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.
