Answers to some Clok revival FAQs

[Adresin]

Hi folks,

Rias had a random voice chat which of course meant a bunch of us had lots of random questions for him. I know I don't remember all or probably even half of them, but here's a quick list of what I do remember. Others that were there, feel free to fill in the rest.

labels
Yes, these disappeared for a reason. People were abusing them to put text on things in ways that didn't make sense. Use things for their intended purposes, people! My words, not his. Anyway, two potential solutions discussed that Rias seemed agreeable to are a way to add invisible keywords to items, like naming but for objects, and allowing specific types of objects like books to have text added. Not mentioned was the fact that this wouldn't solve the issue of wanting to label items so people know who they belong to, but the above solution would solve for most use cases.

mobile healing and physickers
As has been said before, physicker type healing will eventually be a thing, though it sounded like maybe more as general abilities than a specific guild. Rias, correct me if I'm wrong on that. I'm not sure how herbalism will play into that, forgot to ask, but one thing that was brought up was the need for some kind of mobile healing solution to hold us combat people over in the meantime either sold at the market or at infirmeries. It sounds like this may be a thing as a temporary solution.

cvc
Some may know it as PK or PVP, but the idea is that the general rules will be the same or at least similar to Cogg. For those that enjoy a lot of physical conflict it should be a thing, but players shouldn't have to worry about being constantly stalked and harassed just because. It sounds like the info on this will be copied from the cogg wiki to the clok one, maybe with some modification. Which reminds me, Rias, any chance of getting the help system hooked into the clok wiki?

Corvus
Corvus is not intended to be a starting location or as big and involved as Shadgard. However that doesn't mean it won't have interesting things there. Rias wants to open up possibilities for Corvus people to do things that affect the game world, especially things that aren't just go kill people or attack Shadgard. The idea isn't that Corvites are evil just to be evil, as a general rule, but more people that take a different kind of attitude. For them the Lost Lands is what it is, and we'll never fix the resen, canim, the abundance of nether, so instead they want to embrace what we have and run with it. Of course this is a generality but to give that perspective.

swimming
Swimming like climbing is one of those weird things where its hard to know how to make it where not everyone is a master swimmer that can go anywhere. However it isn't intended that new chars can't swim at all, so this has been bugged and hopefully will get a solution soon.

items in containers
When imports happened, containers made it but not the things in them. Rias plans to try to track these items down and do another import, minus the containers themselves, but it's not as simple as it might seem. So all is not lost, but he'll have to find these things first.

[Ninetales16]

hello,
A late person tho the party does not generally mean the party's over, so here I am! I have mischievously taken the duty of taking notes away from benny :D and here are a few notes taken duryng this voice chat this night. Probably I have missed a couple of things, but I will try to update this post, or post another with them when they are done. in no particular order, here they are.
Rias is considering to do a few more things with esp, probably developing it further or doing some misterious stuff onwards (do correct me if I am wrong) this subject was discussed in very little regard.
certain individuals might find themselves able to talk once again in the foreseable future
meditation as a whole is getting changed to channeling, as it should always have been. channelling is getting a potential rework, one idea great altover had is that very six or five seconds you need to roll a channelling reroll for your channeled energy to stay active until you master it somewhat. this might perhaps have riskier downsides for darker magics.
whirling, weaving flopping flipping individuals will have more of an advantage in certain situations where abilities would simply take your dodge down to 0, where in you would get negative rerolls instead of lowering your defenses alltogether. Rias said he really dislikes that idea.
the sap that does not exist in trees might get changed as to not be a very powerful tool.
chained weapons might get changed to only have various attacks proc on not actually being blocked by a shield, because what is the purpose of blocking with a shield then?
skill grinding, a feature many of you are curious about, will definitely get reworked after rias implements all the skills and gets to making calculations for how they work and whatnot.
crafting anything out of metal is not supposed to get you up to 2500 skillcaps on metals anymore, because that will defeat the purpose of you calling yourself a master artisan when you all did was to craft naills all day.
and I believe this is all?
once again, if there is anything I have missed or worded wrongly, do let me know!
keep on watching the clok, and, most of all, remember to have fun!

[esthy]

How do you feel about lockbox difficulty being randomised again? While it might cause newer locksmiths to hoard boxes initially, I personally liked not being able to open everything at once, and wondering when I could get to those more difficult ones. Seeing really high difficulty numbers was always fun, too! :D

How about adding in some descriptors for the clothes we can obtain from them? It was nice that not every piece of clothing you could find looked brand new -- I can remember a lot of frumpy, wrinkled stuff! Completely understand if you don't want those back, though.

