Coliseum

[Gorka]

I see more comments about the coliseum appearing in other threads, and sense something is still festering away underneath... so lets have it out here...

There is a little bit of wrong thinking, jealousy and even hypocrisy in some of the comments about the coliseum. So let’s put some things straight...

I am Gorka, I am a 8hr hour working day, present coliseum bot… As all players do, we exploit something in the game that works for us… I’m a bit miffed this makes some people jealous and that people might also associate me with afk botting. I am capable of doing exactly what I am doing in an area… not just the coliseum… If people think I am getting rich from the coliseum then they are also wrong, I currently have 20m in my bank and rarely does it get over. People are saying all sorts of things about the coliseum at the moment so I will run through them…

It’s unbalanced in the context of the rest of the game…

Totally true. Warriors can spend 800 or more drachma on a single point of ac, well now days with the coliseum it’s possible to run almost perm at -2.0ac for almost no real cost. Blue pots prolong runs, scrolls have almost ended group regens. It must be noted though that the coliseum has not made players “more powerful” it’s simply made them “more faster.” Everything that is now killable with the coliseum potions, is still killable without them… it just takes longer…

The coliseum has added to the grouping experience…

Totally true. The speed at which groups function has been greatly increased… thank goodness… All this from a game where changing continents could take 10 minutes of real life… and regening after a 3 min run takes 7 mins… for levels that could take 48hrs of full time xping for almost no benefit… and an epic system that used to take a group nearly an hour to kill one mob, which gave only points towards +5hp and mana… the game needed speeding up.

Oversupply…

As the biggest seller of potions/tokens to shops rarely do I go a day without being able to sell everything I popped during the working day. Some days I get over supplied but it balances out over time. I find ways to pass on everything without too many problems. My conclusion is, you guys are buying the crap… and nearly all of it, plain and simple. You are nearly all totally complicit. I sense some of the whining is simply jealously. Yes, some of the stuff is slower in moving. I took the token price down to 80k which is now frequently undercut… the system kind of self-regulated and now tokens are fairly worthless. I’ve helped about 5 players get 84+ with cheap tokens. An 84 can still cost as many as 1000 tokens. Tokens WERE a good source of gold on a reset for sure, and yes… people are buying them still fairly strongly in shops, but now they are mostly worthless to me – in fact I made a newb to waste them on for fun. I also recently made comments to JB which led to the supply shops not being able to buy tokens… and I point out, that was not in my own interest to do that but I did it anyway. The biggest problem is now there are several coli-bots, that are apparently doing something similar… if the imms actually weeded out the afk ones, supply should be lower than the level of demand. 10 hours of running coliseum and selling potions is the equivalent of two runs of island gold. People need some perspective…

Limiting the coliseum…

I run coliseum full time 8hrs a day during my working week, as I am all day present on my computer working. For the record my xp per hour rate is less than 150m an hour (thanks to teker’s counters). As a 7x40, is any one xp’ing slower? I do note that some players are in there 24hrs for several days… and when the mud unexpectedly crashes they stand at recall for hours on end in a post-crash paralysis… this is not a reason to limit the coliseum for all players… but a reason to actually deal with the problem and lock out the people caught afking for long periods.

What Should be done?
Let’s not be so reactionary, let’s make slow and incremental improvements. I feel issues of oversupply would be addressed if the afk botters were simply taken out of the equation. Yes goblets need toning down, token pop rate could be halved. As for blues and scrolls… they are speeding up the game and groups for players… I’d change other things I just mentioned first before I’d make any more adjustments to them. As for limiting the run time of the coliseum? What does this achieve? I am perfectly capable and present to be able to do a similar thing in any area in game… not just the coliseum.

Treat the problems… not the symptoms.

[Filk]

As for me, colliseum exp should be remove at all. It wasnt intented to run it for exp i think. And since that place is so easy to botting, you cant actually control if ppl afk or not while they scripted running in one place.

If exp will be removed, all other problems will be tuned down, because little ppl will run it for long just for potions i assume

[*Splork*]

Josiah summarizes most of my thoughts at
http://www.slothmud.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4694&p=37791#p37785

I wish that coliseum conquests and gains only helped within future coliseum competitions.

