Are players leaving?

[Eol]

Just to be clear, the premise of this thread is disingenuous, and a good example of astroturfing. That is frustrating because most of the repliers are replying in good faith and it could probably be a good conversation.

Its interesting how we all think. We see the Taziar thread. Perhaps we sign on to a day of lower numbers. I'm unfortunately in a clan that crumbled and your mind just fills in the pieces.

I know I'm playing less but the game probably isn't the reason. I also 39 and also have 2 kids and a business. The time change has produced some sort of new bizarre reality in which no one goes to bed and I can't play till like 8:30.

I could list things that I think are dissatisfying about the game, but the funny thing is - we're all just going to list different things. Like most of my reasons from a balance perspective are different than the Blues above. I mostly think the balance direction of things is good. I have lost some of my own sacred cows and it has changed how I played. Some people might have quit over those things.

That said.

We have to work on convenience. We have to give people the ability to advance in a lower numbers world. Those are 2 big pain spots for me where I think "no time" and "no point".

[Aloisa]

I've been on and off active for the last 4 years or so. Sometimes very active. I spend most of my time trying to play the game the way I'd like everyone to play, to be inclusive, to be fun. The only times I have very seriously thought about leaving and never coming back are when players statted and lvled characters named after real players, after their alts, and after my own alts. That kind of coordinated harassment makes the game feel really hostile, even if it's by a small group of players or just one player. In the end I decided I wouldn't let those people push me out of the game, but it has contributed to me enjoying the game less at times. If we keep letting things like that happen I think we'll lose more players.

[Jaster]

Haruns post is mainly part of the problem. In one fell swoop he calls for the premise of the post being disingenuous while nodding to the one calling others incels. That is a very constructive part to the conversation. All the while, actual players were posting their feelings and you glossed right past them to shoot to a non factor narrative. Vpn changes? What does that have to do with anything. Can you please point me in the direction of people NOT playing wotmud because of VPN changes or forced not to? I do not believe we will find many.

For the sake of the conversation I will try and donate something constructive until a typical few will try and derail it. I have not been super caught up with the wotmud times of late, but from what I saw before a random mention of me in the discord today for whatever apparent reason its been a 50/50 take. People asking where is everyone while others are saying everything is great and numbers are the best its ever been. Let's be honest, there have been a lot of changes that went through. Some warranted, others wish lists, someone random, and others a continuing splatter of paint to the painting. I would put more stock into the inconsistency of things to why some people are not playing than one particular change. This game takes a good chunk of time investment and if your investment can be poofed on a whim, why invest in it? Who is to say tomorrow trolls using a 2 handed trident may be deemed a bug or oversight. It may sound trivial and stupid but thats the dirt road we ventured on. For the sake of being constructive lets look at a recent scenario.

-20+yrs later Trolloc free notice is a bug ( To fix this it will cost moves to use )
Trollocs now penalized movements in pk with notice on get downed

-The impact of short blades on backstab’s landing rate now scales up to 99% instead of stopping at 80%
LS better mentals and pracs get upped

-The base landing rate of backstab has been increased from 50% to 55% due to the above. This means if you have short blades at 90% your landing
rate is still 50%, but can scale up to 55% landing rate at 99% short blades
LS better mentals and pracs get upped

-Trollocs now gain additional movement regen that scales with pracs in Survival. Base regen is unchanged. This bonus is reduced (though still active) when you are haggard. This change will bring trolloc mobility more into line with horses, whose cheaper movement terrain costs mean their effective regen is quite a bit stronger than trollocs. The availability of human blood and vials in DS shops will be adjusted, but overall this is a mobility gain.
Trolloc who can afford survival without starving another prac benefit, rogues with 2 handed daggers can afford some without large impact

-Master Postures' OB and PB bonuses have been decreased, to lower the combat gap between masters and non-masters. The new bonuses are:
a decent change to try and balance master postures

-A movement cost has been added to Backstab and Charge. It is 2 for Trollocs and 1 for everyone else (different due to Trollocs' larger movement pool). This is because of the defensive play style that has emerged with people sitting in a room spamming backstab/charge to gain the advantage. We want the play style to reward more offensive behavior.
another change that needed to happen but with that also had a compounded effect to one race from other changes

-Moonstone dirks PB also dropped by a few (-5) with these changes, to give a slight defense advantage to those who choose to prac 1h short blades + shields.
people were not using the 1 handed setup for pracs due to the previous changes so took another penalty with a dirks nerfing. Asked for prac advice and they were suggested to prac 80% shield parry and some other mediocre pracs.

