Are players leaving?

[barb]

This whole post (erased for space)

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

communication like this post is absolutely crucial to clearing up a lot of the underlying issues. I can't speak much for the player toxicity as I primarily stay away from pk, never started a discord account for this very reason, and stay away from certain groups entirely bc I know am I easily drawn into the bs and don't actually want anything to do with it. The few times I've hashed it out on forums even, i've discovered that many players don't actually want to be confronted with their issues and just want something to fight about, so I've taken to minding my own business and tending my corner of the world. Even when trying to stay away from it though, I get caught in passing from time to time, and it leaves a very foul taste in my mouth, where I would certainly have quit if i wasn't so thoroughly addicted to my fast-paced text.

As far as PVE behavior goes I think that 95% of the problem will go away with more communication. I have witnessed dozens of smobs and techniques get nerfed, very likely directly related to my farming. Not once have I ever been approached by an immortal (at least on an immortal account), to give warnings or say that something was not intended, or to ask input. Almost every question I put forth was met with silence or derision, most commonly "if its easier than intended, than its a bug" which begs the question "how easy it intended to be?" and this post is the first insight I have seen towards that answer.

We all have different opinions on what should or should not be allowed, in my mind stabbing someone who got disengaged from a bash is clear abuse, when the person clearly knows you are there and watching for it, flee-hitting an smob with a flail so that you get the free hit on all mobs in the room but only get hit by one, is clearly abuse, but both of these things have been ok'd and so without further guidelines on what is acceptable and what is not, then i use them as benchmarks for what is abuse and what is not, projectiles I had felt were fairly balanced given their higher difficulty to use, the higher difficulty to gather in numbers, and the costs of failure if you are hit in pk or fail a hit either because of bad flees or pk, and have to leave 30+ projectiles in an smobs inventory. Had an immortal simply sent a tell saying that this was not intended, I would have left it alone, instead of having 4+ nerfs to projectile use in smobs that immortals were likely trying to use as hints, and I was simply taking it as fine-tuning the balance. Still no idea if i read it right or not, nor will I ever unless we get more back and forth discussion on what is or is not "intended" for smobs.

The Morgase case posted is truly a perfect example. There was no way for Feneon to know that we had 2-3 very new players with us that we had been teaching the game and this was literally our first stop on our very first cityhead run with them. He did not know that these players literally started a seanchan character to be involved in our group activities. We had no way to know how far the unknown immortal was going to go, and we are well aware that even well intentioned changes to very finely balanced situations can go very bad, very fast behind doors with a ton of enemy mobs, especially if any player comes in (having myself had a parrot following me around a few times telling me where pk was, I was a bit paranoid, especially when unknown factors are happening in a room that is stronger than our group even without any other players there). This kind of imm involvment in a city raid is expected and a lot of fun when you willingly join in on it, knowing its going to be there - different story entirely when the capstone achievement of a new players training gets robbed by unknown factors potentially getting the entire group killed by an invisible person that can do anything he wants and looted by whoever comes along. The entire thing could have been solved by a quick discussion, but the clear block PAIRED WITH THE LACK OF COMMUNICATION ruined the experience. It's fine to hold the opinion that blind was not intended for cityheads, but when the reasons for actions are not stated, prays are ignored, and action is taken to block things, then there is no way to tell whether the action for personal reasons, if its because the cityhead was being hit in general, if the immortal is bored, or if the tactic that has been used and allowed since the mud opened is suddenly not intended for cityheads. Would you ground your child without telling him what he did was wrong? Its the same issue here.

I have stated before and will state here publicly that I am happy to work with immortals on balance issues, in the three years I have been playing I have killed many thousands of smobs across my alts, most of them solo, and have solo'd over 90% of the smobs on the game if you don't count cityheads, most of them using multiple different setups and classes, so I have a LOT of information and insight about what changes will have what impact, all you need to do is ask.

In terms of smob rewards I think the balance is already very far in favor of the group dynamic, I see MUCH better rewards getting a share of iomm/jafar loot in a 3 hour run than i get from smobbing solo for 2 days straight. I dont think that top tier smobs need to change more and that any increase would lead to a glut in top-tier gear that would not be good for the mud, I think that the average load on soloable/easy smobs is much lower but I think that their loads should be much more consistent. For instance, the load on hobrion dusque is crap, but it has a distinct advantage to knowing that I will ALWAYS get a set of full leather gauntlets. the shady lapidary or the shifty ogier outside of najdeer are horrible loads but its something that I know i can always get abs gauntlets from. That certainty increases the value of those mobs by 10x because I know where i can go if i need to complete a set for a backup or for a friend. I feel that if most of the easy smobs or soloable stuff has that type of load then it adds value to them, even if its not as good as a jafar or iomm trip, and i know i wont get anything crazy good from it, if i know i can hit x y and z smobs and piece together a full set from them than that makes it worth it hitting much more than if i can get twice as much loot but im gonna keep smobbing for 10 hours trying to find the last piece i need on a % load. In summary, I think that hard smobs should maintain the better rewards they have but have that higher variability on what it drops that they currently have, but nearly all easy smobs should have one or two pieces that they always drop so that there is a reason to hit those smobs (when u need the corresponding piece of equipment).

