grouping problems

[*juggleblood*]

I do get where Tox is coming from... His suggestions usually revolve around the difficulties in maintaining a large group for an extended period of time, which is an important style of play (helps keep our numbers up).

Personally I always liked the smaller, high risk groups.

One problem tho is that people are already leveling faster than anyone had anticipated, and large xp groups are the biggest contributor to that. It's just a question of balance.

[*Splork*]

Ive fixed the ratio aspect awhile ago for small groups to 1 front 2 back and it helped greatly.

I followed that up two days ago changing all groups to a 1:2 ratio which has pretty much solved the group chaosing except if the leader is extremely ignorant and wont move people around. Although to be quite honest, we all know the chaosing was nothing more than added spam and annoyance but at least it has been taken care of.

I also lowered switching awhile back and have followed that up with another lowering two nights ago. I am not sure if this is ingame yet but it most certainly will be by the next crash or reboot.

The secondary protect is something KJ and I had planned from the beginning of this new combat system but figured we would hold off and see how this pans out difficulty wise. I could probably work on it this week and it could cover the secondary target for a round or two. But it will still be up to the leader to notice whats going on and attempt to fix it which I have not seen happen once yet.

Ive made about 15-20 different switches mobs can make and found it impossible basically to code something around scripts from tanks. I added an invisible switch, kick switch, and bash switch which atleast makes the tanks think and be at the keyboard when they occur or death happens. I am not going to change these. Im sorry.

Bashing sucks, rescue lag sucks, they are all mostly identical to S3. It isnt something new we have added.

Large groups and small groups can do extremely well in this new system, much better than in s3. We all know this and have seen it from the beginning. Medium sized groups with alot of newbies or low level players don't do as well but did they really do so well in s3? I think not.

Enjoy,
Splork

[Shyla]

I find when I am leading i try to gmove people and it won't let me ...i know there is a new command for this but since i am used to using gmove can you please put this in and allow it to work for moving people again so i don't have to tell them to man up or try and remember a new strange command to use... I like to be able to put my group in the order I like and gmove works best for this....
thanks
Deb

[Dragoth]

Hey Juggleblood, do you check your slothmud email ? I need your help with something.

[filariel]

[quote="*Splork*":1nv9itf0]
Bashing sucks, rescue lag sucks, they are all mostly identical to S3. It isnt something new we have added.
[/quote:1nv9itf0]

Also, is it intentional that you can be bashed when you're in the back row without the mob chaosing the group? It seems to go against the front/back row concept.

[*Splork*]

Ive spent an hour looking into this tonight Shyla.

It appears that gmove works if you want to move people around that are in the same rows. If they are not in the same row it works randomly(bugged).

This one is going to take awhile to fix, Im sorry.

For now, I would suggest using man <charname> rowname that u want him. The use gmove to move him around. I realize this is a huge pain in the ass and Im sorry but for now this would work:(

Splork

[Shyla]

thankyou I just wanted to make sure it was something you knew about...if this is going to take time to figure out and fix that is fine at least it is known about and being worked on i can be patient if i am forced to ...thanks for the quick reply to it

[Shyla]

one other question while you are responding to posts..when you say i can man flight rowname...is that just man flight up and man flight down or can you have multiple rows like row one row two row three etc?? so man flight rowone?

[Acedia]

[quote:pxy5uc4p]I do get where Tox is coming from... His suggestions usually revolve around the difficulties in maintaining a large group for an extended period of time, which is an important style of play ([b:pxy5uc4p]helps keep our numbers up[/b:pxy5uc4p]).

Personally I always liked the smaller, high risk groups. [/quote:pxy5uc4p]

Numbers aren't everything.

I'm with you though Juggs, the smaller, high risk groups are usually the best places to learn more about the intricacies of sloth. And they tend to be a lot more fun.

I'm concerned that if folks just run bh exp all the time, what will they do if there is no bh exp? Folks flock to bh exp since it's easy, but unless you teach them stuff outside it, that'll be the only time they show up. You don't really learn much just sitting there spamming blast spells and let the leader check your mana for you, raise you, and complain about bash for you. Heck, I haven't seen any bh groups blind anything in a while, save for a few old schoolish folks.

