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« on: June 11, 2011, 07:11:24 pm »
Hey guys,
Sorry to be late to the party as Asmo says. I've finally gotten a chance to dig into what we're doing here, and I've got to say I think it meets several shortcomings that I've always had with the way 4Dimension features tend to launch. There's no sense of real strategy behind why a feature should exist, what it should do, how you want users to interact with it, and no sense of testing as to whether or not it meets those goals.
I think you guys put a lot of work on it, which is great, but if we take a step back and look at what the actual solution achieves we'll find that:
1) It does create a competitive environment between clans, which is great for keeping some element of interest.
1.B) It does not, to my knowledge, actually publicly incite clans when someone just stole their deed. That might get a little public banter and competitiveness going. Stealing someone's deed could become a nice public rivalry.
2) The helpfile of the system is a lot better than the actual system itself. As you'll see here:
>help deeds
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CLAN DEEDS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clan deeds are prestigious bragging rights. It
indicates that clan members have spent a large amount
of time getting to know the ins and outs of a
particular zone. This intimate knowledge of a zone is
then passed onto all members of the clan, bestowing
experience bonuses to the individuals and bonus gold
coins to the clan treasury.
The secrets to attain these deeds are a mystery but
at the very least, one needs to spend some time in the
zone.
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That sounds, in a word, badass. What we have instead is a grind fest. A complete and utter grind fest. Tell me, why would a MUD which is remarkable for the intelligence and wit of its zones, focus on one of its worst features. Grinding is basically the worst thing about 4d currently. This just emphasizes it further, and that's where I feel there's no sense of strategy here. All you're really doing is catering to people who like to see text shoot by everytime they type k mob. If that's the player you want to cater to, then I'm wrong and this is the perfect system. My guess though is that this is not the case.
3) It's really just one more way for high level oldbies to show off. There's not a whole lot that intelligent up and coming players can do to really collect a lot of deeds. You need the best gear, GM, and a whole lot of time to grind to really get anywhere with it.
3.b) There's also no real personal call outs as to who achieved a deed that I can see. Maybe this is in a clan that actually has achieved deeds? If so, forgive me, but I think there should be a way of recognizing the person in addition to the clan.
4) With the grindfest as it is, we'll eventually reach a point where there's little point in joining any clan other than X or Y because they get the biggest benefits and the amount of time to get new deeds for another clan is just painful. If this was intentional, great. I'm willing to bet it was actually completely unintentional and is a result of the system, its goals, and its affects failing to have been thought through.
Rather than just be negative though, I thought I'd also break down a few solutions for you all to think through.
1) On the topic of the grind fest, deeds should be tracked to something interesting in the zone itself. Maybe deeds are still grindish, but they're at a much lower rate % rate than they are now. However, in order to even load a deed in a zone you have to have captured the zone's Zone Flag. Then you don't have near as much grinding because it's maybe 1 in 20 kills, and you also have it be a reward for people who have explored and thoroughly understood an area. Then you can also have clan dynamics in going after a zone flag because if it's gonna take me 100+ kills to get a flag back I'm frankly not gonna be bothered.
2) Show the name of the person in the deed box. Let them get a little glory. Give all the benefits to the clan still, but why not allow a person to shine through this deed's system?
3) Reset deeds monthly/quarterly. When the period is over, suddenly all deeds are wiped. There's a mad rush to be the first to collect deeds which is both going to be thrilling and also very very fun. Especially if deeds are quicker to acquire. I envision a lot of bragging and taunting over gossip the first day after the reset. However, if the kill percentage is low enough because of the zone flags tweak mentioned above this is sort of made irrelevant.
4) Publicly announce similar to a mob "brag" when someone steals a deed from someone else. Let's make it truly competitive. Let's get people actually arguing about it and pushing eachother to new feats. If Jason just stole my clan's deed to Fenizia, and I didn't have the Fenizia zone flag, I'd probably bust ass to find it and then get the deed back if I were an active player. This would probably do a lot to make it a fun and engaging system, rather than a relatively ignored system.
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That's the start of how I think deeds should be structured, how I think they should be changed, and where I think the problem with the current system is. Let me know if I missed anything, or if I'm wrong in any way.
-Once
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. If we have a culture which ignores ideas like this instead of jumping in and commenting we're going to develop a culture where nobody posts ideas. Get your asses in gear with commenting and making ideas posts. Who knows, you might actually see one of your ideas come live and get credit for it in the helpfile.