talk of exp and 8x40

[Mug]

hi last night splork asked if we would like to go back to a 4 class system
the people that spoke said no i agree but i would like to see people level faster
me excluded . that said heres my thoughts double exps and remove caps
or half all exp for levels (what happened to levels capping at 2.1 bil )
either of these would help people level quicker.
also remove aged from game it is a sweet bonus when u hit something aged but then sucks to rerun the area for hours after and mud to small for this.
i can clear most of lyme's grip/blast with 2 or 3 mages behind me so make runnings hard if 2 groups or more is up. i miss the days when i could just cycle one area and other groups could just do there one area i know it sounds boring but it works out . i like s4's eight class system and wouldnt wanna see it go away.
any thoughts nows the time to hear em!!!

[Sleeping Forest]

i for one love having all the classes. i would also like to see caps removed, and lvl cost lowered or mob xp raised. far to many have put far to much into there chars to go back to 4 classes.

[Toxis]

Some ideas I had:

1: Prime eq for 4x40 through 8x40 forges, (and av40 forges).
2: Areas designed specifically for each prime class.
3: Exp bonus progression for every level 40 you obtain. (2% per level 40?)

I’d gladly and rapidly create the first two ideas I had if I were allowed.

My Vote: No more wipes and stay with 8x40 system.

[blackmore]

I'd get rid of caps at 4x40, or 5x40 at most (or double them). The grind that starts at 4x40 is horrible. The grind before 4x40 is the same with s3, and it's bad, but you can see the light with avatar bonuses.
I'd create new top end eq for 5x40 and up. There's almost nothing with more than 2x40 restrictions, and it takes so long to level, there's not much to do but endlessly run xp for years and years.
I'd have ways of giving hints at where the eq is. Nobody bothers to cycle anything that's out of their way these days, especially not with groups.
Here's an idea, randomly double xp in one area a week. It would get people hitting areas that aren't usually hit. Much of the EQ would get found one way or another over time.

I'd brainstorm ways to make it easier to remember and/or use all of the skills you have. I love having all 8 classes, but quite frankly I forget about half of the spells and skills I've got, and I probably use more than most. I can't even remember names of the songs I've got and I'm a bard prime. I don't have any suggestions here, I just know most people find 1 thing that works and they stick with it, when it's possible they could be more efficient if they only knew how.

Finally, I'd give me enough money to be set for life, so I could quit my job and find ways to code on sloth.

[Yasik]

Don't give them anything, people alway whine and are unhappy with what they got and demand moar and making excuses etc. You sold your lives to Sloth, deal with it, now shut up and grind on

[Dragoth]

It's not about the grind, it's about keep playing interested by giving them incentives to level.

I've written this years ago and i stand by it. Make a true multiclass mud as suggested below, then add a few bonuses to abilities according to your class order every few levels.
Adopt a proper carrot-on-a-stick technique and the game will prosper.



As an example is Th/ma/cl/dr/x/x/x any different than a th/dr/ma/cl/x/x/x or th/cl/dr/ma/wa or th/ma/dr/cl/x/x/x?

Nope its not, if you imagine all those classes at 5x40 they have absolutely the same abilities and depending on druid's position in the class some have more mana regen and more hp but that's it. Anything that goes after your prime class is unimportant as long as it supplies you with a sensible amount of mana and regen. Yes you get some spells sooner than others

This can be applied to any class you choose, nothing matters except for your prime and the amount of mana and regen you get. So the trick to make a powerful char is to have a good prime with good prime skills like warrior and choose supporting classes that give most regen and most mana, cool trick isnt it ?

Simply by making all mage spells and cleric spells scale by 10-20% for each late position and scaling druid forms, you are already making a huge distinction from the current system and redefining the importance of class positions. Th/cl is now more of a healer than a blaster while Th/dr is a shapeshifter stabber. Shapeshifter stabber you ask ? Well why not, instead of blasting a mob after stab you shapeshift into a form that can kick that mob's ass real quick - this makes this thief class a more fat mob oriented class with an utterly different gameplay from th/cl or th/ma.

This can be applied to every class in game simply by scaling a few spells and skills to make every class order distinct and worth choosing instead of one another but not necessary making one class weaker than the other.

By scaling armor class cap -1 armor point depending on its position you can make a huge distinction between a th/wa and a th/ma/cl/wa - which instead of a thief who can cycle fattish mobs will now have to stick to thin and hard hitting mobs. Under the current system none of this matters, you can have war 8th and still have good AC.

By giving monk a big damage reduction bonus you can make this a multi-gamestyle mud. If AC will be scaled then warriors will rely on AC to reduce damage from incoming attacks while Monks will rely on huge damage reduction to mitigate that same damage. Currently under our system a WA/mo or a MO/wa are useless choices because those two classes do not compliment each other and the only bonus you get is a few more hp. With our current system you are much better off making a WA/dr/cl/ma so you can have all the mana in the world to heal yourself, be able to solo and still have decent HP with the same damage mitigation. Under our current system there are no differences to groups between real group tanks and tanks who have 100 hp less but have 400 more mana and 50 more regen who can solo pretty much everything.
The exact numbers need to be calculated but If monks were given a huge reduction that scales back 20% with every late position you are making a huge distinction between group tanks with both AC and damage reduction and solo warrior classes that chose mana instead of damage mitigation.

