Uniques - Problems and Spoilers - Observations of guild "Storm"

[_____________Salazar]

Well it just goes to show that different people read things in their own way. If Nikki was really trying to stop others finding these uniques why tell everyone where to find them.
I have heard about most of these but never really knew where to find them. Now I do, although if they are that camped I will never get any.

[Nikki.]

Silly Gyson
Only the people that wanted the items got them. If you call camping uniques for a week exploiting then maybe you should try it and find out for yourself how hard it really is. Not to mention all of the exploits I spoke of where not used by us. Nugget sat there for over a week untouched by my guild or anyone else. If we wanted to we would have really camped the spot and noone would ever know any of the spots. E****ially since we where the first ones to find most of these mobs.

But, you want to argue that because I see flaws in a system that I participated in, that I have no right to get it changed. Well if that argument was to hold true then we would still have mission running, token duping, and any number of things that have been changed because of player input.

You see everything I mentioned was not to make the items any more rare, but rather harder to camp. Thus making it so more people have a chance to get it for FREEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!! I know thats a hard aspect to grasp for some people but I think its more than fair. There still gives a way for guilds to camp but only on a limited basis. Ofcourse it also gives others a chance to find the mobs themselves. Because as of now no one has mentioned the location of many of these mobs. I on the other hand have pinpointed EXACTLY where they spawn.

If that theory is held to be true and my guild isnt farming these items then someone must be. And if you look on ebay you will see people buying the shades for 100bux a pop. Now with that info and the fact that some can be exploited AND camped to boot then noone new will ever know about a spot unless someone releases the info like we have.

But then again Storm did camp these mobs. So we have no right to say anything. We dont have the right to hold Funcom to their promise of not making this into another Evercamp game. So we should just shut up and 6 months from now, after all of you are feed up with paying tons in creds or real cash start your whining to stop the camping. Since only the perfect have any right to speak about the flaws of others. Then again it's usually the people that get dirty that make the rules because they see how dirty it really can get. Thats the same reason we dont let children make laws, they have no experience in life to make laws that will effect us in ways they dont fully understand. If we let the mob rule then things will get screwed up. If we let those that have experience doing it before the mob get unrulely then we have time to make things right.

or something like that.

[Ravan]

Evercamp, lmao

I thought this was Anarchy NerfOlnine.

[______________NERFED]

uhhhhhh 777 stam......thats jus the reqs for the ql 200 version of that helm man...i have 2 of them......one with 400 stam exactly and another with 300ish reqs........and it dropped the lower ql one cause i went with one other friend and kille dhim......the first time i went with a full team of level 140+ peeps and he droped the high ql one.

[Gyson]

I think I got a headache reading that post.

Originally posted by NikkiDial
You see everything I mentioned was not to make the items any more rare, but rather harder to camp. Thus making it so more people have a chance to get it for FREEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!! I know thats a hard aspect to grasp for some people but I think its more than fair.

Harder to camp usually equates to ‘more rare’. This isn’t rocket science, if the exploits are making these things too easy to get, and the exploits are gone.. what do you think will happen? The items will become harder to get, and thus more rare (as they obviously were meant to be from the beginning).

You say your group didn’t use the exploits you pointed out when camping these npcs. That’s fine. I just think it’s odd that you didn’t choose to bring these problems up until your groups no longer needed these NPC’s, but hey.. that's just my opinion. Usually someone who’s trying to prevent exploits from being abused will bring it up to Funcom’s attention right away. There’s even a specific Funcom-only exploit forum to bring this sort of thing up on, so it’s not like it takes effort to set things right if you really want to.

Anyway, again.. just pointing out that it looks odd.

Originally posted by Salazar
Well it just goes to show that different people read things in their own way. If Nikki was really trying to stop others finding these uniques why tell everyone where to find them.

Or, another hypothetical scenario: There’s a rival guild camping these NPC’s now, or just someone he doesn’t like.. and releasing info on where to find these NPC’s and how to kill them will just make his enemies camping experience that much harder. Because random people will begin flocking to these spots and the competition level rises.

See, you can see things all sorts of ways if you try hard enough.

[Bionitrous]

If there are guilds sitting on the spots where these 'uniques' spawn then they should immediately remove these NPC's from the game until they can fix this problem. This is as disgusting, anti-social, and UN-fun a situation as I can think of. The game is better off without these creatures (the NPC's I mean) in the game than with them.

