[MojoJojo]

^ monster swarms that show up in wreathed deep*

(why can’t we edit forum posts anymore?)

[MojoJojo]

Horrendous. Simply horrendous.

Haven is, already, a bad combat MUD. It just doesn’t hold up to par with MUDs designed around solid combat mechanics. Now, it practically forces everyone to deepthroat its bad combat mechanics and suck it up. You wanna go somewhere on the map — Here, let me detour you. Why would you go two stops west, which would be the logical path? Instead, let me send you all the way to the northeastern corner of the map, then straight into the centre of the mist, only to leave you crashed there.

Spawns are both predictable and way too rampant. There’s nothing engaging about going hunting, especially now that safe zones are practically completely removed. We had a few safe zones from which to orient ourselves, to prepare a little, to RP some during the hunt. Right now, you can’t do anything like this.

Because of the way safe spots were tweaked, now any store which would like to host some outdoor RP/activities is screwed. The mist is already so persistent when it finds a spot to sit on, it actively kills people’s desire to visit a store. I’ve had my store be in the epicentre twice now, and this is so destructive to the motivation and spirit of a player like me. You can invest a ton of passion and time into a store only for the game to just decide your store is now a kill zone and actively deter players for going there.

Monsters are way weird, too. Some of the mobs don’t want to aggro unless they have +1s. They roam real randomly, too. Some of them chase you, others decide to just wander away. Other times, you’re in combat and some new mob just decides to ignore the fast combat you’re already in, walks five rooms towards you, and only joins combat when it’s in the exact room with you – so now, on top of having the two mobs you were already dealing with via kiting, you have a weeping willow within 20 units of range of you.

Their damage numbers are whack, too. Ankle-deep, you’ll already encounter mushroom men, which can hit for around 15-18DF. That’s enough to two-turn an unsuspecting person who ended up in the mist cause of WALK. There’s carnivorous plants that deal upwards of 60DF in the waist-high. Then there’s the absurd monster swarms that show up in waist-deep, sometimes consisting of multiple golems, multiple Snarers, and a whole flock of ‘lesser’ mobs.

It’s a terrible design idea, no matter what way you colour it. It forces combat. It deters activity in entire areas of the game. It is unpredictable. It makes hunting unfun and turns it into just standing still on a tile on the street and only adjust what room you’re in when the mist status changed.

There isn’t a day that goes by where like 2-5 PCs are hospitalized. This helps highlight the core issue rather well. It’s way too brutal, unpredictable, and spammy/swarmy, and this is built into a game that does a bad job at providing an engaging, balanced (if not exciting) combat experience. It forces people to always be geared up for possible combat because of the MUDs inherent issues with pathfinding. It kills hunt RP with how spawns are now predictable -and- timed. And if it’s meant to be punishing, I’ll have you know you can outsprint pretty much every mob with Running 1.. but now need to sprint all the way to where the mist doesn’t reach if you don’t sprint through a street with a store next to it – but you better pray that the store, that hopeful safe zone, isn’t accessible only through the new auto-doors, as you didn’t seem to be able to move through them or open them last time I tried while in combat.

[MojoJojo]

“I do think limiting the favor economy on massive organizations is the right call to encourage people to spread out their PCs on the grid.”

Please, if that’s the case – Diversify the societies. They can rather roughly be divvied up to:
– Satanist black witch cult
– Werewolves Inc.
– Demigods and their ABs
– Temple But More Extreme
– The Court

This is not really a diverse selection of societies to spread the playerbase out across, and I guess this explains why we see a lot of flocking happening. We are not being encouraged to spread out, we’re being punished for creating a concept that doesn’t fit in these tight constrains and don’t wanna just pick a no-match for optimal gains/minmaxery, if you ask me.

[MojoJojo]

Still no Karma.
Still no RPXP.
Daily RPXP is random. This week, I’ve seen it twice so far.

