4Dimensions Forum
General Category => Suggestions & Ideas => Topic started by: Molly on May 09, 2011, 01:32:52 am
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I'm splitting this out from the thread about zoneflags, to start a discussion about possible Clan Contests for the future.
Yeah, I'm cool with the idea now, and like I said with there going to be another batch starting one day, it's not like it's not achievable anymore.
Aside from that..Viri had an idea before about Zone deeds. Essentially, if you are levelling in a zone, any mob within that zone has a small chance to drop a deed. you can then claim that deed for you clan. When claimed your clan gets some sort of benefit, like an interest rate, or something positive. Once a deed is claimed it would then be able to be gotten by another clan after so many hours has passed. What this does is gets clans competing against one another on a continuous basis, since it's an on going competition. Also promotes exploring and going out and getting far away zones deeds. Could make it percentage based or number based, after 10 deeds are claimed clan gets increased clan bank interest, if 20 deeds are reached then clan gets 10% more exp a kill, if 30 deeds reached 10% more gold...90 deeds 1 dambonus max deeds, get clan name added to plaque or trophy for it for in clanhall. And all deeds are reset. So it could be a competition to have all the deeds claimed before all other clans, but everytime another clan claims the zone you lose it, so it could very well take a very long time to win. I know the post is cluttered, but what do you think?
Zone deeds sounds like a good idea, but I need some clarifications.
Let's see if I got it right:
1. Every zone in the game gets a Zone deed.
2. A couple of the mobs in the zone gets a 5% chance of dropping that deed when killed.
3. After one Clan claimed the deed, other Clans will be able to get it too after a delay, but all Clans will keep the deeds they already claimed.
4. Each time a Clan has collected 10 deeds a list of those is exposed in the Clan Hall, and all the Clan members get some kind of reward or advantage from it.
5. The reward increases with the number of deeds collected.
6. The first Clan to collect 100 deeds gets a bigger reward.
Comments to some of the points:
1. Should we launch all the deeds at the same time, or divide them in batches of 10 and announce a list of the deeds available? (Personally I'd prefer batches of 10, to keep the interest up).
2. I'd prefer it if just a couple of the mobs in the zone would get the chance to drop the deed, mostly because it means an insane amount of work to set the drop scripts on every 8486 prototype mob in the game. Unless of course it can be coded. But if so, the deeds might be a bit too easy to get, and we'd have to lower the percentage.
3. I think the only feasible delay would be when the zone resets (coupled with the small percentage chance). At least I don't know of a way to script the delay. Unless that too can be coded.
4. The Clan leaders would be responsible for keeping track of the deeds and turning the batches of 10 in to an imm. Possibly we should also display the name of the Clan member who got the deed on the list.
So there would be no extra bonus for the first Clan to claim the deed? It can of course be done, but it would be pretty hard to keep track of. The only feasible way would be for the Clan to post on the board when they claim a deed for the first time, and we'd probably have to set up a special board for it in the Clan Office. Only the first post for a zone would count of course.
5. The rewards definitely have to be well thought out and approved by the staff. They cannot be big enough to cause permanent inbalance, and all Clan members need to benefit from them.
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Personally, I think dividing them up in batches and announcing them that way sounds like an evil and clever idea. :D I vote for that!
I don't plan on participating, (unless I get a lot better at the game than I am now), but I can see this drawing a lot of interest. Kudos to Viri for the great idea!
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I don't think an overall 'who claimed it first' list/prize is needed, or they may as well be zone flags. But that aspect as a little inner-clan competition could be fun... i think it makes sense to keep that aspect in-clan because another clan can always steal from you, and you from another clan. Not only would there (maybe) be a small prize for the most deeds first captured by a person within a clan, but it would cause more clan members to want to participate. Of course, thats just a little icing on the motivation cake for the bigger rewards/perks that you get with having lots of deeds on a clan v. clan level.
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Oh, also...
There probably should be a clear way of listing which zones have which deeds, and hopefully an easy way of the lists changing as deeds are gotten so that the IMMs don't have to be involved at EVERY step of the way. If deeds are going to be changing clans on a never ending cycle, thats only going to get annoying to whoever has to manually adjust lists.
Maybe theres a deed case that you can put it in, and as it gets put in the case, a script checks the other clans cases and purges any copies of the same deed? Also the case could count up the deeds and maybe assist in giving the awards as the numbers got to certain levels.
Did anyone ever say something about clan treasuries making a small percent off of anything bought within a zone of a captured deed? If Vikings have Elven Metropolis, and someone goes and buys a delicious leaf-shake, Vikings get a percent of that money into their clan treasury? Maybe thats a useless feature though...
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Umm, I think either me or Asmodeus has misunderstood something - probably me...
The way I understood Xeriuth's post, several clans could hold the deed to the same zone, making them a bit like zoneflags.
But as Asmodeus describes it, there could only be one deed to the same zone, and each time a new Clan claimed it, the ownership would change to them.
Now I am unsure hos it's supposed to work.
I think I'd prefer Asmodeus' way, since it would make more sense logically. Also it could be quite fun if the Clan that holds the deed could automatically collect a small entrance fee from everybody else entering the zone. (The amount would be added to the Clan treasury).
However, it would probably be a total pain to script something like that, but perhaps it could be coded.
First the delay until the deed carrier loads again would have to be determined, and the delay should be at least a couple of days, even if the way the carrier mob loads the deed is a bit random.
But with scripts we only have three ways to code in a delay:
- wait # seconds or # Ticks (would need a lot of seconds)
- wait until the zone resets (max length for this is 2 hours)
- wait until the mud reboots (very unsure, could be an hour or 10 days)
I wish there could also be a more exact way to determine a wait in a script, but so far there isn't.
Second there must be an easy way to determine which Clan presently holds the deed. I definitely don't want a system where the imms have to go in and register any change of owner. This has to be automated in some way, or it would be totally irritating for whoever is supposed to keep manual track.
I'll ask the coders what can be done.
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I had another idea in the past, a bit along the same lines. I'll post it here to get some opinions.
King of the Clans
This would be a continuous Clan Quest.
One strong mob would be teleporting all over the world, and when found and killed would have a small percental chance to load the King of the Clans crown.
The possession of this item would symbolically make a Clan 'King of the Clans' a bit along the same idea as the Blue Band of Victory.
As long as the item remains in a Clan Hall, the members get certain benefits from it. (Probably some free spells or free teleports).
Only one Clan can possess the crown at the same time. As soon as another Clan gets it and drops it in their Clan Hall, the possession of the title goes over to them, and the other item is purged.
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Great thread!
First thing is I love the King of Clans idea, almost exactly how I think the deeds should work as well!
My idea for the deeds was that they would load in a zones, randomly killing mobs within the zone had the small chance of loading the zone deed, the deed can only be loaded maybe once a day, or we could even say, use moon cycles, every new moon deeds can once more be loaded in a zone. Once a clan claims the deed, by placing it in a container in the clanhall, or maybe giving to one central mob near recall (might be easier that way) the mob would global command something like Table Round has claimed the Camelot Zone deed.
If say Chaos get's it next load it would prompt Chaos has claimed the Camelot Zone deed from Table Round.
Perhaps even broadcast a count of how many each clans own. Chaos 3; Sicilians 2; Table Round 1... if 0 it isn't even broadcasted to save spam?
I'm not sure if batches are better than a mass amount. Perhaps even do it as batches, once first batch of 10 is successfully all obtained by one clan, they win that "round" and then there's 10 more, and the first clan to achieve all 20 wins that "round" and receives an award, eventually with more and more deeds, it'll take longer and longer each round because there's simply more deeds, and with other clans continuously "stealing" them away from each other, it becomes nearly a continuous quest, maybe even make it so if the round is won the bonus prize is permanent for that clan. However if any other clan gets that many deeds they still get the buff at the respective level. Any thoughts? Would have to come up with some distinct bonus prizes. I think along the lines of interest to treasury, clan global innate, innate buff of some kind to attack, health, mana, moves, accuracy, evasion, speed, you name it.
Along with this, we could always implement what we planned to in the past and why we made clan entrances, is open clans to anyone? With the deed buff of interest rate it can make the treasury actually worth something. And with the ability to buy clan defenses, such as a mob for defense that attacks any intruder upon entrance, it's levels etc dependent on gold spent, perhaps traps that cause poison, or instant damage to anyone who enters, that are one time usage items, but all costing gold. This will provide a continuous gold sink to a clan especially if they keep getting attacked repetitively, and give people more incentive to play to keep their clan safe. Clans could be flagged arena, so anyone can defend as well.
