Post
by Eol » Thu Oct 31, 2019 12:08 am
Much to dislike below!
Things That Will Kill the Game:
-Pitifully low numbers. If someone signs on and the numbers are terribly small - that's probably it. They'll see the numbers and say ...its already dead here. When someone signs on in the evening to 7 people we probably lost a chance. I don't know how many new chances we get. So, something has to be done, considered, tried.
-Deathly silence. I've had too many times over the past ... years where I sign on and try and chit chat or get people going and no one says anything. Maybe they are all AFK but I've literally played for like 30 minutes where no one said a word. There's got to be an atmosphere. We have to interact. We have to say hello to each other when people sign on and say what's up.
-A dead divided human side. The game can't survive without humans in the middle to train new players and to be killed. I personally hate the war system and the Seanchan. You're entitled to your own opinion, but humanside is too divided. There was a time point not that long ago where I thought - human side is doing great. People are helping each other. Its long gone. I wont say anything more about the war system other than - it wasn't needed, it could have been so different, it was implemented terribly and its effects linger.
Historic Missed Opportunities
-I know Kryyg says any clan can be joined, but through the years we missed a lot of opportunities with certain clans.
-Trying for Sedai is probably better than its ever been (more people seem to be making it through) but the whole thing is still an exercise in misery.
-I'll acknowledge with hardwork you should be able to clan Gaidin.
-Were I a coder and designing this game right now - wolfbrother traits, not necessarily the full current deal, but parts of it would just be something someone could earn. No clan. No voting. To some extent the rank 8 zone sense for humans sort of helps resolve this.
-Things like Sedai, Gaidin, Wolfbrother, Blademaster are things we use to market and at times have been totally unattainable. If a new player signed on and said "will I ever be a wolfbrother" the answer is no. The game needs balance but we can't waste our best marketing.
-Not to put words in Immortals mouths and will likely be challenged on this - it was suggested in a clan forum that White Leopards were viewed as an opportunity for people to get clanned/clanned weaves because the Tower had such an unbelievable washout rate. The Tower part is its own problem, but the solution during all that time was simply to make Kin much more reasonable and attainable. It shouldn't have been a prestige clan - it should have been a mid-level clan with decent opportunity and the chance to pick up some perks at rank 7/8. I personally think channeler clan balance and weaves is a disaster but I spoke my peace elsewhere and it was rejected.
Things I Think We Have to Keep in Mind
-People are really attached to their characters. I don't know how it turned out for everyone else, I don't know if anyone else ultimately got resolved/or not, but there's still room for improvement in how we approach old characters and stats. In general, most of my main characters ultimately resolved - but I've got a bunch of 500-700 year old characters and I still sometimes laugh at what a crapshow rerolls are. Obviously Vampa stepped in and tried to change people's homelands and help them out, but that was monster of a task and I'm not sure he was able to keep it going. This may sound absurd, unreasonable, ridiculous, but I would almost say - if you have a level 51 (to make you suffer?) new statted char that you can prove is yours, with better stats - there should almost be a way for the Imms to just dissolve/delete/zap/goodbye your new character and set your old characters stats to those. I guess it ruins part of the rank 8 jazz. I know this is a hellacious box to open, but I recently did some statting on darkside and found myself thinking - my god, its easier to make new characters with good stats than to potentially reroll old characters. I've got an old rogue that still can't break 16 18 19 - he started 16 18 18. He was beaked. He got changed on his homeland, but that was it. Consider the fact that people used to declan their historic characters to try and get in with a new better statted name. We went through all this misery and shaming and - oh they needed to work their way in. What they needed was to able to keep playing - not have to engage in silliness like throwing away a character to get back into the clan with better stats. We need to look at things like this that are punitive and take the misery out. These people are stat obsessed - this game has gone on forever. 1 more dex could be a lot of enjoyment for someone playing their character every day.
-I was already told it can't be done but there should be a mechanism to add a few points to a prerolled char if they dedicate to the character, clan rank, etc. These characters will ultimately reroll terrible.
-Imms have done the right thing trying to help people's old chars solve historic permanent events that shouldn't be ie. stilling.
