To the north:
1) A hidden XXX
2) a frostweyr bear
3) a frostweyr bear
4) a frostweyr bear
5) a frostweyr bear
6) a frostweyr bear
7) a frostweyr bear
8) a frostweyr bear
9) a frostweyr bear
10) a frostweyr bear

To the north, north:
11) a frostweyr bear


This is probably more related to XXX for being a total tool, but it would be nice if the game could handle these situations on it's own.

I went and tried to talk to the person. They ignored me and then I pointed them out of hiding, after which they shortly died to the bears. So I'm not sure how/why they were able to have 9 creatures in the same room as them. It fixed itself after they died. (They are still dead in the room, too.)

>> If you're hidden, critters with search indefinantly until they find you or you come out of hiding; and they don't leave unless you're already engaged to four. Since he never left hiding, the critters didn't realize that he was (or would be) already fully engagedand so the critters couldn't figure out it was time to leave the room.

>> At least that's what I think it going on with it. Probably should be a bug.

Neat. His AFK script probably broke. Or he decided to run an idle script while hiding in the hunting ground to knowingly hold all of the creatures... Either way, super annoying.

I really thought there was a mechanic, say in 2005, that the creatures would explode if you danced with them too long? Maybe not explode, but die. Anybody remember that? Gonif?

There are constructs you can hunt from ~20 ranks to ~700 ranks without guardian spirit. If you're dancing at the cap for extended periods of time you're negatively impacting everyone else in the hunting ground by gimping critter generation. It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect you to kill at least one critter in 15 minutes.

If you have someone else with you it seems extremely unlikely that between the 2 of you hunting you can't kill at least one in the same amount of time.

>>There are constructs you can hunt from ~20 ranks to ~700 ranks without guardian spirit.<<

Not true. Check out the construct hunting ladder. There are some serious limitations, and that's if I want to train weapons as a tertiary skill, which I don't. Given the severe limitations of the construct hunting ladder, not to mention the gaps in it, training weapons really serves no purpose for empaths, yet training defenses is extremely valuable.

It really doesn't matter, but having a mechanic that summons a boss critter because I'm dancing with 4 really won't affect me anyway. It's simply a bad idea. I would just manipulate the boss critter to kill everyone or everything else. If the boss causes all other critters to scatter and leave the room, I manipulate it and it leaves the room and despawns or attacks other hunters, but not me. Or I can cast innocence with will cause the boss to leave me alone anyway.

I've found plenty of people who like hunting with an empath they don't have to babysit because the empath needs to be guarded or protected. Lots of hunters like the fact that I can heal them while in combat, or hold the room while they pop boxes and come back, or go sell a bundle and some gems. Gryphons is a prime example. The gen is crazy good in there, so you can't tell me that I'm negatively affecting other hunters, but leave a room for more than 5 seconds and someone pops in there and maybe they're not as open as I am to the idea of hunting with a partner, even an empath who can heal them and isn't going to skin their kills or grab their loot.

Your idea is still a horrible idea. Period.

________________________________________________________________


"EMPATHS RULE ELANTHIA -- ALL SHALL LOVE US AND DESPAAAAAIR" ~GM Melete

<Your idea is still a horrible idea. Period.

Fair enough. The fact of the matter is if you're dancing in a hunting ground at cap not killing critters you are ruining the gen rate for others. Compound this by holding rooms so its easier to camp for hours.

Yea, lets kill a very cute puppy every X minutes until people start killing again!

Or how about just fix the gen? Four per person limit, regardless of hiding or not and four per person hunting ground maximum. Eventually everyone always gets four or whatever number you want. I think it sounds simple enough. Is it possible? I don't know.

Last i heard Raesh was looking into fixing this issue, so lets hope he can work something out and the solution is not one of the previously suggested.

>>As much as I wish it weren't the case, it was stated combat isnt gong to be balanced around 4 per hunter and it isn't the baseline.

I fail to understand why people think a four is such a magic number. Using an extreme example we could balance combat around 1:1, drop the engagement cap to that and it would solve basically all the spawn problems. Would we have to increase exp (And likely treasure) to compensate? Probably, but that's what the term "balanced around" means, we're finding the state we want you to be at and adjusting the other numbers to support it.