Oh, and why don't any of these boxes have pants in them? :P

[Ninetales16]

I second esthy's suggestion with all my heart. I would love to see more interesting clothing around

[Southpaw]

I have heard talk in Discord about guilds and joining but I didn't see an answer here so I thought I'd ask. Apologies if I just missed it.
Are guilds this time going to be open join or will access be controlled by PC's? I didn't have a positive experience years ago when I first started and after trying to get into a PC controlled guild I gave up because I didn't have the time or energy to write essays or chase characters that rarely logged on. I'm really hoping those days are long gone.
I understand making certain ones more complicated than others to join but the old way it was so much actual work it wasn't enjoyable at all.

[RememberNehima]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe someone mentioned in OOC a while back that currently they're all being considered for open enrollment when they open to new members. You may have to pass a multiple choice quiz given by the recruiter NPC to make sure you understand the theme elements of the guild.

[Ninetales16]

yes, this is correct, from what I have heard as well. some guilds will be more strictly monitored, of course, as to not stir up trouble and be wrongly played or abilities exploited.

[artus]

That was what Rias said on one or some of the voice chats, yes.
One thing about old clok was that you'd be in a guild sometimes with no proper rp objective whatsoever and not everyone looked at the wiki, some even joined for the mechanics. The quiz, which I hope could be done multiple times as reminder, serves to give clear objectives and rp expectation of said guilds so people don't end up stuck in wrong guilds just because they can join. It was the approach he used on cogg too but only two went forth before he came back here so I suppose we'll see more of them that way.

The church of light are still rp in though. That's like one exception. I'm not sure what else will be rp in but most should be open once they're functional.

[RememberNehima]

I'm all for guilds having more goals, lore, and objectives. I personally don't see anything wrong with joining one because you think the mechanics look fun, either, so long as you're also roleplaying within the guild's themes; it is a game, after all. But I think the quizzes will go a long way.

Likewise, I'm a little disappointed to hear about the Church, even if I'll probably be too busy playing my main character to make a thaumaturge. I hope a system can be found other than asking players to RP a hobbled monk or templar concept for a prolonged period without any of the RP toys or hooks until they're (maybe) noticed. I've done this on other games and it's never been fun.

[Kunren]

I'm all for guilds having more goals, lore, and objectives. I personally don't see anything wrong with joining one because you think the mechanics look fun, either, so long as you're also roleplaying within the guild's themes; it is a game, after all. But I think the quizzes will go a long way.

Likewise, I'm a little disappointed to hear about the Church, even if I'll probably be too busy playing my main character to make a thaumaturge. I hope a system can be found other than asking players to RP a hobbled monk or templar concept for a prolonged period without any of the RP toys or hooks until they're (maybe) noticed. I've done this on other games and it's never been fun.

Now, the secrets of the church of light have always been obscure for me as an outsider so I'm not sure how much of this is already the case, but I'd make a suggestion that in order to facilitate this there be an open 'trainee' position for the churches guilds.

This trainee would get access to a few non-magical skills/abilities, such as training in mundane healing methods like medical stuff, an ability to train channeling via meditation in preperation for actually having magic, perhaps an ability to stave off the effects of bad sanity or fear through relying on faith alone, etc.

During this period, there would be a checklist of things that would be expected for you to complete. X number of wounds healed, x number of riln donated, X number of netherim killed, x number of hours roleplayed with other people. You could check your progression with each of these at a guildmaster in addition to the standard questionnaire stuff, but it wouldn't give you exact numbers in order to incentivize this being something you should be consistently doing as part of your daily routine, not an achievement style checklist (even if that would be what it is under the hood).

After meeting all these expectations, a ding will fly on the GMs radar and, if no complaints have been raised by anyone to that point, full guild membership would be applied.

No recommendations needed, no essays to write, no guild/player politics or bad login times to deal with, but still accomplishes much of the stated goals.

If you get to this point and complaints have been raised or the GMs in question feel that this person completed the bare requirements without engaging with the tenets of the guild sufficiently, they can receive a letter from the guild or a meeting with a guild npc if time permits to discuss their struggles and where they can improve, after which the above values can be increased by 10-30% and the flag can be raised again in a little while, at which point they either get into the guild in full or are removed from the trainee position and move on.

