Spiral Knights - Players touting out Basil.

Players touting out Basil.

14 replies [Last post]

Mon, 07/11/2011 - 02:41

Zeenzee

When you join a public party, you expect to join and then get playing and killing stuff pretty soon after joining.

Some players will get to Basil on tier 3 and sit and wait for others to join. They will then offer you goods from Basil at an extortionate price.

When you say 'no thanks I came here to play in a party I didn't click to go to your own Auction House', they just kick you from the party, ready for the next person to join. this results in you being now solo, and not in a party.

If we wanted to buy recipes outside of our own dealings with Basil, we would use the AH or have a network of friends to help us find the ones we needed.

All these players do is waste a lot of time, and if you think about it, you end up with many party-seeking players being dispersed in the arcade in their own solo games. This has the potential to waste 10CE for many players also.

This is therefore making, to some extent, the 'join a party' function before you enter the arcade redundant. I'll go further and say, in my opinion these people are abusing the party leadership options you give us in public parties.

Suggestion: Place a time-limit at Clockworks Terminal. 5 or 10 minutes should be enough for normal solo players/party goers to do their shopping at Basil. OR use some other method (kick limit?) to keep people from allowing to join and kicking 100's of people at Basil for their own personal gain and at others' expense.

Hope other people agree =],

Zeenzie

Mon, 07/11/2011 - 10:59

Nodocchi

You are aware that the depths

You are aware that the depths after Basil as several times as profitable as the depths before Basil right? The guy sitting at Basil hawking his recipes actually did you a favour by allowing you to skip past the unprofitable levels and thus saving you CE. As well it costs you nothing to join a party that is at Basil so you haven't wasted any CE at all. Also there is nothing stopping you from sitting at Basil and waiting for more players to join your party. There really does not need to be any changes.

Mon, 07/11/2011 - 11:02

Pelikins

Legacy Username

I've personally never seen

I've personally never seen anyone do this and I doubt it would be terribly successful since Basil's selection is limited and if you try to make too much profit a player can simply go to the AH and get it cheaper. So we are talking a potential 12% (give or take a %) additional profit by sitting in the shop and a very, very small customer base. It's really not worth doing this as it would most likely be a waste of time. You'd be much better off buying all the recipes of value at Basil, putting them on the AH and making a second Basil run instead of waiting around hoping a buyer will come a long.

A good option, however, would be to be able to pick and choose which party you want to join. Being able too see all available parties in a particular dungeon within a selected tier, the level they are currently on, and number of players in that party AND being able to select a party and join them would be a huge improvement over the random pug a party that is currently in place.

That way, you plan on only going half way for Basil, you can join before the party hits too deep to use the shop. If you plan on going all the way or are looking for heat, you can pick the party deepest in, and kind of pick and choose based on what you are looking to do.

Mon, 07/11/2011 - 11:50

Nodocchi

@Pelikins Then no one would

@Pelikins
Then no one would join the parties that have just started and new players looking to start a party from the beginning of a tier will have a harder time finding good help. As well your idea would discourage players from starting their own parties and doing runs from the beginning of a tier. After all, why do the unprofitable depths when you can watch some chump do it for you and then join when he is halfway there?

Mon, 07/11/2011 - 12:54

Criminale

Legacy Username

If I'm not mistaken, if you

If I'm not mistaken, if you choose join a random party, you'll always join at the start, or at the break point with Basil. Neither of these depletes your energy when you join, so I'm not sure how 10ce could be wasted.

As for kicking if they refuse to buy anything, just rejoin another party.

Mon, 07/11/2011 - 13:35

Prisega

No, joining a random party

No, joining a random party can drop you anywhere from the start up to Basil. But as it was already explained, going straight to Basil required no energy so there's no loss even if you go in and your net disconnects. Its also not hard to wait for more players to come if you're solo or fill your friends lsit/join a guild to see if people are available to play with you. Overall, I really don't see the problem.