This of course opens up clan wars, and may even be able to help mud growth in itself. Such as if a clan is 'dead' at what point do we throw in the towel with it and have another clan take it over, like Qualinesti belonged to Dark-Jedi for quite sometime. It doesn't stop the clan from ever coming back, if an interest is shown, but if this clan contest/raid/war features implemented can cut back the clans that are pretty much nonexistent. Perhaps even the option for clans to form alliances is brought back into play. This has many paths it can go, and can start off very fundamentally, and slowly grow, it doesn't need to be fancy by any means at first. simply opening clans and one defense purchasable, whenever time is available more defenses are added, etc. There's so many things to mention and not enough time right now to go through everything or make a detailed explanation, that can come in time if this idea is liked by most... Any thoughts, concerns, questions?
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Just a quick thought with how to determine which clans own which deeds. Can flags be applied to mobs, like player characters, and be saved through crashes/reboots? If so say each clan is represented by a variable, 1-10, clan 1 gives flag to Collector, Collector is flagged with the object(deed) given by clan 1 and adds a +1 count to a counter for clan 1, if any other clan gives that same object to collector clan 1 loses a count with -1 and the other clan gets a +1 count along with the name of the clan given to the collector... makes sense?
Perhaps the collector could have a bulletin board with it, only the collector can write on the board, and a scripted phrase is posted onto the board so the what clan owns what deeds is kept track of on the board, while the count is controlled strictly by the counter script. I might be way off with my thinking, but just an idea.
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Mmmm, ok.
First of all I think a few people have gotten the wrong idea about what deeds are and how they would work ideally.
Deeds are similar to zone-flags, but also quite different.
- Every zone should have a deed, and they should all be out at once, not released as batches.
- Deeds should randomly load on any mob within the zone, not a selection. Players should have to get lucky or thoroughly destroy a zone to uncover the deed, not just go around killing the top 3 mobs from every zone when they want to find a deed.
- Deeds can be claimed by either getting the deed from the corpse of a mob, or stealing the deed off a mob. Once a deed is placed in a container in a clanhall, that clan 'claims' the deed.
- Once a zone re-pops, the zone deed is reset on a new random mob in the zone, and is ready to be claimed again (regardless of the fact the deed is still officially claimed by a clan at this stage).
- It would be cool if once a clan owns a zone, they get a percentage of all the shop transactions that occur within the zone, put into their treasury. It would also be cool if clan mobs started roaming zones if they had owned the zone for a certain amount of time. Or if zone mobs became aggro to non-clannies, or became non-aggro to clannies that owned a zone.
- It would be cool if clannies gained slightly increased experience in a zone they owned
These ideas mostly all come from this thread: http://4dimensions.org/forum/index/topic,399.30.html where they are talked about alongside other substantial clan changes that would also be cool.
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OK, I can see how Virisin's idea could be a fun feature for competitions between the clans.
The questions I have are mostly practical, since I cannot figure out a feasible way to implement some of the details.
And with "feasible" I mean a way to code or script it without me (or some other unfortunate builder) having to put a script on every mob in the game, because frankly that's just more work that I'm prepared to take on. It's bad enough having to produce over 150 deeds...
So my first question goes to the coders:
Can this entire feature be coded instead of scripted?
My second question goes to the scriptors of 4D: I know that some of you are better at complex scripts than I am myself.
Would any of you script experts be willing to take over this task?
Below are some of the points that I have a problem with:
- Deeds should randomly load on any mob within the zone, not a selection. Players should have to get lucky or thoroughly destroy a zone to uncover the deed, not just go around killing the top 3 mobs from every zone when they want to find a deed.
This raises several practical questions, if the feature is supposed to be scripted:
- How do we even determine the choice of which random mob to land on?
- What if the deed loads on a shopkeeper or any other unkillable mob? Or on a mob that cannot be stolen from? How do you get rid of a deed that remains in the zone at the end of the reset time? (A purge script on the deed, triggered by zone reset, would purge the deed even if it's in a Clan)
- Quite a few of the zones consist of several different vnums, since they were built in "100 room batches". (For instance Rip in time consists of 4 different zones, Mother Goose of 3, and there are many more examples). Since this feature will have to be vnum based I see a complication here; it can probably be handled, but means extra attention.
- How do we handle roaming mobs, who don't stay within the original zone? This would mostly occur in the various parts of the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea, since the fish move freely between the zones there. But maybe water zones shouldn't really have deeds?
- Which raises another question; Should animals really carry deeds?
- Once a zone re-pops, the zone deed is reset on a new random mob in the zone, and is ready to be claimed again (regardless of the fact the deed is still officially claimed by a clan at this stage).
- The time between zone resets varies between 5 minutes (in newbie zones) and 2 hours (in the harder zones). Do we really want the deeds to reset that often? (Someone suggested resets dependant on moonphase, which would mean a delay of about one day. Maybe that would be a better way to control it?)
- Should the deed even load every time the zone is reset, so that it's always available, or only let's say 10 percent of the time?
- It would be cool if once a clan owns a zone, they get a percentage of all the shop transactions that occur within the zone, put into their treasury. It would also be cool if clan mobs started roaming zones if they had owned the zone for a certain amount of time. Or if zone mobs became aggro to non-clannies, or became non-aggro to clannies that owned a zone.
- I think this would be cool too, provided it can be coded.
It's beyond my capability to script it. I can see that the vnum of the room where the deed currently is dropped can be used to recognize members of that Clan, but not how to make it global, without putting a script on every mob in a zone.
But without these extra benefits for the Clan that currently "owns" the zone, the deeds wouldn't have any real purpose, so it has to be resolved in some way.
Ideas, anyone?
- It would be cool if clannies gained slightly increased experience in a zone they owned
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In order to allow scripting of Virisin's idea you'll need to code:
1) "Clan_owner" as a variable for a zone. Zones need to store which clan owns them based on the deeds. This variable may need to be reset regularly to prevent stagnation. I'd recommend once per "mud year", just to keep things active.
2) A method in dg_scripts.cpp or whatever the hell it's called in your codebase that allows you to read, print, and modify clan_owner for a zone. The easiest way would probably be to have it based off of the world/room functions and just have the %self.clan_owner% call the room's zone rather than creating a zone.clan_owner function to iterate through. Not the cleanest method, but quick, easy, and with very little downsides.
From there it's mostly just a rote task of creating the actual deeds. Time consuming, but better as a scripted activity rather than a coded activity so that people can regularly tweak them without needing to recompile or involve someone with programming knowledge. If clan_owner is done right, scripters could even reset the clan that "owns" the zone without any coding knowledge which would make it easier to refresh for mud wide updates.
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Consider that my good deed for the month.
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- Every zone should have a deed, and they should all be out at once, not released as batches.
- Deeds should randomly load on any mob within the zone, not a selection. Players should have to get lucky or thoroughly destroy a zone to uncover the deed, not just go around killing the top 3 mobs from every zone when they want to find a deed.
- Deeds can be claimed by either getting the deed from the corpse of a mob, or stealing the deed off a mob. Once a deed is placed in a container in a clanhall, that clan 'claims' the deed.
- Once a zone re-pops, the zone deed is reset on a new random mob in the zone, and is ready to be claimed again (regardless of the fact the deed is still officially claimed by a clan at this stage).
- It would be cool if once a clan owns a zone, they get a percentage of all the shop transactions that occur within the zone, put into their treasury. It would also be cool if clan mobs started roaming zones if they had owned the zone for a certain amount of time. Or if zone mobs became aggro to non-clannies, or became non-aggro to clannies that owned a zone.
- It would be cool if clannies gained slightly increased experience in a zone they owned
I am OK with most of Virisin's points about this feature, but I still have a couple of objections or questions.
- I don't think large grid zones like Outer Space (25000 rooms) ir the Mediterranean Sea (1000 rooms) should have a deed.
- Load on any mob? What about shopkeepers and unkillable Questmobs? And should animals really carry deeds?
- What if a Clan claims a deed and then takes it out of the container again, to ensure that it cannot be stolen in a Clan raid? I assume that the Clan only stays as "owner" and get the benefits as long as the deed stays in the container? Ideally there should also be a list that all players could call out, about which zones currently are owned by which Clan.
