Should /assist be removed from DAoC (RvR)?

[Chronictank]

crippling the interface isn't the way to go

daoc shouldn't be about twitch reflexes any more than it already is.

However, I kinda like that idea of reducing the effect of multiple attackers - e.g. every person after the first gets a 20% damage reduction.

Probably cause a massive amount of lag working this out.

disagree, would increase the realm rank gap.
Ill explain

Low rr grp meets high rr grp

Low rr assist train has say 30% penalty in already low dmg against high resist enemies.

High rr caster can nuke away at similar dmg with 1 person

At the moment damage is balanced out with good assist trains, high rr grps tend to split into 2 trains since they have the dmg to do so whereas a low rr grp will focus all its dmg on a single target

 

[Cromcruaich]

Ive not seen a convincing argument here as to why it should be kept in.

Just to clarify.

Regarding PUGs and voice comms, voice comms is something available to all people to use, anyone can set up a voice comms server with 10 minutes of research and simply get people to use it.

Regarding PUGs in general, if individual players know what they are doing in a full group, and understand the mechanics of the game, then with a little preplanning before running out onto the field there is no reason you cannot perform reasonably on the field. Just take a few minutes to decide on stratergy and targets vs the enemy realms and enemy group makeups, plus sort out your main assist and use visual cues instead of what ammounts to a contrived game mechanic.

Regarding people clustering up, well, you dont need to play in a fixed group to know that that isn't atall viable as an exploit to confuse targetting.

Regarding tank trains still being able to effectively assist, that fair enough, but then this isnt a argument to keep it in, infact it constitutes the opposite.

How about limiting the number of people able to assist at any one time by making it an RA? Would it be THAT hard to change it, so that to /assist someone you have to have some kind of affinity with them, by way of a guard, a protect, or something along them lines?

It could limit the number in an assist train to, for example, 3 by having the main tank apply a "comrade" ability to each?

Regarding this, I cant exactly put my finger on it, but it really doesnt sit right with me. It feels a little too contrived as a solution, and also seems most applicable to tank heavy groups, when most people seem to think removing assist will actually be much more useful as a mechanism for reducing the caster dps.

 

[Flimgoblin]

And that would suck big time for spec nukers indeed :x

Think 600 is a bit low say 1500 damage in 2 seconds then you get 50% damage reduction for 2 seconds...

You could tune it so a single supernuker is unlikely to hit it but two assisting would.

Not convinced it's a good idea though

 

[Flimgoblin]

Ive not seen a convincing argument here as to why it should be kept in.

because voice comm gank groups will still assist fine, people without voicecomms (for whatever reason - not everyone can use it else they would) will get screwed over. Sounds like a good argument to me

/assist won't stop the killer assist trains, it'll just kill the not-so-killer ones

 

[Jenk]

because voice comm gank groups will still assist fine, people without voicecomms (for whatever reason - not everyone can use it else they would) will get screwed over. Sounds like a good argument to me

/assist won't stop the killer assist trains, it'll just kill the not-so-killer ones

Which is a perfectly good argument to get rid of it..

What takes more skill?

Someone to shout "get that dwarf healer on the left" and the rest of the group to look around for him, target him, ensure it is the same target as the one intended, then attack

Or:

Someone to shout "Assist" and everyone else in the group to click a macro -> stick (if tank) or face (if caster) -> attack?

It's always been an issue that PUG's are not as good as GG's.. regardless of comms. PUG's will rarely attack the same target and generally be poor but are good fun none the less.

 

[Bugz]

Increase hitpoints or amount heals heal for.

 

[Fefner]

ive been very much in favour of getting rid of /assist in rvr, i think the fights will last longer even if a group is using voicecoms or not.

Having a MA button does take alot of skill out of the game, even using a voice com will still need a tiny bit of skill clicking on the right target before assisting with the nuke/stun/debuff whatever if there was no MA button. If mezz is broken/purged the fight would then go down too the more skillful players cause there would be multi targets all over the place and it be every man for themselves and pray the others to be ontop of their game. Voice coms dont make ppl more skillful its just helps organising, ive been in group using no voice coms and work just as well together.

You can look at it another way, you never heard of any king in a battle telling his men to forget the other 1000+ men just aim for the one im on!

 

[Dallas]

ive never really assisted much, when i have its usually been in randomgrp,
o the pain that would be without assist lol..

so no, keep it imo

 

[Andrilyn]

I don't mind either way but the removal would, like has been said already, only increase the difference between PuG's and set groups (or noobs and leet people how you like to call it).
A set group will know what to do and basically hardly need assist and people with no clue (olol /assist /stick /style) will be hurt alot by that change.

But whatever you do don't remove /stick, makes it so much easier to spiral someone that uses /stick in a fight

 

[Shike]

voicecom is better for assisting since a shouted maintarget is faster to find than an /assisted one. /assist has a builtin lag and also if the MA decides another target fast you loose valuable time there too.

MA shouts "Inconnu Alerion Knight" and tanks go to the "Inconnu Alerion Knight", nomatter what they get when pressing /assist and they are also aware of all targetchanges. MAs make decisions in split seconds every fight out there and the group need to know what's going on, at all times. A simple macro does not really aid this at all I'm afraid and thus I always go manually in most situations when I go assist since it is far more reliable.

In US all PuG's I've been in use ventrilo, in EU i never was in a PuG with any kind of voicecom ever, things might have changed ofc but.. thats how it used to be anyway. Not 100% of the players have a mic but most do.

