I'm sorry, but I have to cut in here.

It is not the job or duty of the developing team to force you to meet anyone in this game. If you never try to, you never will, it's as simple as that. Talk in world chat, group with others, but don't just sit on your ass, quiet as a mouse, and then complain that you never meet anyone. That goes for anyone else whose main complaint about losing the ability to run Abby is "now I'll never make new friends in this game again!"

Get over yourselves and start talking to all the strangers logged into the server, and that social aspect will be there in no time.

Well just my one line opinion:
I think Abby should be uncapped.

I must say, I cannot help but feel amused in how so many people cling to Abbadon like it is the entirety of the game. You say that the lifting of Abbadon makes DR "unfun", you've "lost motivation", you "lost friends and a means of socialisation"... utter Bull.

The only thing lost here is the profit in running Abbadon. You could still run Abbadon for socialising or fun if you wish. Or, run other bosses: is there some invisible mental barrier which prevents you from socialising or having fun when running say, Ratsputin or Shadow Queen? As a matter of fact, Abbadon is probably the least interesting of the high level encounters, if I wanted fun I'll much rather run Balzack. Heck, you could have fun and socialise simply by standing in Townston chatting in World/Noob Chat!

I say again: the only thing lost to level 100s about Abbadon is the profit. Don't try to cover it up with moanings about "loss of socialisation" and "loss of fun", all you care about is your main (overbuffed) source of Rainbows is gone. Seriously.

Regarding Abbadon as the only high level "short run" for casual players... how much time do you have to play, exactly? Even the lengthiest boss runs rarely takes more than five minutes to complete. If you have less time than it takes to run any Boss just once (at most ten minutes), then MMORPGs probably aren't for you. MMORPGs are meant to take a bit of dedication (I know this sounds nerdy, but it's true), and the "casual" standard of MMOs is a bit higher (or lower) than the normal definition of "casual" for say, online tetris or something.

Just to get my view on this in here: To me it don't matter, either way is fine.

Could you show me how to solo Balzack/MMM insane in five minutes as a ranger? I haven't been social (actually, no one wants to party) so I never figure out how to, I'm not doubting you or anything. People don't want to party because they rather solo it for their own benefit, and I don't blame them for that.

To be honest though, if they added useful skills and more effective AoE for us rangers, I wouldn't care about the cap. As a critical ranger, the only thing we're good at is single target dps and Abby was perfect for that. New bosses has tons of mobs around the boss and our poison AoE doesn't work good on Balzack, which is a popular boss now. I suggested this at http://boards.dungeonrunners.com/showthread.php?t=17489 and if they actually do add them (which I doubt because improving ranger has been suggested many times and ignored), then I'll just shrug it off.

Oh my god, is there a way to remove the time out feature of these forums? I just lost a post of mine because I got logged out and after pushing "submit post" it simply came up with an error and my post had disappeared -.-;;.

Well I can't be bothered typing it all up again, so I'm just gonna say this - if we wanted to farm t3 rbs, we'd do 1150%. Solo. Just to give some numbers, as of right now I can comfortably do 6 1150% balzacks in 1 hour. I think once I get full perfect t3 gear and if I really go hard I can do 7 runs in an hour. That's anywhere from 7-28 rbs an hour, depending on luck. I'd like to see abby give that kind of a drop rate. Yada yada yada, I had more to say but I'm too lazy to type it up again. Oh well. Point is, in reply to all the arguments about "loot whinging" - abby was relatively inefficient in terms of getting loot. If I only cared about getting loot I'd do 1150% exclusively, all day long, as I and many others have stated, numerous times. It was a combination of the other aspects of abby + the potential to get loot that made it worthwhile and fun. Having abby was like hitting 3 birds with 1 stone. Abby filled a particular niche. And yes, of course the loot is a factor. No one wants to spend hours and achieve nothing, heh.

But of course, like I stated, if they added some other endgame content other than simply more farming, I really wouldn't care either way.

And if you click on the back button in your browser, it takes you back to a cached page of your typed up post. You can then copy the post from the box to a word pad, log in, paste from the word pad, and your post will be submitted.

I thought the time-out was an hour though...? That must have been a long post.

I've had to do that (back button, copy, etc.) in the past. The time out is definitely not an hour, though. It's closer to 20 minutes...at most. I haven't actually timed it, but it doesn't take long at all. The edit button time out is even shorter (5 minutes, maybe?). Not to mention the automatic "marked as read" function that only seems to work if you return to the specific forum where the thread is located or use the "mark all forums read" button.

