Hi Everyone,
No doubt if you are reading this, you are probably from Dragonsworn, wanting to know how to do something… :twisted:
In this thread I will start posting game exploits…
Why am I doing this…? Well, either the imms remove my exploits, and therefore admit that even they know the game is supposed to remain somewhat challenging for people to want to play it, or else they leave the exploits up and the game just gets silly… which I would argue has already happened.
I will stop posting exploits if the immortals decide to fix the game and restore the challenge. Just for the record, I offered to immortal and fix all my exploits more than 12 months ago to protect the game… Now I’m just wondering if anyone actually cares?
Either way, my point gets made, and to be honest, I don’t really care about being right… I’ve spoken out, at personal cost, because I believe what I am saying is the unpopular truth, and time will show me to be correct. Some of this stuff will be silly and trivial, even old and well known, other bugs will require the game to be shutdown lest you all be walking around in free drachma.
Let’s see… hmm, so many things to post in my files… Lets go with some coliseum cheats first… For the record, my scores were legit in the coliseum I can provide the logs, but yes, I could have bet any ones score. So Ezekiel’s comment about me being bitter about being beaten, was purely his incorrect projection. I can take back the score anytime I wanted… I would prefer to do it, without cheating though, and therefore I haven’t done it yet.
The coliseum doesn’t kick you out after the timer if you are in the room to the north. The coliseum timers aren’t very accurate by a few seconds. This is enough time to sweep in from the north, press buttons, kill mobs and repeat if you time it right… giving you unlimited kills in the coliseum. It’s works in practice, however there is a possibly depending on how it was coded, that it might report that your run was more than 10 minutes… so your cheat might not be transparent, I never went as far to actually use the cheat to win… but I know the unlimited kills thing works.
Morning Readers!
Hope you are having a great morning… Ready for your next installment? Great!
So perhaps you’ve just forged the new thief artifact and you need to know how to level it to level 10 in a few hours. No problem, I got you covered. Simply wear the hood and a backstab weapon and go to Koshey in Kitezh and type backstab Koshey. A message will appear saying something to the effect that you can’t stab him, but your spirit meter will still increase. Don’t forget to eviscerate Koshey after you’ve filled your spirit points up to 100,000 or so.
Don’t worry you won’t kill him eviscerating, he regens to full just like you do in Herbalist Isle! :D
Level 10 might take 30mins of spamming backstab Koshey, so write a script and go take a coffee! I suspect most mobs in the game that are no attack will work exactly the same.
As the imms used to say… Enjoy!
The last item you need to level it is a Bezel Fire Opal which is 180 drachma, but don’t buy it now… because later I can tell you how to buy it for free!
Question: Why haven’t you reported bugs like these to me?
I honestly didn’t realize you had code access till somewhat recently - and I only figured that out by “reading between the lines” of some forum post. I was surprised to learn it. In previous conversations you were always waiting on coders to do things for you… so you were doing all MUDL things then.
But in any case I wouldn’t report them to you anyway, your vision for sloth is absolutely nothing that holds to the tradition of the game, and as you are yet to find out, practically everything you’ve done has exploits. Every single one of your artifacts could be cheesed, the blind clasp is the most OP in the game, the sceptre curing mobs created new exploits, and your conquest system as I reported to you recently, is still clearing items on cards in some way I haven’t figured to replicate yet. I would ask someone competent instead who has the self awareness to see pitfalls in the game and there own work - to be frank.
The mana drain thing undermined your conquest system, your decisions make no sense. Why would I spend 100m conquest points on ma regen… and there you are legalising what is essentially free and unlimited mana… it’s completely irrational. Why would I try and work with that person? Do I really have to spell it out again?
Based on your post and what others have told me, fixes that went in this morning:
Koshey and similar mobs have been fixed on gauntlets, sleeves, and hood.
Immune magic mobs on the sleeves have been fixed.
Attempting to level your artifact while blind or with no light has been fixed.
I would like to fix the bugs that are in the game, but it requires that I know about them.
Energy drain… for your awareness, all decisions go through the entire immortal staff, not just one person. We talk these issues through, and we aren’t perfect. Prior to the fix, you could drain up to 32k mana (before the 16-bit signed integer flipped negative). All of this goes back to the decision not to reset mana to max mana on ticks, which was requested by… well, you, because you were losing your mana from your max mana mode. So as you can see, it’s not always so easy to ‘have self-awareness to see pitfalls in the game’.
I think a case can be made that at the moment it’s too easy to drain. For example, the wardens can be very painful to drain from (especially when the energy drain doubles), whereas the venerable plaintwraiths are not. The only thing that has been undermined from energy drain is mana regen. Mana itself is quite valuable, as the cap on drain is based on your max mana, and that determines exactly how big of a mob you can kill without having to do multiple runs. I won’t speak for other immortals, but I have been quite sluggish in reacting to this because regen has always been an amazingly boring aspect of the game, and so having a legit means of gaining mana in other ways is a good thing (to get rid of the most boring aspect of the game). To say that this undermines the entire conquest system is obtuse–it undermines mana regen, and that’s it. We can look at making draining more difficult, but I would like to hear other people’s opinions before getting rid of energy drain or nerfing it beyond usefulness.
