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Post by orphan on Jul 27, 2009 2:17:28 GMT
After taking a break from Ancient Anguish for almost 6 years, I've come back and noticed that many things have changed. The lower player-base is among the most disheartening. I really miss those days with 80+ "Mortals" logged in.
Now because there are fewer players to party with, fewer magics available to the public, and other such losses, I think it would be great if something along these lines could be added:
1) A new shop close to Tantallon that sells "Spells" These would range from Enhanced Skill, Blur, Armour, Permanency, some of those new web Drow spells, basically all of the useful spells that can be cast on other players. It could also include Cleric spells, and whatever else I'm missing. Maybe even necro renewals and heals. These would all vary in price and potency of course. Now I know a lot of players will refute this, saying that it takes away from the other classes, but at any given time there are only 25 mortals logged in, and of those, about 5-10 are linkdead, AFK, or at work. Which means there are virtually no players left to purchase an Enhanced Skill, Armour, Bless, Fix, or Purge. And even when there are, if your not one of their friends or a fellow powerplayer acquantance, then they won't spend their time helping you. These current veterans have so much money they don't care about a measly 10k or 15k gold to spend their time perming you. So even if I have to pay a premium, it's worth it, to get these "buffs" cast on my by an NPC, even if they are 20k or more.
It's silly when I can shout, paying 40k for permed ES and/or Armour, and not get a single reply... even when shouted 2-3 over a few hours. An NPC mage/cleric shop would be outstanding!
2) Coliseum: A mixture between Flaw's House, Brawling Arena, and Knight's Training Grounds. Basically Final Fantasy 6's Coliseum, where you pay xx amount of money, compete against a ladder or tournament bracket of opponents, and are then rewarded at the end by how many NPC's you get through, and extra if you finish the whole thing. These current three areas are all great, but they each have some big downsides, the knights area is too low-level, the brawling arena is near impossible unless your a mage (shifters can't even enter) and Flaw's is too expensive $$.
3) Zhou: add command to be able to train Two-Weapon skill
4) I absolutely love Traits. I am so glad somebody thought this up and implemented them. I second the motion some of the other players had, maybe for every 1 million exp you gain a "reset" point, or for $$ an NPC can remove/replace a trait, etc.
Also, the addition of some traits, like Parry, Block, Riposte, and the others that have been suggested.
Slightly more definition on some of the traits is really needed as well. Weapon Expert for example, does Unarmed qualify? does Two-Weapon qualify? the help file is vague. Also, the increased HP/Sps not filling when logging in/out, etc.
Decreased cost to earn traitpoints... lol, sorry but I'm just an average player, 200k is like pulling teeth.
5) Lower exp requirments for level 20+ I know this has already been mentioned... but how dissapointing to see Bazhi playing non-stop every single day of the week, and is only level 42. Don't get me wrong, I know being level 42 would absolutely rock, but for the #1 lifetime exp player to be 8 levels short of max still, with a profile that's so old it probably has hit the 4-digits on "days".... that's insane.
Anyhow, just my opinions from an off/and/on player that has played several MUD's and hated them all but AA. I am a hardcore gamer, just not here, to be honest it's a little too time-consuming and difficult for the returns (exp/gold/skills/traits) which come ever so slowly. So I play for an hour or two and then leave for greener pastures... But I don't want it to be that way, I really really like AA, and I wish I had the motivation to play more than I do, but everytime I play... I feel the same way, I'm like "Man I wish I had a permed Armour... Man I wish I had a permed ES... man, 1 trait point a day, it's going to take forever to accumulate enough for this trait!
I love the game, it's great, it really is, but the time-consumption/difficulty currently outweighs the benefits/returns.
If only a few of these suggestions or any variation of them were initiated, it would help to alleviate these issues.
But please don't take offense or come on and refute/retaliate any of these comments. These are simply my suggestions, I am an average player, which populates (or used to populate) AA during it's prime, and if I am having these issues, then so are other players, which is why the player-base has declined.
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Post by orphan on Jul 27, 2009 2:31:51 GMT
I guess the biggest issue, is really how time-consuming it all is to get somewhere good.
Shifter for example have to spend almost 8 real days (192) hours to max out all forms. And that's if you were to spend 0 minutes outside of necessary forms, which doesn't happen. Especially at low levels when your sps runs out. So 10-12 days is more likely.
The average RPG game is only valued at 40 hours to beat. So I can beat 4-6 full RPG's in the time it takes to max out a shifters forms.
Then we have levels, level 50 for example... there's no estimation, somebody else did the calculation on one of the boards, and it came out to be something unbelievable like 500 days of making 500k/hr or something like that... An unrealistic goal, that nobody will obtain. Bazhi won't reach level 50, and he would be the first to do it. It's simply too much time, and he will become bored or simply too tired/distracted to finish this goal. It's only going to get harder and longer with each level. Disproportionately.
