Oh look... Another Rebirth Topic...

[Gorka]

There was some very brief gossiping last night regarding rebirth, and since I am going through that stage at the moment I thought to collectivize my thoughts a bit more formally about the matter here, as it's a better place to have the discussion that needs to happen.

Firstly a couple of quick points about rebirthing for those who haven't...

* It's really fun, seriously the last few weeks have been great. It's like a victory lap after winning a running race.
* You'll need to vault your elite eq, so you'll need 100-175 vault slots BEFORE you rebirth. (PS You can't buy vaults before level 8 for a reason I don't understand.)
* A smart person would prepare newbie eqsets, quest items before rebirth.
* The typical slow down still occurs at 6x40, and coins will become an issue. I am currently 120m coins down from when I started rebirth.
* You can level extremely fast... I'm not even 3 weeks into rebirth (real time) and I am already 40w 40o 40m 40c 40d 40n 24t 20b 20a
* Keeping half the stuff you gained at avatar shop is an advantage, but won't make much difference. Objectively speaking, it's better to rebirth earlier rather than later.
* You will rank gain 3x faster at rebirth, but at my level that's still 500 big epics for crappy reward. Epic reward shouldn't objectively factor in anyone's decision making. The chance at gems, gold, xp and character improvement in the epic system are worse than any other system in the game once the first ranks are past. Even running xerxes/klklklpa back to back in fast repop can only just keep up with a good group which will also get more gold and gems because you kill more mobs.

So here is some of the chatter from last night...

>'i think rebirth level 2 should be 2x as hard as normal. gorka is levelling too fast.'
Although this was a joke comment, to make rebirth 2 twice as hard raises the question of would there be enough reward for players to even do that. It appears that my rebirth bonus was a single ac point -0.1... of which I already had 140 of before I rebirthed...

>'the way some of the bonuses are set up, in theory you can cap you class bonus since the
code is (rebirth_level * bonus)'
So this comment raises the point that perhaps we could rebirth more than once.

>'rebirth was supposed to be a way for someone to keep their name and restart. 'anything extra should be considered a bonus..'
And this comment states the original purpose of rebirth, but it's not how I want to see it.

So I can't speak for other people who have rebirthed... but for me it was more drachma to buy more items and the replay experience. Sure there is also a rebirth bonus and 3x honor, but these are objectively incredibly silly reasons to rebirth.

My biggest concern is that when I rebirth 9x40 the game is over. I note that the other people who are already 9x40 rebirths don't play there chars much and are playing remorts or other chars. I have already purchased everything in avatar shop so at 9x40, I will have exactly ZERO use for XP. For a second reiteration of rebirth I would have almost ZERO use for DRACHMA. So the point for me regarding reiterations is... why? What's in it for me other than replay value.

Which raises the question what should be the purpose of rebirth... to which my answer is, to incrementally get more stronger. But at the moment that path ends at rebirth 9x40... so what happens next... do I just say I finished sloth and walk away from the game, zero use for drachma or xp? If this is what is true, so be it. However what I really want to see is a rebirth shop, much like avatar shop where I can work to further get my character to some caps that are currently impossible... whether that be purchases through xp or drachma.

One last point, the idea behind making the game more challenging for rebirths... I don't agree that increasing the size of xp for levels for subsequent rebirths achieves that, all that does is make the game more boring than it already is. The challenges of the game ended the first time you reach 9x40... rebirth is like a victory lap. I enjoy playing the game because I desire to maximise my character to it's ultimate form, not to simply continually replay it in 2 months flat. If I loose the ability to improve, I loose the desire to play my character. With that said, clearly there is a social reason to play sloth, and I think I would continue with that occasionally. I don't have plans to make a new character, a bard, or a remort and I don't want to. I want to play Gorka and I want progression.

If it's decided that the road to progression won't be improved, then that's the decision, that's fine... but inevitably I'll fade away, and I don't really want that.

[Filk]

Agree with everything about the motivation to play after the current top

[Teron]

Thanks for the tips about rebirthing. I was expecting 40 slots, not 170, for elite eq, but you are right - low levels dont need to hog 250 items.

Your point about progression brings us back to the idea of repeat rebirths.

This was discussed 2nd thing after Josiah rebirthed.

I suggested giving bonus bonus stats to rebirthers, because some stats are already capped with eq+av shop, and bonus bonus stats are truly cumulative - ie, if a mage wants to rebirth 10 times by spending about a year and 3500mil gold, then he should get the appropriate rewards.

Fluffy also suggested picking from an alloted number of points among skills and stats.

Not to mention, I suggested adding more stats to the pick list for av light.

