In some ways your are correct Searyx, but for the most part the pro's will already have their twinks and PL teams lined up so the aged "mature" server community (those been around) are not really affected deeply by "XP bonus's".
Its there primarily for the noob. or new players. perhaps leaving some sort of bonus in for soloing would be good and balancing it with better group bonus's. So people dont feel overly penalized. But someone who wants to roll a mage or necro can quickly level with xp at old school classic rates and do their "solo" thing without being hurt. For the true soloists its not a penalty to take it out.
i.e. the group bonus thing is just for wars/rogues and other group classes that arent going to want to solo much anyway. In order to entice solo'ers to group and duo with them more.
There can be some great duo's had between a necro+melee or druid+melee. Hell I would even say hybrid + melee can be pretty awesome. But it happens less often with a high solo xp rate. It really does discourage it. If a necro got a ton more xp just for picking up a melee character they would seek you out and hunt you down for that group rather then just doing their own thing. This is the non-obvious but real logic behind not giving out the cake without asking for a party first.
How much spam/tells have you sent out looking for that druid to port with you and snare/fear in places like OT searyx? I know their out there ive ran accross a few. Rhumpkin was around when I was playing starwind and she was a real awesome druid and stopped in to play with me regardless of the hybrid xp penalties and shitty group xp.
While I do not play starwind anymore, players like that are one the reasons I stuck around and gave the server more of a chance. You will get more of this kind of play if the mechanics are developed around it. Hell if I see some melee guy killing sarnak beserkers in OT i'll probably throw them in my group even if i'm quadding to finish off the stragglers on my wiz. Would be sweet if it made more sense to do something like this. Had a few groups like this on live and it worked out alright IMO. even though shit was totally classic.
After thinking about it some form of both kinds of xp bonus would be legit. But to rely on one or the other would be less logical.
Just for fun i'm going to brainstorm a few kewl duo's people should look for more.
Bard+melee dps (fear, slow, kiting) bard feels like their doing all the work but this is normal anyway
Sham+any melee dps
Druid + anyone, druids can root rot with dotters, necros, fear, dot, nuke with wizards, quad with a partner (easy tactic).
Enchanter+anyone for all kinds of crazyness. Might be a lil tricky with a pure melee like war. But the extra root and dps to finish off a charm pet is leet even a war can fill this roll if they dont jump in the fight constantly and wait for chanter to break charms.
2 rogues +bandages
War+rogue +bandages
monk +mend + any other form of dps more monks = more mend rotations
Wizard can agro kite with rangers, and bards, and enchanters, and wars, and anything
Pally+any dps
I mean I have gotten good xp on almost every class combination you can think of. Shit can happen, we just need to make it happen.
Furthermore sometimes you have to be a lil aggressive in recruiting a friend. /ooc Class, Level, Place, and the method of fighting there. Allot of people will ignore /ooc 30 monk LFG
but
/ooc 30 monk LF duo at sarnak fort, can pull singles, fear, charm, any dps, duo's welcome. 100% more likely to get a response, people will see that and go "oh that looks like fun, I want to try fear kiting today" Lastly if theres a drop, advertise that too, bracer of hidden, rare, chance but hell yah, remind people.
They may log out of their mains onto their alt, or bring their PL team to you. Powers in your hands. Stop being so negative. Fuck RD got me to go to freeti yesterday, i got larsen to log on his cleric to go kill him. But it took some assertive communication. things worked out well, i had allot of fun =) I would never have ran over if someone just /ooc blahblah lf cleric
Another thing I noticed and i know the post is already TLDR: but... With dungeon ZEM's allot of people are completely ignoring outdoor zones and focusing on dungeons, soloists that would benifit from having extra dps outdoors can't use the same tactics indoors, everyone knows dungeons are the 1337 path to amazingness and are not thinking of camps like rathe mountain skeles, etc... I even tried skeles at dark blue in rathe mountains for giggles with a shaman on starwind, it was terribad xp compared to lightblues/greens in MM. Didn't seem classic to me. (last paragraph is part rant and QQ, part observation) had better memories of this.
|