what happened to the puller

warrhogg

i remember my early days in eq weaving my way down dangerous corridors to bring  mobs back to the group, or feign death pulling if i was on as a monk  at the time. it seems like somewhere after daoc the system just vanished..

jesad

That was a fun system. Likewise the surprise in the box every time "calm/mez before pull" system. LOL

"Whips out his belt with an onion on it and prepares to walk uphill to school......both ways!"

nariusseldon

Originally posted by warrhogg

i remember my early days in eq weaving my way down dangerous corridors to bring  mobs back to the group, or feign death pulling if i was on as a monk  at the time. it seems like somewhere after daoc the system just vanished..

Because it is not popular?

Now the tank pulls. If you have a puller specific role, what is he/she going to do during the fight? Not many people want to be sideline in the "main event".

Pulling is not all gone, just that there is no more puller that only pulls and does nothing else.

 

Deolus

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by warrhogg

i remember my early days in eq weaving my way down dangerous corridors to bring  mobs back to the group, or feign death pulling if i was on as a monk  at the time. it seems like somewhere after daoc the system just vanished..

Because it is not popular?

Now the tank pulls. If you have a puller specific role, what is he/she going to do during the fight? Not many people want to be sideline in the "main event".

Pulling is not all gone, just that there is no more puller that only pulls and does nothing else.

 

You obviously didn't play EQ. The puller was generally a rogue or monk, i.e. two high dps classes. Pulling was definitely not their only task.

Volgore

I remember back in the early days of WoW when everyone was still a noob and it was common in dungeons that only the hunter pulled! Warriortanks pulling with a bow were frowned upon, haha!

 

Reizla

Originally posted by warrhogg

i remember my early days in eq weaving my way down dangerous corridors to bring  mobs back to the group, or feign death pulling if i was on as a monk  at the time. it seems like somewhere after daoc the system just vanished..

It's still used in Lineage II. Well, not intentionally but lots of AoE parties still exist where one player (mostly archer) runs around to pull half a dungeon to the others.

NagelRitter

Kind of sounds like it may have gone away with the easier dungeons. Many classes still possess pulling abilities, they're just not very popular, and the tank frequently has his own. In Vanilla WoW you'd grab a ranged weapon on a Warrior if you wanted to pull, but other classes pulled in other cases, especially Hunter with all their nice CC.

Drakynn

Last game I remember doing something like that in was on my Burglar in LoTRO,Pulling form distance and running back to my group until they were in range of the target mob then using hide in plain sight so that the other mobs with the target would reset heh.

Murdok

As a Rogue puller Karner's Castle was always my favorite.

 

Inc!!!

 

 

Knytta

Pulling was a fun feature in EQ a good puller was an incredible asset to a group. It wouldand be fun too see dungeons again where you need a puller.

Deolus

Originally posted by Drakynn
Last game I remember doing something like that in was on my Burglar in LoTRO,Pulling form distance and running back to my group until they were in range of the target mob then using hide in plain sight so that the other mobs with the target would reset heh.

I vaguely recall doing something similar with pet classes in either EQ1 or EQ2. As a necro you could send your pet through a bunch of mobs to hit on the boss. Then banish the pet to get rid of the mob aggro. Then the boss that took the damage would be the only mob that came after you.

Axehilt

It had a pretty negative influence on the game's pacing, so I'm not sad to see it go.

Basically the question "When should we pull?" (which is only interesting gameplay for a single player) is always answered by "now" instead of "Sorry you can't play the game yet."

And instead players are hastened towards the bits of gameplay that everyone in the group gets to enjoy: get out of the fire, drag that buffing mob away from his buddies, interrupt that mob's powerful heal, pick up these adds on the fly, dispel that mob or teammate, AOE damage time, AOE healing time, etc, etc.

I'd rather see MMORPGs focus on the latter type of gameplay where everyone's involved in decisionmaking rather than frontload it with one player having a pretty big influence over the group failing (because he horks the pull)

Besides it's not like pulling isn't still a great way to dynamically adjust difficulty.  My tank characters are able to always take a group right to the edge of its capabilities by pulling more or fewer mobs (and the rewards are increased the more mobs I pull at once.)  But the game never says, "Stop, don't play the game for a while" like it did with pulled groups.  Now instead it's a faster-or-slower thing where something is always happening but at a faster or slower speed.

Theocritus

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by warrhogg

i remember my early days in eq weaving my way down dangerous corridors to bring  mobs back to the group, or feign death pulling if i was on as a monk  at the time. it seems like somewhere after daoc the system just vanished..

Because it is not popular?

Now the tank pulls. If you have a puller specific role, what is he/she going to do during the fight? Not many people want to be sideline in the "main event".

Pulling is not all gone, just that there is no more puller that only pulls and does nothing else.

 

 The problem is that the genre has been dumbed down to the point where the tank can pull multiple mobs, everyone else AEs them to death, and even if someone dies there is no penalty....Pulling in EQ was an art....Often if you got multiple mobs you died......Now in this solo oriented, everyone can do everything genre there is no need for pulling because the games are simply too easy and there is no need.

Murdok

Some of the best MMO fun I've had was sneaking deep into Karner's grabbing the mob/mob's I wanted then making a mad dash out to the front to my awaiting group.  Running through the hallways, up the stairs to the ramparts then jumping over the walls and swimming through the moat to my awaiting group and just saying , "Wait for it".  Then a minute or so later they see what you were doing while you were away.  The best part was hearing, "Holy Crap how did you get That down here!!!"

nariusseldon

Originally posted by Theocritus

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by warrhogg

i remember my early days in eq weaving my way down dangerous corridors to bring  mobs back to the group, or feign death pulling if i was on as a monk  at the time. it seems like somewhere after daoc the system just vanished..