Driven wrote: All of this goes back to the decision not to reset mana to max mana on ticks, which was requested by… well, you, because you were losing your mana from your max mana mode. So as you can see, it’s not always so easy to ‘have self-awareness to see pitfalls in the game’.
Are you sure this was me? I have no recollection of what you are talking about. Maybe it was someone else? I’ve barely used my max mana set in 2 years.
Driven wrote: I think a case can be made that at the moment it’s too easy to drain.
No really!?! The groups you are in were visiting there every 10-15mins and now you’ve just noticed? You’ve got people who are now 9x40 rebirth and they still don’t have a mana regen eqset? Now you’ve noticed?
Driven wrote: I would like to hear other people’s opinions
Let me save you the work, the majority love draining and want to keep it. I mean what do you expect, you can’t give people hard drugs and then take it away from them without a dependence, and then what are you going to do? Let the majority rule and keep draining? Democracy has spoken?
What you really should be asking is, what is in keeping with the original core tenants of sloth. Yes, the game needs to evolve and improve, but not at the expense of selling out it’s core principals. Work within the structures there are, vaults could be improved, spectral shield could be improved, base mana regen could be improved, mage weapons could gain small amounts of mana. I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t think a 5-10min regen is too long. I’m completely on board there… but the sloth way is you earn things - not fill up for free. It’s been in too long, now we have people who have essentially finished the game already due to it… but what’s done is done now, fix it and move on.
Energy drain traditionally hardly worked at all on any mob, you were lucky to get your mana back in casting it, and that’s why players had seemingly forgotten about it, until it was accidentally re-discovered on mobs which were really errors created by builders. I bet Idjit didn’t even consider for a minute what he had accidently done in Herbalist, because he made Herbalist before drain was rediscovered. I doubt drain was ever supposed to accrue more than 100-200 mana… you would be best to go through old mobs and consider how much mana early mobs were given on average - to figure out how drain was initially intended to work. Stick close to that tradition.
I will hold posting my exploits, until a solution is found that doesn’t undermine the games traditions, and ensures that improvements are earned.
If things improve I will share my other exploits with immortals to fix, and won’t share publicly with the players. Some are extremely easy to fix… unfortunately some are structural and difficult.
It was because of spectral shield…
I have already started the discussion with the immortal staff on making draining more difficult.
Driven wrote: It was because of spectral shield..,.
I have already started the discussion with the immortal staff on making draining more difficult.
4 years ago, yes I remember now. The days of running lucifer in quest sized groups… and sometimes we’d all get in max mana to regen full, and then before fight someone would make the decision to use a heavenly scroll and we would lose mana rather than gain it.
The crystal goblet artifact is also bugged. From memory you have two options to feed it, every day or half day. It turns out if you feed it every half day, there is some maths error and you get the full days points towards leveling. So effectively you could level it in half the intended time. It also uncovered that there are chop mobs that are only lvl 40… they should probably all be 41 if they are chop. That’s why Okuni started appearing all over the mud. I also learned to keep my mouth shut about things that I found as that info was shared by everyone like it was there own.
Most game exploits come down to improper supervision of area builders and the things they inadvertently put into the game through mobs/procs.
Ah yes, the nostalgia…the quest sized groups killing Luci or Gorka actually being in groups? Ironic to take suggestions from those that are only ever out for themselves in the mud and find the rest of the playerbase so useless as to never associate with or run with.
At least when I had qualms with the imms, I went to them personally, instead of extorting movement out of them by means of the forum. When I disagreed with their final word, I voted with my feet and left the game and cooled off instead of raging against them on the crier and attacking the game itself on the crier by exposing its inefficiencies (when there are far more great things to value in the mud than there are to complain about, though you wouldn’t know it by your weekly whines). How do you think your post looks to anyone perusing the site that may want to newly join the game? But then I guess you don’t care, just as long as the playerbase that does have to play fits within your little boxes. Truly a class act. Like a petulant child that will burn down the schoolhouse because the teacher won’t give him his way.
I’m not saying some of what is discussed is not worth some type of constructive dialogue, I’m just disgusted at the approach. Nothing like putting a gun to someone’s head publicly to get your way…and you wonder, with such low respect for the game itself in behaviors like these, why they wouldn’t entertain your imm application?
