More action

[Kiri-Jolith]

The MUD still has a lot of wimpers. They see enemies, they quit. Personally, I think we cannot enforce rules and punish such players. We don't have enough immortal observers, and we don't have enough players for it.

I would like to discuss ideas, which could bring more PK action to Solace. For example, we could remove constitution penalty for dying in PK. We could reduce number of clans to 4. But how to change limited items, the obvious root of this problem? Any ideas?

[Caleb]

A few major things which i think could stimulate pk fighting.

Right now. well i have to admit there has been good activeness in trying to
stimulate clans. Most noticeably however is heretics seem disadvantged.
No leader. Little on the extent of rewards of promotions ( i have noticed large time zone difference for majority of that clan)

Piyade has little time to play i believe,
however for Milon/Arielle/Weinou, while fading-new inductions, one for sure hero rank,
others hair width from from hero range, yet all low member still.

So only suggestion would continue upkeeping attention to all clans to promote interest.

I think major thing now. it is to easy to have a few trash chars, gang a well armored hero and kill
with crappy armor. (This is truth, please dont argue this). Most often it results in in full loot, even
clan battles have been resulting in full loot or just as far as i am concerned cruel actions.

Its their choice but then again it is IN NOW WAY making it stimulating to continue char.

I think placing a limit of how much you can loot from enemies corpse (total) or at a time.

For example.

command get all corpse
You cant full loot the corpse of Ean! (that will be the day!!! Long overdue i think )
therefore you have to get item specifically by name.
get brace cor
You get a bracelet from the corpse of Ean!

Or

command get all corpse
you get blah 1 from corpse of Arielle!
you get blah 2 from corpse of Arielle!
you get blah 3 from corpse of Arielle!
you get blah 4 from corpse of Arielle!
you get blah 5 from corpse of Arielle!
You cant get more from the corpse of Arielle!

Affects

Loot Corpse affects none for 1 hour.


I also suggested the possibility of having observer/enforcing immortal for north american time to sirrion, he
seemed to like the idea but after his departure never heard more of such things.

Introducing potentially another class or two.

I know this is alot of work, but even i have found myself bored of the classes of lately.
(I STILL REALLY WANT BARDS BACK!!)  minus the song that imitates  Dalamars ring.


My fondest memories of solace. had to be of immortal interaction. ( i know this part is hard,
numbers of playerbase and immortalbase are low, people are busy and time brings forth
new barriers to overcome, but maybe we can even schedule nice quests and stuff if anyone
was will to put that kind of time in? )


Now im going to pick on one character in Paticular.

Im sorry ean, dont know who you are, but i will find out soon enough.


He is renown to be an ass, if you arent in pk range and in enemy clan, he raids raids raids raids raids raids.
unallowing you to ever do anything else.
Im going to bring forth my brother here, he recently has joined solace after not playing for.. god 6 years?
so i consider him ridiculous noob. I have given him a few of my trash characters to kind of get the game back, he also has ranked his own to hero.
and this happens not only to him, i think anyone will mention.

Anytime he logs on with one of his heroes, boom tesseract kill loot some stuff if there is anything good.
goes back to his tower not a word.
or even on reraid.
Now i hope alot of people will agree with this, but when i was zaltais. Razlen bolhir, khirsten even heretics or whoever else i was fighting.

Anytime you died ... 2 , 3 MAX. i would let you reraid. im not going to condeath, im not an asshole,
hell whenever i play a thief, i always feel bad i stole and end up giving it back. (isnt that sad?)

Heh, i had a clan character a little while back, trying to reraid against a necro is damn hard.
i ended up getting so pissed off, because not only when he kill syou does he take weapons everytime
so you have nothing to reraid with. he continues to kill and kill and hunt and hunt and hunt.

Now i dont mean to be like PUNISH HIM. not at all.


but i have to say, opposite clan wise, its a huge HUGE HUGE clan member killer.
Now i'm definitely trying to break the habbit of, Oh look ean and halian are on, im
not going on. and i've been going on to try and reraid, die once or twice, get pissed of
because OH WOW, once again i have to get all my weapons again.

i dont even know what this rant is getting at anymore, but i think what i am majorally trying
to say is that this mud is very quickly and rapidly approaching a non friendly newbie mud,
that if they have a character over... hell rank 10. they are getting killed and looted alot.
when they dont even need to be which is the ridiculous thing. and i think at this point
because of how busy everyone is with jobs, life, everything. not much is being done to reverse
this process, or do anything else about it.

