Suggestions for Fixing Unnecessary Muflation

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At the end of the day, you have to realize not everyone plays every game the same, and not every game lasts forever. Some kids like joyriding in mom and dad's car, some kids like joyriding in their own car. Joyride's a joyride.

The idea is simply to reduce the gross exploitation of game mechanics which allow players to progress massively without putting forth any effort at all. I don't think this is unfair to anyone, and I think it would improve the utilization of game content and increase SoD's longevity.

- Leeching experience while being AFK for an extended period
- Allowing people that players neither know or trust to level up their character.
- Leveling up or getting gear by leveraging toons that are no longer active players.

From a Dev's standpoint, I can see no reason to allow people to bypass content through unintended game mechanics.

All of the issues you bring up are not issues that staff should be trying to hardcode fixes for. The problem isn't the client or the game or zodiac alignment of Omicron Persyieie MXVII, it's the player-base attitude towards the game. Using other people's toons for ringers/buffbots/xp/etc will continue forever and ever because of the social structure of SoD.

And if the staff hadn't banned a ton of people for MacroQuesting, we'd probably all be MacroQuesting by now because that would be the easiest line of progression. That doesn't mean it's good for the game, and it doesn't mean it should be allowed.

Just because people are going to continually try to find the easiest way to the top of the mountain, it doesn't mean it's hopeless or pointless to try and prevent them from getting a free ride.
 
The only Problem with this inflation is that it makes older content Void. Here are a few Ideas that can prevent this content from being dead or soloed.

Make older content higher tiered to be on par with the "New Bottom tier"

Revamp it all together around the people that like locking at 55.

Luckly SoD has not raised the level cap this keeps inflation from being to rampid like other MMO's out there.
 
I don't know about you guys, but my ISP changes my IP address every few months... so locking out an account every few months because of my ISP DHCP policy seems like a really good way to get people to get frustrated when, all of the sudden, they can't log into their toons.

What about people who serve in the military and who are away from their "primary" IP address for long periods of time? Seems like they would be hassled by this proposed IP checking policy.

This is a game, let people play it however they choose. If they want to power through content, let them.

IP address enforcement is a bad policy.
 
The idea is simply to reduce the gross exploitation of game mechanics which allow players to progress massively without putting forth any effort at all. I don't think this is unfair to anyone, and I think it would improve the utilization of game content and increase SoD's longevity.

- Leeching experience while being AFK for an extended period
- Allowing people that players neither know or trust to level up their character.
- Leveling up or getting gear by leveraging toons that are no longer active players.

From a Dev's standpoint, I can see no reason to allow people to bypass content through unintended game mechanics.

How about: because it is fun?

And if the staff hadn't banned a ton of people for MacroQuesting, we'd probably all be MacroQuesting by now because that would be the easiest line of progression. That doesn't mean it's good for the game, and it doesn't mean it should be allowed.

Just because people are going to continually try to find the easiest way to the top of the mountain, it doesn't mean it's hopeless or pointless to try and prevent them from getting a free ride.

MacroQuest was/is blatantly against the rules. This, however, is not yet you are trying sooo hard to make it against the rules. In my mind, the only "fix" that you proposed that would actually do Anything to stem this alleged mudflation is getting rid of ringers. You are far from the first person to propose getting rid of ringers but it isn't NEARLY as easy as you make it sound. Let me provide you with an example of how "ringers", whose existence is repulsive to people like you, are saving the high end of this game, and their removal might do far more harm than good.

Currently, Fair-Weather Friends is the highest tier raiding guild on the server at ~tier 13 having finished Tur'Ruj (9 tribes each with a boss), Innerer Sanctum (Nylastra'Zara, Custodian, and Taeshlin the Fallen thus far), Blazewind, and of course whatever Exodus can't kill in Spires yet (Remains of Akarn, Iskkath's Experiment, Researcher Thek'rak, and of course Mistress Saitha herself). Now you comprehend the extensive gap from the top guild to the next guild (at least 2 tiers worth, if not more).