Still on another thread being salty about coli eh? You attempted without cheating, as did I (which anyone with a modicum of a conscience would). You were the top score at one point, now you’re not. Get over it. If you could have taken the best score for the long haul, you would have after rebirth. You clearly attempted your best score as you spent time getting the top spot (for that moment) and moved to the next to spend time getting top spots there (for those moments). If that was in haste to get to 9x40 and you didn’t hit your true max, that’s your fault, but don’t act like your scores being less than highest now is some noble thing by not cheating or some sacrifice. That’s laughable. Are we supposed to laude you for having a conscience (like nearly every person I’ve met on the mud does)? The fact that you’re bringing up the coli leaderboard on yet another thread is pretty sad and shows how badly your delicate ego is hurt over it.
Wow Eze, A total distortion of my character. I’ll leave you to your imagination. I usually listen to criticism and check my heart, but that stuff is so wildly off, I’m just laughing.
However you are right about one thing… my posts have involved a lot of “theater and drama” for the expressed purpose of trying to get action. It’s been deliberate.
I don’t appreciate Maniac’s vision for Sloth, because it’s not in line with it’s original ethos, and he doesn’t appreciate my point of view. There have been a number of instances which have lead me to conclude that “making a lot of noise publicly” is the only thing that works and that he has to be held accountable publicly…
The introduction of a proc weapon which had “Firewind” - he backed down but basically re-added it with disint.
The introduction of the sceptre, remember the first weeks the insane xp it gave, while he finished getting his char to 9x40?
The existence of group sized mobs with inappropriate levels making them charmable.
Every instance has been a struggle to get the point across. If there is another method that works, let me know.
And with this incident with drain, I expect the same thing, the illusion of change, but no real nerfing. So I adapt my methods to those I think get results… not those I would use if he’d actually listen to me. I feel like I have to exasperate him with proof, lest things go disregarded. I try to speak what I think is the truth, I’m not anti-Maniac, I support his conquest system, and I suspect the bugs with that probably aren’t his fault but something in the base code.
Generally in life, people who make changes, get vilified… it’s the price you pay for sticking your neck out. Maniac gets me holding him accountable. I get Ezekiel or Mage attacking me. It’s just a price you pay when you are a “change agent.” At the end of the day, I’ve done what I’ve done, some balance change will come of it hopefully… and the quietness will return. I support Maniac’s enthusiasm, just wish it was better guided - and at the end of the day that’s just my opinion, although I will justify that with sloth tradition. At the end of the day it appears people generally accept the drain exploit was over the top… I stuck my neck out, crap flies around a few days… things will return better? Chill.
Your characterization of yourself as some benevolent force working for good, and that you are actually an innocent chap who is ‘forced’ to use ill means for good ends because Maniac (who is the real evil one in this play) has given you no other choice, is actually kind of funny.
<LINK_TEXT text=“http://www.slothmud.org/forum/viewtopic … =45#p38917”>http://www.slothmud.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4851&start=45#p38917</LINK_TEXT>
4 years ago I realized Maniac’s path would take game away from it’s tradition, and called him out on it, before he was even an immortal. The next day he showed me his “unconditional love.”
You tell Driven ‘stop defending your dumb idea’
You tell Driven ’the change is too radical’
You tell Driven ‘I’m calling you out on it’
Driven tells you ‘ok I’m done… you are a dick and I am done’
Driven tells you ’there are many ways to handle situations and you consistently choose disrespect'
Driven tells you ‘you have crossed a boundary with ne and I am done with ykur disrespect’
You tell Driven ‘respect is earned, not given’
Driven tells you ‘says you’
Driven tells you ‘I choose the opposite’
Driven tells you ‘I choose unconditiknal love and respect until I get trampled on’
Now we have the guy whose been abusing the exploit in groups for months, pretending to fix it. Unfortunately not many of the old players are around anymore to talk about the sugary sell out the game has become.
Lucifer has gone from a 3 regen, quest group mob, to a sugary 6 man 1 run mob, with exploits he uses himself, and the proc weapon’s he’s implemented.
If this is what you all wanted then fine. Looks like I am one of the last one’s to oppose, and maybe the best thing I can do is just fade out quietly. Well played Grima.
I’m not saying I’m perfect, I’m not saying you haven’t done some good for the game, I am saying that you are not innocent.
Ah yes Gorka, calling yourself an ‘agent of change’ to justify your lack of rational discourse. I’m sure there are plenty of Machiavellian types that considered themselves ‘agents of change’ to justify using brute force in public display instead, pressing others to bend and acknowledge their viewpoints regardless of means. Like the unabomber…
Great deluded vantage point to take there.
Wow.
I can agree with half of what Gorka says - and come away feeling guilty about associating with it. I see there’s some bad blood/angst/whatever betwixt G and a certain Imm: keep it off the forum. Gorka, at this point it’s personal and makes you look like a just.plain.horrible.guy. Keep it to the facts, don’t embellish, don’t offer your skewed and inflated descriptions. Please.
Looking at the current drain situation from a less-than-9x40 perspective (this from my lady,working on a 6x cleric; not me), it allows weaker players to have a real impact, rather than a come-along-for-the-ride and be useless sensation for every group. I personally think it’s too much, but if nerfing is done in a way that re-renders lowbies as useless limbs of the group octopus, it would hurt rather than help the game. So please spray the nerf carefully.
