Lightside Needs Help

[byrg]

Some advice: try LS for a bit. See what it's like. PK some. Join Lancers or something. See if seeing things from the other side changes your perspective, if nothing else you'll have a human to play with.

Some broader thoughts, not specific to your post: most people up north play LS and DS. More people are DS-only than are LS-only. People that are DS-only - especially when they are very active - either cause a numbers imbalance when the LS/DS folks are on DS, or just force those people to play LS to have any hope at reasonable PK. If numbers are one-sided and PK isn't happening (regardless of whose 'fault' it is), alting helps fix that.

I actually started out only playing LS, did that for a couple years across a few different characters, and it was when i was about to quit the game entirely that a friend suggested trying out ds, as on ds most of the things that I hated about ls weren't really an issue. Came over to this side and loved it. The attitude of the players towards each other (except lykan killing me on my first day because i gave the smob gear to the wrong person... what a jerk! ), towards re-eq, the clanning process, splitting of gear and scalps from pk, etc are (or at least when i switched, were) so much better, I never felt any desire to go back to ls, and the couple times I've tried - that hasn't really seemed to change.

For the most part, you can log on ds as a no name, go pk, and still get a fair split, still get re-geared in a relatively short time if you die. Etc. I log onto ls as someone no one knows and sit without gear for 2 hours before i rent and give up again for a few months. When i do finally get geared I go attempt to help with pk, narrate about stuff, get ignored, die, and repeat the whole spending ages re-equing process. I feel like most of those points have been made already - and I know that that's not true of everyone on ls - if you catch the right people there are those willing to help, but the stereotype still seems to ring true to me every time i try to come back over there. Even playing an abser on ls, my two ls alts are pretty much always naked, and when I log them it takes ages to get them geared.

The other thing that's always seemed crazy to me is the clanning differences - DS I made a char, figured out which clan i liked, applied by literally just talking to someone in game quick, pk'd with them for a few days and I was in. Simple, quick, easy. Lightside, the last time I was over there - the processes are so involved and full of politics it's not even funny.

I guess to me it makes perfect sense at the moment that more people are DS-only... I've tried to try ls a few times on and off since I left, and pretty much the same things I didn't like when I left haven't changed.

Don't get me wrong, we have some crappy personalities on ds on occasion - heck I know there are those that consider me one of them - been trying to work on that - I'm certainly good at throwing a temper-tantrum on occasion, I'll freely admit that... but overall this side just seems so much more easy-going in terms of people, clans, and gear... that every time I try to log back onto lightside i get discouraged relatively quickly.

[Hiroko]

On DS your RP is that you kill pukes. On LS your RP is a bit more complex than that - at least in some clans. I think that's probably where -some- of the layers of clanning reqs come from.

As for the Accepted. There are generally a few really eager Journey Accepted that would pk. I'm not saying you have to trudge all the way down to Andor, or even TV, but Fridge is not far for you to go, yeah? Try knocking on Dog instead of Malk and see if any of them want to cut their teeth on you there. They just can't go Dusty. I'm also guessing if there's one not-so-confident PKer (non-channie) that can group an Accepted, they might be more apt to come out to face your group instead of coming out solo and trying to give you PK @ sgts/Kajin.

Obviously this may not be a common scenario. Byrg, you yourself said it was a minority. It's just something that occurred to me as I read your post. If you're already trying that, then I've got nothing.

[eviscerator]

I haven't been active lately so PK has been imbalanced. Sorry. Next month!

[Rig]

I blame Masaj. Humans keep dying to him and he keeps stealing my pk.

[Rig]

I rarely play ls because I hate it. Exp'd for 7 hours for 3 lvls! That was fun! Then I went to go exp on ds and got like 6 lvls in like an hour and half! LS NEEDS HELP

[Rig]

Also, was on an alt pking that ds group WB, and the backseat leading was firetrucking horrible. If you choose to follow someone, you make suggestions. You don't firetrucking call things! LS was vanquished. Back to afk!

Edit: basically from all the time we spent on this thread, I still think ls needs to work on these areas! Because you're firetrucking terrible when you go off and do your own thing

[krul]

Pretty sure imms are miles ahead of you in terms of ideas and things having been approved. Good stuff too. Coding stuff. Bonuses stuff. Statting stuff. Exp stuff. Things that players will love. Things we've been wanting for in some form or another for a decade or possibly even longer. Some things made easier, some hurdles removed, some things to do. However, we all depend on Flash having the time and/or inclination (I can't possibly judge which is the bottleneck) to review and implement them. Which essentially means various good stuff has been waiting on him for anything between two weeks and 10 months.

A non-Flash change: add an enclosed zone east of Fal Dara dedicated to exp. This will make use of egate, won't affect winding, and will help Koagan keep above 29. I'll even draw and write it for you, if you want to build it. I love building zones.

