were being outdamaged or anything, my team got about 80% of the loots, its the fact that the armor just would not drop!! One of the major reasons this makes me so mad, is because they drop rate used to be alot higher, giving some people the chance to get the armor fairly easy but now everyone else has it terribly, stupidly hard, once somethings set and doing ok, it shouldnt be up and changed suddenly, its not fair, and its stupid. Has anyone ever complained " I think getting stuff is just too easy, make us camp for it fun com!! pleeeeaaasse!" things can be made difficult without being made stupid, I think its time Fun Com thought of something a little more bearable then camping, this is a game, we're all here to have fun, not waste our time being mad and wanting to smash our computers because of some rediculas task.

[Naraya]

BUMP.

Can we get a nerf on camping?

I mean just nuke every single static dungeon. Let the mobs wander in various playfields. Make us hunt for them. You took one step in the right direction when you made Jack the Legchopper spawn in I think it is 6 different spots in Varmint woods. The problem with that though is that now you have 6 new campspots in Varmint woods...

Would this be hard to do?
Camelot - Nuke the place and let Tarasque roam through the Artery Valley zones. His spawn should be random...as random as possible on the playfield grid..no multiple static spots...RANDOM. After being killed, he should take no more than an hour to come back and should not spawn in the same zone in which he was killed.

Steps Of Madness - Nuke it. Let Neleb wander Omni Forest. Let him play with the flowers. Let him befriend the leets. Let the newbies hunt him. Don't make him agro on sight, don't give him all his retarded friends...just him...roaming Omni Forest..with all the leets to play with and newbies hunting him.

Smugglers Den - Hmmmm. Nuke it. Scatter the smugglers around in the southern foul hills zone. Let them wander (in groups) about the zone. In fact, give them an outpost in SFH. Make them trace along routes throughout the zone. Make the routes vary in distance enough so that on occasion, more than one group might make it back to the base at the same time.

And then scatter the mantis monsters randomly throughout the zone, maybe sector off the zone and keep certain types of mobs in each sector with random and immediate spawns.

Foremans - Nuke this one plenty. Let the mobs walk up and down the road that runs through the Longest Road. Make them wander off the road from time to time, but keep them on the road for the most part. And then make them check in at the mine at random times and then return back to the road.

[_____________Rubikat]

err.. Im not sure nuking all the dungeons and scattering the mobs around is the answer, makes it abit too easy, like I said things can be made difficult, without being made stupid.

[DukeLeto]

alright...
compalint:
Trash King should spawn more often because there's always a huge amount of people camping there, and when one group kills it, we still have to wait 30min-2hrs for the silly mob the respawn, making the game a huge amount of sitting, and quite boring.

[_____________Rubikat]

Originally posted by DukeLeto
alright...
compalint:
Trash King should spawn more often because there's always a huge amount of people camping there, and when one group kills it, we still have to wait 30min-2hrs for the silly mob the respawn, making the game a huge amount of sitting, and quite boring.

Just count your lucky stars trash king isnt spawing 2-18 hours now...
I seem to remember the big selling point of AO was the fact that there would be no camping. EQ players were always complaining about the camping.... I wonder what happened.

[_______________North]

Use the parrot form when entering the dungeon

[Highorbit]

Originally posted by DukeLeto
alright...
compalint:
Trash King should spawn more often because there's always a huge amount of people camping there, and when one group kills it, we still have to wait 30min-2hrs for the silly mob the respawn, making the game a huge amount of sitting, and quite boring.

only 2hrs?

Longest spawn I've seen on him is 4 hours, and that's happened twice now. At the same time I've also fought 2 Trash Kings and the lackey at the same time. Rediculous.

This rubbish about random spawn times isn't helping, its not reducing camping, it only increases the amount of time you actually have to sit there doing absolutely nothing. Please go and take a look at the Omni Mine as an example of this.

I don't term myself a casual gamer, but it seems that these kind of camps are only designed for people who can play all the time (ie those of us who have very few RL commitments).

Anyway, not that I ever expect it to happen... but:

Trash King Quest

3 layer static dungeon

Outside the dungeon is an attenna that can be bugged as the first part of the second quest. This is not a mob and not something people have to queue for. Queuing to just tag the king is in my opinion even more frustrating than actually having to kill it.

1st layer of the dungeon contains low level mobs (equal to the level of the mobs currently outside) at the end of which (near the stairs) is the Trash Kings Lackey. This layer can also be used to attempt to get the parts for the first quest. (Levels 20 - 50?)

2nd layer is just mobs, perhaps with some of the items that used to spawn in the kings loot as relatively rare mob loot. (Levels 50 - 90)

3rd Layer (Throne Room) a big junk heap throne room with the King and some mobs for the completion of the third quest only.
(Levels 90 - 130)

Decide on the levels that should be capable of getting the pads and base the mob difficulty on that. No restrictions should be put on who enters, so if a team is stupid enough or good enough to be able to deal with the second and third levels while well below the recommended level then this should be allowed.

Finally and most importantly, an instance of the dungeon should spawn for every team / solo player that enters. This can be done by using a switch to open the door, it can update the team / player with a key for the dungeon in such a way that if a team wanders up 20 seconds later and repeats the process it will end up in a different version of the dungeon.

All that I would really like to see is something that is relatively fun and rewarding, not so very dull and seemingly endless.

[_____________Rubikat]

Originally posted by North
Use the parrot form when entering the dungeon

ppffttt Im not an idiot, my post had nothing to do with getting into the dungeon. No matter if we parroted or not, we were still upstairs for 5 hours killing smugglers and got 1 loot.

[alphane]

FC designers love camping, if not they wouldnt have introduce in the new 14.5 patch quests a new mob to kill at the end of each "ring" quests. This way you have one more mob to camp if you want the ultimate ring ,"jack the legshopppers". This is the smart answer to camping problem in AO.
There is only 5 donjon too, since one year, compared to what is available in other MMO, its a shame IMO.
I cancelled my account, you should do the same for , at least, one month or two plus a mail to AO management to explain what is your feeling about the game, but stop whining in the forum, they dont read it and its a waste of time.
It has been suggested houndred times some good solutions in order to eradicate the camping , none has been used.
For the others , those begining to play AO they will understand later when they 'll reach lvl 150+
Those that love to pay for an unfinished game and flame any criticism about AO you deserve what you pay for.

[Daft]

Camping is fun, mmmmmmmmmmmmkay?

On a serious note, the dev team is too lazy to actually program some difficult ways to obtain rare items. Camping is the easy way out.