I’m also agreed that a certain fancy weapon that costs 1000D is way over the top - but it’s here now. In general, any fix that relies on equipment is going to be problematic, if only for its tendency to make every member of each class a cookie-cutter clone of everyone else in it. But we move on, because unless it truly breaks the game, it’s going to stir up a hornet’s nest to remove/nerf/whatever it.
Finally, I’d like to highlight one major aspect of the game’s tradition and purpose, and that is its social aspect. MUDs - MULTI-user dungeons - are meant to be social. It’s not a fringe-benefit of these games, it is their main purpose. If you’ve not been social on this medium, you have disowned its major tradition: bringing us together. We don’t have to agree with everything, each other, or anything in general; at least we play the game together. Without the desire to do that, we could just purchase an rpg from say, 1995 that we could sit at home and play by ourselves, each of us in her/his own lil’lonely world…if that’s what we want.
yes, hahahahahaha!
M
I condemn Gorka’s personal attacks on Maniac.
However I agree that something must be done with the energy drain that makes manaregen obsolete.
I.e. how about making manaregen percentage instead of plain.
So let’s say 1 point of manaregen restores %0.2 of maximum mana when sleeping(%0.15 when resting and %0.1 when standing).
So if a person has 1000 max mana and 100 manaregen, then their manaregen will be 200(20% of 1000) per minute when sleeping.
Such solution for the regen break issue would be way better than the energy drain.
I certainly respect your opinion, but can you give reasons other than ‘I don’t like it’ or ‘It’s different than it used to be’? Yes, Sloth is more active now, which I think is a huge step forward… regenning was literally the worst part of the game. You say you don’t mind it… ok… you can still do it if you want, but to force mind-numbing inactivity on the player of a game seems too high a price to be paid to support an additional dimension to the game.
What a lot of warriors and monks don’t get in all of this is how quickly casters run through mana, as they eat so much damage that the tougher classes don’t eat. Warriors, for example, can actually get to a point where they methodically grind through EU small mobs without extended periods of regen, whereas a caster can never get to that point. Monks can do the same by sticking to mobs that die from deathtouch. This all plays into the deeper dynamics that non-casters are able to deeply utilize all of their resources (hp, mana, moves, regen) super efficiently, and thus operate in a super balanced mode in which no one resource gets tapped quickly, especially since backstab doesn’t play nicely with mirrors/aerial servants. No such balance exists for caster primes, and that’s not fair/cool/fun.
I don’t really oppose the idea of eliminating mana regen breaks. I just don’t like how it was done.
Granting players ability to instantly gain 2-4k mana is the very definition of op.
Why not boost manaregen instead in one way or another?
I think it’s not energy drain per se, but specifically venerable plantwraiths. We have many mobs with a very, very adequate mana-to-risk ratio, such as the pegasus/Paladin/pseudo-dragons in DemonWeb, or wardens/faerie dragons in Herbalist Isle II. (And there are many, many others that are less known.) But plantwraiths fall so far outside the expected range of “normal” that it indeed feels not right.
UPD: Of course, plantwraiths. :)
I can easily adjust the wraiths. I can make it so that lower level players will be able to get good mana from them, but the higher your level, the less you’ll get. I am thinking up to 4x40, you’ll get the normal drain, and by the time you hit 9x40 you’ll get 1/3 the mana from them, with a linear descent from 4x40 to 9x40. Thoughts/comments before I do this? I want to give people a chance to comment.
Do I understand correctly that the energy drain is going to remain primary way of the mana replenishment?
Alternative approaches(aka boosting mana regen/spectral shield/etc) are not even considered?
I think the change to wraiths is reasonable. If someone were to come up with a system that is balanced across all the classes, I would listen. My biggest problem with boosting regen is that I don’t actually want endless runs, I want the player to have to do something to get that mana, something active that does not involve inspecting the lint in your own navel for eons as your player regens.
Ok. How about adding a new spell that transforms corpses to mana?
It works for, say, 5 minutes. And automatically transforms every corpse in one room with the spell bearer to mana. If there are several spell bearers, then one who will get the mana is selected randomly.
The corpse is then turned to dust, all items and gold are dropped on the ground.
The amount of mana depends on the how big the mob was. I.e. a kobold’s corpse would give 1 mana.
Fire Machine’s corpse would give 40.
An epic mob’s corpse would give 100.
Such spell would allow groups to run non-stop. And also to return manaregen gear back in game, since casters would need the passive manaregen anyway.
And the energy drain could be safely nerfed.
I think Yang you need to define what problem you’re trying to resolve here.
Is it that you simply want mana regen eq to return to relevancy?
Or?
Yes and also to justify my classo selection. As I(and many others) had put druid second just for the manaregen bonus. That choice seems way less justified now.
