Shadowgate

Mikyn · Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32

I won't lie, I've enjoyed how the XP Tax system has worked since it was implemented. It made life easier when gaining stats and feats, whenever changing those or swapping around skills. The system has definitely made any mistakes or changes a lot easier and painless.

However, I think that this is precisely why it has indirectly hurt SG and made a few systems broken.

If we removed it and went back to the prior system, death would have an impact. You would still retain gear, but the loss of levels (especially at higher levels) would reintroduce some fear of death. This would also have an impact in player conflict and make death the harder option.

Also, it would add some balance to the current magical crafting. With xp tax simply accumulating, crafting high powered items have no real cost aside from the mats. If creating a +7 weapon or piece of armor would instead cost a player to lose a LOT of levels, you would see the proliferation die down. Characters would be more likely to hunt for equivalent gear from bosses as the less costly option. Crafted gear would also be less likely to be handed out like candy to all the players, and something that the various craftsmen would price much higher to fulfill.

In addition, it would turn some items like the scrying orb into costly artifacts. As it is, they become a free scry as a max level character because xp tax is meaningless.

kassius · Site Admin Joined: 17 Aug 2017 Posts: 243

Mikyn,

Why do you believe this has hurt SG? I don't really agree with your opinion and listed why below. While I'm probably being redundant, mostly the playerbase is strong of late compared to years before. What has it hurt? I don't follow and have offered my thoughts on your idea below. I am not Game Admin so might be overruled. I think mostly we need to quit thinking about reverting back to the old system, its gone IMO.. Lets move forward.

I'm highly against changing the system. One it causes work on the immortal staff that isn't needed to encourage something we don't care to encourage really. We aren't looking to make the game more frustrating for newbies or returning players and while a fear of death would be nice, this game isn't RP enforced anymore, which means it isn't a requirement. The other system didn't really change anything though Mikyn. It basically had people never taking any chances(4 deaths) with 100s of days online time and nothing else plus they weren't RPing a fear of death they were RPING a fear of xp loss/equipment loss.

Secondly I believe N has intentions to lower enchanting output going forward to enchantment plus one bonus. The intention was never for enchanting to replace boss gear/avatar items. Currently I couldn't create avatar gear on par without being stupid about it. So enchanting will find its place slotted next to token gear, but not an option to gear your entire character with more powerful gear than Arkhon, Klauth, Intruder etc. While I may be letting this cat out of the bag too early if anyone has any complaints in regard to this send them to me and I will discuss with Nienne. She has enough on her plate and if we decide some other idea is better I'll notify people. Ares put a ton of time into enchanting and while I'm impartial to changing it or not changing it, I do hate the fact that people have 90+ acs, insane mr and +6 on multiple stats on per one item. However at the time enchanting was wrote there was standard of two bonuses per item and it is has been reconsidered by the most active Game Admin with inquiries to the rest of the immortal staff. Hope that sheds some feedback on this part of the post.

Now back to your original point. I hate to word it this way, but I think you're looking for something that isn't currently the direction of the mud from my POV. We have had a much better playerbase since trying to automate the game, take away the difficulty of death and other things required. While I understand your POV(I believe) having once stood in the heavily RP enforced camp, I don't currently believe it helps anything to introduce those systems. They were heavily flaws and caused a ton of people to leave the game. While RP heavy players are still welcome we have to adjust as did those mechanically or pk minded players over the years as those things began to fade during the decade of heavy RP. RP is our niche and I understand that, but we tried that niche for ten years and by the last half of that decade supported a playerbase of 1-4 most of the time, currently the mud averages 11 at peak hours 4 to 5 days a week and I've seen it reach as high as 27 recently. I think balance and moderation on all sides is the solution as it is for most everything in life.

