Open Discussion

[*Splork*]

In the course of the last few months, we have made dozens of changes, mostly regarding issues brought to us by you, the player.
1) experience overhaul ( bonus exp )
2) Necromancer changes
3) unsocketing runes
4) new, live auctioneer
5) new set of drachma eq
6) honor brought back in-game
7) newbie overhaul, including ptest and graveyard

The list goes on and on but I think we all get the point.

We would like some feedback, thoughts, reactions, changes you would like us to concentrate on next? Etc.

Enjoy,
Splork

[*Breeze*]

12 hours + 43 views + 0 replies.. SlothMUD must be perfect and I can retire now

[Dragoth]

May i suggest looking into prime class ability bonuses first.

Not sure about others, but i would really love to see my prime class abilities grow as i progress with the game to make my abilities more prime-class focused and to keep up a constant flow of upgrades.

And here is my reasoning.

At lower levels, due to the fact that everyone tends to choose secondary and tertiary classes that will provide them the most interesting bonuses, first 3 classes are a blast to level, the progression is very quick and painless because new and important skills are such a short distance away.
However, because of this tendency of players to stick less important classes further down their classo list, only to find themselves stuck with less than exciting classes to level further down the line, that provide them with only 1 or 2 interesting skills, in the span of hundreds of billions of exp.

Coupled with the fact that the most important ( give the most bonuses ) EQ upgrades also happen during the time that you get to 3x40 (4x40 at most), you would have reached your almost full potential by the time you are 4x40 and what are you left with afterwards ? All the boring classes to level that take huge amounts of time to gain and the EQ that will only benefit you in the slightest possible way that also takes huge amounts of time to get.

By giving your players a constant flow of upgrades to their primary class skills, you will ensure that even if they have nothing to gain from that 28th or 37th or whatever level in their fifth class, they will still have to strive for that level, because it will give him a bonus to their fire spells, or summoning spells, or it will reduce the mana required to cast a spell, or it will increase the duration of some important spell, it can be enforced in whichever way you wish.

You may also wish to explore a different direction of finetuning Slothmuds EQ to provide equal bonuses all across the board.

[Dragoth]

You may also wish to explore a different direction, a direction of finetuning Slothmuds EQ to provide equal bonuses that are spread across the 8x40 level range.

If your given max AC is -14, allowing 3x40 tanks to reach -11ac, or 78% of their potential during the first 120 out of 360 levels is utterly stupid, especially given that the rest of 240 levels will take them much longer to gain. This flaw is in every single capped equipment value and even uncapped values are following the same tendency, due to the fact that the high-end gear simply does not offer enough bonuses, so every class past 3x40 ends up scraping the bottom of the barrel for whatever bonuses they can find to make them better.

Fixing this, however, is very tedious, but i can think of at least one shortcut, the code for which already exists. In essence, for every capped bonus, like AC or Spelldam you could assign extra bonus, the closer someone is to this cap. For other values where cap is not available, you could assign a peak value, say HITroll of 20 is your peak value for thieves, so every additional value with HIT on it, will give the thief 2 HIT instead of 1, or any extra hitroll past the peak value will increase Thiefs chance to hit by a given %.

However, this is just a shortcut, that i thought of in 10 minutes, this is bound to be half-assed, as the bonuses from such codes are "hidden" players will be unaware of them for the most part and unless you can think of a way to make it obvious this idea is bound to fail, a more direct approach of spreading EQ bonuses is always more welcome.

If you have a total of 360 levels WHY do you insist on giving 80% or more of players potential EQ bonuses during the first 20% of a characters game progression ? This always baffled me.

[Dragoth]

If you have a total of 360 levels WHY do you insist on giving 80% or more of players potential EQ bonuses during the first 20% of a characters game progression ?

As a direct result of this "feature" and the player's tendencies to choose the first 3 classes with the most important skills, during the first 120 levels, your character can already make 80% of it's total possible experience gain and you are left with 20% of potential growth for the next 240 levels ( twice as many levels at hugely increased gain intervals ).

Coupled with the fact, that you are not seeing any new content as you go along ( no special areas open up to you, no new puzzles, no interesting new mechanics, no new high-level quests ), everything past 3x40 is a snoozefest, well, actually 4x40 is bearable yet, as avatar levels that open up at 4x40 do keep some people interested, as they provide a few interesting skills that give you a boost, but beyond that, I personally find no incentive to level at all, there is nothing i cant do now that i will be able to do at 5x50 or even 7x40 that would interest me, and I play a necromancer, it's one of the most interesting classes to level, because of it's pet progression.

Even thinking about it is making me sle... ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[blackmore]

+1 to everything Dragoth said. All good, valid points.

