Funcom/Cz: I dare you to read my constructive post

I would very much like to go hunting for xp outside again without having to reroll one of the other 11 boring professions..
Higher level xp hunting is a real pain having to sit through endless of team missions. At lower levels I hardly did any missions, and if I did it was strictly for equipment/cash, or whenever I needed, or felt for a mission. Now it`s hardly my only choice if I want to level my adventurer (currently level 145).

I know that this issue have been adressed somehow in the last few patches, like adding more higher lvl dyna camps and adding more xp to outside mobs. Still though fact is that people still don`t want to go outside on Rubi-ka for theire xp. Instead we go to an ugly looking bunker of some kind to gather our precious xp, even though many of us are really so tired of this (yea I know, it can`t just be me).

I don`t know exactly the situation with xp on outside mobs vs mission mobs, but I`ve heared somewhere that missions still give far more xp.. If that is right, then what is so hard by increasing xp on outside mobs drasticly so that people acctually would benefit by going outside? That way you would atleast give people an alternative to endless team missions.

And as a last comment: I can`t stress enough how important it is to have outposts where people can gather to find a group and to save and such, so you don`t have to take that long trip whenever you die..

Team missions shouldn`t be the only alternative to level your character, that gets tedious very fast, and will only harm your income in the end Funcom.Hope you see that and takes more steps to make it easier for people who want to hunt outside to acctually have a chance at it.Oh and add some variety to outside hunting as well. Don`t just add dynacamps with a boss popping up at various times.

Happy hunting! :)

I so agree with you, the only point of interest sometimes is being to do something in the vast outdoors, I only wish FC would make some use of it.
Please make outdoor hunting viable.

I would read this but the lack of structuring and punctuation hurts my eyes.

thanks for your hm somehow constructive post RudeboyZ

EDIT: ok man, now I`ve acctually spend another 2 min editing my original post (damn I`m tired), so you better read it! ;)

I would love to find a good place to hunt outdoors. i used to have so much fun at that rhinocockpit place. It was good because i could run there and almost always find a team to join or if not it wouldnt be long till i did. The problem i think is that when your a higher lvl most spots are half way across the world and in the middle of no where. At least if you died at that rhino cockpit place the save point was right by it and so was the reclaim terminal as well as a medical booth to by more supplies.

In conclusion i would like to see a higher lvl version of this place or if there is one already could someone please tell me where it is.

Thank you.

Heh - outdoor hunting was realy nerfed a short while back. Kinda sad that after they made it interesting to go outdoors away for the high lvl xp (lvl 170+), they turned around and screwed it over again. Don't know how many of you have spent time at Ace camp in EFP but for a short while it was a GREAT place to get some xp. And it was actually starting to become popular again with 1-2 groups there just about every time I went there. Then, Funkycom decided that what the customer wanted was "smart" mobs that would run around all over the place agroing everything around when they got to 15% health. Yeah, was a great idea. Now, not only do you have to hammer away on a hard mob and whatever adds there are but now you have to chase and try to herd him away from other mobs. Last time I was there it took 4 times as long to kill a Primus mob then normal and lost a couple of people doing it where normally it was lose free. I understand several other outdoor camps were done the same way.

Oh, and can we have a few less of this insane special mobs you need to kill for quests and such. All you are doing is either giving it to the small number of huge guilds who can put together 3-4 high lvl kill teams or those who have ALOT of high level friends.

Primus camp is still a good place to gain XP. And that running can be controlled. There are ways to make him run where you want.

I agree that "X" Head on the Silver Platter question is too hard.

I can understand that you would have to take donw the main mob, but not why Eel has to drop the platter.

Outdoors should be a good place for items and cash as well as XP, but these should be randomly placed events: i.e. the mobs don't spawn at a specific location; they spawn at a random location each time they are defeated, and that could be anywhere around Rubi-Ka. This would solve the problem of teams arguing over who "owns" the spawn area.

The coordination and nano/special attack ability of the outdoor mobs should increase as the level and rarity of items increases.

An example of an outdoor treasure encounter could be a group of mobs in the desert that spawn with a tent, and inside the tent is a treasure chest. I don't see anything wrong with some mobs being set on aggro, either.

