Not Rank 8 Zone sense

[arston]

Made a separate thread for all the tangents to the zone sense issues. Please post all related topics and trash talking on this thread so the other one can stay focused.

[arston]

I don't know what game you guys are playing, but smob loads getting changed months ago do not = 10 smobs for 1 side. Try more like 1 sid every 2 smobs. lol. Especially for KMG and with the plethora of basics loads being upped + gold combo basics being upped. Trinks galore.

again off topic, you could have a whole thread on how many things are wrong in that statement

I just did this last week. But go off.

First off, I average over 20 smobs a day when im actually playing so I think i know a bit about smobs and what they load.

Second off, I'm not basing it only on feelings. If you want to know what smobs have been loading what just go to this website: https://wotcode.azurewebsites.net/mobs , and search for the item. For example typing in "obsidian" will pop up every smob that has been killed by about a dozen or so people that have been contributing to it that loaded a sid, and you can see that the only ones that load it more than 10% are ones that have a small sample size (under 20 so if there was 2 lucky drops then it would throw the numbers off) or cityheads.

Third off, KMG cant turn basics into a "ton of trinkets" if you are doing more than 1 per day you are cheating, and this route is really only available for people who are not taking quest points for their turn in's, so its only an option for people who dont actually want to be a KMG and are just using it to cycle through equipment for alts.

Fourth, gold equipment loads do virtually nothing for trinkets, its used to make jcuffs that nobody buys

[arston]

There is a big difference between "looking for top end gear" and "smobbing for reequips". I think its already far too easy for a giant group to gank people as is it is, without having a safe avenue for people to reequip so they CAN fight again. In that way regular smobs that just load basics needed to reequip SHOULD be able to avenues like gate and zone sense to move from one to the next relatively safely.

Things that give quest points though should involve more risk. That's why (as much as i love my heralds and i know people would stop wanting to actually do them) I think think that for stuff like that it should have !gate rooms further out so you do actually have to put yourself at risk, leave tracks along pk lines etc while doing them. They should take longer but not be limited to just one per day.

Stuff like cityheads are virtually no risk in today's environment. 90% of the players will only attack or defend if they feel that theres virtually no risk at all, and 10% will blindly defend and certainly die because they feel rp-compelled to try. It doesnt matter how strong the cityheads are made its always going to be a risk cost analysis the way it is now. Would be fun if when you entered a cross race city it entered into a separate zone where you had to attack the guards on the walls, and hold the gates, so the group had to split up with some staying back to man the walls/kill mobs on the walls to keep them from reinforcing the city/cityhead while others went in to do the city. Forcing a splitup of the group makes it to where theres a bit more risk and smaller numbers actually have a possibilty of making a difference

[Rig]

again off topic, you could have a whole thread on how many things are wrong in that statement

I just did this last week. But go off.

First off, I average over 20 smobs a day when im actually playing so I think i know a bit about smobs and what they load.

Second off, I'm not basing it only on feelings. If you want to know what smobs have been loading what just go to this website: https://wotcode.azurewebsites.net/mobs , and search for the item. For example typing in "obsidian" will pop up every smob that has been killed by about a dozen or so people that have been contributing to it that loaded a sid, and you can see that the only ones that load it more than 10% are ones that have a small sample size (under 20 so if there was 2 lucky drops then it would throw the numbers off) or cityheads.

Third off, KMG cant turn basics into a "ton of trinkets" if you are doing more than 1 per day you are cheating, and this route is really only available for people who are not taking quest points for their turn in's, so its only an option for people who dont actually want to be a KMG and are just using it to cycle through equipment for alts.

Fourth, gold equipment loads do virtually nothing for trinkets, its used to make jcuffs that nobody buys

My guy, that’s 30 obsidian pendants a month. That is a ton of trinkets. I don’t really care about the intricacies related to maximum gains per day.

[Ric]

I Ric the merchant with flair, the greatest merchant of all time will say, obsidians are easy to come by, woo, gold rings are easy to craft and find, woo, jcuffs all day, woo, trash merchants sell trash, merchants with flair sell the expensive items so the people can style and profile, woo, 3k qps no problem, woo, obsidians gold rings jcuffs tokens rares, woo, Ric took the lead and now others follow, woo, market is packed with trinkets, woo, now wtf can I find c belts, belts are too rare!

[arston]

I just did this last week. But go off.

First off, I average over 20 smobs a day when im actually playing so I think i know a bit about smobs and what they load.

Second off, I'm not basing it only on feelings. If you want to know what smobs have been loading what just go to this website: https://wotcode.azurewebsites.net/mobs , and search for the item. For example typing in "obsidian" will pop up every smob that has been killed by about a dozen or so people that have been contributing to it that loaded a sid, and you can see that the only ones that load it more than 10% are ones that have a small sample size (under 20 so if there was 2 lucky drops then it would throw the numbers off) or cityheads.

