A decent party ruined

Osse

A man of wealth and taste
Adventurer
Joined
Oct 24, 2004
Messages
643
Location
VA
After hitting lv 52 on THF and getting to the point where the Funnel Bats in Garliage Citadel only give 50ish xp, the party leader moves us to CN for some Helm Beetle action. Sure, the Chamber Beetles give 120-150, but there just aren't enough to go around for all the parties.

To summarize a long night, we are doing decently on the Helm Beetles, not great but worth sticking around for the night. There is just one slight problem though, every other time I go out to pull another Beetle, there are none. Wave after wave of players leveling their NPC's are demolishing every beetle in sight. Often, they are doing it in groups of 2-3 players with the NPCs. I shit you not, for the next 3 hours we are pulling in 1-2 beetles every 15 minutes (the respawn time there) because of this crap.

I'm a realist. I know the mobs are fair game to anyone. But come the fuck on, leveling NPC's on popular xp mobs while there is a party there? I put that at about 0.1% better than killing the xp mobs just to be an asshole, and I'll tell you why.

What the hell do people do with the NPC's? Do they pull them out to fill in the precious missing Tank or WHM slot in a high powered xp party? Nope. Are they just the ticket to help with Fafnir, or KB? Not unless you are feeling lucky or suicidal that day. The NPC's have 2 functions: killing time and farming, and mostly the former.

We asked the NPC'ers to leave, and did it nicely to boot. For the most part they did, which is why no one is being named. But take 5 seconds to see whom you are going to screw over next time you dust off that next to worthless Signal Pearl. You may think, "Hey, I'm only going to spend 30 minutes here," but so will the next guy, and the guy before you as well.
 
I've got to agree, but I see the conflict as two different angles of the same damn problem. That is to say:

1) There is more than two levelling spots for each level range, but people never seem to realize it. If clippers are lying dead in their spawn points in Valkurm Dunes, for example, it never occurs to ANYONE to simply head to Buburimu Peninsula, which for all intents and purposes, is practically exactly the same. Thus, you get overcrowding. People only learn two zones for each range as they level, so they keep squeezing in to them like sardines on all of their other jobs.

2) Now, this problem is further compacted in on itself with the NPCs. Because people never learned anything but Crawler's Nest and Garlaige Citadel, that's where they head when their NPC is in the appropriate level range. Once again, there's probably more along the lines of four or five GOOD options (at the very least), but people head to the one or two they really know.

In this situation, however, I lay most of the blame squarely at the feet of those with their NPCs, simply because they should understand that they ARE popular "real levelling" places. Thus, there should be more of an effort on their parts to find the "unpopular" places.


Overall, though, I think the best solution would be a greater effort among the entire player base to diversify a bit regarding where they choose to level, and educate themselves on the "other" places. We need to spread things out in the 10,000-square-foot house, rather than continue with everyone trying to squeeze into the friggin' second bedroom.
 
Nothing used to piss me off more than a gang of people leveling their piece of shit worthless NPCs on party EXP mobs. If it's just you and an NPC you have the freedom to have a wandering camp anyway, make good use of it and go elsewhere. Good post Osse
 
Nothing used to piss me off more than a gang of people leveling their piece of shit worthless NPCs on party EXP mobs. If it's just you and an NPC you have the freedom to have a wandering camp anyway, make good use of it and go elsewhere. Good post Osse
 
With this being said, do NPCs actually serve a purpose? I've yet to do the quest because I don't want to give up a precious inventory slot, as well as not having a need for a NPC. But I always think to myself, I'll be so annoyed if they served a purpose in the upcoming expansion.
 
Had near same thing happen to one of my partys. Except it was just a dragoon slaughtering the beetles, then go to different area for 10 mins, and come back to rekill the beetles. Its as if the helm beetles drop something of great value.
 
Winklewil said:
Overall, though, I think the best solution would be a greater effort among the entire player base to diversify a bit regarding where they choose to level, and educate themselves on the "other" places. We need to spread things out in the 10,000-square-foot house, rather than continue with everyone trying to squeeze into the friggin' second bedroom.

Thank you Brother Winklewil. Can I get a /amen?
 
LadyKiKi said:
With this being said, do NPCs actually serve a purpose? I've yet to do the quest because I don't want to give up a precious inventory slot, as well as not having a need for a NPC. But I always think to myself, I'll be so annoyed if they served a purpose in the upcoming expansion.

I haven't heard any word about the future, so who can say about the new expansion. Currently however, the NPC's were specificaly released for help in soloing EP-DC and/or farming.
 
I'll admit I'm one of those kill-time NPCer's but - no way would I ever dream of going to a big leveling location. >.> I think at this point some of us have been spurned enough by other people leveling NPC and the such to know to avoid that. Nice to find an abandoned location and hit a mystery NM too. ^^
 
This arguments been played out. In this case you were already not achieving optimal XP anyways, so you should have moved someplace besided Crawlers nest. I understand your complaint, I just don't care. NPCs are as muc a part of the game as anything else.
 
The NPCs play a vital role in the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion. But they have to be stronger than lvl 30 to be of any use. Their use is all evident in the cutscenes for the NPC quest for those that don't pay attention to them. The CS's speak about the "Far East" and "Aht Urghan" a great deal so they are involved in some way so that covers some reasoning as to why ppl lvl their NPC.

However, that doesn't mean ppl have the right to come into an area where ppl exp and just demolish every mob that a party is exping on. I took my npc to the desert or Xarcabard.

If u wanna lvl ur npc lvl it somewhere on mobs that nobody exps on and ones u can kill easily but are UBERLY IT for your NPC to solo.

I'm not sure about the exp ratio for npcs vs the mob I fight for it but last night mine lvl'd and was at his halfway point before he left.

In short: use common sense.
 
I agree with you Osse...I've seen alot more NPC levelers in prime XP areas. At higher levels it's annoying but at the lowest levels it's worse since at those levels most parties don't have the option to simply move someplace else.

I was told that there are missions/quests in the expansion that will require an NPC by the way.
 
I will agree that using them in a party is pretty much pointless. I wont agree that they are useless, i've solo'd with my npc and few times and it's worked out pretty well for me, and it's even saved my life a few times! I've seen a mage job have a full powered npc in full adaman gear, I can see how that works, seems to fun to me. So yes... I'd say use them for your solo'ing/farming antics, or even if someone DC's ... Just be ready to disband them when that person returns, hehe.
 
Bigboy said:
This arguments been played out. In this case you were already not achieving optimal XP anyways, so you should have moved someplace besided Crawlers nest. I understand your complaint, I just don't care. NPCs are as muc a part of the game as anything else.

Too bad when you're level 75 you can go rape mobs in places that people don't xp at and do just as well if not better. Just because it's the only place you can think of to do it doesn't mean it is the only place period. Oh, and NPC's are not as much a part of the game as anything else. Maybe that will change when ToA comes out, but atm, that's a no.
 
Same thing happened to me in Valley of Sorrows with a party, some NIN was meriting with their NPC, killing all the raptors. I asked politely how long they were gonna be there and they didn't answer. Unfortunately, there were two parties in Cape Terrigan right behind us so we just had to wait it out and grab what we could. I always do an area search before we head out to make sure no parties are there, wherever we intend to go, hard to tell about NPC levelers though. I agree about alternate areas, unfortunately it can be hard to convince parties to try it sometimes. I like to go to somepage and search mobs on a specified level range, usually 7-10 above our level and see what options are there.
 
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