I’ve climbed from 22k RPXP to 33k over the course of nearly three weeks now…

[MojoJojo]

That’s the thing, too. There are only five societies and the usual Big Threes. This is rather limiting. I know my concept, for one, would have -zero- place in any of the societies. ‘Go join other societies’ isn’t really an argument here, when the ones that are available are very.. what’s the word I’m even looking for… And I know I’ve heard this same argument from a few corners, where it’s mostly just forcing yourself into a group because.. well.. ‘group good alone bad’.

Also, Luka, you probably haven’t been around long enough, too. This is always what happens in new iterations. And it continues to highlight this issue. People flock where stuff is busiest. Usually, this is Hand because about 90% of the new characters end up being supernaturals, on top of a player soc/society. And now, player count actively debuffs contribution and due rewards.

So, yes, while I get that it would be great for small socs to see more people join to create more RP, this might not be what it gets treated for. It’s created a system where it would be more lucrative to people to join these small societies, not interact or share patrols/etc., and try minmax the shit out of yet another system. I’m not saying it -is- what everyone is going to do. But it’ll only take so long or people grow weary and frustrated of trying to earn.. anything on the list that isn’t a charm.. with an income of sub-30 a week (if the game even decides to hand it out).

Numbers need to get tweaked. 54 favour is not a lot of favour. It buys you zilch, and that’s on a week I invested 10+ hours on just finding and participating in the patrols alone.

[MojoJojo]

“This is his entire explanation for how the system is designed to work, where he specifically says it’s not going to help you to kick out less productive people, since favor is automatically relatively weighted to give the split of favor to people who are more active and stuff.”

Sadly, I don’t think this is what works. I polled on top of every single activity, week one, in my soc. Between 10+ patrols, two hunts, two events… And that week, I got a whole ass 54 favour in a 24-big soc. And I think this is because, out of all those events, not a lot of them happened in the right borough. Which, you know… is a massive deterrent to RPing outside your bubble.

I agree it is too early to lay heavy judgement on the system yet, but this isn’t heavy judgement. I’m giving my perspective, my feedback, on the system with some doom-thinking about the possibility of it. You can’t tell me that, in a game that now requires you to even spend favour to investigate plots, and which now forces you to kind of solely focus all your society’s cooldowns (encounters, couriers, patrols, etc) in a single borough to even see any kind of reward, having such a tiny pool get divvied out between 20+ people is looking to promote communal RP. Sure, it might incentivize people to join those lower-pop socs, but then those already in lower-pop socs are meanwhile being ‘incentivized’ not to let people in, as any activity of new people would slice into their cuts of the already limited favour pie.

[MojoJojo]

Week two is done.

I’ve seen daily RPXP twice, last week, despite having been active for most of it initially. Still waiting on weekly RPXP handouts, too. Due to missing the first week of payouts, I’ve also not gotten any karma credited to me while the debt continues to build up.

Is this being looked into? Can people who miss out on all this actually expect some payout of the weeks they’ve missed? Right now, it’s rather actively deterring me from investing effort into some ideas for plots/schemes/events I’ve had.

[MojoJojo]

Additionally, I’m now hearing people are receiving upwards of 4 to 5k of Daily RPXP and they admit they aren’t doing much for it. No patrols or anything..

.. Meanwhile, I’ve been doing those pretty much daily. Alongside other RP. Alongside attending events.
And I’ve missed out on daily RPXP handouts for three consecutive days, having sat at 22.1k, only to receive a measly 2.1k today.

Is the daily RPXP not a flat amount?
Does emote length, or perhaps even total amount, cut into daily RPXP gains?

[MojoJojo]

I legitimately would not mind a different Type of Raids to exist entirely, which is very much not about faction/societies duking it out against one another, and it being a Factions/Societies vs Legion incursion type thing. Though these should also come with rewards that each attending group would enjoy.

Perhaps have Operations return, and have them function as before as the PvP with mild ‘vE’ elements in the small waves. Raids could be developed from here into a wave-defense kind of deal.

[MojoJojo]

You are a legend for sharing this!

[Author]

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