So about forced multiplayer sieges...

I suppose I can kind of understand why this was done?
But lately this "feature" is just causing a whole raft of negativity.

Most of the time, if I enter a siege, and see that there are already people who have the siege in progress, I'll see if they need help, and if not, I'll go elsewhere rather than interfere with them completing their daily catalysts. Maybe I'm a nice person, but it wouldn't even occur to me to steal the cabalist they've taken the time to spawn.

However, it seems that there are an increasing number of players who lack basic manners. And its the same ones over and over again who are essentially just using sieges to facilitate a new type of griefing/harassment. Before this "change", if people were being rude you simply went to your own private scene, problem solved.

One of the best, most steadfast features of Shroud of the Avatar, the selective multiplayer, which lets you play in a world with others while avoiding this sort of rude behavior, has been completely removed by this change, and it is getting worse by the day.

I'm not one who often thinks its worth fighting over a particular siege - after all, there are plenty more elsewhere - but its also not fun to waste hours of your time, zoning in, seeing that people are in there, zoning out, finding another, zoning in...same thing. Finally you find one that's empty, and 2 minutes later, here comes the jackass brigade who cleans the place out and gets you thrown out of the instance, to once again go play "shroud of load screens" finding another.

I mean, its not like cabalist loot is so common that there was a need to make it open / exclusive or competitive - its still going to take hundreds of kills to actually get something worthwhile - so I really don't understand why this change was done other than to ...make things more infuriating.

And don't tell me its to make it more "competitive" - its not "competitive" when you're trying to help a guildmember finish a quest and a posse rolls through and ruins it. That's killstealing and harassment. Do we realllly want that here?

 

Considering that we haven't been able to have a discussion about PVP for the last 6 years or so without folks passionately arguing for changes that would allow for full-loot gank squads, I have a feeling that the answer is "yes" more often than you'd expect.

 

Yeah, fair point. I was very careful to phrase this as not-a-pvp issue.
Selective multiplayer has saved Sota from the woes of spawncamping that plague many other games, and I'm just concerned we are going this direction. It brings out the worst in a lot of people.

 

i thought sieges were like other adventure zones. aren't all adventure zones private/open/party?

 

Nah, sieges are open like going into a town. I run through a few, though I rarely run into anyone else and if I see someone working on it. I just go to another one. I am after the catalysts so I tend to hit the POT ones where I run into fewer other players.

 

A while back I made a thread about how it was annoying that the mountain troll encounter was now multiplayer only since it was a semi-popular place for people to fight, on top of being necessary for some virtue quests, on top of being necessary for one of the blessings. A week later they added an artifact that can only be gotten there...

One of my favorite things about SotA is that, for the most part, you can go wherever you want and do whatever you want, whenever you want, without having to fight with other players. That's a little less true ever since they added forced multiplayer on the map. I just consider it an annoyance, but the game also has a pretty low population. It would get a lot more annoying with a higher population.

 

Other random negative side effect of open sieges are for the people who enter one and go afk at an entrance thinking it is safe. I have cleared catapults thinking I am the only one in the area only to find someone zoned in and went afk while I was clearing them. I tend to find them run over by cabalists. Can't throw them a res or anything still. Otherwise yeah, if someone is clearing an area then help or move on.

I'd assume they were open mutliplayer set to kind of push pug parties in hopes people become more sociable and band together to expand their friends list as a friends list instead of a random teleport pool.

 

i wonder if it has been bug reported. everything i've read or heard on the streams was that towns were forced open and adventure areas were selectable. sieges, passes, etc are clearly not towns.

 

On the plus side, if you also see those of us who have manners still, then we're adding players!

Edit: and with more players, selective multi-player will return, as foretold in the prophecy .

 

Peeps with no manners need to GTFO! >_<

 

Yeah its usually not a huge deal. If I see people there, I move on to another siege, if they don't want company.

But after the SEVENTH time in two days that I've been halfway through a siege and had a kill squad come in and yoink the cabalist or start meteoring all over the engineers I'm in the actual process of killing, it has gotten annoying. Sometimes its an accident, sure, you go in, and aren't looking at nearby players, and you kill a camp of engineers and then realize, oh crap, great evil approaches, someone else is here. It happens. And isn't usually a big deal. I'm talking about intentional siegegriefing by players who apparently think the world belongs to them - is becoming a more and more common occurrence. I personally don't see any "up side" to making the sieges open - there's a bypass now, so its not affecting players who aren't actually trying to play the scene

I don't mind so much if I have to try a few places, see there's people in them, try somewhere else - to find a siege to do. I'm willing to deal with that. But what I'm not really willing to put up with are people (and often the same people, repeatedly) coming in while you're doing your thing and either simply steal your cabalist or even intentionally try to sabotage you, by dragging Avara over while you're fighting another one hoping to get you killed. This behavior isn't new, it happens in most online games because there's a lot of really crappy people on the internet - Sota's selective multiplayer really kept this at bay and I really think we need it back for sieges. =/

The troll encounter's another good example, but most people are doing the "log an alt on and force reset it" thing, since once you engage the troll, you ARE in a private instance. Its a bit of a cheeseball workaround but at least there's a workaround. With sieges there is no such recourse. Although I do think its a bit stupid when they added that ring there were at one point that I passed, EIGHT people stood in that pass trying to nab a troll. And as was mentioned, we're a low-pop game. Some of these systems are simply unsustainable if we get more population.

 

@kaeshiva Please post the names of the griefers so everyone here can identify them in the game!

 

I remember that when sieges could be cleaned in solo mode at the same time they could not be farmed over and over but just one time ---
if the solo mode is reintroduced again with the current system the artifacts of the cabalists would lose 80% of their value and simply nobody would be more interested in the sieges --- said that this request has a big NO on my part. )

 

I'm not sure that would set a good precedent. Anyone could post a list of names and claim they're griefers..

 

This is NOT true and the artifact is available in many other locations.

 

My bad. I wasn't aware of that.

In any case, there's still been log jams of people piling up outside of the encounter to try to get in, as well as lots of wacky tricks being used to create new instances. It's pretty dumb.

 

The trolls are an EASY kill. Hence the lines ..............

 

First against the ELUA, deal with it, it is a valid gripe

someone needs to learn about supply / Demand, since they are being "farmed" now their #s are greater and if you have more supply than demand they lose. their demand is not a changing factor in your math the supply is and that is the false part of your statement.

They are losing players becuase they are doing things that are counter to what the core of their base supporters look for. plain and simple

 

Give us back 100% control of what was promised, please:

Open = Open
Party = Party
Private = Private (not multiplayer in 'some' cases)

= = Quality of life (improvement) = =

 

I really hate how they destroyed SPO, which was one of the biggest selling points of the game to me. It's not just the sieges, it's towns too. It's utterly obnoxious to be in the middle of doing stuff (decorating, or whatever else) and having ones concentration interrupted by some nitwit wanting to run around your lot, even if you have it locked down.

I used to really love sieges, but now I have to go around and find ones that aren't already occupied as well. It's been a net negative for my game for the devs to have ruined SPO, and quite frankly, the population numbers don't show that making it so everyone's forced together has had any positive impact in the total number of players, which was the reason given for this change.