I don't like some of the newbie changes. It's like we're admitting that parts of the game suck, but we don't want newbies to know that they suck so we hide the sucky parts from them... like we want to get them hooked on the less sucky version of sloth.

There's so little incentive to solo, the game isn't worth playing unless you have time and desire to group. The xp is so much slower, and the xp at higher levels is so high, that you don't even feel like you're progressing. The other problem, tied to Dragoth's post - I'm still soloing some of the same areas I did at 1x40 or 2x40, and I see them being the same areas I'll solo at 7x40 or 8x40. That's a lot of killing the same mobs over and over. I can only cycle the same areas for so many years before it just isn't interesting anymore.

I think there's deeper problems right now than just people being bored of trying to level at high levels. There used to be a lot of players that would only show up when something special was going on, like quests - but I don't even see that these days. There was a quest mob announced on Thanksgiving and not enough people were on to even kill it.

[Strago]

As a life time valker, I have played sloth on and off for about 10 years never hitting a level 40 character. There are a few things I would like to see that might help me stick it out.

Prime level progression, something that you would gain every 5 total levels.

Better itemization, make gaining levels open up better items. At 1x20 I can gain access to all the items I will use until 8x20, and the upgrades until 3x40 appear to be minor if anything.

Quests to encourage game progression. You could even get away with 6 quest lines at total level 5, 10, 20, 40, 80 and 160 which encourage exploration and provide a useful item for your character to that level.

I somewhat agree with Blackmore about the design philosophy wanting to try an skip parts of the game. Holy weapons for instance, it doesn't make sense to me that you would provide an item for a level 1 character that pretty much invalidates getting any other items that might require work.

A concentration on making levels 1-40 important for character development and add meaningful progression, you really need to provide a mechanism which makes your character important in the first 40 levels.

Also I agree that having solo play be more important would be a boon for sloth. Group play can be the focus, but if there is no reason for someone to sign in and play without a group, you are cutting out a lot of potential players.

[Cizin]

Recent changes reminds me on pre-wipe days on s3 when everything was so easy to get w/ much so ever effort.
So what is sloth's Master Plan ? Take one newbie, dip him inside ptest matrix, teach him how to wield a chopper and wolla ! Master Avatar announces ....
One thing i have learned in all these years on my shoulders is that if you give people something for free you will spoil them and tought them to be lazy.
Don't get me wrong. I really appreciate all time put in developing this great game. I just think it went wrong way.

It is sad 90% of 6x40+ ppl never used charmed spell or visited DemonWeb all by themselves. What i am trying to say is that Sloth needs group of strong individuals, experienced players that group when it is necessary or is just for the fun. Only strong individuals can make strong groups.
I joined huge chop group last night with all that new exp bonus and stuff and I must say i felt like so alone that was probably last time me joining chop groups.
Whats is the point of those brainless boring groups ? To gain as much exps w/o a tiny bit f effort ? F*uck that - i wonna play that game me enjoyed so much there past few years. The game that challenge your experience and brains. The game sloth used to be.

To do so i suggested couple of changes that was always dismissed with 'to much work to do'.

1. I would turn OFF all game extras and make them trigger event.

Killing special mobs like one or more Epics would toggle on/off certain game extra mode for a number of hours. For example: If you kill all Epic God(dess) (Lucifer, Tyrex and Takhisis) small drachma shower occurs. If you kill Demon Mother - you get grp exp day etc. Killing Umbral-Bolt would get you a holy grenade for a hour or so etc etc.

2. Every x40 you gain +1 max_prime_stat. It is kinda sad that even tho i am Master Assassin I still have more-less same stats as a newbie thief. One would thought fighting so many battle would taught me something eh ?

3. Reduce bonus exp cap. 7m cap is just too much imho. One chop mob would give u 17m exps if you are big nuf. I remember it took me once 30 mins or so to get 17m exps.

4. Scale spell/skill/bonuses across classo so 6x40 triple caster would suffer certain penalty in triple attack and vice versa.

5. Make more and more prime eq for levels 4x40 5x40 etc. Eq that would make sense and not just a small upgrade. Why not making a burning helm of dwarfs that would give you (among other thing) immunity to fire. etc etc.

6. Make more 4x40 - 9x40 quests that would challenge your skills and give you some reward. Just remember how scary genie bottle aq is and how reluctant are ppl to undertake it.
Dragoth was so right . There is a HUGE hole between 4x40 and 9x40 that some cheap exps will never fill it up.