- Since the zones have such a varying reset time, and since I also think that deeds shouldn't load every other hour, I suggest that we make them load once a day. This could be maintained by setting new moon as loadtime, unless there is an easier way to code once per RL day.
- I'm OK with the Clan benefits, as long as they can be coded. I suggest 5-10% of the shop transactions to be deposited on the Clan treasury. I'm not so sure about mobs getting aggro or non-aggro to non-clannies however. That might mess up some quests, and could also potentially be really annoying - actually it could be detrimental to Newbie or low level zones
- I suggest 10% extra exp for Clannies that own the zones.
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Ideally deeds are an interesting thing that anyone can get up and have a hunt for at any time, or they should be. Clannies should be able to go on a weekend mission and capture 40-50 deeds and create a large revenue source for themselves in a few hunting missions. But you want it to be hunting missions, randomload on any mob in the zone, if it's a shop-keeper it's just gonna be hard to get that deed until a reboot or repop or someone manages to steal it somehow. A list of deeds would be ideal as well as which clan owns them.
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Who makes the list of deeds? Did you want to start by posting a couple samples Virisin, so others can join in and we can maybe get some of the content out of the way for the rest of the team to implement?
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The deed for Midlands.
The deed for Mother Goose.
The deed for Enchanted Lands.
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I was thinking that basically any aread that already had a zoneflag would have a deed - so basically the same thing except that the deeds would give clans something. Question: what happens if a loner - or someone who has decided not to be in a clan - gets a deed? How do they benefit from it? Not everyone is going to want to be part of a clan - even a loner clan which involves a quest to become part of.
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Perhaps loners can claim the deed in the single loner recall room. And they gain the benefit until another clan claims the deed from the zone after the allotted time frame. Best idea so far was by moon phase.
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I think it'd be cool if players could buy showcases for their houses and then claim them individually as well as for the clan. Sacrificing any benefits other than prestige.
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I was thinking...
Molly came up with a great idea on how deeds should be earned. It is dastardly evil and cunningly clever, so much so, we are not going to tell anyone how its going to be implemented!
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Again, I ask - what about people that don't belong to ANY clan - not even the loner clan? Do they get all the benefits just because they have the deed in their posession (or house)?
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Secret idea.. Something along the lines of not actually doing anything, eh Horus?
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Loner isn't a clan, it's what you are when you are clanless. You can use the wolf whistle to go the the hideout, only when you have no clanflags in your title? With that, my prior idea still applies.
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If deeds are all brought into game at one time, will it be a competition of which clan can recover all deeds first? Perhaps when all are claimed they all reset. Does the clan gain something from finding all the deeds? Thoughts?
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I think some people misunderstood how I first envisioned deeds. I don't think they should literally be deeds you need to complete like a quest, it'd simply be a zoneflag like object that would randomload on any mob in the zone every reboot, you simply need to collect the object and place it in either a personal or clan showcase to claim the flag.
I don't think it needs to be a competition in any way other than it naturally is. If there is a list of all the deeds, and who owns which, it would naturally be a competition for clans or players to try and collect them all. There needn't be any prize other than the benefits you get for claiming them, and they should be easily obtainable by any player going hunting through a zone and it's unlikely any clan would be able to hold all of them at the same time simply because they would be quite easy to get, even newbies could claim them for seekers.
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I'm just thinking since it obviously isn't an easy task to collect all of the deeds out there, would it not be an achievement to have done so?
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Deeds are in! As many of your probably have noticed... and although they are new, here is a gist of my take on them.
From what I've noticed, the deeds have a very small chance of loading as loot upon the death of any mob. So theoretically you could get a deed two times in a row, if you are lucky enough. It is possible that there isn't mob in a zone that has a deed because it is based on chance to load only.
It took me around 1-2k kills the before the tweak to get my first two deeds, after the tweak to drop rate, it took probably roughly the same to get one. That is a lot of kills... for a newbie that can take a very long time. For this to be more of a competition...I recommend that the drop rate be increased again because what came out for me to be a less than 0.1% to load is very small.. at least be 1% so out of every 100 kills you should theoretically get one.
When a clan claims a deed they receive two benefits. A 10% increase in gold and experience from kills in the zone, and only for clan members of the clan that claimed it. This 10% gold increase goes into the clan treasury. Currently this only happens from kills by clan members within the zone, but I think that since the clan 'owns' the zone they should be receiving coins from anyone, regardless of the player that kills the mob. This will in turn reward the clan while people are trying to steal it from them, almost a downside to trying to steal it, but when the clan successfully steals it, they'll get the same benefit when someone tries to steal from them. What this does is give some repercussion in stealing a zone deed.. instead of now where a clan has nothing negative out of trying to reclaim a deed.
At the same time this will always help to refuel a treasury for future upgrades with clan raids?
Thoughts? Agree? Disagree?
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Quick correction, it's only a 1% gold gain per kill. Not 10%.
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I recommend that the drop rate be increased again because what came out for me to be a less than 0.1% to load is very small.. at least be 1% so out of every 100 kills you should theoretically get one.
Disagree. Getting a deed should be difficult and very, very rare. One out of 100 isn't rare enough in my opinion for something that gives you a bonus for as long as your clan keeps claim on it.
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I don't know, I scowered a particular zone for an HOUR STRAIGHT this morning that had a ton of easy mobs, aggro set on and looking in every corpse. this zone repops very frequently and i pretty much destroy the mobs as soon as i walk into the room with a few exceptions. Within an HOUR of sticking to one zone, I found nothing. Maybe it shouldn't be 1%, but is .1% realistic?
Also, I don't think clans should earn gold based on everyone in the zone, just the clan members.
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Getting a deed shouldn't be rare. If you kill every single mob in a zone you should collect a deed. It should load 100%, or at least above 50% of the time on a mob in a zone. They are not artifacts or rare-load they are simply a nifty perk to diversify where you hunt and explore. If they are extremely rare, no one would care about finding them during hunts and would have to specifically go out of their way to start searching for them. This defeats the purpose of deeds entirely.
The mud in which I steal this idea from, deeds would be swapping hands multiple times a day. The competition to capture all the deeds wasn't difficult because it was hard to get deeds, it was difficult because it was extremely hard to KEEP deeds. Any old player can get lucky killing the first mob in the zone they see, or a hunting party would almost certainly uncover multiple deeds.
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Just because an idea was influenced by another mud does not mean we cannot implement our OWN flavour of the idea.
PS: There is one factor that will increase your chance of getting a deed, and there are a few factors that will reset your chance.
PPS: Deeds are for dedication for each zone, so you need to be quite dedicated for the deed to load.
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as much as it pains me to say,
i agree with vir..isin.... :P
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This is a terrible implementation of deeds and totally defeats the purpose of having them. Also providing another way of freely attaining gold without bringing in any more potential gold sinks is extremely irresponsible and will just lead to further gold inflation.
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I'm not entirely sure why you maintain such influence in the coding department Horus when you demonstrated that you care nought for 4d after lying to everyone for going on a year about supposed code changes.
Deeds are not for dedication for each zone, that is what zone flags are for. Why even bother with both of them? Why take the fun out of this for Seekers? Why even bother implementing something else with such a pathetic chance of loading that no one will bother leaving recall to find them. If it requires hours and hours more work just to find 2 deeds then it's a ridiculous idea.
Good work again Horus, well done.
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Wtf man? Quit your whining, this was your idea. I do not like clan deeds whatsoever, and I agree with you, there needs to be gold sinks, and I really dont see any point of having clan deeds in the first place. But apparently enough people liked it, so dont go blaming me for it.
As to why its harder to get than how you want it, well, thats because there is an actual bonus to getting it, like xp bonus and gold bonus. So I see why it SHOULD be harder to get. Having 1 percent chance to get a deed, where every single mob you kill, you get some chance of getting it, is actually quite a high chance of getting the deed. They are easier to get than artis.
Quit your freaking whining. You have done shit for the 4d except exploit bugs, and everything you have done on 4d is for your own enjoyment, so I dont see why you are on such a high pedestal.
Btw, I have left out any personal attacks for long enough and I have ignored your incessant personal attacks to me. Quit it, just because you disagree with something doesnt mean you have to get personal. As you SHOULD know, when something is added, Molly likes to consult with quite a few people, its not any one person's decision, and certainly not yours either, so stop attacking people or things when its not to your liking.
