Lyme Shrinking

[marge]

I've noticed that as the mud gets more top heavy (lots of avatars) and as stab-blast xp has become more popular, Lyme seems smaller and smaller. The cloud giants / irapuete run is so popular that there is occasional conflict between stab groups. Chung Ko and castle todesengel (sp?) occasionally have the same prob.

The number of avatars is only going to increase and lyme stab-blast has completely overshadowed off lyme xp for anyone tri-forty and up.

So I would just ask that everyone be diplomatic when these conflicts arise. Be kind to newbie leaders and lay off cg/irap if you see newer players in there. There's no hard and fast rule about who gets to call what mobs or what areas. We just have to try to be fair.

If you already know the cg/irap run by heart, learn something new. There's also plenty of xp in ebony grove, ebony tower, den of thieves, poseidon's realm, the pyramid expansion, and now mount mystica. Mnm has a lot of potential for xp. If you have questions about which mobs to run, post em. I'm sure peeps will help you out.

I kinda wish alignment weren't such a serious game mechanic. There's plenty of good aligned xp mobs (Pagoda mobs for instance) that no one wants to bother with, because being good aligned is so essential for a successful xp run.

peace out

[Teron]

IMHO, this matter kinda of settles, when players run areas, where they can get the most exp.

Newbies (skillwise, not levelwise) stick to the easiest (prongs, Tony, Ira), while others seek more exp in more dangerous areas, such as higher levels of ET, Pyramid, etc. It also depends on the group size and classo, but not by a big margin.

Perhaps, if you want others (esp newbies) to stick to areas you are not hitting, maybe you should let them know of the possibilities

As such, I think a list of stab/grip blast areas might be helpful, with comments regarding difficulties and a suitable group size/classos.

To those thinking "Bah, learn the game!", I should say that you have to be patient and while doing that, tolerate the everpresent stabbers in your areas.

[Toxis]

It was bad enough without mystica, and now it's still not big enough. Facts are we just need more areas on Lyme to deal with the tri40's and powerful avatars. So get those imm apps in.

-Tox

[Teron]

I think players need to get more explorative, really.

There are many good places to visit, the problem is, if you are a Lyme newbie, you can't just wander around: you need lots of skills and experience to do that.

So maybe it'd help if experienced players showed areas to newbies (like some stabbers (Shiv, Vaire, Auto and others) showed me less run stab areas. It does help, to an extent.

Another way to keep newbies welcome, I guess

And yes, more Lyme areas wouldn't hurt, at least it'll get ppl active for a few months

[jezer]

I think Lyme needs more mystica type areas, that area addressed nearly all things players want...

Coin mobs (32k coin on those spiders)
All mobs are good xp
All mobs are varying degrees of difficulty
Mobs can be stabbed and gripped
Group Mobs
Eq forge
Prime eq for new classos
It's Challenging
Questing

How can we be surprised by the 'shrinking' problem though? I mean it really is a product of the immortals making. Chop died, shortage of good tanks for a while. Game kept on crashing and the specs disappear. No tank and leadership xp on lyme... 5m cap... talk about shooting yourself in the foot... Why kill anything bigger when you have to put up with group politics and then get capped for it.

Why don't you lift lyme cap a little, put in leader/tank xp, and make the macu's 10k at the shop. Another 4-5 areas become viable for players again... old classo tanks want to chop, new leaders want to lead, chop areas get run...

I'm not looking forward to new stabbers learning to run crypt... more cr's at the looting crypt guardians...

[Dragoth]

Agreed with Jezer.
And then they complain that everyone is doing stab/blast exp and nerf thieves or stab/blast areas, talk about false logic.

Why make new areas when old areas are not being run enough ? And only a few of them are in demand due to idiocracy.

[marge]

eh, I dunno, maybe

I don't see where leader/tank xp has really encouraged new leaders. It kinda seems that you enjoy leading or you don't. The biggest discouragement to leading is botting or rude players, not the game mechanics.

I dunno that crashes discourage chop. If you have a chop group going, the choppers are in inventory and dont poof. There's not really a shortage of choppers laying around, even when the mud is only up for a day or so and it doesn't take too long to pop a bunch more.

Raising lyme cap wouldn't necessarily encourage a diff playing style either and it would add to game inflation.

In response to Dragoth, I don't think anyone is complaining about stab blast or threatening to nerf thieves.

It would be nice to increase the number of zones that get run on a regular basis for xp, but I don't see an easy way to make that happen.

2 cents

[jezer]

I group rarely... but recently lead a couple of mystica groups. I found the experience "mentally exhausting." I felt intensely responsible for the group and found myself absorbed in trying to do what was best for it. I couldn't afk and stuff, grab drinks, answer phone... although I'd lead again... I'm in no hurry with those kinds of pressures, especially if I only get what all the others are getting for following.

The last chop group I was in was after a crash. We spent an hour gathering 5 specs only to have our leader relocate and "poof" them. Needless to say the group disbanded.

The last chop group I was in before that was when I first played jezer, the days of Krok, Guinex and Van.... that was around 2 years ago.

Could be my timezone, but I don't recall seeing a group labelled chop since I started my druid a year ago.

Why is chop dead? aren't there some alarm bells ringing? I'd join a chop group in a flash if we would run lyme sewers and carbo/robe cp's. Everyone seems to want stab xp, where are the tanks that want to chop? Is it just my time zone or what? If you want to tank in Rub I'll lead chop on a weekend, keeping in mind, that would be my third decent chop group ever... and I'd definately need a back seat leader/advice.

