Problems & things that might need attention vol. 2

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belannaer
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Problems & things that might need attention vol. 2

Post by belannaer »

Before conversion I started this topic (http://www.icesus.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?t=1457). In it I posted the following message:
belannaer wrote:Wizards are on the warpath and planning big and mysterious things. We are currently seeking possible problems and things that might require attention that already exist in game. This topic is solely dedicated for players to bring those problems to our attention.

So what we want is for you to do here is that you make a detailed explanation of the problem and why you think it is a problem and might need changing. Also if you have some suggestion about how to do it feel free to add those.

What we DO NOT want is discussion about those matters in this topic. If you wish to do so please open a new topic for that matter and do it there, or do it in game. Also we do not wish ideas of new features in this topic that do not yet exist. If you have those either do a topic in to these forums, use 'idea' command or contact a suitable wizard directly. All posts not directed to solely bringing forth a problem and focusing on it and explaining are going to be deleted.
While conversion is long gone and done and I'm not planning a new conversion I was thinking that maybe it would be a nice idea to see what people think about the current situation in the game in post-conversion times and what might be worth looking at now and in future.

I can say one thing myself for starters:

Monk guild being closed at the moment and some of the subguilds/branches unfinished at the moment. These are mainly due to my own laziness/rl stuff like school that have required some more time than I expected previously. I know it's shit especially that the monk guild is closed and it bothers me constantly (and various players with tells too) and it's one of my main priorities to get finished at least in some form and open it so that it would be at least open in some playable state. This probably means opening only one branch at time (staff branch being the first and most complete). And I don't really want to give any promises but I'm aiming to get it in game during February.
uzriel
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Post by uzriel »

I'm not going to give any thoughts about the conversion in this post, i'd just like to give my respect to Belannaer, Moraq, Zaltaiz and all the other Wizards for keeping everything rolling without actually getting paid or any other nice bonuses. It kind of makes me react when a wizard say that "it's shit" when a guild is unfinished and that it bothers him (and that players keep nagging about it). I guess it's easy to take the work of the wizards for granted.

So i just wanted to say a little thanks with this post - for the awesome work that you guys do with the game.
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yoz
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Post by yoz »

Excellent! here are my thoughts:

This is prolly going to be a pretty long list, so grab your popcorn and sit comfortably before reading.

Races:

Many races have been tuned around, but some races still could use some love. These races being:
avan, beholder, brownie, halfling, orc, reed, saerka, spell weaver.

No one really plays these races, and they are rather useless to pretty much anything. Adding some racial abilities, tweaking some stats bit less expensive here and there or maybe increasing regens should do the trick.

Guilds:

Shapeshifters
Psionicists
Earth_priests
Wilders

Previously mentioned guilds are seriously out of shape at the moment.

Where shapeshifters are still decent offies, they are the absolute incarnation of boring and not really needed in anything. They do not provide party with anything that anyone would want (except damage, but other classes are still better in that department).

Psionicists however are a good base for a "could be useful" guild, but they are not. Their masteries go up way too fast and no one plays them. Their lack of damagetypes just spoils the sport. They could have a lot more different kind of buffs to make them proficient buffer class or more reliable alternative damage types. (disintegrate eq destroying etc.). But what i've heard that the buffer slot is pretty much reserved for the upcoming brelasean which makes the psibuffer idea useless.
Maybe more undead killing variety could be added with various debuffs?

Earth_Priests are a chapter of their own.
They have been a broken guild since the beginning. They rely only to their own minion and once again, bring nothing to the party. Haunt was a good try but i don't see it as too much used spell. Few months (or maybe years?) back pfloe had a brilliant idea how epriests could fit into the scale, but it would require shitloads of recoding. The actual subguild is more useful than the guild itself.

Wilders are what they are, and no one dares to touch them.
Their damage was dropped dramatically after several months of serious 3man/100k+ rate abuse by certain wilders and now they are even less liked than they used to be. Some players occasionally try and give up after few days. They are a lost cause as Misrobo is no longer active and there is no one to give them the love they need.

Nuke 'em or fix them.

Most of all, i'd like to see that every guild would have something useful to bring into a party, and something unique that could make them needed when doing eq. Sure, you can grab archers to any guild, but in my honest opinion that is a poor solution.


Resist system:

After the conversion, resists were changed from solid system to this new system which is widely disliked. Resists used to be real resists, if you had 30% resist, you took 30% less damage out of a hit of that type. Now you got your resist % change to resist half of the damage which pretty much makes them useless. Physress used to be the shit, but now, i don't even bother to take it in most of my reincs. A pity.

