Boss Camping Has To Be Dealt With

Alphashado

I love the idea of making the boss scale with the number of people within 25 meters. Problem solved right there. They can do it because the dark anchors work this way

cheeser123

cultmethod wrote: »

So, again, why can't the game just ask the player what kind of experience they want?

Because they planned that, but it was too much work, so they cut it out of the game. Apparently even so, the game is riddled with bugs. Not sure another level of complexity would help considering the shabby state of affairs.

RubyTigress

cultmethod wrote: »

So, again, why can't the game just ask the player what kind of experience they want?

@‌ cultmethod
You are asking for double the work to be done in creating each and every one of these instances, with it's own set of resource and balance issues. That's assuming you only account for two playstyles.

As practical solutions go, I'm afraid this is very much not one.

cultmethod

RubyTigress wrote: »

cultmethod wrote: »

So, again, why can't the game just ask the player what kind of experience they want?

@‌ cultmethod
You are asking for double the work to be done in creating each and every one of these instances, with it's own set of resource and balance issues. That's assuming you only account for two playstyles.

As practical solutions go, I'm afraid this is very much not one.

Queuing users into lower/higher population density instances based on a single boolean doesn't exactly sound like double the work to me, in fact, that sounds like the definition of practical.

Do you mind highly populated dungeons?
Yes > Send to low density instance
No > Send to high density instance
Problem solved.

Not sure where you're getting balance issues from, as the only thing that would require development hours would be whatever logic exists controlling population density and queuing upon dungeon entry. And I have no idea what you mean by "creating each and every one of these instances". They are already created. That's what an instance is.

blackwolf7

cultmethod wrote: »

RubyTigress wrote: »

cultmethod wrote: »

So, again, why can't the game just ask the player what kind of experience they want?

@‌ cultmethod
You are asking for double the work to be done in creating each and every one of these instances, with it's own set of resource and balance issues. That's assuming you only account for two playstyles.

As practical solutions go, I'm afraid this is very much not one.

Queuing users into lower/higher population density instances based on a single boolean doesn't exactly sound like double the work to me, in fact, that sounds like the definition of practical.

Do you mind highly populated dungeons?
Yes > Send to low density instance
No > Send to high density instance
Problem solved.

Not sure where you're getting balance issues from, as the only thing that would require development hours would be whatever logic exists controlling population density and queuing upon dungeon entry. And I have no idea what you mean by "creating each and every one of these instances". They are already created. That's what an instance is.

Problem not solved because everyone will be choosing the low density ones regardless of being a farming type or lore type of player. Nobody wants a high density populated dungeon. So giving that choice is pretty stupid since i am 100% sure everyone will choose the lower populated one.

iMarx

I have an idea, why don't we just make the whole game single player? .... it's a cave mob, get off it

cheeser123

RubyTigress wrote: »

@‌ cultmethod
You are asking for double the work to be done in creating each and every one of these instances, with it's own set of resource and balance issues. That's assuming you only account for two playstyles.

As practical solutions go, I'm afraid this is very much not one.

Wrong. That's asking for the same amount of work to be done -- but in two more more different ways.

Also, "not practical"? This was in the game until.. well I don't remember when or how it wound up cut, but this was a huge selling point of the "megaserver." But devs got lazy and look what happened.

Talmet

cheeser123 wrote: »

Talmet wrote: »

Actually, only a very tiny percent of people who play, ever visit the forums. Most people who play video games, spend their time actually...playing video games, not posting in the forums about them. And most who visit the forums, never post, but instead just come on to read dev posts/patch notes/server status.

Good job re-discovering the rediscovery of power-law distributions.

As for your comment, it's a red herring. There's no reason to believe the people on the forums are more or less inclined to be against griefing and other nonsense than the larger population. You can't just assume "I don't care about this problem, and even though 100 people on the forums are complaining, me plus the 10,000 who have not commented outnumber them" because those 10,000 might not be happy either.

re-discovering? I didn't discover it, or re-discover it. I posted it because apparently people in this thread never heard of it, and were using some really faulty logic.

As for my comment which you claim is a red herring. You are complete correct, it is impossible to take the data from this thread & form the conclusion that they are in the minority. It is also impossible to take the data from this thread and form the conclusion that they are in the majority. The data is faulty, therefore no conclusions can be reached.

You appear to have at least some education on statistical modeling. So you should be aware that from a self-selected sample of people, no valid conclusions can be reached. The people who post in this thread, are biased either one way or another. There is no random element in the selection, therefore the data from this thread is completely unusable.

