Plat/PLing for cash... Can it be stopped?

ambera · Post by **ambera** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 10:59 pm

Also worth bearing in mind is that the 8v8 and solo RVR crowds do not necessarily want to take part in mass events like relic raids.

Tuthmes · Post by **Tuthmes** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 11:14 pm

Anyways will read through this tonight or tommorow on patch day. Before i reply to anything i would like to say: Requil, thank you for your responces.

Genedril · Post by **Genedril** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 11:34 pm

Hmm, plat/pl for rl cash - bots are bad - soloing isn't easy enough.....

I suppose people who don't have full time work offer the first for those that do. Personally I think it's wrong, the time you put into a game should be the deciding factor in what you get out of it. If you want a template/plats/uber drop #2172/a huge in game house you put the hours in that you can manage until you get what you want. Someone else may do it in 4 days playing 16 hours a day, someone else may have to stretch those 64 hours out over a month. You can't penalise someone for priotising their rl time to give them more DAoC time anymore than you could ask a pro football team not to train for 2 months before playing an amateur football team.

Bot's are there, most people have access to buffs in the RvR endgame so they're no longer a deciding factor they once were - if you don't have a bot you most probably know someone who does & can ask them for buffs. If you don't know someone who does then you & your botless friends also have the option of playing on a classic server (not saying I want people to leave - I find it hard to imagine that people really don't know anyone that runs a bot). If you want to stay here then I suppose putting a rvr group together maybe painful, but 1 bard, 1 warden, 2 nurt/regrowth druids (only need yellow dex/quick to cap that) & a vamp + others & I'd say you'd manage just fine. Yes your int & str/con isn't going to be capped, but it's not going to be off by that much that you'd never stand a chance. For min/maxers it'd be an issue, but then if you're a min/maxer you'd have a bot so.....

Soloing... well in RvR you'd need to travel in the right circles to solo effectively (standing by your local bridge not in a group is hardly solo). Buffs probably matter here more than elsewhere as it really does seem to be a case of min/max & timer dumping in the solo world now. Not everyone plays it like that though & as such if you want to play without rebuffing resists every 10 mins from a bot etc etc you'll find like minded souls from the other realms (after all if Taks can then anyone can

).

Solo PvE is a whole different kettle of fish. PvE is designed to encourage grouping & as this is a MMORPG then that's an entirely reasonable premise. PvE is how I met my first group of friends which expanded & waxed & waned, but those are the ones that I remember first & foremost. I'm not entirely sure what logic can dictate that an encounter that some people needed to get together 8 or 16 or however many of their friends should be do-able on your own. Epic armour is an epic quest - it's supposed to be about overcoming odds & needing help to do it. Not walking up to some mob & hitting it a couple of times & walking away with some armour. As for some items being open to a 'solo' toon - would it be right that someone could just walk up to our dear dragon, slap it around & walk off with his stash? That just doesn't seem right to me.

PvE gameplay has it's lovers as much as it has it's detractors. Anyone that says "not doing RvR is wrong" is no more right than someone who says "not doing blah style of RvR is wrong". People play this game to get different things out of it, communities form within communities. The key is for people to recognise this & get on with each other without saying 'what you do is wrong'. MMORPG's reflect real life in that people want different things from it & everyone finds different things enjoyable.

All that made sense in my head & looks like a ramble when typed

. BTW I agree with Xest that PvE could be more challenging than find mob, hit mob, kill mob - but finding a way to stop people abusing strafe & warping & kiting while still actually making it usable in PvE would be a headache I wouldn't like to find the Anadin for.

Belisar · Post by **Belisar** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 5:27 am

Gandelf wrote:Just backing up Requiel further regarding that RvRing is in the minority... how many times have Relic Raids failed because of lack of numbers?

Not sure what you mean by a lack of numbers.

100 hibbies attacking 150 albs probably means there are a lack of hibbies to complete the task. However 24 albs attacking at 3am is likely to be enough.

It is all a relative thing.

For my two penneth - solo PvE or even group PvE is boring eventually, as there is not enough room for variation. The game is always going to be limited in terms of places to go and level to xp and there is not a lot anyone can do about it. That's why first or second time round the grind to level 50 is ok but after that you lose a bit of interest and want to do it faster.

Why have an epic quest that needs a fg or decent level of damage output to finish ? My bard is stuck on epic 9 until I can get a half decent grp together. It would be nice to have the quest as a challenge to my barding skills as it is 'my epic' rather than just a challenge to my ability to find friends to help me.

