Positive Changes

Terrus · **Posted:** Fri Nov 16, 2007 12:21 am

Jardek wrote:

To answer D's question about leveling, there are reasons nobody complained back then compared to now.

1. Spellspamming. You used to be able to GM just from pressing enter a whole bunch. It took longer than when you were out killing things, but it meant you didn't have to put up with having to go out to various places and jump through hoops. You removed that option.

2. NPCs didn't used to cast debilitating spells. These days (or at least, when I last played), you can be charmed, blinded, slept, cursed, deafened, confused, all by NPCs. Great, I just killed one NPC, now I have to sit around twiddling my thumbs for a few minutes. I understand you removed some of these problems, but they're still there and will be there as long as NPCs commonly used for leveling have debilitating, boredom-creating spells and effects at their command.

3. Interaction. People used to interact while they were leveling. There were only a few areas you could level, and there were set "leveling paths" for people to take. You'd do taslamar newbie school, amphitheatre, morea, n'kashya, ToM if you were a lightie for example. It took a while, and the same people were there for the same amount of time. You'd chat, shoot the [REDACTED], have a good time. These days there are umpteen million places to go, but you have to be taken to half of them. This forced interaction makes interaction in general quite boring. When someone says hello, you know they're going to be "wanna group". I don't want to f*cking group with you.

4. Area familiarity. God do I regret suggesting this. You may say you don't like grinding, but you must love it, or you wouldn't have reduced below normal the amount of exp you can get from a single area. It's punishing and boring unless you know where to go.

5. Skills and spells. You have made it increasingly painful to use these things, whether it's skills costing ME, charge needing a 'recharge' time, whatever. You've just made it annoying to play the game.

____________

All of these changes together have made the leveling grind pretty god damn boring and pretty god damn grindalicious compared to how it was years ago when the mud was popular. Leveling might take less time now, but it's painful. I literally sit there and feel like I'm being punished for trying to play the game. It's for that reason that I haven't leveled a character beyond veteran (or stuck with a character after veteran) for a couple of years.

Quoted for truth

Gnimral · **Posted:** Fri Nov 16, 2007 11:43 am

Jardek's right though. I normally can't level past expert or mentor these days with a darkie without any help. With the hours I play and the small darkie pbase that -can- and is -willing- to help, its just not worth it to train. In some certain rps and groups, the idea is to get stronger so that you can fight wars and be able to defend your guardians and what not. But with the decline in active membership in these cabals (usually its just one side of the light/dark spectrum, sometimes not), the want to play becomes non-existent.

How can this be fixed? I'm sure its been stated, but I want to put my two cents in.

Either abolish the area-familiarity system or tweak it in a way that would make the familiarization much slower.

Make some places more attainable for training and provide an equal amount of somewhat safe training places for people to train in. I think its ridiculous that I have to sneak around Exile and Nerina, trying to kill shopkeepers and pray I don't get caught because I have nowhere else to go since there isn't anyone who can help me get to the places I need to go.

People complain time and time again that instead of closing the gap between experienced and novice players, its reverse. This is completely true. With the new leveling systems in place and the sparse pbase, you need to have your ooc cliques and vast knowledge of the game to know where to go and how to go about doing what you need to do. I couldn't imagine getting anywhere if this system was in place when I started playing.

If some of these ideas were implemented in the game, I think there would be a reduction in the OOC cliques, a narrowing of the experience gap, and perhaps even more people coming back to play the game.

Salandarin · **Posted:** Fri Nov 16, 2007 12:07 pm

Everything Jardek said is spot-on. The familiarity system either needs to go away, or change to a daily timer (wherein you gain a much larger bonus that is lost much more quickly, but resets every day). That "group fix" is extremely patchwork and would not alleviate the problem for 90% of all leveling.

Forsooth · **Joined:** Mon Feb 17, 2003 9:55 pm **Posts:** 1365

I disagree in part with Jardek. I don't mind levelling being challenging. I wish it were more challenging, actually. But challenging does NOT equal slow.

I remember when, if you could figure out how to kill some "Death welcomes you" NPCs, you had a fast track to a couple of levels. Even just one or two mixed with some tough NPCs was a great levelling track. But the XP from this became limited, because it was considered too fast for expert levellers. These days, we have familiarity concerns as well.

The result is that it's best not to do anything too hard, because the gain doesn't compensate for your increased risk and recovery time. Better to bore yourself with NPCs that are merely a few levels above. What a waste.

