Geas

Delmon wrote:What do you mean? Do you mean no one is rping anymore, or not taking initiative for coding?

The former. Kind of.

I thought I'd add my worthless coppers.

I'd say everyone playing this game fits into two categores.
1. You don't have time to be a wizard, so you just play the game for enjoyment. If you're in this category, suggest all the ideas you want, write descriptions, and talk about what you like and don't like. But really, you're in no position to criticize the wizards (isengorn, unless your a wizard i think you fit in pretty well here, because i sure as hell do).

2. You do have time to be a wizard - Good, get to work.

And about the Sathos:
Instead of complaining about how inactive they are, make one, or play the one you have. Removing the patrols isn't going to do anything, northwest of the crossroads is a perfect place to sit and talk to others, fuck, I even tried (i think it worked) to get the ENTIRE UNDERGROUND AND GIAT for you guys to talk to interact with others in.

edit:
Small playerbase is also going to be a problem. Go to some MUD forums and write some reviews and recommendations for geas if you care. When you see a newbie, involve them. You know, instead of completely ignoring them and going back to grinding with the other epicly strong characters. It's a pain in the ass for newbies to get involved in the game, especially because everything is so damn monopolized, get them involved and interested.

Concerning the Sathos, if you mean by inactive that there is hardly conflict, then you are right right. The problem are not the patrols, Sathos can deal with them, but the fact that is nearly impossible right now to fight against a team with a Crusader in it.

And as poGanon said, we have tried to negotiate a neutral zone where interaction with other people is possible, though I am not sure that it worked like he said. After taking over as DM I mailed the persons he was negotiating with and I got no response at all.

Warning! Long note!

And about the Sathos:
Instead of complaining about how inactive they are, make one, or play the one you have. Removing the patrols isn't going to do anything, northwest of the crossroads is a perfect place to sit and talk to others, fuck, I even tried (i think it worked) to get the ENTIRE UNDERGROUND AND GIAT for you guys to talk to interact with others in.

I already told you why I wouldn't want to play a Satho. If you want, I could try to play one, but I can pretty much predict what will happen, and I for sure as hell won't powertrain that Satho since I have 0 interest in training a char just for the sake of a higher ratio of PvP success.

The main reason is simple - other than PvP I couldn't do anything at all.

At least I wouldn't know what I should do differently.

I for sure as hell couldn't really socialize or interact with others (other than occasional torture roleplay, but let's be honest here - most chars who are captured are weak and small, not strong), since sooner or later I would be forced to be a part of massive non-stop PvP, and then enter the train-up area of the game unless I want to insta-die all the time. The whole train-up thing is really overdone IMHO, it should not have such a big focus in a roleplay MUD altogether.

If you are weak, you die quickly in PvP, and people tend to not want to continue playing an underdog role if you just can't involve into the game world anymore. And this is not only a Satho thing here ... do you know of any openly evil character who is weak and CAN still play without getting bored because there is noone to interact with? Or the goodies trying to convert you (which can happen very easily, and makes a lot of sense to do IC)

If it were to work we'd have simply more evil characters all around, and more good characters too. Because they would want to kill or somehow "counter" the evil chars, even if it were to just be a spy. But it just doesn't easily work that way due to several reasons.

I also ask myself this simple question:

If the MUD has i.e. 20 players, of these are basically 2 evil at the given time, and 18 good or neutral, then what shall I do as an evil char? Stay in Asador and wait until the other players are offline? Or go out and ambush someone, which can still be cool, a rush of adrenaline ... but there isn't any different way to really INTERACT with other characters than that.

And it simply seems to get more and more into this direction.

Doing something radical like removing the patrol would DO A LOT, different to what you write here, since this does not affect only the Sathos, it affects everyone who is outlawed anywhere altogether.

It can STILL be a lot of fun to fight a Satho even if you lose.

A satho is another player and players are cool to have.

But I personally have NO INTEREST at all to fight the NPCs again and again and again. That is like fighting the system. I have no interest to fight the system. I can't change the system as a player, other than working within the constraints of the system. Which will sooner or later just lead to an incredibly stale setup. How could I change it? It will just make it harder and harder to try anything different.

See @Isengorn's note about killing unicorns. If it costs 80 gold coins, who would want to do that? And that's just one example ... there are more examples, where you simply just want to be nice, lawful, cuddly, friendly. And strong too, since you can - on top of that - do a bit more against strong enemies ...

I play a MUD to interact with other playercharacters, not to get pushed by the system into a direction I wouldn't WANT to play or which would force me to use only one way if I am evil - PvP.

Being outlawed isn't much fun.