Another non-Flash thing: start a snoop stream. I have no idea if this is remotely feasible because of all the imm chatter, but I know watching people PK is something people like doing when they don't want to actually play, and given how intermittent PK can be, if there were an imm snoop PK stream with individuals who volunteered to be snooped, it might help the stream be more interesting than just one player streaming themselves. (Which I would be doing but can't at the moment because of my terrible internet.)

Re: mob raids... every time I do them it's a b*tch fest. People feel it interferes with their normal gameplay, want really over the top loads and if I simply load nice gear it's "worthless". Then there's usually someone who runs off with the loot, which gets worse if it's loot from someone who mobripped. Or people getting warranted all over the place. Oh, did I mention mobrips? Endless complaints.

No, mobraids generally are not well received and only lead to drama and thus aren't fun to run. Just because people say "whee thanks" in public doesn't mean those same people aren't constantly criticizing everything on prays and/or tells to mobs.

Elodin and another invis imm did a great extended pk-oriented mobraid-y thing the other week between FD and RK and no one complained! (I don't think!) Maybe you just haven't reached your target audience? I do hear people complain a lot when Andor gets raided. Anyway, you'd know way better than I.

Don't get me started on Ways. I spent so much time in there, trying to see if there was a rhyme and reason to it across boots, so if there was I could put hints in room descs or moboled, or... I tracked multiple paths and associated room numbers there for over 6 or 7 boots, I think.

I get the feeling I'm the only person on the MUD who actually likes how the Ways are! It only takes half an hour to map them (which, I know I'm weird, but I enjoy doing), I don't know why people don't use them more! But I wasn't alive when old Ways were around, so I have nothing to compare it to..

Could you feasibly just make the zone a lot smaller? The changing connections etc each boot isn't horrible in theory, the problem is the zone is massive for that kind of game logic to play out.

It isn't all that big, you can get from Blight to TV or waste without burning more than 40 mvs. Connections are only 4-6 rooms apart. The whole place can't be more than 80 rooms all together.

People do not search for a Wheel of Time game to log on and kill other players. They search for a Wheel of Time game to immerse themselves in the WoT world. I read the books as a young man and wanted to find that world and explore it for myself. WoTmud was what I found. I truly believe that if we do not promote rp, because honestly that's kind of the only reason people even play muds anymore, then we will die. I also believe that those of us who are still around are the last generation. Meaning if we don't promote the game in such a way to add diversity we'll never gain new players.

Sadly the best example I can use is the Winged Guard.

This is exactly why I've kept returning. I was done with the place and about to quit before 3-4 people convinced me to join Wingers before doing so, and it was like rediscovering the MUD. I was already pretty burned out so I ended up leaving anyway after a little, but not before my perspecive on what was interesting about this place did a backflip. I don't mean it's just the Winged Guard that's interesting, I mean that the Winged Guard kind of exemplify the attitude and perspective where everything in this place is interesting. No one in the Winged Guard is interested in making you play the way they like to play or be interested in the things they are interested in. What disappoints me most about the MUD at the moment is the general lack of cohesive RP, which is now even true of LS. RP has kind of become something you do behind closed doors, or in the form of emotes.

[Sarryn]

LS is a joke, so is SS. But I don't like playing on a easy win side like DS. So I have to play on something that's at least a challenge. I know it's hard for you fade holders and everyone else there. But it will only change if we have leaders and people capable of leading/fighting well. So it is what it is. You get a guy like Evisc/lykan etc showing up. The fights even before then.. It tips massively in there scale. It wont change lol this is how the mud is and has been. A good fade will destroy and always will destroy. If you can't scatter and regroup when this happens. The fight is over. Killing things like Ragan and well destroys pk. But it is what it is.

I'm not saying LS can't and doesn't come out ahead at times. It's usually when those top pkers are on LS that it happens. We don't have the numbers or coordination/skill/firepower DS has. We have channies sometimes and those are wreckers. But they also get pounded on pretty easy. Gaidin are supposed to be there counter. There not really. It's all in the player though honestly.

LS loves to just chill in FD mostly lol. They don't like going far n to blight unless there's plenty of LS there. Like just now we got accused of baiting. Lol so laughable... No one wanted to pk really. We had a couple of people that roam around. I was afk commy forever. In that time LS logged on and we had people in FD. So I called on and they came. This is the reality of most of LS.

[krul]

Some people feel the game needs to be shrunk. Getting Far Madding to move out of the way of Tear Road was a -huge- achievement. Shrinking to the extent some players want it, I really doubt that's going to happen. Might as well stop asking about it.

I just want to weep when I hear from above that clear positive change is out of the question, while negative change isn't. The new Chachin zone was the final nail in the coffin for west PK, for instance, (believe it or not, there were still dribbles of PK out there before that zone was imped) and not even a wonderful change like removing the Ashen-Woodlands connection was enough to breathe any life into it. If it doesn't happen sooner, there may not be any later.

[Arkan]

Not a fan of removing the connection. Choke it up, make woodlands shorter, make east saldaea shorter, maybe SE chachin shorter. but I don't think anything was improved by removing it.