Exploits, Cheats and Hacks.

[Ker]

yes, hahahahahaha!

M

[Hung]

I condemn Gorka's personal attacks on Maniac.
However I agree that something must be done with the energy drain that makes manaregen obsolete.

I.e. how about making manaregen percentage instead of plain.
So let's say 1 point of manaregen restores %0.2 of maximum mana when sleeping(%0.15 when resting and %0.1 when standing).
So if a person has 1000 max mana and 100 manaregen, then their manaregen will be 200(20% of 1000) per minute when sleeping.
Such solution for the regen break issue would be way better than the energy drain.

[Driven]

I certainly respect your opinion, but can you give reasons other than 'I don't like it' or 'It's different than it used to be'? Yes, Sloth is more active now, which I think is a huge step forward... regenning was literally the worst part of the game. You say you don't mind it... ok... you can still do it if you want, but to force mind-numbing inactivity on the player of a game seems too high a price to be paid to support an additional dimension to the game.

What a lot of warriors and monks don't get in all of this is how quickly casters run through mana, as they eat so much damage that the tougher classes don't eat. Warriors, for example, can actually get to a point where they methodically grind through EU small mobs without extended periods of regen, whereas a caster can never get to that point. Monks can do the same by sticking to mobs that die from deathtouch. This all plays into the deeper dynamics that non-casters are able to deeply utilize all of their resources (hp, mana, moves, regen) super efficiently, and thus operate in a super balanced mode in which no one resource gets tapped quickly, especially since backstab doesn't play nicely with mirrors/aerial servants. No such balance exists for caster primes, and that's not fair/cool/fun.

[Hung]

I don't really oppose the idea of eliminating mana regen breaks. I just don't like how it was done.
Granting players ability to instantly gain 2-4k mana is the very definition of op.

Why not boost manaregen instead in one way or another?

[Insomnia]

I think it's not energy drain per se, but specifically venerable plantwraiths. We have many mobs with a very, very adequate mana-to-risk ratio, such as the pegasus/Paladin/pseudo-dragons in DemonWeb, or wardens/faerie dragons in Herbalist Isle II. (And there are many, many others that are less known.) But plantwraiths fall so far outside the expected range of "normal" that it indeed feels not right.

UPD: Of course, plantwraiths.

[Driven]

I can easily adjust the wraiths. I can make it so that lower level players will be able to get good mana from them, but the higher your level, the less you'll get. I am thinking up to 4x40, you'll get the normal drain, and by the time you hit 9x40 you'll get 1/3 the mana from them, with a linear descent from 4x40 to 9x40. Thoughts/comments before I do this? I want to give people a chance to comment.

[Hung]

Do I understand correctly that the energy drain is going to remain primary way of the mana replenishment?
Alternative approaches(aka boosting mana regen/spectral shield/etc) are not even considered?

[Driven]

I think the change to wraiths is reasonable. If someone were to come up with a system that is balanced across all the classes, I would listen. My biggest problem with boosting regen is that I don't actually want endless runs, I want the player to have to do something to get that mana, something active that does not involve inspecting the lint in your own navel for eons as your player regens.

[Hung]

Ok. How about adding a new spell that transforms corpses to mana?
It works for, say, 5 minutes. And automatically transforms every corpse in one room with the spell bearer to mana. If there are several spell bearers, then one who will get the mana is selected randomly.
The corpse is then turned to dust, all items and gold are dropped on the ground.
The amount of mana depends on the how big the mob was. I.e. a kobold's corpse would give 1 mana.
Fire Machine's corpse would give 40.
An epic mob's corpse would give 100.

Such spell would allow groups to run non-stop. And also to return manaregen gear back in game, since casters would need the passive manaregen anyway.
And the energy drain could be safely nerfed.

[cnl]

I think Yang you need to define what problem you're trying to resolve here.

Is it that you simply want mana regen eq to return to relevancy?
Or?

[Hung]

Yes and also to justify my classo selection. As I(and many others) had put druid second just for the manaregen bonus. That choice seems way less justified now.
Yes, I know it's possible to change the classo on rebirth. However it comes with the price of reroll. Which means for me losing 85.

Generally I don't think that the energy drain should be the ultimate and primary way of the mana replenishment. It should be just one of the ways.
Other ways should be:
1. Passive manaregen that comes from the gear and the class order.
2. Spectral shield.
3. Potions?
4. Other unimplemented yet ways like the above proposed transforming of corpses to mana.

If a player smartly uses those ways, then they will never run out of mana.

[cnl]

I understand your classo position, but you haven't played since 2017.

In the meantime, people have made characters with classos attuned to the new reality.
You are proposing nerfing their classos to make your classo choices comparatively better.
But they have been here. Playing characters all the way through 9x40. And 9x40 reborn.

I don't think that Dr 2nd is a bad choice regardless. I played Dr 2nd with drain in-game and then respecced
on reborn but there's value in having increased regen. People are still choosing to put Dr 2nd.

