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

[Lestache]

While I tend to do my questing solo, I can understand your frustration with how things seem to be working, OP.

@Thorgrum - The dev diary link that you're providing is not exclusionary, meaning that the statement is not phrased in such a way as to indicate that each individual has to tap a mob to get credit for killing it - only that anyone who does will get credit - nor does it say that the five-year-old mechanic of "everyone in a fellowship gets credit for a mob kill as long as they're within range" has gone away. It's certainly reasonable for people to assume that open tapping would work along with the existing fellowship mechanic - i.e., a single member of a fellowship tapping a mob counts as all members of the fellowship tapping the mob.

As for half of the rest of you... yeesh. This is the community that won some sort of "best gaming community" award? Makes me glad I don't bother with the forums on other games I play. Who were we competing against anyway - 4chan and SomethingAwful?

[Thorgrum]

Actually there *is* something confusing about this -- as illustrated in this very thread. Again, my understanding is that the open-tapping changes described in that dev diary are about what happens if you are fighting with someone who is *not* in your group. That's what 'tapping' has ALWAYS been about -- what happens when someone you are not fellowed with has already tapped the creature, thus denying you the possibility of getting credit for it. There has never been any issues about tapping *within* a fellowship -- once one fellowship member hits a mob, then it is effectively 'tapped' for all fellowship members. The confusion is apparently whether or not the new open-tapping system requires people >inside< your fellowship to also do damage etc., in order to get credit, despite the more general open-ness to tapping outside your fellowship. My guess is that the answer should be "no." I didn't test this specifically in Beta, though (and apparently it was flagged as a bug).

EDIT: the reason why I care about this is because my kin has a lot of fun doing "Deed Nights" in which we get a group together and knock out slayer deeds. It is incredibly efficient having a bunch of people killing things in parallel in a small area. It will be much less fun if we all have to gang up on each mob in order to get credit.

I didnt find it very confusing but apparantly you and others did. I read it literally:

Step 3:
We are making all the monsters in Rohan use the new open-tapping rules (aka tapping doesn’t exist). If you contribute to killing a monster in Rohan you will get full kill, deed, quest, and XP credit as if you killed the mob solo.

Key being "If you contribute to killing". Should it be like that? I dont know. Is it like that? Apparantly yes, so the point of confusion seems to be how should it be, not how it is.

Regardless, Im sure it will be sorted out and made easier for everyone if there is enough outcry. Perhaps its not WAI? That wouldnt surprise me either, from time to time Turbine dosent mean what they say.

[Thorgrum]

While I tend to do my questing solo, I can understand your frustration with how things seem to be working, OP.

@Thorgrum - The dev diary link that you're providing is not exclusionary, meaning that the statement is not phrased in such a way as to indicate that each individual has to tap a mob to get credit for killing it - only that anyone who does will get credit - nor does it say that the five-year-old mechanic of "everyone in a fellowship gets credit for a mob kill as long as they're within range" has gone away. It's certainly reasonable for people to assume that open tapping would work along with the existing fellowship mechanic - i.e., a single member of a fellowship tapping a mob counts as all members of the fellowship tapping the mob.

As for half of the rest of you... yeesh. This is the community that won some sort of "best gaming community" award? Makes me glad I don't bother with the forums on other games I play. Who were we competing against anyway - 4chan and SomethingAwful?

Indeed you are correct, I read it that way but that dosent mean I am right.

[podgie_bear]

You're still not making it clear what your problem is. As others have posted, you hit a monster, you get XP for it. As someone else pointed out, if XP is not being awarded properly in a fellowship, maybe there's some kind of bug.

And the point of "group play" is to play as a group, which, with open tapping, no longer necessarily means forming a fellowship. So, again as others have pointed out, it improves group play by making it more friendly to do ad hoc group play.

Tell that to the healer who is covering your back and getting naff all now while you get everything. I know I won't bother healing anyone if they get everything while I get nothing!

