Zone Reimbursement

[Gormal]

There needs to be a policy in place empowering non-forgers to reset zones after crashes. Spending 6 hours in SPOB only to have it crash when there's one mob left in the entire zone sucks. (The policy needs to be in favor of reimbursing our progress).

[Lilithelle]

It was 4 at most, not 6! But still rather frustrating.

[Dalar]

And a big thanks for the area gods for telling us that certain mobs in certain zones were changed.

[Elscint]

yeah it's frustrating when something that you've put so much time and effort into is taken away in no more than the snap of a finger..
however..
you take the good with the bad.. it's crashed plenty of times when perhaps there was a rough CR back in the day before CR's were so easy during an invasion that has saved a group much time and effort in getting back to the eq they had already put time and effort into acquiring...
I'm not saying that one way is right or wrong I'm simply saying that both could probably be justified and since it's not been implemented in such a way that reimbursements are done then we just live with it as it is..

Elscint

[Dalar]

this isn't sojourn, try again elscint

[Gormal]

I don't see why this policy cannot be changed. How does it hurt the game to help players in this manner? After 8 hours of BC if it crashed while we were killing Bel, I'd be more then a little miffed. As part of the new "kindler/gentler" Toril, this kind of policy seems an out of place throwback from less gentle times. I'd understand no reimbursements in regular zones, but for things like SPOB, BC, Tiamat, etc where you work hard but get nothing until the end...

Can we get a forget to comment on this please?

[Ashiwi]

How much of a reimbursement would you deem acceptable? If you finished exactly half of the zone would you want half of the items? How would they know if you'd finished an exact percentage of the zone? If you're two hours in the zone as compared to four hours, would it still net a reimbursement? If you decide to do Musp or Jot invasion the old fashioned way and work your way through the grid should that deserve reimbursement if you don't get to the equipment when it crashes? You don't think there might be a very vague line on when reimbursement would be appropriate and when it wouldn't be? Do you think that when it's decided to be inappropriate there's a possibility that some players involved in the situation might decide otherwise and cause a big stink over it?

[Sesexe]

After having done SPoB the last weekend, and having took us 9 hours to do, there was a point where a lot of us lagged out.

I prayed and crossed my fingers that it wasn't the crash the whole time. It was during the last battle too.

Yes I realize that some leaders can do this in 4 hours apparently, but that doesn't mean everyone can.

It would have really sucked if it had crashed instead of being a net-burp.

I concur with Gormal. The kindler gentler Toril would do well to revamp this old policy. :D

[Mplor]

**insert bitter rant about crashes at invasion Loki or with corpses under the hive king and all-night CRs on school/work-nights, and the usual walking through fiery sleet uphill both ways to Split Shield**

[Imis9]

laugh, remember how tiamat used to always crash just as you were about to go on her?

[Ambar]

laugh, remember how tiamat used to always crash just as you were about to go on her?

an evil woman always makes the *game* crash

[Gormal]

If you do muspel invasion, jot invasion, or almost any zone in the game you still walk away with eq if it crashes. We're talking about BC, SPOB, and other zones that require the entire zone to be completed before you receive any rewards.


(I typoed and meant to request if we can get a forger comment on this. Sorry about that.)

[Sservis]

This thread touches on a deeper issue. Why is eq tied to the mud rebooting?

If you reset spob, you deny the next reboot from having a full spob load to benefit the previous. [making spob items effectively 2x as rare as there's only 1 run for 2 reboots]

If you don't reset spob, you deny the previous group of any reward.

If you reward the group for doing the partial spob, what do you do to groups that decide they don't want to complete the full zone? [spob repops on empty] Can you smite part of spob and petition for exit + partial reward?

The only spob reimbs/resets of any kind that I have witnesses are 1) pulling corpses out that were at the entrance, and 2) giving full gems to a group that was having their postzoning/prequest res party when it crashed.

There are also other ramifications. What about asking the imms to reset ttf so you can do later fights without the earilier after someone else has already done the first few fights? You forced to fight those fights basically !reward otherwise, and hence the deep end of a number of zones is deemed not worth it as the early part is yoinked early in a boot.

I have to say, the policy of making players take the lumps when the mud crashes/reboots [I've seen announced reboots in a timeframe that forced people to stop smiting rares they have found b/c they were doing it small but slower style] is one of the least player friendly policies on this mud. Mud stability should have minimal impact on the players.

