Hello all - I just finished opening up an area that was built last year and in the process have figured out how to do a few other things I've been working on. There are currently a number of projects on my to do list for the MUD including another new high level area and a major new city. Outside of that, I have a list of tasks I'd like to get to afterward and would like to solicit your feedback on what you'd like to see next. As a result, I've made an easy little survey you can access HERE.

If you pick "Something Else" then please feel free to comment here on your selection. The goal is to eventually accomplish each item on this list but your feedback will help give me some direction on what's most important to the people who will be impacted by this stuff.

Thanks.

FYI - a player wipe is a "reasonable option" if you want to consider that as well.

I responded with something else: within reason, but maybe I missed the option to put in my "something else"? Anyways this is going to sound like crazy talk but for me I just wish there were more alternatives to the gold grind. When I played that's what always killed me, I suck at grinding for gold. I don't really do perm runs, I usually just stick to the few places I remember grinding exp at, and get whatever gold I can make there while getting my exp.
I wish you could just set a flag that turned all exp you gained after being 0 tnl into a special type of gold used to level. Once you have enough to level and you train etc any excess leveling gold would just disappear. That way I could just grind exp as much as I wanted and still be able to level lol. I realize this is probably not within reason but I figured I'd give my two cents anyways. Pfft great, just spent 2 cents, now I need to get more gold to level.

Arcen wrote:

I responded with something else: within reason, but maybe I missed the option to put in my "something else"? Anyways this is going to sound like crazy talk but for me I just wish there were more alternatives to the gold grind. When I played that's what always killed me, I suck at grinding for gold. I don't really do perm runs, I usually just stick to the few places I remember grinding exp at, and get whatever gold I can make there while getting my exp. I wish you could just set a flag that turned all exp you gained after being 0 tnl into a special type of gold used to level. Once you have enough to level and you train etc any excess leveling gold would just disappear. That way I could just grind exp as much as I wanted and still be able to level lol. I realize this is probably not within reason but I figured I'd give my two cents anyways. Pfft great, just spent 2 cents, now I need to get more gold to level.

Thanks Arc, my intent was to discuss the "something else" selections here in the forum but I didn't make that clear in the original post.

For everyone else, I spoke with Arc last night to discuss this but want to make sure and address it here in the forum as well. Gold concerns are definitely a big Quality of Life issue for players (not named Ducky) so I am looking to address those as well. I'm looking to do this in 3 ways:

• Daily/Monthly Quests - Repeatable quests will allow players to do fairly simple tasks to get consumable rewards (potions, materials, gold...etc.) every day. These quests will be scaled by level so that, for example, level 1-5 quests may give $1,000 / day for completion but level 15-20 quests will give $20,000 / day and 35-40 will give $50,000 / day. Again, these numbers are examples and not finalized but you get the idea. In addition, items will be received from daily quests that, if the player accumulates enough they will fulfill a condition for a monthly quest which grants even greater rewards. For example, a level 5 $30,000 monthly bonus or a level 25 $250,000 monthly bonus. The rewards will not always be strictly gold-based but hopefully you get the idea.


• Revised Crafting Rewards - There are a fairly substantial number of crafting recipes and ingredients in the game but for seasoned players, and perhaps even new ones, there is little incentive to craft items when gold, exp, and better items are much more accessible. As a result, I'm looking at tuning the rewards for crafting including: item quality, gold return on investment, and experience gained. The ideal scenario is a situation where a player who devoted their entire daily activity to gathering crafting materials and making sets of plate armor, potions, or other items would be able to keep up in level and gold with someone who spent the same amount of time doing perm runs or farming certain mobs. This would create a trade-off situation where some players may choose to craft where others farm/grind and then trade with one another (doing both is an option but less efficient). Even if a crafting-focus player doesn't have a plethora of customers, the value of the crafted items will be high enough that pawning them will provide a near-similar amount of gold as someone who farms mobs/perms. Obviously, it won't be as much gold as someone who farms very difficult monsters as the high risk will have higher reward; however, it should alleviate some of the gold crunch


• Refined gold grinding - areas specifically designed with monsters for gold farming are being looked at and tuned to an appropriate difficulty level associated with how much gold they drop. Specifically, I want to make sure that areas designed for level 10-15 or 20-30 and so on aren't overly prohibitive in terms of difficulty for players to grind gold. Additionally, more transparency on where these areas are, either through in game NPCs or through forum announcements, will be available.

In addition to new areas being built, those are the basic ideas currently in the works. Any of the new additions to the game will have take gold-anxiety into consideration. I welcome any other suggestions (though its unlikely we'll be converted exp to gold any time soon).

[quote="nikola"]

Arcen wrote:

(not named Ducky)

Yup Yup Yup!

I told you, one simple fix: Evenly distribute Ducky's gold among all players and the gold problem will be fixed! lol

Arcen wrote:

I told you, one simple fix: Evenly distribute Ducky's gold among all players and the gold problem will be fixed! lol

A player wipe would have the same effect

Arcen wrote:

I told you, one simple fix: Evenly distribute Ducky's gold among all players and the gold problem will be fixed! lol

Nope, Nope, Nope!

I've struggled to respond to this a few times... but I just couldn't figure out the right way to phrase things. Either way, I think the is great and that's why I keep playing. But I do think the entry for a new player is rough, I've played on and off and never higher than level 12, so I can say I'm relatively "new" still. My biggest problems right now for me is how to get gear/weapons by myself, or where to hunt and go... I find it extremely unforgiving to get rekt by exploring into a wrong area lol... but Part of the RoH experience is the exploration so I don't really want to lose this aspect of the mud. So unfortunately I don't have any ideas at present how to ease this burden for new players. And although I like the idea of a wipe, I just don't see a wipe working until we can get an influx of new players :P

krymsin wrote:

I've struggled to respond to this a few times... but I just couldn't figure out the right way to phrase things. Either way, I think the is great and that's why I keep playing. But I do think the entry for a new player is rough, I've played on and off and never higher than level 12, so I can say I'm relatively "new" still. My biggest problems right now for me is how to get gear/weapons by myself, or where to hunt and go... I find it extremely unforgiving to get rekt by exploring into a wrong area lol... but Part of the RoH experience is the exploration so I don't really want to lose this aspect of the mud. So unfortunately I don't have any ideas at present how to ease this burden for new players. And although I like the idea of a wipe, I just don't see a wipe working until we can get an influx of new players :P

I get what you're saying completely. Even though I've been playing this MUD since it started I've never been much of an explorer myself so I always forget where to go to get certain weapons etc etc. I know there are some npcs that have dialogue for quests and whatever but it would be nice to have more varied dialogue for weapon farming or armor or whatever. For instance, in rhurdan talking to someone near the tavern might give you a hint that brawlers in the bull place or whatever sometimes are seen wearing silver fist weapons. I dunno. I do like the addition of (!)for quest related npcs but something similar for npcs with knowledge pertaining to the area would be a big help for newbies and returning players alike.
I know in a way it dumbs down the exploration aspect of the game a bit but its so much better for those who play casually like myself. There is also a wiki but who really checks it nowadays? I'm not sure if there is a way for npcs to verify the level of the player talking to them, but having them be able to say something like "You look strong enough to help us with the ruffians at the breakwater pub" or whatever would be nice. Or if you're too weak or way overleveled they could say something different. Having a small 4 or 5 room training area that shows these different types of npcs and tells the player how to interact with them would be nice for newbies too.