Yes, I know it’s possible to change the classo on rebirth. However it comes with the price of reroll. Which means for me losing 85.
Generally I don’t think that the energy drain should be the ultimate and primary way of the mana replenishment. It should be just one of the ways.
Other ways should be:
Passive manaregen that comes from the gear and the class order.
Spectral shield.
Potions?
Other unimplemented yet ways like the above proposed transforming of corpses to mana.
If a player smartly uses those ways, then they will never run out of mana.
I understand your classo position, but you haven’t played since 2017.
In the meantime, people have made characters with classos attuned to the new reality.
You are proposing nerfing their classos to make your classo choices comparatively better.
But they have been here. Playing characters all the way through 9x40. And 9x40 reborn.
I don’t think that Dr 2nd is a bad choice regardless. I played Dr 2nd with drain in-game and then respecced
on reborn but there’s value in having increased regen. People are still choosing to put Dr 2nd.
If I was making a pure caster and I may one day - I would highly consider Dr 2nd regardless. Because it’s fun.
But I think it’s nice that Dr 2nd is now not essentially mandatory for any who wants to use mana.
It’s opened up way more classo’s as viable than: pick some flavor of __ Dr __ __ __ __ __ __ if you want to
use mana.
Dr 2nd is still a solid choice that will help lots of players in the early game.
85 might seem like great stats but when you get to 9x40 mayor there is no difference between 81, 82 or 85
other than a few less buys before you have bought all to stats to 19.
When you get to 9x40 you will realize this is not the barrier it feels like now.
I think the biggest loser here is druid primes - but like thieves did before their recent refresh,
the druid classo needs a working over beyond just mana regen - they are still amazing support characters
but their solo game suffers comparatively.
–
Quote:
- Passive mana regen that comes from the gear and the class order.
Mana drain also depends on class order and gear with casters having more mana - a quad caster
has way more mana potential than someone who is just caster prime for example, and this seems right.
as people invested in mana regen gear, so have they invested in +mana and spell save gear including
expensive drachma gear.
Quote: 2. Spectral shield (why couldn’t it boosted again?).
Spectral shield is fun. more opportunities to use it strategically would be fun
Quote: 3. Potions?
potions, heavenly scrolls are already a thing and are heavily used by some players. There’s a reason
kangaroo pouch and dwarvish scroll bag take up valuable space in my inventory.
Quote: 4. Other unimplemented yet ways like the above proposed transform of corpses to mana.
I don’t think groups that never run out of mana is a good idea. This just sounds like … chop?
I would rather go the other way - making there be incentives to complete an area with the
resources you enter with - forced to push things to the very edge and make use of every last drop of mana.
Mobs that make you pray you have enough mana to survive to the end. I think this is best tackled
with area design though.
What I like about draining is it is active. You undertake an action to regen. There is risk. People
are killed every day at the vens. Experienced players are killed by the lich. You’re not afk.
And it’s kind of social. You bump into most of the players at the vens. Groups start at the vens.
Even when you’re just hitting solo stuff you pass people there. It’s not run to the dreamweaver and
sleep.
And it makes newbie players useful. and tantalized. sometimes they get mana. sometimes they die. better get
better eq. how come I’m dying? why are my drains failing. they start learning how to play. and they
can be useful healing or just staying alive in a group
I’m not opposed to making vens more difficult somehow for the higher level chars as Driven proposes.
That may be a good idea. I’m not really sure it’s needed.
But ultimately I think the balance issues we have are not a “drain issue” and have to be addressed in area
design and mob stats.
They are a cumaltive issue, a death by a thousand cuts, of power increases that have crept in across the board.
If I was to propose one change off the bat it would be to increase the death XP penalty loss. Currently
it’s about 100 million for 9x40.
I say scale it based on xp for the last 7 days. If someone has little xp in the last 7 days, the rate would be
about what it is currently. But a 9x40 getting good xp should be penalized up to 1.5B, and a 9x40 reborn up to 3 B xp
cnl wrote: I understand your classo position, but you haven’t played since 2017.
In the meantime, people have made characters with classos attuned to the new reality.
Ok-ok. Keep energy drain. After all, I don’t want to be that guy who spoils everyone’s festival.
Moreover it’s not just energy drain that I dont like.
I must admit that I dont like major part of the recent years changes.
I may like the ideas of the new stuff, but the implementation seems very imbalanced to me.
It simply made the players significantly more powerful, which resulted in Jord becoming different place.
I mean when I left in 2017, Jord was harsh and unforgiving world. You had to work hard in order to archieve something. Even middle-grade gear was sometimes hard to get.
Now Jord is the place of prosperity and success. Almost everyone is 9x40. One could find the top notch gear even at the town shops. Many adventurers are dressed from head to toe in the drachma gear. And - as far as I understand - they got it not from the diligent doing of autoquests.
I perfectly understand why people like and defend the new reality. And I even agree that there’s probably no going back now. Still I want to return to the old Jord.