Because it is not popular?

Now the tank pulls. If you have a puller specific role, what is he/she going to do during the fight? Not many people want to be sideline in the "main event".

Pulling is not all gone, just that there is no more puller that only pulls and does nothing else.

 

 The problem is that the genre has been dumbed down to the point where the tank can pull multiple mobs, everyone else AEs them to death, and even if someone dies there is no penalty....Pulling in EQ was an art....Often if you got multiple mobs you died......Now in this solo oriented, everyone can do everything genre there is no need for pulling because the games are simply too easy and there is no need.

They shift the challenge from pulling, to actually defeating the boss. I don't see a problem if that is what players want.

 

Knytta

But Axehilt if you raise the difficulty level (an matching xp of course nowadays) to situations where you occasionally HAVE to split a pull to survive the game would again reach some of the complexity that so many miss. Personally I do not think that the "pull everything and AOE" is good or even very fun. Another solution would of course be to bring back the need for crowd control in a dungeon setting, that is sometimes bad as it usually requires certain classes.

trinix

The puller decided the difficulty, not the devs.  I tried pulling in WoW, but it didn't work, most mobs were linked together, so you either had to sap one and hope he wasn't magically thettered to a mob you pulled, or you got lucky and the sap'd mob would forget you. I still pulled a lot in vanilla, but with time it became less of an art and more of a pull more jokes.

In Vanguard we saw the return of pulling. More mobs linked, but also a lot of pulling skills in classes. The classes weren't even useless in everything else as some think they were.

And for EQ, we had times the puller was so busy pulling mobs that when we killed a mob the new target was up ready to be smacked. The healer would after a few fights say oh guys moment to rest and the puller would bring one more mob in . If it was a really awesome group, a necro and enchanter would be nice batteries for the healer, you could keep a steady stream of pulls as long as the mobs were up.

I see pullers as another way to CC. With the death of CC and the overuse of AOE's the puller has died. You see in certain games the puller being used at the start, but when content is trivilized, the pulls become more of a train and AOE's kill everything. It's also killing my rogue's dps as he's weak in AOE.

nariusseldon

Originally posted by trinix

The puller decided the difficulty, not the devs.  I tried pulling in WoW, but it didn't work, most mobs were linked together, so you either had to sap one and hope he wasn't magically thettered to a mob you pulled, or you got lucky and the sap'd mob would forget you. I still pulled a lot in vanilla, but with time it became less of an art and more of a pull more jokes.

What? You just defeat your own premise that "the puller decided the difficulty, not the devs". In fact, you just said that the devs make it impossible (by tethering or whatever) for you to separate the mobs, hence THEY, the devs, control the difficulty, not you.

 

trinix

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by trinix

The puller decided the difficulty, not the devs.  I tried pulling in WoW, but it didn't work, most mobs were linked together, so you either had to sap one and hope he wasn't magically thettered to a mob you pulled, or you got lucky and the sap'd mob would forget you. I still pulled a lot in vanilla, but with time it became less of an art and more of a pull more jokes.

What? You just defeat your own premise that "the puller decided the difficulty, not the devs". In fact, you just said that the devs make it impossible (by tethering or whatever) for you to separate the mobs, hence THEY, the devs, control the difficulty, not you.

 

Back in the days of EQ you could decide what you pulled and control your difficulty. Nowadays things are thettered and you can't always control it anymore. That's what I meant.

Catbert

God I miss being a gunner in RYL was so much fun to pull to party,,,

munx4555

I used to love the puller role as monk, but for some insane reason soe eventually gave enchanters far better tools for pulling then monks had, to the point where they could pull better then any monk with far less effort..

The whole puller role became somewhat of a joke when that happened, It became a timesink before you could fight the mobs rather then a challenging task that felt rewarding.

Rydeson

The puller is at home sitting next to the kiter wondering if they will ever find a job in this economy

Yilelien

Not only was pulling a important part, but so was the slowing & de buffing & the healing that came along with that. Many class's didnt do alot of damage in fights, but were making sure mobs stayed mezzed/rooted. It wasnt all about who could make the biggest numbers.

 

 The point was to work together as a group. Bad group = lots of death. Which could mean you lost a level. Because there actually was a penalty for sucking!

nariusseldon

Originally posted by trinix

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by trinix

The puller decided the difficulty, not the devs.  I tried pulling in WoW, but it didn't work, most mobs were linked together, so you either had to sap one and hope he wasn't magically thettered to a mob you pulled, or you got lucky and the sap'd mob would forget you. I still pulled a lot in vanilla, but with time it became less of an art and more of a pull more jokes.

What? You just defeat your own premise that "the puller decided the difficulty, not the devs". In fact, you just said that the devs make it impossible (by tethering or whatever) for you to separate the mobs, hence THEY, the devs, control the difficulty, not you.

 

Back in the days of EQ you could decide what you pulled and control your difficulty. Nowadays things are thettered and you can't always control it anymore. That's what I meant.

Ah ok .. now it is clear.

BTW, the devs probably don't want you to control the difficulty.

trinix

Maybe they don't want to, but nowadays it's so easy. If you want to kill things you need one tank for agro and 4 or 5 aoe classes, maybe someone who can do a heal here or there, but more aoe is better. So no, it's easier now.

Devs should players decide how they want to play.

nariusseldon

Originally posted by trinix

Maybe they don't want to, but nowadays it's so easy. If you want to kill things you need one tank for agro and 4 or 5 aoe classes, maybe someone who can do a heal here or there, but more aoe is better. So no, it's easier now.

Devs should players decide how they want to play.

Devs do give you options of difficulty. Is hard mode raid in WOW easy for you? I highly doubt that.

LFR may be easier, but hard mode certainly is not for 99% of the players.