Tetrasoli

Ticare wrote: »

The only point of these dungeons is for players to work together, run through the dungeon, get the skyshard on the way and then kill the named pushover in the end that you couldn't even tell different from the other mobs if it didn't have a different name. Then you get the achievement and it's over.

They are not there to provide a challenging single player experience. There's plenty of fights in the game elsewhere that you can and have to do solo. Here's a definition of public dungeons:

Such areas are called Public Dungeons or instances. Players get together and try to kill bosses and loot something cool. Top weapon, amour and other items can be looted there.

Not one single public dungeon I have gone into requires people working together, nor does it encourage it. In fact, a lot of over world quests are more challenging. Therefore, in order to fulfill this intended purpose, they would have to scale the mobs up for groups... which introduces an infinitely compounding problem of balance, given that groups could range between two to twenty players.

We all know that players working together isn't happening in public dungeons. Mobs get leapfrogged, on occasion a player will assist another for XP or loot, but it's all about the race to the end for the shard and loot. It is, in effect, the exact same thing happening outside the dungeon, but in a tunnel.

So, if your premise on the point of these dungeons is true (and I'm not saying it isn't) then it is a failed implementation and is not working. If no effort, strategy or skill is needed to get a shard and blue item, then they might as well be put in a chest in the middle of town and handed out for free. Of course that solution wouldn't be as convenient for the gold sellers and their bots.

Dallie

I don't understand why this is a thread. Mob camping has been around since MMO's were invented. Who cares if you get the loot, most bosses drop the same thing regular mobs do in public dungeons with the exception of maybe one shiny piece of gear. To get the kill, all you have to do is smack it once or twice for the credit. Stand there for the next spawn and spam your fastest attack a couple of times, done. I haven't seen one public dungeon boss' loot that would hinder your progression by not having their drop.

As someone else said, this thread seems to stem from someone who doesn't have a lot of MMO experience.

Snugenz

In a game with broken questlines stopping all progress, people who can't even log in properly and bugs like the bank getting deleted, this non-issue (in comparison to the real issues) has 12 pages!...

How is this an issue at all, i've never once failed to get a hit on a boss, never. Guess why, because there's nothing hard about it.

Now if this thread was about getting rid of the bots that do this and many other things i'd be completely behind it, but it's shocking to see it being about something so trivial.

blackwolf7

kilarahrhb16_ESO wrote: »

In a game with broken questlines stopping all progress, people who can't even log in properly and bugs like the bank getting deleted, this non-issue (in comparison to the real issues) has 12 pages!...

How is this an issue at all, i've never once failed to get a hit on a boss, never. Guess why, because there's nothing hard about it.

Now if this thread was about getting rid of the bots that do this and many other things i'd be completely behind it, but it's shocking to see it being about something so trivial.

Well, the main reason why is because people who cares about these things are usually those spoiled brats who wanted everything handed to them. They hate competing with people.

And these spoiled brats are the ones who are usually free to post in forums thats why topics like these gets more responses than other important stuffs

Dracovar

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi folks,

...The act of manually farming these bosses, while possibly not very courteous of others who are trying to have a shot at the content too, is not against our Terms of Service.

Tipsy

at least let bos hp scale to the amount of players present or something.
Just now I was in with like 10 people there waiting to kill and I managed to get the kill and completion but no loot.
You are forced to participate in the farming routine if you want any loot in this case.
Make them more challenging or something

Something needs to change about it.
And if farming these bosses is not against terms of service,fine
But at least make them challenging
and not trivial vs the overwhelming amount of players present
Trying to get a hit requires patience and being fast but it also requires 0 skill

Zarec

Talmet wrote: »

cheeser123 wrote: »

Talmet wrote: »

Actually, only a very tiny percent of people who play, ever visit the forums. Most people who play video games, spend their time actually...playing video games, not posting in the forums about them. And most who visit the forums, never post, but instead just come on to read dev posts/patch notes/server status.

Good job re-discovering the rediscovery of power-law distributions.

As for your comment, it's a red herring. There's no reason to believe the people on the forums are more or less inclined to be against griefing and other nonsense than the larger population. You can't just assume "I don't care about this problem, and even though 100 people on the forums are complaining, me plus the 10,000 who have not commented outnumber them" because those 10,000 might not be happy either.

re-discovering? I didn't discover it, or re-discover it. I posted it because apparently people in this thread never heard of it, and were using some really faulty logic.

As for my comment which you claim is a red herring. You are complete correct, it is impossible to take the data from this thread & form the conclusion that they are in the minority. It is also impossible to take the data from this thread and form the conclusion that they are in the majority. The data is faulty, therefore no conclusions can be reached.