If we suddenly decided 3:1 or 2:1 is the ideal ratio we're not just cutting everyone's learning and treasure rates.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

>I fail to understand why people think a four is such a magic number. Using an extreme example we could balance combat around 1:1, drop the engagement cap to that and it would solve basically all the spawn problems. Would we have to increase exp (And likely treasure) to compensate? Probably, but that's what the term "balanced around" means, we're finding the state we want you to be at and adjusting the other numbers to support it.

>If we suddenly decided 3:1 or 2:1 is the ideal ratio we're not just cutting everyone's learning and treasure rates.

>-Raesh

Because you're not waiting for spawn if you're keeping a steady stream of creatures which is more sustainable than a 1:1, more sustained creatures the easier it is to keep more going.

I wouldn't care if you did a 1:1 as long as there's no downtime between creatures for me to kill, but that's not how it is right now. In a 4:1 area I work more weapons than 2:1 or 3:1 hence the desire for said 4:1

>No one is seriously talking about 1:1, I was using that as an example, but my point is that if the ratio we balanced at changed we would adjust the other numbers to account for it, so your statement would no longer be true.

>If we said we wanted to balance around 10:1 would people suddenly want that more than 4:1? I think not. 4:1 is just what people have grown use to.

No I get your point, I think you're missing mine. People currently want 4:1 because the engagement cap is 4. The more critters I have with the current exp model the less likely it is I will run out of mobs. This means I can keep more skills moving. If I'm hunting in a 2:1 or 3:1 area and spawn is tied up I have to search for mobs or wait for more to arrive. This can cause certain weapons to drain below 3/34 meaning I'm now learning less skills.

The problem exists because you have some areas at 2:1 some at 3:1 and others at 4:1, lower spawn creatures result in less overall skills. If you made it even and all areas with a consistent ratio, exp model etc then it wouldn't matter but like I said its not like that. There is no consistency.

-Raesh

Hopefully never, in the manner it was put on the forums atleast.

Some people kill faster than others. I, for example, am struggling to keep creatures in my room for any reasonable amount of time because I kill quickly and I would not like to see my spawn go DOWN because some arbitrary system thinks Im killing too fast in the area Im in and it wants to nudge me into a different hunting range. Im still learning all my offenses and defenses where I am and I would prefer to be the one in control of when and what I hunt when I DECIDE my learning would be better served by moving up - not when "dynamic spawn rates" say Im owning the creature Im in too hard and should move up.

I mean, some people are overtrained, statwise, for where they are in a creature ladder. Some, for instance older Moonmages, may have stats double to triple what average hunter in an area is expected to have due to being circle 100+ in critter xyz versus it being considered a circle 20 critter because they waited till late in life to really get into combat. Does that mean someone with 40s in stats should be penalized for training somewhere that was created in mind for a character with half that?

I would imagine this would really rear its ugly head for users of TM. If Im rocking mega-mentals but my tm is only 200 and I can train somewhere, but my tm hits super hard for my place in the critter ladder, am I going to lose spawn? Am I supposed to stance down and use minimum prep to avoid triggering these "dynamic spawn rates" from deciding Im to good to be here with 200 tm in a creature that trains perfectly well to 280 or 300? If its even remotely possible for things like this to happen (intentional or otherwise), I'm 100% against it and I dont really think Im alone in this regard.

>>So make Y=4 everywhere, end of story.

Just noticed that Raesh mentioned the possibility of lowering the engagement cap, so technically I should amend this sentence to "make Y = engagement cap"

Or in other words, the reason 4 is a magic number to players is that GMs chose 4 as the engagement cap. There is nothing else special about the number 4

Apu
_
Respect. Integrity. World Domination.
https://sites.google.com/site/apucorpdr/

<< No one is seriously talking about 1:1, I was using that as an example, but my point is that if the ratio we balanced at changed we would adjust the other numbers to account for it, so your statement would no longer be true.
I think the numbers are more or less solid already with 3.0 but we still need some kind of a buffer to work with.

<< Because you're not waiting for spawn if you're keeping a steady stream of creatures which is more sustainable than a 1:1, more sustained creatures the easier it is to keep more going.
I agree, i doubt there can be a steady flow with just one or two. You kill one -- boom, you got another in melee? I don't think so.

I know it's a fine line between too many and none. A steady flow is a difficult task to achieve and this is why a four critter limit seems like a good buffer. You can kill some and still have a few left to play with until the next wave arrives.

