Why are absolutely any chances of enjoying PvE being destroyed?

[Masaj]

You're missing the point here. I am not arguing about pk being wrong or new as a way to disrupt the pve elements I am just saying, that if it happens too often, I m forced to play someone elses game, to give someone else fun, and someone else rewards. Because most of the time, I am not having fun pking at all, I am simply not that kind of a person, it is mostly an exception to have fun while pking (and it usually happens in group vs group pk, so not happening for vast majority of my time online).

Your advice sounds nice at first and I would partially agree. Some pk skills should be learnt by everyone. But you are basically telling me to give up on playing Age of Empires, just because other people want to play Counterstrike all the time, and their fun is more important than mine. (Perhaps not the best examples, but they demonstrate the point). And I am expected to serve as their fun just because they don't have other people to play with on the Who list.

You seem really nice and your thoughts on the issue are obviously earnest.

That being said, I think there's sort of a fundamental misconception: not parsing out your off-the-cuff analogy too hard, but WoTMUD isn't Counterstrike or Age of Empires, which are two different games -- it's one game. This might seem obvious, but that was one of *the* key differentiator between WoTMUD and several other muds.

I'd also say the trade-off is generally that PVE is always there for the taking, whereas PK is entirely player dependent. As such, PVE is also the path of least resistance, where the risk is almost entirely dependent on other players willingness to muster that resistance. On the balance, people manage to kill Jafar/IoMM, take cityheads, flip Baerlon/Jehanna, complete smobbing runs etc. *far* more often without any resistance than they run into the other side. This is doubly true when someone is gating people around doing these things.

Or people on LS on statters sending DMs to someone on DS if the smob group/event has been organized/announced on globals.

It can happen, has happened and best to just keep it low key as frustrating that can make the whole deal. I've had a number of tells sent that X doesn't know Y and doesn't trust Z so the smob group fell apart before we'd even start with the first smob.

I agree that this is a legitimate concern and a particularly annoying part of playing LS consistently, which is why a lot of people take a "don't trust a ho" approach to playing on that side and form specific groups to do these things with. That's fair enough -- a little bit annoying when it gets exported to other sides, in my opinion, but still totally rational.

That being said, between basin (odds of a bunch of the people online standing in one room are higher), rats/ravens (an entire trolloc clan can hear them now), and tracking in certain places (Ways, south of DR, etc.), it's not particularly difficult to figure out there's a smob group around.

[isabel]

Callesa, as a primarily light side player, if I was playing wotmud I would play this alt because I hear you about the damage to LS. It used to be great when someone like verania/fender would be rolling around and equipping up LS, stocking barrels, taking newbies etc along. There was something about the most recent tower smob groups that I just really disliked and I felt like the downing of bond pairs made sense in light of how it was being played.

That said I would advocate some patience with the system because a lot is clearly being changed. I think your post is great feedback and I hope imms are hearing it. But for a long time abs was in a shitty place and combo was op, and now they have downed combo so all these things are clearly on their list. It doesn't help the current playing atmosphere (and if I was playing id be frustrated too) so I just hoppe that players read your post and swap out to their LS big alts and invest in building up LS once again.

The game is currently really set up for the solo stab smob kind of thing. Heralds has been not worth it ever since the changes. I'm hoping the system is changed but meanwhile happy to sling my 4-5 rares storage your way if you want to trade it for gear (not a solution just some temporary pain killer)

About Lisennet btw had she stayed to be sedai no doubt she would have been secretly black ajah. But there's no point / reward in being sedai with the current system. There's actually zero benefit from even being clanned. I know her through her entire journey and she actually never betrayed people who were trying to smob or did anything even remotely shitty from what I know. She helped a lot of people exactly as she would have had she not been a df. There's maybe a few times that the dfs I know tried to alert/ work with DS but it was vs players who could handle themselves or a genuine error (some newbie being incog an high level).

Unfortunately LS has just seen leader attrition over the years - Dorian Markus verania etc. All gone!

[Reyne]

Where is the power that people think needs to be downed?

I dunno, I always ask this in the Discord and get pretty vague responses about how channelers do a lot of damage so it's fine. The fact that the point of a glass cannon is to do damage is disregarded. I think channelers feel a bit weak after all the nerfs to the class and to individual weaves, maybe it's fine though. They certainly don't need more downing.

