How do you design a quest..

...that a warlord necro could not solo. A necro cannot do cave alone anymore than a temp. No AOEs which means no SH2, poison, B2, C2, warcry. Temps and necros are screwed. Then kick a necro for being lead when he gets help on it? yes the person helping was higher ranked... and? Not one of us was ever at risk of dying if he had not been there.

Leading rule needs a certain rank applied to it. Like if a warlord were leading a 2LT through enhance weapon quest that would technically be leading, which is absurd when a corporal could solo with ease. Which is exactly the situation I was in with cave.

The PVP community is dead which only leaves PVM. We have a player base that barely breaks double digits on a good day. The odds of any of those chars being the same ranks and needing the same quests at the same time are practical nonexistent.

So because three people wanted to enjoy one of the few newer quests that most players dont know yet, litterally 75% of the active players of the game logged in just got kicked.

as much as i see your argument in light of the fact that i am a necro like you albeit not quite as up there as you,
the rules state that unless you can group each, you are leading, regardless of who is more powerful than who.

i cannot say that i would have or wouldn't have kicked as you were today, my good man was just doing the job that us as staffers are here to do

of course we are always open to discussions and if there is a huge grievance you can complain at the gods.

How can a necro or temp not solo cave? Why does AOE have anything to do with it?

In cave quest you have to escort three 2LT haras through amaze of majors+ basically. The highest being a single col AH at the end by itself.

A necro and temp have no stun or c1. Warcry and C2 are AOEs. If you attack them, even if you dont kill them.. they will follow you around attacking you non stop. Blackdeath hit one by mistake and as a temp with low stealth could barely walk for half the quest after that, if his SH2 had hit 3 of them he would not have been able to finish the quest without starting over from scratch - and that is with help.

@Smasher

These rules were designed for a game with 100 people regular, not 4 people. You could also a make a rule that says you can only kill 10 NPCs per hour, doesnt mean its a good one. If they really wanted to prevent leading it would not be hard, even with Ishtar's butchered code, to create a check based on /group and /who to prevent most quest areas from allowing other people inside based on ranking. This could be applied to more than half of the quests in the game with almost 0 effort by triggering it every time someone steps on a particular map cord via a recall trap / lag scroll. Infact I dare say if LL wanted to do it that it would take him less than a day. Which tells me there are probably understandable situations were staff is expected to use their head instead of being mindless zombies following things to an exacting letter.

That rule is designed to prevent leading, he was not leading me however, he was helping me and that is a big difference. I was on a Lt Col necro. A lt col hara could have escorted me just as easily. Infact even a captain hara could have done his job more than likely. However the lack of player base makes that impossible the vast majority of the time. His rank was irrelevant in this scenario, yet that was the sole factor it was based on.

Because you damage the guys you are leading and the guys you are leading are weak compared to the spiders and die very easy

Dieharder wrote:

In cave quest you have to escort three 2LT haras through amaze of majors+ basically. The highest being a single col AH at the end by itself.

A necro and temp have no stun or c1. Warcry and C2 are AOEs. If you attack them, even if you dont kill them.. they will follow you around attacking you non stop. Blackdeath hit one by mistake and as a temp with low stealth could barely walk for half the quest after that, if his SH2 had hit 3 of them he would not have been able to finish the quest without starting over from scratch - and that is with help.

@Smasher

These rules were designed for a game with 100 people regular, not 4 people. You could also a make a rule that says you can only kill 10 NPCs per hour, doesnt mean its a good one. If they really wanted to prevent leading it would not be hard, even with Ishtar's butchered code, to create a check based on /group and /who to prevent most quest areas from allowing other people inside based on ranking. This could be applied to more than half of the quests in the game with almost 0 effort by triggering it every time someone steps on a particular map cord via a recall trap / lag scroll. Infact I dare say if LL wanted to do it that it would take him less than a day. Which tells me there are probably understandable situations were staff is expected to use their head instead of being mindless zombies following things to an exacting letter.

That rule is designed to prevent leading, he was not leading me however, he was helping me and that is a big difference. I was on a Lt Col necro. A lt col hara could have escorted me just as easily. Infact even a captain hara could have done his job more than likely. However the lack of player base makes that impossible the vast majority of the time. His rank was irrelevant in this scenario, yet that was the sole factor it was based on.

i completely sympathize with ATs soloing this and it is hard but doable (i would know having had Smasher as Warlord AT) not sure with necro as im not that high yet to try it. i think more to the point that yes it was helping BUT there is a HUGE difference between being maybe 1/2 ranks over group limit and 6/7 ranks over group limit.