- all weapons +5 base OB to compensate for the loss of master OB, such that overall bash % vs dodge remains unchanged.
Now that you have mediocre pracs, less possible pb for the weapon and from postures, get hit more by everyone.

-After a lot of thoughtful debate among a number of staff, we have decided to remove two-handed daggers from the game. We will be doing this over time to give characters time to adjust, and we are also introducing a number of options for you.
you all still didnt get the point so we will just delete this type of weapon from the class and force you to the 1 handed mediocre prac model.

-With how good trolloc moves are when they have pracced survival, we have room to experiment a bit with horse regen too. All mounts, e.g. horses, torm, raken and shadow stallions have been upped, which should add up to +6 moves regen per tick. This will go in once bought, unstabled, or repopped
instead of seeing what the imbalance from the troll survival was, we jumped into upping the mounts around them.

-Changed to Med blades and Fencing blades. More OB and PB.
Time for the mediocre defenses to get shredded. Mainly a change that effects one race the most. Very few medium users on DS or fencing blade users.

-If this goes well, we will add in the silver sai as a craftable 1h dagger, with significantly boosted OB over a silver basilard. I am holding off on making them craftable for now to see how this other change goes first. You can see the updated stats in the spreadsheet.
again, another change that will largely impact one race positively while the other negatively with the mediocre pracs.
some players will largely benefit from changes like that. Ones that get extra OB for being in the clan. So HIGH OB/ATTACK weapons to shred the mediocre prac DS version

This is just an example of some compounded changes that can be seen to be aimed at a possible positive outcome by staff having negative effects. If people choose to play or not play over those changes is entirely up to them. I have not polled anyone. But if you invested a lot of time into a char that kept getting changed up on you like that, you may not want to spend more time on it or the game wondering what is getting changed or deleted next. Kitiara and others gave great examples of the abolishment of what they considered a part of the game they can enjoy. I will let them continue with their details of what impacts them to a point they are not compelled to play.

[Vannor]

Yeah.. no..

Attributing the VPN change to the decrease because of alleged statter snipers is laughable at best and the sideswipes is just more passive aggressive behaviour. We're all older and bigger and uglier, just talk plainly, no need to talk in circles.

A major issue is the now long history of conflict by two distinct camps of long-term core players, with some blending.

Been in both 'meta' camps, I can say with utter confidence which camp is more toxic in my opinion. Mind you the vast majority outside the 'top members' of those groups don't really care, are just happy to play with whoever.

I certainly don't bear any hostility but some of the behaviour and attitudes I witnessed was concerning, especially when applied in the context of an ONLINE TEXT BASED GAME. You even echoed some of the concerns I voiced if I remember correctly Harun, so did you Langois. I told Austin about it, don't know what if anything was done about it. There are no innocent parties in that 'silent war'.

There's a real mentality among certain players that if you don't play the game in a way they like, they will do their best to run you into the ground. If you don't agree with their groupthink, you are the enemy. It's caustic and toxic and the 'outside' players probably aren't even aware how it affects them. I can't be bothered linking to Wikipedia articles, but I'm sure we all know what griefing means.

If someone enjoys PvE, who cares, let them rank 8 from it. Make it easy and sustainable, nearly all major AAA games have clear and rewarding progression from both PvE and PvP elements. Again who cares, it would be nice if there were two types of turn points, one for PvE and one for pvp and the rewards from each were different in some way, that way the elitist PK douchebags could point to their fancy PvP awards and pat themselves on the back and lord themselves over PvE'rs.

On that note, PK is probably gonna always be 'healthy' when you log in with six of your group on the side with the least numbers. It's artificial. For everyone else like Reyne says being able to achieve something rewarding in 30mins to an hour is a great benchmark.

