What I'm attempting to describe below are "feeling" I have in certain situations. The simple truth is - I feel differently at other times and if I was arguing some of these things I could easily argue both sides of them. The game is always about maximizing your advantage, but some of the time the pieces just aren't there. If I was arguing certain things from a human perspective I might say:
- Leveling up / new character / unclanned on human / no one else on ie. Warders, WBs etc - humanity often feels really lonely and short on information. Maybe I'm paranoid but you can just feel exposed ie. having smells on darkside is just this explosion of information compared to being a human. No one really hunts trolls exping. No one can really sneak up on a troll smob group other than a WB. The functionality of smells - instant, no timer, always functional within its limits is unbelievable. Its one of the most potent bonuses that bonused humans get but you get it on day 1 as a troll. The experience on human being in a bonused group is night and day compared to solo.
*I have sometimes wondered if "where" related detection should have - a timer, a cost, a limit per tick, a possible fail etc however, I also acknowledge these skills are part of the intensity of the game - the gathering of new information that keeps people moving.
-The game is all about dismounting humans which makes them pitifully weak on bash. Going on a quest somewhere - dismounted. Trolls in a door at a patrol? Historically a dismount. Smobbing? Dismounted. Horses are humans greatest strength but the moment you take it away from them there's a BIG step down. Fully concede humans bash better mounted than trolls and humans flee substantially better than trolls. Both of these came to feel like big issues to me over the last few years and I wish more coding solutions had been offered for them. But a lot of the game revolves around humans having to give up horses and losing direct combat ability and mobility.
-Horses also have been part of a huge amount of the douchiness of the game. Let's be real here - through time if you put enough Wotmud players in a room you'll find a lot of them are just out for themselves. Historic Tower channelers argued till they were blue in the face that blind should have no counter, no cure, no resistance, whatever. Players often give terrible feedback. So when someone brings up something they think is broken - there may or may not be truth to it. But the historic treatment mounted humans received with horse bash and horse stab and what not is just absurd. Mounted players (mostly humans) were subjected to garbage coding and garbage behavior. There's a large list of other broken things and many of them target humans (ie. darken purposely targets another specific human trait - inability to see at night that darkside doesn't have to deal with and is only a human disadvantage - there's never a human positive in the night/day cycle) but the horse related stuff is just cringe because it could be used against a human at essentially any time.
-Trolls historically complained that human cities are too strong, but historically human mob support in most places is weak/non-existent. Zones of emptiness with nothing to back you up. There's been a substantial evolution up north over the last few years that I sometimes feel actually went too far, but hands down I'd rather fight a troll near Fal Dara than near Caemlyn. Meanwhile, trolls zones also just have this beautiful economic use of space. There's stellar exp. There's plentiful support. There's a city to rest in. And they are all right next to each other. We're literally putting in campfires to try and get humans out of cities. Humans used to go spine to dismount to fight predators in a door. Trolls literally have predators 15 rooms away from keep in a zone that used to repop like every 20 minutes. TKD literally has high level exp inside the city. There's just no inconvenience for darkside. You want to look for vials you just flame city to city. Its tight, its close, its fast. In fact, if you really think about it - like 99% of troll activities happen keep / blight / and the zones immediately around it. Not saying you aren't rewarded for expansive zone knowledge but you can play darkside for years without ever really heading south from Stronghold (yeah, yeah, I know worms is there). Darkside is a "Keep" centric world with flame to other points. Its good for their community. They don't even have to leave their cities to flame.
-A lot of the game has really always been about inconveniencing humans. I'm aware the Imms are going after this but I wonder how much of it is still built in. Historically an example of this was shop times. But here's a weird one - how many human smobs are a "puzzle" or require a key and how many darkside smobs involve opening a door and smashing. Neat for exploration and discovery? Sure. But literally there are 2 smobs right outside Caemlyn and both historically required pick. Meanwhile, a troll kills Ruined City every repop. Does Shadowknight die every day? For a lot of human stuff the juice ain't worth the squeeze.
-Anyone remember that for a brief wonderful moment humans could turn scalps in -anywhere-. Do I get the rationale for its removal? Yes, but it had a incredibly negative effect on my playing experience. When at the end of a PK sessions I have to give away a scalp because I don't have time to walk south that rapidly turns into - why am I bothering to log on when I won't get to keep my scalps regardless.
