Player Mentality

[Xaearth]

Note: Before I go into my explanation of recent, frustrating events which could be seen as an attack against a certain class, I want to clarify that, although much of the following may be venting, it is an example I am using to convey a disturbing point... Basically, the purpose of this thread is to provoke discussion (yes discussion, not arguments) on the way that player mentality (all players, though I will be using sorcerors as an example... we all know many melee's who fall into the trap of looking at kill counts, clerics that brag how much they can heal for, poor rogues and rangers who get treated like orphans, and wizards who used to sit and spin at shrines) is going in DDO, if this is the mentality that we, as a community, truly want to see, and, if not, what we can do to change it. Really, it seems the ddo community as a whole is quickly growing more and more narrow-minded as to what they believe to be the ways to accomplish anything in game, and, if anything, as the developers continually make new quests to force us to adopt new strategies, it will only make future attempts to complete new content more and more difficult.

What comes to mind when you think sorceror? Really, that's a rhetorical question because what you think doesn't matter as much as what the player(s) playing that Sorceror think throughout the duration of the quest. It seems to me that more and more Sorceror's are becoming narrow-mindedly focused on nuking everything to death and when it comes to having no sp... Well they'll cross that bridge when they come to it.

Well that's all well and good when the primary objective of the party is to do just that. However, perhaps this is not always the case...

Shroud, Part 2: Pretty much a basic party make-up with 3 clerics and 3 sorcerors. We ended up losing one of the cleric's early on, but we continued, setting up to take care of the 4 nameds - Orthon, Kobold, Fire Ele, and Troll.
So we split into two groups, with a cleric in each. Well I suppose the gods of Eberron decided to test me... I end up in the group with the wf barb who pulled the Troll and the Fire Ele. The plan is to nuke the **** out of the Troll and the Orthon while running the Ele and Kobold around. The pull went smoothly, the rest, not so much. The sorc on our team (sorc 1) immediately starts spamming Cone of Cold on the fire ele until he is down to 1/4 sp, all the while I'm telling him to throw firewalls on the Troll and forget the ele, while keeping up the warforged barb who is getting beat like crazy by the Troll. So sorc 1 uses the last of his sp to throw firewalls on the Troll and starts rolling in the butterflies. By this time I'm down to around 2/3 sp, and one of the two sorcerors that were in the other group comes over and says "*** is going on here, this whole area should be full of firewalls!" So he (sorc 2) burns most of his sp throwing down the firewalls and directs the other sorcerors to start taking down the Fire Ele. Now, 2 out of 3 sorceror's are pretty much completely burnt out of sp. Sorc 2 went back to his group's tree to regen, sending sorc 3 to CoC the Fire Ele. By this time I'm well below 1/3 sp and the sorc that had burnt all of his sp in the beginning is back up to around 1/4. I tell the wf that I can't keep him up at this rate, and politely ask our sorc to "Please let me have the tree". So by now I'm almost drained, the 2 sorc's (1 and 3) on my side are hoarding the tree, and the only thing close to being dead is our party. By this time I'm burning heal scrolls left and right, so much so that the other cleric (who didn't have to keep a warforged alive), started running back and forth between the two teams to keep everyone alive. Perhaps it would have been more effective to let the clerics get sp back, keep the party alive, and >then< give another go at taking the nameds down? Seems to make more sense than a party wipe...
Anyways, I was pretty relieved when they killed the Orthon by accident, he respawned, targeted me, and sent me to the penalty box... Spared me my last 30 heal scrolls.

It seems to me there are two major schools of thought when it comes to tackling a quest: kill everything as fast as possible, or keep the party as healthy as possible. Granted, both can be accomplished at the same time, but maybe, just maybe, there comes a time when you have to put the well-being of the party over burning everything in sight...