Third off, KMG cant turn basics into a "ton of trinkets" if you are doing more than 1 per day you are cheating, and this route is really only available for people who are not taking quest points for their turn in's, so its only an option for people who dont actually want to be a KMG and are just using it to cycle through equipment for alts.

Fourth, gold equipment loads do virtually nothing for trinkets, its used to make jcuffs that nobody buys

My guy, that’s 30 obsidian pendants a month. That is a ton of trinkets. I don’t really care about the intricacies related to maximum gains per day.

Correct. It's very easy for a very-top tier player to gather lots of items (theres probably 3-5 players that can et 30 sids a month farming it 10 hours a day) at which point theres no "reward" for gear at all and its why you see giant piles of gear in barrels or left in corpses. A group of 5 can typically do about 6-12 smobs per hour with gate, depending on how good of a leader and how well everyone is actually listening and not afk. Split between 5 people thats about 5 hours of hard smobbing with a good leader for everyone to get a single sid.

The only people it really helps are NON-top tier players that need gear after dying in pk. They are the ones that need a way to get equipped so they can keep on playing the game. Gate and zone sense both help get groups together to facilitate that. Groups of DS that see tracks and kill all the newer players while they are trying to prep for another fight is what makes people quit (obviously not referring to referring to the groups of all bonded pairs/ masters smobbing for fun, YES they exist too, and YES they should have more risky options available for quest points and for fun, but there should exist different safer smobs with basics, that way new players can re-gear without you ganking them again before they have armor to fight in).

[byrg]

First off, I average over 20 smobs a day when im actually playing so I think i know a bit about smobs and what they load.

Second off, I'm not basing it only on feelings. If you want to know what smobs have been loading what just go to this website: https://wotcode.azurewebsites.net/mobs , and search for the item. For example typing in "obsidian" will pop up every smob that has been killed by about a dozen or so people that have been contributing to it that loaded a sid, and you can see that the only ones that load it more than 10% are ones that have a small sample size (under 20 so if there was 2 lucky drops then it would throw the numbers off) or cityheads.

Third off, KMG cant turn basics into a "ton of trinkets" if you are doing more than 1 per day you are cheating, and this route is really only available for people who are not taking quest points for their turn in's, so its only an option for people who dont actually want to be a KMG and are just using it to cycle through equipment for alts.

Fourth, gold equipment loads do virtually nothing for trinkets, its used to make jcuffs that nobody buys

My guy, that’s 30 obsidian pendants a month. That is a ton of trinkets. I don’t really care about the intricacies related to maximum gains per day.

Correct. It's very easy for a very-top tier player to gather lots of items (theres probably 3-5 players that can et 30 sids a month farming it 10 hours a day) at which point theres no "reward" for gear at all and its why you see giant piles of gear in barrels or left in corpses. A group of 5 can typically do about 6-12 smobs per hour with gate, depending on how good of a leader and how well everyone is actually listening and not afk. Split between 5 people thats about 5 hours of hard smobbing with a good leader for everyone to get a single sid.

The only people it really helps are NON-top tier players that need gear after dying in pk. They are the ones that need a way to get equipped so they can keep on playing the game. Gate and zone sense both help get groups together to facilitate that. Groups of DS that see tracks and kill all the newer players while they are trying to prep for another fight is what makes people quit (obviously not referring to referring to the groups of all bonded pairs/ masters smobbing for fun, YES they exist too, and YES they should have more risky options available for quest points and for fun, but there should exist different safer smobs with basics, that way new players can re-gear without you ganking them again before they have armor to fight in).

I'm not sure I'm following what you want. It sounds like you want a NWIH "safe zone" for "newer players" to "get basics". If someone is going to quit over being killed a handful of times in a row, sometimes before they can re-gear... then they're going to quit eventually no matter what you do, and imo you're just delaying the inevitable, because that's just flat out a reality of wotmud sometimes (I can't count how many times I've raged and taken a break over said exact thing - by no means saying its fun... but its definitely a part of the way the mud works).

[arston]

My guy, that’s 30 obsidian pendants a month. That is a ton of trinkets. I don’t really care about the intricacies related to maximum gains per day.

Correct. It's very easy for a very-top tier player to gather lots of items (theres probably 3-5 players that can et 30 sids a month farming it 10 hours a day) at which point theres no "reward" for gear at all and its why you see giant piles of gear in barrels or left in corpses. A group of 5 can typically do about 6-12 smobs per hour with gate, depending on how good of a leader and how well everyone is actually listening and not afk. Split between 5 people thats about 5 hours of hard smobbing with a good leader for everyone to get a single sid.

