Saturday, 15 September 2007

The Mud Connector (TMC) Discussion Summaries - 09/15/07

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The following discussions occured today on TMC @
http://www.mudconnect.com/member/discuss/discuss.cgi

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Table of Contents:
=====================

Mud Promotions
 > A Players Request and Questions
 > RE: A Players Request and Questions
 > RE: A Players Request and Questions
 > RE: Come and Play!  [The Realm of Draenor Calls You!]
 > RE: A Players Request and Questions
 > RE: Come and Play!  [The Realm of Draenor Calls You!]
 

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Summary for: Mud Promotions
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Subject:  A Players Request and Questions
Author:   Random_N_G
Posted:   Fri Sep 14 [6:51 PM]
Url for Post:
http://www.mudconnect.com/discuss/discuss.cgi?mode=MSG&area=promotions&message=18300

I've been mudding in one form or another online since the
early 90s, and before that I was an old table-topper.  Over
the years I have found many muds that I've enjoyed, and over
time, they have shut down or I've left for one reason or
another.  I'm looking for a new home.

I do currently work as an immortal on another mud, and while
I do enjoy my time there, it does not fill all of the needs
I have for a mud.  I'm sure without going off on my own, and
creating a mud myself, I'll never find one that is will 100%
meet all my needs and criteria.  But here is a list of what
I enjoy and look for in a game, but I also hope to spur a
discussion on what others feel are there criteria and how
often they have to "lower the bar" to find a place to play.

The first, and most obvious, is cheating.  Or what is more
commonly known as "catering" to the long termers.  While
this may seem a necessity to keep those long termers around
it does tend to leave a bad taste in the mouth of newer
players.

Second would have to be the mortal vs immortal relationship.
I understand that all immortals would like to spend time
playing with their mortal characters. But to give yourself
bonuses using your immortal, or to expect others to give up
their time to help your new mortal, simply because they wish
to gain favor with the immortal is wrong and also tends to
hurt things, especially in the views of newer players.

I also seem to enjoy muds more that have a logical
progression of skills and spells.  Far to often, or so I've
seen, muds and their coders/implementors tend to beef up
skills because they feel a race/class/group is underpowered.
While maintaining balance is a good thing, if the skills are
simply being tacked on, or worse, when they go through and
drastically alter as a whole, and the logical progression is
broken, it makes it feel like mudding is more of a numbers
game.

I tend to find that I enjoy mudding more when there is RP
involved.  And "good" RP is a matter of personal taste, I do
find certain things distasteful as well as other things
truly good.  Sites that determine what RP and background
your character will have based solely on race and class tend
to be to limiting for my tastes.  If I want to make a blind
drow cleric and can actually pull off the RP, then let me
try it.  I find muds where players can "reward" each other
for good RP tends to strip the value of those rewards. 
Players will always find a way to make sure their buddies
have the "points" needed for whatever they want.  I also
would like to see a place where the RP is actually
motivated.  Let me explain.  To often RP is based entirely
on the alignment, race or class, but when someone creates an
alt (not a true newbie, but an alternate character) their
buddies who would normally not help someone of that race,
class or alignment, will "behind the scenes" give as much
assistance as they can.  After all, the typist is their
friend and they want to help their friend.

I happen to like the earlier codebases, but am not against
any of the newer ones.  My biggest criteria when it comes to
that type of thing is not so much the code or the base, but
more often in tasteful use of color.  Some codebases just
seem to lend themselves more to color abuse then others, and
I don't want to have to put on sunglasses or turn off color
in my browser to play a mud.

Character creation should be relatively simple, and not a
numbers game.  I've found that more often then not, when
creation has been made complex, it is so that the older
players can play a numbers game and customize their alts to
better take advantage of the background numbers.  This also
is something that either confuses new players, or makes them
wish they had created differently in the first place.  And,
frankly, I want to play the game, not spend 30 minutes in
an uneducated attempt to create a character, then an hour in
to the game find out that the options I took have been
nerfed and wish I had created another way completely.

I also like to find a place where the wholist doesn't look
like an explosion of random words and phrases.  When I type
who, if I see things like &lt;-- n00b slayer, or anything else
of that nature, the first thing I generally do is quit, even
if it isn't a PK mud.