[MistressMagpye]

It amuses me that you're concerned it'll ruin group play when I have the opposite fear - that it'll ruin my solo fun. In pre-Rohan content it's often hard enough to explain to people that, no, you don't want or need their help with killing mobs (landscape, rare spawn, or otherwise) and that, if anything, their interference is ruining your enjoyment. At least the more thick-headed "but it's an MMO!" players would leave you alone after you explained to them that they were also hurting your experience gain by interfering (though it's not about the experience gain at all - it's about the fun of going one-on-one with mob_x or group-of-mob_yand seeing if you can defeat it solo - but it's at least an explanation most people will accept without further very annoying argument).

In Rohan, I will never be safe from passersby deciding to tap in on my kills. Never, ever, because all they have to do is tap once and then stay in close enough range to get full credit and experience for the kill. Suddenly there is no easily explainable downside at all for people who like to interfere with other players' fights - in fact they're getting rewarded for doing so. Which may not bug players who love fellowing, but will be a major pain in the fundament for those of us who are solo players at heart.

I like soloing. After ten years of playing EverQuest, where only a handful of classes could solo on anything close to on-level content, and ten years of gawdawful PUGs and so forth, it is such a relief to find a game where I only have to PUG if I'm in the mood for it (rare, but it does happen). Where I can jump online for even just 30 minutes of play, and not have to hope that I can find a group right off the bat, or accomplish nothing. Where any class can play all the way to end game levels by themselves if they so desire, and only miss a comparative handful of optional content. Where if I want to limit my social interactions on any given day to chatting a little in /ooc, that's just fine.

There are a lot of things I'm looking forward to in Rohan, but open-tapping is not one of them :\

[Ailedra]

Has anyone confirmed that healers are, in fact, not getting credit for simply healing? Or is that simply being extrapolated from the OP?

I ask, because the mechanic of "healing = assisting/tapping" has existed for a very long time, both in and out of fellowships. That's why you'd lower somebody's XP by healing them when you weren't grouped. The presentation of open tapping spoke to healing specifically....if you healed somebody being damaged by a mob, you've effectively tapped that mob.

So, before we start saying things like "healers are screwed"....has anybody actually tested this behavior on live?

[podgie_bear]

I didnt find it very confusing but apparantly you and others did. I read it literally:



Key being "If you contribute to killing". Should it be like that? I dont know. Is it like that? Apparantly yes, so the point of confusion seems to be how should it be, not how it is.

Regardless, Im sure it will be sorted out and made easier for everyone if there is enough outcry. Perhaps its not WAI? That wouldnt surprise me either, from time to time Turbine dosent mean what they say.

So as healers we don't contribute? Keeping our fellowship memebers alive is not enough and we are suypposed to say screw'em, let them die, while I tap some monsters for myself?

[ChromiteSwiftpaw]

Tell that to the healer who is covering your back and getting naff all now while you get everything. I know I won't bother healing anyone if they get everything while I get nothing!

Calm down. It's a bug. We reported it in beta. Unfortunately they didn't fix it before launch.

Everything is pretty easy anyhow so just make sure to tap as many mobs as possible if you're in a group and someone is tanking them all. Use your AoE spells.

[JaironKalach]

As far as I know this is WAI. It was brought up during beta and was not addressed. Healers will be fine with this, because healing someone with a contribution counts as contributing. Buffing/Debuffing however get hit pretty hard, as they do not contirbute healing/damage. During beta, I was hopeful that this is something that they would change. A *lot* of us asked for it. If they tried, it didn't make it in time.

Honestly, this is probably my #1 disappointment with this release.

[botoo]

@OP: If the tapping situation you described is correct (damage done by chars in your fellow but not by you wont give you credit). As example I see a guardian grabbing aggro and keeping control of a bunch of trash-adds while the rest of the groep kills a boss, that guard should get credits of the boss too even if he did not even hit it. It must be an undesired side-effect and hopefullt fixe asap.

