Remove pocketing/kiting

[NotDavidBowi]

Please remove heck kiting and grey mob pocketing from this game. It's potentially gamebreaking and takes the fun away for people that actually want to play and learn their profession.
- Normal leveling teams are almost non-existant.
- New players are left out in the cold, hardy any team to level and play with.
- Kitehill always ends up with drama, flags and /petitions.
- Ado heck teams are dead too because people just sit at kitehill till 160 and then move straight to inf.

Funcom, you can make people play this game again with 2 simple fixes. Let grey mobs run away when you try to aggro, and give hecks 40m range.

Let the flames and trolls begin.

[Gunfytr]

@OP

bump

[Comdriver]

and give hecks 40m range.
Let the flames and trolls begin.

hecks are throwing stones at 40m?
but anyway I love to lvl with non kiting teams

[Pomidor]

I got 35 toons on paid accs - Since 3 weeks, whgen I unfrozed them, I was able to get NORMAL team 5 times at low lvl. 5 times... At this moment, its way to hard to find normal team (no KITE or OST) and I just quit playing my lowbies lvling characters - I used to have fun learning new proffesion, teaming, doing job I supposed to. Heck, I even had problems geting team with my doc - doctor is no longer needed for TM/Hecks

Lowbie team play is non existant.

/signed

[Ceenah2]

They kick doctors from pocket hecks team for NT. After lvl 160, they kick NT for doctor for normal Ado hecks team/Inf hard mish.

[monkier]

Make gray mobs run, but dont make them have a 40m range. Kiting is part of the NT toolset, and it can be damned hard to do. Pocketing is another game alltogether.

[Vgman01]

With a kite team you generaly pay for your lvls. Imo this makes it ok. I mean, you pay totw twinks to take your lvl 20-30 char through totw to get your phatz, should we remove this from game to?

Pocket teaming is fine to because (most of the time) players actualy step up and kill the hecklers, the only real diffrence is that theres no real danger of dieing on the players end.

If anything you wont get people playing this game again by removing thease things you will only irritate them and possibly get even more to leave. Should their be other viable ways to lvl then hecks? Yes their should. Create more instances like DR (except you can run the solo version as many times as you please!) that give reasonable xp and a decent gear reward. Then you will start to see less people smashing rocks on the brink and more people lvling the "proper" way.

[hokutonoken]

i know if you've a 2nd acct. wiht high lv toon..you're bond to tank your other accts lower toon...it's just faster...until fc inact a way to make leveling easier for 2nd acct..link acct..etc

[Butsut3kkai]

Ely hecks are not the only way to level untill 160, there are other viable options like Ado hecks when you hit 130+, and I depreciatte kite teams because sitting while leveling means that you are not killing yourself and learning your profession toolset.

It s maybe true for persons that are lvling their 1 st toon. I m playing since 3 years now. It take me 2 years to finish my first char. When you spend 2 years on a single toons to learn the game, it s normal that we don t wanna spend 2 more to make an other 220. I kite nacs hecks at lvl 26 ish, ely at 75 ish and ado hecks at 132...seriously, without kitting i ll never make a TL7 again. Grinding the same mobs during hours is a pain. Im really glad to see that FC understand that by putting daily mishes or DOJA.

It s maybe an objective point of view but, i m a PVM only players and i only make TL7s.

EDIT: my english isn t good enough to explain well what i want to say ><

[Worldofalts]

lets not forget the fact that with "proper" levelling, you need to (or at least should) upgrade your toons equipment all the time. with power levelling, you only need to when the toon reaches a level where you need to. as far as people not knowing their toolsets and not knowing what they should be using nano/equipment/perk wise, i think those people wouldn't know either way, as leeching off of teams the entire way without knowing what your toon is capable of, will also happen with proper levelling. ao is not a game you can run through blindly and succeed. But, unfortunately, there are those who do because they do not know better, do not have the resources, or do not research their proffessions toolset.

[hokutonoken]

well it seems with new patch...the daily misson seems to encourage "outside tanking' with so call "solo" mish ^_=

[JenShay]

Please remove heck kiting and grey mob pocketing from this game.

I think you will find it has been discussed at great length and detail here

[Rissa]

Why do so many people seem to think that removing OSTs/pockets from the game is going to magically create lots of regular teams? The reason they exist in the first place is because there are not enough players left to sustain normal leveling. Removing OST teams is not going to fix that, it's simply going to remove one of the last remaining ways to level effectively.