I dont really care if /assist stays or goes, wont make much of a change for most of the people relying heavily on voicecoms. In EU I can imagine it will be alil bit harder for the PuGs that doesnt use voicecom though but there is like, nothing stopping those players from using voicecom and, perhaps it is time for the playerbase to play less stupid than just pressing a silly macro all the time?

The game is far more enjoyable with voicecom imo, it becomes more alive and you also socialise in a totally different manner aswell which imo, isnt a bad thing. Language is ofc sometimes a barrier for some people but it usually is possible to overcome those problems. If japs, yanks and italians can be in a group and get some RVR going then nobody can really have a serious problem with this. As Flim pointed out, if you are deaf sure, you have a problem but, I doubt a large percentage of the community are affected by this problem.

Voicecom ftw!

 

[Carnalito]

I raised this question years ago, and ppl laughed it down like a clown in a circus. But whatever nowdays every1 is vent/ts anyway, so nowdays i think the macro should stay (helps randomgroiups who actually dont run voicecom).

 

[Rediknight]

But even with voice comm you can't make someone who's not as quick on the uptake, or particularly slow generally, as efficient as you could with that simple macro.

A lot of "talent" in GG's im sure would show itself up as not half as good as they appear without /assist. Just cos you can say it faster, it doesn't mean that it'll actually be faster to find them and then target them. For example, if you're fighting in some random terrain, and one players screaming down TS "The healer!! get that d0rfy healer, ffs!!!" or whatever, and it so happens that the healer isn't in view of one or two others, then you get people saying, "What healer?? WHERE?" and other random voice comm clutter. With the /assist macro, if one person can see them, then everyone else is made almost immediately aware that they have to move and keep spamming the button til they get the target. For voice comms to work, you still need a well thought out strategy and clear instructions...

Then again, without /assist it would be tough for siege-fanatics to work with infiltrators and minis to get targets inside a courtyard...

i dunno, waxing idiotic again...

 

[Elrandhir]

Yes to removing /assist. It's ridiculous when you face caster /assist groups, anything they look at is vaporised in 0.003 seconds from long range; the game would be much better off without it.

True, and not like it's really needed in RvR imo, still in PvE it should be still possible to use imo.

 

[Elrandhir]

because voice comm gank groups will still assist fine, people without voicecomms (for whatever reason - not everyone can use it else they would) will get screwed over. Sounds like a good argument to me

/assist won't stop the killer assist trains, it'll just kill the not-so-killer ones

True, even though I use it myself, I can understand this ;D
and yeah, i would effect the least experienced players mostly ofcrourse.

Still I wouldent mind it being removed myself though as I don't think it's really needed in RvR.

 

[Castus]

I wouldnt be against removing /assist but i`d be more happier about MEZZ being taken out of rvr.

 

[Rolv]

Dont think removing it will have a huge effect tbh. I dont use it, rather click manually, or use 'nearest enemy button' if target is clustered close to lots of other ppl wich makes it almost impossible to target, though I usually run as ma.

Think if they remove it, those ppl that use assist macros, quickly will learn to effectvely target with mouse and still follow ma.

But dont remove it from pve! lol.. im way to lazy for that

 

[TeaSpoon]

Havn't read the whole thread, but if healers have tools such as the mini window and the healing helper and a few other gadgets to help them target people quickly, why shouldn't assist be there.

If you want to nerf it, make it so that it indicates the person that the person you are assisting is targeting, so you then in turn have to target that person, but you know who it is.

 

[Jjuraa]

Yep. get rid of /assist, the fact that it would delay casters assisting on a target by 3-4 seconds would mean that playing a tank effectively would become more common-place. It would also increase the need for communication and teamwork. While that would hamper groups that dont use voice comms, i dont think thats a good enough reason not to do it.

A) If you dont use voice comms in a group, then thats your own fault there is plenty of access to voice comm programs, and the download is free. the only possible expense comes from 1. Renting a server (negligable cost, especially if you share it round a few people) 2. Buying a microphone. (£3.99). If youre not willing to part with precious pennies, then dont expect to become a good group, end of.

B) Even as i write this, the polls indicate that Mythic are considering introducing built in voice comms to the game.

 

[Klonk]

My opinion is that the problem is increased damage over DAoC history. I used to be able to heal quite effectively on my Friar with a few baseline heals before going into combat - it's impossible to outheal as a secondary healer these days. The original game never had debuffs for casters, level 50 lifetaps, resist pierce, various ToA bonuses to increase damage (speed and damage increases), melee debuff procs, melee debuff artifact abilities, realm ability damage increases, etc. I could keep going on and on

Great post, imo, spot on.

 

[Rediknight]

I still think it's laughable, as a TS user on many many games, that any of you think that Voice comms is any kind of actual advantage when it comes to the game mechanics...

Saying something doesn't make it happen. It's a request, if you will, for all the other people to press the necessary buttons in the necessary order. If you're a good group player, then you are just that - it's not because you got voice comms, it's because you know how and when to do things.

/assist of course helps groups, but if someones saying to me that all these GG's could immediately drop /assist and rely entirely on TS, or whatever, and STILL be as effective as they were are just kidding themselves...

If anything soloers will be into a slightly advantagous grouping situation as they are used to not relying on /assist, and will be much more attuned to switching from mouse look to target, and complete the necessary in the shortest time...