I think we should also maybe form a method, or manner in which we might be able to
advertise again, and really get the word out there, and take an active involvement in new
players, and even encouraging old players to stick around to bring this mud back to its former
glory.

because lets face it, it is an awesome mud. Great areas, ideas, immortal staffs, players.
items. ( i think the feats and vamping has started to get ridiculous). especially the amount
of hp you can have now. ( and i am slowly starting to hate the new saves system about needing 60
plus saves to be really protected, and that is hard to do and upkeep hp and damage)

This is a great mud, and it has always been and hasnt changed, so lets bring in a new player base,
really stick it to them. and make it something memorable.
i've played a few muds now , and set up wise, how everything looks, this is my favourite.

[Urimarr]

Return old Heretics without warpaints etc.

[Kage]

- I agree that elite limited items can hinder pk ironically.  As in, if you are buffed with these items you should want to fight...most times the opposite occurs for fear of losing these things.  Also as stated earlier the pain of re-equipping a character from naked for time constraints makes some think eh..its not worth it.  

1.)  Have some items deemed a higher level of limited.  Call them elite or whatever.  These items disappear from characters after a certain amount of time...no matter what.  And reappear on mob.  This will keep such items in the loop...and thus perhaps keep many from having super-geared basically rp characters.  Before, these items switched around quickly and naturally from pk clearly this is not the case now.

2.)  There does need to be some sort of hinderance to full looting as well.  Perhaps you must type full name of item to retrieve it from corpse.  And as stated no get all command for corpses, a 3-5 item initial loot seems fine too.  With a cooldown time of an hour if you manage to slay your foe in a far off place resets your 3-5 loot ability.

3.) Make slayer only player even able to loot your corpse.  So many vultures in the lands now.  And I suspect the most inventive cheat Ive seen... naked chars (thieves and assassins moslty) that follow battles and linger in hero pk.  Logged on to weaken and steal from players...and conveniently die to character  that you were fighting with a smile  and "looted" and thus a new clever item transfer method is born.

4.)  I have stated it several times that no one knows about Solace.  It is considered a dead link to most online mud sites.  Our information must be updated.

5.)  An arguement for full looting other then being a jerk I have heard is that you dont want to fight the same foe over and over after he just gets his clothes and rests.  You get little benefit from this in clan battles for a slaying if nothing is looted according to some.  He can just sleep an hour and kill a drunk and he's back in the fray.  Perhaps you keep ghost timer same...but add another timer called "pacified".  Once your slain you cant do anything aggressive for an hour or so to give at least a benefit from a raiding or defending slaying.  

6.)  Make an arena for practice pk for new players so they are less frightened of pk.

7.)  Perhaps Im just a bad explorer.  But there is a larger gap between limited and non-limited gear.  After Full loot and rank 10...there is the obligatory wyrmling set, buffalo, steel wristguard, kender helm, earthen gear kit.  And from these a usual jump straight to limited or elite gear.  The middle ground is lacking.  Just as an example those simple gears listed above are better then the full set of the captain from Giant castles gear who is a formidable warrior and his gear is limited, for neutral humans only.

8.)  Maybe upon slaying of foe 3-5 random items from the corpse inventory drop outside the corpse as well as whatever they were holding.  These items are in the room on the ground and could be taken with get all.  Then the corpse is safe from further looting.

9.)  Another take on looting can be.  Mostly only items not worn by the slain foe can be looted. most of his worn gear could be protected from desecration but his inventory spills onto the floor. cept backpacks should have there own wearable slot  This combined with option 1.) could balance maybe.

10.)  On death all limited items on dead poof!  This is annoying too but at least both now have a chance at the gear.  This would depend better on system rebirths more often.

     As me and Caleb can agree on this...full looting is like a snowball effect.  It multiplies geometrically.  Some hardcore players will say they dont care...but on the "wrong day" or perhaps after multipe times a full loot can cause I think even the most devoted to delete on occassion.  We dont want to water it down too much but we dont want scared item hoarders either.  

[Quino]

Well , NO.
NO to restrict of fulloot - that's what makes Solace the MUD we love.
NO to lack of middle unlimited gear - there is nice equipment (todo: there's no unlimited platemail with saves, or I just don't know?)

[Kage]

Well , NO.

- thanks for adding some ideas ... as usual constructive

[dedraelos]

meh, forget about lootings. Find a way to have an imm on at all times. Even if it's just one to enforce rules upon people. Should be a rule about not being a douche bag. Raiding 30x to prevent someone who's not hero ranked from enjoying the game is being a douche bag. Full looting elite gear is being a douche bag. Transferring eq is being a douche bag. Having friends log on to help you kill people is being a douche bag. Having an imm on at all times will help to prevent these things.

