Rank 8 Zone Sense

[erulak]

There's been a lot of complaining about gate lately by a relatively small group of vocal people, and I would say it's been more beneficial to activity and keeping people logged in than not.

This sentence sounds like it starts off talking about gate but then seems to wander into talking about holiday loaders? Is it the holiday stuff or the Gate ability, which has been around for years and has had its detractors for years, "keeping people logged in"? Those are two separate things.

So let's summarize:

1) People have been pointing out that Gate is dumb forever, and this isn't even the highest mark of it -- that might have been around heralds.

2) Nobody cares if you compulsively smob your face off -- in fact, this year's form of it is much better than years prior when the encouraged form was sitting in one zone spam-smobbing.

3) The issue with Gate is around whether or not you're making most of the game look like an inactive dead zone while spam-farming.

If you want sick loads *and* safety to play WoTMUD gacha, that's one thing and you should say so. Think otherwise, asking people to walk to places and keep their head on the swivel while collecting that phat loot is a better alternative than upping smobs to the point where people who just want to play casually can't do them at all or downing loads where you pretty much have to somehow smob for 10 hours in a row on weekday to get anything.

Anyways, this thread is about zone sense, not smobbing, I don't know why we're letting Harun put words in Rig's mouth.

[Rig]

Gate is an entirely different can of worms that I’d love to open up discussion about how dumb it is in the future. However, yes, zone sense.

Remember when we all used to do things like practice track and stuff? Those were fun times. Anyway, my point is that it’s pretty messed up for a few reasons to take away zone sense from the r8 characters who don’t get zone sense from traditional clan bonuses (wolfbrother/Gaidin/raken), while taking the stance of “This was too strong, and didn’t make sense.”

Mostly when we turn around and then apply to a *far* larger group of people and put it in the perspective of “this is how it works in the books” and disregard the gameplay balance side of it.

It’s so strong that grayman has a coded clan bonus against almost all forms of zone sense. Rats and ravens were so strong (note: this is a different version of basically the same premise) that we downed shadoweye loads, and removed the ability for trolloc rogues in dha’vol to get it.

We did these things out of in-game balance and when you throw in-game balance out of the window with strong bonuses because the books said so, then boy oh boy where are the changes to fade/gaidin/kin/literally everyone else who has some crazy stuff going on that we don’t have because of game balance.

[Fyra]

Often times in this game, "gameplay balance" is translated to pk balance. Zone sense for Aes Sedai makes sense, because from the RP side of things, Aes Sedai would have it. And RP is also gameplay for many people. There are things that Wolfbrothers have that may slant pk in their favor, balance wise, but I'd argue they should still have access to it, because it makes sense in RP terms. I also don't think zone sense/gate is always used to avoid pk. There are many that use it to find it. It is sometimes used to avoid being ganked, but is that the kind of PK we're looking to increase? Ganking unsuspecting travelers? That doesn't increase quality pk, it increases easy scalps for some and frustration for others.

[Oogieboogie]

Zone sense allows for large smob groups to do their thing in too much safety. Given that finding a group in a smob is fun and makes the game more exciting and how difficult it is to actually find a group at all, let alone in a smob, because of the prevalence of Gate, zone sense ruins fun and deprives people of excitement.

At the very least, the rooms for which you can't get gate codes near a smob should also preclude the use of zone sense.

Too many people with zone sense depreciates the value of running locs when about to hit a smob. This in turn depreciates the value of having a no-loc item at all, let alone a group having them.

I argue that instead of zone sense being the RP appropriate bookish detection, locate life or item should be the game version of the book idea.

Lastly, zone sense being a perk for PKers invested in that element of the game to facilitates them finding that element makes good sense. Giving it to people who will use it primarily to avoid PK is counter productive.

[Rig]

Often times in this game, "gameplay balance" is translated to pk balance. Zone sense for Aes Sedai makes sense, because from the RP side of things, Aes Sedai would have it. And RP is also gameplay for many people. There are things that Wolfbrothers have that may slant pk in their favor, balance wise, but I'd argue they should still have access to it, because it makes sense in RP terms. I also don't think zone sense/gate is always used to avoid pk. There are many that use it to find it. It is sometimes used to avoid being ganked, but is that the kind of PK we're looking to increase? Ganking unsuspecting travelers? That doesn't increase quality pk, it increases easy scalps for some and frustration for others.

We could argue the general practices for zone sense all day long, but the bottom line is that zone sense is used for seeing if there is another player in your zone. While I agree that often times gameplay balance is translated to pk balance, that's because this is a primarily pk focused game, and these are things that primarily effect pk balance. The same balance that affects pk also affects those who are more roleplay orientated as well. See: using zone sense to save yourself from getting ganked. Used for both pk and rp orientated types.

I don't believe anyone is saying that zone sense or Gate are used by everyone specifically to avoid pk. I do believe, however, that it is often primarily used for this purpose by people who wish to avoid pk. It's a very strong combination of skills and bonuses that allow a very, very high reward minimal risk scenario. If that's something you think that should be in this game, then I think it should be clear that's what you want.

