The Zerg

[Umber]

So I went on my first group dungeon run last night and holy cow was it fast paced and lucrative!

What I am finding is that Zerging dungeon chests/bosses seems to be the best way to gain loot and councils. Since Dungeons are not instanced (which I love by the way!) and boss loot IS instanced, it creates a situation where solo play is far out-shined by zerging. I'm not sure if this is even an issue, but it seemed it merited a discussion. It certainly incentivizes grouping, which is great. What is doesn't seem to do, is promote long-term group hunting. Zerging through the bosses and disbanding as soon as the dungeons are complete.

As it was my first multi boss experience with a group, can anyone confirm whether or not bosses can be farmed (beyond specific boss items on a timer)? Didn't see this happening, which is good, but is it possible?

[alleryn]

I agree, zerging is unbalancing. The whole "outnumber your opponents and outDPS them" phenomenon leads to buttonmashing in place of any actual strategy and should be looked at (though i'm not sure what the solution is).

For now, i just avoid doing it myself.

My biggest fear is that if i ever get to the point where i can attempt one of the popular zerg locations with a small group (assuming i can find others interested), some wave of players will just blow past us and stomp everything.

[Khaylara]

Bosses can be theoretically killed every time they respawn (10-15 mins more or less) but their loot "decays" on a 3 hrs timer. What it means - you get nice loot the first time then if you kill him again you get next to nothing. If you kill it again in 3 hours it drops nice items again but it has to have that 3 hours time period between kills otherwise you get rubbish. So farming bosses would not present much advantage for the farmer

Some dungeons (and even outdoors areas) have also elite mobs which have shared loot just like the bosses.
Grouping is recommended for dungeons but many would disagree with the "zerging" although that is the situation right now, if the group has mad dps that group storms through dungeons. Ideal would be to have some party/group roles but it's gonna get there eventually when the game is finished.

It's definitely better for your finances to run the dungeons in groups

[eikona]

I agree, zerging is unbalancing. The whole "outnumber your opponents and outDPS them" phenomenon leads to buttonmashing in place of any actual strategy and should be looked at (though i'm not sure what the solution is).

For now, i just avoid doing it myself.

My biggest fear is that if i ever get to the point where i can attempt one of the popular zerg locations with a small group (assuming i can find others interested), some wave of players will just blow past us and stomp everything.

This is already happening, and it's what has been keeping me out of dungeons. Most times when I try a dungeon with a group, a larger zerg group blows by us and takes over the area, leaving us very little to hunt at best. Some few are nasty about it and deliberately train us to death or have a smaller group split off to follow us around to make sure we get nothing to hunt. It is very frustrating.

I haven't posted about it because I can't come up with a solution either, that doesn't bring modern mechanics that I am here in Gorgon to avoid into the game. But it is frustrating. I keep hoping to find the dungeons growing into the large sprawls that I remember from EQ, that could support multiple groups.

[Khaylara]

It's unfortunate that some people are being nasty and griefing because there are few simple solutions to sort out the lack of space in dungeons

-join groups and rush bosses and chests. A dungeon can be ran with 20 people split in 2 groups and talking in nearby chat, there's not much need to compete

-it's custom not to bury mobs in dungeons. Throw that rule off the window when there are others nearby. If one group buries their corpses the group coming behind would have fresh new mobs to kill. It involves not being an asshat and actually being considerate.

-if people are griefing it's not bannable but it's frowned upon. This community tends to get rid of the sort of players who love to grief others so call out their behavior.

The dungeons won't be instanced (I understand the engine doesn't support large instances) but the devs know the playerbase is growing and probably intend to sort that out so sharing resources doesn't have to depend on someone's courtesy or common sense. Till then try the above mentioned tips

[Crissa]

If a group rushes the boss, you can always walk in and get the loot, too. And if the the boss despawns and you don't get a shot - you can still get loot for yourself on the next kill.

One group can't deprive another of the loot, since the loot is locked per player, not the world.

...Also, I've never seen it possible to 'train' mobs onto other players. The mobs always just run away. Is that something new?

[alleryn]

If a group rushes the boss, you can always walk in and get the loot, too. And if the the boss despawns and you don't get a shot - you can still get loot for yourself on the next kill.

One group can't deprive another of the loot, since the loot is locked per player, not the world.

Yeah, but loot isn't everything. I want to actually do the boss fight in a way that is challenging and fun...

