The tweakening!

[*Chobbs*]

Mornin' folks,

Just a heads up, several severely dated mobs might get a tweaking/fixing. I think several were beefed up for quests and never reduced, while others are just embarassingly weak.

Same goes with some aqs, namely exploits and some unrealistic drachma reward values for easy/hard quests. This means some will have reduced values, while others will be boosted.

We'll add more quests/fix some of the broken aqs as well, however we are not omniscient (I know I'm not!), so if you would be so kind to point out which ones need a fixing, please let me know. Same goes with mobs.

On a side note, stone skin aq should be working again. I hope. Going to try adding a few other hard to find skill/spell quests.

This is just a friendly heads up. Changes a-comin'!

Chobbs!

[*juggleblood*]

Awesome.

[reboog]

It is important that you "lend" me 787 billion drachma, or your economy will collapse.

[*Chobbs*]

Mornin' folks,

Some mobs that have been changed:

Boosts:
+ Fallon, Chaeston AH
+ Vellow, Chaeston AH
+ Huge Dragon, Underdark, SS

Reductions:
- Fire Guardian, Fire Planes AH
(platemail of the planes should now be reasonably forgeable again)
- Vampire followers, City of the Undead, SS
(these might have been left crazy from a quest in vampire lair years ago)

A full list will probably not be disclosed.
A list of 'by how much/how' will most definitely not.

Most increases were because the mobs pop top of the line eq/pretty darn good stuff, but were relatively easy to bring down. Pop values [i:17oa6kge]may[/i:17oa6kge] be reevaluated to compensate for increased difficulty. No promises.

Some autoquest reward values will be changed soonish: some easy ones will be decreased, while other hard ones increased. No changes have been made as of this posting, so I recommend doing some mad questing now before the changes take effect. More quests have also been half-written.

This is another heads up.

As regards to areas, I'm hoping to tweak places like:
- Castle of Perseverance
- Ogre Caverns
- Forest of Aaost (probably will ignore cincture mobs)
- Some AH places
- suggest some more!

Bear in mind this is in no way binding.

If there are any other candidates for reworking, please let me know or e-mail me at chobbs@slothmud.org.

Chobbs!

[Toxis]

I thought Vellow and Fallon were just right. It's not our fault someone decided to put crappy subdue AQ on fallon, and now we need more people who won't turn off autokill? Besides, who was the moron who decided huge mobs should be subdued for AQ's? *SLAP*SLAP*

Not every mob in the game needs to be huge. I thought huge green dragon in underdark was a nice size too. Don't design the game for just avatars. Think about the little guys.

[Vixn]

If I can kill mob without a group I wouldn't call it 'huge'.
I subdued Djab, Fallon and Malign alone on s3 and I'm almost sure it's still possible (probably in some tricky way). But I'm not going to even try. Because our imms try to make this mud group oriented and we guys shouldn't complain about it. There are a lot of brilliant leaders like Toxis, Sa, Shyla, Zuzu and others. Join thier groups or lead your own and let lonesome individuals cry.

Kida

[*Chobbs*]

[quote:368r76b5]I thought Vellow and Fallon were just right. It's not our fault someone decided to put crappy subdue AQ on fallon, and now we need more people who won't turn off autokill? Besides, who was the moron who decided huge mobs should be subdued for AQ's? *SLAP*SLAP*

Not every mob in the game needs to be huge. I thought huge green dragon in underdark was a nice size too. Don't design the game for just avatars. Think about the little guys.[/quote:368r76b5]

The subdue AQ was only one of several reasons cited as to why Fallon in particular was changed. We are not assigning fault to anyone, nor trying to penalize anyone, so I'm not sure where this 'It's not our fault' stance is coming from.

True, not every mob in the game needs to be huge, but Fallon is hardly every mob. Last I checked, Fallon, Vellow, and Huge Dragon are but three mobs in a world populated by thousands of npcs.

'Huge' is a matter of perspective. If I log in as a lv20 newbie, BH exp mobs are all preposterously 'huge'. The three aforementioned mobs were considerably weaker, albeit a bit thicker, than most BH exp mobs, unless you are implying that you think BH exp mobs are too 'huge' as well. I do not, so they will not be touched by me. The mobs are now closer to large BH exp level, so are still quite killable. Please at least give them a hearty attempt before decrying them so quickly.

We aren't designing the game just for avatars, but we cannot neglect them either. We [b:368r76b5]are[/b:368r76b5] thinking about the little guys. We're also thinking about the middle guys, the big guys, and everyone else.

Chobbs!

[*Chobbs*]

Mornin' folks,

Random stuff!
- Been a few weeks, hopefully folks have gotten a bit more questing done in that time. Quest reward values will slowly be phased into more reasonable values in the coming days.
Yes, that means some will be lowered, but others will be increased. If you have any additional candidates for either direction, do let me know and it'll be considered. We reserve the right to say no.

- Three new quests have also been added ingame. One is on VK, search the fens, another SS citadel, and the last SS ettins. If there are any problems with those, please let me know since there's a lot of custom coding running amok. A few more quests almost done, but Chobbs got sidetracked. Again.

- Darksteel quest is in the process of being revamped/fixed. So half of it is currently turned off. Will most likely be made slightly tougher, but the reward will increase accordingly.

