The Lost Art of Hunting

Hello all , time for another boring ramble on my part (yes im bored at work sitting doing nothing ) So todays topic is going to be Hunting outdoors ! Yes ! thats right , the fine Art of hunting outdoors .

We as players have lost this touch , this fine finese of a skill . We have grown too comftrable with Missions and the hack n slash aspect of it. Run in , agro everything , Heal , kill everything , loot . Rinse repeat . We ( for the most part) have forgot how to pull monsters to us and our team in the wild . We treat these things like it was a mission and blindly run in and agro anything and everything and bring it to our team . Which , 9 out of 10 times kill us .

We have grown to comftrable in the knowlege that our toons are uber and can handle whatever can be thrown at us , or that our team can do the same . While this may be true in missions , it holds no water in the wild now . We need to relearn how to hunt and pull monsters and what are jobs are within each profesion in regards to what we do to help the team . A doc heals , and enforcer tanks , a soldier gives dmg and MK sheild when agroed , mp with pets , agents and their roots ... so on and so forth . We can not Blindly Run into the middle of a crowd and try to kill the Boss of the camp as if it was Tara .

Tactics : If first you dont succed , try try again .
My guild and I went out and hunted Uniques last night . It was a blast to get our butts wiped by polymorhed lunitic ! THose panthers are funny to listen to and scared the hell outa me when they came roaring out of no where and riped me to shreds ! Most of the team Died , but it was a blast . We already knew we had no chance , we were just killing time till the real event .

The key to Killing a boss mob is to find out where it is weakest . Take the pest for example . Weak mob in genral with an area nuke of 2k ish . BUT his minnions are a pain in the arse . That is his strong point . How do u beat em ? Tacics , Plain and simple . Take out the Pest puss and the Pest goes down like a fine wine . I wont tell you what worked for us , But as i stated above , it seems that the best things work in difrent ways . Just because one class's nanos wont work on em dosnt mean a difrent class's nanos wont work . Strange logic But it is very true .

Lets all learn how to hunt outside again . It is a beutifull world out therre and i am enjoying my time spent in it :)

Any comments about tactics is welcome .

that was nice to read....i luv ur post...make all strong again...

5-8 pest pus's causes the problem :p

Bump for the return of strategic hunting :D

.. and seeing oversized "uber" groups get spanked in seconds hehe


Outside is unpredictable and fun :)

The only problem is the didn't offer any outdoor hunting for high levels. The new boss camps are a far cry from outdoor hunting. When I think of outdoor hunting I think of the nubi days at the Lush mines. Monsters all over the place. Not some dumb ass camps with 3786372678628762387236 HP mobs that you won't get xp for your time invested. It's really sad because I rolled up an Agent a while back. It's now @ level 44 so I thought I'd do some hunting out at Lush Mines. I yalm up and go there and guess what....IT'S DESERTED. ROFL Luch Mines deserted on a aturday afternoon. GG~ FC you're really improving your game loads I tell ya. Outdoor hunting. Yea thanks FC.

I simply do not agree with anyone who says the dyna-camp patch introduced outdoor hunting. Outdoor hunting has always been there. People wanted rewards but not the risks - so they stayed inside missions and complained there was not enough XP/loot incentives to go outside. Now that there are XP/loot incentives with dyna-camps and new mobs, people now complain it's not as easy and guaranteed as missions. Hmm.

Oh btw - bump for the starter post -

I have always preferred to spend more time outdoors than indoors. And I still learn something new every time I go outdoors, even more so with the recent patches. And it's always a good read about other people enjoying hunts and the outdoors. And oh I agree - too many are still stuck with Home mission mindsets. Time to embrace new paradigms and adopt new tactics for the outdoors.

Safe journeys, fellow Rubi-Kans.

