Assistance request for mob killing

[Rongar Elani]

This might have been brought up before, but via search, I didn't find anything similar.

I don't really like the fact that 'you must be grouped with X to attack Y'. I know it has been created to prevent kill stealing, but it's somewhat unlogical. In my opinion, the best would be, if you could request your assitance, by attacking the mob, someone else is already fighting, without the need to group up with the person.

Example:

You see someone fighting an Ulber and want to help him. You target the Ulber and hit your attack shortcut. But instead of getting the denial message, your attack try should let a confirmation box pop up for the person you want to assist. Of course, a pop up is often quite annoying, especially in the heat of battle, and requesting a group has about the same effect. But, if you had the option to macro your confirmation, just like with the PvP request (always accept, ask each time, never accept), you could easily determine your attitude concerning the feature. I for one, would like to have the possibility of providing, aswell as receiving assistance and think, it could be an interesting feature.

[Under the moon]

Agreed. One of my characters was killed once because a Rogue randomly poped up in the middle of a play sesson with friends. As I was typing something at the time, I did not have enough time to get away. As I was not in the same group as them, my character's friends had to stand by helplessly as she was killed in front of them.

The system is flawed if you need have creatures 'owned' by a player to prevent killstealing. Instead, let anyone attack and get XP from any creature, even if it is being attacked by another player, but have the person who originally attacked the mob get the looting/sharing rights, unless the attack is broken. PP... get rid of them completely.

It makes more sense in code, leveling, and RP.

[Farren Kutter]

Yeah, and it would also make RPing a ranger.... Erm... Possible?

[Illysia]

Isn't this basically the same as or in the same spirit of the old /assist command. It doesn't work anymore but you used ti be able to type it and help the person fight a creature.

[Farren Kutter]

I believe /assist only targeted the NPC the targeted player was fighting. Not totally sure

[Rongar Elani]

As long as I am playing, /assist only targetted the npc, the player in target was fighting, just like Farren said, but still we were not allowed to attack it. Though, if any possible, I'd like to have a working /assist-script to be included in the /attack-script, so we would just have to attack the mob, to request assistance to the person, who is fighting it. Much easier than having to deal with typing it, or trying to remember the shortcut, since it won't be in use THAT often, I guess.

And I like the idea from UTM, about the sharing rights.

[Karyuu]

First you guys go on and on about killstealing, then you turn around and say "Just do it anyway." Make up your minds :]

[Under the moon]

I have always said "just do away with it". Killstealing, and the reasons for it, are all based on hack-n-slash/Geet-the-lootzORz-and-XP!! games, not roleplaying.

I could lay out a system that would work very well and be fun for everyone (PLers included), with no opportunity for grieving or KSing (both OOC actions), but it would take a lot of changes, both in code and mindset, as it is based on a concept often rare in MMORPGs.

Sharing... and benefiting from it.

[Rongar Elani]

Wasn't the original term of 'kill stealing' used to describe a bug, which allowed player B to attack a mob Player A had already attacked and also prevented Player A to attack the mob again? If so, then of course, we're not saying 'please, dear developers, give it back to us'

My idea is about the possibility to share mobs, because not everyone likes the idea of a mob to be reserved by attacking it. With a simple (i just presume it to be simple) option in the options window, one could determine, how he thinks about sharing, by deciding for one of the three possibilities: always accept, ask each time, never accept. But however someone decides, the looting rights should be reserved for the first attacker, to prevent high level players of abusing the feature against low level players, or to have a second option to determine the looting rights: first damage, most damage, last damage.

Either way, i just think it would be more realistic.

[bilbous]

I think that if you are going to allow that kind of thing then the possibility of misguided blows hitting the wrong combatant ought to be significant. Wading into vigorous altercations is a dangerous pastime.  Of course this would render the challenge system impotent as someone wanting to fight another player would only have to "assist" the person he wants to kill and "accidentally" beat him about the head a few times.

[Farren Kutter]

They would also need to make the exp for PP earned per hit instead of per kill I think. That would make it a bit more fair

[Zan]

Things used to be like that. You get experience for the amount of damage you did and anyone could attack a monster.

Then newbies started whining about grievers stealing their kills and there not being enough NPC spawns for all the players so the Devs changed the system and made sure you couldn't attack something as soon as it was attacked by someone else.

Me, I never minded the initial system because I've never been much of a leveler but I could easily take advantage of it and irritate quite a few people if I wanted to.

[Cyl]

I am probably going to be hit with a comically oversized mallet for this, but actually the way WoW dealt with that issue seems pretty straightforward and effective to me: Engaging a mob that already is in combat with another player, who is not grouped with you, is perfectly possible, however you don't get any experience and loot from it.

[Nukm]

Engaging a mob that already is in combat with another player, who is not grouped with you, is perfectly possible, however you don't get any experience and loot from it.

that would indeed work well...
cause you take away every reason to steal monsters, so just 2 intentions stay:
a) helping other players that are in real danger - thats what we want
b) annoying other players - this shouldnt be a real problem because of the way the community is structured + if the same person keeps being a dick, he will be banned

[eldoth_terevan]

It could be made so that any characters could assist on a kill, but the original character that had the target lock got the PP and loot. In this manner, players could help each other, and "killstealing" would be worthless and so would stop. Of course, with the target lock the way it is now, there is no killstealing per se... it's just whomever gets the target first. Blah blah blah...