theworldofdreams.com

Preface: I recognize that these changes are pretty radical. I respect everyone's right to disagree, but please do so in the same fair and balanced way I am attempting to make this post. Also, if you are going to disagree, please explain why you disagree.

1.) Shard wipe. One day Drocket posts that on a future date, he will wipe the shard of everything. That means gear, gold, houses--everything. The biggest positive I see out of this is allowing everyone to start on "equal footing." We will all be newbies, again. We will have to work together, again. I see this as a major way of "shaking up the status quo," getting the Oldbies re-interested and making us all one big happy family, again.

2.) Make player-made mean something, again. How? By making player-made BETTER than monster-dropped, and then significantly reduce the number of monster-dropped magics. For example, a full set of player-made exceptional armor would actually give a higher a/r than a full set of invulnerability armor. An exceptional maul would be better than a destruction maul. This might be the end of Benson, or it could make his potions that much more valuable. It would certainly make the crafter a viable playing option.

3.) Make dungeon spawn dynamic. Why does Destard have to have Ophidians? I agree we need to have easier dungeons, but can't the spawn be more than just lizards or orcs? Rather than knowing what is in Wind or Despise, wouldn't it be cool to have to find out? We keep certain dungeons easy, some medium, some hard and at least one unsoloable.

4.) Regarding treasure maps: Drocket's changes were cool, but they didn't go far enough. A successful cartographer should also have to have mining to dig up the chest. And here's more: maps should have multiple spawns, all should be locked and most should be trapped. Let me give you an example: my carto-miner gets a frayed map. He goes to dig it up (because he has mining he can find it) and when he finds it, he "stirs" the chest by trying to open it. Out pops the first layer of protection, and they need to be defeated. The chest is tried again, and out pops another layer of protection. In fact, all layers of badness must be defeated before the chest can be opened by a locksmith. And even when the chest is finally ready to be opened, it will probably be trapped.

5.) Finally, magery should be intelligence-based. Just because you can throw 120k into training shouldn't allow you to cast circle 8 spells. It needs to be based on intelligence. Check out any other game-system, and mages don't get to use the hardest spells until they have been a mage for a long, long time.

There you have it, my fellow WoDians.

*flames*

atei sUks.

Well, you asked for comments, here are some.

1. Shard wipe - to me, it wouldn't make that much of a difference, as I've never had any gold, and never seem to get a chance to accumulate anything, but I think most people would be upset if this were to happen. It has been propose many times before in the past, and every time it comes up a fire-storm ensues, so hopefully you have your fire resistant armor on, though it won't be coming from my direction. Just to me it seems a pretty radical solution to a problem that could be implemented on an individual level, i.e., any player can decide to start a new character without any items at all, it is their decision, and is quite a challenge to do so, and I think I have heard of a few doing just that. So it can be done without forcing EVERYONE to do it, so I am not sure that I am for it.

2. Player made items - that would be a great move, but realistically, I am not sure how do-able it is. The problem with player made items is that as soon as an item is makeable, everyone (or a lot of people) is able to craft that item with regularity, therefore the market becomes glutted with that item, and it is then devalued in the marketplace. It is a vicious circle, and I struggled with answers to it before, and never came up with the perfect balance. To make player economics more balanced would probably take a complete re-working of the value system, monster drops, creation difficulties, and other items I am probably forgetting. When I ran FS, there were always complaints about player economy, and I never was offered a real plan for solving it that was workable. Maybe we can here, I do not know, but I think it would have to start with specifics, and be well thought out and tested beforehand.

3. I love the idea of the dynamic spawn in different places, but the problem may be the reasons for it. I believe at least some of the dungeons are populated with the monsters they are, based on valid RP reasons, i.e., the Ophidians invaded the cove fort region, and are still there. It doesn't make much sense for all types of monsters to co-exist in the same place, as they may have different goals, which are divisive of them. Not sure, just throwing out some thoughts there.

4. Treasure Maps - I thought mining was the basis on how far you can dig up the chest, so it does help a little, just not a major part.

5. Magery - Not sure what you mean by this one, unless there should be a scaled ability to be able to cast spells based on INT, i.e., you have to have INT up to 80 to be able to cast 8th level spells. There is already a semi-built in relationship, as mana is not available until you have built up your intelligence. At least it isn't like Sphere was; I was the 2nd person on the shard to get a GM in magery. And it took me 2 months of constant repetition and buying regs to do so.

Anyway, some good thoughts there, lets see some more comments here

Atei wrote:Preface: I recognize that these changes are pretty radical. I respect everyone's right to disagree, but please do so in the same fair and balanced way I am attempting to make this post. Also, if you are going to disagree, please explain why you disagree.