@podgie_bear: iirc healing a char that does damage to a mob gives the healer also credits fot that mob, so that would be good.

[MistressMagpye]

So basically if you are a healer, you're screwed, welcome to the future of Lotro!

According to the dev diary about open tapping, healing someone who is tapped on a mob is supposed to add you to the tap. It counts as a contribution to the battle against said mob. if it's not doing that, it's not WAI.

So it's basically just classes that have either a) no useful heals, and/ir b) no useful AoE skills, who will be SOL on taps, such as the aforementioned burglar. Who does have an AoE skill but it's short range and has a long cooldown, iirc (been a while since I last played my burglar). Lore-master has plenty of aoe skills and a pretty much instantly-respammable long-range damaging spell they can cycle through to tap all the mobs quickly, plus a heal (not a great one, but it should still count for taps). My captain has two damaging AoE skills and a variety of heals.

But basically it's adding in an annoying mechanic of everyone having to frantically get their taps in before the real carnage begins, if the old fellowship group-tapping rule is no longer applying. And contrary to belief, it doesn't really do anything at all for real soloers.

[mr_underfoot]

i certainly can't imagine not being able to share kills across groups as WAI.

what the OP is describing sounds like a MAJOR bug that goes to the heart of group play and ought to show up at the top of the known issues list. i hope we get to hear a response from a blue name ASAP.

[Raowyn]

I cant believe how many ppl completely missed the OPs point, and assumed he was trying to "exploit the system". Kudos on not getting frustrated with all the Lotro fanboys that dont think before they post. Anyone whos played an mmo should know how pointless open tapping would make joining a fellowship to perform any role other than dps.

[Captainaction]

What makes your point hard to understand is what specifically the dev diary says. Either you didnt read it, or you dont like what it says. Im going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are just unhappy with the change but your issue has been known and discussed for over a month.

Ok wise guy, I read the DD, and while it explains the new system, no where in the DD did it say that they were also going to eliminate the benefits of forming into an actual group. In the past if you were grouped then the actions of one were the actions of all. So, if they are adding something, they explained that, but no where that I can see did they also explain that in adding that something they were taking something else away, i.e., the benefits of grouping. Maybe its a bug, maybe it's what they intended. No real way of knowing unless they come out and say so.

"It's certainly reasonable for people to assume that open tapping would work along with the existing fellowship mechanic - i.e., a single member of a fellowship tapping a mob counts as all members of the fellowship tapping the mob." yeah, what he said.

Personally I think the open tapping is a good way to go, but I also think that eliminating the benefits of fellowing is not the way to go. In a fellow the actions of one should be the actions of all.

[podgie_bear]

I just read the dev diary, dont know what your going on about. Probably better to pick someone else to QQ at because the game isnt doing what you want it to do. I didnt write the dev diary or implement the change. I dont care if you get XP or not, your fellowship dies or you otherwise have an extremely negative expirence with game play in general.

I just didnt want a little thing like the dev diaries words (that have been up for over a month and discussed at length) to be ignored. Facts are sad realities for a lot of people, I know ive suffered too. Hang in there podgie bear Im sure your anquish and lament will garner a quick resolution from turbine.

Take heart!

I do take heart ......... that I didn't buy RoR! I am posting for my friend who was stupid enough to have bought it. I knew what to expect and sadly I have not been proved wrong. Maybe in a few months time if they get things sorted and if they don't make things worse instead of better, I will take another look at it, but in the meantime I am keeping my money and avoiding Rohan like the plague. If my friend wants to play what he has bought, then that is his lookout.

[Zombielord]

Just started questing Rohan with a fellow Guardian and I'm pretty shocked at how group unfriendly the open-tapping is!

And what would be the alternative? Form your group and then start camping one location at the brigand camp for 20 minutes to get the quests done?

While it still has flaws, it did make the first quests in this expansion by far more easier.

