The Death of group play? (Open tapping/contribution discussion)

[Tailborn]

Guys relax it's probably a bug. If not? Well get used to how grouping works now. You actually have to put some effort in rather then sitting there watching your fellows.

Maybe hit an attack key once? Not hard..

-TailyB

[Embolo]

I have taken to running around pulling all the mobs in for my champ friend to aoe them all.. no stealth just run through tabbing targets pretending I am an aoe tanking burglar.. so much fun.. feels so much like the class I kow... ./endsarcasm

Ok, I second that. Again would you use your stealth, move behind mob, Surprise Strike in a fellowship with a Champ that AOE the &%/£ out of mobs with two skills using the old mechanics??? Maybe yes, or maybe you would follow him dealing dps to each mobs w/o thinking too much on your brg's skills...
I'm not arguing that this way of manage quests/killing is the best one, just that it helps EVERYONE in advancing on the quests w/o the usual day-one tapping rage.

IMHO is a good improvement in our gaming experience.

It's easier? Indeed it is... Was it harder before? Nope at all, this game is TOO MUCH easy by ages...

[podgie_bear]

Guys relax it's probably a bug. If not? Well get used to how grouping works now. You actually have to put some effort in rather then sitting there watching your fellows.

Maybe hit an attack key once? Not hard..

-TailyB

Maybe you should learn to play this game, perhaps read up on how characters are designed and what their skills are for? Then perhaps you might realise what a stupid comment you just printed. You are basically saying that all characters, regardless of their skills, style of play and what they were designed to do, must now scrap all that and become DPS classes. Really? So all the skills we spents months and even years learning, practicing with our friends, learned to use to support others, that were specifically designed for teamwork and supporting others should be thrown away and we all need to become selfish "Me wants!" players? Lotro is no longer an MMO then, it is a game where soloers rush to selfishly grab for themselves and screw everyone else, the teamwork that this game was built upon is no longer wanted, please delete your support classes and join the DPS only brigade?

[Embolo]

...So all the skills we spents months and even years learning, practicing with our friends, learned to use to support others, that were specifically designed for teamwork and supporting others should be thrown away and we all need to become selfish "Me wants!" players?

Open questing areas are not instances or raid.

I would like to know how many minstrels, lm, captains, guardians, warden don't retrait/respec for DPS while questing (even in a group)... Maybe I'm noob but I've NEVER done it (on Mini, Lm, Brg, Grd, Cpt).

[Rainothon]

Okay people, so they made a change to this game, and the sky is falling. What do we do?

1) Adapt, or you'll find yourself sailing West all too soon. Maybe only for now, maybe for a longer run. Learn to become tap-aware. Maybe you'll even find out it adds unsuspected fun to your game. Change isn't always as bad as it looks.

2) Give feedback. The devs ask for it, specifically on this very subject! So go for it, and by Eru be careful about how you word your feedback. We are not all born bards.

Now for my feedback:
I think the tapping rules should be different in a fellowship. Because a fellowship is a greater sum than the total of it's parts, and the concept of Company is such a centerpiece of Tolkien's work. For a fellowship, it should not differ if all members focus on different individual targets, or they all do AoE dam/healing, or some other strategy. What matters is whether the fellowship survives the battle. Rewards should be shared among all the members if they contributed -to the fellowship-, which is something different than contributing to a kill.

I suggest that when fellowing actions like debuffing, CC-ing, fellowship manouvering and buffing should also be considered tapping. Initiating and reacting to fellowship manouvering should have the by-effect of being an 'tap all' action - go burgs!. Buff a fellowship member, share his taps for a varying amount of time depending on the buff. Debuff a mob = tap. This should give support characters more leeway. I also accept this means that if Legolassie oneshots a baddy from afar, I may get no credit - well maybe if I used that hope token on him 10 secs ago... I'm fine with that, it's not like I held his bow.

[Derorath]

It seems to me, that almost all of you are ignoring mounted combat. While on your warhorse, you do not have access to the skills you are used to. Yesterday I, a warden, was grouped with a hunter, while galloping through the steppe. The current settings are nice, if you could AoE at least once or tab through the available targets and try to get them on a horse in melee range...

The hunter, naturally, killed more mobs as I and finished the quests usually faster, while I still had to kill three or four of them.

This either means, that everybody needs a ranged attack or some kind of AoE skill on the horse.

I for one find this rather annoying and would love to see, that as soon as a mob is attacked by one member of the fellowship, it gets tapped automatically by all members of the fellowship.

[Embolo]

...Buff a fellowship member, share his taps for a varying amount of time depending on the buff. Debuff a mob = tap. This should give support characters more leeway...