If I was making a pure caster and I may one day - I would highly consider Dr 2nd regardless. Because it's fun.
But I think it's nice that Dr 2nd is now not essentially mandatory for any who wants to use mana.

It's opened up way more classo's as viable than: pick some flavor of __ Dr __ __ __ __ __ __ if you want to
use mana.

Dr 2nd is still a solid choice that will help lots of players in the early game.

85 might seem like great stats but when you get to 9x40 mayor there is no difference between 81, 82 or 85
other than a few less buys before you have bought all to stats to 19.
When you get to 9x40 you will realize this is not the barrier it feels like now.

I think the biggest loser here is druid primes - but like thieves did before their recent refresh,
the druid classo needs a working over beyond just mana regen - they are still amazing support characters
but their solo game suffers comparatively.

--

1. Passive mana regen that comes from the gear and the class order.

Mana drain also depends on class order and gear with casters having more mana - a quad caster
has way more mana potential than someone who is just caster prime for example, and this seems right.
as people invested in mana regen gear, so have they invested in +mana and spell save gear including
expensive drachma gear.

2. Spectral shield (why couldn't it boosted again?).

Spectral shield is fun. more opportunities to use it strategically would be fun

3. Potions?

potions, heavenly scrolls are already a thing and are heavily used by some players. There's a reason
kangaroo pouch and dwarvish scroll bag take up valuable space in my inventory.

4. Other unimplemented yet ways like the above proposed transform of corpses to mana.

I don't think groups that never run out of mana is a good idea. This just sounds like ... chop?

I would rather go the other way - making there be incentives to complete an area with the
resources you enter with - forced to push things to the very edge and make use of every last drop of mana.
Mobs that make you pray you have enough mana to survive to the end. I think this is best tackled
with area design though.

What I like about draining is it is active. You undertake an action to regen. There is risk. People
are killed every day at the vens. Experienced players are killed by the lich. You're not afk.

And it's kind of social. You bump into most of the players at the vens. Groups start at the vens.
Even when you're just hitting solo stuff you pass people there. It's not run to the dreamweaver and
sleep.

And it makes newbie players useful. and tantalized. sometimes they get mana. sometimes they die. better get
better eq. how come I'm dying? why are my drains failing. they start learning how to play. and they
can be useful healing or just staying alive in a group

I'm not opposed to making vens more difficult somehow for the higher level chars as Driven proposes.

That may be a good idea. I'm not really sure it's needed.

But ultimately I think the balance issues we have are not a "drain issue" and have to be addressed in area
design and mob stats.

They are a cumaltive issue, a death by a thousand cuts, of power increases that have crept in across the board.

If I was to propose one change off the bat it would be to increase the death XP penalty loss. Currently
it's about 100 million for 9x40.

I say scale it based on xp for the last 7 days. If someone has little xp in the last 7 days, the rate would be
about what it is currently. But a 9x40 getting good xp should be penalized up to 1.5B, and a 9x40 reborn up to 3 B xp

[Hung]

I understand your classo position, but you haven't played since 2017.
In the meantime, people have made characters with classos attuned to the new reality.

Ok-ok. Keep energy drain. After all, I don't want to be that guy who spoils everyone's festival.
Moreover it's not just energy drain that I dont like.
I must admit that I dont like major part of the recent years changes.
I may like the ideas of the new stuff, but the implementation seems very imbalanced to me.
It simply made the players significantly more powerful, which resulted in Jord becoming different place.

I mean when I left in 2017, Jord was harsh and unforgiving world. You had to work hard in order to archieve something. Even middle-grade gear was sometimes hard to get.

Now Jord is the place of prosperity and success. Almost everyone is 9x40. One could find the top notch gear even at the town shops. Many adventurers are dressed from head to toe in the drachma gear. And - as far as I understand - they got it not from the diligent doing of autoquests.

I perfectly understand why people like and defend the new reality. And I even agree that there's probably no going back now. Still I want to return to the old Jord.

Maybe it makes sense for the admin to run alternative MUD called "SlothMUD Classic", where the recent years' changes would be brutally rebalanced.
I understand, how crazy such idea sounds. As it's unlikely that the admin has desire and resources to run two MUDs at once.
Still if "SlothMUD Classic" would be run, then I'd move there and start from level 1. And probably I wouldn't be alone.

[Vegetable]

I don't mean this as anything personal but read with an open mind. After all, my knowledge of the mud and recent changes is limited given my 3 years of absence and have only returned a year ago. That said, I can share some insights from a player that has played both the old and new versions of the mud having experienced both physical and caster prime classes in both versions. Warning, English is not my first language so try to make sense of the comments if any of the sentences look weird.

I think it's not as easy as you thought it would be to get to 9.40 reborn with fully decked drachma gear and decent buys from the reborn/conquest shop. Only at this point do players get really OP and rightfully so as it takes a lot of effort and time to get to that stage. It is not hard, yes, but it does take time and determination.

