Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

Except that we have a far harder time having our fun because the majority of DDers and refreshers loudly demand meleeburn and nothing but.

Either A) You need new friends, or B) You need to realize your preferences and priorities are different from the vast majority of other players, and you need to compromise on your preferences if you want to play in a party.

Others who share our views have completely given up seeking at all, lest we get roped into a meleeburn and chastised/stared at for complaining. We can't have our trad-party fun if we can't make trad-parties in the first place. That's why we want camp balance. -- Pteryx

If you find 5 other players who want trad-party, then you can set up a static and don't have to worry about seeking in the first place. Setting up a static like that would take work. You'd have to figure out not only a time when everyone can meet, but then you have to make sure that the jobs people bring will mesh well together. But that's the price you have to pay.

If you want the flexibility of putting up your party flag and joining a group of random players, then you need to be willing to compromise.

[Akashimo]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

If you want the flexibility of putting up your party flag and joining a group of random players, then you need to be willing to compromise.

Better search function and ability to Everyone's Grudge party members.

And LS parties don't always work either <_< Majority of the people from my dyna and endgame shells want 30k/hr >_>
Even when I offer to people who need the buffer on the less popular jobs.

[Murphie]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

Better search function and ability to Everyone's Grudge party members.

So long as you understand that they'll be able to use it on you as well. And no offense, Aka, but you'd be eating a lot of EG if that were the case.

And LS parties don't always work either <_< Majority of the people from my dyna and endgame shells want 30k/hr >_>
Even when I offer to people who need the buffer on the less popular jobs.

LS party does not always mean "friends party." I mean, ideally it would, but seriously. LS members want to maximize their time as well, you know.

[Akashimo]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

So long as you understand that they'll be able to use it on you as well. And no offense, Aka, but you'd be eating a lot of EG if that were the case.

That would be fun, like seeing 2 blms racing to d2 the other.

LS party does not always mean "friends party." I mean, ideally it would, but seriously. LS members want to maximize their time as well, you know.

Yeah ;_;

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

LS party does not always mean "friends party." I mean, ideally it would, but seriously. LS members want to maximize their time as well, you know.

See, that's what is wrong, though.

Endgame LSes being about this "teamwork" thing, they should be making damn well sure jobs like PLD, THF, WHM, SMN and such are getting a nice buffer and merits if they're REALLY interested in keeping people around. When I was a sackholder on my LS on Titan, I made it my business as a leader to see those needs were met.

I mean, sure, they could go campaign, but that's not getting people buffers as quickly as they'd like. SCH and COR are my mains, its not like I'm starving for an invite here, so were I a leader, I'd suck it up and help, I'd set an example for the rest of the LS.

Most endgame shell holders and sacks have no concept of team morale. They just care about thier bottom line. Prime example would be the treatment of BRDs or THFs - they're treated like tools. BRD is harassed for merit, THF is called out to make every insipid little thing drop.

Then you have jobs that had to crawl to 75 solo because the community deems them unworthy of a PT invite. As a direct effect of that, just who do you think is most capable of sponsoring those nice KS99s that benefit the LS?

Oh, I'd say BST, PUP and BLM for the most part. I mean, I don't mind soloing myself, but when I do, i tend to have 40 KS per week to show for it. I end up with more seals than I personally know what to do with. Little respect for putting up those seals, thanks. You won't get them as quickly splitting them 6 ways in meritpo.

Good leaders look out for the needs of thier members, period. But then, this is exactly why I have so much trouble in finding enjoyment in endgame - few share that concept.

I always looked out for my PLDs and BLMs particularly and we had good chemistry from them in the LS partially due to that. You scratch your members backs and they'll show up for your needs and be a stronger team member. Treat them like a wageslave and that's exactly how they will act and, in time, they will leave.

So many times I get the "endgame is about teamwork" line fed to me, only to see its a facade put on by leaders who never take interest or much care for the people they're leading.