[Gorka]

As for me, colliseum exp should be remove at all. It wasnt intented to run it for exp i think. And since that place is so easy to botting, you cant actually control if ppl afk or not while they scripted running in one place.

If exp will be removed, all other problems will be tuned down, because little ppl will run it for long just for potions i assume

If they removed xp, I wouldn't run at all. I think your net effect would be there would be there would be almost no scrolls and potions available, and no incentive for people to get them or share them in groups due to availability.

The coliseum is easier to bot... this is true... but it's not much more work to bot any other area - and get better coins and xp at slightly higher risk.

The logic of changing the pop rates is also potentially flawed... it's only because someone is always running coliseum that supply is good... I don't think any other area gets run as much.

The concept that blue pots are overpower could also be flawed, as I suspect the avg time to pop a blue in the coliseum is potentially many times longer than regenning 300 mana.

[Teron]

Yeah, I think people overestimate how often stuff pops in the coliseum.
Gold from it is minimal, can't be compared to a gold area run (or it can, but it's 8 times worse).
It takes about 30-60 min to pop a blue potion.
It takes 30 minutes in the chaos pit to have a chance to pop 0-2 scrolls, and it's much faster, than the coliseum itself - I've popped 1 scroll in a few hours.

Essentially, the gladiators spend their time, so others wouldn't.

There wouldn't be any major epic kills without scrolls. Who likes to regen 1-2 times to kill a single epic, and do it for most major ones? Same for quests, actually. They could easily be 30% longer for no apparent benefit, other than being able to walk to a WC or grab a drink.

[Filk]

As for me - i dont care about pops. At all. I just dont like the idea of such simple place to make bot exists. So you doing something slow, but non-stop.

[*juggleblood*]

@splork - The potions add a really neat element to the game and personally if I had to go back to the days of regenning 5-7 minutes several times on a single epic mob, I would probably not play. I love the group recharge scrolls.

Here's what Josiah suggested in other thread:
1) goblet duration reduced to the same duration as godsanc, and/or weakened to -1.0 AC
2) token drops removed.
3) (hard to implement) - Limit pops to the first 100-200 kills per day in the coliseum.
4) Add a cost to enter the coliseum more than 10 times in a single day.
5) Dramatically reduce poprates.

1.) I think "or", not "and".
2.) Yes, agreed.
3.) Not too hard really. In mudl the limits could be implemented pretty easily, however we wanted them. Why not just further limit their coli time altogether tho? 2 options I've considered are, 10 minutes cooldown between doing ANY arena, instead of 10 minute on that particular arena, and/or limiting participation to your own current level +1.
4.) I think it's simpler to limit it than charge them.
5.) I think you're overestimating the pop rates, but yes, I need to spend about a day of crunching mudl to make the rates and items adjustable from a central location. And if other limits are added, then would probably wait on adjusting rates to see what affects the limits have.

[Gorka]

Limiting is a bad idea, why should everyone be punished for the behavior of a few? How will anyone get a good run in during a rare major house with it limited? The xp is low, and coins are low, a few people are afk botting... Where are the bot police? This idea chucks the baby out with the bathwater. This shouldn't mean everyone is punished and we need to start a new precedent of area limiting. There has to be better solutions. Treat the problems not the symptoms. This area is no better than any other area in game, it's just getting camped. In the past area's like this have been nerfed too drastically and have rendered the area almost useless. Let's be cautious...

[Josiah]

Thanks for bringing my comments over from the other thread. I just wanted to clarify that I am not suggesting we do all of the things in my list. It was just my brainstorming of options, if we aren't happy with the status quo.

[Filk]

That area is total no risk, with auto raise and single room. That eliminates any issues in scripting bot for it and add to big temptation for some ppl. You cant fight with bots, because every of them has alerts. But you could make life harder by removing such simple areas for exping. So reduce exp to the ground and move ppl out of colliseum doesnt seems as bad idea.

