Suggestions for changing the MPK systemFollow

Greetings everyone, my name is Ahkore and I'm a representative of Square Enix! This is my first time posting in the Allakhazam community, and I hope it won't be my last! I'm here today to talk about MPK.

No one likes MPK and the development team is serious about trying to make it a thing of the past and so I'm here today to ask your feedback regarding FINAL FANTASY XI's MPK system. I want to gather as much feedback, thoughts, comments, and concerns and take it to the development team when they are addressing the gameplay system in upcoming updates. No serious idea will be overlooked, so please do not hold back.

Let me give you a few examples of the kinds of information I'm looking for:

"Make it so monsters trained to the zone do not aggro until they've walked back to their original starting point!" or something along the lines of "AoE damage should not affect players in other parties not engaged in the battle with the monster that initiated the AoE attack!"

These are just a few examples. I'm ready to hear many, many more! It would help for collecting purposes if your suggestions could be clearly marked, i.e. something along the lines of:

"
Suggestion: Released BST pets shouldn't aggro other people!
"

Let's hear those suggestions!

Edited, Thu Dec 29 11:27:02 2005 by Railus

1. Make it so no monster can link with one being fought or one being pulled.

2. Station a GM at every spawn point of highly sought after NM's (Simurgh, Roc, Serket, KB, etc.) Give them the power to take control of situations like that and handle the linked monsters on their own.

3. Make darn sure that monsters cannot go yellow during anytime a fight is ensuing by the people that legitaemly claimed the said monster in question.

These are just few that I can name off the top of my head. Some of them may go hand in hand.

EDIT:
Took out Kirin, cuz I think he was right about it ^^ My bad

Edited, Thu Nov 3 14:52:56 2005 by Avoklex

How does limiting the distance and the number of mobs that can be trained sound?

I agree with this sediment. MPKs happen way too often at these NMs, and in my experiences EXPing in the Citadel, sometimes they get way out of hand and MPK EXPing parties.

Get rid of that bind/shadowbind MPK thing. Whenever a player binds a mob next to another player, the monster just attacks that person. What makes it even worse is that the monster name is purple, so the player being attacked can't do anything about it. If he heals himself, he gets more hate. At this point, whoever bound the monster just sits back and watches the player get worked. Please, just get rid of this. It seems like a bug to me.

I think 3 been resolved a while back, and Monsters should still link/agro if you are near a linkable and agro- else I see major exploits on that otherwise.

I know a person in real life that had a tendency to MPK on Odin server. He stopped after I "persuaded" him not to, and I stopped having a character on his account. I would, however, love the idea of monsters not aggroing (if they've gotten close to the zone) until they return to their starting area. That would a) remove the problem of trains in places like Garlaige Citadel and b) make it harder to MPK.

However, AoE damage *should* continue to affect people who participate in the battle in any way, including healing. Even if you're not in party. If you've done something that can get hate, you should get hate.

Don't station a GM everywhere, though. That's completely impractical, and you guys shouldn't have anything distracting you from banning gilsellers. And, of course, monsters should continue to link.

1. Make it so no monster can link with one being fought or one being pulled.

Something about that one makes me go "Nah"

If someone zones a mob of any kind in a zone, why not have them zone out as if they're going after the character that zoned them. Such as someone brongs a rumble crawler to the zone in the crawler's next, that thing will ling with every crawler on the way to the zone. Now when the player zones, if the mobs still have hate twords them they run out of the zone. The player will end up in Roleberry fields (spelled horribly, I know) and the crawlers just kind of disapear and reaspan a few moments after running out of the zone.

That would stop those roming packs of crawlers from killing everyone that's leveling there.

Basically you are suggesting to get rid of the whole Linking system.

I aggree with the other points, however, I dont want the game to be easier as a result. Linking mobs were created to add difficulty/strategy to the game, and getting rid of that is another way of making the game easier and therefore more boring.

Like NephthysWanderer said, we should focus on WHY people are MPKing rahter than fixing the end-result. Fixing the "bugs" will work temporarily, but if people are so intent on ruining the game for others, they will find other ways to MPK.

Edited for flow.

Edited, Thu Nov 3 14:55:03 2005 by Lyne

Yeah, but what about if they have absolutely nothing to do with the battle?

Example: A Ghoul's AOE attack Blood Saber drains HP from all player characters within the area of effect, not bust the person(s) fighting them.

This is what made the line so incredibly long for the Fellowship Quest in Eldime, because people refused to move back from the NM, the NM would use Blood Saber, and drain HP from 10 other people, going back to full or near full, making it a longer battle.

When mobs spawn, they generally stay in fairly small areas of the map. Most xp parties will go to those areas to camp the mob, as really long pulls are a pain.

Suggestion::Change mob behavior so that they only aggro inside their normal spawn and wander range. This allows people to still pull to camp while xping, but removes the MPK trick of pulling mobs from far away to MPK people.




Edited, Sun Nov 6 04:10:55 2005 by dementodin

How can you MPK at Kirin? I don't think its possible lol.

Thanks first off for coming to Allakhazam. I think a big reason why people get so bent out of shape (read the various threads on this forum) is because there is no definite response to the public from SE. People want to know that they are being heard, and that their suggestions are taken seriously.

With that being said, I think there are a few things that could be done to solve the problem of MPK:

-As Avoklex stated, ensure that once a mob is claimed, the mob does not come unclaimed until every single person in the alliance is defeated. This would prevent Dia/Voke spamming from causing an HNM to run rampant on people who cannot take any action against the NM.

-Put a GM at all HNM pops at their pop time to ensure that what occurs in the area is actively being monitored. Too often we (The players) see someone using a Mr.Argus tool/bot program etc, but even with the reported information, do not see any action taken. Ensure that the GM is not visible unless a situation arises.

-I am not sure how possible it would be, but somehow restricting the loaded data that is in game while fighting an HNM would be great. Too often other LS or RMT can try to force people to D/C by using JA, pulling monsters on top of tanks, etc.

-Make it so that if a mob is claimed, and the alliance fighting it is wiped, the mob cannot be claimed until its HP is at 100%. Too often we've seen RMT MPK groups of people at the end of a fight, to defeat a mob who had a sliver of life remaining.

Hope to see you around here more often, and thank you for the efforts you've made thus far (Blockaid comes to mind) to assist players in having an enjoyable gaming experience.