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So it's not even possible to steal a deed from a mob, as a sneaky way of obtaining the deed and stopping it loading again until the mob that thinks it still has it is killed.. That's great.
This is now just another thing directed at the few oldbies that still manage to find the time to play, and will simply let whichever oldbie is currently the most active on the mud amass a richer than rich clan treasury. The deeds will be lucky if they change hands once a month let alone once an hour...
You wouldn't know the half of it Horus, you turn up, promise everyone great things about this code you work on for well over a year (consistently pushing back any and all deadlines anyone would make) and then apparently delete every thing you previously did (including all back-ups). You wonder why no one takes you seriously, lol.
You were the worst thing to ever happen to 4d, you got everyone's hopes up and then shat on everything. Now you just hang around mocking the fact that Table Round is meant to be a 'good' clan, as you make retarded lewd comments at every passing male, female or dog.. You're a sad, pathetic, 30+ year old man who I would have nothing but pity for if you didn't have such stakes in 4d.
As a coder I'm surprised you're not more outraged at the way this was implemented, or at least could have put forward a few good ideas...
"As to why its harder to get than how you want it, well, thats because there is an actual bonus to getting it, like xp bonus and gold bonus. So I see why it SHOULD be harder to get."
There is more than one way to make something like this still balance. If something has a good bonus, and there is only 1 per zone in the mud, making them ridiculously EASY to get is actually just as good. Anyone online for 5 or 10 minutes could go kill all the mobs in Olde Yorke and grab a deed.
Meh, I don't support this feature at all really. These are just a cross between artifacts (poorly implemented) and zoneflags now and will simply lead to escalating clan treasuries for whoever the one or two players are that can be bothered. The lack of allowing steal is another way of removing any advantage to peek+steal combo, and forcing 4d into a 1dimensional HUNTER MAX DAMAGE KILL KILL KILL kind of game that bored everyone when it first became like this.
Bravo, everyone.
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As I've already mentioned before it was all put in, I'm not too fond of the deed idea. I find it to be a bit pointless.
However, being that I like friendly competition and actually want to try a new feature out, I thought I'd give it a go. Here is my experience.
Day 1: get Nightdragon realms deed after 30 minutes.
Day 2: return to find Xeriuth had claimed it after I did (apparently within 5 minutes of entering the zone, just like the 1000 other deeds he found already)
Day 2 cont: spent 6 HOURS looking for deeds, 3 in Nightdragons, 1.5 in EL, .5 in Temple of damned, and 1 in Aussie. I FOUND NOTHING!
After consulting with various imm/morts about my issues, I just pretty much got laughed at, told I'm unlucky, I'm doing it wrong, etc etc etc. Let me say noone is this unlucky, and I'm not doing it wrong as some can attest to after witnessing all my techniques I told them about.
This is a stupid feature the way it is now, and after tonight I will be taking no part in it. All it has managed to do is make me wonder wth I'm doing on here. Yes it was my choice to spend 6 hours specifically looking for deeds, but when you spend that much time committing mass genocide in zones with lots of mobs that respawn frequently, I dont care if it is a 1% load, you should've found ONE by then. Someone seriously needs to take a look at this and figure out if its worth it. >:(
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Oh look, Virisin just mentioned how he hates it when people who actually actively mud on 4d will accumulate a lot of wealth. Holy shit, what a revelation. Now lets calm Viri down by punishing those that are active here instead. Because those that are actually active are making the mud unbalanced because they actually kill and collect gold!!!!!
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What a surprise, Horus is talking out his ass again.
Asmodeus is one of, if not THE most active in the mud at the moment - and came 1st in the zone-flag competition. You'd think he'd have a pretty good shot of capitalizing on deeds the way they're implemented right now but wait, what do you know.. He spends 6 hours searching, finds nothing, and concludes that the feature is the epitome of boring and all it does is try and force players to grind more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and ... wait what.
Uhh, I'm not sure where I asked to punish those that are active. I think those that are active would benefit greatly if deeds were much easier to obtain, in fact those that were MOST active would be able to consistently regain the deeds they lose to other players or clans.
You're hysterical Horus and you cannot take criticism. You get all huffy and extremely defensive and this is why people struggle to work with you. You're literally a retard.
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Oh look, Virisin hasnt even tried to play it and he seems to KNOW everything about it. I managed to get two deeds (Haze and Punt) and I spent 3 hrs in Aussie and got nothing. Thats life. Why dont you play and actually test it before you talk out of YOUR ASS. At least Asmo is talking from experience, and guess what? Shock horror, I am talking from experiencing this too.
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What more is there to learn that I don't already know, except that there are apparently some secret ways to tweak (abuse) the feature. I guess if I go to all the places in zones that I know have respawn mobs I could set up a trigger and just leave myself there until I get a deed loaded. In fact, if this is done based on mobs loaded in certain vnums, rather than with the mobs themselves, I could probably just set up a trigger that killed any elementals or clones I created as I move through zones until I collect the deed.
Who knows, the intricacies don't matter, and I'm sure I could figure out whatever little tricks there are to apparently fool newbies. The way this is implemented currently defeats most of the goals of putting it in in the first place, so unless you can properly explain why the goals were all changed, I don't think I'll support this implementation - clearly I thought the goals originally set out were more appropriate.
Prove me wrong, Horus, in a month I'll come back and check the list of deeds and if Xeriuth's name isn't next to every single one I'll give you a cookie. If I even manage to see one new name that doesn't look like an oldbie, I'll delete my character and you won't need to deal with me again. I'm fairly confident.
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Again, instead of talking out of your arse, why dont you go into the zone and summon elementals or whatever you want and kill them and see if you can get deeds that way.
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I've got an exam tomorrow, I'm not gonna spend 6 hours searching for something that gives me 1% gold gains..
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Can we please uphold at least a somewhat civil tone, and try to keep the personal attacks out of the discussion?
That usually makes whatever arguments you have more valid. :p
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Settle down guys... This is meant to be a clan competition, at what point does it need to become belligerent? Use some constructive criticism, Asmodeus at least used some... I agree the drop rate should be increased, after all the benefit of deeds is very minimal. A 1% gold gain, is VERY small, and with it only being attainable by clan members of the clan that owns the zone, it's not like it's a huge influx of gold. The 10% experience is something, but still rather minimal... Essentially one free kill every 10. For the effort involved in getting the deeds currently, the bonuses don't come close to the efforts.
As for me getting a lot of deeds, it's only because I kill VERY fast. Go to a zone with 10 mobs in one room and use earthquake. That just increased my chance ten fold theoretically to get a deed. Then do that every room you move, and wipe a whole zone in 20 min, if you have no luck move to the next newbie zone, it is all chance, my first deed after the recent change took me around 1000 kills, after that I was getting them every 20 to couple hundred. It is completely random due to the chance. There is no secret behind getting deeds, it is just simply luck. Considering how long it takes me though to get the deeds in comparison to how fast I kill, newbies might as well not even try. Since kills can take a significantly longer time, in which a 1% chance to load would be much more appropriate.
Also, I don't know if elementals/clones would work, it's worth a shot, and if it does work should definitely be fixed.
Whoever coded the deeds would be the best one to answer us on the actual percent to load. I think 1% is certainly sufficient, especially considering the benefits. So please change it, it will appease a lot of people and maybe make the the work put into this new feature appreciated and many more people will enjoy it. Thank you!
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In response to your method of killing, I do very similar. Walk into rooms with a handful of easy mobs with aggro on that get killed in the same tic as me walking in, and if not, usually the next tic after that. I kill very fast as well. With the amount of time I spent doing this at a constant rate, and your desc of it being about luck (which it is, hence the random load), I must be the unluckiest son of a bitch in the game. Except Candy said she spent 6 hours doing the same, and Horus did 3. Its just suspicious, is all.
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As of 1 day and 13hrs of mud uptime, we have the following stats for clan deeds:-
Sicilians - 12 zones
Table Round - 5 zones
Dark Jedi - 1 zone
Saints - 1 zone
Dragons - 1 zone
And that is only based on less than 10 active players.
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The mud that I stole these from had about 3 active players and about 100 deeds changed hands multiple times a day. But I'll pretty much submit to whatever Xeriuth and Asmodeus think is good here, they're doing the playtesting.