[barb]

One thing that I have noticed in my own activities to a lesser extent (but still present) than other players, is that it can take a while to really learn an smobs strengths and weaknesses. Once you do then you can farm it much more efficiently than you can smobs that you dont know, so that is something that incentivizes someone to "abusing" certain smobs. (to be fair i never realized that repeat farming was abuse, I've 100% been guilty of it on most every smob south of the blight at one point or another). If the goal is to expand variety i would highly recommend some kind of system that rewards for a different smob each week, something like "this week zomara, najdeer, and brute commander all will drop an "smob token" that can be exchanged at a mob for loot/tps/qps," or their scalps will be chunkable that week, or it adds towards a global counter that once enough of the targetted smobs get killed it spawns some kind of event/holiday smob for either the mud or for your side.

However it works out if theres a reason to track down specific smobs for that week than it gets players chasing that bonus to hit and learn new smobs which expands their personal horizons and gets them out of their comfort zone, and once they know all of them then they wont be farming the same ones all the time, then the next week the bonus changes to a different set and they learn those ones too. Then in the future, when deciding which smobs to hit then they have a larger knowledge pool to choose from.

[Kitiara]

@Kitiara:

Fair points. Thanks for the response.

[jafra]

I was a bit confused by this too. I think you have to expect a player to use all tools at their disposal to defeat a mob, and a channeler using the blind weave is just to be expected. It sort of seems like a failure of the game and not the player if using blind was not intended here. IMO, there are too many unwritten rules to WotMud, and its near impossible to know them all or keep up.

Question: I really know nothing about how mobol works or it's limitations, but could mobol be applied in advance in this situation to counter or discourage blind against the throneroom mobs? I believe there are already certain smobs that are blind resistant/immune due to mobol but I don't know the specifics of how it works. I know there are some issues with the WotMud code/access, etc., but in an ideal world the code or mobol should really define the rules as much as possible instead of having players interpret the rules. If something is off limits the code should just prevent it.

I think you already mentioned it, but it seems like a mistake to intervene and make active changes to the mobol while players are involved. First it has the chance to frustrate the players if they do not believe they are doing anything wrong. Second your putting yourself in a situation where you're writing mobol code and making changes to the game at a fast pace, more chance of inserting bugs into the game. Would really encourage you to triple check (and test and re-test) every change you make to game in an effort to minimize bugs.

Just my opinions, really not meant to be a criticism of your actions, just voicing my thoughts for how I think the game could be improved. There are likely challenges that you are dealing with that I don't know about or understand. I have worked full time as a programmer and consultant for many years now, so I'm just coming at this from a general programming perspective.

[Draz]

Thank you for the post Feneon, and everyone else, its sparked a lot of discussion in all the chat groups I'm involved in, and for a change most of it seems positive!

I'll admit to complaining about immortal interaction regularly when its involved in a PVE environment without any heads-up.

I want to give some examples of myself with these various changes; however I'm gonna include it in a table since its just background - not so much complaining as reiterating my thoughts for various reactions.

Code: Select all

One example was 15+ players had headed TKD to hit Moridin with no effective resistance - the imm in question had a trap planned 
to spawn two more dreadguards. Given I haven't seen a successful Moridin hit since it was changed yaers ago *shrug* there are 14 high profile 
players - they'll nuke the DGs and maybe lose 2-3 players..fine.. but the imm mistakenly locked the door at one point to figure something out,
 a player instant ripped, and..noone else was willing to risk entering a door without being able to flee vs Moridin, 2 dgs, Blodfest.. 
 and an unknown quantity of an imm who could lock the door. I wasn't able to convince players to go back.
   As much as I tried to interact with the imm who admitted the door was a mistake without a public response to say so.. 