If someone wants to spam the living dung out of it to farm it beyond all reason... Bully for them, does anybody really care? It's like all the bitching about how many r7/8 KMG there are/were... Why is that an issue for you? It's beyond my comprehension

To the posts at hand and to progression. Keep the hard goals hard, for sure. Massively upping the herald rewards but keeping the cap at 999 is a great idea. Nerfing of master postures is a great change to even the playing field, so is the rank damage change. Now people don't feel like they have to master 'just to play the game'. It's a good thing. Leave the game changing bonuses beyond some sturdy locked doors. For the vanilla stuff, let people go HAM.

Adding more flavour to the world would help, people come/stay for the WoT flavour, Ely is putting in effort to do that with RP ranks. I think it could be made more accessible, coding in this direction would likely assist.

Expansion of the treasurer rewards, and adding a feature that handing in the scalp of xyz contributed to the coffer. Let people upgrade their clan in meaningful ways that aren't temporary but not gamebreaking, encourages people to stay and haul clans for the long-term.

I think most people have achieved many of their significant individual goals, addition of widescale group ones is an avenue that had been sporadically but not deeply explored. I honestly feel like and have had others discuss and agree that it's like 'what is there to do?'

Widescale clan improvement deserves it's on separate thread, if imms decide there's an appetite for it.

Finally though, everyone plays this game for different reasons, a different blend of PvE/PK/RP, just stay in your lane and stop worrying so chortlesnorfling much about how people choose to spend their time in it.

[Vannor]

I've been on and off active for the last 4 years or so. Sometimes very active. I spend most of my time trying to play the game the way I'd like everyone to play, to be inclusive, to be fun. The only times I have very seriously thought about leaving and never coming back are when players statted and lvled characters named after real players, after their alts, and after my own alts. That kind of coordinated harassment makes the game feel really hostile, even if it's by a small group of players or just one player. In the end I decided I wouldn't let those people push me out of the game, but it has contributed to me enjoying the game less at times. If we keep letting things like that happen I think we'll lose more players.

Yeah those alts (the bear trollocs ones from memory?) statted taking the piss out of Razhak is the first example I can think of. Completely unnecessary

[Foil]

I think I am the only person to receive real punishment from the VPN thing unless there are others that I am unaware of which is very possibly the case.

To set a few things straight on the VPN issue. Never at anytime was there any evidence that I cheated by using a VPN. An immortal linked me to a bunch of characters that aren't mine and when I expressed that they weren't mine I was basically told it couldn't be proven that they were mine or that they weren't mine so I would be punished because I guess punishing someone for circumstantial things is the better option.

You might wonder how this could happen. Well it's pretty simple. I used a rather popular public VPN which I am sure others use. If at any point a person uses the same data center to mask their IP they could potentially have the same IP as yours. I didn't give this much thought, but afterwards I definitely could see how this is possible and I can understand why this would cause problems for staff so I let it go.

Why do I choose to use a VPN if I am not doing anything wrong one might ask. Well to me that's also quite simple. I have no faith in the staff here. If I make a new character and I don't want it to be known I feel that you have to mask your IP. Staff will snoop your IP and staff will most definitely tell other players who you are. Some might say I have a pretty nice tinfoil hat on, perhaps that's true, but that is a hill I will die on and no one will convince me otherwise.

I didn't necessarily quit because of my punishment. I mainly decided that playing a game where I have 0 confidence in that staff to be subjective is not worth my time. Those are my feelings and I don't expect anyone else to agree or understand my viewpoint on it. This is also not a community that I really feel is worth being a part of. I have no goals left to really attain here and my time is better spent playing other games or just doing things in real life.

The changes to the game are fine. It's a game right, if you change something, down something, remove something it's whatever. People will just change their setup to the next viable alternative and keep going. I don't agree with all of them, but no one asked my input so it's moot.