[Rias]

Q: is it intentional that labels, and more recently now packages, vanished from the post office?
A: Yeah, labels just got really really goofy and ended up being used both frivolously and excessively. There's been some talk about allowing a label-like system for specific items, such as adding a title to a book or journal or folder. As for packages: They were initially introduced as a way to help people more conveniently send multiple items in the mail at once, but they ended up being used as overpowered all-purpose containers since they could hold as much weight as a backpack and items even larger than could fit in backpacks, while themselves being considered "small" size and weighing .05 pounds (and being super cheap). Their removal has been long, long overdue!

Q: Are there plans to allow new chars to get horses any time soon with the ability to train the riding skill?
A: Have new characters earned enough riln to afford horses already? Wow! Anyway, I'd say "soon" as in I'd like everything to be re-added as soon as possible, but there's still a lot to do.

Q: we're apparently limited to a week at a time for inn room rentals now?
A: Yes, inn rooms should feel temporary and ephemeral rather than like they're a dependable long-term thing that a character can keep indefinitely. It was getting pretty common for people to rent rooms for a really long time and then shelve a character so the inn room would still be there by the time the character was unshelved again 30 days later, and that defeats the purpose of having them be temporary and time-limited to the purpose of keeping game resource usage down. And honestly, I just didn't like the expectation that inn rooms could be treated as a long-term, potentially indefinite, housing solution.

Q: might basic guild functionality get a look sometime after the crafting pass?
A: It's another thing on the very large pile!

Q: If I have to get killed because I'm a terrible fighter just to craft something I could before, it isn't worth it even for the riln.
A: I think most of the stuff that would require significant combat skill to acquire will be more exceptional stuff that is neat and nice, but not a requirement. You're not going to have to be a master swordsman to get copper out of the mine. And when you do want some of those exceptional resources that require significant combat to acquire or access, ask a fighter buddy for help! After all, there are a lot of fighters (and other types of characters) who have to go to crafters for services and equipment they need for their non-crafting activities, so it seems fair that sometimes crafter characters might have to ask for help from other types of characters as well.

Q: How do you feel about lockbox difficulty being randomised again?
A: I always liked the more wide-ranging random box difficulties in original CLOK, so I'd count on seeing that come back. Despite the occasional grumbling about someone getting an extremely difficult lock from a carrier in Tarueka and it only having a small handful of riln in it.

Q: How about adding in some descriptors for the clothes we can obtain from them?
A: Bringing back the old randomized clothing loot (or at least something very much like it in the updated codebase) is on the list!

Q: why don't any of these boxes have pants in them?
A: Look, where the NPCs and mobs of the Lost Lands choose to store or not store their pants is their own business. (We'll have some in the clothing loot when it's restored.)

Q: Are guilds this time going to be open join or will access be controlled by PC's?
A: The plan at the moment is to make most guilds be joinable via independent methods not requiring approval by other players/GMs. Most (if not all) will have a little introductory schpiel with information about the guild followed by a quiz to ensure the person understands the basics of the guild before joining it. Some may have additional requirements. I always thought having a few recruitments tasks leading to joining the Guild of Thieves would be good, to prove the interested parties are actually willing to get their hands a bit dirty. There have been a surprising number of people who have joined the Guild of Thieves only to refuse to ever do anything they feel is shady or morally questionable. You don't have to be a dirty rat with no moral compass in order to join, but on the other hand, the Guild has no interest in recruiting people that aren't going to walk the walk. A good point to take from this is that even if it's relatively easy to join a guild by passing a quiz and maybe performing a few tasks, that doesn't mean these guilds aren't going to hold their members to standards or requirements.

Q: "Most" guilds joinable independently, but not all?
A: Right. Harbingers and Claw will both only be available to members of the Corvus Outpost, which is not a faction players can just choose to have a character start in or join on their own, so those aren't guilds anyone can just sidle up to and join. I think it's a good thing to keep their membership more controlled anyway, considering their clearly antagonistic bent.

Q: What about the Church guilds?
A: They will still require GM approval. For whatever reason, it has always been very popular for people to want to join these guilds with some sort of alternative interpretation or approach instead of adhering to the specific teachings and philosphies of the Monastic and Templar Orders. This has always been a bit confusing to me, as these guilds are deliberately and clearly designed to be extremely strict and narrow in the type of characters they accept. I think to some that kind of thing is seen as a particularly tempting opportunity to be different. It might also be that some conflate these two Orders with the overall Church of Light. The Church of Light as a whole isn't overly picky about who wishes to join or proclaim themselves members interested in doing the good works of spreading compassion and charity, and empowering the people with the capability of self-reliance. But the Monastic and Templar Orders are very specific niche paths built on foundations of a very specific philosophy and a strict discipline beyond just being kind and compassionate. It's not exactly a situation where people should be expecting a lot of conceptual wiggle room.

