Lightside Needs Help

[Thrasymachus]

Whatever your views on stats and superstats and their effects on the game's playability, I want to point out that the first item on Otoan's list was the lack of his preferred client. I honestly think the lack of a good client with a standardized map, triggers, macros and aliases is a huge barrier to entry, re-entry, and sustained play. As you're wrestling with learning spams, getting familiar with which EQ is better than which other EQ, which smobs load what, which mobs can be farmed for money, how to pk, how to get back on your feet after a pk rip or if you've dted or let your corpse expire, navigating the clans and player's reputations, etc., etc., you're also wrestling with getting the right packages installed in CMUD or mudlet or ZMUD or whatever other obscure telnet clients that exist out there, trying to figure out why a 10 year old script isn't working right, trying to write and debug your own scripts (which can also be kinda fun, but the script-writing game isn't the WOTMUD game), figuring out how to edit the map, how to add rooms, how to delete zones that were removed, why the thing won't follow when you flee, etc., etc., etc.

There are good coders out there who probably could do a lot to fix the game itself and add cool stuff. But if we want to make it as easy and painless as possible to get into the game, stay in the game, and get back into the game after inevitable breaks, having a good, standardized, regularly updated client with a good, recent, easy-to-read map, would go a huge way to doing that. Forget about stats and gear and being outplayed by some veteran. The number one thing that will make me stop playing is when my client gets in my way. Getting me killed because my map didn't autofollow with a flee and now I don't have a clue where I am, or having a self-written script get caught in a loop or just not work at all, and so forth. Flash might be the bottleneck for getting those coders to help with the server-side game design. But nothing is stopping those coders from building a good, standardized, readily available client with all the macros, triggers and scripts already loaded and ready to play.

[Elysia]

But I didn't know about the bug when rerolls first came out that allowed most people to get amazing stats. Then they nerfed that bug and added a +-2 to statsum to the rolls so if you didn't have a great statsum (like Otoan) your crappy stats are just jumbled around.

This comment puzzled me, as that was the first I had heard about it. I tried a bit with a test mortal, but I can't find any evidence for this.

Fc:
Your base abilities are: Str:11 Int:17 Wil:17 Dex:18 Con:11. Sum: 74

# 1 - Str[13] Int[18] Wil[18] Dex[14] Con[15] Hps[306] Move[129] 78
# 6 - Str[15] Int[19] Wil[19] Dex[16] Con[11] Hps[205] Move[125] 80
#13 - Str[12] Int[17] Wil[19] Dex[17] Con[14] Hps[282] Move[123] 79
#16 - Str[13] Int[17] Wil[19] Dex[15] Con[14] Hps[283] Move[129] 78
#20 - Str[13] Int[19] Wil[17] Dex[17] Con[14] Hps[269] Move[127] 80

The higher your statsum though, the smaller the chances are for huge increases.

I've also noticed that it's not so much about statsum, as it is about distribution:

Warrior:
Your base abilities are: Str:18 Int:15 Wil:12 Dex:15 Con:18. Sum: 78

# 2 - Str[19] Int[11] Wil[11] Dex[17] Con[19] Hps[404] Move[129] Sum: 77

The higher your statsum though, the smaller amount of leeway there is for huge increases, so that's where this notion comes from maybe.

[Mantorok]

Misinformation spread by rumor regarding stats? Surely you jest.

[Mangler]

Also, realistically, did many people really know and take advantage of the reroll bug to get super stats? I know people always assumed I had, but I never even knew about the bug until it was fixed! Thanks for keeping me in the loop, call yourself friends! I think it's another one of those myths that everyone has superstats because of a bug.

[Otoan]

But I didn't know about the bug when rerolls first came out that allowed most people to get amazing stats. Then they nerfed that bug and added a +-2 to statsum to the rolls so if you didn't have a great statsum (like Otoan) your crappy stats are just jumbled around.

This comment puzzled me, as that was the first I had heard about it. I tried a bit with a test mortal, but I can't find any evidence for this.

Fc:
Your base abilities are: Str:11 Int:17 Wil:17 Dex:18 Con:11. Sum: 74

# 1 - Str[13] Int[18] Wil[18] Dex[14] Con[15] Hps[306] Move[129] 78
# 6 - Str[15] Int[19] Wil[19] Dex[16] Con[11] Hps[205] Move[125] 80
#13 - Str[12] Int[17] Wil[19] Dex[17] Con[14] Hps[282] Move[123] 79
#16 - Str[13] Int[17] Wil[19] Dex[15] Con[14] Hps[283] Move[129] 78
#20 - Str[13] Int[19] Wil[17] Dex[17] Con[14] Hps[269] Move[127] 80

The higher your statsum though, the smaller the chances are for huge increases.