Lastly, there are things being considered for death, but Saide stepped down before they were implemented. We are currently in a transition with our coding skill level. I believe we have a lot of creative people upstairs, but Saide was one of our most advanced coders along with Ares(currently on break). That leaves us with others who are in and out, but no one as consistent as Saide was the last 18 months. My skills are hit and miss, I'm able to fix things here and there, but I'm not able to help a lot in coding, a lot of that falls on Nienne and Lujke from what I can tell in my brief few months up there now that the others are gone.

ideas board [0 out of 27]
praise board [0 out of 21]
typos board [0 out of 53]
bugs board [2 out of 920 unread]
wiz board [0 out of 316]
lib board [0 out of 299]
avatarmail board [0 out of 255]
pkmail board [0 out of 180]

That is a list of the boards we see. 920 is the bugs board with over about 90 percent still needing completed. That doesn't included the ideas board, the typos board and personal projects. I am not posting all this to be a dick, I truly want the playerbase to understand the workload as I truly never did as an avatar or player. We are understaffed and that won't really change IMO. We need to fix things that TRULY need fixing and I don't see why this needs fixed, what does it help besides create an OOC frustration for 60 to 80 percent of the players online. This doesn't include taking time out to handle pk complaints, doing projects we enjoy to keep from burning out, area updates, game breaking bugs, player requests on the spot, etc. Thanks for your time and your thoughts, please feel free to offer thoughts I didn't see at all, but I 100% don't see how reverting back aids anything. I love the new system even with that bias if I felt it helped the game, I'd be for it.

Kassius

Mikyn · Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32

I think you might be overstating the strength of the playerbase. It appears strong during times of plots such as Nienne's right now, or when you're actively running plots, but it drops back down to 3 or 4 when that's not the case. I think the evidence is that RP is what keeps people around, and creating an environment where player RP is more readily implemented is more conducive especially with the need for less immortal intervention.

It is in that vein that I feel that death needs a bit more consequence. As I've stated before, the current systems only permit a characters power to increase. There needs to be some manner of flux in order to allow players to affect each other in meaningful ways, and this is one way that I see to fix that from an automated standpoint.

Also, reducing the current magical crafting to a bonus and the enchantment will in turn cause players to abandon the system in favor of boss gear. I feel that is robbing players of a chance to have personalized yet competitive equipment. By increasing the cost by lost levels in xp cost, you reduce the abundance of crafted gear and will reach a closer balance between drops and crafted equipment. I believe players would find a middle ground of both, giving both created areas and bosses just as much traffic while permitting players to still invest in some personalized items.

kassius · Site Admin Joined: 17 Aug 2017 Posts: 243

Edited as my comments expressed frustrations that I did not intent.

Sorry.

Kas

Mikyn · Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32

I don't believe you actually read my posts. I never talked about rolling back death, it was the tax. With the current tax system, xp costs aren't actually costing anything, which leads to proliferation of anything that uses xp as a means of balancing it.

But by all means, talk down to me some more.

EDIT: Since I probably have to spell it out some more:

1) I didn't initially bring up the RP ramifications, that was you. But I think it would be a net benefit by adding some reason to not run into every PC conflict with an "I don't care if you kill me" mentality. I think there can be a balance between RP and mechanics, where one lends to the other.

2) If you limit crafted gear, no one is going to use it. It will just be another forgotten piece of code and I feel that's just as blasphemous to the immortals that wrote it. I am suggesting a situation where there's equal pressure to go to areas as there is to crafting.

3) It appears to me that banking xp is part of the problem, because it's just flipping the weakness of the system. Remove banking, and have xp stop when you're ready to advance. Make the feats and stats you gain as you level cost nothing the first time, so that you only have to spend xp if you're making changes.

ViolaRose · Joined: 20 Apr 2015 Posts: 113

First thing... MERRY CHRISTMAS SHADOWGATE!!!

Also! For what it's worth, I agree with Mikyn on this. While we wish to be a game of rewards rather than punishments, I still have the sense that actions would be more meaningful if they came with a cost.

For example, and please excuse my rp-inclined thinking, does it not make the game more interesting when an assassin can offer a player the chance to keep their life rather than paying them off? Nowadays (and yes this was an actual IG experience I witnessed) people would rather be killed then pay for their life, because it costs less overall. To this extent, even non-rp games maintain a level of "realism" where choices and consequences matter. Not so on ShadowGate.

While I agree newbies should be given an advantage in every possible way (which is the only drawback, as I see it, to this), it seems to me that experienced players are reaching level 50 in a day anyway, and losing a level or two because they're crafting stuff is not going to be a breaking point for most. Also, I'm pretty sure the hoarding of stats and feats has only increased, since the exp can't actually be lost now. People jump right up to 50 and then work on knocking out stats and feats. Which, even Saide has said is not as his system was intended to be abused, but people will do as they do.

