Scaling NPCs

[Cherek]

Alexi:
I didnt say anything about increased risk of dying? I said increased fun, excitement and reward. Not risk. I truly believe people will participate in what is fun. As I said, lots of people enjoy the current small raids we do have even if it doesnt reward you at all in XP. This game was not all about XP once, and I dont think it has to be. But I truly think if we could make XP-gaining more fun for more people we could gain alot from it.

I did not say this type of XP would replace another, it would be an option for those who us who think the current way of grinding is utterly boring for the most part.

About teaming with smaller people...
Well, in all honesty I think a beginner should in general team with other people of his size. This was possible before when we had more players, and again, I think more players would solve this problem. And if you want to team with him you should go to a place where its safe to do so. I dont see how scaling would solve this though? You are suggesting removing danger from the game? You said youself Terel trolls, Mithas, Quali actually make you pay some attention since it can become dangerous. Isnt that a good thing? If we make everything scale, it means we will have tons of safe areas just as rewarding as the dangerous ones, then it becomes even more boring to grind, and people will be even more prone to scripting I think? And if you want to scale things down so it doesnt become as dangerous for the beginner, you are scaling down your own experience too arent you? Maybe I dont understand how it would work? Can you explain?

And also,
For the moment we have very few TRUE newbies. Those who want to tag along are most likely seconds who just want some free XP to get a boost when they start. Thats fine of course, but I think they can accept a little danger then since they will gain way more anyway. However a TRUE newbie would most likely benfit very little from teaming up with a pair of myths who do everything super-quick. He would just see lots of text spam by, miss everything that is being said (if its a team that actually speak). If its a scripting team with two people who dont say anything he will most likely just be very bored. And even if he does have a good time and manage to keep up, he will end up extremely violent, at a mortal level much higher than he started without having achieved anything himself. The extremely violent problem will also make it almost impossible for him to gain any experience on his own after you drop him off. That will most likely not be very fun...

So no, if you actually find a TRUE newbie, I dont think dragging him along to do Terel trolls is a good idea in any case.

More players would also solve the problem of 50%(or more) of our areas not being used. With the huge size of the world and the small number of players we have a game that is too large for its playerbase. There are only two ways to solve this problem I think. A - Add more players. B - Decrease the size of the world. Making all areas interesting for grinding wont do anything good I think. Atleast now people occasionally bump into eachother going for the same grinding spot or EQ. Not often, but it happens. I dont understand why you want people to be more spread out? What good does that do for anyone? Yes its too bad some areas arent used much, but we just dont have the players for it right now.

Actually, I think we put alot of time into trying to solve problems caused by too few players, than to actually get more players and keep them. Solve that problem and a whole bunch of problems will automatically be solved.

[Makfly]

Can't we just have the leader of a team gain a temporary ability called "move infront", which is basically the reverse of the Calian ability?
That way 1 person in a team could protect 1 other person in a team. So a Titan could protect an Apprentice or whatever.
I'm sure it'll have all kinds of disadvantages and such, but it would give a bit more flexibility in teaming, which perhaps will outweight any negatives.

Also I agree with Cherek again (?!), the main focus should certainly be on getting out there and attracting more players, almost everything else should be of lower priority.

[Johnny]

How about giving that ability only if a player is below a certain level.

This can be argued because it is similar to that of the bandages. Bandages removed the need for healers and it took their special ability of healing, pretty much away from them. Move in-front is pretty much the same as the Knight's rescue; thus, this will make their special ability not special anymore.

I believe that special guild abilities need to remain special. But if we are making special abilities given to certain guilds available to everyone, then I want the ability to reduce my enemies stats to that of a novice's and heal myself

[Davvol]

I agree with Cherek. All what we need - more players. When i started in Gen, in 96, there was 100 players online, and we had to wait to login. And there was no probem to gather team of 3 wanderers to kill small kretans. Or catch a huge champ in Kalad, and become GA in 2 hours And all players: small, newbie champs, epic champs and immortal chams was happy without trolls and qualinesty elves. Gathering teams to kill Nazgul, Mergula, Deepie or Bolg.