Maybe it makes sense for the admin to run alternative MUD called “SlothMUD Classic”, where the recent years’ changes would be brutally rebalanced.
I understand, how crazy such idea sounds. As it’s unlikely that the admin has desire and resources to run two MUDs at once.
Still if “SlothMUD Classic” would be run, then I’d move there and start from level 1. And probably I wouldn’t be alone.
I don’t mean this as anything personal but read with an open mind. After all, my knowledge of the mud and recent changes is limited given my 3 years of absence and have only returned a year ago. That said, I can share some insights from a player that has played both the old and new versions of the mud having experienced both physical and caster prime classes in both versions. Warning, English is not my first language so try to make sense of the comments if any of the sentences look weird.
I think it’s not as easy as you thought it would be to get to 9.40 reborn with fully decked drachma gear and decent buys from the reborn/conquest shop. Only at this point do players get really OP and rightfully so as it takes a lot of effort and time to get to that stage. It is not hard, yes, but it does take time and determination.
Most of the reborn 9.40 chars you see now are old veteran players and some very smart newcomers that know what they are doing and have the right build and gear to do it. Many of them were here before the changes kicked in. Fast forward 6 years, it is only reasonable that they are where you see them right now.
I agree gears are easier to come by nowadays. Partly thanks to some dedicated players that constantly cycle gears and forges for weeks and give them out to other players for free. It’s not a bad thing as it keeps the veterans occupied and the new players happy. Just need to know who to talk to wink Ezekiel :) I’m sure the challenge is still there if new players decide to do this on their own.
Regarding drachma gear, we do get good drachma from immort run quest now. However, those players I know with full sets of drachma gears have done most of the AQs in the game once or twice (from reborn) per char to get there. This is also speaking from experience from what I went through to get my set of drachma gears for both my chars. You won’t likely see an average player having those gears without spending time doing AQs.
I agree players now are a lot stronger than before as a result of the recent changes. I believe this is a natural progression of any game. Let’s face it, most people want to get stronger as they invest more time in any game. Perhaps we just need to tweak the difficulty of some areas to align with the current char powers. For example, revamping the xp/gold/damage of the old group areas can make things harder and also more rewarding to the current players. Areas like Tomb of Forever King, Dark Covenent, BH Volcano, Ice Glen, Onyx Tower, Positive Planes, Underdark 2, etc. There is a fix now for that using sceptre but nothing beats doing a refresh on these areas. I assume that the work required to tweak these areas is a lot less than creating a new area? This is probably a topic for a separate post.
I remember before these changes, the mud was a very quiet place. I used to log into the mud with less than 5 people constantly for a period of time. Reasons I believe people are simply burned out from the slow-paced game style or have already maxed out what they can in the game and got bored. A small player base means you won’t be able to cycle big mobs that are meant for big groups (except for some exceptionally strong chars). Things were not looking good for the mud back then. With a bit of power creep now, people can still cycle stuff they need outside of a group. In my opinion, it is better that way as some of us play in different time zone and can’t always catch a group.
I understand some may think we have grown too strong now and may reach a point where we destabilise the mud. What I see instead is the opportunity to create more difficult areas for players to tackle in the future. Dark Valk is a good start. Also, before these changes, the gap between caster and non-caster prime is too big. You will notice 60-80% of the mud is either warrior or monk prime. Now, we see more casters (and of course, the return of thief prime). It add some diversity to the mud. Although I don’t play some of these classes, I am happy to see them return (when they are not stabbing my mobs :)).
Regarding energy drain, if I remember correctly, this “exploit” was in the game for some time, possibly before the recent changes. A few of us have been doing that in the past, just not many people know of it or the potential it has. We also haven’t found the ideal place to drain at that time. In fact, it was more powerful last time as you don’t get capped on how much mana you can store up and you end up with a mage running around with 6k - 10k mana. Not forgetting, even without exploiting energy drain in the past, we are replenishing group mana with spectral shield. It is clear that people do not like the conventional way of regening mana. It’s just a little more tedious but the same overall outcome.
If we remove energy drain, there need to be some changes to how casters sustain mana in group or solo. I’m not a game creator or designer but what I can think of can include some or all of those listed below.
Including some passive skill for casters to proc cast with no mana cost on spells
Give them a proc to return mana on cast
Make regen scale to mana pool.For example, regen % of mana pool.
But to get make it sustainable, casters’ mana pool needs to increase which will probably end up similar to energy drain situation we have now. To give you an idea, it takes my mage 3k - 3.5k mana to clear an area that takes mo/th little to no mana to clear. You can imagine the mana pool mage needs to be competing with these classes when running solo. You could argue those are thief area and it should be that way. If I run some caster oriented area, it would also take me similar mana to get similar xp as what th/mo are getting per hour.