Now say that an extremely pivotal member of your active raid roster (a Cleric/Shaman/Enchanter/Tank) quits. In the case of a cleric, I would look no further than a tier 10 guild, because that is the only way that I can be reasonably assured that I will find a cleric with max CoP and Archaic. This cleric is now a member of our raid roster, but in order to keep my guild happy we have to push progression and high priority targets (Rujik/Taeshlin/Blazewind) which means that he has to play Not His/Her Cleric (a retired cleric that is ridiculously more geared/tomed). If we did not have access to Not His/Her Cleric then the guild would be at a standstill backgearing until the newly recruited cleric has enough hitpoints to survive some of the ridiculous nukes at this tier, and the mana to heal more than he would ever think is possible (this gap is rather glaring going from tier 10 to being able to heal what we currently do).

Moving on to Shaman, Zurkka is the unsung hero of FWF and I am not sure what we would do without him. You would think that Shaman is more easily replaced than a Cleric, but essentially the Shaman is the glue that keeps all of the healers together. He is the only healer that can afford to stay on the MT 100% and when you have a Shaman with ~1500 less mana it drastically reduces the longevity of ensuring the MT stays alive (to a similar but not as quantifiable extent the same could be said about Druids, who might be the most efficient healers in the game that provide much needed supplementary healing at points in time when the MT would otherwise die from going 4 seconds without a heal).

For a tank, it is even more difficult. Imagine a mob that does 5k unmitigated damage per round and there are two of them.. I don't think I need to say anything more.

Lastly, the most powerful class in any raid, the Enchanter. If we had two/three of them, we would use two/three of them. Unfortunately, Enchanters are also the least mained class in the game. This means that the pool of possible recruits includes much worse options than any other class. Currently, we really have no option but to box Zorlon on easier content and drop a DPS to single client him on hard content (the majority of what we do now). This is an undesirable option, but it keeps my guild running as smoothly as possible.

In any of these instances, a problem arises, it has taken some of us since Ikisith's release (almost two years ago) to get where we are today, and another 1-2 months of strictly backgearing is a nauseating thought. If we didn't have access to retired players (or "ringers" to the rest of the server) people would quit and we would fall apart. Meaning no one would be where we are today for at least 1.5 years if not more, that hardly seems like a good thing for the server.
 
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out of curiosity, how bad is it for the non-pivotal classes like DPS

From my experience (it has been a year) even lower tiered guilds (I was 8-10ish i guess) have similar problems since you dont really want a lot of extra people having to sit out raids you aim for 15-18 active people. 2-3 quit around the same time and the choice can become box the people who quit or stop raiding (which can cause even more people to quit) until you can get some recruits to take their spot.

I think most people's major problem with ringers is using them to "trivialize" lower content, not guild survival/progression. To that effect, i think there were ideas to in some way make a zone lower a chars stats to an "appropriate" level so ringers could be used but not trivialize stuff.
 
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Having more people in your guild then 18 mained, and all wanting to raid is the best possible thing you can do for your guild, Competition for raid spots is A+ Keeps people logging in and doing there best, If someone has to go to a funeral or something you have other people to step in ect, Having as many possible people in your guild ready to raid is the healthiest thing you can do for a guild period.

Its up to the leadership to balance this out and the players to understand there place but having more people then you need is amazing.
 
maybe it was just the lack of recruits that always made it seem like there was 15-18 (typically more like 14-15) since both of the last 2 guilds i was in had recruitment open the entire time
 
The fact that content would sit untouched for months or years if fwf died does nothing to the health of the server. The loots only benefit your guild, which you yourself just said is extremely exclusive of all others. It matters none to the rest of the server if content they can't touch is touched at all. That said, i still see no need to do anything about ringers. Its a silly argument that's been had a billion times.
 
The fact that content would sit untouched for months or years if fwf died does nothing to the health of the server. The loots only benefit your guild, which you yourself just said is extremely exclusive of all others. It matters none to the rest of the server if content they can't touch is touched at all. That said, i still see no need to do anything about ringers. Its a silly argument that's been had a billion times.

It won't impact the players aside from those in FWF and maybe some of our friends/secondary beneficiaries of our guild, but having an entire guild drop off is still a pretty big hit to the server any way you look at it. I could definitely see it hurting the staff though, as there might be less interest in making new content / working on Ikisith Phase 2 if the remaining guilds are years out from doing it. If FWF died I wouldn't expect Dev-Marza to wait years to have people do his content again. But I could be wrong.

out of curiosity, how bad is it for the non-pivotal classes like DPS

Not nearly as bad. We have a pretty solid core of DPS, and have anywhere from 1-3 sitting out every raid. I would say as a whole we have 21 very active raiders.
 
