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Re: What would make you come back to Geas?

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 7:10 am
by Vaylon
I'm a new player, and I have put about five days into Geas. I joined the game at the same time with seven of my friends from a different roleplaying game, all of whom, myself included, are experienced roleplayers. Commendably, a fair number of established players in Geas are friendly to new ones, and the majority of the roleplay that I have seen so far in Geas is well-done. I can understand why people have stayed with the game.

I can also understand why player retention is such a huge problem. I have been reading what other players have to say about Geas, and I've been asking questions -- and the more I learn about the game and its history, the less I like what I'm hearing and the less I want to continue playing. I won't go into what I've heard; much of it probably qualifies as gossip, which I won't repeat here. I will, however, list observations that my friends and I have made:
  • Quite frankly, in my opinion, the game part of Geas is unenjoyable. As one of my friends put it: "I assumed everyone was just tolerating the gameplay to experience the RP."
  • Besides fighting, there simply isn't much to do.
  • The game is extremely time-consuming. Many skills require you to wait before you can use them again, and even if you use your time "efficiently" in training your skills, you still put an inordinate amount of time simply into raising skills -- time that you could have spent doing something actually enjoyable, such as roleplaying.
  • Confusing and unintuitive syntaxes. If it weren't for helpful players, we probably wouldn't have been able to guess half of the syntaxes necessary to do things. In general, Geas is confusing, even to people who are familiar with MU*s.
  • Broken or bugged features that, from reports, have been broken for quite some time now. Some of these are complex, and some of these are simple fixes.
  • Some elements of game mechanics operate in ways that are nonsensical, unintuitive, and sometimes downright detrimental to fun. Particularly egregious offenders: armor management, random skill gain, reputation, coinage. One person mentioned that the mechanics could be more transparent.
  • A lack of reasons to play. Okay, so I've ground two or three dozen skills to 100. So what? Now what? What am I going to spend all my money on? It seems like most people play because of the roleplay -- why not emphasize that?
  • Did we mention the lack of things to do besides fighting?
Geas is a game in which "roleplay which is both mandatory and strictly enforced," but the game mechanics don't reflect that: they often work against roleplay, when they ought to facilitate it. Until that problem is resolved, Geas will probably continue to have problems with player retention.

Re: What would make you come back to Geas?

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 7:50 am
by luminier
How do you propose to solve the problems you see, Vaylon?

Re: What would make you come back to Geas?

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 8:07 am
by Grume
A start would be fixing whatever petty bugs or tiny problems new players would run into or face while first getting into the game. I'm sure there are plenty of various problems and issues that are worked on and need to be worked out, but, new players are going to notice ones in their newbie area/newbie quests first. Perhaps reviewing what issues lie there would be beneficial.

Re: What would make you come back to Geas?

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 8:09 am
by luminier
Thats a good idea, what bugs did you guys notice stand out the most? Perhaps you can make a list of the most obvious and then report them?

If you aren't new to MU*'s in general it's always nice when people suggest changes via the report function. Especially if it's a quick and simple fix the wizards can usually have it done within a day or so. But patience is key!

Re: What would make you come back to Geas?

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 9:04 am
by Vaylon
luminier wrote:How do you propose to solve the problems you see, Vaylon?
I don't know. I'm a new player, so I don't expect anyone to take anything I say seriously; older players obviously know what would be better for the game than I do. Regardless, coupled with some comments from our group, I have tried to give an honest and accurate assessment of what I've seen so far.

I don't see how most of the problems I mentioned, such as the soul-crushing skill system, could be fixed without radical overhauls. Honestly, if I were a new player, knowing what I know now, I would probably just play something else instead. However, there are a few things that I think could be done to address some of the problems I mentioned:
  • Bugfixes. I have used the report feature to report bugs that I've found, but again, as I mentioned in my previous post, other players have told us that these bugs have existed for ages without being fixed, which in turn discourages me from bothering to report further ones. Fixing lots of minor bugs, as Grume suggests, would go far in storing faith in the game.
  • Make the game friendlier for new players. I noticed that the tutorial is outdated and incomplete: you don't learn some of the most common verbs, and you can't learn some of them from reading the helpfiles; you have to ask other players. You don't even learn about the newbie channel during the tutorial.
  • Implement other things to do besides fighting -- in particular, things that would facilitate roleplay. Crafting is the main thing I'd suggest.
  • Reward people for good roleplay. Many people stay with the game in order to roleplay, and I suspect most of those people believe that good roleplay is often its own reward. Regardless, there may always be a nagging sense of having to choose between spending your time either roleplaying or grinding skills -- but why should it have to be that way? I don't know precisely how you'd handle this, whether it would be a bonus to your learning, whether you'd simply get skill as you age, or something like that, but it seems possible, if maybe a little radical.
Like I said, I'm just a new player, and my thoughts might be completely off the mark. If I'm wrong, then just ignore me and keep doing what you're doing.

Re: What would make you come back to Geas?

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2015 9:23 am
by luminier
The problem with that is most of the old players can't remember what it's like to be a newbie. Most of the syntaxes that perhaps new players struggle with are second nature to older players.

For the skill system, I think thats sort of the "spirit" of the game. The skills are suppose to "hard" to learn and take months-years of OOC time to master. Thats part of the appeal for the some, obviously not a feature if you don't like "the grind" which many do not, understandably. I don't see that being changed to any large extent. In real life you don't get better at swinging an axe by saying how good you are at it, you go out and swing it! :)

That is strange, most of the reports I put in go answered pretty quickly. But I do have a lot of open reports too. I think the key there is patience. We only have about 3-4 active wizards at any given time, and they have lives of their own. They aren't our own personal bug crushers. The fact that they do anything for us is very kind. My mom always told me there "no free lunch" in this world, these wizards give her a run for her money on that one I think!