The heralds getting harder, ending in DS zones, and rewarding less made heralding not worth it for me (definitely not on an r7 character), which I was sad about.

I don't exactly know how to fix this though, I'm sure it's a nightmare for the Imms there isn't exactly a good solution other than maybe "Under level 30 you can 'say kit please' when in the circle of light" or something like that. It might be easy to abuse and that's why it doesn't but just something that doesn't leave you with nothing. That or maybe makin the town criers give VERY basic gear for like 50 crowns or something. Idk what value you want to make it that doesn't matter as much but similar to how the wearied merchants do just make it lower tier.

I think there should be repeatable quests (such as the turning in rat/raven scalps or fishing) which will give an amount that will buy you a very basic gear set in about ~15 minutes of grinding. Like, explore around to fish and/or kill rats for 15-20 minutes, get 20-30 gold, give it to the local outfitter/armorer/what-have-you for a very basic but full set of gear.

I don't really see how that is exploitable given there are much faster ways to get more gold and better gear if you have a higher level character and you know what you're doing.

Unfortunately LS has just seen leader attrition over the years - Dorian Markus verania etc. All gone!

Perhaps people should use Elysia's pay-it-forward mob to reward QPs to leaders they liked, so as to incentivize good leaders to keep doing it? Not sure if that would be allowed or intended. Also could be abused of course but I'm assuming that would be obvious in the reward log.

[Elysia]

Callesa, I think you're hung up on your own misconceptions of darkfriends.

DF system 1: There was no system. Imms awarded if/when they saw something, or gave out quests. Not really tenable, because depending on imms with timezones etc. sucks.
DF system 2: Chosen awarded darkfriends who did things for them. This included ratting out smob groups, starting wars and whatnot. Not really tenable because few Chosen actually bothered with working with darkfriends. It was really easy to miss eachother, which made the process even longer.
DF system 3: A lot more like the Tower aqps system. There were some Chosen endorsements.
DF system 4: The current system. Essentially like the Tower aqps system + a Known Phase. Vampa's idea for unknown darkfriends is that it's a grind, but their actions shouldn't affect other players, e.g. no ratting out etc.. They are more likely to join you for smobbing because they need a certain item, than they are to rat your group out.

I think because the current df system removes the need to be in the right timezone, a lot of people in previously unwieldy timezones have now taken their chance. However, aside from fulfilling maybe an rp thing, there is no real benefit to playing a df the old way.

But right now, we are ending our short bond with Ciegon, because it got changed in a way making a bonded pair much worse for smobbing, than me just smobbing with another totally random person.

Wrt the above, a warder/ AS pair will always be stronger than two random other players. They still are stronger. However, if you are going to say things like the above, you will essentially make imms roll their eyes and close the thread. If you have feedback or opinions, don't make something seem like the end of the world, because you will not be taken seriously and that will absolutely affect how other feedback is taken.

[Reyne]

Yeah it seems like being a DF is new and shiny with the recent updates so a lot of people are trying their hand at it. Give it a little time I think, probably won't be so many running around.

I don't think DS are bad people or anything like that, but I also can't afford to spend 2 QP's on a new dress and ring every day. I barely know how to get QP's as it is and I'm sure there are many other players that would be in the same boat.

I used to shelve books in the Tower library to get those QPs back... although maybe the percentages / caps have changed so that's not really viable. I believe the Green Ajah also reimburses if you send them a combat log.

[Elysia]

I used to shelve books in the Tower library to get those QPs back... although maybe the percentages / caps have changed so that's not really viable. I believe the Green Ajah also reimburses if you send them a combat log.

The only change there was that you can't get qps from bookshelving if you have 200+ qps. And that was after an Accepted had like 2000 qps, years and years ago.

[iria]

Yeah it seems like being a DF is new and shiny with the recent updates so a lot of people are trying their hand at it. Give it a little time I think, probably won't be so many running around.

I don't think DS are bad people or anything like that, but I also can't afford to spend 2 QP's on a new dress and ring every day. I barely know how to get QP's as it is and I'm sure there are many other players that would be in the same boat.

