Posted by Darkheart on 10/24
I'm sure there's somebody keeping count of how many new players
join this mud, and some way of figuring out how many players leave.
And some 'feeling' of whether ppl are cutting playtime or not.
It is my assumption that the amount of playtime provided by new
players, or the number of new players joining do not outweigh the
amount of playtime cut by old players or the number of old players
leaving. Well, not many old players may be leaving, but i'll just
argue that their absence is felt more than a new player's presence.
I'm not arguing that we stop being friendly to newbies, but arguing
that there should be more effort put in that accomodates old players.
I for one would like a shopkeeper that will buy and sell anything
and everything that is rentable, and keeps his inventory over reboots
and crashes. Though he may pay only half the amount of what other
shopkeepers may pay, and sell them for a cost that's twice that of
others, having one like that would be far more convenient in case of
DTs, overrent crashes, eq-set switches, etc.
Or the long waited mob that tfs, repairs, preserves, mends, brews
without limit as long as you provide him with enough money. I know
some of these functions are provided already, but it's just for
convenience sake that there's one place you can find it all.
The ability to choose the exact stats you want when you create a new
char. I don't find it to disrupt game balance, and chances are that
having an exact stat set is actually more harmful to you in the long run,
but i wouldn't mind that.
Ability to transfer xp among chars of the same level. This way i could
just say "if you lose pk against me, i'll just transfer you 375k xp."
Since you couldn't transfer xp among chars of different levels, you couldn
powerlevel or anything.
A way to change your name to something else legal. Make it cost a
redemption point if you wish, but it would be nifty to become anonymous
and unknown for a while (who knows for how long) without having to
recreate a char.
Possibility of keeping a record of the DT's you've hit, and preventing
you from hitting the same one again. Have it cost a redeem or two, and
after a tour of the DTs in the game, you're dt-proof :p
Ability to cut skill lag on non-combat related spells, such as preserve,
tform.. and skills such as repair, mend, fish... They should probably come
in a package, and if cheap enough, i'd love to cut down lag on preserve :p
Dh
From: Dune
Saturday, October 21 2000, 09:30AM
I noticed that a lot of your suggestions have to do with
REDEEM points.... DH, I dont have time to aquire billions of xp
like you do... and you know what? most people dont. Just cause
you have aquired close to a billion xp over your 9 million characters,
doesnt mean that you deserve rewards from imms for it.. sorry!
I like your shopseller idea.. HOL was kind of like that, but not really.
As for mobs that preserve, tf etc.. its bad enough that we have
marauder! I cant blind in combat, you know why? cause I wanted
to learn preserve for hps eq so I went create instead of cause.
recite new players can go cause and still get the preserve.. dumb! Sup
with those 600+hps fighters that just use marauder for perserve.. you
want to make that worse? And we have a brewing mob.
Cutting lag on non-combat spells sounds good... choosing exact
stats gives huge advantages to players like you and me.. transing
xp sounds good in pkill but ridicules to the concept of legend..
A lot of your suggestions seem to be fixes to things that annoy you..
that could be fixed other ways... maybe we should just reduce the
damage caused to eq... reducing the need for TF. Isnt that the
real problem? And for transfering eq... why dont we have a duel
command where the players are actually only doing 50 percent damage
and an annoucement on info "so and so emerges victorous in his
duel against so and so". Transfering xp is the wrong way to go
about it, IMHO.
Yeah, I get annoyed by the same things you do, but you might as
well not bother posting the solutions you thought up. Imms will never
ever go for it....
Hm, up top I ment snipers not fighters... and transfering XP not EQ.
But Im typing super fast cause I have to go..
From: LadyAce
Saturday, October 21 2000, 07:29PM
I hafta echo Dune on most of the ideas....we can't have a shopkeeper
buy everything unless it's realistic for them to do so. There are
a few that buy a whole heck of a lot, but we have to balance the
different player types -- some people appreciate atmosphere, and
we have people who like all different styles of play.
There are balance problems with a mob that can replace all those
skills, I can't think of an amount of money that would be worth
that number of practices. That being said, more helping mobs is
a goal of the building dept, but they're being spread around the
mud.
I understand why you want to be able to set your stats precisely
when you choose a char -- you want to be able to get a particular
stat setup. Meanwhile the staff doesn't want you to reroll, doesn't
like rerolls at all. But the answer I think lies more in trying to
craft the equipment set and perhaps some of the quests so that
you could get that magic combo with the right amount of work.
Transferring xp between chars is too abusable, but offering to take
someone on an xp run after a pk fight might well be a lot of fun.
Protection from DTs is an interesting idea, although knowledge is
probably the best protection, I can see some builders considering
it for their DTs.
Adjusting skill lag is also an interesting proposal, but what I
would rather see is something Ea talked about a while ago --
a way of making it so that certain things obeyed skill lag and
others didn't. So maybe you could only first aid or operate
ever so often, but there's no reason why you couldn't talk while
doing it, etc.
Just some thoughts on how some of the same goals might be accomplished
in different ways. I find that players and imms often have a lot of
the same goals, but dramatically different ideas about how to accomplish
them :). Then again, we often have very different goals as well.
-LadyAce
From: Conspiracy
Saturday, October 21 2000, 09:06PM
hell, I have 60 spirit and have trouble getting the str
to carry all this crap around..
From: Bonk
Saturday, October 21 2000, 11:34PM
Realism of shopkeepers huh.. well, I don't care if they save
eq over reboots, what bugs me is that when they become full
of stock they don't buy anymore until the players buy some
of it back, well that's never gonna happen if the eq is crap
but worth something so the shopkeeper has to be killed.