Everyone is basically forced to be either:

- nice, friendly and well-behaving (in regards to the law, but also independent of the law with the karma situation)

- or simply power your way through (i.e. by having a strong character and so on and engaging in PvP a lot, but this rarely seems to work)

If this note sounds aggressive, it is not really meant to be that way. But I do think that the game world needs to be more accessible again.

I don't critisize the players of Sathos or anyone, but I do want to critisize the underlying framework. You get locked into a situation where you simply can not break out, because the game code makes it very hard to do so. Not only because certain guilds are stronger or not - not everyone plays a guilded char anyway ... do we want to have unguilded characters? Will they have fun altogether? It is already quite difficult to join most guilds. Strong characters are usually accepted more happily than weak characters ... what should weak evil characters do? Hmmm.

As an evil character, you need good or neutral characters just as much. You need to have some share of the world, and Asador alone just isn't working at all here.

@ganandorf this is really a much bigger problem, and you yourself wrote it somewhere else, about other players who gave up wanting to play a Satho and simply switched with the char to participate in the "good" world of the MUD. This will simply affect anyone who wants to go the "evil route". It just isn't really working at all right now. How many here on the forum actually have their MAIN char be evil? Very very very few.

There are obstacles which just can't easily be worked around by the players alone.

Here a few more great notes by @Jezz:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=32&p=4471#p4471
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=323&p=2761#p2761
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=50&p=351#p351

And the best one, which you should all read (you can ignore the other links, that's really one of the best notes on this forum)
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=323&p=15458#p15458

Hardly anyone plays an evil character right now. There are a very few who still do - respect to them - but the MUD has had evil chars in ~2003 just as well, yet they lost a lot of options to interact with the game world compared to back then.

If it would be only bad for Satho clerics, well then I can understand it partially due to massive PvP (though it works both ways just as much, when Sathos permanently die in every PvP situation), but it is a situation which affects everyone who wants to be evil altogether, no matter if high PvP or low PvP or no PvP. Who wants to be small and evil due to ROLEPLAY reasons alone? I just can't imagine anyone who'd want to do that right now ...

Conflict should not be solely PvP. If PvP alone would make everyone happy easily we'd see plenty more PvP players.

No, the obstacles can be worked around by the players alone. The good guys have to realize if they dominate us everytime it's not fun. When a watchtower sees us instead of rallying the troops and coming at us with a group of 7, come with two or three first, then if you're outnumbered get backup. Make the game fun for everyone instead of just your goddamn selves. So what if sometimes your roleplay isn't always perfect (ie. sometimes you let a satho live) this is a f*cking game not real life.

I really wish the watchtowers were just removed. They give a huge advantage and are really hard to destroy without getting picked off by the crossbowman.

They're just as hard to destroy as the Sathos equivalent. I don't have a problem with watchtowers probably because of speed, but i can see how others might. All I'm saying is, a few good guys fighting at a time is more interesting than being vastly outnumbered. Especially my a large group of really old characters vs. not so many old characters. Just take it easy, atleast give the bad guys a chance at a "fair" fight. Like i said before, if you're looking for perfect roleplay, then the evil side wouldn't exist against such a strong good side. So take it easy, and make the fights interesting.

One of the problems is that each time the bad guys are a bit too successful the good guys get new features to counter this. As Jezz once wrote in one of his notes, Sathos are not even close to be one of the strongest guilds in Geas, and their success is mainly due to the players' abilities, and not the chars'.

A couple of months ago Sathos were able to beat the good guys several times and, I suppose due to that, some changes were introduced in the game that resulted in making it nearly impossible to fight Crusaders now. As a result, most of the Sathos that were playing are gone and most of the new members hardly show up anymore.

This has happened in the past, and this will happen in the future, I guess. Playing an evil char is very hard in Geas and you have to live with this drawbacks.

The evil or good side is going to be the strongest and only at few times will they be comparable. That will probably never change. It depends mostly on how many characters are active in each alignment camp. So as a player/character you will most likely always be on either the winning team or the loosing team. There's just no way around that.

Just wanted to point that out..

Take away the power that makes undead run to all corners of the world and you will see more fights between the sathos and crusaders where the sathos win. I will point out that this may not be a new skill, considering the old Jezz vs Cathal Blitz, tatiana fight. You could also take away the rider lance so that sathos could hide behind undead. Arxthas makes a point as well. It's tough when you have some big tshaharks like Mathias and Adanath and mogwai (not to mention characters like Arxthas) around, along with clerics of taniel and rangers active. That's a lot of enemies, but when half of them are not logged in, is it really impossible to take win against a crusader?

eh well, I chase after em alone. I'll chase two alone, but if revenants or multiple undeads are involved where they can go behind them and cast at their leisure, durn straight I am bringin backup. I actually have had quite a few fights 1v1, 2v1 etc. When there are undeads in every room and nowhere to run, well there it becomes a bit complicated.