But anyway...my opinion on the issue hasn't changed since my previous post.

I do not know how it is like for Rangers (having never played one), but the Ranger issue (if there is one) is irrelevant here. That is an issue of it's own, and does not directly correlate to the issue at hand (Abbadon and other Boss Farming activities).

Instead of arguing all day, it'll be nice it we can get at least one sentence stating whether the devs are considering if Abby is coming back or never coming back. People are arguing about this in-game and outside of the game(forum) all day long.

Haha, that's true. It'd be nice if a dev just made a call and stated if abby coming back was even an option or not, that'd render the entire argument meaningless

Btw rangers can farm 1150% balzack. I've tried it with all 3 classes and any of them can kill 1150% balzack, with a bit of strategy and the right build. Rangers just have issues with the fact their attacks only hit if you have line of sight, whereas fighters/mages don't, and also a total lack of an aoe attack (except poison, which is *cough* useless, especially as balzack is immune). I did abby on 1150% too with my ranger build (pre-patch), though it certainly wasn't worth the effort.

Oh and the back/copy thing, I tried it but for whatever reason firefox didn't cache the page with my post *shrug* oh well.

If Abby isn't coming back, I'd like Balzack to be nerfed. Seriously, the majority is soloing Balzack at 1150% and they say they're getting in 5~20+ RBs per hour. 1150% should be a group effort. I mean a real group, not alts.

I completely agree. At some point, profitable boss farming should be a challenge. If possible alone, it should at least be very hard. I don't see why it should be ridiculously easy to collect RBs right and left either to be honest. Aren't mythical items supposed to be rare?

As in, rare to get a monster drop it? Yes. Its supposed to be rare and it is.

1150%? Better chance, created yourself, more damage + hp = more costs and effort but more income.

One notice tho, when comparing to abby, which is one mob doing 1 out of 60 drop of rb at normal, it aint really fair.

Pull 4 groups at 1150% from shrines + balzack and kill all? Fair chance, much effort, much mobs all dropping a rb very rarely. Pull a whole dungeon level at 1150%, kill all, same effect.

I agree. The whole 1150% thing is pretty disturbing, especially since many players are exploiting a bug (in the Balzack encounter, specifically) that was supposed to have been fixed in addition to playing in a team of alts.

Frankly, I'd like to see either shared bank space or a mail system put in place to allow players to share items between characters/accounts and then remove the ability to run multiple instances. This will make twinking more difficult (I'm not against twinking, per se, but it's cheesily easy), make it harder to farm rainbows (once again, not against farming, just making it too easy), pvp rank farming/cheating by playing your own characters, etc... True dual-boxers would still be able to do some of these things, but overall it'd be harder for most players.

Exactly what was on my mind. I wish Balzack to be a group effort like how Abby was. People are saying "if you want to group or be social, run abby again" but that's not the issue. Level 100's will not want to run a full party Abby that's capped at 90, they profit a lot more from soloing 1150% balzack. How often do you see full group of 100 running abby anyway? I never seen it after the patch, not even once.

I hope the exploitable bugs gets fixed and your suggestions are considered by the devs.

Hmm..I seem to have opened a can of worms .

Here we go again...I don't think there are that many doing 1150%. The fact is not everyone can do it. There is still a risk, and a lot of cost. If someone is willing to put in the time and effort, and work out a build and strategy that lets them take care of 1150% balzack effectively, I don't see anything wrong with that. When I started out doing 1150% I could only do maybe 3-4 runs in an hour, dying a number of times and drinking a ton of pots. I tinkered a bit and tried different builds, different classes, different strategies for taking out both the premobs and balzack himself in the most efficient way. I didn't just one day decide "I'm gonna farm 1150% solo" and poof, like magic, he was so easy I could kill him with virtually no effort. Hell, it's still a task right now, don't pay attention and you're dead in 2 hits.

While it's true, as ripper said, there is a glitch with the encounter making it even more profitable than usual. Once they fix that, you'll most likely see a decline in the number of people doing 1150% balzack solo. Though it's still completely feasible, and that's how it should be. The manglefeet encounter is soloable at 1150% (I just prefer balzack), and like I stated I managed to do abby too at 1150% (none of these were so easy that, *poof* my first attempt I managed it). You want to nerf all those bosses too? Better yet we should just nerf rb drop rate across the board, turn this game into a hardcore grindfest. No thanks, do that and see how many will stick around.