The example of the Morgase hit - echoing barbs thoguhts and then moving on from there if its the one I'm thinking of -
 I actually thought mobs that quaff can do so infinitely. 
 Adding the quaffing made the hit harder. A lot harder. It still doesn't take away from the danger of the hit - 
 a single PC hitting 5 once SPs are spent can kill all 5. Two players hitting 7 can do the same. 
 There have been city changes made to allow for that to occur. So when you have people approaching a perceived risk 
 (5  hitting Morgase - if someone enters right as they hit some are going to die, even without PC opposition regularly 1-2 people die).. 
 and a change is added, and then another change is added, and then another 
 (mobs spam engaging removed any chance of channeling and killed one of the players from full'ish' hps).. 
 If a hit is too easy by all means do something to increase difficulty, but if you do it in such a way that that hit won't happen anymore.. 
 I think players were hitting Morgase 2-4x per week at one point, and at least one of those would be interrupted leading to pk 
 (or us just dying in a door), its one example where without exception if clanned QGs were on it led to interaction. 
 
The changes have removed possibility of other kills (latest example was a char hit a crit human in throneroom with another sei'tar,
 they killed the human..and the other sei tar died instantly. The player who survived was able to survive by buffing 6 mobs wvd 
 (that wouldn't let her blind them) in a perfect set, for 3-4 tics until the alarm stopped.. and went from full hp to getting out sub 10hp. 
 The only reason they survived was they were playing with other status setups and were able to chill and fear the mobs.. to survive with sub 10hp..
 

For Tanchico - I don't know I'd say you're talking about a mob that was farmed all day daily for months at one point recently. 
If mobs were lead out of the room from memory that room would still spawn, and there would be more and more difficulty with hits (A standard hit of Panarch summons 15 mobs without weapons that hit like trucks - one  round a player got agroed and went healthy to crit with wvd in one round). 
So I was praying the various issues we were encountering during that. Perhaps some kind of request for feedback with how things go? 
I know I interacted with imms over it at the time.  And again perceived risk - the changes to Panarch are obviously to increase how long a hit takes -
 historically if I have a group ready to go I can get there from almost any point in the mud within 2-3 tics. if 1-2 person hits at the right time that groups gonna die. So I perceive that anyone else can do the same.
 

An example of a good change might be Shaidar (as much as he still has a bug of fleeing out of room and can still fade then), 
he's had one ramshorned added to him - and I think I've tried hitting him 6-10x since that change where that one change means we can't
 reliably bash him, and need to complete the hit in two hits, (assuming noone dise in the first hit), which vastly increases the danger.

For Evil Braem Elyas -  I was involved in that, and the primary players involved, after several months of me refusing to hit due to the previous 
issues, were specific to try and keep hits limited. It was still dangerous - I've died many times and had TPKs there. I've been hit by DS, by SS, by 
samesiders. It wasn't a secret. Then, more people were involved, and people were more active, and people wanted to hit more, and.. 
its just not fair to others to /not/ hit because we are limiting hits, so I stopped requesting that we not hit. I do think the new load is probably
 either too low or bugged (so far we've had 100% woodcutters axes and given up). The thing is if we were hitting and someone was grouped 
 with us, if we needed people, if people asked to smob.. those people get to come along. It involves people. Other than a very brief period 
 with projectiles I don't consider the various kills on Elyas as abuse, it required players to have specific setups, it had significant chances of 
 instant almost unavoidable death (any failed skill results in an emote to 1 hit from dead..and Elyas hitting you), 
 (same as I don't consider 4 people zerk charging taim abuse - you have maybe a 20-50% success rate depending on his room of enough of those 
 charges landing to kill him - and you need 4 people specifically pracd for it, with suitable weapons, who have a reasonably high chance of 
 eating an incin and dying. I have once ever in my history of WoTmud manage to get such a group together. 

I really do want to reiterate that I think multiple channeling mobs, and multiple channeling mobs with bashing mobs - is very hard to balance.
 
I recently posted a 'gem' of an old global quest where the imm made a joke about how he failed to kill players. And you know what? 
How about that - if you're going to have a mob raid and all the danger and fun and engagement it entails, great! what about if you're going
 to go those extra steps of multiple channeling mobs and bashing or direct control - stating that peeps are gonna die. 
 Some will outright choose to leave. Some, like me, after being given the choice of whether I'm going to do something that will result in my
  likely death or not - will likely still choose to go ahead :) as would many PCs.

Hey Jafra. I just wanted to address what you mentioned specifically. Using blind to kill mobs. Great.
 One thing that got punished by imms previously was specifically using max engage limitations to allow mobs to be killed in a way that otherwise wouldn't be possible. 
 One of these was considered abuse the other wasn't.
 For the blind I believe he chose to make it harder, and as we adapted, to then continue making it harder.. to a point where we complained.
  I'd even say so much as..having a mob say YES - we were prepared for the damane's tactics this time! might let us know that there is some 
  limitation to whats been done. At the end of it something like hitting morgase with less than 10 people - 
  literally all the imm needs to do is lock the door and everyone there is going to die. In an environment where we mistrust.
  .or have seen similar happen.. its not a great recipe. 