[moq]

Guys, what you are suggesting would just kill Solace!
I think we all saw such muds where you respawn in a temple with all your gears in inventory...
One should be aware that he can lost everything no matter what.
There's no point to play wihtout risk of loss.

Post Scriptum To Make Things Clear: Being a noob, I personally never full loot, but are getting looted from time to time ;o)

[Kiri-Jolith]

Return old Heretics without warpaints etc.

That wouldn't help at all. The only way to improve PK action is to fix items somehow: looting, cheating, transfer, etc.

[Kage]

-  So even looting all items one by one...is too much of a hinderance for looters? Sorry that this would mess up those with trigger " is DEAD"get all.book corpse"  "get all corpse"  ... if this is what solace is all about.  Woopity do where do I sign up.  That will get more then 6 players per continent Im sure.  Its all working out fine as is...clearly why an immortal started this post...for no reason.(<---Sarcasm)

[Matthew]

Seems like this is a result of nerfing skills, every time a skill is nerfed better equipment is needed to compensate. At the same time skills have been nerfed BY better equipment...

I would say Assassins lost major malediction/high damage attack that can be used to engage, warriors lost flourentine in offensive etc... Most don't want to lose their shinies cause without them they are nothing, some still fight because they couldn't possibly lose.

But i wont say that cause they ALL lost all benifit of their maledictions with introduction f wyrmling gear and loads of +str/dex bonuses added in the equipment revamp. Don't get me wrong the equipment revamp was great, nice gear is everywhere. But so many item granting +str and +dex(some up to +5 str and +3 dex each) was too much.

The autocasts are cool, they make things interesting, there should be more, mostly worn in the same slots to prevent stacking so much. And the saves are cool, some of them are to easy to take though, gee the best necklaces for saves are WAY easy to take.

I loaded gauntlets of ogre power at 25 rank, thats me immune to boneshatter, straight up from one item. Add giant strength, some other item that probably has +1 or 2 str, you would have to be Sios to stop me parrying as well.

[Kiri-Jolith]

And how about enforced RP?

Enforced RP has nothing to do with lack of well-geared PK action. I am looking into improving PK action among existing population, who don't complain about RP and rules.

[Raider]

- lower dependancy on eq.
- lower clan powers. For me clans are the way to have reasons for pk, not added powers. Raid/reraids.
- either make it easier to join a clan or remove 25rank limitation(takes much time to wait for induct, and there is nothing to do while you're at 25)
- balance skills/spells at all levels, not just for hero, there are tonns of useless low/mid level skills.
- change guardians/laws - for now, breaking laws is a 100% death, so you dont want to break laws.
- its pretty easy to flee any fight, too much protection from lagging skills, too low chances for lagging skills, too much damage reduce, too good chances for blocks. It should be action-counteraction system, like you should be able to find a key to every door.

I dont want to say this, but CF is a great example of perfectly developed PK system.

For myself, nonlimit geared shadow assassin, everytime i login i have to reraid, and for every fight i do i feel that shadow assassins need improves at these levels of fight - w/o gear they are nothing. Unless you think this is ok. You should at least admit, that w/o certain level of gear you just cant stand in a serious fight with some classes.

[Kiri-Jolith]

Seems like this is a result of nerfing skills, every time a skill is nerfed better equipment is needed to compensate. At the same time skills have been nerfed BY better equipment...

So, what is your idea? How to prevent well-geared players from typing "quit" each time they are in danger? They will quit anyway, because better equipment makes your character stronger, no matter how your skills and spells work.

Its not a secret that almost all super-geared players sometimes quit in dangerous situations. Not everyone accepts it on public, but its true.

[Kiri-Jolith]

meh, forget about lootings. Find a way to have an imm on at all times. Even if it's just one to enforce rules upon people. Should be a rule about not being a douche bag. Raiding 30x to prevent someone who's not hero ranked from enjoying the game is being a douche bag. Full looting elite gear is being a douche bag. Transferring eq is being a douche bag. Having friends log on to help you kill people is being a douche bag. Having an imm on at all times will help to prevent these things.

We can't manage it. And even if we could, people would still quit. There are lots of smart ways of saving super-equipment, while not breaking any rule.

[Kiri-Jolith]

- lower dependancy on eq.
- lower clan powers. For me clans are the way to have reasons for pk, not added powers. Raid/reraids.
- either make it easier to join a clan or remove 25rank limitation(takes much time to wait for induct, and there is nothing to do while you're at 25)
- balance skills/spells at all levels, not just for hero, there are tonns of useless low/mid level skills.
- change guardians/laws - for now, breaking laws is a 100% death, so you dont want to break laws.
- its pretty easy to flee any fight, too much protection from lagging skills, too low chances for lagging skills, too much damage reduce, too good chances for blocks. It should be action-counteraction system, like you should be able to find a key to every door.