They should decrease stock automatically and they should
also not have lunchbreaks, this isn't even realistic, no
shops close for lunch.. But then why I should realism even
be taken into consideration, we don't starve to death cos
it'd be annoying, why should shopkeepers close at all.
From: LadyAce
Sunday, October 22 2000, 12:30AM
I agree that they should probably decrease their stock over time,
but we have the restriction in there for a reason -- it's one
of the steps (and it's small, and not all that painful imho)
we're taking to try to make the mud have a more functional
economy. Housing is a part of that process as well. Shopkeeper
closure is something that builders decide, if a particular
keeper's hours bother you, be sure to speak with the person
in charge of maintaining the area.
-LadyAce
From: Carney
Sunday, October 22 2000, 01:00AM
No offense ladyace, but wheres your heart in these posts. Usually
your posts are interesting, but the last few have been cookie
cutter responses...how depressing :P
From: LadyAce
Sunday, October 22 2000, 01:33AM
Bah. You complain when we post, you complain when we don't. Where's
my heart? I don't see all that much in this post to get my heart
involved. I understand that the suggestions are meant well, but
I expect players who have been here for some time to understand
somewhat better where we are coming from when we evaluate whether
a change is a good idea or not. And whether you agree with our
principles of game design or not, it might make some sense to
take them into account when making suggestions.
Lemme tell ya tho, if I hafta sit around and ponder if what I have
to say will be considered fresh and interesting by everyone who
reads it, I won't bother writing on boards at all. That's not too
likely, sooooo....I'll spin my broken record collection anytime
I please :P
-LadyAce
From: Bonk
Sunday, October 22 2000, 02:45AM
Reinstate the old auction system to fix the economy.
From: Kaige
Monday, October 23 2000, 01:08PM
Reinstating teh old auction system as it was would not fix the economy.
It would surely spin it further out of control, which is why it was
removed in the first place, along with the myriad of ways to abuse it.
Once upon a time, I had been working on a complete and total rewrite of
it, but decided that a feature that once again reduced the time that
players were required to deal with each other in the same room was a
bad thing and abandoned the project with high hopes for something
more widespread and wouldn't disstract players from meeting up with
each other to exchange goods and money.
-Kaige
From: Discord
Monday, October 23 2000, 01:58PM
If you were able to hit a DT once and forever be safe from it, I'd
simply drop all my eq in a safe spot and hit every DT I could find
with no risk. Then I'd reclaim my belongings and brag that I'm
"DT-Proof."
There are people who resent Marauder's services; a mob that does the
same thing without going link-dead would be even worse. There are
mobs in the game that do everything you mentioned except preserve. A
one-stop shop isn't necessary and is hardly plausible. A mob that
true forms >and< repairs armor and weapons?
Ignoring skill lag for things like socials, channel talk, status and
configuration commands would be neat. Spells and skills should always
have some lag, in my opinion. I do agree that some spells/skills seem to
have too much lag.
Transferring xp would upset the levelling effort required to build a
character. For instance, if I'm levelling a cause mage and you're
levelling some sort of dex fighter, you're more likely to score xp
faster than I do. However, if we team up, you can transfer your xp to
me and help me keep up with you, making it easier for me to level. So
long as we hit our levels at about the same time (not hard to manage,
I'd imagine) you could help me level at a much faster rate through no
real effort of my own.
TANSTAAFL.
From: Mac
Monday, October 23 2000, 02:56PM
So you've decided against the convenience of an automatic
auction system on the basis of people not having to wait
around for the buyer or seller to show, exchange goods
and money, say thanks then leave. Bah, people rarely
bother to sell stuff these days and you never see eq
that newbies could afford. A lot of those that don't
normally help newbies would at least start throwing
up +2/3 eq for cheap if it were a good auction system
that could handle multiple items at once.
It really seems to me that a lot of decisions are made
based on petty reasons for or against without really
weighing up what's best overall.
From: Infidel
Tuesday, October 24 2000, 07:22AM
If you really wanna get players together, and for more
than just exchanging goods, give druids or some other
suitable char type a skill or even spell that increases
regen to all in the room.. I think it was dragonswords
that used camp fires for just that.
From: Darla
Tuesday, October 24 2000, 09:18AM
I like Infidel's idea. Maybe add on to it an ability to create a safe room
From: Christopher
Tuesday, October 24 2000, 10:59AM
oops
From: Kaige
Tuesday, October 24 2000, 11:14AM
Actually, we've had the idea of the campfires for increasing regen around
since we first started the idea of skill trees, It was part of the
outdoorsman set.
As far as Mac's idea that this was a petty and uncalculated decision, as
well as one that hurts newbies, I don't see any of that, even tho I'll
admit I'm a bit biased. =)
As far as it hurting newbies, I don't think it hurts them to not be
instantly given outrageous sums of gold or equipment from cool parts
of the mud that they may never see, because it was already handed to
them. I think the lost and found boxes in the hometown have provided
a nice place for people to leave stuff that they want to give away.
I know my latest newbie found all sorts of nice stuff in one of
those boxes the other day.
As far as petty and arbitrary.. I hardly consider the length of time that
we've been without the auction system arbitrary. I mean... it's not just
laziness on my part or any other coders for not having it done. The
benefits of having it and not, have been weighed many times over. Like
I said, I had once thought it worthwhile, but after seeing how it was
used, and the problems it caused at the time, the way it was designed
is _NOT_ worth the benefits of instant object transferrance through
time and space.
-Kaige
From: Mac
Tuesday, October 24 2000, 12:30PM
Shame you have a different opinion on such matters to most players.
Oh well, it's your MUD, I'd do things my way if it were my MUD too.
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