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So, you now think you will follow whatever opinions Asmo and Xeri provides? I dont think they need you to talk on their behalf, and if you want to state your opinions, then state it as an informed player - test it yourself before you criticise something.
2 days and 4hrs since inception:-
Sicilians - 13 deeds
Table Round - 5 deeds
Chaos - 4 deeds (I believe Loran found at least 2 of these)
Saints - 1 deed
Dragons - 1 deed
(Looks like someone reclaimed one of the deeds off Dark Jedi)
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Chaos - 4 deeds (I believe Loran found at least 2 of these)
I found all 4, but will see how long they last :)
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2days and 22hrs uptime:-
Chaos - 21 deeds
Sicilians - 5 deeds
Table Round - 3 deeds
Dark Jedi - 2 deeds
Saints - 2 deeds
Dragons - 1 deed
It appears zone deeds have been reclaimed several times between clans.
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yeah a few, but mostly you never bother regetting them. unless you actually need to level, and a particular place is good exp originally.
stupid idea from the getgo. :P
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What I think needs to be implemented is mile marker, global bonuses for a clan..
At 10 deeds for the clan, they get some sort of buff, at 20 same thing, at 30 something else. This will give incentive to keep reclaiming deeds to get the bonuses for your clan. If the bonuses are worth it, this could make people want to go collect all the deeds... increasing competition. Right now there is little incentive to go out and get the deeds.. this would add incentive.
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I'm going to agree with Xeriuth on this one. As I understood the original plan, thats how I thought the rewards were going to be implemented. But even if its every 15 or 20 just so awards don't stack up too much, I think it should be done.
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They should also be worldwide effects, if Chaos owns 20 zones, Chaos should gain milestone*2 for every kill made in the zone, regardless of if it's a Chaos member or not.
A milestone could be every 10 deeds, hence 20 being milestone*2. And a milestone might provide 10% experience bonus for Chaos members hunting in a zone, and 10% of the gold from every mob killed goes to Chaos. This doesn't actually bring any new gold into the mud, rather Chaos simply takes a small 'tax' of gold from players hunting in the zone if they don't own the deed themselves.
I still think deeds should be easier to get, even if the chance was just 25%, it's still a lot more than 5% or whatever it is now, which has so far seen only about 30/100+ deeds come into existence.
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Personally I think the percentage load looks just fine as it is, not to easy and not too hard either.
The reason why there are still only around 30 deeds in circulation is probably that people tend to stick to zones they know well, their favourite levelling places, or just zones with lots of mobs.
Or maybe they haven't yet realised that unlike the zoneflags all zones in the mud have deeds. (With the possible exception of the large grid zones, but I'll have to ask the coders about that to be sure).
As for an extra milestone bonus per every 10th zone in a Clan's posssion, I like that idea, provided that the bonus only is for the 20th zone (whichever that is) and that the bonus goes away as soon as the total number drops below the milestone. That could make for some nice and irritating tactics game between the Clans.
One thing that I don't quite like about the feature is that the deedlist already is pretty spammy, and this will get worse as more deeds get claimed. I'd prefer it if there were two options, one to see just the deeds in your own Clanhall, and another to see all the deeds, (like the present list).
Ideal of course would be to be able to call out a deeds list for any Clan in the game, the commands being something like 'show deed <Clan-name>' and 'show deed all'.
But if that is really hard to code, I'd settle for two options; to see just the deeds of your own Clan when looking in the box and a another command to show all. Heck I'd settle for the present display if getting two separate lists is too much work to code. I'm just wondering how the list is going to look when all 150+ deeds get claimed.
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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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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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Many interesting ideas in that post Once.
Some things I want to comment on from the past few posts.
1: Deed List. This sort of goes along with what Molly was saying, and with what I was saying on Viri's original post of deeds. First, I like having a master deed list, as well as a clan deed list. What I said I wanted to see (and it seems others agree) is who in each clan got the deed. I know Loran and I have been sort of competing against each other within the clan... friendly competition is great! I suggest the following:
Show Deed <clan name>
Deeds Collected by <Clan Name>: <number of deeds>
- <Deed Name> <Who Collected it>
- <Deed Name> <Who Collected it>
.
.
.
This shows a number without having to go through and count them all, as well as who in the clan put that deed in the box last.
Show Deed All would show something similar to what there is now. You probably don't necessarily need the actual person who collected the deed in this list. The number would be nice, but again, not necessary if you can see it in 'show deed <clan>'
2: I think deeds should not reset every so often. It should be a constantly ongoing thing. You should either reclaim the deed through the zone, or through a clan raid (when those become an option). The zone flag idea once posed is an interesting one. But I think that excludes a large portion of the pbase (which isnt that big to begin with). Perhaps something else that would accomplish the same effect? Also, not all zones with deeds have zone flags, so it wouldn't always work.
3: Whats wrong with adding some perks to the grindfest? Grinding sucks, that much is certain. At least NOW there is a little bit of incentive to grinding. I think its sometimes a good thing to add a feature that try to help boost our weaknesses (grinding). We just need to make sure there is enough of a bonus to make the deeds through grinding worth it.
Newbies and non-newbies who still want to level automatically participate in deed collection through leveling. The extra xp that we get now for owning a deed is tailored for these players. Although oldbie have the current advantage of earning more deeds, at this time, oldbie participation has to come out of the goodness of their heart to help their fellow clannies as the xp perk isnt really helpful to them. This is where the milestone idea should come in. The milestones that will provide some buffs and extra stuff is the incentive for the oldbies as well as noobs. Bonus damage, spells (innates?), stat boosts, etc. Different things at different levels. The higher the number, the better the milestone boost. My question... should they stack? So if a clan gets to 40 and you get a milestone every 20, do you get both milestone from 20 and 40, or does the 40 replace the 20? I seem to think the stacking is preferable, but thats my opinion.
The extra gold bonus is a little pointless now too just b/c there is no use for gold. Hopefully that will change with raids.
4: I dont find there to be any need for global announcements for deed shifts. I guess i don't mind it, but if you go that route, at least add a toggle to turn it on/off.
I'm sure some of this post is a little nonsensical as I am currently very distracted, so for that I apologize. However, the points should be clear enough to understand.
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Once makes some good points, and some good solutions though I think some are also a bit silly.
I agree that currently the deeds are a huge grindfest, it's not like you just have to grind a zone once and if you manage to uncover every mob you will either get the deed or be foiled by someone having stolen the deed before you so it doesn't reset. You literally might grind a huge zone, down to the last mob 10+ times and still be unlucky.
This is a BIG point too, I want to make a few things clear: the way the system works currently, it is based heavily on how many mobs you kill. I'm unsure how big of a factor diversity is, if it is even taken into account at all. But if I go to a zone, and wander around the heavily populated 'good levelling' areas with aggro on and keep doing it every time those mobs repop, I will eventually get the deed. This doesn't even force me to know a zone well, as soon as I find an area in a zone that is packed full of mobs, I just camp there killing until I get the deed.
I think there is a better alternative to this that doesn't even have to make it 'easier' to get deeds. All that needs to be done is this: instead of deeds having a low chance to load on the death of a mob in the zone, a deed should have a chance (low or high, meh (though it would need to be at least slightly higher with this structure)) to load on any mob in the zone upon the reboot of that zone. Let me give a more clear example:
Midlands repops, there is a 30% chance the deed will load upon repop and if it does it randomly repops on any mob in the zone. The deed is now IN THE GAME, in the inventory of whichever mob it happened to load on. If it happens to load on a mob faraway in the zone, I can't simply keep killing all the gars until I hit that 0.1% chance to make it load, I have to start killing all the Gars being very hopeful, and I could easily get lucky. But if I don't get it from the Gar's, I know there is a reasonable chance it will be somewhere else in the zone - I have to actually search the zone and kill every mob I can find hoping it has the deed.
I think this would be a better way to structure the deeds, as it would also allow thieves to peek at mobs, and steal the deed from them. Without that mob dying, the deed wouldn't even have a chance to repop next time Midlands repops, until the game sees that the mob it thinks has the deed has died, and then the deed has a chance to load again. It also gives incentive to grind, without making the whole thing depend totally on grinding, and it gives a bigger incentive to have to know the zone. I would recommend a 50% load chance for deeds this way, because it would be very demotivating to kill every mob in the zone 10+ times and get unlucky that the deed just didn't happen to have loaded at all.