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Which is big part of the reason people aren't happy with the Grupo decision. However, the justification for that decision was based on the idea that "people shouldn't be allowed to do malicious things to your character, period". As such, it's philosophically consistent to lock a character's faction along with that character's items. If a way can be found to accomplish this, it should be implemented.

You pull things so far out of context. First, lets define "people", being a total of TWO in that entire thread that were unhappy with the decision. People can dislike Grupo and that is fine, but to think that policy decision was bad is an entirely different thing.

What you quote as staff's justification is misleading too. They did not state that people shouldn't be allowed to do malicious things to your character, period. That is an all inclusive statement about malicious acts. What staff said was that when a malicious act is extreme and extensive to the point that it essentially destroys a character, that act will be undone in order to ensure victims don't quit and remove power from potential offenders. If someone fucked up my faction I am SOL. When people steal things you are SOL.

Please stop taking policy and staff quotes and extrapolating them to mean whatever you want. You did it repeatedly in the other thread and you are doing it here too (in posts other than just this one)

As I said before, I am all about legitimate ways to reduce mudflation, but this is a very old issue, which has been thoroughly discussed in the past. Your very poorly though out ideas have/will make you lose credibility in many people's eyes. If somehow you can come up with something that is actually viable and helpful, make a post, but all your ideas thus far took about two seconds to see how exploitable, uncodable, and incompatible they are (except possibly the +15% exp thing... but that is simple and up to staff, and im pretty sure you only included it as a counterbalance to the other invalid suggestions)
 
Isn't the high end raid game balanced around characters having a ton of tomes done?

No but it obviously makes the game/content easier. Id say the only tomes really required at the high end are the tomes of power which have been in the game for years. Everything else is just added benefit that might help you win a fight you otherwise would have lost due to poor playing.

If FWF died I wouldn't expect Dev-Marza to wait years to have people do his content again. But I could be wrong.

It is not like the content is going anywhere, but who knows if I will be around to make sure everything is working correctly. But that could be true even if you all never disband.
 
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Bango put it nicely, and it's important to realize that it's true for almost every guild, and has always been. I spent a good chunk of my time here in Phoenix Rising, a relatively casual but fairly effective guild. We had numerous people come and go but we retained access to important toons that almost seemed to be guild property, such as Ratkon, Arcadia, Aanallain, Vartenaal, etc and we would have had zero chance to progress into Sanctum/deep yclist/whatever back then if we were suddenly restricted from using them. Then probably by the time we gear a replacement, someone else quits/takes a break, and well, you get the idea.

I'm not really sure if that qualifies as a ringer, since they were explicitly geared by that guild and weren't higher tier than the guild in general - unless the guild happened to drop back a tier, which did happen several times in PR. It's easy to say "ringers are bad" but when you look deeper at most situations, it's not really that simple.

Sure, I think random guilds that use toons like Ringo, who had absolutely nothing to do with the guild or people he's ringering for, then it's pretty silly. But this idea that people want to prevent mudflation and keep everything on an even playing field is flat out unrealistic and you will just get yourself all worked up over it for no reason. To thrive, I really feel this game needs the inverse to happen. I've alluded to it before, but let me unequivocal about it - I am the #1 geared and #1 exped character of my class, and I think it should be dramatically easier for newer people to reach where I am. Not harder. I don't want encounters to be nerfed or adjusted, I want character progression to be smoothed/quickened so they are essentially experiencing the same thing, at a slightly increased pace.

Ultimately I feel like adding yet another rule, this time for ringers, would have the same effect that a lot of other recent rules have had (pug changes, exp nerfs) - the change is targeted at one group of people, but ultimately ends up hurting a second, oftentimes larger, group of people. I think it's important to step back sometimes and realize this is just an internet video game and people enjoy killing large pixely dragons and things in it. Live and let live.
 
You pull things so far out of context. First, lets define "people", being a total of TWO in that entire thread that were unhappy with the decision. People can dislike Grupo and that is fine, but to think that policy decision was bad is an entirely different thing.