The new resist tune also made some monsters annoyingly tough. Ice dragon is most propably unkillable and Glagkasjrhrwrwhjexer the ancient spider is just too annoying for the great pile of poo it drops.

So far in my honest opinion this was one of the worst "fixes" in icesus's history.

Midlevel game content:
We had a long conversation about this few days ago, where some unnamed newbies were whining that they are having hard time in getting eq, as they are a) not finnish b) they don't know how (:D) c) They have no chance at later levels of the game.

Turned out that we have no actual mid-level content for mid-level players to go with. Some monsters meant for that level (zombie/frost beast) were bit too tough and not worth the effort. Zaltaiz made a remark that if the midlevel players could get organized even once in the history of icesus, they would propably get the sweets and someone would propably have the interest to look into the system. Some kind of an resist tweaker system based on party's total levels/worth could propably help here?

Constantly decreasing player base:

Our numbers are decreasing, and not too many people actually stay after testing the mud. Maybe opening donates for a while to create some kind of an campaign to attract more players would do the trick? It costs money but it can also do wonders. See batmud for a good example.


The conversion itself was a brilliant trick to get some money out of the game. New horribly expensive subguilds and all that propably made a big dent in many players wallets. However, for me this is mostly over again, and i do not have much use for money unless i plan to do something drastical and become a sorcerer/airpriest or such. Some more nice holes to waste your cash to wouldn't hurt. (mansions etc?).

Again, all of my suggestions would require a lot of recoding, and i'm very well aware that we are lacking in coding power.

Apart from these small things, i think the game is interesting once again, i got stuff to do, masteries to gather and friends to go with.

Thats all for now, i'll keep updating this when more stuff pops into my head.

Thanks for the good work for all of those wizzies still around!
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cromin
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Post by cromin »

In monk secondary guild info it says that scions aren't supposed to be able to join water neophytes but the water neophytes' guild info shows no such restriction. So is it just not visible or does it not exist?

My sincere thanks for all the wizards too for the great job they've done
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dwo
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Post by dwo »

I completely agree with yoz on most of the things, and the thing that mostly bothers me is the situation of midlevel players. Sure i might get to kill one eq monster as a healer, but there are so many bigger healers around i would be the last to be picked.

I consider myself as midlevel lvl60 with under 200m totals, and there are not enough mobs to kill while soloing. I cant take up 15-20k mobs in solo in a way that would make it benefit me. And the 5-10k mobs wich i could solo easily are killed by the smaller players, since they are allso good exp to them. I feel like we need more stuff for midlvl players and less for highbies. Making eq with midlevel people would be very hard with todays situation of icesus, let's say lich for example, would be allready be a pain in the ass with a pure midlevel party. Yoz's idea of tweaking the resists for lower lvl people might just be the thing that fixes this broblem, ofc not making it too easy ;)

Thanks for all the wizard's for keeping the game up and making us new things.

Sorry for typoes etc
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solar
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my two cents

Post by solar »

First of all, I apologize for cramming this post full of unrelated stuff.

I would like to see guilds get more 'organized' and be given stuff that will (only) be beneficial in parties, comboing with the performance of other player characters. These abilities would not be usable in solo play.

Some of the older guilds (and systems) could really use some clever and creative loving. Some guilds (like mages) are just dead weight to be lugged around - unless their player knows what she/he is doing (or has high masteries - and these two go usually hand-in-hand), of course.

While the component-based spell system looks all nice and dandy at first, it is actually very, very, restricted. If you want to blast damagetype X at monsters, it is perfect. But the offensive mage spells lack interesting content, and it is awkward to add them this many years after their implementation. Mages will blast the way they do, and the newer guilds will have pre-coded spells with cool features that do not involve swarms. Sigh?

And now to something completely different:

Parties that would include newbies and provide that warmth, fuzzy comfort and in-game guidance would be a huge plus in the game and increasing the player base in general. Too bad newbies only get to party among themselves if they're not like a good RL-friend of someone, eh? I am far too XYZ as a person to do really anything about this myself, but yeah. Kudos to anyone who is willing to go the distance to integrate the new addicts to the community.

Not much good is said usually when it comes to this one american highbieish player whose name starts with the letter F, but at least he took newbies with him, some of who continue to play, still.

Hmm, just where am I leading this thread to?

When I came back from AFK today, I started reading through the conversation Pidzer started and in which Darthalomus participated. I was prepared to see some heavy bashing being about to be served close and personal, the kind of which has too often driven away some of our more easily provoked new players, but...