IMO there are only two ways to fix the current leveling situation: 1) an influx of new players and 2) an XP boost to make solo-able content a viable means of progression (something the daily missions have so far failed utterly at, in spite of them being talked up by Means as 'an alternative and effective way to progress').

[Metafizis]

With a kite team you generaly pay for your lvls. Imo this makes it ok..

Pocket teaming is fine to because (most of the time) players actualy step up and kill the hecklers, .

Thanks for my new signature.

[Keldros]

Pocket teaming is fine to because (most of the time) players actualy step up and kill the hecklers, the only real diffrence is that theres no real danger of dieing on the players end.

So the reward is still legitimate if it's not earned by taking risks?

Somehow I doubt you'd see it the same way if you saw a GM buffing the opposing side for a tower battle.

[JenShay]

Removing OST teams is not going to fix that, it's simply going to ...

I think you got lost at that point.

The team being OST'ed ... they are ... guess what? A team! Gee ... hmm ... imagine if they want to level and can't OST, kite or do Hecks ... well ... ummm ... I guess they could quit (makes no difference they were having someone else play for them anyway) ... or they could like get equipment, learn their profession to kill many mobs quickly in order to ... well ... effectively level.

[Rissa]

I think you got lost at that point.

The team being OST'ed ... they are ... guess what? A team! Gee ... hmm ... imagine if they want to level and can't OST, kite or do Hecks ... well ... ummm ... I guess they could quit (makes no difference they were having someone else play for them anyway) ... or they could like get equipment, learn their profession to kill many mobs quickly in order to ... well ... effectively level.

The point I was trying to make (which seems to have gone right over your head) is that if you make it hard for people to level alts, there will be a lot fewer people trying to level lowbie alts. How will having even fewer people than we have now in Nasc, Ely and Ado make leveling any easier???

[Szyylin]

lets not forget the fact that with "proper" levelling, you need to (or at least should) upgrade your toons equipment all the time. with power levelling, you only need to when the toon reaches a level where you need to. as far as people not knowing their toolsets and not knowing what they should be using nano/equipment/perk wise, i think those people wouldn't know either way, as leeching off of teams the entire way without knowing what your toon is capable of, will also happen with proper levelling. ao is not a game you can run through blindly and succeed. But, unfortunately, there are those who do because they do not know better, do not have the resources, or do not research their proffessions toolset.

That's why daily missions are a step in the right direction IMO. Let's say you get the smuggler's den missions on a TL4. You don't need to be twinked to do it, but you certainly need to know the basics of your toolset, have your nanos up to date, etc.

[Takun]

Mm disagree.

Two points to make here.

First off I greatly enjoy AOE leveling.. the problem with this game is that basically only NT-s have AOE abilites so they kind of get funneled into that role while leveling and it doesn't make it as viable for other classes. I think it would make a lot more sense if enforcers had a lower level ultimate behemoth ability to allow them to tank larger numbers of mobs so you could actually have an enforcer in your team of your level 'pocket' for you instead of your 220 enfo friend.

I don't understand why you whine about pockets (by which I assume you mean tanks) when people pocket with MP heal pets, crat aao aura / baton, hell I pocket my other account with my engineer 'aoe heals, damage aura, blind aura'.

On the second point I feel you are missing out on the issue here, isn't there a problem with the game when its so painful to level with out a pocket or a higher level to help that no one wants to do it? Hell I don't even attempt to level if I don't have explorer and training seminar perked (not to mention 2 IQ rings and my crat for baton).

There are two things that need to happen to make normal 'team leveling better' have designated kiting zones / levels and make everything else unable to be kited. And make instanced solo / team content with mobs / missions / rewards that scale and are valuable to the team so people actually want to do them.

[Xercia]

Problems with OST and Kiting is primarily a social one and less about mechanics or people not learning their tool set. Lets face it, if a person who is new wants to power level with the minimum effort with out learning their professions toolset they will find a way to do it. You will still end up with "Heckler Noobs" at level 220 that have no clue how to use their toolset to it's full effectiveness and still have a huge learning curve to overcome.

Socially speaking the primary problems arise from inbuilt survival instincts built into each and every one of us as human beings. We remember the bad more strongly than the good. This is instinct to us and helps us to avoid being in situations detrimental to us. However it also causes us to see more of the bad and less of the good.