I've also noticed that it's not so much about statsum, as it is about distribution:

Warrior:
Your base abilities are: Str:18 Int:15 Wil:12 Dex:15 Con:18. Sum: 78

# 2 - Str[19] Int[11] Wil[11] Dex[17] Con[19] Hps[404] Move[129] Sum: 77

The higher your statsum though, the smaller amount of leeway there is for huge increases, so that's where this notion comes from maybe.

If it hasn't changed since my last reroll, then I have terrible luck because Otoan is 18 12 10 18 16 with a statsum of 74, is almost 500 years old, and has never gotten higher than 76 statsum in rerolls. I changed 2 other characters stats around to be the highest statsum possible among the rerolls because it happened to them too(both having 2 rerolls each).


I would like to change my answer though. This is do to my own naivety and laziness I guess. I did log in to the 18 17 19 that I have. I got regeared and pracced which took a minute then I'm like what's next? I thought about farming some solo stuff for some possible raw gold but I didn't even know where to start or what good gold is in game. I can only imagine how much those auctions get up to for an iron/copper chit and last time I played gold really had no value because everyone wanted to just trade gear for gear. I thought about exping but that seemed kind of dull. I already had more than enough pracs to get everything I currently wanted. There didn't seem to be enough activity to get a smob run going. I didn't want to even try to mess with pk yet. At that point, I had already asked like 100 questions in chat and felt like I was pestering people with questions. Maybe create a little tips post about what can you do solo in the game?

[Razhak]

I dont get all this complaining.

LS is as good as LS players want it to be. If people want to interact, they can interact. The players need to step up.
All this asking for things to do, tips and tricks and so much more, will help nothing at all if people wont step up.

Instead of asking for "top-down" solutions, we need to come with "bottom-up" solutions which are carried by the playerbase instead of laid down by the imms.

[Thrasymachus]

The "bottom up" solutions are simple. More people need to play that side more often, particularly the more experienced players who can help LS "win" more often. I mean, that's pretty much it. The problem is that not enough people play LS, so the only way to fix that is to get more people to play. And then you have to think about how you get people to play and what will keep them in the game.

Some of that is self-reinforcing. More people would play regularly if more people played regularly. Some of it is that it's just too damn difficult to get into the game, or get back into the game, at all, having to create your own client out of scraps of packages from ten years ago or better, or deal with a telnet client and the years-long learning curve it takes to get even halfway decent doing that. Some of it is a dearth of "end-game" activities for LS, just a never-ending cycle of PK, XP and occasional smobbing on a master character that won't ever get any farther or better unless they want to take it to DS. And some of it is the players themselves, imposing their own notions of appropriate roleplay on each other before they'll consent to allowing another player to advance or join a clan, or even just having to be on at all in order for someone to join or rank up.

[Otoan]

I dont get all this complaining.

LS is as good as LS players want it to be. If people want to interact, they can interact. The players need to step up.
All this asking for things to do, tips and tricks and so much more, will help nothing at all if people wont step up.

Instead of asking for "top-down" solutions, we need to come with "bottom-up" solutions which are carried by the playerbase instead of laid down by the imms.

Anyone can make a guide of things to do solo in game. Places to farm for gold. Please to farm for gear. Crafting. How to craft. What smobs drop what gear. What good is gold in game? There's so many websites out there that have information about wotmud but which are accurate and up to date? I don't see any stickies showing where to get this information. Maybe some people are still of the old mindset of FOFY like they were 15 years ago but there are just too many games out there to go play instead and I'm no longer a kid with a terrible computer that can only play MUDs and too much free time on my hand.

[Elysia]

*cough*

http://www.wotmud.org/mud-crafting.php

[Thuvia]

The wotmud crafting page is pretty outdated by now actually. Still shows large steel spear as top craftable spear, for instance.

The Wiki is more up-to-date on most things. I try to work on it daily. Here are some potentially helpful links:

http://wotmud.wikia.com/wiki/Crafting - somewhat incomplete, but much more current than the wotmud page.
http://wotmud.wikia.com/wiki/Shop - I've been working hard on adding shops to this, over 200 listed now.

http://wotmud.wikia.com/wiki/Smob - Current but very incomplete.

For that last link, another player (Niv) had been making some great additions to smob loads until he recently quit.

Anyway, the Wiki is really a great tool that anyone can contribute to, so I'd like to encourage anyone with specialist knowledge to come on over and add what you can. I work on it daily and am always happy to help with the technical side of things, templates, etc.