Mornin’ folks,
As I was contemplating my next Sloth project, I asked myself: What makes Sloth “fun”? What can I do to make it funner?
Is it the autoquests, in all their cheat-sheet glory?
Maybe it’s the large scale quests?
Perhaps it’s exploring new areas, discovering what no one else has before?
More followers, pets, and skills mayhaps?
The challenge?
The shoop-shaped cookies?
The grinding?
Getting more items?
The people? (not much more I can do about that; I’m already too awesome as it is)
A combination of the above, while probably true, is not extraordinarily helpful.
So to help determine what project I should tackle next, I ask you all:
What makes Sloth fun for you so I have an idea of what to work on? Or perhaps I should ask, why do you keep logging back in so my mobs can repop empty? (You can’t reply “to afk”! That’s my answer!)
/afk
Chobbs
I had so many sarcastic replies that would be censored :cry:
How about improving the epic system a little or giving it another dimension. Dynamic epic quests… kill %mob, brew %potion (for honor) etc
Fixing the information in the help system wouldn’t go a miss either. It’s not fun to find it’s outdated.
What ever happened to putting more drachma in, druid pets, and the map thing Isabo had running for 3 weeks?
Mornin’ Jezer,
Clearly my appeal to better understand and seek advice from the playerbase which I spend so many hours trying to appease is worthy of sarcasm and scorn. By all means, reply sarcastically, for I carry such weight in your flippant remarks.
Honestly, I’m not really a fan of the honor system (good concept, but no real impactful nor interesting choice in it), but I will consider adding new mobs, maybe rework some aspects, quests, &c.
Nod. Help system updates would be good, but are quite tedious to write. Also I don’t really have access to the mechanism to do so. Clearly the thing that draws you to Sloth are the help files, so I will see what I can do.
More drachma already got put in months ago. Think I added three quests for that, and another minor vk quest for a piece of lowbie eq. More in the works, but needed time to think of more creative ideas instead of your rote “cycle for this cp” a billion times over.
Awaken creatures re-evaluated, complications with the code, decided it was better to direct energy in adding 23 unique druid forms, which, judging by your last login:
Jezer’s last logon was Sat Oct 30 19:48:33 2010
you have clearly tried and tested extensively. Largely scrapped/reworked into the epics killed for the forms quest, but who knows, maybe they’ll show up later.
- Hm. Not sure about the map thing. But if that is what you enjoy about Sloth, evident by your ‘overwhelming’ number of map submissions, I will talk to Isabo.
For everyone else, I wish to know what is it about Sloth that appeals to you so I can try to improve and expand upon it to further your enjoyment.
emailing chobbs@slothmud.org works too.
Chobbs
My apologies, I neglected to see that you only wanted ideas you like, from people you like. My bad.
Going wiki style with help files just might help ease the burden of updating it. (Player Approved Updates) The mere fact you don’t have much time for the epic system like the majority of most players seemed a good reason to make it better even though I’m mostly with you on that one. I’ve have had a look at your form changes. I don’t understand druid pets inaction, fix them or scrap them.
As for my absence - it’s summer here, I’m about to climb my 19th mountain tomorrow and until the weather starts to turn nasty I plan to enjoy the outdoors as much as I can.
I’m sure your think of something fairly good.
Seriously, why even bother down this route? Chobbs kindly asked for suggestions and sure enough, one of our inactive players responds with the type of bullshit which drives the active Immortals away. Either way, if you have nothing to contribute to the thread in hand, maybe its time to to stop trolling and get back to climbing mount Everest for the 100th time.
Splork
Splork wrote: Seriously, why even bother down this route? Chobbs kindly asked for suggestions and sure enough, one of our inactive players responds with the type of bullshit which drives the active Immortals away. Either way, if you have nothing to contribute to the thread in hand, maybe its time to to stop trolling and get back to climbing mount Everest for the 100th time.
Splork
I’ve put forward two ideas Splork, the players have noted, and out you come like a guard dog, accusing me of “bullshit which drives the active Immortals away.” You just want me to leave and your trying to steer things that way. And it’s called Mount Aspiring fyi.
I can say for druids. Some things that annoying me.
Mana cost for beeing in form is still too high. Starting from wurm at 2x40 i guess, it becomes very heavy. Especially for blasting forms. Maybe it should be just cutted twice. Or shapeshift mastery moved to something like 1 avatar. Or another skill,that reduce that mana cost, maybe depending on total levels. But i think it should be much lower. Now its irritating.