Making scrolls, imbuing items crafting equipment, scrying orbs, death.. none of it comes at any consequence now, and I feel like, in contrast to Kas' feelings that it "doesn't make any sense" to lose exp for these things, it really does - as these things should be quite draining (additionally, beyond death - which admittedly they're doing quite a bit of) these are not really things newbies do so they wouldn't suffer this particular consequence).

And finally (but probably not, I just forget most of what I wanted to say), I don't feel that death was keeping people from taking risks. Losing a level from a dragon is a small thing compared to losing all your hard-earned gear which, admittedly, sucks. And isn't an issue anymore.

And finally finally! This should likely be in a separate thread when the time comes, but I get the sense that nerfing magic crafting down to just one bonus per item will pretty much make all of Ares' very hard work obsolete. People still tend to favor high-end boss gear (Klauth/Intruder) because it has multiple bonuses as well as specials as well as unique abilities crafting doesn't allow for. Most gnome gear has at least two bonuses as well as specials, so I don't know why anyone would bother collecting mats and adding to their exp tax when they could just pick up better gear and alter it to their preference. Ares clearly understood he needed to make his crafting skill on par with the best things in order to entice people to use it at all.

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE! <3 <3 <3 Smile

kassius · Site Admin Joined: 17 Aug 2017 Posts: 243

Not sure I agree the system you're proposing fixes the issues. Maybe it doesn't, but I do not believe it does.

Kas

kassius · Site Admin Joined: 17 Aug 2017 Posts: 243

Viola,

There are no token items I can think of with plus two bonuses except for the crown of driftwood with +5 survival and +2 wisdom.

Most are one like greaves, boots, etc. I'm sure there are a few ah, bracelets on copper gnome is another. However, those are rare and by no means the majority if you do an average of the items with + and 2 bonuses I think you'll see it is less than ten percent.

I've seen almost no one since my return in boss gear. So please point that out to me. I see most players in player made stuff from head to toe, because I don't recognize the items. Now granted that could be because people are altering shit, don't know.

EDITED: I went and looked there were more than I remember on the Gold Gnome. However, they were still less than 50% and most were on items that never were used. The more common items such as cape, greaves, stockings, boots were all one and one. However, you were right and I was wrong there is a good number with multiple bonuses. However, I think someone update those recently, because when I was playing my last character I don't remember some of those things being that good. I know they weren't years ago.. I felt it was right to give credit where credit was due. I'll refrain from posting going forward, sorry I didn't keep my word from above posts.

Kas

Mikyn · Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32

Okay, so you're reading words in my posts that aren't there. I'm not sure that's better... So let me (further) clarify:

Death, while it can be an RP thing, is most definitely a mechanic. The opposite of success, especially against a boss or in conflict with other PCs.

Prolifteration doesn't mean lowbies getting their hands on high level stuff. Just the abundance of crafted gear. Adding an actual XP cost would reduce the number of items made, and characters would look to other options to fill out their equipment. This would lead them to going into dungeons and killing bosses more, even with the loss of xp on death because they'd still keep the gear.

xnithi · Joined: 25 Oct 2017 Posts: 57 Location: Texas, y'all

Just a thought - if you really, really, really want a change in the game, you believe that many others agree with you, and it will be better - look into coding it yourself, or asking/paying someone who isn't an imm to code it. It's one thing to say that you want this gigantic change. Even if Kass agreed with you, would it be worth the effort coding when the imms are juggling so much already? On the other hand, if you offered code ready to be adjusted to fit in - that's a lot easier to consider. Doesn't mean that they'll agree, so one should keep in mind that it may be a waste of time and effort. But it's still better than asking for a major overhaul when the imms don't really have the resources unless it's agreed by imms to really be necessary.

Hope I didn't come across as patronizing or as scolding - it's a real suggestion. Once I get home from my parents' home, I hope to take advantage of the link Ares gave to learn how to help myself. We all just want Shadowgate to be the most fun, right?
_________________
"[Aiden poses clinging to the ceiling like a gecko].
With a slight shimmer, Aiden is revealed to view.
Night screeches
Aiden drops down and lands on his feet lightly.
Night speaks softly: Why!?
Aiden smiles at Night."