-Darkside has unity of purpose. That's well explained above. Humanity at its worst just sucks. Its not just divided so no one can group. Its being stabbed by some douchebag you were smobbing with. Humans are just straight terrible against their own same side stabbers. See a hidden lifeform - hit kill dark, oh but its a human rogue, etc. Trolls just don't have to experience this kind of crap. I'm not claiming its happening every day or every minute but the ability to be griefed through time on human is just so much worse.
-Advancement. Superior on darkside. Human rank 8 - in fact reduced in quality from what was initially offered which was already inferior to darkside. The ultimate human achievement still gets you a rank 8 shirt that is worse than the equivalent item on darkside.
-Trolls historically didn't get survival (I get it, they didn't have the practices), basically paid the same movement cost everywhere, and could have both sneak and notice on without any movement cost. Meanwhile there are terrains where an unprepared human loses 7 moves a room. I will concede that historically I thought troll movement was still awful for extended PK. I've told a story before of chasing humans to dusty, sitting 2n4e2sw hag and a group of humans that had just been chased in came back out, chased a guy to like Blight, and then came back to FD and I was still sitting dusty regenning without enough moves to keep PKing. Obviously the new survival change has changed the calculus. Trolls also were theoretically historically uncatchable if they started with full moves and a vial and vial changes have I guess been extensive.
-There's obviously some historic stuff that used to be a much bigger issue that has improved. Darkside mob lead historically crushes human lead. Much better ability to control the story in your home zones, stack mobs, set up douchey situations. This is still slightly favorable to darkside ie. most darkside areas load a diversity of mobs while you'll never find a Red Eagle mob on dusty. Humans historically had pathetic mob levels and certain darkside mob sets were much stronger.
Here's a recent one though - how does something like that new mob set Granlin zone even get created? I'm referring to the Seanchan->Darkside conversion. I suppose I get a Seanchan base having to be adequate since they have nothing (It was still absurd - one of the rooms had 5 level 61+ mobs in it). But the current darkside base there? Seriously, how could anyone ever play in that. Count the mobs. Its unbelievable. There's plural mobs in every single room. This is a base located in a zone that already contains the darkhounds mob set which is also 1 zone away from FD Fade that no one uses. I literally feel like I'm back 20 years ago trying to explain to anyone who will listen that old school camp loaded 50+ mobs.
-Most human clans are pointless. The game has has clear favorites/winners and losers. Anyone putting their time into a loser clan is wasting their time.
-There are massively too many shadow eyes in the game especially with Dha'vol being able to hear them. Ravens/crows etc should fly way less or mobs should report less frequently or trolls should have to pay a timer/cost for a tick of the ability to listen or something.
-Humans getting contagioned by looting darkside gear. Seriously. Massively broken things in this game never get fixed.
-Earthquake. How do coders read these logs and think "yeah, this works as intended".
What are things that make LS harder to play than DS?
Re: What are things that make LS harder to play than DS?
I have been playing ls the last week or so instead of ds to try and help this along a bit.
What I noticed coming back to ls is that there is a distinct lack of communication from the player base. There used to be conversations happening over chats while pk happened over narrates. I tried to start some pk or smobbing multiple times this week and all you get are crickets.
When I start sending direct tells I get more of a response but there seems to be a fear of using ls comms. I believe this comes from dark friends, shared ss/ls narrates, the availability of info getting passed through out of game channels/discord. This limits people even trying to get stuff started and people only get involved when a well known player comes to the side. Most people nowadays are likely to coordinate quests, smobbing, group activities out of the game when on ls.
I also find that new players get stomped pretty quick because they are easy to find for raiding ds due to the easy availability of instant info available to large portions of ds players with basin, smells, rats/ravens (as above the sheer number is insane and largely unavoidable). Newer or inexperienced players also take longer to help and slow you down when involved in group activities. This isn't bad but it does mean, as a leader with reduced time available in game, that choices need to be made to do smaller or quicker things while supporting newer players or blitzing things quick with an experienced group.