Oh, PK, another of my favorites.  I don't mind PK, as long
as there is a reason for it.  PK for the sake of walking
around and killing people for logging on is rediculous.  I
once actaully logged on to a new mud I saw advertised here
and there was a rush to see who could get to me first by
the three guys sitting in the newb creation point and abuse
me.  I spent quite a while without even being able to use
the quit command, as I was walked around the mud and used
as a shield.  I couldn't use channels, couldn't quit and
never even got to see the mud, since I was "charmed" and
unable to even see the wholist.  After a while, I simply
dropped link, and erased the history of ever having been on
that mud.  In my opinion, that is not a good way to increase
your playerbase.  I don't enjoy dying repeatedly and losing
my hard earned experience because someone 370 levels above
me felt like showing me how powerful he can be.

Okay, I've rambled long enough, but I do have a request.  If
you do decide to respond and invite me to check out your mud
I would ask that you include some basic information about
it.  I'm sure it's a great mud, but responses with "check us
out, here is the link" don't even remotely come close to
hinting at the possibility of making me want to waste my
time of typing the address in to my browser.  It's nothing
personal against you, or your mud.

<font size=-1>(<i>Comment added by Random_N_G on Fri Sep 14 18:57:58 2007</i>)</font>

-edit- while rereading this I did notice an ommission, and
it goes along with the catering of the long termers referred
to in paragraph 3.  Keep your helpfiles up to date.  New
players tends to rely on your helpfiles for their current
information, and if the helpfiles say one thing, yet another
standard (especially as they pertain to rules and policies)
is enforced, it creates confusion and leaves your new
players wondering just what rules are enforced, what works
and what is just there for show.

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Subject:  RE: A Players Request and Questions
Author:   Hades_Kane
Posted:   Fri Sep 14 [8:00 PM]
Url for Post:
http://www.mudconnect.com/discuss/discuss.cgi?mode=MSG&area=promotions&message=18301

1) I agree with the cheating/catering issue.  Who you know or who your alt is shouldn't have any effect on your gameplay.

2) It is expressly against our rules for Immortals to aid mortals.  Here is the direct quote from our Immortal rules file:

"Do not cheat.  This includes, but is not limited to transferring mobs or players,
loading objects for a mortal, giving a mortal ANYTHING, etc. and especially using
any power, skill, or privilege granted to you as an immortal to help your mortal
character in anyway.  This very well may result in the deletion of both characters."

Of course, this goes even more so with Immortals and their own characters.

3) I feel like our skills have a natural progression and add to the overall feel and cohesiveness of our classes.  A good chunk of our magic is about as 'logical' of a progression you can have.  While we are still tweaking some of it, we have an entire elemental "star" system where you learn, for example, your first fire spell, and after maxing that, you learn your next.  Learn your first fire and earth spell, then you gain your first magma spell.

4) We are RP encouraged, but since we aren't quite open yet, there isn't a lot going on right now.

5) We are Diku-&gt;Merc-&gt;Rom with a lot of heavy recoding and modifications.  We have a consistent (and dim) color theme throughout the game. 

6) Character creation might not quite line up...  In creation, you pick a handful of aesthetic choices, but you do have some other highly customizable and notable features such as your elemental alignments, along with a Merit/Flaw system.  If you aren't playing a magic user, the elemental alignment won't matter quite as much, and you can skip the Merit/Flaw stuff entirely.

I also like to find a place where the wholist doesn't look
like an explosion of random words and phrases. When I type
who, if I see things like &lt;-- n00b slayer, or anything else
of that nature, the first thing I generally do is quit, even
if it isn't a PK mud.

7) This is typical of our wholist (yes, with the AFK flag by Ssolvarain as well :p )

<pre><code>
Immortals [2]:
---,----'--,'---@
[  Implementor  ] Diablos      
[   Gruteling   ] Ssolvarain     [ AFK ]

Players   [1]:
---,----'--,'---@
[Race    Sex  PK]
[Ronso    M   N ] RandomPlayer
[Moogle   F   Y ] MoogleGuy
</code></pre>

RandomPlayer and MoogleGuy not being real people, just wasn't going to paste any real player names.  As you can see, we don't allow titles in our who list, and otherwise only RP Obvious things are posted.  We do have clan flags show up when a player is guilded, however.

8) PK is restricted by a 'valid RP reason'.  Generally this doesn't require any real enforcement, as RP notes are generally posted with a Roleplay View of the battle that took place, along with the reasons.  PK is optional, however, as everyone creates in the game PK Safe, but after level 5 they can opt to permanently remove their safe flag, at which point there is no level restriction.  If you pick on people a lot lower than you, however, you can generally assume you'll be targeted in retribution.  But again, without a valid RP reason, PK isn't supposed to occur.

9) We do our best to keep our helpfiles current, and are quite good at adding to them when someone points out something that is missing or is out of date.

