If you could change everything, what would you change?

[Toar]

What is balance?

Balance is when two players can give their all at something and honestly feel like they could have, they themselves, done better rather than their character  being inept or underwhelming. Balance is when you feel like you own your class choice and are not at a disadvantage because of it. (Here's lookin at you scouts). Balance is when you feel like you can fight back if you issue your commands as the fight plays out, and feel involved in those choices, rather than auto attacking your way to victory or death.

What is helplessness?

Helplessness is the unknown. Why did I lose the fight so quickly? Why does my character who I have perceived as "strong" suddenly feel weak and broken? Why am I questioning which class I chose and what spells I used? The feeling of helplessness happens when something can't be quickly explained. It makes you believe that another player is so infinitely stronger than you that you must be broken, or they must be overpowered. It's the feeling that you might as well give up because you aren't certain how to even get stronger and so you feel helpless.

So I've written some fake "patch notes" below that will change everything we know, but will used as examples where the MUD could change to provide more player involvement in combat (especially PvP) and perhaps change the way we look at the MUD as a whole. Instead of "beginning and end" or "early game and end game" we can look at it as a constantly evolving place to hang out and enjoy ourselves rather than who is participating in the meta game and who isn't even remotely close to it yet. (Large disparity there)

• All quests now provide 5x the quest tokens upon completion
• Additional quest items added with pseudo legendary affixes are now available at all quest masters for 50k tokens each
• You can now purchase a Legendary Stone for 10,000,000 gold or 1,000,000 tokens
• All negative combat mods have been removed from the game. Bye hallucination.
• Being bloodsworn no longer increase the "group" range of players.
• Non bloodsworn players can no longer attack or be attacked by bloodsworn players
• All brands have been removed from the game.
• A new skill "brand" has been added to every class. It can not be stopped by silence, it can not be miscast, it hits through level difference with the same chance to fail as a traditional spell unaffected by chasmic would have to succeed. It is not affected by bounce or dense. It can not be used in combat. This skill choose a brand at random from your memorized damage types. See the next skill for more information
• A new "memorize" skill has been added to the game. This functions the same way as memorizing a spell, in that you can't use the new "brand" skill with that damage type unless you've already memorized that damage type. No memorizing in combat. You can choose any damage type in the game except for Otherworld
• A new skill "debrand" has been added to every class. It can not be stopped by silence, it can not be miscast. It has the same chance to fail as a traditional spell being cast unaffected by chasmic. It is not affected by bounce or dense. It can not be used in combat. This skill chooses a negative "brand" at random and removes it from your character, with a lag delay similar to "brand"
• All levels beyond 200 have had their experience required to level reduced by 50%
• Dearmor now has a longer delay between recasts
• Picking up your armor after being dearmored now has a longer delay (the same delay as dearmor recasting) Dearmor was never meant to be combatted by triggers
• Disarm now has a longer delay between attempts
• Picking up your weapon after being disarmed now has a longer delay (the same delay as as disarm recasting) Disarm was never meant to be combatted by triggers
• Underused areas have been removed from the game
• All players have been wiped and must start over. All old character names (except immortals) cannot be used
• New loot table drops have been added to the game. Including "Legendary stone" drops at random from killing mobs that qualify for skill gains. The entire MUD will be alerted if you find a Legendary Stone in this manner
• New combat mods are now MUD wide and randomly trigger double exp for 5 minutes, double quest tokens for 5 minutes, double mobiles in your current area (the area is announced MUD wide) This does not affected legendary mobiles
• New daily log in rewards now exist. You must stay logged in for 1 hour per day to collect your reward. The rewards get exponentially more rewarding until you reach 30 days logged in, in a row.
• Quest timer reduced by 1 minute for every quest completed within 5 minutes of your quest timer hitting 0 up to a maximum of 5 minutes between quests.
• Quests now reward a LOT of experience per completion. You can now conceivably "only" quest all the way to level 200 if you so choose. This can be toggled off by typing "questexp"
• Racial skills now disregard level difference. No more missing every single racial skill on every single mob because you would never fight a mob who is the same level as you.
• Augments can now be reset for an EXTREMELY large amount of tokens. One augment at a time. Starting from the most recent augment used. Good luck.
• A friend referral bonus has been added. Your friend will have the option to type in your referral code after completing newbie school.
• All religion spells have been given to all ranks of religion members
• Perfection has been removed from the game.
• All augmented skills can now be trained to GM again. Through MUCH ado. Do not expect to GM everything!
• The arena has been replaced by a mock "Lapis" zone and now uses Bloodplanes rules in regards to resistances
• The arena no longer spams people outside the arena who will only be alerted that an arena fight is starting and if they would like to "watch" they can toggle arena chat on
• Vampires no longer deal less damage during the day and do more damage at night. Instead Vampires always take more damage and always deal more damage than normal.
• Stake no longer requires you to hold an item, the Stake must still be in your inventory
• There are now two stages of the skill "mort" so that extremely high level players can buff lower players easier and with more meaningful buffs
• GMA no longer teleports you out of the room. Curse can still be used, however. That's the risk you take.
• Race change options have been added for an immeasurable amount of tokens
• Class change options have been added for an immeasurable amount of tokens
• A new gambling system has been added. Spend gold or tokens for a chance to win buffs, unique items that can only be found in the gambling loot table, or legendary stones.
  
