Tuesday, September 17, 2013

If I was Supreme Entity...

I genuinely believe that the immortals of the Realms of Despair do a pretty good job of administrating the game. Some of the recent changes such as pre-authed names and questlines have been great. Overal the immortals have shown a commitment towards the game and the community of players/builders/smaug developers which is appreciated. However there are certain areas of the game I would like to see changed. Some of these I am sure that the immortals would like to change too but haven't got the resources or time to have done themselves. So in no particular order here is the list of things I would do if I was Supreme Entity of the Realms of Despair.

1. Change pre-auth.
What I hate about pre-auth is when I make a new character and see the following:

Path of Sages                                                   
A tunnel beneath the Sunless Sea leads directly to the far side of the distant mountain. Here there is no distraction from the goal ahead. While the tests of identity and of life choices yet remain, the test of ability is bypassed. Those who walk this path are confident in their ability and know their own destiny.
Exits: up
Dblojqgaazya the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Sbhysvpgmhmo the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Iiheksnhovmx the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Jvvufqgqnmow the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Jyninhhojffr the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Ymawvduepllh the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Ccmxlkrxmoka the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Corsyysvbcus the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Qaimtwmjmcfv the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Edbbxurncfox the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Cqhewurmoahp the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Irjtcenyhezg the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Ikwcnbjnuhwe the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Rzetwmpdfxac the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Ybuzsyhpmqtf the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Rjzjrvlxwajy the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Offotyidwupp the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Gmfngsypmwox the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Beygxmerqiqe the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Arxwddwggzqr the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Oezzlkvigpsx the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
Xlunxrcpjgsp the Fledgling of Blood is standing here.
You hold a glowing beacon as your light.
A burlap sack filled with equipment materializes in your inventory....

A whole screens worth of spam from people rolling new characters. I have no problem with people logging a heap of characters and rerolling them in the hopes of getting the perfect base statistics for a thief or vampire. What I don't like are the gibberish names filling up a whole screen. I then think if I don't like this then what does it say to new players for whom this is one of the first rooms they see? I believe it would be better if people could go to one particular room to reroll where their names do not show up to others or the reroll process is done in the new character section before they get into the pre-auth rooms.

2. Rerolling
The above room filled with rerolling characters could be avoided by making it easier to get the statistics you want. If they could make the reroll command accept an argument of which statistics you want most.
i.e. for a thief: "reroll dex str luck" that would only generate characters with those 3 statistics higher than the other statistics.

3. Bring back the lizardmen.
I've already posted enough about this but please bring them back.

4. Housing/apartments
There have hardly been any houses or apartments for sale this year. Apartments are a lot less expensive than houses due to the reason that items in apartments do not save over reboots. This is crazy to me. Houses will always cost more due to them having extra rooms in them which is how it should be but still...

5. Some banners to advertise with
On the Realms of Despair promote page it talks about "Coming Soon - Sample banners for promoting us on your blog or webpage". I've got a blog here and am trying to promote the game. I understand making these things takes time but if it could be done soon, I'd appreciate it.

6. Tank potions
One area of the game I find unenjoyable is having to organise tank potions. Sorting out empty flasks, setting up brew scripts and then waiting around is not fun. One of the best moves made in recent years was the lowering of the price of heal potions. This removed the problem of having to brew heals yourself. What I'd like to see are some cheap tank potions sold in Darkhaven. For 100k if you could buy a single potion that cast all of the longer tank potions and another potion that cast all of the shorter ones it would remove a less enjoyable part of the game and speed up the fun.

7. More quests
The recent addition of the questnews command that advertises quests that run over several days and add to the storyline of the game are great. Would love to see more of them.

8. More class differences
Sometimes it can feel like the classes are too similar. I would like to see the magic classes especially have more of a focus on different areas of magic - fire, cold, electricity, draining etc. If more mobs were made with particular weaknesses i.e. some new dragon was susceptible to cold then that would make that class more useful against it. Scatter some hidden clues to what weakens what mob would go well with it.

9. A better trade system
I don't like the idea of having to make trading bots to sell equipment. If there was some easy system where we could get a mob to hold an item until it sold at a price set by the seller and list all items to be sold it could save people problems with unreliable bots, connection, problems, etc.

10. More solo challenges
It can be hard to get together a group big enough to kill some mobs. Having an area that needs people to be able to solo mobs without help from other players/alts would be a fun challenge.

11. Bring back Tagertale
One of my favourite mobs in the old days was Tagertale. He could transport characters below level 20 to suitable areas for levelling after answering a riddle. I found it great as a new player to get me started in exploring new areas that were appropriate for my character's level. Now all he does is transport people to their racial nations.

Eleven ideas on how to improve the game. Feel free to agree or disagree but hopefully at least if anyone reads this it will get them thinking.

Cheers,
V.

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