Race Balancing And Character Balancing

[nanukimo]

Why not give the option of what you want. Either the tail or the Feet. Like the henna hand tattoo/horns.

Like for instance Im not even bothering to do Setis because I would get the sandals and my Achilles heel is better then the sandal. But im not sure whats the stat is on the tail but the only other quest item for a tail is martins holy armor. Which is a 3damroll 3hitroll item.

I would actually do setis If I could get the tussle instead. but if not then I wont ever bother with it. Be a waste of my time.

[Molly]

I would actually do setis If I could get the tussle instead. but if not then I wont ever bother with it. Be a waste of my time.

That's a very sad excuse for not doing a quest. But I guess that's how the majority of you guys reason.

I see two possible solutions. Either I make the tussles load instead of the sandals for all the races that have a tail. Or I make an 'exchange' script for the sandals, which would substitute them for the tussles on demand.

Neither is exactly IC, but obviously that is not something that would bother you, since all that seems to matter is stats. Makes me wonder why we even waste our time trying to make the quests interesting.

[Virisin]

I'm pretty sure we don't need to worry about seti and tussles. I seem to remember that after you made them not wearable at the same time, the only race that was missing out on stats was Spacewolf.. Having 3, 3, 5, as damroll for their extra slots, whereas all the other races have 3, 5, 5..

And yeah, that is a dumb excuse for not doing the quest.. That's either the hardest or second hardest quest in the game. You sure the reason you havn't done isn't simply because you can't? 

[nanukimo]

Actually it being one of the hardest quests in the game why would I want to waste my time doing it for getting a reward thats not worth my time and effort. Sorry I dont find it fun wasting 4+ hours if not more searching around and gaining nothing in the end. I do quests all the time for easier equipment thats no use to me but they are easy quests im not gonna bother with one of the hardest in game for nothing.

Give me tussels and Ill do it

[Fizban]

Isn't the point of the quest to have fun with the prize just as an added perk? Otherwise I don't see the point of scripting quests at all. Especially as technically IC-wise your character shouldn't even know the prize of the quest until after doing it.

[nanukimo]

yeah well IC wise people talk about quest stuff and it gets around to what the rewards are.

Questing for fun? Ive never really found questing to be fun. Its more like work to me with just a prize for completing the work. But why do the work if the prize is int worth it. I think the quests are great just because its something you don't see in every mud. But it doesn't mean I get all happy and excited when I go quest. Theres other quests that I need to do and rather spend time on doing because the reward will be worth putting my time into it.


Ill more then likely finish that quest one day but ill never sit down and put all my effort into figuring it out. I might try here and then and look for new stuff, but I wont put as much time into it as I have on my other equipment that is of value to me.

I don't see why its hard to understand why waste valuable time on a HARD quest for a reward I cant use. Dont get me wrong I think a lot of the zones are well designed and most quests are well designed expect for Mother goose. But not everyone just enjoys doing a quest for the sake of doing it. Hard quests are time consuming and I want a reward I can use for my time.


And why should space wolves get the short end of the stick. We already have the short end of the stick when it comes to race bonuses. Space wolves are suppose to be a melee race and they are one of the worst races to choose from.

[erwin]

I do quests because they, well, are fun to do, and there's this feeling of getting closer everytime. You don't need good equipment as a reward, but rather the sense that you're close to accomplishing something.

For example, Victorian England. I spent a lot of time there figuring out how to do the main quest, and when I finally completed it, there's this sense of achievement. Quest rewards are a nice perk, yes, but that shouldn't be the main objective of completing a quest.

But perhaps for these 'harder quests', maybe a 'token' reward (pun not intended) as well as equipment for those who solely quest for stats / rewards?

(I admit I don't know about the Seti Quest, but I haven't really poked about pre-historic much)

[Fizban]

I do quests because they, well, are fun to do, and there's this feeling of getting closer everytime. You don't need good equipment as a reward, but rather the sense that you're close to accomplishing something.

For example, Victorian England. I spent a lot of time there figuring out how to do the main quest, and when I finally completed it, there's this sense of achievement. Quest rewards are a nice perk, yes, but that shouldn't be the main objective of completing a quest.

That's more or less how I also feel. If players only want to do a quest for a prize then there's something wrong with the quest.

[erwin]

I'd think I'll post on the other side of the coin, under which circumstances I'll avoid a quest unless there's a very good reason for me to do so.

