Category: building

The Busy Idler

by Tharius

So it’s been a while since I’ve been out and mkilling or adventuring much at all, yet it’s been a busy couple of weeks on the Realms of Despair. All of us are probably aware that there have been a couple of houses sold, a couple of apartments are up for sale. We’ve seen some code fixes come in to address some bugs that have been causing crashes and also to add at least one new skill for the followers of Tempus. There’s been some new eqsets added and a new area has found its way into the game. I have had absolutely nothing to do with any of these projects, yet I’m delighted to see these outwards signs of activity in our game.

What have I been up to? To my great delight I have completed my role in the creation of the Guild of Origin item quest. I undertook this project after the guilds were ported and decided to make it fairly elaborate on the programming side. The quest plays out reasonably from the user side, the extra programming was put in place to give the thing a little bit of replay value and so that each of the different classes in the guild will experience it slightly differently. With some luck we’ll see that come in before the end of the year, assuming that my code is actually reasonably correct (if it’s not, {RusselPetersVoice} somebody’s gonna get hurt real bad {/RusselPetersVoice}).

My RL has been fairly busy so I’ve shied away from adventuring too terribly much, I haven’t spent a lot of time chasing down clues to the new eqsets, from the response on avatar it seems that many people have been frustrated in their attempts. One clue we saw was that the pieces may not be fixed to specific mobs in the same way that previous sets have been. We will have to see how it plays out, I don’t think I have a Drow character, so there’s a bit of investment required to get into this.

Some people have gotten through The Wilds rather efficiently and I’ve been fortunate enough to see some of the gear coming out of the area, I must say it seems like the items are quite worth the adventure. I have deliberately avoided the area because there’s too many people flooding it right now, but as it cools down a bit I look forward to checking it all out (I have also been attempting to avoid discussions about any puzzles … I’m not just sitting back to have the puzzles handed to me).

I have been doing some leveling, it’s nice to be able to pick it up and put it down. For those of you who have been involved with Syldir’s Rolling Project (what I call “Stoli Rollers”) it has provided me with a plethora of level 2’s to go work on. I have spent some time during this leveling to “smell the roses” by experiencing a surprisingly growing list of pre-avatar quests. If you haven’t gone looking for them I encourage you to try.

I have also been doing a fair bit of building when I’m around and I have been really pleased by the help and support of the immortal community, especially Gonnil who has endured my questions with great patience. Gonnil is visible most of the day, which opens him up to spam from all sectors, yet he is really quite good about replying if he’s not busy. Thank you Gonnil.

So that’s a bit of the news at this hour… I’m sure some of you noticed I brushed up realmsofdespair.info recently, I will continue to work on that as time permits. Certainly I need to get my item database reworked (it is very technically correct but also exceptionally slow and unnecessarily rigid) so that we can all start to use the “Mr. Dressup” code I’ve enjoyed in my local application. If any of you are experienced at database design I’d love to bend your ear a bit and come up with a reasonably efficient way to solve this problem.

Cheers!

From working on the database to working on the guilds …

by Tharius

I am still working away at some trigger problems, so I’ll return to that topic soon enough, but now for something completely different …

When I returned to Realms one of the first things I did was ask Gonnil to port an area that Julie had almost completed before she died.  I want to see it completed and in game to honour her but I also don’t want it to be too pansy and need to be tweaked and updated to accommodate the new reality of the Realms (for example barbarians weren’t in the game when the area was designed).  Part of that education has been to learn what tactics and techniques are currently used and work them into my design.  That’s still an ongoing issue.

In the mean time as I discussed building things with people I was steered to approach Melindora and Zistrosk about contributing to the guild overhaul.  As I understand it the guild revisions had been proposed quite a while beforehand and should have been completed by March 2013 according to the original timetable.  As it was early May and they were not done we can safely assume timetables be damned but there was an urgency to getting this project completed.

So a bit of backstory.  It’s not widely known but it’s not secret either.  I was passed a log of the meeting at which the changes were announced to the leadership of the guilds and I must say I was not surprised by resistance to the idea of the merger but I was disappointed with the way that rather than contribute to the new ideas some of the guild leaders elected to abandon the project and even their guilds.

After this announcement many guild run programs became idle as no one wanted to accumulate points towards gear and not have those points recognized in the new guild.  This led to wholesale inactivity in guilds as far as I can tell.  I think that if people had continued to be active in their programs and had gone forward with an agreement to honour the old point systems then perhaps the merger would have gone on with a more active userbase but … it didn’t happen.  With some notable exceptions people abandoned the old guilds and moved on.

When I joined the project my original idea was to work on Guild of Origin but I was happy to contribute to the Guild of Spirit build.  At that point Guild of Nature was well developed and a lot of what you see today was already there.  Zistrosk was in full shine and polish mode, though through working together and using each other as sounding boards some things evolved.

