Hello
I usually dont say my opinions on here cryier since - first of all - my english sucks and I seem to annoy ppl so I appoligize for that. Hopefully this time you understand my point and not how it comes out. Cool?
This post is a general post to all issues you’re talking about, I’m just flying my taughts and how I feel about it here.
Our creators wish us to vote every day to keep up the newbies coming. That’s the best way to keep them coming so please vote - everyday.
I felt like slapped into face when the gem-pop-thing changed. I just build myself up to be able to kill solo lvl40 mob. Plp used to able to pop them solo and it was taken away. Just seems unfair to me.
I know this sounds selfsentered but that kinda major change should have been done in next sloth.
I have popped past 2 years less than 5 tier-3 gems(bought alot so cant remember escant number - even with bought it’s still under 10- so no runes) and 2 tier-2 since I dont have the time to group so much :(
But anyhow - you’re now talking about rebirths and making new drachma eq and new area for avatars etc.
It’s ok and I like what read in cryer - but you all seem to forget one thing. We’re all screwed if we dont attract more players.
I do alot soloing since my RL takes me afk all the time. I like groups but can’t find the time to go with them so often. And when I go with group (hoping to pop a gem) all gems that I primaly want are taken already by calls. Heh - good luck me ever getting GYT :)
Mudding is my time to get of from my painful reallife. I just want to have fun. I want everyone around me to have fun. So to everyone - thank you for the nice groups and good times - lets keep them coming and big thanks for immortals that keeps up coding and making us this awesome experience which can be both pain and fun - still the best!
Written 30.11.2016 6.03am drunk
-Belrath
ps. That post was meant to be positive - I just can’t express myself in english when emotional.
I agree Belrath. New players are definitely needed, and we aren’t particularly good at getting them.
When people log into Aardwolf and see 100s of players online, they just trust the game more than our little server with 12 people. Nevermind that SlothMud has infinitely more depth and breadth and is just generally more interesting…
Other than voting, which we’ve not been doing very well, I’m not sure how else to attract the dwindling pool of people that are interested in text-only games. We could try breeding some I guess; my son just figured out his way through the newbie school as part of his typing/computer literacy practice.
Gems were initially supposed to be super rare, but the original implementation made them only semi-rare. I preferred the original drop rates, which let a dedicated player could complete a full set of runes in the same time it takes to hit 9x40. Of course, we weren’t intended to ever achieve a ‘full set.’ Currently your best bet for completing a set seems to be finding some good wealth building strategies and then buying them for 10-30 million gold each.
Rebirth discussions do address an important point. Our game community is very small, and historically we lose most of our top players when they hit 9x40. A few create alts, but most leave. The game really can’t sustain these losses, because we aren’t attracting enough new players. The players we lose have been around for many years. Without rebirth, I was just out of interesting stuff to do. It is a relatively simple way to add a ton of content, and is getting a lot of interest from many players who have spent many hours on the game.
This time i came back to sloth with 5 friends.
One is very expirienced player and he still plays. Others stop.
3 of them quit almost immediately.
For 2 keywords were “wall of text”, “too complex”, “no time”.
One said he don’t like interface.He played lots of other muds and was displeased there is no highlighting key objects (he wanted to see “A frost giant [giant] is guarding the gate.” or “A frost [giant] is guarding the gate.”), also he was outraged he can’t use “open west” but have to type “open door west” or “open gate west”. I don’t really get his point, but that’s what he said why he don’t want to play sloth.
Madmonk played quite a lot, but he said he is getting tired, because “sloth is more a work than a game” :)
So, as i get it, most of real newbies can’t start playing because it’s too complex and they don’t know what to start with. I guess we need an interactive tutorial for new players. May be a mob, mentor, who will teach new players how to play. He will give players mini-quests like “go kill cat! you need to type “kill cat” for it” and will provide more and more info individually with the speed player can accept.
Also, language barrier is the reason too. If your english is not too good, wall of text become wall of unreadable text :) Translation to some popular languages will help, and i think sloth community can help with it, but it’s an insane amount of work, even if we’ll translate only key info, not all room descriptions etc.
As for gem’s rate, i found that removing the posibility of getting t3 gems solo made lots of ppl unhappy.
It’s like life imprisonment - no chance, no hope.
What’s about making chance of popping t3 gems solo like 1/50 or even 1/100 of 10-man group rate?
I mean make this chance low, but leave the hope.
Agree with Josiah about rebirth, it’s a good way to keep 9x40 from quitting.