[Ailedra]

I do take heart ......... that I didn't buy RoR! I am posting for my friend who was stupid enough to have bought it. I knew what to expect and sadly I have not been proved wrong. Maybe in a few months time if they get things sorted and if they don't make things worse instead of better, I will take another look at it, but in the meantime I am keeping my money and avoiding Rohan like the plague. If my friend wants to play what he has bought, then that is his lookout.

...again, has anybody actually confirmed on live that healers are not getting tapping credit, either inside or outside a fellowship?

Maybe we should get clear on what's actually happening, then decide whether the sky is or is not falling?

[Thorgrum]

Ok wise guy, I read the DD, and while it explains the new system, no where in the DD did it say that they were also going to eliminate the benefits of forming into an actual group. In the past if you were grouped then the actions of one were the actions of all. So, if they are adding something, they explained that, but no where that I can see did they also explain that in adding that something they were taking something else away, i.e., the benefits of grouping. Maybe its a bug, maybe it's what they intended. No real way of knowing unless they come out and say so.

"It's certainly reasonable for people to assume that open tapping would work along with the existing fellowship mechanic - i.e., a single member of a fellowship tapping a mob counts as all members of the fellowship tapping the mob." yeah, what he said.

Personally I think the open tapping is a good way to go, but I also think that eliminating the benefits of fellowing is not the way to go. In a fellow the actions of one should be the actions of all.

I dont know what to tell you wise guy, like I said, humbly, in other posts the words on the dev diary are not mine. You can speak in broad terms as much as you like ("no where in the DD did it say that they were also going to eliminate the benefits of forming into an actual group" what DD would?) but the diary is specific.

You can believe whatever you want.

[Thorgrum]

I do take heart ......... that I didn't buy RoR! I am posting for my friend who was stupid enough to have bought it. I knew what to expect and sadly I have not been proved wrong. Maybe in a few months time if they get things sorted and if they don't make things worse instead of better, I will take another look at it, but in the meantime I am keeping my money and avoiding Rohan like the plague. If my friend wants to play what he has bought, then that is his lookout.

I like the cut of your jib podgie. Hailing from Cornwall just makes you a little bit better then most.

+rep

[Damlyn]

Hmmm, just tried this out with my husband. Not a fan of the change. Many times one of us has had to walk away from the computer for a minute to grab something for one of the kids, go to bathroom, make a call, etc. and the other would continue killing things for quest/deeds. Hope this is returned back to normal soon.

[MorningStarSE]

Actually Open-tapping just open the door for more group play.

by example, GW2 is all about open-tapping and I've seen no issue at all about group play, you don't tap, you don't get stuff, but if you tapp everything, you get it all..

[Erlessa]

That is a serious problem. I was actually waiting for a few friends to log on to quest together but I guess I won't bother - I'd prolly rageblade all mobs myself .

This needs to be fixed asap!

[Haradim]

It should be noted that Turbine has, to my knowledge, never said anything about whether this is working correctly or not with formal groups, only that the open-tapping mechanic itself is meant to work this way (and it is, it seems). There is so far no indication that groups no longer getting group credit is a bug or a design choice.

[hucklebarry]

I don't think this will kill groups, it will slightly modify the way they cooperate. One of the biggest issues in pugs, and even in kin/friend groups at times is getting people to follow the target assist (either they don't know any better or they think they know better :/ ) .... now there is incentive

All that is needed is a slight change in strategy. Someone mentioned LM's. LM's have a fantastic ranged dot that can be spammed as needed. Click TA, wizards fire, click TA, wizards fire, click TA, wizards fire... then debuff, CC, contribute etc.

Groups in LL have worked well waiting on the poor 6th to get the silly spider webs and tree branch, I don't see any evidence that this will be any different. If its grouping you want... group! Communicate. Set a strat. "everyone on the TA", "lets stop and kill them after we get 3", etc.

[Jeffor]

...but if when in a Fellowship all parties must damage the target to get credit, what about the Minstrel or the healing RK...

This is exactly what I was thinking.