An example from very recently while leveling my advy with my brother and my fixer solo and in PUG's.

I have gone to 2M hecks a total of 10 times since returning to AO. In this time I have come across 5 OST teams. Four of those times the OST insured that his team leap frogged with us, sharing the spawn as we went and did not KS. They where polite, offered merging of teams (until we realized level ranges made this not possible), and one, a 220 fixer OST'ing with snares, even helped us out by snaring our mobs before we got there to give us a few moments of free hits. One time, and ONLY one time did I encounter someone who was leading a rude team. This OST, an Enforcer, made sure that not only did my team not recieve xp, but directed his party in vicinity to KS us until we left. When we continued to OD his team of level 30's repeatedly and still get our full XP for the kill he then started to KS us directly himself to prevent us from gaining xp until we gave up. This turned into a DD war that resulted in the OST having to kill every heck to prevent us from getting his parties xp and thus he prevented his team from gaining xp as well. Eventually I grew bored of this and left and headed to bed.

With Kite teams the problems become one of screw ups on both sides and the way they are handled. NT's are not perfect and sometimes they make a mistake when kiting and train a team. Sometimes, but not always, they even do it on purpose believing that any team even close to them will intend to try and mess up their kite train. Like wise some teams will not realize an NT is in the area, get to close and get caught in the middle of the kite train. Afterwards rather than people speaking to each other like adults, making sure everyone is ok and apologizing for any mistakes people jump directly to flaming and getting angry. This is the social problem here. People just get to angry to quick.

In the end, removing OST's from the game will do nothing to better teaming. It won't hurt it, because a team that can kill with an OST can most likely do so with out one, just 10% slower because they will have to bring non-DD members and stop to heal up now and then. People will still try to KS and DD Wars will ensue. The only drawback to OST's is when the OST gets involved in the DD war and then no one gets xp.

Removing kiting will also do nothing good. NT's are weak toe to toe. They need to kite when solo'ing in order to be successful. That is just a fact of life. Removing this ability from them would be like telling all ranged professions they must now use 1he instead. It would be a nerf to a single profession that already has been left at the wayside ages ago.

Now that all said, I would like to see the mentality that you must be a kite heck noob or in an OST team to level effectively wiped out. However, until funcom implements a few changes that will likely not happen. What changes you might ask. Well, How about...

1. Create new instanced, level locked, areas that can be repeated with out a lock out timer. These new instances would hold enough XP for a team to get levels at almost the same rate has hecklers. I'd say just pure going in and killing will give about 75% xp vs a heckler teams xp per hour.

2. Add quests to these dungeons that can be done as bonus'. Make sure the quests are not gawdy and out of the way but something that only requires a little extra work. Doing these extra quests would push the xp/hour up to about 90% of the heck teams xp/hour.

3. Add GEAR to these dungeons that drop at a resonable rate. Include various armors and weapons that can be used at the levels the instance is locked at, and slightly past and into the next instance. This does not need to be uber end game stuff, but rather easier to aquire, nodrop, leveling gear to make outfiting a leveling character less of a pain and drain on the pocket book. Have each item have a 25 to 30 level range that it can level by right clicking when you meet the proper stats. Insure at it's maximum level it is just slightly underpar of more expensive items of it's level range, and bammo you have an inexpensive alternitive for a leveling character that is going to out level gear quickly anyways. You should beable to enter the dungeon at the minum level range, run it a few times through out the level range it is available for (5 to 10 times) and come out with a full set of gear. Perhaps have the gear be a reward for completing certin quests within the instance so you do not actually need to farm it. You complete X mission get Y reward.

If you can provide alternitive forms of xp that are both fun and exciting that also do not force people to go broke trying to level alts the old fashion way you might see more and more normal teams. As it is tho people would rather OST because it is faster and easier and really there is nothing to do at the lower levels worth doing.

Personally, no matter what, I would not want to see kiting as a play style and tool set nerfed. However kite teams could be nerfed with out nerfing kiting directly. Just reduce the radius of area you need to be in when a mob dies to get the xp. Make it so you basicly have to be in threat range when they go splat or you won't gain xp. That is the only way to nerf kiting teams with out also nerfing the NT Profession at this juncture. Please understand I am not advocating doing so, but rather stating it is the only way I see to do it with out also nerfing the poor NT's.