Anyway, believe me it's still incredibly hard to find the rb you're looking for. Even though we may be getting 10+ rbs an hour, you know as well as I, 80% of rbs are "junk" that no one wants to use, and I usually end up selling/dropping 80% of the rbs I find. The rb drop rate is compounded by the fact there is a huge pool of rbs for the game to choose from, most of these being "junk", and the fact you only get gear -5/+2 levels from you, which is basically a 1/8 chance that an rb drops is even t3. Add to this the multivariety aspects of many of the rbs (jewelry especially) and you could be farming for a year and still not find what you want. Increasing the rb drop rate through skills and perseverance only increases your chance of getting the rb you want, it doesn't guarantee it. It's analogous to any real life situation, you put in the work, you reap the benefits. At the end of the day it still comes down to luck, I know people who got perfect jewelry just as happenchance, while others who have been farming for a long time, are still looking for their gear.

My point is that, I'd like at least one boss that we can use group effort effectively. If you get more loot by soloing 1150%, people doesn't want to party. You might easily say "just ask for party and do a run" but other people will not want to share their loot and be less effective. Right now, lvl 100 rather solo at 1150% and it's completely single player mode now. Trade is the only thing that's social as of now, also random chats here and there.

Although soloing 1150% takes effort, the loot is defiantly worth it. So much that grouping is ineffective.

If we get abby back, there will be tons of lvl 100 cooperating together and running abby. Or it'll be nice if Balzack will be nerfed so that it's more effective grouping instead of soloing just like how abby was. Why should there be a disadvantage to group on a mmorpg game?

Edited by Delusion (10/05/08 08:31 PM)

Yup, that's true, there needs to be more group related features, which is partly why I wanted abby back. Though remember, this game was designed to be casual and solo-friendly, so as to not put pressure on people "needing" to find a group before they can tackle a boss. Abby was one of those things which wasn't planned but just happened to be, it filled a niche almost by accident. Completely soloable, completely beneficial with a group.

Yes I do remember about casual and solo-friendly.

But, if I ask you to take me and all my friends (full lvl 100) with you to 1150% Balzack , what would your answer be? (note that this is not intented directly toward you, I'm talking about the lvl 100s) I'm sure you'll say "I prefer solo" which I don't blame you, so it has become "Solo Runner" instead of Dungeon runners. No point grouping if we get less loots. Although casual and solo-friendly, it is still considered as MMORPG and it would be nice if we can group without disadvantage.

Prior to Abby cap, it was still solo-friendly. Like you said, grouping was more beneficial which makes sense. Loot is raised so that people can share it with other member but now, majority is getting 100% loot to them self.

Ok Ive read all the posts and heres my blather on it. As I have stated in-game (As the Devs devils advocate) the lowering of Abbys cap wasnt so much to stop 100's farming it but more of just another tweak on what they've 'fixed' (read nerfed). Remember when you could pull the goons away from Abby? I do, I was one of the Great (Hey if I dont say it no-one will) pullers. I could keep the goons occupied far away from Abby and still plink away at him from a distance. Remember when you could kill the goons and Abby would be alone so everyone could focus on him? Now my 1st toon (yes I know alot of ppl hate the term but Im an old crumudgeon {You damn Kids Get OFF MY LAWN!!} so just accept it) is a Ranger. The way Ive set my build up is focused on Ranged Attack Speed. Great for in a group where you have meat shields (read Mages and Fighters). Solo? Versus a lvl Apropo Boss? You must be joking. I know there are ppl who have Rangers who can solo Abby, Balzack etc etc. Im just not willing to keep farming just to get the gear needed to do it (that and I noticed its Rangers that use Plate Piercer and after the Plate Piercer nerf of '07 I refuse to use the damned thing but thats just me). Even in a full team I dont enjoy running Balzack. The poison immunity just further nerfs a ranger I think and Fear/Ice shot just dont cut the mustard damage wise. Now with Flaming,Divine,Shadow shots it might actually be doable, as I see it. Now on the PTS I had a blast doing the MMM, but my 1st and only try on live servers I lagged so bad my system locked up. Shadow Queen was ok as well. In short Lou is a group toon not a soloer.
Ok Imma wrap this up so my train of thought doesnt jump the tracks more than it already has. I seriously dont care either way on the Abby Issue because I rarely play Lou any more.

Alright, Abby fans, vote on the IdeaRunners idea and/or the poll on my site:
My Poll
IdeaRunners