A good number of us have English as the second language, so feel free to post more :) You it works, when you are sober, too .)
Belrath, I’ve sent a letter to JB about getting more new players about 7 months ago.
Out of this, he created a university, where players can learn how to do basic stuff on Sloth. I’d say it sort of works, because Arcainic got through it. So it’s already done, Zlodiak.
I earlier suggested that imms should promote the MUD, and then Splork told me it wasn’t immorts’ complete responsibility. I agree and here’s why and what can be done by all of us.
- I agree that solo gem restriction sucks. Even as the leader of half of the groups in the last year, I have built 3 t3 runes I needed - and that’s only one weapon dam rune. When it comes to weapon damage, that’s really disappointing, because a good portion of it lies in the runes.
By the way, you get more gems you need from trading the ones you get in groups, not just hoping the gem you need pops in group. It does happen rarely, but there are many more ppl, who need what you get randomly. So, you can trade the under 10 t3 gems to get at least one t3 rune you need.
I agree that a slim chance of popping a t3 gem solo would be good, because playing games isn’t only groups, it’s also solo. While some games, like WoW, depend on groups, we don’t have the luxury of that many players online here.
- Different players are at different stages of leveling/interest in the game, so it’s natural that they discuss different things.
I’d say we lost most of our players during or shortly after wipes. Loss of top avatars is particularly hard on us, because there were/are so few on them and it took 10 new players to produce 1 6x40, so something should be done for that too - and rebirths is the perfect incentive.
By the way, can we see the updated stats, since bonus exp has been going for 5 years?
- It’s good to see you in groups, when you join, find time to group more on the weekends, if you can - more chances to find a group in the evening/morning there.
I’d be interested to know if there are game features that people think are obviously missing that the bigger games have in place. I’ve started working on the new quest code again which would provide a journal containing discovered quests and their progress. I’m hoping I can get it to a workable state over winter. But what else? We can certainly do small things like “open north” for non-secret doors, but I seriously doubt little issues like that are driving lots of people away.
- Damage meter! Damage Meter! Damage Meter!
Seriously. Every popular game around has all information about each and every skill and spell. What formulas, what exact output. So ppl dont wanders in the dark like we do for plenty of skills.
I dont expect all that information to be shared, at least now(though there are no real matters to hide it actually), but at least displaying of exact damage(and actually healing) result of each attack and skill should be implemented.
- That in fact greatly raise motivation of any group. When you see your low output, you are heavy motivated to improve it as much as you can.
Well. Avatar rebirth thing as well. We concluded some good and easy to implement variant in rebirth topic. That could be done to give another live to some bored 9x40s who left.
- Also. I want to touch another holy cow. Eq looting by mobs when corpsed. Thats just too hardcore for current times. I guess we lose some ppl due to that reason also.
- Teker, “open north” is how doors work in Aardwolf.
Also, you can unlock the door if the key is lying on the ground.
I think a lot of mudders have been to Aardwolf and, perhaps, liked the feature.
An auction that accepts all the items at once, not every minute. And that doesn’t lock up, when someone else is putting stuff on auction.
I agree with Fluffy: there’s certain satisfaction in seeing how well you are hitting the mob after spending weeks on forges and quests.
E.g., just today, I’ve x3 stabbed a mob, I do 2 normal vicious attacks and 1 massive crit. How hard did the crit hit? I have no idea, because my exp counter/damage meter says it wasn’t that different from 3 vicious massacres.
- If you want an example of a good quest log, check WoW:
http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Quest_Log
I know it’s graphical, but there’s some grouping, info and options that make it really useful among hundreds of quests.
A melee, toggleable, skill to block fleeing mobs, shieldblock. The more ppl, the more effective it is.
An automatic PVP arena with rewards. Maybe give honor for winning in the same bracket? Double honor for the first win of the day.
I wanted to say, “group PVP matches”, but we already have that on SS. The only reason the SS Thunderdome is lacking participants and visitors is the lack of reward for participation.
- Daily quests.
It’s a repeatable quest you can do for a good reward:
kill a number of mobs in an area for honor (current honor from most raid mobs is a joke, when you need 5mil honor w/o a remort bonus, and you get 50 honor per kill). Or kill a number of any mobs above cap/2 total exp
collect a number of drops (dust, pelt, gemstones, etc) for gold
defeat a boss in a group for a double chance of a tier 1 gem pop
Ideally, there should be 3-7 dailies in an area, and they rotate every day, so it’s not boring.
