Group Hunting and Challenge

[KianTheArcher]

[quote=Tenlaar]Agreed. I think easier kills vs. skill gain and unique loot/boxes is enough of a balance as it is. Making it so that things will eventually drop nothing at all seems to be forcing people's play to a greater degree than is necessary.

This system does not "encouraging" people to move on, it forces people to move on whether they want to or not. Those are very different things.[/quote]


By that logic, making it so a PC is receiving no skill gains is worse than just lowering loot. You're still gaining loot at least, but no more skill. Which is "forcing" people to move on in order to gain skill.


It's a game. Games typically have things that are by design exclusive (such as only certain classes getting certain mundane ablities) and by design limiting factors to prevent their abuse, and to act as a balancing factor. Saying that lowering riln is forcing a person to move on is folly, because the person is still being rewarded, albeit less so. They are still, however, receiving reward.

[quote=Gad]Why are you comparing me to Lemuel? What does he have to do with what we are talking about?[/quote]

Because Lemuel complains about facets of the MUD that he disagrees with, yet are perfectly acceptable and legitimate implementations of code.

[Gad]

I am giving perfectly acceptable and legitimate questions to the contrary but since it is against what is done it must be complaining. I accept that new loot system is implemented and will not change no matter what I say here.

[Nootau]

Tenlaar, you stop gaining skill gains long before you you stop noticing as much loot.

[KianTheArcher]

No. The first few posts you made were perfectly fine, I think. But Landion has explained more than once the reasoning behind the decisions towards the loot system, and you're outright ignoring those arguments and saying it doesn't make sense regardless of what he says. That's the point in which it became straight out complaining. Your only argument is "it doesn't make sense". But by the same token, it doesn't make sense that only two guilds get dirt kick, and only one gets choke. It's a case of exclusivity by design for the sake of game balance. And game balance should almost always overcome "realism for the sake of realism".

But that's neither here nor there. If you want to keep pushing for a change, then by all means go for it.

[Skjotur]

I think there should be something to prevent high skill people from hanging around places far too easy for them if they're doing it constantly. It's like when you're playing WoW or whatever MMO of your choice, and some jerk is running around slaughtering all the mobs in one hit, and you're there just trying to quest or level in an area appropriate to your level. I know I hate people that do that. It's disruptive, frustrating, and makes you just want to quit and go do something else for a while, just because one person is being selfish.

I don't know if I agree with this specific implementation, but I can see why it's being done. By the way I'm not saying Gad or anyone else is being a selfish prick, I've never personally seen anyone in CLOK do this stuff. I was just providing an example of why I think it's a good thing the GMs are at least thinking about ways to encourage people not to do something like this.

I liked hadesfire's idea, where if a player is doing this excessively, the NPCs being farmed rise up in a mob or something. So like if someone powerful is farming carriers for their riln or whatever, then there could be an alert in Tarueka about this warrior wreaking havoc on them and a huge swarm of carriers and maybe some guards from the town and brigands from the ship would show up to drive off the particularly dangerous threat. That would make more sense than the mobs just somehow dropping less riln because you're more skilled.

[Acarin]

[quote=Gad]I am giving perfectly acceptable and legitimate questions to the contrary but since it is against what is done it must be complaining. I accept that new loot system is implemented and will not change no matter what I say here.[/quote]

First mining and now this. Poor Gad. I'll shed a tear for you.

[Acarin]

[quote=KianTheArcher]No. The first few posts you made were perfectly fine, I think. But Landion has explained more than once the reasoning behind the decisions towards the loot system, and you're outright ignoring those arguments and saying it doesn't make sense regardless of what he says. That's the point in which it became straight out complaining. Your only argument is "it doesn't make sense". But by the same token, it doesn't make sense that only two guilds get dirt kick, and only one gets choke. It's a case of exclusivity by design for the sake of game balance. And game balance should almost always overcome "realism for the sake of realism".