• Customs can now be "reforged" without losing the legendary that is on them, into a different item type.
• All "cursed" rooms have been removed from the game. You should be able to recall from anywhere in the game now. (Quality of life change for newbies) The only exception is Gem Dragon Island
• Maps have been added to the game showing speed walk directions to every major area of the game
• Recalling no longer takes half of your movement, instead the more you recall the more it will cost within a certain period of time
• A "heal all movement" command has been added to healers with the same lag time as "heal all" for mana
• All spells in the same except for "nova" and "splash" have had their damages increased to help them become more useful and viable for combat with the new "choose your own damage type" brand system
• All skill combos in the game (slash, thrust, etc) have had their final chain strike damage doubled. It now does damage based on the brands you have memorized via the "choose your own damage type" brand system mentioned above
• ALL forms of blind, including dirt kicking, are now able to be removed in combat by "rub eyes" command.
• You can now freely walk around while blind, if you know where you're going you should still be able to get there. Go get 'em Daredevil
• Violent/aggressive players can no longer be attacked outside of their level range. Sorry 275s you shouldn't be killing level 40s who are engaged in PvP

Hope you enjoyed. There are many other things we can do to help increase the level of involvement players have in combat so they will feel more in control of their characters instead of just auto attacking everything to death.
Thanks
-Toar

[nuk]

All quests now provide 5x the quest tokens upon completion

Yes, because if your still just questing and feel forced that way. I am sorry as much better options exist.

Additional quest items added with pseudo legendary affixes are now available at all quest masters for 50k tokens each

this would be a fun change and not unbalancing at all, pretty much golden idea

You can now purchase a Legendary Stone for 10,000,000 gold or 1,000,000 tokens

despite never having this much because i have a gambling addiction , i support this as it gives other options and not bad pricing either.

All negative combat mods have been removed from the game. Bye hallucination.
yep, hallu is probably the most useless mod the game can offer that makes me turn color off and wonder why it exists.

Being bloodsworn no longer increase the "group" range of players.
this would definitly make alot of players not feel forced into going bloodsworn

Non bloodsworn players can no longer attack or be attacked by bloodsworn players
end the drama , not a bad option

All brands have been removed from the game.
A new skill "brand" has been added to every class. It can not be stopped by silence, it can not be miscast, it hits through level difference with the same chance to fail as a traditional spell unaffected by chasmic would have to succeed. It is not affected by bounce or dense. It can not be used in combat. This skill choose a brand at random from your memorized damage types. See the next skill for more information
A new "memorize" skill has been added to the game. This functions the same way as memorizing a spell, in that you can't use the new "brand" skill with that damage type unless you've already memorized that damage type. No memorizing in combat. You can choose any damage type in the game except for Otherworld
A new skill "debrand" has been added to every class. It can not be stopped by silence, it can not be miscast. It has the same chance to fail as a traditional spell being cast unaffected by chasmic. It is not affected by bounce or dense. It can not be used in combat. This skill chooses a negative "brand" at random and removes it from your character, with a lag delay similar to "brand"

something definitly needs to happens with brands , this supports augmenting for sure but otherwise pvp is kind of just a given. protect against the fighters , you can showclass to know the posibilities. we know the skills that hurt . lets go 90 rounds in arena or end up turning or stopping combat . or we could just dearmor and have a blast.

All levels beyond 200 have had their experience required to level reduced by 50%
this will only affect a few more people hitting 275

Dearmor now has a longer delay between recasts
Picking up your armor after being dearmored now has a longer delay (the same delay as dearmor recasting) Dearmor was never meant to be combatted by triggers
Disarm now has a longer delay between attempts
Picking up your weapon after being disarmed now has a longer delay (the same delay as as disarm recasting) Disarm was never meant to be combatted by triggers

other then making adhesive a mandatory augment against someone that has dearmor and disarm , this doesnt seem horrible

Underused areas have been removed from the game
I dont like this actually, people put alot of time into making those areas, maybe updating them is a better option.