Something like adding code to mobs to prevent blind is something that I believe can easily be made permanent
 (and is definitely in place in Morgase - I don't know if the mobs spam attacking channelers is in place or not).

+ 1 to Barb, to Kitiara, to Elyse, Ominas and Khaster, and to Elysia, and again to Feneon.

I'll also note that I believe my deaths - on multiple alts, with tons of trinkets, may have also been what was being commented on by Elysia.
And its entirely fair. If I'm smobbing with a group - I'm often smobbing all day every day. I don't have storage alts. You won't find a load like that on me when a clan chest isn't full. I stay on that alt because sleep well and wake is removed and I don't want to take 20min to change alts. Smobbing is also compounded by how much I LOVE trading and making deals - I use the market multiple times daily, and am well known for dying with tons of stuff on me, So dying with 9 gchains doesn't necessarily mean I've killed Evil Elyas 9 times that day; what it probably means is I've been smobbing with a group of 5-6 people, where we've done at least 2 rounds of major smob hits..two days in a row. Every other player has gotten anything they need and these are what I've been carrying around. Realistically I should just actually invest in storage alts, or divest from keeping anything I don't want. Also my pk is very on and off - some days I will solo kill 3 rogues with full dodge sets - some weeks I'll die more than I get kills. Its not all PVE.

[Gretchen]

a point about equip loads on smobs and farming them the problem is in order to get even close to enough trinks to pk actively in dodge and not be running around in brass rings is you HAVE to farm smobs in the quiet time (could just be i suck at this dodge pk stuff ...)
or take a lot less risk and try to really hold on to your stuff (no one wants to see me play like that ...)

so if dwc loads a g ring at 10% and i die 3 times a week how many times do i hit it or another ring loading smob per month?
humm dwc is kinda hard they made it no channel last time i farmed it ill take 2 friends along with me oh right i am gona split with them to
so you as a human build up a routine then it gets noticed and the loads get reduced again or they make it harder instead of asking why is this player having to hit this smob x times a month

so said player mentioned in the thread being the one guy farming the ds trinks load good for him he smashed it before it got downed which you can 100% bet he thought was gona happen i would and saved himself tons of hits on something else even if hes just trading the sids for something he can use its massive time saver in a very time intensive game can you blamie him?

who wants to hit dwc ??

5 times a day for 5 days a week for the rest of your time pking! caus trollocs dont load g rings lol

who has that much time to invest just to be able to get a few g rings so u can die and requip 3 times a week show of hands.....?

the problem comes not when its people farming for stuff they need its when it turns to greed and how /if we should distinguish the two caus we are reducing the loads based on this but it has a much larger impact on the rest of the players not the one or two that its aimed at
are people dramatically over farming them or are the loads so low its the only way to do it without cheating??

one thing that dont help in the case of trinks is they are a currency now they can be turned in to vials or qpts aqpts and are used in almost all the half decent crafting


also you would have to hit dwc sooo soooo many times to actually end up with 6 or even 4 g rings a week its obviously way way over the numbers used here

sooo what do people do they issue them on alts rather then compete with the rng the time sink to farm the smobs over and over the risk involved of pk meaning you gona have to add another 30 hits of said smob to your list or propping up the broken system by using qpts

thats where most of the trinks in game are from/going

and yes the gap between mid end doge and top end dodge is closer now
but even what most consider max dodge is in a bad place with all the changes to weps and dodge and now the lack of trinks is making it worse

and dont get me wrong its not just dodge trinks its just an example

so back to the question why do people farm stuff over and over ......... caus we have to trinks are so valuable to wards keeping you alive in dodge and used as currency in so many ways yet the loads are so low we are forced to hit the same boring smob over and over again its not fun

we have a whole clan whos job it is to farm equipment and sell it for advancement .......but we dont want people over farming stuff!

if i can do it solo am i going to take someone else to help and be social/split the loot with them or am i gona save myself 50% of the hits and just smash it solo getting the loot i need faster so i can spend more time pking not smobing

sorry did i really say a point at the start this turned in to a rant

[Gretchen]

so a lot of moaning sorry how about a solution???#

every year or two change its so the top dodge ring and necky are different making storing them long term useless

so you could change it to k necky and emerals or just remane them and swap the loads round making all the horded sids your worried about useless

[Elysia]

Not once have I ever been approached by an immortal (at least on an immortal account), to give warnings or say that something was not intended, or to ask input. Almost every question I put forth was met with silence or derision, most commonly "if its easier than intended, than its a bug" which begs the question "how easy it intended to be?" and this post is the first insight I have seen towards that answer.

