Mercenaries

[Fosug]

I have been having a great deal of troubling finding groups lately. To compensate, I have begun efforts to start a guild, and while I have not been unsuccessful, the reception has not been wild. Adept raids are hard to organize even during prime time.

Perhaps mercenaries would be a helpful addition. Hiring a single mercenary for a certain amount of plat, either as a pet or something else, that would follow you around for a set amount of time. The mercenaries would have faction associated with them and perhaps quests involved in unlocking them. Mercenaries would be of various levels and various classes and they would take experience as any member of a group would, or perhaps to compensate, would act as an experience penalty of some kind.

Effectively, they should act as an additional party member, meaning that ideally they would not reserve a pet slot. They would act as a money sink. Perhaps they would random for loot and offer to sell whatever they won at merchant prices. To make them accessable to people of various financial situations, perhaps they could exchange greater experience penalties for less money when joining a group.

Ulimately their purpose would be to reduce the strain on players who have difficulties in finding groups or adequate numbers for adepts.

This post does not attempt to work out all the kinks that would certainly be part of mercenary balancing. I do admit the workload for this type of project is considerable, but it seems to address a couple of problems, namely money sinks and reduced playerbase.

 

[iaeolan]

Didnt read the whole thing, but the mercenary idea to make it easy for people to find people to kill with is bypassing everything the staff has put in to promote grouping. The server population is like 10x what it used to be and I don't see why there is any problem finding groups

Besides, already been suggested http://www.shardsofdalaya.com/forum/index.php?topic=297.0

 

[luciferblack]

Didnt read the whole thing, but the mercenary idea to make it easy for people to find people to kill with is bypassing everything the staff has put in to promote grouping. The server population is like 10x what it used to be and I don't see why there is any problem finding groups

Besides, already been suggested http://www.shardsofdalaya.com/forum/index.php?topic=297.0

I agree and disagree...

The mercenaries idea is just duct tape. I don't really like the idea of it. Instead of not being able to find a group and wanting to hire a mercenary, look for quests to do. If there is a shortage of quests for you to level in lieu of grouping, then address that concern.

The part I disagree with is:

The population is NOT what it once was...when I quit playing back in May it was peaking out in the 400's at prime time...these days it's like 200's. Granted that should mean a lot of groups, but for lower level players it sucks. I'd guess that a good 1/2 to 2/3 of the players on during prime time are level 60-65. That's not good odds for people lower than that to find a group.

 

[chelkey]

I had been bored during primetime hours waiting for more in my guild to show up so we could raid, so, I did a bunch of /who's with levels. Here is what I found:

/who all:
1-10=17
11-20=19
21-30=18
31-40=9
41-50=8
51-60=17
61-64=14
65=106

Then I tried /who all in increments of 5, just because many, I think, especially new guys out there still have it stuck in their head that you group with folks within 5 or 6 levels of you(dropping lvls 1 -10 because many of those are mules):

11-16=13
17-20=9
23-28=14
29-34=7
35-40=5
41-46=4
47-52=4
53-58=10
59-64=21
65=98

I've tried this quite a few different times, this is the only time I've recorded it though. It just appears that getting groups from levels 30 to 60 is not an easy task, due to the smaller amount of people at this level. Yeah, if you are able to duel-client, that's ok, you can still level up some, but if you can't, you might be sitting around pretty often LFG.

 

[Fosug]

Didnt read the whole thing

Firstly, it's probably a good idea to read the "whole thing" before commenting on something that may or may not be addressed by the post.

However, the problem of mercenaries replacing traditional groups wasn't addressed. This would be done by either limiting the number of mercenaries per player 1 or by making the number of mercenaries somehow proportional to group size.

but the mercenary idea to make it easy for people to find people to kill with is bypassing everything the staff has put in to promote grouping

In order to claim that mercenaries bypass everything the staff has put in to promote grouping requires you to list each individual perk for grouping and how mercenaries defeat it. I'll have a go at it:

Groups don't split xp after two players: mercenaries always split xp, like adventure bands when they were proposed.
Damage equations have had levels as a factor greately reduced: people are still just as picky about who they invite into their groups and mercenaries should always be strictly inferior to having a player around.

Those are the most important points that have been implemented to support grouping.

The server population is like 10x what it used to be and I don't see why there is any problem finding groups

This effectively blames the player who is having trouble finding groups for having trouble finding groups. The only way you could say there really isn't a problem finding groups is by doing a survey of many people at various level ranges and asking them about their grouping experiences.

Besides, already been suggested http://www.shardsofdalaya.com/forum/index.php?topic=297.0

This post refers implementing a pvp guild and having mercs to augment your guild. I don't see how it's relevant to my post especially since it wasn't addressed by the original poster, but in a reply, and it wasn't commented on again in the rest of the thread.

The mercenaries idea is just duct tape. I don't really like the idea of it. Instead of not being able to find a group and wanting to hire a mercenary, look for quests to do. If there is a shortage of quests for you to level in lieu of grouping, then address that concern.

Firstly, duct tape fixes everything. Don't knock duct tape.

Secondly, not being able to find a group is a problem. There is no hierarchical code that says questing is a more important aspect of the game than grouping and should be addressed first. In addition, many quests either require groups, in which case I cannot do them, or are too low level, in which case the rewards are of little value, or can be done solo, in which case the reward is again of little value.

My priorities go in the order of friends, with which I'd be happy to do grouping, raiding, or questing; levelling, of which I can only stand so much solo; followed by merchanting around where I tout my wares and try to play the market. I've never liked questing much in any game. It's simply not my style. Regardless, I feel grouping is more pressing since players cannot see content or complete many quests without them, and without a strong community, we won't be able to maintain the community we have. Clearly the developers see a problem with grouping since levels were to a great extent taken out of damage calculations. I am suggesting something I believe would make a player stay online and hunt rather than log since they can't find a group.

 

[Xeldan]

Odd thread to put this in, but with Thazeran's Tower mostly finished in terms of tuning and such, my focus is shifting to getting some more quest content in to help give things to do when you can't get a full group together. This includes both some repeatable quests(akin to the newbie xp quests, etc) and a slew of one-time quests.

We're also planning to add in some Starfall-esque quests for the higher levels, so that's another thing that will help occupy time on those slow days.