All players have been wiped and must start over. All old character names (except immortals) cannot be used
if every single change possible was implemented turning this game into something else i could see this happening though it would mean many 10k+ hour people will never log in again. This is one that most likely wont be seen

New loot table drops have been added to the game. Including "Legendary stone" drops at random from killing mobs that qualify for skill gains. The entire MUD will be alerted if you find a Legendary Stone in this manner
yeh i agree with this, the harm is so low

New combat mods are now MUD wide and randomly trigger double exp for 5 minutes, double quest tokens for 5 minutes, double mobiles in your current area (the area is announced MUD wide) This does not affected legendary mobiles
another change i think is fun and gives people a reason to play

New daily log in rewards now exist. You must stay logged in for 1 hour per day to collect your reward. The rewards get exponentially more rewarding until you reach 30 days logged in, in a row.
app style rewards and pay to win style rewards do cause people to play and stay on more

Quest timer reduced by 1 minute for every quest completed within 5 minutes of your quest timer hitting 0 up to a maximum of 5 minutes between quests.
that seems legit

Quests now reward a LOT of experience per completion. You can now conceivably "only" quest all the way to level 200 if you so choose. This can be toggled off by typing "questexp"
legit and i feel it could be fun

Racial skills now disregard level difference. No more missing every single racial skill on every single mob because you would never fight a mob who is the same level as you.
yep
Augments can now be reset for an EXTREMELY large amount of tokens. One augment at a time. Starting from the most recent augment used. Good luck.
yes yes and yes

A friend referral bonus has been added. Your friend will have the option to type in your referral code after completing newbie school.
very new age mmo style deal, it obviously works

All religion spells have been given to all ranks of religion members
i would possibly debate deleting my character to permanently have renew and refinement

Perfection has been removed from the game.
as much as i love perfection, its a cancer

All augmented skills can now be trained to GM again. Through MUCH ado. Do not expect to GM everything!
yep if perfection is removed

The arena has been replaced by a mock "Lapis" zone and now uses Bloodplanes rules in regards to resistances
The arena no longer spams people outside the arena who will only be alerted that an arena fight is starting and if they would like to "watch" they can toggle arena chat on
the arena is pretty annoying , and yes to resistance knocks .....no more 90 rounds

Vampires no longer deal less damage during the day and do more damage at night. Instead Vampires always take more damage and always deal more damage than normal.
Stake no longer requires you to hold an item, the Stake must still be in your inventory

id be ok with this and yes to the stake thing because really thats so bad

There are now two stages of the skill "mort" so that extremely high level players can buff lower players easier and with more meaningful buffs
very much a yes

GMA no longer teleports you out of the room. Curse can still be used, however. That's the risk you take.
yeh i mean ever since you zombified armengar and never put the staff of curse removal in , im pretty supportive of this.

Race change options have been added for an immeasurable amount of tokens
Class change options have been added for an immeasurable amount of tokens
very very very very very vrery very very very very very high very very very very, and if thats the case i think mandatory name change as well as complete restrings are necessary

A new gambling system has been added. Spend gold or tokens for a chance to win buffs, unique items that can only be found in the gambling loot table, or legendary stones.
translation progressive dice and i am so in

Customs can now be "reforged" without losing the legendary that is on them, into a different item type.
yes or the ability to destroy the custom for no token reimbursed and have a 50 percent chance to get the legendary stone

All "cursed" rooms have been removed from the game. You should be able to recall from anywhere in the game now. (Quality of life change for newbies) The only exception is Gem Dragon Island
i feel like there is such a limited amount of these that they should stay

Maps have been added to the game showing speed walk directions to every major area of the game
library under tolin anyone? maybe purchasable books that show areas and maps

Recalling no longer takes half of your movement, instead the more you recall the more it will cost within a certain period of time meh never cared never will , have never run out of moves

A "heal all movement" command has been added to healers with the same lag time as "heal all" for mana
yeh why not

All spells in the same except for "nova" and "splash" have had their damages increased to help them become more useful and viable for combat with the new "choose your own damage type" brand system
yes i have them both and thats about all i use.