[Lunaryn]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

If you want the flexibility of putting up your party flag and joining a group of random players, then you need to be willing to compromise.

That's not a compromise. A compromise involves concessions from all sides. You're just asking for conformity with an established (and controversial, or we wouldn't be discussing it here) norm.

The fact that it is theoretically possible to still perform roles in xp that were once common does not mean that all is well with the game. I don't think SE ever intended or envisioned that we would be looking at this stark a trade-off between time-efficiency and strategic diversity (in fact, time-efficiency looks like it was meant to be pretty scarce in this game from the beginning, and that scarcity is why it's hard to ever take any of it back once given without incurring backlash; the very experience of relative plenty shifts people's tolerance levels). The somewhat meager nature of the benefits given out for other methods, in particular small parties, suggests to me that 1) they are afraid of large changes shifting the game dynamic in unpredictable ways, and 2) they still haven't fully come to terms with just how badly they skewed the time-efficiency equation when it comes to xp/merit.

Also, finding 5 like-minded people and then forming a static with them is unrealistic. Especially in xp rather than merit, merit at least you don't have to worry about levels. I'd say you'd need about 10 like-minded people to have a decent shot at a proper job role layout, and more like 25 to have a decent shot at finding compatible schedules. A better option would be some sort of parallel lfg/search system. Yes, comments are there and a few of us try to use them, but so much as having your flag up says to most people "I'm up for anything you have to offer as long as it's in Aht Urghan and doesn't have any downtime" regardless of any comments you might have set. And comments can't be switched off easily enough to be trusted on their own.

That said, perhaps I should start searching for xp seacoms before lfg people when I build parties, just in case. Establishing a cultural norm surrounding seacom might be more effective than petitioning for a new search method...

And once I finish my equipment database project (still in data entry, 1600 pieces entered so far) I would like to at least try my hand at designing an off-line party-management system of some sort...

As far as my own take on time-efficiency of meleeburn... I don't like it when I spend a whole day leveling and get half as much xp as the last time I did, true. I had a particularly sucky Bibiki Bay party once that got less than 2k/hr and I couldn't help but resent the fact that we'd been dragged out there when Mt. Zhayolm was available, we weren't built right for the targets in question (we were frankly overhunting), and the exact same lackluster party could have been getting at least an extra 1k/hr if not more just by changing to the popular AU camp of the level range. On the whole, though... burn-style burns me out rather badly. The xp grind is mildly fun on an interesting job in a setup that requires strategy. It's just kinda boring and tedious in some of the worse trad-party scenarios. It's both soul-crushingly tedious and exhausting in a no-downtime, have-a-mob-waiting-for-you-by-the-time-the-last-one-dies party. And I haven't even been in true meleeburn yet, just burn-style parties with token tanks that may or may not hold hate for any length of time (their role is to keep the mob from running off toward the healer(s) until the heavy-DDs rip hate off them, more than to actually keep hate altogether). Frankly, I'd rather spend 3-4 hours in a party that gets me 3-4k/hr than spend an hour in a party that gets 10k/hr and then be too burned out to do anything else productive the rest of the night.

[Murphie]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

See, that's what is wrong, though.

You mean, that's what you personally feel is wrong. What is right for you isn't right for everyone, and not every LS is going to work the same. Heck, not every group of friends is going to work the same. We can make personal judgements about the relative validity of these systems, but there is no one right answer.

Endgame LSes being about this "teamwork" thing, they should be making damn well sure jobs like PLD, THF, WHM, SMN and such are getting a nice buffer and merits if they're REALLY interested in keeping people around. When I was a sackholder on my LS on Titan, I made it my business as a leader to see those needs were met.

Which is great. And it's a system that I prefer. But not everyone feels the same way. Unfortunate? Yes. But no less true.

Good leaders look out for the needs of thier members, period. But then, this is exactly why I have so much trouble in finding enjoyment in endgame - few share that concept.