Outdoor hunting safaris is the reason I got into AO....I really enjoy forming a team and venturing off into uncharted (for me) territory. The lack of pick-up teams that want to go hunting is a dissapointment and I find endless mission running rather mind-numbing. If only there were some overriding advantage to hunting (besides "to have fun," the whole reason we all play AO to begin with). Perhaps if everyone ran missions for loot but hunted for exp?...some dichotomy like that, where you need to do a little of both.

Missions give better, more reliable XP and loot. That's all it really is. Hopefully the outdoor mob XP bonus will help next patch.

Looking back, I really loved those days as an ignorant level 13 NT, taking my ignorant level 10-15 stranger newbies to kill reds in Omni Forest to see if we could, and I actually had a good time leveling. Maybe the extra XP will give more of an incentive to roam a whole zone during a trip, killing things? Who knows...

One of the biggest reasons hunting won't be as good as missions is that there wont be any way that at the end of a half hour to an hour of hunting Ill get a token, a much more importantly, a 1.4-1.9 million xp bonus. One third to two thirds of my mission xp comes from the reward at the end. Outdoor missions wont beat that.

I remember one time when me and a few of my friends went hunting for medusas up in Mort (im omni and this was in the days of 25% zone up there). Now that was a blast, not only did we have to worry about the borgs and the adds from them but at the same time always look out for clanners that might try to get in our way....

That was plenty of fun, more outdoors hunting and MORE 25% ZONES FUNCOM!

These days its just going through the same predictable broken shores missions without a challenge at all. Only thing interesting in the whole mission is seeing what the boss mob carries, and that of course is never anything I have any use of...

Anyway, good post, truly hope 14.6 with the increased XP for outdoors mobs will make hunting return on an grand scale... and that with that we can see some outside skirmishes between clan and omni... hell, make the entire planet (including the cities, but not reclaim terminals) 25% gas and i'll be happy.

(Edit: Also, shut down the grid, blow up the whompas, introduce alot more wildlife and destroy all yalms so people have to walk around on the planet and can see some of the wonderfull nature that actually exists there...)

I preached for a very long time for outdoor hunting : it's more pleasant and it requires better tactic than chaining rooms with 1 mob waiting in it. So I usually ended up at level 100 with 10 or 15 tokens.

I've started my Fixer in a very different way, just doing missions solo. I now have a 100 token board at 54 and earned more than 8 millions out of the mission loot. Of course I have a strong knowledge of the game, don't loose time or money if I choose not to do so, but still. It proves for me that outdoor hunting is tons of fun but absolutly not rewarding.

And it makes me feel sad.

Take a 40 ish team 4 holes.

From the grid facing the guards take a left..and go staight till you hit the water .. Just follow the lake to the right .

This is one of the best places on RK to hunt . Ever!!
Best work funcom ever did for hunting.

I reroll uber twinks just to hunt this arena.
Then get upset when i out leveled it!!

I very much like the oasis in newland desert... the one with bronto's...

I think theres less outdoor than indoor grouping going on because, simply put, people are more interested in 'winning' the game than playing it. Just look around next time you're in a populated area. All the soldiers with the same weapons, all the enforcers with the matching armor.. too many people play this game like its Quake, instead of a RolePlay Game. Thats the RPG in MMORPG, for those uneducated.

Thats the reason people go to Home over and over and over. For some reason they think they'll 'win' if they reach 200, so they're in a mad rush to get there. What are you people going to do when you reach 200? When you have no need for XP? Make a new character and do it all over again? Why? So you can do it again? Are you getting the point yet?

Sorry for this slightly inflammatory post, but its kinda disappointing to see an MMORPG become a MMOFPS (MMOFirst Person Shooter). It was my big disappointment with Everquest too, there was just no roleplay to be found. Everyone talks with d00d speak, talks in stats and figures, best armor, best guns. For those who don't roleplay, Cyberpunk (which AO is) was always meant to be style over substance. :)

I went flying around today, before the patch, looking over areas I'd never seen, killing outdoor bosses and their friends, and so on. Its a nice world out there, how many of you have actually seen over half of it? Did you know Avalon has heavy omni bases, with Juggernaut vehicles? I didn't until today.