What you quote as staff's justification is misleading too. They did not state that people shouldn't be allowed to do malicious things to your character, period. That is an all inclusive statement about malicious acts. What staff said was that when a malicious act is extreme and extensive to the point that it essentially destroys a character, that act will be undone in order to ensure victims don't quit and remove power from potential offenders. If someone fucked up my faction I am SOL. When people steal things you are SOL.

Please stop taking policy and staff quotes and extrapolating them to mean whatever you want. You did it repeatedly in the other thread and you are doing it here too (in posts other than just this one)

As I said before, I am all about legitimate ways to reduce mudflation, but this is a very old issue, which has been thoroughly discussed in the past. Your very poorly though out ideas have/will make you lose credibility in many people's eyes. If somehow you can come up with something that is actually viable and helpful, make a post, but all your ideas thus far took about two seconds to see how exploitable, uncodable, and incompatible they are (except possibly the +15% exp thing... but that is simple and up to staff, and im pretty sure you only included it as a counterbalance to the other invalid suggestions)

I get it, Solo. You think the game is too hard already, and you think the changes I proposed would only make things harder for you to enjoy the game. You think that more free experience would make you enjoy the game even more.

My aim isn't to make the game harder. Fewer people reaching the end-game so quickly and greater utilization of content means that people would be enjoying aspects of the game which can currently be bypassed for no reason other than that they used game mechanics to skip through any number of levels and tomes.

If unearned rewards were removed from the game across the board, it wouldn't affect your enjoyment of the game because you didn't do anything to earn those rewards in the first place. However, it might make you feel that the game is more fair for everyone, and it might mean that the staff aren't being pushed to constantly create new content since the server population won't be tearing through it so quickly.

Regarding the "decision" (and this will be the last time I address the issue), the staff said that someone shouldn't be able to irreparably harm your character, because that means the bad guys will have won. Taken to its logical conclusion, keeping the bad guys from winning means that people shouldn't be able to do anything malicious to your character, period. By reverting your character which was not irreparably harmed but was merely inconvenienced, the staff proved they agree with the logic that toons should not be maliciously harmed at all. GMs currently still have the option of saying "tough luck" if someone's faction gets screwed up, but it will be philosophically inconsistent with their arguments and precedents.

Finally, stop taking things so personally. I have no beef with you or what you did. I think the Devs should take an open stand either in favor of what you did or against (which they haven't, by the way), and then we could all play the game accordingly.
 
I think we should just stop talking to this person his posts are better written then abel's but the content is on par.

To that effect, When you start a game like this and see all the omg good stuff raining down from the top of the game you want that stuff and it being super challenging / giant time sink to try and catch up to these things is kinda what makes it "unfun", As someone who managed to get to the top of game, or as top as it gets not in the number 1 guild on the server, In probably 1/3rd the time if not less then most other people have invested in this, (Oh hey i never whored my info out GO FIGURE), I support getting to the top to be a little easier, Using a ringer regularly on a guild raid(See Power Though, Sanctuary, Whatever We follow Ringo was called at some point in time), Is kinda shameless but fuck it if that is how they want to have fun w/e man they can do it. You can keep posting these stupid uninformed ideas you have formed around your massive experience in this game, but its not going to get you anyware.

I would like to add before someone gets offended that i don't think it needs to be lol WoW easy, but a nice boost to xp would go a long long way everything else is as perfect as a mmo will ever get, and despite the witch hunt still in effect <3 most the staff for the effort and time put into this game.

Oh, btw whats your ingame name so i can avoid you.
 
eqjenius you are not an authority on inflation

You are not an arbiter of how the game should be played

You are apparently not even well-versed in how long this game has existed without the shining brilliance of your game theory

What you may be is just arrogant enough to think you're laying down some enlightening ideas

Please stop trying to be the videogame police and never join a debate team

Thank you
 
I think we should just stop talking to this person his posts are better written then abel's but the content is on par.