Melindora had already established the layout of the Guild of Spirit and I started a process of adding extra descriptions and programs into the guild, polishing each room description as I went along using Melindora’s original descriptions as a guideline.  We have differences of style but what eventually came out of it and is in the game now I’m quite pleased with.

I think that at first there was an outpouring of effort but that as personality conflicts arose people dropped off the project.  By the time I was working on Zist’s port it was not uncommon that only he and I were on.  In time Bern stepped in to help get GoO completed and Malkatov dropped in to start designing the guild port quests.  The whole while there was a ton of support and consultation with Ceirana and Destre (hand holding too sometimes).  Gonnil was a big help with unkinking some programs.

As I worked on the guild project I really got the chance to brush the dust off my creative side and take it out for some exercise.  I originally was uncertain about revising an area but it really did leave a lot of room for creative expression.

When we were finally finished with the builds they went back to the Build Council and finally the CoE for approval, some things got nerfed but some the important things stayed.  Zistrosk and I were asked to find suitable locations to put the guilds within Darkhaven and had some idea of the timetable as we moved into September.  When the guild only quests started we felt sure that the time was near for the ports 🙂

I think my involvement with this project is the reason I was asked to step from Guild of Thieves First into the Guildmaster of the Guild of Origin role.  Leadership is a verb and if you’re not actively out there leading, then you’re not doing the job.

I will find some more time to reflect on this time period soon but this gives you an idea of what the behind the scenes process was.  A thank you to everyone who did contribute positively in any way including constructive criticism before the port and since.  Some of the things I put in GoS were boneheaded (Joy should have had sneak and should have had a lower % on her progs!! Sorry guys and gals!!) but I learned. 🙂

 

All that’s old is new again …

by Tharius

I reflect a bit on my recollection of being a new player, indeed I have blogged about it a bit.  The goal of this recollection is to try to keep myself open to the experience that new players are having with Realms so that I can try to keep useful ideas floating to the surface for new player attraction and retention.

I think it’s important to separate them because getting people in the door means nothing if we can’t keep them and keeping 100% of a very low attraction does little to help the overall situation.  Of course both attraction and retention are two-fold, attracting new players versus re-enticing older players and retaining new players versus retaining the existing player base.

Attraction is a matter of advertising I think.  Traditionally I’ve felt the best method of advertising is word of mouth.  If your friend plays and helps you get up to speed then you’re likely to give it a go.  This is how I was recruited into the Realms of Despair by Daltorak so many years ago.  For this to be effective as a primary strategy there needs to be a critical mass of players and at present I believe we are probably below that threshold but it’s still a very good way of introducing new players.  Are you involved in role playing website?  Are there people there who might enjoy Realms RP?  Perhaps you have some friends who are big fans of retro gaming, does their interest extend into text based games?

We certainly need to get the word out among the people who are already interested in muds as well, that is why voting on The Mud Connector and Top Mud Sites is so very important.  We’ve languished around 25th for some time and recently we’ve beaten our way back into the top 20, but that’s not good enough.  I think that we’ll need to keep pushing for the top 10 before this will become a good source of new players, but again every little bit helps.

There has been a great deal of posting happening on the Facebook Realms of Despair group.  I think this is lighting a bit of a fire under some old players to come back in and check things out again.  An important question is why did they leave originally?  I think that topic could fill a few blog posts, but I do think it’s important that we listen to them.  Not everything can be addressed but perhaps things that didn’t make sense 5 or 8 years ago would make sense now.

So what about retention?  It used to be that the first stopping place of a true new player would be a guild.  I always thought that leaving them on their own until level 15 or even 20 was a little tough.  It’s the first little while when you need the most help.  Of course when channels were active and there were lots of NC online that helped to balance things quite a lot.  I am hopeful that the new guild builds will give a good home to new players again.  I also hope that the entry level is set somewhere to maximize the feeling of belonging and help.

New players are quite welcome in Arete but it is certainly not the order’s goal to replace guilds as a first stop for new players.  Not only do guilds offer a place that is more specialized towards learning a particular class but in principle there would be more people of similar level who you can join in leveling.  Nonetheless I think a sense of community and home for new players is important in helping with retention.  Everyone who answers questions or even says hello on channels is helping that sense of community.

I’ve seen a great deal of comments about “don’t level too fast” or “enjoy the adventure” but the fact is that when you don’t have an avatar, your goal is to get an avatar.  Your whole climb up the ladder is about entering the land of yellow spam and never having to eat, drink or sleep again. *eg*  I agree that there are a lot of interesting areas out for lower level players but I don’t think they get visited unless there’s a reason to go there.  If a new player is told there’s a piece of equipment that will help their leveling they’ll go there.  Unfortunately like Diablo, by the time you can get the equipment sometimes you no longer need it.  Still everyone’s going to do things differently.  The introduction of lowbie quests have been fairly well done I think there’s room to keep growing along these lines.