Q: But what if I want to be a healer/support character? It's awful having to wait for approval to become a Monk, which might not ever actually happen for some people.
A: You may be interested in a new guild I'll be introducing that has conventional healing and support as some of their specialties. Things like sutures, splints, unguents, medicines, surgeries, enhancive serums, therapy, and the like. One could even roleplay one as a member of the Church of Light, if they like that kind of RP. Monks (and Templar) are only a very small fraction of overall Church members.

P.S. A request: if anyone has general suggestions for the game, please put them in their own topics so we can keep this one focused on frequently-asked (or inferred) questions about CLOK coming back and how that relates to what CLOK was like before. It makes it a lot easier for me to reference ideas later on when I'm ready to implement things if they and their discussion are all conveniently organized together in their own threads instead of scattered throughout massive and comparatively disorganized megathreads.

[artus]

On the subject of very short inn rent, could it be possible that, if housing gets added again, more houses are added along with it? We still have a lot of rooms for houses like up that cliff path in shadgard and a bunch of other areas I can't remember. Someone might want a house obscured in the alley or something, dunno. We definitely have loads of player accounts around. Perhaps not as many as like everyone gets the houses but enough for people to comfortably get and compete for. We have few now compared to player population.

[Adresin]

More questions spinning off of these answers, and thank you as always, Rias.

So if I'm understanding you right, it's fine for characters to consider themselves members of/affiliated with the church of light in general? There's no actual coded joining the church, just those two guilds if accepted? I've been wondering this for a while now and keep forgetting to ask.

Along the same lines, I have a legacy monk char from a decade ago, and now an active char I hope to get into templars once it's ready for that. If I had to choose between the two I'd go with the hopeful templar hands down, but is having that legacy monk around an issue? If I start pulling her out on occasion for actual rp beyond just testing, is that going to cause problems for what I'm hoping for with my main?

It sounds like you plan to make the physicker type stuff a guild rather than general abilities, which is fine. However, do you still plan to make herbalism a thing, and if so, will it be generally available? Can you shed a bit of light on your thoughts on the line between what will be guild locked and what we may see as general abilities when it comes to nonmagical healing?

[Alila]

Hi,

I am really terribly sorry to be asking this while you are already so busy, but is the email to contact staff still support@clokmud.com? I figured I would include this in the FAQ thread since it is a question which might come up more often in the future.

[Lysse]

Do you foresee adding in any undocumented/hidden abilities, similar to Cogg? (not asking about SPECIFIC abilities, moreso interested to know if you think you'll have abilities hidden out in the world again, though)

[ydia]

If we had a home that is now gone is the import complete of any items left in it. I don't remember if I did or didn't have anything in mine, but I feel I did. If that is done and the import is complete it would just be good for me to know for sure.

With your comment about inn rooms not being mint for forever housing, then is the lore going to be everyone is expected to buy a home? I'm assuming the cells will still remain an option for the respective orders that get that perk? My character had a home that was destroyed and her roleplay is she's not sure if she will ever buy another, but her home was special to her.

[Rias]

Q: Could it be possible that, if housing gets added again, more houses are added along with it?
A: Sure. I don't think every single account needs to have a homeowner character, but yes, there can be more homes eventually.

Q: So if I'm understanding you right, it's fine for characters to consider themselves members of/affiliated with the church of light in general? There's no actual coded joining the church, just those two guilds if accepted?
A: Anyone can say they're a member of the Church of Light, because the church doesn't have strict membership requirements or records or anything. All you have to do is want to be there and show up and participate: boom, you're a member of the Church of Light. Stay as long as you want and leave whenever you want. On the other hand, no one should claim their character is involved in the organization's administration or playing some kind of official role in it. That's reserved for NPCs. The Monastic and Templar Orders are specific niche orders that are part of the Church, but not the only thing the Church is about nor are they even required for the Church to function. I imagine there are plenty of places where the Church of Light exists without any Monks or Templar. Just people trying to be good people and wanting to dedicate their time to helping out their fellow man.

Q: Can I have only a Monk OR a Templar, but not both?
A: Players can potentially have both a Monk and a Templar character, but both characters will need to go through the process of proving that they're a good fit and becoming initiated. As always, go in with the knowledge that the character may not actually get in, and ensure you'll be capable of enjoying that character even if they don't end up becoming a Monk or Templar.

Q: Do you still plan to make herbalism a thing, and if so, will it be generally available?
A: In some form, yeah.

