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Discussion on "Cheap Exploit" - Kiting (Ranger vs bard)
novercalis
Member, Founder, Kickstarter
So I wanted to bring up this topic and see what the community feels about.
Personally I am against certain types of Kiting - for the purpose of this post, I will be using EQ (p99) BARD example & possible solution.
For me, I think it's a very cheap exploit to see a Bard Swarm kite an entire map/zone/dungeon.
What makes this possible is they have a spell that makes their movement speed insane, allowing to avoid hits, while in return have a radius aoe damage emit from them. Thus they create other issues in the long run, Power leveling service.
My question is - how will AoC handle NPC being kited.
There are probably few ways to approach this such as:
1) LEASH - if you move X amount distance, they reset - ala WoW.
Personally not a fan of this
But I am also not a fan of FF14, pull the entire dungeon right before the boss or WoW Scarlett Monastary, pull 2-3 big sections before boss with all the HP Regen, Shield, Bubble, etc before nuking it down (BUT ALAS THIS IS FOR ANOTHER DISUCSSION! Dungeon Kiting vs Open World). I believe NPC should follow you till the end of times (or zone) ala EQ. But NPC should be smart, not mindless stupid ai
Ranger - let's assume a classic ranger has the ability to trap, snare or stun an npc. This type of class should be able to kite.
But Nover, you're not making any sense now and you're contradicting yourself.
So, how I imagine, as a potential solution - if code / tech permits - giving the npc ai some sane capabilities.
There is a huge difference from a ranger who runs and shoot, might have movement speed but still needs to stop and drop a Trap. THE TRAP itself is what reset the NPC internal cooldown.
The NPC should have an internal cooldown, that if it is unable to hit a PC and still taking damage - it will learn to run away and reset itself. Thus Preventing the Bard from doing its own thing.
Whereas the Ranger - it puts themselves at risk of getting hit still, having to stop n activate a skill before proceeding to re-kite.
If the ranger just simply runs and shoot - the NPC will eventually run away.
I also believe most NPC should have a gap closer to prevent bards/ranger from just doing 100% safe kiting.
Kiting should be a thing but it shouldnt be 100% safe. As stated above - a smart ranger who wants to sucessfully kite, has to learn to time their trap on a npc who activates its gap closer. Or even take a hit or two. If not, why would a humanoid npc, an eye of beholder, an acient dragon (all in D&D world have very high Int) just be mindlessly chasing someone, constantly taking damage and no realizing, hey this is a dumb idea, im gonna retreat - fuck that guy??
I am aware we dont know the skills yet of what a Bard and Ranger can do in AoC - this isnt a discussion about the class - but about mechanics that are usually present in most mmo.
Another difference - atleast in P99 is - Bards can have inifinite amount of npc chasing, whereas a ranger, necro is limited to how many it can kite - thus the level progression between the 2 is vastly differently. A ranger may solo kite but still lose XP per hour to a 5 man group just by sheer time it took - and that is okay, if one decides to balance stuff out like that. But the Bard outclasses any efficient XP group with ease - that is an issue we should keep an eye out for and prevent in AoC.
Personally I am against certain types of Kiting - for the purpose of this post, I will be using EQ (p99) BARD example & possible solution.
For me, I think it's a very cheap exploit to see a Bard Swarm kite an entire map/zone/dungeon.
What makes this possible is they have a spell that makes their movement speed insane, allowing to avoid hits, while in return have a radius aoe damage emit from them. Thus they create other issues in the long run, Power leveling service.
My question is - how will AoC handle NPC being kited.
There are probably few ways to approach this such as:
1) LEASH - if you move X amount distance, they reset - ala WoW.
Personally not a fan of this
But I am also not a fan of FF14, pull the entire dungeon right before the boss or WoW Scarlett Monastary, pull 2-3 big sections before boss with all the HP Regen, Shield, Bubble, etc before nuking it down (BUT ALAS THIS IS FOR ANOTHER DISUCSSION! Dungeon Kiting vs Open World). I believe NPC should follow you till the end of times (or zone) ala EQ. But NPC should be smart, not mindless stupid ai
Ranger - let's assume a classic ranger has the ability to trap, snare or stun an npc. This type of class should be able to kite.
But Nover, you're not making any sense now and you're contradicting yourself.
So, how I imagine, as a potential solution - if code / tech permits - giving the npc ai some sane capabilities.
There is a huge difference from a ranger who runs and shoot, might have movement speed but still needs to stop and drop a Trap. THE TRAP itself is what reset the NPC internal cooldown.
The NPC should have an internal cooldown, that if it is unable to hit a PC and still taking damage - it will learn to run away and reset itself. Thus Preventing the Bard from doing its own thing.
Whereas the Ranger - it puts themselves at risk of getting hit still, having to stop n activate a skill before proceeding to re-kite.
If the ranger just simply runs and shoot - the NPC will eventually run away.
I also believe most NPC should have a gap closer to prevent bards/ranger from just doing 100% safe kiting.
