ML steps!!

[old.Whoodoo]

Last night we had a great ML2 raid, but what should have taken 3-4 hours max went to 7 hours after many people who attended had failed to complete the solo steps. This takes little to complete, and a few steps can even be done by 1fg. Heres a list of what most large scale raids, should have done before people sign up to them:

ML1:
Trial 2 - Retrieval 1 or 2 blue cons, solo step
Trial 5 - Conflict duel yellow cons

Can both be solod at 50, so no reason most cannot do them, as my healer managed them both.

ML2
Trial 8 - Stand Fast - Solo step.
Trial 7- Pick your poison can be solod choosing "Fear", although its not easy getting there solo, so take a crowd.

ML3
Read this, about the pre-requists, which can all be done with 6-8 ppl easily.

All the MLs have parts like this, so please study each raid before you go on them!

And as usual, ppl had no clue where they were going, so heres the maps:
ML1 map
ML2 dungeon

Or do the sensible thing, print the lot from either http://www.visionofsages.net/toa/ or http://www.toascrolls.com/scrolls/index.asp

This thread is probably old, and been done before, but it dont hurt to get a refresher, and it benefits new ppl.

 

[Cirventhor]

Fully agreed Whoo.

Though I would add 2.5 as a preq for ML2 as well.

 

[old.Whoodoo]

Agreed:

Trial 5: Chath's Test of Strategy
Get someone in your grp to make a macro too, I used:
/macro chess /bu(or /g if grpd) KING - COMMAND, QUEEN - DRAIN, ROOK - DEFEND, BISHOP - HEAL, KNIGHT - WEAKEN, PAWNS - STUN
to remind everyone on their positions.

 

[Shrye]

2.5 can handle a FG at a time, and it's on a 1 minute respawn timer. 2.7 can be done in a BG, choosing 'Terror', hence no real reason to make it a pre-req. Half an hour extra at maximum is what it'll take with a large zerg, but that's it.

However, what you forget, is that both steps requires the appropiate key to enter, keys that you can't come by solo.


I do, however, usually agree that people should do the non-BG steps before they attend a raid. However then again, I'd imagine that the people who bothers following the community outside the game (ie, reading here on FH), usually ain't the ones who's lazy tits and can't be bothered to check a website - in other words, it's the wrong people you're telling it to --v

 

[old.Whoodoo]

Half an hour extra at maximum is what it'll take with a large zerg, but that's it.

Incorrect, 2.7 is on a 45 minute repop timer, and as our zerg proved last night, we had to complete it 5 times, hence we also did 2.10 twice for those still waiting for it. And it can only be done by 2fg at a time (since 1.68), as we had still 73 ppl at the time we started it, you can imagine, it took a while and hence IMO should be a prereq.

 

[Archeon]

2.5 can handle a FG at a time, and it's on a 1 minute respawn timer. 2.7 can be done in a BG, choosing 'Terror', hence no real reason to make it a pre-req. Half an hour extra at maximum is what it'll take with a large zerg, but that's it.

However, what you forget, is that both steps requires the appropiate key to enter, keys that you can't come by solo.

True, but there is no garentee that you'll win even using the 'right' combination of commands. It took a few groups 3-4 attempts, and when your trying to explain it too people who arn't really paying attention anyway it can take a long time

As for 2.7 it was changed in 1.68 to a '2-full-group' step. Only 16 people can get credit. Another award winning decision by Mythic, apparently too many people were making ML2 and they deemed this overpowered. Especially in Midgard as we all know ML2 for us is the Insta-win button which lets us cast a PBAE multi-hit for 5k+ dmg

 

[Fana]

Indeed, more raids should have a stricter policy on prereqs imo. Rulke was trying to accomodate even those that had not done the solo step last night, and in hindsight it was probably unfair towards those that had, but he did it to be nice and help everyone, even the lazy people, get the ml done. But *never expect* to be able to complete a ml if you blatantly disregard the prereqs and raidrules.

Best raid ive been on so far must be Khras ml3 raid where prereqs was the two prequests, including egg and sword farming. Despite having a large zerg it was completed in under 3 hours. All steps etc.