1.) Shard wipe. One day Drocket posts that on a future date, he will wipe the shard of everything. That means gear, gold, houses--everything. The biggest positive I see out of this is allowing everyone to start on "equal footing." We will all be newbies, again. We will have to work together, again. I see this as a major way of "shaking up the status quo," getting the Oldbies re-interested and making us all one big happy family, again.

If you do that then we lose a lot of the history of Wod. We would lose Homer's Tower for example.

Atei wrote:2.) Make player-made mean something, again. How? By making player-made BETTER than monster-dropped, and then significantly reduce the number of monster-dropped magics. For example, a full set of player-made exceptional armor would actually give a higher a/r than a full set of invulnerability armor. An exceptional maul would be better than a destruction maul. This might be the end of Benson, or it could make his potions that much more valuable. It would certainly make the crafter a viable playing option.

Then why bother hunting for any cool magics? That and virtue are why I hunt.

Atei wrote:3.) Make dungeon spawn dynamic. Why does Destard have to have Ophidians? I agree we need to have easier dungeons, but can't the spawn be more than just lizards or orcs? Rather than knowing what is in Wind or Despise, wouldn't it be cool to have to find out? We keep certain dungeons easy, some medium, some hard and at least one unsoloable.

How will newbies know where to go? I don't want to spend a lot of time trapsing around the country looking for what I want to hunt. I might as well just do the smithing deal and/or guard quests to get the virtue I want.

Atei wrote:4.) Regarding treasure maps: Drocket's changes were cool, but they didn't go far enough. A successful cartographer should also have to have mining to dig up the chest. And here's more: maps should have multiple spawns, all should be locked and most should be trapped. Let me give you an example: my carto-miner gets a frayed map. He goes to dig it up (because he has mining he can find it) and when he finds it, he "stirs" the chest by trying to open it. Out pops the first layer of protection, and they need to be defeated. The chest is tried again, and out pops another layer of protection. In fact, all layers of badness must be defeated before the chest can be opened by a locksmith. And even when the chest is finally ready to be opened, it will probably be trapped.

Too much trouble then, might as well let them decay and I'll go do nets and mibs. Why should Tam have to give up magery so she can have mining to be able to dig up a map occasionally?

Atei wrote:5.) Finally, magery should be intelligence-based. Just because you can throw 120k into training shouldn't allow you to cast circle 8 spells. It needs to be based on intelligence. Check out any other game-system, and mages don't get to use the hardest spells until they have been a mage for a long, long time.

I thought it already was. I mean, you need the appropriate mana to cast a higher circle spell, ie, intel.

Joram Lionheart wrote:*flames*

atei sUks.

Hahhahha that was my FIRST thought! USUCK!

But I didn't think it would be helpful to post that hehehe

3.) Make dungeon spawn dynamic. Why does Destard have to have Ophidians? I agree we need to have easier dungeons, but can't the spawn be more than just lizards or orcs? Rather than knowing what is in Wind or Despise, wouldn't it be cool to have to find out? We keep certain dungeons easy, some medium, some hard and at least one unsoloable.

I love this idea Atei but if I may add some to it.
We could have the dungeons spawn like orc and lizards and have it be kind of like a "war" type thing where they are fighting for control of the dungeon. After say the orc where killed off they would come back in greater numbers till all the lizards were killed off and then the lizards would spawn greater. A player could come though and kill off all the lizards and orc to restart the "war".

I'm not sure if this can be done but I think it would add a nice twist to things.

Suggestions?

Atei wrote:1.) Shard wipe. One day Drocket posts that on a future date, he will wipe the shard of everything. That means gear, gold, houses--everything. The biggest positive I see out of this is allowing everyone to start on "equal footing." We will all be newbies, again. We will have to work together, again. I see this as a major way of "shaking up the status quo," getting the Oldbies re-interested and making us all one big happy family, again.

Only problem with this is that, at least as described, it is only a temporary measue and in another 3-5 years it will have to be done again for more or less the same reason.

That said it wouldn't bother me any.

2.) Make player-made mean something, again. How? By making player-made BETTER than monster-dropped, and then significantly reduce the number of monster-dropped magics. For example, a full set of player-made exceptional armor would actually give a higher a/r than a full set of invulnerability armor. An exceptional maul would be better than a destruction maul. This might be the end of Benson, or it could make his potions that much more valuable. It would certainly make the crafter a viable playing option.

This I think goes a bit too far, if player crafted is actually better than all magic drops there would be little reason to hunt for magics (basically only for skill buffs).