I have seen all RK has to offer and yes there is alot to see.
However, alot of players go for the safe xp and not the excitment of the game . I guess untill missions are made more risky or hunting is giving mega xp players will mission.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Majikall
too many people play this game like its Quake, instead of a RolePlay Game.
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its kinda disappointing to see an MMORPG become a MMOFPS (MMOFirst Person Shooter). It was my big disappointment with Everquest too, there was just no roleplay to be found. Everyone talks with d00d speak, talks in stats and figures, best armor, best guns. For those who don't roleplay, Cyberpunk (which AO is) was always meant to be style over substance. :)

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people play the game like it was quake because ao is quake. it's a first-person shooter that aims for you.
one of the fundamental aspects of a roleplaying game is (drumroll) roleplaying. what about blundering through a mission facilitates this? what about lurking through the woods killing wildlife facilitates it? now granted, there are some opportunities to participate in the storyline; a few quests in the game attempt to tie into it, but in order to be `fair' to all parties involved, these quests must be offered to both clan and omni (and even neutrals in some cases) which necessitates having a backstory that is flexible enough (i.e. weak enough) to be tweaked so that it can justify giving the quest to anybody in the conflict! the tir rings quest is the only one that i can think of that isn't given to both sides, but the reasoning for that is clear when you consider the equipment advantage that one side has over the other already. it just so happens that an effort to balance this disparity takes the opportunity to attempt some sort of story tie-in. if you do this clan-only dogtag collecting fiasco, are you participating in the storyline or are you collecting items in order to get a goodie at the end? chances are you aren't exactly furthering the rebellion's cause.

the thing that really makes or breaks a roleplaying game is the story, and how you (the player) interact with it. building a character by `leveling up' and allocating skill points does not an rpg make. one of the fatal flaws any game can make is having pretenses about what type of game it really is. as of right now, anarchy online is a slow fps with stats and gear. until every single player in the game is absolutely drenched in an all-consuming goo of storyline, it is silly to consider it anything else. anarchy online is primarily centered around combat and equipment. there are no rewards given for good social interaction. there are no rewards given for staying in character or using unconventional tactics or being exceptionally good at your job. thus it is an action game, not a roleplaying game.
as such, the goal many people have is realistic: get the best gear so you can kill **** faster. just because one would rather roleplay doesn't make this mindset wrong does it? i mean, you sure as hell aren't wrong for wanting to roleplay, so why are others wrong for not?

now let me just say that i am very disappointed that ao didn't turn out to be an mmorpg as well. but it did turn out to be a unique mmog, and that's what is attractive to me about it. i'm sure many other people also envisioned a gritty, cyberpunky, post-apocalyptic neotechnological warzone somewhere between shadowrun and mad max. and i'm sure many people were at least somewhat disappointed when what we got instead was a watered-down story delivered as articles on a webpage and endless tasks to accomplish `for the greater good' which involve a canned message telling us it is imperative to the already distant storyline that we go to x location and kill everything there under the pretense that we must retreive a stolen prototype of a shining inner pool nanocluster which is guarded by a ludicrously powerful individual. huh? we don't really know what good our missions and quests accomplish, if any, but we know we gotta do em. we get xp so that we can use better equipment so that we can get more xp so that we can use even better equipment so that we can......
it's 3d diablo.
quake with implants.
in other words, it's an action game.

it may not be the type of game we all wanted, but it holds some sort of charm for me, so i'm happy. do i want more meaningful stuff to do? by all means! am i disappointed that the most effective character is a spreadsheet with legs? sure. am i pissed off that the variety in selection of decent equipment is dismally lacking? you bet. but am i having fun with what we do have? yep. that's all that matters, right?

this post isn't directed at anybody in particular...in fact i agree with majikall for the most part. i just don't think anybody is to blame, really.