It didn't happen! Dudes, WTF! Thumbs up, big time!

---
I have voiced out my earlier (and mostly current) opinions in: http://www.icesus.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?t=1525

You, dear reader, may find it of interest.
---

Summa Summarum, it would be nice to see more (encouraged) parties, but we lack the areas to fully support so many active expmakers.
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Post by darthalomus »

I would like to start out with much thanks to the creators of this game and also the staff who currently keeps it afloat. I enjoy my time playing on Icesus and hope to continue enjoying it for years to come. I will start with what I think needs the most attention in my opinion.

The game lacks seriously in the Newb department. I haven't played through to the highbee/midlevel part of the game yet so stay tuned for my ideas, be they good or bad, about what things could use a touch up in that department.

The newbie side of game lacks some kind of "here this is icesus we love you aspect." {from afar Icesus give you a warm cuddly hug} Seriously some ideas would be to have some kind of newbie council people who volunteer or are asked and accept the "responsibility" of being newbie helpers.

As newbie helpers give them access to the newbie line and restrict access to the newbie line from the player base as a whole. Wait just listen please.

I am totally down for bashing somebody and understand the fun that can be had in giving someone a hard time and getting a rise out of them especially newb's."because it's so easy" That being said newbies often have a fragile and delicate psyche and we in our having fun often scare them away.

Newbies need a place where there questions can be answered with out all the catcalling. I think this alone will help greatly.

Things that I would like to see implemented would be 1) an announcement for newbie helpers of when these newbies login to the game. 2) The newbie helpers/council should greet them and make them feel welcome. Start with some generic statement maybe like.
"Welcome to Icesus <playername> if you have any questions type newbie <your question> and someone will help you out.

Also it would be cool if when you first started the game you had a book to read giving you some of the basics on how to ask for help and other basic commands.

At the end of background it could go something along the lines of someone gives you "A guide to the adventures life" the book inspired you to start your journey's into the world as and adventurer. Note: "You still have the book you could read it again to help get you started."

If you made it this far through my rant wow cool. wait till I post my next one. :)
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goderic
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Post by goderic »

Ok, a few random thoughts...
Yes, the game is rather noob-unfriendly. I'd suggest that, on character creation (first time around), a 'quickstart' option be introduced, giving a choice of pre-made character types with basic eq, staring in Vaerlon. A default army, default mage and default healer perhaps. Army is a nice start for newbies as it actually already gives a sackful of basic gear - something that could be added to other newbie guilds. Let's face it, the current way of designing your character is a bit bewildering if you have no idea what's useful for a specific guild. Speaking of which, I frequently see noobs going aroung trying to play without realising you actually have to JOIN a guild...

English language. Always. Even in parties. Nothing against you Finns, please don't get me wrong - but stick to English, not just on channels but also on tells and in parties! I believe that's what Jaa Ry (Sp?) intend the game to be for, anyway.

A few thoughts on guilds I've played since conversion:
Mages: Work pretty well now. My only gripe is that the 4 damage guilds feel like 'cut and paste' jobs. Once you complete one, the others are a bit like re-treading old ground. Still, a very nice guild.
Earth priests: Wow, if ever there was a guild to destroy your self-confidence, this is it! You are, and will always be, crap. Your minion does everything, IS everything. You're as good as it is. A player also needs the patience of a saint to get masteries and level the minion to a decent point - which also takes a lot of time. Not a guild to play if you only have a couple of hours per boot to play.
Earth Priest sec: Useful. Gives a few handy buffs and some useful spells - but... Animated corpse only? A player has to be minimum level 50 to join a sec, and it takes 10 more levels to even get the minion. So, MINIMALLY level 60 for a sec to get a minion, and it's made of paper and can't equip anything. Not much use against anything a level 60+ player would want to fight. You end up making one, allowing it to die, making another - like they're expendible. May I suggest skeleton warrior is a better compromise - worth keeping alive, a bit more survivable, and yet unlikely to be broken? Or perhaps allowing any minion up to and including skeleton warrior?
Coven: Fun. Lots of fun. A bit tricky to play, and not really a party animal - but there's a lot to like about this guild. I'm rather surprised there aren't more coven players about. They could benefit from some more defensive spells at lower levels, before venom ward becomes available.