To be honest, in these cases, it's more often a few players using this tactic. E.g. projectiles literally had dozens of users. Some were even several fcs chosing to use projectiles over weaves. Then if you consider the chants of channies being overpowered and said channies using projetiles...

It's kind of pointless to speak to you if there are literally dozens of characters across timezones sniping smobs... Also, chances are that means someone in an imm-less timezone doesn't get noticed and/or feels they aren't going to get noticed anyway and venture into abuse.

Note, upstairs we make a difference between hitting, say, Lugard lithe for the vial every time you're in the vicinity and camping there and hitting it every repop. Even if you were to pass there 4 times a day, eh, that's what it's for. But there's also people obsessively hitting, for example, an inno mob that loads a thing several times a day for weeks on end, using a dedicated alt. Like we see in the log when a zone repops and within minutes that person logs on, hits the inno mob and (idle) rents (using an example of a few months ago).

@Jafra: we actually yoink a lot of mobol and copy/paste in normal imming. E.g., we'd know said quaffing mobol would be on damane, thus all you have to do is go to a damane mob, give mobol, copy mobol, and apply to the new mob. Bugs are essentially not a risk there.

@Gretchen: you are forgetting about all the mobol to exchange sids into clan items. Or clan items into sids (although that would be a lot easier).

Common venting subject among imms: Players going "why don't you just..." while forgetting aspects of why that is a lot more work than it seems at first glance. If it's even possible on the short term in the first place, e.g. Jaster's "change the trolloc mv bonuses code".

[Liia]

I wanted to chime in on the PvE stuff. I think a number of people have given a lot of great insight on some of this, Kitiara, Gretchen, Feneon, etc. Just wanted to throw out there my 2 cents.

As for big stuff, city heads, etc - these are things where if they're being hit by anything less than a group of like 5-7 people, it's probably a case where you should ask yourself "is this intended?" and it should be adjusted to prevent that. However, on the comments about massive channie groups, or very OP groups in general (maybe tower groups with combination of Gaidin/Sedai and others, or DS groups with a lot of warriors, fades or a DL or two).... OP groups are OP. If they can hit it, that should be okay! A large number of OP people will always be OP, and it's group activity, players doing things together and adding to the social aspect of the game. And yes, I agree that things like that should be risky and invite the other side to try to rally to defend.

I also really believe that all rare loads of any kind should be on %, no matter where it is. I think IOMM/Jafar RNG was mentioned. Those I feel like are fairly well balanced from the perspective they take time and effort by a group (5+) people working together. If I was making loads on city heads I'd put any rare item or items that they load in an oilskin bag so they can't be located or seen by looking at them, and encourage stuff like that to be done by players if they find it fun, with just that added bonus if they get lucky.

I haven't hit evil elyas since the change, or probably a couple of years before the change, but I suspect that the new process is a step in the right direction. I always thought a 100% wicked axe load was a little crazy, so maybe the new load is slightly low, or it can be set to load something decent like vials, trinkets, etc. so there's some reward for the group every time even if it's minor.

And my final thought is sort of related, but I know for a long time Panarch was by far the easiest TP target for DS for the reward, which I think was 15 tps 100% of the time. That seemed a bit excessive, which is why it was hit a lot of times. I think that's on par with a lot of the other city heads, but at a much lower difficulty. I don't know if it's possible, but I'd really like to see all of the LS city heads (that aren't remort targets) balanced to be pretty much equivalent to all of each other in regards to how the doors work, any anti-whatever mobol is on them, emote damage, etc. The worst is when you finally get a group together to try to hit one of those and get surprised with some nasty mobol that wrecks the group that couldn't have been anticipated.

[Shinji]

Note, upstairs we make a difference between hitting, say, Lugard lithe for the vial every time you're in the vicinity and camping there and hitting it every repop. Even if you were to pass there 4 times a day, eh, that's what it's for. But there's also people obsessively hitting,

Question: is there a reason why this difference is not communicated to players as a rule (e.g. you not supposed to hit mini-smobs/smobs more than X times a day)?

Seems like an important bright-line that the Staff uses to distinguish between legitimate hits and perceived abuse and is one that players need to know/respect. I see this as similar to the Uniques policy of needing to use one 100% of the time and not store it etc.