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 Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 10:36 am |  |
I wanted to create a calm, intelligent discussion on things we the players, along with the assistance of the staff can do to revive the mud so that everyone is happy. I want to address the growing stagnation strangling the mud and I want to highlight what moves have been used in the past to combat stagnation.
Current faults:
Three family system: Some enjoy the familys, infact the tiny portion of the mud that actually still plays the game are likely the only ones to enjoy the family system. However the pbase as a whole (meaning the people we have lost) Clearly did not like the system for whatever reason.
Lack of character options: Currently you can be a family grunt, or an indie. You could also be a bandit which no one particularly likes. If your a family grunt you, scav, mudsex, train skills and branch crafts with your families massive resources. This is about the gist of it. If you are an indie, you have nothing. Absolutely no materials to craft with unless you sewer dive. Family scavs are not frequent enough to give you constant entertainment. Chips are nearly completely useless but that doesn't matter. Your an indie you can't get any. The most your character can hope for is getting into a shop to earn chips that dont matter. There isn't a whole lot of reason to play an indie unless you just desperately want to play the game and hate the families. The only role in the entire game that you can strive for as a family member is to eventually lead the family. Once there you can really affect changes on the game setting, indulge in the minor politics available, and you can crap on anyone you really dont like.
Rust: Rust is really big. Even for 25-30 players online most are locked away in clan bases. The only interaction is within bases and the boozer. Who doesn't love some tavern rp? Rust can barely support a large pbase, it defiantly cant support what is available to us now.
Content: This is anything from building, hunting, scavving, training, business, trade, whoring, dancing, radio news etc. Honestly most of these jobs I mentioned just dont work right now, there isn't enough content to keep someone entertained. I honestly played my current character as a hunter. But after killing my 20th lagato I grew bored, my family had food going bad cause we couldn't eat it all, and the hides were worthless for armor. I didn't have an incentive to hunt other than to look badass. Just like a whore doesn't have an incentive to whore because money is worthless. Business is also therefore pointless. Training, your skills do hit a cap eventually. Building is unwieldy and it takes forever for staff to add in structures that have been built.
/rant
Solutions
Three family system: I have three possible suggestions for my part of the brainstorm.
1. We do away with the families all together, we can do this on a player level, of course it would take some OOC leniency cause I know your characters would not likely abandon the system willy nilly. Find something else, likely a communal single family in a smaller localized spot.
2. We expand the family system, the staff works with us and encourages us to use the families like intended. The families govern rust, they put the laws down, they enforce them, they manufacture a new economic standard, they build the shops and front the resources to do wild and awesome things. Unfortunately unless the staff started npc riots due to lack of governance and low public opinion, it is highly unlikely any family will want to put the extra work in to run the town.
3. Expanding on Two. Interconnect the families, we as players could create a council to run rust, to establish governance rather than each family working for their own interest on their own slice of the town. This council could consist of three elected representatives from the indies, and one representative of each family. Totally six. This would add a whole new political game and add new life to the indies in particular. They would have a voice. Now why would the families give the indies any power? Cause there is something like 20,000 indies and if they started to riot it would not be pretty for the families. Democracy would be the best way to calm them.
More in next post >
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 10:50 am | |
Solutions part 2:
Lack of character roles:
Economy: The game just needs an economy, once money is rare enough and worth something then whores, businessmen, indies and families can start enterprising. Trying to amass the most wealth through trade and services. The problem with turf quest and gold buying was that families had a unlimited source of wealth, and nothing to spend it on but gold. Indies were cut out. They weren't needed for anything. If indies did manage to get chips the most they could buy is gold or a frivolous pattern. Turf quest were forced in to provide chips when we had no real sources, but it was badly implemented and ended up flooding chips everywhere.
Rust: Two options.
1. We keep rust, but the players decide to build a camp out in the waste, we have rust to visit and retreat too but we live on the edge. In a camp with only the resources we can scav and all the dangers of the wild just outside our shoddy barricades. This would force the pbase together, blurr the lines between families and leadership would come from the best leaders.
2. Rust is destroyed, we migrate anywhere in the wilderness or even underground. My personal favorite location is the hospital. Two wings, plenty of rooms, small but not too small. Once we've migrated we'd have nothing but the gear on our PC's from there we have the crafts to install lighting to the building, patch breaches in the walls to make more rooms usable. Scav tools, scav resources, hunt for food again. Just basically start from scratch. I also like that with two wings, you'd probably have the pbase split between them, forced to interact often but possibly have ideological differences. The plus side of this is we can use the ruins of Rust as a scav location.
Content:
Hunting: Adding new and useful wildlife to hunt would revive this profession. Food is useless and new hides would have to provide better or side grades of armor, nobody cares for that. So as I've suggested before, why not add specialized creatures, game that has benefits for chemist, biologist, techies, and even weapon crafters. example: A hunter goes and uses traps to hunt down a weak, but slippery little snake that has a powerful venom. Chemist can then use this venom for a specialized valuable medicine, or maybe a cure for various sicknesses.