Q: Can you shed a bit of light on your thoughts on the line between what will be guild locked and what we may see as general abilities when it comes to nonmagical healing?
A: On the one hand, healing shouldn't be too much of a hassle for people to get. On the other hand, if everyone can choose to just learn to provide their own healing because why not, that's going to end up meaning that most people won't want to go to anyone else for healing since they can just do it themselves, and now no healer is special or valued by anyone else. This kind of thing has been one of my biggest pain points in MUD development: The desire of so many to be able to handle everything themselves. (Speaking generally, not saying you specifically want this.) So, I wouldn't expect a whole lot of healing capability that isn't guild-locked or otherwise restricted or gated in some way to specialists. We've got Monks and will also have Physickers who both specialize in healing stuff, and in the past both have had trouble getting people to give them the time of day since people can just go to an NPC healer instead. I don't think I want to further trivialize the healer-specialist guilds by opening up more healing as a generalized thing to everyone.

Q: Is the email to contact staff still support@clokmud.com?
A: No, it's clok (at) contrarium (dot) net. I don't have access to the clokmud.com domain. (Sorry for the weird email address formatting. The automated web crawlers, scrapers, and associated spambots are getting worse every day.)

Q: Do you foresee adding in any undocumented/hidden abilities, similar to Cogg?
A: Heck yes! Those go-out-and-find-in-the-world abilities are awesome.

Q: If we had a home that is now gone is the import complete of any items left in it?
A: No, player homes are a huge mess. I was never able to find any official list or documentation on homeownership so it's a case of "track down the location of the deeds or keys and hope they're in the hands of the rightful owners and not stashed away in some random non-obviously-associated container" which is further complicated by how many duplicate deeds and keys there are and how many homes have been re-sold and changed hands or just been reclaimed without documentation of such. A lot of homes also had their items moved out after the owners went inactive for a long time and there doesn't seem to be any central removed housing item storage repository or anything, nor records of which items were removed from where and why and to which destination. It's a massive headache with a number of issues that have no clear solutions.

Q: With your comment about inn rooms not being meant for forever housing, then is the lore going to be everyone is expected to buy a home?
A: My comment about inn rooms was more about that people shouldn't assume they can just rent a single inn room once and then it be theirs forever, like a house would be (by, for instance, pre-paying for months/years at a time). Being away from the game for an extended period for whatever reason and having the inn room expire is the point of the system - it's to prevent those resources from being constantly taken up when the players aren't around and using them. Yes, it'll move all your items out to your locker and you'll have to haul them back if you re-rent a room. That's just how it goes! Feel free to get comfortable in your inn room, just don't treat it like it's your permanent private property.

Regarding the lore/IC situation of it, it's fine to say a character is essentially living out of the inn, because the housing situation in Shadgard (and moreso Corvus!) is such that not everyone is able to have a privately-owned personal residence. Not because of finances, but because space in Shadgard is physically limited, and just going out and homesteading elsewhere in the wilderness isn't viable - the lands are far too dangerous for that. An inn-living character can ICly grumble about the time they went out on a trip for more than a week and their inn room was cleaned out when they got back, because that's just part of Inn Living life. Lorewise, I imagine a lot of Shadgardians share homes or utilize impermanent living arrangements like the inn rooms, or bouncing around among friends or acquaintances or organizations who can provide places to crash. Heck, I kind of want to add in some NPCs that set out some bedrolls on the chapel pews and floor at night. That's all part of the feel of Lost Lands life, we don't have the luxury of spacious settlement borders and private homes for every individual family with multiple rooms and a yard. It's rough out here, even by earlier-than-the-modern-era standards!

Q: I'm assuming the cells will still remain an option for the respective orders that get that perk?
A: Monks and Templar still have their tiny spartan living cells to accommodate their ascetic lifestyle, yep.

[artus]

Well,, if any of the limbo items came from old nonexistence house number 52 northwall, feel free to delete them because they're mine and I have no idea what they even are anymore so I can just forget about them. Never mind that steel buckler I have no idea where I lost...

I think players who still remember what items they miss and want the most can make request files or something to request them back, rather than have you dig forever in the possibly ocean deep pile of whatever we naughtily piled up over the years. If you can find it, you can at least spawn it. Things need to be sacrificed and whatever never got requested within months or years can just be wiped out to save server space entirely. It might be easier that way. Just an idea though. I see some people still remember what they have and stuff. I don't really care about mine. Most of the good stuff were Gaiyan supplies anyway and no one used those. Go ahead.