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Scadale

Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2004 7:53 pm
by Katel
Hi, I would just like to note that Scardale has made every one of your other newbie zones obsolete.

I tried really hard to leave scardale and explore some areas outside waterdeep that people told me were for newbies. It doesn't come close to comparing to what Scardale offers. I ended up spending 2 days dying twice and gaining no levels. Scardale offers easier monsters to kill that give higher experience and no aggressive ones that attack on sight.

Maybe thats what you intended, I don't know. I just wanted to let you know the areas like Ant infested farm, Sedawi hills and Goblin Caves offer much more danger and much less reward.

Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2004 8:02 pm
by Ihazim
I so agree that the recent trend of zones and newbie zones has made experience far too easy.





on a side note:
You complain of level 40 newbies? It's because they have no reason to become more experienced. I feel exp-ing, leveling up, gaining new skills/spells is as much a part of this game as the +40 zoning. Infact i would argue the grind of exp can be more fun.

Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2004 8:19 pm
by Katel
Ihazim wrote:I so agree that the recent trend of zones and newbie on a side note:
You complain of level 40 newbies?


:?:

Re: Scadale

Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2004 8:31 pm
by moritheil
Katel wrote:Hi, I would just like to note that Scardale has made every one of your other newbie zones obsolete.

I tried really hard to leave scardale and explore some areas outside waterdeep that people told me were for newbies. It doesn't come close to comparing to what Scardale offers. I ended up spending 2 days dying twice and gaining no levels. Scardale offers easier monsters to kill that give higher experience and no aggressive ones that attack on sight.

Maybe thats what you intended, I don't know. I just wanted to let you know the areas like Ant infested farm, Sedawi hills and Goblin Caves offer much more danger and much less reward.


Interesting. Thanks for letting everyone know!

Some Ideas

Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2004 10:26 am
by deidrit
I agree with this post, in the past week i've leveled up 2 newbie characters, one in scarsdale and one in kobold village. It is painfully obvious to me that new players should not even bother leaving scarsdale until after they are forced to leave :)

This is not necessarily a bad thing, in that i believe that the mud experience for newbies on toril needs to be streamlined as much as possible. I'm trying to come up with a list of ideas that would accomplish this.

So far i've identified the following issues/problems:
-MOB exp/difficulty at low levels needs to be standardized - i think scarsdale is appropriate, but needs to be applied to the older newbie zones.

-Scarsdale has numerous quests, however many are 'collection' type quests, and participants run into problems when other players in the game have the items they need to complete the quests. You could fix this issue by making the items drop each time the mob is killed, however that could introduce farming problems. I believe the best thing to do would require a few code changes:

1. Add a unique flag, such that a single player cannot possess more than 1 of the same item.

2. Add a quest inventory, a special inventory for quest items only. Items that go in this inventory are there permanently unless you turn them into the quest mob, or destroy them manually. Even in death these items stay with you. Items in this inventory will be effectively, !DROP !TRADE and typically UNIQUE

3. Add code for a quest log. Include command options to list previous completed quests, and read current quest hints. Your history of completed quests can be used to prevent you from obtaining the same quest over and over for farming purposes.

these changes open the door for zone writers to do whatever they want with quests without fear of players abusing it. It also will streamline the quest process away from the problems we are experiencing now in scarsdale where the loot gets spread around among numerous players and noone is able to complete the quests at all. (this is frustrating and confusing !! especially bad for newbies to experience this when first playing the mud)

4. remove tedious/annoying errands for new players. I suggest raising the starting skills of newbies to a point where they at least somewhat viable (bash, backstab, meditate) I suggested raising the baseline to 40 or 50. You can slow down notches going forward to even it out. Another example i suggested is with mounted combat. I heard a newbie complaing about how he kept falling off his horse a billion times while trying to raise mounted combat. This type of stuff is frustrating! its not fun for newbie players, it is unrealistic, and i have a hard time figuring out what kind of purpose it serves at all. I suggest making your mont failure chance related to the level of the mount. Thus it scales up nicely as you progress through the game, and is useful early on.

5. get newbies into the role of their character as soon as possible. If your character is a pet class, make sure they have a pet to play with as early as possible, if they are support, get them some reasonable newbie powered support spells in their first circle. flatten out the memtimes or effectiveness of newbie spells so that it is actually viable to mem first circle spells and use them instead of running around with your level 2 mage killing everything with your dagger.

6. hitter classes are especially difficult to start up unless you have access to equipment that raises hit/dam. I suggest that you open the door for newbie areas to contain hit/dam gear, Low AC +1 hit OR +1 dam gear that is easy to get at low levels will NOT unbalance the mud, but if done correctly it WILL help newbie players to set and obtain some early goals.

7. Make Identify free for everyone via the examine command. Remove scrolls of identify. Many players already have item databases, and id scrolls are ONLY Prohibitively expensive for newbies. Highlevel players in general already know the stats of the items they are wearing, and if not, they are experienced enough to check their attributes with and without the items to determine what the stats are. Newbies on the other hand are bombarded with a plethora of uknown items, and are generally confused as to what items they should be wearing. If you need to find an alternate plat sink to replace identify scrolls, you can introduce additional potions/scrolls, etc.

8. dont fragment the player base. Scarsdale helps with this problem by providing a centralized easy access location for newbies. The elfgate is an example of something that causes this problem.

9. I believe you should go ahead and add your voluntary pvp system. Or alternatively, some other end game objectives. Incentivize these systems as appropriate. (special skills/spells or additional levels)

I realize some of these ideas require a considerable amount of work. If you are really trying to grow your player base however, I believe many of these changes may be necessary going forward.

