Skyreach Dungeon, Mob Tagging Rules, Blue Posts, EU Connected Realms, Finalboss #51

[Stormykitten]

Well, I have seen a lot more groups forming, a lot more interaction after kills and a lot more helpful interventions so far in the game I play with free mob tagging. I just don't buy any of the mob tagging arguments, it's just bad for interaction. All it does is make it easier for groups that has already formed, instead of encouraging groups to form. I'm not even lying if I said it is the primary way I've made friends in this same other mmo, because I didn't know hardly anybody joining it.

All you've got to do is to make sure there is a certain treshold for mobs, like you have to be present for 20% of its life (the value scaling with amount of players) or something, to get credit. This way you can't just tag and pass. The reward you get is really no big deal if you add something like this, no reason to scale it down. It is a nonissue then because you simply cannot tag that many things that are spread out, if you also have to damage them.

I also saw a great post in that thread regarding how people that are a bit cautious in forming ties with strangers is actively discouraged by the system in WoW where if you don't naturally end up grouping, why on earth would you feel an incentive to actually group, on a social level? I'm pretty introverted, as is a very large part of humanity, so it's not an isolated thing. I can relate to this a lot, it's exactly how I feel on the topic. For me, free tagging made a huge difference in actually forming those ties.

[Turaska]

Have to disagree about the tagging thing, prefer having it as is now.

[Deleted]

The issue has arisen again mostly due to Beta spawnrates being badly balanced still. Some bad spawnrate questmobs or events have dozens of people jumping every spawn or just camping a spawn for half an hour to get their tags.

At lvl 96 I have about 7 unfinished quests simply because after half an hour I gave up on the spawn. I reported them all through the ingame suggestion system and I expect them all to be fixed with release, but for now it does get annoying.

There are also several areas where the spawnrate scales with number of people and I haven't heard any complaints about those. I'm curious why Bliz doesn't add that mechanic to simply every spawn. It will give a much better respawn rate feel right off the bat.

[Deleted]

I've never seen this type of activity in other mmos with shared tagging it's generally not that worth it. Most players would get pretty bored of playing like this. In any case you'd still have to run around and loot everything. Aoe loot doesn't have that large an area.
Most share tagging does have a min participation to get the rewards anyway.
Blizz is just being way too "safe: with this change.

GW2 trains through Arah farm excessively based on the very fact that shared tagging is enabled. You just get a blob of 50 max levelled players spamming AoE just to ensure they each get credit before mobs die. Would not want to see that become a meaningful practice in WoW.

[jimlow]

Wow these instances are getting me really hyped! Maybe its because I have run the MOP heroics to the point now where it seems like every run is a time trial. But between the item squish/ new mechanics/ and all the really cool new looking models and art this expansion is shaping up to look really awesome!

[Triggered Fridgekin]

I really dislike the mob tagging system (outside of bosses/rares) and that they are holding back on it in much the same way that they were about AoE-looting. A lot of newer MMOs use faction tag and it's incredibly convenient to the point where it inspires players to help each other out regardless of being grouped or solo rather than see the name turn grey a fraction of a second before you hit it, you groan, and move on to another mob. Spawn rates are a non-issue in games which use this method.

Just feels like another system Blizzard is reluctant to change and I don't feel it's for the better.

GW2 trains through Arah farm excessively based on the very fact that shared tagging is enabled. You just get a blob of 50 max levelled players spamming AoE just to ensure they each get credit before mobs die. Would not want to see that become a meaningful practice in WoW.

If you mean the three defense missions that were within a minute or so run between each other, yeah, I would put more of that blame on to the developers for not realizing the consequences of putting timed events (often in series) which can provide you with massive amounts of points, items to salvage and crafting materials that ran 24/7 to the point where you could literally no longer see the mobs due to the amount of players on screen at once.

For an open/faction tag system to work, the rest of GW2 and Wildstar are good examples of how they handle it through mob density and respawn rate.

[Slappyjoe]

GW2 trains through Arah farm excessively based on the very fact that shared tagging is enabled. You just get a blob of 50 max levelled players spamming AoE just to ensure they each get credit before mobs die. Would not want to see that become a meaningful practice in WoW.

As opposed to now where players out in the world in WoW actively avoid each other because there's no reason at all to help? What you're describing in GW2 isn't because of open tagging, it's because the game sort of funnels players into that type of behavior just because it's available and the density of normal and group mobs is far higher than it is in WoW. You're also ignoring the fact that in every other place in GW2, open tagging is a huge benefit. It encourages social behavior simply because there's literally no reason not to help out people who are around you. And let's be real: a lot of people are going to take the path of least resistance anyway, so if there's an equivalent to Champion farming in WoW, people are doing it already. Back when Timeless Isle was new, people were forming raid groups to farm rep all the time. How is being a nameless person in a 40 man raid any different than doing exactly the same thing without having to form that raid group?