[eikona]

If a group rushes the boss, you can always walk in and get the loot, too. And if the the boss despawns and you don't get a shot - you can still get loot for yourself on the next kill.

One group can't deprive another of the loot, since the loot is locked per player, not the world.

...Also, I've never seen it possible to 'train' mobs onto other players. The mobs always just run away. Is that something new?

It is certainly possible. Mobs right now seem to switch aggro to random players, for no other reason than their walking by. If you're doing zergs/ highly populated dungeons you may not have noticed it. But if you go into a low pop dungeon with another player, ungrouped, and both fight solo and "leapfrog" each other, you will see more often than not, the mob you're fighting will literally in the middle of combat with you stop fighting you, turn its back to you, and charge the other player. It works this way with groups as well - walk past a group fighting and it's more than likely that at least 1 or their mobs will turn and attack you even when you do nothing at all.

So the "trainers" aggro a bunch of mobs, then run in circles around us until their horde switches onto us and we die. It doesn't take long at all, as it seems as though there is some odd mechanic that prioritizes aggro onto non-participants.

edit to say - Yeah, what alleryn said. I want an old fashioned dungeon crawl, the loot is secondary.

[Citan]

Hey guys, love getting feedback but this thread feels very vague. It'd be really useful if people gave any sort of specifics. "Zerging" where? What levels are you? How many people are involved? Without specifics I can't give specific feedback. Here's some general feedback that I've posted before on the old forums (more or less):

Some low-level dungeons, I honestly don't care if you bum-rush them with a million people. If a high-level player wants to organize a bunch of newbies to kill Gajus? I can't really bring myself to give a crap. It's not important in the scheme of things. But if you're doing high-level content in groups of eight or ten, that's a bigger problem, one that we're aware of and that's on our to-do list to fix.

My current plan is to basically use EQ2's system: hunting groups have a max of 6 people, monsters become "loot-locked" (and XP-locked) to the first person or group that attacks them, and a little icon shows that the monster is locked. There are simple level-range restrictions on the group, as well, to keep a level 100 from carrying a group of 50s. This system works well for keeping the game's challenge level up. But it has down sides, mainly that you HAVE to group up in order to share loot and XP from a monster -- casual "nearby grouping" stops working. It also opens up some dumb abuse situations, like "high level guy runs to boss and keeps him perma-locked for hours just so that you that can never kill him", but in practice that's pretty easy to fix. We first disincentivize the abusive situation as best we can (e.g. after the third repeated boss kill, you get literally nothing from it), then if people continue to be dicks just for fun, we ban them.

But as I said in the Big Dev-Info Roundup post, these plans will come later this year. The main hold up is that I need the GUI revamp to be done first. I don't currently even have a way to show a little "locked" icon overtop monsters. I could hack something in, but I'd just have to re-code it again in the new GUI. So that's wasted work, which I try to avoid.

In the mean time, please try to exercise a little self-restraint. Yes, you can abuse the limitations of the alpha and run a dozen people through a dungeon. But you should understand what you're doing: you're twinking yourselves. There are literally no dungeons in the game right now where a group of more than 6 should be needed -- and most dungeons are balanced for a group of 3 or 4 -- so if you have more than six, you're playing on an "easy mode" that is only going to be available until I can change it.

Why should you care? Because once you twink yourselves, your feedback becomes worthless. You don't really know how hard or easy things are, so you stop being able to help me balance content. Plus, the combat metrics generated by oversized groups are worthless, so I can't balance it that way either. I know that there are level ranges where it's hard to level, and dungeons that need work, and skills that need improvement at certain level ranges... but I don't really know where they are exactly, and I need your help -- your untwinked help -- to find and fix them.

The game isn't finished yet, but stuff like this won't be a problem forever. In the mean time, I'd like people to use their sense of restraint. It's not hard! Try it.

Edit: here's the big dev info roundup. It's from August, so it's a bit outdated in a few places, but it may fill in some gaps for new players: http://projectgorgon.com/blog/entry/...-info-round-up

[eikona]

I am very sorry to hear that you are introducing EQ2's loot locking. I found that damaged the community, and disincentivised people from helping and interacting with each other. It completely changes the way combat, grouping and player interactions in hunting grounds function. Once you're in a locked combat, you're essentially removed from the rest of the world as most people see that lock icon and their eyes slide away to find an open mob and you've become an obstacle rather than another player.