Thats just it though. There wasnt a difference. -1 rank, 3 ranks, 8 ranks. We had no chance of dying even if the 3rd person never healed or spelled us and it was just us two on our own. The only thing that changed by the nobles presence was the survivability of the NPCs. Their survivability gained was not because of rank. They were merely there for a c1, stun or extra body. With rank comes power, we did not need noble power. We needed their class because it had stun. It was help to have their body to lure monsters to (instead the escorties). Having 30 base bless or 120 base everything had no impact on what was occurring.

Me and diehard tried to do it, and we got yelled at for being 1 rank outside of grouping.  I was on my magen necro and he was on his warlord AH.  There needs to be some leniency on this issue because the fact that we had to stop was totally a genius, I could have been unspelled and survived in there on my own.

If the lowest ranked person in the area is +1-2 ranks the monsters in the area then it should not matter. This wouldn't effect black stronghold or prison or tower as the strongest monsters in those areas are noble rank. Can someone figure this out please, because the fact that this is an issue is really sad.

I have posted a topic in higher admin to discuss.... One of us will get back to you

I don't like the leading rule either but repeatedly ignoring the rules is not a good way to get them changed.

I realize some bad seeds(who largely no longer play as far as I can tell) have necessitated harsh reaction in the past. With that in mind I would like the rules to be relaxed a bit and there to be more leeway for imps and staffers to interpret them. An immutable rule is quite silly when we at the present have active administration willing to oversee the day to day operations of the server.

the point of this whole arguement was because the players in question WERE warned but carried on regardless.

had the knight swapped out for a lower alt that would have been fine.

rules are rules and i can honestly say they wont change overnight.

what happened, happened.

but as said earlier in this topic it is being discussed.

any more thoughts?

smasher wrote:

the point of this whole arguement was because the players in question WERE warned but carried on regardless.

had the knight swapped out for a lower alt that would have been fine.

rules are rules and i can honestly say they wont change overnight.

what happened, happened.

but as said earlier in this topic it is being discussed.

any more thoughts?

I really think what I proposed is a perfect fix for this, and I don't really see any downside to it.  The no leading still stands for black stronghold and wherever it was set before.  Although in the rules lies the 1 change, if the lowest ranked person who is being led is +1-2 the rank of the monsters in the area it should not be an issue.  For example

Valley of Death: Magen monsters
Lizard temple: Magen monsters
Mountains: Brigen monsters

Tower/Prison/Stronghold: All Noble monsters

I don't see this as an issue, those are the 3 big arch quest area's and +1-2 rank above them is lt gen or general which can already group with nobles@#!#!@#! How is this an issue. If it is an issue for another area then make that area no leading as well? I don't comprehend   

To append to all this.

I am not happy with being saved because was a col necro solo in Q3. Why am I so unhappy? I started that quest with 2 others my own ranks and COULD NOT CONTINUE WITH THEM because of that dang dog/wolf room. Something complained about months ago by multiple people.  I mean really, who thought it would be a good idea to have a random teleport in an area right BEFORE you need a key. So if 3 people go in.. only one can pick the flower, means only 1 person gets key. There is less than a 50-50 chance of 2 people both ending up at the lake back to back. If youre slow enough going through that the flower respawns that means you need a group. If you go through so fast the flower doesnt have a chance to respawn then youre probably at least a general and are not likely with a group anyway.

And you wonder why people end up leading or other things. The PVP is dead and the grouping system is screwed. Groups are basically only done in prisons, sometimes tower (rare) and when forced to/available cave quest (which most either dont know how to do or dont want to know). The main thing that holds this game together is the community and people are forced to solo basically.

I am so tired of the stupid Tea and biscuits with this game. I have literally played hundreds of RPGs offline / online and never once encountered the types of problems I have with this game nor have I ever seen so many things go unaddressed for so long. AT should have never been added with all the other issues and problems.

I mean seriously, In the Q2 alchemy room as a necro with max sword and good gear (godly..etc) on a freaking dpot. It took me so long to kill things that other things in the same room started respawning. Then I hit a trap to move forward and get sent back to 3x ATs that kiss and tell a GC -1 rank on my spells on a dpot with rings turned on? If I wait till I get any bigger the armor will be half worthless. And the other half of the players dont have literally dozens of gpots and dpots sitting around and mass collections of ish..etc to go through these solo, its no wonder no one knows how to do them. I was literally in Q3 so long on heavy drugs that I nearly broke 2 huge saphs that I only used for spelling up me/GC/the 2 I started the quest with. I was in Q2 so long that my first key piece actually time rotted and disappeared on me so I had to go back on dpot so I could do it faster.