------------------------------------------------------------

We are a Final Fantasy based MUD with heavy influences from Chrono Trigger and some from Seiken Densetsu (Secret of Mana).  We aren't so stuck in the theme, however, that non-fans will have difficulty accessing the game.  Our races, classes, and areas are derived from the games, but they all come together to make a rather unique and cohesive world.  Our main goal is for it to be fun, with a bit of a console RPG feel to it.

We have done a lot of work on combat, especially with magic.  We have what I would dare boast to be a very deep and detailed magic system.  It can work as simple as 'cast fireball citizen' and your character will begin to cast, they will experience casting time (a wait state that limits what they can do) and then the spell will fire, allowing the character to immediately act afterwards.  During casting time, you may do several things, such as modifying your spell pattern to be stronger and using more mana, be weaker and use less, widen to hit more targets, expanding to speed it up, compress to make it take longer, retarget it to another target, stop it immediately, interrupt it by casting another spell that will put your original spell 'on hold' until your new spell takes, or overlay it with another compatible spell to create a new spell entirely (see the above fire/earth into magma as an example).  Melee is a bit different as well, with your attack rounds determined by your AGI stat, with weapon class having a lot to do with your available number of hits per round.  Skills carry with it a 'wait state' (rather than actual lag) that allows your character to still do many things such as speak, check the who list, etc.  While in wait, you are unable to do things like use new skills, equip weapons, etc.  Any 'forbidden' actions taken during the wait state will be ignored.

I've already mentioned our Merit/Flaw system, along with innate elements for each character.  We are trying very hard to create the possibility for many options for any given character, as to promote as much of a sense of uniqueness among our playerbase.  Among that is our skill gaining process, where you won't find your entire skill list at a given location, but rather there are teachers scattered throughout the world that will teach you various skills at various levels (we are still in the process of placing these teachers).

We offer 4 starting classes, with soon-to-be-available promotion options for each class.  For example, if you are a Knight, at level 50 you will have the option between going the 'good' path and become a Paladin, go the 'evil' path and be a Dark Knight, or skip those options completely and continue on as a 'neutral' Knight and become an Advanced Knight.  Each class has three such choices, and at level 80 there will be another split of choices for those classes.  We have 9 starting classes each with a unique set of racial abilities gained every 20 levels.  We have actually managed to suceed in having Humans be the majority race without overpowering them.  They have been described as the MUD's "easy mode" however, as they are easier to proceed through the game with, but not stronger than any other race.  In addition to those 9 races, there are three in-game 'template' options that are available.  The easiest to obtain is the 'Unsent' (or Undead) option, where after remaining dead for about 2 real life hours straight, your spirit hardens into flesh, and you are permanently Undead.  Lycanthrope and Vampire are available as well.  Once you obtain a 'racial template' you are still your 'true' race, but the template, for all intents and purposes, replaces all of your original race strings (you are seen on the wholist as Unsent, Vampire or Lycan (during full moons).  You retain any racial abilities gained from your original, however you from that point on only gain racial abilities from your 'new' race.  Lycanthropes (and the Cetra class for their Morph ability) have seperate descriptions for their shifted form that will appear when they are changed, and have custom shifting messages as well.

We have a 'limit break' system that allows you to, for all intents and purposes, create a custom skill based on certain options.  Given your 'limit break' level, you have available numerous limit break affects that you can choose, and after that, you get to apply a custom string that you and the room sees, in addition to naming it whatever you like, and creating the command used to execute it.  A character may have up to about 10 or so limit breaks total.

No hunger, no thirst, no movement points, lag-state removed in favor of wait state, no lights needed to see at night... we try to entertain, not annoy, our players.

Skill use and improvement bonus exp for an alternative to exp gain than killing things.  Once we get the "storyline" (a series of interlinked quests that guide the player through the areas) it will also bonus exp through reaching certain milestones and finishing quests.

Our newbie school does a pretty good job of guiding people through everything, and indeed we offer three options for new characters... 1) Total MUD Newbie that guides newbies through every normal aspect of a MUD school including End of Time specific changes, 2) EoT Newbie that skips all of the BS that everyone already knows, and takes people through our changes to magic, combat, tutors about limit breaks, etc. and 3) EoT Veteran for the people who know all of that other stuff and wants to get directly into the thick of things.  EoT Veteran gets a full set of EQ and any other benefits that might have come from going through the school.  There are also a small handful of self-contained newbie areas within the newbie zone, which will allow new players to get used to our game with a reduced risk of death from stronger mobs, and without having to deal with the playerbase at large until they are ready to.