Speaking of Timeless Isle, it's weird because of how perfectly it illustrates the difference between shared and unshared tagging. All of the named mobs and rares are open and people naturally gravitate to one another to kill them. They may not talk to each other much or form actual groups, but they're still playing together because there's no effort required to do so. Then you have every other mob on the isle that isn't shared. What do you do when you see someone killing one of those? You go somewhere else. You may group up, but just as it is throughout all the other levels in the game as people are questing to level up, unless people form groups with people they already know, chances are they're playing solo.

Open tagging removes the pressure to be social and simply lets it happen naturally. People help one another because there's no reason not to. I'd be willing to bet that most players here who have spent any amount of time solo questing have wished at least a few times that those other people killing the quest mobs weren't there. So with open tagging, even if you're not making friends every time you kill a mob together, at the very least that's better than actively avoiding contact at all, isn't it?

[Deleted]

I loved WoW for such a long time ... only two months of Wildstar changed how I look at WoW Dungeons though... I really dont think any of the bosses looked challenging at all >.>

that is how a run around in a circle mechanic looks like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37r_OSj-1DA

[ApeDosMil]

Rebuttals to the trite responses to tagging stance:

"X game does it and its not antisocial..." Okay, let's say you see x paladin in quest area, cool, you quest together. Once the quest is over, no words are exchanged, nothing social actually happens. It may seem like a small thing, but asking to group may result in chit chat while killing stuff and may result in friend listing, guild inviting. If this isn't happening, either you are a toxic person or they are, not the community as a whole. Open tag doesn't reward you for socializing.

"X game splits quest credit..." Okay, cool so that lock dotting and running around the field gets the same credit you get without as much effort. You play a class without an instant cast spammable dot. These same locks would /roll their eyes and tell you to re-roll. Other players seem like a nuisance for efficiency.

"X game splits kill experience..." So, by the time you run out of quests in one zone without reaching the level requirements of the next zone, you are stuck mindlessly grinding the few non-quest-related mobs away from other players. Seems like antisocial behavior. Other players seem like a nuisance for efficiency. "but you can group up..." Yeah, just like in wow... during quests.

Bosses and named mobs are always open tap, and the rarer multiples-needed quest kills always have their spawn rates increased or get put on dynamic spawn timers based on other players in the area. "Oh, but if too many people are in the area, killing one will have them spawn on top of me once I am done..." <---An actual genuine gripe? Whaaaaa... Okay, this just means you have to make note of where they spawn, and pull them into safe areas where you can escape afterwards. Open world should be dangerous anyways. Learn to group for fun, efficiency, and to prevent having to corpse run every 5 minutes.

If you argue after this, you may just be stubborn. I love you anyways.

[papajohn4]

How is a random quest group where no one says a word and people drop in and out as they finish their quests social but the same players playing the same way solo asocial ?
Blizzards definition of "people in a group for whatever reasons = social = good" is really funny.

exactly...I have been in countless groups for rep/coin farm on the island and guess what, no one ever spoke or even better put someone on friend list...first they add all those LFG tools and LFR to let everyone push a button solo and do dungeons/raids without ever need to say a word and then they care about "social" activities and they try to achieve this social part with a very old and outdated mechanic..how ironic.

[Deleted]

So that explain why Golden Lotus dailies were such nuisance early in MoP. It was blizzard way to design social gameplay.

[Deleted]

GW2 trains through Arah farm excessively based on the very fact that shared tagging is enabled. You just get a blob of 50 max levelled players spamming AoE just to ensure they each get credit before mobs die. Would not want to see that become a meaningful practice in WoW.

and yet its massively more social to do that, have fun event farming in GW2, jking with people talking between events, helping people in the zones to do stuff. All the time people are in chat asking for a bit of help with a skill point or something and someone will go help.

I just dont see it in wow, which I regards as a single player game unless you are LFG running or in a raid.

[Keleri]

A shame about the tagging. A lot of people seem to be in favor of open tap on the official forums.

This is one thing that GW2 did so well, I felt excited to see other players because I wasn't competing with them for anything, not even resource nodes. WoW might be okay with shared tap on named mobs and dynamic spawns for the regular ones, but only if quests are intelligently designed (e.g. kill 20 mogu, not kill 10 mogu warriors and 10 mogu mages-- inevitably, one of these groups spawns less than the other and then it's trolling and stealing to finish up because no one wants to be wasting time clearing the surplus mobs).

