Mythos Questions Answered

Posted by Stropp on February 18, 2008

A reader named Jakob has been following my Mythos reviews, and posted a comment with a few questions about the game.

Does the game scale to party size, particularly in instances?

I haven’t grouped up with anyone yet, so I can’t say for certain that instances scale. However, the instances I’ve run have a lot of mobs. The bosses, especially as I’ve increased in level, are reasonably tough and have taken a bit of kiting to bring down. One of them, a bear, must have taken at least ten or fifteen minutes. Coupled with long boss fights, the instances usually taking me forty-five minutes to an hour to clear. A group will be able to clean up an instance far faster than a single player.

For a bigger challenge there are elite maps that have a recommended party size of five. Normal instances recommend just one player. These should be much more challenging for a group.

What is the LFG Mechanism like?

There is a Party Finder dialog that is accessible by a button on the Chat interface. It seems to be pretty much standard fare for this sort of feature. The LFG dialog has a list of players looking for groups, and allows players to list themselves, or find a party.

There is also a LFG chat channel available, which I’ve seen a number of party requests on.

What is the ratio of persistent to instanced areas?

For each main town, for instance Stonehill, there are a number of persistent areas, farms, temples that are essentially mini-versions of the towns. There are a couple of vendors, several quest givers, and some other NPCs hanging about.

Other than that, all other areas are instanced. Apart from the clearings around cave or dungeon entrances these areas have lots of mobs just waiting to be killed.

Does the game offer the option of AI assistance, like henchmen in Guild Wars?

I haven’t seen any henchmen for hire yet, but to be fair I haven’t really been looking for them. As Jakob mentioned in another comment, there is mention of Hirelings being added in a recent patch.

If the intent of the game is to be free, what will the purchased content be?

I asked this question when I recently interviewed Max Schaefer. The idea is to sell luxuries to paying players. These won’t necessarily effect gameplay - though they may enhance adventuring, not sure what that means. The RMT model also won’t result in players not being able to enjoy the full game because they haven’t paid, unlike other games such as Dungeon Runners.

There could be some similarities to the subscription model used by Hellgate: London - they are both produced by Flagship Studios - which provides for additional storage space and some other features that also don’t affect gameplay. Though I’d have to say having lots of storage is almost essential to enjoy these sorts of games. Especially for an old hoarder like me.

Don’t forget, if you have any questions that you would like answered, about Mythos or MMO games in general, please ask. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll try to find out.

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