It took me just under 300 hours to beat all of the Guild Wars campaigns, Prophecies, Nightfall, Factions, and Eye of The North. This is one of the biggest MMORPG's of all time, and I had several titles upon doing so as well, including 98% Cartographer, which if you played Guild Wars, goes to show how much of a pain it is. And compared to Ancient Anguish, that's like hitting level 30? maybe?
And if I were to continue playing it again, another 300 hours equated to maybe level 31-32. The AA levels really rise exponentially and disproportionately to their return.
Anyway, I'm not bashing, I just really do like AA, and you know it's one of those things, if people sit around and don't say anything then nobody will ever know somethings wrong, so here's my input from a player with no association to any of the current players, veterans or powerplayers. I've always simply soloed, or played with my brother, I've always kept to myself, and still share the same pains as these other guys.
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Post by Mani on Jul 30, 2009 21:42:35 GMT
Hmm.. I agree with most of your points. something thing you forgot to mention is the price of dying. Bazhi dying would lose what? 100,000,000(100mil) xp? thats more xp than most people have made in their entire playtime. The problem you don't see is that coding takes time.. maybe more time than it should, I've heard the requirements for a single room are extremely insane. Also theres the problem with the fact that not all wizes have time to code something that big. Hell, look at ficers.. they were released years ago and the 'staffs' part of staffs and wands still hasn't been added.
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Post by nine on Jul 31, 2009 1:22:00 GMT
Loss of xp by death is capped at about 8m xp. Not to mention pure soul dramatically decreases that 8m cap, regardless of your total xp.
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Post by orphan on Jul 31, 2009 4:07:21 GMT
Cold, You're right, I'm surprised I didn't add that actually. Dying is pretty bad, I understand the reasoning behind it, you know if dying had no repercussions, then people would just fight the biggest creatures over and over to power level and skill, etc. Take advantage of the system, but to lose Xp, Stats, Level, Skills, And Traits... that's just too much. Especially since the penalties worsen the higher you get. In Bazhi's current situation, I would actually be more worried about his skills... He has 1692 skills!!!!!! as a Dwarf Cleric If he died, the loss on skills alone would cost him an incredible amount of pain and suffering. Which is what I mean, by the game being too difficult, and too time consuming. I mean, come on, is that not masochism at it's finest? People play games to have fun... not to have their balls smashed.
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Post by sinister on Jul 31, 2009 6:26:34 GMT
AA is tough? No, once you figure out the mechanics of the game, it's pretty easy now, since the introduction of a couple of things from when I left in 2004 especially the exp cap. In fact I would say playing AA is trivial, I mean look at all the pikers that ran up the top exp list after I left in 2004. No name rejects as far as I was concerned. The mud is saying the players behind these super characters are better than Calvin, Lunger, Machine, Rhynst, Riske and if you go way back, guys like Forlorn/Tatanka, Apostle, let alone a one dimensional player like me? Hell, no!
Death matters? Bazhi did die recently, he lost .... 7 skills points? Trivial ... due to Unnatural memory 3.
In fact the penalties DECREASE (not increase as you suggested) the higher you go. So yeah, since deaths don't really matter. I would fight the biggest monsters over and over again exactly as you said someone would do if death didn't matter.
Most efficient/effective way to become a powerplayer I think the key to speeding up the learning curve is by partying/tagging, specifically with powerplayers, just 2 or 3 sessions totalling 3 hours and you'll quickly see/learn firsthand what you need to do to drastically improve and the kind of routes you'd need to take. And I don't mean you and a powerplayer, I mean 2-3 powerplayers plugging along and you just join in, watch, keep your mouth shut and do what they tell you. If you're especially smart, you'll log the sessions.
I know that's hard now with most of them gone.
I think in the archives under fighters there's 2 methods there were outlined in how to advance quickly. A method advocated by Calvin (specifically where to kill at certain levels) and a sneaky method that I used, which I basically just outlined above.
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Post by nine on Aug 3, 2009 5:45:01 GMT
I mean look at all the pikers that ran up the top exp list after I left in 2004. No name rejects as far as I was concerned. I dunno, I think the majority of todays top ten know whats going on, although it definately reflects the ease of which rangers can generate XP (40% are rangers) 1 : Bazhi 2 : Chun 3 : Veruka 4 : Stretch 5 : Druenarrii 6 : Whiteknight 7 : Moot 8 : Kayne 9 : Juanka 10 : Tollie
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Post by CalviN on Aug 3, 2009 10:44:05 GMT
That's always been the case with Rangers. You really do make a darn good amount of exp killing fuzzies and rats, and making sacks n pouches n stoles. I mean, look historically at the high exp players. Zwr... Clemeth... Levek... Most of what they did was kill fuzzies and easy 9ks over and over and over. (Granted, Zwr was a damn good player when he wanted to be.... solo Effaw several times each day, and could actually tank a decent party) Then there's today's crop, Veruka... Kayne... Not saying that they don't know what they're doing now, but by the time they actually did, they were already pretty high level.