[Vegetable]

I have to agree with Fluffy on this. Whilst some player enjoy grinding xp in colliseum, there are plenty of botters around. At one point, i actually took up the idea and run a trial bot with my mediocre scripting knowledge and it works fine.

Gorka may be sitting infront of the pc working all day while doing this but this doesnt mean its not botting. To me, having a program/script run the game for 7-8 hours straight at the background with minimal or little supervision is botting. And i believe that botting is still agaisnt the rule in our mud? Can i then bot in other xp area and say that i'm working while my script is cycling for me? Because few months ago my friend just got his char locked because of that.

I'm not saying this our of jealousy, to be honest, i did enjoy the cheap pots, tokens and scrolls. But as this kind of thread hit the forum and nothing is done about it, it sort of give an impression that this is a bot friendly mud? Anyway, you guys are smart. I'm sure we can work something out. Good job in pushing for the rebirth thing btw Looking forward to see it implemented.

[Gorka]

Let's not get precious about what is botting, lest I start outing players in their hypocrisy. I've seen most players do something... I've even seen immortals do things... the important thing is are you attentive and present. It's odd to me at the moment there are calls to change second wind, and nerf my niche business... when I played a druid in s3 and ran an eq for coins business I was likewise targetted... Interesting correlation of circumstances... I can't rule out jealously sometimes... Change the items, deal with the afk botters, then see what happens. No need to be rash.

[*juggleblood*]

From someone who has been the bot police in the past, I can tell you best way to go about it is to address the underlying incentives, i.e. things that are easy to abuse for bot or player. So Gorka, stop trying to throw other people under the bus. You aren't any better than the two you want punished and you're also the one raising the biggest stink about the whole thing, which is somewhat mind boggling. Seems like the smarter strategy would have been to be quiet. Instead you're trying to portray yourself as the victim, or hero here.

Currently, playing around with max_stat and wraithform pots gives me a fun solo activity and the scrolls make epic groups possible even when there's not a big who list. If all my crack vanished overnight I might lose interest in the game for a while and that's not an exaggeration.

So, the immediate affect of a strong nerf will be a reduction of activity on the mud. The coliseum 'junk' is actually encourage a lot of different activity. A big nerf would give no tangible benefit to the mud apart from satisfying a few people that a couple people aren't getting away with something. It's hard to motivate myself to spend a whole day to do something that only has negative results on activity and numbers.

Don't expect me to dictate what needs to happen with it. I'll act when I sense that there is some kind of consensus on what to do, or if Splork has a clear preference on what he wants. Just post the exact change that you want tho, no generalizations or excessive explanation. Just say, I think you should do x, y, and z. We'll see who's in favor of what. Those of you who've already clearly laid out your position, great. Thanks.

[Vegetable]

Just a small suggestion. If the concern is on falling supply of pots/scroll, how about making them load in certain areas (maybe depending on area difficulty) i.e. mob in high group xp area have chance to drop scroll. So it makes people cycle those areas for xp and they get some scroll for epic (sort of like incentive or bonus). You can then adjust to add/take out the pop rate/pop chance to divert people to certain areas if you choose to do so in the future. *OUT OF TOPIC: we should do this also on some old XP area like tomb of forever kings but tweak the xp (like increase them substantially). With rebirth coming, we need more good xp area for the rebirth char to run through*

Can do the same with mana pot/restore pots/aegis pots (those that can improve your run in general) but in a slightly easier area or the common stab/grip/blast area. However, the pop rate should be set after extensive testing by both players and admins to ensure there is a balance (so you don't get 10 pots in 1 run or 0 pots in 10 runs).

Goblet/max stat pots can probably be loaded in small/medium group area so the pot can be used to hit the high group xp area.

This could change the game play for players. When there is not enough player for group, you do your solo run and pop some mana pots. Where there are people for small group, you pop your goblet/max stat pot. When there are people for high group then you pop your scroll for epics. etc

Of course, this is just a suggestion. Feel free to debate on this.

[*juggleblood*]

hrm.... can easily make a treasure category for it and assign it to different zones every week... That... is pretty good idea...