[quote:pxy5uc4p]Also, is it intentional that you can be bashed when you're in the back row without the mob chaosing the group? It seems to go against the front/back row concept.[/quote:pxy5uc4p]

Probably functions on the same concept that allows you to bash the mobs from the back row. Not like anyone advertised sloth to make sense or anything.

[quote:pxy5uc4p]The suggestion of a very limited protect skill sounded interesting tho.[/quote:pxy5uc4p]

Just curious, but does oath of protection still work? Or was it rendered defunct?

[Dragoth]

[quote="Acedia":3qn27arm][quote:3qn27arm] Heck, I haven't seen any bh groups blind anything in a while, save for a few old schoolish folks.
[/quote:3qn27arm][/quote:3qn27arm]

Thats only because it now takes about 20 rounds of trying to blind a high level mob, and when you do blind - it makes no friggin difference whatsoever.

Dont forget its not the same old sloth anymore, things changed.

[Thraxas]

"This is a group mud" <<< sort of really annoys me because I don't enjoy grouping, but that said it is kinda true at higher levels.

"This is a group mud" <<< yet there are only 2 players who lead groups and one of them is quite frankly hopeless at it and both only lead the same bh xp runs, except when you say this lots of players come out of the woodwork and cite examples of groups they led days / weeks / months ago.

"This is a group mud" <<< I'd love this to be true rather than just the optimistic desire of the admin, if it were true there should always be a choice of groups to join at all times.

I know there are niggling problems with getting tanks for groups etc. but lets face these could be overcome if players had incentive, but the biggest bar to this this being a true group mud is the lack of leaders. Rather than leaders being arm twisted into leading and getting flack for not doing it well enough we should have players competing for the chance to lead. Make the lead bonuses signigficant enough and it would happen.

[b:djzie0nl]Give group leaders say a bonus of 25% of the xp that every group member receives and players would queue up for their turn to lead and all players would be romanced into joining groups by the leaders[/b:djzie0nl]

Maybe this is over the top, but I would rather have 3 competing bugging me to join their groups when I logged in every time than only seeing a group run once a day normally just before 1am local time.

That all said even with such a bonus I probably still wouldn't lead anyway ...

T

[filariel]

[quote:2piol6uh]
[quote:2piol6uh]Also, is it intentional that you can be bashed when you're in the back row without the mob chaosing the group? It seems to go against the front/back row concept.[/quote:2piol6uh]

Probably functions on the same concept that allows you to bash the mobs from the back row. Not like anyone advertised sloth to make sense or anything.
[/quote:2piol6uh]

I'd argue player's -shouldn't- be able to bash/kick/circle/physical attack du jour from the back row either.

[Acedia]

Leaders already seem to get a heap of gold from leading large groups. Then there's the leader exp, which while not 25% of each, does tend to build up. And of course the first dibs on everything bit.

If these don't offer proper incentives to lead, I don't think adding more will help. Folks just need to try new things, die a little here and there, and learn other areas outside of the the same, safe bh exp stuff all the time.

//
Also, a thought occurred to me after Dragoth's post.

He mentioned that no one blinds because it's not worth it anymore to blind. I vaguely recall that blinding mobs stopped them from bashing, does this still hold true? I remember that one of the old indicators if blindness dropped on a mob was if they started bashing again, but I haven't really checked it out now.

If this is true, perhaps this is why bashing is so 'problematic' now: mobs aren't blind nor debuffed, so they bash folks to frustration.

[*Splork*]

[quote:3t029fry]I'd argue player's -shouldn't- be able to bash/kick/circle/physical attack du jour from the back row either.[/quote:3t029fry]

In my opinion, sometimes you have to overlook things like this and go with what you think is best for the game. I really don't want to remove an option from a player's arsenal and cause players to have to sit in the back row and do absolutely nothing when they run out of mana. It might be a different situation if we had something fun and viable to replace them but we currently do not.

Splork

[Dragoth]

Not only that, but it would make those lowbie warriors thieves and monks absolutely useless in big groups.