Most of the reborn 9.40 chars you see now are old veteran players and some very smart newcomers that know what they are doing and have the right build and gear to do it. Many of them were here before the changes kicked in. Fast forward 6 years, it is only reasonable that they are where you see them right now.

I agree gears are easier to come by nowadays. Partly thanks to some dedicated players that constantly cycle gears and forges for weeks and give them out to other players for free. It's not a bad thing as it keeps the veterans occupied and the new players happy. Just need to know who to talk to *wink Ezekiel* I'm sure the challenge is still there if new players decide to do this on their own.

Regarding drachma gear, we do get good drachma from immort run quest now. However, those players I know with full sets of drachma gears have done most of the AQs in the game once or twice (from reborn) per char to get there. This is also speaking from experience from what I went through to get my set of drachma gears for both my chars. You won't likely see an average player having those gears without spending time doing AQs.

I agree players now are a lot stronger than before as a result of the recent changes. I believe this is a natural progression of any game. Let's face it, most people want to get stronger as they invest more time in any game. Perhaps we just need to tweak the difficulty of some areas to align with the current char powers. For example, revamping the xp/gold/damage of the old group areas can make things harder and also more rewarding to the current players. Areas like Tomb of Forever King, Dark Covenent, BH Volcano, Ice Glen, Onyx Tower, Positive Planes, Underdark 2, etc. There is a fix now for that using sceptre but nothing beats doing a refresh on these areas. I assume that the work required to tweak these areas is a lot less than creating a new area? This is probably a topic for a separate post.

I remember before these changes, the mud was a very quiet place. I used to log into the mud with less than 5 people constantly for a period of time. Reasons I believe people are simply burned out from the slow-paced game style or have already maxed out what they can in the game and got bored. A small player base means you won't be able to cycle big mobs that are meant for big groups (except for some exceptionally strong chars). Things were not looking good for the mud back then. With a bit of power creep now, people can still cycle stuff they need outside of a group. In my opinion, it is better that way as some of us play in different time zone and can't always catch a group.

I understand some may think we have grown too strong now and may reach a point where we destabilise the mud. What I see instead is the opportunity to create more difficult areas for players to tackle in the future. Dark Valk is a good start. Also, before these changes, the gap between caster and non-caster prime is too big. You will notice 60-80% of the mud is either warrior or monk prime. Now, we see more casters (and of course, the return of thief prime). It add some diversity to the mud. Although I don't play some of these classes, I am happy to see them return (when they are not stabbing my mobs ).

Regarding energy drain, if I remember correctly, this "exploit" was in the game for some time, possibly before the recent changes. A few of us have been doing that in the past, just not many people know of it or the potential it has. We also haven't found the ideal place to drain at that time. In fact, it was more powerful last time as you don't get capped on how much mana you can store up and you end up with a mage running around with 6k - 10k mana. Not forgetting, even without exploiting energy drain in the past, we are replenishing group mana with spectral shield. It is clear that people do not like the conventional way of regening mana. It's just a little more tedious but the same overall outcome.

If we remove energy drain, there need to be some changes to how casters sustain mana in group or solo. I'm not a game creator or designer but what I can think of can include some or all of those listed below.

- Including some passive skill for casters to proc cast with no mana cost on spells
- Give them a proc to return mana on cast
- Make regen scale to mana pool.For example, regen % of mana pool.

But to get make it sustainable, casters' mana pool needs to increase which will probably end up similar to energy drain situation we have now. To give you an idea, it takes my mage 3k - 3.5k mana to clear an area that takes mo/th little to no mana to clear. You can imagine the mana pool mage needs to be competing with these classes when running solo. You could argue those are thief area and it should be that way. If I run some caster oriented area, it would also take me similar mana to get similar xp as what th/mo are getting per hour.

If the mana issue is not fixed after removing energy drain, we will end up seeing casters run out of mana after clearing half the area in the group and the group continue chopping the whole continue. Like what we have done in the past. I know, I lead almost daily when I grind up my first 9.40 (unless I'm doing it wrong).

Regarding slothmud classic, if you prefer the old ways, you don't need a separate server for that. Just don't use energy drain and run solo. It will be similar to what you experienced in the past at least until you get to reborn shop. There is no need to slow the server down for everyone else.

Happy to hear what other people think about this. As I said, I'm just speaking from my experience and what I've seen so far. These changes are enough to make me want to try out other classes which I believe is a good thing. Maybe some people see the game differently. After all, we all love slothmud. That's why some of us have been sticking to this game for so long.

Cheers,
Vege/Broccoli

[Hung]

Maniac,
Considering your suggestion, no, I don't support simply nerfing of energy drain from venerable plantwraiths. It'll bring no good, but will provoke huge amount of complaining from players, who are used to that feature.

Imho, energy drain should be replaced with various alternative ways of the mana replenishment. And only after those ways are properly implemented, then the energy drain could be nerfed.

Vegetable,
Considering your experience, you should know that playing pure solo is very far from being equal to playing SlothMUD of old days.