I dont want to say this, but CF is a great example of perfectly developed PK system.

There are things, which we cannot do. We cannot make a full revamp to items, we have no resources for it.

I agree that we need more immortals, who will help with clan induction and interaction. I will talk to Chemosh about it.

What about balancing skills and spells, you shall provide a list for all classes, not just for your beloved ones. Alas, we have no resources to revamp all skills and spells in Solace.

In gear-dependant MUD we cannot make holding skills stronger. It will help to quit, not to increase number of fights.

[Matthew]

Hrm i haven't really thought of a way to fix it, and i don't think that is the whole reason for the problem, as someone else put it 'Douches' are probably a big part of it too.

Ok, Lets look at my character. I have 4 auto's, extra pet, displacement, sanctuary for my strong pets, blink, nice maces. In a forest, I don't really fear much, not even a necromancer... Out of a forest i am still feeling mostly safe. I can at least attempt to fight someone who might beat me knowing i can very likely get away safely. Along comes mr warrior with his two cold maces or his lightning or whatever maces, attacks me, bashes my griffon trying to dismount me. He has boneshattered which did nothing to aid him, and then hit me once in 3 rounds. He can't drum until i am dismounted so he keeps bashing the griffon and i keep fleeing to remount but he is stuck fighting my pets. His mace poisons me, more -str but i still have giant str and some other +str bonuses on my gear. Once a round i swing my mace for a mangle, in 6 rounds the warrior has turned to backhand and hit me a couple of times for disembowels, mean while my elementals are tearing him appart, i have blinded and cursed him or hit him for 6 mangles, if he stays and fights he will surely die, better quaff return. He quaffs return, heals up, stays away from me, quits. Though if he had been unsuccessful with boneshatter he might try again, cause he has this mistaken belief that it will be useful. Cause of course, It has to be useful its a skill... but its not, it does not alter the outcome of the fight, better to bash my griffon once more instead, perhaps i will typo mount and take a few rounds worth of damage on foot...

The only ideas i can think of - Perhaps increase maledictions but perhaps make some of them harder to land? Or remove/decrease the stat bonus from lots of gear.

[Matthew]

I know some people would come to explore new zones. Imma work on that now myself

[Raider]

I dont have beloved classes, each class i play i note useless stuff and things to change.
Usual answer "it is supposed to be so" and what is the reason for that supposing?

energy drain is useless in current state.  high mana cost, low damage, hard to pierce saves, not that huge benefits.
regeneration is useless in current state.

Why these exist if these are useless? Even in newbie guides there are words like "this is useless, dont practice ever"

You can change global things to lower eq dependancy.
Raise skills damage, change saves ( lower svs - raise chances, higher svs - lower chances, ultimate defense should be very hard to reach imho),  why some classes get like 15-20 to all saves from spellups, and others dont. Damn.. everything i say is just observations from CF *frown*

But okay, i will work on list of things i'd like to be changed. And its not that hard and timeconsuming to change formulas in fight.c and magic.c

if you make flee preventing skills stronger - eq will spread among more chars, lowering numbers of elite geared wimpers, and raising numbers of good-geared players in general.
I just wont fight an enemy, wont chase it and engage it if i know that i wont be able to kill it. If i know that he'll flee easily.  What for to fight in this situation? Waste of time. There is only one guaranteed way to kill a smart, geared person - norecall(curse) + wall of ice/roots + outnumbering.

there are other ways to help clan induction than finding more imms... like no induction at all, so you could choose your clan when you create the char(and its pretty logical)

Mathew:
cf boneshatter does like -12str/dex
there are more skills like that, so you can have -30 str/dex
there are a lot of armors +str/dex, so you can counter those
weapons have real weight, like an axe that weghts 2 pounds is a nonsense, so a landed boneshatter on not prepared victim will definately make him drop the weapon(apart from daggers,whips and some others)
and noone complains about fighterlikes being overpowered.

[Kiri-Jolith]

When I answer "it is supposed to be so", it means that I have checked the skill or spell someone is complaining about and noticed that player just doesn't know how it works.

And, believe me, IT IS time consuming to change formulas. They are NUTS. For example, parry formula spreads over 150+ lines. For each skill and spell you must spend ~30 minutes to change it to something reasonable, check level scaling, save throw chances, feats, and so on. And if you count all these... with more than 700 skills and spells in MUD, you will understand that it takes about 5-10 days of raw time. But equipment revamp will take even more time, we have 9MB of areas vs 5MB of source code.

If you make holding skills stronger, eq will not spread anywhere. Instead, it will quit with its master even faster than now.