- One area has been reworked slightly and is partially linked to one of the above quests. If anything gives 0 exp, let me know. That Chobblehead probably forgot to save properly.

- Random group quest in the works. Hopefully done soon, so expect lots of Chobbs related deaths in the coming week or so.

- A minor note, honor loss will be restored to Marsup. He seems to be a part of the honor system, so why this was even removed in the first place is beyond me. This is a heads up/fair warning, no changes yet as of this posting.

Chobbs!

[Ezekiel]

Heya, I don't mind some of the tweaks...but I would request that you not restore negative honor to marsup. It has been changed for the better to give ppl a chance to pop the -1.1 shield during xp/eq runs on bh. If you re going to restore the negative honor, groups won't touch it and the mob will go unrun. I have noticed that ppl are becoming increasingly interested in keeping their honor, so I'm pretty damn sure leaders will avoid hitting it altogether...so while you might say "It's a choice and it makes the value of the shield worth more." ...in reality, no one will hit the mob (just as groups always skipped it in s3) and the only ppl that will have the shield are those who popped it when things hadn't yet been tweaked. It would be a self-defeating change really.

[*Chobbs*]

Mornin' sir,

My way of thinking is this:

Honor is a choice. Choices have consequences. If you only have gain, then it all becomes a pointless grind. That is why death penalties remain: they are consequences of your choices, be they unintended or just bad luck.

Folks never hit negative honor mobs since no one wants to lose anything. It is not the numerical value of the loss, but just the act of losing something. So to give folks an incentive to make this interesting choice, some pieces of desirable eq was placed on negative honor mobs. Now folks have a reason to hit these mobs, but they also must decide if the consequences are acceptable for their choice.

Perhaps "restored" was a poor choice of words. The mobs will have negative honor, but at a much more reasonable rate that will be lower than the original. I'll probably add something so that you'll only lose honor if you're above a certain rank, else nothing happens. After all, it is called honor. There's no honor in cycling one of your commanders because you want his shield, or your king if just for his ring.

Chobbs!

[Ezekiel]

Don't get me wrong, I understand where that might look good on paper...I'm looking at the practice. The groups that hit such areas will not hit any mob that is negative honor... period. Even if a couple people did want to hit it, most of the group won't, which means it will be skipped all the time. It being skipped means it is one less piece of eq for mid levs to call and one more mob that is added to the slew of mobs that so characterized s3..mobs (and sometimes areas) that were tweaked to to the point that they were never run.

[Toxis]

Gee, that first post by Ezekiel is the exact same arguement me and Chobbs had earlier this morning.

In the words of the great Sam Kenison:
"'mumba, me mu ma jumba?', Yes, this is sand! Nothing grows here, nothing's gonna grow here! Do you know what it's going to be 1000 years from now? IT'S GONNA BE SAAAAAND! Here ,eat some of it, a**h0le. Pack your bags, grab your shit, we'll take you to where the fooood isss!"

[blackmore]

In order for one player to pop the shield, all members of the group must be willing to lose honor - and why would I agree to lose honor? Unless I'm calling the shield, why would I care if we pop it? It doesn't provide me any benefit, but it does cause me loss. The argument that it's a choice makes sense for a solo mob, but not a group mob that requires the entire group to be willing to make a sacrifice for one player to possibly obtain a shield that isn't all that special.

[13]

if it's a dope-ass item then it might be worth it..but then again i never really went too far on the honor clasp thing.

[*Chobbs*]

Morning sirs,

@Ezekiel:
Looking at the practice, I see that this has happened before with King DeGrance and the diamond rings. The same exp groups would split, with those honor fellows resting prior to splatting the king, while the nonhonor fellows quickly dispatched him. So practice, I saw that it did work. Was it slightly annoying? Probably. So things require a bit more attention and decisiveness in one of the easiest exp zones in the game. Oh no.

@Toxis:
Are you talking about this "arguement":
Chobbs[engrish]> 'just a heads up, when i get around to it, the honor loss will probably be returned to marsup'
Chobbs[engrish]> 'he's tied to the honor system, i'm not sure why it was removed'
Toxis[engrish]> 'really?'
Chobbs[engrish]> 'it looks like he was meant to give you acess to some vault?'
Chobbs[engrish]> '*access even'
Toxis[engrish]> 'ah, I think I know what you mean'
Chobbs[engrish]> 'but there's a lot of honor related stuff'
Toxis[engrish]> 'never done it though'
Chobbs[engrish]> 'i don't know why it was removed'
Chobbs[engrish]> 'but just giving you fair warning'
Toxis[engrish]> 'nods'
Toxis[engrish]> 'well I got my 2 shields, I'mhappy'
Chobbs[engrish]> 'too busy now to return it, but it will'
Toxis[engrish]> 'kinda funny, we were 8 deep in calling marsup '

Or the part where you stated things similar to what ezekiel said and I simply agreed that they were points.

@Blackmore:
So a standard BH exp group might not run it. A smaller, more dedicated group could quite easily, probably even right now. My proposed change would greatly reduce the honor lost, but nothing that can't be easily recouped several times over just by hitting say, uhhhl once. Heck, even one clear of sidhes would probably be enough to fix two or three runs of marsup. I'm just concerned with having near top end eq within such ready access of a ridiculously easy exp area without any real danger of running him.

@13:
Yup.

Chobbs!