Ideas for gods etc.

Feedback, bugs, and general gameplay related discussion.
Pril
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Ideas for gods etc.

Postby Pril » Sat Aug 27, 2005 12:06 am

Ok so i was sitting around thinking and here's an idea i came up with. It's understandable that the gods have lives and that's kewl i'm a firm believer that rl is > the mud, but some stuff clearly needs to be changed. I don't know the whole areas process or any of it so tell me if some of this stuff is already done or what not.

1) before a zone goes into a game ptest it. a lot of the new zones going in have bugs or unbalanced eq (no matter what the eq clac'r says)

1a) I've noticed a trend of zones going in spawning a lot of eq and then the amount of eq spawn'd gets down'd but people already have a bunch of it (izans for example)

1b) This would be especially useful for for all the homeland zones which will be coming in soon. I think that if we're putting in a whole bunch of zones they should definatly get players who play a lot and know what they are doing to ptest them.

2) have gods review the ptesting to see if players think of ways around stuff that gods hadn't anticipated so that they can plug those holes.

2a) yeah the 15 players who ptest it will know the zone better maybe don't allow those players to lead the zone for the first 5(?) times it's lead. i figuer by the time it's lead 5 times people will have a working idea of how the zone should be done etc.

3) ptest all existing zones for bugs/ideas of how to change stuff to make it more interesting.

4) listen to the people who play the game a lot, we understand that rl gets in the way and between your god duties and rl duties. But some of us play a lot and have input on zones that a lot of the time (or so it seams) goes unnoticed when we post it.

5) don't be too proud to ask for help coding/building etc if you need it. We understand that this is your game but for a lot of us this is our home away from home yeah it sounds stupid but it's true, i've made a lot of really good friends on here as i'm sure most of us have, some of us are more than willing to help so maybe in announcments make posts like. "LF: someone to go through an area" and see who responds and have them go through it. I know i wouldn't mind taking the time ptesting or going through areas.


Anyways just ideas if i think of more i'll post more.

Pril
Cyric
FORGER AREAS
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Postby Cyric » Sat Aug 27, 2005 12:16 am

OK, this is my take on the whole ptesting thing, since I shut it down in the first place: Waaaaaaaaay back when when I first started writing zones here we had official ptesters, and 100% of the zones (my own included) got hacked immediately upon implementation by players that had leaked information about said zones.

So, as a result I decided, and the areas folks all agreed, that we'd no longer do ptesting. Now, let's look at the whole concept of ptesting a new zone. When Zaor came in not too long ago, experienced 50th level players that visited it the first few times said that the zone could never ever ever be completed, was way too hard, and needed a major overhaul. Well now it's a 2 hour zone with a moderate group. Ptesting does not give an accurate representation of anything. You guys are smart enough to figure stuff out over time...we cannot create a zone that is as hard to do the first time as it is the last time it's done...impossible.

As a result, ptesting doesn't help us at all...trust me, I've done it a bunch both as a player and as an areas writer. We all have morts over on the testmud that we use to run through particularly strange parts of our zones, but we leave the wholesale "testing" to you, and for the most part it works just as well as any other system I've ever seen. We do indeed listen to the experienced players (those that are polite, that is), and make changes appropriately.

Hope that helps!
Thilindel
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Postby Thilindel » Sat Aug 27, 2005 12:29 am

I'd fully nominate Lilithelle! She's the most honest and helpful player I know. She's the full reason I play here..well, core reason I should say. I'd even trust her with my passwords :P Lastly, she definitely knows how to keep secrets! She still hasn't told us about winning that 150 million lotto! *nod me*
kiryan
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Postby kiryan » Sat Aug 27, 2005 12:48 am

i tend to agree with cyric. the answer is not to beta testing the zones with a group.

the answer is to address the problem which is 2 part.

1. changes take too long to implement.

for whatever reason, once something has been identified as clearly F*d up, it takes forever to change them. sometimes when we have a very active god looking into it thigns get fixed fast, other times weeks go by players bitch like crazy another month goes by and a weak change gets implemented.

2. people doing the review of new zones either don't know enough or don't look closely enough.

One exceptional player could've told you in a heart beat what was wrong with some of the last few zones that came in. Having someone like Lilithelle look at a zone for twinky stuff would eliminate 90% of any newbie twink mistakes, having someone like Klandan look at the eq stats would help identify 90% of the omg wtf were you thinkings thats insane or thats totally retarded or that completely ruins another zone....
Cyric
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Postby Cyric » Sat Aug 27, 2005 12:58 am

You're absolutely right about your first point. If you can get one of us interested we'll fix it up lickety split. Trust me, Marthammor's all over the current Jot stuff like a duck on a junebug. As far as the 2nd point goes, we actually do do just that. We have senior players that have been sworn to secrecy (really, I'm not kidding) that we bounce ideas off of. But, that said, it's hard sometimes to see an item in its context. As always, we're working on it, and I think we're way better that we've been in the past.
Dalar
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Postby Dalar » Sat Aug 27, 2005 1:47 am

Cyric wrote:You're absolutely right about your first point. If you can get one of us interested we'll fix it up lickety split. Trust me, Marthammor's all over the current Jot stuff like a duck on a junebug. As far as the 2nd point goes, we actually do do just that. We have senior [b]players that have been sworn to secrecy (really, I'm not kidding) that we bounce ideas off of. But, that said, it's hard sometimes to see an item in its context. As always, we're working on it, and I think we're way better that we've been in the past.[/b]

Larim
Ambar
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Postby Ambar » Sat Aug 27, 2005 4:47 am

a duck on a junebug?

rofl
Marthammor
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Postby Marthammor » Sat Aug 27, 2005 3:16 pm

You get used to his ways of describing yer work after awhile.. I'm still trying to :P

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