Ok, if you forgot what this post was about, read the note at the top xD. Now, feel free to discuss. :p

Edit: Shortened... cuz... well, no one wanted to read it xD. Also, forgot to mention the main reason this frustrated me - Afterwards half the party congratulated the other cleric for a good try and blamed the wipe on me not being able to keep people up, while I was in House J restocking ~20k pp worth of Heal Scrolls...

[captain1z]

longggggggggggg post but I promise to read it and post something more constructive in a bit. (edit to come)


My gosh that was long, I lost focus twice half way thru (started daydreaming)

ok. Cleric in quest, having trouble keeping up with the heals. Key players have died thus far making life hard for all, melees are getting pounded and people wont let the melee regen at the tree...... got it.

Answer = let the melee die.

Im serious, no joke. As someone who plays a few melees I hate to die and its easy to die when you are outnumbered/overpowered.
Melee needs to learn to control their aggro.

- If I do a lot of damage to a mob, it comes after me.
- if the mob is beating on me to badly I stop doing damage to him (or reduce the amount) turtle or switch weapons

Another melee can pick up the aggro or the sorc with his Firewalls can run him around while I recover for a bit

If a melee, or a caster for that matter, cannot do this; as a cleric I will control the aggro for you by letting you die and bringing you back to life when the heat is off you. Granted I will try a command or a comet fall or even a holy smite before I let you go... but if those dont work then you are gunna have to go down.

Why?

1- I got other people to heal also
2- my resources are limited. when you buy 100 heal scrolls, you dont usually plan on using them all in 1 quest (not always)


Its the lesser of 2 evils if you ask me:

Burn all your SP and 20-50K plat healing 1 guy or spend 100 sp on some CC and let someone die.


Classic shoot the hostage scenario.


But you did the best you could I guess.......... likely more than I would have done.........trust me.

[JFeenstra]

hey i know the feeling

i had a cleric ask me if i had cc, then complain every time i threw up a dancing sphere because it interfered with his blade barrier and he couldn't kill everything in the quest...

meanwhile the party was downing potions like madmen because the cleric wasn't tossing out heals :)

[winsom]

You want to talk about different gameplay styles?

Was kinda hard to spot your point because you wrote so much inbetween. I see it now.

[Xanstrollinoax]

Know what ya mean a guildie on a cleric was out of sp trying to keep grp alive and the sorc was hogging it so the feeling mutual.

[ViVid7th]

*Post Snip due to quote change*

I'm too lazy to change the rest, leaving it as is.

The two Sorcs took the trees on his side, when he needed the SP for healing. He was forced to draw heavily upon heal scrolls and drop a likely insane amount of plat to keep those fools healed (healing a WF as well >.<) because the Sorcs wouldn't listen.

The discussion being put forth is the player mentality of "Big Numbers" compared to effective use of available resources. Wasting SPs by not focus firing, putting nuker SP over the healer SP and kill count watching (among other things). These are the types of players that must watch DpS meters during a raid in other games and top them by a large margin to deem their worth. While in some cases that could be argued as an accurate measure for some classes in those games (Such as a class that brings only damage and nothing else, doesn't happen in DDO though), to the extreme it leads to 'One Man Show' and 'OMGIMASUPERHERO' complexes in game.

I see things differently from that, but I don't know if that is because I'm an evil super villain mastermind or not...

[Purgatory]

longggggggggggg post but I promise to read it and post something more constructive in a bit. (edit to come)


My gosh that was long, I lost focus twice half way thru (started daydreaming)

ok. Cleric in quest, having trouble keeping up with the heals. Key players have died thus far making life hard for all, melees are getting pounded and people wont let the melee regen at the tree...... got it.

Answer = let the melee die.

Im serious, no joke. As someone who plays a few melees I hate to die and its easy to die when you are outnumbered/overpowered.
Melee needs to learn to control their aggro.