-So now we have a cave quest thats necro/AT cant or can barely do even at noble when a captain hara could possible solo it and the slightest slip up from someone else could force you to restart a quest that could take 30min-2h depending on your experience with it.

-We have castle quests that are broken and unbalanced for a reward that wont be worth while for as many as not by the time you can get it and you are nearly forced to solo for. Including the fact that all 3 people are forced to get their own key on Q2.

-We have AT that I am told isn't in full release yet and you have to ask for scrolls to get there for.

-And then you have prison where you could potentially do 100 runs that take 30 minutes each and never get a prize. If you do get the prize 3/4 pieces will eventually break. Meaning youll like end up with 4 of one piece and of another. In an area that can easily enough kill any class warlord solo if they make the slightest mistake.

I also vaguely remember reading things like Karate was basically done years ago but never put in. Like really? If you need graphics for gloves use FoH and make them a solid brown color using an mspaint eye dropper. Need different attack animations? Use the current ones with swords as place holders. We have had skeletons that dont equip a sword stabbing players with a sword for years. I know 7 year olds that could fix that project in a day.

Q4 I am told had 5 potions, they all lowered brave instead of bwias respectively. Granted I dont know the exact way the code is written, but if thats the only problem it should have taken all of 30 seconds to change a 0 0 0 0 0 to a 0 1 2 3 4 or glance at some loop and be like oops a C should have been an X.

All the mean while this is mixed in random crashes and incompatibility on newer OS.

I am not going to even get started on professions again. Stop putting new stuff in and fix all the problems you already have and figure out a way to balance out the quests and fix clans / PVP for the players. I feel like I post bugs and complain about this stuff all the time and I see people go.. its being discussed. Maybe there are one too many discussions. I was once told recently by *forgets who* that LL is the only active coder on this server right now? If that is true then why does he read every post? You realistically need at least 1 full time coder, 1 full time person to watch the forum, and 2+ full time people ingame for player watch for the heinous leading and other crimes against humanity that could destroy the server. If LL is coding and Ody is on the forum and Din and Smasher are imping ..etc are doing this, how did we get to this point?

Maybe its just me being annoyed, but Ive heard a fair number of complaints over time about quests..etc in passing. Occasionally Ill hear the good comments about things that were done. All of the quests above have a lot of good elements but I feel like there are a lot of partially complete projects. Ive yet to hear anyone sit there and go yep, its perfect dont change a thing. Maybe the dev team has some master plan going on the forums with all the discussions we never see. But no one ever comes out and says yes I spend 30 hours a week coding on this, or I cant do X problem because of this code and its indefinitely stalled or I have this 98% done and it will be realized 3 months from now..etc.

Die... I have seen this community get eaten up from the inside for years because of half-butt rules aimed at stopping behaviour that hurts no one. The leading rule is a vestigial amendment that stops high ranking players from powering low ranks through higher ranked quests. The problem is that most leading does not hurt any player and simply helps remove the tedium in this game. I agree that rocking a major in baron ice pents is not acceptable but some quests where the minimum rank to complete is lower than the rank of the person attempting it should be exempt. Should we expect players to get ankh armor and amulet past major because that is the only feasible time when they can solo it?

Half the community quit a long time ago and this makes diversity of rank really hard to deal with. Even worse is the fact that certain quests are not soloable. Whatever one says, a necro without stun will never be able to do the LC alone because certain areas swarm you. Not to mention that aoe skills will make it impossible for you to progress because you will get blocked by the same npcs you are trying to lead through. I am incredibly saddened that mayhem got kicked because obviously that area has nothing that could kill you. I mean you could probably rock the npcs without spells on.

I really hope an amendment to this no leading rule will take place because right now the only thing being harmed is the players desire to log on.

Sometimes, I think "hmm, maybe I should give this game another try and not just bot the whole way." Then I remember crap like this - excessive enforcement of rules which you may not question and must always obey. Who the hell wants to play with people like that? I remember asking about quests, even simple stuff like "where is this quest?" and "is it safe to enter here at rank X?", and getting threatened to be kicked for simply that. Trying to play the game legitimately with others became such a hassle stepping around rules that it was easier to just write a bot to play for me. My bot, who pented all day and did not ask question, never got in trouble because he did not speak or attempt to go anywhere. Though people did complain he would pent too slow, and I got threatened for a kick for that as well under the reasoning of "idling in pents"... not like I could pent any faster manually as a templar.