Your points of view are valid but do we really need another way to get reward from (others) killing mobs? If we will find a place like Limlight Gorge (BIG high morale mobs) I'm ok with that, but atm we are speaking of tagging trash mobs that we used to see grayed by someone else.
Debuff = tap can keep the class focus on even during questing, tho I can run around with my LM spamming SoP: Command tapping each mobs w/o getting any aggro at all... It's still help for the other one questing but not so "relevant"

[Khafar]

But still the open tapping improved our life:

That's a matter of opinion. I dislike this because it changed the natural etiquette of the game from something I liked (help, but only when someone is in trouble) to something I don't (free for all).

Before: EXP* release day, everyone questing, camping respawn point, faster tapper wins
Now: RoI release day, everyone questing, camping respawn point, single skill on a mob to win

For me, it's more like:

Before: don't play on release day - or wait until 2AM so I can play the way I enjoy (without taking forever). Long-term, play as I enjoy every day.
Now: don't play on release day, and hope the crowds thin out soon so I can play the way I enjoy. Long-term... hope it stays thinned out so I won't get unwanted "help" with every other fight.

I played some tonight, but I think I'll just wait until next weekend to play again.

Khafar

[Lohi]

You have problems in fellowship? Use tactics, move together as a group, follow rat, slow dps to let everyone hit the mobs, keep mobs together and so on... Isn't that hard?

But that removes need for a fellowship, just solo in a group :-) Yes what you describe will work but it is not how it should be for fellowships. If I've got 6 players in a fellowship we should be able to kill 6 enemies at once with everyone targeting a different one and everyone get credit for all 6. That is how it works everywhere except Rohan! But in Rohan you need all 6 to target same enemy and hope that it doesn't die before everyone gets a hit in. It will make working together on slayer deeds only barely faster than doing it solo.

This also severely penalizes the player who's smart and focuses on debuffs for safety instead of being a DPS clicker.

[Juanlo]

I think the tapping rules should be different in a fellowship. Because a fellowship is a greater sum than the total of it's parts, and the concept of Company is such a centerpiece of Tolkien's work. For a fellowship, it should not differ if all members focus on different individual targets, or they all do AoE dam/healing, or some other strategy. What matters is whether the fellowship survives the battle. Rewards should be shared among all the members if they contributed -to the fellowship-, which is something different than contributing to a kill.

^This, this and 1000 times this

[podgie_bear]

Turbine needs to say whether they intend to aim the game at being solo only, in which case open tapping works but support classes are no longer needed and fellowships are discouraged. Or if they made a mistake and will be looking to rectify it, in which case fellowships will be given full credit to each member, as was the case before RoR and we can sit back and wait (with various degrees of patience).

[Embolo]

...Turbine needs to say...

They did...
Simply being part of a group will not get you credit on an open tapping monster -- you must have participated in the battle and defeat.

[SungXe]

They couldn't figure a way which enables group tapping while allowing additional tapping for non group members.
Probably needs a complete system overhowl to support "multi" tapps.


Anyway there is a reason it's only applied to ROHAN. So all people crying over kill DEEDs are exergating.


It certainly isn't great for fellowships (especially 6 people on landscape monsters) but let's just not make things up, allright?

[MoonwalkIntoMordor]

*sigh* So this annoying new mechanic that I dislike as a soloer (because it actually gives people an incentive to jump in on all my kills) is also disliked by groupers? That's just brilliant. How did this make it out of testing?

I would have expected better from a poster of such praise like you. Instead of trying to be snarky, try to understand that there are more than one, separate complaints with the open tapping mechanism.

One of complaints is the fact that it encourages spontaneous group work. This is the intended function of open tapping and the part that is liked by groupers. Soloers complain about this bit because it results in others butting in their solo experience. Understandable. But not relevant to the issue that was brought up by the OP.

The actual issue OP is complaining about in this thread, is that open tapping rules are active within fellowships. Groupers dislike this because certain classes (especially support/single target) are severely disadvantaged and don't get full credit from combat despite doing what they are supposed to do.

Example: I am grouped with a champion. We are about to fight a group of 1 elite and 2 normal enemies. I throw Dust in the Eyes at the enemies and stun them with Startling Twist. I put DiTE on the group again, then apply Counter Defense and Reveal Weakness on the elite. I start attacking that one. Meanwhile, the champion is AoEing them all. When they are all dead, I get XP and items from only the one I was attacking, while the champion gets it from all of them.

So yeah, we are looking at a specific issue here. Once they fix that issue, I'm sure most groupers will be satisfied with the system because it no longer penalizes certain roles in fellowship play.

[Glumposneak]

Something occured to me earlier.

I was with a kin member who I bumped into while leveling. We went around together for a while, not bothering to group as we could tap.

Without thinking, I tried to do a FM but of course as we werent grouped, it didn't work.

If tapping is going to be a way of open world grouping, then wouldn't it be nice to able to use our group skills when others are tapping our mobs?

That way it gets everyone involved rather than everyone out for themselves doing their own thing.

