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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
First hit mob tagging
Tadashi
Member, Alpha Two
Playing as a Melee, I hated the quests where I had to kill 10 of so-and-so because it needed first hit to count and not tagging damage. With there being tons of people around and mostly range, it was quite hard. You could invite them to a group to get around this, but most people wouldn't join. IDK even on my range alts it was a bit much lol
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Goes a bit both ways, but I get where you are coming from. When it comes to the boss Ted, specifically, I experienced fighters being way ahead as they could AA at his spawn point, thus getting a strike in before any ranged would be opted to setup.
That said - I never had an issue once inviting people around me. Neither as a ranger nor bard. :]
... Though, I'll admit, I am not a huge fan of the "first tap"-system either. Especially not for bosses that takes ages to spawn. That is just a really tedious mechanic that should have been left in the past, imo. However, I do not believe "most damage gets the kill" or "execute gets the kill" is the solution either (in fact, I believe both of these are worse and even more unfair), and the community on the forums has made it quite clear that they do not want people to just be able to tag to get part of the credit.
A easy middle ground is contributing some damage to it like less % for bards and heals and more needed for dps
Is that a middle ground that’s … easy??
What if the Cleric or Bard are specced into damage or tanking as their Secondary?
If the game just looks at their Primary and takes a % of their heals/support buffs, that could yield some misleading results.
I’m all for better options than pure damage or “tagging” … but this idea needs more details too.
Everyone who participates in a kill (regardless of party affiliation) should get XP relative to damage contributed.
Healers should take a portion of a portion from everyone they've supported for the next 2 mobs the supported player participates in.
You can make the system affect item loot differently from glint and XP loot, if necessary to encourage competition over items without excessively gating levelling XP progression (though a lot of that will be balanced by quest and event baselines anyway.)
If healers are speccing both damage and healing, that shouldn't be a problem at all. Their support contribution already constitutes only a portion of another player's portion, which in smaller parties typically totals less than their percentage of the group, so no one will mind if the supporters make a little extra in some setups. You can adjust the numbers to make sure the party never gets drained by the supporters; it's good for the game if it's hard to level support characters.
From there, competitiveness handles itself. If you want to out-farm someone who's hogging the same place as you...just deal more damage. If you're a melee, find a ranged player to party up with, and find higher-levelled mobs that don't die in two hits.
Just out of curiosity, the supporting characters *TAKES* (aka, making the damage dealer miss out on a bit of their own reward) a bit of the credit from the people they support? That sounds like a ... interesting system. Especially if this effect stacks.
What would the result be if, for an example, a mix of 10 clerics and bards keep buffing you (and you are not in the party, nor "wanting" to be buffed) - would they take that portion of exp/credit x10 from you?
Not necessarily saying it is a problem if it is (because those are adjustable numbers) - just curious about the design!
If that ceiling is something like 35%, a single supporter might have to cast 10 spells on you to get those full 35% for the next 2 mobs.
Then if there are three supports that each cast 5 equally weighted support spells on you, then each of the three support players gets a third of those 35%, and you still keep your 65% as if a single supporter had reached the limit.
Long duration damage buffs are weighted higher than healing/shielding, which is weighted higher than mana restoration.
(The numbers are obviously just examples. It's not flat numbers of support spells, but numbers of support spells relative to percentage of opponent health that the damaging player dealt. So that it also works for bosses, and a single healer can't just heal you once for 10 spells in 1 minute, and then take 35% after you fought the next 10 minutes on your own. And it probably should be higher than 35%, but scale inverse-exponentially, so if a healer completely carries you through an encounter that outlevels you, you don't get 65% for that kill, even if the healer doesn't outlevel you much.)
Again, an indie game I played figured these calculations out very satisfyingly, so it can't be very difficult to let that code run in the background of damage calculation.
No one ever complained about supports taking too much XP, and supports rarely complained about levelling too slowly, because they had other methods of getting XP besides supporting. And it was generally understood that it was supposed to take a little more dedication and effort to level up a support for your guild.