Also, we have few druid eq. Actually there are few slots that have no items at all. Maybe some good forges, probably hard, but with good items? :)
I cant skip awaken. It was fixed. Great. Maybe some more work on it? Like non-combat pets, that gives bonuses, or debuffing mobs? I miss web, curse etc. How about adding some follower for that?
There was suggestion to make drachma items refunds with full price, probably with high coins cost. I guess that would be cool addition. Comments and ideas on its own topic.
Thanks for attention :)
Ok, what keeps me coming back for more? To put it in a nutshell the sense of progression and development.
As I play I gain xp and level which makes me more powerful and gives me new skills.
The early days of a character are the most fun when there is a short gap between each new progression point, the later stages are far less fun and more like a long slog followed sometimes by a fantastic new skill / spell / pet / shift form, sometimes though a long slog followed by death and the fruits of the labour wiped away or a disappointingly unuseful new skill / spell / pet / shift form.
Hours of what can be fun if repetative play should yield some benefit, at low level gaining your first worthwhile fighting shift form, or your first necro animate or finally getting double stab is hugely rewarding, every few days of play something worthwhile happens that gives you a warm glow about the growing abilities of your character. Later when you’re faced with 12 billion xp needed to get the last 11 quint levels to make 5x40 and you dont even get any noticeable reward for getting there (better equipment available to wear benefitting me by -0.1ac) isnt hugely incentifising, the prospect of 42 billion needed for the 27 levels to get 6x40 and 2nd trip40 eq is frankly depressing.
Fun for me would be at regular intervals and far more frequently than each 40 getting something substantial and new that makes my character more powerful, so yes for necros far more pets, a new one every 10 levels each noticably more powerful than the last, as a mage a new blast spell every 10 levels thats superceded the last, for thieves a small increase in stab power every level or few levels, for warriors some ac bonus at regular intervals, druids a new shift form every few levels (it seems a lot of work has gone into do this already).
As a rough guide I would say that if you put in 12 hours active play (a serious investment in time) you should get something noticable in return that is a permanent benefit to your character. As an example of how I view things now, presently if I played 12 hours at 50mill an hour (which is pushing it even for me) gives me just about 1 level which equates to I think 2hp, the next 12 hours wouldnt even give me a level.
I hope this attempt at a serious answer helps,
Thraxas
Agree Thraxas.
Fluffy… As hard as it is to get some of these items, maintaining form is actually an issue with your eq, and it’s not a problem at high levels. As a druid, you need to work on drachma for shifted mana regen items. Mana regen that shifts is more powerful in proportion to mana regen that doesn’t shift.
jezer wrote: Agree Thraxas.
Fluffy… As hard as it is to get some of these items, maintaining form is actually an issue with your eq, and it’s not a problem at high levels. As a druid, you need to work on drachma for shifted mana regen items. Mana regen that shifts is more powerful in proportion to mana regen that doesn’t shift.
I doubt you understand the question now. I guess thats your eq at sloth3 5x40. It differs from mine for like 10mr shifted. Not that much, compared to 130 mana/tick minotaur eating now. And that is only 3x40 form. The far we go - the more it becomes. And i get only that extra 10mr at the very end. Not good compare result.
What made SlothMUD III “fun”? For me, it was discoveries of emergent behavior. You can’t create emergence intentionally (or it ceases to be emergent). If you create enough abilities that do strange things, you’ll generally hit it eventually, but that’s a tedious approach. I also enjoyed identifying corner cases of equipment significance. Like finding the lightest magefour ioun. I collected as many containers as possible and enjoyed that considerably. The engineer in me would have preferred an eqlist that covered those parameters, but it was also kind of fun having to pop stuff to find out what eqlist did not say. Attempting minimalism was fun, too: “How cheaply can I kill this mob/clear this area?” “How few people can take down $BIGMOB within 30 minutes?”
Note that I played SlothMUD III, not because it was fun per above, but because of reasons like those Thraxas described. The occasional fun was just a side bonus to the deeply addictive nature of the progression pattern.
Filk wrote:
jezer wrote: Agree Thraxas.