Just my observations!
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Post by uzriel »

goderic wrote:I'd suggest that, on character creation (first time around), a 'quickstart' option be introduced, giving a choice of pre-made character types with basic eq, staring in Vaerlon. A default army, default mage and default healer perhaps.
This is already availible, or atleast it used to be.
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Post by pidzer »

darthalomus wrote:I would like to start out with much thanks to the creators of this game and also the staff who currently keeps it afloat. I enjoy my time playing on Icesus and hope to continue enjoying it for years to come. I will start with what I think needs the most attention in my opinion.

The game lacks seriously in the Newb department. I haven't played through to the highbee/midlevel part of the game yet so stay tuned for my ideas, be they good or bad, about what things could use a touch up in that department.

The newbie side of game lacks some kind of "here this is icesus we love you aspect." {from afar Icesus give you a warm cuddly hug} Seriously some ideas would be to have some kind of newbie council people who volunteer or are asked and accept the "responsibility" of being newbie helpers.

As newbie helpers give them access to the newbie line and restrict access to the newbie line from the player base as a whole. Wait just listen please.

I am totally down for bashing somebody and understand the fun that can be had in giving someone a hard time and getting a rise out of them especially newb's."because it's so easy" That being said newbies often have a fragile and delicate psyche and we in our having fun often scare them away.

Newbies need a place where there questions can be answered with out all the catcalling. I think this alone will help greatly.

Things that I would like to see implemented would be 1) an announcement for newbie helpers of when these newbies login to the game. 2) The newbie helpers/council should greet them and make them feel welcome. Start with some generic statement maybe like.
"Welcome to Icesus <playername> if you have any questions type newbie <your question> and someone will help you out.

Also it would be cool if when you first started the game you had a book to read giving you some of the basics on how to ask for help and other basic commands.

At the end of background it could go something along the lines of someone gives you "A guide to the adventures life" the book inspired you to start your journey's into the world as and adventurer. Note: "You still have the book you could read it again to help get you started."

If you made it this far through my rant wow cool. wait till I post my next one. :)
I'd have to agree with Darth on this.

A newbie council, or designated group of newbie assistants is beyond _need_.

Letting the entire player-base have access to the newbie line gives way for too much retorhic, sarcasm and cinisism.

I would have to suggest that after a certain level, a players access to the newbie line be cut off.

The current problem with this suggestion, though, is the state of idle times.

A person can idle for hours and hours. Which may lead to some newbies not getting their inquiries answered in any kind of timely manner.

There's an easy fix for that. After about an hour, maybe 2, kick the idle players linkdead or net dead, or whatever you refer to it in this game.

Idle players not only give an inaccurate reflection of active players, but also who you can ask for assistance with various tasks or issues.

I think Darth's suggestion is a great idea and very pragmatic. Not only that, but easily implemented as well. Not much coding time involved to do it.
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yoz
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Post by yoz »

pidzer wrote: The current problem with this suggestion, though, is the state of idle times.

A person can idle for hours and hours. Which may lead to some newbies not getting their inquiries answered in any kind of timely manner.

There's an easy fix for that. After about an hour, maybe 2, kick the idle players linkdead or net dead, or whatever you refer to it in this game.

Idle players not only give an inaccurate reflection of active players, but also who you can ask for assistance with various tasks or issues.
First of all, could you by chance make those superb paintbrush arts of yours any bigger? My nose only bled for 5minutes after seeing that terrific piece of multimedia art.

Second, i vote a stiff no for kicking out idle players. What would this fix anyways? 90% of people use zmud which has very very well working reconnect triggers. That would fool the newbies even more, seeing that a helper is unidle, but in fact, he just reconnected by automated function.

Cutting off newbie channel from bigger players would not help much, but having that newbie helper "title" available for players who choose to be such could possibly help.

Direct guidelines could be made for those players who decide to become one. And failing those could have dire consequences.

This again, has already been done in batmud, and seems to work quite well.
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Post by darthalomus »

yoz wrote:
First of all, could you by chance make those superb paintbrush arts of yours any bigger? My nose only bled for 5minutes after seeing that terrific piece of multimedia art.

Second, i vote a stiff no for kicking out idle players. What would this fix anyways? 90% of people use zmud which has very very well working reconnect triggers. That would fool the newbies even more, seeing that a helper is unidle, but in fact, he just reconnected by automated function.

Cutting off newbie channel from bigger players would not help much, but having that newbie helper "title" available for players who choose to be such could possibly help.

Direct guidelines could be made for those players who decide to become one. And failing those could have dire consequences.

This again, has already been done in batmud, and seems to work quite well.
Wow the start where you bash someones creativeness in there post really lends weight to your following words?

