Is Kite farming Monsters intended?

Rojo_Loco

I have a question for the dev team: At what point does farming a slow moving monster by "Kiting" it go from an intended skill check to exploiting creature AI to "Farm" XP/Loot

I Have a few specific examples i want to bring up in this discussion: Zombies, Skeletons, and Invokers. In addition to these specific mobs, I also want to look at two different instances and why i feel this should be discussed.

1) Skeletons - Feels very fair - they move fairly quick, and throw their ribs at you when they cannot melee you.
2) Zombies - Feels fair - they move slowly and have a charge attack that can easily catch someone who isn't paying attention and can nullify healing with their ranged vomit projectiles
3) Invokers - Feels abusable - Move EXTREMELY SLOW, while their abilities can be devastating (Particularly their siphon life), their maximum range is considerably less than the player's max range allowing for nearly risk free kite farming for xp/loot

As for where this can become problematic in my opinion, is where character levels are lower than monster levels by a large margin.
A) Level 9 character farming level 9 (1 star elites) invokers outside Winstead - Pretty fair - skilled players can out maneuver these mobs allowing for a good source of xp/loot without the need of a group.
B1) Level 15 character farming level 21 (3 star elite) gravewalker zombies - fair(ish) - the zombies pull in packs usually, their charge skill makes kiting them a task that requires constant attention and situational awareness, their damage can kill if kited poorly. this results in a CAREFUL player able to solo a mob for xp (12000ish)
B2) level 15 character farming level 23 (3 star elite) Restless Invokers - Borderline Abuse? - being aware of their range issue, a level 15 can at almost zero risk kill these elites solo that would if "normally" engaged would result in death in only 1 or 2 hits. While a "High Risk" task, because the mob could easily kill you almost instantly if you get too close...it poses virtually no risk to a PATIENT player resulting in very large amounts of xp (17000ish solo)

Where i am concerned is in where do we draw the line in what is exploitive? Would a level 5 farming the level 23 invokers be an exploit? what about a lvl 15 farming a level 50 Invoker?

To be clear, I am not against "Kiting" mobs. As a long time player of other MMO's I understand that it has been a strategy that has developed by the player bases that makes harder content available to skilled players. I believe that this should not be something that all mobs are designed to completely prevent. My concern lies in just how easy it is to kill invokers in their current state at virtually no risk to the player.

Edit: Here is a video of me and a friend killing a level 22 elite mob at level 6 and level 7 just to test to see if we could. the rewards are seemingly turned off (Good in my opinion), but we did it mostly to prove the point that we could.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaFIJVscUa0

Edit #2: My point seems to be repeatedly getting missed in further discussion.
A ) I am not saying that these mobs are finished. Yes this is an alpha, yes the PVE portion of the game will be getting several passes before the final release.
B ) I am not trying to call this out as a full EXPLOIT in the current state of the game. yes a level 6 killing a 22 yields no rewards.

The point i am trying to discuss is that when the devs DO THEIR PVE PASS, that they look at their designs for mobs with the knowledge that mobs like these in their current state CAN BE PROBLEMATIC. On my server, the spot where i started farming the 22 and 23 mobs is now a popular solo xp farm with multiple sub 18 players in the last 48 hours competing with me for the kills in that location.

Rojo_Loco

This Topic came up for me after seeing the bug of "Passive" mobs being farmed for risk free xp/loot.

Fippy

To my mind, I think this is the exact kind of risk/reward calculation that they want in the game that also makes the game feel alive, and like you don't have to do the exact same formulaic group content over and over again.

For instance, at level 8 or so when my friends and I were killing invokers in a graveyard, it didn't even occur to me to try to kite them, because we just had the people to handle it. Given that there's also death penalties, there's an inherent risk in learning things like "oh, I can actually just kite these solo."

If the level 50 invoker is in an open field with no other mobs to avoid, and a level 15 can just strafe and win, rinse repeat, that seems like poor design, but if that player has to weave their way around other mobs, and pay attention, and actually apply skill, then that seems like I'd want to say good job. Like when people 3 manned Onyxia in WoW. It being possible doesn't mean everyone can, or will do it.

Now if it ends up that everyone chooses to go solo invokers rather than engage in the group content locations, I think that would indicate a problem, but is that the case right now? (I know it's the case for some other exploits to be sure).

kadimir

Would you rather the meta be you can't kite? Range classes nulified, and everyone except for self healing classes have no solo farm options.

Shoklen

I remember the massive Bard kites in EQ1; immensely impressive, took an extremely long time and was very dangerous to accomplish; twisting 3 songs, maintaining distance on the pack, situation awareness, ect...

I remember just doing a small pack in a very tight circle... Someone came along and started talking to me in whispers... I couldn't reply and after a moment he realized I just couldn't while maintaining the kite. When I finally finished, all he said was that was the most impressive thing he witnessed (this was back in 2001).

Good times. Much more fun then Tank, Spank, Heal, Pull. (yawn)

Rojo_Loco

kadimir wrote: »

Would you rather the meta be you can't kite? Range classes nulified, and everyone except for self healing classes have no solo farm options.

No, you misunderstood my post or didn't read my full post and are reacting to my posts title alone. My concern lies with invokers and similarly designed mobs becoming the "Efficient solo farm" and game content becoming a boring grind to max level instead of actually varied group content being the most efficient. My opinion is that kiting should exist, but that it should be a challenge not a mindless grind. Invokers in their current state are a mindless grind.

Edit: You may also have misunderstood my post as a "I see other players doing this, and am mad because I can't", but no, I bring this discussion up as the player trying to push boundaries and find things i can do that are unintended to properly document (or bug report where applicable) them for the developers to make the best game possible. I bring this up as a concern because I am that level 15 trying stuff to see how far I can go.