Fluffy… As hard as it is to get some of these items, maintaining form is actually an issue with your eq, and it’s not a problem at high levels. As a druid, you need to work on drachma for shifted mana regen items. Mana regen that shifts is more powerful in proportion to mana regen that doesn’t shift.
I doubt you understand the question now. I guess thats your eq at sloth3 5x40. It differs from mine for like 10mr shifted. Not that much, compared to 130 mana/tick minotaur eating now. And that is only 3x40 form. The far we go - the more it becomes. And i get only that extra 10mr at the very end. Not good compare result.
You also get +mana regen which shifts for avatar levels. It’s true, the power does come at the end with druid. If you want to conserve mana while shifted, don’t use your highest form, use the one below it. From memory shift costs drop as you level. Your highest shift form is nearly always expensive. Shapeshift Mastery is awesome. Yeah, you may have a problem now… doubt you will later. But this always was the problem I tried to point out with druid, the progression seemed exponential, not linear. I tend to recall being able to maintain tarantula form in S3… that’s pretty high.
Chobbs I love your humor. This thread gave me a big smile.
I love anything that boosts our numbers. It’s just great logging in and seeing a big who list.
Your previous quests have been great in this regard, spiking interest in the game. So that’s my suggestion. It’s always great to see the honor / epic system grow, but nothing spikes interest in the game like the quests have.
It’d be neat to see some kindof weeklong event that was automated that had multiple possible outcomes. So that all week long people felt they needed to log in to help get this thing accomplished.
What makes Sloth fun? well what makes any mud fun or for that matter attract players?
A good resource can be found here: http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/laws.shtml (author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design)
if you dont want to follow the link or read it all then the following extract is pertinent:
Quote: Design Rules
The secrets to a really long-lived, goal-oriented, online game of wide appeal
•have multiple paths of advancement (individual features are nice, but making them ladders is better)
•make it easy to switch between paths of advancementt (ideally, without having to start over)
•make sure the milestones in the path of advancement are clear and visible and significant (having 600 meaningless milestones doesn’t help)
•ideally, make your game not have a sense of running out of significant milestones (try to make your ladder not feel finite)
However for those prepared to read the full article there is a lot of wisdom as well as humour there that may go some way to answering Chobbs question.
Two last truisms from the same article:
Quote: Featuritis
No matter how many new features you have or add, the players will always want more.
Pleasing your Players
Despite your best intentions, any change will be looked upon as a bad change to a large percentage of your players. Even those who forgot they asked for it to begin with.
Enjoy
Thraxas
Hi Chobbs
I took a long break, over a year I think, after Sloth IV started as I hated the constant struggle for coins, eq, xp and so on while feeling I was not getting anywhere. Not sure if it was real or just a reaction to change but I got the impression that everything was nerfed and felt frustrated. Once the sense of progression pales into insignificance compared to the grind, I tend to lose interest.
So what keeps me coming back? Well I like the format, the structure the commands. It’s all very familiar and I am very lazy. The people here are, for the most part great, on both sides of the immortal fence. I like the big quest groups, they are often fun as are area openers and the drachma always comes in handy. Some aqs are so opaque they can only be solved by the cheatsheet method you referred to in you original post. I would like proper clues for more independent solving.
I largely agree with Thraxas on this so won’t say it all again but from a selfish cleric point of view I would like to see more supplication creatures. Currently we have the same old SIII things spread out over nine classes and the progression seems stifled somewhat. It’s such a slog between x40s often for little or no gain in power. So more creatures please, or allow more than one, or have some creatures which are not alignment dependent.
It would also be great if the 3x40 eq was available earlier: 3x40, 4x40 and 5x40 as that’s when it’s most useful and is like personal milestone eq.
Regards,
Norks
I know this might not be what you are looking for but I want to see more quests like the blaster toy box quest or the enea statue quest. They used to do these scatter quests where they would scatter parts and when you got the whole set you could trade it in for drachma and it was done from time to time. Enea even made it so he could repeat it when he felt like it and not have to be on. Once he started it he would leave and his guy would be there to give the drachma until the mud crashed/reset. These were a ton of fun because you would have them scattered all over the place and people would say i have an eye i need a leg anyone have a leg. and the whole mud would get involved and help each other out. The drachma scatters they do now are so freaking boring I don’t care how much I want drachma it isn’t worth it. Someone got the bright idea you shouldn’t be able to locate the drachma tokens which for me took all the fun out of it. Heck half the reason I learned the mud was to try to figure out where that room was that had the drachma token. Now they have people just mindlessly wandering around. I would like to see more fun stuff implemented with drachma again.
