Ok, everyone has seen this before when going to level. In a room where there is supposed to be just one mob there are mow multiple. It happens when the area resets and all of that mob have not been killed.

I'm guessing what it does is take the count of a particular mob type then reload them based on room order or something until the area has the max limit. So if you had 8 max mobs and you killed 4 and the area reset it would load up to the max (4 + 4), but would do so starting with the first room thus creating the possibility of multiple mobs forming in that room.

For example:

Room Desc
Arial mob
Arial mob
Arial mob
Arial mob
Arial mob
Arial mob
Arial mob
Arial mob
Arial mob
Arial mob

Is there some reason this hasn't even been fixed? Is it a nightmare to fix? Does it introduce some aspect of danger you like? More often than not it just makes me go elsewhere.

You know, how you have to hunt own every one of them for the special rat to repop? Not sure if that's intentional or not, but it is a pain in the ass.

the person who killed the special rat before you never killed them all. Then you do the same to the next person :P

awefwef

I can think of a few other areas that this happens, but arial city was just a good example in this case. If you want more examples I can probably check a few places and add to my list.

It would be helpful, but I also can't guarantee it's a project that will get addressed super fast.

You are correct in your assumptions about why this happens.

I would say that while some people might consider the danger factor of this when writing their areas, the main reason is probably due to the fact that some areas have a lot of the same mob, whereas others are much more diverse.

I think generally the areas that have problems with this are older areas. Arial City is being re-written, so eventually that one will be taken care of.

What other areas can you think of where this can get really out of control (and it tends to happen more often than once in a blue moon)? I can think of a few others, but none of them tend to get as bad as Arial City.

Forbidden Forest (damn trolls)
Azuremain (?)
Orphanage (girls/boys)

Arendyl in the past (aka Eregion) is a huge one. Those elves are always stacked up 8 deep.

Yeah, those feasting elves can be a bitch. I don't know that it will be changed though. I think all of the others wander around.

I think it's a good thing that *some* areas work this way -- it adds value to, for example, having a bard in your group for those areas.

ntnt

It's not usually my first groupmate choice, but it's never my last, either.

They provide a rediculous amount of utility to a group.

Better exp per mobe, faster learning, group sleep, can flush hidden for a long time, maladic groups.

All and all the class I look for most when grouping and the (IMHO) dumbest idea for a class ever.

>Better exp per mobe, faster learning, group sleep, can flush
>hidden for a long time, maladic groups.

I'll give you the last three... I'm curious about your logic for the first two.

Kinda depends on what you're playing. If you're a bard then you probably don't want another bard in your group.

Most of the time I'll take a healer over a bard, but there are exceptions to that too. Like if our tank is a paladin and already has sanc and healing. In that case I'll take the bard over the healer. But if we're fighting stuff that can be modified by a transmuter then I might take the muter over the bard. Especially if the third is a warrior.

If I have a group with two tanks who are taking turns, then bard starts to look better since all his healing songs are essentially twice as effective.

I'm guessing he means since Bagatelle improves morale and help morale says high morale can improve your learning rate and skill success.

Also the help file claims high charisma for the group leader affects morale so if the bard is the leader that might help too.

I always wondered how much of an impact that really had though.

>I always wondered how much of an impact that really had
>though.

Overall, I'd say not a whole lot.

At least, I don't play for / plan for it. I think groupmate competence and good group composition are much stronger indicators of how fast you'll really get XP.

(Which isn't to say that a bard can't bring a lot to a group; I think they often do.)

If the bard is leading a group, it can contribute a nice boost to morale, plus bagatelle of bravado.

At least, I always noticed a little bit of learning rate/exp difference it seemed like.

Without doing the math, I'd be surprised if all of the above adds up to a 5% difference.

I wish it was a class that we didn't have or that had some or all of the following restrictions.

No singing while in battle period. Yes even if not tanking.

Songs don't take affect until the end of the song lag.

Long song lag.

Songs are less effective the more they are heard.

Shield cleave/dent work on their instruments.

Using bard notes to make a list of Theran ABC's automaticlly sends a lethal electrical surge through your keyboard killing you and any offspring you have attempted to put in the gene pool.

I don't think they are neccisarily overpowered as they are overlame.

For what ever reason that wasn't the intended response to your post.

I think Bard boost is closer to 20% on exp.

>I think Bard boost is closer to 20% on exp.

I'm positive it's not, assuming you're killing the same stuff.

If you're saying, well, because we have a bard we can kill these tougher mobs or we can kill them faster or we die less and that amounts to a 20% gain... depending on your group, maybe that's possible.

