Raid Engine/War Machine/Battalion

[jackmor]

Is there going to be some way of putting groups together into larger groups so that when there are large amounts of players in a cooperative effort they can:

Speak to each other in common chat.
Seperate into teams of fighters, healers and casters in a coordinated unit with common exp and target screen.
Special color for commander and leader chat.

[dazman76]

We definitely need something like this, and I think your suggestion of colour for the leader(s) chat is excellent.

This would also help with continental trips, since it's currently a case of 'heal your own team members, occasionally heal others who are down, and hope the other teams are doing the same' Of course organisation can help with that problem, but organisation seems a distant memory when 4 Torbaks attack from different directions!

[xcomvic]

Is there going to be some way of putting groups together into larger groups so that when there are large amounts of players in a cooperative effort they can:

Speak to each other in common chat.
Seperate into teams of fighters, healers and casters in a coordinated unit with common exp and target screen.
Special color for commander and leader chat.

if they are "ALL" cooperative against a common enemy like NPCs or Kitins.. then you got REGION or AROUND chat...

as for the other two... i think you mean the ASSIST, but if there are 100s/1000s of enemies coming at you, does it matter who you target?

Special colors for commanders and leader chat... not a bad idea... how about make it so that players can CREATE their OWN chatrooms in game... might help coordinate everyone... but i dunno, just throwing out ideas...

[jackmor]

if they are "ALL" cooperative against a common enemy like NPCs or Kitins.. then you got REGION or AROUND chat...

as for the other two... i think you mean the ASSIST, but if there are 100s/1000s of enemies coming at you, does it matter who you target?

Special colors for commanders and leader chat... not a bad idea... how about make it so that players can CREATE their OWN chatrooms in game... might help coordinate everyone... but i dunno, just throwing out ideas...

The common chat should be seperate from others such as Region or Around to avoid sifting through common chat in the game.

Seperating into units but within a larger group each with its own leader under a commander. The targeting would be mainly for the healers and then yes, it does matter.

[josephm]

If everyone followed your strategy of just picking anyone Xcom what happens with 15 healers point on one guy who's low level anyways, and heal him 14x over what they need to while 14 other people die?

I don't think you should be able to see the leader chat, but I do think there should be one. I think the reasons are obvious if you want to get things done.

Here's how I picture it.
Baldy invites Vhaldir into a group, moves to a goup window similiar to guild window.

Makes Vhaldir high officer. High officer Vhaldir has access to both team and leader chat.

Vhaldir has his own squad. and can recruit people into a seperate team. Vhaldir and I can both flip through eachothers team health bar windows.

Vhaldir also may make a full group of 9. Vhaldir then selects two officers who move into new groups max #5

Squads can be named so that only the group sees who they are (for PvP reasons). So I can name Vhaldir Beta squad while mine are called Baldy's Angels.

Vhaldir's officers may see his group and eachother's but not my group's health bars.

Group members only see their own group health bars.

XP is only shared in a group. I will get no xp if Vhaldir makes a kill and I heal him.

Over all Baldy can make two high officers, three officers. Each high officer can make 2 officers.

At max size baldy has: Team; and officer (highs included though) chat. So would Vhaldir and Gondi.

Vhaldir and Gondi's officers would not see my officer chat. Nor would I see Vhaldir's or Gondi's

Sometimes to get things done people need limited information. Otherwise you have chaos. which is why there are limitations to the group bars and the chats. Leader limitation on chats is also nessicary because in this sense 1) realism is akin to elitism. It helps show who's better oragnized. 2) Leaders would have an aneurism with all that spam. Saves headaches, migrains, and other sever side effects of online gaming. Someone on Arctic Diku mud had a heart attack while he was playing. He was like 16 or something, his mom found him at the keyboard, with a disconnect signal from inactivity. We suspect it was during pk since it gets you all riled up. He's fine btw, was up an playing again in a month.

[tetra]

If everyone followed your strategy of just picking anyone Xcom what happens with 15 healers point on one guy who's low level anyways, and heal him 14x over what they need to while 14 other people die?

I don't think you should be able to see the leader chat, but I do think there should be one. I think the reasons are obvious if you want to get things done.

Here's how I picture it.
Baldy invites Vhaldir into a group, moves to a goup window similiar to guild window.

Makes Vhaldir high officer. High officer Vhaldir has access to both team and leader chat.

Vhaldir has his own squad. and can recruit people into a seperate team. Vhaldir and I can both flip through eachothers team health bar windows.

Vhaldir also may make a full group of 9. Vhaldir then selects two officers who move into new groups max #5

Squads can be named so that only the group sees who they are (for PvP reasons). So I can name Vhaldir Beta squad while mine are called Baldy's Angels.

Vhaldir's officers may see his group and eachother's but not my group's health bars.

Group members only see their own group health bars.

XP is only shared in a group. I will get no xp if Vhaldir makes a kill and I heal him.

Over all Baldy can make two high officers, three officers. Each high officer can make 2 officers.

At max size baldy has: Team; and officer (highs included though) chat. So would Vhaldir and Gondi.

Vhaldir and Gondi's officers would not see my officer chat. Nor would I see Vhaldir's or Gondi's

Sometimes to get things done people need limited information. Otherwise you have chaos. which is why there are limitations to the group bars and the chats. Leader limitation on chats is also nessicary because in this sense 1) realism is akin to elitism. It helps show who's better oragnized. 2) Leaders would have an aneurism with all that spam. Saves headaches, migrains, and other sever side effects of online gaming. Someone on Arctic Diku mud had a heart attack while he was playing. He was like 16 or something, his mom found him at the keyboard, with a disconnect signal from inactivity. We suspect it was during pk since it gets you all riled up. He's fine btw, was up an playing again in a month.