Rojo_Loco

Shoklen wrote: »

When I finally finished, all he said was that was the most impressive thing he witnessed.

This is what I feel kiting should be, an impressive display of skill, and concentration. Invokers currently are mindless, Zero risk, easy kite mobs worth significant xp.

dirich

Kiting takes skills, but not everything needs to be taking immense levels of it.
If there is a balance problem, I'm sure the devs will fix it, this is still fearily early alpha stage.
To be fair, the balance of many mobs is off, so it's not bad if there is something that's imbalanced in a way that favors the player rather than the opposite. The game is very grindy right now, as the devs mentioned they haven't started tuning the levelling experience yet - especially if you level outside of groups.

Also, I thought there was an exp penalty if you kill stuff too far higher than your level - I guess it is a mechanic to counter being carried by a higher level player (not sure why exp distribution based on level isn't enough though).

Anyway, where are the Invokers located?

Rojo_Loco

We took a level 6 ranger and a level 7 cleric and tested killing a level 22 (2 star elite) gravewalker zombie (Video to come soon). I am glad that neither of us received any XP for the kill, and we had to be pretty active in kiting it (One of us even died), but it remains that a level 6 and a level 7, in mostly vendor gear, were able to easily tackle a level 22 elite mob. I find this to be problematic.

dirich

The reason you can tackle the 22 elite mob is that scaling in this game is very (s)low.
Just look at how much your power rating increases when you change a weapon or level up. Plus, there's diminishing returns on it (which I created a topic about a few days ago).

While part of it might be due to the levelling and scaling into pve (endgame included) not being tuned yet, I've not heard anything about it in the sources I checked, so I'm not sure if this low scaling is actually intended.
Right now it seems like a system tweaked for pvp, and applied directly to pve.
Normally you get a pve system with no diminishing returns on offense (albeit this leads to scaling from single digit damage into trillion damage as years go by), and a variant that limits offense when in pvp mode (because basic resources like mana, stamina and life aren't modified, and need to work for pve, but you can't keep the pve damage in pvp).

kadimir

Rojo_Loco wrote: »

We took a level 6 ranger and a level 7 cleric and tested killing a level 22 (2 star elite) gravewalker zombie (Video to come soon). I am glad that neither of us received any XP for the kill, and we had to be pretty active in kiting it (One of us even died), but it remains that a level 6 and a level 7, in mostly vendor gear, were able to easily tackle a level 22 elite mob. I find this to be problematic.

why? Slow and safe mobs with poor drop tables? Just because you *CAN* kill something doesn't mean it's even close to worth it to. In that time from you could have aoe farmed goblins got a bunch of greens, glint, and gained an entire level.

Easy mobs are typically ONLY good for exp. even at lvl 15 you got what? 12k exp? at lvl 15 we were pulling 5-8 elites in oakenbane and aoeing them down getting wayyyyyyyyyyy more than that in about 2 minutes with good loot on top of it. even at 19 we were pulling 3 bears and the mimic blasting them down easily for about 16-17k im sure MUCH quicker than you can kite that 22 with your auto attacks.

There's your risk vs reward. Easy safe mob that you can grind at 1/5 the speed of a group farm that has no notable drops. that sounds like virtually 0 risk for a comparably bad reward. You could be aoe farming otters for more exp a pull that take about 60 seconds to cleave down.

Rojo_Loco

dirich wrote: »

Kiting takes skills, but not everything needs to be taking immense levels of it.
If there is a balance problem, I'm sure the devs will fix it, this is still fearily early alpha stage.

I agree completely, which is why i want to have the discussion in the forums now to better inform the dev team's design decisions for future passes of the content.

Rojo_Loco

kadimir wrote: »

why? Slow and safe mobs with poor drop tables? Just because you *CAN* kill something doesn't mean it's even close to worth it to. In that time from you could have aoe farmed goblins got a bunch of greens, glint, and gained an entire level.

Easy mobs are typically ONLY good for exp. even at lvl 15 you got what? 12k exp? at lvl 15 we were pulling 5-8 elites in oakenbane and aoeing them down getting wayyyyyyyyyyy more than that in about 2 minutes with good loot on top of it. even at 19 we were pulling 3 bears and the mimic blasting them down easily for about 16-17k im sure MUCH quicker than you can kite that 22 with your auto attacks.

There's your risk vs reward. Easy safe mob that you can grind at 1/5 the speed of a group farm that has no notable drops. that sounds like virtually 0 risk for a comparably bad reward. You could be aoe farming otters for more exp a pull that take about 60 seconds to cleave down.

While i was giving numbers based on individual kills, my problem was that I was easily pulling half of that graveyard on my lvl 15 in order to aoe farm, so take the figures i gave and factor in 5-6 gravewalkers and 2 invokers every pull that i was AOE-ing down.

kadimir

Rojo_Loco wrote: »

While i was giving numbers based on individual kills, my problem was that I was easily pulling half of that graveyard on my lvl 15 in order to aoe farm, so take the figures i gave and factor in 5-6 gravewalkers and 2 invokers every pull that i was AOE-ing down.

If you're solo aoe kiting 5-6x 2 star and 2x 3 star mobs with ranged puddles and charges with a 100% healing debuff for even touching you, I'd like to actually see a video of you doing this consistently without dying. can you say, upload a video of you pulling all that 5 times in a row, unedited. surely it's very easy for you, so we can see how imbalanced it is. Although I'm sure you're level 22 by now at that rate.