As for challenges, I think that we need not just challenges for rebirthers, but for 9x40 players:
- new areas that'd be worth it or dangerous to solo for them, R'Lyeh on steroids
- increase 9x40 exp caps: as mobs get tougher, exp per kill will increase, they need to get all of it.
Simply increasing exp cap would broaden the range of existing mobs 9x40 can go and kill for exp
- add group gold areas that'd mimic gold/hr of existing areas for 9x40s: about 1.5mil/hr/member w/o fastrepop, though some avatars might argue this number is a bit low.

Just look at various MMORPGs, what do they do for their aging players? Do they add new areas and leave them as is, or they tweak mobs in private testing, public testing and in production, continuously? For WoW, that's the latter.

While Sloth doesn't have the dev team WoW has, a list of awesome things to do can still be made.

[Driven]

What would be good are concrete suggestions for interesting ways of progressing our characters without making them so powerful that it ruins the game for everyone else. Here's one idea:

- At rebirth 9x40, gain access to crafts.
- Each craft has 5 levels associated with it, items impacted by crafting become personal.
- Possible trades:

- Gemologist - can fuse gems together (personal) to grant items new abilities (increased crit %, lifesteal on crits, poison on crits, psychic scream proc on crits that causes mob to lose an attack for two rounds).

- Weaponsmith - can add advanced enchantments on weapons (lifesteal proc, damnation proc, hardening proc that reduces chances of choppers breaking by 95%, elemental damage proc, blind proc)

- Guildmaster - can level up other players in your prime class, you get a % of the gold based on guildmaster level, remainder goes to the gods, can teach skills in your prime class and gain practice points like spells currently can.

- Classmaster - gain access to skills/spells of your secondary class as if it were your prime, but effects of spells/skills reduced a bit relative to true prime.

Could level up all four crafts independently. Obviously the xp/gold required to gain access to crafts would be Very Big (as Zuzu would say).

[Teron]

Alright, that'd make 1 rebirth worth it. What about 2, 5 or 10?

Making avatars powerful without giving them enough areas to solo/group in does seem like it'd ruin the game for everyone else, but cumulative bonuses or extra prime skills on their own aren't the cause of those ruins - they are reasons players might want to rebirth repeatedly.

I totally side with a notion that one wishes to play one character - it creates a situation, where remorts just don't cut it.

Also, please clarify exactly how cumulative bonuses ruin the game for everyone else, so I could suggest precise solutions not to ruin the game.

[Gorka]

Not to take away from ideas for rebirth... but I just want to point out... if you can't spend your xp points on improvements... which would be the case at rebirth 9x40 at the moment, whats the point in playing? We need some way to spend our xp, I think we need a rebirth shop, based on the avatar shop concept at a bare minimum first.

[Teron]

That might work well, if that's how you get your cumulative bonuses, wouldn't it?

[Driven]

I don't disagree with the rebirth shop idea. I do know Breeze has said repeatedly that he won't be the one doing it, but that he would open to it if someone else did it. Taron/Gorka, you guys are two of the most knowledgeable mortals we have, so providing a fleshed-out list on what could be in the shop might prove helpful.

Yes, so let me state the obvious so that we're all on the same page. Let's say we allowed mortals to become so powerful that they could easily solo group mobs. Given enough time and enough people getting there, the entire sloth economy would collapse because items would be easy to get. The biggest part of sloth that is awesome (to most people) is that elite EQ is legitimately hard to get and it legitimately matters whether you have it or not. Just as an example, as a monk, I have spent a year building my solo set and I'm still not done yet. Not going into too much detail, my solo runs last over an hour (without regenning) and net me great xp, and that is just plain fun. It's also extremely rewarding knowing that I worked my ass off to get to this point. If all of my current EQ had been available to me (easily) at 3x40, I would have been 8x40 in about a month and the game would not provide nearly the same amount of satisfaction that it does.

Now I realize that 9x40's can already solo group mobs, but that's limited to a select few with extreme skill and patience. Those same few also have enough respect for the game not to flood the market with cheap EQ that would end up ruining the game for everyone else. If we allow all players to get to that point where it doesn't require extreme skill/patience, then the game is done. So whatever we add, we have to do it within the current confines of the game.

To me, that means we need to get creative and add cool stuff instead of powerful stuff, hence my suggestion.

[Filk]

Would be nice to start with adding every non point based buffs to avatar shop for example.
And maybe adding bonus bonus stats. Bonus heal/spell bonus etc.
Actually anything that gives us progression. Since Gorka is totally correct - if you want players to stay, you gives them way to improve their chars.