[Fyra]

Often times in this game, "gameplay balance" is translated to pk balance. Zone sense for Aes Sedai makes sense, because from the RP side of things, Aes Sedai would have it. And RP is also gameplay for many people. There are things that Wolfbrothers have that may slant pk in their favor, balance wise, but I'd argue they should still have access to it, because it makes sense in RP terms. I also don't think zone sense/gate is always used to avoid pk. There are many that use it to find it. It is sometimes used to avoid being ganked, but is that the kind of PK we're looking to increase? Ganking unsuspecting travelers? That doesn't increase quality pk, it increases easy scalps for some and frustration for others.

We could argue the general practices for zone sense all day long, but the bottom line is that zone sense is used for seeing if there is another player in your zone. While I agree that often times gameplay balance is translated to pk balance, that's because this is a primarily pk focused game, and these are things that primarily effect pk balance. The same balance that affects pk also affects those who are more roleplay orientated as well. See: using zone sense to save yourself from getting ganked. Used for both pk and rp orientated types.

I don't believe anyone is saying that zone sense or Gate are used by everyone specifically to avoid pk. I do believe, however, that it is often primarily used for this purpose by people who wish to avoid pk. It's a very strong combination of skills and bonuses that allow a very, very high reward minimal risk scenario. If that's something you think that should be in this game, then I think it should be clear that's what you want.

I don't think the game should be high reward, and little risk. However, I think the risk and reward should be balanced. If I were going around solo, and was happened upon by one or two DS, I'd stay and fight. I'd lose, but it would be fun, and a learning experience. However, going solo, and then being ganked by a group of 8 DS and dying in 2 rounds is not fun. I would argue that it's not even quality PK that many profess to want. Honestly, that's what happens more times than not. Due to not wanting that, many flee as soon as they see DS in the zone. They're not fleeing quality PK, they're fleeing getting instantly ganked by a large group.

[Briannon]

Often times in this game, "gameplay balance" is translated to pk balance. Zone sense for Aes Sedai makes sense, because from the RP side of things, Aes Sedai would have it. And RP is also gameplay for many people. There are things that Wolfbrothers have that may slant pk in their favor, balance wise, but I'd argue they should still have access to it, because it makes sense in RP terms. I also don't think zone sense/gate is always used to avoid pk. There are many that use it to find it. It is sometimes used to avoid being ganked, but is that the kind of PK we're looking to increase? Ganking unsuspecting travelers? That doesn't increase quality pk, it increases easy scalps for some and frustration for others.

The problem wasn't the RP of it (and if we're using the RP argument, zone sense should apply to more than just Sedai). It was that the argument for the initial removal was that too many people had it with all rank 8's, and then was turned around and given to many more Sedai. On this, Rig is 100% correct on every point.

As for if it is used offensively or defensively, that's up to the player, and really isn't something that you can police, it's just how people want to play their characters.

[Rig]

I don’t really think going solo has much to do with this particular set of circumstances that we’re describing for a reason of change. Zone sense isn’t going to give you numbers in that situation (unless you’re a trolloc and humans are mounted) that you mentioned. In fact, it kind of strengthens the point that while you may stick around to see how many it may or may not be, others will choose to instantly leave. I can’t think of anybody off the top of my head who logs in and pats themselves on the back because they killed someone in some obnoxious way via 8v1 or something.

I also don’t think anyone is trying to “force” pk on role players. The issue is the safety net provided and the lack of risk associated with these bonuses and skills. Namely the large groups who use them to leave little to nonexistent ways to be found, and who will quickly disappear before you even know they’re there when they see you first.

Anyone who thinks these are not things that happen consistently are either not playing wotmud, or not paying attention to the imbalance this causes. It contributes to a high reward, and basically nonexistent risk game style that does more disservice than good.

[Rig]

Anyway, griping aside about how stupid zone sense is in 90% of situations, and how stupid it is that Gate/Zone sense even is used collectively and primarily as a way to avoid cross-race/same-side interaction, it’s still also stupid to take zone sense away from r8’s and give it to a much larger pool of characters.

This conversation gets a lot easier when we just admit we want an idle rpg, because the argument comes down to whether we (me specifically in this situation) want more player interaction. Or whether we (not me in this situation) want to keep increasing the ability to avoid specific avenues of player interaction that equates to high reward low risk environments.

[Fermin]

discussion illustrates how removing abilities and gained attributes is frowned upon in game design and probably better solutions (especially if we now have some limited coding abilities) could easily be added.

Zone sense too powerful? Make all no locate devises also block zone sense. I thought the idea was more zone sense to lull people into a feeling of safety and then greymen would have a very powerful bonus with it.

Berserk attack too powerful? Make it more risky, like going berserk immediately takes 90% of remaining HPS.

Obviously there is going to be power creep in a game such as this and probably the best way to mitigate that is make things more powerful to compensate, instead of trying to isolate a segment and remove the thing they are most excited about. We lost a ton of warriors, then we lost a bunch of rank 8's.