[thunderdragon2]

as ive said in another thread 2 fixes could make things alot better for everyone

1) allowing the ability to solo queue for dungeons/scenerios/lfr even when grouped - the system for this is already in place and its working for battlegrounds even when in a group you can solo queue or grp queue for battlerounds

2) for quests that to loot X of Y from corpses you can have it shared so that all your party memebrs that killed Y mobs 4 of X drops all members that killed Y get the 4 of X this alredy qorks for the 50 ephoc stones quest from timeless isle, exaple me and houyi kill 8 frogs 5 stones drop houyi loots the 5 stones i can also go and pick up those stones

[Deleted]

I loved WoW for such a long time ... only two months of Wildstar changed how I look at WoW Dungeons though... I really don't think any of the bosses looked challenging at all >.>

that is how a run around in a circle mechanic looks like [can't post links]

So you just run and avoid lava circles? That is boring. Can't even attack anything. You just run. It's just repetitive and annoying after first 2 times.

[subanark]

Rebuttals to the trite responses to tagging stance:

"X game does it and its not antisocial..." Okay, let's say you see x paladin in quest area, cool, you quest together. Once the quest is over, no words are exchanged, nothing social actually happens. It may seem like a small thing, but asking to group may result in chit chat while killing stuff and may result in friend listing, guild inviting. If this isn't happening, either you are a toxic person or they are, not the community as a whole. Open tag doesn't reward you for socializing.

"X game splits quest credit..." Okay, cool so that lock dotting and running around the field gets the same credit you get without as much effort. You play a class without an instant cast spammable dot. These same locks would /roll their eyes and tell you to re-roll. Other players seem like a nuisance for efficiency.

"X game splits kill experience..." So, by the time you run out of quests in one zone without reaching the level requirements of the next zone, you are stuck mindlessly grinding the few non-quest-related mobs away from other players. Seems like antisocial behavior. Other players seem like a nuisance for efficiency. "but you can group up..." Yeah, just like in wow... during quests.

Bosses and named mobs are always open tap, and the rarer multiples-needed quest kills always have their spawn rates increased or get put on dynamic spawn timers based on other players in the area. "Oh, but if too many people are in the area, killing one will have them spawn on top of me once I am done..." <---An actual genuine gripe? Whaaaaa... Okay, this just means you have to make note of where they spawn, and pull them into safe areas where you can escape afterwards. Open world should be dangerous anyways. Learn to group for fun, efficiency, and to prevent having to corpse run every 5 minutes.

If you argue after this, you may just be stubborn. I love you anyways.

By "split" quest experience is not the same as shared experience. If you do 10% of the damage you get 10% of the quest credit. Your quest progress is only measured in percentages. The exception to this is bosses, which, yes if you hit the boss once you get credit and can complete the quest. In any case, there are more quests to do in a zone than needed to level up, so you generally shouldn't run out.

[Deleted]

Lol I know what that guy means when he says: "I actually hate raidleading".

I'm in a pretty casual guild, but still MoP was the first expansion where we didn't clear any heroic bosses. When the last raidleader quit the game the choice was no raids or someone that didn't want to start leading. That someone ended up being me and I did not feel up to leading heroic progression raiding. So we called raiding quits after we cleared everything on normal with all the regular raiders.

We'll have to do some new recruiting in WoD because of the long period of inactivity, but I prefer it over a WoW burnout. The plan for WoD is to at least do some mythical bosses, but we're not to worried if we don't clear it :-)

[ApeDosMil]

By "split" quest experience is not the same as shared experience. If you do 10% of the damage you get 10% of the quest credit. Your quest progress is only measured in percentages. The exception to this is bosses, which, yes if you hit the boss once you get credit and can complete the quest. In any case, there are more quests to do in a zone than needed to level up, so you generally shouldn't run out.

*swoooosh* Over your head. However it's divided, it will be scrutinized by anyone who doesn't agree. Here's a possible result of percentage damage=percentage quest exp, percentage loot drops, and/or percentage quest credit... OP classes will have an exponentially easier time leveling, gearing up, and completing quest chains required for other perks, because they just hit harder and if hitting harder = more experience, more loot allowances, and faster quest completion (higher xp-per-hour). The OP classes will be nerfed into the ground. One perceived OP class/spec will rise and fall after another, and while OP classes usually get nerfed anyways, there will be more push to homogenize to make things "fair." And you know damn well that once that happens, healers will complain that the already difficult level experience is too hard without others trying to "help" by siphoning off experience, because their specs struggles to kill things. No healers leveling up, no healers in leveling dungeon queues. Slippery slope, slippery slope.

[OPLIX]

So you may as well axe some specs Mana bars, no? Or is this intended to be flavour? An homage to when it did matter?
Somewhat flavor. It's a very fair criticism that most DPS with mana bars don't use mana as their primary resource. (Celestalon)
In these cases, Mana is functionally a tertiary resource, used for offheals/utility. Presentation as primary is misleading. (Celestalon)

Blizzard just officially killed mana. RIP mana 2014.

[grexly75]

That dungeon looks awesome but wonder how long it will be before Blizz caves to the "it's too hard whiney brigade" and changes it..

And I wonder that since Ghostcrawler is long gone that Celestalon has taken up the mantle of community whipping boy..