But that's neither here nor there. If you want to keep pushing for a change, then by all means go for it.[/quote]

Trust me Kian. You don't want choke.

[hadesfire]

I'm not comparing you, just stating a scenario, with a proposed plan to fix the situation. If we could avoid the illogical courses of less riln or less loot than I would want that, I know it's time to go to the next critters when they start fleeing/facing 7 at once.

[Acarin]

[quote=hadesfire]I'm not comparing you, just stating a scenario, with a proposed plan to fix the situation. If we could avoid the illogical courses of less riln or less loot than I would want that, I know it's time to go to the next critters when they start fleeing/facing 7 at once.[/quote]

This actually brings up a good point (just not necessarily the one you made).
Would it be possible to add a command that assesses whether an opponent is considered lower, equal, or a challenge by the current system (at least for treasure if not applicable to anything else)?

[Lemuel]

[quote=Acarin]
Would it be possible to add a command that assesses whether an opponent is considered lower, equal, or a challenge by the current system (at least for treasure if not applicable to anything else)?[/quote]


This is a valuable suggestion. In most muds it is the CONSIDER command. It stands to reason that if the mob's relative weakness is important enough to nerf the spoils and skillgains (mention of which you'll no doubt want to omit from the website and MudConnector listing), then there should be a command to assess the challenge or lack thereof, so the player can quickly know to move away from those mobs and be able to identify more appropriate opponents.

[Slaidh]

You bunch of pansies! The command to assess a creature's challenge to you is BATTLE.

On a more serious note, I like that you have to either hear about it or figure it out for yourself. Doesn't make sense that you can just look at a creature and somehow get an accurate gauge of its combat capabilities in comparison to your own.

Cue the counterargument, "This loot change doesn't make sense either!" That may be, but that doesn't mean we have to use it as an excuse to make a bunch of other changes that don't make sense either. That's my trollish opinion!

[Acarin]

[quote=Slaidh]You bunch of pansies! The command to assess a creature's challenge to you is BATTLE.

On a more serious note, I like that you have to either hear about it or figure it out for yourself. Doesn't make sense that you can just look at a creature and somehow get an accurate gauge of its combat capabilities in comparison to your own.

Cue the counterargument, "This loot change doesn't make sense either!" That may be, but that doesn't mean we have to use it as an excuse to make a bunch of other changes that don't make sense either. That's my trollish opinion![/quote]

You can't always tell off of BATTLE, sharp tooth. Do you know what the cut offs are (1/2 skill? 2x skill?) If I'm killing something with 500 melee, 1000 polearms, and 0 daggers with daggers does it calculate the challenge for my endroll? my highest combat skill? Can I still get good riln if I'm training something I'm unskilled in on lower critters? It may be straightforward in some cases (Gad farming carriers) but probably not most.

Also your trollish opinion led you to a lackluster counter-argument.

[Slaidh]

[quote=Rias]For skillgains, it's whatever numbers you actually see. So if you're using a weapon you're unskilled with, you'll get any gains based on your numbers with that weapon.

For tasks, and I imagine this system, it looks at your best/highest skills.[/quote]


[quote=Landion][quote=Rias]... it looks at your best/highest skills.[/quote]

This is how it currently is coded. (Though it ignores skills that aren't combat oriented.)[/quote]

[Acarin]

Alright, but what are the cutoffs? is it 50% of my highest skill on the low end and 200% on the highend? Since it seems to be based on skill ranks and not endroll, this could be misleading since you can't make a direct comparison to enemy ranks.

[Nootau]

Acarin, is your concern Tasks or is what creatures are a Challenge for the sake of loot?

[Slaidh]

[quote=Acarin]Can I still get good riln if I'm training something I'm unskilled in on lower critters? It may be straightforward in some cases (Gad farming carriers) but probably not most.[/quote]

[Nootau]

If that's the case then, i would have to ask two questions: 'What is good riln?' and 'Are you just using a skill you are bad in, in order to get more riln per kill?'