A guaranteed random location _zone_ spawn would be acceptable if the NPC immediately started wandering around the entire area. The fact that Nikki was able to provide a 'Guidebook to Unique NPC Locations and the Loot They Give' is a terribly disturbing commentary on how little this game has improved over that 'other' game. This whole X,Y coords at an interval of Z hours makes my stomach wretch.

Likewise, I fear that FunCom may do the same for it's 'static missions'. Almost every single player is sick of kill x, get y, return it to me and recieve z. When those cards from the two static missions are finally used for quest rewards, it is my hope that the reward will at least be randomly chosen from a table of rewards. Nothing worse than a particular profession saying 'Sorry, I can't mission with you guys tonight. I gotta go kill Gary Pendleton and get my ZippyGun. Haven't done that one yet.'

It is my sincerest wish that they take the time to look at Diablo II and see the random loot generation system in that game. I'd have no problem turning in my 'quest' card and having the server roll me up a random reward. If it sucked, no biggy. There's always other 'quests' out there. If it were kind of cool, then I'd be much happier than knowing what I was going to get before I even started the damn mission.

[Nikki.]

Gyson
Believe what you want about me. That doesn't change the fact all of this needs fixed.

[Gyson]

I totally agree. I just think it would have been nice if this had been brought to Funcom’s attention sooner rather than later.

[_________CaptFallout]

Funcom tossed these crappy things in after they saw their "vision" of random everything was pry the lamest aspect of AO.

They knew people wanted static stuff, but they sure didn't think much about making the static stuff worthwhile... in EQ stuff that spawned rarely usually dropped decent stuff.

I think Shades of Lucibration are the only "decent" item out of all of them. The rest are junk, and wastes of time for Fc's programmers.

Of course, Trash king's pistol isn't too bad if you like using pistols... At least EQ rewarded super long camps... AO doesn't even try: "Woohoo! camped for a junky item for only 8 hours! yay!"

Sure, I agree it needs to be fixed, but it's pretty lame you'd milk it then report it but still think your complaint had validity "gee um, don't let anyone pull this crap cept us!"

[Nikki.]

Bump, and why hasnt the capt. been banned yet?

[Nikki.]

bump

[__________Mindswayer]

Originally posted by Gyson
I have to go with Stark here.. it really sounds like you’re saying “Now that my guild and I have milked these mobs to the point where we have everything there is to be had, it’s annoying to see other people using similar tactics to get these rare items that we acquired. Please make it more difficult for them so that these items my guild and I found don’t become so commonplace. We would like to be the only ones who spent months taking advantage of a flawed system that I will now finally bring to Funcom's attention.” .

Maybe that’s not what you meant, but that’s how it’s coming across.

It's Storm man, they have a history of doing this. Like when Fiezerald was the first to 100 and Doc Giggles decides to tell everyone how they all cheated to get the levels that they got.

Exploit then tell how it's done so no one else can do it. That's their way...

[Nikki.]

Nothing we do is secret.
Everyone saw the mission running. Noone would believe how overpowered it was though. Not until someone gained 15+ levels in a day at level 100+. Wasn't illegal though, and it wouldn't have been any good to have kept it in the game.

Everyone saw the next incarnation of mission running. Still no one would listen until people started hitting level 200. Not an exploit though and not anyones fault. It would have done no good to keep it in except to let everyone hit level 200. That wouldnt have helped the game though. And yes it was storm that was asked how overpowered mission running was in that mysterious note in the patch notes about guilds asked to comment on them.

Now we are telling you that there is a problem with uniques. Your only argument though is it should stay because we got to farm for a week. And obviously everyone in our guild was rich with loot and had everything they could ever use from them. Only in your dreams though, because uniques are hard to get period. Max of anything you could get was 7 copies of something since we only camped for a week. Then you have to consider we are a guild of about 600. Hmmm looks to me like we are incredibly rich in loot though, wouldnt you say?

Just because people take advantage of something that is perfectly legal at the time doesnt mean we cant lobby to change it. If you ever participated in unique hunting at all you would know that Storm wasnt competing against anyone since when we did it the Mobs wherent known. Heck they wherent known for weeks after we stopped hunting them. I remember seeing Nugget in his spot for 3 weeks without being killed once. Not like he was hard to find either. I mean heck he was a few screens away from the clon**** grid.

Ya but the argument still stands by you. We dont deserve to say anything because we noticed how screwed the system was. Thats awfully naive of you to only let those incompetant on a subject to speak about it. Then again this is the internet and naivete is rampant.