You appear to have at least some education on statistical modeling. So you should be aware that from a self-selected sample of people, no valid conclusions can be reached. The people who post in this thread, are biased either one way or another. There is no random element in the selection, therefore the data from this thread is completely unusable.

That was my point by asking he flower that. He says its a small minority but more and more threads get made by different people and more complain on this forum. But you are right that the forums are not indicative of the player population as a whole. A random sampling focus group would be able to show a more realistic sample as we all come to the forums with an opinion already formed.

erichatchcub18_ESO

All I see are a bunch of single player crybabies upset that they can't have a skyrim experience in every dungeon. This is an mmo. The game centers around loot farming period. The genre has since everquest and ultima online not to mention Diablo II which was all farming one mob over and over. D2 is probably the most popular RPG of all time just due to the farming mechanic. If you don't enjoy it, this game is not meant for you.

Humanistic

Years ago, I saw how this was an issue. Often times you would get people camping a certain boss that dropped a very nice item. In this game however, the drops aren't super great, and they aren't guaranteed. From what I've seen so far, people camp for a spawn or two, then leave. I don't think I've ever seen anyone camp for more than 3 spawns total. Since most of these spawns seem to be right around 5 minutes, it's short enough to wait, but long enough to lose interest. I believe it is working well - it may not be perfect for YOU in particularly, but you will have to learn to deal with it eventually. Personally, I am glad there are people camping - it would be very difficult, if not impossible to solo some of the bosses. Any help with that is awesome.

Blezer

cultmethod wrote: »

RubyTigress wrote: »

cultmethod wrote: »

So, again, why can't the game just ask the player what kind of experience they want?

@‌ cultmethod
You are asking for double the work to be done in creating each and every one of these instances, with it's own set of resource and balance issues. That's assuming you only account for two playstyles.

As practical solutions go, I'm afraid this is very much not one.

Queuing users into lower/higher population density instances based on a single boolean doesn't exactly sound like double the work to me, in fact, that sounds like the definition of practical.

Do you mind highly populated dungeons?
Yes > Send to low density instance
No > Send to high density instance
Problem solved.

Not sure where you're getting balance issues from, as the only thing that would require development hours would be whatever logic exists controlling population density and queuing upon dungeon entry. And I have no idea what you mean by "creating each and every one of these instances". They are already created. That's what an instance is.

I agree that is not the right solution because then it will be impossible to report bots since they would go in a instance all alone and would not be detected.

Imryll

Dodece wrote: »

Slow down your game progression. Do something else for awhile

I encountered this in Del's Claim. The boss in question is level 7. I couldn't even see him due to the mass of players. He certainly had no opportunity to engage my character in dialogue. The problem is not that I need to slow down or do other things. My character is currently level 10, largely due to frequent lockpicking. She crafts. She reads notes and books. She takes walks on the beach. She makes regular stops to enjoy the view.

The problem is not that reaching level 10 in the interval March 30-April 11 involves an ill-considered, headlong rush to end-game. The problem is one of effort and reward. Players are motivated to farm Polinus because these are out of synch. Unless ZOS wants to encourage such behavior they need to adjust the rewards so that players are encouraged actually to play the game--and others have the opportunity to do the same.

Edit: @Deadmedic. No, these folks were not there for three spawns. Waiting them out was not an option. My guess is that some were bots, others players. Given the solid mass I've no idea the actual mix. Anyway, I was in the vicinity for quite awhile (forgot the shard, duh!) and there were other folks coming and going, but the solid mass didn't shift.

ub17_ESO

Sinoby wrote: »

My opinion is: the whole idea of publich dungeons is bad, and the way this dungeons are implemented is bad. It is not fun to do 90% of pub dungeons (except for those harder ones with more mobs and more bosses) because you always run into train of other people running through it, getting to the box, instagibbing him and either moving along or staying to farm. Not to mention most of the dungeons have the same layout, I'd expect to have more variety. But in my opinion problem is not the whole "farm of the boss is revarding", but the ammount of people allowd in same instance of the dungeon. I would lower it to 4 max and crenked the dificulty of mobs up a fair bit, so the dungeon doesn't fill like a walk in the park.

I think this is the most viable solution I've read on this thread. Limit the total number of players in a public dungeon and increase the difficulty.

Farming in itself isn't bad and farmers don't destroy the game. In many ways they make the game. For the casual player who doesn't have 4 hours to camp a rare spawn they provide the opportunity to acquire those rare hard to get items via trade. They provide crafters with quick access to materials for coins.