Whoring, business, etc all become solved by some sort of economy.
Conflict and death: Adding this in..its not a problem, in fact its a solution. When we are at war or on the edge of war, the pbase skyrockets back to old numbers. Abandon peace loving ideals, we live in a post apocalyptic setting where weakness shouldn't thrive like it does. Compete with other groups, beat them down, change the map, change the dynamics of the game through strength or smarts. DO NOT whine about the pk, do not fret about losing your characters. My god why did we become so soft? Pc's died all the time in Atonement, and in shadows of islidur staff would wipe out dozens of pc's without blinking. It kept the game fresh, let people try out new concepts and it also freed up roles for other players to step into. DO NOT threaten to quit the game if you lose your character. I dont care, no one should. We dont need one player who wants to play sims. We want the 5 players who will take their place who want to play a challenging, post-apocalyptic game in a gritty setting.
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grandpa
Registered
Entrenched Oldbie
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 3:02 pm | |
There's a lot of assumptions here, Flincher, and some straight-up untruths. But the real problem is the schizophrenic nature of your suggestions, as well as the general impossibility of implementation.
Half of your suggestions are in direct conflict with eachother: first and foremost is how you're trying to design a MUD that both encourages desperate PvE with one that encourages rampant PvP. PvE does not encourage PvP; this was a cycle that happened repeatedly in Atonement; Alpha all the way to the end of the game. If you have an active enemy the playerbase -has- to struggle to survive against, PvP drops to next-to-nothing. If you defeat/remove that, PvP will slowly but steadily rise. People get bored, so they go to PvP, whether it makes sense or not.
Councils are equally silly on an OOC level; I understand wanting them on an IC level, but from SoI to Atonement to Parallel, I challenge anyyyybody to come up with a relevant 'council' that met regularly and did -anything-. Elections don't work, either.
Destroying the game just won't work; we don't have the manpower to do it, either as a pbase or as Staff.
Straight-up untruths:
"When we are at war or on the edge of war, the pbase skyrockets back to old numbers."
No. Absolutely no; the numbers -drop-, and so do the number of people actually playing with others outside clans. This is a basic fact; go look at the other thread to point out how hard people turtle when conflict shows up. There's no such thing as measured response or roleplay when it comes to conflict in Parallel. It's unfortunate, but as soon as the hint of conflict shows up, two things happen: the majorit of PCs decide that they must win and come out of this as the absolute and total victor, and a majority stop taking risks. There's some overlap between these two groups.
"In shadows of islidur staff would wipe out dozens of pc's without blinking."
These would be major RPTs on a game that could hit 40-60 players every day, with multiple spheres; closing parts of the game works when you have -other places to go-. Not an option here.
Ending on a positive note, RE: Hunting; this would be interesting. It wouldn't add the same level of depth as you're imagining, I bet, but it would help alleviate some things.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 4:01 pm | |
Yeah unfortunately you ask for the most overpowered thing in the game to be buffed for Hunting's sake.
Sorry, no can do. It'd require a retroactive armor overhaul and that's not happening.
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Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2014 4:08 pm | |
Player numbers hit 25 two weeks during a pvp conflict that was threatening to become a full blown war. Three days later when it was obvious a war would not occur numbers dropped back below 10.
Also my ideas contradict each other because I'm suggesting two possible directions. You can lean heavily towards conflict and revive the mud that way. Or you can lean heavily towards pve and a better sims experience. Likely reviving the game that way too.
What I suggested for hunting was -not- adding any new armors. I suggested adding other types of things you can gather from hunting. Such as special materials, or important materials needed for the other crafters in the game.
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Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 1:44 am | |
Well this probably isn't very helpful or ground breaking, but the mud voting website -just- restarted. Maybe we could all vote a bit more? .02 humbly tossed
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Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 1:58 am | |
The cause of the war being started was more likely the 25 active at a time. More people just equals moer shots at conflict. After the war threatened, numbers began to drop lower quickly.
Reverse cause and effect as to what you believe, in my opinion, Flincher, though it's an interesting standpoint.
That said: more the issue than needing an enemy, we really should do more with the enemies we -have-. Bandits shot Bjork, and Rusters. There are assuredly more of them
We don't need to start making new enemies, we just need to get over the 'enemies out of sight, enemies out of mind' mentality. There are still bandits with buttloads of gold. Please, RP doing something about that, and once it's over, we can worry about future conflict >>
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slyviolin
Registered
Sometimes I struggle with my demons. Other times we just fuck and have cheesecake.
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Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 7:51 pm | |
Numbers rose with the potential of plot line development/PvE war (Hilde/little girl development, Us vs bandits), however as soon as people started to escalate into a pvp war the numbers dropped away again and the playerbase got pretty heavily segregated with people being locked away in bases from fear of random pking or orders from higher up.
That's the only observation I have to add to this conversation if we are being polite.
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Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 11:55 pm | |
I joined for a random run and I have millions of followers so they all started playing too.
At least that's what I tell myself.
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