- If I do a lot of damage to a mob, it comes after me.
- if the mob is beating on me to badly I stop doing damage to him (or reduce the amount) turtle or switch weapons

Another melee can pick up the aggro or the sorc with his Firewalls can run him around while I recover for a bit

If a melee, or a caster for that matter, cannot do this; as a cleric I will control the aggro for you by letting you die and bringing you back to life when the heat is off you. Granted I will try a command or a comet fall or even a holy smite before I let you go... but if those dont work then you are gunna have to go down.

Why?

1- I got other people to heal also
2- my resources are limited. when you buy 100 heal scrolls, you dont usually plan on using them all in 1 quest (not always)


Its the lesser of 2 evils if you ask me:

Burn all your SP and 20-50K plat healing 1 guy or spend 100 sp on some CC and let someone die.


Classic shoot the hostage scenario.


But you did the best you could I guess.......... likely more than I would have done.........trust me.

Classic case of not knowing what your talking about but giving advise anyway rofl

[Brego]

I just noticed this post. After wading through the intro, I realized the rant was against me. I am said sorc who blew all spell points, was not following direction, etc, etc. I was not, in any way, trying to 'bump up my kill count' I was new to the Shroud. I said that to all when I joined. I was trying to follow multiple directions at once, none of which were very clear, and I ended up being greatly unhelpful. Oh well, lesson learned. Life goes on.

[Purgatory]

hey i know the feeling

i had a cleric ask me if i had cc, then complain every time i threw up a dancing sphere because it interfered with his blade barrier and he couldn't kill everything in the quest...

meanwhile the party was downing potions like madmen because the cleric wasn't tossing out heals :)

Hmm thats funny i was in a quest with a sor that would cast dancing balls on my max extended BB that kill anything in one passing and when asked repeatedly not to after requested by the grouup leader that it was more sp cost eective to kill 10 mobs with one bb then for you, sry i meann the sor, to cast weak discos that only cought 1/2 them 1/2 time and then let the mellees take 5x more dmg costing the clr 3x more sp then 1 bb would o cost. was that you? if it was pls send me the 5k plat or the heal scroll i had to use ecause u thought it was unny to negate my bb 100&#37; of the time. AT the same time when there was single mobs or the melee to take down the sor would run up after it was 3/4 dead and fod LOL.

OH by the way no one asked if u had cc. LOL they asked u to fod hostile casters!!! not 1/2 dead melee mobs that are getting beat down.

[captain1z]

Classic case of not knowing what your talking about but giving advise anyway rofl

About the quest = absolutely dont know a thing

about aggro/playing a cleric = I can teach a thing or two



geez try not to hate me too much.........

"I cant help being this pretty" - The greatest of all time

[Xaearth]

First of all, I already see some replies falling to the negative side. Please don't turn this thread into a massive argument, let's keep things on the civil side :).


Answer = let the melee die.

Im serious, no joke. As someone who plays a few melees I hate to die and its easy to die when you are outnumbered/overpowered.
Melee needs to learn to control their aggro.

I know exactly what you mean. I'm a fairly good cleric if me and my guild and my friendslist do say so ourselves xD. But the problem is, the design of Shroud parts 2 (the part in question) and 4 seriously penalize this. Whenever someone dies in either of these parts, they are sent to a "penalty box" just like the Reaver Raid with one major difference - they can NOT be brought back to life until that phase of the raid has been completed. So basically, if you choose to let people die, you could severely be hampering your party's ability to continue. Essentially, I could have let someone die, but instead I chose to let the party wipe more slowly, at my own personal cost, in the hopes that things would turn around.


The two Sorcs took the trees on his side, when he needed the SP for healing. He was forced to draw heavily upon heal scrolls and drop a likely insane amount of plat to keep those fools healed (healing a WF as well >.<) because the Sorcs wouldn't listen.