Mon, 07/11/2011 - 13:48

Quasirandom

Zeenzie, report the

Zeenzie, report the griefer.

xiax, people who use the random grouping tool tend to be people who want a group, not people who want to solo from a different starting point. If someone gets to the front of the queue and is kicking everyone who joins, then that breaks the tool so that people who want a group can't get one. That's pretty flagrant griefing, and should be a bannable offense. Well, maybe a warning the first time, but if someone does it several times and will not stop, eventually a permanent ban.

Mon, 07/11/2011 - 13:49

lifesbrink

Legacy Username

Waste of a Topic

Seriously, I don't even see why this would make sense. When you get to Basil, why would anyone try to sell you recipes when you can merely buy them off of Basil himself? He would carry a copy of the recipe for you to buy, it is not like the player who started the group is the only one who can buy them...

Mon, 07/11/2011 - 14:25

Nodocchi

@Quizzical If people are

@Quizzical
If people are being sent to this guy at Basil, that basically means that there are no available groups anywhere before Basil or else priority would be given to them and the player would not be sent to Basil. This means that THERE ARE NO OTHER GROUPS for people to join, and if they wanted to play in a random group they'd have to either wait at Basil or start their own from the beginning of the tier. How in any way is the person sitting at Basil griefing anyone?

Mon, 07/11/2011 - 15:38

Ightex

@lifesbrink

Because you can't. If you go straight to Basil, all his recipes will be out of stock just to prevent this sort of behavior. Hence, this recipe solicitation thing, which is not very useful since people can only have one of each recipe per day. Once that is sold, there's no much point in keeping shop, especially when most people are there for a popular item that's already been sold. Or if the current recipe list doesn't have what you want to begin with, since its randomized -per party- not per knight.

I personally find it annoying, since I do tend to want to go on Basil runs, and ending up straight there defeats the purpose. It doesn't matter if it saves energy, if you go back up and try to join again, you could very well end up back at the same party. Though its not an impossible problem to overcome- I simply go to emberlight and wait for a party there, or start going down and hope people will join my group before reaching Basil so at least they can benefit from him better than a PUG squatting at his place selling a very limited item list.

Mon, 07/11/2011 - 19:00

#10

Quasirandom

xiax, what makes you so

xiax, what makes you so certain that there isn't another group at Basil waiting for people to join, but people can't find it because all the new joiners are going to the other, fake group to get kicked?

If there aren't any real groups to join, then I want a pop-up that says, there aren't any real groups to join. Would you like to make your own? I don't want to get sent to a fake group to wait there for a couple of minutes, find out that it's some griefer who isn't going on, have to report him for griefing, get sent back to haven, try to join another random group, and end up having the same thing happen again. I also don't want to assume that there is no other group to join, start my own, and have to wait a long time for anyone to get to it because three other people assumed the same thing and started their own group.

I don't have a problem with people sitting at Basil if they're not trying to siphon off people who are trying to actually find a real group. Lock the group so that you don't get random joiners if that's what you want. But that's not the behavior that is described in the original post.

Tue, 07/12/2011 - 07:32

#11

Zeenzee

It' a fair point about the

It' a fair point about the 10CE, and it was an oversight of mine to forget that joining or leaving at Basil won't cost you any CE.

However, my post also includes the other annoyances of wasting your playing time, and also the more important fact that many players seeking to party will go through this 'tout' being spun out into a solo environment. It disperses party-seeking players, so that when it happens the party function is made redundant that very time you used it.

@xiax you say how can this grief anyone. Well the party function tells you if there are no available parties to join. If there is a party to join but it happens to be just a guy touting Basil, then you're basically being sent on a wild goose chase. If you play t3 a lot (and perhaps you do), you will realise this happens daily.

It may not take long to go back to Haven after an unsuccessful attempt to make a party (because of this tout), but sometimes it takes a few minutes for you to realise the party leader is a tout, especially when normally you would simply be waiting for the party to fill up.

I find this whole thing extremely annoying, and hence my original post. And yes, as someone pointed out, the people doing this really have a flawed business plan as they would be better off doing basil runs and placing recipes in the AH. But whether they are successful in their actions or not is irrelevant. I find it annoying and it wastes time and ruins what is normally a fast and fluid way to join parties and make friends.