 

[Gorrion]

The design of the ML raids in general are totally out of proportions of what to expect for a casual player ( 1 - 2 hour's MAX per day) i recon about half the players on Daoc can relate to that?, and hence make it close to impossible to ever get any ml done, as the time to form groups and organice things often take 30 min alone, and the raids themself about 3-4 hours . . . somtimes more.
Mythic really have screwed up the chance for these players to ever dream of getting much more than a few ml's, and that way make their life in rvr even more complicated, if they need a few artifacts aswell.

 

[illu]

I've always had this theory that everyone who is on level 50 should auto-level after time. This would be basically so that no one got left behind (ppl who have full time jobs) and everyone would,after a few years, be on a level playing field or at least have access to everything that the game has to offer.

I would have auto-levelling set at 1 ML per month, and maybe RR1 after 1 month, RR2 another 2 months, RR3 another 3 months, etc up to RR 10, so to have a RR10 ML10 lvl50 char would take 10 months to hit ML10 part, and 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10=55 months to hit RR10. Ok that's about 4.5 years - but I think that's about fair. If you manually dinged to next levels, then on the date that you were to auto-ding - it would just take you to the next level - so I suppose theoretically if would probably take about 2 years to get RR10 if you play the game semi-actively....
This could also be applied to Crafters - 100 skill points every month
and maybe to ToA Artifacts - 1 Level per month.

At least then people would "eventually" get to experience the game fully instead of sometimes giving up when looking at the time involved.

Obviously this would take away the hard work that the people who are Legendary Crafters / RR10 / ML10 already, but it would open up the game for more people.

On the other hand - maybe people should go through the hardship of all the ML trials (some are quite "fun" ?!), but the levelling of artis, and getting Realm Ranks should be accelerated I think.

Anyway - enough rambling and the boss is watching

Oli - Illu

 

[old.Whoodoo]

The design of the ML raids in general are totally out of proportions of what to expect for a casual player ( 1 - 2 hour's MAX per day) i recon about half the players on Daoc can relate to that?, and hence make it close to impossible to ever get any ml done, as the time to form groups and organice things often take 30 min alone, and the raids themself about 3-4 hours . . . somtimes more.
Mythic really have screwed up the chance for these players to ever dream of getting much more than a few ml's, and that way make their life in rvr even more complicated, if they need a few artifacts aswell.

These days I also fall into the category of casual gamer, however, even I can see that I could have have reduced ML2 into 3 parts, over 3 nights;

2.7 - solo
2.5 and 2.7 and 2.5 with 1 or 2 full groups
Remaining to be done, should take 3 hours tops, probably less.

And some ppl do runs specifically for ML X.10, so that too could be done in less than an hour. A decent guild could probably do all of ML2 in 3 sittings. Or team with 1 more guild to finish the job. On this basis, you could say 2-3 play per night, 30 days = ML10 for all, its nice to think that, but its possible, not realistic.

Arch, as for the chess quest, yes it will work, what happened last night was purely down to lack of research. Players failed to understand that when they associate with a peice, they have to give it commands during the game, for example, staying with the queen, clicking the enemy king and typing /s drain. Left to their own devices, the peices will just do their own thing, hence random, hence 50% chance to fail. Again, this goes down to ppl not bothering to research their role in such an event.

The final problem was LDing, mainly it seemed due to ppl trying to run 2 acc on one machine in a lag heavy zone, plain dumb, so pls dont do it.

 

[Shrye]

My bad, weren't aware that they nerfed it Altho it'd still be 3fg that could do it at a time ("bg" and grp). With a small amount of planning (starting out with 2.7, when you got a zerg which would make GoL proud), it still shouldn't take nearly that amount of time to do ml2 - all the steps is simply so close together, that there's hardly any travel time involved...

... it's not too much to ask, for people to contribute a little themself (which was kinda my point to begin with), if everyone actually pays attention instead of picking their noses, most raids would only take a fraction of the time they (the public raids) do. Altho worse still, the afk mentality only contributes to pushing people into more "elitist" raid types, since there's so many that can't be bothered with the afk'ers.

 

[Archeon]

My bad, weren't aware that they nerfed it Altho it'd still be 3fg that could do it at a time ("bg" and grp).