Emphasis on "good." There are a lot of LS leaders. There aren't a lot of good LS leaders. I wish that weren't the case, but it is. And I don't see much point in arguing about the way the community should be. I can only affect my own behavior, and possibly, the behavior of those I interact with.

[Callisto]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

Emphasis on "good." There are a lot of LS leaders. There aren't a lot of good LS leaders.

That's a huge point right there. I consider myself a 'good' leader as I try to get things nice and organized and lead the troops to victory in the best way possible. I show up to every event despite the fact that 90% of what we do has absolutely no shot at benefitting me. Our shellholder and officers are very transparent about what's going on in the LS and exactly where LS funds are going. I'm sure that several in my LS won't consider me a 'good' leader because I sometimes force them to come to events on jobs they may not want and bump them on items they're in line for should they intentionally choose to XP or farm instead of coming to scheduled events, and I consistently call people out in front of others for doing stupid shit that is detrimental to the LS.

At the same time, a notorious LS leader formerly on Ramuh ran a shell over a year while the entire time refusing to ever disclose the contents of the LS bank, very obviously used LS bank funds as their personal gil, had an extremely arbitrary point system that distributed most drops to their 'pet' members, got themselves an Aegis and half a GHorn, then broke the shell and jumped servers when they couldn't get into another LS. Despite all this, they could be considered a 'good' leader, as they led people to win the big fights and many of their members got the drops they wanted.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

That's not a compromise. A compromise involves concessions from all sides.

You make it sound like a proper compromise is where your preference carries as much weight as that of 5 other people. If 2 other people in a pick up group felt the same way you did, then it would easily be a case where the other half of the pt needs to give up as much as your half.

You're just asking for conformity with an established (and controversial, or we wouldn't be discussing it here) norm.

I doubt this norm is as "controversial" as you say. It gets discussed time and again because it's "controversial" for a very vocal minority. If more than a minority of the player base felt this way (e.g. fun beat grim efficiency in exp parties), you would have a much easier time finding people to go to non-ToAU zones and do standard SC+MB partying.

Also, finding 5 like-minded people and then forming a static with them is unrealistic.

It's not "unrealistic". It just takes a lot of work. More work than people actually want to put in. Which begs the question: just how important is it to exp in a non-TP-burn setting? If you're not willing to do the work to create a static, then maybe you really don't care as much about TP-burn vs not TP-burn, and this whole issue really isn't all that controversial. It's easy to complain. But when it comes down to it, many of those people complaining will still take exp wherever they can get it. The "best of both worlds" isn't having a SC+MB party and still getting great exp. Apparently, the "best of both worlds" is getting great exp and getting to complain to your LS about it the whole time behind your parties back.

I keep coming back to my Basketball analogy. It's like TP-burn is full court basketball where the focus is on fast break, and non-TP-burn is half court where the focus is on more organized and planned, rather than spontaneous, plays. But because some people are having a hard time convincing others to play half court, they want SE to step in and rip out one of the back boards, so that people are forced to play half court.

I'd say you'd need about 10 like-minded people to have a decent shot at a proper job role layout, and more like 25 to have a decent shot at finding compatible schedules.

Are you going to have a hard time finding just 25 players on your server that share your views on exp? At any given time during the day, doesn't a server have at least 1000 players logged on? That's less than 3% of the player base at any given time.

[Lunaryn]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

It's not "unrealistic". It just takes a lot of work. More work than people actually want to put in. Which begs the question: just how important is it to exp in a non-TP-burn setting? If you're not willing to do the work to create a static, then maybe you really don't care as much about TP-burn vs not TP-burn, and this whole issue really isn't all that controversial. It's easy to complain. But when it comes down to it, many of those people complaining will still take exp wherever they can get it. The "best of both worlds" isn't having a SC+MB party and still getting great exp. Apparently, the "best of both worlds" is getting great exp and getting to complain to your LS about it the whole time behind your parties back.

