Okay the mechanic I'm thinking of is Renaissance era accurate but a full on balance would require utilizing it in new or existing mobs. I'll just call it the (savage rider mechanic) Obviously Tamers have it the easiest when farming followed by bards. Mages can kite and med decent but even that's slow. Then melee classes have the highest risk of death even at 7x gm and a whole list of creatures that are just plain off limits and after hours of farming might have as much loot as a 15-30 minute farming session of a tamer or bard and are lucky if they don't die or get pk'd in that huge time frame. Savage Riders in OSI could kill a dragon or WW in about 4 hits and took almost no damage from pets. I'm not sure how they were scripted to make that happen but it was nice to be able to farm something that tamers couldn't. Unfortunately the Risk v Reward v Time speant still isn't spectacular by any means on these guys. The possible solution I would like to suggest is the possible implementation of difficult yet killable high yield mobs that can't be barded and do bonus dmg to pets (like savage riders do against dragons). You could even cater to melee and mages seperately if wanted by giving different mob types extra high armor values or magic resistance. This would give dexers and mages a valid farming option while also giving them a sense of accomplishment in killing something other "classes" can't. As much as it's probably easier to just make a bard or tamer and go farming, I don't always want to play a bard or tamer but feel like I'm sometimes just wasting my time trying to dungeon crawl as a dexer. It feels like every dungeon I go to is just a struggling attempt to validate my choice to play a dexer. There's plenty of unused or forgotten and neglected corners of the world including islands imo that could be the new home for these creatures or a dungeon. I wouldn't expect these guys to be easy though. I'm not looking for different way to mindlessly farm my hours away. I just think it would be nice if my rewards matched my risk and effort a little better when playing as a melee PvM character. Even if no changes are made I won't be upset. I love this server and just thought it might be an idea worth considering and since Savage Rider's used this mechanic it still stays era accurate. Maybe even if just savage riders and orc choppers get the same dmg bonus to pets when they get added in and get a boost to their loot and can't be barded it would be enough without having major changes. Sure those mobs drop mob specific loot but the tamers and bards could easily afford to buy them off the dexers thanks to their hours of farming easy gold. <--- which is fine with me. Just a random idea I had I might be way off base in this suggestion and I might not just thought I'd share it with everyone and let you all decide.
I like the idea of introducing mobs that are bard and tamer resistant to give PvMrs some more things to do and by all means make them hard as hell it'll only encourage teamwork.
I like Gideon's idea of making monsters have the same casting times as players, and be able to interrupt them.
I figured OSI had the right idea by starting to put in stuff like the Savage Rider but then they abandoned further investing in this great new idea and focused on AoS. Sure chivalry solved their problem of pumping up melee toons in PvM. Unfortunately that didn't balance anything for the pure warrior types. It just further took away from the wonderful freedom of skills and further incouraged a move towards cookie cutters. I think we should revisit and improve the idea of anti-tamer/bard monsters. I don't think their feelings would even be hurt if they even looked up from their Ancient Lich's, Elder Gazers, and Balrons and Faction PvP long enough to notice that there was something they couldn't kill as long as it wasn't excessive and unfairly rare or powerful loot. Just a nice comparable loot to make melee adventuring and occasional farm sessions plausible. I always found it strange that the most powerful "warriors" were among the weakest PvM in the game. While squishy mages, lute playing bards, and glorified shephards were the "tanks" of every encounter. Not that I don't enjoy playing all of those kinds of toons, It's just I don't want to feel forced to play those toons in order to be viable in high end PvM. I feel like my plate clad, shield bearing, occassionally poison coated weapon toating monster warrior shouldn't be the weakest character I can choose from when going into battle.... at least not all the time.
sounds good. except you should just have it so that creatures cant be Provoked. Discordance and Peacemaking should still be usable for those disco or peace warriors i nthe world
pretty cool idea. different areas having different mob types for different pvm styles makes sense. i also like the "teamwork" sized mobs too... I think there should def be more teamwork mobs. Good ideas... -fren
The code savages use to do deal bonus damage to pets is. public override void AlterMeleeDamageTo( Mobile to, ref int damage ) { if ( to is Dragon || to is WhiteWyrm || to is SwampDragon || to is Drake || to is Nightmare || to is Hiryu || to is LesserHiryu || to is Daemon ) damage *= 3; } I assume this means if target is one of the listed creatures then it sets the damage multiplier to 3. So instead of 29 - 34 damage to pets on the list they'd do, 87-102 dmg per hit. Or in somehow nerdier words it's attack becomes 1d6*3.
I'll comment further on this as I have time (patch crunch in progress) but I will say that the staff was actively researching a similar mechanic recently in order to boost the effectiveness of direct player vs monster combat. Our goal is to have a variety of situations in which various character types can excel. An example of this was our Halloween Night of Horrors event where the most effective player was a bard/mage. The haunted house event was geared towards tamers.
I like the idea very much. Brings to mind the "good old days" when a plate clad warrior could take great pride in wearing plate and being a gm warrior. Was great fun, just going cross country, fighting whatever kind of monster appeared ( at that time daemons spawned outside of Brit). I would also like to see some of the lesser monsters, lizard men, etc, carry more gold. Would make it more worth while to do "old school" dungeon crawls, where you went level by level in a dungeon, by the time you got to the hard levels, you were really pumped. This would also give newer warriors more incentive to use the upper level spawns now in dungeons. The concept of being able to hunt without using a bard or pet is a great idea. I agree would inspire more team work. thanks for bring this topic up.
I know this is an old post but I was wondering if anything happened with this, it looked interesting.
Still in the works ico1. Look forward to some interesting mob changes in the coming patches. I think they even mentioned some pending in Patch 38, but we'll see in a few days I'd guess.
Why not just do this: Implement the +damage to pets/non-provoking code to your everyday "lesser" mobs, increase their spawn rate as well as their gold/loot drops...but make them a little easier to kill; this way a warrior can dive head first into a clan of Orcs/Lizardmen/Ratmen and get all bloodthirsty and rich as the some time Keep the "greater" mobs the same with a slightly slower spawn time; so that tamers/bards are not chain farming Elders/Ancients... This should keep the tamers/bards away from the "trash" mobs for fast kills/loot and let the melee get down and dirty, right where they want to be. And let me say this...I for one am not a tamer, I am a die hard melee/archer but nothing sucks more then farming Orcs for 50-100gps and no magic drops while I know tamers are looting near 800-1200gps with all sorts of goodies included... Lets be real folks, as your everyday tank you can not expect to be running up to an Ancient Lich and expect to kill him in a timely manner worth doing all the time... As for bosses....throw in a few lower level guys so it is worth killing 200 Orcs to see a Chieftain appear and give me a run for my money! Just my thoughts on the topic, no need for new spawns just yet, level out what we have already with a little bit of code ***Forgot to add, look how long it takes to make a GM melee character...24hours with a little prep...now take a look at how long it takes to make a tamer, there has to be a balance somewhere***
