General post to all

[*juggleblood*]

And I hope you know that regardless of whatever argument or debate we have on the crier. I'm still happy to respond via telegram for ingame raises and CR on mortal side. I don't agree that I have to kiss your ass on this forum because of my title, and so I won't. On mortal side, I'm still happy to help with wutever. Cheers.

[Riurik]

"This is absolutely, 100% false. I tracked our average number of players for two years before we wiped. The last year of Sloth 3, we averaged 11 players and that number was consistently dropping every year. There was nothing to lose which is why we changed things up. Currently, our numbers are pretty solid, especially for a mud."

Fair enough, thanks for the info Splork.

[Riurik]

Oh I know that Juggle, you have been incredibly helpful online.

[Hung]

I think one of the main differences between nowadays sloth and old one is non-changing game mechanics. In the old days game mechanics were changing quite often. New skills were introduced. Old skills were buffed or nerfed. New pets. Attunement. Devaks. New classes. Etc.
Now the game mechanics dont change. Latest changes in that area were introduction of gems and its poprate nerf. Also nerf of second wind. But I cant even remember how many years ago that happened.
Changes that are happening nowadays are related to the convenience of playing(eqset, target, etc). Of course, those changes are great too and we(players) are very grateful.
However personally I would like to see changes in the game mechanics.
Not sure if it is related to the player base size.

[*Splork*]

Not sure if it is related to the player base size.

I don't think that's the reason. I tend to lean towards the fact that we have added just about all the spells and skills we can think of(we tend to stay away from adding similar ones) and the fact that for past couple of years, Teker has been the only active programmer. It also comes down to time. There was a time where I could log into every mud in the top 100 or look at their webpage and try to find interesting features that we don't have. That is no longer the case...

Teker is somebody who we took a chance on but did not have much experience actually playing Sloth. He has concentrated on additions which will not affect game balance and quite honestly, we couldn't be happier. Previously, most of the additions were made by coders who played and changes like the ones Teker has been adding were missing! I guess the game goes in cycles.


I've actually been wondering what it would look like to add back in the code for s3 with some fun tweaks and allow people the ability to play 4 classes with the avatar class. Just day dreaming out loud and I haven't even mentioned that to other Immortals so its not something which is even in consideration currently...

[Teron]

By the way, I've raised the issue of being able to sustain yourself somewhat in solo earlier.

You can go discuss it there in more detail, than there.

[*juggleblood*]

Taron, the fact that you need other players for best performance has been the key to our success. We're here to play together, not to show off and compete with one another.

On a side note, I'll remind you that I worked very hard on the newbie / lowbie areas across BH to make it more consistent and soloable for low level players. If you remember correctly, players made stinks over the most trifling of changes. I tested these areas, achieving 8x20 with Sochi, and they play out great contrary to all the ruckus. But despite the success, I would never attempt this again because it's the most thankless task I've ever done.

But if you are a newbie/lowbie and want to solo. I suggest:the garden, kobolds, goblins, asylum, sewers, tree demons, firenewts, greek forest, catacombs, king's bazaar, emerald mine, sun temple, lycanthropia, and troglodytes. Very solid content.

[Teron]

You can't solo better eq at 20-2x40 levels, you are stuck with what valk or similar mobs got you.
You should be able to solo eq that stands between you and the eq you can pop in a group.

Also, you all clamour for groups, but there are no group areas for gold. Why not make an area, where players can enjoy farming gold instead of hating doing it solo?

[Josiah]

A group area for gold sounds awesome. Should we be worried about players soloing there though? There are some players that can crush content intended for groups.

[Filk]

Its all about speed. If you spend 8 mins to kill one big mob for 200k-300k. And you could at same time clean hellwell for same amount. Or elemental school for double of that(and twice more time though) - its fine. Go and kill that fat mob.
We actually need more gold areas around the world. Since atm one 9x40 avatar cleaning everything alone, with no space for others. Would be nice to pick 10 areas around the world, with quite good dificulty and pity exp(so noone running it), and add gold to mobs there. We have plenty of such areas.
In that way group gold areas will not be a problem(same idea - low exp/high gold), because if you want gold you could farm it anyway. Just focusing on gold instead of exp.

[*juggleblood*]

Ok, lets try it out. Pagoda of Enlightenment is now a gold area, and I'm also boosting the xp a bit cuz those monk procs do add a lot of challenge. Let me know if you think it's either too low to draw groups, or so high that avatars fight over it.

I did all the gods, humans, monkeys, and skipped the inanimate stuff and fauna mobs. I was surprised how many mobs were there. In other news, there was a Pixie sighting yesterday, so maybe we can draw him back in with renewed interest in his area.

[Teron]

Josiah and I have killed a bunch of gods, humans and monkeys, and have concluded that gold in this area is terribly low.

In my opinion:

Surya is good exp, other mobs - not so good.
Gold on them is on par with group or Lyme solo exp gold: 155k gold on the 80mil Yak God, 15k on a 4mil mob, etc Yet they aren't splorks, so they aren't worth it, unlike Lyme mobs.