Time Wasters
-Scalp turn in. You had the right idea when you just let anyone get the full qps wherever they chose to turn them in. I understand the Imms concern - people need to have a connect to their home base, but its just a time killer. If you want people near their clan bases - give people a reason to be near them. I can assure you - I PKed and played less when I lost this functionality and was still trying to be active. I had a few PKs where I had a scalp that I didn't have time to walk south and I modulated my behavior. I played less. I skipped PK. I don't use maps. I don't use spammer programs. If I have to walk south I do so 1 click at a time and my hands hurt. I've been doing this 19 years. Does anyone else feel like they've done damage to their joints? Everyone talks a big game about how they can get 50 qps in a game but if I get a scalp and I have time - I'm walking south to get my extra 2 qps which the loss of I view as an insult. If we were Pking and you hoped to avenge your friend - too bad, I'm off to turn my scalp in, and I hate it. Thank god my longest walker has refresh.
Bonuses for Bad Guys
-The idea, implementation, mentality - everything associated with the CoL/Seanchan smob reporting bonus was terrible. I don't think I've smobbed a single time since that was put in place.
-But it brings us back to an underlying flaw in how things in this game are implement - I know a lot of people worship imbalance, but new bonuses shouldn't be secret. Let's keep in mind this is the same game where someone decided dreadlords should have faster weaves than all other channelers essentially destroying channeling balance. Without the light of day bad ideas can't be exposed for how awful they are.
-Worse, these sort of things always seem to flow to bad guys. Was there ever a moment where someone thought - we should let Lion Wardens have a perfect reporting feature so they can defend Andor. It was a giveaway for villains trying to cheese something into happening.
Smobbing
-I don't know how many rares should load, but awhile back I did a lot of solo smobbing (not with stab). I could kill a lot of things and still not have anything to show for it. I dumped 99% of what I found into barrels and it was constantly taken, needed, used. For all the talk of everyone being rich I think there's plenty of poor players who could use a hand.
Mixing it up
This is hard to do, but every once in awhile we just need to mix it up. I'm just tired of a bunch of the usual north PK. I tried playing a stretch of darkside when the Ghar master bonus was in place. Died repeatedly Ragan orchard. I felt like every PK ended up there. That was my darkside vibe. My human vibe is that I just can't stand another PK camp playing the how many at Camp ent game. Some of these setups and things have been exactly the same forever. I'm not making this as a balance argument or a "darkside hates Kajin" - just a, some of these things have just been the same for so long. Some of our oldest stuff hasn't really been used ever and ..should be changed until someone cares about it. No one really uses Treesinger anymore. Trolls have literally never used shrubbery patrols in dark forest. FD fade and darkhounds essentially sit unused. Siffas was a disaster and should never have been implemented. These are my opinions and others will have them to, but jokingly you just can't draw people away from the most common places. I've tried at times and jokingly no one has track anymore because everyone is either a rogue or a warrior.
Rank 8
Not sure this really motivated any humans. Its neat - I won't disagree. My opinion and others have already disagreed - humans needed zone sense at 1500 qps or something less than 3000. I get it - that's a huge upgrade for not being at 3000. But I've been in too many PKs in the past where the trolls had all long since bailed and the humans are tracking around and around in circles wondering "where are the trolls" ultimately to go keep and find the trolls are gone. Its not perfect, but trolls' where gives trolls a pretty good idea if humans have packed their bags and left. Its obviously multi-faceted, its a huge upgrade, but it protects against garbage PK which is a time saver. Back in the day there were a lot more Gaidin and WBs.
Anyway. A lot above to disagree with. Thanks to the people who posted and kept this thread going. When I saw no one posting I thought - eh, why bother. With people replying its perhaps worth saying something. A lot has happened that I think is positive - some good Imm work, rare stuff is interesting, sleep well and wake is great, adjustments to things based on use shows people thinking and evaluating, tps/tokens = good, smob tps = good, upgrading prerolled stats, etc.
again, different topic completely but, Raefnal had the absolute gold standard post for what we're trying to accomplish with this post - for that I thank you for your contribution and deep thought on the situation.