[Damojo]

If the issue is fairness, please explain how it is fair that every member of a group of four, five or six people tackling the same mobs as me, a solo player, should get the same XP? I have to tap every mob, kill it, and watch my back while I am doing it; no tank, no heals, no rez, no debuffs. If I need to kill 200 wargs for a deed, I have to kill them, nobody else will.

I don't mind when people say they dislike this, or want Turbine to look at it again. I can sympathise with a point of view that says for a group, CC and buffs are as important as DPS and heals. But please, it's not unfair.

[Calead]

I couldn't agree more.. As a captain questing with a lore master and a minstrel in dps traits I am always finding myself in a position where the are waiting for me to kill x mob because I couldn't tap it in time. I think group play should work as before, if a fellowship engages it the fellowship should be the xp/loot etc but people outside the fellowship can still help and get the xp/loot.

Surely this is not working as intended ATM..

I would hate to be a burglar, really. I really think this is broken at the moment cos a fellowship, working together, should be focussing themselves on group play and working together instead of tapping the bloody mobs. I had to do a warband about three times last night because I got the quest and my kinnies killed the boss twice whilst I killed the adds, because I didn't tap it I didn't finish the quest, even though I par took in the group play keeping the little ones off the squishy minstrel..

I really hope this is broken, it is the ONLY down point of the expansion so far. Apart from this I am very, very happy with it.

Good work turbine, but fix this.

Cal

[Bezmer]

They did...
Simply being part of a group will not get you credit on an open tapping monster -- you must have participated in the battle and defeat.

This is counterintuitive, counterproductive, and just plain horrible.

This wasn't the case under the closed tapping system. What exactly is about the way open tapping works in a fellowship that necessitated this change?

[Bezmer]

If the issue is fairness, please explain how it is fair that every member of a group of four, five or six people tackling the same mobs as me, a solo player, should get the same XP? I have to tap every mob, kill it, and watch my back while I am doing it; no tank, no heals, no rez, no debuffs. If I need to kill 200 wargs for a deed, I have to kill them, nobody else will.

I don't mind when people say they dislike this, or want Turbine to look at it again. I can sympathise with a point of view that says for a group, CC and buffs are as important as DPS and heals. But please, it's not unfair.

Except this argument would work only if xp splits between group members. Even under the new system, some players in the group will still get as much xp from the same mob as a solo player would.

[seyahat]

again, what makes my point so hard to understand? Are you guys always only questing solo? The point of a fellowship is to help each other... if I kill a mob, my fellow still gets credit for it, because I'm doing it for the fellowship and not for myself! That's how group play always worked and should work!

I don't have enough time to read this entire thread. But you are being clear enough and the inability of people to understand you (and the alacrity with which they accuse you of various forms of cheating) is irritating. Many of your readers just seem a tad dense to me. Or, perhaps, they are so anxious to dismiss your concern that they are purposely misreading it.

In either case, I agree that it is an unnecessary irritation, particularly for group grinding. Obviously all members of the fellowship should be included in the kill if they are reasonably close to each other. In the meantime, you and your friend are going to be spamming a lot of aoes as a work around.

[Errastas]

Its a tricky one because you need to disable the open tapping system whilst in a fellowship so all fellows gets XP regardless, but also have it enabled to allow fellowship members to open tap on an individual basis whilst out of group combat.

[Artyfarty]

Isn't it just to discourage 'boosters' where a lower level gets boosted along by higher levels?

[Doulos]

This won't be death to groups, but as one poster said, death to coordinated groups where classes function with any level of finesse at all. Oh, and burgs. Just one more step toward the mind-numbing shallows of other much less reputable online f2p games.

[Trusilver]

Ok, I second that. Again would you use your stealth, move behind mob, Surprise Strike in a fellowship with a Champ that AOE the &%/£ out of mobs with two skills using the old mechanics??? Maybe yes, or maybe you would follow him dealing dps to each mobs w/o thinking too much on your brg's skills...
I'm not arguing that this way of manage quests/killing is the best one, just that it helps EVERYONE in advancing on the quests w/o the usual day-one tapping rage.

IMHO is a good improvement in our gaming experience.

It's easier? Indeed it is... Was it harder before? Nope at all, this game is TOO MUCH easy by ages...

No... this is a good improvement on YOUR gaming experience. God forbid you actually have to wait for a mob to respawn in your quest to tear through the new content in record time. You quite obviously never group.

Instead of being a fun game where everyone in a group is using each of their abilities in the most efficient manner possible, it has now turned into a boring grind of:

"Okay... did everyone tag this mob?"
"Everyone?"
"We are all good?"
"Oops... okay... go ahead..."
"Now, has everyone tagged the mob?"
"Okay! we can kill it now!"

what amazing fun THAT is.... /sarcasm

[Embolo]

No... this is a good improvement on YOUR gaming experience. God forbid you actually have to wait for a mob to respawn in your quest to tear through the new content in record time. You quite obviously never group.

Pretty clever arguments