lose the convenience cost, thats ridiculous. i dont mind the timer one bit, but lessen it to whatever the regular time is for npcing each elite. i can do dark runners in nearly one hit now( a few more ranks and i will be able to) so no extra time required.

tech collectors are 3 hits, about 2 seconds

assassins 5-6 hits 3-4 seconds

flamehawks are 7 hits about 4-5 seconds

xathe ... 30K/500 per hit, then the arti, then another 6-7 hits..

It still should cost something somewhere. If not a small bit more energy, then it needs to take longer.

On top of causing carpal tunnel/RSI it also encourages cheating. Namely autoclickers and bots. Making NPCing less of a drag would encourage more people to play legitimately.

I don't think Dan will change it, the increase of EXP per rank and the clicking is what keeps us from ranking out insainly.

Leaving the spelling intact, but making it just a little more accurate for ya Pony.

how about double the current damage cap on npc's (2.5 x rank to 5x rank) and double E to hit an npc to 10?, would half the amount of times you'd need to click with the same effect except slightly quicker ranking/npcing...

Make one, just one, good reason why this should not be implemented that can not be achieved in another method to compensate without making a snide remark.

I think people are overlooking a cost of killing NPC's.... Time. It takes a huge investment of time. After putting in countless hundreds of hours I'd be kinda annoyed if Dan said "Now everybody can do the same thing in a week that took you months of work."

Aside from that I do agree that it does take a physical toll. I have mild carpal tunnel and have had to give up on using a mouse or laptop touch pad. I binded the click to the keyboard and I am now able to NPC for much longer in relative comfort. Switching hands, changing posture, etc. all helps too.

Taking a break every now then may help too. If you are playing games so much that you injure yourself you may need rehab

I think you are overestimating the time reduction. An upgraded flamehawk that takes 2-3 shots to kill as opposed to the current 7 may take off 6-7 minutes for 2 hr run. I base this off the assumption that flamehawks spawn about 1 in 6 NPCs and that I can kill about 600 NPC/hr. It takes about 4-5 seconds to kill a flamehawk and about 2-3 for a RTC (dies in 2 hits).

So 600NPC/hr 1flamehawk/6NPC*2hr*2 seconds/flamehawk=400seconds or about 6-7 minutes

That's about 5% time reduction as oppose to your 75%.

Attack until destroyed button, 40 sec timer, game actually calulates and applies all attacks, energy, xp, and damage until either you or your npc oppenent are vanquished.

--myst

Dan, I love GL. I've been playing for more than 2 years and have bought my fair share of GP. I have nerve damage in my thumb which means that each click hurts just a little bit. A dozen clicks isn't such a big deal, but 40, 50, or if I have to NPC a thousand or two thousand really adds up. I've worn out two mice since I started playing this game.

I don't have Carpal Tunnel, but friends of mine (not ones who play this game) do and I know that they have similar problems. I suspect that many players of this game may have it though. I know some of these might be tricky, but they might help.

1. For single player NPC's, could you add a 1 click kill button, which just tells the system to keep attacking until the target dies?

2. For missions, could you add a 1 click complete button, which just keeps repeating the task button until you run out of energy, resources, level up or finish the mission?

3. For tougher NPCs (especially the new ones?), could we get a power attack button that say, costs 50 energy and does 10 attacks as one? That shouldn't be too hard, since you just set the button to click through ten times in a row, triggering whatever.

4. I'm not asking for anything to change on Elites, PVP, or bases. That would mess with game balance, but continuous clicking gets both tedious and tiring and slows down the game for everyone. Streamlining NPCing and Mission completion would help significantly and might keep high level people playing.

+1

This is something I'd like, something that have been repeatedly requested.
But it have yet to come into the game, and I believe the road block is auto-ranking.
As far as I know, Dan dislike auto ranking. And tbh, the ONLY thing stopping me from auto ranking 50 times a day on NPC is this clicking hell.
So it would be best if some kind of anti-auto-ranking way of this thing is introduced. Perhaps disable it if you have ranked more than 2 times during a given day. OR a delay on usage based on # of clicks used or whatever.

To prevent autoranking from going quicker, the "attack" button could just be a "loop" checkbox. So it still makes each attack one at a time, but automatically. It would have a "stop" button.

+1
from the above suggested, this could be really implemented:

3. For tougher NPCs (especially the new ones?), could we get a power attack button that say, costs 50 energy and does 10 attacks as one? That shouldn't be too hard, since you just set the button to click through ten times in a row, triggering whatever.

simply for weak NPCs requiring few clicks would stay 5e attack button, for the bigger ones (can be set per rank) we could have 10e/20e/50e/100e/200e attack button. the attack would be multiplied by same number as the cost in energy (100e attack would trigger attack 20x stronger - game would perform 20 attacks so this still could trigger the NPC abilities).

Question is the HW behind, on what server is GL running and what additional activity in short time it can take - as automatic attacks would be performed/calculated much faster than manual clicks. The number of attack clicks would decrease, but the need to target each NPC would remain.

I think, if there are any scripts used, this modification would make easier to identify the users as the number of performed attacks would peak over the average activity. (multiplication from automatic action by script and multi-attack button)

Then add a delay timer between each attack... done client side...

I agree with the topic

clicking gets old

Without adding anything particularly visual it wouldn't be terribly hard to put a loop on the button functions to make them repeat as long as the button is pressed. It doesn't need to be as dramatic as a "kill the npc button".

It would change the user interaction from "click click... click" to "click and hold".

Continuous Attack ... Let the server attack for you once every 1-2 seconds and send the results to the client. Server just keeps processing the same attack message until NPC is killed or you tell it to stop. For shared elites/bosses could also end when you've done enough damage to trigger the lock.

It would be a trade-off. Not quite as fast as spam-clicking attack yourself, but should simulate it close enough. While it will use some additional resources (timers, storing message), it will not hammer the server with attack messages any worse than manually clicking the attack button would. Should not down an NPC faster than doing it manually. Taking just a bit longer than manual means that using it would be a convenience, and you won't go through NPCs as fast (but still fast enough).

Unless the server checks the time between attacks, putting the timer client-side would open it up to someone modifying the client to spam the attack faster than intended (you know someone will have to try). And if the server is going to check anyway, then why not just keep the functionality server-side. Much, of course, would depend on how the server is designed/setup to do things (which only Dan and company should know anything about).

We're getting very technical.

Most games I play would simply tell me to scram if I asked for something like this. When you think about it, this game was never designed so you could kill ten thousand NPCs per day. Infinite amounts of energy were never meant to happen - Dan's said himself.

BUT, that's not what's happened. I do think a change is needed, whether it be a loop or a one click kill that has a 10 second cooldown or something.

I'd like to see a change, very much.