The culture on the MUD is in a terrible state. At the end of the day for the game to be successful and fun you need all types. There are going to be people who don't align with your view points and THATS OKAY folks. When a player leaves this small community it is a loss to everyone, not just his friends or his clan. It's a loss to every last player here. If you remaining players could find a way to actually care about keeping the community alive and foster some growth it would probably do you a lot better in the long run than simply feeling like you "won" every time someone you don't agree with packs their bags and leaves. That isn't winning even though it may feel good to be rid of them, the community dying isn't winning long term.

I asked an old mud friend of mine if she had any interest in playing here again last time I came back. Her response was "Hell, no" "I have no interest in returning to that dying cesspool". I kind of laughed it off as I thought it was a bit dramatic, but it's actually quite accurate. I came back for a bit and honestly I did nothing to help the community be better, I felt like the community did nothing to make the game fun for me. So it honestly was a good time to go. The more time I spent playing the less fun I was having and the more I found myself just being another negative aspect of a negative community.

In short, I am better off without WoTmud and WoTmud is better off without me.

[Harun]

To be clear: I am not being passive aggressive, I am being aggressive. You (Vannor) and Jaster and Foil can try to brush off the VPN use if you want to. Cheating by sniping globals is shameful. It's bad for PK and it's bad for the game atmosphere. The players who benefited from it have a permanent asterisk next to everything they've accomplished on this game. There is no defense for it. That's not talking in circles--that's being quite direct.

And you (Vannor) are right that I expressed similar concerns and still have them. I don't like people being nasty with each other and support all efforts to reduce toxicity. That means cracking down on offensive outbursts, whoever makes them. I don't care if Langois gets a strike or a timeout for calling people incels (although I think it's funny). Neither does he. But it also means cracking down on harassment and baiting. That's far more important to me and, without a culture of harassment and baiting there will be far fewer outbursts to monitor.

[Foil]

To be clear: I am not being passive aggressive, I am being aggressive. You (Vannor) and Jaster and Foil can try to brush off the VPN use if you want to. Cheating by sniping globals is shameful. It's bad for PK and it's bad for the game atmosphere.

You are a 100% right, that's a huge problem. Now who is doing that? I never did for sure. What I did do was use a VPN to stat about 5 sessions of characters every night while I slept to try and stat a max FC and max hunter. I never had stat bots running while logged on a different side. But again, you can make up the narrative as you go to make a point. That's the good thing about situations like this, if you don't have hard evidence to prove a point you can just kinda throw thing's around to make people look bad because there isn't much they can do about it. The VPN thing is a problem for staff, I 100% agree on all counts. Yet the real issue with people on VPNs is you can't prove ANYTHING. Perhaps I am being honest, perhaps I am lying. No one knows for sure and that creates a big issue for the staff. Banning VPNS is completely fine imo.

[Raspen]

Langois point about griefing is very much true for me as well. The backhanded and behind the back talking begged the question as to why I was there. Ive heard that since certain actions the mud has been a much more normal human interaction friendly.
And Harun's asterisks assessment and Aloisa's note about using people's rl names are two irrefutable points and I'm 100% in agreement with them. It highlights certain behaviors were allowed to exist which quite frankly should have resulted in zeroing out all qps for cheating or permabans for harassment. Or both. I am glad actions were taken but unfortunately these behaviors HAVE driven away players.

I myself started playing other games more. Found a guild with 125 raiders. The guild has a set of house rules where people who grieved others were quickly weeded out and a strong/competent officer core who kept results as a team the priority. Pretty happy with that and the community. In the end that's what I look for in a multiplayer game. Otherwise time to Civ VI it up or play a fps.

I am happy the mud is taking actions at least. If the good environment continues may jump back in.

[Vannor]

To be clear: I am not being passive aggressive, I am being aggressive. You (Vannor) and Jaster and Foil can try to brush off the VPN use if you want to. Cheating by sniping globals is shameful. It's bad for PK and it's bad for the game atmosphere. The players who benefited from it have a permanent asterisk next to everything they've accomplished on this game. There is no defense for it. That's not talking in circles--that's being quite direct.

Just to be clear, you think I was using VPNs to snipe globals? Where on earth has this come from?

This sort of dung is exactly what I'm talking about.