- Complex boss fights that require more, than standing at the boss and spamming a few commands.
I’ll try to think of more, but this is a good start already.
However, I’d appreciate if you first do 1. from the list here:
It’ll only take some minutes.
I support the damage meter idea with my whole gaming desire. And I promise never to question game mechanics behind those revealed numbers.
Show damage…
Really, without this, the game is like going sight seeing in a tunnel, looking for views of progress… Hiding damage makes for a sloppy game as no one can detect if they are, or if they can… do better. In my view group leaders should also be able to see the percentage damage of mob hp each group members did on mob death.
Without vision the people perish.
Gorka, ingame group damage stats is what follows showing damage.
Personally, as a leader, I’d want to know how’s everyone doing.
If we look at the top addons for WoW, we’ll see that people need:
info about epics
personal and group damage stats: Recount
show buffs and debuffs (here’s another: show which song a bard is singing, when I type “look” and “score”, so I don’t tell bards to gods, when they are already singing their lungs out)
alerts on bosses, where not to stand
easier access to info/options
ability to get stuff in and out of bags easily
a locator to tell you, where the mob you need is
an easy to use auction.
In my experience with Recount I used it to:
see my contribution to boss kill
see how I compare to others of similar gear level
learn which skills I used more, and how much damage they did (were they worth it, or I need to adjust my skill rotation?)
to see the same for others, so I could understand, if they were doing what they were supposed to (or not). Even tho anyone can spot a slacker at the bottom of the DPS meter, this list helps a leader tell the group member where to fix the rotation, if he’s familiar w/ the class - I’ve seen newbies only use 1-2 spells, when you usually use 4-6 main ones.
Here in Sloth stats would tell me:
which of the mages were throwing acid blasts, how much, and how many of those blinded the mob
who was healing, and what’s their contribution to healed hps (and how much of that was overheal)
who was blasting, how damage they dealt, and which skills they used
what the bards were doing: just singing or also striking/healing
what were the 3-4.healos were doing, when waiting for their turn to heal.
Stats should also time spent in form and damage in form.
Damage stats would also help people choose more powerful class orders, something only very experienced players can do now.
Another thing we should consider is eq points, which would help:
new players to easily compare eq they found
immorts to price drachma items adequately
both players and immorts to create a custom eq shop, where players can buy/forge items with the stats they like.
Taron, I don’t know of anyone who takes efficiency to the degree that you do. When I am in your groups I am always second guessing myself all the time… asking myself I am doing everything to the level Taron expects of me and I sometimes feel under a bit of self imposed pressure. In Knubberub/Curate groups I have the freedom to do more of what I feel is best and there is less pressure and occasionally I enjoy more. No one is going to want the break down that you are going to want… but with that said, I do feel players need some feedback about what they have contributed to a mob kill.
It would be nice if the system echoed automatically debuffs back to group members.
The mob is cursed by Gorka.
It would be nice if players could get an indication as to their percentage dam contribution to a mob kill in a group.
The mob is dead! R.I.P. You did 22.2% of the damage.
Feedback could be determined by the “role” a group member flags themselves as… tank, healer, damage.
Tank - You took 2135hp’s of damage on this mob.
Healer - You healed 2000hp of tank damage on this mob.
Damage - You did 22.2% of the damage.
It’s a matter of pride for me to be a strong damage contributor in groups, but I lack the feedback to monitor this.
There is also a positive spin off from this… people who do not contribute well in groups will be forced to change there ways simply through the imposed social pressure they will put on themselves, not to be “the worst.”
To tie this back to the overall point I think players are making here… we want more information back from sloth so we can monitor our own performance and progress, because not being able to see this clearly kills the joy of the time we spend in making our character improvements… and if a game no longer becomes fun… it becomes like Zlodiak said… work.
Yeah, I have to say that little about the game frustrates me more than not seeing my damage. When I issue a strike and sometimes see some tiny little gain of experience, I actually get angry, because I don’t know if my strike actually sucked or if the stupid exp randomizer is fooling me. I basically feel intentionally lied to all the time by my exp reporter.
As for code which judges the performance of players in a group…that’s something that can be accomplished client side. With all the things we ask for from coders, it’s a bit much to ask for things that we could be contributing ourselves on our clients.
Don’t worry Juggleblood… strike never sucks!
I disagree with Taron regarding Recount-level information for groups. I don’t mind everyone seeing their own damage. You can already do that with clever scripts. I don’t think we should make that information public (seeing other players damage).
