General Discussion

You could go about it either way, and neither way would be wrong, some people will like one way, others another.

You could make it so you kill mobs in one or two shots, and you kill 10 or 20 mobs in a minute or two. OR, you could give the same XP for killing just one mob in that same time period.

Which do you prefer, a bunch of fast fights, or one long fight for the same XP?

Let's say you could do both in the same game. Kill a whole bunch of mobs quickly, or one mob that takes a while, and you'd end up with the same loot and xp either way.

Which would you gravitate towards?

Here's a rough video of a WAR combat encounter that takes a while.

I like the longer battles.

A mix of both of course.

I like the longer battles. EQ1 ftw.

Blessings,

longer battles since they don't make you feel to powerful and you don't have to run from mob to mob every 2 seconds.

I like longer battles but I also liked CoX where mobs were in groups, each mob individually didn't take very long but as a group sometimes they took a while.

Originally posted by MarleVVLL

I like the longer battles. EQ1 ftw.

Blessings,

Classic EQ had it right, longer battles, little bit of experience, slow leveling, and if you died you would lose 6 hours of experience grinding. Those were the days. I wish I could get em back.

Look what the state of the industry has sunk to!

People actually discussing optimal kills per minute grinding ratios!

What's next? "Do you prefer your lvl.1 starter mobs to be RATS or SPIDERS?"

This is not what MMOG's should be about.

I guess i would go with more kills less exp, since that would mean more chances to get a rare item :D

best fights i had were not vs mobs but vs people, in swg befor nge i would be grinding with a group to get jedi xp i was main tank couse i was master defender / master saber i was on lowca server and my name was Eder and BH would jump me when my HP were under 50% and the fights would last for 15 minutes or more some times, it was great. I would get killed alot befor i hit the master lvls in my jedi skill and the fights would last for a few minutes if the BH was new or just bad but the fights were fun even when i lost.

the BH got use to me after a few weeks and when they would come to the place i was with my group and see i was there target. i would walk up to them and wait for them to attack and ask, " so are  we going to do this or what ?" they would say " nope. seen it was you and i droped the mission." hahah good times

long fights vs mobs are not very fun couse they do the same things all the time and you get to used to there moves then it gets to  easy nothing beats a good pvp fight

they need to hurry and use or get new AI to make the mobs more random in there action or hurry and get more real time animation porgrams on MMO games to make even the mob fights more fun.

if you only do the same thing over and over and the mob dies the same way over and over that gets boring, now since i seen what the new AI and animations are comming to games like, Unleash the force once MMO have that in the games we will see the best MMO games but i think they will only be out in the next 5 to 10 years so we have to put up with the games comming out now couse i am like you all and i dont have millions of dollars to make the Real next gen MMOs

IF fighting a mob was challenging, and IF the encounter was tricky, and IF the AI + game engine was up to the task then fewer fights with harder mobs would be the most interesting approach for me.

The problem is that currently MMO's treat PvE as an XP piñata moreso than anything else.  Just a big bag of hitpoints that takes a while to grind down.  That's the biggest reason why you have all these people talking about DPS vs HPS, speed specs and so on.  PvE combat in MMOs is so simple it can be reduced down to one set of figures - if you put out more damage than you take in a given unit time, you win.  No question about it.

By rights the player should be no tougher than the mobs they fight.  I get really tired from an immersion stand-point when I see my PC mowing through dozens and hundreds of orcs / pirates / miscellaneous NPCs.  It's pretty ridiculous. 

In an ideal world a "dungeon" would have a relatively small amount of opponents on average (excepting the odd "swarm" encounter) where each fight would demand a lot of player skill and ability - not simply watching cool down timers to optimize your DPS.  (actually the whole idea of hitpoints and damage per second would be out the window were it up to me).

I like longer battles but not of the same grain as EQ where you kill just as many in the ones that require shorter battles.  Nothing more annoying then the monster grind in EQ linked with the unsexy avatars are horrible animations.