A middle ground would work though if player crafted exeptional was the same AR as protection/maiming it would leave the extreem upper end magics as better and still have some cases where you would have to make the decision of wether or not it is worth losing a bit of AR to pick up a skill buff of defence or guarding.

3.) Make dungeon spawn dynamic. Why does Destard have to have Ophidians? I agree we need to have easier dungeons, but can't the spawn be more than just lizards or orcs? Rather than knowing what is in Wind or Despise, wouldn't it be cool to have to find out? We keep certain dungeons easy, some medium, some hard and at least one unsoloable.

A mixture of static spawns and dynamic ones might be nice, keep a few themed dungons for storyline purposes and a few other dungons where you don't really know what to expect till you get there.

Along the lines of stirring up dungons some, it always struck me as odd that in order to get to the main newplayer friendly dungon (Shame Level one) you have to be able to gate or be prepared to run through the Reaper/Titan/Ogre Lord infested forest. It would make lots more play sence for one (or both) top levels of Despise to have that sort of spawn.

4.) Regarding treasure maps *snippage*

Not really much to say here, this all looks good.

5.) Finally, magery should be intelligence-based. Just because you can throw 120k into training shouldn't allow you to cast circle 8 spells. It needs to be based on intelligence. Check out any other game-system, and mages don't get to use the hardest spells until they have been a mage for a long, long time.

The first time I heard about this I really hated it, of late its been more of a split decision. *waffles* Perhaps requiring high levels of int for Circles 6-8 would be good, I would not start it at circle 5 mostly because that is where magic reflection is.

*Adds Items*

You knew this was coming.

6) Drastically reduce spell buffing, there were some minor tweaks a while back but they never went nearly far enough to put any level of challenge into the game. I would either make only one stat buff spell effective at a time + protection or reduce the duration to something like 5 minutes. Make buffing something that is done as part of a tactical decison not something that is done as a matter of course after breakfast and before leaving the house.

7) Invasion spawner mob AI, the mobs are created in groups, supposedly groups that normally work togeather, as such they should attempt to stick togeather, if one mob locks on a player the rest of the mobs in the group should come with it, not nessicarily targetting the same player but they should all probably try to be on the same screen at the same time. I have no idea if this is possible script wise, but it would be nice.

7a) More invasion spawners would be nice.

7b) http://www.theworldofdreams.com/phpBB2/ ... php?t=6411

So how would the skillset be for a treasure map digger (on #4 above)?

You would need:
Cartography
Mining
Detect Hidden
Lockpick

at the very least.

What about any fighting skills? Ok so swords and tactics secondary. Parry secondary and make lockpick tradeskill.

You would have to waste a char slot on Just digging up maps? Forget it.

Caramon wrote:Magery - Not sure what you mean by this one, unless there should be a scaled ability to be able to cast spells based on INT, i.e., you have to have INT up to 80 to be able to cast 8th level spells.

Pretty much, Drocket's had a proposal up on the upcoming changes page for quite some time, though the last few times it's been talked about he's said it's there more just to scare people. Hehe.

Two things:

1) You can get to Shame through Covetous, no need to run through the woods.

2) Why don't we have the Britain sewers open up for newbies? Keep the graveyards for newbies also, and then maybe have more dynamic dungeons.

2) Why don't we have the Britain sewers open up for newbies? Keep the graveyards for newbies also, and then maybe have more dynamic dungeons.

unless i'm mistakn, POL 0.95 doesn't play nice down there. We could, when .96 comes out, have a slew of new places to hunt added. I suspose right now we're waitng for a improved backbone to add new things to WoD.

a change i feel that could do some good is the skills.
for example...
any warrior or someone can use necromancy, so long as they train it.
but its nearly impossible for a necromancer to be come any good with a sword or in hand to hand combat.
maybe fix it so that if your a warrior, you cant use necromancy, as well as not being able to use most spells? its unbalanced the way it is, because a mage or necro cant get as strong as a warrior, but a warrior can use magic?

Eldric wrote:6) Drastically reduce spell buffing, there were some minor tweaks a while back but they never went nearly far enough to put any level of challenge into the game. I would either make only one stat buff spell effective at a time + protection or reduce the duration to something like 5 minutes. Make buffing something that is done as part of a tactical decison not something that is done as a matter of course after breakfast and before leaving the house.

Ok I am sick of seeing this suggestion every few months.

Hey, here is a thought. Don't buff.

Do you need the scripts to say you can only use 1 buff spell? Why not Choose to only use 1 buff spell?

Shorter time on the buff spells you say? Try a character that only has 20 some magery that should be short enough.