In WoW, Recount contributed to a very elitist environment, and it was regularly used to exclude people who were performing optimally. Groups shouldn’t be stressful!
Gorka, Josiah, I understand that you only want to see your progress.
However, as you and others see your damage/second, you will have no choice but to consider how you can improve it. Breaking down to each individual skill damage, attempts and success rate for oneself and groupies would be appreciated, but it is hardly a 100% requirement of the counter.
Oddly enough, what I’m pushing people to do is to do their jobs however they see fit, something they would have been doing with the counter enabled. I think you mean that I remind ppl about mob specifics: spectral, nostab, nofire, arms, bind, etc. I tried not telling ppl what to do, but they stopped doing all that ¯_(ツ)_/¯ and what’s the point of that?
As far as dps/hps, if someone can’t do their primary job in the group, I tell them how to do it. I even provide them with trigger patterns/commands more often, than not. Eg, if someone is not healing and not striking/blasting, he’s sponging exp and not making things go faster. It’s in everyone’s interest that everyone performs at least at 70% efficiency.
Josiah, I think it was more up to each leader, than to overall atmosphere of high-level performance. Sure, some leaders, who are tired of wiping during their RT and want to go to bed soon, require high DPS, but the rest of them just ask people to perform ok. They can be leading for fun, popping shards for themselves, eq for their guildmates or for other reasons other than being top 1 on the server.
Good leaders take into account player class and eq, and only speak up, if performance is significantly lower, than optimal for that particular player.
By using a group counter addon I can help a player do actual damage and feel pride on doing it, same thing you feel when you see yourself brutally massacring x5 (Gorka) or viciously massacring x6 (Josiah).
You’ll have to trust me that I’ve seen a far more efficiency-bent raid leader, who was routinely doing mythic raids in WoW. Perhaps, long distance running and heroic raid experience has taught me that every effort counts. I can’t imagine someone would think otherwise.
JB, I can’t see, how I can script my client to see what damage others are doing to the mob.
Well, we can’t even see our own actual damage, but we could count player blows.
Something like:
Pattern:
^(\w+) (barely |brutally )?(misses|massacres).*
Trigger:
groupHitCount[matches[2]]=groupHitCount[matches[2]]+1
if matches[2]~=tank then deleteLine() end
I’ve had that counter for myself for years and it’s very imprecise.
For example:
Vicious: 447 (9%), brutal: 156 (3%), massacre: 3117 (65%), extremly hard: 945 (19%), wiff: 56 (1%).
Total damage: 118249+ with 27 per hit so far :P
That 27 avg dam per hit is very imprecise, it’s based on minimum damage. It could be 30, and I wouldn’t know it.
Suppose I can see massive crit hits and disregard chops as well.
Were any of vicious attacks done, when mob was morted?
Was that vicious 71 or 100 after a brutal stab?
If a player hits a brutal for 32 damage, the same brutal could’ve done 69 damage, and I wouldn’t have known it.
I haven’t been using this counter forever.
JB has posted to TMC regarding showing exact damage per attack.
I was going to respond here but there is no sense in responding twice. Here is the link to my response:
http://www.mudconnect.com/SMF/index.php?topic=80583.0
Maybe we can find some middle ground? One option would be to remove most of the randomness from work experience? Maybe you guys can think of something else…
Here’s a middle ground suggestion:
Add total damage dealt to the new ‘counters’ command. Probably just two data points: total damage dealt, and average damage per round. That would give us a good idea of how effective we are, without adding potentially spammy damage counters to every line of combat.
Mages and Thieves would be able to see their damage precisely by splorking a mob, and players in a group could track their effectiveness over a longer duration.
The numbers would only be available to players that care, and wouldn’t be pushed on anyone who doesn’t want the information.
I also agree with forum guy on mudconnect, code obscurity is a bit old fashioned.
A number of options would fit in the “not revealing the mysterious stats” criterion, such as:
You contributed x % of group damage
You healed x % of group heals
You received x % of group damage
Also, if the argument is that it’s too spammy, make the players decide with a toggleable command.
Splork, what happened to:
Splork wrote: “Immortals run things past all of us because we have 25 years of experience to draw from. I don’t even think I’ve vetoed anything in years, I now simply tell people what I think will happen and say go for it and good luck :mrgreen:
If an Immortal wants to bring any of the ideas they see here to our admin team, they are free to do so and it would be discussed. "
That is exactly what is going on. The discussion is actively taking place and no decision has been made. I’ve received opinons from three other Immortals at this point and 2 have similar views that I do,
I’ve summarized a few of them in the TMC post.