Having scaled adhoc raids or a smob roaming around put if its normal arena usually get ls to rally around into a space, this gets things going afterwards (if they haven't all mobbed to an itesh level abomination) and is something that could be done during holiday downtime for people.
It is a sad fact that people need to be incentivised to play ls over ds. As you get experience and achieve goals, ds is just simpler and more fun which appeals to a player base that has less time to invest.
What I noticed coming back to ls is that there is a distinct lack of communication from the player base. There used to be conversations happening over chats while pk happened over narrates. I tried to start some pk or smobbing multiple times this week and all you get are crickets.
When I start sending direct tells I get more of a response but there seems to be a fear of using ls comms. I believe this comes from dark friends, shared ss/ls narrates, the availability of info getting passed through out of game channels/discord. This limits people even trying to get stuff started and people only get involved when a well known player comes to the side. Most people nowadays are likely to coordinate quests, smobbing, group activities out of the game when on ls.
I also find that new players get stomped pretty quick because they are easy to find for raiding ds due to the easy availability of instant info available to large portions of ds players with basin, smells, rats/ravens (as above the sheer number is insane and largely unavoidable). Newer or inexperienced players also take longer to help and slow you down when involved in group activities. This isn't bad but it does mean, as a leader with reduced time available in game, that choices need to be made to do smaller or quicker things while supporting newer players or blitzing things quick with an experienced group.
Having scaled adhoc raids or a smob roaming around put if its normal arena usually get ls to rally around into a space, this gets things going afterwards (if they haven't all mobbed to an itesh level abomination) and is something that could be done during holiday downtime for people.
It is a sad fact that people need to be incentivised to play ls over ds. As you get experience and achieve goals, ds is just simpler and more fun which appeals to a player base that has less time to invest.
Re: What are things that make LS harder to play than DS?
Most of this has been covered across the various responses, but just to reiterate. In general I think my answer is 'almost everything is harder, so it's not worth dealing with'.
1) Horses! They're worse than troll moves and they get you killed a lot. Horse stab, horse bash, horse target - turns out being able to selectively target people makes people less able to stick around low and less likely to want to play abs setups. And as someone mentioned, LS is balanced around being mounted, the above forces you into a no-win situation - dismount and lose 15% bash, or get targeted (or just go in). Another thing that constantly frustrates me is the burst move ability - on my trolls, I can just run down to camp in a tick. On my humans, I take literally three ticks just to get to a point where I can PK in orch, starting in FD. Three ticks is a LONG time in PK if humans are being hit ragan or something. And of course, if I run down to camp on a troll, I'll probably get compelled or freshed on DS (because both leader classes have it) and on LS I just have to wait for my horse.
2) Communication/factions. It turns out having enemies constantly on your own lines of communication makes everyone a lot more cautious and only willing to communicate through tells or when it's 'safe'. And a lot less willing to group with randoms, which hurts the culture (this matters a lot more than it seems). I know they're a big part of the world etc, but darkfriends hurt this a lot too, and if I could remove them and put everyone on the same side, I absolutely would and it'd be a huge boon for PK. Because with SS and DFs listening and communicating back (via in-game or out-of-game methods) you don't have the same safety. Oh, and all the bullshit with warranting magically makes people not want to play justice clans AND makes it hard to PK effectively if you get unlucky with who's on. Honestly, seems designed to make LS more fractured, and surprise surprise it worked.
3) Congratulations, someone heard you were hitting a smob group and told DS! Except wait, you don't have anywhere near the ability to know that unless you're in a very specific clan that has zone sense. Why do people feel safe hitting SK on pop, but don't do that for LS smobs? Well, DS smobs are unfriendly to LS (move cost to get up, move/OB/bash cost to dism to hit in a DS smob) but mostly the info that you get is HUGELY asymmetric. Rats/ravens are common so you're almost certainly getting spotted (and can't do anything about this, because they're just in random rooms) and once reported, you can generally assume that either a dhavol or a remort is on. Basin exists for some reason, and has no LS equivalent (again, free info that gives LS no way of knowing they're being watched, this is a theme), and of course even if someone were to hit you, you'd know about it way in advance because of smells.