You can make the game more challenging for yourself, you don't need it scripted that way. Unless you can already kill an ancient dragon unbuffed, without armor or skill buffs, and only using wrestling.

When you can do that then you are The Ultimate Bad@$$ and the game needs to be more challenging.

FYI I rarely buff when I hunt and I do sometimes hunt without armor, but I choose to do that.

Don't take away my choice.

The only issue I have with this is that the hours and hours I put into the library and getting it up (and they were painstakingly long and arduous) would be wiped, just to the interest of getting oldbies to play? If you want oldbies to "start from scratch" I suggest they do an account-wipe, and get rid of everything they own, personally.

I can understand that rationalisation behind it, though. A shard-wipe is like opening up a new shard, and the advantage of it would that WoD would be "new" again, and I could chronicle everything that happened as if it'd been "from the beginning". I know it's not exactly true, but I do find an interest in that.

What I really think would happen though, if there was a shard wipe, would be that there'd be a huge race to get items/static houses/gold as quickly as possible, and the game would become even more superficial than it already is. I think that the oldbies who don't play, don't do so because the game doesn't hold any more appeal: they've reached their goals. Wiping the shard isn't really going to change that, I think. It'd drive away people as much as it made them play again. Though, I only speculate, and do not speak on behalf of them.

-M

Ok, let's take a look at these . . .

Atei wrote:1.) Shard wipe: The biggest positive I see out of this is allowing everyone to start on "equal footing." We will all be newbies, again. I see this as a major way of "shaking up the status quo," getting the Oldbies re-interested and making us all one big happy family, again.

I think you mean it would force everyone to be a newbie again I think you would agree that if you really want to start from scratch, there's nothing stopping you from doing so right now, just delete your old characters and start anew.

As far as "shaking up the status quo," I'm curious as to know what in-your-opinion, the status quo is like right now that needs to be 'shaked up' so badly. Your comment seems to imply that "material" possessions are the one thing that (unfairly) separates us all. The great divider--the number one social determinant in WoD. No offense friend but your statement seems to be founded on marxist philosophical assumptions about the human psyche. If there's anything 20th century communist experiments have taught us is that individuals will always find ways to make themselves more 'equal' than others. If there is any unequalness in WoD right now, gold and magics are neither the source (nor is getting rid of them, the cure).

Therefore, I fail to see how taking everyone's hard earned possessions is going to change people at any fundamental level. After all, it is not altogether hard to regain these (if motivated enough) in a few months. I do see, however, how some old players may choose not to invest the time to go through the motions of building a new character all over again. I, for one, am far more enmeshed in real life affairs now than I was years ago when I built my characters. I simply could not enjoy the game as I used to because I would not have as abled characters anymore (most quests would be out of the question, for instance).

We will have to work together, again.

And we cannot as it is?

2.) Make player-made mean something, again. How? By making player-made BETTER than monster-dropped, and then significantly reduce the number of monster-dropped magics.

Umm, I'm going to assume that the underlying reason for this is to make people want to rely on other player's crafting abilities. After all, if everyone has a blacksmith character player-made armor would still mean nothing because anyone can make it him/herself. In fact, a change like this would only result in devaluating the worth of magic items to the point that hunting would no longer give any substantial rewards. The real problem of player crafted items is not that they're not uber enough. The problem is they're just too darn easy to acquire by everyone. It's not that people do not need them. They're not special because every player can literally make every single type of crafted item in the world on his/her own.

This situation necessitates a completely different solution. We have been over this, and several options have been offered. Drocket has not been satisfied with any of them, however. Perhaps, you could come up with a better idea?

It would certainly make the crafter a viable playing option.

Not if everyone can make what you can. Why buy expensive uber armor when I can make it myself? You can improve the product all you want but unless there is market demand your product will continue to be worthless.

3.) Make dungeon spawn dynamic . . . Rather than knowing what is in Wind or Despise, wouldn't it be cool to have to find out? We keep certain dungeons easy, some medium, some hard and at least one unsoloable.

Well, this would be a real pain for AG questers because they'd never know for sure where to find X type of mob at any given time. Other than that, I wouldn't have a problem with this because I can just about solo any type of creature. But I do realize not everyone can, and some people are bound to complain (not that that alone should be reason enough to prevent changes )

4.) Regarding treasure maps: Drocket's changes were cool, but they didn't go far enough.

Any more specialized requirements and the treasure hunter will be the first official class character in WoD I guess I don't care either way, cartography has lost its appeal on me.

5.) Finally, magery should be intelligence-based.

Ok by me