There should also be a drastic increase in items that can ONLY be found outdoors guarded by camps of mobs, and these items shouldn't be available in stores or missions.

Outdoor mob camps shouldn't always be huge either, so soloists or small teams can have a chance to get these items.

I vastly prefer to hunting outside to doing missions. To me the big problem with hunting outside in this game however, is not xp, but the fact that you don't get the same rewards from hunting that you get from doing missions. Most importantly you don't get tokens hunting outside which are really important for the bonuses they give to your character.

I guess the original idea was that you should be rewarded for a job well done in missions since they are, after all assigned "missions." This makes sense from a story perspective, but the real end result is that it takes a lot of value away from the game by penalizing players who choose to go outside and enjoy wonderful world the designers worked so hard to create. The new subway does the same thing. You can go in the subway and have a great time hunting there, but you'll emerge level 24 with zero tokens and poor equipment. The game punishes those who enjoy the best of what it has to offer by making their characters weaker and poorer. That's not good game design and not a good way to keep customers.

The solution would seem to be a simple one; tweak the outdoor mobs to randomly drop tokens and other rewards so that the output roughly equals what the player would get in the same time grinding missions. There might need to be new token objects with maximum level restrictions to prevent people whacking gray mobs just for tokens, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Some might argue that there would be no compelling reason to do missions then, but why does there have to be a compelling reason to do missions? If players want to hunt outside what reason is there to not allow them to receive the same rewards as those who prefer to do missions? The missions would still be there for those who like them. What purpose is served by having the game revolve around doing missions? Most customers come from games where outdoor hunting is the thing to do, and when they get to AO they want to do the same thing, but what they find is a game where it's hard to find teams to hunt outside with, and a reward system that penalizes them if they do. This then becomes just one more reason to be added to the pile why so many leave the game.

If only Funcom could understand that they have one of the greatest games ever designed, but that customers leave it in droves, mostly only because of bugs and a number of small, poor design choices that could be very easily corrected.

Oh yeah I miss elmer, he was my buddy lvl 50-90. And VW back when the pit was all the rage! Now of course you get 2 snakes every 5 minutes. I remember the day the spawns died like it was yesterday. I think I almost cried.

Now the only real viable way to level is missions, why? because the spawn rates at everything but a few small areas have been nerfed to the point of no return. Even worse are the dyna camps. As the damage multipliers on the bosses are bugged and can take down most pets in less than 2 minutes.

Real reason people take missions thos is: They are safe. You can controll adding very well in missions. Wich means you can kill a lvl 200 mission at lvl 130. As opposed to hunting outdoors where your team could easily be overwhelmed by lvl 150 mobs.

(See! Edited and restructured made it easy to read and quite enjoyable! ;))

May I suggest Primus camp in EFP (earlier called Ace camp) - I rarely have a problem finding teams there, and the XP is worth the thrill (IMHO.)

I agree with dynacamps thou', they did fail as an alternative to missions.

As I said in a previous post, I refuse to do outdoor hunting until they tweak the mobs so you're not killed in one hit. I don't find playing for 3 hours followed by a 7K instakill shot particularly entertaining. That was at cyborgs for those who are curious.

Anthonysar I like your suggestion for outside hunting.
I guess one of the reasons I`m still around is because the great time I had at the beginning of playing this game up to level 100, partly because of the wonderful world known as Rubi-Ka and partly because of some of the people I met back then (who sadly are gone now).

I guess making outside hunting easier at higher levels, and more profitable when it comes to exp, tokens and loot will increase the life of this game by a large amount, for me anyway.

Thedo, you could always make a new character and experience a phoenix-like rebirth! :cool:

Yea I could, but I don`t find any of the other professions to be as fun playing as my adventurer. Would be nice to make level 200 as well

OK, I'll start off by saying that I am in support of the hunt outside movement, however I'll offer a few pros and cons of the proposed system.

Make outdoor mobs give more xp you say? This would make leveling perhaps faster than FC would like. Of course the players want leveling to be as fast as possible, but that would present some kinda balance issues I'm sure. Also, we all remember the infamous "5 NT and a doc" teams with their AE nuking craziness. I don't think that can even remotely be considered an *exploit* but it sure as hell isn't fair to the non-NT profs. That's far easier to do outside than it is in missions.