If this is something you are interested in please feel free to talk more on line and i will now get off my soapbox
Thanks
Shyla
I like most that I can log in, put the game in a corner of my screen, and afk as long or as short as I like, then play for as long as I like in between afking. Seeing as how you probably have no projects that are going to affect these, I’ll focus on game play.
I like gaining power, and realizing that I can kill things I couldn’t kill before. The problem is, those things are few and far between. Bard songs cap at level 40, so the mobs I used to kill at level 1x40 are the same ones I’m killing at 4x40. I have other skills from other classes that I can use now, which have increased my power, but I’m doing nothing with my prime class I wasn’t doing before. One thing I’d like to see is for there to be something like supps, forms or summons for each of the classes. It might make the game more difficult to play, but the rest of us would like there to be some benefit to gaining levels.
My other issue is with the lack of benefit in gaining levels in NC classes. I have monk 5th, and from 26 - 40 I gain a total of 4 skills.
The other thing I like to do is find eq that nobody else has found before. It gets really tedious to cycle a mob for 2 weeks, though, with xp on that mob constantly decreasing, just to come to the conclusion that no, they don’t really load anything. I would really like to see some way of obtaining vague clues about unlisted eq, even if it’s area based and not which mob loads it.
you know what i like what blackmore said about eq. It would be nice if every so often something is posted almost like a quest that i have heard rumors of such and such and give people a reson to try new mobs in new areas ..we have often been told how there is eq out there that no one has found yet we will waste months cycling a mob only to never have anything pop and no idea if the mob even pops anything.
SHYLA
Showing my ignorance here, but how well does wealth and glory work with regard to finding eq pops?
What kind of clue do you need to be able to use it properly? Part of the object keyname?
Also how do you go about finding new forges when a new zone goes in? Query mob about forge? Does that always work?
I remember trying to locate a heart of a sheolian with wealth and glory with a level 3x40 bard with nearly capped charisma. We knew the exact name and knew the area where it popped but didnt know who exactly it was that popped it. We spend 3 days and a few hours each day trying to sing wealth and glory and in the end we just gave up. That skill needs a slight boost for sure.
W&G requires at least 2 keywords. Bard primes can use up to 5 or so keywords. The odds don’t seem to increase, it just gives you more combinations to try. Each distinct combination of keywords can be sung once to a mob each reboot/crash, or you can kill/sing on respawn.
The odds of getting an exact area or mob is extremely low. It works best when you have a room full of mobs to sing to, but there aren’t many of those in the mud (CF smugglers, centaur fillies type rooms).
Mornin’ folks,
Thanks for the insights.
//
@jezer
Having an antagonistic tone (‘i should have replied sarcastically, but I didn’t’) does not really accomplish anything productive. Try insulting someone then giving them advice, see how well that works. I addressed all your ideas, whether I like you or not.
Regarding helpfiles: Wiki style would be amazing, but I think I brought that up briefly with Benq but I vaguely recall he doesn’t like mediawiki. And given the then ‘recent’ web overhaul, I didn’t really push it further). Took action regarding this though, stay tuned.
Update for you regarding maps: talked to Isabo about this, seems folks complained about the time limit being too short, and lack of participation during December. Could be the holidays, who knows. Consult Isabo for more details.
@filk
- Druid mana drain: Hm. Not sure how the mana drain is now, but I hope shapeshift mastery way down the line helps. I honestly have no clue how it actually plays out, since my focus was on content generation. Testing things out, forms such as the spirit worm is absurd, good enough for a mob maybe, but I didn’t do extensive tests. I hear good things about
lower level form maintanence. Hopefully jezer’s response, as a more experienced druid than I, helps.
Druid eq: Will look into druid eq. Honestly, adding/balancing eq is a real chore, even more so when dealing with shapeshifting. I have provided mechanisms to increase specific druid skills, so you might have something that is say, +3 damage on felid pounces or maybe +20 heal bonus for unicorns.
Druid pets: Awakens, were put on the backburner. There were some, ‘complications’, with the code, namely trying to make custom webs as per the most common complaint. Don’t want too much debuffing, since the primary char is already such a monstrous beast hp and damage wise. They may show up sometime in the future, time/interest permitting. No promises nor timeline.