The names of the deeds currently seem to honour the builder of the zone more than the player who grabbed the deed. This seems really odd, even zoneflags don't honour the builder of the zone. I would remove the name of the builder from the deed-name, and add a variable attached to deeds to keep track of which player captured it. Then when a player looks in the clan box, they see all the deeds only their own clan has, as well as which player in the clan collected the deed. If a player types 'show deeds' it will show all the deeds in the game, and which clan they're owned by, potentially also showing which player. I also agree that deeds should be gossiped about when found. When someone claims a deed, the town gossip should make a statement to that affect:
"Asmodeus just claimed the deed for Midlands!"
"Loran claims the deed for Mother Goose, Sicilians won't be happy!"
Or something to that affect, showing either someone claiming an unclaimed deed, or someone claiming a deed that another clan owns.
I like Once's idea that every month the deeds repop, this would re-invigorate the race every so often and at least prevent it going stale too soon.
***
Another idea, to do with the benefits of deeds. Extra gold is pretty pointless, as has been pointed out. Because gold is worthless. Even tokens are relatively worthless. Experience is the only real benefit, and even that is pointless to someone with GM who are the main hunters of deeds at the moment. What I think needs to be discussed are some more interesting benefits that are possible, here are some ideas:
Once a clan owns the deed to a zone, mobs in that zone might:
-Slur at players from other clans that are under a certain level.
-Aggro players from other clans that are level 50.
-Pick up items they find on the ground, and donate them to the clan HQ.
-This would be especially effective if there were actually random-load objects that it was actually really handy to find. Tokens are boring, but imagine if tokens randomly loaded on the ground very occasionally, it'd be nice if zones you owned effectively searched for you by having the mobs in the zone donate things they pick up.
Here's an interesting one:
-Clans that own a zone can bribe mobs from the zone to collect things from death-traps. If it cost a member of a clan that owned Odessin 1 silver token to have the contents of a DT in the zone donated to the Clan HQ, it would allow for players that hit DTs to interact with other clans if their own clan didn't happen to own the zone. They might have to pay a clan 2 silvers, or even 1 gold if it was a really worthy set of equipment, for that clan to get their equipment back for them. It would also be an incentive to control zones that have DTs in them.
Those are just some ideas, the benefits to owning a deed certainly need to be more thoroughly discussed at the very least. There are a lot of options.
-Mobs casting beneficial spells on members of a clan that own the zone or casting debilitating spells on members of clans that don't own a zone...
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If you have it set up that way viri, wouldn't someone have to go through every zone and make a list of the mobs that shouldn't have a chance to load it, and then actually set up some parameters to prevent that from happening for each? And if thats true, wouldn't that be a huge PITA? Is there an easy way to do that?
I don't see deeds resetting every so often as keeping it from going stale any more than the way it is set up now. In fact, as one of the people participating heavily in capturing deeds, I would be fairly upset if that happened. All the work I put in to help chaos get something like 30+ deeds so far goes down the drain? Its like having a mini p-wipe every so often, but with deeds... why?!? I think its better to keep it to stealing deeds in raids when they're in, or from the zone itself once again.
I still think at least have a toggle for the gossips. I don't really care that much about seeing those messages, its just more junk on the screen.
As for an off the wall milestone option... What if one of the highest benefits if you own a lot of milestones makes anyone in that clan's zone pk'able (only by members of the clan, of course)? maybe thats a little harsh... just trying to think of other appealing options.
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The way I see it, if it loads on a shopkeeper that's just one repop you won't be able to get the deed, it's not like it's going to load on an unkillable mob every time, heck it's not even gonna load every time, so it's kinda just an inherent increase in difficulty to obtain a deed.
I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but if it was done this way, it would be possible to 'locate deed' and see the deeds that were currently in the game. Even if they're !locate, you can still see if it's loaded or not. This seems like a bad thing, and I guess this might be why whoever implemented it tried to do it the way they did. Having it so every unique mob you kill in a zone increases your chance of collecting a deed slightly, to 'encourage' more diverse killing. Not sure if that's actually what they did, but I hope so.
Heh, I always thought some revolutionary mud could make a shitton of glorious features if they had monthly p-wipes. Not full p-wipes, but some kind of monthly reset. That's a whole nother story though. And I think I actually agree with you, I would prefer if they didn't reset every month.
A toggle for the gossips would be good.
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Ok. I'm posting this because Horus is throwing a shitfit and getting mad at me over tells, and because for some reason he thinks me posting this will solve all the problems. The following is my opinion: for the way deeds are set up now, I think the current load percent works well. There is no need to set it higher. Sometimes the deed loads right away, sometimes it takes a few repops of slaughtering an entire zone to get a deed.
That being said, this is the last thing I'm going to say on the matter of deeds for a while. Thank you Temes for helping me realize this.
I still maintain that deeds are stupid. I have said this from the beginning. "Why," you ask, "are you collecting so many deeds then, Asmodeus? Grinding is obviously a huge PITA when you're not receiving any benefits from it." Good question, fellow 4Der. Here's the real answer that really didn't cross over from my subconscious until talking with Temes.
The real reason I am collecting deeds is because all the people in Chaos are collecting deeds. For us, collecting deeds is more of a fun activity than race to obtain perks. They're just a fun group to be around and work together with. When we're all online spread around the realms deed-hunting, our ctell is a lot of fun to watch. To be honest, if Loran and Temes and Kito and, yes, for a moment even Jaros, weren't trying to collect deeds and having fun with it, would I be going out and collecting them? Probably not.
All of you can sit here and angrily debate deeds and their purposes and their mechanics and their load percentages until the cows come home (and yes, I've been throwing in my opinion because I have been taking part in actually collecting them and just want to help), but Chaos is just going to keep hanging out and having fun with this "clan-building activity". I love you guys!
One more thing and I'm finished, I promise... Temes couldnt have said it better:
Message 36 : Sun Jun 12 (Temes) :: Deeds are sucky?
"Deeds are no fun if your clan is small, riven with strife, or plain sucky. All other clans on 4D are."
"So yes, deeds are a great idea. For Chaos, and only Chaos."
"I'm not complaining about the deeds. Chaos is enjoying them. Thank you very much!"
Asmo out.
*drops the mic*
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Wanted to touch on a few things real quick.
I agree there should be global chats of when a deed changes hands, claimed initially and who claimed it. And preferably toggleable. Could perhaps just have it chatted over quest channel, and you can toggle quest on and off whether you want to hear it or not.
I think the way deeds load is fine, at least you have a potential chance of loading it every reboot. If a deed would load on a shopkeeper during a reboot, you'd pretty much be screwed for 5 days at some times because the mud does not crash anywhere near as often as it once did.
There should be milestones for specific amount of deeds and respective bonuses. I think they should also be cumulative bonuses. As I've mentioned before the top prize being when a clan manages to claim all deeds in the game. At a point such as that, I think that would be an appropriate time to have a global reset of deeds, and start from scratch once more. It's a hard feat to achieve let along maintain, hence the reward should be permanent for hitting max deeds, even as subtle as name on a plaque or any number of things.
Changes to mobs and how they act in a zone would be a nice feature to have added, but not priority. I think the milestones is a better thing to hit, mainly to give incentive to finding deeds because the current bonuses don't cut it. This would of course help resolve the grinding aspect to make it better in the fact of being more desirable, having an actual purpose, and will help being selective of where you hunt.
I don't think forcing anyone into pk due to deeds is wise.
Will touch on more at a later time. That is all for now.
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Hmm, Asmo, is that a recruitment post for Chaos? ;)
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Asmo is sneaky like that.
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A quick idea, wondering what you all thing, but with this talk about ctells and how it can be fun and lively. What about a small feature to get it going, clan alliances... which can precede clan wars possibly. If two clans like each other enough they can ally, once done they can hear but ctells, of their own and other clan. I'm not sure how hard this would be to code, but could prove to be very interesting and fun. Any ideas, thoughts?
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Clan alliances would be a fun way of helping small clans and bigger clans. The small clans would get help in wars and also, depending upon the treaty agreement, could also get financial help, etc. The bigger clans would benefit too but in less materialistic ways. Helping out a smaller clan not only feels good but it can be sort of a status builder.
There are many different types of alliances. Some alliances will be made simply as a financial charity to a struggling clan. Some may provide protection or support if a war is waged on their ally but not declared by the ally, some may even go a step further and agree to support their ally in any/all wars even those their ally declared.
