Outdoor camps

[aaronb]

Hi folks,

I'm not sure what the thought process was here. I was pretty excited about the new outdoor camps, but what I've found is mostly frustration in my visits.

What was the motivation behind making the mobs all immune to our crowd control nanos? This removes a huge portion of what I do in my profession, and I can't imagine how much of an impact it is on the crowd-control focused professions such as the bureaucrat. Can someone provide me some reasonable explanation for why this immunity was added?

[Sheffy]

Or how about getting chain-summoned from across half the zone by a mob which never saw you in the first place, making it so you can't escape?

Oh wait, that's silly. But its what happens at Ace Camp, and probably various other high level camps.

And I have to agree on the crowd control issue. Asmoran pretty much summed it up. It makes little sense to render certain professions' abilities useless just to make the camp "harder."

"Wish I were a fixer."

--Tsk

[locomdenom]

Originally posted by Tsk
"Wish I were a fixer."

Why?

GA is just as useless at those camps as crowd control. :/

[Sheffy]

*cough* evac *cough*

I had no escape from a chain-warping boss even though I was between 50 and 100 yards from him.

"There is no escape. Unless you're a fixer."

--Tsk

[Naraya]

Nullity Sphere is umm...useless at these camps...

...and they are adding more of them...

Something does not seem right.

[aaronb]

I don't want it to seem that I'm unappreciative of the efforts here -- I know funcom is trying to give us better high-level content and I know this is difficult to do.

I have the following comments:

1. The way mobs flee when they get low on health is awesome. When I saw this, I was literally laughing to the point where it was hard for me to chase them. Thank you for adding this; it adds a whole new element to hunting.

2. Increased nano resist is good, as it presents a lot more challenge and risk. This is particularly true for professions that rely heavily on hostile nanos. I think it may be a little too much, but I'm glad it isn't as easy as typical outdoor hunting.

3. Immunity to hostile nanos is bad. Specifically, all crowd control nanos. We don't even have the option to fail trying. This applies to roots and calms (I'm not sure, but I suspect snares as well).

4. Hostile player warping is also bad. Mobs should be using roots/snares to stop fleeing players, not warps. Or possibly give us the ability to resist warping.

5. The xp gain is a little weak (but not horrible). An improvement here would be a big motivator for getting more players out of missions.

6. I'd like to have the PvP risk brought back into hunting outdoors (at least in some, if not most, areas). I realize most players will disagree here, but the most fun I've ever had in this game was chasing after 1-2 omni attempting to gank my team while we were engaged with borg in Mort. The thrill of trying to take down Hermy or Paris or any number of others that attempted (and we often got them!) is one of my best memories in this game. This could also produce some humorous organized PvP situations.


Aside from #3 and #4, I'm supportive of the progress made. Last night, one of my close friends in the game (and the one who brought me into AO in the first place) told me he never wants to hunt outside again. This was right after his entire team was warped from well out of line-of-sight and annihilated by a boss mob. This is the same friend who a few months ago was eagerly hunting in a 25% zone. We are not carebears -- we just want to be able to employ the crowd control strategies we have been developing over our time in the game. With the nano resist these mobs currently have, crowd control nanos will already be difficult to land, but at least they will be possible.

[Peisinoe]

Funny story about warping. MP cast qw to get away from a pull gone awry. (ie: some idiot pulled while everyone was buffing.) 1720 runspeed + Flight and she couldn't get to a zone point. Summoned. Summoned. Summoned. Summoned. Summoned. Summoned. On and on and on with no end in sight. Finnaly got a bit tired of it and /terminated to get out of there. Summoning should not be the end answer to everything. Like any skill, it should be used in moderation.

Xp is still horrible. :P But I'm beyond the point where I care about xp anymore.

Boss loot. When a boss takes you almost thirty minutes to kill and drops a Kin of T nano and some refined implants, for 400k xp, I think the general reaction is that you were just jipped. :P When these bosses do this over and over and over again, you start questioning just how much 'fun' this really is. :P

Still, if you don't care about xp over time, and don't care about loot, they are a nice change of pace.

[Naraya]

Warping should be subject to the 40m limit, just like everything else.

And umm....Kin Of Tarasque, Flamespot, and Superior Lick Wounds can now be put in stores by now. Had I been collecting these discs instead of trying to find the ones I'm looking for, the score would be:

Kin Of Tarasque: 35
Superior Lick Wounds: 18
Flamespout: 17
Izgimmer's Little Nuke: 0

Something doesn't make sense there...

[_____________Meurgen]

Originally posted by aaronb
1. The way mobs flee when they get low on health is awesome. When I saw this, I was literally laughing to the point where it was hard for me to chase them. Thank you for adding this; it adds a whole new element to hunting.

I agree... sort of. As I pointed out in the patchday forum, it was awesome the first time. I did laugh out loud at the absurdity of it. But the second time was a bit strained... it ran halfway across the EFP zone before nomi finally killed it with his specials (enfs and fixers seem to be the only folks able to keep up while self buffed).

The third time... well by then it was just annoying. The fourth and fifth time... guess what? We let it go.

It's funny yes, but combined with the complete and absolute inability to STOP them from running away (as the main point of this thread goes) completely ruins the experience. It can take 10 minutes of running just to knock the last 10% of hp off of a Primus Mob... that COMPLETELY skews the XP vs Time ratio of the camp, and makes it a completely unviable alternative for xp gain.

/edit: I'd also like to add that until they put a save terminal within a reasonable distance of the camp, I am never going back. It takes me over 30 million experience points to gain a level now... I can get a good 10 million after numerous hours spent hunting at the camp... but that's literally hundreds of mobs that we have to fight. Somewhere in those hundreds, something is bound to go wrong, and we'll die. I've had successful runs at that camp that gained me around 10 million, and I've lost it every time due to some form of aggro that COULDN'T be controlled by crowd control.

So far my net experience gain from that camp is somewhere around 2 or 3 million... after well over 15 hours of game-time spent there. I can get 2 or 3 million from a very small mission in BS that takes a good team 20 minutes to finish... and in the end I get a 1.5 million bonus tacked on.

[secondkenlon]

Yeah, we need crowd control.

The mobs are nasty enough that even with mezzes/roots, you screw up and you're hosed.