Deidrit/Inani

Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2004 3:42 pm
by Areandon
I really like the idea of the quest log. It would be nice to keep tabs on which quests you're running, and how far you've come.

Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2004 7:58 pm
by Nurpy Fuzzyfeet
Ihazim wrote:I so agree that the recent trend of zones and newbie zones has made experience far too easy.





on a side note:
You complain of level 40 newbies? It's because they have no reason to become more experienced. I feel exp-ing, leveling up, gaining new skills/spells is as much a part of this game as the +40 zoning. Infact i would argue the grind of exp can be more fun.


First 1-21 levels are easy beyond that it gets difficult. Especially if you are playing a caster. Its either ds/ship or nothing at all.

Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2004 9:14 pm
by Katel
I would just like to reiterate that identifying items right now is a real pain. If there was just one thing that could be changed, it would be this.

Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2004 11:09 pm
by Delmair Aamoren
Identify always added some realism, but i kind of agree that it IS only an
issue for the newbies/lower-middle levels.

As far as voluntary PvP, go to the arena.

As far as scarsdale, yeah, anything that makes exp that easy should be
"tweaked".

Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004 7:03 am
by Nurpy Fuzzyfeet
Delmair Aamoren wrote:Identify always added some realism, but i kind of agree that it IS only an
issue for the newbies/lower-middle levels.

As far as voluntary PvP, go to the arena.

As far as scarsdale, yeah, anything that makes exp that easy should be
"tweaked".


Whats wrong with the first 21 levels being easier? I ecped in Scardale, its not overly easy at all. A newbie's learning process is not during the first 20 levels, but more like during the 20-35 levels.

Scardale has level 20 ranger mobs that cast call lightning, others that cast holy/unholy word, I hardly think its a piece of cake.

If you think it's too easy, roll a character and start in scardale, in newbie eq, alone, because that's what newbies have to do.

Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004 12:19 pm
by Iaiken Toransier
Ihazim wrote:Infact i would argue the grind of exp can be more fun.

Wow... I have been involved with mudding and mmorpg's for a long time, but I have never heard anyone say that... Most people just grind away to get to where they can play the endgame (zoning etc.)

Personally, I find it about as fun as getting your wisdom teeth out; only, you have to go back and do exp again every day until you hit level 50. Ick!

Edit: To be constructive, I would argue that rather than being made easier, exp could be made fun. I always love doing buffalos in a group of level 10-13's because we have so much damn fun as a group. While some players prefer to solo exp(some of them because they like to bot[yes it happens and no I won't name people]) I always found a lot more fun in getting a group, going out and layin vast quantities of hurt upon the monsters across the land that were too big for me to solo.

I have ALWAYS been an advocate of changing the formula that divides up fight experience, so for example, rather than giving two people who did the same amount of damage to a mob and tanked evenly (hypothetically speaking) a 50/50 split, what if they both got 60% and 60% respectively? This would encourage people to group more and the benefits would trickle all the way up to the higher level people who would like to see more exp from zones.

Edit2: Example Table (assuming the above combat scenario)
1 person, 100%
2 persons, 60% each
3 persons, 40% each
4 persons, 30% each
And so forth at a 20% bonus to each for being grouped!
NOTE: 20% is not a suggestion, just an easily computed example.

Not a true newbie but...

Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004 3:23 pm
by Trinak
I played here about 7 years ago. Having just come back and being in newbie equip, I can tell you Scardale is pretty fairly balanced. Is it the easiet newbie xp out there? I'd say so, but if all you have is newbie equip that xp is almost impossible to come by. I tried to head over to my really old stomping ground of Podville (at least that's what it used to be called) and got my head handed to me...literally!

Some nice people have recently given me some small items from their bags so I'm doin semi ok now, but Sedavi's are still very much a challenge. I wouldn't be able to to them if it weren't for the donations I've recieved.

Just my thoughts.

Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004 3:59 pm
by Shar
Scardale was specifically designed to aid the *new* newbie in their quest to find a home on TorilMUD. It is a newbie zone... dosen't that speak for itself?

Other zones that are labeled "newbie zones" are merely places to kill/learn. Scardale is designed to train. The code for Scardale is not yet completed but the zone itself was ready, so it was put in to find any flaws (this is called "ptesting" which usually happens on testmud, but this was far more effective) but, the upcoming code should do more to train a true newbie than anything outside of having good friends explaining every detail to you would.

Scardale is easier by design, not by oversight/exclusion of other zones.

Hope that helped.

Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004 5:17 pm
by Gormal
What they're saying, is that just as the spirit raven and DS drove players out of old exp zones, so has scardale done to the lower level exp zones.

Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2004 5:06 pm
by Shar
Gormal, stop putting words in the imms mouths.

Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2004 5:47 pm
by Shevarash
There can't be a new hotness without an old busted joint.

Scardale is better than those old newbie zones, period. Good - mission accomplished.

Posted: Sat Aug 07, 2004 12:32 am
by fotex
How about making examine able to identify regular items not flagged as magic, while making the identify spell/scroll required to identify magical items flagged as magic? As far as I can tell, the magic flag isn't used for much, except for maybe preventing items from being lighted by the continual light spell.

Yes, it might take a lot of work to go through and check the flags on items, but I think it might be a happy medium...

Posted: Sun Aug 08, 2004 1:05 pm
by Gormal
By "they" I was actually referring to the mortals that had posted Shar. Thanks for putting words in my mouth!

Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2004 7:08 pm
by Shar
mmm crow pie.