Which is why we are trying to find something we can all be happy with.
Now thats what the quote box is for. Quoting something that people actually say…
I dont think that any middle compromise it posible here. If you reveal something, you actually reveal all. With enough data about any round or combat, we could gather statistic about pretty much details. It just makes this harder and available for good scripters only.
So discussion didnt change my point of view - all damage should be revealed. Dixi.
Only reason against it i think is worth something, is big flow of questions about inner formulas.
But that reason seems silly to me, because if we have output of that black box, we could test all that by ourselves. And any newbie never would ask on forum about that, if players ingame could answer on most of their questions.
All ideological reasons about “thats not our old good times blabla” are nothing, if you ask what ppl expect to see in modern game.
Filk, +100
I would also add that if potential flow of question about damage calculation could be a problem. There is an administrative solution. I.e. such questions to immorts could be forbidden. And violators turned into donkeys. Problem solved.
I’m a fan of getting integers blasted at me… especially positive integers. I’d play sloth in binary mode if you gave me the chance. The progressive and numerical eq system was what attracted me to sloth. I’ve always found combat tedious - you hit something hard / you hit something very hard… unexciting due to the lack of transparency, the in game puzzles an obstacle of charging ahead, and the social side of the game (grouping) with players who I wouldn’t probably be friends with in real life… difficult. (more so in the past) Numbers kept me playing.
I actually feel I might understand where Splork is coming from here. He has history and memories of the game that are precious to him. If you read his post… you can see this… Obviously these are nothing to the new players who are clearly more interested in powering up and world domination, and see the lack of transparency as an obstacle to improvement. Boths points of view are as valid as each other, but Splork’s is far more deeper as it feels like changing part of himself, his thinking, his traditions, his history in respect to this game.
We are messing with something here that’s deep to some. This is more of a “feeling” matter, and our logical arguments are as useless as warriors slashing at ether mobs with their swords.
If given the chance I would unashamedly vote for an integer on each line of combat in a heartbeat… Numbers improve my gaming experience, put me in control and remove ambiguity… to me that’s 1000% better… but if life has taught me something… people in Splork’s position, you have to give them space about these decisions because it’s deeper for them than for us. Both sides are right.
EDIT: A MUD Administrator has since made this response, which is well worth a read.
<LINK_TEXT text=“http://www.mudconnect.com/SMF/index.php … #msg210898”>http://www.mudconnect.com/SMF/index.php?topic=80583.msg210898#msg210898</LINK_TEXT>
OK so let’s talk realistically:
a) We made a philosophical decision to promote group play over solo play. I am still in contact with many of the older players, and this is the number 1 reason people won’t come back and new people don’t join. Period. I’m back right now, at some point I will leave, and this will be the reason why. Unless you encourage soloing, you will never grow the base. Make certain areas better solo areas, other better group areas.
b) The trend seems to have been to flatten out differentiation between classo, bring it back. Make prime skills stronger, make prime only spells and skills stronger.
c) Bring back some of the danger. That may sound conterintuitive, but being killed by the sundew and the man on the north road are part of the game.
d) The game does not stand alone, the game and the website/s are a combined experience, and frankly the website needs a lot of work. The EQ List looks like it was designed by a developer, the functionality is very cool but highly arcane and unusable. The wiki is not really a wiki in that none updates it. Try to find the ingredients for any of the thief spells, or the potions easily.
Registration on the site is a nightmare. It has tighter registration security than a bank website. Unless you are an Avatar you have no idea what spells are Avatar spells but that is the Gotcha, so the message is we don’t want new players registering comment. In addition, the mechanism calls you for to drag the spells, but lowlighted text infers you have to leave the correct spells on the left, not drag them to the right. Again, an unusable UI.
If you lose your password you have the remember both your username (that you may have registered years ago,) and password, so it tells you the username password combo is not valid, but if you try register a user with that email it tells you it is in use. The new registration feature never sent an email confirmation, so I had to dig back through my secondary email for the username.
There is no mobile website and most users want a mobile website. Trying to navigate the website on a phone just plain sucks.
So, numbers 1 and 2, sort out the website and create a mobile version. Yes I know of players we have lost because of this.
e) Remove the algorithms that penalize you for killing the same areas over until you hit 1x40. Again if I want to solo play levelling up below 40 is hard.
f) Make tri tokens able to roll better stats, guarantee a range, cap the top higher than they are now with some chance of going over the range, not as high as hexes. Believe or not lots of people like rolling for stats, triangular tokens are useless now as anything other than a safety net.
g) Simplify the game structure, it is simply confusing. If you are going to have a newbie graveyard, just have them come back with all their EQ and go up to go to the gate they died on, the whole grab your corpse and follow the beckoning figure thing is simply annoying.