I used to shelve books in the Tower library to get those QPs back... although maybe the percentages / caps have changed so that's not really viable. I believe the Green Ajah also reimburses if you send them a combat log.

We have a limit on qps we are allowed to reimburse an Accepted these days, so the well runs dry rather quickly if you are a new player learning to PK on your Accepted or if you just take risks when you PK.

[Callesa]

*pushes her pay it forward mobol again*

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2077&p=12182&hilit= ... ard#p12182

If you see someone consistently helping newbies, feel free to leave a note for them to be awarded for that. It's manual and reviewed every once in a while, so not instant, but still, it is rewarded.

Ooo I didn't know about this, that is useful thanks for linking it

The main weakness: you need to be seen. So, no highbies knowing about this will see me (unless DS starts telling trees to reward me), and I am definitely not gonna instruct newbies to reward me. nwih

I appreciate the idea behind this, but I'd say it is not the main part of the solution. Most are just between players.

Defiantly the information thing is important as well, I think a lot of people have played for so long that they kind of forget how much people don't know. Like killing lithe for example, I'm planning on writing up a guide on where they all are and how to get there / what dangers are around. Cause so many times I see people say "oh just kill lithe north of Lugard" or "east of tear" etc. Which is helpful information, but as a newbie I have no idea what half those words mean the wiki has helped me a lot with that and the findroom command for the mudlet map.

That would be great. A lot has been done in the newbie help area. A lot and it is great. But people often get lost at this low intermediate stage, when they know the basic commands, but certainly don't know how to find and kill a lithe, what weapons are good for them and easy to reeq, that there are different horses, and so on. I would like to help with such a low-intermediade guide. THe wiki is awesome too, but I think the newbie or barely not newbie needs some more compact introduction.

Id be very very surprised if your smob group was hit because of an unknown DF ratting, the system for getting that to occur is actually a whole lot harder than you might think. You might've left tracks, had a rat/raven on you, or just gotten plain unlucky.

Or people on LS on statters sending DMs to someone on DS if the smob group/event has been organized/announced on globals.

It can happen, has happened and best to just keep it low key as frustrating that can make the whole deal. I've had a number of tells sent that X doesn't know Y and doesn't trust Z so the smob group fell apart before we'd even start with the first smob.

Yeah. We are now in a situation, where we deal with lower numbers in general, especially at some times of the day, plus some IC logical divisions (like an AS not grouping with a whitecloak), and on top of that this widespread player vs player distrust, and no real LS global channel. It makes bigger groups very hard to make.

You seem really nice and your thoughts on the issue are obviously earnest.

That being said, I think there's sort of a fundamental misconception: not parsing out your off-the-cuff analogy too hard, but WoTMUD isn't Counterstrike or Age of Empires, which are two different games -- it's one game. This might seem obvious, but that was one of *the* key differentiator between WoTMUD and several other muds.

You might be interested in looking at this webpage: https://wotmud.info/
See? There is a list of various ways of playing the game. It's one game that is meant to be played in various ways, with various parts of it being enjoyed. And various of those parts have been too damaged to serve the pkers. So, perhaps it woud be more earnest, if the picture of the pker was huge and the rest of us tiny and under your foot.

I'd also say the trade-off is generally that PVE is always there for the taking, whereas PK is entirely player dependent. As such, PVE is also the path of least resistance, where the risk is almost entirely dependent on other players willingness to muster that resistance. On the balance, people manage to kill Jafar/IoMM, take cityheads, flip Baerlon/Jehanna, complete smobbing runs etc. *far* more often without any resistance than they run into the other side. This is doubly true when someone is gating people around doing these things.

No, it's not. It's not there for the taking for the large part of my day, because in the current mud environment, I simply won't gather a group big enough to take it. Only a minor part ot the smobs (the less interesting ones) is there for the taking.

I see, you simply see yourself as superior and you don't understand that this game is meant to support various types of players and activities. If you want to take it this way, then you might perhaps also look at stuff like the smob loads. The pkers get tons of stuff rather fast, the smobbers need to invest a lot of time and kill many smobs to get the same set of things (and most of those the hard smobs for large groups).

You talk about the game being about everything, not about separate games, but that is where you are wrong. It is not about everything, everything is being changed to favour pk.