7. Redesign honor clasps and honor story line.
This game need this stuff although there is none serious Imm willing to undertake it. We need huge kick-ass monsters that would scare us to death and wipe their floor with our butts. We need them to connect all missing dots in sloth story , to connect us with all those new areas that noone really explore.
We need clasps to be our dream come true. We want to work our ass off and to enjoy looking at our shoulder proudly. Gaining +5 mana for 1mil honor and 6 month effort is just so lame considering that you need like 3 days to buy that mana or get it from some clasp etc.

8. Make all classes playable. Bards need their own followers, Mages and Clerics need 6x40 7x40 etc bonus spells ... pets that would increase their channeling powers .. so many ideas and yet ...

Oh well. Back to my dark corner. Good thing noone listens and noone cares so whatever.

[*Splork*]

The two major concerns seem to be eq progression and game content for higher level players. Ill address each one from my point of view:

The equipment concern has been a major issue since the beginning of SlothIII (1997). We addressed some of it during the restart of this version of SlothMUD but only a small part of it, mostly AC. I think most of you realize what an enormous project this would be to fix the issue correctly. Making this even more difficult is the fact most eq has been popped or forged, meaning doing this while the game is running would cause major conflict between players/immortals and the game in general. What we have done to counter this issue, while a slow process, is everything we add is mostly aimed at the higher level players. All new areas have at least one top of the line item which is usually 5x50, 6x40 etc flagged. Any other eq which we add which isn’t done so via an area addition is flagged the same. So eventually, the issue which Dragoth pointed out is less of an problem.

Fixing the eq issue correctly would mean reflagging hundreds on top of hundreds of items. The player would log in one day, and find over half of their eq in their inventory, unable to be worn. This would cause major online strife. While I think players would like to see eq progression, I really disagree with the fact players will be happy when they actually see themselves half naked with most of their eq not worn! Even doing this one body part at a time, which is the method we would have to use, would cause issues, I think anyways. Logging into a game you spent countless hours, weeks, months to pop an item and finding it not able to be worn, would not cause me to be happy… This project would literally take months, even with help from our players. A perfect example of this would be ars magic. It’s the top in-game item. It should be, at the very least, 8x40 with room for a new item above it. I really cant imagine the screams we would hear if the players with this item logged in and found they had to vault the item…


As far as game content for higher level characters, we add it as quickly as we can. We have seen more areas put in-game in the last year than the previous two combined. As our playerbase gets older, so do the immortals. This usually means we all have families now and other responsibilities, finding time to add stuff is very difficult. I was able to help out greatly these last few months because I was laid off from my job. I was just informed yesterday that I will be starting back this week which again, means my time to help out as has been cut drastically. The method which Ive been using these past few months was to recruit help from the players I feel are responsible enough to see both the players side and the administrations side of Sloth. This has helped us get quite a few tasks completed which we would otherwise not of had time to do, such as Necromancer changes and Drachma eq redo. We need help of the players.

One idea we have is a website application where a player can enter in information for a quest and then the Immortals will look it over, approve it, and add it in-game. This could be a great way to get more quests in-game. Either way, Immortals are not going to be able to solve this issue, or any issue, on our own, we need the help of you guys.


The are too many things being said in this thread to address each one. I do disagree with Cizin’s and the comments regarding a harder sloth with stronger individuals. If nothing was done regarding the exp situation which Clink and I caused by making the leveling charts too high, there would be a group of 10 of 10 players left in 2 more years, and this is completely unacceptable to me. As is pointed out in hundreds of threads posted on this game, this is a pretty difficult mud in terms of mud difficulty. I hardly think letting players feel a better sense of progression in a virtual environment is a bad idea. The leveling statistics clearly show that the power players are only leveling twice a month at higher levels, can you imagine what the dozens of people who are only able to play twice a week feel like? Its unacceptable for a game, and we have been told this since the beginning of this version of sloth by the majority of our players, and we agree. Either way, the power players weed themselves out and will get the highest levels, just like they always do. This was simply to assure that the majority of our playerbase can still level once in awhile.


My personal goal is this, some other immortals probably have different ideas but that’s for them to discuss:
1) Add more quests and content for higher level players
2) Skill and spell improvement based on levels
3) Somehow figure out the eq mess without pissing off majority of our players ( difficult )
4) Improve on honor system, more raids, more epics, more rewards( the major issue with this is its entirely written in MUDL, there are over 200 mobs with numerous of these procs involved. Doing anything with this is nearly impossible for anyone other than Akasha. While this is a fun feature for quite a few players, its entirely uneditable by the majority of our Immortals. I have hard coded an EPIC proc which we use for all large epics but the smaller ones have not been switched over. Either way, this is a project which is very unlikely to occur anytime soon…

Enjoy,
Splork

[*Breeze*]

Some of these are great ideas, but as Splork pointed out, there are only so many of us.
Some of these changes would probably even require a player wipe.