Trying to find things for mid-level characters to do? They'd have oodles of things to do, if RPed missions to areas were challenging and productive. PK (and PK groups) have to favor the higher levels; adventuring doesn't.

whocarez62 · **Joined:** Tue Feb 21, 2006 6:25 am **Posts:** 211

Sinnoch wrote:

My only suggestion to this is that (and I surprisingly agree with Dulrik on this one) most characters should not make it past master. Only a few percent should.

That is all.

50 players x a few percent (2) = 1 player should make it through master...

Levelling is ridicoulus slow and a lot of people stopped playing because of that. Admit you were wrong and make the PBase increase again...

B00ts · **Posted:** Thu Nov 29, 2007 5:00 am

When it got slower to level, it just made it harder for newbies and twinks just readjusted.

Erevan · **Joined:** Sun Jul 22, 2007 5:18 am **Posts:** 1176

Quote:

twinks just readjusted.

Twinks will readjust no matter what you do. Especially in leveling.

Unless youre willing to be changing the way leveling works every 3 days so that they can't keep real track of it, making it harder to reach GM is only going to really work on new players. And will sometimes push older players away from starting a new character after their old is deleted

I've got a different suggestion in mind, however, though it may be a long term one.
Have certain spells, certain skills, and certain other stuff like joining a cabal, tribunal, even religion, feel like actual achievements. Right now, its more or less granted you'll join the cabal/tribunal you want, train bolt of glory and final strike. As a result, when a character actually hits GM, there really isn't much to do anymore on an achievement basis. J
ust mastering spells he alerady has and thats about all the advancement he can get. Sure, there are mentor points but that was not built with advancement in mind.

If the players have something more to work towards, that will give their character perks, after GM level, then it doesn't need to be that hard to be GM in the first place. And, if that further advancement is mainly RP oriented, twinks will have no real way of circumventing it.

Erevan · **Joined:** Sun Jul 22, 2007 5:18 am **Posts:** 1176

I'll sound like a broken record here, but ever since cabals were given the need to have at least X active members with all skills learned, so that they can have their relic defended, the whole concept of slow development of said skills and the rp behind it was lost.

Now, older players outright expect they will have all their cabal skills by the time they reach the appropriate level, and some will pout/sigh when they are told they will need to wait to get them.

Its reasonable to a point: when they know their enemies are not going to have to wait to get their spells, they will feel like they're getting the short end of the stick.

And yet when they get everything, and master every skill/spell they want, or all of them as some older players do, what is left to do in SK, achievement-wise? And by that I mean what is left for your character to learn, advance, and become better? They all reach the point where they are equals, and its planning/allies that gives you the advantage. from the GM with 100 hours to the gm with 2000.

Mr.Treefinger · **Posted:** Thu Nov 29, 2007 8:11 am

Thats the way games work, in super mario you get to level eight and thats it. If you are lucky you had fun playing and play again. In gran turismo you drive every car you want and after that, if your lucky, you enjoy it enough to play again. SK is no different. For the longest time the problem for SK is SK's players. It is never enough, never. No one is simply happy that this is an awesome game so multi-faceted that you can play for years and still approach newness. SK seems to have given so much to its p-base, that goes for granted, that now they are in a feeding frenzy for more more more. I say Dulrik and his cast stop everything and focus more on character interactions. How cool would it be if immortals were present all the time? I have noticed an increase in IMM interaction with mortals and for that I am thankful. The IMMs these days don't even consider my point because every time a new idea thread is posted they begin to think if it's worthwhile or not, this is how great they are! ... and we criticize until the breath escapes our lungs. I am no different, look at my create bows thread, but at least I know it. These forums may very well have been the beginning of the end for SK. My two cents.

Lakir · **Posted:** Thu Nov 29, 2007 10:10 am

Dulrik wrote:

I think the best way to solve the problem is to make more things in the game that can only be done when you are lower level. And make these unique actions be important and helpful to your higher level allies. That way lower level players wouldn't have to race to the top in order to be a useful part of the game. I welcome any ideas along this line.

Lowbies in your group yields all Master+ characters get morale bonuses for not wanting to be embarrassed in front of their pupils? *shrugs*

What kind of situations would you want lowbies to be able to help with?

PK? Cabal raid/defense? Quests?

Shattered Kingdoms

Positive Changes

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