You misread my comment. It's unrealistic to take an otherwise arbitrary group of 6 people who happen to have a similar interest and form a static out of them. We know this from long experience organizing things that require similar kinds of time commitments (often longer, really) among a group of people (and 5-6 is about the threshold at which these things start becoming unmanageably big). You will find that out of those 6 people, only about 2 will have easily compatible schedules, only 3 will be able to work out a regular time to meet without rearranging things, and you're lucky if 4-5 can actually manage, with difficulty, to make the time that was convenient for the majority. To actually build a functioning full static, you must draw from a larger pool so that once other necessary constraints come in, you won't narrow it down to too few people to work with (small statics and partial statics, OTOH, have different considerations to them, and are arguably more viable).

Are you going to have a hard time finding just 25 players on your server that share your views on exp? At any given time during the day, doesn't a server have at least 1000 players logged on? That's less than 3% of the player base at any given time.

Yes and no, because you're now pulling things back out of the realm of "make a static out of people you're connected to/familiar with" and into the realm of "make a party out of interested seekers", just with conditions. Which brings us back to the problem expressed that meleeburn is so incredibly ubiquitous that it is supposed to go without saying that that's what you expect when seeking and what you offer when inviting. People are downright offended to be invited to non-AU parties or to be turned down by a seeker because that's what they're offering. If we had a way of expressing our interest in parties and searching for that interest which didn't collide head-on with this unspoken expectation, then I think we would manage.

That said, frankly, there's another unspoken assumption behind all of this which is somewhat troubling. Does the fact that we might be willing to put up with a great xp/hr disparity from the majority just to get a bit of variety and relief from the monotony mean that we are undeserving or unworthy of xp/hr parity? Is it not just an unfortunate circumstance but actually somehow right and the way things should be that such huge differences exist? Is wanting to put more effort, thought, and time into the grind something that ought to be punished?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

If SE "intended" to make ToA camps the norm, then I can't understand why the current expansion is larger in size and scope than any that had preceded it. I don't think these zones are just backdrops for missions and a different way to grab some EXP without PTs.

What's really bothersome to me about the prevelance of ToA PTs is that it has made the gain of Conquest points a 1-55 affair. What if I wanted some R/E gear from another nation? First off, I have to pay an inflated CP cost for that, but if I'm starting from practically no Conquest points, how do I get there when all people want is to do ToA camps?

And really, there aren't a lot of worthwhile items to buy from imperial standing in terms of Assault Ranks. OK, maybe there is if you're a ToA job, but thats about it.

The way we earn Allied Notes in Campaign is almost an admission of guilt that Conquest is ailing in some ways, we obtain Allied Notes totally different from the way we get Conquest points or Imperial Standing. Campaign will never suffer, people will always have a means of getting Allied Note items.

I think its time to apply some other bonuses to Signet. An EXP bonus and perhaps some more unique buffs that further distinguish it from Sanction and Sigil. It might also be time to rework the respawn timers of RoZ zone in particular. Perhaps not a 5 min respawn but something a bit lower than 16 mins would suffice. Don't want to tweak RoZ/CoP zones too much since they're brilliant solo zones already.

Since Conquest/Campaign mobs are harder, they should probably also give more EXP, at least in the 70+ range, anyway. WotG actually has a nice mix of camp options for many ranges of levels.

Its a sticky issue, but SE cannot ignore the fact that people are doing now what we used to do in RoZ/CoP merit camps - cramming ourselves into a handful of camps. The problem back during RoZ/CoP was that there really were not many places to go for merit. The problem now is that we have several viable merit camps and people just want to cram themselves into the same two ToA camps.

[Karinya]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

The problem is that we have more camps, but the number of "viable" camps has actually *decreased* since CoP, because the new standard for exp/hr makes most or all pre-ToAU camps not "viable" by today's standards. Moongate, Lufaise Meadows, roaming Shrine parties, KRT - all deserted in favor of Caedarva and Mamool Ja Staging Point. Gee, thanks for all your hard work on the merit camp scarcity problem, SE!