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Post by sinister on Aug 3, 2009 16:19:35 GMT
Exactly what Calvin said, I even agree with his use of punctuation, and how they are good players now.
But it's a whole lot easier learning to be a good player with a level 32 character than a level 19 character.
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Post by nine on Aug 4, 2009 0:31:38 GMT
Too true, couldn't have put it better myself.
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Post by Pillar on Aug 4, 2009 16:42:37 GMT
The mud is saying the players behind these super characters are better than Calvin, Lunger, Machine, Rhynst, Riske and if you go way back, guys like Forlorn/Tatanka, Apostle, let alone a one dimensional player like me? Hell, no! Give me back the days when people actually had to knew how to play, follow, bash, and loot... None of this trait crap, levels over 20, etc. The fact that players are being rewarded (via traits, more carrying capacity, hitting harder) for killing insane amounts of low-level crap and never having to take a riske (get it? riske! haha! i crack myself up...) is pathetic. Knock off all levels above 19. take away traits. Screw infidian. Gimme my fez, titty, and a boomshakalaka and let's party like it's 1999.
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Post by orphan on Aug 4, 2009 22:26:40 GMT
Reply to last 6 posts,
I don't doubt that playing AA has become trivial for yourself, or any player of high level. with several traits, but the amount of time that must be invested to get that far, is absurd. From what I understand, Sinister your character is an efficiency necro, but how many days old did it take to hit however high you are now? Probably an insane amount, too much for a game. Don't you ever feel like it took too long to get where you are?
Take Valdy for example, he just maxxed his shifter, and he's a good player so it's not like he was noobin it up and killing dwarf babies and butterflies. It took him 567 hours (24 days) to get all forms, and 6mil exp. And yes, it might be pointless to max all forms, but regardless, a game shouldn't require months and years worth of playing to get a bunch of forms that are mostly useless anyway. I think that's why so many of the noobish, average, and just decent characters faded away over time, and only the powerplayers and loyal old-timers hung around. The time invest was simply too much for those players.
And it doesn't just apply to shifters, its also leveling, skilling (how many million/billion for 100 two-weapon?) exponentially increasing trait levels (Times three!) etc.
And any game becomes trivial after you have put in that much time, and/or you have really good friends and allies playing with you. Shoot, I get on Call of Duty 4 every night and that is trivial. #1 score every single game I play. But that's because I played competively for a long time, and I have put as many hours into the COD series as some of you have into AA. I know all the maps inside-out by heart, all the spawn locations, the building names, zones, triggers, etc.
*Anyway, it probably is very easy for you guys to get out and run over 1mil an hour, but that's because there aren't that many challenging monsters compared to your levels anymore. You had millions of experience stockpiled before the new level system was implemented, and power-leveled and earned dozens of traits right away. So now 9k kills turned into the likes of a level 9 player killing ship rats in the ghost ship. It starts out very hard, but gets ridiculously easy. Simply put, they now need more epic monsters to give you guy's a challenge.
... but for the rest of us who don't have characters over level 19-20... the future is bleak, because it's harder than ever to find a party, with the decreased player-base. Everyday I see shouts go unanswered for purges, blesses, perms, tanking, bashing, etc. Back in the day that almost never happened.
I guess what I'm getting at, if you big guys were to make a new character today, how many hours would it take to hit level 24 or 25? Solo, and then vs. Partying? It has to be a fairly large number, or else those of you who were set back with the necro changes (races), would have suicided and remade your chars, I know I would have at least, if the amount of time wasn't too bad.