[Cherek]

Well yeah... I think we try to solve so many problems that are ultimately caused by lack of players. If we as a community could come together and work for more players, we would have way less problems with the game. And it would no doubt be alot more fun too. And I actually think getting more players would be less work than coding lots of changes to the world to make it work with a small playerbase, somthing the game was never made for in the first place.

We have a tutorial area, and now even a great newbie dungeon in the "real" world. Thats way more than what we had when we started, and we got hooked anyway.

I dont think we need any more changes to the game. I think its fine. It works. We just need to let people know we exist. And we dont need THAT many really...a few hundred. Which in internet online gaming terms is quite few.

And it doesnt really need to be a five-year plan. We could do it now. But hey, I know ol' Gorby think we need to fix some things first... I'll keep disagreeing though. I think the game is just fine as it is.

Webpage you say? Yeah sure we need a webpage. But that doesnt have to be a five-year plan either. Creating a webpage that looks good in the year 2011 doesnt have to be very hard really. And a client to play the game? Well anyone of us could create an exe-file that automatically unpacks som some old zmud that connects to genesis directly and includes some some neat colors and triggers and put it up for download. The web client we have now is perfectly fine for testing the game.

Fix this and, then start a serious promotions campaign targetting the right places, and in my naive eyes, we could double our playerbase before the summer.

But thats what I think. I am probably just naive.

Oh and sorry for the hi-jack of the thread. Couldnt help myself...

[OgreToyBoy]

I agree with Cherek. All what we need - more players. When i started in Gen, in 96, there was 100 players online, and we had to wait to login. And there was no probem to gather team of 3 wanderers to kill small kretans. Or catch a huge champ in Kalad, and become GA in 2 hours And all players: small, newbie champs, epic champs and immortal chams was happy without trolls and qualinesty elves. Gathering teams to kill Nazgul, Mergula, Deepie or Bolg.

Since you need to kill opponents larger or close to your size to gain any good xp you won't find anyone above hero to be happy killing in Kalad
Also one of the reasons why the mud can't really handle more than 3-4 xp teams doing the different good xp areas, throw in a super-myth doing one area alone and it further decrease the options. In the past you could make xp on pretty much anything, of course you had the fabled critical to worry about but you could pretty much do small critters until you were really large. If it weren't for the skulls I would probably not do much in the game, it really is no xp killing endless amounts of 'tiny' critters.

[Tive]

Gathering teams to kill Nazgul, Mergula, Deepie or Bolg.

good times, Bolg was actually a feared creature and people were dropping there like flies ;P

[Cherek]

Ogre:
Well in the past people did alot more than just XP as well. I miss hanging in Bree a whole day attacking every AA that came out from the bushes.

But you have a point, and there is where the whole "downscale" idea discussed in the other thread has some serious merit. As it would make the world more similar to the old world, with more areas to chose from since more areas would be a challenge. And todays prime XP-areas would be a huge challenge only attempted by the the really big, or the many, just as it should be imho.

Now the prime XP areas have become the "only place to go" since people are so big only those areas provide growth and a challenge anymore.

[Tive]

Ogre:
Well in the past people did alot more than just XP as well. I miss hanging in Bree a whole day attacking every AA that came out from the bushes.

But you have a point, and there is where the whole "downscale" idea discussed in the other thread has some serious merit. As it would make the world more similar to the old world, with more areas to chose from since more areas would be a challenge. And todays prime XP-areas would be a huge challenge only attempted by the the really big, or the many, just as it should be imho.

Now the prime XP areas have become the "only place to go" since people are so big only those areas provide growth and a challenge anymore.

if they were providing any challenge then people would not be leaving themselves scripting without paying attention. Growth yes, but not challenge.

[Cherek]

Tive:
They are still challenging for most people who arent really big myths. I surely cant turn on a script and go watch a movie while my char clean out Mithas. Can you?