I think SE should nerf some ToAU camps and mobs (well, buff from the mobs' perspective, but it makes the camp less desirable) and tell people to suck it up. Yes, there'll be some whining, but in the end the game would be better for it, and trying to adjust the whole rest of the world to the ToAU standard rather than vice versa would be much more work and probably wouldn't work anyway - something else would get imbalanced.

Don't be afraid to correct your mistakes. It's better than leaving them uncorrected.


P.S. You can get conquest points from Expeditionary Forces and Garrison, IIRC. Good luck finding people for that though.

[Feba]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

I think SE should nerf some ToAU camps and mobs

Actually, better idea: Lower EXP earned when an area is popular, and increase EXP when it's unpopular. It would be hard to set exact numbers without having access to the data SE has, but, for example, if a zone has 3 times as much EXP earned inside it as the average of other zones, your EXP there is cut to a third. This would force people to spread out to many areas which otherwise wouldn't be as attractive, and encourage them to go to oddball camps (if your area has only a third of the average EXP earned, for example, EXP would be tripled. Those might be a bit much, but you get my point)

This would also prevent any camp from ever getting monopolistically popular in the future, too. Of course, SE would have to add ways for players to easily tell what areas will have what penalties and rewards on the region map, but other than that.

[Lunaryn]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

Actually, better idea: Lower EXP earned when an area is popular, and increase EXP when it's unpopular. It would be hard to set exact numbers without having access to the data SE has, but, for example, if a zone has 3 times as much EXP earned inside it as the average of other zones, your EXP there is cut to a third. This would force people to spread out to many areas which otherwise wouldn't be as attractive, and encourage them to go to oddball camps (if your area has only a third of the average EXP earned, for example, EXP would be tripled. Those might be a bit much, but you get my point)

This would also prevent any camp from ever getting monopolistically popular in the future, too. Of course, SE would have to add ways for players to easily tell what areas will have what penalties and rewards on the region map, but other than that.

I think the factors you cite here are a bit extreme (essentially averaging xp among all parties in a zone, on top of existing mob scarcity problems?), but the general notion of penalty/bonus based on the amount of xp activity is intriguing. Also reminds me somewhat of the way CP under Signet works; XP in a zone you already have control over grants fewer rewards, so in theory you'd be motivated to focus on those zones your nation doesn't control. In practice, CP just doesn't matter enough to people for this to pan out. Direct effects on xp, OTOH, would be far more visible and cut into the 'bottom line' for parties.

I'd say factors ranging from 0.7 to 1.3 would be plenty for normal circumstances, though the meleeburn skew is so big we might not see results unless extreme concentrations allowed the penalty to go lower than that. Just seeing the mire consistently bottom out to 70% of its current xp potential would still lower the massive xp/hr disparity significantly; however, SE would face the same problem implementing this as things now stand as they would 'fixing' the overly weak mob problem: it would cut into the expected xp/hr dramatically, making it practically impossible to achieve. Cue flood of account cancellation threats. There are no less popular camps to go to to get the same kind of xp/hr that people have come to expect. So even though in relative terms other camps would be more viable, the people who won't do anything but mire parties now still wouldn't do anything but mire parties, and they would see this as nothing but an xp nerf.

I think Karinya's right on the whole. There isn't a good solution to this problem now that they've opened the door on this kind of xp/hr rate. Either the problem stays and we hope it doesn't drive us out of the game, or SE has to slam the door in a lot of people's faces. Raising trad party xp/hr would help, but doing that in a way that doesn't similarly raise meleeburn xp/hr even further would be complicated and risks introducing even more unanticipated consequences.

[Murphie]

Re: Will Al Zahbi be Thrown to the Wolves?

DAoC had a "camp bonus" for mobs that hadn't been killed in a while. It increased exponentially as time went on and the mob remained unkilled. Something like that wouldn't be a bad idea, actually.