If the mana issue is not fixed after removing energy drain, we will end up seeing casters run out of mana after clearing half the area in the group and the group continue chopping the whole continue. Like what we have done in the past. I know, I lead almost daily when I grind up my first 9.40 (unless I’m doing it wrong).
Regarding slothmud classic, if you prefer the old ways, you don’t need a separate server for that. Just don’t use energy drain and run solo. It will be similar to what you experienced in the past at least until you get to reborn shop. There is no need to slow the server down for everyone else.
Happy to hear what other people think about this. As I said, I’m just speaking from my experience and what I’ve seen so far. These changes are enough to make me want to try out other classes which I believe is a good thing. Maybe some people see the game differently. After all, we all love slothmud. That’s why some of us have been sticking to this game for so long.
Cheers,
Vege/Broccoli
Maniac,
Considering your suggestion, no, I don’t support simply nerfing of energy drain from venerable plantwraiths. It’ll bring no good, but will provoke huge amount of complaining from players, who are used to that feature.
Imho, energy drain should be replaced with various alternative ways of the mana replenishment. And only after those ways are properly implemented, then the energy drain could be nerfed.
Vegetable,
Considering your experience, you should know that playing pure solo is very far from being equal to playing SlothMUD of old days.
I think Vege is right, there’s nothing stopping you playing the way you want to play right now.
Create a new clan called classic. Setup your clan rules. Players must start from level 1. Following items not allowed: no 6x40 artifacts, no proc weapons. No energy drain. No eq from outside classic chars. If as you say people want to play like that - you can right now. And you can play your classic chars sometimes when your classic buddies are on. And you can play your other chars some other time. You can have your cake and eat it. If there are these players you say would jump onto a sloth classic server but aren’t playing now, just jump into a clan. have fun. Why worry what other players are doing?
I often thought about creating a clan called bare metal for people to play with limited scripting. All healing and attacks by hand. No triggers beyond some minimal feeding/drinking automation ( I hate eating / drinking by hand). Anyone AFK - they really rudderless. Sometimes I would play on this, sometimes not. And it’s voluntary. You choose to do it or not. Kind of a long term, when I’m in the mood for it project. Chip away over years. Maybe I would be the only member and I’m ok with that.
Actually, I had another idea for being able to create a new char in iron man mode with perm death on shock. This may be a bad idea (tm) leading to much distress :D maybe this not a good idea for mental health
In Sloth sometimes people do things I don’t like. I used to get rather upset about it but why. I’m just here to have fun.
I definitely had a lot of fun as a new player clawing my way up. But Vege is right - it is a natural progression to Sloth that you will eventually get more powerful - because otherwise what are people spending time doing? It’s hard to motivate people to play for years with no tangible increases in power and if those increases are there - you will have people who obtain them. because that was the goal.
I do think there’s an opportunity and a need for challenge to be re-injected into the game for powerful characters. revamp some areas. make some new epics or retool existing ones. new challenging areas. But I also think the trajectory of sloth has been necessary and ultimately good for the game.
cnl,
You should apply for the job at Blizzard.
Imagine, how much money they could save if they had such magnificent adviser as you, who’d tell them that instead of making WoW classic, they could simply tell players to make a clan with constraining rules.
Quote: cnl,
You should apply for the job at Blizzard.
lol :lol:
I think that having discussions like this as a player base is very healthy, so long as we stick to the discussion.
I don’t think that breaking something that is working as designed is the right thing to do. I think doing that in order to harmonize. or balance the mud causes more problems than it helps. I too have played on and off for many years and this most recent return to Sloth has been 2019-present where I’ve leveled two 9x40 chars but not using remort tokens (some think I’m crazy for that, I call it just uninformed :lol:). I have to admit when I came back and someone said “let’s go drain” I was like, what is this witchery you speak of?
My characters are not the best drain classes either (Wa/Cl) and (Ba/Ne) but they can, given enough time to find eq and set up the right eqsets. It takes time to do that, and actually not die. I’ll be the first to admit, I’m still not great at not dying at vens when I go, either.
I think the suggestion to balance the mobs so that they’re not able to be taken advantage of so easily and let people drain during regular group cycles makes good sense. I like the proposal made by Driven. It still keeps the spirit of the spell, and it helps the lower characters without blocking the larger characters from using it.
I also like the idea of optional ways to obtain mana, I think game evolution like that makes good sense as well. Some smart mage worked with some powerful necromancer to turn infuse soul into a mana + hp potion (Improved Infuse Soul). This is a potion solution but unlike what exists it gives the players power to control when they get it - much like energy drain would. Or even a spin off the druid canopy that made it more portable, some type of druid aura that they could pump up the team’s mana regen by +25 or something as they go for a few ticks, rather than parking for it.