Changing the mud would involve a lot of work to ensure that mob/eq repop isn't tied to mud reboot/crash/zone repop. It's also one of the things that should be near the top priority for the imms in my opinion.

[Sarell]

make a rentable object (the key to bhaal) that loads on master ebn or one of the other later masters.

make a big gold dragon load at start of spob, quest mob.

if you quest the key to him, he goes on rampage up to that point you got the map from, killing (unloading) all mobs (then perhaps you could have to fight him to continue zone *so you dont get off totally free*)

you still couldnt take the key out of zone if it didnt crash as there is no portal yet.

what a great idea :P *duck*

very simply you could even just make the keys rentable so you didnt have to do master fight if you had already done it... cant save em up unless it crashes anyhow...

one problem could arise would be people doing half the zone the idling out, is nice to have to do a whole zone in a run, but hurts when it is stopped due to a crash.. would be prettyy stupid to do this tho as hard to form a group from inside spob next time you on...

[Sservis]

ld rent in spob puts you where? the !cage cage? or back in spob?

What prevents idling in spob after successful completion until a crash for an easy 2nd run through the zone?

[Sarell]

key breaks in lock

[Sservis]

key breaks in lock

Then the run that prompted this thread would have been screwed for I think they had already unlocked bhaal.

[Sarell]

hrmm good point... perhaps have a chest with something in it required for portal quest at devourer, key could be for chest?

[Sservis]

hrmm good point... perhaps have a chest with something in it required for portal quest at devourer, key could be for chest?

It's fixable. Just require all the reset zone partial items as part of the quest to exit.

The issues I can think of are
1) A group might do the first part of the zone with one group, the rest with a different one [due to players not logging, not intnetional reshuffling hopefully]

2) A group might not clear the full grids, and gain a (small) advantage.

3) The frequency of spob eq entering the game increases [due to every run being a successful run + the increased number of runs that occur as the risk is lessened]. This would slightly affect eq/zone balance. [It's crappy that eq balance is based on reboot frequency, but until items repop based on factors other than reboot, that's the way it'll be]

[kiryan]

delete: rant about fumble + crash and dragons + bag fu**

crashes are not supposed to happen, therefore the powers that be should have more discretion to intervene and reimb. Nearly every aspect of the game preserves the individuals progress in exp and eq (from anti pk to rentable eq to opening of doors when players get locked in, reimbing of quests fights). It would be consistent if especially long zones were reimbd just as quest fights are reimbd.

I'm sure the admin sphere prolly doesnt want to touch this cuz its an administration nightmare, but are our admin gods just here to police ooc and gcc or what? no offense you guys do a great job, you dont need to be scared of taking this on. People gonna bitch no matter what, but you know its the right thing to do to reimb 60 hours of work (4 hours * 15 people).

/sarcasm unless of course the percentage chance that the game will crash before you've gotten zone rewards is somehow calculated into our mystical magical gonna fix all zone problems silver bullet zone eq calcr.

[Dalar]

i was told crashes are accounted for in this new zone equipment system unless I was being lied to yet again. and yes, it was an admin

[Sarell]

upgrade glittering golden mask!

[Crumar]

I agree to some extent on what has been said here in regards to giving the group that nearly finishes a zone their rewards. Like the last spob run we did when the devourer was at nasty wounds and everything else dead when it crashed really sucked. If it had crashed lets say half way through the zone I dont think we would be complaining now. The point is it crashed right at the end of the zone. What would have happend when we had killed it and it crashed right away without us looting? I think we probably wouldn't of gotten the reward of doing the zone at all. Something really needs to be looked at in regards to this policy, and have admins be able to do something about it not just forgers in general.

Crumar.

[moritheil]

delete: rant about fumble + crash and dragons + bag fu**

crashes are not supposed to happen, therefore the powers that be should have more discretion to intervene and reimb. Nearly every aspect of the game preserves the individuals progress in exp and eq (from anti pk to rentable eq to opening of doors when players get locked in, reimbing of quests fights). It would be consistent if especially long zones were reimbd just as quest fights are reimbd.