[Filk]

To me, that means we need to get creative and add cool stuff instead of powerful stuff, hence
my suggestion.

Driven, it starts and end at the point as there are no active enough immortals to code such "cool" stuff. While adding extra bonuses to avatar shop seems simple enough. So you could offer any geniuos ideas how to make it cool, but noone will do it, even if agree its cool.
So decision should be easy enough to do it with current staff. Or as usual "do it by yourself". Though i tried that way and got almost ignored, but still

[Teron]

tldr; Driven exaggerates the impact of 9x40s and the importance of suffering to get eq.

Driven, what makes you think 9x40s can't solo huge mobs right now, given enough time, patience and corpses?

Also, cumulative bonuses I linked to aren't overpowering. To truly gain power, one would have to rebirth 10-20 times, which isn't an option for a sane avatar.

And yet again I point to the issue that there can be more 8x40-9x40 eq. Some rebirth only eq - and that can load in new 9x40 areas.

I don't think Tiamat, Iblis or zeridan leader will be noticeably easier to kill, if you get +50 bonus spell bonus, -0.5ac, +10mr or +5dam.

Now you are saying that 9x40s would solo high-end gear mobs for fun. Maybe. But casual players would still have to farm tons of gold for that gear, because 9x40's time is money: they get millions gold per day, compared to under 1mil/hr for 4x40.

Also, you may appreciate how hard it is to get gear, but some might think that it's too hard. Notice how half people leave at 4-6x40? For them leveling more is hard.

[Driven]

I agree with you 9x40's can solo anything with enough skill, patience, and time, and I even said as much. You make a good point that massive mobs don't suddenly become easier to kill because of incremental power improvements. I like your suggestion of the cumulative bonuses, though Gorka has demonstrated that getting back to 9x40 is pretty easy. What was once thought to take 9 months is now looking like 4-6 months. I think the cumulative bonuses would need to cap at some point.

[Gorka]

I think we need to bring it in and find the things we can agree on. I don't want my push for a rebirth shop to be lost in a crap fest, not trying to stop the debate - just want to make sure we stay on track. To date every rebirth thread has gotten no where... because of dumb ideas, people being demanding and disunity... How long is it going to take for us to learn?

The discussion about player power needs a reality check...so does the point about me being intelligent about the game, because what I've learned is mostly from current players. Could name you 5 players that know a heck more than me in 5 seconds. The truth is, the real player power is not hit/dam... it's game play techniques and knowledge. With this knowledge every mob was already solo from 3x40 onwards. Name me a mob you can't solo with a nightmare? +1 dam is +1hp more damage per attack, maybe +5 dam to strike and +10 to grip... but mobs have hundreds of hitpoints, so it would take cumulative bonuses to even finish a fight a whole round shorter. Ruining the game is not going to happen, because at any point the shop can just be nerfed... and the KVP points in the player files fixed... and for the record, MUD's are dying and most of our "new" players are old players. I don't plan to flood the market with cheap eq and most elite eq takes time and drachma anyway, and I'm lazy.

My proposal is basically a re-mirroring of avatar shop... Same stats for sale, +1 MAX STAT, +BONUS points to marginally increase some caps (maybe even your xp cap), maybe some different perm spells, include the 4 saves. Prices to start at double the old prices using "the exciting" ratio of diminishing returns which has already been discussed several times by Prof Zuzu. Each time a point is purchased the next point is more expensive. Boom, done! No need to over complicate it. Avatar shop is already written, KVP stats points is already written. If we could just get on the same page a bit more, instead of discussing new skills which take a lot of time to write and balance, it probably would have already been done.

Furthermore xp doesn't just need to be spent on player power... it could be spent on other things... like improving my vaults, more regen, continent portals, these kind of ideas. Although I am always going to push rebirth shop primarily, I'm open to other ideas, but I strongly suggest we work together on getting the shop done.

[Filk]

I agree. Even removing current shop caps with progressive cost would be good.
Add all other stats there and some buffs and we have something to do for a lot of time.
And if costs will be progressive, it will not ends with raising strictly one stat.

[Driven]

So something along these lines?

Armor -.1 per, xp cost of 50B + 50B/point, 30M gold
Damroll 1 per, xp cost of 50B + 50B/point, 50M gold
Hitroll 1 per, xp cost of 50B + 25B/point, 30M gold
Hit Points 1 per, xp cost of 20B + 10B/point, 3M gold
Mana 1 per, xp cost of 20B + 10B/point, 3M gold
Moves 1 per, xp cost of 20B + 10B/point, 3M gold

So basically armor would cost 100B xp for first .1, then 150B xp for second .1, then 200B xp for third .1, and so on and so on...?