When you make changes to take away power from something you have a tendency to swing it the other way completely. Now, I have no history that tells me that the person that implemented “Sanctuary for the soul” or “Sanctuary for the body” intended it to work differently than it does, but if they didn’t - it makes no sense based on the help files. I could see if it worked as it was written with Bards being able to hold a song throughout battle it would be incredibly powerful especially with the right instrument. As it is now, it’s completely unusable solo, and really only benefits big groups at the biggest mobs (ok, I use it on little-ish mobs in big groups too but that’s cuz I hate being struck with lightning or burned in fire). Again, I have no history - but in the testing I’ve done, if this was intended behavior the song writer planned for a huge group of 9x40s to attack big mobs with a character singing this song on repeat to a point they can’t do anything else. Seems silly, right? Maybe they meant that or didn’t think it through. I think if we take the same stance with energy drain because the vens are not small drains like other mobs in the game we risk ruining the spells intended function.
I also don’t like just pumping up non-caster classes and basically using them as defacto healers to just keep going constantly and I do a fair amount of leading larger groups. That’s not to say if they come to the group with mana, I won’t use it. I think using characters for their prime/second classes makes the most efficient use of their abilities. Now, there are plenty that disagree with me on that and I’m ok with that. We’re allowed to have different opinions on things.
I find drain (meaning visiting AH vens) to be really pointless in the bigger groups. Some of the players already buying and having mana that regens super-fast or spent time designing their character intended for groups means we can flow for a long time without drain. In fact, leading several quest sized groups I almost never go there, it’s counterproductive for big groups - as mentioned dead players and non-casters end up with less mana than they started with. That said, the mages that follow me often run empty after an area or two until we pass a mob they can drain, or they go off and drain themself, or they hold off casting and regen as we run, which they then miss out on possible xps/gold/honor/etc.
All of this to say I think there are likely good ways to fix the vens without breaking the ability to drain within the game. It may mean that the primary way to get mana shifts, which isn’t necessarily bad as long as enough ability remains to make solo draining possible.
(P.S. If you do go to work for Blizzard, cnl- let me know if they need QE directors)
Quote: Vegetable,
Considering your experience, you should know that playing pure solo is very far from being equal to playing SlothMUD of old days.
Yup, I get it that grouping is how most players (me included) get xp in the past. However, there was a time when the mud was semi-dead I was forced to solo my way to 9.40 or beg people to follow me so I can get a group of 4 people running xp to boost my warcry. Sometimes it’s because we don’t get enough active players, sometime it’s due to the timezone I’m playing from. I’d say half of my xp on Vege is from solo runs. It is also the time I learn more about the area and tricks in the mud. Now, I’d say most of the reborn char (or even a properly geared 9.40 char) can get XP faster solo than in group. Just need to know what area to hit. I like to have the option for solo and group xp.
Quote: cnl,
You should apply for the job at Blizzard.
Imagine, how much money they could save if they had such magnificent adviser as you, who’d tell them that instead of making WoW classic, they could simply tell players to make a clan with constraining rules.
I’m not against having a separate server for classic play or even a trial server to test out new stuff before it gets rolled out to the main game. If the admin has time to do that, great. We can’t compare sloth to wow. If sloth is a billion-dollar enterprise with a big team of developers, yes, by all means, run as many servers as you want. I’m not sure sloth has the manpower to work on 2 servers right now. After all, having a separate server won’t impact my gameplay on the current server. From what I read just on this post, seems like there is a lot for immort to do if we want to rebalance drain, char progression and area difficulty. Blizzard probably won’t create a classic server if they have only a handful of players either.
Quote: I find drain (meaning visiting AH vens) to be really pointless in the bigger groups.
I agree with this. It’s only good for small to mid-sized groups and solo runs. You won’t have enough vens to fill up the whole group anyway if the group is big.
Just somehow vaporized a long post, so long-to-short:
If I were trying to code something to rekindle interest in caster classes, it might very well end up looking a lot like drain as it is currently implemented. So: good job, Maniac and whoever else worked on it.
A possible tweak that would be inline with the game’s design: apply a small bonus amt of mana for mage/necro primes, a small reduction for Wa/Mo/Th primes, and a “baseline” for all other classes.
Whatever is done, pls preserve the ability of “youngn’s” to successfully drain. Tapering off the chances at higher level is great, but if there’s a weakness of Sloth currently it’s making the little guys a positive part of groups, and it’s very easy to make that even worse with careless tweaking.
Finally, for those who think the burgeoning 9x40/9x40-reborn ranks indicates that gameplay is now easy:
First: the good old days weren’t always good. I for one, having run both a “standard” character and a “token child” character, am hard-pressed to revisit non-token character play again. It’s not bad early on, but those final 20 or so levels are just plain awful. Why suffer? It’s a game, the concept is enjoyment.
Second, much of that perception is misconstrued due to COVID and the subsequent isolation laws. When that went down, playing Sloth became my main recreation. It was easy to play a lot - and nearly impossible to do much else. We all needed the escape, we used it, and consequently more of us played more, getting a group going was easier, keeping it going was easier, and most of us leveled rapidly. Game changes probably played a very minor role in the leveling rate.