We've had a lot of recent changes and we have yet to fully update the newbie school, but that is on the agenda quite soon.

Well, I think this has been long enough.  More information is available on our website at <a href="http://www.eotmud.com/">http://www.eotmud.com/</a> or of course you can log on if you found any of this intriguing.

host: eotmud.com
port: 4000

Like I said, we aren't open, and things have been a bit slow/empty lately, so if you aren't up to being a bit lonely at certain parts of the day, maybe you can check in and see if we aren't a place you might want to keep in mind for when we do become more populated.

Either way, good luck in your search!

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Subject:  RE: A Players Request and Questions
Author:   Random_N_G
Posted:   Fri Sep 14 [9:28 PM]
Url for Post:
http://www.mudconnect.com/discuss/discuss.cgi?mode=MSG&area=promotions&message=18302

Thank you for the offer, and for the detailed description.
I would like to point out that I was there already, and in
the end left, since I was unable to find anyone to answer
questions.  It has been shifted to my "check back later"
list.

A few notes, if you're willing.  Your spell star is a great
idea, I really like it, but approach the character creation
part of it from a new player perspective, and frankly, it
is a little hard to grasp.  I had to play with it somewhat
and am still not sure I fully understand it, though your
description here has cleared up quite a bit of that.  Also,
your flaw/merit system doesn't read in creation that it is
optional, and it wasn't until I got frustrated with having
to nerf my character and closed the window and began the
process again (there is no way to undo the choices you've
gained from it) and simply attempted to skip it, that I
found it was possible.

Once you are ready for new players, and not just ptesters, I
would be more than willing to give you another shot.  Oh,
just a quick FYI, your boards ingame don't make for good
vibes with new players who read them rather then just use
the catchup command.

I am looking forward to seeing it a little further down the
road when it is more playable.

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Subject:  RE: Come and Play!  [The Realm of Draenor Calls You!]
Author:   Random_N_G
Posted:   Fri Sep 14 [10:05 PM]
Url for Post:
http://www.mudconnect.com/discuss/discuss.cgi?mode=MSG&area=promotions&message=18303

-snip-
We want some experienced players who don't
need an immortal around to hold their hand.


Not be a jerk or something, but why?  Perhaps it's just the
way I'm reading this, but it almost sounds like "we don't
want to be bothered by pathetic mortals and their dumb
questions"  I'm not saying that is how you intended it to
sound, but with that many new features, perhaps being more
available to answer questions about them would be a good
thing.

<font size=-1>(<i>Comment added by Random_N_G on Fri Sep 14 22:12:08 2007</i>)</font>

-edit-
Or are you in beta still and looking for ptesters?

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Subject:  RE: A Players Request and Questions
Author:   ZetaThomps
Posted:   Fri Sep 14 [10:50 PM]
Url for Post:
http://www.mudconnect.com/discuss/discuss.cgi?mode=MSG&area=promotions&message=18304

Interesting...

No I do not run a mud, no I do not begin to say I have suggestions for you.  But I will add my criteria and comment on yours:

<blockquote>
The first, and most obvious, is cheating. Or what is more commonly known as "catering" to the long termers. While this may seem a necessity to keep those long termers around it does tend to leave a bad taste in the mouth of newer players.</blockquote>

I see this more as favortism than cheating. It occurs on every mud I have ever been on. It is more how blatant it is that concerns me.  If I can tell within a week who the IMMs rl buddies and MUD friends are without being told, it is too blatant. But an outcropping of this that I object to is upping the power of things or making things more difficult to offer the older players a challenge and affecting the newer ones as well. It is no fun to go from whack rabbits in the forest to dying to vampiric frogs in 3 levels.


Now cheating for me would be builders that have items with 'secret' words their buddies are told to increase power or xp, they tell answers to coded quests to their friends.  They create items that work one way for one group and another for the rest of mud.  Most IMMs catch this eventually and the builder is removed but in the mean time players have left.

Now for what I consider REAL cheating


<blockquote>
Second would have to be the mortal vs immortal relationship. I understand that all immortals would like to spend time playing with their mortal characters. But to give yourself bonuses using your immortal, or to expect others to give up their time to help your new mortal, simply because they wish to gain favor with the immortal is wrong and also tends to hurt things, especially in the views of newer players.
</blockquote>


Add to that:

IMMs allow one group to perform on group of actions or show their disfavor for another group by denying them the same latitude as others receive.

Examples of this is letting 4 members of XYZ clan group PK and loot a lone member of abc clan. When ABC clan goes to retaliate in kind, they are told they are harassing the member of xyz clan.