The staff here are bossy, stubborn, and judging by the site and simplicity of all the changes, not very good developers. I am still baffled how this was the last v2 server to live on.

I'm on the fence here because its easily solod without stun skill with scrolls so that is in my opinion not the issue here. The issue is Perseus should have used better judgment and let it go because any one of the 3 could've solod it and were enjoying team play. With our current community of players there is no need for admin to act in this way as nobody blatantly breaks the rules. Leading in particular is a very area and admin should use discretion or our community will continue to dwindle and that's the last thing we need

Spodi wrote:

Sometimes, I think "hmm, maybe I should give this game another try and not just bot the whole way." Then I remember crap like this - excessive enforcement of rules which you may not question and must always obey. Who the hell wants to play with people like that? I remember asking about quests, even simple stuff like "where is this quest?" and "is it safe to enter here at rank X?", and getting threatened to be kicked for simply that. Trying to play the game legitimately with others became such a hassle stepping around rules that it was easier to just write a bot to play for me. My bot, who pented all day and did not ask question, never got in trouble because he did not speak or attempt to go anywhere. Though people did complain he would pent too slow, and I got threatened for a kick for that as well under the reasoning of "idling in pents"... not like I could pent any faster manually as a templar.

The staff here are bossy, stubborn, and judging by the site and simplicity of all the changes, not very good developers. I am still baffled how this was the last v2 server to live on.

While I do think the rules should be amended, i don't think the majority of them are the problem, however there are a lot of staff that like to flex their muscle for stupid reasons (I don't see how Perseus abused any power here, as he did warn the players, and hes generally a pretty nice guy) but I have seen it done by others, but that is inevitable on all games.

However I would like to see more developers/active staff in general, and ive said that for a long time, there are a lot of skilled people that are willing to help the server. There are an enormous amount of posts in brain storm that are good ideas that i doubt will ever be implemented because of lack of manpower.

What people do need to realize is that all the staff here are VOLUNTEERS and have real life which supersedes this game... which is why we need more VOLUNTEERS to help out.

Ody LL and a few others have real life jobs and school and families and im sure 500 other things to do too. It's not that hard to figure out why some things dont get done.

IMO first priority for this game: Get some trustworthy & qualified people to help out with server development, there are plenty here, whether it is coding or developing or whatever.

I would like to see this topic stay a bit more on topic. If you want to talk about ways the game can be made better I'm glad to listen. I think we're starting to cross the line of seeking to improve the game and more just venting about people. If there are times you believe a staff acted inappropriatly the best way to deal with that is a PM to a God, LL or Ody.

Dakr wrote:

I really think what I proposed is a perfect fix for this, and I don't really see any downside to it.  The no leading still stands for black stronghold and wherever it was set before.  Although in the rules lies the 1 change, if the lowest ranked person who is being led is +1-2 the rank of the monsters in the area it should not be an issue.  For example

Valley of Death: Magen monsters
Lizard temple: Magen monsters
Mountains: Brigen monsters

Tower/Prison/Stronghold: All Noble monsters

I don't see this as an issue, those are the 3 big arch quest area's and +1-2 rank above them is lt gen or general which can already group with nobles@#!#!@#! How is this an issue. If it is an issue for another area then make that area no leading as well? I don't comprehend   

Going to quote myself, all that needs to be read is this post right here. How is this not a topic of discussion. There is NO downside to this.

Put in an amendment to the rule where there is no issue with leading if the area where you are has monsters that the lowest ranked person is +1-2 rank of those monsters, example lost cave has major spiders; lt col, colonel, and brig general are not going to die to those things or have much of trouble. I see no one responding to my post so it makes me think that no one thinks it is useful and I don't see how. The quest area's of the game have no issue because of how high ranked the monsters are in those area's so leading is not an issue as it doesn't happen.

Sorry I moved to skim reading this a long way back.

My preference would be to tighten up grouping rules rather than relax them.
New areas are being set up with semi enforced grouping restrictions and I would love to go back and retrofit them to existing areas and quests.

The game was designed to be a challenge and for a player to work for what they get.
Unfortunately over the years some players have decided to power alts through quests or labs or pents that the weaker alt would not normally be able to do.
As a consequence, the current set of rules have evolved and they are unlikely to be removed as far as I can see.

The arguments listed for anomolies and exceptions all have merits but would effectively make the world more murky and even harder to understand and enforce. There are those who will then try to push the boundaries further because we did not specify every combination and permutation of what was and was not allowed.