In order to have alliances, there would be a need for diplomats. Clans can decide if they want to set up an internal structure in their gov't to manage the foriegn affairs and appoint a leader over that department which would still be under the CL. And as long as it is peace time, giving a newbie a diplomat job is a good way to build friendships which leads to more permanent activity. Obviously you would want a knowledgable player to be the diplomat to a clan where there are serious issues to hash out.
If there are diplomats and treaties, there would need to be a place/channel for the two (or more) clans to discuss business. perhaps there can be a room within each clanhall built to allow other clans' diplomats in with certain restrictions? Diplomats could be another way of resolving problems without going to war.
These are just some thoughts I had on the subject. I am all for allowing alliances. It would add a new depth to the game.
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While waiting for any bigger changes to the Clan system to be worked on, I am about to finish my King of the Clans idea. Sice it's been some time since I mentioned it, I'll describe the idea once more:
* A strong mob would be teleporting all over the world, and when found and killed would have a 50 percent chance of loading the King of Clans Crown. The possession of this item would symbolically make a Clan 'King of Clans', a bit along the same idea as the Blue Band of Victory.
* The crown has to be dropped in the room with the Deed box for certain benefits to work. As long as the item remains in this room, the members get the benefits from it.
* Only one Clan can possess the crown at the same time. As soon as another Clan gets it and drops it in their Clan Hall, the possession of the title goes over to them, and the other item is purged.
* The crown can also be stolen, if and when we open the Clan halls.
* The Crown will also disappear when the mud reboots or crashes.
What I'd want input on from the players is what the Clan reward would be. It should be pretty good, since potentially any Clan can get the crown.
We already have teleports from the deeds and the zoneflags.
So I am thinking maybe 5 free spells, but am unsure which ones would be appropriate. Suggestions, anyone?
If someone has some other good reward ideas, please share them here.
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I like the 5 free spells idea. how about a free perz'd item? As a newb, I don't know how much those are valued so I don't know if that is a good suggestion though. An addition to damroll as a reward for being the strongest/best?
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A big one-time reward is not possible, it has to be something smaller, but continuous, to work as a Clan Reward.
The crown is going to change owners many times, so it should only last as long as it is in the Clanhall.
So far free spells or timered affects is all I can think about.
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If we're going to do this open clan halls and clan raids thing, what about the current crown holder gets some sort of small discount on defenses as well as maybe 3 spells, instead of 5 spells only. The discount only applies if they buy while they have the crown, of course. May be a good idea because people might be trying to break into the clan and steal it.
But... are spells the right path for an award for this? Spells are not necessarily something worth fighting for in my mind. I don't know right now what would be worth fighting for at the moment (except maybe defense discounts), but I don't think spells are the answer.
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It's quite hard to give real rewards to players that can pretty much cast every spell on themselves, or quaff any others.
Asmodeus' idea is likely the best one, but even that is kinda boring and would only inspire players to become king of clans if they planned on beefing up, and once beefed up they wouldn't need the king of clans again. A better idea would probably make the king of clans just have greater clan defenses while they are king of clans. E.g. whichever clan is currently king, a badass monster protects the clan from intruders that's stronger than any possible clan defense mobs.
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Yeah, thats a better idea Viri. Don't lower cost, but boost defense effectiveness/stats by a small percentage if your clan owns the crown.
We also need to keep awards for KoC different than what deed milestones will be. As of right now, I kind of see them fulfilling the same purposes, just in slightly different ways. And while they are similar, the only way to make each of them kind of worth it is by having rewards being worth it as well as different.
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What you oldbies tend to forget is that not all players are multi remorts with every possible spell and defense.
This is for ALL Clan members, remember, and free spells in the Clanhall might be a good way to attract new members.
I was also thinking about more expensive or rare spells like Armor, Bless, Shield, Stoneskin, Vitalize.
I also like Viri's idea about defences being better only as long as the Crown is in the Clanhall.
However, there will probably be some time before we can implement Clan Raids.
What worries me about it is that it might make players leave in protest again. Some Clans might not like the idea of having their hall raided, or having to spend a lot of gold and tokens on defences.
There is a possible solution to this; making the open Clanhalls optional.
So a Clan can choose to stay out of Clan Raids altogether.
But if they do, they will also not get the benefits from the Deeds and the Crown.
What do you think?
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What rewards can there be for the King of Clans. Well this could sort of tie in with the spells thread. I think utility spells that you always have to but another for would be the better spells. Ones that you can't get from healers such as armor and bless as Molly mentioned. Vitalize is a good one. However I have an idea to throw on top of this, the KOC rewards could sort of be tiered. For instance, if clan A gets the crown, then the mob would of course still load. That same clan could go after it and claim the crown a second time in a row, to get an even better reward and so on. The moment another clan gets the crown, the clan despite the number of times they claimed the crown in a row, lose all of the rewards and have to start over. The better defenses can be work well. Other spells that could be good are locate object, identify, or higher end levels mana shield, brace, locate person. Another potential award is to increase the experience bonus everywhere by a smaller percent, and have it stack with whether your clan owns the zone with the deed too. So 5 % extra experience everywhere and 15% in zones the clan owns, instead of the 10% it is already set at. Or simply perhaps a temporary exp buff. for the next 2 mud days after claiming a crown, the clan gets a double exp buff, much similar to double exp holidays that we used to have. Since a crown should be a group effort to attain anyways with your clan, not a solo effort. With more players on to have gotten the crown, then they are fair game to level as well afterward as an immediate reward. just some thoughts .
A suggestion for clanhalls could be perhaps, have a section simply for raiding and another part of the clanhall for clan members only. This way clans can still be raided, but it's up to them whether they participate in raids, and in turn deeds and king of crowns. They should just be wary of storing gold in their clan treasury if they don't want to take part in raids.
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I think you should just take a few minutes and realize that all these new shitty stuff,
you keep implementing, is horrible, and not really bringing anything to the mud,
except making it worse. i smell desperate additions, that only lead to faulty implementations, that in the end
will just be in the game to no use or joy for anyone. why is it you are never fixing the problems of existing shit.
you continuosly add new half broken shit instead. If you would bother to put half the time to fix existing things that has been broken for years or not working correctly for years.... instead of adding new awfull things....
you can't fix a broken thing by adding more things that will end up broken and left for years without fixing. ;D
stop implementing bad shit........
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the point of my so awe inspiring post was, fix what is broken before ya'll,
implement 50 half-assed ideas.. :D
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Jason's actually onto something here.. 4d is already quite feature rich, it's just that every feature is broken.
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Not a fan of the tiered crown idea.
Raidable/non-Raidable sections of the clan hall is an idea to look more at.
This is a bit off topic (I blame Jason)... is it possible to take some time on figuring out how to make leveling at first a bit more newbie-friendly? I've seen two newbies in the past few days complain about how hard it is to level. And then the only way they seem to be happy (because it seems to go so slowly) is if they're power-leveled.
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true asmodeus, but what they really should DO,
is to bring back the way grouping worked before,
very fond memories of massive groups taken route to dinos.
with that kind of grouping again, eventually you could add more areas of harder mobs for grouping expeditions.
would be fun, is all im saying... ;D
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Yeah even I don't level cause it takes too long.
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I thought the tiered reward sounded pretty good. And I like making this event optional.
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Jason's actually onto something here.. 4d is already quite feature rich, it's just that every feature is broken.
Every feature is broken? Don't you guys exaggerate a bit here?
So be a bit more constructive give us a list of all features that are broken, and preferably also explain in what way.
That would make it easier for the coders to fix it.
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I'd say it's a bit of an exaggeration. Sure deeds can be improved upon. But I think 4d doesn't really have a lot of features. Gladiators were implemented, but I think it should have been done differently, to a point where I think people would enjoy it more. I can go into that idea again on another thread sometime. Right now we have deeds and king of clans on the plate.
We don't have crafting, fishing is very limited but still there, farming was popular when it rewarded tokens but when switched to tradepoints kind of lost interest.
Really our primary features that we are known for is our world and our quests. But those aren't truly features in my opinion. All muds have zones and sort of quests. But actual things (features) to spice up the life of the mud, for people to gather and group and have fun, that's what is lacking, that other muds have and what we need here. These clan changes are intended to do just that, and the deeds helped with Chaos, as Asmo used in his recruitment post.