There’s some good points in there. I’m only going to talk about g)
Yes, dying could be simpler and less painful for newbies. They used to leave corpses on the ground, which is too punishing when they live on a continent that most players can’t get to. Eventually though, they’ll need to learn to go find their corpse and get their stuff. The design purpose behind requiring them to ‘get all tomb’ is probably to help them learn how things work in a less punishing environment.
Corpse retrieval at any levels is rather hardcore compared to modern games, but you said in point C that players like risk. Perhaps we could think of some interesting alternatives to corpses getting looted. For instance, who would be interested in signing up for an optional life insurance racket where you can pay NPCs to safeguard your stuff? If you corpse more than 5 rooms away from a recall point, and there are no living members of your group in the room when you die, then they charge you ~5000 coins per level to retrieve your eq for you, and you’d have to wait 4 minutes for them to bring it back to town. It could be free for lowbies, and a nice transition from the deus ex machina of the graveyard to the harsh reality of the Struggle. The cost is high enough to be a legitimate risk.
On the other hand, CRs are one of the places where our players currently shine in supporting each other. I’ve never seen anyone politely ask for CR help and not receive it.
Hi Riurik!
On prime differentiation, that was decided when we went to the 9 class system and is not getting reversed. It’s differentiated enuff, while still pushing people to strive for 9x40.
On the graveyard, I think it’s a definite improvement for newbs, but I do see room for improvement. Newbs are a little slow the first couple times, but after that there’s no problem. One issue is that when they appear in the graveyard and get the room descrip, there’s nothing there. They don’t loot tomb, because they don’t see a tomb there to loot. As for the messages giving them directions to altar, I concur that the 10 second timer is annoying and most people will prefer to wander off before they see it. I would suggest just leaving objects along the path that direct them where to go.
On the eqlist, I have to say you’re being awfully critical. It’s rather great in my opinion. Similary I think you’re being awfully hard on the website for free game.
Regarding danger…I don’t know what you’re talking about. It seems you’re just complaining that these 2 particular mobs aren’t dangerous enough or you’re complaining about the non-aggro against newbies feature. Newbies rather like the non-aggro feature, so I think you’re alone on that one. If you just want to be killed by a scarecrow, I can arrange that for you.
Regarding corpse retrieval, I would steadfast stand against any change that makes corpse retrieval easy for non-newbies. It is the number one thing dissuading bots. I suspect this is also related to your complaint that soloing is hard. Anyway, the current balance of solo vs group activity is pretty good.
It appears you haven’t been active since 2007 and yet you speak as if you’re an expert on the game. Did you come back just to complain and be able to quit again? “This is a game which allows you to be online with other people, having fun.” If it’s not for you, so be it. We’ll still be here when you come back in another 8 years to complain that it’s not to your liking.
An immort slamming a post on the Crier is probably another good reason not to stay here. One of the reasons that the numbers are up at that people like me have returned to try help rebuild the numbers.
No I didn’t come back just to complain, and yes I would consider myself an expert in general in the game. I came back because of a post made on the Facebook Sloth Alumni, but having said that where is the active Facebook page? Where is the mobile web app? You want a concrete suggestion? Give me a way to put in my levels and filter for equipment I can wear, and search within that dam eq or mana regen eq. Again, the EQ List was made too complex. I said it had lots of nice functionality, it is just too hard to get what you want easily,
I am regular contact with old players who are friends of mine, and the main reason people have told me they don’t come back is that decisions to flatten classo play when the new game in was not something most people liked, and the game discourages soloing. You can bury your head in the sand and ignore that if you like, when I used to play we have 50 to 75 people online. Now the numbers are up and we are lucky if we break 20. The latest Sloth has never had the sustained number the S3 had, work out what was broken with the new version and (generally in terms of why people play)and fix it.
The decisions that where made when we moved to 9 classes lost the player base, and it’s not getting refreshed, and that is not just text-based games because other games have 100 to 200 concurrent players. Keeping on doing more of the same will not change anything. The new players we get when everyone goes and votes stay for a week or less, because the game mechanics are too complex and leveling is too slow unless you are in a group, and they go play an other Mud.