Mikyn · Joined: 02 Jul 2015 Posts: 32

I get your intent, and unfortunately I do not have the knowledge to code it myself. From my perspective, I'm aware that crafted gear is an issue, that death is an issue, and that there are a multitude of items that use xp as a balancing factor that no longer are balanced. It seemed to me that this was a way to fix several systems in place by fixing xp, thereby possibly reducing the amount of work that lay ahead.

At the same time... this is a forum, and a place to share ideas and thoughts. I understand that the imms are hard working volunteers, and I don't believe discussing the merit or issues we see in the game should be construed as attacks on their work. It is opinion and commentary for the hopeful benefit of everyone involved.

Lujke · Immortal Joined: 18 Nov 2006 Posts: 642

xnithi · Joined: 25 Oct 2017 Posts: 57 Location: Texas, y'all

Sorry, my thought was that it would be easier for an imm to modify code to fit into the game than to make it from scratch. But, yeah, I am currently clueless as to what will help and what is a waste of time. Could be that so many changes would have to be made that you would be basically starting from scratch, anyways. I guess suggestions for how people can help make changes they want to see happen, given how small our staff is? Besides it being approved, since "Bump all my characters to level 50 automatically when I roll them" isn't going to happen even if you somehow managed to type up everything exactly how it would be needed to implement in game. Smile

_________________
"[Aiden poses clinging to the ceiling like a gecko].
With a slight shimmer, Aiden is revealed to view.
Night screeches
Aiden drops down and lands on his feet lightly.
Night speaks softly: Why!?
Aiden smiles at Night."

Gerard · Joined: 22 Dec 2017 Posts: 6

So I had a big long thing I was gonna type up on SG and Risk/Reward systems and how they compare, but I sorta distilled it down here.

Arguably, if you're going to put in the work to redo the death system, I'd take a position that you would be best served by using a hybrid permadeath system like most LARPs use (wherein you have an allotment of lives, or a random, increasing chance of permanent death for each death you take and get through).

I realize this would likely require a far larger overhaul in scope than just rebalancing death penalties (mob strength relative to players and availability of gear needs to be assessed and compared, mob placement, quest placement, and more systems would need an overhaul).

I feel like the difficulty in assessing an "appropriate" death penalty for a game like SG is that an unlimited source of XP (in the form of respawning mobs) exists, and the fact that resources are relatively unlimited (or at least, unlimited feeling enough that there's no real crunch on them), means that short of losing significant accumulated time (probably the more accurate way to gauge relative character strength), anything can be replaced. And that makes death have relatively minor mechanical impact (RP impact, of course, varies based on character) in the longest of terms.

xnithi: just as a tangent. Even if you were to code the entire system in the base coding language, a lot of computer code involves work thats personal to individual developers. Things like variable naming, array naming, inheritable templates, and more are all custom defined and usually stored in your library for ease of access, and would have to be manually inserted where relevant, a process more arduous than sometimes coding by hand.

"Industry standard" practice is to have a sort of "programmers bible", and proper in-code annotations/comments liberally introduced, so any dev can make sense of your logic/naming conventions, but I use "Industry Standard" the way I do because even among long term professional development projects, they rarely get observed.

Your best bet if you want to get changes made (grain of salt, because I'm guessing) would be to keep an eye/ear on whats already in dev, and to keep suggestion scope small, or able to be expanded upon in stages, with a clear idealogical roadmap of how dev might get there.

ViolaRose · Joined: 20 Apr 2015 Posts: 113

To be clear, the proposed change is a rollback of a system that's only been in place for not quite a year. It used to be that a player would lose 10% of their total exp upon death, which often resulted in the loss of a level or two (as well as all of their possessions), but now we lose no exp, levels or gear, but we gain the death tax of 25%. So it's not exactly a massive undertaking, at least I don't imagine so, but then I know very little about these things.

(Personally, and I suppose this is just reiteration of my previous post), while I like the idea of a loss/gain component of death (and people not choosing to simply die to escape a dungeon because it comes at no personal loss), I also like that newbies are better able to thrive without this constant set back to their advancement.

But as for crafting and other personal character -choices-, such as scrying, I do believe it would be nice if players had to "pay" something of themselves in the process.)