[__________Mindswayer]

Come on. Like Mission Running was the only thing you were doing. Do I need to bring up old posts? I never considered Mission Running an exploit, but the other crap Giggles mentioned was without a doubt. Lagging the client to get the same mission three times. Crashing the server by moving an inventories worth of items to the shop sell window, filling your inventory, then hitting decline so you could dupe. Using treatment labs while fighting. Remember all that crap? Oh but I am sure you never used any of that even though the people you hunted with day in and day out were. I remember you, Cryptic, Morbid, Sentime, Giggles and others posting in defense of each other when someone would accuse you of exploiting and bring it to the boards. I also remember when some of those started admitting to cheating and the excues were "Hey don't blame us, it's Funcom's fault."

[__________Mindswayer]

I say Good Job Funcom! You kept your promise! You said you would make sure the items wouldn't be better than the stuff attained normally and wouldn't imbalance the game in favor of the campers.

That is why the Uber Mob Boss items are useless. Funcom only put them in for the EQ crackheads who were *****in at em to do so.

[Nikki.]

PLEASE DIG THEM UP!

I want you to show me where I was posting as a member of storm when Giggles was part of the guild. Nahhhh you cant, because I didnt even know or join the guild until after 12.6. Which broke up storm pretty much and only left a shell of what it was. Like every other guild in AO at the time.

To my knowledge though my guild hasnt participated in any illegal activity. Sure you wont believe but you cant point out any thing we are doing wrong.

Anyways you still havent made an argument, just accusations to libel me. Good job, now go away.

[_____________Lamonia]

Greetings

This post has gone out of hand - what was your actual intention with it - now it is more suited in a forum over at Quake 3 World called R&R.

/salute
Lamonia

[Cz]

The post can stay, but keep the bickering out of here. Either do it in-character in the Organisation Politics forum, or take it entirely to another bulletin board, please.

NikkiDial, suggestions noted.

Group hug, everyone?

[__________Mindswayer]

Originally posted by NikkiDial
PLEASE DIG THEM UP!

I want you to show me where I was posting as a member of storm when Giggles was part of the guild. Nahhhh you cant, because I didnt even know or join the guild until after 12.6. Which broke up storm pretty much and only left a shell of what it was. Like every other guild in AO at the time.

To my knowledge though my guild hasnt participated in any illegal activity. Sure you wont believe but you cant point out any thing we are doing wrong.

Anyways you still havent made an argument, just accusations to libel me. Good job, now go away.

I said bring them up (which I did), not dig them up. You know I can't dig them up because:

1. The forums were wiped
2. The forums were wiped again.
3. The archives are down.

First of all, there was no Storm during the time when all the crap I mentioned happened. Well there could have been a storm, but who would have known, /org functions didn't work, you had no way to *see* if someone was in a guild.

I knew cheaters by name, not by guild. Only recently did I learn those names were in the same guild.

Nonetheless, I do agree with you. The spawns should be randomly placed and spawn more frequently.

[______SecretAgentMan]

Originally posted by Bionitrous
It is my sincerest wish that they take the time to look at Diablo II and see the random loot generation system in that game. I'd have no problem turning in my 'quest' card and having the server roll me up a random reward. If it sucked, no biggy. There's always other 'quests' out there. If it were kind of cool, then I'd be much happier than knowing what I was going to get before I even started the damn mission.

Asheron's Call handled this issue on a couple of 'static quests'. After killing the boss-mob and getting the magic-widget, you could take it to one of multiple NPCs and exchange it for an item that you could actually use, with each NPC dispensing a different item. It's not random like what you suggested, but at least it's not a case of a "new static quest that only rewards <insert class of the month here> with a new gadget".

The main drawback to a system like that, is that now *everyone* wants to go do that quest, since it will produce someone that *everyone* can use.

I'd still like to see mission keys handed out for static dungeons, so that you can choose who gets into the dungeon with you, just as with a normal mission. Want to invite your normal team? Dupe 'em some keys. Want to invite another team? Dupe 'em some keys? Want your whole guild along? Dupe 'em some keys? Don't want players 'TooCool4U'* and 'ExploitMan'* in your dungeon? Don't give them a key, let them go get their own which will open their own private instance of the dungeon.

If you could keep unwanted players out of a static dungeon while you're completing it, that would be heaven in my opinion. That's why I love normal (non-static) missions, no campers, no idiots, no griefers, just me and my friends...

*Intended to be fictitious names, if you have a character named after either of these, before flaming me, ask yourself this important question "Why?"