The discussion being put forth is the player mentality of "Big Numbers" compared to effective use of available resources. Wasting SPs by not focus firing, putting nuker SP over the healer SP and kill count watching (among other things). These are the types of players that must watch DpS meters during a raid in other games and top them by a large margin to deem their worth. While in some cases that could be argued as an accurate measure for some classes in those games (Such as a class that brings only damage and nothing else, doesn't happen in DDO though), to the extreme it leads to 'One Man Show' and 'OMGIMASUPERHERO' complexes in game.

I see things differently from that, but I don't know if that is because I'm an evil super villain mastermind or not...

Thank you for summarizing what I was trying to say more clearly.


I just noticed this post. After wading through the intro, I realized the rant was against me. I am said sorc who blew all spell points, was not following direction, etc, etc. I was not, in any way, trying to 'bump up my kill count' I was new to the Shroud. I said that to all when I joined. I was trying to follow multiple directions at once, none of which were very clear, and I ended up being greatly unhelpful. Oh well, lesson learned. Life goes on.

Truth be told, I don't know if you are one of the sorc's in the example, but it seems you believe you are the first sorc mentioned. But if you were, to be honest, that wasn't the problem. I do believe the first sorc I mentioned did move when asked, but promptly thereafter the 3rd sorc mentioned stole the tree from me. But all said and done, that wasn't the point of the thread. I will say that, because of my frustration at the time, I made the initial post longer than need be, skewing the message I was trying to convey. I do apologize for that, and will try to shorten the example (after all, I intend it to be nothing more than an example), and make clearer the fact that I'm trying to say that players should broaden the way they approach their adventures, instead of sticking to one play style they feel comfortable with.

Even the most "elite" of players that can't adapt to changing circumstances can not reliably overcome every quest they come upon. Approaching a quest with only one sound way of achieving success, whether it be zerging through Coalescence ignoring all of the bats and scorpions, rushing the Giant Skeles in Madstone with 3 disruptors, or just trying to shieldblock in a choke point while casters drain their mana blasting a boss, is not sound judgement. All it takes is one small stumbling block (in the above examples: LAG, bad luck, oops he's healing too fast), and if you can't adapt to it, you fail. It seems all too common today that not just the characters, but the players, are one-trick ponies. And as new content comes out intent to challenge us, we have to reliably be able to adapt to the new circumstances, instead of falling into the groove of taking what we believe to be "tried and true".

[ChaelaAnne]

I honestly think that no matter what race you play, people are always going to critisize the way you play.

I know, as a fighter, I get a lot of flack about pulling aggro. However, there have been plenty of times where I have been yelled at for pulling aggro in one room, then yelled at in the next room for NOT pulling aggro, and letting a spellcaster die.

I don't know that there will ever be a situationg where everyone appreciates every one else. I persoinally have found the solution be to game with my guild and my friends, and that is it.

[efreet5]

I know how you feel, I too play a cleric, but the one thing you do need to learn is when to let people die. Frankly, as captain1z put it, you need to educate people by letting them die. I would like to say that was the main thing, but it does seem that your group went into the quest assuming everyone knew their roles. I would suggest going into the shroud with a more organized group and a vocal and effective leader. Make sure that everyone realizes that the leader's word is absolute, when he tells you to die, you die, when he tells you to firewall, you do it until Quarion appears in-game and tells you that the spell is now being removed from the game due to being abused single-handedly by 1 player....Basically, your group sounds more like a bad pug of the shroud with little or no coordination than any problems with playing style. In the case of the few bad apples that don't like to go along with a leader in a quest all i have to say is BOOT THEIR SORRY @$$es!!!:mad:

[TFPAQ]

that it seems that the devs have put in some extra time trying to get us to play together as a team lately?

Sorry you had a bad experience with that run. I don't care if anyone flames me on this, but several of the posts hit it on the head as far as I'm concerned. I run my cleric guild-only in the raids, it is just too expensive to pug him anymore.

Once you have several runs in, the quests are relatively smooth and not financially taxing, which is why my cleric is currently guild-only in the raids. Anyone who is burning though 100 heal scrolls/quest should rethink the group dynamic they are in.