For this to be a *gold* group area, players need to be making at least 600k* per area reset, each. Since the bottom half of the area is for 2-4men (depending on levels), and the upper half is for 4-8 man (depending on levels). Since the mobs don't actually splork, but require time/mana to kill, then even more gold is needed to bring the gold/time closer to that of other areas.

So I'd say this area needs to have about 5-7mil gold total, if it is to be a group gold area.

Right now, 9x40s won't be fighting for it even if you double gold on monkeys. It needs to be x3-4 of current gold for it to be worth soloing.

* 600k is what a player can get in some of the gold areas per run, so gold/hr is higher. I can probably bring it to 2.5mil/hr if I try hard enough on a continent bonus day. So don't think that even putting more gold, than I specified, would make it a top area, because mobs here are pretty thick and hit hard.

[Josiah]

Taron and I just cleared Pagoda to check out the new gold. It was extremely underwhelming. I'll post the log below.

We were picturing was an area where everyone in the group could get similar gold to solo gold runs. Instead we killed a lot of very thick mobs with poor xp, and got gold comparable to splork mobs in castle todes. If I'm only going to get 10-14k gold per kill, I'd rather solo those splork mobs rather than slowly kill thick mobs and split that 10k multiple ways.

Pure gold runs like hellwell or elemental school give 400k gold for a 5 minute run. We got less than 400k in the whole area, and it took both of us way more than 5 minutes.

-------------

Total exp for kill is 56027542.
Your blood freezes as you hear Indra, the groundskeeper's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of Indra, the groundskeeper that's on the ground.
There were 46153 coins.


Total exp for kill is 63,666,446.
Your blood freezes as you hear Surya's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of Surya that's on the ground.
There were 46153 coins.

Total exp for kill is 18072159.
Your blood freezes as you hear an elder monk's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of an elder monk that's on the ground.
There were 29700 coins.


Total exp for kill is 2160404.
Your blood freezes as you hear a Green Tara follower's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of a Green Tara follower that's on the ground.
There were 9230 coins.


Total exp for kill is 2,193,193.
Your blood freezes as you hear A Blue Tara follower's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of A Blue Tara follower that's on the ground.
There were 9230 coins.


Total exp for kill is 2197947.
Your blood freezes as you hear A White Tara follower's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of A White Tara follower that's on the ground.
There were 9230 coins.


Total exp for kill is 2204863.
Your blood freezes as you hear a young monk boy's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of a young monk boy that's on the ground.
There were 11538 coins.


Total exp for kill is 5979777.
Your blood freezes as you hear a black monkey guard's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of a black monkey guard that's on the ground.
There were 40621 coins.


Total exp for kill is 4,821,607.
Your blood freezes as you hear a black monkey guard's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of a black monkey guard that's on the ground.
There were 16500 coins.


Total exp for kill is 4,794,931.
Your blood freezes as you hear a large monkey's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of a large monkey that's on the ground.
There were 11538 coins.


Total exp for kill is 5165936.
Your blood freezes as you hear a tan circus monkey's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of a tan circus monkey that's on the ground.
There were 30114 coins.
Total exp for kill is 4841152.


Total exp for kill is 7350716.
Your blood freezes as you hear a short chubby monk's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of a short chubby monk that's on the ground.
There were 15384 coins.


Total exp for kill is 12,216,777.
Your blood freezes as you hear a curvy woman with dark skin's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of a curvy woman with dark skin that's on the ground.
There were 36923 coins.


Total exp for kill is 1,033,913.
Your blood freezes as you hear a Green Tara follower's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of a Green Tara follower that's on the ground.
There were 13200 coins.


Total exp for kill is 12553704.
Your blood freezes as you hear a woman with pale skin's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of a woman with pale skin that's on the ground.
There were 41538 coins.


Total exp for kill is 8624654.
Your blood freezes as you hear Kali, the enlightened monk's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of Kali, the enlightened monk that's on the ground.
There were 36300 coins.


Total exp for kill is 8285154.
Your blood freezes as you hear The laughing Bhudda's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of The laughing Bhudda that's on the ground.
There were 26923 coins.


Total exp for kill is 10415016.
Your blood freezes as you hear Samantabhadra's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of Samantabhadra that's on the ground.
There were 15384 coins.


Total exp for kill is 11,179,446.
Your blood freezes as you hear Maitreya's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of Maitreya that's on the ground.
There were 15384 coins.


Total exp for kill is 27306974.
Your blood freezes as you hear Shiva, the muscular warrior's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of Shiva, the muscular warrior that's on the ground.
There were 41538 coins.


Total exp for kill is 81346312.
Your blood freezes as you hear the Yak God's death cry.
You get gold coins from the corpse of the Yak God that's on the ground.
There were 165000 coins.

[Ker]

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Pixieeeeeee!

M

[*juggleblood*]

Well, I hadn't really anticipated that it would be great content for 2-man. An 80 mil mob is hard to chew that way, but a regular xp group chewing thru it would rack up a decent amount of gold.

And I don't think we want to approach hellwell levels of gold 550K per run with a group area. The attraction for a group area is still going to be a combination of gold and xp. If a group zips thru and area and kills 20 mobs, then a haul of 200-250k would be pretty good actually.

I'm gonna let that adjustment to pagoda of enlightenment steep for a while, because that was a really big boost. But I'll try again with some other zones while we talk it out.