I’m participating in a beta for a new MMORPG, which one I probably can’t say because of the NDA that I clicked to agree to without reading very carefully. I’ve never played an MMORPG before and I can really see the appeal – far better for us old farts than the fast twitch first person shooters that I used to play.
I’m playing a “hunter” class, and the hints say to stand back and fire distance weapons rather than getting involved in the hand-to-hand, but I’m also in the initial quests that are very small and don’t make much sense to do in a group. So I spot an enemy, fire an arrow or maybe two, and the enemy comes over and starts hand-to-hand, so I respond in kind. That’s fine and dandy, since so far I’ve had not much trouble with the hand-to-hand either. But on one of the quests I found myself in a very target poor environment with dozens of players running around trying to find enemies to defeat and every enemy already engaged in some battle or other. I basically had to spawn-camp. While waiting for an enemy to spawn, I’d see other players fighting enemies nearby. In order to experience that “hunter” life-style, I’d fire some arrows at the enemy they were fighting to give them some help. Is giving this sort of help a good thing or a bad thing? I’m pretty sure the game system will give the kill to them and not me. But I don’t know if I get XP for the kill or not, and if so would the other players think I’m stealing from them?
As long as they get the kill, I’m all for helping. If they don’t, I’d say something like, “Want a hand with that?” before firing. You should be able to tell who’s getting the XP – just check your XP, shoot for a bit, then see if it changed.
I didn’t know you were am MMORPG person.
I checked the game forums, and it appears that this question has come up before, but the game only gives experience to the person who engaged the enemy first. As a matter of fact, some people have been exploiting that to engage an enemy, then backing behind somebody else who has to deal with the enemy, taking all the damage but gaining none of the XP. Somebody suggested making the XP go to the person who engaged the enemy only if they’re within a certain distance, but that isn’t proving very popular with people who use distance weapons.