Make outdoor mobs drop better loot/tokens? The tokens issue I suppose can be remedied by the mentioned "QL" of tokens with level reqs, I suppose would drop similar to the methods that monster parts drop (regarding QL, not frequency. Should only be tokens on 2-3% of mobs). As for the loot though, this may present the problem of either overlooting or underlooting, and I suppose will take time to balance. It could work though, just I don't have any high hopes with FC.

Aren't missions safer though with closer saves and better add control still better though? Yes. I hunt frequently at ace camp (probably increased by the nearby MoK base which provides a handy grid in/out point) but it pisses me off remarkably when I get 5 mil xp and then die. I know I could spend the 5 minutes to fly to the omni OP EFP or back to the MoK base and grid to ent, save, and grid back, but I'd rather not. Whereas with missions you tend to only gain 3-4 million per mission and can save pretty easily in between. Also of course is the problem of adds. Even while in missions you still get that 4 mob first room and in those 4-way crossroad rooms can get 3 or 4, you still at least know they'll be there and know their level.

To combat the saves problem, I propose a risky system of player-save nanos. They should be given to bureaucrats, traders, and fixers, and have their power be in that order. There should be 5 nanos for the crat, 4 for the trader, 3 for the fixer. The 3 gotten by crat, trader, and fixer would be a Save(self) which be sold in basic shops and take 90 seconds to cast.
The save(other) would be sold in advanced shops, have a level req of 50 or so, and take 60 secs for crats to cast, but 90 for the other 2 profs.
Save (team) would only be sold in crat superior shops, the other 2 being mission reward (clicksaver) only. It'd have a level req of 100 or so. It'd take 90 secs for crat to cast, 180 for the other two.
The 4th in the line, which only crats and traders can use, will be a faster form of save(other), which takes 20 secs for crat to cast and 40 for trader. Level req 125. Crat form available as clicksaver fodder, trader as boss loot only.
The final form of save(team) would be crat only, take 30 secs to cast, and have 150 level req. Boss loot only.

The Catches: What's to stop a team from saving constantly? It costs money to save right now, right? Shouldn't it cost more to save remotely? Anywhere from 10 to 50 times as much depending on the prof and level. I'm thinkin the self is 10x as much, other 20x, team 30x, fast other 40x, fast team 50x. For crat it would cost half as much (5, 10, 15, 20, 25, though I guess it doesn't really apply to the last one). The money would be deducted from the account of the person being saved However, I'm thinking the fixer should get a save (self) with a pretty high level req which takes maybe 30 secs to cast but is free. What's to stop people from getting their saving char to save all the time? You can only save if the target (or in team cases, everyone in the team) is currently not in a fight, and cannot get into a fight while the nano is being cast.

I'm suggesting the whole remote-save idea mainly because I have a crat and I think that crats currently only have 2 killer apps (mass calm and xp buff) along with fixers (NCU and HoT) and traders (wrangles, deprives) while most other profs have 3, i.e., advs have heals, morphs, and dmg shields.. docs have heals, hp buffs, treatment buffs.. etc. and also because from what I've seen so far with the xp buffs and planned but failed xp reduction buff, crats seem to be the masters of xp manipulation. I don't know how hard it'd be to implement or if FC can overcome the extreme potential for buginess in the concept, but I'd sure like to see it in there.

Long post... hope someone takes the time to read it :)

I can see the problem by increasing xp outside, but atleast make the xp equal to the xp in missions ( with mission reward taken into consideration).

If Funcom could make the necessary changes so it would be easy to save nearby the hunting grounds ( I loved bot mountain in my newbie days), with different outposts I think people would take the risk to hunt outside. Afterall the risk is part of the fun.

I`ve heared this idea before and I don`t think the save nano idea fits in the game. Partly because some of the professions shouldn`t be allowed to have such a nano (it don`t fit some of the professions), and partly because of the way the story will turn in "Shadowland" (Which I think have something with reclaim terminals to do) wont allow for such a nano. Beside I find the idea kinda boring (no offense) :p

So Funcom, get to work on some nice outposts (with a save terminal of course ;) )