Perhaps we need more elite zones that are impossible to solo, but need groups to go to. However the experience yielded per mob would have to be worth it. If you can kill 20 dino's and get 200mil exp in 10min and it takes you 10min to kill 5 mobs in the new zone and they only yield 350mil total, you'd rather go solo and get the experience quicker. We can actually just simply make zones like Dark Planet and Prehistoric Forest have harder mobs, so there is no need for new zones. Groups pretty much work like they did in the olden days. Leader everyone would follow and be primary tank, while the last person in the group would be secondary tank, just in case a random mob would walk in and attack. Since they attack the last person to enter the room. From what I remember that's how it worked in the old code. It is just a lot easier to solo these days then it was back then. I remember rip in time zone being a challenge for many people back then... that says a lot I think.
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I am still wondering what all those broken features are.
Jason and Virisin, you made the claim, so provide me with a list.
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Hamstring still doesn't work for one.
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If we're actually talking features though:
Races: races are implemented with rather ridiculously willy-nilly bonuses, most of which are not remotely equal.
Classes: classes are implemented in a way that totally removes any diversity, and most show no signs of use except when forced to.
Skills: skills fall into 3 broad categories: damage, buff, debuff, and all are virtually just different names for the same thing. Less than 20 skills are actually good.
Spells: spells fall into 3 broad categories too: damage, buff, debuff, and all are again virtually just different names for the same thing. There are very few spells anyone bothers using because it's generally quite easy to see the spells that have the ideal damage/cost ratios.
Remorts: remorts are one of 4d's major unique features, the feature is sort of trampled all over though and loses it's way so that remorts arn't actually a cool way of trying out different classes, they're just an annoying loss in strength players are forced into every so often in a seemingly retarded experience curve.
Tiers: this feature is another quite unique feature to 4d which is one of the major ones trampling all over remorts.
Trading, tokens, gold: this feature is extremely inflated due to a lot of things and is thus relatively irrelevant.
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Would be really cool if the classes actually worked and was balanced out,
so that you could remort into more then 2-3 different classes... variation is more fun!
also as virisin said the bonuses for races are kinda strange, indians,gringos,
get little to no bonus at all... why would anyone want to be one.. maybe change that a bit,
and the actuall bonuses, shouldnt that be made more race based?... farming,fishing,and lumberjacking etc etc.
would be totally awesome if they were actually giving out something worthwhile in the end.. ;D
and as virisin said aswell, spells/skills would be awesome if all the skills/spells available actually were usefull. :D
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Tiers and remorts are not unique to 4D.
As to all your other points Viri, I agree. Everything is all the same, skills and spells are just rehashes of the same thing.
Jason, what you are saying is, all classes are very similar to play with, and if you want to fix that, it means you need to change things quite drastically. And guess what? You will also need to add quite a few different skills and spells too. So, things arent really broke, the actual infrastructure is broke - so when we suggested changing the structure, you whined. You will need to make drastic changes to make classes different to play with and we have discussed this in other threads.
4D does not really have that many features, and with the limited time available to coders, it wont be that easy to implement a whole rash of changes, especially with the spaghetti western code that 4D has inherited.
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there are alot of features that are unused that was mentioned just before your,
post.... why? cause they give nothing of worth anymore..your sayin you need to tear,
down the entire mud to balance out and make spells skills that suck and have no use actually good?
that sounds like your sniffing for pwipe all over again.. >:(
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What features are broken that are so damn crucial that it will make each class different to play with?
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Things like lumberjacking, farming, crafting, brewing, cooking etc.. Are all features that are unable to be perfected with broken infrastructure.
GM is a broken feature that happens to be implemented perfectly, even the simple abolition of GMs from the code would make classes slightly different.
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Class masteries, class elemental strengths and weaknesses, and spell elements are all very badly implemented.
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The features you mentioned arent broken - broken implies there is something wrong with it after it was implemented. Instead, they were unfinished, or badly implemented. Even if we knew what Mord's intention was on implementing them, I still dont see how that make the game play any dramatically different. Elemental stuff are just different ways to cause damage. Crafting stuff just gives you different ways to gain TPs, which you mentioned are pretty useless yourself.
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I don't care about this conversation what-so-ever, but I just have to point this out...
Horus, last time we were arguing and I mentioned something related to semantics, you threw a bigger shit-fit than my little sister when she doesn't get what she wants.
The point they're making is that they don't work, either the way they should, or at all. Whether they're broken, unfinished, or implemented poorly is irrelevant.
Don't be a hypocrite :-*
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Wrong Asmo, I wasnt referring to just semantics - there is a BIG difference between what is broken and what is SUPPOSED to be implemented. You cant just say, oh elemental spells are broken. What does that mean? How is it SUPPOSED to be implemented? How does it affect different mobs, and different spells and under different weather conditions and against different races. What is the purpose of it and how does it affect game play and game balance?
Lumberjacking, farming etc how is it supposed to work? Are you supposed to just walk around typing some command and suddenly you get wood, farm stock etc? What then? Is it just another way of gaining TPs? Would it then make gaining TPs much easier and make TPs even more worthless now?
There are a lot of things that can be added or "fixed" but you cant just add things without thinking about game balance. Also, every time you want to add something, it takes TIME to finish the coding, and it takes TIME for builders to take advantage of certain features. Coders also need to add features for builders as well.
In an ideal world, we can have a team of coders who can work full time on 4D and we can then "fix" every thing everyone wants. In the real world, what gets "fixed" is prioritised. And as I said, the so-called broken features do NOT affect game play to make each class play differently. THIS is the issue Jason had - he complained that there are only a few classes that are worthwhile playing. Adding crafting skills and all these other things Jason and Viri listed does NOT differentiate game play between classes.
THAT IS MY POINT - read carefully before I start thinking you are trolling me.
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"Adding crafting skills and all these other things Jason and Viri listed does NOT differentiate game play between classes."
That was kinda our point, coders are focusing on implementing minor new features rather than working on the major frustrations most players have.
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I am referring more to Jason than you Viri. When you are talking about major frustrations, my point remains valid - if something hasnt been implemented properly or if its unfinished, then for someone to actually finish it, it is really a NEW feature being added, since 4D has never had it functional in the first place.
So, back to Molly's point - if you think something is broken, explain what is broken about it, how it should be fixed, what impact does it have on other things like game balance, class balance and how does it interact with the other skills/spells/etc. Whenever Molly wants a new feature, she always write a page of exactly how she thinks it should be implemented. Then there are planning sessions to finalise all minor aspects of the feature. So contrary to the ridiculous notion that things are implemented willy nilly, there are a lot of effort in implementing anything.
I wish you guys would stop with the childish complaints and be more constructive, instead of belittling Molly's efforts.
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the things that exists in the game allready but is "poorly" implemented or not "working" as balanced or
good as it should that is what you should focus on instead of keep farting out and implementing new shit
constantly. and i think i can speak for virisin too, that neither of us is belittling mollys work if anything
we are belittling your existance and influence. which is HIGHLY overrated.. and frankly quite pointless. :D
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I wish you guys would stop with the childish complaints and be more constructive, instead of belittling Molly's efforts.
Molly isn't my target... :-*
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I was referring to people who complain about things not being "planned" or just implemented "willy nilly" belittles all those involved in the planning process.
But I know you are trolling me Asmo.
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the things that exists in the game allready but is "poorly" implemented or not "working" as balanced or
good as it should that is what you should focus on instead of keep farting out and implementing new shit
constantly. and i think i can speak for virisin too, that neither of us is belittling mollys work if anything
we are belittling your existance and influence. which is HIGHLY overrated.. and frankly quite pointless. :D
If you have great ideas, then write a detailed plan down and you might get to see your ideas implemented. If you just say stupid ass things like everything is broken and needs to be fixed, then how do you expect anything to be done?
Its like you hire a web developer and tell him that your website is all broken, now fix it. Or that you dont like the colours on the website, so fix it. Fix what? You need to be much more specific on what ideas you want, and how its implemented.
Xeriuth had an idea about seekers clan, and guess what? It got done. Viri had an idea about deeds, and although its not exactly how he wanted it to be, it got done.
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you must be a retard man... just make the things that are in allready work.
and maybe finish off the crafting, before you trick anymore 4d imps into believing in your shitty consultation.
about what to add or change on 4d.. :-*