The only people it really helps are NON-top tier players that need gear after dying in pk. They are the ones that need a way to get equipped so they can keep on playing the game. Gate and zone sense both help get groups together to facilitate that. Groups of DS that see tracks and kill all the newer players while they are trying to prep for another fight is what makes people quit (obviously not referring to referring to the groups of all bonded pairs/ masters smobbing for fun, YES they exist too, and YES they should have more risky options available for quest points and for fun, but there should exist different safer smobs with basics, that way new players can re-gear without you ganking them again before they have armor to fight in).

I'm not sure I'm following what you want. It sounds like you want a NWIH "safe zone" for "newer players" to "get basics". If someone is going to quit over being killed a handful of times in a row, sometimes before they can re-gear... then they're going to quit eventually no matter what you do, and imo you're just delaying the inevitable, because that's just flat out a reality of wotmud sometimes (I can't count how many times I've raged and taken a break over said exact thing - by no means saying its fun... but its definitely a part of the way the mud works).

NOT AT ALL. Im saying that the current system including gate and zone sense creates a safeish enough environment to gather basics (not really rares or anything particularly good for the amount of effort aside from holiday stuff) that people are actually willing to group up and lead people around. Its still not SAFE, 90% of my deaths happen in a group setting even though I spend less than 1/4 of my playtime in a group, but if you made it to where you couldnt gate or have zone sense then every person that is weighing the benefit of helping someone out vs the risk of getting hit from people finding tracks is gonna pass that up.

What that ends up creating is a SYSTEM where new players only way to equip themselves is by leeching off of others. Where every time they try to earn their own set, they are getting killed, and they have to be given every set of equipment they get, which is not fun. Its a steep learning curve in this game and if someone doesnt feel like they are contributing in some way than they are never going to make it over that curve.

[erulak]

I feel like this:

aside from holiday stuff

Is doing a lot of heavy lifting here imo. So if gate didn't exist but things loaded like they do "from holiday stuff", it'd be worth the risk of walking around and playing the game rather than teleporting from one location to the next? Just trying to figure out if your issue is that it's not safe enough without gate because of the "standard" rewards or if it's just not safe enough in general. Because there are two ways to address that.

As everyone has said, we're already at the bottom of the slippery slope of inflated QPs, inflated gear, etc. (and let's not pretend this wasn't the case prior to holiday season) and if it makes people feel good to smob their face off, I already think each smob should load one rare at a rate so high that everyone should get a rare. The tradeoff that should come with that is if anyone log on to the other side, they shouldn't need to be a remort with locate and gate to have even the off-chance of interacting with the other side.

[arston]

Absolutely, in my opinion. I think smobs that dont give quest points or holiday loads are nearly perfect. They dont load anything insane or if they do its so rarely to not be worth farming, but can get a full set of basics in one gaming session. Strong enough that if someone who doenst know what they are doing can bring a handful of other people to help kill it, or a solo person can have fun testing its weaknesses and figuring out how to take them out.

That being said, i think smobs that give quest points/advancement/exceptionally good loads should be riskier and more challenging. Justice I think is a somewhat good example, it does have the risk and difficulty but it still leads all or nothing hits, where skill isn't a huge deal most of the time. Even moreso for cityheads, a side just has to pass a threshold of what they are capable of and then they can hit them "safely" where even if a couple people defend they can just steamroll em or leave. Making it stronger, or changing the loads only changes where the balance of "how much risk CAN we safely handle" and "Is it worth doing when its going to take x number of people and y amount of time", and wont change how its approached (which to me is the most boring kind of smobbing, the pk equivalent of zerking and just being led around and hitting bash until you kill something or die).

If you wanted to change the dynamics of how cityhead hits go you'd have to change them entirely, cant just have you walk up to it and kill it or its essentially just another smob thats a bit stronger and narrates. If it was me designing it id have it to where if you dropped something like the scalp of kreeza + bedroom fade + demented dreadlord or something then said "launch an invasion" mobol would pick up the scalps, and open up a new zone to attack the walls (with the option of dropping a bunch of trolloc scalps to get a bonus on ls mobs that are freed up to join the invasion, either in terms of static mob support or that would follow you). Then every tic thered be a mobol that if a Xrace player wasnt in the city barracks, then it would spawn more mobs on the walls, and if there wasnt a Xrace player on the walls, then it would respawn rescuing mobs that were with the cityhead. That way you have to split the group up on mulitple fronts (possibly with multiple zones on the walls) so that an attacker has to decide how many people to leave in each section to deal with defenders, and a single defender can make a difference if he puts pressure on one section that will impact the whole battle. and a group of defenders can force the attackers to pull back, group together and fight their way out. Something like that can be made infinately more adaptable and supportive of good pk, with checks on how fast, how many people can move through each zone at a time etc. I've got a lot more ideas on how to actualy make that work with mobol how it is if thats a possibilty, but as far as zones could just replace seandar smob tower or something and have each city share the same zones in unconnected rooms, and the mobol to open up the wall zones would just not function if another city is being attacked.