If you don't find it annoying, good for you, but I would hope that this thread seeks out the multiple other players who DO find it very irritating, and instill some sort of change.

I welcome more ideas like Pelikin's, to prevent people from touting @ Basil, but ALSO so as to not to invoke some other form exploitation such as people deliberately skipping unprofitable levels.

Enjoyed the discussion thus far, =]

Zeenzie

Tue, 07/12/2011 - 08:40

#12

Nodocchi

@Quizzical You know what you

@Quizzical
You know what you can do? You can ask, "Hey you going past Basil? No? Alright that's cool I'll just go solo or create my own party." Also try making some friends instead of being so dependent on PUGs.

@Zeenzie
If you don't like wasting your time joining a party at Basil then I suggest starting your own party instead of hitting join a party every time. Other than that by the time you are in tier 3 you really should have a ton of friends to do runs with.

The fact is, I don't just not find it annoying, I LOVE (no homo) these kind of players because it allows me to skip all the unprofitable levels and go straight to the profitable bits. In fact I wish there were MORE of these kind of players so I never have to do the depths before Basil.

Tue, 07/12/2011 - 09:21

#13

Zeenzee

"@ZeenzieOther than that by

"@Zeenzie
Other than that by the time you are in tier 3 you really should have a ton of friends to do runs with."

@xiax I have enough friends that there's always someone on who would party with me in t3, but there are a couple of other reasons I and someone else might choose NOT to party with them sometimes.

1) I have a heat level 10 set and I'm trying to upgrade other items one by one, by displacing just one heat 10 item for the noob item (so all the heat from each level goes on just that one item). I quite like joining public parties because often there is someone less experienced and quite simply you can harvest their heat when they die. They get revived and get to continue deeper into their newly accessed tier without spending CE, and I get to level up my items quicker in return!

2) I quite enjoy meeting new people and the dynamics you get from playing with different players, and I'm sure many other people play for this social aspect.

Even though I understand your exploitation of these touts in that you use it as a stepping stone to get to more 'profitable' levels, it still doesn't resolve or give enough counter-weight to the issue that party-seeking players end up in solo rooms, and the function the party button was supposed to do is made redundant, with the consequences laid out in my other posts.

~Zeenzie
Guild: Radical Roosters

Fri, 07/15/2011 - 05:13

#14

Pelikins

Legacy Username

"@Pelikins Then no one would

"@Pelikins
Then no one would join the parties that have just started and new players looking to start a party from the beginning of a tier will have a harder time finding good help. As well your idea would discourage players from starting their own parties and doing runs from the beginning of a tier. After all, why do the unprofitable depths when you can watch some chump do it for you and then join when he is halfway there?" Quoted from xiax

You just said no one would start at the beginning therefore players starting at the beginning won't have anyone to run with. That's an utter contradictory statement.

On top of this your logic is faulty.

1) Someone is going to have to do those first levels. If there is no party to join, someone is gonna have to man up and do it. On top of this, in many boss runs having decent consumables is necessary to kill the boss (unless you way over skill/equip the boss in which case you are carrying people through and they shouldn't be complaining anyway).

2) You have the option to lock your party. If you feel like a chump because you let someone skip a few unprofitable levels on your behalf then lock your party. If you don't mind helping other players out, you should have that option too.

3) It should not be the responsibility of good players to carry bad ones. I am constantly carrying noobies through content while they steal and waste valuable consumables, the best vitapods, half my hp every time they do something stupid, and a % of the materials dropped along the way. I can solo, easily I will add, everything in the game short of Van, I don't have any benefit of having the little kiddies in my party. My point is, if I'm constantly helping out these little greedy buggers, why not implement ways that higher level players can use the lowbies to help them?

Now I think that the option to go solo should only become available when you've been with the party for at least a few levels.
(I also think that the party leader should lose his position if he idles or dc's for any amount of time and that a vote should elect a new party leader. If these features were in the game, I don't think the "go solo" option would be necessary.)

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Players touting out Basil.