I can think of three examples in which this happens.

1. Collect an arbitarily large number of items. 10 is okay. 100, or 200 would be effectively grinding at mobs / repop locations.

2. Placing a lot of emphasis on high random drops. Maybe you need Item A, B, C, D for this quest, but they are all random drops with a low chance of happening. Completing this quest would also be grinding at mobs, with some emphasis on luck as well.

3. A large number of DTs. (debatable, I'm sure) This really isn't a problem here, as DTs are clearly highlighted. But if I'm doing a quest, and every other room I walk into are DTs without any kind of warning, I'd be pretty pissed off.

Well, basically, these above types of quests have something in common. The player who spends more time playing will eventually solve this quest, regardless of whether he hacks and slashes his way through, or spend some time thinking about it.

*Edit. Come to think of it actually, 1 and 2 are just variants of the Questmaster kinds of quests. Issue you a quest to slay this mob or recover an item, and then get QP. After getting a certain number of QP, you could trade it in for equipment. But then QP would be equivalent to the 'number of items' to collect in 1, and the 'number of kills needed to get an item' in 2.

Perhaps it's just me, but I feel that if a quest doesn't let you exercise your brain cells a bit, I'll tend to skip it, unless I have nothing better to do, or the reward is kind of worth it. However, I don't think 4 Dimensions have these kind of quests

[Virisin]

yeah well IC wise people talk about quest stuff and it gets around to what the rewards are.

Questing for fun? Ive never really found questing to be fun. Its more like work to me with just a prize for completing the work. But why do the work if the prize is int worth it. I think the quests are great just because its something you don't see in every mud. But it doesn't mean I get all happy and excited when I go quest. Theres other quests that I need to do and rather spend time on doing because the reward will be worth putting my time into it.


Ill more then likely finish that quest one day but ill never sit down and put all my effort into figuring it out. I might try here and then and look for new stuff, but I wont put as much time into it as I have on my other equipment that is of value to me.

I don't see why its hard to understand why waste valuable time on a HARD quest for a reward I cant use. Dont get me wrong I think a lot of the zones are well designed and most quests are well designed expect for Mother goose. But not everyone just enjoys doing a quest for the sake of doing it. Hard quests are time consuming and I want a reward I can use for my time.

And that's why I dislike anyone asking me how good my eq is, or which zone it's from, and claiming it's 'legal' for me to tell them.. People should quest for the fun of it, not because they already know the reward.. I basically disagree with everything you just said. Don't take it personally.

***

Let's get back on topic: Race balancing.

I think first of all, the races need to have their points equal out to 0, so they have strengths and weaknesses. And THEN we would go into eq balancing, but I'm almost certain all that needed changing to balance races eqwise was adding a 5dr scruff item. Could be wrong though, I may need to come up with full lists of all the best race gear.

[nanukimo]

Yeah this isint a debate on why each person does a quest. Its a person own opionon and no one can aruge with him why he wants to do a quest  for what reasons.

I never really liked the idea that certains races had certain attributes that make them better at a certain class then it would another. Id like to see it so a player could pick and choose from a set for what they want to be. But I dont know if everyone would agree on that. Actually Ive always disliked that in a mud, becuase I might want to be one race but i wont like the bonuses you get with it so ill be forced to choose another race.




Yes I remember all that was needed was a 5dr scruff item

[Fizban]

Essentially so you could pick an elf for RP reasons but still be able to configure your abilities more like a centaur? (aside from obvious things like an elf with hooves, but things that could be considered 'training'?)

[nanukimo]

Exactly I mean who says an Elf is only good at magic, why cant they take the 15% melee damage if they wanted to other then magic?

I know quite of few mudders pick a race based on rp.


You could just devise a number of points then say so many attack points = so many bonus points etc, etc. Then just let everyone build their character the way the want to. It would let a character customize his character even more.

[Virisin]

I agree with that.. Bonuses based off race are kinda boring. I wouldn't mind a more in depth character customisation, but that'd be harder to code I think.

[Mordecai]

New players don't often want to customise their character because they don't know what is going to be best for them when they start playing until they have played for a while.

What I probably should do is remove the bonuses all together from races and char creation, and have them available from say, worshiping a particular god, or being a certain alignment.

As in, something that you can choose to do when you are educated as to what is best for you.