And yes, sadly the greatest learning tool in this game is death. Now that death is xp debt free, my cleric doesn't suffer for letting people die when necessary....

[Brutous]

longggggggggggg post but I promise to read it and post something more constructive in a bit. (edit to come)


My gosh that was long, I lost focus twice half way thru (started daydreaming)

ok. Cleric in quest, having trouble keeping up with the heals. Key players have died thus far making life hard for all, melees are getting pounded and people wont let the melee regen at the tree...... got it.

Answer = let the melee die.

Im serious, no joke. As someone who plays a few melees I hate to die and its easy to die when you are outnumbered/overpowered.
Melee needs to learn to control their aggro.

- If I do a lot of damage to a mob, it comes after me.
- if the mob is beating on me to badly I stop doing damage to him (or reduce the amount) turtle or switch weapons

Another melee can pick up the aggro or the sorc with his Firewalls can run him around while I recover for a bit

If a melee, or a caster for that matter, cannot do this; as a cleric I will control the aggro for you by letting you die and bringing you back to life when the heat is off you. Granted I will try a command or a comet fall or even a holy smite before I let you go... but if those dont work then you are gunna have to go down.

Why?

1- I got other people to heal also
2- my resources are limited. when you buy 100 heal scrolls, you dont usually plan on using them all in 1 quest (not always)


Its the lesser of 2 evils if you ask me:

Burn all your SP and 20-50K plat healing 1 guy or spend 100 sp on some CC and let someone die.


Classic shoot the hostage scenario.


But you did the best you could I guess.......... likely more than I would have done.........trust me.

nice to know where you stand.

[nbhs275]

About the quest = absolutely dont know a thing

about aggro/playing a cleric = I can teach a thing or two



geez try not to hate me too much.........

"I cant help being this pretty" - The greatest of all time

I agree fully with the captain. If a cleric has to push too much into one character to keep them going, that cleric has to know when to pull the plug. Shroud part 2 could be completed with only 4 people even when the penelty box was in effect, so as a cleric i felt no remorse in letting a moron fighter bite it.

To the OP, i don't know about everyone else but the whole "WF barbarian" thing leaves me with a sour taste. Somehow if it was a moron human or dwarf barbarian you wouldnt bother mentioning the race.

[captain1z]

wow.....

you broke the freshness seal on this thread and its gone all necro........ LOL



2 months ago I had not been on a shroud run ... nor had I even been in meridia.

1 month ago I was getting settled in meridia and 2 days ago did my 1st shroud run

necro'ed threads make you go back and re-think your opinions.


having seen 1st hand the shroud I still say if you pull to much aggro and do nothing to push off that aggro to another party member so you can step back and heal or be healed..... the cleric need to control your agro by letting you die.


Sunday I got a warning from the group leader as I soloed the pit fiend. He said "you have 2 clerics healing you" as I stayed and fought the pit fiend even as the blades got closer.

I quickly learned that you need to drop trow and get the heck outta dodge with that 1 warning. The rest of the battle I needed very little healing.

Get in, fight & move around, bledes get close you get out and defend the party..... rinse repeat. If I didnt learn that after the 1st warning I'd be a liability hurting the groups resources and less of a burden as a stone.

[transtemporal]

OP: sounds to me like a simple case of "can't follow instructions" in the case of sorc 1 because if he'd nuked the troll like he was supposed to, everything would've been sweet. Wouldn't it? Or am I reading you wrong?

[FluffyCalico]

The best advise I can give you might not like.

1) Everyone get all mana before engaging the 4 named.
2) Does not matter who gets their mana first as long as noone is dumb in group goes and pulls while trying to peek.
3) If you engage the 4 named with a planned pull and split them to the 4 corners and still run out of SP you need to seriously look for another 11 people to group with.
4) If you don't get a planned pull because people won't listen then you need a new group.
5) One time I saw someone aggro the 4 named before most the party was even zoned in. **** happens.