But hey, if you want think I just came back to complain go ahead. It always amazes me when managers slam people for raising issues. I think the declining player base says it all.
Bad analogy. Immortals are not managers, they are players and free content contributors. So yeah, I can tell you to shove it when you post such drivel, because if you really cared so much you could contribute something yourself. There’s only so many active coders, of which I am not one btw, and they have jobs and lives. You can’t just come in here after an 8 year hiatus and shit on everything and say, that if we did things your way, we’d go back to a 50 person who list. I call bullshit.
…Don’t read too much into my strong opinion here. I’m still available on telegram for you for raises and CR. Cheers.
Bullshit back. I gave thousand of hours of my time over a number of years to this game, I want to see it thrive as much as anyone.
The reality is that we seldom break 20 players. Sometimes in the last year I have logged on and we have had 5 players.
You want to do something to save the game you love? Work out what makes people want to play.
People vote with their keyboards. If we don’t have players, it’s because they prefer other muds.
And the manager analogy is completely relevant. I can do one of three things - I can play, I can make suggestions of how to build the player base, or I can leave. I don’t have the rights to build or code on the mud right now, but honestly even if I did, if what I did was more of the same nothing would change.
In the end this mud won’t die because of what players do, it will live or die because of what the immort team does, the people who manage and run the game.
Most newbies are playing a while, and leaving and not commenting. If we had one newbie a month stay and level up with would be 12 regular players over the next year. If we don;t make them want to stay and play they will go elsewhere.
Quote: The decisions that where made when we moved to 9 classes lost the player base, and it’s not getting refreshed, and that is not just text-based games because other games have 100 to 200 concurrent players. Keeping on doing more of the same will not change anything.
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.
Everyone likes to compare us to Aardwolf or Zombiemud and say look, these muds still have 100 players online. That may be true but they used to have 500.
I am certainly not saying we can’t do things better because we absolutely can. There is always room for improvement…
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.
“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.
Oh I know that Juggle, you have been incredibly helpful online.
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.
Quote: 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…
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Pixieeeeeee!
M
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.
JB, if gold sucked for 2man, gold will suck more for more people, mob total exp won’t change. We weren’t measuring exp/hr, obviously that’d be low for 2man, were assessing mob thickness/damage relative to total exp, and whether it’s worth leading a group here.
We saw the gold at the level, which is ok gold for an exp mob. DWeb has even higher gold, which is nice.
If you leave it as it is, most Pagoda mobs aren’t worth killing for exp. And obviously not for extra 50k gold in a group too.
If you want Pagoda to be an exp area, then exp in mid-level gods needs to be improved as well. However, it would mean that this is not a gold area, because it’s hard to expect an area to be perfect in exp and great in gold, even though it’d make leveling easier.
We have 8 people on after a reboot for a total of nearly 750 million coins in the bank.
To an outsider, that sure doesn’t look like we have a gold issue or need to be adding gold to the game.
The outsider isn’t bored to death by doing the same unchallenging areas for the xxth time nor he cares for players’ enjoyment. An outsider also doesn’t understand that adding an area with the same gold/hr doesn’t mean increasing gold/hr for players, because it simply adds variety and challenge.
Across 10 people online, there are about 4-5 trillions used exp on players.
We don’t need any new exp in the game.
Earlier, you increased exp bonus, because players were leveling slowly.
The same levels cost gold, which players accumulate even slower, than exp.
Yet you hadn’t decreased levels cost nor increased gold drops.
How is that so?
The game has two determining factors to level: experience and gold. For the most part, players have been gaining enough gold to level as they work towards that level. There will always be occasions when you might have enough gold to level but not experience or the other way around. I happen to think this is a good thing and not bad…
There was a major issue with experience and the rate players were gaining it at. That is why those changes were made. Gold is something which hasn’t been that huge of an issue so far or if it has been, it hasn’t really been talked about.
Gold was a huge issue issue for us in the previous version because there was simply too much of it. I would rather us be in this situation where we can make small increases and add to the game rather than trying to figure out a way to remove gold…
How do you know that gold wasn’t an issue for players? I remember talks about gold areas, and a huge uproar, when Mansion of the Mourned gold was nerfed, as well as in other areas.
Did those players, who stopped playing, had same or more gold, than they needed to level their most expensive level? I bet it’s possible to check that data now.
Since it’s easier to get exp, than gold, I don’t understand why players should have to spend hours upon hours killing unchallenging 100-3mil gold mobs.
There are always discussions about everything regarding the game. There is also always an outcry when an area is nerfed. However, that does not mean there is a global issue.