[Toxis]

I've always thought chop groups were borring, but some like them. I dunno.

Thanks for all the good comments on mystica, I do think it rounds out Lyme a little. I believe that more areas need to be designed to low tri40 solo and two man that aren't thieves, warriors, or mages. If only we didn't have to make those silly descriptions, I could make 100 areas in a year. ~

By the way, I don't think anything needs nerfed. I do believe that some classes need to be evened out, monks prob the most. More things need to be able to be bought at lyme mayor.

Sloth's come a long way from start of Sloth 3. Pretty cool game, I might add. A lot of work has gone into this mud, I'm pretty proud to be a builder here. We still have a long way to go, and better changes are to come I'm sure.

-Tox

[Teron]

I don't see a shortage on tanks, really.

The problems with chop are:
- it takes a while (1-2hrs) to gather a group and get specs. People don't join, if there are no specs, because of the delay.
- it takes a while to get macus, other specs just plain suck. And yes, it even takes time to get those, too.
- with the cap, it doesn't make sense to spend several minutes to get 5mil, when you can get that in 15 seconds with blast/xp
- add to that a larger group, where a potential for botting/screwing up rises and you get a picture of chop
- there aren't many players on for a long period of time to make chopping fast and easy (nonshop, killing mobs in 10 rounds).

I have to second the idea that instead of adding more areas, they need to fix current areas. Make them appealing for exp, eq, gold or whatever.

Remember town chop? The easiest way to start chop groups? What happened to it? The mobs were made worthless. (Though, the idea was that ppl would start chopping elsewhere. And they do, except we have one chop area less and every chop area is away from spec poppers.)

[Vixn]

I hope imms will make revision of old areas any time soon. We have great amount of areas but most of them were made an age ago and its need to be balanced with newish areas. Just think of such areas like Maw, Sahaguins, SS Beach, Sky elves, Barovia, Kendermore (and these are only SS areas). There is neither exp, nor good EQ and people come there just to make autoquests or pop spellbooks.
Probably those areas shouldn't have such exp as shadowkeep or dweb but there should be something else that'll make it interesting for people (coins, EQ, more quests etc). You can just re-zone few cps or EQ to force ppl run in different areas.

We have same trouble with spells/skills. A lot of them were designed for old Sloth and aren't usable atm. We got masterful casting but now we only have 1-2 spells that has different effects on usual/masterful casting. We have charm person that was screwed to prevent ppl from tricking (though we have pets). We have control weather spell but have you ever used it except for autoquest? Have you ever use enchant weapon, telepathy, energy drain, sleep, chronos incantation, sandstorm? Probably it's just a matter of my personal lack of sloth experience but hell I don't even use mindbar, scrybite, even reflection.

[surfnazi]

i agree with marge, a little civility makes the game go smoother. a bigger issue is people who join up without asking then bot the run...lately i lock groups cause i get tired of leading exp for friends with bots, or groups that are doing stab blast - understand i dont need 3 stabbers in a group if you cant at least blast or heal...its nothing personal just keeping group small and effecient, if this rubs you the wrong way then dont follow up, its that simple

[marge]

i don't know if this is a heretical suggestion or not, but perhaps the way to get chop going again would be to inflate the power of the chop weapons. The game is already inflated in so many other ways: lots of avatars, new powerful skills and class combinations, excrutiating blow, increased caps, etc. Besides, how many limbs can a typical mob realistically have? There's prolly very little risk of over-inflating them, given how unpopular chop is at the moment. Also the xp cap ensures they can't be exploited for rapid xp. The chance of swinging wildly and killing your team mate adds a good element of risk also. If there was concern of some chop eq becoming too easy to obtain, there is always the option of buffing up the eq mob in question. I was surprised to learn that Risk and Volnaib, 2 quint 40 bard avatars don't even have sanc for body, one of the most useful songs in game, simply because it loads on a chop mob that requires a large group and its too hard to form such a group under current game mechanics.

[Toxis]

Thing is chop xp isn't bad and you get good gold out of it too. The problem is you sit there and heal and fall asleep waiting for "auto chops" to occur.

Mobs die in a minute or two, which is boring. I've tried to think how to make chop more fun and it's very hard to add something to that without destroying the balance of chop with normal game play. The only thing I could think of to make it better would be to slightly increase the chop rate. If anyone else has any suggestions, pls say.

-Tox

[Teron]

IMHO, increasing the chop rate (to x1.5-2 of a macu) should make chop faster and more risky, thus requiring more attention. While not extremely entertaining, at least it won't be boring.

Another way is to increase the cap to 15mil (or so).

Possibly, one of the above should be sufficient, but if it doesn't work, both of them should surely ignite the people to chop

P.S. We do need more people online. Maybe we should let newcomers give a taste of Lyme for 2 weeks by giving them access to a char with basic non-transferrable gear for their classo, so they'd:
- see what waits them on Lyme and have fun instead of hunting kittens
- see what they can and can not do in their classo (though for a newbie, nothing is killable on Lyme)

Or, better yet, ask imms to chop themselves and compare it to other ways of making exp (stab blast xp, solo, Desert *chuckle*, etc). If they see how much it sucks, they'll probably agree to increase chop rate.

P.P.S. Choirmaster is a 4man chop mob, unless it was changed since I popped the sb for Teron. Poseidons was a good starting chop area back in the days.

Risk/Volnaib can pop macus or collect them before forming a group. At noon EST there are plenty ppl to chop, so it shouldn't be hard. If anything, I'll come help, if I'm on.