Web Based Quest Suggestions
So the idea was to make a form or maybe even something in game
that would allow you to suggest quests. I would think these should be full ideas not half thought out ones.
Along with the messages that the players would see when they win/fail the quest.

Honor..
For me to make a tiny change to anything honor related i have to stare at MUDL for Jake knows how long, reformatting it so that I can actually see what Akasha meant to do , code a whole new mudl function, recompile the mud, test test test new function to make sure it doesn't crash the game, commit the changes so that they can go into the live game as opposed to my coders port, and then edit the live game mudl attached to the mob/object and see how it works out. All this takes a lot of time. It took me 20 mins to track down one particular proc to fix a typo (procced to proceed or some such).

Auctioneer
The auctioneer in its current state took me ~28-30 hours to code and longer to test.
The latest comment I got on it was "why doesn't it do this-that-or-the-other-that-Chobbs-auctioneer-used-to-do"
Simple answer.. I am not Chobbs.
Most of the auctioneer functionality is the same. About the only difference is that you can't do 'lots blah' to search for something

Quests
On top of that, I get private tells from people complaining to me, and hear from others that they don't think its fair for me to
(for instance) load bronto - a group mob - and then go and join a group - comprised of 3/4 of the mud - that decides to kill it. That's why I don't load him anymore for anyone. I may be an immortal but I do like to play also, and if it takes me not running mini quests etc, to be able
to play the game I spend a ton of time working on, then so be it.

Coding
There are 2 main reasons why I don't put in a feature that is requested.
a) it will not get used by anyone after the first 2 weeks
b) i will get 20 private messages from people- some of whom haven't even been on in ages- on why this change is a bad idea
otherwise i will talk with the others about it and we decide as a group if it should go in.

a lot of my recent changes have been in direct response to the 'ideas'/'bugs' lists. thats the best way to get my attention.
a sure fire way to get me to ignore your idea is to
a) don't log in for months/years then try to put in your 2 cents
b) ambush me as soon as i log in, and complain
c) complain to my mortal while i am trying to relax and play
d) be condescending towards me

[jezer]

Real problem effecting my desire to play at the moment is high amount of xp till next level. When ever I log in, the level is too far away to get me back into the addicted stage before I get bored.

Here is an idea to make xp'ing a little bit more dynamic... Lucky Streaks/Combos... some sort of bonus that increases damage/critical hits while doing a run if you start landing a lot of hits. Message to Player "Your on a roll!" Player must keep fighting or the increases go back to zero. 30 seconds of not fighting will kill the lucky streak, or if you start missing lots during the lucky streak it will be cancelled. Maybe different stages of the lucky streak... Your on a roll, Your on fire!, Your Unstoppable! Just an idea... watching my lucky streak meter would become my focus instead of 300 kazillion to next level.

The justification is a bit like fitness, the more you do it the better you get... but spend a few weeks not doing anything and your back to zero again... as it is with all skills, you need to keep them sharp and while keeping them sharp you are better.

[*Splork*]

The current exp changes should help with anyone regarding similar feelings to the post above. The bonus experience is very nice.

Splork

[Shyla]

I am not sure posting by me is a great idea but here goes. I agree about one thing too many players don't know how to get to mobs on the mud or what common eq is etc. I would like to see something where players have to fully explore a common area before they are allowed to get past a certain level like maybe a quest where you have to fully explore oly and talk to hermes before they allow you to get past avatar 5 or something like that. I know that I am partly to blame b/c I run things for people and use convocation all over the place, but it would be nice if I wasn't told by a 6 40 character I don't know how to get to mind in poseidon. or how do I find torrid etc. I am not so worried about this at lower levels but good grief at avatar you should know how to do this. And if this was implemented i would somehow random the mob so someone doesn't just give them a run and say here is how you get to it...but rather make them run themselves and learn an area.
Shyla

[blackmore]

I remember an Avatar on S3 say they didn't know the run to Oly, from Lyme recall.

I was actually thinking about something similar Shyla. I've been playing Contract Killer on my cell, and there are "daily challenges" for bonus xp. There's so many things that could be used as a daily challenge - fully explore any area, increase exploration by 1%, kill a certain # of mobs, gain a certain amount of gold, etc. The nice thing about stuff like that is it gives you some excuse to play each day, even if only for a litttle bit.

[*Splork*]

I actually spoke to Breeze about this about a month ago. The basic idea is that of Blackmores but will happen every few hours over the quest channel. Areas, mobs, quests will be chosen, level ranges given, and a race will begin type of thing.

But this is exactly what I would like to see happen, or something very similar...

Splork