All skill combos in the game (slash, thrust, etc) have had their final chain strike damage doubled. It now does damage based on the brands you have memorized via the "choose your own damage type" brand system mentioned above
i havent played melee in forooorororever

ALL forms of blind, including dirt kicking, are now able to be removed in combat by "rub eyes" command.
You can now freely walk around while blind, if you know where you're going you should still be able to get there. Go get 'em Daredevil
this seriosuly should happen, because it makes complete sense and i will don my red tights in an instant and show you whats up

Violent/aggressive players can no longer be attacked outside of their level range. Sorry 275s you shouldn't be killing level 40s who are engaged in PvP COMPLETELY AGREE

[sye]

I love the ideas, and really supportive of Nuk's comments to them.

I think that brands are something that needs to be looked into because seriously 50% or less of the classes are viable except for having fun factor (for RP, but not for PVE or PVP) after a year of building a char, finding out you are only a support or less char might scare people away or make them jaded at the least.

The Religions are also something that need to be addressed.  I'd personally say even all leader ranks.  The Pbase is too small and 'clicks' cause new players and old players to be ostracized in addition to the quality of life of the mud being demeaned by not having access to some spells and being forced to choose a religion because of an overbalance of other spells.  (Perfection: good idea to remove).

Religion:  having no Religions perse' and instead having 'beliefs in certain dieties/religions' with the option to use faithprays or another option to 'build your way up' being able to select from an 'augment type style' system so you can build your char however you feel and RP the same.   Why not be able to support Galr and Athorien, or Syskee and Chaos?  Maybe if you augment certain spells it bars others?  There are def some better options to be had of a more player friendly rel system.
(Having everyone have an opportunity to reach the top rather than having a select few have all the top rank spells in the game and deciding who gets the second best spells)  - Maybe have an RP only sect leader, but have all spells be augmentable via some kind of system?  Balance it, but have everyone be able to be on the same footing if they spend the same amount of time into it.

Additional loot, loot tables, and quest items etc..
This is something that can really help drive creativity and uniqueness.  Farming a text based game my not have the same pzaz as lets say.. Diablo III or Torchlight 2, or Witcher or Skyrm, even Chrono Trigger! (yes I went there)   Many classic RPGS have adopted many mud style systems and improved them with visual aids.  Manifesting our loot system and quest system to strongly support more 'customization' and help increase a reward system for playing and grinding it out, or questing it out.  (more challenging now than it was 15 years ago).

Groups:
Groups should be overhauled greatly..  Should be able to stay grouped for long periods of time and get diminished XP bonus but still get an XP bonus by being in the same zone etc and use the feature Group Tell. (I mean seriously GT for people in the same room as you, this would make this feature way more intuitive to the group system)
GT : I'll take out west lapis if you take out east lapis,  GT : okay After this lets head to TOLIN.
You could farm a larger amount of area and both get bonuses.. you can even include 'loot drops' because a team mate killed mobs even if they aren't in the same room but are grouped with you.
(to avoid this being abused both players would need to be in an area actually grinding, to avoid people from idling in a room and getting loot, which to be honest.. people do that now when they get dragged around, so this option would benefit multiple people in the group being active at one time, rather than one person leading five around while they are 'semi afk') 
Questing while grouping WHAT?  A bonus to quests depending on the size of the group?  double WHAT?!  you could really add some sweet features.

Non Bloodsworn should be amped up, increased group range, remove bad mods, etc..

Bloodsworn should be amped up, Way better rewards that favor pvp specific aspects.  maybe offer Arena gear that you can only wear in the arena?  Plus X stat or adds a skill, maybe a pseudo maxed pre legendary but only viable in arenas although they talk to you outside arenas even though they wouldn't work.
(maybe they are only active when you are bloodsworn with X bloodpoints) wouldn't be something, or maybe someone with the most bloodpoints have their items active etc, a lot of options here.

Basically people who like pvp should have a better reason to participate for Seasonal Goodies, and some thing they can kind of show off to to other PVP masters, this would encourage people who like PVP to actually participate.


Serene should have some options too, if you want to serene and solo stuff maybe you get a buff of some kind? you are unable to group with anyone, and you get increased quest bonuses and exp? 
Other than having this be just a baby way out of pvp, maybe this can be a way to show who actually does not like combat at all period but only questing.

I'd like to throw up a new idea of 'seasonal' flag, where you log in to this, and your char gets wiped after X amount of days, or maybe 3 months, rolling. 
And you can get put on leaderboard of some kind.   You have increased chances of cool loot and it could be a trial version for people to see if they like the game.  You get super increased xp and token gain, with 50% chance increase of runes and moxes gems.. you would not have features available to you..
(You would have no deliver set permanently) no give set permanently, not be able to give, deliver, trade, auction, etc..   Just an idea, maybe this might be something for way down the road, but this has been thrown around before.  Two buddies could say hey id' like to try this type of style out, throw up a seasonal char and try it out.

hardcore could be another fun twist, if we wanted to get crazy! Maybe not just yet.