Kiting should be a thing but it shouldnt be 100% safe. As stated above - a smart ranger who wants to sucessfully kite, has to learn to time their trap on a npc who activates its gap closer. Or even take a hit or two. If not, why would a humanoid npc, an eye of beholder, an acient dragon (all in D&D world have very high Int) just be mindlessly chasing someone, constantly taking damage and no realizing, hey this is a dumb idea, im gonna retreat - fuck that guy??
I am aware we dont know the skills yet of what a Bard and Ranger can do in AoC - this isnt a discussion about the class - but about mechanics that are usually present in most mmo.
Another difference - atleast in P99 is - Bards can have inifinite amount of npc chasing, whereas a ranger, necro is limited to how many it can kite - thus the level progression between the 2 is vastly differently. A ranger may solo kite but still lose XP per hour to a 5 man group just by sheer time it took - and that is okay, if one decides to balance stuff out like that. But the Bard outclasses any efficient XP group with ease - that is an issue we should keep an eye out for and prevent in AoC.
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Comments
My problem with this is. You answered how to abuse your own system. If a party is kiting every mob in an area, all they have to do is get hit a few times within this cooldown.
I would rather the internal timer unlock more punishing skills, and activly punish someone for abusing kiting too much. Like a group of lizard mobs, that can suddenly spit fire with rediculous range. That type of thing.
I did a quick update / Edit -
There is a Dungeon "Zone" and Open World. I did state previously that the Tank pulling an area to be a separate discussion in general as other mechanics are at play. I wasn't clear about it, sorry.
For this post - it's single player, Open world Kiting
I'm not sure what part of it is the 'exploit' or problem?
I'm not as familiar with EQ, does the Bard have 'claim/tag' on all those mobs at once and no one else can just attack them?
Or is it explicitly the opposite, that because they do NOT have claim on all those mobs, the person being PowerLeveled just has to run around behind them and pick off mobs when the Mobs' health drops far enough?
Make some dungeon have mods simply too fast to kite. Have some areas with mobs spaming roots. Have areas of mixed mobs, where some are fast and lock doen targets and others are hard hitting and tanky. I dont mind some dungeons being kiteable. I dont want every dungeon to be kiteable. As far are "power leveling services" ashes is looking to make all content revolve around nodes, having high level players and low level players in the same areas. Dungeons that start out looking to be level 10, but 3 floors down your start running into lvl 30s. I think they will need to really look into how they want to prevent leveling cheese if it is something they want to prevent.
Also the concept of a pack bonus. Have mobs gain buffs for how many of them are currently aggro'ed within a range.
to the bard PL - in the beginning sort of yes, they arent group, bard is just tanking - but eventually they dont have to do no dmg and leech off the bard XP when they can share group xp.
You say discussing dungeon kiting isnt the focus, so you are more trying to talk about open world kiting?
Ashes has no zones.... leashing is going to have to come into effect at some range... otherwise you could literally try and gather every open world mob on the server....
Okay. Im going to try and sum up your post in a few general wants and worries. Let me know if im wrong.
You want:
No leashing distances. Mob chase forever.
And you want this so as a solo player you can kite something that you otherwise could not kill. You want this to be possible for certain classes, but not all, and use a ranger having a trap skill as an example of accomplishing this in an internal cooldown method.
Are my thoughts on your wants correct?
What you dont want:
Is power leveling through no leash distance. You dont want all classes to manage kiting in this way. You dont want someone kiting too mamy things at once to be nuked by aoe's
Is that correct?
Are those your points of discussion?
It also worked by login-off right over people if the monsters were of the aggressive type.
Aren't we all sinners?
So if you have nice resistances to the CC monsters use in a said area you may manage to kite them, but your resistances chances will only carry you that far....
Aren't we all sinners?
This wont be an issue in Ashes.
EQ was developed at a time when the developers didnt really know how players would use abilities. They just gave players abilities.
In Ashes, developers have a better idea of how players will use abilities, because there is a decades long body of work for them to pull information from.
Second, EQ didnt have the issue of PvP to contend with. If a super speed Bard is pulling mass numbers of mobs, just CC said Bard. You get the satisfaction of killing them, without the corruption
Edit: Another idea could be terrain blocking, but the downside is that the same terrain could potentially be used to simply rush through an area and straight to the boss/loot. So maybe an area has to be cleared for the next bit of the terrain to be accessible.
As a former Ragnarok Online player, kiting an entire map requires some skill in its own right. For the most part, monsters move at different speeds. I am thinking a tiger can run faster a sloth for example.
But I would also like to see varied stats within the same mobs.
Say for example human players move at speed 10 (unless affected by skills) and you're hunting something. Give them varied stats. Say unfriendly NPCs They also run at speed 10. But rather then have that be set. Give it a range instead. From say 8~15
I would actually like that for the entire set of stats too.
Anyway the point is, kiting monsters with varying movement speeds is a huge hassle.