4) General convenience - would you rather flame or horsehop across the map? Hit the good exp that conveniently exists only in far-flung areas or just go 10 rooms outside a city? Or perhaps you'd like to hit the DS smobs that all are tuned to very efficiently load gear for specific (often abs) setups? I mean, the whole DS environment is set up to be an efficient way of gearing, leveling, and getting around, and LS is worse for all of that.
5) Culture, and this one's hard to solve because of that. When LS is set up to be an 'everything' side - RP, smobbing, factions, etc - it makes the people that just want to PK move away, because you get way higher variance in who's actually joining on LS. The experienced PKers move to a more PK-focused side, and shockingly the more PK-focused side with the PK-focused side bonuses has more experienced PKers. This has been true for DS/SS for a long time, but eventually it caught up to LS and the numbers equalized (or worse).
6) Advancement, and this one's much easier for you to solve. Make a LS remort and you'll probably see people start chasing it and numbers will look less awful, even with all of the above.
7) Mob support is...embarrassing. Like, it's really weird that I'd rather fight in FD than TV, and even FD is specifically designed to be extremely hittable. A lot of effort was undertaken to ensure that nothing on LS was safe, but RK is very safe unless numbers are seriously uneven (and even then you can run around forever) and TKD is unhittable practically. Again, things were designed to make LS raidable and unsafe, and DS unraidable and safe. For general PK, I agree with what's been said. DS tends to have better mob support (and often in places that result in LS being unable to run easily if they lose at it). Also, please make blands pat just stand in one spot - it's really irritating to have to find it, and you kinda need to know where it is before you hit in camp (or you just go dusty if you lose).
1) Horses! They're worse than troll moves and they get you killed a lot. Horse stab, horse bash, horse target - turns out being able to selectively target people makes people less able to stick around low and less likely to want to play abs setups. And as someone mentioned, LS is balanced around being mounted, the above forces you into a no-win situation - dismount and lose 15% bash, or get targeted (or just go in). Another thing that constantly frustrates me is the burst move ability - on my trolls, I can just run down to camp in a tick. On my humans, I take literally three ticks just to get to a point where I can PK in orch, starting in FD. Three ticks is a LONG time in PK if humans are being hit ragan or something. And of course, if I run down to camp on a troll, I'll probably get compelled or freshed on DS (because both leader classes have it) and on LS I just have to wait for my horse.
2) Communication/factions. It turns out having enemies constantly on your own lines of communication makes everyone a lot more cautious and only willing to communicate through tells or when it's 'safe'. And a lot less willing to group with randoms, which hurts the culture (this matters a lot more than it seems). I know they're a big part of the world etc, but darkfriends hurt this a lot too, and if I could remove them and put everyone on the same side, I absolutely would and it'd be a huge boon for PK. Because with SS and DFs listening and communicating back (via in-game or out-of-game methods) you don't have the same safety. Oh, and all the bullshit with warranting magically makes people not want to play justice clans AND makes it hard to PK effectively if you get unlucky with who's on. Honestly, seems designed to make LS more fractured, and surprise surprise it worked.
3) Congratulations, someone heard you were hitting a smob group and told DS! Except wait, you don't have anywhere near the ability to know that unless you're in a very specific clan that has zone sense. Why do people feel safe hitting SK on pop, but don't do that for LS smobs? Well, DS smobs are unfriendly to LS (move cost to get up, move/OB/bash cost to dism to hit in a DS smob) but mostly the info that you get is HUGELY asymmetric. Rats/ravens are common so you're almost certainly getting spotted (and can't do anything about this, because they're just in random rooms) and once reported, you can generally assume that either a dhavol or a remort is on. Basin exists for some reason, and has no LS equivalent (again, free info that gives LS no way of knowing they're being watched, this is a theme), and of course even if someone were to hit you, you'd know about it way in advance because of smells.
4) General convenience - would you rather flame or horsehop across the map? Hit the good exp that conveniently exists only in far-flung areas or just go 10 rooms outside a city? Or perhaps you'd like to hit the DS smobs that all are tuned to very efficiently load gear for specific (often abs) setups? I mean, the whole DS environment is set up to be an efficient way of gearing, leveling, and getting around, and LS is worse for all of that.