I agree that this is a legitimate concern and a particularly annoying part of playing LS consistently, which is why a lot of people take a "don't trust a ho" approach to playing on that side and form specific groups to do these things with. That's fair enough -- a little bit annoying when it gets exported to other sides, in my opinion, but still totally rational.

That being said, between basin (odds of a bunch of the people online standing in one room are higher), rats/ravens (an entire trolloc clan can hear them now), and tracking in certain places (Ways, south of DR, etc.), it's not particularly difficult to figure out there's a smob group around.

Rational? There has always been some amount of normal rational distrust on the LS. But never like what I've seen in the last two months after my last break. It has changed.

[Callesa]

Callesa, as a primarily light side player, if I was playing wotmud I would play this alt because I hear you about the damage to LS. It used to be great when someone like verania/fender would be rolling around and equipping up LS, stocking barrels, taking newbies etc along. There was something about the most recent tower smob groups that I just really disliked and I felt like the downing of bond pairs made sense in light of how it was being played.

That said I would advocate some patience with the system because a lot is clearly being changed. I think your post is great feedback and I hope imms are hearing it. But for a long time abs was in a shitty place and combo was op, and now they have downed combo so all these things are clearly on their list. It doesn't help the current playing atmosphere (and if I was playing id be frustrated too) so I just hoppe that players read your post and swap out to their LS big alts and invest in building up LS once again.

Thank you, it is good to hear publicly that some people understand. I really think the LS suffers from not having enough leaders like you describe.

I am trying the patience, doing my part. I could even agree that changes like the abs better and combo worse are logical. But I think there is now a combination of changes, that is rather tiring and discouraging.

The game is currently really set up for the solo stab smob kind of thing. Heralds has been not worth it ever since the changes. I'm hoping the system is changed but meanwhile happy to sling my 4-5 rares storage your way if you want to trade it for gear (not a solution just some temporary pain killer)

Yeah. I greatly respect solo stabbers and try to learn that. But I'd prefer to play with people but don't have the option to get a large group (with several extremely good players) to do for example a herald or other really exciting stuff. No clue why the heralds were destroyed this way. The risk/reward ratio is just laughable.

Thank you for your kind offer, but it's not about the rares, I'd die with them very soon anyways. If you'd consider returning, to have people to play with on LS, that would be the best. But I understand, that you don't feel like it now.

About Lisennet btw had she stayed to be sedai no doubt she would have been secretly black ajah. But there's no point / reward in being sedai with the current system. There's actually zero benefit from even being clanned. I know her through her entire journey and she actually never betrayed people who were trying to smob or did anything even remotely shitty from what I know. She helped a lot of people exactly as she would have had she not been a df. There's maybe a few times that the dfs I know tried to alert/ work with DS but it was vs players who could handle themselves or a genuine error (some newbie being incog an high level).

Unfortunately LS has just seen leader attrition over the years - Dorian Markus verania etc. All gone!

I agree about Lisennet probably being a secred black ajah otherwise, and I definitely don't think the player meant anything ooc evil by their choice. But the harm done to the LS and the Tower is enormous. The distrust, the suspicions, the discouragement. I believe you, that she was not shitty ooc, and i understand how ic her choice is. But the player community damage is done.

What I see around is not a lot of IC action and fight of good vs evil. What I see are discouraged and emotionally hurt players (let's not forget people are much more fragile in the real world right now on a whole population scale), who don't trust each other far too often, and who know that DFs always win. There was recently one stupid enough to be caught while unknown, doing something really stupid and traitorous. Do you think anything happened? No, they went inactive, so they are still clanned. No catharsis, no celebrated win for the LS for once. The LS never wins. I totally get that imms cannot force the player to do something. But if one caught DF actually had the courage to show also their loss to the world and face the IC consequences, it would really raise the moral. Not just IC, but also OOC.

A legitimate question is also whether we should get such a wave of DFs and such a damaged LS now, when we get the newbies inspired by the TV series, who probably want to see and be the heroes.

The heralds getting harder, ending in DS zones, and rewarding less made heralding not worth it for me (definitely not on an r7 character), which I was sad about.