If AC is made less abundant by scaling and reducing its availability to non prime warriors and monk's damage mitigation is comparable to AC in its reductions then you can make people choose a playstyle that suits them just by choosing between monk and warrior. Some would like mobs to miss them and others like to mitigate that damage instead ( for example thief mobs rarely miss AC so it would be better to pair thief prime with monk and wear dam_reduction eq to get reduced damaged and mages would work better with warrior and AC eq as mage mobs usually miss AC alot ), others like to have both at the cost of reduced mana and regen and blasting and healing (remember that restores and firewinds scale back now too ). I think an 8 class mud can use double tanking standards. There is plenty of dam reduction EQ on the mud to make damage reduction work the same way as AC, the more dam_reduction EQ you get the more damage you mitigate ( same it is currently, but make it comparable to AC, if a monk has capped his damage reduction he has about the same tanking ability as a warrior with -12)

By combining all these scalings you can create a truly multi-class mud with a huge emphasis on your class positions that will affect absolutely everything you do - from how you behave in solo situations to how you behave in groups. This will make people want to try out different characters and this will create the much needed diversity while making every class important and unique.

[Harm]

Would some of these changes involve a full pwipe?

[*Splork*]

I want to increase experience for everybody, make leveling quicker, and ultimately scale damage of skills/spells per position of class order.

Thats what I would like to see:)

SPlork

[Insomniac]

I want to increase experience for everybody, make leveling quicker, and ultimately scale damage of skills/spells per position of class order.

Thats what I would like to see:)

SPlork

Sounds good!

I guess it all depends on how exactly scaling will take place. If you take existing maximum damage and scale it *up*, then it's great

[blackmore]

I want to increase experience for everybody, make leveling quicker, and ultimately scale damage of skills/spells per position of class order.

Thats what I would like to see:)

SPlork

That's only 3 things, I don't see the problem. You've got 3 coders, each of you code one and you're done. It shouldn't take more than a few days. Anything that can be described in so few words shouldn't take more than a few days to do.

[Thraxas]

Anything that can be described in so few words shouldn't take more than a few days to do.

roflmao ... not sure I ever heard anything quite so ridiculously untrue

Best of luck to you all, nice to stop by and see you're all still stuck in the grind, maybe I'll come join you again some day.

[Shyla]

please do I miss you thraxas
shyla

[blackmore]

Anything that can be described in so few words shouldn't take more than a few days to do.

roflmao ... not sure I ever heard anything quite so ridiculously untrue

Good, because sometimes people are silly enough to take me seriously.

[Stark]

Caution: Wall of text. Preemptive tl/dr: Slothmud requires too much time investment for anyone but the most hardcore of players (which most people don't have the time commitment for). Recommended dropping exp requirements dramatically.


Just one person's personal preference, but I thought I'd throw it out there. First, some background. I've played in short bursts over the course of the last 10 years. I think the game is great, but the amount of time commitment that this game demands to get anywhere is just INSANE. In fact, for most non-hardcore characters, it's downright intimidating. I think it took me about 6-7 years (with breaks counted in years between playing sessions counted in months) to finally get my healer Stark to 3x40 and running in some chop groups. Not long after that, of course, 8x40 was introduced and a playerwipe executed. Pretty depressing. But hey, I gave it a shot. Came to find out that it will take even LONGER for my character to now even THINK about getting near to max level.

Slothmud has been around a long time, and during its existence, at least as far as leveling is concerned, it's catered much more to the core group of people who have the time and desire to spend hours after hours after hours on this game every week of every year. They seem to be the only ones with a chance at getting to 8x40 (or even 5x40). This focus on being "hard" and requiring such a long time commitment is the opposite direction that most games in the genre (and the people playing them) have headed during sloth's existence. Back in the day, it was common for most RPG games to do their best to kill you and require long hours of tedious grinding. As the genre has progressed, they've moved away from that model because most people really don't think it's fun. World of Warcraft, for an example of the most popular online rpg out there now, takes about a week of gametime to level one character to max level. Yes, I just cited world of warcraft as an example. I'm not saying I want Sloth to be like WoW, but you can take some queues from them. Every time they add some levels to the max character level, they make the lower levels quicker to get through to even things out. I couldn't even begin to guess how many weeks of gametime it would take to get a slothmud character to max level, but I would guess that if you even halved the time it took to get there, it would still be far beyond how long it takes to level a WoW character. And even World of Warcraft has evolved itself in its 6 years from a more hardcore (even though it wasn't really that hardcore) to a much more relaxed playstyle.

I really want to experience as much of the sloth world as I can. I want to try this type of character and that one. This weird classo and that one. But whenever I've logged in and start playing, the insane amount of time commitment required of me crushes my soul and I log off. Maybe some of the time I've spent playing WoW has made me soft. But I've enjoyed being able to get the full experience of multiple classes across different characters in WoW. Is it such a bad thing to deny of the players of sloth? To allow people with less time on their hands to have high level characters, or even multiple high level characters?

If the speed of leveling was doubled in this game, I'd probably come back for an extended period of time. I know the culture of this game probably won't allow for that to actually happen, but it would take something drastic like that for me to come back and stay awhile.

[Stark]

Also, slightly off topic, but I thought I'd throw it in. Dying and losing extremely hard earned equipment has more than once caused me to quit the game for years at a time. I'd have a lot more fun exploring the world if I didn't risk literally losing my shirt. Yes, I know, I could get the server to help track down and kill the mobs that looted my corpse. But I always felt like a jerk when I had to get the whole server to band together to kill a huge mob that looted me. Or even if it was just one person who had to help me take on something smaller to claim my stuff back. Ugh. And I know I can talk to immorts to have equipment granted back in extreme circumstances, but nobody wants to have to do that either. It's extremely offputting. Half of this game is building equipment, and it's entirely too easy to lose that whole half of your character. It's a huge potential loss to any character. Long time veterans know best how to avoid getting killed and looted, and where to avoid it. But not so much for those of us who don't have the game memorized. Losing a level can't have nearly the same impact.

Sorry. I kind of got into rant mode. But I really don't think the potential for such loss makes the game any fun. Especially when it actually happens.