The watchtower thing is a dead horse. Watchtowes > Revenants, Revenants > Watchtowers...skulls>watchtowers, watchtowers>skulls...skulls are way overpowered, take em away..watchtowers are way overpowered..old old horse..I don't think it will support me anymore.

I have had fun interactions quite a few times with the evil side, even when I have died. Thats what it is, fun. There will never be an awful lot of evil players, but yeah..if people want there to be more, then make one, I am sure Phelan is salivating at the thought of the taste of unknown flesh as we speak.

The game isn't dead, it is a lull. I have mudded since 1991, all these things go through lulls. If you have time and you are younger especially by all means get involved with the wizzes..Just write descriptions for them and send them in. It takes a lot of time and it isn't very rewarding because people yell at you all the time, and it is monotonous. Meribo needs fresh flesh for the grinder, and Phelan needs fresh flesh for dinner. Give em both what they want.

The whole room evil fear thing is pretty overpowered. You can just have a few Crussies spam it while Taniels turn and clear out whole rooms of rather strong undeads (Tower of Pain comes to mind), which I've personally seen.

With undeads it doesn't always worked as planned, but then that has been around for a while and there are things everywhere..like I said dead horse. holy/unholy word are similar as well except not as strong in fear, and they heal/hurt.

Unlike some spells though, invokes are much easier to interrupt.

There just isn't a melee guild in Asador because order is incredibly selective so this removes long term melee combatants from Asador.
Also if you non clergy/ thief sathonite. you have no line item. you a pinned in the north, you need your WHO off for anything. And finding the other evils to coordinate is near impossible.

Having good experience is difficult for evil tshaharks. Some form of guild should be open for evil tshaharks. There is not a feasible way to contact other evils without the opportunity of a line item.

By opening up some form of guild to tshaharks, this will increase the playability of tshaharks.

Hunting in the nymph valley isn't very fun all the time especially when you can't find anyone to train with 90% of the time. Atleast the clergy can preach, have line items, swap threats.

Let me ask this, how many successful guildless evils do you see?

The same ammount of guildless good guys that fight sathonites on a regular basis.

None.

Delmon fought sathos guildless. So did Mogwai. It's VERY possible.

Jesus, this certainly devolved into a whining thread.

Sathos are good, Crusaders are good, Taniels are good. Everything is good. Honestly, I can't think of any other way to make this game more balanced than it is right now. Invokes are not "broken" Isengoo they are just as good as anything else.

The way it may seem unbalanced is that some Sathonites and Asralites are downright stupid and most of the Taniels and Crusaders just aren't. And if they are stupid, they have their numbers (usually) to back them up.

I applaud the people that take up the reigns of the evil doer and try to make something happen because it isn't easy. If you are a little evil nublet how do you expect to win against someone like Adanath? the key is you don't. You play it smart, think about things. You aren't going to beat him directly so use your brain.

Ganon and I have talked about this so much. We have had the nerdiest of the nerd conversations about this game. As someone who has played PvP quite a lot trust me, it's balanced.

The reason you don't see guildless evils fighting good people is because guildless evils have no allies. To get allies they have to make nice with the Sathos and if you are doing that, might as well join Sathos or Thieves or w/e. When Mogwai and Delmon or Matusalem were fighitng guildless Matusalem had the back up of three guilds and Mogwai and Delmon had eachother (as well as presumably some help from others like Asrals I don't recall.)

I want a pet tiger.

luminier wrote:Jesus, this certainly devolved into a whining thread...

It's a standard Geas forum ritual It starts with insert-favourite-topic and ends with "XX is stronger than YY".. where XX = crusaders/sathos and vice versa.

The positive part was that it started good! The first one and a half pages of the conversation was essentially on-topic about wizzies abandoning players..

luminier wrote: The reason you don't see guildless evils fighting good people is because guildless evils have no allies. To get allies they have to make nice with the Sathos and if you are doing that, might as well join Sathos or Thieves or w/e. When Mogwai and Delmon or Matusalem were fighitng guildless Matusalem had the back up of three guilds and Mogwai and Delmon had eachother (as well as presumably some help from others like Asrals I don't recall.)

So basically making a guildless evil is kind of lacking in potential. Even if you are friends with evil this or evil that you have no line item and are stuck on your own with no way to contact anyone almost.
What makes geas interesting to me is player interaction and that simply isn't much of an option for a non sathonite priest/thief evil who wants to go run around and make havoc but doesn't want to be a sathonite priest or thief.
Simply put maybe everyone doesn't want to go raise an army of undead or be a thief(yes there are many that do) but there really isn't a great amount of room for that.