Above you state that removing bigger players from the newb line won't be an effective way of helping to keep newbs but those are the very players who raised there hands on the line to let us all know they where a bunch of A#$hats which is not what newbs need to feel welcome to a game and as far as reconnect triggers make them illegal problem solved.
Just because I am paranoid doesn't mean people aren't really trying to get me.
pidzer
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Post by pidzer »

yoz wrote:
pidzer wrote: The current problem with this suggestion, though, is the state of idle times.

A person can idle for hours and hours. Which may lead to some newbies not getting their inquiries answered in any kind of timely manner.

There's an easy fix for that. After about an hour, maybe 2, kick the idle players linkdead or net dead, or whatever you refer to it in this game.

Idle players not only give an inaccurate reflection of active players, but also who you can ask for assistance with various tasks or issues.
First of all, could you by chance make those superb paintbrush arts of yours any bigger? My nose only bled for 5minutes after seeing that terrific piece of multimedia art.

Second, i vote a stiff no for kicking out idle players. What would this fix anyways? 90% of people use zmud which has very very well working reconnect triggers. That would fool the newbies even more, seeing that a helper is unidle, but in fact, he just reconnected by automated function.

Cutting off newbie channel from bigger players would not help much, but having that newbie helper "title" available for players who choose to be such could possibly help.

Direct guidelines could be made for those players who decide to become one. And failing those could have dire consequences.

This again, has already been done in batmud, and seems to work quite well.
Yeah, that ended up bigger than i thought.

As for the reconnect triggers. Turn them off. Or an auto reconnect rule could be implemented. Besides that. Zmud is teh suck. Get a real client. Portal is by far the best and most powerful.

A high level player doesn't always make the best newbie hewlper. Oftem times the opposte.

High level players tend to develop a huge case of know-it-allism.

If a player(s) has the desire to help noobs, let them apply acordingly.

Idle times are a definately in need of an alteration. I'm not saying this as a noob. I'm saying this as a tenured player of MUDs. Not just one mud. not just Icesus. but of many MUDs.

Just because you've played one MUD for a long time, does not mean you know what works best overall.

I've sen many formats, but the most effective is what Darth has suggested. I've played with him on countless muds. he's not just suggesting something off the top of his head. His logic has come from over a decade of MUDding and experiance.
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solar
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this and that

Post by solar »

darthalomus wrote:
yoz wrote:
First of all, could you by chance make those superb paintbrush arts of yours any bigger? My nose only bled for 5minutes after seeing that terrific piece of multimedia art.

Second, i vote a stiff no for kicking out idle players. What would this fix anyways? 90% of people use zmud which has very very well working reconnect triggers. That would fool the newbies even more, seeing that a helper is unidle, but in fact, he just reconnected by automated function.

Cutting off newbie channel from bigger players would not help much, but having that newbie helper "title" available for players who choose to be such could possibly help.

Direct guidelines could be made for those players who decide to become one. And failing those could have dire consequences.

This again, has already been done in batmud, and seems to work quite well.
Wow the start where you bash someones creativeness in there post really lends weight to your following words?

Above you state that removing bigger players from the newb line won't be an effective way of helping to keep newbs but those are the very players who raised there hands on the line to let us all know they where a bunch of A#$hats which is not what newbs need to feel welcome to a game and as far as reconnect triggers make them illegal problem solved.
I'd rather keep this forum free of (huge) pictures as well.

As for keeping all highbies out of newbie. A definite no, since some of the helpful midbies/lowbies/highbies are clueless and provide inaccurate or false help, even though they themselves may be 100% certain that they are right and everyone else is wrong. The unhelpful highbies just toggle newbie off and live their unlifes in peace, so no harassment there.

Newbie helper system would be nice, but then again, re-read the clueless part above.

As for idle players, a clever newbie knows how to 'finger' or use 'who idle' or even 'who unidle' to see who to ask, if no help is forthcoming. Well articulated and polite inquiries with no spelling errors (We Finns take punctuation seriously) asking a reasonable question is often answered. Just don't start asking for help from the top to bottom, but start from the middlegrounds.
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darthalomus
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Post by darthalomus »

It seems funny that everyone seems to think all these newbs are just going to magically start staying on icesus without making any changes at all. If that where the case ,if what is being done works, then there wouldn't be people talking about keeping more newbs.

Also I think the point is to help people have a better understanding of the language not shun them because they are trying to learn.
Just because I am paranoid doesn't mean people aren't really trying to get me.
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