[JFeenstra]

Hmm thats funny i was in a quest with a sor that would cast dancing balls on my max extended BB that kill anything in one passing and when asked repeatedly not to after requested by the grouup leader that it was more sp cost eective to kill 10 mobs with one bb then for you, sry i meann the sor, to cast weak discos that only cought 1/2 them 1/2 time and then let the mellees take 5x more dmg costing the clr 3x more sp then 1 bb would o cost. was that you? if it was pls send me the 5k plat or the heal scroll i had to use ecause u thought it was unny to negate my bb 100&#37; of the time. AT the same time when there was single mobs or the melee to take down the sor would run up after it was 3/4 dead and fod LOL.

OH by the way no one asked if u had cc. LOL they asked u to fod hostile casters!!! not 1/2 dead melee mobs that are getting beat down.
wasn't the same run, obviously, because upon joining the party i was specifically asked if i had any crowd control in a tell by the cleric who proceeded to drop blade barriers everywhere and ***** when i did what i was asked

since i normally play a nuke/FoD based caster i doubt i'd have an issue being asked to do that (fingering casters/etc)

also, im pretty sure my dc 33 disco balls with +25 spell pen catch mostly everything when i drop them, even on elite anything :)

[Aranticus]

wasn't the same run, obviously, because upon joining the party i was specifically asked if i had any crowd control in a tell by the cleric who proceeded to drop blade barriers everywhere and ***** when i did what i was asked

since i normally play a nuke/FoD based caster i doubt i'd have an issue being asked to do that (fingering casters/etc)

also, im pretty sure my dc 33 disco balls with +25 spell pen catch mostly everything when i drop them, even on elite anything :)

i always ask if casters have crowd control..... if they say yes, i tell them not to cast n proceed to bb everywhere......

nice numbers.... try devils elite. i'm pretty sure my bb can take the eladrins down much faster. :cool:

[Xaearth]

I agree fully with the captain. If a cleric has to push too much into one character to keep them going, that cleric has to know when to pull the plug. Shroud part 2 could be completed with only 4 people even when the penelty box was in effect, so as a cleric i felt no remorse in letting a moron fighter bite it.

To the OP, i don't know about everyone else but the whole "WF barbarian" thing leaves me with a sour taste. Somehow if it was a moron human or dwarf barbarian you wouldnt bother mentioning the race.

Hmm... very interesting thread necro... seems I have a stalker :D.
Of course I wouldn't bother mentioning the race. When you're running low on sp because other people aren't doing what they're supposed to, heal scrolls do jack on a wf barb getting beat to death by a red named supa-troll :rolleyes:.

And I probly would have pulled the plug... if it wasn't for the fact that the only thing holding the aggro of that dang troll was that wf barb :rolleyes:^2. (Like I believe I pointed out in my original post, hard to remember as it was >months< ago, the leader wasn't very... intuitive as to the best way to split the group).

Edit: Forgot to mention that nowhere in my original post did I say anything negative about the wf barb, besides the fact that a red named troll was beating on him... which is to be expected if he's the only one tanking it and the sorcs aren't nuking him.

PS: I've moved on from cleric-ing shroud raids... I refuse to run any other character through the shroud or do any completions until my Ranger gets a normal power shard... I'm on around run 40 or so :mad:.

[JFeenstra]

i always ask if casters have crowd control..... if they say yes, i tell them not to cast n proceed to bb everywhere......

nice numbers.... try devils elite. i'm pretty sure my bb can take the eladrins down much faster. :cool:
done devils elite, many times...rarely drop a dance sphere in that quest cause it's faster to FoD everything that doesn't have deathward and disentigrate everything that does

the CC is reserved for quests that require spell point conservation or extensive crowd control

although for ritual i now prefer to solo it with mass suggestion :)