5) Culture, and this one's hard to solve because of that. When LS is set up to be an 'everything' side - RP, smobbing, factions, etc - it makes the people that just want to PK move away, because you get way higher variance in who's actually joining on LS. The experienced PKers move to a more PK-focused side, and shockingly the more PK-focused side with the PK-focused side bonuses has more experienced PKers. This has been true for DS/SS for a long time, but eventually it caught up to LS and the numbers equalized (or worse).
6) Advancement, and this one's much easier for you to solve. Make a LS remort and you'll probably see people start chasing it and numbers will look less awful, even with all of the above.
7) Mob support is...embarrassing. Like, it's really weird that I'd rather fight in FD than TV, and even FD is specifically designed to be extremely hittable. A lot of effort was undertaken to ensure that nothing on LS was safe, but RK is very safe unless numbers are seriously uneven (and even then you can run around forever) and TKD is unhittable practically. Again, things were designed to make LS raidable and unsafe, and DS unraidable and safe. For general PK, I agree with what's been said. DS tends to have better mob support (and often in places that result in LS being unable to run easily if they lose at it). Also, please make blands pat just stand in one spot - it's really irritating to have to find it, and you kinda need to know where it is before you hit in camp (or you just go dusty if you lose).
Re: What are things that make LS harder to play than DS?
I was ready to type up a pretty long post here, but (as is often the case for these two!) Eol and Naerin covered things really well. All their points are quite valid. But if I had to focus on one single item, I'd say that the fear of cross race communication is the biggest community killer for me on ls. Extreme caution concerning dfs, discord communication, and shadoweye reports keeps you alive, but it makes working together and aiding the less experienced (which is where so many of the best moments on the mud come from) vastly harder.
Re: What are things that make LS harder to play than DS?
FWIW, we are not going to bring back unknown Darkfriends in their current form. Any future iteration won't involve or reward spying on LS, or currying favor with DS players in a way that incentivizes it. We agree it creates too much distrust with the current size of the community (was fine when there were 200+ online regularly and lots of people to run to defend and a lot of population density on LS, but this isn't the early 2000s).
Re: What are things that make LS harder to play than DS?
Ideas!
(1) Tower can create diplomatic alliances with justice organizations that allow for a new fast travel system to let you make 2-way gateways between major cities. Like coaches but you can take your horses with you! Can’t use with no-quit, could set extra limits on how often you can use it.
(2) New songbird or pigeon or something that flies away and sends a zone wide emote once per tick or something if DS enters its room and doesn’t kill quickly enough. Kind of like a reverse raven for LS that helps with scouting or a poor man’s zone sense.
(1) Tower can create diplomatic alliances with justice organizations that allow for a new fast travel system to let you make 2-way gateways between major cities. Like coaches but you can take your horses with you! Can’t use with no-quit, could set extra limits on how often you can use it.
(2) New songbird or pigeon or something that flies away and sends a zone wide emote once per tick or something if DS enters its room and doesn’t kill quickly enough. Kind of like a reverse raven for LS that helps with scouting or a poor man’s zone sense.
Re: What are things that make LS harder to play than DS?
Lack of an "automated" end game to retain players with a more goal oriented mind set, typically PKers. Automated in the sense that it isn't a clan where you can fail to be accepted once you have done the requirements asked of you. Lack of a central "hub", lack of worthwhile targets to hit in close proximity to said hub.
The mud is too big to sustain our dwindling numbers, this isn't to say that we should delete zones, but that we need to create incentive for people to huddle together more, so the spontaneous smob trip and whatnot can happen. Better ways of travel between cities that are far away from each other would be helpful, would be easier to travel from Fal Dara to Andor to help someone who needs re-equipment.
I think if you try to rearrange Caemlyn to be sort of the LS version of Keep, in terms of worthwhile targets to hit and so on, it could have a positive impact. That being said I think you'd also need to remove the waygate from Caralain to somewhere else for this to have any real effect.
Agree with most of what has been said already.
The mud is too big to sustain our dwindling numbers, this isn't to say that we should delete zones, but that we need to create incentive for people to huddle together more, so the spontaneous smob trip and whatnot can happen. Better ways of travel between cities that are far away from each other would be helpful, would be easier to travel from Fal Dara to Andor to help someone who needs re-equipment.