But coming back to balancing around lower number of engaged. There is one big advantage in terms of reducing combat scroll. It is not just unnecessary but probably a big strain on the servers as well. It's all a complete mess and sometimes nothing more than a series of highlighted colors in a heavily scrolling stream of text. I personally recommend everyone not to look at it directly or you might lose your eyesight. For myself, i have chosen a new set of more neutral and non-aggressive colors to make it all blend in so that it is easier to ignore the most of it. Is this the intended game mechanics? I hope not.

To me there seems to be two solutions, either reduce the number of critters across the board or reduce the actions those critters take in combat. Which one is more feasible or is it feasible at all, i guess that is already up to the GMs.

With all of those issues against it what's the logic behind keeping the cap at 4?

Personally I don't care what the cap is; I just want another enemy to always be on deck before I kill the current one.

I'm not opposed to a 2:1 or even 1:1 engagement cap if a change is necessary as long as everything is balanced towards it in terms of exp and the likes. My concern about moving to a lower engagement is like you mentioned Raesh, momentum. Turn up the spawn in areas with a lower engagement cap so the down time in between kills is minimal and it achieves the same effort as a 4:1 in its current incarnation.

I feel like this whole argument was caused when Combat GMs decided to make the critter cap universal. I enjoyed the days when you could have 10-20 vines/creeps on you. While at the same time, there were caps on different critters. Now, I was under the understanding it was done to make all critters on the same template to make creating new critters supposedly easier. I personally dont see the issue with adding a size category to the critter scale. So you have 6 different sizes of critters, and with each size comes with its own critter cap.

Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Gigantic, Special.

Tiny = 7-10 critter cap; creatures like eels, rats, squirrels, etc.

Small - 5-7 critter cap; sprites, kelpies, badgers, goblins etc

Medium - 4-5 critter cap; Humanoid, Wolves, luecros, etc

Large - 3-4 Critter cap; Gargoyles, Guardians, Adan'f, etc

Gigantic - 2-3 Critter Cap; Sky Giants, Giants, etc

Special - For Critters GMs want to have a special critter cap.

Loot tables will need to be based partly on size scale as well. And there is nothing to say a Rat cant be put in the medium category if it is a Giant Rat, etc. Places where this can be a problem is where there are multiple critters, that might be different sizes. There are a couple ways to combat this problem. The easiest way is to just make sure all creatures in the same area are the same size. IE Vipers, Leucros, and Genies would all need to be medium size. Another way it to write a math table that would allow a certain value to be reached based on size, where tiny is 1 point, Small is 1.5, Medium is 2 points, and so on, while the engagement cap at a total of 10 points.

You guys already go rid of MO, which I think added flavor before the changes, but became pointless when all critters had a cap of 4. I understand all creatures would need to be reworked. But in my honest opinion, once 3.0 is far enough along, the next big project should be a major overhaul of all the critters in DR. Including the critter template table.

Falker

>>With the caveat that we're rather outside of my area (So I can't give you The Answer) I'd say it's largely a function of momentum. It's what players expect and while adjusting the engagement cap itself wouldn't be too hard the cascade of adjustments that would be needed is NOT a small project.

I don't think players really care that much what the engagement cap is, as long as defensive skills can be trained at a reasonable rate with a number of creatures that poses very little risk (to a player paying attention and not doing anything stupid), and as long there will always be a steady enough stream of creatures spawning to train weapon skills (regardless of what players in other rooms are doing).

I like Falkonis's idea, although that sounds like a nightmare to code and balance.

Apu
_
Respect. Integrity. World Domination.
https://sites.google.com/site/apucorpdr/

Honestly, knowing a little bit about coding, I think making a size chart and basing the critter cap on it would be infinitely easier to code than the dynamic spawn rate that Raesh is talking about. I know the two things can be mutually exclusive, but I dont know that I'm for the dynamic spawn rate that was purposed. I would want critters be written to better conform to combat 3.0, rather than put in band-aids or poor ideas be implemented to fix spawn issues that were caused by fixing the critter cap and spawn rates to begin with.

Falker

As a note, the OP's problem wouldn't be solved by that, and that problem deserves to be addressed, but these things always turn into general spawn arguments.

I had a fun time hunting Warklins in Crossing, 1 empath with 8 Warklins in the room with it and not 1 came in my room after that. I had to leave the area because I could not work any skills. Im sure this will all get worked on but now my only other real option is to go to Ratha and I really don't wish to do that.