IMM mortal characters that are significant individiuals (ALWAYS) in the realm and use the position not to generate RP as some do, but rather to control. 

Example:  One mud I played the owner was always the king of the realm and his friend queen although no player was supposed to know that it was their characters.  If it was just to generate RP that would have been fine, but if any other person attempted the position they were killed and replaced with the IMM's morts who always ran the same stale rp.

IMMs characters that must always 'win' the rp.

see above.

IMMs that do not follow the MUD rules for their own mortal characters.
Sigh no explanation needed here unfortunately

IMMs that give items of significant power to mortal characters
I actually saw a great solution to this on a SWR mud. Anytime an IMM gave a mortal character an item a cheater flag was placed on the mort. They could not quest, rp, do much of anything until the flag was removed.  I saw it happen a few times in truely innocent circumstances. (player hands IMM item they reported as bugged, IMM looks at boject, hands it back - WHAM flag goes on)

I tend to leave these places that have these issues without a word as do most of my friends.  Why bother complaining when the IMMs are corrupt? It is their game and if they want only to play with their friends then so be it. There are many many MUDs, MUSHes and MUCKs out there.


<blockquote>Character creation should be relatively simple, and not a numbers game. &lt;snip&gt;. And, frankly, I want to play the game, not spend 30 minutes in an uneducated attempt to create a character, </blockquote>.

WITNESS Brother and/or Sister! I had an rp mud suggested to me. I spent 3 hours working through character creation to be told at the end that no IMM was around to approve my 'application'. I went and played a DIKU instead that night. I am sorry, I understand RP is important. But I have better things to do than spend 3 hours getting ready to play a game and trying to figure out commands for each stage of creation. If I was wanted that I would go back to my old dungeons.


<blockquote> Keep your helpfiles up to date. New players tends to rely on your helpfiles for their current
information, and if the helpfiles say one thing, yet another
standard (especially as they pertain to rules and policies)
is enforced, it creates confusion and leaves your new
players wondering just what rules are enforced, what works
and what is just there for show. </blockquote>

MUSHes and CIRCLEMUDS seem to be the worst at this. If a command is not used on you MUD remove it from the command list.  If it is used it better have an entry and put it under multiple keywords. Skills the same. and please, have a newbie manual that has basic things in it like to cast a spell here that has more than one word use this syntax (c. burning_hands, c 'burning hands') And explain the difference somewy like NOTE the underscore that is the usual way to bridge a space on this engine, or words to that effect. 

While you are at it PLEASE check the references at the end of each file. If the stock file says see FORCE and force has been removed from the game, remove that reference.

Things I like to see, continutity between zones, little things like a reference to a city in a continent halfway across the mud or the repetition of a guild's symbol in every building they own shows attention to detail and continuity.

Quests that are puzzles, not just get this sys generated item at this place and return to me here. And the ability to work in a group onn the quests.  Same with exp.  What is the use of an online game that does not encourage people to group together to play together? Especially an RP mud. My favorite mud is not an RP enforced, but it has some areas where you get more xp if you are in a group than if you try it alone. (in other words group size min and max set)

A PK system that dovetails with the mud's rp system.  I like the idea of needing a motivation to kill another player other than he was ugly and his mother dressed him funny. Obviously this applys to RP muds only.

I love it when IMMs of RP muds do little things to make RP easier to reflect the world as it is.  Like everytime a Jawa enters the room everyone else smells something awful. Or disable sleep and hunger stuff if an rp flag is set.

Oh and RP points I have feelings about both ways.  I like the concept but the execution sometimes is open to too much abuse.

Last but not least, I don't require 60+ players on but I do like to see at least 5 individuals around.  If I log into a mud and idle for 30 minutes and no one is around I do not go back, so that means I should be able to see a who list or at least a count of active (not AFK) characters vs IMMs.

So I keep searching and always return to my main mud because i do not find anything better out there, mainly because of these issues listed above.  Oh and I should add I prefer space and fantasy MUDs. Sorry but acting out real life situations in an online world is just not something that appeals to my escapist mentality.

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Subject:  RE: Come and Play!  [The Realm of Draenor Calls You!]
Author:   ZetaThomps
Posted:   Sat Sep 15 [4:36 AM]
Url for Post:
http://www.mudconnect.com/discuss/discuss.cgi?mode=MSG&area=promotions&message=18305


<blockquote>
We want some experienced players who don't
need an immortal around to hold their hand.
</blockquote>


Experienced in which codebase?




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