All that said, I'm still not a fan of the public dungeon boss camping, for a couple reasons. It is experience breaking for many. If I'm trying to get that Elder Scrolls experience and kill a boss then I'm cheated of that experience because I merely have to shoulder my way through the mob and whack the boss twice when he pops. As i've transitioned back to the MMO mindset this really effects me less and less every day, but after playing Skyrim in anticipation for the launch this Boss camping got under my skin. I think the main reason I don't care for it is I feel that players get something for nothing well, close to nothing as time is traded. There is no long spawn time, there is no threat of death, there is no line to wait in for the camp. Just show up and if you can hit the barn you get a prize, and if you can keep hitting the barn every 2 minutes you will keep getting the prize. Last, for sure this will effect the economy, the items dropped by these bosses will never be hard to find or sought after items, but hey, maybe they were never meant to be.

Fen

It literally ruins every dungeon which may have ended in a decent/interesting boss fight. You end up sitting there on a stack of 10 people trying to spam buttons every few minutes when the end boss pops up, just in the hopes that you might land a hit before it is exploded, so you can actually finish the damn dungeon.
I asked the people camping it why they were doing it and the response I got was "minor soul gems and potions". I was like, seriously? Those drop like candy in dungeons, I have 49 minor soul gems without even trying for them. I was, however, ignored after that.
There needs to be a fix where these people can't actually see the boss after they've completed the dungeon, because I don't believe they are the type who are intelligent enough to not keep attempting for gear drops for hours on end, even when the drops have been taken away. These people are ruining a whole aspect of the game for others. Alternatively they should be booted out after a certain amount of time or we should be given the option to enter a private instance so we can actually experience it instead of running through some empty rooms and standing in the last one spamming aoe's.

Liil

jdkorreckpreub18_ESO wrote: »

Ban botters, let farmers do what they want. As long as you are at the keyboard and killing what they're doing is not wrong, it's a normal part of mmo's.

^^this. Witnessed 5 botters yesterday on one mob. The were all stood together and killing the same mob over and over and which was on a quick respawn, to loot what i can only assume is the soul gems from him. Reported all 5 accounts but really takes the fun away from the game when you cant even get a hit in on a mob in a dungeon.

Publius_Scipio

Many of you have forgotten that @ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ said that this thread brings up very legitimate concerns that ZOS will look into.

This thread had absolutely nothing to do with violations of the terms of service. And I personally haven't reported any player. ZOS built the game for all to enjoy and as it stands right now the camping and farming has deteriorated the game experience for other players. This has nothing to do with the "one swing get the dungeon completion" nonsense some of you have brought up. To the rest of us our enjoyment doesn't include making dungeons a chore, a dash to the end for a open faucet of loot.

I made a suggestion in the OP that I feel would keep the game flowing and still give everyone the same fair shot at loot. And anyone can come here and feel free to drop any and all suggestions.

Many of you have defended the current status of things without any regard to the other players game experience. We all pay the same subscription fee. All the lengthy comments about other MMOs and "camping the boss has been around since the Big Bang" are meaningless.

ZOS will make tweaks to the game as they see fit and that benefit all. It's been that way since day one as they have said countless times now.

Monsoon

The boss loot is not a problem IF there are real players camping it. The massive issue are the bots that are parked on the spawn and just wait for a target to spawn.

I usually pull the boss away and you see the bots stay where the boss was killed instead of moving back to the original spawn. The fact that the game can not detect this is plain stupid

cheeser123

jdkorreckpreub18_ESO wrote: »

Ban botters, let farmers do what they want. As long as you are at the keyboard and killing what they're doing is not wrong, it's a normal part of mmo's.

Yeah, so I guess you've never heard of Chinese gold farmers, eh? You know, in this far off land know as "China" they take people in jails and prisons and force them to farm on MMOs and other online games for 12-18 hours per day, non-stop, to earn money by reselling in-game commodities.

So do we consider them botters? Farmers? You're going to draw the line at the type of entity at the other end of the keyboard, rather than by the actual in-game actions? That's backwards.

Singular

Dallie wrote: »

I don't understand why this is a thread. Mob camping has been around since MMO's were invented. Who cares if you get the loot, most bosses drop the same thing regular mobs do in public dungeons with the exception of maybe one shiny piece of gear. To get the kill, all you have to do is smack it once or twice for the credit. Stand there for the next spawn and spam your fastest attack a couple of times, done. I haven't seen one public dungeon boss' loot that would hinder your progression by not having their drop.

As someone else said, this thread seems to stem from someone who doesn't have a lot of MMO experience.