16 people = 2fg

His respawn timer is around 10mins as well which compounds the problem further

 

[old.Whoodoo]

16 people = 2fg

His respawn timer is around 10mins as well which compounds the problem further

2.7 is 45 mins m8, we had the rather obnoxious chance to time it

Aye, its weird, its classed as a BG encounter, yet only 16 ppl can do it, why not just make the mob more zergable rather than tame the zerg

 

[Cirventhor]

I actually was not aware of the chess thing there.

When I asked Jaokin about it he just said you could sit back and watch the pieces duke it out. Which is what I did. I paid close attention to /g and /bu, but still did not get that you needed to do anything after the start of the chess game.

Which seemed to be the case with a lot of people.

But lesson learned, VoS will be my first stop before doing ML3 tomorrow.

 

[Lothandar]

It's annoying most raid attendants cba to read the guides. Really annoying to lead people who haven't a clue.

 

[Shrye]

16 people = 2fg

That's good for todays lesson - for tomorrows lesson, please figure out how much 2fg + 1fg is

 

[Cirventhor]

It's annoying most raid attendants cba to read the guides. Really annoying to lead people who haven't a clue.

Agreed, though again I have to question Mythic's design of the MLs.

Should they not be intuitive enough so that one did not have to read through a walkthrough before doing it? It effectively takes away "role-playing" when you are following a pre-set course.

I wouldn't even look at any guides when playing a conventional role-playing game like, say, Baldur's Gate. But in ToA it's more or less required. Which sucks, in my opinion. Not because of the few minutes of reading a guide, but because it takes away the exploring aspect of the game.

Another thing that's annoying with the MLs is that you cannot talk to the various NPCs around, because you would trigger an encounter pre-emptively. Again it takes away all resemblance of a role-playing game, when you can not even get into *why* you are doing something, or the story behind it.

Oh well, /end rant.

 

[Archeon]

That's good for todays lesson - for tomorrows lesson, please figure out how much 2fg + 1fg is

24, only the mob says before it starts "Only 16 people will recieve credit for this trial" - hence the whole 'only 2fg can do it' bit

 

[Shrye]

Agreed, though again I have to question Mythic's design of the MLs.

Should they not be intuitive enough so that one did not have to read through a walkthrough before doing it? It effectively takes away "role-playing" when you are following a pre-set course.

No one is forcing you to read any guides, there's plenty of lore-NPCs and sphinxes around who tells you how to do the steps - you don't have to read off-game sites.

I wouldn't even look at any guides when playing a conventional role-playing game like, say, Baldur's Gate.

Your loss ... personally did succumb to reading guides after the 5ft run-through, to see what I hadn't found out yet and likely wouldn't have found at all, if not reading a guide

Another thing that's annoying with the MLs is that you cannot talk to the various NPCs around, because you would trigger an encounter pre-emptively. Again it takes away all resemblance of a role-playing game, when you can not even get into *why* you are doing something, or the story behind it.

Now, you're complaining about not being enough roleplay in the MLs, however now you're complaining about NPC's seeking help (quests) - ain't that exactly what roleplaying is about, helping every virgin which has a dragon roaming around inside their head?

 

[Shrye]

24, only the mob says before it starts "Only 16 people will recieve credit for this trial" - hence the whole 'only 2fg can do it' bit

lol

Aye, but there's solo step, group step and 2fg step - each of them is on a seperate timer... hence 24 people can do it

 

[ztyx]

I think one reason to make big raids is to wrap steps up so you all don't have to make them separatly. If a step requires almost a fg I think it should be done in the raid. A problem though with some raids is that they grow too big and get held up by waiting for people going ld or afk etc.

 

[Cirventhor]

Now, you're complaining about not being enough roleplay in the MLs, however now you're complaining about NPC's seeking help (quests) - ain't that exactly what roleplaying is about, helping every virgin which has a dragon roaming around inside their head?

Naw, what I meant is that you cannot actually talk to the NPCs (unless you are the raid leader, or otherwise designated talker) to get the story, not that the NPCs needed help. Helping the NPCs is all well and good, but knowing why would also be nice.