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Post by nine on Aug 5, 2009 0:36:38 GMT
Whats your obsession with -NEEDING- to be able to beat a game? If you can't its broken? That logic doesn't stand up in my opinion. Especially not with this type of multiplayer adventurer game. The reason I left this game back in about 2001 for a long period was because it had become stale, there was nothing to aim for, once you had hit lvl 19 and achieved some big numbers in a party, explored most of the mud, maybe hit the old plist (could get on plist in about 5 days total play time if you were really good). There was nothing to do. No goals to shoot for no reason to keep on accumulating EXP. So I for one got bored and stopped playing, and I know plenty of other people who did the same. Now this has changed, theres more challenges, shit loads more to kill and you can actually grow your char past lvl 19 and make them stronger, and this is a bad thing? The only thing that is impossible for a lvl 19 to do that a lvl 43 can is wear 1 particular set of armour, besides from that, anything else in the game is still possible at 19. Look the growth/extra power you get through the levels is nothing like what you say it is, my lvl 33 paladin has +2 dex +1 str plus a boat load of other traits, racials etc, and he regularly gets outclaimed by tanking rogues who are like 10 levels smaller when he is using all but the best weapons. Even when he uses smite he still can't carve through lvl 19s like a lvl 9 will carve through ship rats - it may take the same time, but it requires heals, lots and lots of heals But like you say it does take a massive amount of time and effort to gain the high levels so in my opinion you deserve any boosts you get. It simply comes down to this, if your not enjoying stockpiling massive amounts of EXP and working towards these high end goals, then DONT. Theres absolutely no reason to do it if you dont have fun in the process. Maybe you just have to accept that in AA you've found a game you are not likely to ever 'beat', not unless you quit your job and spend the next 5 years playing it full time.
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Post by sinister on Aug 5, 2009 15:22:14 GMT
I don't doubt that playing AA has become trivial for yourself, or any player of high level. with several traits, but the amount of time that must be invested to get that far, is absurd. From what I understand, Sinister your character is an efficiency necro, but how many days old did it take to hit however high you are now? Probably an insane amount, too much for a game. Don't you ever feel like it took too long to get where you are?. Well it took me just shy of 34 character days to reach 587+ million exp and 13.5 months of playing, averaging a little less than a couple of hours a day. Towards the last month and a half I was playing about 2-3 hrs a week. Frankly, it didn't take long at all, certainly not compared to what it would have taken pre all the new stuff. Probably a 1/3 of what it would have taken otherwise. Actually without the exp cap, it would have been impossible with the 21 deaths, even if I took less risk and cut the number of deaths in half. *Anyway, it probably is very easy for you guys to get out and run over 1mil an hour, but that's because there aren't that many challenging monsters compared to your levels anymore. You had millions of experience stockpiled before the new level system was implemented, and power-leveled and earned dozens of traits right away. So now 9k kills turned into the likes of a level 9 player killing ship rats in the ghost ship. It starts out very hard, but gets ridiculously easy. Simply put, they now need more epic monsters to give you guy's a challenge.. Well in my case, when I came back in mid-May 2008 I realized I was horribly deficient as an orc necro in this new world and started over as a human in the last week of May. A couple of weeks later the EPIC exp downgrade occurred. I just used the prior knowledge I had (which from a gathering quick exp perspective was quite extensive already) from mid-2004. ... but for the rest of us who don't have characters over level 19-20... the future is bleak, because it's harder than ever to find a party, with the decreased player-base. Everyday I see shouts go unanswered for purges, blesses, perms, tanking, bashing, etc. Back in the day that almost never happened. . The problem for you is that when you left you probably were not a powerplayer then, whereas when people like Nine and I left we were already powerplayers, so the learning curve for us wasn't steep at all. Perhaps I will assist alleviate some your concerns with a "Sinister's guide to Powerplaying (Necros), [basic edition]" It's something I've been thinking about writing up for proboards now that I'm done with AA, if people are curious enough. I'm sure some of the ideas could be applied to other classes. In any event, a review of Rhynst's guides might not be a bad idea. I guess what I'm getting at, if you big guys were to make a new character today, how many hours would it take to hit level 24 or 25? Solo, and then vs. Partying? It has to be a fairly large number, or else those of you who were set back with the necro changes (races), would have suicided and remade your chars, I know I would have at least, if the amount of time wasn't too bad. Fron my notes, it took me 10 real life days (of which looks like the first 4 I spend BS-ing) to maxxed stats, level 19, character age 14 hours on 6/4/08 (much worse than the 4.5 character hours back in 2004, but that took almost 1 month to achieve), level 24 came at 6/10 and 25 at 6/14, all solo except for a couple of parties with Pillar and Machine but I realize these numbers are non standard.
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Post by orphan on Aug 5, 2009 18:59:01 GMT
I think your right, I didn't have enough of a grasp on the world of AA as a whole when I left, now that I have returned it's much bigger, with even more changes, and I have even less time to commit to the game than I did back then... Just frustrated at my situation I guess Out of curiousity, how did you manage maxed level 19 in 14 hours (if I read that correctly)? Even when I played my cleric, suiting up and killing things as fast as possible, it took me about 7 hours just to hit level 9. I didn't keep track after that, but I know I was probably around 30-40 hours for level 19
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