Feedback for Tinkerers

[Honey]

I’m curious why the tally was so low and whether it had to do with unclear instructions or it was more connected with something else?

It's something I opted into trying during a downtime in PK or lull -- unless I was with a group it wasn't going to happen. I think we did it once because we were in a group and PK died and then we just decided to do it. On several occasions in similar lulls, we simply didn't have the numbers to do it. Not a complaint, but just a fact. I recognize it's tough to strike the balance between something that's accessible in downtime vs. farmed like it's an occupation.

Over the course of the tinkers event we rolled out a couple different narratives of storyline for with the hopes that people could use some of these aspects of storytelling and integrate them into reasons to roleplay about our world. From Timmee’s master quest and the rock in the gap to the corpse of a Black Ajah in the White Tower, to the tinker camp, the emptying of the tinker camp, and the expanded patrols throughout the area, we were hoping that these pieces put into play would give reasons for players to interact from their own either political or gaming interests to have a more direct roleplay engagement and in-game impact.

Our hopes were that we could generate content and promote activity and facilitate more DM experiences rather than prescribed gameplay and outcomes by allowing player activity to influence the narrative through roleplay, events, and activities.

I think an Accepted had some fun to read roleplay with the corpse in the Tower (unless that was something different, I'm not super plugged into that), but other than that, I don't really think we're good at using set pieces, as a playerbase. This is an issue that's not exclusive to the things you've described here, but even things like Elysia trying to catalyze political engagement between different factions (CoL, Tower, Lancers) based on things that members of those factions did or didn't do unprompted and prior to that effort by Elysia.

The quests for dark side in particular (Kreeza quests for generating gold, the dreadlord patrol quest)

Same for the light side. In particular the quests from Joar and Raed seemed to have limited engagement.

What stops limited time quests like this from being done? Were they too difficult?

What would have influenced your gameplay to approach the game differently? Any thoughts in general on a content-based approach for WoTMUD?

Messaging in WoTMUD is more asymmetric than it seems and assumes everyone reads everything. I personally only had vague ideas what any of these things were. Lokras was kind of annoying at times, but something like that, which presumably checked in on 'the horde being awake', was at least prompting that made you go "oh yeah, that's something i could do". Think if every 5th log on or something triggered something like that (judiciously), you'd see more engagement. It's not that I need everything to be ultra rewarding or that reading is hard, but just thinking of it in the moment when I log on without any specific thing in mind is less likely than responding to some sort of prompting. Reading the posts isn't hard, but there's so much competing stuff that if it's not something you log on with a mind to do, you're probably not looking up the specifics.

Random thoughts:

Min-maxing, which includes opportunity cost, is just in the DNA of players at this point. I don't recommend running several things at the same time, especially things that are highly rewarding with things that are meant to be flavor/engagement with the world.

I didn't entirely understand the point of the holiday gift stuff. Freebies are nice, but would rather low effort (and well described!) quest lines to get stuff like that instead of a free-for-all assuming you're willing to just wait 5 minutes per alt for 50 million alts.

[Naerin]

Given that the final tally of the Blodfest/Master of the Blade event is a tie at 4-4 I’m defaulting this as a win to the Dark Side because the location as well as the Light Side groups that have been active should have made this an overwhelming snowball experience. This will have in-game consequences to Blodfest’s location, some of the added patrols over the course of the event, and the general Andor area.

I’m curious why the tally was so low and whether it had to do with unclear instructions or it was more connected with something else?

Over the course of the tinkers event we rolled out a couple different narratives of storyline for with the hopes that people could use some of these aspects of storytelling and integrate them into reasons to roleplay about our world. From Timmee’s master quest and the rock in the gap to the corpse of a Black Ajah in the White Tower, to the tinker camp, the emptying of the tinker camp, and the expanded patrols throughout the area, we were hoping that these pieces put into play would give reasons for players to interact from their own either political or gaming interests to have a more direct roleplay engagement and in-game impact.

Our hopes were that we could generate content and promote activity and facilitate more DM experiences rather than prescribed gameplay and outcomes by allowing player activity to influence the narrative through roleplay, events, and activities.

Some events seemed like a total dud.

The quests for dark side in particular (Kreeza quests for generating gold, the dreadlord patrol quest)

Same for the light side. In particular the quests from Joar and Raed seemed to have limited engagement.

What stops limited time quests like this from being done? Were they too difficult?

What would have influenced your gameplay to approach the game differently? Any thoughts in general on a content-based approach for WoTMUD?


Disclaimer: above all we want to keep this thread on topic. We will delete posts that deviate in a way that is not meaningful. Our hopes were that we could generate content and promote activity and facilitate more DM experiences (for light side or dark side) by giving a setting without setting a goal.

I got into the storyline fairly late, so I'll mostly speak to my experiences with the later parts.

In general, I think saying the rewards would have helped. With just an unknown 'points' system as part of a storyline, it's hard to know how much effort is worth it. In a similar vein, using either worthless materials (oilstones were in the right zone of things) or just random useless tokens would probably have worked better than things which have a use (particularly for DS) - the eaxe day was particularly notable for using a good weapon as the turnin item and there's zero chance I would have engaged with that one.