There have not been any, to my knowledge(forums posts which I read daily, email, personal tells, chats, etc), major complaints regarding gold as their had been regarding the issues surrounding experience. The total experience and rate at which it was being gained was abysmal and a mistake on our parts. We listened to our players and made adjustments which seemed to have pleased the majority.
I am not saying we will not add more gold to the game but I am saying we will be cautious, as we should be because we will not get ourselves in the situation we were in S3.
Isn’t it great having me around daily Taron :mrgreen:
I am starting to really enjoy my time here again!
Splork wrote: To an outsider, that sure doesn’t look like we have a gold issue or need to be adding gold to the game.
Splork wrote: I am not saying we will not add more gold to the game
Ok
Since you know both the experience gain rate and the gold gain rate, can you run your stats and show us, what it currently is? Thanks.
Also, what about gold on players that left? Were they rich or poor?
The suggestion that I agreed with and was responding to, was the concept of an area that was nice group gold. To me 2 man is not group. A “group gold” area to me would be an area like pagoda of enlightenment where the xp is a little sub-optimal, but puts a decent little chunk of gold in the pockets of everyone in a good sized group. I’m not going to load up gold on a zone that is 2-man size and call it “group gold”. I have a heck of a lot of experience adjusting mob values, and based on that experience I can say that pagoda of enlightenment is now on the upper end of gold values for large group mobs. For the idea to work, it needs to be on very thick mobs, because as Josiah pointed out, what is soloable varies wildly.
I’m not reacting to a belief that there’s not enough gold ingame. I’m reacting to the idea that there could be a little more variety to the gold runs or the idea that a few group areas could have some nice coin in them to draw traffic there.
Teron wrote: Since you know both the experience gain rate and the gold gain rate, can you run your stats and show us, what it currently is? Thanks.
Teron, those numbers are freely available to you via the top 20 lists. Feel free to crunch the numbers and compare it to leveling costs on your own time. I’d rather the Imms be working on the game rather than your statistics homework.
Our Immorts react well to common problems, expressed by multiple players, over a sustained period of time.
Gold complaints seem to come from a few specific players, and on an infrequent basis. I would guess that those players might have a spending problem rather than an earning problem.
Splork wrote: I am not saying we will not add more gold to the game but I am saying we will be cautious, as we should be because we will not get ourselves in the situation we were in S3.
Splork, please give shop keepers (in towns) more gold. A shop keeper should at least have 1m on him at a reset. Auctioneers are fine, but it would appear most others only have about 500k. This is causing shortages of coins on days 1-3 after resets.
Valid point Jezer and it has been brought up in the past on numerous occasions. Honestly, I don’t know much about this topic other than what I keep hearing and reading from you guys.
I will reach out to Teker and see what he thinks.
Thanks Splork, specifically… Rhin on SS, supplier on BH, Red Moran on AH…
If you decide to give more money to shopkeepers, I’d recommend doing it gradually rather than right at reboot.
Five minutes after reboot today, every auctioneer, supply shop, gem shop, and alchemist in the game were broke.
If they get a small hourly or larger daily allowance, that would be better than a big pot for whoever is lucky enough to be online right after a reboot.
Understand your thinking Jos, but your idea treats a symptom, not the problem. We are still going to bomb the shops, all you are doing is implementing a lag on us with your idea. But if the shop keepers at least had a mill, we can bomb them… AND the newb can sell his invitation to castle black.
A serious solution would either, stop tokens being sold to suppliers or introduce a specific token dealer. JB’s 1d100 * 1000 gold token eater was a good idea I thought, even though I doubt it will get implemented.
I’ll remind teker about shops, but figure he’s read what Splork said here, cause he’s on the ball… Island shops could be re-vitalised I feel… not sure why island has just never worked in the shops department… might be the distance from recall. Maybe they need a McSloths or a Walsloth to attract more consumers.
Fixed. Supply shops will no longer buy tokens. They were never intended to honestly, I had added item type light a couple years back just on the chance that some newbie would sell a lamp or something. It wasn’t so that you could fill up the shops with hexes. The other end of this problem is the excess of hexes from colibots. Will try to address that soon.
Can I suggest more edits to Coliseum…
Remove potion of invulnerability.
Fix potion of accuracy to be as original… +5 to hit (according to my s3 notes).
Reinstate original potion of destruction at +3 dam (according to my s3 notes).
Potions of invulnerability and accuracy are at best, slow movers, but more commonly… “shop cloggers.”