To that effect, When you start a game like this and see all the omg good stuff raining down from the top of the game you want that stuff and it being super challenging / giant time sink to try and catch up to these things is kinda what makes it "unfun", As someone who managed to get to the top of game, or as top as it gets not in the number 1 guild on the server, In probably 1/3rd the time if not less then most other people have invested in this, (Oh hey i never whored my info out GO FIGURE), I support getting to the top to be a little easier, Using a ringer regularly on a guild raid(See Power Though, Sanctuary, Whatever We follow Ringo was called at some point in time), Is kinda shameless but fuck it if that is how they want to have fun w/e man they can do it. You can keep posting these stupid uninformed ideas you have formed around your massive experience in this game, but its not going to get you anyware.

I would like to add before someone gets offended that i don't think it needs to be lol WoW easy, but a nice boost to xp would go a long long way everything else is as perfect as a mmo will ever get, and despite the witch hunt still in effect <3 most the staff for the effort and time put into this game.

Oh, btw whats your ingame name so i can avoid you.


I find it kind of mind-boggling how offended some of you are by these suggestions and how hard you'll fight to retain your methods for attaining free experience.

Draeos, you have more tomes completed than over 98% of characters on the server, yet you think the xp rates should be increased. And Solo has twice as many as you and he thinks the same thing. The XP grind in SoD may be too hard, but judging by your fomelos I wouldn't know it.

I've quite a bit of experience in the game, but you've shown you're more interested in attacking me personally than addressing the arguments, so you've given me little motivation for telling you the name of my characters.
 
eqjenius you are not an authority on inflation

You are not an arbiter of how the game should be played

You are apparently not even well-versed in how long this game has existed without the shining brilliance of your game theory

What you may be is just arrogant enough to think you're laying down some enlightening ideas

Please stop trying to be the videogame police and never join a debate team

Thank you

Jesus christ. This is the suggestions and requests forum. I posted my ideas and asked for constructive criticism. If you disagree, I'm happy to debate with you, but I'm not interested in getting into a street fight over this.

I guess I just don't understand the offense I've committed here.
 
Jesus christ. This is the suggestions and requests forum. I posted my ideas and asked for constructive criticism. If you disagree, I'm happy to debate with you, but I'm not interested in getting into a street fight over this.

I guess I just don't understand the offense I've committed here.
You're not debating you are doomsaying. You are gabbing on about subjects that have been talked to death over the numerous years this server has existed and presenting them as revelations and it is tired and annoying. Be a normal person and accept whatever the staff decision is about Grupo and move on and in the future try not to argue points by reducing them to the absurd.
 
I'd like to also add that under the current rules you are personally free to play the game in what you consider to be your ideal way you just can't force it on everyone else as well.
 
Why do i want to see the ability to get XP made easier? Its not cuz i want more tomes, its cuz me and solo only have this many cuz we are fucking hardcore nut jobs with little life to speak of, any normal person isn't getting the levels of xp we generate without some serious dedication we are talking alot of dedication, or play this game for 4-5 years.

Here is an example, Draeos was born April 30th 2010, now work out the amount of xp that is per day against my tomes (Hey tao do this for me PLEASE), and tell me someone who can only play this for at max 4 hours a day the average employed well adjusted human being who involves them self in a real life. Your looking at 3-4 years.

If anything i want to see XP made easier so there are more people to play with at the higher end, it should be a bit easier to get to the high end then it currently is, and free xp? Dude your fucking kidding yourself if you think me and solo got here by getting free xp, Id say maybe 1/100th of my xp has come from "leeching" and I'll go out on a limb here and say the same thing for solo. Your a fucking brain dead monkey who thinks we are getting all this free xp for nothing.

If you think me leeching off a friend is me getting something for nothing, What about the next day when i go help that friend with a 6man encounter i don't need loot off of? Was that free now? Or was it a trade off? Is it just friends helping friends? What now? Whats your brain dead logic have to say about that? Jesus fucking tapdancing christ, You have no idea what would be good and what would be bad for server health and the entire server being forced to do it the way the past people have done it would not be at all good for the health of the server, You see all this amazing stuff happening at the top end and want to be a part of that, you don't wanna go well i need to play this game for 12 hour a day for the next 6 months so i can become apart of the drama/loot/6man you see happening all the time.

FUCK I rambled a bit but holy shit are you dumb and holy shit you make me wanna gouge my eyes out with a dull spoon.

^ That earned you a forum vacation
 
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