I think if you try to rearrange Caemlyn to be sort of the LS version of Keep, in terms of worthwhile targets to hit and so on, it could have a positive impact. That being said I think you'd also need to remove the waygate from Caralain to somewhere else for this to have any real effect.
Agree with most of what has been said already.
Re: What are things that make LS harder to play than DS?
Too many things for my tired mind to list. Coordination/skill/regrouping/order/dependability/reliability/bonuses/mobs/numbers/zerk-str-high damage weapons-abs bashers vs not so much/horses-moves/shadow eyes/comms/smells etc.
Could go in depth on each thing listed but to tired. Also I think the removal of r8 zone sense was idiotic. It was a small counter to the ease of DS smells. Not enough end game goals on LS. And beating a dead horse on this one, clanning/bonuses etc is archaic and silly.
Could go in depth on each thing listed but to tired. Also I think the removal of r8 zone sense was idiotic. It was a small counter to the ease of DS smells. Not enough end game goals on LS. And beating a dead horse on this one, clanning/bonuses etc is archaic and silly.
Re: What are things that make LS harder to play than DS?
A very common theme I feel is reoccurring is clans and goal orientation on LS. Being that bonuses are basically centralized in a few of the couple dozen clans available it seems silly to me to invest time on a character unless you are going for a bonused clan.
So how do you make the clanning process more interesting and less subjective while at the same time not making it autoclan.
BG doesn't seem bad, it's the only clan where I have been playing an unknown alt and a master from the clan approached me after pk offering me a chance to join the clan.
WB no clue, from my understanding you have to fit the bill and they approach you. Seems flawed imo. But, I don't really know so not much I can say.
BT from my understanding no one is getting in. End of story.
Gaidin at face value not a bad system, but requiring people to complete tasks based on other people's playtimes just doesn't seem like a good way. I feel like if you were a worthy candidate for training most of the current entry quest should be a part of your training and growth as a student (ranking quests).
Kin again another subjective entry. I'm not wholely in the known but from my understanding you have to be suggested by a another member and then voted in. Not good.
Tower channelers decent system, full of rp, character growth, I understand the shawling thing used to be quite a problem with people essentially getting blocked from certain ajah because of personal reasons but lately haven't heard much gripe so perhaps that's a system to look to when considering other clan admittance. Easy to join, tasks to rank.
Unsure if I missed any of the real bonused clans, but that's just an average LS players take on the clanning processes that actually matter. I'd consider myself someone who falls into the demographic of "why isn't LS appealing" I try to play it, I'd like to play it, but it just seems like too much red tape at times. DS character advancement is streamlined and easier, it just makes more sense.
So how do you make the clanning process more interesting and less subjective while at the same time not making it autoclan.
BG doesn't seem bad, it's the only clan where I have been playing an unknown alt and a master from the clan approached me after pk offering me a chance to join the clan.
WB no clue, from my understanding you have to fit the bill and they approach you. Seems flawed imo. But, I don't really know so not much I can say.
BT from my understanding no one is getting in. End of story.
Gaidin at face value not a bad system, but requiring people to complete tasks based on other people's playtimes just doesn't seem like a good way. I feel like if you were a worthy candidate for training most of the current entry quest should be a part of your training and growth as a student (ranking quests).
Kin again another subjective entry. I'm not wholely in the known but from my understanding you have to be suggested by a another member and then voted in. Not good.
Tower channelers decent system, full of rp, character growth, I understand the shawling thing used to be quite a problem with people essentially getting blocked from certain ajah because of personal reasons but lately haven't heard much gripe so perhaps that's a system to look to when considering other clan admittance. Easy to join, tasks to rank.
Unsure if I missed any of the real bonused clans, but that's just an average LS players take on the clanning processes that actually matter. I'd consider myself someone who falls into the demographic of "why isn't LS appealing" I try to play it, I'd like to play it, but it just seems like too much red tape at times. DS character advancement is streamlined and easier, it just makes more sense.
Re: What are things that make LS harder to play than DS?
Also, seemed like I was complaining mostly. I'd like to say, I appreciate the clans trying to make it difficult to join so when you did it feels like you have achieved something. I get it's a hard line to ride and I honestly don't have a good solution, I was just giving my POV. This has been a good thread and I didn't want it to seem like I was digging dirt to fling.