I'm sure the admin sphere prolly doesnt want to touch this cuz its an administration nightmare, but are our admin gods just here to police ooc and gcc or what? no offense you guys do a great job, you dont need to be scared of taking this on. People gonna bitch no matter what, but you know its the right thing to do to reimb 60 hours of work (4 hours * 15 people).

/sarcasm unless of course the percentage chance that the game will crash before you've gotten zone rewards is somehow calculated into our mystical magical gonna fix all zone problems silver bullet zone eq calcr.

Is it, Kiryan? Or was that intended to be part of the risk of the zone? Individual crashes may not be intended to happen, but I don't think the imms don't know that the MUD crashes every few days. With increased zone time comes increased reward, and also increased risk.

To be fair, you could also suggest that I'm bitter, because I was the one who had a 10 hour Crypts CR due to having four crashes and a reboot following the initial spank, and imms standing by saying "hey man, that sucks, but we can't help you." But I don't feel that way, and I wasn't even angry the very next day. It's the way the system runs. You accept that despite the desire of people to make a fair system, things will not be fair. Heck, us goodies have a mage who has bid Brass wings something like 27 times in a row and failed to win every single time.

Now, beyond that, I can think of a simple way to save zone progress, and a few of them have been ennumerated here. But it should be up to the area designer to decide whether or not his or her zone is so tough, and the rewards so deserved, that progress should be saved.

[Sservis]

To be fair, you could also suggest that I'm bitter, because I was the one who had a 10 hour Crypts CR due to having four crashes and a reboot following the initial spank, and imms standing by saying "hey man, that sucks, but we can't help you." But I don't feel that way, and I wasn't even angry the very next day. It's the way the system runs. You accept that despite the desire of people to make a fair system, things will not be fair.

The point of this thread is that the policy should be revisited. Mud stability issues should not concern the players. Anything that ameliorates the impact to players of muds issues not brought on by their own actions is a good thing.

Consider the following features and what their intent is.
1) jot rhemos. Is their intent potential eq loss?

The answer is a resounding no, given that the consumption by the rhemo was recent. After much discussion [I don't understand why there was even a discussion], I've seen players that were eaten by a rhemo 5 minutes or so before a crash reimb-ed about a week later.


2) fumbles. Is their intent potential eq loss?

I'd lean towards no, but this is debateable. This seems like a gameplay feature, like the jot rhemos. Again after a certain time eq loss looks acceptable as it falls into the same category as "failed to cr before rot".

3) zoning, and partial spanks [full spanks it's a moot point]. Is their intent potentially extremely hard zoning? [or zoning and crashing, is their intent wasted effort]

Again, I don't think so. Why not have a save file associated with each zone, like each player. [it could be cleared on zone reset as post a zone reset, a crash doesn't make a difference]. Such a log file would aid an imm in doing the restoration process, they could potentially even create a tool that would automatically do it given the name of the zone to reset.


In all these cases it's a certain gamplay feature [rhemos, fumbles, zoning] being changed drastically from the normal intent by an unexpected random event that occurs outside the mud world. The question is not, "should these events have a reimb?", but "For how long after the event should these events have a reimb?".

1) jot rhemos. 18 hrs seems reasonible. Instead of cr-ing you should go find the rhemo. seems reasonible that the rot time on your "corpse" is the same as it would be if it actually was a corpse. Maybe the jot rhemo should just reload with your gear and the clock should reset to 18 hrs like it does for unpressed corpses

2) fumbles. Even though there are in game workarounds [cursing], this does not seem like the intent, at least not through crashes, water rooms, !ground without a down, hell yes. The fact that this is fairly easy to remedy makes it seem like a lower time limit would be appropriate. However if a mob picks it up, it's the same case as the jot rhemo. It just went "fumble + scavanage", rather than "eat".

3) zoning. This one seems like the reimb should happen immediately following the crash [including trans-ing players that were in the zone to the zone]. If the zone group can't get rolling after the crash, they should have the option to leave the zone and have it reset full [eq on all mobs, not just those they didn't kill earlier]. This presumes that there is an empowered imm on at all times that zoning is happening. Might not be the case all the time, but quite often someone is up there.


In any case, revisting the cases where !reimb post crash policy is still in effect please. It's the most player unfriendly policy on this mud imo, without any real justification except "we don't feel like doing the additional work/adjudicating such situations".