Pwipe,  not so sure I like this, I think we could make the changes we need without wiping.  Wiping is always meh.  It really turns people away and with a Pbase this low it might do more damage than good.
However, what if we did a partial pwipe? a Pipe?!  You get to keep one char through a wipe, the rest are lost.  This way the imms would only have to 'fix up and make things work with x chars instead of 100's'  Not sure though.  still meh on this idea.


re augmentation.  - Yes Please.
even if it cost 10,000 tokens to unaugment, and you had to pay 10,000 tokens to augment again.   You would have to pay 25 x 10,000 tokens x 2 to re augment everything that would make it not 'Abuse able' but still give people some flexibility and options.

you should never be able to attack someone more than 75 levels below you ever for any reason, bloodsworn aggressive, violent whatever the reason.

forms of blind..
If we remove the skills of blind, to be 'rubable' id vote that if you are bloodsworn you cannot 'rub eyes' period, and you cannot 'rub eyes' in the arena either.   Other than that that's fine!  (the phoenixe's will be super farmable with that change tho..)


I think that the way the mud is, is it's stale.  People are used to the 'day to day running's' and it's highly disappointing to have ideas shot down by people who sit around and do nothing anyways.  I'm very excited about these ideas and that this idea thread got revitalized.
I agree with almost all of it.

Kudos!
-Sye

[Chalgyr]

LOTS that could be replied to here in these posts, and while I like some of the ideas better than others, this response gave me pause:

Non Bloodsworn should be amped up, increased group range, remove bad mods, etc..

Bloodsworn should be amped up, Way better rewards that favor pvp specific aspects.  maybe offer Arena gear that you can only wear in the arena?  Plus X stat or adds a skill, maybe a pseudo maxed pre legendary but only viable in arenas although they talk to you outside arenas even though they wouldn't work.
(maybe they are only active when you are bloodsworn with X bloodpoints) wouldn't be something, or maybe someone with the most bloodpoints have their items active etc, a lot of options here.


Player wipe:

I'm not hugely in favor of this. Why wipe out peoples' time and effort? if it's for the sake of 'starting fresh' - you can create a new player to do so. I am hesitant here because I have had several of our current players tell me in the past that if we ever did another pwipe, they wouldn't come back. Heck, we never really fully recovered from our last one that cost us more than 30 people a night. Not sure what we gain here except to tell people they are all starting from ground zero, so the more competitive people have a reason to... well, compete against one another, but it doesn't really *gain* us anything either, and it hurts the players who aren't interested in being alpha dogs or the first ones to do something.


Remove Perfection:

Or just make religion skills available to everyone in a religion and they can 'purchase' them? Of course, I've had a storyline/notion about blowing up the existing deities altogether at times and trying to do something different w/ the religions... I just haven't fully formed that notion in my head yet and wind up thinking about Ashes instead. :/


Heal all movement, rub for blindness (outside of combat. if you're in combat, tough luck): pretty sure we talked about doing these in the past, just hasn't happened yet, but not bad ideas.


Refer a friend/daily login bonuses/etc:

I like both. We even tried refer a friend in the past. Toughest part is coming up w/ legit accounts. When a game like WoW does it, the parties benefit when the referred account pays for the game/a month of service, and their account is then tied to a credit card. It's easier to verify that it is a unique account.

I am one of those guys who logs into several games daily just to make sure I get my daily bonuses (M&M Duel of Champions freebies, Rested exp bonus on WoW, daily gifts on Puzzle & Dragons). This might help address the earlier issue of accruing tokens and goodies more quickly as well that was brought up earlier.


Just some random thoughts on this thread that I've been bouncing around for a while.

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Those two things feel at odds with one another. If we are going to pump up Bloodsworn even further, doesn't that get us back into the situation where players feel 'forced' to be in Bloodsworn again? I feel like it makes more sense to make Bloodsworn and non be closer to one another in what they offer, and Bloodsworn can just be for those who want to PK a little (or a lot).

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Other quick thoughts:

Auto quests giving more tokens - so we're once again looking at expediting the max gear process? I'm just curious as we have created a new way to get gear quicker earlier on. Instead of just outright offering 5 times the tokens, maybe ways to make it more interesting? A counter that keeps track of how many quests you have done so the first time it's times 1, second is times 2, third is times 3, up to a times 5 and then cycles back when you a) log off b) do a quest for another city c) resign a quest - maybe something like that?