Post by **Lieva** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:21 am

Belisar wrote:Why have an epic quest that needs a fg or decent level of damage output to finish ? My bard is stuck on epic 9 until I can get a half decent grp together. It would be nice to have the quest as a challenge to my barding skills as it is 'my epic' rather than just a challenge to my ability to find friends to help me.

yea id prefer that to

an option would be like wow.
In the NE druid they have quests to get certain abilities.
With the water one it is to dive into deep water to retrieve something

For a bard epic they could do something where you need to play a lullaby to a mob or something

ooh ooh or something similar to the sleeves drop in atlantis where you have to leggit across the zone on speed 5

The druid one was the only one that seemed story lineish with the cad goddau part in it

and obviously the horse? attack at the end is kewl...or was the horse the bard one?

Maeloch · Post by **Maeloch** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 9:38 am

Belisar wrote:NIt would be nice to have the quest as a challenge to my barding skills as it is 'my epic' rather than just a challenge to my ability to find friends to help me.

Atm the only thing it's a challenge to is ur ability to run an animist on a second account.

On related note, actually doing encounters, arties, xp grps, by one person running multiple accounts and various minigrp setups is actually pretty fun and interesting sub-game in itself. Problem solving just without the social element as downside, but you're ur own boss on the upside. I know some peeps have made quite a hobby out of it.

Gandelf · Post by **Gandelf** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 11:49 am

Genedril wrote:Epic armour is an epic quest - it's supposed to be about overcoming odds & needing help to do it. Not walking up to some mob & hitting it a couple of times & walking away with some armour. As for some items being open to a 'solo' toon - would it be right that someone could just walk up to our dear dragon, slap it around & walk off with his stash? That just doesn't seem right to me.

It doesn't necessarily figure that being able to complete a quest solo has to be easier than doing it in a full group. One way it could work is that when you are first given the quest, the NPC offers you the choice of doing it solo or in a group. Before you make your choice the NPC would warn you that if you do choose to do it solo that it will take a lot longer, because there would be more steps, more travelling to do and more monsters to fight, albeit the monsters wouldn't be more than say, orange con, maybe red. The quest would then only be doable solo. The solo quests could be set in solo instances, so that you alone could enter those instances, so that you couldn't try to speed it up or make it easier by getting other players to help you.

If you choose to do the quest in a group, then naturally it would involve fewer steps, less travelling, but higher level monsters (high purples etc). So in this case, the reward for doing the quest in a group would be that you could do it quite quickly, rather than it being long and more drawn out.

Both versions would be equally challenging.

It doesn't necessarily mean that everyone would choose to do the quests solo, because there are players who much prefer to work in a group.

Ovi · Post by **Ovi** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 11:54 am

In terms of class specific Epic quests it is actually feasible to make the quests hard to solo, then it is to make them for groups.

If a certain class is soloing an encounter they know exactly what the class is capable of, and where it's limits are etc.

With a group encounter there are a large number of combinations, and they would really have to make the encounter easy enough so that it can be done by a non-optimal group, making it a walk in the park for an optimal group.

The problem is that creating solo content goes against the grain for a MMORPG

Cromcruaich · Post by **Cromcruaich** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 12:07 pm

Shame there wasnt a realm wide channel that you could ask for help on.

Restrict shouts to every 3 mins or so, or do like the old muds did - you had a kind of power bar and if you shouted it went down. The amount of power and the regen time was based on your level (but here it could be based on in guild rank, level, realmrank etc) so you got more frequent shouts if you were higher.

Genedril · Post by **Genedril** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:14 pm

Cromcruaich wrote:Shame there wasnt a realm wide channel that you could ask for help on.

Restrict shouts to every 3 mins or so, or do like the old muds did - you had a kind of power bar and if you shouted it went down. The amount of power and the regen time was based on your level (but here it could be based on in guild rank, level, realmrank etc) so you got more frequent shouts if you were higher.

How old school & yet still a brilliant idea. I'd forgotten all about that. Still, I find it hard to believe that there are people out there that can't get 7 friends to help them do something. Maybe they can't all do it straight away, but surely they could arrange a time & get it done? Maybe there are people out there like that (probably mostly affects those new to the game as the level command & such has taken out the grouping which the rest of us relied upon to build up our first networks of friends).