I'll also say that honestly, patrols only matter so much. I mostly care about the patrols from the perspective of how it affects PK, and whether it was 8-0, 4-4, or 0-8, PK would have figured a way out because it's ultimately down to what mobs each side has and what numbers each side has. While that's good, it means that I don't really care who gets a patrol where - you either have mobs and can use them, or you don't have mobs and have to go somewhere else if you need them. And that in turns limits my engagement and what I consider the 'value' of turning in things like etcheds or eaxes because I can work with whatever the result ends up being.

Think I did the Blodfest one once and the Master of the Blade once. Blodfest one was probably undertuned, Master of the Blade probably overtuned. Master of the Blade had like 10 mobs when we did it, Blodfest DL had 6 - and I think the group sizes were inversely proportional (LS had two groups for the DL and it was a cakewalk, DS had to do it in a few tries). Given the amount of Sedai on and huge smob groups, the LS target probably should have been much scarier.

The main thing I think is just how much you're actively thinking about it - I guarantee if you looked through scalp awards from the past week, the score would not be 4-4 (I know I turned in a bunch to clerks that would have qualified) - but I think people's patterns are so ingrained that they go immediately to a clerk and skip the quest turn-in mob. Kind of gets worse with the Holidaze - that was on my mind (loaders, TAR) but other than 'hey, there's a new tinker camp' I don't think I ever remembered that there was another mob for scalps in the area.

Something like how Kurch works on DS, placed in the same spot as popular clerks (FD, 4k, RK), might have helped - so that when you go to the clerk, you also see the holiday turn-in mob and it clicks that there's this event going on. Particularly (for FD) if it avoids the 20 gc cost to summon the clerk. And being more clear with which areas qualified would have been good, as well.

[Feneon]

Let me replay some of what I'm hearing and taking away as feedback:

• Instructions
  [1] Too many posts in different locations and with different objectives made it hard if you were active, and a waste of time if you weren't.
  [2] While mobol has limitations, maybe include initial instructions when someone arrives in the room to teach people (can remove at a later time).
  [3]More frequent narrates about activities that are temporary with some semblance of instructions
  
  
• Contests
  [1] These are more fun when the scoring is visible and it is a reminder.
  [2] Due to a lack of clarity on instructions, the final contest had people missing out on points because of directions and it was lopsided
  
  
• Presents
  [1]Would have liked a quest tied to it for both sides.
  
  
• Rewards
  [1]TAR increase and the loaders were so rewarding that some committed the majority of their time there.
  [2]The tinker events and activities were either unclear as to rewards or not rewarding enough (maybe even rewarding too poorly?)
  [3]Either the initial reward needs to be strong or the rewards need to be semi-known.
  
  
• Ask of Players
  [1]Please post when things aren't working or you are confused on Known Bugs. It informs other players about something and allows us to publicly answer and resolve things when we have time.

Perhaps we can have an Events Forum (with clear instructions on activities), continue to use Announcements for notifications of gameplay changes, and then continue to use Voices of the Wheel on ToL, ToD, and ToE to give roleplay content that we hope gets interacted with?

If I've missed something important in your post, please re-articulate it. I appreciate the intention brought to this and this discussion is important because we want to have roleplay backdrops that we can use to supplement player experiences as well as provide a scene to create the opportunity for storytelling.

[Kitiara]

Perhaps we can have an Events Forum (with clear instructions on activities), continue to use Announcements for notifications of gameplay changes, and then continue to use Voices of the Wheel on ToL, ToD, and ToE to give roleplay content that we hope gets interacted with?
.

I love this idea.

[Pugbert]

With the timing of all of the events with some IRL stuff, I wasn't able to give them a try nearly as much as I would've liked.

I did the revamped ghar quest once -- great for a party of 2 players, quite a bit of work and risk for the reward with only 1 person tho (the grouped mini-patty having several of the mobs naked made it easier, but likely also a bug).
If the Andoran patty was near cut, and turned in to bedroom fade vice way down in Braem, it would get likely get more use.
And as with most of those style quests, they are much easier to complete with a stabber than anything else. Ragnar style bash for extra damage mobol would be helpful for making those sort of quests much more palatable without incentivizing folks to alt to a stabber.

My thoughts on the larger TAR/smobbing events.... There should be more of an incentive put in to play the underdog. With how things currently are, it's "everybody all join one side and steamroll rewards" which kinda kills the pk focus that the MUD should strive to keep at all times. There were a few great moments of pk with both sides smobbing and then one side jumping the other side...but that's very few and far between compared to the larger smobbing status quo from what I've heard.

For the fetch quest stuff.... it's either smob as a group or solo as a rogue (DS). Less than exciting when I want to play a basher and looking at solo activities.
When it comes to flipping CTFs, or killing smobs for sungwood staves, Interim rewards go a long way with these. A "10 gcs per turn in with a small chance to get a str tea or vial per turn in" sort of thing, you probably would've seen a lot more engagement with it. More definitive meanings of "shaping the future situation", or opening things up to "top point earning player for the side that wins gets to be involved in shaping a change to a prominent pk zone of the MUD" sort of thing would have gotten at least a few people I can think of very interested in that.

[Draconus]

LS didnt hit because they were doing the silly loader smobs.

If that wasnt in, im sure you would have seen a lot more engagement.