It is sad that this seems to be the usual impression now. Even when I ask people for smobbing, the Heralds awake a negative emotion. Not even a "it is hard" reaction, the usual is "it is not worth it at all". Rarely, someone is willing to try, and it usually doesn't end up well, we don't finish because of pk, or we get caught by pk.

Was there even any reason or any improvement by this change? Is someone still doing them and enjoying them more?

Usually, even the harsh changes are done to improve something else. What was improved by this? We don't need more pk, and we don't need to get people to the Blight to stimulate pk anymore, Andor is the new Blight.

Callesa, I think you're hung up on your own misconceptions of darkfriends.

DF system 1: There was no system. Imms awarded if/when they saw something, or gave out quests. Not really tenable, because depending on imms with timezones etc. sucks.
DF system 2: Chosen awarded darkfriends who did things for them. This included ratting out smob groups, starting wars and whatnot. Not really tenable because few Chosen actually bothered with working with darkfriends. It was really easy to miss eachother, which made the process even longer.
DF system 3: A lot more like the Tower aqps system. There were some Chosen endorsements.
DF system 4: The current system. Essentially like the Tower aqps system + a Known Phase. Vampa's idea for unknown darkfriends is that it's a grind, but their actions shouldn't affect other players, e.g. no ratting out etc.. They are more likely to join you for smobbing because they need a certain item, than they are to rat your group out.

I think because the current df system removes the need to be in the right timezone, a lot of people in previously unwieldy timezones have now taken their chance. However, aside from fulfilling maybe an rp thing, there is no real benefit to playing a df the old way.

You're absolutely right that I have some misconceptions of the DFs (and many others with me, from what I hear). But am I really wrong in interpreting the effects of the DF wave on the LS?

I am not sure that even a massive information campaign "DFs are not OOC evil and are not ratting you out all the time" would help at this point. What the LS needs is some more player cohesion, a real global channel just for LS, and some real victory at least over the failed DFs. They are supposed to be a high risk high reward option, but they are the no risk high reward option. We never win, we never get to see a DF char, who has done something stupid enough to be outed, punished as the player just gets inactive and starts something else (perhaps a new df).

Honestly, this is not about whether it is too easy or too hard to be a DF, or how do they really get their altqps. This is about how does the LS perceive them and how does the LS perceive itself.

Wrt the above, a warder/ AS pair will always be stronger than two random other players. They still are stronger. However, if you are going to say things like the above, you will essentially make imms roll their eyes and close the thread. If you have feedback or opinions, don't make something seem like the end of the world, because you will not be taken seriously and that will absolutely affect how other feedback is taken.

Stronger in what sense? With a random player, we can choose from a variety of strategies, including me buffing something for some time. With the warder, the strategies are limited by the autorescue (a supposed huge advantage), while we were taken away the tools to make that path efficient. No WvD for the warder, worse autobash, lower sps etc. I don't see it as the stronger PvE option.

Thank you for not rolling the eyes (or perhaps rolling but responding kindly and thoughtfully anyways). I know the automatic response of some people (perhaps even imms, who knows) is "Callesa just sucks at the game, that is the only problem". But I hear the same opinions from others too, which doesn't really convince anyone, unless they say them publicly too. But some seem already burnt out.

It's not the end of the world, but it is simply sad that so many things I was looking forward or relying on were changed to the worse. I was looking forward to lot of smobbing for qps but the heralds were totally destroyed. I was looking forward to duo smobbing with a warder (the perfect solution to my timezone group finding problem), like what I've seen so many people do over the years, and it is no longer it. And other already discussed things added to that.

I was really looking forward to this, and it is no longer fun. It's not the end of the world but I am just very disappointed that yet again, I don't get to enjoy what many people before me had.

[Kryyg]

Killing smobbers has always been the bread and butter for some fades/DS players. It’s easy qps, gear and usually involves doors so lots of guaranteed kills.

I would say it’s harder now given most smob groups have several channelers and a Draz. I think the onus is on the smob group to plan their hits assuming they are going to get hit by DS at any time. That’s how I would smob anyways. Have a plan if you get hit. Make sure channelers stop channeling at good to keep reserves for PCs in the event you get hit. May take longer to complete the smob but probably worth the effort. I don’t know, I don’t really smob but even when I exp I assume I’m going to get hit.