The tutorial is actually a sort of new thing the wizards tried here. It was written by a player I think. You are correct that it should have more verbs and such so you are better prepared for the world. Maybe it should even have a mini quest to help you get used to doing quests.

What did you recall that the tutorial lacked and should include? I've done it a few times but I don't really know like you would what it lacks.

Crafting exists already, but costs some gold. It exists in the form of you ordering something from a dwarf in Elvandar, then writing your own description. Creating a personal crafting system is something that has been talked about, but, it would be a major undertaking to complete.

I also feel like there is plenty to do besides fighting... but a lot of the game is centered around combat. Mainly because this is a combat MUD I think.

Like skald skills? Most of them are combat beneficial...
book bindery? you have to get most of the materials from fighting stuff or mining...
scribe stuff?... fighting for materials or mining...
alchemist stuff?... dissecting stuff after killing it ... or looking for herbs in a flowery field!

as you can see combat is tied to pretty much anything which is a blessing to some, and perhaps a curse to others. but just because combat exists a lot in this game doesn't mean that you can't flourish without combat. There are lots of people that simply buy all the things they need after they can get making things and selling them in the shop so they don't have to fight anymore.

I really thank you for your response! It's really helpful when people come to the forum to tell us how they feel the game should be. I really like it when people come together to work on the game because it makes me feel like people actually care about improving the game :)

Re: What would make you come back to Geas?

Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2015 12:01 am
by Aturshus
I have to totally agree with everything you said. I know a new tutorial was discussed already.

We need a player-based economy and almost everything should be created by players. In terms of combat, Geas is great. Super. The best I've ever played. But the economy is bad and there's little to no crafting except for a line of craft guilds leading up to... books! Yeah...

The world is too small. Way too small. When I have most of the world memorized (I don't use maps) it's probably too small! Did I mention how small it is? T.T

As far as bugs some get fixed really fast and it seems like others get swept away and forgotten about. VIALS STILL DON'T STACK RIGHT GUYS! If I want to store them in my locker EACH VIAL takes up another item slot. My locker is full because of this. This is just an example.

Not totally sure about an rp reward system of any kind though, to be honest. We should be able to roleplay while training our skills.

Which leads me to... training zones. A lot of areas in the game are so static that the average player knows what's next without even looking. If we want to fight x monster, we go to y place. This leads to all the 'want to go to y and hunt x? which totally breaks immersion

A difficult but BADLY NEEDED change would be to see some of these places empty usually, but sometimes a group of orcs or goblins or even undead or whatever else will wander in from wherever they would normally come from and take up residence

At that point we have more roleplay opportunity because we can legitimately say 'Some goblins took up residence in the tower recently, I saw their tracks and I think we should go wipe them out'

Some places could remain static for obvious reasons, like thildens, E-D, ironhold, goblinoid camps, but most of the places should be randomized and not always occupied. (I'm just gonna make a new thread for this before I derail this thread)

Re: What would make you come back to Geas?

Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2015 7:54 am
by anglachel
I agree that confusing and unintuitive syntax-es are very annoying. If you noticed such, please write are report and suggest a better alternative syntax.

To the small world, if you have an idea for a new area, or a idea for a good content am existing empty area, report this too.

Re: What would make you come back to Geas?

Posted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 10:23 am
by Liranne
There are a few names I remember from my days of yore. I backed away because the ooc stuff was getting too much. People made alts to get into guilds and then share the information with other guilds. That I disliked ALOT. You play a light aligned character, you're going to have conflicts with dark-aligned characters. I get that. Some of the darks were pretty cool (total fangirl) ..in another life it would be almost cool to rp with them without having to try and kill one another but hey... Other than that, no one seemed to want to play light aligned characters. Alot of some kind of versions of Hannibal Lectors, mixed with Drizzt, mixed with Dexters...and that's just the elves that seemed to like Aborea alot. I guess the cultural shift to be PC and embrace evil psychopaths is too much of a draw for people. Again, some evil folks were just damn cool (*cue Imperial March*) and I give them props for playing a solid character.

I would like to see player crafts that drive the economy more. A dedicated merchant class would be cool. I know this is opening the door to abuse since people will have alts in many areas. I've seen it with the evolution of alchemy (which I am excited to see how it's evolved) and it was kind of disappointing to see the cliques info-sharing ingredient lists right off the bat from recycled characters. I got turned off on alchemy, though I personally loved it. Politics made it difficult to continue practicing alongside some twinkish behaviors that made me squeamish.

I know that staff has been very responsive to abuses and I would like to see that maintained. Twinkish stuff makes me uneasy. My first character Liranne followed the path that she did because I was surrounded by a group of solid rp'er that made being (race) and (class) fun. Alchemy lessons were fun...dangerous but fun...healing spells were readily practiced. Even the PvP was fun...well as much fun as it can be sacrificed on an altar. :roll:

I've popped in a few times and made disposable characters to wander around. I try not to interact much with people during these times as I reoriented myself to the game. I must say that the changes do look interesting. Skill decay doesn't bother me and reincarnation seems to be appealing. I wasn't much one for zooming skills to be a pk monster. It got kind of boring when I had to resort to that just to walk out the city gates.