Yeah - I'm new to this style of MMO, so I was surprised that people were boss camping. I sent a few a tell asking 'are you getting xp off this or something?' but they didn't answer, just shot their weapons over and over. In hindsight, that was my introduction to the botters! Had no idea those existed.

Anyways, had no issues getting the credit for a kill. I never seem to get loot, though - is that b/c someone who does more damage is getting it? I thought that a chance at loot was given to each player who sufficiently damaged the boss.

But, yeah, you kinda have to feel sorry for that boss AI. Everyone waiting there to crush him - like he died and in his own personal hell now.

"No, wait! Wai - ach!"
<30 seconds later>
"I am willing to cha-ach!"
<30 seconds later>
"nge - I am goin-erk!"
<30 seconds later>
"g to be goo-aaach!"
<30 seconds later>

natalia76

easiest would be to just stick a debuff on you once you have killed the boss a few times.
for example kill boss once you get a debuff saying can only kill boss 5 times more.
second time it says only 4 times more
and so on, and once you killed the boss for the last time, you get a debuff for 20 mins or so before you can kill it again for loot. it would not solve the problem totaly but it would stop people for farming it for hours.
notable the debuff would also reset to full 20 mins if you insist on continue to kill the same boss when you got the debuff. this would kill off the bots quite well to or well atleast stop them from getting loot from that boss.

not sure it is needed but that is the only way I can se it working if it is realy needed.

pmn100b16_ESO

Went back to do a low level dungeon last night to grab a skyshard and came across a few very obvious bots. I suppose its the first dungeon you're likely to come across after leading the stater zones so explains why the multitude of bots there.

They had names made up of random letters like a face was rolled across the keyboard. there was scripted movement, after killing boss, running back to the exact same spot, facing the exact same direction as before. One of the bots seemed to be malfunctioning though cause it was attacking thin air for about 10 secs before stopping and moving back to its start position.

Quite sophisticated how they're programed for movement. But if these are the people sending me in game mail and guild requests for gold selling websites, then it needs to be addressed asap.

Talmet

Publius_Scipio wrote: »

Many of you have forgotten that @ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ said that this thread brings up very legitimate concerns that ZOS will look into.

This thread had absolutely nothing to do with violations of the terms of service. And I personally haven't reported any player. ZOS built the game for all to enjoy and as it stands right now the camping and farming has deteriorated the game experience for other players. This has nothing to do with the "one swing get the dungeon completion" nonsense some of you have brought up. To the rest of us our enjoyment doesn't include making dungeons a chore, a dash to the end for a open faucet of loot.

I made a suggestion in the OP that I feel would keep the game flowing and still give everyone the same fair shot at loot. And anyone can come here and feel free to drop any and all suggestions.

Many of you have defended the current status of things without any regard to the other players game experience. We all pay the same subscription fee. All the lengthy comments about other MMOs and "camping the boss has been around since the Big Bang" are meaningless.

ZOS will make tweaks to the game as they see fit and that benefit all. It's been that way since day one as they have said countless times now.

You are correct, ZOS will make tweaks.

But the comments about how MMOs work, are not meaningless.

Whether you like it or not, this is an MMO. I know that many people didn't like the idea that they made the next TES game into a MMO. They wanted to continue their single player experiences from arena/daggerfall/morrowind/oblivion/skyrim. That is understandable, but in their infinite wisdom, the game devs made the next TES game a MMO. Complain, whine, whatever you want...this is their game, not yours. The game dev's made many design decisions during the creation that aren't going to change (i.e. redoing every dungeon into a private group instance as someone suggested in this thread, is not going to happen.)

Being a MMO, means that certain things have to happen in the game, and some people who never played MMOs before may not like them. i.e. In beta there were some threads started because people were complaining that mobs respawned in the open world. Mobs must respawn in MMOs, in other TES games you could clear a dungeon/keep/fort/etc...you can't do that in an MMO.

People farming for mats/loot/gold/xp/etc...that is going to happen in an MMO (and truth be told, the option to farm for those things existed in every TES game as well.) Complain if you want, but there is no way to remove farmers in MMOs...and if ZoS is thinking long term, they won't want to anyway. Farming is what keeps a MMO going, people doing the same things over and over farming up mats/loot/gold/faction points/xp/whatever. Those of you that played any TES games for over a few hundred hours, you farmed in those games as well.

natalia76

an other idea that is prolly said here already, make bosses in public dungon, scale on how many hits it, for example boss got 100k healt, 10 people hit it the boss goes up to 2 miljon healt, this would make it easier for people to be able to hit it, and make it so you only need to hit the boss to be able to loot it to.