100% Drachma refund: personally I’m against this, but I only speak for myself and not the entire staff.
@Thraxas
Progression: With 9 classes it’s quite hard to add content everywhere. Necro pet balance is a pain, and would require such an extensive overhaul it’s overwhelming. I am not a fan of just making the pets grow according to a stiff mathematical formula as you have suggested several times (look how well it worked with exp tables). Like with the druid forms, I prefer creating specialized entities with differing functions. Of course, this takes more time to develop, so I’m still thinking upon it. Only time will tell.
Links: Thanks for the links, an interesting read. Those truisms are quite applicable to Sloth, namely the second. Remember the tweakening? What a reaction that got for a such tiny changes.
@Atwell
- On emergent behavior: Nod. We’ve discussed this before, but like you say, can’t really create emergent behavior intentionally. Usually. What kind of new abilities would you suggest?
@juggleblood
- On quests: More quests!? Those things take time!
@norks
Early S4: Yeah, cramming too many people into the same few areas made sloth feel a bit cramped. That and everyone was suffering from heavy 10+ year avatar withdrawal. Better now!
Supplicant pets: Agree regarding supplicants. Wrote a few, but problems trying to pair each tier. Neutral alignment supplicants seems a bit… odd. Will think more upon it later. Still working on it, though.
@Shyla
- Stay tuned, maybe a week or so.
@blackmore
- Finding new eq: I agree. I’ll see how to facilitate finding hidden items/adding hidden eq here and there. One problem is that most folks are just content with their current set, and won’t take the effort to explore unless the eq is better. Kinda creates a problem when designing new eq for areas: “How do you make desireable eq that people would want without simply tacking on a modifier to a spot that has never had it before, or tiny tiny hp/ma boosts that usually isn’t worth the trouble to cycle for”. Yeah, it’s rough. Some old eq could use updating too.
//
Concluding remarks:
Sense of progression/milestones seems to be the big thing concentrated on pets and honor. Rest seems to be desire for more content. Will be keeping those two truisms in mind.
Appreciate the input, but remember, we don’t know what needs fixin’ unless folks say something, and a little bit of politeness goes a long way.
/tldr
Chobbs
Chobbs wrote: @filk
- Druid mana drain: Hm. Not sure how the mana drain is now, but I hope shapeshift mastery way down the line helps. I honestly have no clue how it actually plays out, since my focus was on content generation. Testing things out, forms such as the spirit worm is absurd, good enough for a mob maybe, but I didn’t do extensive tests. I hear good things about
lower level form maintanence. Hopefully jezer’s response, as a more experienced druid than I, helps.
- Druid eq: Will look into druid eq. Honestly, adding/balancing eq is a real chore, even more so when dealing with shapeshifting. I have provided mechanisms to increase specific druid skills, so you might have something that is say, +3 damage on felid pounces or maybe +20 heal bonus for unicorns.
One thing about shapeshift mastery. In S3 you was getting it muuuuch ealier. Now its almost ungetable for most ppl. If we can get it at start of avatar levels, on its 4x40 part, that would be more correct, i think. Jezer expirience is nice, but he didnt played with current form changes. And now mana cost is very heavy, and higher we go, the more heavier it becomes. Something should be done with it.
About eq, i guess eq that gives some basic stats, and then adding some effects only when shifted, whould make sense to balancing. But in my post i only meant that we have only 1 ingame item for several slots, some with only 1 drachma item, and few slots have none items at all. Filling these holes would be nice to start with. And adding some specific form items after it.
Btw, we still lacking reworked eq list. Just small addition, that shows what can be forged from item. Now its very hard to understand value of item, if its cp and you dont know that, since you cant see it, until you catch exact forge on that list. That should not be very hard, since that info is in the db already, it just should be shown
You have no idea on the structure of the DB or the eqlist code so you cant comment on the difficulty of adding to it
I enabled the testcode i had set up, but if its broke, its broke and will stay broke til I have time to fix it
and no i am not linking the components back to the main items for now.
Filk wrote: Btw, we still lacking reworked eq list. Just small addition, that shows what can be forged from item. Now its very hard to understand value of item, if its cp and you dont know that, since you cant see it, until you catch exact forge on that list. That should not be very hard, since that info is in the db already, it just should be shown