> faster learning

Bard as healer/tank assist:
Resisting + healing generally means you can take on tougher mobs. Usually the limiting factor on how tough a mob you can fight is what the tank can handle, more so than what is hittable by your group. Also, even on normal stuff many tanks can't fight without rest. A bard often means you can fight without rest just with resisting alone.
Sometimes a bard can even turn a non-tank into a tank... like a giant with axes, especially with distortion

Bard as damage dealer:
If you have a good tank (innately or after bard boost as above), you can often tank two+ mobs and have the bard doe AOE. That's pretty sweet stuff. Bards also have battaglia, which while not hugely impressive, does give a decent boost if you have a melee heavy boost. And fire and ice + melee hits is not terrible damage-dealing.

Bard as tank:
Depending on race, a bard is a very good to excellent tank, if you include resisting and distortion. If you compare, say a bard or an assassin vs arial prisoners I think the bard comes out on top because of unavoidable kicks. If distortion is in play, then the bard is probably second only to regenerative form shifters in overall effectiveness as a tank.

Bard as utility:
Bards make dangerous situations safer, meaning you can take more risks, which translates into faster ranking. Between non-aggro sleep and combat stopping, there's a lot of problems a bard can fix.

I think a bard is pretty great once symphonic echoes comes out, but that's so late as to seem like a non-factor to me. Generally getting the last ten levels plays out really different for me in that I either have so much hero help that it's a breeze, or I'm not going to bother trying to get XP.

Beyond that... yeah, everything you say is spot on and yet... only so for a bard player who actually knows what they're doing and is on the ball, and my experience generally is that a player of that caliber is a pretty effective groupmate even if they're something like a necromancer or double-water shifter.

I've had a lot of bard groupmates who were somehow terrible tanks, or who never seemed to have an idea when to heal (even if prompted) or who constantly AOE'd things they shouldn't be. By way of comparison, I think a lot of other classes are less of a burden if the player is terrible to mediocre.

If you are able to, that is. If area authors want a huge pile of mobs to sit in the same room, they can put them there by design. Would it be possible to have the repop routine check which mobs are present instead of just popping in the amount. For example, the if the system could know that mobs 3,4 and 7 are dead, then it would repop mobs 3,4 and 7 instead of mobs 1,2 and 3 like it does now.

Short answer... it's not trivial without 'breaking' something else in the process.

Is this a problem you guys are going to address in the Arial City revamp? Or do we like it the way it is?

As I stated in my earlier post, it won't be as much of an issue when/if the new version of Arial City goes in.

That being said, this isn't so much a "bug" as a consequence of the way things work. Arial City, in my opinion, is the worst instance of this getting out of hand. Newer areas generally give this more consideration than older areas do.

I would say Arial city isn't the worst example for the prisoners at least because they don't assist. The guards maybe. The arial miners in Zaakim are much worse. The trolls are also sort of bad, but and this is a huge but... they wander. I think if the mobs wander then the point is moot. I am really only concerned about stationary mobs that assist.

####, I had a recent ranger who would get as many trolls as possible on me, then retreat, and kill all of them one at a time in their huge group.

I had like 12 trolls in one room once.

Dodge and parry mastered quickly.

I also mob-died twice ;)

But I agree, I like that some areas are this way.

Except when I kill super buff mob, and I'm sorting through his loot at 30% health and all my protections have fallen and he repops and one-rounds me.

That's not as great. But still fun, in a weird way.

What stacks up in Azuremain?

all kinds of spirits will stack with their respective kind of spirit.

Personally I kind of like it, because it adds strategy to ranking there.

Thanks for the suggestion, but in this case I do think the danger adds to it in this case.

Probably the only way I could see changing this one so they don't bunch up would be replaced with diversifying their weapon specs, as I think the risk-reward balance is already incredibly favorable for ranking.

Basically, this happens in every area that uses same mobs in different rooms. There's two ways to fix the problem as I see it. One is fixing the flawed repop code, which fixes the problem for all areas. The second is fixing each and every area where the problem occurs to accomodate for the flawed repop code by making the mobs repopping to different rooms to be different mobs.

Galadon sewers, like Java mentioned. There's a ring there that people want, which is held by the rat that repops into the last room of the repop series. Thus, people have to kill the entire rat population in the sewers to get it to repop. Making this rat different mob from the other rats would solve this problem.

The second one is dungeon guards in Evermoon Hollow. The guard guarding Midnight Dragon doesn't repop if the other guard guarding the dwarf is still alive.

If I remember correctly from the days of building areas you the coder of the area set the maximum number of a mob to be loaded. So when you set for a mob to be loaded you can add max 1. Then if there already is a mob no new will be loaded. So it's really up to the area designer.