I disagree with a lot of what you said here.... first off, healers learn pretty damn quick who the useful members of a party are and work on a "heal as much as possible but focus on what is needed to prevent death". Primary/Secondary healer's sap is bar none one of the absolute highest concerns since he can't heal my sap or heal anyone else if he runs out. Depending on the situation, on an almost equal level is the folks that are tanking any mobs and taunting them away from me. Folks that are better and more alert with their taunts are more likely to get preference if I have to pick between two roughly equal folks. Then the hp/sap on nukers. There are always exceptions... but you learn fast that joe n00b is not important and that he can rot on the ground for a few more seconds when things are hairy.

Seeing someone complain about healers being able to heal everyone due to the ability to target them with a team window style interface, because they might waste time all healing joe n00b and let "14 other people" die, is downright stupid. Especially considering the fact that all healers in said raid would be able to easily heal whoever needed healing, including each other, rather than having umpteen individual groups of 9.

Also, I'm going to be brutally honest and say that having EXP go only to the group with the most damage has been one of the biggest screwups in breaking down the community of the game, having exp be set by the highest skill used in the group and linked to other players was the first. Under the old system folks were far more willing to help others or join up with others when they knew it didn't matter if joe was a level bazillion [insert class] or level 3 [insert class]. Under the old system, nobody gave a rats ass about being in the damage group. Under the old system, nobody ever said "ok... no exp for us I guess" when they found out that the group was made with 4 healers. Under that old system, nobody thought about exp at all... they thought about accomplishing the goal. They knew that they would get a gigantic gob of exp in healing by using their level 53 heals and chaincasting sap heals on someone. They knew they would get exp for tanking mobs and hitting them even though there was another group made of 9 level 250 elemental mages doing virtually all of the damage. They had no problems and often would walk by and heal some sob in a fight, and that suddenly not quite as screwed sob had no problems with said healer doing that since it wouldn't affect exp for either of them. Saying exp only goes to the group that does damage only serves to encourage grouping where folks want to be on the damage team and feel disenfranchised if they are not... and believe me, there can be a lot of exp for the damage team on something as simple as a world crossing which can take multiple hours. Nobody wants to continually spend 2-5 or 6-10+ hours leading a bunch of n00bs to another continent/across the world, knowing that they might get 20k exp if they are really lucky while the other group is getting a couple mil or more.


To be quite honest... your post is mindbogglingly stupid on so many levels... especially those ones arguing against the desire for folks to have the interface grow ability for folks to act as a group rather than N groups of 9.

[zzeii]

Nobody wants to continually spend 2-5 or 6-10+ hours leading a bunch of n00bs to another continent/across the world, knowing that they might get 20k exp if they are really lucky while the other group is getting a couple mil or more.

I would have to argue with you on this part tetra.

Mainly because...

I don't care about getting xp on the trips... It's about making the trip that matters to me, not getting xp on the trip. I know alot of people care about the xp. But not everyone. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~dokihara/meetingagain-en.swf cheesy little ffxi clip, but it's a good example of what some people play for.

[tetra]

Nobody wants to continually spend 2-5 or 6-10+ hours leading a bunch of n00bs to another continent/across the world, knowing that they might get 20k exp if they are really lucky while the other group is getting a couple mil or more.QUOTE]

I would have to argue with you on this part tetra.

Mainly because...

I don't care about getting xp on the trips... It's about making the trip that matters to me, not getting xp on the trip. I know alot of people care about the xp. But not everyone. http://www2.hawaii.edu/~dokihara/meetingagain-en.swf cheesy little ffxi clip, but it's a good example of what some people play for.

I've been in groups in this game where someone said over group chat that they were unhappy that they would be getting exp cause there were so many healers in the group. I've seen people unhappy about not getting any exp for a trip around the world/across the continent. There will always be a few that don't care, but when it comes right down to it... the choice between going and escorting some newbies, and going and doing something nonstressful and getting exp is very clear cut for many folks, and grows increasingly difficult to choose "help the newbies" for many of the remaining ones with time.

And to add more to it... I've seen the hassle caused by folks trying to create damage teams yesterday rather than just creating teams... or did you forget how many times you had to shout about folks not in teams with folks still coming out and admitting to not having a team later.

[josephm]

That's interesting, I was under the impression of whomever got the kill got the experience.

Tetra did you read Xcomvic's post? he said 'does it really matter who you target?'. I thought it was obvious he was talking about other players. This thread is also about organization outside of your group, so I assume he's takling about a point and click heal on people ungrouped.

It might not have been clear but my post was hardly stupid. Not reading posts and putting them together, and the excessive use of the word n00b is. You should change your login to n00b obsessed n00bian lunacy.

Serious, how smart do you have o be to figure out if you don't like certain people in groups you kick them out? someone doesn't listen and keeps dying? who says you have to rez them? seriously.

Zzei I agree with you. I run around and stack DP for the hell of it....well I try not to stack DP but I know it's coming with what I'm doing .

As for your response to Zzeii Tetra, why agree with someone then go off and argue IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH when it's clear that it's your own decision that counts?

If you are having trouble finding people to group with online that you can agree with, power levelers or not, you must be a real jerk. Either that, or since your post is so off the wall, while you call me names, you are one of the very n00bs you hate so much. Be nice and do things right and find some friends. That's just a guess and a helpful suggestion if it's right though. I'll still rez u if I see you down.

[jdiegel]

I've never really cared about xp. I just play. If I level, cool. If I don't, cool. If I max my dp, no prob. If the next two hours of playing just reduce that dp, no prob. If I can help out a new player using one of my low level skills I will. It's still fun for me and I'm helping somebody out.