What about avatar engagement?  The classic problem.  There is no end game for Realms… the goals are what you set for yourself.  In an age of many players online, you have your choice of runs to attend to help you dress an army of characters.  This is something every player, new and old, can contribute to improving.  It is frustrating trying to get a critical mass of players together to go topple the next mob.  A system that scales mobs attacks and defenses by the number of characters in a room or an area could help this.  Any mob that is a tank switcher would need hardly any modification to it’s attack style and any mob that locks onto a single tank while the hitters beat it to death is probably due for an upgrade anyway.  So now a single player could reasonably go fight a wider range of mobiles.  It shouldn’t be easy.  You should be able to be insane and go one on one with Danbala and have a shot to win.  It shouldn’t be easy.  It should be a bit easier with multiple people to encourage the social aspect.  Hey can’t we just take multi checks off things and get to the same place?  Maybe.  Multi checks do help restrain some of the really over the top behavior that we’ve seen over the years and by keeping things solo we still support the idea that a new player has an equal shot at things.  Yes, better equipment will help a veteran, but that’s the privilege that you earn for playing.  The Falcon’s Quest is something I think is extremely well done, it gives something that is genuinely worthwhile to your character.  More things like this would help.

Fully automated quest system?  No… I think that’s overreaching, the quest council does a good job being creative.  Let’s untie their hands and give them a little more ability to give out cool prizes.  Glory is helpful but unique quest prizes are very nice too.

One of the biggest comments I’ve heard is that our areas are static and that stifles the ability of players to feel like they’re interacting with the game.  This is true and valid, from my point of view.  There is little interaction between areas because of the structure of objects and area files.  You have to be trusted to a certain level before you can figure out the numbers to use to make areas interact with one another and you create couplings that can break if one area changes out of lock step with the other.  With modern source control these text files can easily be tracked and dependencies maintained.

I say more interactivity and some source code help in allowing minor edits to an area.  When working on the Guild of Spirit I realized how stupid it is that the garden will be lush and green even when Realms tells me it’s snowing.  I would have to write another room with the winter description and a program to silently trans everything and everyone in the room to the winter room and then open and close passages so the exits would still work.  It’s quite doable.  I may even try to put some of this sort of thing into an area.  Who would want to do this for more than a few rooms however?  I think a high level of interactivity with some sort of overarching story within Realms can help.

 

Oh well, this is getting long in the tooth.  I’d love to hear from anyone reading this with your ideas on how we can make Realms better.

 

Here, There and Everywhere

by Tharius

It has been a little while since I popped in here to leave a few words, and I thought I’d share what’s been going on.

As many will already know June 13 brought the RoDpocalypse… the couple of weeks of downtime when the server decided to go for a permanent coffee break.  It started with a few updates, a force quit by Conran and apparently the server just couldn’t take it any more, went out for cigarettes and never came back.  I will say that bringing up an alternate port was a good idea, I’m not a huge fan of Helter Skelter mode but it certainly got some people interested in player killing (PKill), so huzzah, and allowed the rest of us to stay in touch at least.  I will express my thanks to everyone who worked hard to bring the game back up, especially to Thoric (Derek Snider) who has been keeping the lights on for almost 20 years.

The RoDpocalypse had little affect on me personally, as I was renovating and painting our new rental house and honestly had very, very little time for any online activities.  I did lose 2 level 2 rerollers, good stats but nothing I can’t roll again 🙂  The biggest disappointment … no birthday cake!  Ah well, maybe next year.

So that’s a little of it… the other part is that I have been hanging out on another SMAUG mud … yes, I’ve been unfaithful… but it’s not what you think!  I’ve been over on Zistrosk’s port helping to get the Guild of Spirit built.  The guild merge has been coming for a long time and I think one of the problems that’s been stalling it is too many people starting and quitting over personality conflicts.  That’s just an opinion, I haven’t been around this since the beginning so I can only comment on the little I’ve seen.  GoS also suffers from the fact that some of the guilds that are merging into it are, in this author’s opinion, the most inactive guilds on RoD.  I have observed that at least one of the guilds that could have really chipped in and made this area something special chose to simply oppose the entire merge idea.  It’s too bad because their headquarters was one of the nicer written headquarters and their input would have been valuable.  Notwithstanding, I’ve worked as much as possible to incorporate them into this new guild and I really hope they participate, but I won’t hold my breath.

I’m excited about the guild merge, I think it’s a good thing.  I will say I’m impressed with the new Guild of Nature, kudos to Zistrosk, Elendure and all the others who worked on it.  If there was a guild I was going to be critical of, this would be it, having been long time members of both Guild of Rangers and Guild of Druids.  I think it has a new feel to it but does work to incorporate a fair amount from the old guilds without feeling cut and pasted.