[Acarin]

[quote=Nootau]If that's the case then, i would have to ask two questions: 'What is good riln?' and 'Are you just using a skill you are bad in, in order to get more riln per kill?'[/quote]

First of all, I just want to state that I'm fairly ambivalent towards the recent changes. They likely won't have much of an impact on my income. I do, however, have an interest in the challenge system and thus my continued posts.

To answer your first question, good riln would be considered not modified down from the amount pre-challenge implementation.

To answer your second question, it really doesn't matter. Say I decide to train up my sorcery which is way lower than my brawling because I want more sorcery. I assume the current system will yield me far less riln even though I am not killing as quickly as I would be if using brawling. Is that a fair assessment?

It's great that everyone always wants to jump to accusations of abuse all the time when a system is not working perfectly, but when you try to stop this "abuse" it sometimes has very real penalties towards people who are not abusing a system. Nootau, just because numerous systems were modified because both you and I have used them in a manner that was not considered during their design or prior to intended changes, does not mean that I (at the very least) am trying to abuse everything I come across. Would that be your intention if you were training up a skill you were weak in?

[Nootau]

I guess first with the response of 'not modified down', there won't be an agreement of how much should be removed so I guess that string is already found its end.

Now as for training a new skill, I would say you should gain as much riln and rewards for using a skill that you are bad with as much as you would from a skill you are good with, the attacker is still a much more powerful fighter then the subject.

Personally I don't think changing the loot is a good thing, but I don't have an idea of how to make stronger players stop hunting at weaker grounds just because they money is easier to collect(even though they will not gain skill points). When someone asks 'if they can get more money doing x using Y methods' it sounds as if they are simply trying to game the system btw, it was not targeted at you or anyone else.

If I was training up a skill I was weak in, the only thing I would care about is my skill gain, I would not care about the drops that the creatures offer. I normally kill animals that never drop riln, pelts make more money per kill then the riln and the equipment that the humanoid NPCs offer anyways.

[hadesfire]

What if your character had an aversion to harming animals? No pelts, you need humanoid enemies. Just because it works for you doesn't mean it works for everybody. Most of my characters gain riln through tasks, if they give me an impossible challenge than we have a problem.

[Nootau]

If they give you an impossible challenge, you can train on weaker humanoids. If you wish for money, you could take up a profession. Woodworking, herb gathering, mining, and farming would all work even if you do not wish to harm a single animal. These are all rather profitable and will most likely make you more money per time invested than killing humanoids.

[Orris]

I like how Gemstone had it set up, where areas gave less treasure as they were hunted, didn't matter who was doing the hunting or how strong they were. So if everyone is hunting carriers their loot is going to go down and money hunters will be encouraged to go elsewhere. The treasure would go back up to normal over time as the carriers had time to recover from all the raids and looting.

I don't think it's a big deal anyway, there are a ton of different ways to make money. And I don't think other ones adjust like this hunting change. Like if I'm a miner and I have 5000 mining skill, am I going to find less if I mine in the Shadgard mine where it's easier than if I mined in the mine with the slaves and slave drivers, because it's considered less challenging? But then someone with 5 mining skill would go in, and they'd get more since it's more challenging for them? That seems backwards.

[hadesfire]

Exactly my point, Orris, less riln due to challange makes much less sense than having the enemies react by fleeing or ganging up

Nootau, my point was that what works for you won't work for everybody, try to think of everybodies point of view.

[Tenlaar]

[quote=Nootau]If you wish for money, you could take up a profession.[/quote]

You keep repeating this. Not every player wants to work on trade skills, and not every character would do them. "You can do x, y, or z instead" is not a valid answer to the concerns presented in this thread.

[Nootau]

If killing is to be a balanced sort then, would you agree to nerfing the drops significantly of riln on lower level mobs but increase them for higher, more dangerous mods?

Edit
The mobs I found now seem to be fixed, they are giving a lot less then what they were before.